I got hired in as a senior engineer and, after getting adjusted to the new job, I suggested some pretty big process changes for a big year long project we're working on.

I convinced the manager and team to not continue our practice of dozens of independent project repos where we repeat a lot of the same .NET code, and instead have all our services in one big monolithic repo specific to this domain. I build out the docker compose infrastructure so we could build everything using local Kafka and Mongo (previously devs always relied on the cloud dev environments for both).

It's streamlined, and still a bit clunky because I didn't want to change too much, but I think it will be a significant gain with a project that's this big.

We're already seeing a lot of issues that could have been swept under with the old process of tons of independent services.

Still, I struggle to care. We had layoffs in November, the logistics industry is still struggling, my manager is still using LLMs for stories and coding .. and although he did fix a bug in our Kakfa libraries pretty quickly using copilot, elsewhere it just seems like we're getting big messes of stuff. Even I'm auto-generating all the unit tests and not bothering to even look at them anymore.

I've been here six months. I bet I'll see this go into production. I hope it's not a disaster. I'm struggling to care.

When I applied for the AWS re:Invent 2025 All Builders Welcome Grant, I honestly didn’t expect to get selected.

But a single email changed everything.

In this video, I share my real journey of getting selected for the AWS re:Invent All Builders Welcome Grant 2025, including how I discovered the opportunity, what AWS actually looks for in the application, and why community involvement and networking matter more than most people realize.

https://youtube.com/watch/...

Why are job offers so damn boring lately...? Software developer for a lawyer? Policy maker dev? Food supply chain dev? Come on wtf. Guys. Why don't they come up with exciting roles like Media dev? lol

Have I ever told you how I found this hilarious && stupid debug feature in one of my old $company's released games?

It was during the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean era. I had very little to do w/ the actual $project_0, but was tasked to test it, briefly, so I was aware of its existence.

Later on, when I was testing $project_1, I would test the chat _a lot_. So much, in fact, that I purchased a keyboard that I would connect to the Android devices to help w/ the whole testing.

Just for fun, I downloaded the $project_0 from the Google Play Store && started messing w/ it using the newly purchased keyboard.

...turned out that a debug feature had been unintentionally left in the game. During the tutorial, you could press '0' on the keyboard to skip it...

Nothing major, to be sure, but still, fucking hilarious. Given how the $project_0 had already been left to die a slow death && was no longer in development, I mentioned the issue to the PM as a curiosity.

Too bad the original programmer was no longer working for the $company.

I'm sure he'd have a 'WTF?' moment.

JoyRant build 50.

I don’t know who else is still using JoyRant but according to TestFlight there are currently 73 users (wtf?!).

The new version doesn’t ignore the cert anymore because it’s been fixed.

And the new highlight is: auto-retry!
If a Slim Shady Error occurs, the app will retry up to 5 times until giving up and showing the error.

It’s really smooth again now. What a difference!

The retry feature is implemented on the SwiftDevRant SDK and is currently set to 5 by default.

@retoor if you want to use it, just update to the latest version 2.3.0
It’s better than just hiding the error because as a user you don’t need to manually repeat the request.

Have fun!

I don't want to show of my swiping skills but I only have to swipe once to go from top of this feed to the bottom. I think I'm just born to be a swiper.

Annoying: when a friend asks you for help with a computer issue and then a few moments later solves it themselves.

Shortly after joining the $company, I found this issue where if you connect a certain peripheral to the console, you can use it to do weird stuff that isn't really a thing on consoles. I documented my finding by creating a bug report.
...the bug report had been closed by the test lead w/ a message stating 'The game doesn't support the peripheral. Won't Fix'.
Fucking moron. Well... personally I don't give a fuck whether the issue is fixed. For one, though, it's !that tester's call - it's the devs' call. Seconds thing about this is - if the peripheral is !supported, then how about fucking disabling it, instead of letting the game intercept input from it, which can /* && does, as it turns out */ lead to unintended behavior?
I kind of wish the game had an SQL injection vulnerability, so I could create a report of it just to see whether the retard closes that one too w/ 'The game doesn't support code injection. Won't Fix'.
FFS.