Are we still on Web 2.0? I'm guessing you're referring to Web 1.0. I find it amusing that nobody called it Web 1.0 even after they started talking about 2.0.
I'm looking forward to Web 3.0, when we can have retro sites like this, but on decentralized platforms so we don't have to worry as much about hosting and bandwidth.
> figure out how to automate into a script that developers can use to run automated tests
That was my thought exactly. A test suite that starts with a setup, runs a few e2e "smoke" tests to make sure basic functionality is there, then a teardown.
Since the real action is handled by Ansible, I think it should be relatively easy to set up a dummy repo that only simulates playbook runs without actually doing anything. That way you can hit "build" or "patch", get a valid response back, output even, but it's not actually going out and hitting anything.
My main thing is, now that we've nearly tripled the number of devs working on it, and it's now being used by another team (was 2 teams using it, now 3), we'd be irresponsible to add any new features or do further development without a way for contributors to, at the very least, type "python runtests.py" or just type "pytest", and see that the site still has basic functionality.
Here's an example: There's a system in there that allows admins to assign roles to users. Some JS was added for a totally unrelated feature, but it ended up intercepting form submits on that page. I didn't find out there was a problem until a couple days later.
Another time, I was giving a demo to 4 different managers, and I went into this one section to do something, got a 500 error. Turns out I had a couple lines at the end of a view function at the wrong indent level.
It's embarrassing. Before trying to set up Jenkins, Docker, whatever else, a few basic high level tests that cover 5-10 areas of the UI would surely keep us from embarrassing ourselves at the very least.
I'm down with discouraging paywall content. I've never flagged an article for it though. I get HN through the Feedly app, so I can't tell where the link goes until I hit it. It's always a nuiscance when it ends up at some paywall site.
On the other hand, those paywall sites do tend to be very high quality, with longform articles and more citations, more depth than most. I'll give them that.
Keep programming and don't be afraid of corporate I.T. You don't have to be a musician or make a huge impact on the world but if you keep programming you'll be happy.
That was back in 1994. Back then I felt pulled in multiple directions because I was in a band, hanging out with hippies, writing music, but I also loved hacking and all things computer related. I was raised to believe we all must do our best to have the maximum positive impact on the world, and anything less would be selling yourself short.
I also wanted to be a programmer, maybe eventually a game developer, but back then the only programming jobs required a CS degree. I went through some books and wrote a few apps, but it all seemed out of reach back then.
I eventually settled on I.T. but stayed in the SMB space due to bad experiences in the corporate world early on. I hit rock bottom after failing to run my own business during the late 00's. I was ready for a career change when I stumbled on an enterprise I.T. gig. About 2 years ago I discovered DevOps and now I'm a full time developer focused on simplifying, automating, and abstracting complex infrastructure tasks. It's so fun! Python, HTML, and JS all day!
So yeah, I should have stuck with programming, I had no idea how fun it would be. Maybe back then I didn't have the focus or perspective to really engineer complex projects. I was also intimidated by all the maths.
I started to post a detailed 6-part how-to guide on Linkedin. The topic was using pyvmomi, Redis, vROPS API, and Pandas to collect VMware capacity data for intelligent VM placement. My company asked me to take it down halfway through. It shook me up pretty bad for a couple days, even though I halfway expected it.
It contained no data specific to the customer but they said they were worried someone might get the wrong idea. They're not allowed to even disclose who their customer is per their contract.
They said I could post it on a tech blog but just not there. I thought about posting it here but I don't know what to do since I don't have much of a social media presence. All my techie friends are on LinkedIn.
