Since when do Unix tools output 3,000 word long usage info? Even GNU tools don’t even come close…

[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man grep | wc -w
4297
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man man | wc -w
4697
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ 

01.01.1970. Timestamp zero for the win.

For bash, this is enough:

# Bash TAB-completition enhancements
# Case-insensitive
bind "set completion-ignore-case on"
# Treat - and _ as equivalent in tab-compl
bind "set completion-map-case on"
# Expand options on the _first_ TAB press.
bind "set show-all-if-ambiguous on"

If you also add e.g.CDPATH=~/Documents, it will also always autocomplete from your Documents no matter which directory you're on.

Sure -> I'm not smart enough to explain it like you're five, but maybe 12 or so would work?

The problem

The problem here is that you're not adding 1 + 2, or 0.1 + 0.2. You're converting those to binary (because computers talk binary), then you're adding binary numbers, and converting the result back. And the error happens at this conversion step. Let's take it slow, one thing at a time.

decimal vs binary

See, if you are looking at decimal numbers, it's kinda like this:

357 => 7 * 1 + 5 * 10 + 3 * 100. That sequence, from right to left, would be 1, 10, 100, ... as you go from right to left, you keep multiplying that by 10.

Binary is similar, except it's not 1, 10, 100, 1000 but rather 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 -> multiply by 2 instead of 10. So for example:

00101101 => right to left => 1 * 1 + 0 * 2 + 1 * 4 + 1 * 8 + 0 * 16 + 1 * 32 + 0 * 64 + 0 * 128 => 45

The numbers 0, 1, 2, 3..9 we call digits (since we can represent each of them with one digit). And the binary "numbers" 0 and 1 we call bits.

You can look up more at simple wikipedia links above probably.

bits and bytes

We usually "align" these so that we fill with zeroes on the left until some sane width, which we don't do in decimal.

132 is 132, right? But what if someone told you to write number 132 with 5 digits? We can just add zeroes. So call, "padding".

00132 - > it's the same as 132.

In computers, we often "align" things to 8 bits - or 8 places. Let's say you have 5 - > 1001 in binary. To align it to 8 bits, we would add zeroes on the left, and write:

00001001 -> 1001 -> decimal 5.

Instead of, say, 100110, you would padd it to 8 bits, you can add two zeroes to left: 00100110.

Think of it as a thousands separator - we would not write down a million dollars like this: $1000000. We would more frequently write it down like this: $1,000,000, right? (Europe and America do things differently with thousands- and fractions- separators, so 1,000.00 vs 1.000,00. Don't ask me why.)

So we group groups of three numbers usually, to have it easier to read large numbers.

E.g. 8487173209478 is hard to read, but 8 487 173 209 478 is simpler to see, it's eight and a half trillion, right?

With binary, we group things into 8 bits - we call that "byte". So we would often write this:

01000101010001001010101010001101

like this:

01000101 01000100 10101010 10001101

I will try to be using either 4 or 8 bits from now on, for binary.

which system are we in?

As a tangential side note, we sometimes add "b" or "d" in front of numbers, that way we know if it's decimal or binary. E.g. is 100 binary or decimal?

b100 vs d100 makes it easier. Although, we almost never use the d, but we do mark other systems that we use: b for binary, o for octal (system with 8 digits), h for hexadecimal (16 digits).

Anyway.

Conversion

To convert numbers to binary, we'd take chunks out of it, write down the bit. Example:

13 -> ?

What we want to do is take chunks out of that 13 that we can write down in binary until nothing's left.

We go from the biggest binary value and substract it, then go to next and next until we get that 13 down to zero. Binary values are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... (and we write them down as b0001, b0010, b0100, b1000, .... with more zeroes on the left.)

• the biggest of those that fit into 13 seems to be 8, or 1000. So let's start there. Our binary numbers so far: 1000 And we have 13 - 8 = 5 left to deal with.

• The biggest binary to fit into 5 is 4 (b0100). Our binary so far: b1000 + b0100 And our decimal leftover: 5 - 4 = 1.

• The biggest binary to fit into 1 is 1 (b0001). So binary: b1000 + b0100 + b0001 And decimal: 1 - 1 = 0.

So in the endl, we have to add these binary numbers:

` 1000 0100 +0001

b1101 `

So decimal 13 we write as 1101 in binary.

Fractions

So far, so good, right? Let's go to fractions now. It's very similar, but we split parts before and after the dot.

E.g. 43.976 =>

• the part before the dot (whole numbers part) -> 1 * 3 + 10 * 4 = > 13
• the part after it (fractional part) -> 0.1 * 9 + 0.01 * 7 + 0.001 * 6
  Or, we could write it as: 9 / 10 + 7 / 100 + 6 / 1000.

Just note that we started already with 10 on the fractional part, not with 1 (so it's 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000...)

The decimal part is similar, except instead of multiplying by 10, you divide by 10. It would be similar with binary: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. Let's try something:

b0101.0110 ->

• whole number part: 1 * 1 + 2 * 0 + 4 * 1 + 8 * 0 (5)
• fractional part -> 0 / 2 + 1 / 4 + 1 / 8 + 0 / 16 -> 0.375.

So b0101.0110 (in binary) would be 5.375 in decimal.

Converting with fractions

Now, let's convert 2.5 into binary, shall we?

First we take the whole part: 2. The biggest binary that fits is 2 (b0010). Now the fractional part, 0.5. What's the biggest fraction we can write down? What are all of them?

If you remember, it's 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16... or in other words, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625...

