patrick.net

@Patrick - New Bug:



I'm just clicking "quote" on a post - can't do it.

Peter1656 says

Can I solve this question in an hour? Yes. Actually, I have:

In you solution, where is the preferred CPU listed? It DOES make a difference as I've shown here:

https://patrick.net/comment?comment_id=1960746

I don't think my interviewer realized that the CPU's position made a difference.

SunnyvaleCA says

richwicks says

People seem to INSIST on using cloud storage

Are they merely using cloud storage? Most people are using cloud services, which includes storage, search, database, and now AI! If you're trying to encrypt the data stored in the cloud, then those other services will need to be able to decrypt in order to work on your data.

The whole point of cloud "services" is to hand over your data to a corporation.

Because it's "convenient".

It's like using Alexa - it's "convenient". Got one? What is a pet you would NEVER EVER own? Well, pretend among your family you are about to get this new pet. Talk about it, make plans about it, in front of the Alexa - see how long it takes before you get advertisements for accessories for this pet.

It's a spy device, and it CONSTANTLY listens to you, not just when you prompt it. I can tell you this, just gave you a test to confirm it, it's continually listening to you. You'd think this would end people having Alexa devices - nope. People literally aren't bothered by having a machine CONTINUALLY listen to them 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and it's all recorded as well.

richwicks says

Patrick - New Bug:



I'm just clicking "quote" on a post - can't do it.

@richwicks, not a bug.

There needs to be a limit on quote size. Before, I was trying to abbreviate the middle of an excessively large quote, but that caused problems with html parsing.

So my new solution for a too-large quote is to ask the user to select something smaller.

If you click "quote" without selecting anything in your example, that's too large. So you should select a portion of the comment, and then click quote.

Let me know if I misunderstood you.

Patrick says

richwicks says

Patrick - New Bug:



I'm just clicking "quote" on a post - can't do it.

richwicks, not a bug.

There needs to be a limit on quote size. Before, I was trying to abbreviate the middle of an excessively large quote, but that caused problems with html parsing.

So my new solution for a too-large quote is to ask the user to select something smaller.

If you click "quote" without selecting anything in your example, that's too large. So you should select a portion of the comment, and then click quote.

Let me know if I misunderstood you.

Why limit quote size? You know how small characters are. 8 bits.

It's your site, but consider how small a quote is in terms of data storage.

Everything you have now, fits on a $11 SD Card. I believe you still think there are storage limitations, there aren't. You're still in the 1990's.

So, I have a sophomore student in Computer Science at OSU. Which programming languages should he learn? And how?

Javascript and Java are always big ones, but Python seems to be gaining popularity. It kind of depends on if he knows what he wants to do. Front-end/UI, JS all the way. Security or devops, Python.

There are plenty of good free tutorials online, but from what I've heard those coding camps work really well.

gabbar says

So, I have a sophomore student in Computer Science at OSU. Which programming languages should he learn? And how?

Have them learn a very low level language like assembly (useless) to understand what the machine does.

And a very high level language to understand concepts.

And then fill in the inbetween. That's a good solid start. Assembly is essential to know what is going on, IF they want to know what is going on. High level languages are entirely abstractions, they are slow in comparison to lower level languages, but you have hashes, you have dictionaries, regular expressions, all this weird shit which would take forever to implement in a low level language.

BTW: C++ has improved VASTLY since I last used it. It no longer sucks!

I didn't really understand the concept of a pointer until I learned assembly, and then it was "oh, it's just a pointer to a memory location", because in assembly, there really aren't any variables, there are only memory locations. Once you learn assembly, it's TRIVIAL to understand how the CPU works. Nobody knows what a register is until they work in assembly. A register is a storage location for a value when you do this in C:

i += 1

What is happening really is in pseudo-assembly is something like:

load REGISTER1, MEMORY_LOCATION # load the value in memory_location into register1
set REGISTER2, 1 # set the value of register2 to 1
add REGISTER3, REGISTER1, REGISTER2 # add register 1 and 2 together and store the result in register3
store REGISTER3, MEMORY_LOCATION # store final result in memory_location

There's 4 steps to it, but it might be as little as 3, because adding 1 to a value is so common, it's often part of the chip.

