The downsides of coding drunk: Implementing the same thing you've already implemented but forget you did

Years ago, I joined a company making games for handheld consoles.

Because a game's audio needs to be tested, too, I connected earphones to the console so that:
0. I wouldn't bother others w/ the sounds coming out of the console.
/* !Everyone wants to hear that crap. */
1. I could hear the sounds better.

PM: * Enters the room. *
Me: * Focused on testing the game. *
PM: * Walks up to me from the side, starts talking. *
Me: * Focused on testing the game. *
PM: * After approx. 30 seconds of complete lack of response from me, kind of irritated, knocks on my desk to get my attention. *
Me: * Take out the earphones. *
Oh, hi, how can I help you?
PM: Haven't you heard a word I said?
Me: Well, no. I am testing the game, including the audio.
PM: You need to pay attention to what's going on around you.
Me: Testing audio is one of my responsibilities. I am using earphones because of the reasons [0-1].
PM: Even still, you just need to pay attention to what's going on around you.
PM: * Finally explains the reason for him bothering me, then goes back to his lair. *

Moral of the story: Fuck being good at what you do && knowing your responsibilities.
When PM wants something from you, you better give him the attention he wants.

/* The expectation being I grow an extra pair of eyes && ears, so that I see the guy coming && am prepared to listen to him whenever he wants something _while_ doing the best job I possibly can. */

no man, I can't rebase, I don't work for you anymore

Here’s to a better 2025!

Is devRant Losing Its Spark?

Hey ranters,
Anyone else notice how quiet devRant has become? Back in 2016-2017, this place was buzzing with energy, but now it’s down to just 10-12 rants a week. What happened? Did competition from platforms like Reddit or Discord take over, or did devRant stop evolving?

I still believe this platform has huge potential—developers will always need a space to vent and connect. But without fresh ideas or a clear roadmap, it feels like devRant is fading.

To the creators: what’s the plan? To the community: do you feel the same? Let’s discuss!

A concerned dev.

Procastinator's tricks to be productive: Schedule messages

I hate to write people. They could answer. My whole plan might be thrown off. But when is the best time to answer them? The day after tomorrow? Too late. Tomorrow. Around 10? Thank you to all messengers that allow me to schedule a message. Instead of procrastinating, I answer, I schedule, and if I am in a bad mood, I later come back and abort and rewrite the message nicer.

Went perfectly swimmingly with my happy new year messages. Everyone got them at 00:00. Yes my friend, you're obviously the most important thing in my life, first thing I did was writing you!

A software developer's experience life cycle:

0 - 5 years: attempt to replicate what your current senior is preaching, assuming that's the right way. Reading "Clean code" and preach it as gospel, even though you don't practice any of it.

6-12 years: gained the belief that you are better off coming up with solutions yourself, usually "sophisticated" and "elegant" which to everyone else (and also yourself a few years later) is an over-complicated inheritance ridden shit show. You have realised the "Clean code" movement is actually a cult but still believe code reuse is the holy grail.

13+ years: finally realized that simplicity and pragmatism is the most sensible way for most software development. Code is now readable, maintainable and functional. You took the few good bits from "Clean code" and ignored the extremism. These are the golden years.

The problem is most developers jump ship and stop developing before reaching the golden years, thus resulting in most software projects looking like shit.

Unpopular opinion, but it doesn't make it untrue.

Happy new year.

gonna try working from the hospital while my youngest brother is in surgery from a car accident yay american work culture forcing productivity in difficult times

I didn't become a developer to be legacy's bitch. But we're all legacy's bitch.

I want to roam free. I want to piss in the rain and sing at strlen. I don't want to be in corporate meetings anymore.

I don't want to contort my ideas and good intentions to fit legacy's ugly painting.

I want to be free.

Please let coding be fun again.

I process more tickets than a brothel car park ticket machine

Very excited to announce I've started another project I will never finish

I just named a class GString and it makes sense. I laughed. Happy new year fuckers.

Github Copilot is a dumb little shitstain

For the past years I've been trying to periodically give a go to various copilots every time they made an announcement like "our next version will replace programmers, it will make singularity look like child toys"

Unfortunately and unpleasantly, in 2025 copilot is the dumbest shit ever and even junior coworkers can produce better code.

