Volkswagen, personal

Volkswagen And The Benchmarks

I bet you have heard what happened to the famous German car manufacturer in the United States. In few words, Volkswagen has been caught cheating during the laboratory tests for

Microsoft, Windows

The Computer Is Mine!

This is one of the things that make me go nuts. Microsoft decided that users must download Windows 10 [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2425381/microsoft-is-downloading-windows-10-to-your-machine-just-in-case] whether they want

Microsoft, Edge, personal

Why I Don't Trust Microsoft

Lately I'm seeing much hype about Edge, the new browser included in Windows 10 and, to be honest, I don't understand it. I'm old

development, PLC

PLC Programming

Last week, my colleague Tania asked me if I could help her to create a single question to quickly understand if a developer has ever dealt with a PLC. I

personal, solved, Firefox

[Solved] Issues With Vimperator On Firefox

If you: * are using Mozilla Firefox®, * have installed the addons Status-4-Evar and Vimperator, * are experiencing issues with the auto command LocationChange of the latter, this post is for you! If

personal, blogs

Time For A Change

Maybe you have already noticed it in the past few days. Now this blog has a new home. I've decided to leave Google/Blogger to embrace Ghost [https:

security, DMail, email

DMail And The False Sense Of Security

Email is around since several decades. Nevertheless, it is still one of the most used form of communication, especially in business. Therefore the security of an email message is really

StackOverflow, C

Recursion And Stack Overflow

Few days ago, the Twitter account of StackOverflow [http://stackoverflow.com/] (the famous site of technical questions and answers) has published the following tweet: > int main() { return main(); } pic.

project management, bug tracking

You Need A Bug Tracker

For some years I've worked without the support of any bug tracking system (BT for short) but now it's hard to do without. I think that

working life

About Projects Driven By Users

I do believe that users are the most important part of a project. Really. They can provide you useful feedback, great ideas and suggestions on what can make your product

working life, personal

Code Review

During past few weeks, I've been reviewing an old codebase. Some functions were in place since 2008. You may think that those functions are bug-free. After seven years

development, working life, personal

The Day That Never Comes

The deadline is close. The customer is waiting for your fix. Your mate needs your patch before going home. No matter which of the above situations applies: the only way

horror code

Horror Code - Copying & Pasting Errors

The following piece of code contains a trivial error... twice. int v; char buf[11], *p; memset(buf, 0, sizeof(buf)); /* Fill buf with a string */ v = strtoul(buf, &

security, politics, browsers

Cookies And The Law

On June the 2nd, a new Italian law about cookies took effect. Basically it imposes: * to notify the user about the usage of so called technical cookies, and * to ask

development, working life, personal

Code Will Tear Us Apart

There's nothing worst than read the code of someone you consider a good programmer and find tons of anti-patterns [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern]. Of course often

Git, tips, versioning

4 Easy Tips To Work Better With Git

Maybe they are quite trivial and only come from common sense, but sometimes it's useful to repeat. By the way, these are general purpose suggestions that can be

development, music

Studio Vs Live In Software Development

I like rock music. And I love live performances. Well, you know, studio albums provide a great sound quality and the cure of small acoustic details. But songs registered during

development, personal

Which Programming Language You Should Not Learn

Lately, I've seen many times young developers asking which programming languages are worth learning. Obviously I've seen a lot of superficial answers, mainly because people tend

development, personal, Eclipse, IDEs

Eclipse: Good Editor, Bad Build System

For a large C/C++ project I'm involved in, Eclipse [https://eclipse.org/] has been chosen as default IDE. I have to say that I really like the

development, working life

Narcissus Vs Getting The Things Done

Do you know who Narcissus is? He is a character of ancient Greek mythology, so attracted from his own beauty to forget to eat only to look to his reflection

development, personal

Please Optimize

Every now and then, I find quotes against optimization, just like this: > The First Rule of Program Optimization. Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization.

working life, horror code, optimization needed

Horror Code - Loop And Re-loop

Some time ago, a colleague of mine told me to look at a function. It was something similar to this: void foo(struct bar array[], unsigned int count) { /* some initialization

development, working life

Don't Wait For Bad Things To Happen

This thing has happened to me so many times that I start to think bad luck is real. The situation is the following: a product is on the market since

development, working life, open source, Valgrind

Check For Memory Leaks!

Last week, I've lost at least three hours in understanding and fixing an overcomplicated implementation of a binary tree in the shape of an open source C library.

security, passwords

3 Ways To Open A Lock - Part 3

This is the third and last part of a series (first post [https://while2.ghost.io/3_ways_to_open_lock_part_1/], second post [https://while2.ghost.io/3_