It's a trick question anyway, most programmers are probably bad at both Ü

I am so going to start to use computer networking terminology when talking about social networking from now on.

I'm sure he's fine, Sans/Susie.

Ohhh nice! I could see replacing dozens of nested if statements with dozens of nested case statements!

Early returns seems good, but personally I find code more confusing when things get arbitrarily separated out into functions, because to read it you have to keep scrolling back and forth between different parts of the page and either remembering where the other part is or typing a lot with ctrl-f, there's more variables to hold results, and if the section of code to be separated into a function is picked just because of nesting depth reasons then it's likely the function name isn't going to describe what it does very clearly, leading to more scrolling and more having to keep track of things in your head.

This seems geared more towards programming languages like C++, whereas in scripting such as BASH it seems to me like it absolutely would get to be a mess to have so many functions, particularly those called only once (either total for the execution of the entire program or within the context of being inside another function, so once per function).

I am curious now what would Linus Torvalds say about that?

I'd argue programming for micros is an order of magnitude more involved than say a simple linux or windows terminal app. The former requires actual understanding of the architecture, chipset, features, instructions, interfaces, on and on... The latter has such advanced tool chains readily available you dont need to think about any of that.

I had a class where we did a similar thing, except it was re-inmplementing basic forms of internet and transport protocols on top of the link layer

And it was a really really fun class imo, no sarcasm

I can't remember but I don't think this was on Linux. Solaris or Sun OS or something.

And then, even when it's not DNS, it's probably DNS.

Reading the iptables dump is not for beginners. Far from it. A packet can go through all tables and chains or none. And allowing a packet in one chain then begs the questions which is the next table or chain. There are maybe 100 flags and nobody can memorise them all.

Ufw just allows adding rules, ss doesn't trace packages as they go through the firewall, it can show you open ports and established connections, but it can show you which tables and chains a packet went through. lsof is even more rudimentary than ss and literally means "list open files". Since everything is a file in linux, that's a lot of files. Again, no tracing.

Somebody will say "just tcpdump". Again, no that doesn't trace which tables and chains a packet goes through. The entire firewall is a blackbox to tcpdump. At least to my knowledge. All it sees is which packets arrived and which were sent on the selected interfaces, and whether they was successful or not.

Nothing I know of traces a packet through the firewall and presents in a TUI nor GUI. I know that it's possible to make copies of packets and send then to custom chains that can log the chain and packet it came from. There might even be a way of generating a trace by adding a rule to a chain, which means adding it to every chain, but I'm not sure I've seen something do that.

That's a very generic name. Do you have a link?

Extraterrestrials

No. This whole laying off story is bigger and longer Shortly said. Last year i did a project, alone, for a customer. I didn't know that the version i gave him for review, was supposed to be the finished polished version. For me it was the rough work that he could have a look at, if the UI and functions roughly are as he expected them and whether he wants other changes. That brought the stone rolling.

Then the best friend of the only senior dev in this small company got into the position of team lead. There he constantly changed things up but i thought yeah what ever i write the texts differently. That was in december 2025. But the big issues then came in january and stronger in february. He bickered at how i named my variables, saying they werent accurate, leaving classes empty (just like the structure he build up was and i wanted to emulate it because i thought 'well it got to have a reason why he did it that way'). For example the variable for a list for a table of employee time entries i called "employeesheet". He marked it as completely wrong and that this isnt appropriate, giving as example that one of the translation of the word into german is "time note" and i should rather call it just "employeecollection". I argued, that it does fit because sheet also can be used for a listing and this not being a collection could lead to confusion with wrongful expectations and this is only being a list to be displayed and printed. And asked for better clarification why he thinks that would be a better name. I never got that. Note that all other classes and lists were called "sheet" and not "collection" He also was constantly passiv aggressiv and i cant even recall all of it because its some time ago and lot has happened since then. During a "meeting" to clarify things. He got loud, mad and angry that the bosses didnt read the emails he send them complaining about me. This person had a history and i wasnt the first to be feeling his power tripp. Another collegue felt it at the same time and one even before it. We went to the bosses. This was all due to unclear communication. I even offered to write them a manial on how to phrase things so i understand it better. Got told it was not neccessary. I did it anyways after senior developer asked in an email exchange between me and the ass-leader

Then i was tasked to do a version 2.0 for that customer project. Alone. As the project began i was on the verge of ending up on the street and had to juggle housing search, my grandma (and mother figure) being diagnosed with end stage Thyroid cancer and my dad suddenly landing in hospital due to a huge cepsis. Due to all that stress i oversaw something major for the project. That i then ofc admitted to be my fault and worked hard to fix it all. Then i noticed (after having done this fix just in time) that without telling me this project got given to the senior developer instead.

What a motivation booster. At the time i also got told (end of june) that i'll be laid off due to the financial situation. But in the case for the states approval (im 50% disabled meaning they have to get the states approval first) they stated "lack of skills for the position" as reason. In my statement i wrote how it all went down and that it was not due to lack of skill but due to stress in private that i oversaw that thing for the project.

