Developers like to create square wheels

I am helping in fixing the scalability of a web app. While digging through the code looking for the problem spots. I saw a piece of code and a comment saying:

# One common problem with login is that people can hit the back button
# after a user logs out and relogin by using the cached password in
# the browser. We generate a unique hashed timestamp so that users
# cannot use the back button.

Wow that is an amazing feature! But it clearly shows the previous developer did not understand the framework he/she was working on. The framework provided the login page to timeout, I guess this feature doesn't exists anymore along with the other security features, since he/she heavily changed it and erased the code to secure the login page.

Hopefully I don't become a developer that looks at a wheel, not able to understand the wheel and create my own wheel which is square.

Cut and Paste software development nightmare

I think Cut and Paste is one of the worse things for software development. It seems to more convenient for developers to Cut and Paste rather than thinking of making the code modular. Its really sad how Cut and Paste really destroys code.

mount Sandisk Cruzer Crossfire in Linux

I just got by 4.0GB Sandisk Cruzer Crossfire, for some weird reason I can't mount it in Linux. I can see that its able to detect it as /dev/sda. I can even fdisk /dev/sda. I tried various way of mounting it. For some reason it seems Sandisk does not make partition on this USB flash disks. I was able to mount with:

mount /dev/sda /media/usbstick

Take note its "/dev/sda" and not "/dev/sda1".

*edit* For some weird reason automount now works. Its able to mount it just fine... weird.

What most software developer think?

I have been involved with different software projects and teams. There is one thing that I always encounter, especially from the less experienced developers. Most of them always think the current code is crap, they can do better, what the hell was the last developer doing, yada... yada... yada...

Little did they know that the previous developer may be a in different circumstance and usually its the time pressure that makes developers code like crap. Yet most of the yappy developers who think they can do better often do the same crappy job or even worse development once they are the one under the time pressure.

Good software developers can write good design and code, as well as understand and tries to understand existing code and history.... but sometimes people do code like crap :)

Developing on Spring

Its been a week now with my new job. Doing primarily Java and using Spring framework. Spring is pretty good, although not as Spring to me. It maybe Spring for those who came from EJB winter, but not for me where I had some experience with RedHat CCM, OpenACS and a bit of Rails.

I am still holding my verdict for Spring. What I do like is that the framework encourages layering through IoC and interfaces. It surely does have advantages, however like all advantages there will be some drawbacks. So is the advantage big enough over the drawback, or is it just better than EJB winter times?