This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...

I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.

I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:

Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.

Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!

Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.

But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.

25 years of Linux! :D

October - Hired

November - Hear that CEO 2 was stealing the company money

December - Dismissing 6 persons. CEO 1 says to me that, since I'm the last hired, I'll be the first dismissed.

March - Company doesn't get better. Dismissing 3 persons... still there.

May - Company doesn't get better. Dismissing 2 persons... still there.

July - Company doesn't get better. Dismissing 9 persons... still there.

Now, with the remaining money the company should live for about 2 years and not dismiss employees anymore.

We were 25 employees, where are 4 now. I feel like the winner of Survivor.

Saw this quote in a local newspaper. The guy is against buying laptops for school kids which I also am against but he makes the wrong argument. 25 years ago my school had computer rooms where we learnt how to code and although I don't use that language now it is still the same concepts as any modern language.

The Linux Kernel, not just because of the end product. I find it's organizational structure and size (both in code and contributors) inspirational.

Firefox. Even if you don't use it as your main browser, the sheer amount of work Mozilla has contributed to the world is amazing.

OpenTTD. I liked the original game, and 25 years after release some devs are still actively maintaining an open source clone with support for mods.

Git. Without it, it would not just be harder working on your own source code, it would also be harder to try out other people's projects.

FZF is possibly my favorite command line tool.

Kitty has recently become my favorite terminal.

My favorite thing open source has brought forth though is a certain mindset, which in the last decade can be felt most heavily in the fact that:

1. Scientific papers with accompanying GitHub urls, especially when it comes to AI. Cutting edge research is one git clone away.

2. There are so many open hardware projects. From raspberry pi to 3d printers to laser cutters, being a "maker" suddenly became a mainstream hobby.

Biggest scaling challenge I've faced?

Around 2006~2007 the business was in double-digit growth thanks to the eCommerce boom and we were struggling to keep up with the demand.

Upper IT management being more hardware focused and always threw more hardware at the problem. At its worst, we had over 25 web servers (back then, those physical tall-rectangle boxes..no rack system yet) and corresponding SQL server for each (replicated from our main sql server)

Then business boomed again and projected the need for 40 servers (20 web servers, 20 sql servers) over the next 5 years. Hardware+software costs (they were going to have to tear down a wall in order to expand the server room) were going to be in the $$ millions.

Even though we were making money, the folks spending it didn't seem to care, but I knew this trajectory was not sustainable, so I started utilizing (this was 2007) WCF services and Microsoft's caching framework Velocity. Started out small, product lookup data (description, price, the simple stuff) and within a month, I was able to demonstrate the web site could scale with less than half of our current hardware infrastructure.

After many political battles (I've ranted about a few of those), the $$ won and even with the current load, we were able to scale back to 5 web servers and 2 sql servers. When the business increased in the double-digits again, and again...we were still the same hardware for almost 5 years. We only had to add another service server when the international side of the business started taking off.

Challenge wasn't the scaling issue, the challenge was dealing with individuals who resisted change.

Today I was 25 years old, asking for a raise or a opportunity to reach the next level of my career.

My department manager simply said:
"I'm sorry, but in terms of salary you have already reached the end of your career."

Bye then :)

To all young freelancers in low-income countries: I want to share my experience, of 6 years working for a piss-poor country, and 6 years working in freelance, and then emigrating. Here's what you should watch out for, and what to expect:

My first salary was barely 1.5$ per hour. I lived in a piss-poor country that taught me a lot (like why it's piss-poor).
The main thing to note when you're a developer in such a country, is that you're being fucked. Your employer might scream at you and tell you how bad you are, while barely paying you. That is you ... being ... fucked. Gain some confidence with the help of friends and family, and a great effort from yourself, look at what freelance gigs you can find, and ditch anything related to jobs in your country.

Being a somewhat able developer, but with modest experience, I started my freelance gigs for 5$ per hour. Because I was lazy, and freelance gigs weren't exactly being thrown at me, I was making 100$ per week, AFTER the companies I worked for appreciated what I did and offered themselves to up my pay to 12$ per hour. Yep. I was lazy. You will likely get lazy in freelance too, so be prepared for this.

My luck changed when one of my clients became a full-time employer, at 15$ per hour, with a well organized team where I actually worked for 40 hours per week (I had already amassed 8 years of experience...). For people in first world countries that will seem laughable, but in my country I was king of the hill, getting paid more than government CEOs that ended up in the news as the "most well paid".

That was the top of the pyramid for international indie freelance, as I would later find out.
I didn't do stuff that was very difficult. In fact, I felt like my abilities were rotting while I worked there. I had to change something. So I started looking for better offers. I contacted many companies that were looking for a senior developer, and the interviews went well, and all was fine, except for my salary demands. I was asking for 25$ per hour. Nobody was willing to pay more than 15$ per hour. That's because of my competition - tons of developers in cheap-to-live countries that had the same, or more to offer, for the same rates. Globalization.

So I moved to Germany. As soon as I was legally able to work, I was hunted down by everybody. I was told that it takes a month to pass the whole hiring process in Germany. My experience demonstrated that 2-5 days is enough to get a signed contract with "Please start ASAP".
There is freelance in Germany as well. And in the US. And everywhere else. A "special" kind of freelance, where you have to reside locally. The rates that this freelance goes for is much, much higher than international freelance. I'd say that 100€ per hour is ok-ish. Some people (newbies, or foreigners who don't speak the language well) get less, around 60 or so. Smart experienced locals get around 150-200 or even more.

It's all there. Companies want good developers to solve their business problems with IT solutions, and they'll beg you to take their money if you can deliver that.

So code!
Learn!
Accummulate experience!
Screw the scumbags that screw you for 1-2$ per hour!
Anyone able to write something more than "Hello World!" deserves more.

Do the climb! There's literally room for everybody up there! There is so much to do, that I feel like there will never be too many developers.

Thank you for bearing with my long story. I hope it will help you make it shorter and more pleasant for you.

I'm 20, and I consider myself to be as junior as they come. I only started programming seriously in June 2016,and since then, I've been doing mainly Android Work, and making my own servers and backends(using AWS/Firebase nd stuff).
For the first time in life, I was approached by a recruiter for a company on linkedIn. They "stumbled upon" my Github profile and wanted to see if I was interested in an internship opportunity. This company is an early stage start up, by that I mean a dude with an idea calling himself the CEO and a guy who "runs a tech blog" and only knows college level C programming (explaination follows).

So they want me to make the app for their startup. and for that, I ws first asked to solve a couple problems to prove my competence and a "technical interview" followed.
They gave me 3 questions, all textbook, GCD of 2 numbers, binary search and Adding an element to the linked List, code to be written on a piece of paper. As the position was that of an Android Developer, I assumed that Java should be the language of choice. Assumed because when I asked, the 'tech blogger' said, yeah whatever.
But wait, that ain't all, as soon as I was done, Mr. Blogger threw a fit, saying I shouldn't assume and that I must write it in C. I kept my cool (I'm not the most patient person), and wrote the whole thing in C.
He read it, and asked me what I've written and then told me how wrong I was to write 2 extra lines instead of recursion for GCD. I explained that with numbers large enough, we run the risk of getting a stackoverflow and it's best to apply non recursive solution if possible. He just heard stackoverflow and accused me of cheating. I should have left right then, but I don't know why, I apologized and again, in detail explained what was happening to this fucktard. Once this was done, He asked me how, if I had to, I'd use this exact code in my Android App. I told him that Id rather write this in Java/Kotlin since those are the languages native to Android apps. I also said that I'd export these as a Library and use JNI for the task. (I don't actually know how, I figured I can study if I have to).
Here's his reply, "WTF! We don't want to make the app in Java, we will use C (Yeh, not C++, C). and Don't use these fancy TOOLS like JNI or Kotlin in front of me, make a proper application."
By this I was clear that this guy is not fit to be technical lead and that I should leave. I said, "Sir, I don't know how, if even possible, can we make an Android App purely in C. I am sorry, but this job is not for me".
I got up and was about to leave the room, when we said, "Yeah okay, I was just testing you".
Yeah right, the guy's face looked like a howling monkey when I said Library for C, and It has been easier for me to explain code to my 10 year old cousin that this dumbfuck.
He then proceeded to ask me about my availability, and I said that I can at max to 15-20 hours a week since my college schedule is pretty tight. I asked me to get him a prototype in 2 months and also offered me a full time job after I graduate. (That'd be 2 years from now). I said thank you for the offer, but I am still not sure of I am the right person for this job.
He then said, "Oh you will be when I tell you your monthly stipend."
I stopped for a second, because, money.
And then he proceeded to say 2 words which made me walk out without saying a single word.
"One Thousand".

I live in India, 1000 INR translates to roughly $15. I made 25 times that by doing nothing more than add a web view to an activity and render a company's responsive website in it so it looks like an app.

If this wasn't enough, the recruiter later had the audacity to blame me for it and tell me how lucky I am to even get an offer "so good".
Fuck inexperienced assholes trying shit they don't understand and thinking that the other guy is shitsworth.

Being told I’m not experienced enough to get a senior dev job I interviewed for.
Even though I aced the first 4 interview rounds, the tech test feedback was “the best solution they had ever seen”, and I’ve been a senior dev for 25 years.
Time wasting assholes.

So there is this girl who joined the company as a trainee.

The company developed a 1 year project to train 25 trainees and she joined saying that she already had some experience making websites. (remember this)

They started in the beginning of January and stayed for about 3 months just studying the platform (Salesforce) and receiving some classes from Senior Devs, on subjects like OOP basics, loops, conditions and features of the platform.

After this time they joined the teams, 2 joined my team, a guy with 32 years that worked 10 years in a bank and wanted to go for a IT job and the girl of 22.

We gave her a really small task, just to make a code to copy info from one field to the other on a list of objects.

After 3 days of saying she was working on it we asked her to show us the code, she had written the "code" directly in the class, VS Code was going crazy with errors. When we asked her "But where is the method?", she answered "What is a method?"

After it we had other experiences trying to teach her some things. The team was formed by me (mid level dev), another mid level dev, a senior and a architect (who was self taught and one of the best teachers I've ever seen).

We tried for about 3 months to teach her how to do basic stuff, like a for loop, and every time we learned that she was missing some "foundations" of this basic stuff, so we would come back and explain the foundation, and a couple times she needed to use this knowledge like a week later and didn't remember shit.

So after this the team talked with our leader that we wanted to let her go and focus on the other guy who was going really well and some other junior devs who had joined the team.

But the HR found out that she had sued her last company, we don't know the reason, but HR guys were afraid of firing her without a careful firing process.

So now we're stuck with her in the team, and everything we ask her to do need to be remade, not because the code is bad, but because it NEVER works

And after all this I still ask myself, how did she finish college? Every person that i know that studied CS or CS like courses had a lot of OOP or at least knew what a class and a method were supposed to be.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it - unless the customer's paying."