Once they understand assembly, they understand the machine IF they want to understand it. Assembly was fascinating to me. Once I understood it, all other languages were just abstractions to it, but higher level languages gave me the ability to see and work with concepts which were FAR too complicated for me to ever implement in assembly.

You have to learn many high level languages, and a few lower level languages. You don't have to learn higher level languages well, it just introduces you to many concepts which you can implement elsewhere. The concept of a class in C++, brilliant idea, but it's trivial to implement that in C. You're just passing around a pointer to a C structure to every function. There, that is basically C++. C++ used to be nothing more than a preprocessor for C - it took in the C++ code, and through a bunch of macros and conversions, made a C file, and compiled that.

richwicks says

In you solution, where is the preferred CPU listed? It DOES make a difference as I've shown here:

Yes, it's the input parameter index.

I think LeetCode practice is kind of standard in this competitive market. I first got into it for entertainment — I wanted to explore some dynamic programming problems. Later I used it to learn Python.

Peter1656 says

Hmm... I marked the below as code, but it's not honoring the all-important indenting. I'll add some dots instead.

I believe this solution can be made with a single calculation, with 3 edge cases:

preferred CPU = 0
preferred CPU = 1-total CPUs
JOBs < 1/2 x CPUs x CPUs

I can't use asterisk her, because it's taken as "bold"

Using a binary search I think is sloppy.

I was surprised by the question because I can see no relevancy in implementation. I have 30 years of coding under my belt, and have never seen a reason to do this, and I've done priority inversion on an operating system - that's non trivial. This is when a low level process has secured a resource, and a higher level resource wants this resource. The solution is to TEMPORARILY increase the priority of the low level resource so it can free it. But what if you have 7 processes requesting this resource?

The solution is, you increase the priority to the maximum process that wants it until it frees the resource. You only pay attention to the top one.

Useless knowledge at this point. People who still use processes are, in my opinion, morons. Everything should be a program not a thread, and use interprocess communication and event driven. It drastically reduces errors, and entirely eliminates race conditions. I wouldn't want to go back to the 1990's again.

No more semaphores, no mutexes - kill them all. These are obsolete ideas since protected memory came into play. Threads shouldn't exist at all today. I don't even know if there are chips that still don't have virtual memory at this point. I'm sure they still exist, but they shouldn't.

richwicks says

I believe this solution can be made with a single calculation, with 3 edge cases

Perhaps your problem is different than the LeetCode one, but I don't think so.
Here's my understanding of a simplified version of the problem you had...
Suppose, for simplicity, the 0th CPU was the special one. If you give it 8 jobs then the whole set of CPUs get 8, 7, 6, 5, etc. jobs. The catch is that every CPU after the 7th needs to get 1 job (the minimum number of jobs) — not 0, -1, -2, -3, etc. So the distribution of jobs is non-linear and so the solution is not a polynomial. When the binary search "guesses" an answer, it can verify in constant time, so the algorithm runs in log(n) time. That might be "sloppy," but if the count of CPUs and count of jobs each fit in a 64-bit integer, logarithmic time will be nearly instantaneous on the worst possible input.

SunnyvaleCA says

richwicks says

I believe this solution can be made with a single calculation, with 3 edge cases

Perhaps your problem is different than the LeetCode one, but I don't think so.
Here's my understanding of a simplified version of the problem you had...
Suppose, for simplicity, the 0th CPU was the special one. If you give it 8 jobs then the whole set of CPUs get 8, 7, 6, 5, etc. jobs. The catch is that every CPU after the 7th needs to get 1 job (the minimum number of jobs) — not 0, -1, -2, -3, etc. So the distribution of jobs is non-linear and so the solution is not a polynomial. When the binary search "guesses" an answer, it can verify in constant time, so the algorithm runs in log(n) time. That might be "sloppy," but if the count of CPUs and count of jobs each fit in a 64-bit integer, logarithmic time will be nearly instantaneous on the worst possible input.

