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• Should I be put off a junior role that uses an online development test?

  - by Ninefingers

  I've applied for a junior development role, or rather been found by a recruiter looking for a developer. In order to get to a telephone interview stage I've been asked to sit one of those online coding assessments. This wasn't quite what I expected. I consider myself a fairly good developer for my age and experience, but I've no illusions about being Don Knuth or anything. The test was a series of incredibly obtuse questions asking about the results of various obscure evaluations. About 30 minutes in I was thinking to myself I hadn't intended to enter an obfuscated code contest/code golf exercise. After my last telephone interview I was asked to build something. I did. That seemed fair. Go away and work this out is more my in office experience of programming than "please evaluate this combination of lambdas, filters, maps, lists, tuples etc". So I'm a little put off, to be honest. I never claimed to know the language inside out or all the little corner cases. My questions, then: Should I be put off? Why? Why not? Are these kinds of tests what I should be expecting for junior roles? Should I learn stuff exam style? That seems to be the objective of these tests, for which you are timed and not supposed to use references or books? Normally, in the course of development I have a fairly good idea of basic types, rules, flow control and whatever. Occasionally I'll come up on something I need to use a regex for and have to go and remind myself of the exact piece of syntax I need if trying what I think should work doesn't. Or I'll come up against a module I've not used before and go and look it up. For example, if I wanted to write a server using sockets in C right now, I'd probably check the last piece of code I wrote doing that (and or the various books I have) and work from there. Chances are I probably couldn't do it exactly from scratch and from memory, although I can tell you you'd need a socket(), bind(), listen() and accept() call and you might also want select() depending on whether you intend to pthread_create or not. So I know what the calls are, but not their specific parameter list. What are your experiences if you are a recruiting manager? Are you after programmers who can quote you the API or do you not mind if your programmers have a few books on their desk and google function calls every so often?

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• C library build system dependencies

  - by Ninefingers

  Hello all, This debate has cropped up on a mailing list for a project I'm involved in. Unfortunately we're quite a small bunch at the moment, so I want to ask a wider audience. We're writing a C library (for arbitrary precision arithmetic) and are investigating build systems. Currently we have a bash script in desperate need of work. I believe we can't use autotools etc due to licensing (bsd vs gpl). So I suggested we use a modern scripting language like python or perl. The question is: is having something like perl or python around at build time an unrealistic dependency on Unix-like platforms these days?

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• Fedora 12 Wireless problems (Intel Wireless 4965AGN Card)

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, I'm having an interesting experience with my wireless card at the moment. Basically, it does like this: I connect to the local wireless network (netgear router) It works, briefly, allowing me to browse a webpage or maybe two, if I'm lucky. It then stops working / sending any packets, whilst reported still connected. Now, me being me I've had a look to see what I can find. wpa_supplicant.log looks like this: Trying to associate with valid_mac:a2:30 (SSID='vennardwireless' freq=2462 MHz) Associated with valid_mac:a2:30 WPA: Key negotiation completed with valid_mac:a2:30 [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP] CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to valid_mac:a2:30 completed (reauth) [id=0 id_str=] CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys So that's working fine. dmesg | grep "*iwl*" spits out this: iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27kds iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2009 Intel Corporation iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN REV=0x4 iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: irq 32 for MSI/MSI-X phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-4965-2.ucode iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 228.61.2.24 Registered led device: iwl-phy0::radio Registered led device: iwl-phy0::assoc Registered led device: iwl-phy0::RX Registered led device: iwl-phy0::TX iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: iwl_tx_agg_start on ra = 00:24:b2:32:a3:30 tid = 0 iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: iwl_tx_agg_start on ra = 00:24:b2:32:a3:30 tid = 0 So that's working too. I can also ping 192.168.0.1 -I wlan0 and arping 192.168.0.1 -I wlan0 the router until the network falls over. uname -r:2.6.32.10-90.fc12.x86_64. Laptop is a Core2 Duo (2Ghz) with 3GB RAM. Other symptoms I've noticed are that wireshark freezes when I capture on the "broken" interface until I disconnect. Am using networkmanager as per normal. Stupidly, I can connect to the same router via eth0/a cat6 cable just fine. Everyone else can connect to the AP fine (from Windows). Yes, I'm sat right next to it and not trying to access a hotspot the other side of the world. Any ideas? Is this a broken update? (I intend to reboot and test an older kernel later)? Anyone else come across this? Edit: iwconfig wlan0 rate auto is the settings I'm using for rates. Also, according to networkmanager the network is still connected. Thanks for any pointers / advice.

