Announcer: Now for quick hits and commentary on software development topics from around the web, the EIP web-ring brings you the stigmatized spawn of a refactory, MoffDub, and Helltime!
- The AppSec Street Fighter Blog features a post by Jason Montgomery responding to an argument against password masking. He’s right when questioning whether failed log-in attempts really can cost a company some business. If your customers are that finicky, do you even want them?
An interesting point made, also reinforced by Platt’s Why Software Sucks, is that security is not a technical problem, but a human problem. Complex passwords have to be forced. Otherwise, people will resort to the most attackable of choices. This problem, though, only spawns another: unmemorable passwords are often shared between multiple systems. All it would take is for you to use a single insecure website, and suddenly, all of your online identity could be compromised.
- If you’d really like to geek-out today, gawk at the Twitter architecture in an article by Abel Avram at InfoQ. It really is cool: Ruby for the front-end, C, Scala, and Java for the mid-tier, and MySQL for the back-end. That is definitely the kind of system that can help you keep it in your pants.
I’ll also mention that the caching scheme is simply nuts; a true work of art. I’m especially impressed with how some caches can use other caches to get its work done. The only thing missing from the article is an overview of the eviction policies of these caches. That is always the aspect of caching that has led me to keep a respectful distance.
- Read Anum Lodhi’s 4 steps to a professional database design over at Programmer Fish for a refreshing return to the basics. Back in the day, I enjoyed designing and implementing databases. I think the steps in this article can significantly grease the wheels of the impedance mismatch, which I admit I have never suffered from (and if I have, I didn’t find it painful).
I can only imagine being a SQL developer today. I think within the first ten minutes, I’d be reaching for the manual to find out how to declare classes and interfaces. Hmm, a Nowhere To Run strip, anybody?
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