So 0.5 would be binary 1/2, or b0.1000

And finally, 2.5 in decimal => b0010.1000

Let's try another one:

13.625

• Whole number part is 13 -> we already have it above, it's b1101.
• Fractional part: 0.625. The bigest fraction that fits is 0.5, or 1/2, or b0.1. We have then 0.625 - 0.5 = 0.125 left. The next fraction that fits is 1/8 (0.125), written as b0.0010.

Together with b0.1000 above, it's b0.1010 So the final number is:

b1101.1010

Get it? Try a few more:

4.125, 9.0625, 13.75.

Now, all these conversions so far, align very nicely. But what when they do not?

Finaly, our problem.

1 + 2 = 3. In binary, let's padd it to 4 bits: 1 -> the biggest binary that fits is b0010. 2 -> the biggest thing that fits is b0010.

b0001 + b0010 = b0011.

If we convert the result back: b0011 -> to decimal, we get 3.

Okay? Good.

Now let's try 0.1 + 0.2.

• decimal 0.1 => 1 / 10.

How do we get it in binary? Let's find the biggest fraction that fits: 1/16, or 0.0625, or b0.0001 What's left is 0.1 - 0.0625 = 0.0375. Next binary that fits: 1/32 or 0.03125 or b0.00001. We're left with 0.00625. Next binary that fits is 1/256
... etc etc until we get to:

decimal 0.1 = b0.0001100110

We can do the same with 0.2 -> b0.0011001100.

Now, let's add those two:

` b0.0001 1001 10 +b0.0011 0011 00

b0.0100 1100 10 `

Right? So far so good. Now, if we go back to decimal, it should come out to 0.3.

So let's try it: 0/2+1/4+0/8+0/16+1/32+1/64+0/128+0/256+1/512+0/1024 => 0.298828125

WHAAAT?

You can then remove the russian federation lang pack: rm -rf /

One thing to add that I haven't seen is that for big projects, there's often nobody that could understand it all. People either get their individual components it they understand how stuff interacts, it's very rarely expected that new people in the project, even if very experienced, can just understand everything at once.

What you said that maintainers know every single fob is very frequently not the case at all! But since they get the big picture, they know in which part to look, and with their experience, they'll know what to look for in that part, it may seem to you like magic. It's not, it's just experience.

Don't get discouraged though!

Getting into big open source projects as a junior -level can be difficult, but often isn't that hard - a lot of projects often need help and will take anything they can get. And if your experience already partially aligns with what you're getting into, even better. If you reach out and be upfront about it, you'll usually get pointed in some way.

Now, you seem to only have worked on your own, with smaller code bases. That means, you don't have a problem of code organisation. So you can't understand a solution if you don't know what the problem is.

So how would you go about it?

My suggestion is to maybe get the. 10,000ft overview. Also, understand the project workflow. Projects usually have specific ways of doing things - how to build, test, run things. Try to figure out how to build and run the software on your own. If you make it, that's a great step!

Then dig into one specific component/module/part. After a bit of study, you may be able to understand that component and find a simple thing that you can change about it. If you get this far you're golden, you're doing more then a majority of users that software.

Now if you're interested, you can dig more, or reach out to devs, saying what your experience is and how far you got, and ask them if you can help. And take it from there.

I've been meaning to get the ansible thing. Not for my home computers, my dotfiles are on GitHub, SSH keys offline, stuff backed up. But I always think that if my poor hetzner box dies, I'll have a lot of fun getting it all back up :/

Absolutely, especially si if you don't have a background in software development. Operations tasks a typical "DevOps engineer" does can help you understand the big picture, the concept of a server or service or a batch job. Configurations , environment, initialization, logging, integrations. It will introduce you to a lot of failure points - network problems, load problems, balancing problems etc.even some domain language - what's this or that service for, what is it doing, for whom. The usual way to come to backend is e.g. from school with very little of such experiences. You would come with all these ideas already as known problems. You would also learn a lot of the dev process, team work, documenting how to run something. You'll pick up basics of programming through bash and python and similar scripts. Even read some "proper" code once in a while.

After a while when you get settled, you'll learn a programming language on the side. But you'll only learn the syntax, standard library, idiomatic ways to loop or something. The problems to solve - which IMHO is often a weak point of many trainings and tutorials - will be a known thing to you, not abstract made up ideas.

So yes, you can use the DevOps role experience in your future work as a backend developer.

even if it is an earlier, yet undeteced bug, whoever found it (in this case, the cowboy), should at least log it, if not open a separate PR to fix it.

I think it is a bit more than that.

You point out two things:

• the "fuck it" algorithm
• the hidden DNS request.

So, now, obviously if you wrote the "fuck it", then well, you fix it. If you found the DNS library problem - find a better lib or something.

But if you take the stance "fuck it, there's always something", you don't even have a chance of finding out. If you had a test suite running 10 seconds, and suddenly it's up by 10 more, you would notice. If you had tests running for 10 minutes, you would not.

If you had a webapp or something that always opened "fast", then suddenly it gets doubly slower, you'll notice it. But if you already started slow, you won't notice (or care, or both), when it gets even worse.

I think that's the point of the article. If we all dug in and fixed a little bit, eventually we'd have fast apps or tests or whatever. If you accept that things suck, you'll make it tripply worse. It is a conscious effort to be fast.

It's not a monopoly, but it's still an oversized influence on the market. I think the poster is arguing that: when have you heard a recruiter ask you for your bitbucket account? But they will look at github.

I largely agree with this statement. I think the original question is very widely scoped. It's like asking, "what's the best tool for hammering nails, chopping wood, cutting wood, cutting glass, polishing floors, and building skyscrapers, and the tool is used by all builders anywhere and any time in the human history?" Different people, different skills, different problems.