OK, here's the solution, that doesn't quite work.

The problem is really you have an array (that's the CPUs) and every element in the array must contain at least "1". If you add up all the values of the array, you will have the value V.

No element in the array can be +/- 1 form an adjacent element in the array. The value next to to any adjacent element can't be more than 1 off, but the difference can be 0.

Find the maximum value you can place in the array with these constraints given that all values in the array need to add up to V

SO - here is what I did. I think of it as a volume. The value "V" is a volume

First, since V is really a volume, the minimum height can be calculated with:

V = W x H
H = V/W

We need 1/3rd of the volume to build the pyramid, so the max height is actually

2/3 V = W x H
H = (2/3 V) / W
H = 2 x V / W x 3

that's the height of the base, the rectangle.

Now, the area of a triangle is 1/2 x W x H. The volume of this is 1/3V

1/3V = 1/2 x W x h

h = 1/3V * 2 / W
h = 2/(3V x W)

Add H and h together, and you get the result.

BUT I'm ignoring a few constraints.

My mind is still baking on this problem. I think a binary search is a sloppy method to do it. I'm confident this can be done arithmetically with at most 3 constraints.

Fucking math. Give me a math problem, and I can't stop working on it until I solve it.

First, you subtract W (number of array elements) from the volume. then you calculate the rectangle, then produce the highest possible pyramid on top of that from the 1/3rd of that block. It's all integer math as well, so if you can't produce a block, you just have the remainder to work with, or if you can produce a block it's 1/3rd of the block PLUS the remainder. It's all complicated because of it being integer math, and I need to think more on it.

I bet this can be done with float math, and get within 1 of the true value, if not always being correct if you always round down.

But this neglects the edge cases where the top point is at the start of the array, or at the end of the array.

Can I take a poll with you all?
If you were starting from scratch, what would you use to create a commercial website?

What the site does: upload/download (domestic and overseas), payments, Google map and Google calendar to create schedules based on time/distance, overlays on photos until payment is made, cron jobs for deleting old files/images and emails, user rearranging/sorting images for slideshow displays, user registrations, api for transferring images and links to other websites and image mapping.

Also: when and/or what would make you recommend a client rewrite a company website?

richwicks says

Have them learn a very low level language like assembly (useless) to understand what the machine does.

Good callout. C or C++ are the still the preferred language for physical machines that have to do very high load operations. When I worked at Illumina, their DNA analysis SW was all C I believe.

Also forget to mention Python seems to be the language of choice for AI if you are interested in getting into that.

GNL says

If you were starting from scratch, what would you use to create a commercial website?

Before I left a former company, we were in the process of re-writing our travel site integration with EAN(Expedia) as a single page Python app. But I would guess most people would say Javascript, probably React?

Don't invest time in a re-write unless you will gain some significant improvements for your clients, increase your reach, something tangible that improves your bottom line. Worst case you have some massive security issues or you have spaghetti code you have to keep adding to that will make your site impossible to update, then you might have to consider it just for maintenance, but hopefully you've laid a better foundation than that.

Do it in MVC

I once did a similar project for a Nautical Satellite company. I used Google Maps to place the ships coordinates and routes on Google maps.
I did it for a job interview for the company. I turned it around in about 4 days over a three day weekend, and the interviewer wasn't back on the fourth day.
The interviewer gave me an end point, that returned nothing but a bunch of numbers separated by a comma. I guessed that they were x and y coordinates. And ended up being right. Exploring the Help endpoint further I found the View, Details and Insert endpoints. When I emailed it back to them, the interviewer still wasn't back and was out for over two weeks. I ended up taking another job in the meantime. When the guy got back he was telling me that it was better than what they were expecting. No other candidate figured out what the end point was, or even returned the completed test project. All they wanted was someone to hit the end point, and realize what it was and anything beyond that would have been gravy. I was at the time, trying to really figure out MVC beyond using wizard and data connecters GUI's, that I found just so restricting and limited if you go by most common MVC documentation. That little project gave me insight on ways to use MVC that 90% of the people that use MVC don't believe is possible. They wanted me to start right away, but I already took the other job. So they asked me if they could use the test project I sent them as the foundation to build their software.

