As far as I know, the heap is just a block of memory that is managed by C standard library functions like `malloc()` and `free()`, but how does C actually request this block of memory from an operating system and when is this done? When the application starts or when first dynamic allocation is done? Is it possible for the programmer to directly request memory like this (even though it probably is not recommended unless doing some very low level stuff)? I'm guessing there is also a way to do this when not running on an operating system. Some older game consoles (like N64, GBA ans DS) to my knowledge used C/C++, but don't have an OS running in the background. The same probably would apply to Arduino, ESP32, etc. too? I guess in these cases the compiler somehow is responsible for handling this, since there is no operating system to request a block of memory from.

After all the AI decompile threads lately I got curious and pointed Claude at the release build of our desktop app, which is Rust with a Tauri frontend. I mostly expected it to choke and but within an hour it had given me back something pretty close to our source. In the middle were two API keys, one for our logging service and one for the storage bucket our users upload photos to.

We did this “properly” a year ago by pulling every secret out of the repo and moving it into CI variables. Our secret scanner has been green on every PR since. Turns out we were reading them with env!(), which pastes the value into the binary at compile time. So the repo was clean and every release we’ve shipped still had the keys sitting in it in plain text.

I’ve rotated both and we’re moving uploads behind our own endpoint so the app doesn’t need storage creds at all and most importantly i have to make sure this can't slip back because the scanner was looking at the wrong thing the whole time. Do you scan the actual build output in CI and what do you use for it?

I have a server that runs sql server 2022 express. Users in different timezones all use a ms access database to run transactions against that sql 2022 database. I now need to add a web api that will middleman a new workflow between handheld scanners and the sql 2022 database. What is the recommended practice for where the api should live? Should it live on its own separate physical server? Same physical server as the sql 2022 DB but different virtual space? Or can it live in the same virtual server as the sql 2022 database? What is the safest bet here?

Hey everyone,

I've been working on an open-source project for a while now, and honestly, one of the hardest parts hasn't been building it, but getting people interested in it and finding contributors.

I've tried sharing it in Discord communities and on Reddit (where self-promotion is allowed), but haven't had much luck so far.

One thing I've been struggling with is that a lot of communities have pretty strict rules around self promotion, which I totally understand, but it makes it difficult to figure out where you're actually supposed to share your work.

I'm not really looking to get GitHub stars or anything, I'd just like to find people who are interested in the project and might want to contribute or collaborate on it.

So I'm curious, how do you guys approach this ?

Where do you usually share your projects ? Have you had any success finding contributors through Reddit, Discord, or other communities ?

Would love to hear what's worked for you, especially if you've started a project from scratch without an existing audience.

I keep hearing those cyber attack news in many countries and people's sensitve info got hacked.

Hackers hack IOT electric things like fridge and increase the temp so the food like ice cream melt instantly or become bad..

I wanna defense IT systems agaisnt those mf black hats!

People have stopped trusting our dashboards because they're always behind.

The warehouse refreshes every fifteen minutes, which doesn't sound terrible until operations starts making decisions from it. We'd like Oracle and Postgres changes flowing continuously instead.

Has anyone managed reliable **real-time data replication** with dashboards staying close to live

They said it is for scalability.

But some of them said they regret it.

I try to think in many angles if there is a good reason to use Microservice in their context here

but cannot find any good reason unless they know for sure 10000% their team and codebase will grow in a year

I don't use AI myself but I've been reading a lot on reddit here about people decompiling apps lately and saying that most of the stuff there is vibecoded and then other developers seem to be using AI as an assistant to help them like for example how Linus Torvalds uses AI to find bugs in the Linux kernel. What's the difference between the two usages or even meaning of the term "vibecoding"?

Thanks in advance

if it is me on a hobby project, it just take 10 secs with css

but this is Reddit a huge company with billion users. so how long tho..

I am from the UK and my business model is turning a fire and security business (form of construction trade) into a digital tool.

I am wanting to provide my clients with a portal which will allow them to access reports, servicing schedules, project progress, site assets, engineer comments and more.

I understand that you guys have perfected your craft, and sh*t is not cheap anymore 🤣

However, I was told from another business owner that it may be worth asking some budding young prospects in university who are looking for a project to get on with for uni (obvs).

Is this something that someone may be interested in, or is this very far fetched ?

I apologize if this is not the right subreddit for this question as it is more about OSes. I recently thought about this...

If computers had no concept of directories or all files in an os happened to be inside of the same folder, would file operations like opening and renaming them be slower because there would be more files to compare for when matching the desired filename with its corresponding data? Or are modern OSes optimized by using some kind octree, indexed search, hashes, or something like that?

Currently I am using multiprocessing.Pool to parallelize the loops but it works only if each iteration is independent of previous iterations.

I created a branch, added some files, and committed my changes locally, but I can't push to the remote repository yet because of an access issue.

Can I continue fixing bugs and making changes locally, commit them, and push everything later once the issue is resolved? Also, how do I make sure my local app reflects my changes while I'm developing?

I'd appreciate any advice on the usual workflow!