Rule I've never learned and main reason why I don't have enough money despite 25+ years of experience.

So, I sign up for devrant and read all about the school devops fuckery everyone seems to have.

The only problem is, computers at my school's lab has no internet access and only a pirated copy of.... Visual Studio *6*. Hell, that's 5 years older than I am.

No python, no git, nothing. The best part, you ask? They use VS6 just for teaching 9th graders Visual Basic, and for C and C++, they use TurboC++ in DOSBox. 25-year old software. They teach us Pre-ANSI C++.

No fucking wonder people from here re-learn everything on the job. I jumped the gun and started messing with basic C++ in 7th grade, and then had to go back and remember that 25 years ago, they used <iostream.h> instead of just <iostream>.

Everyone just saves their code in the TC/BIN folder in DOS too, making it more of a chaotic mess than anything ever imaginable.

Bringing your own device? Too bad that's against the school rules.

The fact that they went out of their damn way to make me use TurboC in DOSBox on Windows 7 instead of giving me a sane Linux install with an editor and GCC is just... ugh.

My classmates all think I work magic, while all I really do is simple logic. Schools here in India are almost universally terrible.

Well, it's a good thing I started learning it on my own, because if I thought programming was in any way similar to how they try to teach it to us, I would've given up a long time ago.

True Story. Good rant bad pitched.

Just a small information before: In Germany, if you want to be a softdev and want to learn it, you can either go study IT or you can have a apprenticeship, which is 3 years with 75% of work in a company which will pay you (around 1K / month) and 25% in a school.

I work for this city-govermant company nearly 1 year now. Around 6 month into I told them I which to have a intern for 3 years (apprenticeship) at my site. Most likely because I really enjoy to teach.

My boss agreed to this very fast, told me it's a good idea, it would be a new way for our company to evolve. In Feb 2019, when we had interviews with candidates, we decided for one and I made a resource plan for most of 2019 in which I blocked 3 weeks for the start of his apprenticeship in July (2 weeks ago) because I knew he is a kid, 18 years, etc, never coded etc.

7 days into his apprenticeship my boss called me and my boss to her and told me there is a project which should be done by end of june and why it isnt finished.
It was the same project which I had ressources for 4 weeks in June but the department didn't come up with proper feature requests etc. so another department got the time from me. I told my boss exactly this: not my fault that it isn't done, showed her emails, reminders etc.
I also offered her to spend a weekend soon if everything is there now, but she told me: no. It has to be done ASAP. ASAP means, start now, don't stop until its done.

I told here, I have a intern on my site, I blocked the time.

She told me one sentence I will never forget:
"If your intern is blocking this project, he has to go. You decide. Now."

I was so surprised that I didn't even got any word out then "yes, I will start." I was shocked by this words and her decision to quit this young guy.

Just to give a a bit more background: we hired him in Feb 19 for Jul 19. If we would quit him right now, he would most likely not have any chance on the market for another apprenticeship and has to wait for Jul/Aug 20 and 1 year without job, money etc. He even moved to our city for this job...

So I moved back to my desk and today, 2pm, I finished all of the project, nearly 50h+ work done in 5 days, so he can stay.

What the actual fuck...

Quick recap of my last two weeks: 15 year old production server is basically dead, boss has taken over calls and claims credit for "resolving" outages (even though my coworker and I did the work, but ultimately the traffic died down enough to where it wasn't an issue anymore).

I go to a meeting to plan migration to a better server, boss bitches about not getting invited, I tell him I invited myself, and then he lectures about how that's not our job.

Different boss says we're migrating a schema for an application that should have been decommissioned 5+ years ago to use as a baseline. I explain what's going on, he says he understands, and proceeds to tell higher bosses it's perfect because there will be no user impact. OF COURSE THERE'S NO FRICKING IMPACT, YA DUNCE! there are no users!!!!

I merge two email threads together, since they discuss the same thing, but with different insight, and get yelled at, even though they requested it.

The two bosses I like are OOO for the next week, too, so I'm just sitting here hoping I don't say something that'll get me fired or sent to sensitivity training.

I'm just starting my on call rotation and don't know that I can do this. I cry when my phone rings, now, because I experience physical pain with how hard I cringe.

I got yelled at today by a guy because SOMEONE I DON'T KNOW assigned a ticket to him directly, rather than to the proper team (not his team). So I had to look into that, which at least had the benefit of preventing a catastrophic outage to our customers world wide, but no one will know because I don't brag at work; I'm too busy doing my job as well as most of my division/section/larger team, whatever the hell it's called. I saved us probably 25+ hours of continuous troubleshooting call from noticing something tiny that the people "smarter" than me missed.

**edit: sorry for typos; got my nails done yesterday but they feel like they're a mile long and I have to relearn how to type**

Just when I thought I'd seen the craziest job ad...

Title: Sr. Lead Data Scientist / Python Developer

Required education: bachelor's in CompSci, Math, etc. PhD preferred (lol)

Required experience: 10+ years in Python development

Other requirements: must be under 25 years of age to qualify for funding from EcoCanada (lmao!!!! y'all trippin)

Who is writing these job ads? I swear they get more insane every day.

It's enough. I have to quit my job.

December last year I've started working for a company doing finance. Since it was a serious-sounding field, I tought I'd be better off than with my previous employer. Which was kinda the family-agency where you can do pretty much anything you want without any real concequences, nor structures. I liked it, but the professionalism was missing.

Turns out, they do operate more professionally, but the intern mood and commitment is awful. They all pretty much bash on eachother. And the root cause of this and why it will stay like this is simply the Project Lead.

The plan was that I was positioned as glue between Design/UX and Backend to then make the best Frontend for the situation. Since that is somewhat new and has the most potential to get better. Beside, this is what the customer sees everyday.

After just two months, an retrospective and a hell lot of communication with co-workers, I've decided that there is no other way other than to leave.

I had a weekly productivity of 60h+ (work and private, sometimes up to 80h). I had no problems with that, I was happy to work, but since working in this company, my weekly productivity dropped to 25~30h. Not only can I not work for a whole proper work-week, this time still includes private projects. So in hindsight, I efficiently work less than 20h for my actual job.

The Product lead just wants feature on top of feature, our customers don't want to pay concepts, but also won't give us exact specifications on what they want.
Refactoring is forbidden since we get to many issues/bugs on a daily basis so we won't get time.
An re-design is forbidden because that would mean that all Screens have to be re-designed.
The product should be responsive, but none of the components feel finished on Desktop - don't talk about mobile, it doesn't exist.
The Designer next to me has to make 200+ Screens for Desktop and Mobile JUST so we can change the primary colors for an potential new customer, nothing more. Remember that we don't have responsiveness? Guess what, that should be purposely included on the Designs (and it looks awful).
I may hate PHP, but I can still work with it. But not here, this is worse then any ecommerce. I have to fix legacy backend code that has no test coverage. But I haven't touched php for 4 years, letalone wrote sql (I hate it). There should be no reason whatsoever to let me do this kind of work, as FRONTEND ARCHITECT.

After an (short) analysis of the Frontend, I conclude that it is required to be rewritten to 90%. There have been no performance checks for the Client/UI, therefor not only the components behave badly, but the whole system is slow as FUCK! Back in my days I wrote jQuery, but even that shit was faster than the architecuture of this React Multi-instance app. Nothing is shared, most of the AppState correlate to other instances.

The Backend. Oh boy. Not only do we use an shitty outated open-source project with tons of XSS possibillities as base, no we clone that shit and COPY OUR SOURCES ON TOP. But since these people also don't want to write SQL, they tought using Symfony as base on top of the base would be an good idea.
Generally speaking (and done right), this is true. but not then there will be no time and not properly checked. As I said I'm working on Legacy code. And the more I look into it, the more Bugs I find. Nothing too bad, but it's still a bad sign why the webservices are buggy in general. And therefor, the buggyness has to travel into the frontend.

And now the last goodies:
- Composer itself is commited to the repo (the fucking .phar!)
- Deployments never work and every release is done manually
- We commit an "_TRASH" folder
- There is an secret ongoing refactoring in the root of the Project called "_REFACTORING" (right, no branches)
- I cannot test locally, nor have just the Frontend locally connected to the Staging webservices
- I am required to upload my sources I write to an in-house server that get's shared with the other coworkers
- This is the only Linux server here and all of the permissions are fucked up
- We don't have versions, nor builds, we use the current Date as build number, but nothing simple to read, nonono. It's has to be an german Date, with only numbers and has always to end with "00"
- They take security "super serious" but disable the abillity to unlock your device with your fingerprint sensor ON PURPOSE

My brain hurts, maybe I'll post more on this shit fucking cuntfuck company. Sorry to be rude, but this triggers me sooo much!

4 years ago, during our college, a friend of mine was explaining us about hacking using simple SQL injections. He showed us some of the sites he hacked. Out of curiosity we tried it on college internal website it worked. We had access to all the details of all the students in university, and even the lecturer's information. We informed the management , they were shocked on seeing this. They had just spent 25 lakhs for this website couple of months ago.

Dev: This is the first version of this new app, we’re still experimenting with how it’s going to work but initial headway is looking promising. It cost very little to make, came together very quickly and is already resulting in productivity increases for users. We’re just doing a bit of code cleanup now and we’ll make a move on the next iteration.

Corporate IT: This project is being completely mishandled! In order to successfully build an app you have to determine every single requirement beforehand! It takes millions upon millions of dollars due to the complex system of governance and approval that needs to exist. Massive numbers of stakeholders need to be involved and coordinated to even make so much as a login screen! I bet your project doesn’t even have a documented list of core values.

Dev: Has you ever successfully built an app using that methodology?

Corporate IT: 😡 That’s a loaded question. I went to school to study project management and have over 25 years of experience in the field. If you had the training and experience I do you would know that tech projects are naturally very volatile and there’s nothing you can do about that!

Dev: …

After two extensive talks with a potential employer (they lasted for hours), I decided to accept the offer, although the salary was ~25% lower than at my previous job. Everything else sounded fantastic and I needed that desperately since at the previous company everything was toxic for years.

These new guys wanted a senior php dev because they had none of them, except only wordpress and drupal people who were not skilled enough to take other types of projects (they called them "custom php"). I liked it and thought I'm gonna shine there and quickly earn a raise because the agency will start earning more by getting projects that they were unable to even bid for.

First day at work and I got assigned to a new Drupal project, although it was supposed to be a simple restful API for a simple iOS app. It could be done in a week or less, with no rushing at all. But it had to be Drupal. And I happened to be around to hear that there is a queue of Drupal projects waiting. After 2 days leaving the office late and having my brain melted by nonsense I was looking at, I quit the job.

No offense to Drupal people, I really do admire you, but I just could not stand it after 8 years "doing custom php". It felt too much like being downgraded. But more than that I was pissed off by the fact that I have been shamelessly lied to and tricked to accept something I clearly said that I dont want.