I still have a copy of that project if you are interested.

NuttBoxer says

Don't invest time in a re-write unless you will gain some significant improvements for your clients, increase your reach, something tangible that improves your bottom line. Worst case you have some massive security issues or you have spaghetti code you have to keep adding to that will make your site impossible to update, then you might have to consider it just for maintenance, but hopefully you've laid a better foundation than that

Always do a rewrite. Normally by time you are called to bring a Customer's software to the next level. The previous developer had already coded the project into a hard corner. And the new business requirements would be impossible to factor in without creating a buggy broken system.
If the data model is good, and the enterprise is happy with it. Then the best and quickest way to do a rewrite is to use Code Generating SQL against the tables. I can stub out a whole Enterprise suite in under a week. Then only need to write the business logic layer and the client Scripts.

Examples below...

declare @TableName sysname = 'TaxLine'
declare @result varchar(max) ='[DataObject(true)]
public class ' + @TableName + 'DB
{' + '
' + @TableName + 'Context DFctx = new ' + @TableName + 'Context();

public ' + @TableName + 'DB(){

}'

select @result = @result + CHAR(13)
+ ' [DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Select)]
public List<' + @TableName + '> Select(int tableId, int _userid)
{
return DFctx.Get' + @TableName + 'singleton(tableId, _userid);
}
public ' + @TableName + 'Selects(int tableId, int _userid)
{
return DFctx.Get' + @TableName + '(tableId, _userid);
}
[DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Select)]
public List<' + @TableName + '> Select(int _userid)
{
return DFctx.Get' + @TableName + '(_userid);
}
[DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Insert)]
public void Insert(Dynamic' + @TableName + ' DTable, int _userid)
{
DFctx.Insert' + @TableName + '(DTable, _userid);
}

[DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Update)]
public void Update(Dynamic' + @TableName + ' DTable, int _userid)
{
DFctx.Update' + @TableName + '(DTable, _userid);
}

[DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Delete)]
public void Delete(' + @TableName + ' DTable, int _userid)
{
DFctx.Delete' + @TableName + '(DTable.' + @TableName + 'ID, _userid);
}
public int Get' + @TableName + 'Count(int _dyntbl)
{
return Get' + @TableName + 'Count(_dyntbl);
}
}'

print @result

Tenpoundbass says

If the data model is good, and the enterprise is happy with it. Then the best and quickest way to do a rewrite is to use Code Generating SQL against the tables. I can stub out a whole Enterprise suite in under a week. Then only need to write the business logic layer and the client Scripts.

I would add, that I preferer to custom script out my own code generation per each project. I do not use Entity Frameworks because it adds way too much buggy sluggish overhead, it's hogs more resources than all of your project's code combined. All of my code generation is external and I plug it into the pages and classes I'm working on by hand. But I can script for any language and any model, for any purpose. Client HTML code, Object Classes, and Data Classes. EFF can not do that. Frameworks can generate cookie cutter code, but it's all the same code from project to project. You can't use Microsoft EFF to generate Python or Java code.

Tenpoundbass says

Always do a rewrite. Normally by time you are called to bring a Customer's software to the next level. The previous developer had already coded the project into a hard corner. And the new business requirements would be impossible to factor in without creating a buggy broken system.

I spent a month testing some API's for a guy who was monetizing a domain purchasing site. He hired an oversea's programmer who slapped a bunch of stuff together with no standardization, and some pretty big security gaps. I pointed it out to him, but due to the fact that he hadn't even launched yet, there wasn't much interest in doing anything beyond plugging the security gaps.

