(Untitled)

Feb 28, 2011 15:37

yesterday, with almost no forewarning*, i successfully salted a password and sanitized some sql inputs in php ( Read more... )

Leave a comment

Comments 6

lindseykuper February 28 2011, 23:10:27 UTC
Actually, I don't think it's just web programming -- I think a big part of every kind of programming is knowing how to look up what you need.

Reply

lyceum_arabica March 1 2011, 14:09:29 UTC
yeah... although the built-in commands in php are fairly impressive. escaping the sql input was just a matter of calling the right command. :-)

Honestly, the 'look things up' part is not my favorite aspect of CS. The math major in me feels like you ought to be able to learn a good starter set of axioms and theorems and then work on your own from there. (And I note that matlab and LaTeX are both very considerate in enabling you to do that :-) ) But to write anything practical in C or C++ (or, gah, network programming), it feels like designing something nice and then trying to persuade a group of angsty and recalcitrant junior high kids to build it for you.

Reply

lindseykuper March 1 2011, 18:27:27 UTC
Heh, yeah, and often (especially with network or systems programming), you're dealing with interfaces and protocols that were designed a long time ago by people who, at best, couldn't have anticipated the things you're trying to do today, and, at worst, were insane.

Reply


cmd_bakotl March 1 2011, 02:56:46 UTC
examples are some of the quickest way to find code that does what you want without having to read through mountains of specs. i cut and paste and modify a fair bit of code these days. who has time to design something themselves entirely :) (not to mention design something that has already been designed)

Reply


shinmatsuz March 1 2011, 03:23:45 UTC
As long as you don't need to deal with the guts of JavaScript, everything will be nice. As soon as you need to deal with squishy, ugly JS, stuff goes bad.

Reply

kumarei March 1 2011, 14:57:27 UTC
I beg to differ. JS is a beautiful, if misunderstood language. You can do some really interesting things with it, and once you get over the fact that it's not anything at all like Java, it basically makes sense.

It can be a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes due to Microsoft making up their own version that isn't compatible with anything else, but that's the way of everything on the internet, so you can't really blame the language for that.

Now PHP, that's an ugly language. Pretty much all its advanced features (like objects) have been tacked on as an afterthought, so the syntax and behavior is strange and unintuitive.

Reply


Leave a comment

Up