This happened a year ago. I now earn 2.5x more money than those guys offered and work in a very healthy environment. In the meantime, I heard that the other guys shut their company down.

I fucking did it!!!!!!!

I fucking passed my last exam!!!!!!!!!!!

It fucking took me 6 YEARS of college to finally graduate a 4 year college!!!!!!!!!!!

I fucking have to do my finishing thesis before i get my degree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!fcuck you

I fucking suffered so fucking much!!!!!!!!!!!

Last fucking exam was databases 1 and i fucking passeD ON THE FIRST TRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!lick my balls play with them

WTF?????????????????????

I fucking spilled blood to get here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!shuh

I fucking am still mentally stunned!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fucking I cannot wrap my fucking head around what just fucking happened!!!!!!!!!!

I fucking expected to fail and take another exam next week but I PASSED??? ON THE FIRST TRY?????????????

My fucking gpa is shit BUT I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IM DONE WITH STUDYING COLLEGE!!! FOR EVER!! FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE BRUH WTF THIS IS UNREAL IT FEELS LIKE I JUST SERVED THESE 25 YEARS OF PRISON AND NOW IM FINALLY GETTING OUT OF JAIL AFTER 25 FUCKING YEARS!! ALL MY LIFE I COULDNT DO SHJT I LOVED TO DO CAUSE I SACRIFICED MY LIFE TO SCHOOL. WAS IT WORTH IT? NO. FUCK THIS GOOFY AHH SHIT. I HOPE THIS DEGREE PAYS OFF CAUSE I DIDNT LEARN ALMOST SHIT IN HERE

Not just another Windows rant:

*Disclaimer* : I'm a full time Linux user for dev work having switched from Windows a couple of years ago. Only open Windows for Photoshop (or games) or when I fuck up my Linux install (Arch user) because I get too adventurous (don't we all)

I have hated Windows 10 from day 1 for being a rebel. Automatic updates and generally so many bugs (specially the 100% disk usage on boot for idk how long) really sucked.

It's got ads now and it's generally much slower than probably a Windows 8 install..

The pathetic memory management and the overall slower interface really ticks me off. I'm trying to work and get access to web services and all I get is hangups.

Chrome is my go-to browser for everything and the experience is sub par. We all know it gobbles up RAM but even more on Windows.

My Linux install on the same computer flies with a heavy project open in Android Studio, 25+ tabs in Chrome and a 1080p video playing in the background.

Up until the creators update, UI bugs were a common sight. Things would just stop working if you clicked them multiple times.

But you know what I'm tired of more?

The ignorant pricks who bash it for being Windows. This OS isn't bad. Sure it's not Linux or MacOS but it stands strong.

You are just bashing it because it's not developer friendly and it's not. It never advertises itself like that.

It's a full fledged OS for everyone. It's not dev friendly but you can make it as much as possible but you're lazy.

People do use Windows to code. If you don't know that, you're ignorant. They also make a living by using Windows all day. How bout tha?

But it tries to make you feel comfortable with the recent bash integration and the plethora of tools that Microsoft builds.

IIS may not be Apache or Nginx but it gets the job done.

Azure uses Windows and it's one of best web services out there. It's freaking amazing with dead simple docs to get up and running with a web app in 10 minutes.

I saw many rants against VS but you know it's one of the best IDEs out there and it runs the best on Windows (for me, at least).

I'm pissed at you - you blind hater you.

Research and appreciate the things good qualities in something instead of trying to be the cool but ignorant dev who codes with Linux/Mac but doesn't know shit about the advantages they offer.

TL;DR :

"when i die i want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time"

STORY TIME

Last year in College, I had two simultaneous projects. Both were semester long projects. One was for a database class an another was for a software engineering class.

As you can guess, the focus of the projects was very different. Databases we made some desktop networked chat application with a user login system and what not in Java. SE we made an app store with an approval system and admin panels and ratings and reviews and all that jazz in Meteor.js.

The DB project we had 4 total people and one of them was someone we'll call Frank. Frank was also in my SE project group. Frank disappeared for several weeks. Not in class, didn't contact us, and at one point the professors didn't know much either. As soon as we noticed it would be an issue, we talked to the professors. Just keeping them in the loop will save you a lot of trouble down the road. I'm assuming there was some medical or family emergency because the professors were very understanding with him once he started coming back to class and they had a chance to talk.

Lesson 1: If you have that guy that doesn't show up or communicate, don't be a jerk to them and communicate with your professor. Also, don't stop trying to contact the rogue partner. Maybe they'll come around sometime.

It sucked to lose 25% of our team for a project, but Frank appreciated that we didn't totally ignore him and throw him under the bus to the point that the last day of class he came up to me and said, "hey, open your book bag and bring it next to mine." He then threw a LARGE bottle of booze in there as a thank you.

Lesson 2: Treat humans as humans. Things go wrong and understanding that will get you a lot farther with people than trying to make them feel terrible about something that may have been out of their control.

Our DB project went really well. We got an A, we demoed, it worked, it was cool. The biggest problem is I was the only person that had taken a networking class so I ended up doing a large portion of the work. I wish I had taken other people's skills into account when we were deciding on a project. Especially because the only requirement was that it needed to have a minimum of 5 tables and we had to use some SQL language (aka, we couldn't use no-SQL).

The SE project had Frank and a music major who wanted to minor in CS (and then 3 other regular CS students aside from me). This assignment was make an app store using any technology you want. But, you had to use agile sprints. So we had weekly meetings with the "customer" (the TA), who would change requirements on us to keep us on our toes and tell us what they wanted done as a priority for the next meeting. Seriously, just like real life. It was so much fun trying to stay ahead of that.

So we met up and tried to decided what to use. One kid said Java because we all had it for school. The big issue is trying to make a Java web app is a pain in the ass. Seriously, there are so many better things to use. Other teams decided to use Django because they all wanted to learn Python. I suggested why not use something with a nice package system to minimize duplicating work that had already been done and tested by someone. Kid 1 didn't like that because he said in the real world you have to make your own software and not use packages. Little did he know that I had worked in SE for a few years already and knew damn well that every good project has code from somewhere else that has already solved a problem you're facing. We went with Java the first week. It failed miserably. Nobody could get the server set up on their computers. Using VCS with it required you to keep the repo outside of the where you wrote code and copy and paste changes in there. It was just a huge flop so everyone else voted to change.

Lesson 3: Be flexible. Be open to learning new things. Don't be afraid to try something new. It'll make you a better developer in the long run.

So we ended up using Meteor. Why? We all figured we could pick up javascript super easy.Two of us already knew it. And the real time thing would make for some cool effects when an app got a approved or a comment was made. We got to work and the one kid was still pissed. I just checked the repo and the only thing he committed was fixing the spelling of on word in the readme.

We sat down one day and worked for 4 straight hours. We finished the whole project in that time. While other teams were figuring out how to layout their homepage, we had a working user system and admin page and everything. Our TA was trying to throw us for loops by asking for crazy things and we still came through. We had tests that ran along side the application as you used it. It was friggin cool.

Lesson 4: If possible, pick the right tool for the job. Not the tool you know. Everything in CS has a purpose. If you use it for its purpose, you will save days off of a project.

I was engaged as a contractor to help a major bank convert its servers from physical to virtual. It was 2010, when virtual was starting to eclipse physical. The consulting firm the bank hired to oversee the project had already decided that the conversions would be performed by a piece of software made by another company with whom the consulting firm was in bed.

I was brought in as a Linux expert, and told to, "make it work." The selected software, I found out without a lot of effort or exposure, eats shit. With whip cream. Part of the plan was to, "right-size" filesystems down to new desired sizes, and we found out that was one of the many things it could not do. Also, it required root SSH access to the server being converted. Just garbage.

I was very frustrated by the imposition of this terrible software, and started to butt heads with the consulting firm's project manager assigned to our team. Finally, during project planning meetings, I put together a P2V solution made with a customized Linux Rescue CD, perl, rsync, and LVM.

The selected software took about 45 minutes to do an initial conversion to the VM, and about 25 minutes to do a subsequent sync, which was part of the plan, for the final sync before cutover.

The tool I built took about 5 minutes to do the initial conversion, and about 30-45 seconds to do the final sync, and was able to satisfy every business requirement the selected software was unable to meet, and about which the consultants just shrugged.

The project manager got wind of this, and tried to get them to release my contract. He told management what I had built, against his instructions. They did not release my contract. They hired more people and assigned them to me to help build this tool.

They traveled to me and we refined it down to a simple portable ISO that remained in use as the default method for Linux for years after I left.

Fast forward to 2015. I'm interviewing for the position I have now, and one of the guys on the tech screen call says he worked for the same bank later and used that tool I wrote, and loved it. I think it was his endorsement that pushed me over and got me an offer for $15K more than I asked for.

Answered a job ad in our morning news paper and got an interview.

After 2 hours or question I got an offer to try it for 3 days and I have been here since then, soon 25 years ;)

People/companies talking about ooh we want gender diversity we want more female software developers, IT professionals etc

You talk the talk, do you know how to walk the walk?? Do you know how to deal with female engineers?

I am a hardcore engineer worked and studied majorly with men for years. I lead, managed teams had my own company worked as a consultant for years.

Then I got into the IT industry as developer later. I was completely against the idea of being female would make any difference or you would be treated differently.

Finally I had my own enlightenment and stopped resisting that idea.

Some treatments made me think what are these guys doing? Don’t treat me like your sister. I am not your sister. Don’t see the femininity or looks. I am not a Merrilyn Monroe to say oooh you are great you know soo much. I am not paid for that act, I do my job! It’s same as yours mate.

Don’t underestimate me or try to preach me as if I am a cute little girl. Don’t show off and boost your ego next to other guys.

Now I regretfully I agree the ladies ranting about male dominance and getting different treatment in IT.

I am literally trying to avoid red nail polishes or red lipstick god forbid. Maybe I should put some fake beard and a belly, loose jeans with an energy drink in hand. Here comes the expert IT professional, already ticking a box.

Honestly you are not taken seriously most of the time. If you are a guy then they are all ears..And those guys talk about they want gender diversity blah blah

You feel like a ghost when you express your opinion. You are not taken into account even when you have a comment or suggestion.

Even humiliated by a guy giving me a speech about how to be a good developer next to a manager. Look buddy I am not a yesterday’s child. I am at your age. I haven’t come to this position by jumping around picking flowers in a field. If I was a man, would you dare saying those to me? There could be a street fight coming.

LinkedIn selfie takers with body show offs putting ooh I am an IT recruiter as a female I got into IT. You can do it too. (don’t get me wrong I respect that achievement that’s good) but those girls get thousands of likes and applauses, you are working in IT for years people say they are seeking for. Your technical post doesn’t even get 20 likes. Your encouraging comment on a guy’s post isn’t even acknowledged. You are not even taken into account. Am I a ghost or something?

Honestly I don’t understand.

