Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
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Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#2I seem to recall that, years ago, this article's photo[1] of Digg engineers sitting together for the v4 launch used to get posted every now and then. Usually, the idea was to shock people about how awful open offices were. Only today did I learn that this was a photo of an unusual event, and not how people usually sat at Digg.
Or maybe I'm thinking of a different photo?
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#3> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is used for every call to the function. As a result, if you mutate those values, the mutations span across invocations.
How on earth did such a well-known Python footgun ever make it into production? This is the kind of thing that should leap out of the screen for even a mid-level Python developer - and once you've been trained by bitter experience it's very easy to spot.
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#4> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…
Humans aren't perfect. Open source projects have missed unescaped spaces in directory paths that caused the deletion of /usr (Bumblebee), video games have forgotten to check the cwd and deleted vital windows boot files (Eve Online) and operating systems have forgotten to check passwords (MacOS).
Given this was 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if they had a less mature development process that doesn't use things people take for granted today, like linters, and pre-merge code reviews.
If you assume perfection of humans, maybe 95/100 times it works out and 4/100 it's a small oops, but 1/100 times you get something embarrassing like this
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#5> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…
It feels like they had someone developing this service that hasn’t done this kind of thing before. Which is a pretty startupy thing to do. I’ve been there before, even with that exact footgun. Though a much smaller feature and testing revealed it.
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#6> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…
Humans aren't perfect. Open source projects have missed unescaped spaces in directory paths that caused the deletion of /usr (Bumblebee), video games have forgotten to check the cwd and deleted vital windows boot files (Eve Online) and operating systems have forgotten to check passwords (MacOS). Given this was 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if they had a less mature development process that doesn't use things people ta…
Completely disagree with the aproach humans are not perfect. This was not a one opportunity only event. Every test case they did not run, every load simulation they did not perform, every chaos test they decided to overlook was an example of humans failing repeatedly. Massive websites were running since the early nineties...And robust software practices are a thing of the sixties.
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#7Waiters? ...really?
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#8> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…
Humans aren't perfect. Open source projects have missed unescaped spaces in directory paths that caused the deletion of /usr (Bumblebee), video games have forgotten to check the cwd and deleted vital windows boot files (Eve Online) and operating systems have forgotten to check passwords (MacOS). Given this was 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if they had a less mature development process that doesn't use things people ta…
Not knowing Python, but I have a feeling things like this weren't as well known back in 2010 and the reason they're so well known is from people doing it at sites like Digg and then telling everyone that's a really bad idea. There are so many things that I know now for programming that were pretty much unknown 10-years ago because no one had really encountered them in a large scale setup.
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#9Kevin Rose: We migrated from LAMP to Cassandra because LAMP doesn't scale and Cassandra does.
Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans aren't perfect. Open source projects have missed unescaped spaces in directory paths that caused the deletion of /usr (Bumblebee), video games have forgotten to check the cwd and deleted vital windows boot files (Eve Online) and operating systems have forgotten to check passwords (MacOS). Given this was 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if they had a less mature development process that doesn't use things people ta…
Not knowing Python, but I have a feeling things like this weren't as well known back in 2010 and the reason they're so well known is from people doing it at sites like Digg and then telling everyone that's a really bad idea. There are so many things that I know now for programming that were pretty much unknown 10-years ago because no one had really encountered them in a large scale setup.
Nah, this has been very well known since decades and is very easy to spot.