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How many developers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None, it's a hardware problem.
But in all seriousness, why not know the stuff? Everything you learn improves you as an individual and makes you more valuable. Always keep improving yourself!
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I'm still figuring out whether to learn Python, Scala, Redis, Neo4j, .NET Core, baking a pie, driving a bus... You see there's a problem with learning everything
Although I agree learning about some networking makes lots of sense.
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What is so hard about saying: "Let me get back to you"?
I use it all the time in my dealings with (paying) customers. No one has ever had issues.
What no one likes, is off-the-cuff answers that are questionable.
Or, you can say it's not in your job description; but that usually only works in union shops.
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: Let me get back to you Because finding the answer takes way too much time that I don't have
I'm never off-the-cuff, questionable, or sticking to my job description
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Maybe it's because I work as a freelance but I have the vision that a developer must provide solutions no matter what.
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That's a bit shortsighted... If I asked you to create something in a language you never used, using a database you've never heard off, including some libraries you didn't know exist... Sure, you COULD come up with something, but you know it's going to take you a lot of time to learn all that stuff and the result will not be top notch quality. The only fair answer would be "sorry, but I can't help you with that"
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I live in a third world country. My customers need solutions. I know I can't always provide top notch quality but when I can provide good quality I tell them and when I cannot I recommend someone who does.
My point is that I am a developer who is not afraid to get his hands dirty in servers, networks, configurations and the like.
Cheers!
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From my standpoint, this is where consultants come in.
Find an expert, or someone with a lot of SOLID experience here, and pay them to give you the information and the configuration settings you will need.
The problem today is that most companies are making decisions WAY BEYOND their abilities. Kinda like Clinton using a non-secured blackberry to check her own email server while using A CHINESE network connection. Really. If TLS was not setup, then her password went through in clear text. OMG.
But companies do this all the time. It is why I like the new push to use SSL Everywhere, all the time. Everything should be encrypted when it is going over the wire.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Common knowledge, or stuff left to sysadmins?
My opinion, of course you should know, maybe not now, but eventually. You were tasked with getting RabbitMQ running, therefore you are now the expert that will be answering those sorts of questions when they come up. So you don't know when your lead asked? Fine, go figure it out. After all, someone has to know to be able to advise the sysadmins. Your lead clearly thought that someone should be you, and I completely agree with them.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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I read through all of the responses to your post and I have a completely opposite opinion for you.
If you are a software developer and that is what you are specializing in than you already have a huge knowledge base to learn and work with. Trying to cross lines into networking and\or infrastructure, which have their own huge knowledge bases has been found to be highly inefficient making much of the results ineffective in the long term.
A study was done on just this issue many years ago when networking was a more compartmentalized function due to the limited set of options we had. Even then it was found that software developers and software engineers would also run into serious issues when attempting to work with two completely different knowledge bases. As a result, the analysis found that it simply couldn't be done very easily.
Today, of course, we have different environment but the emphasis has gone from 4th generation style development environments back to 3rd generation or even maybe second generation environments where the level of detail is larger exponentially.
The commenters who have replied that yes you should have knowledge of this additional detail in your tool-kits are promoting the idea that developers should be an "every man" type of professional, which is categorically impossible. However, this pressure has evolved as a result of different viewpoints towards the way development should be accomplished; and in this case it is to be done by turning the clock backwards.
The idea for example, of ASP.NET WebForms was to make web development far easier than it was with "Classic ASP", which it did. The same held true for standard Windows Forms, which allowed developers to use other languages than C++ to develop desktop applications.
Today development has now promoted so many paths to getting a task done that it is almost impossible to decide which one will secure one's career in the long term. The answer everyone provides for this is to know just about everything like it is something very easy to do and anyone should be able to do it. Well, you can't.
Nonetheless, the requirements of you maintaining your position may also depend on how flexible you are in such situations so it may behoove you to develop a proposal that suggests bringing in a specialist as needed to assist with you such additional complexities if you cannot afford the time to learn this material on your own due to other pressing responsibilities.
The real problem you are facing is that the younger generations of professionals have created environments of such complexity that they will not be sustainable in the long term; this time by turning development into some level of rocket science, which it was never intended to be and nor can it be with the level of support now needed for so many IT organizations around the world.
