> Find cool repo on GitHub
> Works very well
> Respectable weekly downloads
> …Hasn’t been updated in a year
> …Owner from Shanghai, China
> …Hasn’t pushed to any repo in over a year
> Last profile update: Feeling sick 🤒
> …
>😔
> Rest in peace friend, thanks kindly for the time you’ve saved me.

I was recently hired as a lead devops to a giant shit show. The CTO said he needs someone to do things correctly instead of quickly. This is a conversation I just had this morning

HR: We want you to interview a potential new DevOps engineer
ME: okay, when?
HR: Tomorrow
ME: I won't be able to create interview tests and materials for tomorrow. How's next week
HR: This hire is urgent! It has to be tomorrow
ME: Then you'll have to do the interview without me
HR: We need you to interview them because we've had a few bad hires in the past that we don't want to repeat
ME: The best way to filter out bad hires is with technical tests, which will take time to develop. I can be ready by next week.
HR: We can't give you a weeks notice for each hire, we are in urgent need for more devops.
ME: ...

Military grade encryption: md5
Enterprise grade encryption: Base64

Week 278: Most rage-inducing work experience — I’ve got a list saved! At least from the current circle of hell. I might post a few more under this tag later…

TicketA: Do this in locations a-e.
TicketB: Do this in locations e-h.
TicketC: Do this in locations i-k.
Root: There’s actually a-x, but okay. They’re all done.
Product: You didn’t address location e in ticket B! We can’t trust you to do your tickets right. Did you even test this?
Root: Did you check TicketA? It’s in TicketA.
Product guy: It was called out in TicketB! How did you miss it?!
Product guy: (Refuses to respond or speak to me, quite literally ever again.)
Product guy to everyone in private: Don’t trust Root. Don’t give her any tickets.
Product manager to boss: Root doesn’t complete her tickets! We can’t trust her. Don’t give her our tickets.
Product manager to TC: We can’t trust Root. Don’t give her our tickets.
TC: Nobody can trust you! Not even the execs! You need to rebuild your reputation.

Root: Asks coworker a simple question.
Root: Asks again.
Root: nudges them.
Root: Asks again.
Coworker: I’ll respond before tomorrow. (And doesn’t.)
Root: Asks again.
Root: Fine. I’ll figure it out in my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Asks four people about <feature> they all built.
Everyone: idk
Root: Okay, I’ll figure it out on my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Mentions multiple meetings to discuss ticket with <Person>.
TC: You called <Person> stupid and useless in front of the whole team! Go apologize!

Root: Tells TC something. Asks a simple question.
Root: Tells TC the same thing. Asks again.
TC: (No response for days.)
TC: Tells me the exact same thing publicly like it’s a revelation and I’m stupid for not knowing.
TC: You don’t communicate well!

Root: Asks who the end user of my ticket is.
Root: Asks Boss.
Root: Asks TC.
Root: Fine, I’ll build it for both.
Root: Asks again in PR.
TC: Derides; doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks again, clearly, with explanation.
TC: Copypastes the derision, still doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks boss.
Boss: Doesn’t answer.
Boss: You need to work on your communication skills.

Root: Mentions asking question about blocker to <Person> and not hearing back. Mentions following up later.
<Person>: Gets offended. Refuses to respond for weeks thereafter.

Root: Hey boss, there’s a ticket for a minor prod issue. Is that higher priority than my current ticket?
Root: Hey, should I switch tickets?
Root: Hey?
Root: … Okay, I’ll just keep on my current one.
Boss: You need to work on your priorities.

Everyone: (Endless circlejerking and drama and tattling)

Recruiter: So you’re in Canada?

Dev: One sec let me check

*Points webcam out window at ongoing blizzard*

Dev: Yup, that looks like Canada to me

Recruiter: Ok I am just confirming

Dev: Me too

The nightmare continues.

Currently dealing with a code review from a “principal” dev (one step above senior), who is unironically called a “legendary dev” by some coworkers. It’s painfully obvious he didn’t read the code, and just started complaining and nitpicking.

It’s full of requests to do things that make absolutely no sense, and would make the code an unmaintainable mess.
• Ex: moving the logic and data collection from the module’s many callers into the module instead of just passing in the data.
• Ex: hiding api endpoint declarations by placing them in the module itself, and using magic instance variables to pass data to it. Basically: using global functions and variables instead of explicit declarations and calls.
• Ex: moving the logic to determine which api endpoint to use, for all callers, into the view.

More comments about methods being “too complex” (barely holds water) right next to comments saying “why are these separate? merge them together!”

Incredulously asking how many times I’m checking permissions and how ridiculous it all is. (The answer? Twice.)

Conflating my “permissions” param and method names with a supposedly forthcoming permissions system overhaul, and saying I shouldn’t use permissions because my code will all have to get rewritten. Even if that were true, and it’s likely not, the ticket still needs to use the current permissions. I can’t just ignore them because they might be rewritten someday.

Requests to revert some code cleanup because the reviewer thought the previous heavily-nested and uncommented versions (with code duplication) were easier to read. Unsurprisingly, he wrote them.

On the same ticket, my boss wants me to remove all styling and clientside validation, debouncing, and error messages from a form. Says “success” and “connection failed” messages are good enough. The form in question sends SMS and email using arbitrary user input for addresses. He also says it shouldn’t be denounced on the server, and doesn’t want me to bother checking permissions. Hello, spam!

