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What is a pointer?
A descriptive and ELI5 answer found on Reddit:
You have a house.
When you’re outside, and you want to go home, you don’t make another house right where you are, because it’s too big for you to carry around or take apart.
So you carry a piece of paper or store on your phone the address of your house. Now you always know exactly how to find your house so that you can go home.
The piece of paper or your phone is a variable.
The variable contains an address (a reference) to your house.
You can make a copy of this piece of paper and hand it out to your friends when you invite them over, instead of building each friend a copy of your house.
You can have an address book filled with pages, where each page is an address (i.e., an array of pointers). Each page you turn (each index you increment) goes to the directly next address-containing variable.
Now if you cut the address book in half along its height, and then attach the lower half behind the upper half, then you have a book with smaller pages but more pages.
You can store phone numbers in this, and even if it’s the same total size, you have double the number of pages and double the number of phone numbers (if you store one number on each page).
Now, since the pointers to home-addresses are different from pointers to phone-numbers, turning the page in an address book (increment pointer by 1) moves forward by one address.
But turning the page in the phone book (incrementing pointer by 1) leads you to the next phone number, even if you technically turned only “half a page”.
That’s how pointer arithmetic works.
Source: https://reddit.com/r/...8 -
Let me explain a tiny corner of some awful code I read earlier today, in layman’s terms.
It’s a method to see if the user is in a secure session — not to set up the session, just to see if it exists. The method ends with a question mark, so it’s basically a question. It should look up the info (without changing anything) and should always give a clear yes/no answer. Makes sense, right?
Let’s say the question is “am I in school right now?”
The code… well.
If there isn’t a student, the answer it gives is null, not yes or no. Null is a fancy word for no, pretty much, so that’s kinda fine, but it really should be a simple no.
It then checks to see if the school is open today. If it is open, it then checks to see if I made my lunch, if I took my backpack, and if I rode the bus — and makes these things happen if they didn’t. Forgot my backpack? Just ask “am I in school today?” And poof! There’s my backpack! … but only if the school is open.
It then, finally, checks to see if I’m actually in the school, and gives that answer.
It could just see if I’m in the school — I mean, I could be in school without a backpack, or walked there on the weekend, right? Ha! You and your silly logic have no place here.
So, by asking if the user is in a secure session, we change the answer: they weren’t before, but the act of asking makes it so. This isn’t profound or anything: I don’t work with Schrödinger. My coworkers are just idiots.
And no, the rest of the code isn’t any better…7 -
What I fear most is the "I used to be a developer like you" type of client.
No, that's not how any of that works.
No, noone uses that anymore.
Please stop trying to correct me.4 -
I've seen SOAP on here and now in other places.. can someone explain what it is to me like I'm drunk?12
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I'm about to move to a new city and one of the websites I'm using adds its name, url and ©️2018 to anything you copy. It is driving me absolutely insane. Trying to find an adress on google? Well you didn't search for [streetname], you searched for [streetname, website name, url ©️2018]. Thank you for copyrighting that public street you fuck. Trying to e-mail an agent? Sorry I can't send an email to [e-mail adress, website name, url].
Whoever thought of this needs to be taken out back and shot.2 -
tfw...
• the new "sr dev" asks what the point of TDD is
• being polite, I answer in an ELI5 format
• rest of the room nods head in agreement
• new "sr dev" still has baffled look on face -
...just download our new app! NO! FUCK YOU! What do you think you deserve storage space and permissions on my phone? Make a responsive site or webapp or I will not use your service. Why does everything need a fucking app? Oh, you bought a new car? Download an app! New appliance? DOWNLOAD A FUCKING APP! Just bought a new Samsung phone, but already use all of Googles empireware? WELL HERE IS ANOTHER CALENDAR/MAIL/EVERYTHING APP FROM SAMSUNG THAT YOU CAN'T COMPLETELY DELETE! This needs to stop.
/rant
Thank you for listening2 -
Hey fellas, especially you security nerds.
I've had asymmetric encryption explained to me a number of times but I can't get a handle on it because no example actually talks in human terms. They always say "two enormous prime numbers", which I understand, but I can't conceptualize.
Can someone walk me through an entire process, showing your math & work, using some very small, single- or double-digit primes? Such as if I were to encrypt the text "hello world" using prime numbers like 3, 5, and 710 -
i don’t know what docker is and at this point im too afraid to ask.
i read an explainer on it every few months. i’ve used it a couple times. still don’t know what it does.
“it’s a container!” okay.. so is my tupperware. it has beans in it. what’s your point.12 -
Never thought I'd be back here after all these years. But today I thought I would rant about our product owner, who thinks he's priceless to the project. The man walks out of meetings that don't go in his preferred direction. He gets flustered whenever discussions become technical and demands everyone ELI5 the entire thing to him. He clears his throat loudly every time he wants to make himself noticed, like loud grunts of a wild boar. He will find ways to shift blame away and onto others. He does not like being recorded during meetings and does his best to make sure his decisions don't have a paper trail in case they go sour. No paper trail also means he can contradict himself everyday ans get away with it. I wish there was a way to make him resign or switch to a different project. Other managers and even his bosses are already aware of his behavior and yet still no significant changes in his actions or behavior.
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Anyone using Psiphon?
Can someone give me an ELI5 on what it is and how to go about it?
https://psiphon.ca/6 -
Does anyone else read about a new library/framework, get really excited about and can't wait to get home to try it out?
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My fellow devs, appreciate what you have right now, even if it doesn't seem that great. I've recently switched majors from Bioinformatics to Medicine and I wouldn't say I regret it, but I do certainly doubt this decision sometimes. While studying Bioinformatics, I was always really interested in the biological part, often wanting to learn more about medical topics and such, thinking if I did switch, I could always keep programming as a hobby. Now I did switch and I miss being in a professional CS field so much. Medicine is great, but the people who study are mentally completely different from people that code. I still code small projects on the side, but don't really have anyone to talk to about them and I'm even starting to regret not paying more attention in linear algebra. I miss linear algebra, think about how ridiculous that is haha. Anyways, if you are looking forward to a major change in your life, it might not be all that you think it will be. So look at your current situation, it might be what you wanted all along.
Thanks for listening.
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Also it is incredible, how technologically incompetent most medical students are lol4 -
So I'm a windows person through and through.. I used them at school college and university, but
I've heard a lot about Linux and unbuntu and it's got me a little curious Now the question I'm asking is can someone eli5 what unbuntu is? is it free to use? how hard is it to install? How hard is it to use? What is it good for? work/games/music?4
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