I work in software quality, so my first instinct is always to push for maintenance NOW, but it really does depend on where the business is at.

The hardest part for any Enterprise software, is getting it to the point to where it is now.
One of the biggest problem with rewrites is they come in thinking they are going to do a total data model redesign. These days they want to shoehorn software written for a unique business case in a unique industry with unique requirements. Into a one size fits all Cloud CRM and ERP. So they are forced to rewrite the whole business process logic and requirements. Any gaps not meeting previous requirements, they outsource to a third party service, lots of third party cloud services, to do what 90% of the companies should be home growing on their own. I try to understand the business reasons for the most fucked up head scratching code, and understand why the previous guy did it so ungracefully. There was always a reason, that even those cloud guys eventually run into. No matter how hard they try to ignore that complicated backwards, stupid way the previous guy was forced to do it. .
But if you take time to understand that you probably would have met the same trap, because you understood, what it was doing, how that process got added on after the fact. And you understand what it does and why it's important.. You can then figure how to gracefully make that process. You can make some of your most elegant impressive code you ever did. And in many ways, you owe it to the previous guy, and the problem he was faced with. That you then built on and made it work.

Most migrations and updated enterprise rewrite development lead, do not understand that process today.

Tenpoundbass says

met the same trap, because you understood, what it was doing, how that process got added on after the fact. And you understand what it does and why it's important.. You can then figure how to gracefully make that process. You can make some of your most elegant impressive code you ever did. And in many ways, you owe it to the previous guy, and the problem he was faced with. That you then built on and made it work.

Most migrations and updated enterprise rewrite development lead, do not understand that process today.

I found your comment quite insightful. Yes, we've added many things after the fact because these add-ons were not envisioned at the time. Mission creep has to stop at some point also.

Last company I worked at for a year and a half was supposed to be migrating their legacy infrastructure to the cloud. We were the last team in line to do this, so not charting new waters by any means. But the code was inherited probably a few times over, and almost no one on the team was there when it was written. I remember one of the engineers after an outage(there were many), comparing what he saw to duct-taping shit together, it was that fragile. Right before I left they had decided to pivot to just migrating to Kafka from MSMQ, and push the rest off, but I seriously suspect the team dev lead, and product owner will be fired when this stuff never completes.

Worst part, they kept dumping new feature requests on the team. I spent more than a few meetings telling them they needed to stop if they wanted migration to ever finish, but there was always an excuse.

My time at that company was split into 1/3 testing(my actual job), 1/3 helping manage process, and 1/3 on call for production issues(usually outages). I don't even want to look at prod support at my current place, still scarred from having to get up and answer alerts in the middle of the night.

richwicks says

BTW: C++ has improved VASTLY since I last used it. It no longer sucks!

Funny you should say that. The current C++ redistributable somehow omits the msvcr100.dll which causes a graphics program I loaded yesterday to not run. Once I figured that out it was just a copy and paste from a computer that still had that dll.

HeadSet says

richwicks says

BTW: C++ has improved VASTLY since I last used it. It no longer sucks!

Funny you should say that. The current C++ redistributable somehow omits the msvcr100.dll which causes a graphics program I loaded yesterday to not run. Once I figured that out it was just a copy and paste from a computer that still had that dll.

I don't ever work under Windows. I just got fed up with their bullshit ages ago. It won't be long before you have to rent MS Windows, and pay a monthly fee for it. That's already true of MS Office.

I am never going to work under Windows again, ever.

richwicks says

I am never going to work under Windows again, ever.

I hear you, but the software I like will not run on Linux, and Apple is just a pricey way to do the same thing.

HeadSet says

richwicks says

I am never going to work under Windows again, ever.

I hear you, but the software I like will not run on Linux, and Apple is just a pricey way to do the same thing.

If I have to use Windows, I fire up a virtualbox virtual machine.

