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Not that I think we should go back, but I do miss the wildwest days of web development when it was still acceptable to FTP untested code straight to production.
by kypro 6y ago
Not that I think we should go back, but I do miss the wildwest days of web development when it was still acceptable to FTP untested code straight to production.
For my first dev job we would develop on production using an FTP client to push up changes on save. One day I was writing an SQL UPDATE statement and I forgot to include a WHERE clause. I basically nuked the entire product DB and it took days to recover because it was also not unheard of to not have regular db back ups. No one really questioned it too much though. Stuff like that just happened from time to time back then.
I rarely ever use FTP today. I wonder if students learning to code today even know what FTP is? It was one of the first things I learnt when learning to build websites as a teenager, but I don't that's the case anymore.
It's kind of interesting how processes in tech have evolved as much as the technology over the last few decades. It's hard to think of a good usecase for FTP anymore, but just a couple of decades ago it was used everywhere. Is anyone still using it for anything?
- formercoder 6y agoDon’t worry, SFTP is the backbone of the US financial system.
- robotixonic 6y ago...and the US healthcare system.
- hansor 6y agoAnd big mobile telecoms as well.
- quelltext 6y agoBut SFTP is nothing like FTP (in terms of protocol).
- blabitty 6y agoPreach. I was setting up SFTP batch jobs for financial data last year. New jobs, not migrations.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoHopefully with a modern encryption selection that doesn't have known short circuit attacks?
- tinus_hn 6y agoThat’s a lot more modern than the expected csv over smtp solutions.
- mtone 6y agoI still use it to sync folders to my iPad (from Documents Readdle). Since walled gardens don't leave much options open, it's basically either that or a cloud provider -- and no free cloud plan has enough space to store these folders. So FTP wins easily this one. It's free with unlimited storage, always has been, always will be.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIs that FTP, or SFTP? Despite the similar name they have almost nothing in common.
- mtone 6y agoI just use FTP.
- smoe 6y agoThe backend team in one of my previous jobs (around 2010) had an interesting file locking mechanism. All the developer were sat around one table but you couldn’t see each other behind the dual screens. So every hour or so, somebody stood up to inform the team that he is going to be editing file xyz, so please don’t touch. It wasn’t production though, everyone was just working on a shared staging system.
- TheManInThePub 6y ago>an interesting file locking mechanism Only 5 years ago, we had an 'editing stick'. Only the person physically in possession of the editing stick was allowed to make edit the configs to our (early 90's vintage) SCADA system. Frankly the system worked very well: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". We only got rid of the editing stick when the machinery in question was scrapped.
- aspaceman 6y agoIm a youngin’ and I regularly use it to transfer Roms to hacked portable systems (psp, vita, 3ds, wii). It’s convenient to transfer larger roms this way.
- nly 6y agoIt's still used a lot in finance for file delivery.