What do you mean by gender diversity? What do you want here?

Leave this gender bullshit. Look at the knowledge you don’t even know what equality means. It’s not having even numbers of genders. It is respecting knowledge and hard work regardless. Listening and acknowledging without judgement. Looking beyond male, female or others

Companies that say we want to have more females, you don’t come and knock on my door either. You are already stating a difference there. Attract with indifference don’t come and tell me you are a female we want more females here.

I’m telling you this sector is not getting proper gender equality for 25 years. Talk is there but mentality is not yet there.

I am super pissed off and discouraged today. I don’t even get discouraged that easily. Now I understand some women in IT talking about insecurities. I am on the edge of having one, such a shame.

Don’t come at me now I would bite!

This is my generalisation yes. Exceptions apply and how good it would have been if those exceptions were dominant.

this is how I destroyed my career in IT and how I'm headed to a bleak future.

I've spent the last 10 years working at a small company developing a web platform. I was the first developer, I covered many roles.
I worked like crazy, often overtime. I hired junior dev, people left and came. We were a small team.
I was able to keep the boat afloat for many years, solving all the technical problems we had. I was adding value to the company, sure, but not to mine professional career.

There was a lot of pressure from young developers, from CEO, from investors. Latent disagreement between the COO and the CEO. I was in between.
Somehow, the trust I built in 10 years, helping people and working hard, was lost.

There was a merge, development was outsourced, the small team I hired was kept for maintenance and I was fired, without obvious explanations.Well, I was the oldest and the most expensive.

Now I'm 53, almost one year unemployed.
I'm a developer at heart, but obsolete. The thing we were doing,
were very naif. I tried to introduce many modern and more sophisticated software concepts. But basically it was still pure java with some jquery. No framework. No persistency layer, no api, no frontend framework. It just worked.

I moved everything to AWS in attempt to use more modern stack, and improving our deployment workflow.
Yes, but I'm no devop. While I know about CD/CI, I didn't set up one.

I know a lot of architectural concepts, but I'm not a solution architect.

I tried to explain to the team agile. But I'm not a scrum master.
I introduced backlog management, story mapping, etc. But I'm not a product manager.

And before that? I led a team once, for one year, part of a bigger project. I can create roadmap, presentations, planning, reports.
But I'm not a project manager.

I worked a lot freelancing.
Now I'll be useless at freelancing. Yes I understand Angular, react, Spring etc, I'm studying a lot. But 0 years of experience.
As a developer, I'm basically a junior developer.

I can't easily "downgrade" my career. I wish. I'll take a smaller salary. I'll be happy as junior dev, I've a lot to learn.
But they'll think I'm overqualified, that I'll leave, so they won't hire me even for senior dev. Or that I won't fit in a 25 y.o. team.

My leadership is more by "example", servant leader or something like that. I build trust when I work with somebody, not during a job interview.

On top of that, due to having worked in many foreign countries, and freelancing, my "pension plan" I won't be able to collect anything. I've just some money saved for one year or so.

I'm 53, unemployed. In few years time, if I don't find anything, it will be even harder to be employed.

I think I'm fucked

!dev

T-32min

Long story short:
I dont have many friends, I'm isolated in my home, for the first time in 25 years I actually felt like my birthday is worth celebrating but Im alone because corona.

Therefore I'd like to ask you to drink a glass of your good (or other) booze at 23:00UTC (Which is midnight here) to celebrate the first bday party I never had and to celebrate DevRant as a great community and each of you, the members.

I hate fucking stupid badly made websites of biggest companies in my country. I just bought an expensive pc in one of the biggest chain of physical tech shops, and it sucked as fuck, full of popups hiding the buttons, fucking popups advertising their own products. But I'm so stupid I continued despite it.

I selected the item, I inserted the address and card info, no summary page. An email arrives in my inbox, I check it: there's a typo in my address. I go back in the website, I discover not only that I can't cancel the order or change the address, but doesn't even exist a personal page where I can check the items I bought and their shopping state. OH. MY. GOD. We are in 2017 darling, I saw better websites 25 years ago, in the end of the month do you also expect to be paid? Do you go around saying "I'm a programmer"? Do you say this to your children? How can you keep a serious face saying it?

And like if it's not enough, the only way to contact them is calling them to their number, which is paid 0,15€ each minute. And knowing it, they will make me wait to charge me as much as possible.

Then they complain because they're missing money and everyone wants to buy on Amazon instead than their shop. Fuck them.

So today I realized that Im not happy.

When I was a kid I wanted to do many things because I had time and energy but I had no money. Now that Im an adult and I have the money, I have no energy and no will power to try and have personal life in these few hours left of my day. I spend 9 hours at work everyday and totally 1hr 30min is wasted on commuting.

I spent 4 years in uni between lectures and working on my side projects, and I really believed that after uni I will get a job and my life work balance will improve.

After uni I spent 2 years working abroad in 3 jobs at 3 countries. I work as android dev and now Im making a really decent salary.

However Im not happy at all. I realized that life is not about the money. Im changing countries like socks and dont even feel the need to socialize or enjoy my life anymore. Im european and these other eu countries are not that different at all. It came to a point where relationships are meaningless to me. I became an office drone who cares only about work and outside of work I care only about my projects and more work.

At this point im only 25 years old with around 2 years of experience and money is really good, but fuck it Im so tired of being an emigrant and having no stability in life. Im so drained. I spent past 6 years (4 in uni combined with side projects and 2 years working in 3 jobs in different countriee) working my ass off and lying to myself that after the next big thing Im gonna take a break and enjoy life. But its never enough. I dont want to hit 30s or 40s and realize that I wasted my life on pursuing money and didnt get to enjoy life..

Im really considering taking a 6-12 months vacation. I need to find myself. Probably going back to my own country. Just learn how to enjoy life, attend workshops, get to know new city area, meet new people, do some interesting hobbies. Maybe do a little freelance (max 10hrs a week).

Im tired of feeling like I need to make as much money as I can and learn as much about my work as I can. Its not rewarding because its never enough.

Whats the point in that money if I cant enjoy it?

Yeah sure, the Metaverse will be bigger than the Internet.

I really believe that. Short of a system collapse, there's nothing which will stop some Web/VR/AR amalgam from eventually going mainstream. If anything, a prolonged pandemic will make humans hunger for more digital entertainment and socializing options.

Might take 5 years, or 25, but it will happen in some form. Eventually, people will even readily accept various augmentations to their bodies to further immerse themselves and connect to digital experiences.

BUT:

We're still pre-bubble.

Does no one remember the dotcom crash?

Facebook/Meta will become the new Yahoo, decimated to a sliver of its former glory. Million dollar hype NFTs will become the new $10 parked domain names. 99.99% of all current efforts and content will end up like a modern day Geocities Archive.

So yeah... when I read that my pension fund is considering "investing in metaverse technologies"...

...you fucking bet it's time to transfer to a different fund!

In the Ruhr area (Germany) we have some very old, very strange words with strange meanings. One of those words is ‚Prutscher‘.
A Prutscher refers to a person who does things but never gets a good result, due to lack of knowledge or simple carelessness. Most of the time, Prutschers are people who are interested in certain subjects and often work in the related jobs, but who lack the motivation to properly train themselves, learn what there is to learn and to always keep up with their technologies .
Here are a few examples I've stumbled upon so far in my career:

- Developers in their 60's who read a book about PHP 25 years ago and decided to become a software developer. Since then haven't read anything about it. Who then now build huge spaghetti monoliths for large companies, in which they prefix every function, every variable and constant with their initials and, of course, use Hungarian notation.

- People who read half a fucking tutorial about <insert any fancy js framework here> and start blogging/tweeting about it

- Senior web developers who need to be told what the fuck CORS is and who can't even recognize CORS related errors in their browser console.

- People who have done nothing else for 18 years than building websites for companies on Wordpress 1.x and writing few lines of PHP and Javascript from time to time. Those who are now applying as a frontend dev due to the difficult economic situation and are surprised that they are not accepted due to a lack of experience.

- Developers who are the only ones working on Windows in the team and ask their Linux colleagues for help when Windows starts bitchin.

- People who have been coding for 30 years, have worked with ~42 languages ​​and don't know the difference between compiled and interpreted languages ​​in the job interview.

- Chief developers at a large newsletter-publisher who think it's a good idea to build your own CMS (due to a lack of good existing ones, of course).

- Developers who have been writing PHP applications for multinational corporations for 25 years and cannot explain how PHP is executed. They don't even know what the fucking OPcache is, let alone fpm. FML

- People who call themselves professional developers but never ever heard of DRY, KISS, boy-scout rule, 12-Factor App, SOLID, Clean Code, Design Patterns, ...

- Senior developers wondering why the bash script won't run on their fucking Windows machine.

- Developers who consider Typescript to be a hindrance and see no value in it.

- Developers using ftp for deployments in 2022

- Senior Javascript Developer applying for a job and for whom Integer is a primitive data type in JS.

- Developers who prefer to code without frameworks and libraries because they are only an unnecessary burden/overhead and you can quickly code everything up yourself.

- Developers who think configuring their server(s) manually is a good idea.

You fucking Prutscher. What you have already cost me in terms of work and nerves. I can't even put it into words how deeply I despise you. I have more respect for the chewing gum that has been stuck in my damn trash can for the past 3 years than I do for you guys. You are the disgrace of our profession. I will haunt you in your dreams and prefix every fucking synapse of your brain with MY initials.

As a well-known german band once sang in a very fitting song: I wouldn't even piss on you if you were on fire.

If you recognized yourself in one of the examples here: FUCK YOU!

Well, it finally happened.

After 25 years coding in all types of languages and environments, I’m no longer having fun.

It now seems like it’s a fight to get interested in the code. I used to be something that I would spend hours / days doing. Now I just want to walk away from the code.

Is it true (do you think) that after a while all you see is a for loop, an if statement, a null check and you just think to yourself. Fuck this! Because I think I’m there.

God it’s depressing to think that I no longer find it fun.

This was my first real programming bible. I remember reading it chapter after chapter in the car on long car trips as a youngster and being so excited about the stuff I was learning I would explain it to my mom in the front seat as I was learning it. I'm sure she didn't understand a word of it.

Funny thing is I still do that today, 25 years later. And I'm sure she still understands not a word!

So, what was the book that really got you into programming?

Found this gem 😂

TRANSLATION

Java for believing programmers

For who?
Young male,
which want to pray together,
and at the same time make first
steps in programming

How old you need to be?
Up to 25 years

What do you need?
Holy Bible
Laptop
*you just need 500 mb RAM and WinXP

I do not like the direction laptop vendors are taking.

New laptops tend to feature fewer ports, making the user more dependent on adapters. Similarly to smartphones, this is a detrimental trend initiated by Apple and replicated by the rest of the pack.

