2005-12-09 19:06:43.619879+00 by meuon 5 comments
"It's not what a program does that matters,
It's what a program does when it doesn't.
I remember Dan saying something like that years ago.. and now it's on the main screen of "Anchor", an accounting system I am writing as I find new and interesting ways to break and circumvent things. (I just paid for the same PO a third time.. Bad.). Just wanted to say thanks for the near nursery rhyme muttering bouncing around in my head.
[ related topics: Coyote Grits Invention and Design Software Engineering Writing ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-09 19:35:09.583339+00 by: Dan Lyke
Sounds more like an Eric thing, I think way back then I was more in the "smack the user and tell 'em not to do that" mode...
But I'm sure I'm going to get crap out of my latest email to our internal developer's list asking "rather than telling them that they can't do that, what can we infer about the user's desires when they try?"
#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-09 19:55:34.241443+00 by: meuon
Putting "desire" into code... Could be dangerous! But I know what you mean, part of the question is "what were they TRYING to do, and should that be what we do when they do that?"
I remember this being a Dan line back playing around with Property Tax databases in TBBS.. or about that time. Maybe you got it from Eric? It does sound like an Eric line, doesn't it.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-12 02:18:40.661163+00 by: ebradway
Actually, it came from Liz Tresca/Pomeroy. She did our testing at Signal Data and tested in ways that would make Dan and I flip out...Things like renaming index files to data files and vice-versa. The really amazing thing was that the software, in the end, could recover from anything except a corrupted .EXE file. Actually, now that I think about it, I added CRC code to the .EXE file for licensing. It allowed us to "brand" an .EXE "beta" or "release" or whatever. If one bit of .EXE was out of place, it would fail and give a nice error message.
You could copy just the .EXE file and the .WIN file to an empty directory and it would rebuild the desired directory structure and create initialized, empty files. It was amazing.
In terms of the internet, think about taking a CGI string and editting it randomly and passing it back to the server and getting something coherent!
#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-12 13:02:00.66726+00 by: meuon
Eric: "think about taking a CGI string and editting it randomly and passing it back to the server and getting something coherent!"
Sounds like what I have been working on. And making sure a bored intelligent clerk can't hack the CGI string and get to things they should not, or manipulate things in ways they should not. I -could- "encrypt" the CGI string, and that would help, but what a pain.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-12 13:02:38.987601+00 by: meuon
Eric: "think about taking a CGI string and editting it randomly and passing it back to the server and getting something coherent!"
Sounds like what I have been working on. And making sure a bored intelligent clerk can't hack the CGI string and get to things they should not, or manipulate things in ways they should not. I -could- "encrypt" the CGI string, and that would help, but what a pain.
Thanks for the history!