It's been a while, but I've been busy pwning n00bs at Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, and buying a car, so life has been pretty busy as of late. Have no fear though! I continue the look at the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors with numbers 15 to 11. 15. Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions When you ASSUME things, you make an ASS out of U and ME. This is all about assumptions. You assume something will work, you assume …

Rails developers aren't exactly known for getting their indexes right (or even at all) on their databases. Granted, databases are a tough subject, and some people and companies make their living dealing with only databases, and some only with one database (like MySQL or Oracle). If you're coming to web development with no formal background in databases, and it's all new to you, then it's totally understandable to maybe forget about indexes initi…

I continue the look at 5 more of the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors. Here's part 1 (25-21) 20. Download of Code Without Integrity Check You might not think of this at first, but it's a doozy. If you are downloading things, like files, code, updates, whatever, they could be compromised. DNS poisoning or redirects could make your request for a file go to a different location. There could be a man in the middle messing with your data, or …

The Common Weakness Enumeration posted their Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors last month. Most everything in the list is completely avoidable, but most new programmers, and especially those without real world experience (as opposed to trivial classroom projects), fall victim to at least some of them. A lot of them bit me in university and I still get nipped by some of them today. Proper education is the first step, and the CWE have done …