The DMZ

MechMK1

12:26

30

Q: Under cmd.exe, how can "del *.tmp" be prevented from deleting *.tmpl files?

Under Windows 10 cmd.exe, the command del *.tmp may silently delete files like project.tmpl. Is there some option, workaround, registry entry, or ritual sacrifice to prevent this? For the incredulous: on my machine, on which the C: drive was formatted by a Windows 10 installer in 2020: (where th...

cmd.exe

Today I learned that Windows cmd is even more horrible than initially believed

Anonymous

Heh, wow...

MechMK1

Bash: "Yes, *.xyz matches all files which end in .xyz"
Windows: "Yes, *.xyz matches whatever I feel like it could match, according to some rules back from 1982, which were introduced to fix a bug in a script from Bob over at IBM."

2

Anonymous

Hahahahahhahahahahah.

Anonymous

You have just described every single MSFT product to exist.

Anonymous

All of the bugs in any of their products are patched following this logic and fuck the consequences :D

MechMK1

12:32

I don't even want to know how many "bug fixes" were introduced into Windows to fix some specific problem at some high-value customer.

Also, interesting trivia: Team Fortress 2 includes a .jpg image of a coconut in its source folder. When deleted, the game crashes.

Nobody knows why.

A. Hersean

Maybe a Monty Python reference

MechMK1

Who knows, to be honest?

A. Hersean

I want to believe!

MechMK1

It's not just Microsoft either. I once did a code review for a customer, and was curious about a specific edge case, where they specifically checked whether it's a specific customer doing a specific thing, and then handle the logic differently.

The reason: That customer has a specific database setup that just "causes problems" and instead of figuring out why, they just code this specific exception into the program to handle this one query at this customer differently.

The title text here is relevant:

I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.

Anonymous

Heh :D

MechMK1

12:41

I'm sure, every day somewhere out there, someone makes the decision to just say "Fuck it" and commit a sin against good software design, which will inevitably confuse the hell out of anyone trying to maintain this system in a decade.

Did I ever tell you the story of the weird C++ code?

A. Hersean

It's a matter of respecting deadlines. The "pass the salt" deadline is rather short.

@MechMK1 You will.

MechMK1

Correct!

So there was this guy, who was new at this company, and was tasked with maintaining some old C++ codebase.

And he read into it, and stumbled across a very peculiar condition:

if(f < 12.0 && f > 12.0)
{
    /*...*/
}

So at first glance, this doesn't seem to make sense. f can't ever both be smaller and larger than 12.0, right?

He did some debugging, and he could never get into that branch, but he also couldn't get himself to remove it.

A. Hersean

Looks legit C++ code too me. If it starts to make too much sense, it's not good C++ in my book.

MechMK1

What if this was the result of weeks of bug triaging, to find some obscure C++ floating point rounding madness?

Best leave it how it is - and so he did.

And the program kept working, but the seed of doubt was on his mind...

Why? Why was it there? He had to know.

So one day, by pure chance, the engineer who wrote this code, unbeknownst to the protagonist, was in the office, just to say hello to his former colleagues. And the protagonist of our story happened to mention this to him.

The man said "That sounds like some code I had written"

The fire of hope was rekindled - finally, answers within reach

"Ah yes, I did that just for debugging one day. Obviously, this branch will never execute. Feel free to delete it."

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and a false is just a false

A. Hersean

That's the most disappointing epic short story I've ever read. Well written nonetheless.

MechMK1

12:51

I think the moral of the story is to just trust your gut feeling :D

And that C++ is horrible

A. Hersean

You can never do that with C/C++. Too many "undefined behaviors" to count them all.

MechMK1

You know what I would love to do? Write a C compiler which is standard-compliant, but fucks you over so hard

nobody

@MechMK1 I don't trust story morals. If a story has been specifically engineered to teach that particular moral, it is useless for teaching anything.

Since my gut feeling tells me not to trust my gut feeling, I won't

MechMK1

@nobody I'm not sure if it's been written with that moral in mind

It's the moral I'm taking away from it

A. Hersean

Were we work, we start to joke "can we write in the report that the product is most probably vulnerable because not written in Rust?"

MechMK1

12:53

"Just don't use C++"

@A.Hersean Vulnerability: Product does not include mathematical proof of security.

nobody

@MechMK1 Why not? Hackers will start going out of business

A. Hersean

@MechMK1 OK, PHP then?

Perl?

Anonymous

PHP yuck

MechMK1

>PHP

lol

Perl? Yeah, whatever. If you use Perl you probably know what you're doing. Same for Ruby.

A. Hersean

Version 5.5 for compatibility reasons.

MechMK1

12:56

I think your choice of programming language really says a lot about you

A. Hersean

You know that the 1st version of PHP was a Perl module, right?

Anonymous

I see Ruby as this hip thing 20 years ago that now is only used by elitists or people that dont like change.

MechMK1

Yeah, cancer cells also used to be useful.

Anonymous

Ruby is like that 40 year old man thats friends with 20 year olds...