Then the last few weeks i got tasked to programm something for a technologie which hasnt been in use since the 90s! And therefor ofc barely any documentation. I programmed it all regardless to the best of my abilities, having never interacted with Paradox (.px) database files or Oracle OR Borland Software before. Did it all dynamic, as i was taught in traite school, how i was always told to do things, even here). This still somehow was wrong lol. The safety things were: check that the repository exists before calling it. If not exists create it. Before trying to send a SQL Query to the Database, check that the connection is established and open.

Both i got told (along with gas lighting that apperently the call i had with my boss last friday according to him didnt happen) were unnecessary because "the folder will always be there". I told him "nobody can gurantie that!". He told me to shut up. I did for the rest of the call. He used the word "clone files" not "copy files" which in my book are 2 different things. And then got upset that i didnt copy the files but created new once from the templates. He treated me litterly like i never programmed. Didnt give me a few minutes to find the connections and how i arranged the methods, in the code i didnt touch in a week. It's all so frustrating.

And yes they were aware from before they hired me that i have adhd and autism

No. This whole laying off story is bigger and longer Shortly said. Last year i did a project, alone, for a customer. I didn't know that the version i gave him for review, was supposed to be the finished polished version. For me it was the rough work that he could have a look at, if the UI and functions roughly are as he expected them and whether he wants other changes. That brought the stone rolling.

Then the best friend of the only senior dev in this small company got into the position of team lead. There he constantly changed things up but i thought yeah what ever i write the texts differently. That was in december 2025. But the big issues then came in january and stronger in february. He bickered at how i named my variables, saying they werent accurate, leaving classes empty (just like the structure he build up was and i wanted to emulate it because i thought 'well it got to have a reason why he did it that way'). For example the variable for a list for a table of employee time entries i called "employeesheet". He marked it as completely wrong and that this isnt appropriate, giving as example that one of the translation of the word into german is "time note" and i should rather call it just "employeecollection". I argued, that it does fit because sheet also can be used for a listing and this not being a collection could lead to confusion with wrongful expectations and this is only being a list to be displayed and printed. And asked for better clarification why he thinks that would be a better name. I never got that. Note that all other classes and lists were called "sheet" and not "collection" He also was constantly passiv aggressiv and i cant even recall all of it because its some time ago and lot has happened since then. During a "meeting" to clarify things. He got loud, mad and angry that the bosses didnt read the emails he send them complaining about me. This person had a history and i wasnt the first to be feeling his power tripp. Another collegue felt it at the same time and one even before it. We went to the bosses. This was all due to unclear communication. I even offered to write them a manial on how to phrase things so i understand it better. Got told it was not neccessary. I did it anyways after senior developer asked in an email exchange between me and the ass-leader

Then i was tasked to do a version 2.0 for that customer project. Alone. As the project began i was on the verge of ending up on the street and had to juggle housing search, my grandma (and mother figure) being diagnosed with end stage Thyroid cancer and my dad suddenly landing in hospital due to a huge cepsis. Due to all that stress i oversaw something major for the project. That i then ofc admitted to be my fault and worked hard to fix it all. Then i noticed (after having done this fix just in time) that without telling me this project got given to the senior developer instead.

What a motivation booster. At the time i also got told (end of june) that i'll be laid off due to the financial situation. But in the case for the states approval (im 50% disabled meaning they have to get the states approval first) they stated "lack of skills for the position" as reason. In my statement i wrote how it all went down and that it was not due to lack of skill but due to stress in private that i oversaw that thing for the project.

Then the last few weeks i got tasked to programm something for a technologie which hasnt been in use since the 90s! And therefor ofc barely any documentation. I programmed it all regardless to the best of my abilities, having never interacted with Paradox (.px) database files or Oracle OR Borland Software before. Did it all dynamic, as i was taught in traite school, how i was always told to do things, even here). This still somehow was wrong lol. The safety things were: check that the repository exists before calling it. If not exists create it. Before trying to send a SQL Query to the Database, check that the connection is established and open.

Both i got told (along with gas lighting that apperently the call i had with my boss last friday according to him didnt happen) were unnecessary because "the folder will always be there". I told him "nobody can gurantie that!". He told me to shut up. I did for the rest of the call. He used the word "clone files" not "copy files" which in my book are 2 different things. And then got upset that i didnt copy the files but created new once from the templates. He treated me litterly like i never programmed. Didnt give me a few minutes to find the connections and how i arranged the methods, in the code i didnt touch in a week. It's all so frustrating.

And yes they were aware from before they hired me that i have adhd and autism

Yeah, for this, I started with this and this. With that said, it's still mostly arcane witchcraft. 🤣

Of course not, but I've found that seeing the protocols in action and looking at real headers can be very helpful in making them click. Understanding DHCP or ARP or mDNS or BGP or whatever is much easier by inspecting a pcap than it is by reading RFCs

The tcpdumps I've worked with can also dump UDP, ICMP, and even ARP.

Yes, but before I used it I assumed that its scope was pretty much limited to what you just mentioned. Instead it can operate on most protocols both above and below layer 4, and it is incredibly useful as a traffic capture tool to produce a .pcap on a remote headless machine which you can then load into Wireshark. The "dump" part is the interesting one, not the "tcp" ;)

Yes. Also learn about certs if you need to deal with encryption https etc.

Electrical engineering is just layer 1 on the OSI model.

It absolutely is. I'm dealing with genetic data, so I'm on their high security tier. Right now, the signs point to some poorly documented environment variables that aren't sourced on startup for some reason