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Comment by dj_mc_merlin | Hacker News Reader

I was of the same opinion as you before reading the article.. but really? Genuinely just putting user input in SQL queries? I mean, everybody starts somewhere.. but how the hell do you get to be CTO of anything when nothing goes off in your brain when you're interpolating raw user input into SQL queries? WHAT? How? Everyone slips up, concatenates strings when they shouldn't, whatever.. but this genuinely looks like he didn't know that SQL injections are a thing. That is unacceptable for a technical leader.

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I barely know much about programming. I have finished LPTHW years ago but I'm not a coder by any stretch. Even I know to google how to sanitize user inputs before putting something into production.

In my book, any C levels shouldn't have direct access to production, and espectially when you become a CTO you stop coding.

Well, that surely also depends how big the company is.

This mistake looks like he just started coding.

The only thing experience will do is decrease the frequency of errors. I mean this is why there is a movement to prepared statements and safer language. None of us is smart enough to sanitize correctly or avoid buffer overflows.

> None of us is smart enough to sanitize correctly

It's just something that isn't and shouldn't be a concern of most engineers. I don't care about these things in terms of solving them.

You entrust the collective wisdom in each area like security for these types of things.

Which is exactly why it's hard to believe a former Facebook, veteran CTO would commit some code like this.

No legitimate electrical engineer would do the equivalent.

Managing people for the most part, helping out because staff got sick, writing parts of the code between meetings, being interrupted by your child.

Maybe it wasn't a mistake

Suffice to say, if you are remotely competent, you don't go work for far-right assholes.

So you get to be the CTO but actually being an awful enough person to put up with the company.

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