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More than a little unfair when the following is in the article: I’m not going to write this completely from scratch – I think parsing DNS packets is r

by taeric 5y ago

More than a little unfair when the following is in the article: I’m not going to write this completely from scratch – I think parsing DNS packets is really interesting, but it’s definitely more than 80 lines of code, and I find that it kind of distracts from the algorithm. Which, seems legit to me. This article was a fun read to refresh on exactly what goes on in resolving basic records.

dixie_land 5y ago
I agree it’s a fun article but you can’t deny the title is at the very least clickbait-ish
- tptacek 5y ago
  I hereby do fully deny that there is anything the least bit clickbait-ish about this article, which is super interesting and all the more an achievement for its brevity. It demystifies what is the most annoying thing about trying to code the client side of DNS, and the fact that it uses the same DNS message parsing library every other Go programmer does isn't of the slightest import --- if the article hadn't used miekg/dns, some other lowbrow comment would be taking the author to task for reinventing the message codec wheel. The world needs more simple recursive lookup examples, and absolutely does not need more explication of DNS message parsing, any more than than an article talking about etcd's Raft implementation would benefit from a hand-rolled implementation of Protobufs. Yikes, everybody.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    It's (sadly) telling that all the dismissals are focused on packet parsing, and not like, bailiwick checking, which is understandably missing, but also really important.
zamadatix 5y ago
This is the key case I wish HN allowed editorializing the title. Regardless how good the article is (or isn't) when they have titles like this it's inevitable the conversation will be about how the title was overreaching. If people were encouraged to make titles like this into something like "Making a simple DNS resolver with miekg/dns in Go" or even just "A DNS resolver in Go" when posting we'd avoid this multiple times a day recurring problem. Or maybe it already is encouraged and people just aren't aware this counts as "misleading" or "linkbait" since it's not well described what the cutoff point is. Either way both titles like this one and discussions of have long gotten old. Edit: looks like the article moved to "A toy DNS resolver", excellent choice of wording IMO.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  > This is the key case I wish HN allowed editorializing the title The ability to leave a short (less than 100? 140?) description would be one the ways which would allows not to clickba^W editorialize the titles. Or the submission author can do the same by leaving the comment about it in the first comment.
  - throwaway1777 5y ago
    Leaving description opens up other bad avenues though. Like posting an article with a description about how stupid the article or the author is.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      The more general take I have seen is that it would give a "priority comment". That can result in problems like that but also more commonly just cause the comments to all act like a response to the "main" comment rather than general discourse on the topic. I can definitely see that though I also see the poster having a large amount of that control already in most cases since they get to pick the source they post.
    - airstrike 5y ago
      > Like posting an article with a description about how stupid the article or the author is. The community can moderate that, though
- djur 5y ago
  "Making a simple DNS resolver with miekg/dns in Go" would have given me the false impression that the article was about how to use miekg/dns. "A DNS resolver in Go" would have given me the false impression that it was about a full-fledged DNS resolver meant for integrating with Go applications. The current title at least pushed me in the direction of understanding what the article is about, which is demonstrating how DNS resolution works using a short Go program.
  - 5y ago
userbinator 5y ago
but it’s definitely more than 80 lines of code To this old demoscener, that sounds like a challenge...

by taeric 5y ago

dixie_land 5y ago

I agree it’s a fun article but you can’t deny the title is at the very least clickbait-ish

tptacek 5y ago
I hereby do fully deny that there is anything the least bit clickbait-ish about this article, which is super interesting and all the more an achievement for its brevity. It demystifies what is the most annoying thing about trying to code the client side of DNS, and the fact that it uses the same DNS message parsing library every other Go programmer does isn't of the slightest import --- if the article hadn't used miekg/dns, some other lowbrow comment would be taking the author to task for reinventing the message codec wheel. The world needs more simple recursive lookup examples, and absolutely does not need more explication of DNS message parsing, any more than than an article talking about etcd's Raft implementation would benefit from a hand-rolled implementation of Protobufs. Yikes, everybody.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  It's (sadly) telling that all the dismissals are focused on packet parsing, and not like, bailiwick checking, which is understandably missing, but also really important.

zamadatix 5y ago

This is the key case I wish HN allowed editorializing the title. Regardless how good the article is (or isn't) when they have titles like this it's inevitable the conversation will be about how the title was overreaching. If people were encouraged to make titles like this into something like "Making a simple DNS resolver with miekg/dns in Go" or even just "A DNS resolver in Go" when posting we'd avoid this multiple times a day recurring problem. Or maybe it already is encouraged and people just aren't aware this counts as "misleading" or "linkbait" since it's not well described what the cutoff point is. Either way both titles like this one and discussions of have long gotten old. Edit: looks like the article moved to "A toy DNS resolver", excellent choice of wording IMO.

justsomehnguy 5y ago
> This is the key case I wish HN allowed editorializing the title The ability to leave a short (less than 100? 140?) description would be one the ways which would allows not to clickba^W editorialize the titles. Or the submission author can do the same by leaving the comment about it in the first comment.
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  Leaving description opens up other bad avenues though. Like posting an article with a description about how stupid the article or the author is.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    The more general take I have seen is that it would give a "priority comment". That can result in problems like that but also more commonly just cause the comments to all act like a response to the "main" comment rather than general discourse on the topic. I can definitely see that though I also see the poster having a large amount of that control already in most cases since they get to pick the source they post.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    > Like posting an article with a description about how stupid the article or the author is. The community can moderate that, though
djur 5y ago
"Making a simple DNS resolver with miekg/dns in Go" would have given me the false impression that the article was about how to use miekg/dns. "A DNS resolver in Go" would have given me the false impression that it was about a full-fledged DNS resolver meant for integrating with Go applications. The current title at least pushed me in the direction of understanding what the article is about, which is demonstrating how DNS resolution works using a short Go program.
- 5y ago

userbinator 5y ago

but it’s definitely more than 80 lines of code To this old demoscener, that sounds like a challenge...