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A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

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Re: A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

#21

Post by NoahZuniga »

hangonhn wrote: post #8

I'm a little surprised by the answers in "Cryptographic Right Answers". Both libsodium and Chacha20-Poly1305 are not FIPS-compliant. "AES-GCM" is but it has important gotchas in regards to the IV and per key data volume. "AES-GCM-SIV" is more resilient but "AES-GCM-SIV" isn't FIPS compliant either but there is a proposal underway to certify it. So the cryptographic right answer is "it depends". FIPS compliance may no…

If you use libsodium, its very hard to screw up your encryption. If you use AES-GCM, it sounds at least like you can screw it up. Surely you'd want to use the first one?

Re: A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

#23

Post by banashark »

Not every developer needs to know about all of these things. I'd take this more as a "list of interesting details related to common things you might depend on", it's akin to suggesting that doctors of specific specialties (dermatologist) should know about random things that are part of other specialties (proctologist).

Re: A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

#24

Post by sho_hn »

hu3 wrote: post #9

If you are starting your career and panic reading such list, that would take years to learn, if even. Don't worry. Most of these items are more like nice to know than should know. Yeah it would be great if every software developer knew everything. But I doubt even the repository owner know all that is listed. My best advice to newcomers is get your hands dirty and stay away from endless hours of courses, YouTube vide…

Absolutely. This kind of list isn't the price to entry.

Toward the middle of your career you should have a reasonable understanding of roughly what's in all of those and why someone cared to write them down, and be able to know when to consult them. And you will know at least a few of them very well.

Re: A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

#27

Post by falcor84 »

justinko wrote: post #17

You should know only what you need to know to solve a problem.

My contrasting advice is that you should use the problems you're facing as opportunities to learn and practice the wider competencies that will allow you to gradually take on bigger and more interesting problems.
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