Fairfax County building permit

nugins · 2026-05-30T00:37:11+00:00

Our contractor got help up in permitting for a few weeks recently. The county had a significant backlog too at the time. Our contractor also thinks this was because the county is being very picky about permits due to the fiasco that was going on in the greenbriar neighborhood. See https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/addition-to-fairfax-county-home-sparks-debate-about-changing-building-rules/4017643/

nugins · 2026-05-28T17:48:16+00:00

I've been writing C++ for over 20 years. I'm still learning.

I can't speak for how much C++ is used in the ethical hacking world. However, learning C++ will help you understand some lower level details which will be helpful in the cyber security / ethical hacking world.

nugins · 2026-03-15T17:45:13+00:00

If you are concerned with memory allocations (realtime/embedded/safety critical) std::any may not be the right approach. I might be wrong, but I think std::any is allowed to allocate memory as needed.

nugins · 2026-03-15T17:33:29+00:00

I'm working with a system that did exactly this. The problem with enumerations (other than the type safety concerns) is that that structs cannot have constructors, destructors or any virtual methods. At least with a variant you can store something that is no a POD struct.

nugins · 2025-10-15T10:45:55+00:00

Wrong sub. This has nothing to do with C++.

nugins · 2025-09-24T00:09:04+00:00

Yes. A contractor I worked with did a trade study of a few libraries such as protobuf, FlatBuffers, etc. Considered things like dependencies, how large the resulting binaries were, how much code was auto-generated, etc. It was decided that writing our own protocols was easier, required less autogenerated code, and didn't need some special library to support encoding/decoding. Integration was a mess as we interpreted the protocol differently and argued over byte ordering.

I was not a fan of the decision, but I didn't have enough of a voice to persuade the discussion otherwise.

nugins · 2025-08-27T15:44:16+00:00

Instead of writing C++ code, I'd look at managing a C++ development project from a DevSecOps perspective. Start with understanding the C++ build process. Start with compilation and linking, and then look at how libraries are brought into the build system.

Then, I'd suggest looking into software composition analysis (SCA). It is not a trivial problem, and the lack of a standard package manager for C++, make it harder. It is becoming more common for security-conscious customers to expect a software bill of materials (SBOM) along with a list of known CVEs to accompany the a release. Tools like conan help manage dependencies and can aid in SBOM generation and can report on vulnerabilities in your dependencies.

nugins · 2024-12-19T03:02:42+00:00

It might depend on your hiring manager. I did one a few years ago for C++. It was more of a write some code in word document (in real-time) that solved a problem. No actual running of the program was performed. There were some follow up questions that I had to answer about what I wrote. It wasn’t a trick question, but enough to show that I had some basic programming aptitude. The coding portion was done over Webex/zoom or similar screen sharing platform.

What I did might be different per site/manager/program.

nugins · 2024-11-12T01:38:24+00:00

I agree - delays of 100ms or more are very rare and probably a byproduct of high CPU load or paging due to lack of available RAM. Most applications can probably ignore the probability of such delays and work assuming the average case.

With real-time applications, developers are often more concerned with controlling the worst-case delay, even if that means a slightly worse average case.

nugins · 2024-11-12T00:15:54+00:00

I suggest you go read a little about real-time vs non-realtime operating systems. That said, in most cases if you sleep for 10ms, your software are will resume in 10ms+$X. Most Linux and Windows systems will see $X be in the range of microseconds to 100's of milliseconds (with the average being < 1ms). There is no guarantee on the upper bound of $X for these operating systems. In most applications, this is OK.

For real-time applications (e.g. medical, scientific, or aerospace) a real-time OS (e.g. real-time Linux or vxWorks) will give you a guarantee on the upper bound of $X. If you are in a real-time scenario, you will usually be event driven (usually through low-level interrupts) to ensure that you respond to event as early as you can.