Anonymous

lul

Anonymous

12:57

i hate that language

Anonymous

any time i have something which uses it

Anonymous

i find mytself wanting to punch something

Anonymous

its garbage

MechMK1

Honestly, if you use ruby, you probably like to tell everyone that you use ruby

Anonymous

never works out of the box...

A. Hersean

12:57

The motto of Perl is "write once, read never".

Anonymous

constantly fucking errors. just horrible.

Anonymous

@A.Hersean lul true

MechMK1

And you love telling everyone about the cool syntactic sugar in ruby, which makes this one specific task really easy

nobody

@A.Hersean I thought that was regex

MechMK1

Cobol and Fortran: You work for a bank.

Anonymous

12:58

Oh no, Regex means you've never been laid.

MechMK1

Wrong

I love regex and I'm no virgin

Anonymous

It is super powerful but its too complex for my small brain

MechMK1

Bash: You like simple solutions to simple problems. Your script works for you, and nobody else.

A. Hersean

@nobody That's kinda the same. Perl is just a turing-complete wrapper over regex.

Anonymous

^^ true lol

MechMK1

12:59

Powershell: Same as bash, except that you really like microsoft for some reason.

Anonymous

C: I have never had any friends nor will have any.

nobody

@MechMK1 Wait, powershell ain't simple

MechMK1

I would say C: You keep on talking about how it allows you to program "close to the hardware", yet you've never done anything with hardware.

Anonymous

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Anonymous

thats true

Anonymous

13:01

you're quite good at this mech, maybe you should become a computer comedian

MechMK1

Python: Your main task is finding the library that solves your task. You are convinced that there is a library to do this for you, you just haven't found it yet.

2

:D

Anonymous

Well, there's a library for checking my birthday...

Anonymous

SO let me assure you the library exists. No matter your task.

MechMK1

Mhm, I am certain of it:

Anonymous

Oh, if you think I'm kidding.

MechMK1

13:02

Objective-C: You cannot stop telling people how much better your language is, simply by virtue of it being associated with Apple.

Anonymous

libraries.io/pypi/isjosh18

Anonymous

I'm not...

Anonymous

Armin = <3

MechMK1

Oh, I know :D

Anonymous

feelsgoodman

MechMK1

13:03

Java: You work for a big business and feel superior to everyone else.

C#: Same as Java, but you don't want to admit it.

JavaScript: You're younger than 30 and you believe JS is the best language in the world.

I could dab on PHP kids, but they have it hard enough as it is

nobody

:D

Anonymous

I am building a ROP chain by hand and I'd like to die, thanks.

MechMK1

I honestly just love ranting on PHP

Anonymous

Yeah me too, it's awful.

MechMK1

Do you want to know however what my favourite thing about PHP is? Like, unironically?

Anonymous

13:06

Shoot.

MechMK1

password_hash() and password_verify()

It's built into the standard library, uses good algorithms and a simple-to-use interface that is really obvious.

Seriously, I love it. That's exactly how password hashing should be done.

Anonymous

13:21

I can't tell if you're being serious or not. Sarcasm is hard, Sadge.

MechMK1

No, I mean it

Look at the rest of PHP. It's like watching a severely mentally disabled child attempting to draw an elephant and 90% of what you see on the paper is saliva.

Anonymous

hahahahahahhahahaha

MechMK1

Well, compare that to a nice sketch of an elephant and now you know why I love password_hash()

MechMK1

13:46

Holy shit, the story in FGO just went into overdrive

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Have to remove the spoilers

MechMK1

14:36

I pay 35% of my income in taxes :/

Anonymous

Ouch.

Anonymous

That is one of the biggest issues I have with countries on my list so far.

Anonymous

Nevermind. I don't want to leave that there.

MechMK1

Missed it :D

Anonymous

Oh I was just talking about my one issue with moving from the UK depending on where I go.

Anonymous

14:41

And the tax disadvantages or advantages.

A. Hersean

Usually what you pay in taxes you get back in another way. It's not as if the money was just disappearing.

Anonymous

personal income tax is retarded, you cant change my mind.

A. Hersean

Free education and health care is not free.

Anonymous

governments need to crack down on businesses paying tiny amounts of tax

Anonymous

its morally wrong.

Anonymous

14:50

they should cover the deficit not me,

A. Hersean

we agree on that

MechMK1

@A.Hersean Of course not. My problem is how those taxes are spent.

Let me phrase it this way: I'd rather give my money to a heroin addict than a politician, because at least with the heroin addict I know where my money is going to.

A. Hersean

Yeah...

At least the addict does less harm to the society.

MechMK1

Politics is a scam

djsmiley2kStaysInside

15:47

like religion :D

/me tries again

Conor Mancone

16:45

@MechMK1 did you finally give us the full deets? It's now buried under a very long chat history :)

@djsmiley2kStaysInside Sounds like this dislike of religion is something you hold to very dogmatically

djsmiley2kStaysInside

18:06

haha almost religiously

nah, i just find it... weird when i see seemingly otherwise intelligent people, following..

nobody

18:49

Does anyone have any idea why spam still exists? Like who even uses emails anymore?

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