928

Dear people who complain about spending a whole night to find a tiny syntax error; Every time I read one of your rants, I feel like a part of me dies.

As a developer, your job is to create elegant optimized rivers of data, to puzzle with interesting algorithmic problems, to craft beautiful mappings from user input to computer storage and back.

You should strive to write code like a Michelangelo, not like a house painter.

You're arguing about indentation or getting annoyed by a project with braces on the same line as the method name. You're struggling with semicolons, misplaced braces or wrongly spelled keywords.

You're bitching about the medium of your paint, about the hardness of the marble -- when you should be lamenting the absence of your muse or the struggle to capture the essence of elegance in your work.

In other words:

Fix your fucking mindset, and fix your fucking tools. Don't fucking rant about your tabs and spaces. Stop fucking screaming how your bloated swiss-army-knife text editor is soooo much better than a purpose-built IDE, if it fails to draw something red and obnoxious around your fuck ups.

Thanks.

Comments
  • 116
  • 121
    Fucking amen brother.
    Someone should pin this to the top.
  • 40
    The truth has been spoken!
  • 21
    I agree with you, but I think that it depends. If it's a stupid bug I wanna kill somebody, but if it's interesting I actually enjoy my work.
  • 77
    *drops mic*
  • 30
    Good point, but if no one rants about this all we are left with is customer rants and shitty meme reposts.
  • 3
    But but but, i like searching for syntax errors... 0_0
    That's just why i use the built in text editor for coding, it makes it more fun.
  • 9
    This sounds ds like it came from a bitter person.
  • 4
    @anonScriptah well played 🤣
  • 8
    I mean when I complain about stuff like that. I'm mostly just laughing at myself cuz of the type of error. It's also funny because the one thing that took your time and gave you a headache was a simple tiny error. It's the one of stuff you look back on and laugh about later. That's part of what makes programming fun and enjoying. Solving small, ridiculous issues like these.
  • 11
    I actually was exactly thinking that.

    Also about which language should I learn next. You should not learn a specific language, you should learn to program and choose a language where you can achieve your goals in the easiest way for that project. I have a love for certain languages, but if my boss says that I have to program in this or that I can simple change, because I can program and i can program in any language.

    Learn things like control flows, oop, data management, modeling, relation data, functional programming, stuff like that. That is used in any project.

    You should not learn something because you may be using it in 3 years, because you probably have no fucking clue at which project your working on in 3 years.

    So fucking, learn the general ideas how to program, and that can be done by any language.
  • 3
    And about fucking syntactic errors, we have fucking parsers who can check for those things automatically.
  • 5
    "fix your mindset"
    This was motivating.. Thank you :)
  • 2
    So much this
  • 6
    There are people, like me, who are guided by, and playing with, syntax. Yes, I can write algorithms and data structures and design. But syntax is what allows me to reason about the correctness of the code I actually wrote, instead of the code I intended to write. Syntax allow me to refactor with confidence and to see connections between components that would have remained hidden.

    So yes, I need the syntax of the program to be clear, standard-conforming, without distractions.
  • 5
    @elazar yeah sure, syntax is important for programming, but it should not be a problem in programming, like a missing semicolon, or someone uses space or tabs
  • 2
    Rekt confirmed
  • 3
    True words!
  • 5
    I'm offensive and I find this House Painter
  • 9
    @NightSkyLove The reason about the rant is that it's practicly impossible to get stuck on syntax error bugs because 99% of modern IDE's do a syntax check for you and gives visual feedback. See picture. So when you get stuck on missing semicolons, missing brackets or whatever you need to shop around for a proper IDE. You don't see a carpenter slamming in nails with a saw do you? Same for us developers; proper tools are half the job.
  • 7
    Stop complaining about complaining ...
  • 2
    Fuck yeah 🙌
    How do I ** this?
  • 2
    How I love these, let me count the ways.
    While { X < 3; X = X + 1 }
  • 2
    Oh my god, I did not know I needed this rant so badly. Thank you!
  • 2
    Who the fuck spends hours on a syntax error?
  • 4
    IMO this is Dev Rant! If one gets annoyed, angry, irritated or frustrated at any development related issue then this is the place to take it out in a safe environment to people who feel your pain. Not saying you are wrong to rant at this damn straight developers are complaining ranting turds me inclusive and it's bloody annoying!
  • 1
    Thank you!
  • 7
    @CogInTheWheel

    It was certainly more of a personal metarant than a desire to push rant legislation.

    When I said "a part of me dies", it's not out of hate, but out of (dutch expression) substitute shame. I will not deny anyone a reassuring hug when they stumble over a stupid mistake, although I might roll my eyes and shake my head a little.

    I do truly feel like a lot of devs get sidetracked a lot, fighting holy wars over editors, operating systems and indentation — instead of rest vs graphql APIs, activerecord vs datamapper ORMs, and whether writing JS in lisp-like syntax is acceptable.

    Maybe the contradiction (and possibly beauty) of devRant is that it's a community of smart people with interesting knowledge, but also a place to release frustrated instinctive screams.
  • 2
  • 2
    Damn straight

    Be an artist
  • 4
    Code is my zen garden, my spiritual medium, my chaotic void within which, through focused meditation I may shape form and realize creation.

