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A URL Lengthener

aaa.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com

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Re: A URL Lengthener

#101

Post by sethammons »

TimLeland wrote: post #80
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've shortened 6,463,545 links so far. Assuming you're using a charset of [A-Za-z0-9], that gives you 14,776,336 total possible 4-character URLs. Almost half way there! What's your plan once you reach the 4-character limit? Roll over to 5, or something fancier?

Yes, you are correct. I don't have anything fancy planned. Users with accounts are able to customize the ending so this will increase the availability. Currently, Bitly is up to 7 characters long when you create a random short URL. T.LY is already 2 characters shorter and there are still plenty of short random URLs 62^5 = 916,132,832

years ago, we asked bit.ly if they could vendor our link shortening and tracking. Turned out we were already a couple multiples larger than them in terms of link processing. our use case is a bit different though. Instead of one link given to many, we tend to be one link given to one recipient. Optimizing this kind of problem is interesting and fun.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#102

Post by peder »

lurkerasdfh8 wrote: post #17

fun fact. in the browser wars of 1993(?) i looked at the specs from netscape (mozilla dady for the young folks) and microsoft (what w3c? ha!) and netscape release a browser spec that said "X must support up to Y", as in "url must be up to 1024 chars", "cookies must be up to 1mb", etc... then microsoft release IE4 (or 6?) web spec. It was literally a copy of netscape's but with "up to" replaced with "at least". and fr…

I've written a number of front-end projects that used URLs for state, and yes, lol, IE was a hard no for such efforts.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#103

Post by kenniskrag »

lostcolony wrote: post #62
toomuchtodo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requirements are hard in dysfunctional organizations, or those with more stakeholders than capability and agility.

Requirements are hard upfront, period, to the point I'd say that any organization trying to set them upfront is dysfunctional, tautologically. Making all the decisions when you have the least amount of information is a Bad Idea.

but there are some architectual significant requirements, which have to be known upfront.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#105

Post by mypalmike »

tgb wrote: post #53
bulletsvshumans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At least" means more than or equal to. In other words, the 'least' it can be is 100 characters, with no upper bound.

Yes but "you must support up to 100 characters" also has no upper bound - supporting 200 characters also fits that requirement.

So if you were a programmer on a project and you were given a spec that says "up to 100", you would just make it unbounded, and for all intents and purposes completely ignore the spec?

Re: A URL Lengthener

#107

Post by eevilspock »

vlovich123 wrote: post #24
lurkerasdfh8 wrote: post #17

fun fact. in the browser wars of 1993(?) i looked at the specs from netscape (mozilla dady for the young folks) and microsoft (what w3c? ha!) and netscape release a browser spec that said "X must support up to Y", as in "url must be up to 1024 chars", "cookies must be up to 1mb", etc... then microsoft release IE4 (or 6?) web spec. It was literally a copy of netscape's but with "up to" replaced with "at least". and fr…

I don't know. There's a lot of problems but to me "at least" sounds like a more helpful phrasing. Browsers run in such heterogeneous compute environments (even back then) that "up to" basically cripples you to the lowest common denominator of all platforms you target. "At least" makes it mostly the HW vendors problem. Sure, MS was encountering this problem more because Windows ran on such a large range of HW but thin…

Originalism vs strict constructionism vs loose constructionism.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#108

Post by bulletsvshumans »

TchoBeer wrote: post #95
paulddraper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both sentences require browsers to support 100 characters. Both sentences permit browsers to support 101 characters.

Exactly, they're functionally the same.

On second pass, you're right. They're the same.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#109

Post by nemacol »

piemadd wrote: post #86
nemacol wrote: post #32

Fyi - I posted this link to the sub https://www.reddit.com/r/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/ It seems to fit very well there.

1 step ahead of you ;) https://www.reddit.com/r/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/comments/nc382v/a...

Nice! Man, I even search first - I wonder why I didn't see it.
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