As of 2022, many mid-range laptops feature just one USB-A port and one USB-C port, resembling Apple's toxic minimalism. In 2010, mid-class laptops commonly had three or four USB ports. I have even seen an MSi gaming laptop with six USB ports. Now, much of the edges is wasted "clean" space.

Sure, there are USB hubs, but those only work well with low-power devices. When attaching two external hard drives to transfer data between them, they might not be able to spin up due to insufficient power from the USB port or undervoltage caused by the impedance (resistance) of the USB cable between the laptop's USB port and hub. There are USB hubs which can be externally powered, but that means yet another wall adapter one has to carry.

Non-replaceable [shortest-lived component] mean difficult repairs and no more reserve batteries, as well as no extra-sized battery packs. When the battery expires, one might have to waste four hours on a repair shop for a replacement that would have taken a minute on a 2010 laptop.

The SD card slot is being replaced with inferior MicroSD or removed entirely. This is especially bad for photographers and videographers who would frequently plug memory cards into their laptop. SD cards are far more comfortable than MicroSD cards, and no, bulky external adapters that reserve the device's only USB port and protrude can not replace an integrated SD card slot.

Most mid-range laptops in the early 2010s also had a LAN port for immediate interference-free connection. That is now reserved for gaming-class / desknote laptops.

Obviously, components like RAM and storage are far more difficult to upgrade in more modern laptops, or not possible at all if soldered in.

Touch pads increasingly have the buttons underneath the touch surface rather than separate, meaning one has to be careful not to move the mouse while clicking. Otherwise, it could cause an unwanted drag-and-drop gesture. Some touch pads are smart enough to detect when a user intends to click, and lock the movement, but not all. A right-click drag-and-drop gesture might not be possible due to the finger on the button being registered as touch. Clicking with short tapping could be unreliable and sluggish. While one should have external peripherals anyway, one might not always have brought them with. The fallback input device is now even less comfortable.

Some laptop vendors include a sponge sheet that they want users to put between the keyboard and the screen before folding it, "to avoid damaging the screen", even though making it two millimetres thicker could do the same without relying on a sponge sheet. So they want me to carry that bulky thing everywhere around? How about no?

That's the irony. They wanted to make laptops lighter and slimmer, but that made them adapter- and sponge sheet-dependent, defeating the portability purpose.

Sure, the CPU performance has improved. Vendors proudly show off in their advertisements which generation of Intel Core they have this time. As if that is something users especially care about. Hoo-ray, generation 14 is now yet another 5% faster than the previous generation! But what is the benefit of that if I have to rely on annoying adapters to get the same work done that I could formerly do without those adapters?

Microsoft has also copied Apple in demanding internet connection before Windows 11 will set up. The setup screen says "You will need an Internet connection…" - no, technically I would not. What does technically stand in the way of Windows 11 setting up offline? After all, previous Windows versions like Windows 95 could do so 25 years earlier. But also far more recent versions. Thankfully, Linux distributions do not do that.

If "new" and "modern" mean more locked-in and less practical and difficult to repair, I would rather have "old" than "new".

An IT guy told me during a phone meeting set up to talk about how he builds these web forms on a dumb CRM for a client of ours that he has been an IT professional for 25 years.

He says he doesn't know much about the codey stuff.

What do IT professionals do again?

I am the manager of a customer service team of about 10-12 members. Most of the team members are right out of school and this is their first professional job and their ages range from 22-24. I am about 10 years older than all of my employees. We have a great team and great working relationships. They all do great work and we have established a great team culture.

Well, a couple of months ago, I noticed something odd that my team (and other employees in the building) started doing. They would see each other in the hallways or break room and say “quack quack” like a duck. I assumed this was an inside joke and thought nothing of it and wrote it off as playful silliness or thought I perhaps missed a moment in a recent movie or TV show to which the quacks were referring.

Fast forward a few months. I needed to do some printing and our printer is in a room that can be locked by anyone when it is in use (our team often has large volumes of printing they need to do and it helps to be able to sort things in there by yourself, as multiple people can get their pages mixed up and it turns into a mess). The door had been locked the entire day and this was around noon, and the manager I have the key to the door in case someone forgot to unlock it when they left. I walked in, and there were two of my employees on the couch in the copier room having sex. I immediately closed the door and left.

This was last week and as you can imagine things are very awkward between the three of us. I haven’t addressed the situation yet because of a few factors: This was during both of their lunch hours. They were not doing this on the clock (they had both clocked out, I immediately checked). We have an understanding that you can go or do anything on your lunch that you want, as long as you’re back after an hour. Also, as you mentioned in your answer last week to the person who overheard their coworker involved in “adult activities,” these people are adults and old enough to make their own choices.

But that’s not the end of the story. That same day, after my team had left, I was wrapping up and putting a meeting agenda on each of their desks for our meeting the next day. Out in broad daylight on the guys desk (one of the employees I had caught in the printing room) was a piece of paper at the top that said “Duck Club.” Underneath it, it had a list of locations of places in and around the office followed by “points.” 25 points – president’s desk, 10 points – car in the parking lot, 20 points – copier room, etc.

So here is my theory about what is going on (and I think I am right). This “Duck Club” is a club people at work where people get “points” for having sex in these locations around the office. I think that is also where the quacking comes into play. Perhaps this is some weird mating call between members to let them know they want to get some “points” with the other person, and if they quack back, they meet up somewhere to “score.” The two I caught in the copier room I have heard “quacking” before.

I know this is all extremely weird. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to write you because of how weird this seems (plus I was a little embarrassed). I have no idea what to do. As I mentioned above, they weren’t on the clock when this happened, they’re all adults, and technically I broke a rule by entering the copier room when it was locked, and would have never caught them if I had obeyed that rule. The only company rule I can think of that these two broke is using the copier room for other purposes, preventing someone else from using it.

I would love to know your opinion on this. I tend to want to sweep it under the rug because I’m kind of a shy person and would be extremely embarrassed to bring it up.

!rant

Hey all, I just wanted to spread some aware to mental health issues in this industry since I'm very close to burn out according to my psychiatrist.
I'm not even 25 years old, just worked 1 1/2 years full time and 3 years apprenticeship before that. So, I'm pretty young and "new" as a software developer.
Many projects got wrong horribly and fights with the clients felt as they were carried out on the back of the developers. Timings and specifications were communicated poorly, deadlines were undoable but no one listened.
I thought, this is normal. Now, after weeks of on-off-working because of reoccurring small illnesses, clearly caused by the permanently high stress levels, my psychiatrist, which I visited yesterday for the first time, was totally shocked. She was surprised, I could even handle it so long. That hit me quite a bit. I already expected it to be bad, but close to burn out... That came, I don't want to say unexpected, but quite unexpected.
It was really hard holding the tears back while telling her my story.
And now here I am. I'm currently on sick leave till the end of the year (then my employment at this company ends) and I feel bad for them, to leave them. I know, they could use my knowledge and abilities, but I shouldn't damage my mental health even more.
I will not work for the entire January. If my psychiatrist thinks, I shouldn't work in February as well, I will do so even though my plan was to work again.
I will not work full time again, since my brain seems to not be able to handle it. Maybe some time in the future.

This turned out to be way more sad than expected. I just wanna leave this here. Thanks for reading.

If you people are in such horrible situations, try to break out.

Just another big rant story full of WTFs and completely true.

The company I work for atm is like the landlord for a big german city. We build houses and flats and rent them to normal people, just that we want to be very cheap and most nearly all our tenants are jobless.
So the company hired a lot of software-dev-companies to manage everything.

The company I want to talk about is "ABI...", a 40-man big software company. ABI sold us different software, e.g. a datawarehouse for our ERP System they "invented" for 300K or the software we talk about today: a document management system. It has workflows, a 100 year-save archive system, a history feature etc.
The software itself, called ELO (you can google it if you want) is a component based software in which every company that is a "partner" can develop things into, like ABI did for our company.

Since 2013 we pay ABI 150€ / hour (most of the time it feels like 300€ / hour, because if you want something done from a dev from ABI you first have to talk to the project manager of him and of course pay him too). They did thousand of hours in all that years for my company.

In 2017 they started to talk about a module in ELO called Invoice-Module. With that you can manage all your paper invoices digital, like scan that piece of paper, then OCR it, then fill formular data, add data and at the end you can send it to the ERP system automatically and we can pay the invoice automatically. "Digitization" is the key word.

After 1.5 years of project planning and a 3 month test phase, we talked to them and decided to go live at 01.01.2019. We are talking about already ~ 200 hours planning and work just from ABI for this (do the math. No. Please dont...).

I joined my actual company in October 2018 and I should "just overview" the project a bit, I mean, hey, they planned it since 1.5 years - how bad can it be, right?

In the first week of 2019 we found 25 bugs and users reporting around 50 feature requests, around 30 of them of such high need that they can't do their daily work with the invoices like they did before without ELO.
In the first three weeks of 2019 we where around 70 bugs deep, 20 of them fixed, with nearly 70 feature requests, 5 done. Around 10 bugs where so high, that the complete system would not work any more if they dont get fixed.

Want examples?
- Delete a Invoice (right click -> delete, no super deep hiding menu), and the server crashed until someone restarts it.
- missing dropdown of tax rate, everything was 19% (in germany 99,9% of all invoices are 19%, 7% or 0%).

But the biggest thing was, that the complete webservice send to ERP wasn't even finished in the code.
So that means we had around 600 invoices to pay with nearly 300.000€ of cash in the first 3 weeks and we couldn't even pay 1 cent - as a urban company!

Shortly after receiving and starting to discussing this high prio request with ABI the project manager of my assigned dev told me he will be gone the next day. He is getting married. And honeymoon. 1 Week. So: Wish him luck, when will his replacement here?

Deep breath.
Deep breath.

There was no replacement. They just had 1 developer. As a 40-people-software-house they had exactly one developer which knows ELO, which they sold to A LOT of companies.

He came back, 1 week gone, we asked for a meeting, they told us "oh, he is now in other ELO projects planned, we can offer you time from him in 4 weeks earliest".

To cut a long story short (it's to late for that, right?) we fought around 3 month with ABI to even rescue this project in any thinkable way. The solution mid February was, that I (software dev) would visit crash courses in ELO to be the second developer ABI didnt had, even without working for ABI....

Now its may and we decided to cut strings with ABI in ELO and switch to a new company who knows ELO. There where around 10 meetings on CEO-level to make this a "good" cut and not a bad cut, because we can't afford to scare them (think about the 300K tool they sold us...).

01.06.2019 we should start with the new company. 2 days before I found out, by accident, that there was a password on the project file on the server for one of the ELO services. I called my boss and my CEO. No one knows anything about it. I found out, that ABI sneaked into this folder, while working on another thing a week ago, and set this password to lock us out. OF OUR OWN FCKING FILE.
Without this password we are not able to fix any bug, develop any feature or even change an image within ELO, regardless, that we paid thausend of hours for that.