GNL says

If you were starting from scratch, what would you use to create a commercial website?

@GNL

I used node.js to rewrite patrick.net a few years ago, and I'm very happy with it. Clearly I'm no visual artist, but performance and maintainability of my current version are the best of any website I've ever seen, if I may say so myself.

Having worked with React, and I learned to detest it as a low-performance ball of yarn. Hell, avoid all front-end frameworks and get people who've actually read most of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ The browser already does everything you need, you just need to figure out how.

This site is one file, patrick_net.js, and all the code is in it except for some unavoidable npm libraries, such as for interfacing to mysql.

I was taught that css and client-side js should go in separate files. That's bullshit. You get dependency problems because of version skew, and clearly lower performance. Yes, external js and css files can be cached, but it's still faster performance-wise to have a single file and include the js and css just where you need them in the generated html. If you're pulling in giant external js and css files you have serious problems to begin with. Don't do that.

And the development speed from a single file is priceless! I literally never need to figure out what file any function or js snippet or css is in, because it's all in the same fucking file. Most programmers spend half their time searching various files for things. I never have to do that. And using ALE in vim to detect errors as I'm typing has saved me vast amounts of debugging time: https://medium.com/@victormours/better-linting-in-vim-with-ale-1e4b1d5789af

I got the single-file idea when I heard that a popular travel site was all one php file. The guy who made it was a newbie programmer, but damn, he hit on something super-useful with that naivete.

I also optimized the shit out of the database, and have a strict naming convention in the db that every column starts with the singular of the table name. So the users table has columns user_id, user_email, user_pass, ... Then when I'm looking in the code at fields I got from the db, I know exactly which table they are from, instantly.

Tons of lessons like that acquired over the last 25 years or so.

richwicks says

You have to learn many high level languages, and a few lower level languages. You don't have to learn higher level languages well, it just introduces you to many concepts which you can implement elsewhere. The concept of a class in C++, brilliant idea, but it's trivial to implement that in C. You're just passing around a pointer to a C structure to every function. There, that is basically C++. C++ used to be nothing more than a preprocessor for C - it took in the C++ code, and through a bunch of macros and conversions, made a C file, and compiled that.

Student is already registered to take assembly language in Fall 2023. Thank you for the recommendation.

Tenpoundbass says

The hardest part for any Enterprise software, is getting it to the point to where it is now.

How can a sophomore in computer science learn Enterprise software?

gabbar says

Student is already registered to take assembly language in Fall 2023. Thank you for the recommendation.

If they're like me, they have to understand "how" always. Assembly explains it the "memory" of a chip is TINY. You have registers (the real memory) cache (fast memory), regularly memory (this is just fetched to put in the cache, and periodically written back), then virtual memory is sometimes incorrect called "cached memory" - this is when memory isn't being used very often, so it's written to disk for later retrieval.

IF they want, they can learn binary logic to compose gates, and ALUs and so on. This isn't necessary, but I had to know. I'm actually trained as a computer chip designer, very glad I didn't go into that. It's ridiculously complex and it's just really verilog and VHDL now. I can lay down metal and poly-silicon layers to make a chip. If they want to know this, just learn logic, learn what a CMOS gate is, just simple stuff.

Thanks guys. I can't imagine what a rewrite of my site would cost in terms of $$ and time.

GNL says

I found your comment quite insightful. Yes, we've added many things after the fact because these add-ons were not envisioned at the time. Mission creep has to stop at some point also.

A common mistake for mission creep is what I call "the Fred exception" when a principal comes to you and says...
"You know that very elegant efficient process you made for the company that processes payments and late fees?
Well there's a customer named Fred, and we need to process treat Fred totally different, and you need to write an algorithm that will calculate what he owes and how he owes it differently but only on the second Thursday of every month. The rest of the time, treat Fred the same."
Most developers will begrudgingly go on and plug in verbose Fred exceptions, with if and nested case statements, parsing the name of every customer that comes through the system, every single time, wasting valuable resources and littering the code.

