Ran into a nice little bit of nostalgia today. Have any of you heard/remember the bash bomb ? It’s Denial of Service attack in 13 characters! : (){ : |: & };: Here’s how

This a another discussion I have frequently. Why bother changing something, however small, if it works as it is? Well, it’s a best practice. If we can spend a very limited amount of time to make trivial changes that will protect us from mishaps, carelessness and changes beyond our control, is it not worth it? This argument, on its own, is usually not very effective against a stubborn engineer in a hurry. So, whenever possible, I try to give more concrete examples. Here’s one that I was happy to find just in time for such a discussion. ...

I’ve always been fascinated with details. They’re subtle, easy to ignore but every once in a while they turn out to be important. I have gotten in very interesting (and often heated) discussions about this fascination (mainly at work). Taking the time to go over the details, learn, understand and digest takes time. And startups are always on a countdown clock and push to get things faster. People too. If something seems like it can be ignored, we tend to ignore it. I suppose most of our minds are already at capacity, way before someone starts a long-winded argument about things that seem trivial and inconsequential. ...