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• Forward local port or socket file to remote socket file

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, Quick question - I run two linux boxes, one my own desktop and the other my VPS. For security reasons on the VPS end I opted for socket connections to MySQL (/var/run/mysqld/mysql.sock). I know I can tunnel like this: ssh -L 3307:127.0.0.1:3306 [email protected] if I set up the remote sql server to listen on some port, but what I want to know is can I do something like: ssh -L /path/to/myremotesqlserver.sock:/var/run/mysqld/mysql.sock thereby tunnelling two sockets, as opposed to two ports? A perfectly acceptable solution would also be to forward a local port to the remote socket file, but where possible I'm trying not to have tcp servers running on the remote box. (and yes, I know tcp would be easier). Thanks all, Nf.

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• Smartcards for storing gpg/ssh keys (Linux) - what do I need?

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, I'm interested in storing my SSH keys and gpg keys on a smartcard for added security. However, I'm a bit uncertain on a few points, which are as follows: How many keys can I get on a card? I assume both SSH and GPG can store keys on the card. Is there a limit to key size? I see a lot of cards saying they support 2048-bit keys, what about larger sizes? Hardware: can anyone recommend a card/reader combination that works well? I've done a fair amount of research and it seems PC/SC readers can be a bit iffy - is this your experience? Have I missed anything I should be asking? Are there any other hurdles? I'm aware fsf europe give away cards with membership - I'm not sure I want to join, but... are these cards any good?

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• Return template as string - Django

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, I'm still not sure this is the correct way to go about this, maybe not, but I'll ask anyway. I'd like to re-write wordpress (justification: because I can) albeit more simply myself in Django and I'm looking to be able to configure elements in different ways on the page. So for example I might have: Blog models A site update message model A latest comments model. Now, for each page on the site I want the user to be able to choose the order of and any items that go on it. In my thought process, this would work something like: class Page(models.Model) Slug = models.CharField(max_length=100) class PageItem(models.Model) Page = models.ForeignKey(Page) ItemType = models.CharField(max_length=100) InstanceNum = models.IntegerField() # all models have primary keys. Then, ideally, my template would loop through all the PageItems in a page which is easy enough to do. But what if my page item is a site update as opposed to a blog post? Basically, I am thinking I'd like to pull different item types back in different orders and display them using the appropriate templates. Now, I thought one way to do this would be to, in views.py, to loop through all of the objects and call the appropriate view function, return a bit of html as a string and then pipe that into the resultant template. My question is - is this the best way to go about doing things? If so, how do I do it? If not, which way should I be going? I'm pretty new to Django so I'm still learning what it can and can't do, so please bear with me. I've checked SO for dupes and don't think this has been asked before...

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• Which functions in the C standard library commonly encourage bad practice?

  - by Ninefingers

  Hello all, This is inspired by this question and the comments on one particular answer in that I learnt that strncpy is not a very safe string handling function in C and that it pads zeros, until it reaches n, something I was unaware of. Specifically, to quote R.. strncpy does not null-terminate, and does null-pad the whole remainder of the destination buffer, which is a huge waste of time. You can work around the former by adding your own null padding, but not the latter. It was never intended for use as a "safe string handling" function, but for working with fixed-size fields in Unix directory tables and database files. snprintf(dest, n, "%s", src) is the only correct "safe strcpy" in standard C, but it's likely to be a lot slower. By the way, truncation in itself can be a major bug and in some cases might lead to privilege elevation or DoS, so throwing "safe" string functions that truncate their output at a problem is not a way to make it "safe" or "secure". Instead, you should ensure that the destination buffer is the right size and simply use strcpy (or better yet, memcpy if you already know the source string length). And from Jonathan Leffler Note that strncat() is even more confusing in its interface than strncpy() - what exactly is that length argument, again? It isn't what you'd expect based on what you supply strncpy() etc - so it is more error prone even than strncpy(). For copying strings around, I'm increasingly of the opinion that there is a strong argument that you only need memmove() because you always know all the sizes ahead of time and make sure there's enough space ahead of time. Use memmove() in preference to any of strcpy(), strcat(), strncpy(), strncat(), memcpy(). So, I'm clearly a little rusty on the C standard library. Therefore, I'd like to pose the question: What C standard library functions are used inappropriately/in ways that may cause/lead to security problems/code defects/inefficiencies? In the interests of objectivity, I have a number of criteria for an answer: Please, if you can, cite design reasons behind the function in question i.e. its intended purpose. Please highlight the misuse to which the code is currently put. Please state why that misuse may lead towards a problem. I know that should be obvious but it prevents soft answers. Please avoid: Debates over naming conventions of functions (except where this unequivocably causes confusion). "I prefer x over y" - preference is ok, we all have them but I'm interested in actual unexpected side effects and how to guard against them. As this is likely to be considered subjective and has no definite answer I'm flagging for community wiki straight away. I am also working as per C99.

