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A single line of code cost $8000

pietrasiak.com

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Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#361

Post by therealpygon »

mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

I don’t know this software, but my sense is that this would be exactly the type of desired functionally in order to bypass rejected user metric sharing by parsing update request metrics, but maybe you are right and the Developers really do believe you can’t go more than 5 minutes on an out-of-date version…

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#362

Post by stevage »

js2 wrote: post #358
benwilber0 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes

Unpacked, it's actually 517M on disk: 517M ─┬ Screen Studio.app 100% 517M └─┬ Contents 100% 284M ├─┬ Resources 55% 150M │ ├── app.asar 29% 133M │ └─┬ app.asar.unpacked 26% 117M │ ├─┬ bin 23% 39M │ │ ├── ffmpeg-darwin-arm64 8% 26M │ │ ├── deep-filter-arm64 5% 11M │ │ ├─┬ prod 2% 10.0M │ │ │ └── polyrecorder-prod 2% 11M │ │ ├─┬ beta 2% 10.0M │ │ │ └── polyrecorder-beta 2% 10.0M │ │ ├── hide-icons 2% 9.9M │ │ ├─┬ discov…

So looks like the app itself is about 10MB but there are multiple copies of it, a bundled ffmpeg and all kinds of crap like wallpaper?

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#363

Post by londons_explore »

mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

Well designed software does not poll for anything - everything is event based.

In this case, that means an update should have been sent by some kind of web socket or other notification technology.

Today no OS or software that I'm aware of does that.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#364

Post by donatj »

monkeyelite wrote: post #249
latexr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code reviews kill velocity This feels like a strange sense of priorities which would be satirised in a New Yorker/Far Side single-panel comic: “Sure, my mistake brought down the business and killed a dozen people, but I’m not sure you appreciate how fast I did it”. Code should be correct and efficient. Monkeys banging their heads against a keyboard may produce code fast, but it will be brittle and you’ll have to pa…

> would be satirised in a New Yorker/Far Side single-panel comic: Thanks for taking my experience and comment seriously and challenging your preconceptions. > Code should be correct and efficient. When it ships to customers. The goal is to find the bugs before then. Having a stable branch can be accomplished in many ways besides gating each merge with a review. Do you have any studies to show how effective synchronou…

> Thanks for taking my experience and comment seriously and challenging your preconception

I'm honestly curious what you're experience level is? I've never known a developer with more than a couple years of experience valuing velocity over financial stability

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#365

Post by treve »

londons_explore wrote: post #363
mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

Well designed software does not poll for anything - everything is event based. In this case, that means an update should have been sent by some kind of web socket or other notification technology. Today no OS or software that I'm aware of does that.

So your conclusion is all software that polls is badly designed?

Keeping a TCP socket open is not free and not really desirable.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#366

Post by js2 »

stevage wrote: post #362
js2 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpacked, it's actually 517M on disk: 517M ─┬ Screen Studio.app 100% 517M └─┬ Contents 100% 284M ├─┬ Resources 55% 150M │ ├── app.asar 29% 133M │ └─┬ app.asar.unpacked 26% 117M │ ├─┬ bin 23% 39M │ │ ├── ffmpeg-darwin-arm64 8% 26M │ │ ├── deep-filter-arm64 5% 11M │ │ ├─┬ prod 2% 10.0M │ │ │ └── polyrecorder-prod 2% 11M │ │ ├─┬ beta 2% 10.0M │ │ │ └── polyrecorder-beta 2% 10.0M │ │ ├── hide-icons 2% 9.9M │ │ ├─┬ discov…

So looks like the app itself is about 10MB but there are multiple copies of it, a bundled ffmpeg and all kinds of crap like wallpaper?

I'm not sure why there are both app.asar and app.asar.unpacked. I did just run `npx @electron/asar extract app.asar` and confirmed it's a superset of app.asar.unpacked. The unpacked files are mostly executables, so it may have something to do with code signing requirements.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#367

Post by skydhash »

monkeyelite wrote: post #330
cbsks wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not require two or three reviews if they are so helpful at finding mistakes? For secure software, e.g. ASIL-D, you will absolutely have a minimum 2 reviewers. And that’s just for the development branch. Merging to a release branch requires additional sign offs from the release manager, safety manager, and QA. By design the process slows down “velocity”, but it definitely increases code quality and reduces bugs.

Once again let me reframe the mindset. Trying to get a perfect change where you anticipate every possible thing that will go wrong beforehand is impossible - or at least extremely costly. The alternative is to spend your effort on making it easy to find and fix problems after.

You are not anticipating every possible bugs. It's mostly a learning experience for you and the team if it's done correctly. Someone may proposes another approach, highlight certain aspects that needs to be done "right" (definition may vary), let you know possible pitfalls, etc... It's not always LGTM.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#368

Post by londons_explore »

treve wrote: post #365
londons_explore wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well designed software does not poll for anything - everything is event based. In this case, that means an update should have been sent by some kind of web socket or other notification technology. Today no OS or software that I'm aware of does that.

So your conclusion is all software that polls is badly designed? Keeping a TCP socket open is not free and not really desirable.

Most platforms offer other notification channels - ie. Web push. Those truly are free.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#369

Post by skydhash »

monkeyelite wrote: post #329
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it isn’t. Fake work, synchronization, and context switching are all separate problems Context switching is a problem because it...kills velocity. Fake work is a problem because it kills velocity. You're saying it's time that could be better spent elsewhere, but trying to make it sound wider. I disagree with the premise. Synchronization is a new word, unrelated to what you originally wrote. > How many times have…

> Synchronization is a new word, unrelated to what you originally wrote. I believe you can figure it out. > Never? Ok well I’m trying to talk to people who have that problem. Because I and my team do.

I guess they say never, because if you have descriptive commit messages and write good PR description, it's easy to regain the context surrounding the change. It's all about communication, both to others and your future self.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#370

Post by alpaca128 »

coldcache wrote: post #278
mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

Obviously five minutes is unnecessarily frequent, but one network request every five minutes doesn't sound that bad to me. Even if every app running on my computer did that, I'm not sure I'd notice.

People complaining about 5 minute update checks hopefully don't use Windows 10/11.

A while ago I did some rough calculations with numbers Microsoft used to brag about their telemetry, and it came out to around 10+ datapoints collected per minute. But probably sent in a lower frequency.

I also remember them bragging about how many million seconds Windows 10 users used Edge and how many pictures they viewed in the Photo app. I regret not having saved that article back then as it seems they realized how bad that looks and deleted it.

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