I lost access to my GoDaddy VPS CentOS 6 server after fat-fingering an openssl update and clobbering sshd in the process. GoDaddy technical support was unable to reinstall openssl then restart the server. They might not have physical access or a means of simulating physical access to my VPS instance. (With physical access to a […]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 introduces Application Streams. Software Collections (SCLs) are no longer needed in RHEL 8. According to Introducing Application Streams in RHEL 8, Application Streams, containerization, or virtualization can be used to fulfill needs met previously by SCLs. I recently updated PHP and Apache httpd on a CentOS 6 server with Software […]
Working within a software development team is like being a member of a jazz band. Software architects convert specifications into overall designs. Engineers distill overall designs into detailed designs of individual modules. And, implementers convert detailed designs into source code. Each role has some degree of creative freedom. Each member improvises while keeping their contributions […]
I have been partly responsible for maintaining legacy source code. Almost all of the code is implemented in C and therefore does not use exceptions. Much of the error handling code follows the following pattern here implemented in C++ (imagine in this example, operator new returns 0 when no memory is available): int function() { […]
I inherited the responsibility of maintaining an internal development tool implemented in C#. I recently added new classes to extend the tool’s functionality. Several of the new classes uses several properties, and I found myself writing code similar to the following: class Shape { private int _width; private int _height; private bool _isVisible; public int […]