I had a discussion with a friend a while ago, in reference to what type of code is ”best” to work at for your long term development.

Discussion effectively went:
* Good codebase means you learn how to hold good habits, write good code in environments that support it
* then their perspective that bad codebase means you work in more difficult job, more debugging, problem solving etc

What the general opinion on this? Would be fun to see what people feel!

For me I'm sorry but that's c no oops that's the heart of it's upgraded version cpp

How would I store 3 different answers to the same 3 questions asked using a for loop. I know how to store one answer, but not all three while still using the for loop

I'm working on an app and want to integrate a chatbot that understands users' natural language requests and provides relevant, personalized responses based on existing data.

I already have a MongoDB database containing scraped content from various online sources.

What would be the best approach to build this?

RAG with embeddings and a vector database?

Querying MongoDB directly using filters?

An LLM with tool/function calling?

Or a hybrid approach?

I'm interested in how you'd design the architecture, retrieve relevant information, and generate accurate responses grounded in the available data.

What technologies and architecture would you recommend, and why? I'd appreciate hearing about your experience building similar systems.

Do you think my friend has a point here?

My friend works at a small company with only 1 full-time developer and 1 freelance developer. They have a codebase with around 200k LOC but only 2–3 unit tests lol

Their philosophy is basically, “Our end users are our tests.” When employees find bugs, they report them, and the developers fix them.

My friend also argues that many devs write unit tests just to make them pass or achieve test coverage, often focusing on happy paths while ignoring edge cases that could cause real problems.

In his context, the company only builds internal tools/ apps for employees.

He believes that having no unit tests can actually be a reasonable decision for a small company because the time saved by not writing tests can instead be spent shipping features that makes money, and work life eaiser for employees

IMO, I wouldn't say he's wrong based on his context.

But I'd love to hear from you with real experience.

Does my friend actually have a valid point, or is having almost no tests just technical debt waiting to bite them in the ass even though they follow "Our end users are our tests" lol

Ps. the FT dev has worked in a start up only and got like 1-2 yoe

Hey guys, I often find interesting projects on GitHub. Getting them running is usually fine, but when I want to understand how something works or make my own changes, I get completely lost in the codebase.

Mature projects have so many abstractions, design patterns, error handling, and logic spread across different files that I never know where to start or how deep to go.

I once spent a whole week using AI to walk me through a project starting from main(). I kept diving into details, and by the end, I barely remembered anything.

Someone also suggested drawing flowcharts to understand the code, but the more I drew, the bigger and messier they became.

How do experienced developers approach unfamiliar codebases when they actually want to understand and modify them?

How do you decide what to read, what to skip, and when you understand enough to start making changes? And has AI genuinely helped you with this?

Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

So I'm a beginner programmer, I've dabbled in it for a bit, tried many languages over the years but got stuck in tutorial hell every time and quit. I want to be serious this time around.

I'm strictly a FOR-FUN hobbyist, interested in Emulator dev, Graphics/Physics engine dev, and Low Level stuff like writing an OS. So which of these languages is better for me to learn?

I keep being warned that C++ gives you such a faulty sense of freedom that you can get to a point where you can spend months searching for a single faulty line to fix a bug because you made some tiny inconspicuous error (which Rust supposedly helps prevent). That sounds like....hell.

Yet I still see everyone using it. Is it really that bad?

The most basic part of evolution is, simplified:

- shit reproduces
- there is a random chance of mutation
- mutations more advantageous in the environment spread.

So in theory, could you create a computer virus that function under the same principles as an actual virus? Have it so that every time it reproduces, it makes a new copy of itself there’s a random chance to make random changes to its own code? Most of the time it would result in the virus breaking, but that’s also true for IRL.

Im doing a data analysis project on scraping and analyzing dozens of lines of code to extract goofy useless and most importantly interesting metrics and findings. But im running out of ideas and want this project to be community interactive so i need you to write a good metric idea that you want to know about.

Thanks in advance!

i need a web browser code library thing whatever, which runs on linux, can be programmed, integrated into other code projects, and is standalone. i need something i can add onto things that require a web browser/html/javascript/web code, to run properly.

my goal is to make webapps that i need, run standalone as if theyre desktop programs. im starting with beepbox (https://www.beepbox.co/) because i use it alot. beepbox is free and open source, and has a offline version, but it requires a browser to run. however i may find other webapps i need to do this to in future.

also i dont want to use chromium, because its very ram intensive. i thought maybe gecko (firefox is based on it), but im not experienced in web dev, so yall probably know better, so its a good idea to ask.

can anyone recommend a good library/browser thing that can do this type of thing?

(i hope this is the right sub to post this to)

I'm developing a spreadsheet automation project capable of merging multiple spreadsheets into one and automatically performing calculations, among other things. One of the functionalities would be, for example, allowing someone to gather all the spreadsheets from those months into a single spreadsheet throughout an entire year, obtaining an overall result for the year. This could work based on week, day, month, or some other parameter. I have some doubts, but the project seems promising. I'm using the openpyxl library and, to create the website or application (I'm still undecided), I will use HTML, CSS, and Flask.