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Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

neilkakkar.com

61–70 of 301 posts

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#61

> I like a bit of humour in my code, and I wanted to name it GodComponent. No. Just no. Do not ever be funny in code. No one else likes your humor, and it's distracting. (Ignoring the other reasons "GodComponent" is a bad name.)

I think it's okay to be funny in test cases. For instance, my test data has included the user-agent string, "The Thrilla In Mozilla".

As long as you don't go into potentially offensive humor

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#62
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

At the last place I worked at (a smaller ISP) we were a little spastic with our naming schemes. Sometimes boring -- web-1, web-2, web-3, web-4, ... and sometimes more entertaining -- we named a cluster of content filtering servers after porn stars (sindee, etc).

Now everything is a VM so I'm back to naming "servers" by their function because I don't really need to worry about them being multifunction or evolving.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#63
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

I am not understanding why the machine name could not be changed when it's purpose changed? Is an immutable name unique to that environment?

Because you'd probably also change the SMB or DNS name for the machine when you rename it, and that opens a can of worms where you try to work out what's using that reference and change everything that matters.

Now renaming the machine is a multi-day thing involving configuration changes (and that assumes it's not hard coded anywhere) to a whole bunch of software; inevitably you'll miss some and it'll break. Easier not to bother.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#64
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

Naming standards are the ultimate bikeshedding event. Everyone has an opinion and camps develop for various schemes. The last time this happened, I happened to be in a position of influence for the final decision for naming standards. We took an approach designed to piss off everyone... license plates. We used sequential numbers prepended by a pronounceable string, and random words, selected by a system, for internal…

I have been on both the receiving and producing end of a similar decision making process whereby all stakeholders are consulted, and then a solution is provided which has as its only real design consideration - beyond being effective - that no-one gets exactly what they requested.

Is there a name for this kind of anti-consensus decision making?

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#65
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

I am not understanding why the machine name could not be changed when it's purpose changed? Is an immutable name unique to that environment?

[deleted]

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#66

> I like a bit of humour in my code, and I wanted to name it GodComponent. No. Just no. Do not ever be funny in code. No one else likes your humor, and it's distracting. (Ignoring the other reasons "GodComponent" is a bad name.)

I for one appreciate good humour in a codebase.

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#67
post #30
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

in my home network i name my computers after animals, whereby the power/size of the computer roughly resembles the size of the animal. my beefy desktop may be the whale, the nas is the rhino, the notebooks are roughly dogs, the raspberry pis are small animals like mice, the chromecast is e coli. plus good: i'm never going to run out of animal names.

[deleted]

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#68
post #21

> Naming your clusters? Naming them after the service that runs on them is great, till the point you start running something else on them too. We ended up naming them with our team name. This is covered by RFC 1178¹, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (from 1990): Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine. A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was going to be used to control a nu…

At the last place I worked at (a smaller ISP) we were a little spastic with our naming schemes. Sometimes boring -- web-1, web-2, web-3, web-4, ... and sometimes more entertaining -- we named a cluster of content filtering servers after porn stars (sindee, etc). Now everything is a VM so I'm back to naming "servers" by their function because I don't really need to worry about them being multifunction or evolving.

It's sad to see in the current century that a group of erstwhile professionals jump to "porn stars".

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#69
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my home network i name my computers after animals, whereby the power/size of the computer roughly resembles the size of the animal. my beefy desktop may be the whale, the nas is the rhino, the notebooks are roughly dogs, the raspberry pis are small animals like mice, the chromecast is e coli. plus good: i'm never going to run out of animal names.

Nice! Could take a turn for the worse when you need something smaller than E. coli though--you'll be wishing you named the Chromecast "tardigrade" when some lightswitch has to be named "herpes."

Rest assured, IoT deserves to be named herpes...

Re: Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming standards are the ultimate bikeshedding event. Everyone has an opinion and camps develop for various schemes. The last time this happened, I happened to be in a position of influence for the final decision for naming standards. We took an approach designed to piss off everyone... license plates. We used sequential numbers prepended by a pronounceable string, and random words, selected by a system, for internal…

I have been on both the receiving and producing end of a similar decision making process whereby all stakeholders are consulted, and then a solution is provided which has as its only real design consideration - beyond being effective - that no-one gets exactly what they requested. Is there a name for this kind of anti-consensus decision making?

Great question! I wish I knew!

It’s a weird scenario as people are very emotional about their chosen position during the discussion, but literally nobody gives a hoot once a decision was made.

In our case, multiple organizations were merged, so the perception one camp “winning” was important to avoid.

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