Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
4 years ago, I carved a little place on the web for myself. No, I did no create a new social media profile. I created a blog. This old thing in the age of videos, tweets, and one-click-create-a-website. I chose a medium that is being phased out by the mainstream, not intentionally, but because it made sense at the time. And here we are today reading it. This little place is the only place I have somewhat control of, so I will use it to tell you what has happened in the 4 year span.
I used MD5 as my password hashing back in the days (few years ago). I used it in combination with a salt and it was enough to secure the web applications I worked on at the time. Now, MD5 is broken. Not that the algorithm it used to generate one-way hashing was updated or is broken, but techniques have been developed to create the same hash using arbitrary input. Also, GPUs are powerful enough to brute force passwords. Ask Linked in about that. But the question now is, since we are all moving to more secure cryptographic methods to secure passwords, are there any uses left for good Old MD5?
Looking back at the last 10 years, I can say with great confidence that programming is creating a list of functions that perform a task. Those functions become your portfolio, toolkit, or resources. They never grow stale because you can always improve them over time.
A quick question. Do you need to know what Web Server I am running? Your answer is yes? I know, your answer is "I don't really care." Yes, I know you don't care, but I am sending you this information anyway with each web request.
Web development differs from environment to environment. If you are a .Net developer, you may have a different mindset than a person who works with PHP or ruby. In .Net, when you compile and deploy your code, an application is started and waits for web requests. It is up and spinning in a loop until a request comes. Not so in PHP. Before you make the request, there is nothing.
I'm in the category of people who are in a permanent leave of absence when it comes to college, or the more technical term a school dropout. This could be the start of a great narrative, or the source of many rejections.
Every time I look at code that obviously looks copied-and-pasted from the web, I cringe. They didn't even bother to update the variables to make sense in their own code. Why are people still using deprecated functions, SQL injection vulnerable code, or freely opening up their computer to the whole world?
After a few years I have forgotten something as fundamental as bread and butter.
Have you ever thought about getting into this programming thing? Heard a few things about code camp and now want to join the wagon? Obviously if you want to work with code, you need to have a computer. Not just any computer of course, but the best money can buy. Note that every programmer use their own suitable tools, so all I can help you with is share my own arsenal.
One of the recurring tasks as a software developer is to fix bugs on tools that have been designed for an earlier time. You may get a project that was written in PHP 4, or a JavaScript tool that still tries to sniff for Netscape. It is easy to see how outdated the tools are and try to upgrade them. Most often than not, the task turns into a complete redesign rather than a bug fix and it ends up costing much more time than originally planned.
