Programming Bytes; Or, The Terrible Mambas Doth Linger In Pairs
When I was a baby, one of my most important lessons, or so I thought.
Was that Mambas, a kind of a cheerful, and cheerfully deadly snake, always try to get you in pairs.
So once you fling one danger noodle away, you have to turn right around and chuck the other one too.
I also learned that some islands float, and not to fidget too much when stuck in quicksand, just die calmly.
These lessons came from my, now lost, but once fantastic library of extremely educational European comic books.
I am yet to test out the quick sand, it is not as quick as it claims, I guess.
Unless your mom is in the water, the islands, probably donât actually float, but, rather move with tectonic plates.
But, you know what, the Mambas, freaking attack me on weekly basis.
From an end user perspective, when something is broken in a computer program.
It is a little bug, you get the programmers to fix it and move on.
But from the programmers perspective, a bug is just a missed deadline, or an unfortunate moth.
The real problems, are only seen by program mangers, shortly before they mutterâŚ
âAre you forking kidding e right nowâ, and begin their secret search for the next job.
Those are the Mambas, the deadly creatures in the code.
And oh my gosh, they never come alone.
And while most often they rip your code apart in pairs, they somethings come in threes, sometimes fours.
But you canât really fix that, once you have four layers of bugs.
You really want to use the existing program for snippets and chastity, and just rewrite everything from scratch.
So how does a mamba strike occur, it is sharp, swift, hopped up on java, and there is nothing regular about it, that can be expressed.
You run your program, you get a bug, a tiny little sting â it is just an unfinished thing, your can fix it.
And that is where the other mamba gets you in the eye, I wasnât a tiny bug at all, and your clever little fix didnât matter.
Because something entirely different was happening, but, no, no, no, no, no, no you donât know this yet⌠cause you're half blind.
Because obviously your fix was small and perfect, but you need to see it in a broader context.
Whatever broader context means in this context, just changed all the files on your website.
Including the audio files, which arenât even generated.
What is actually going on, is that your little bug didnât happen, you had a colon in your title, inside a YAML fileâŚ
The generator crashed as soon as it could, die early, is an amazing strategy for dealing with infinite complexity.
But the Mambas, are clever, that is why they are so dangerous.
The first snake, is squirming in your internet service provider, who is rolling out IPv6, totally invisible to you.
It is a transparent upgrade to all the users, except you, the programmer.
Because your program, is using an older library, that requires extra code, several lines in fact, for IPv6 support.
That is the second mamba, and now you are the third one, oh yes.
Your little fix changed all the timestamps, because in your wisdomâŚ
Your defensive programming, made you rename the distribution folder.
And just regenerate a new website from scratch, just to be sure.
But, now, with the mambas firmly attached, youâve lost your mind â and donât even know what renaming a directory does.
Because now, you too are a mamba, on the lookout for a byte.