When we asked ABI about this, his CEO told us, it is "their property" and they will not remove it.
When I asked my CEO about it, they told me to do nothing, we can't scare them, we need them for the 300K tool.

No punt.
No finish.

Just the project file with a password still there today

I've started programming when I was 12. Right now I'm 25. I can clearly say that I'm passionate, I've touched I think almost every "type" of programming ever. From game development, through IoT and finished at eCommerce. I never stop learning.

My workmates are pissing me off. For code review sometimes I'm waiting even 3 days when I've changed like 5-6 files. They don't want to introduce "new" technologies (by new I mean who are existing at least 2-3 years, got stable community). They don't want to refactor some core of the application because it's working - they don't care about it as they can later say "legacy system so this basic feature took me a week".

Code quality means for them "use shorthand syntax, this code is ugly" - the basic shit which can do any linter

When I'm doing code review, I'm checking out to this branch, test it, check if the solution is scalable. Then I make my comments. I just hear "stop bitching about it just approve".

Thank God I've made through interview and I'm going to switch job in next week.

2022 Dev Goal: Find a way to retire early so I never have to build another website or write another line of code again. It’s been over 25 years and I’m just done and over it.

celebrating 25 years of WWW with IE😂😂 LOL

If you ever get bored with how far Linux has come these days, there is a solution: BSD. That shit catapults you easily back by 25 years.

So if Arch isn't shitty enough for your desire as late born and you really want to know what a piece of crap Linux was in the late 90s, have a look at BSD.

My dev setup after 25 years... Note: missing the bulk container of Tums.

Today I spent 25 minutes explaining to this dev that there’s no way that a http request can access directly to an ftp server and retrieve a file.

A dev with 4 years of experience...

Primarily IntelliJ IDEs.

I'm using IDEA for Rust & Kotlin, PHPStorm, Datagrip (DB), and sometimes PyCharm CE.

IDEs can feel a bit dirty with how heavy they are, and the lack of customization/control. But at the end of the day there's just nothing that can measure up against IntelliJ's inspections, integrations and project indexing.

My ideal product would be one universal IntelliJ IDE, but combined with the openness of VSCode/Atom, having everything transparently configurable through stylesheets and scripts.

As an editor though.... I use Vim for LaTeX, Markdown, plain text and Haskell code... but not so much for other programming languages.

Vim was my first editor when I moved from C64 to PC development 25 years ago, and while you get used to balancing keybind vimgolfing with being actually productive, i've always found maintaining plugins and profiles too cumbersome -- the reality is that Vim is an awesome TEXT editor, but it's really awful as a CODE editor out of the box.

When you want to try out a new programming language, you don't want to have to mess around with your Vimrc and Vundle and YCM for half a day just so you can comfortably write "Hello World" in Rust or Elixir... you just want to click one install button, press F10 to compile and see if it flies.

Oh, and I use Xed a lot for quickly editing files... because it's the default GUI editor on Mint desktops, and it's quite good at being a basic notepad.

"We're promoting you to be a Team Leader, since you proved your skills to handle tough tasks and bring good solutions, and we're raising your salary by 25%."

That sounded good for me, until I realized that all they need is an interface between them (the boss) and other employees to force their style and monitor every fucking thing that could be different from a dev to another. But since the boss is a sEnIoR with mOrE tHaN 10 years of experience but he does not have any clue about good practices and how to make a code that does not push you to be humiliated by the client, he still thinks that he's the fucking programming God.

That's a shit

Parents had asked me to assemble some furniture, fix the pc and so some other "brain" work

Furniture
Me: *Stops to check something in the manual*
Parents: Are you stuck? Maybe try assembling the door upside down
Me: No, it is the right way
Parents: *Ramble, ramble*
Me: Just let me work, shut the hell up

PC
Me: *Checks cables, checks logs, ect*
Parents: Maybe it is the problem with (insert random tech word there)?
Me: No.
Parents: W h y?
Me: Let me finish, it isnt that, (tech word) isnt even correlated to that
Parents: But, but, you never talk to me... (ramble ramble)
Me: Get the hell outta the room
*Argumemt breaks out*
30min later

Me: *Finnaly manages to fix it after the heated argument*
Me: I finished, everything works
Parents: Great, but you are mean
Me: I managed to finish the work in 15 min, you dont even have enough strengh to call for a specialist, (but knowing me i wouldnt allow it anyway because a lot of them make a poor job), so in order to make it properly and to relieve you from learning how to fucking google i want you to stay out of this so i can just finish my job. Your interruptions waste time and i dont need your help at all. Everytime you tried to fix stuff you always managed to fuck shit up when you tried to do anything.
Parents: (ramble)
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP, LEAVE MY ROOM
Parents:
Me:
Parents: *Leave the room*

1h later i get 25$ for the job perfectly done

Sometime i wish they were tech independent, so i can save my sanity and time but money is nice.

If anybody tries to argue that i should respect them:
I tried talking to them nicely countless times through years, but they always force themself to a project and they always fuck shit up because of it. I tried telling them about my problems and they tried helping me but after it didnt work they retured to the old: "it is the pc fault" and similar. Even if they couldnt help me i juat wanted them to understand my situation, but no that didnt happened.

First i fix my life then i will fix the relationship

But but greeeeeg, relationships should be cared for always!
Eat shit. There is time for family and there is time for me especialy when my life can suddenly colapse due to my problems.

Worst and only experience is the reason I moved away from programming...
25 years ago I was hired to copy a phone book list to a access database.
Access back then would create lots of garbage, so I would add 3 to 5 entries before access crashed (shitty p133 laptop with 32mb ram running windows 98.
So I made a visual basic program to add data and work around the problem.
I offered said program to the guy really cheap and would still make it better.
Did also a admin module since he had hired dozens of people and I knew he would have problems peasing the databases together.
And... Dude cancels the deal.
I get a job, 2 weeks later he calls me... Ohhh I don't know how to get all the databases together...
Me: I'm working now, the program I did solved said problem. I trew the code away. Deal with it.

Scientist has send some message to another universe which are some light years away. Due to the distance the earliest reply we can get is after 25 years.

Thanks to Google Assistant!

Okay...not a rant. But my boss's boss is amazing! I've been with this company for about a year, and every time my lowly ass needs permission elevation to do something, I have to practically beg. And then I get elevated one little permission at a time. I have a presentation to the board on Tuesday, and all damn day it's been one network permission problem over the other. It's become insulting that I'm the only team member that has to beg for permission scraps. Today, they take me out to lunch and when I get back, sends an email and copies me on it basically instructing that I'm to receive near-God like permissions on the network. Quite an honor for being everyone's junior by like 20-25 years! I feel like I'm about to receive an Infinity Stone or something...best day ever!

Still on the primenumbers bender.
Had this idea that if there were subtle correlations between a sufficiently large set of identities and the digits of a prime number, the best way to find it would be to automate the search.

And thats just what I did.

I started with trace matrices.
I actually didn't expect much of it. I was hoping I'd at least get lucky with a few chance coincidences.

My first tests failed miserably. Eight percent here, 10% there. "I might as well just pick a number out of a hat!" I thought.

I scaled it way back and asked if it was possible to predict *just* the first digit of either of the prime factors.

That also failed. Prediction rates were low still. Like 0.08-0.15.

So I automated *that*.

After a couple days of on-and-off again semi-automated searching I stumbled on it.

[1144, 827, 326, 1184, -1, -1, -1, -1]

That little sequence is a series of identities representing different values derived from a randomly generated product.

Each slots into a trace matrice. The results of which predict the first digit of one of our factors, with a 83.2% accuracy even after 10k runs, and rising higher with the number of trials.

It's not much, but I was kind of proud of it.

I'm pushing for finding 90%+ now.

Some improvements include using a different sort of operation to generate results. Or logging all results and finding the digit within each result thats *most* likely to predict our targets, across all results. (right now I just take the digit in the ones column, which works but is an arbitrary decision on my part).

Theres also the fact that it's trivial to correctly guess the digit 25% of the time, simply by guessing 1, 3, 7, or 9, because all primes, except for 2, end in one of these four.

I have also yet to find a trace with a specific bias for predicting either the smaller of two unique factors *or* the larger. But I haven't really looked for one either.

I still need to write a generate that takes specific traces, and lets me mutate some of the values, to push them towards certain 'fitness' levels.
This would be useful not just for very high predictions, but to find traces with very *low* predictions.

Why? Because it would actually allow for the *elimination* of possible digits, much like sudoku, from a given place value in a predicted factor.

I don't know if any of this will even end up working past the first digit. But splitting the odds, between the two unique factors of a prime product, and getting 40+% chance of guessing correctly, isn't too bad I think for a total amateur.

Far cry from a couple years ago claiming I broke prime factorization. People still haven't forgiven me for that, lol.

A story from around 2005:

Customer laying out specifications: “We expect this software to need to last 25 years or so, and it will need to keep historical file processing data by dates for at least that long, assume storage is no issue.”

Devs at the time: “look best I can do is support that start with 200 or 201, anything else is really too much to ask. Also understanding how to work with dates at all and not just string manipulation is waaaaayyy hard yo.”

Fuck you lazy motherfuckers. This is why people thought Y2K would be a problem.

I can't pass a whiteboard interview to save my life. I did pretty well on a fizzbuzz whiteboard a few years ago but in reality in is fairly straightforward. I am interviewing right now and the more I practice and study I realize my teacher in college was right 25 years ago. I should never have become a programmer. I am a likable and fairly competent coder but I am completely overwhelmed and stressed.

I want to be the CTO in ten years. I'm 25 now, and think it's possible. My former boss was the CTO and he inspired the hell out of me to work hard and invest in myself. I have a lot to learn but I'm eager to figure it out.

Another one of my job recruiter ranting posts

I couldn't add all of it in but they want a senior developer with 4 years of experience (which is I don't believe is senior worthy) but pay peanuts ($25 -$35, is not a lot in New Zealand)

I don't understand how companies can expect someone to be able to be in charge of all their development and expect to pay absolutely nothing, no wonder there are more companies that want to be contracted for work, then being tied down

Oh yeah and the recruiter couldn't even be bothered typing senior mobile developer, they just typed software developer.. fucking lazy

What a fucking joke...

On New Year's Eve a few years back I was around 21/22 and my friends were anywhere between 20/25.

My best friend has a big house so he offered to host it there (as every year pretty much), so we all agreed to do dinner and party after.

We decided to go with barbecue, and we all brought a few things.

Without my knowledge, they are all pretty much gamers and also decided to bring their laptops and even towers to play during the whole day and night.

The result was me "alone" cooking with the dad of a female friend (whose wife died a few years back and offered to help since he would be pretty much alone or with some other family members, not sure).

Once we finished cooking and went on to calling them, no one came to eat because "they were finishing just one more game", and eventually the dad yelled at them and left, I just went eating by myself, and they all showed up a few minutes later looking like 5 year olds when dads scream at them.