    As I breathe deeply through my nose, that missing semicolon is the fruitfly gets sucked up in and shocks me out of my zone.

    I'LL GODDAMN FLIP A FLAP-FUKKEN-JACK HEARTY BREAKFAST OF KATHARISIS LACED RAGE IF I DAMN WELL PLEASE KINDLY FUCK OFF.
  • 3
    @unfuckers-inc alright let's take in deep breathes. 1, breathe in. Breathe out
  • 3
    @bittersweet we dont fight about that because we know unit of work is the way to go hehe and because graphql is awesome but almost no one messes with it, but i agree we should defy the standards, and thanks bro i do needed this rant
  • 4
    @erik404 Just to add to your image and comment, even current compilers do complain, I used to work on tweaking Android Kernal, and GCC always complained when I missed a } or had a typo, I didn't know about them because I was using default Ubuntu text editor but compiler backed me up with its errors.

    I think those missing ; are 80's or 90's thing they don't fit these days
  • 3
    I never understood the whole semicolon problem. Never in my life have I had it. Don't people use an IDE? If not, plz do it's 2017 and they're awesome now.
  • 2
    @Tasperen

    * assumes a meditation pose
    * visualizes a while loop where zen === true
    * in through the nose
    * out through the mouth
    * continue;
    * continue;
    * continue;
    * in through the n...*fly flies up nose*
    * ... throw new Exception('https://youtu.be/JJrEUJBV5RA')

    >(((
  • 2
    Thank you I'm so freaking tired of 50% of rants on here being really trivial shit like tabs and spaces and IDEs and brackets.
  • 4
    OP. Serious question. Do you dislike junior developers? How are they supposed to learn when their senior holds people with less experience in contempt? Are you #verySmart?
  • 3
    @bittersweet great rant, fully agree!

    Problem is that thus place is now swamped with juniors or less - and not that it is a problem with that..

    Most in here are web developers - mainly present, store data and present it again. Bugs are more trivial in those projects.

    Get a lead enterprise system developer to write a rant about their system, now that's pretty much always highly entertaining.

    A semicolon missing is a grain of sand worth in weight compared to the complexity, orchistration and bad architecture in a huge system. No central data store, messaging, service discovery and versioning, frameworks, duplicity etc etc..

    New devs, small problems, senior dev, complex problems.

    Sure, I've had a few semicolon issues with js, but that was because I didn't use my main, trusted IDE, which alerted me straight away.
  • 4
    @viking8 I think it's also a case that people can't really talk about larger projects or complex problems as they would have to self censor key info, Due to security risks. This makes those rants less exciting and so people don't bother so much.
  • 4
    @rm-rf-star If you're not very smart you don't become a developer.

    And I don't hate juniors, except those who partake in holy wars without knowing why.

    Recently one was standing next to my desk shouting that I really had to try this "Atom" editor. I tried explaining that Atom is fine for many projects, but that our project is large and uses a lot of complicated language features which are better picked up by the Jetbrains IDEs we use, but he wouldn't listen. Fine, use Atom, but don't come crying to me if it takes you hours to find a bug.
  • 3
    Ranting about ranting. So meta
  • 2
    Or wait, are these people actually still using plain Vim // Emacs? Shiiiiiiiii
  • 2
    Nice one
  • 1
    @anamus i am using notepad btw...

    😂😂
  • 1
  • 4
    @Letmecode I think it depends on the language as well.

    For nicely structured && well designed languages, Vim is a great IDE.

    For JS its still doable, provided your project doesn't use too much dirty magic.

    For PHP, where frameworks like Laravel sacrifice a kitten in a satanic ritual every time you call a method/property... you're almost forced to use a specialized IDE like PHPstorm.
  • 1
    Changing the mindset... Precise.
  • 1
    @bthrsmynmbr had a user whose password was contained a ` in a template string. That was interesting.
  • 2
    But can I rant about OpenGL? The error messages are nearly always entirely unhelpful. What a bitch to debug.
  • 2
    If you're working on projects that's used by thousands of people you use serious tools, like IDEs, languages and frameworks that is used widely, if you just play around you use vim, atom or any other shit..
  • 1
    @randomcomma You have a point...
  • 1
    RT Boom!!
  • 1
    But this is what this platform is all about... Rants 😂
    You are dangerous for this community here
  • 2
    😌
  • 1
    LOL!!!!!!
  • 1
    @rm-rf-star Idk how op feels about juniors but it doesn't take skill to ensure you don't miss semi colons, just takes proper ide/tools
  • 1
    @Darkler I'm not hating on anyone no matter their skill level or personal preference.

    Whether you pick Notepad on Windows, Sublime on a Mac, Vim on Linux or any IDE, it's all fine if it works for you.

    But there are a lot of developers for whom their choices clearly aren't working, yet they'll defend those choices vigorously.
  • 1
    Poetry
  • 1
    When the clients ask you to paint the Sistine Chapel in 2 days, then you have to become a house painter. Don't hate the player, hate the client.
  • 0
    What do the numbers mean mason? WHAT DO THEY MEAN
Add Comment