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• Django - provide additional information in template

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi all, I am building an app to learn Django and have started with a Contact system that currently stores Contacts and Addresses. C's are a many to many relationship with A's, but rather than use Django's models.ManyToManyField() I've created my own link-table providing additional information about the link, such as what the address type is to the that contact (home, work etc). What I'm trying to do is pass this information out to a view, so in my full view of a contact I can do this: def contact_view_full(request, contact_id): c = get_object_or_404(Contact, id=contact_id) a = [] links = ContactAddressLink.objects.filter(ContactID=c.id) for link in links: b = Address.objects.get(id=link.AddressID_id) a.append(b) return render_to_response('contact_full.html', {'contact_item': c, 'addresses' : a }, context_instance=RequestContext(request)) And so I can do the equivalent of c.Addresses.all() or however the ManyToManyField works. What I'm interested to know is how can I pass out information about the link in the link object with the 'addresses' : a information, so that when my template does this: {% for address in addresses %} <!-- ... --> {% endfor %} and properly associate the correct link object data with the address. So what's the best way to achieve this? I'm thinking a union of two objects might be an idea but I haven't enough experience with Django to know if that's considered the best way of doing it. Suggestions? Thanks in advance. Nf

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• Modify Django Forms

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, I've recently been developing on the django platform and have stumbled upon Django Forms (forms.Form/forms.ModelForm) as ways of creating <form> html. Now, this is brilliant for quick stuff but what I'm trying to do is a little bit more complicated. Consider a DateField - my current form has fields for day, month and year and constructs a python date object from that. However, a django form creates a single textbox in which the correct format (say 2010-06-15) must be entered. As another example, for large fields I need to replace <input> with <textarea>. I'd like to take advantage of Django's forms for simple validation but I need something simpler for my users. So my question is: can I intercept the rendering of one of these objects to write out the html as I like? If so, do I have to do all the writing myself or can I only do those objects I wish to re-write? Thanks in advance.

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• Efficiency of data structures in C99 (possibly affected by endianness)

  - by Ninefingers

  Hi All, I have a couple of questions that are all inter-related. Basically, in the algorithm I am implementing a word w is defined as four bytes, so it can be contained whole in a uint32_t. However, during the operation of the algorithm I often need to access the various parts of the word. Now, I can do this in two ways: uint32_t w = 0x11223344; uint8_t a = (w & 0xff000000) >> 24; uint8_t b = (w & 0x00ff0000) >> 16; uint8_t b = (w & 0x0000ff00) >> 8; uint8_t d = (w & 0x000000ff); However, part of me thinks that isn't particularly efficient. I thought a better way would be to use union representation like so: typedef union { struct { uint8_t d; uint8_t c; uint8_t b; uint8_t a; }; uint32_t n; } word32; Using this method I can assign word32 w = 0x11223344; then I can access the various parts as I require (w.a=11 in little endian). However, at this stage I come up against endianness issues, namely, in big endian systems my struct is defined incorrectly so I need to re-order the word prior to it being passed in. This I can do without too much difficulty. My question is, then, is the first part (various bitwise ands and shifts) efficient compared to the implementation using a union? Is there any difference between the two generally? Which way should I go on a modern, x86_64 processor? Is endianness just a red herring here? I could inspect the assembly output of course, but my knowledge of compilers is not brilliant. I would have thought a union would be more efficient as it would essentially convert to memory offsets, like so: mov eax, [r9+8] Would a compiler realise that is what happening in the bit-shift case above? If it matters, I'm using C99, specifically my compiler is clang (llvm). Thanks in advance.

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• Why isn't wchar_t widely used in code for Linux / related platforms?

  - by Ninefingers

  This intrigues me, so I'm going to ask - for what reason is wchar_t not used so widely on Linux/Linux-like systems as it is on Windows? Specifically, the Windows API uses wchar_t internally whereas I believe Linux does not and this is reflected in a number of open source packages using char types. My understanding is that given a character c which requires multiple bytes to represent it, then in a char[] form c is split over several parts of char* whereas it forms a single unit in wchar_t[]. Is it not easier, then, to use wchar_t always? Have I missed a technical reason that negates this difference? Or is it just an adoption problem?

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