hahaha....lol

Less rant, more story.

Tl;Dr: Disney uses "Magic Bands" to track every action of every person within their parks.

So I took my family to Disney World this past summer and we got these "nifty" little things called Magic Bands. These things are little wrist devices that basically handle everything for you in the parks. It unlocks your resort room, it gets you into the parks, you pay for meals and souvenirs with it by connecting a credit card and/or your meal plan. It makes things real simple as it's like putting on your watch each day.

At first I kinda enjoyed how easy it made everything on the trip, but then as we were exiting a ride the couple in front of us noticed the digital signs had their names on them, I looked around and noticed mine too, a sign that said "have a good day $myName." It suddenly clicked. These "Magic Bands" are people trackers. Suddenly everything about the park that I had been enjoying, was part of the system they had in place using these bands as human cattle tags. The ride wait time estimations were perfect, not because of a good algorithm and estimations, but because they had actual real data telling them when a person entered the line and got off the ride.

Using a BLE scanner app I was able to see that they have hundreds of APs throughout the parks tracking every single band on every single person withing their compound. I started to think about all of the data they're collecting and the thought of it was overwhelming. The amount of assumptions they can make about people based on their actions within their parks and what that data would be worth to additional advertisers. By the end of the trip I was cynically pointing out everything to my family about the cattle tags and how much I hated wearing it and yet it was required in order to do anything.

*Working on app for client*
After review - “Can you make that font bigger?”
*Makes font larger*
After review a week later - “Can you make that font smaller?”
*Puts font back to original size*
Another review later on - “Can you make that font bigger?”
*Keeps font at same size and changes nothing*
Next review - “That new font size is perfect!”

I’m sorry for my earlier rant (deleted). It was obnoxious and offensive. I was rude and stupid on a galactic level.

I was having a bad day. Cheers!

It's the FUCKING....
WEEEEEKKKKEEEEENNNNDDDD!!!!!!!!

I don't know about you lot, but it's felt like a long time coming since Monday morning.

Several concurrent projects pulling you in different directions take its toll.

Oh and to answer your question.
Yes, I am mentally unstable right now 🤪

Long time lurker, first time poster. This site has been a huge source of fun and laughs for me on bad days.

So dear fellas,

I've been a software engineer for about 5 to 6 years which was intense as fuck and I've been burnt out multiple times. My highest rank was a senior software engineer so far.

I was offered a new job recently as a Technical lead for a small team which would mean I have to make architecural decisions on top of good ol grunting out the code. I took up the offer but I'm more worried than happy.

Impostor syndrome has kicked in heavily ever since I agreed to the job. What if they realise I don't know certain things that engineers are supposed to know? What if I get in an embarassing situation where somebody asks me a question and I'm not able to answer? What if people who I work with laugh behind my back cos I'm not a rockstar engineer?

I'm depressed and scared as fuck right now. Usually I had someone senior to ask my questions or get my doubts cleared with, now it looks like I'll be making those decisions and getting things done and I'm shitscared and worried as fuck.

Does anyone have any pointers, tips or anecdotal advice that might help me? It would be much appreciated.

Sorry for the incoherent rant. Have a good one y'all

am i a joke to you

how to tell your partner to fuck off?
I love my partner very much. but I get nothing done on a personal level. Lots of listening to her and watching netflix together. but then when I try to start to work on a personal project.. I get disturbed everytime.. until she finally sleeps.. but then my mind is already burned out.

the truth is that I don't have any dedication and am easily distracted. (Oh look devrant)

Personal project struggles

Spot the problem. 🙃

After drilling yourself with links and resources, documentation and cant execute what you want. You leave it.

Some time later you go back and you are like why the hell didnt I understand this it's so simple :/ and it literally says what to do.

This is when I became a calm developer. Don't rush yourself. If you want to quickly do something. READ dont just look 🙃

Also, don't persist with understand the official docs. The third party explanations will show you flames 80% of the times if you are learning something new.

"Disregard what you're doing now. We need a FUNCTIONAL prototype (which will become the main app because refactoring is a waste of time huehuehuehue) with these features our POSSIBLE client MIGHT potentially need for TOMORROW's presentation."

"What do you mean that thing you were working on yesterday isn't done? Those are the times we estimated, right? By the way, our (still not confirmed) client thinks he'll choose us over that other company if we do changes A, B, C and D. Need it for yesterday."

Confirmation message takes too long, ask us to make it faster as it should not hold the user back.

Next week: the confirmation message is too fast we must please make it slower 🙈

Every fucking time I see a mention of "iphone x" I read it as "phone x" as if someone is just referring to a generic phone.

Its a fucking stupid name.

So I'm supposed to implement a date range. Easy right?

Wrong. It's not implemented into Angular-material (even though it's quite a standard thing to do). There is a third party solution - that works with Angular 8. We're still on Angular 7.

So either we do the update, or we just put two date-picker side by side. I propose the two solutions. Head of UX come to me to say "every change have to go through UX".

Then, she's unpleasantly complaining that "that's why we do grooming" and "why haven't been detected before"... Ugh, those people job is to tell me where to put my button and they think they're important. I don't know, we work in an unprevisible world?

I tried the update. I get stupid, angular-style error like "'green is undefined'", and countless stupid dependancies incompatibilities.

I have a degree in usability. I didn't do UX because it's... not interesting. I love programming. I hate Angular.

