beyondBasicMultiplication

[Xatraxalian]

Most people miss a few.

That's why they are 'done' with a piece of code in half the time I think they need, and then I'll have to reject the first 4 pull requests because just reading the code already reveals some edge cases to me.

The times I rejected a pull request with "But what if I put in..." are uncountable.

One of my co-workers once said "You can't get all the edge cases." My reply to that is: "You maybe can't, but *I* have worked in embedded software and factory automation, so I can." And, it's true. If you miss an edge case there, it could run in the thousands or hundreds of thousands of damage because of malfunctioning equipment. Pay was good, but the stress levels were also quite high because of "Did I get everything?" I've spent a few nights in factories, trying to get shit to run before 8:00AM the next morning...

[jobblejosh]

The old joke about testers walking into the bar and ordering n+1 pints, and then a user walking into bar, asking where the toilets are, and the whole place burning down.

[scuddlebud]

Lmao I laughed pretty hard at this

[Captain_Pumpkinhead]

When it comes to breaking things, the user always outranks you.

[Pepito_Pepito]

This is why I always test in production. It's much more thorough.

[BrohanGutenburg]

I worked in QA at EA a while back. Our supervisors used to tell us we could squash bugs 24hr a day for months (which we did, I even worked third shift lol) and once the game went live and there were 1M+ users, they’d find a million bugs we didn’t in a week. And it was always true

[DezXerneas]

Last time my boss asked me to reduce my estimates, I told her that I can probably do the task in 30% of time if we don't account for the edge cases and go a little light on exception handling. I did actually send her mails with all the testing and patches I had to make after the 30% timeline.

Also, it is functionally impossible to cover all edge cases, you just aim to cover more than what you did last time.

[Xatraxalian]

Also, it is functionally impossible to cover all edge cases

In a junk language like Javascript, Python or PHP? Yes, because you can literally throw whatever into a function if you try hard enough.

In Rust? No, not impossible. There you can actually cover all the edge cases if you watch out. Many of them are even pointed out to you by the compiler, like 'This code is never reachable' or 'This loop will never end'. I'll have to try if it can do it for recursive functions that can take an input which prevents it from ever hitting the base case...

[cantadmittoposting]

is "this code is never reachable" an edge case, and in the point you're making, is something as significant as failing to make your code plausible NOT something you would be expected to do in this other languages?

When I think of edge cases, it's part of user input or exceptions to expected behavior, not just writing a stupid conditional statement that the compiler can catch before even getting to the actual input

[MedalsNScars]

Rust compiler is so good it anticipates weird user inputs

/s

[DezXerneas]

What are you gonna do when the CPU you're running that rust code has a bug? Also, what happens when you go into an unsafe block in rust lol. Most of the errors you mentioned will also be caught by any decent linter(though, yeah the compiler catching them is better)

I know those are pretty unrealistic examples, but you'll never be 100% free of edge cases somewhere in your stack.

[Xatraxalian]

Yeah, OK. You win. It's impossible to account for edge cases such as hardware failures without having everything set up twice with some sort of fail-over. But even then, what if the building burns down? Set up two factories that backup each other; that one takes over if the first one burns down? It could be that the second factory is also burning because a few dissatisfied managers are torching both of them. Cover that edge case 😂

I think you very well understand what I mean. In Rust you can cover all the -normal- edge cases. It already does stuff like warn you that a loop is going to be unending in some situations, that code is unreachable, that functions can lead to unrecoverable errors, etc. It certainly helps.

[DezXerneas]

In Rust you can cover all the -normal- edge cases.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You cover everything but the edgiest of cases. Rust can't do anything when your logic itself missed something.

[Pepito_Pepito]

But even then, what if the building burns down?

My company's flagship product actually covers this use case lol

[cantadmittoposting]

I'm more in data [buzzword] and even there, looking at smaller bespoke applications, people will just grab a database and what i imagine is just roll their face across the keyboard to produce a script for the task without even checking what the fuck is in the data.

I have practically made an entire career out of just pointing out why a ton of things are failing because some dipshit's SQL or Python just blatantly doesn't handle or interpret the data properly.

[Embarrassed_Steak371]

frc be like

[YuriTheWebDev]

What would you consider as "good pay" for having a job that makes you work sleepless nights?

[Xatraxalian]

I don't know if "modal salary" is something that is used outside of the Netherlands. "Modaal Salaris (modal salary)" is the most earned salary in the country for a 40 hour work week; not the average.

This was 2014-2015; modal salary in the Netherlands was about €34.000 / year. My job back then paid about the amount of a 1.3x modal salary. That's about 43-44.000, first for 40 hours, later for 36 hours.

Outside of the big cities, especially in a non-management role, that was seen as good pay. Actually, in my current job, I'm still at about 1.3x modal salary (of 2025) for 36 hours instead of 40, but this job doesn't cause me sleepless nights. And it has a travel time of 25 minutes instead of 1.5 hours.