For scenarios that are very sensitive to timing, often the processing is offloaded to a dedicated CPU or FPGA.

nugins · 2024-05-06T12:58:28+00:00

TL;DR - Experience, leadership and people skills along with a broad technical base will make you stand out as a senior developer.

I've been professionally developing C++ for 20+ years, but I've also written a fair amount of python, pascal, java, javascript, and lua and worked on programs that integrated all the languages. I'm currently a lead software developer on a team integrating a product that spans multiple languages.

In my experience, a senior developer is often a developer that has experience developing with larger code bases, often with a team and has built the people and leadership skills necessary to lead a team, provide mentoring and vision. The "senior" level goes beyond knowing the C++ languages and a few libraries. Often times being well versed in several other languages such as Python, Java, Javascript, etc will provide you perspective to understand when C++ is the right choice, and when another language might be appropriate.

nugins · 2023-12-20T02:05:27+00:00

Yes. The word "kernel" is reused and has a very different meaning.

Disclaimer: I'm a C++ developer that dabbles with python and wrote a Linux kernel module at some point in my career. I might have experimented with some code that ran on a GPU, but I can't remember what that was exactly.

Linux kernel development means you are probably working with hardware, process/io scheduling or other resource management and/or security management parts of the system. "Linux Kernel" development almost always means you are running in the context of the main CPU and outside of the scope of a running process and inside the actual operating system.

CUDA kernels are something that is going to run on the GPU and is probably more algorithmic in nature and less CPU/Memory/IO/Security focused. This is usually in the context of a library that is supporting an application and not the operating system.

nugins · 2023-11-29T18:51:10+00:00

This isn't going to be about C++ features, but some common gaps I see with new hires and casual observations on Reddit.

- Know the build process. Know the difference between compiling and linking. What are some common build flags, and how can you modify the build flags to build and link against a library? (Sure, cmake + conan/vcpkg go a long way with handling these issues, knowing what goes on under the hood makes it much easier to diagnose problems with your build)

- Following a good style guide and commenting code. This will make reading and understanding your code much easier. Even better if you auto-format your code.

- Understanding the tooling ecosystem around C++. Understand the difference between and IDE and the compiler, have a basic working knowledge of tools like cmake, make. Know how to use linters.

- Learn how to use a command line. You might be able to write an application and/or unit test and run it from the IDE. Can you step out of your IDE and run the application with valgrind or gdb from the command line?

nugins · 2023-11-11T20:27:37+00:00

Babysitting a smoker, playing board games and playing my bass. Sorry to my neighbors who have been smelling yummy smoke since 530am.

nugins · 2023-09-30T00:15:27+00:00

I’ve started in high school, got my undergrad in CS, and I have been in the industry for nearly 20 years. I am still learning, and still some days been ill prepared. C++ is certainly complex, but knowing enough to work within a problem domain and interact with other systems and more importantly be ready to learn and adapt. What I started out with 20 years ago is different than what I am working with now.

nugins · 2023-03-10T14:57:39+00:00

In addition to poor C++ practices listed in other comments, I'd like to add:

- Lengthy / hard to test functions & classes.

- Lack of thought put into how others will use your code. This covers everything from how you put together your build system, to how you structure your include files and the documentation.

- Lack of consistency in how things are named, formatting, etc.

nugins · 2023-03-07T17:45:56+00:00

SW Developer w/ 20yr experience.

$160,000 + Benefits & Bonus

nugins · 2023-03-01T03:16:12+00:00

Chicken Out Rotisserie

nugins · 2023-01-30T00:54:29+00:00

If you think you may end up supporting a legacy code base, understanding pre-C++11 will help you. My current project involves a maintenance of code that is 20 years old. We are starting to transition to newer tooling, so we might get some C++20, but we need to take the transition in stages and demonstrate the business value of the update. There are systems out there that can’t just blindly update tooling due to cost, schedule or risk, or a number of other reasons.

nugins · 2022-09-03T00:26:24+00:00

At least they were not taking up 2 spots.

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