I can pretty much say that was the weirdest thing ever, but they did learn because never again they did the same!

So I recently found out that just about every other company in this town pays their devs with equivalent experience at least 25% more than what my current employer does.

I requested a salary meeting and informed my boss that I'm way below the average for my position, he replied "Yeah, your salary has been below average for years now, yet you are my best employee in this area".

It hurts that he very well knew this fact and still decided not do to anything about it before I brought it up.

I told him that I don't feel rewarded for all my hard work and overtime, so I requested a 25% bump or I'm leaving in January.

'Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet 25 years ago today.' If I hear that BS one more time..... #ffs

The more I'm on here the more I remember all the shit I have had to deal with in the past.

Anyway, lets rant! I just moved cities after college to be closer to my family, I didnt have any work lined up at that stage but started job hunting the moment I was settled in, I did some freelance for smaller companies to stay afloat.

Eventually I got a job at this agency startup where "SEO" was there main focus, still very inexperienced they put me on frontend and data capturing but will teach me how to code using their systems in due time. At this stage I was getting paid minimum wage, but I was doing minimum work and it wasnt that bad.

A new investor bought 49% of the company and immediately moved into the office space to focus more on marketing (He was one of those scaly marketing guys that will sell you babies if he could get his hands on enough to make a profit).

This is where everything starts going to shit. He hires a bunch of "SEO Gurus", fills up the small office with people like sardines squished together. Development was still our main money maker at this stage, so there where 3 new more senior developers at this stage and I started learning a lot really fast.

Here are some of the issues we had to deal with:

1. Incentives - Great more money, haha! No, No, you where 5 minutes late so you only get half of the promised amount.

2. For every minute you are late we will deduct it from you paycheck (Did I mention I was getting paid minimum wage).

3. If you take a smoke break we will dock it from your pay.

4. Free gym membership to the gym downstairs, but you can only go once a week during your lunch.

5. No pay raises if you cant prove your worth on paper.

He on purposely made up shitty rules and regulations to keep us down and make as much profit as he could.

Here are some shitty stuff he has done:

1. We arent getting a 13th check this year because the company didnt make a big profit - while standing next to his brand new BMW.

2. Made changes over FTP on clients work because we where too slow to get to it, than blames me for it because its broken the next day and wants to give me a written warning for not resolving the issue Immediately. They went as far as wanting to fire me for this, gave me 1 day notice for meeting and that I can bring a lawyer to represent me (1 day notice is illegal, you need 5 days where I am from), so I brought a lawyer since my mom was a lawyer. They freaked the fuck out and started harassing me about this a week later.

3. Would have meetings all the time about how much money the company is making, but wont be raising our pay since no one has proven they are worth it yet.

4. Would full on yell at employees infront of the entire office if they accidentally made an mistake on a clients project.

One one occasion I took a week off for holiday, my coworker contacted me to ask a question and I answered that I will handle it when I am back the following week. Withing 2 hours my other boss phones me in a rage, "he is coming to fetch the company laptop from my house in 5 minutes, he will let me know when he arrives. Gives me no time to talk at all and hangs up - I have figured out what has happened by now so when he showed up he has this long speech about abandonment, and trust and loyalty to the company. So I pass him my laptop once he shut up and said: "You do know I am on holiday leave which you approved, right?", he goes even more silent and passes me back my laptop without saying anything, and drives off.

While the above was happening Douche manager back at the office has a rage as well and calls the whole office (25 people) to a meeting talking about how I abandoned the company and how disgraceful that is.

Those are the shitty experiences I can remember, there where many more like this. All of the above eventually led to me going into a deep depression and having panic attacks weekly, from being overworked or scared to step out of line. Its also the reason I almost stopped coding forever at that stage. I worked there for 2.5 years with the abuse.

I left 2 weeks after the last shit show, I am ok now and have my anxiety and depression well under control if not almost gone completely.

Ran into Douche Manager a few months ago after 9 years, the company got bought out and the first person they fired was him. LOL! He now has his own agency and is looking for Developers (They are hard to find he says), little does he know I spread his name far and wide to all and every Dev I knew and didnt know to avoid working for him at all costs. Seems like word of mouth still works in this digital age.

Thanks for reading this far!

I recently tried to apply the same data analytics rationale that I use at work to my personal life. This is not a rant, it is more like an data storytelling of an actual use case I would like some input on.

I set a goal - gotta thin up a bit and calm down my ticker - and got a (almost unreasonably expensive) field expert consultant to yell at me about it for a couple hours.

I unravel the metrics - there is like a million weight-related KPIs and most say nothing at all. I have never seen an non-infrastructure measurable subject that could not be resumed to 2-5 performance metrics. I got overall weight, how well my nine-years-old business suit fits me, heart rate, and day-after relative muscle pain (it will make sense soon).

Then its data-pipeline time. I bought a cheap weight scale and smartwatch, and every morning I input the data in an app. Yes, I try to put on the suit every morning. It still does not fit.

After establishing a baseline, I tried to fit different approaches. Doing equipment-free exercises, going to the gym, dieting. None was actually feasible in the long run, but trying different approaches does highlight the impacts and the handling profile of each method.

Looking at the now-gathered data, one thing was obvious - can't do dieting because it is not doable to have a shopping list and meals for me and another for the family.
Gym is also off the table - too much overhead. I spend more time on the trip there and back than actually there.
And home exercise equipment is either super crappy or very expensive. But it is also the most reasonable approach.

So it is solutions time. I got a nice exercise bycicle (not a peloton), an yoga mat (the wife already had that one) and an exercise program that uses only those two resources. Not as efficient without dieting, not as measurable and broad as the gym, but it fits my workflow. Deploy to production!

A few months pass and the dataset grows. The signal is subtle but has support - it works! The handling, however, needs improvement, since I cannot often enough get with the exercise program. Some mornings are just after some hard days.

I start thinking about what else I can improve in the program, but it is already pretty lean and full of compromises.
So I pull an engineer and start thinking about the support systems and draft profile. What else could be draining my willpower and morning time?

Chores. Getting the kids ready for school, firing up the moka pot, setting the off-brand roomba, folding the overnight-dried clothes, cooking breakfast, doing the dishes, cleaning the toilets. All part of my morning routine. It might benefit from some automation.

Last month I got that machine our elders call "wasteful" and "useless crap lazy entitled Americans invented because they feel oh-so-insulted for simply doing something by hand like everyone always did" - a "dish-washer".
Heh, I remember how hard was to convince my mother-in-law that an remote-controled electric garage door would not make she look like an spoiled brat.
Still to early to call, but I think that the dishwasher just saved me about 25 mins every morning. It might be enough to save willpower for me to do more exercise.

This is all so reflective of all data analytics cases really are out in the wild - the analytics phase seems so small compared to the gathering and practical problem-solving all around. And yet d.a. is what tells you that you are doing the wrong thing all along. Or on what you should work next.

Why is it that virtually all new languages in the last 25 years or so have a C-like syntax?

- Java wanted to sort-of knock off C++.
- C# wanted to be Java but on Microsoft's proprietary stack instead of SUN's (now Oracle's).
- Several other languages such as Vala, Scala, Swift, etc. do only careful evolution, seemingly so as to not alienate the devs used to previous C-like languages.
- Not to speak of everyone's favourite enemy, JavaScript…
- Then there is ReasonML which is basically an alternate, more C-like, syntax for OCaml, and is then compiled to JavaScript.

Now we're slowly arriving at the meat of this rant: back when I started university, the first semester programming lecture used Scheme, and provided a fine introduction to (functional) programming. Scheme, like other variants of Lisp, is a fine language, very flexible, code is data, data is code, but you get somewhat lost in a sea of parentheses, probably worse than the C-like languages' salad of curly braces. But it was a refreshing change from the likes of C, C++, and Java in terms of approach.

But the real enlightenment came when I read through Okasaki's paper on purely functional data structures. The author uses Standard ML in the paper, and after the initial shock (because it's different than most everything else I had seen), and getting used to the notation, I loved the crisp clarity it brings with almost no ceremony at all!

After looking around a bit, I found that nobody seems to use SML anymore, but there are viable alternatives, depending on your taste:

- Pragmatic programmers can use OCaml, which has immutability by default, and tries to guide the programmer to a functional programming mindset, but can accommodate imperative constructs easily when necessary.
- F# was born as OCaml on .NET but has now evolved into its own great thing with many upsides and very few downsides; I recommend every C# developer should give it a try.
- Somewhat more extreme is Haskell, with its ideology of pure functions and lazy evaluation that makes introducing side effects, I/O, and other imperative constructs rather a pain in the arse, and not quite my piece of cake, but learning it can still help you be a better programmer in whatever language you use on a day-to-day basis.

Anyway, the point is that after working with several of these languages developed out of the original Meta Language, it baffles me how anyone can be happy being a curly-braces-language developer without craving something more succinct and to-the-point. Especially when it comes to JavaScript: all the above mentioned ML-like languages can be compiled to JavaScript, so developing directly in JavaScript should hardly be a necessity.

Obviously these curly-braces languages will still be needed for a long time coming, legacy systems and all—just look at COBOL—, but my point stands.

*revving chainsaw noises*

Today I started nuking leftover project code.

At the end, some projects shrunk by roughly up to 40 % .

Can anyone explain to me why programmers have such an awful hoarding syndrome?

Why do you keep shit that might unleash complete havoc cause it hasn't been touched since years and noone knows id it still works?

It's like having a leg with gangrene and keeping it cause "it doesn't look that bad".

For fucks sake. Clean up and remove shit when it's not necessary anymore.

Reason why I did a bloody gore massacre in nearly a dozen projects... After all the rework of networking, it's finally evident which projects have a bad / nasty behaviour of "fucked up" connection handling (HTTP 1.1).

And when my gory massacre removal goes life, I think 25-35 % of persistent connections on the loadbalancers will vanish. Maybe even more, since some very nasty stuff was in some projects.

Like "let's implement monitoring without having any clue about how monitoring works and even less clues about how TCP/ HTTP works."

*Bangs devs heads on table*

Stop. Doing. Stupid. Things.

For fucks sake.

:@ :@

Soooo this Canadian mother fuck, own the domain I want, and isn’t using it, and doesn’t wanna sell it.. tells me he is using it for his business.. after a bit of research the domain went inactive after 2007. Hours after sending an email.. a wix site pops up. And then then tells me his buisness has been using it for 25 years.. really??! Per public record your buisness went defunct years ago.

Won’t sell me the domain... fine, I’ll buy all the domains with your name in it variants of your buisness name, and point them to gay porn.. FUCK YOU.. fire with fire BITCH!

I've been reading devRant at work for the past 6 months and it kept me sane through a few moments. Thanks. :)

And now I finally started to feel that maybe even I could have some horror stories to share. (I've been in the company for more than 4 years)

(Sorry for long post.
TL;DR: break time laws suck in my country.)