I always go back to the model first and add a new field in a table that will identify a new class of customers, and field for any qualifiers like aging and dates that I will use to treat those class of customers. So now any time anyone else needs a Fred exception, all you have to do is change their classification identifiers. Because there will always be another Fred, then your doing if or statements.

The turn around to treat Fred special might be a week longer often not though. But in the long run I save a ton of time, by not having Fred create more mission creep where I'm accommodating more process exceptions for Fred.

Believe it or not, it's the principals in meetings that will be against extending the project to accommodate a new classification. In their mind, it was their brilliant idea to quick and dirty just parse the whole enterprise for one single name treat differently. These are the same assholes that likes to bring up in those meetings if the Project is Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.

gabbar says

How can a sophomore in computer science learn Enterprise software?

About a year after reading my first VB4 book from not knowing a damn thing about anything. Got my first job for a mail order catalog company.
It was converting a Data Flex Unix Server based CRM to a VB6 project. It paid for Shit, like $43K a year IIRC. I interviewed for the job and the guy that was leaving and moving on, which I was replacing. Gave me a quick Data Flex syntax tutorial.(He bought land in NC and was moving up there to farm)
Then he brought up Data Flex code for one of the forms, (it was a Dos client) and opened VB 5 at the time, VB 6 came out a few months after he left.
And had me migrate the code from Data Flex to VB. He saw I had the knack for it, and knew there was no damn way they were going to get a seasoned developer to work for $43K to do a job that typically was paying $60 to $80K a year even in 1997. He told the boss I was a great fit and I was there for three years before moving on. I moved on because the cheap fuck wouldn't raise beyond the 3% typical pay raise. Which was still keeping me below $50K after 3 years. I left there and got a job for $60K and never looked back.

I would tell the kid to put himself out there. I was damn lucky that my first job was a one man shop job. I was forced on the high dive that I would have never seen in a typical dev team environment. I wouldn't know 1/10th of what I know if not for that. I was in charge of setting up new HP servers, managing a Novel network in the graphics department, and moving it to a MS network with apple talk protocols. Installed and managed Exchange server, Biz Talk server. The guy that left had an agreement with the boss that he got the MSDN Enterprise subscription every year. Which I inherited. So I had all of MS toys at my disposal to really dig in and play with as a lab of sorts, both at home and at work on old defunct servers. It was how I justified staying there for three years for so cheap.

My explanation was how to get in the door. But how to learn it. He can do it the same way I did, by just jumping in the code and step debugging through it until he understands what the processes are doing. He should look for some sample project developers may have posted, that runs a business.
Like MS Adventure Works, or Nerd Diner, the MS sample Book publisher project. there's quite a few out there.

But the enterprise is being dominated by project leaders that want's to use out of the box CRM and ERP or Cloud services. It's the trend that has me looking for a new career path. I hope this is just a passing phase. Enterprise software development these days is more of a end user of a kluge management suite that you have to set up by filling in form values, than actually writing code. And roles I just took for granted something I need to do first before I can do other parts, now are separate duties held by gatekeepers who are behind 5 layers of SOP and process ticket systems and meetings before you can get done what I used to just do in a minute.

The IT admins have elevated themselves to the only hands on technical people in the organization, and their developers are nothing more than convoluted word processer users.

Tenpoundbass says

A common mistake for mission creep is what I call "the Fred exception"

Nothing wrong with the Fred exception if you charge for it, and make it clear any additional work needed for the Fred exception will be treated to a separate bill. That way you avoid endless customized maintenance for free. And I mean to the level that when you do a major refactor, if Fred's shit doesn't work anymore, you invite Fred back into the core product fold, or Fred pays again...

NuttBoxer says

Nothing wrong with the Fred exception if you charge for it, and make it clear any additional work needed for the Fred exception will be treated to a separate bill. That way you avoid endless customized maintenance for free.

