Hacker Read

adrianN · 2019-08-08 04:50:43+00:00

The article shows that there is at least one engineer who looked at the code and found issues.

bilalq | karma 2638 | avg karma 5.3 · | 2023-03-31 08:43:16

A junior engineer who read the documentation, but didn't quite understand parts of it. And also got parts mixed up with documentation for something else.

29athrowaway | karma 2447 | avg karma 0.53 · | 2019-07-21 19:11:35+00:00

That's different. That engineer is just mistaken, but at least is acknowledging that a problem exists, that's a good starting point.

rphillips | karma 253 | avg karma 6.84 · | 2018-10-22 00:43:48+00:00

Sounds like an engineer knee deep in diagnosing the issue.

mrb | karma 22679 | avg karma 6.53 · | 2016-09-08 13:00:14+00:00

This is a great example of a "10x engineer". Someone less experienced would take 10x or 100x the time to investigate and resolve this problem.

alexgmcm | karma 1654 | avg karma 3.22 · | 2021-06-04 03:16:59

Also, the engineers are often well aware when something is wrong or dubious.

But there's a difference between knowing that and having the power to do something about it.

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htrp | karma 3449 | avg karma 2.55 · | 2022-07-19 07:05:06

The engineer who includes the binary is responsible for understanding the ramifications

antisthenes | karma 3681 | avg karma 1.09 · | 2016-09-01 16:07:21+00:00

Wouldn't be surprised if some overworked engineer made a mistake.

6d6b73 | karma 611 | avg karma 1.13 · | 2023-04-20 09:35:16

That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.

6d6b73 | karma 611 | avg karma 1.13 · | 2023-04-20 09:35:33

That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.

7thaccount | karma 3906 | avg karma 1.99 · | 2019-12-04 12:41:46+00:00

What kind of engineering code you dealing with? Just curious.

amelius | karma 42902 | avg karma 1.63 · | 2015-11-09 12:23:38+00:00

This could only be the case if the engineer doing the development was the same person as the engineer doing the QA.

jagged-chisel | karma 2947 | avg karma 2.63 · | 2020-03-07 00:51:01+00:00

Like he said, an engineering problem.

oliveshell | karma 1182 | avg karma 4.12 · | 2018-11-15 18:36:28

It’s a hard problem that engineers- if they really are good engineers- should question the utility and consequences of solving.

Thank God some of them are.

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tullianus | karma 193 | avg karma 4.11 · | 2022-03-18 09:19:16

Lots of Engineer Spelling in this article...

nextworddev | karma 1160 | avg karma 2.28 · | 2023-04-06 22:01:56

A lone "senior" engineer could, maybe, but definitely not someone who hasn't worked in the problem space

robertAngst | karma 489 | avg karma 0.97 · | 2018-12-15 18:44:32

Since the article sucked, I'll give the 2 best engineering advice I've received from 2 different senior engineers:

>Remember when you'd go to eat at a restaurant, and the kids menu has that game where 'What's the difference between these two pictures?' That is Reverse Engineering. You have a part that works, a part that doesn't work. What is different?

>"You just kind of figure it out". Not sure how to start/solve a problem. Figure it out. This means researching, doing math, proving, and testing. And as I've done this more and more, math is really really useful to prove things.

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nautilius | karma 877 | avg karma 1.67 · | 2022-08-06 20:27:24

It's rarely the engineer deciding this.

mrandish | karma 5175 | avg karma 5.32 · | 2024-04-25 01:51:59

Ah, interesting. Originally, it would answer that question correctly. Then it got concern trolled in a major media outlet and some engineers were assigned to "patch it" (ie make it lie). Then that lie got highlighted some places (including here on HN), so I assume since then some more engineers got assigned to unpatch the patch.

I'll take that as supporting my point about the folly of wasting engineering time chasing moving goalposts. :-)

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practice9 | karma 536 | avg karma 2.1 · | 2019-05-08 10:10:20+00:00

But it included this one engineer