Thank you for this. Its lovely to be reminded that a lot of us share some the same ups and downs whatever we're doing.
No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
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Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#12Wow what incredible timing. I am currently working on an Image Uploader component and the gotchas are hiding around every corner.
This is one of those things I wouldn't suggest you solve with the "roll your own" approach. There are some good libraries out there that will handle this and more. Uppy is one that comes to mind. I created and maintained another popular one for 7 years that i sunset in 2017.
Currently using react-dropzone seems to solve most of the major issues for me. Use that to get a signed URL via API, then upload from client to image server directly.
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#13As a software engineer I always kinda enjoyed debugging. It allowed me to use a different skill and mind set than creating designs and implementing them.
Not to say I didn't get stressed out debugging. I had one demo while developing software for AT&T's 5ESS telephone switch. We had only one phone line in the test lab configured for our feature. Attempt after attempt the software just wouldn't work. Knowing the software worked, I checked everything I could all the while stressing out. Finally I asked the lab tech to check the line. Somehow our only configured line was disconnected. The problem was a stupid hardware issue.
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#14Loved this story. A bit skeptical that that kind empathetic manager really exists in the field, but maybe.
Most telling that no sales/marketting/product managers showed up to console the guy. Satire just couldn’t plausibly stretch that far. But maybe I’m too jaded. Would love to see the reply that posited a section to this story where the empathetic individual from one of those domains gave solace to the main character.
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#15That's quite a tale, a parable almost about how software engineering differs from other jobs (I want to say 'real' jobs but tongue in cheek). I like this one too, it's even snappier. A software engineer, a hardware engineer and a department manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of co…
The big advantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. I liken it to building castles in the clouds; everything down to the foundation is reshapeable. ... the big disadvantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. Everything down to the foundation moves. http://thecodelesscode.com/case/154
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Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#16That's quite a tale, a parable almost about how software engineering differs from other jobs (I want to say 'real' jobs but tongue in cheek). I like this one too, it's even snappier. A software engineer, a hardware engineer and a department manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of co…
The big advantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. I liken it to building castles in the clouds; everything down to the foundation is reshapeable. ... the big disadvantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. Everything down to the foundation moves. http://thecodelesscode.com/case/154
Also, software is right now primarily a means of codifying human thought, which means it embodies the whole spectrum of human sanity and competence
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#17As a software engineer I always kinda enjoyed debugging. It allowed me to use a different skill and mind set than creating designs and implementing them. Not to say I didn't get stressed out debugging. I had one demo while developing software for AT&T's 5ESS telephone switch. We had only one phone line in the test lab configured for our feature. Attempt after attempt the software just wouldn't work. Knowing the softw…
> As a software engineer I always kinda enjoyed debugging. It allowed me to use a different skill and mind set than creating designs and implementing them.
Same here. I always enjoyed the challenge of it, especially in complicated systems.
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#18> I sent a message to my friend, "Cracked it at last. It was the letter 'E'."
Funny how the simplest, tiniest bugs are often the hardest to find. Just this morning I burned an hour or two hunting down an off-by-one error. Turns out it was an "index + 1" that I had forgotten to change when I refactored (facepalm).
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#19A physicist friend used to quote Rutherford, all science is either physics or stamp collecting.
By which my friend meant, physics has a way of being checked by physical reality in a way that math or computer science don't.
His area of work was extreme magnetic fields. Experimenting meant building giant copper coils, running enough current in them to melt them in place, and then very quickly detonating explosive around the coil so that, for a fraction of a second, the magnetic field at the center of the coil became the most intense ever built by mankind, before the whole setup was destroyed by the splattering of liquid copper thousands of degrees hot. Errors and miscalculations in that work environment meant that people could die unpleasant deaths very quickly.
So when he looked at math PhD students who at most got chalk dust onto their sweater, calling themselves scientists, he disagreed.
Re: No dogs were harmed in the making of this app
#20I giggled at the end. Just yesterday, we solved an issue that plagued the company for 3 years. For us it was the letter 'A'.
Someone had been doing manual fixes inserting and removing data for the past 3 years. It became part of his job. He added a recurring event in his calendar just to do that regular clean up. Millions of customers depended on this one individual making sure they had the correct data plan on their phone line.
You can imagine the chaos when he forgets or goes on PTO.
Turns out: if $line->status == STATUS_ACTIVE
one was 'Active' the other was 'active'. No dogs were harmed, but incalculable money was lost over the years.