I can make it do only bovine code like class mapping and simpleton tasks.

Delusional

Soo... Turns out, if your laptop has usb-c charging and it has several such usb-c ports, you can use them simultaneously.

My lappy has issues with usb-c sharging, i.e. it becomes sluggish when charging w/ usbc (compared to on-battery and charging through barrel plug). Aaaaand Linux tends to occasionally crash if I unplug the charger while it's "awake". I wanted to change chargers, so I figured I could plug in the second one (hoping not to see any smoke) and unplug the first one. As soon as I plugged in the second one, all the lag disappeared and the battery keeps charging.

So if you have an usb-c charger that's too weak for your laptop, try using two of them :D

Never would have thought....

Mandatory winter break means mandatory.

Getting PR requests from a team mate during company wide holiday PTO. Asked him wtf he was doing, manager told him he had to work.

NOT the managers call! This is going to HR on the 2nd

Am I going crazy or is the web dev community on some otherworldly drug?
Now "server-side"-whatever is the coolest thing ever?
To the point where client side validation is not recommended anymore and actively discouraged? Are you kidding me? So, you mean to say after filling a long form with millions of fields, the page will RELOAD when I press submit and after waiting an eternity for your shitty server to respond then and only then will I know what fields are invalid?
GTFO with that bullshit.
How in the world is that good UX/UI?
I've always had this theory that we humans are the dumbest species to ever walk this earth. I mean, serisouly, how is this even a thing?

Imagine if a mobile app had to restart to tell you that your email is invalid in a simple form.

But.. but... but... what if the client has disabled javascript? Then fuck them! Who the fuck cares? What's next? Some dumb user is still using Android 2.1 Eclair and we should make our app support them? Fuck no! Fuck them, they should update.
Newsflash, if Javascript is disabled, then pretty much everything will be broken anyway.

Form validation should be instantenous. This isn't rocket science.
It should happen as the user types so they can see what's valid/invalid in real-time.
This does require effort and consideration, something many devs lack apparently.

This is just ridiculous.

Sleeping well cleans our mind and let us approach a problem in a different way and help us find the solution. For some days I was worried about how to solve a couple of bugs, but this morning after a good sleep I magically realized how easy the solution was:
WON'T FIX

Today, I was successful in shouting AGENT into an automated call menu today to get to an actual agent.

I have a new UNTRAINED bot on my site. It's based on openai now. And that's why it's blazing fast and blazing usless.

I can tell you why bots are so boring and will sure cause the dead internet theory. My datasets for example never contain real disturbing stuff ACCORDING TO NORMAL PEOPLE. EVERY TIME:

"The job failed due to an invalid training file. This training file was blocked by our moderation system because it contains too many examples that violate OpenAI's usage policies, or because it attempts to create model outputs that violate OpenAI's usage policies."

Now i'm really done. I gonna email them about their unusable training system.

In theory, i could test the message one by one if it is bad first. Don't want to do or pay for that. There should be an option to skip the data it considers disturbing instead of cancelling a whole data set for 0.1%. You also don't want to know how long it takes BEFORE he is finished validating you set. I think someone is doing it manually and clicks 'Uh uh..'-button..

Also, for the people who think they have gpt4o by having the API, you're lied to. The 'own gpt'-option on the paid openai is way more advanced than the ones you make locally.

They don't give us the real good stuff!

Oh, btw! The input data for my training is based on FORMER conversations with the bot. I automated a script to repeat a conversation I had and selected those messages and clicked 'train'. So it even complained about its OWN data! That data was already saying stuff like 'I can't help you with that' IN my training data. So, you 'corrected' and corrupted my data and now its still nog good enough for round 2?

I would really love to go back to local LLM's, but I can't imagine having ever a machine that generates as fast as the real GPT does. I also prefer to do it myself, but it's David vs. Goliath, even with a 5k computer. I'm sure.

Low quality rant, I know. I'm typing while still frustrated. For people who think censorship is needed often, this is the result! According to someone else, YOU are the one who has to be censored. Don't forget that.

A fancy position opened up in a good spot, which I should be applying for. I want to. But this soul sucking place I currently work for has crushed me and I really don't see it in me anymore. The robots have more soul in this corridor than people.