Related: the legendary dev reviewer says he can’t think of a reason why we would want to disable the feature for consumers, so I should remove the consumer feature flag.

You can’t make this stuff up.

My colleague wanted me to examine a script issue. I open it up, and it took several minutes to comprehend how it worked. Once it finally clicked:

Me: I can’t decide if this is idiotic or genius.
Colleague: Well, YOU wrote it.
Me: Oh… Genius it is, then!

Holy shit! Albert Einstein is a real person!

My whole life I thought he was a theoretical physicist.

We were still using python 2.7 waaay into 2020 - It had been heralding the impending doom since 2018 and finally end-of-lifed in 2020.

That's when I finally managed to be the loudest asshole in the room and allocate a team (myself included) to refactor shit up to 3.6 (then somewhat more modern) for a month or so.
COVID the destroyer may have helped by wrecking havoc on our client's demands pipelines.

It was the third week into "the red sprint" when my entire team (myself included) were beheaded out of the company since we had "not delivered ANYTHING in weeks!" (emphasis in the original).
Frankly, being laid off was by a large margin the best thing that company ever did for me.

I heard from a poor schmuck who stayed behind that they were still using the shitty spaghetti code from before our refactoring - in freaking November 2021 - and that our entire last effort was thrown out because "nobody knows how to use it".

There is tech debt and there is tech bankruptcy.
I may have a lot of tech schadenfreude now :)

So.. the software team I work with still maintain Java 6 apps.. meanwhile management keep asking when we're "moving to the cloud".

DevRant posts are too small for me to describe our technical debt.... 🤦

I got two lines of code done today, and they were just changing numeric defines. Time to do that: 2 seconds.

Time for analysing the measurement data of various runs in order to know which numbers will work out: the rest of the day.

How I see GPU brands:
- Team blue, Intel:
Oldschool autistic engineers, working GPU but not practical
- Team red, AMD:
Competitive but anarchist, horrid Windows drivers, but good on opensource, anti-mainstream
- Team green, nVidia:
Way too greedy cunts circlejerking each others off during breaks (like Apple employees), delivering on performance, but wayyy overpriced and scammy tactics

No one cares you got kicked off twitter.

Let it die.

001 REM Code review

010 PRINT "Nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick"
011 GOSUB REFACTOR

020 PRINT "This function is too complicated, break it up"
021 GOSUB REFACTOR

030 PRINT "Why do you have three methods for this? Put all the logic in one method."
031 GOSUB REFACTOR

040 GOTO 020
041 REM ARGH

998 PRINT "Looks good."
999 STOP

Mommy Microsoft really wants all your data in Windows 11.
The Facebook of operating systems.

Well, for starters there was a cron to restart the webserver every morning.

The product was 10+ years old and written in PHP 5.3 at the time.

Another cron was running every 15 minutes, to "correct" data in the DB. Just regular data, not from an import or something.
Gotta have one of those self-healing systems I guess.

Yet another cron (there where lots) did run everyday from 02:00 to 4ish to generate the newest xlsx report. Almost took out the entire thing every time. MySQL 100%. CPU? Yes. RAM? You bet.

Lucky I wasn't too much involved at the time. But man, that thing was the definition of legacy.

Fun fact: every request was performed twice! First request gave the already logged-in client an unique access-token. Second request then processed the request with the (just issued) access-token; which was then discarded. Security I guess.

I don't know why it was build this way. It just was. I didn't ask. I didn't wanted to know. Some things are better left undisturbed. Just don't anger the machine. I became superstitious for a while. I think, in the end, it help a bit: It feels like communicating with an alien monster but all you have is a trumpet and chewing gum. Gentle does it.

Oh and "Sencha Extjs 3" almost gave me PTSD lol (it's an ancient JS framework). Followed by SOAPs WSDL cache. And a million other things.

Follow-up on my previous rant:
My "friend" recently removed all credit to me which is breaking the license of the graphics I made for him. I have given him 7 days before I will take legal action, hope the warning scares him into either not using the graphics or adding credit back.

It is time. I have to admit it.

I don't understand Git.

I just memorized some basic commands: git commit, git push, git push -u origin master, git clone, git checkout [-B], git merge. That's it, that's the full list. I use them like they're some kind of magic spells that do what I need. Everything else, those intricacies like rebasing, resetting, HEAD and all that shit, is beyond me.

I'm not a real programmer. Real programmers know Git.

While exploring matterverse.ai, I looked at the formula for rubber:

C5H8.

its bandgap is 5.803

After a few minutes I discovered a slight modification:
C2H4, with a bandgap of 6.85!

"Holyshit, why aren't linemen using this instead of rubber for electrical insulation?"

*looks up formula*.

C2H4, the formula for:
Ethylene.

It's ethylene, a highly flammable gas.

And now you know why I don't do chemistry.

I just LMFAO(ed..?) at myself so hard.....

Messing around with all the option in the Android Emulator's "Extended Controls" window, and I was playing with the battery level slider.. got a little carried away, and suddenly my emulator just shut down.. by itself!

🤔

It took me way longer than it should've to realise what happened. But yeah, that's what Android does when your fucking battery reports 0%.

🤣🤣🤣🤦

I think I must stop working now, this day is done with me.