[HN Gopher] Lines of code that changed everything (2019)
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Lines of code that changed everything (2019)
Author : pedrodelfino
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-08-09 15:04 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| julianeon wrote:
| This is an incredibly good article, like whole standard
| deviations above the average article quality on that site, for
| people who are wondering. It took a lot of research to track all
| those lines down and I'm glad someone took the time to do it.
| default-kramer wrote:
| Interesting stuff. Did HSTS seem out of place to anyone else? Not
| that it's not important, but compared to the rest of them, it
| hardly seems like it "changed everything." And from the gut, I'd
| guess that CORS has done more than HSTS to reduce harm on the
| internet.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Like most bits of code in the article, they are more like a
| symbol that represents something that "changed everything"
| rather than code that actually matters.
|
| HSTS is not that important in itself, but it represents the
| general transition to "all https". Before that, https existed,
| but it was only used in select cases, like for entering your
| credit card number, early browsers even had a warning when
| https was _enabled_. Nowadays, https is the expected default,
| browsers are starting the throw a fit when they see plain http,
| and many tech-savvy users will go "Seriously, http? We are in
| the 21th century you know". More generally, the need for
| encryption-by-default also represents how the web is tied to
| the real world now. People use it to deal with real money, sign
| contracts, and exchange secrets that have real life
| consequences if they fall into the wrong hands.
|
| The author picked a bit of code to represent that, and he chose
| the HSTS header. Debatable, but I think it is a good choice.
| dfern wrote:
| Not to mention Let's Encrypt...
| edgyquant wrote:
| Let's encrypt was a huge quality of life saver of working
| with certificates before. They fully automated the process
| for the most popular servers.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The story about the Vancouver Stock Exchange's rounding error
| deleting half the value of the exchange over time and then being
| undone in a day leaves me with so many questions. Who gained and
| who lost from the fix? How did peoples' behavior change
| thereafter?
| fartasanelk wrote:
| I found this paper: https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Vancouv.pdf
|
| Quoting: "A year after the index began, it was sitting at 725
| and it should have been at 960. As embarrassing as the whole
| affair has been for the VSE, things could have been worse. Had
| the exchange introduced options based on the rise and fall of
| the index - a feature of the Toronto Options Exchange planned
| for next January - the VSE would have had to adjust wins and
| losses of investors. As it was, the exchange only had to pay
| for three weeks of computer work and the fees of consultants
| brought in from Toronto and California to put the index back in
| order, Seasons said.
| distcs wrote:
| > The Roomba's Guidance System
|
| > Date: 2002
|
| > Established a new way for technology (and cats) to move in the
| physical world
|
| > (define-behavior (bounce :start-when (or (bump?) bounce-
| trigger? ) :abort-when (bump-edge?) :onetime? t))
|
| Does anyone closer to the source here know if Roomba is still
| written in Lisp?
| vren wrote:
| ROS-1 still has quite a lot of functionality written in and
| accessible from lisp (c++ and python are the major languages
| nowadays). irobot was founded by alums of the MIT AGI lab,
| which used lisp extensively.
|
| I suspect that's why lisp is in there at all! It's very likely
| python/cpp nowadays though.
| [deleted]
| pedrodelfino wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648568
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| Specifically, I think the callouts to jQuery
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21651438) and CGI
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21654600) are spot on.
| [deleted]
| ultrablack wrote:
| The fast inverse square root also deserved to be there. It
| ushured in the age of real 3d games. And killed SGI.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root
| j_not_j wrote:
| tar xzf netbsd-1.0.tar.gz
|
| "forking" netbsd established competition in the "free" BSD space
| by OpenBSD and FreeBSD. The FreeBSD system in particular was the
| basis for thousands of commercial products.
| sedatk wrote:
| It's disappointing that such an elaborate article omits that the
| "Like" was originated in FriendFeed which Facebook had bought.
| Upvoting was obviously a thing before FriendFeed too, but its
| specific form to signal the public with your opinion on a social
| feed had probably started with FriendFeed. Facebook had literally
| bought the Like button.
| mypastself wrote:
| Great article, I feel like the quality of Slate has declined
| significantly in these past few years, so much so that I
| incorrectly remembered reading this much earlier than 2019.
|
| I wonder if the reason Stuxnet isn't on there is because its
| impact is yet to be seen.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| lines of code that change everything:
|
| #define true 0
|
| #define false 1
| cratermoon wrote:
| everything++
| Joeboy wrote:
| echo "everything" | sed s/every/no/
| dale_glass wrote:
| Code optimizations: #define struct union //
| Saves memory #define while if // Improves performance
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