The other problem with doing it that way. When the next company comes behind you, you have a reputation for writing spaghetti code.
My motto is "There's always time to do it right!".
You can put time up front to prep and create the foundation for any task at hand. Or you can just hack it in, and butcher it until it's good enough.
The butchered solution requires constant massaging and manual manipulation. Eventually boiling over to the point that they have to rewrite it and do it right, months or years after tolerating the inferior work around solution.
And I have proven it time and time again. When I have integrated a new classification in a data model to accommodate future Fred exceptions without having to update the code next time. My counterparts from outside vendors end up taking months of rewrites, and work arounds, and often scratching that roll out, until the next big update. After my code was ready within hours, days or a week of the request.

NuttBoxer says

Nothing wrong with the Fred exception if you charge for it, and make it clear any additional work needed for the Fred exception will be treated to a separate bill. That way you avoid endless customized maintenance for free. And I mean to the level that when you do a major refactor, if Fred's shit doesn't work anymore, you invite Fred back into the core product fold, or Fred pays again...

Also I consider tasks like that as a Data Plumber. The last thing I want to do is manual data entry, or sit there and plunger shit data through leaky code plumbing. I'll resign within a week.
My goal when I start work at a company. Is to write code that someone that isn't a programmer can manage with the tools I made them. After that its time for me to move on. If I were into that sort of thing, then I would have gone the IT route instead of the Developer route. I don't want to be that guy that has to log in at 3am to make sure a faulty shitty process completed without error codes.

As much as possible, give your users the ability to customize things on their end. A good CRM is worth years of development work. Current company is in the process of pulling all the customization back and focusing on just putting out a standard platform. Spoke with a couple people when I started as part of onboarding. Most common complaint I heard was how customization fucks everything up, and this was mostly coming from the business side.

Patrick says

I used node.js to rewrite patrick.net a few years ago, and I'm very happy with it. Clearly I'm no visual artist

This is one of the best websites out there. If I wanted to see the work of a "visual artist" I'd visit a museum.

Instead, we have:
• Clear, high-contrast text
• nothing animating, giggling, or making noise
• everything on the page searchable in local browser text search
• pertinent information displayed without information overload
• responds properly to browser window width resizing
• zero CPU usage after initial load and layout
• fast load times

NuttBoxer says

As much as possible, give your users the ability to customize things on their end.

The last company I worked for did Dye-sublimation printing on fabrics. The users could pick or upload a pattern, and order a sample size or a quantity of full yardage. I gave him a html based GUI that not only batched like fabrics, and a graphical layout of the samples before printing it. He could remove items, or move them around to accommodate their needs. Also to bring up a batch or a single item and reprint it. I gave him many tools for every gotcha we ever ran across that was outside of what my application could manage. Like report on the real available fabric at hand, or a report that shows stock needs to be moved to fulfil the order. Show the image didn't download for what ever reason, or the print error was due to the image being an improper format or wrong dimensions per the step repeat instructions(A serious error when that happens). The huge International consultant team ported that process to a cloud based MS 360 Cloud ERP. The end user I designed it for, says now the batch is just a list. It tells me nothing. The XML instructions that drives the print press is generated minutes after he batches it. Not Realtime, so if something fails or doesn't print. They don't find out about it until customers are moaning they didn't get it. With my system, he knew immediately . And because the new cloud system is purely a onetime one shot operation. The only way to reprint, is to tell the customer to cancel the order and send a new one. No guarantee it will make it either, if they don't' know that the image is screwed up.

More idiots that wondered. "What in the fuck did he do it like this for? All of this shit shouldn't be the guy that is printing the orders job!"
They are damn lucky they have that guy, I wrote him what he needed, and it was elegant and the industry leader. The consultant idiots wrote what they wanted him to have and it sucks and is nothing but problematic. When I wrote them the software, one of their Competitor/Partner developers were struggling generating a batch XML like I created. So the owner had me send them my code and massage them until they understood it. That really hurt, I should have left then rather than doing that.