During a health and safety course today I was asked to talk about the workspace ergonomics. Part of that course is to make sure everyone knows how to customise their seat, screen, keyboard, etc., so I told everyone to unfold those little feet on the bottom of their keyboards and everyone did... Everyone but a cheeky little customer service girl who was more interested in taking selfies of her skirt coincidentally matching the carpet. I cleared my throat and said again:

- "Please, unfold your keyboard's feet."

Nothing. Coughed. Nothing. Finally, quite annoyed, I repeated myself for the 3rd time:

- "Unfold the feet, please!"

She jumped. Eyes wide. Noticed everyone staring. And very very slowly, with a look of complete puzzlement, she spread her legs.

I’ve recently started to see a behavioral therapist. During my second session I realized my scrum master at my previous company was essentially doing the same thing for me.

During sessions with my scrum master (SM) I always thought it was a good thing. However, now that I look back at it and I’m able to compare the two I think some of the advice he gave me wasn’t that great. My therapist has been recommending that I lean into my anxiety and share my fears with others. Allow people to clarify themselves and don’t assume they don’t like you or that they will be mean intentionally. Doing so can lead to you wanting to work harder to try an impress someone when you actually don’t really need to. Simply having a conversation can clarify a lot.

For example, I had a Senior Engineer (SE) who loved to code golf during code reviews and I loved learning how to review code in that manner. However, this impacted my deadlines. Upon learning this my SM wanted me to take more ownership on my tasking and pushback by mentioning my deadlines. I quickly learned the SE didn’t give a damn about what deadlines I had. I also learned even though he’s an SE he doesn’t have to be my mentor and he’s not boss or my stakeholder. His main concern was tech debt and his own deadlines. He wanted to merge code in that he wouldn’t get a call about during happy hour or in the middle of the night.

Talking to my SM just made things worse. My SM’s advice would never take into account my SE’s own motivations. During sprints I would give my SM continuous updates on oversight and he would get frustrated. He would continuously want me to think of ways I could step in front of oversight next sprint.

Talking to my SE seemed like he wanted nothing to do with me other than to give me feedback on my code. If I tried to small talk or connect with my SE during work he would stare back at me with a blank face. This was confusing since at company outings where we were allowed to drink we would crack jokes and share stories. On top of that, sometimes when I asked his preferences on code he would just say “meh.” He wouldn’t give me any more insight. He’d just stop at “meh.” None of it hurt my feelings and I kind of liked it. It made me feel like I was in an anime or action movie and I was trying to earn my Sensei’s respect. However, it frustrated my SM. He kept giving me advice on my communication skills and prioritization skills. For example, when I gave him scenarios that had a lot of fears behind them he would give me advice that seemed to be straight out of a _for dummies_ book. It didn’t really acknowledge everyone’s own motivations and concerns.

I think my SM meant well. But, it felt like he was continuously watching deadlines and wanted us to move like drones. My SE wanted his code to be kept clean so he could drink his beer in peace after work. I wanted to connect and I wanted gain respect from my SE. I wanted him to invite me to hangout after work. And i thought he’s invite me once I heightened my skill set.

However, I think I had it all wrong. I think the lack of small talk was that the SE wanted to stay focused and maybe he just didn’t find what I had to say that interesting. Maybe he knew I was “forcing” conversation? Like he could pick up it wasn’t that natural.

I think how I read the situation was solely based off of my own fears and less on facts. I think it caused tension when I would see my SM calling individuals to the office one at a time. I feel like since I was in this mental rut it never actually allowed the SE and me hash it out. Although, maybe the SE didn’t want to hash it out? Maybe there wasn’t anything to hash out? Maybe I was just walking around with all these fears that my SE saw me more of a nuisance than a friend?

Eventually my SE changed jobs and so did I. Since then I’ve been able to contribute to open source projects with high confidence and review code like a champ. I’m very appreciative of those times. I just wish I got a couple more times to crack jokes with my SE and I wish I didn’t cause so much tension. Oh well. We live and we learn. 😁

Somewhere in out application backend we generate a simple bullet chart. But in the most complicated way possible.
We call a web service to retrieve it(yes, a simple bullet chart). The service requires some parameters, and the code that generates them is hidden behind a wall of interfaces and abstract methods (the best and apparently only way to get to the actual code is to debug it).
However, one of these parameters is very well visible and it is a string with (uncommented)javascript function that manipulates the resulting chart, adding some final touches. With hardcoded values etc..

Dear programmers, I know we should avoid reinventing the wheel, but sometimes we should stop and consider the possibility, that we are using the wrong wheel and in completely wrong/obscure way. Thank you.
Yours WhoeverWillMaintainTheCode

Been using Dark Mode for 3 years now but no idea why I didn't start using it before.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't of needed glasses 3 years ago if I did it sooner.

I just compiled GNOME and for some reason it switched me to 60Hz. Im like. Wait WTF is wrong. Why is GNOME lagging so much.
I move mouse its just utter most garbage to watch.
GNOME is lagging like crazy.
Then i look into settings and see that i have been running 60Hz. I switch it back to 120Hz. Ohhhhh thats just so much better.
To the people who say you cant see more then 30Fps you should see 30 to 120 and then if you tell me you cant see it then you should go to doctor.

I saw this headline today: "Trending Technology - Google's new AI tool could help decode the mysterious algorithms that decide everything"

Basically, an AI tool to decode how other AI algorithms work...

Congratulations humanity... you done well.