4 posts tagged with "experience"

In light of recent events, there's been some confusion about the polyfill.io service and polyfill.js. This article aims to clarify the differences and address some concerns.

The Polyfill.io Incident​

News recently surfaced about the polyfill.io service injecting malicious code into JavaScript assets fetched from their domain. This article provides a detailed account of the incident.

Understanding Polyfills​

According to MDN, a polyfill is a code snippet, typically JavaScript on the web, that provides modern functionality on older browsers lacking native support. For instance, if you want to use the latest JavaScript APIs like array filter or map—supported by Chrome but not IE7—you'd need a polyfill to ensure seamless functionality.

8 Years ago…

AngularJS was very popular library and talk of the town.

The Software product had a requirement of providing a search solution with display of tabular data / pagination etc. with some UI animation.

It was decided by the tech lead and the management to go with AngularJS and there could be various reasons for it, possibly:

• AngularJS was popular framework
• Going forward all the new features in this software product had to be developed using AngularJS
• It is always exciting to work on a new technology irrespective of figuring out if it actually is needed.

This feature was released and praised, but over the years, there have been no instances of this library being used for any other features, reasons:

• Continued usage of the legacy framework, it being the obvious choice
• The rising popularity of Angular2 over AngularJS causing lack of time and interest.
• Lack of resources / technical skills in AngularJS

So, this huge product had AngularJS as a low hanging fruit, used only for one single feature.

However, security fixes to AngularJS library were patched whenever available.

In this blog post, I am thrilled to share the story behind my proudest Pull Request (PR) yet. PR#458 wasn't just another contribution but a significant milestone in my journey as a software developer. It was a challenging task that pushed me to my limits, and in overcoming those challenges, I learned valuable lessons that have shaped my approach to coding.

By the Numbers​

Before we delve into the story, let's take a moment to appreciate the sheer scale of this Pull Request. It comprised nearly 10 individual commits, introduced close to 2,800 new lines of code, and astonishingly, resulted in the deletion or modification of over 314,400 lines across almost 1,000 files.

History​

The project I worked on has a rich history spanning almost two decades, evolving from a Windows application to a browser-based web app with a diverse tech stack. This enterprise application has made careers of many software engineers, which means this codebase had been touched by many software engineers. With wide tech stack such as CPP, Java and Dojo framework on the UI, over the years, it accumulated tech debt, and my role primarily focused on UI enhancements and refactoring.

The need for a change​

The accumulation of tech debt prompted a thorough review of the codebase to identify areas for improvement:

• Removal of unused assets and code snippets.
• Refactoring of legacy code to improve readability and maintainability.
• Elimination of support for outdated browsers.
• Streamlining of build scripts to remove unnecessary generated files.

I am a avid reader of HackerNews, I like to read about start-ups and I love to work with code. I started my career as a programmer working on web projects. I have had experiences working independently and with a huge team. In this post, I try to pen down my experiences as a software developer and some of the things I learned throughout this journey.