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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One of the problems with software these days is when developers knowingly or (more commonly) unknowingly develop insecure solutions. Saying "it's an architect's problem" is buying into the culture that enables this. If--as you've mentioned--you've analyzed the problem and determined you don't need to know something, then move on. But be aware of the issue and remember that you may not be around to explain (or remember) today's decisions for the eventuality that scalability necessitates a modification.
Saying that the solution doesn't merit security because of its lack of ubiquity is ignoring the fact that cyber-criminals can easily gather formidable bases of data by taking advantage of lack of security across the multitude of solutions that didn't think security was merited. In fact, most sensitive data available to criminals these days is not gathered in one fell swoop, but combined from many sources that have been compromised.
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I think understanding at least basically how it works will make your code better. For example, if you send a message and expect a response - understanding some of the things that might make it take longer - such as the effects of latency for example will make the difference between something that works, and something that works well - even on slower networks.
There's a lot of developers who get by without these skills - and if you have a good relationship with you sysadmins, then you can make it work.
By way of analogy - you don't need to understand how your car works to be a good driver, but you do need to know something about the car - or when it needs fixing, to safely make an interstate trip in it. Otherwise you might make it - or you might become friends with the RACV.
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I'm staying in digs in a tiny town (pop: about nine, give or take three), next to a church and graveyard, whilst working in a nearby city.
As always, I leave my laptop in the room, with the camera running to take pictures when anything moves.
The desk is in the middle of the room, away from any curtains, etc, that could blow in front of it, and nothing in the room can move of its own accord. And the window was closed.
But something moved, today. I got over 400 pictures, compared to the usual 50-100.
I've cut out all the pictures that were taken because of changes in lighting (there's a picture window less than eight feet behind the laptop, so clouds trigger the motion detector).
But that still leaves 318 pictures -- which are pretty big (over 20meg), so I've dumped them in a RAR file, and uploaded it to Mega.
This is not a spoof, and I am not taking the p1ss (I do do spoofs, and I do take the p1ss, but I don't lie). The laptop was set to take snaps when it detected movement, and no humans entered the room (if they did, there would be pictures of them). They are real photos, taken automatically today, by a laptop camera that was not malfunctioning in any way.
Download only if you want the sh1t scared out of you.
The rar file[^]
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Change in light on ceiling caused by reflection from windshields of cars passing by?
/ravi
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I suppose the obvious explanation of an insect, probably a fly, crawling around over the lens would be just too prosaic to consider?
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Damnit!
Let the tension build up a little, eh?
My initial reaction was "WTF!!!" (because until you realise what it is, you can't figure the distance from the camera), but there were two flies trapped in the room, so it was pretty obvious what had happened.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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i was just about to ask if you ever noticed any smells like sulfur or if it sometimes feels like it's cold...
but it could be bugs too i guess...
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Obviously Beelzebub (The Lord of The Flies)
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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What did you have to do to set up your laptop like this?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I use YawCam[^], and a desktop manager.
I open it in a background desktop, and it saves the photos to both a local directory and a web location (a domain that I use for this and this alone).
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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That's nothing; this[^] is scary!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Grew up in a large family (9 children), so, there was usually someone entering or leaving the house.
I can hear my parent yelling at us, "In or out! But shut the door!"
In regards to Brexit, that thought just made me smile.
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I read a lot and I really enjoy technology so when I find a well-written book that describes a technology in a fun way I really like to talk about it.
I'm attempting to build a bluetooth-based controller so I can open my garage door from any bluetooth enabled smart phone (with a code) and I'm reading a book on Atmel AVR Programming.
Have any of you read this fantastic book on Atmel AVR Programming?
AVR Programming: Learning to Write Software for Hardware, Elliot Williams, eBook - Amazon.com[^]
I really like how the author states the purpose of the book.
And so we come to my sincerest goal in writing this book instead of simply another blinky-LEDs-on-an-Arduino manual — to turn you into a true microcontroller type. Although the Arduino environment is good for getting people hooked on microcontrollers, it’s a cheap high. Arduino/Wiring goes to great lengths to abstract away from the microcontroller’s hardware. Here, I want to teach you about the hardware — because it’s useful — so getting further away from it won’t help. (My friend Ash once described working with the Arduino environment as being “like knitting in boxing gloves.”)
The open source hardware community is so cool and you can buy these little components and experiment so cheaply now. Have any of you tried some projects?
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