Posts

Showing posts from March, 2022

Bad design consequences

Image
Human errors are inevitable. Flaws in design can lead to serious consequences. In IT small errors can affect millions of users and create a PR nightmare for the company. One of the examples that came to my mind was Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery catching fire.  Back in 2016, Samsung discontinued its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone just two months after its became available on the shelves, due to battery defects causing the phone to overheat, combust or explode. Around that time, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge also reportedly caught on fire. But the main focus was on the Note 7, as it's definitely the smartphone that became Samsung's biggest advertising nightmare to date. The phone's battery reportedly had a flaw in design that made it prone to bending, and indeed, there were  dozens of reports of Note 7s catching on fire. The Note 7 was quickly withdrawn from sale and Samsung tries and forget about it as a their error from years ago, but there are reports that the brand new Galaxy S22 may

Skills of an Estonian IT professional: Evolution

Image
Every year requirements of an IT specialist rise. Competition is getting more intense and more and more people try to become IT specialists. The IT world is very different to what it was 20 years ago. Stack Overflow became a thing. Nowadays, programmer must be an expert at using Google search. Almost every problem's solution and every question's answer can be found on the Internet, specifically on Stack Overflow. Security is something we have to think about now. 20 years ago IT specialists didn't have many concerns on program security, nowadays, cybersecurity has become a major branch of development, many cybersecurity companies have risen and cybersecurity has become a big concern in modern society. The set of tools for working with the language is much wider. Previously, there was only a compiler and, if you're lucky, a debugger. Today they usually come with a linter, a code formatter, a templating engine, a self-updating feature, and a list of reasons to use in holiv

Copyleft: Impact on choosing a software license

Image
Copyleft originated as a pun from copyright. Nowadays it denotes whether the license will influence the derived works or not. There are 3 main types of copyleft: Strong copyleft - these licenses demand that all the derived works (the software that is made by altering the original) must retain the license of the original. Weak copyleft - sets some exceptions in order to allow better software integration (linking) with non-free (proprietary) systems. Weak copyleft is especially appropriate in the case of software libraries. No copyleft - these licenses do not limit the licensing of the derivatives. This is option gives the largest freedom to developers while somewhat cutting back on the continuity assurance for end users. Strong copyleft The most well-known strong copyleft software is the GNU General Public License . The GNU General Public License guarantees end users the four freedoms: to run , study , share , and modify the software. If you are using a GPL component in your software,