One example would probably be how our company decided to cut 5 minutes from our lunch time (down to 25 minutes) and add 3 minutes to our 5 minute coffee break(*"gifted" by our CEO) in the afternoon.

You're probably asking yourself, "What happened to the remaining 2 minutes?".

*Well, it's simple. In my country it's somehow still legal to have only 30 minutes of break time for the whole day if working hours don't exceed 10 hours. It's actually written in the law that you CAN divide that lunch break time to be placed at different times. To me that sound like fucking nuts...

Thankfully nobody's taking that time change quite literally and most people still use the full 30 minutes. But some people here have been fired for much less, so I don't play around. I just pretend to work while reading devRant. 😎

Just came across a few rants blaming coursework, which doesn't have anything to do with programming. To them I wanna say two things:

1. Programming is modelled on everything other than programming. So it helps to know a bit about that 'everything'.

2. The famous author James Altucher has had 14 careers in 25 years. Not 14 jobs. 14 careers, including photography, authorship, entrepreneurship, finance planning, and more.

So stop bitching and eat your frog/broccoli.

Marketing tech of over 25 years in this company asks this at least 2 - 3 times a year, "to find the percentage, take the small number and divide by the big number right?"

NO. NO. NO. NOOO! NOOOOOO! God dammit. You're a grown man.

!dev

i think i need to control my emotions and expression around girls. things are going quite wrong and i am not sure i am able to interact with this beautiful gender correctly.

<misc: somewhat unrelated event. need to vent>

- got called out "a creep", "jerk", and "hypocrite" by this girl. she may be totally correct in calling me these but these words made me think about my behavior and therefore this post .

- characters? she: a friend of a friend, to whom i have met 3-4 times, in trips where we drank together, danced together nd talked till late night, among other people.
me : well me . based on previous allegations you can also label me as creep and hypocrite , but i would describe myself as an introvert, nerdy person who talks better on a keyboard than real life (otherwise i wouldn't be typing this post but whatever.)

- action : i made a comment on her insta story

- action details:
• we follow each other on insta. it was 12 am and i was in a half sleep state, scrolling the damn app before falling asleep
• saw her story with his 3 girl nd 2 guy cousins probably, so out of fun, replied her about how all of their specs look the same and if they all take out their specs from the same shop (cheeky comment, i know)
• she just erupted. from asking whether i also wanna buy from the same shop, to why am i talking to her, who gave you the right to compliment, jerk, hypocrite who can't talk in real life but compliments on keyboard, to creep and "stay away"
• I really wanted to say sorry at some point, but i kept making more cheeky comments in between. i was like , yeah she is my friend going through something and bursting her anger on me, she will come back and laugh, but she kept going towards hypocrite, jerk and finally stay away thing

• after that i knew i crossed the line and immediately got out of the conversation. i didn't apologize though.
• as of now am calm and don't mind the current situation of she being angry at a person who means nothing to her and me realising she is not a friend but a common connection . and till the time i was making cheeky comments, i saw her as my homie friend, so i am not bothered if she is angry
</misc>

I think i am a very needy person. i didn't have many friends in school time and i didn't had any relatives/cousins/siblings to get a lot of affection. a 25 yo horny virgin with no relationships till date does give a bad personality vibe from far, but keep in mind that i have mainly focused on personality growth and a conservative chsracter development my whole life. i do not act on my lonly feelings, but i try to be helpful and nice to everyone (which might be a suspicious/bad thing. just trying to defend my character, but feel free to judge)

every girl that talks nice with me, i get very helpful, nice and cheeky with them. most girls likes nd ignores these things, but some also get along, trust me and are willing to spend more time with me.

This makes me not only be more nice and cheeky with them but also start developing feelings for them and imagining my future/relation with them.

as of now i think there are 12 or 13 girls with whom i got into "vibing" (here, assume that vibing means me talking with them, cracking jokes nd compliments, meeting them alone ,etc. no adult stuff ofc), nd then after a few days told them directly or indirectly that i like them ( in a hope of getting some affection back i guess), getting rejected and still trying to keep the "friendship"

i think this needs to be changed. the people calling me creep, despo, perv , whatever might be correct in calling me those till now(based in my behavior) but i don't wanna be that.

i need to understand the girls might not want anything more than just a help at some point and then be done with it. I shouldn't be going out a limb and trying to get i to conversation/flirt/whatever.

i just am too emotional to let any person go away from my life just because our reason for interaction is over.
If I am commenting on a girl's post to whom i met on some trip, i will be commenting on a guy's post (to whom i met on a similar trip) too , in a similar manner,

if i see a post from one of my school's batchmates , and i find it nice/funny/weird, i will comment as if me and this batchmate met yesterday and not for 1 hr 10 years ago (irrespective of the gender)

and even after that if people are so intolerant, then maybe i am wrong and rather should start forgetting every person with whom i have spent less than 50 days alone.

hope this is the correct math and i could expect people with 50 days = 600+ hours of daytime to be enough to not see me as a stranger

So, I'm looking into something and end up on Stack Overflow. Someone posted the question:

"Does minified javascript improve performance?"

This question was old as shit, all they way from 07/25/09, and about an Adobe Air application. (Remember that? Me neither...) It had a great, accepted, and still accurate answer, posted the same day the question was asked. Now, fast forward 8 years and on 12/08/17 (A mere 7 months ago...) the following answer was posted. I don't know what they were thinking, but here it is, complete and unabridged, with my comments in square brackets:

"I'd like to post this as a separate answer as it somewhat contrasts the accepted one: [Somewhat contrasts? More like completely contradicts...]

Yes, it does make a performance difference as it reduces parsing time - and that's often the critical thing. For me, it was even just simply linear in the size and I could get it from 12s to 4s parse time by minifying from 3MB to 1MB. [First off, your parse time should NEVER be THE critical thing, but secondly, and more importantly, WHO THE FUCK HAS 1MB OF MINIFIED JS ON A PAGE!!!]

It's not a big app either, it just has a couple of reasonable dependencies. [THERE IS ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING REASONABLE ABOUT ANYTHING HE JUST SAID! What dependancies is he using?! You could use minified and not even gzipped jQuery, AngularJS, Vue, Ember, React, AND Dojo libraries on the SAME PAGE, AND have 118k of application code, AND STILL NOT HAVE HIT 1MB QUITE YET!!!]

So the moral of the story here is: Yes, minifying is important for performance - and not because of bandwidth, but because of parsing. [Javascript should NEVER take longer to parse then to download, even on a low powered device...]"

So, yeah, I'm at a loss for what this guy was thinking, but the thought the people like this exist, and that my browser might one day be subjected to their horrific nightmare of code terrifies me...

25 years Judgement Day! 🥳

This started as an update to my cover story for my Linked In profile, but as I got into a groove writing it, it turned into something more, but I’m not really sure what exactly. It maybe gets a little preachy towards the end so I’m not sure if I want to use it on LI but I figure it might be appreciated here:

In my IT career of nearly 20 years, I have worked on a very wide range of projects. I have worked on everything from mobile apps (both Adroid and iOS) to eCommerce to document management to CMS. I have such a broad technical background that if I am unfamiliar with any technology, there is a very good chance I can pick it up and run with it in a very short timespan.

If you think of the value that team members add to the team as a whole in mathematical terms, you have adders and you have subtractors. I am neither. I am a multiplier. I enjoy coaching, leading and architecture, but I don’t ever want to get out of the code entirely.

For the last 9 years, I have functioned as a technical team lead on a variety of highly successful and highly productive teams. As far as team leads go, I tend to be a bit more hands on. Generally, I manage to actively develop code about 25% of the time to keep my skills sharp and have a clear understanding of my team’s codebase.

Beyond that I also like to review as much of the code coming into the codebase as practical. I do this for 3 reasons. I do this because as a team lead, I am ultimately the one responsible for the quality and stability of the codebase. This also allows me to keep a finger on the pulse of the team, so that I have a better idea of who is struggling and who is outperforming. Finally, I recognize that my way may not necessarily be the best way to do something and I am perfectly willing to admit the same. I have learned just as much if not more by reviewing the work of others than having someone else review my own.

It has been said that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. This describes my relationship with software development perfectly. I have known that I would be writing software in some capacity for a living since I wrote my first “hello world” program in BASIC in the third grade.

I don’t like the term programmer because it has a sense of impersonality to it. I tolerate the title Software Developer, because it’s the industry standard. Personally, I prefer Software Craftsman to any other current vernacular for those that sling code for a living.

All too often is our work compiled into binary form, both literally and figuratively. Our users take for granted the fact that an app “just works”, without thinking about the proper use of layers of abstraction and separation of concerns, Gang of Four design patterns or why an abstract class was used instead of an interface. Take a look at any mediocre app’s review distribution in the App Store. You will inevitably see an inverse bell curve. Lot’s of 4’s and 5’s and lots of (but hopefully not as many) 1’s and not much in the middle. This leads one to believe that even given the subjective nature of a 5 star scale, users still look at things in terms of either “this app works for me” or “this one doesn’t”. It’s all still 1’s and 0’s.

Even as a contributor to many open source projects myself, I’ll be the first to admit that have never sat down and cracked open the Spring Framework to truly appreciate the work that has been poured into it. Yet, when I’m in backend mode, I’m working with Spring nearly every single day.

The moniker Software Craftsman helps to convey the fact that I put my heart and soul into every line of code that I or a member of my team write. An API contract isn’t just well designed or not. Some are better designed than others. Some are better documented than others. Despite the fact that the end result of our work is literally just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, computer science is not an exact science at all. Anyone who has ever taken 200 lines of Java code and reduced it to less than 50 lines of reactive Kotlin, anyone who has ever hit that Utopia of 100% unit test coverage in a class, or anyone who can actually read that 2-line Perl implementation of the RSA algorithm understands this simple truth. Software development is an art form. I am a Software Craftsman.

#wk171

After 25 years working in the IT industry, as a web designer, developer, digital marketing professional, and a bunch of other stuff, I've had it up to here with recruiters who approach me on LinkedIn. After having (presumably) reviewed my extensive and detailed résumé and testimonials from people I've worked with that I put there for the world to see, they then are surprised when I tell them in no uncertain terms and before anything else is said that, yes, I'm interested and that I need $X in compensation to take the job they're offering. They just don't know what to say to that. Here's a hint: "Yeah, that sounds like something we can work with. Let's schedule an interview." or "Sorry, we're not paying that much." But say _something_.

I figure that I'm done playing the "We have a job, and we want you to jump through a million hoops to find out what we'll offer you" game.

Let's play a new game, where you pay ACTUAL attention to my experience level, and then you ask me if I'm available and I say "Yes, and here's what I want to get paid. When can we meet?" My CV speaks for itself. You either want me or you don't. No, I won't take your stupid qualification test. No, I don't want to be put in front of 5 different HR screeners. If you want me, I'll be here waiting for you to schedule a real, bona fide interview with the person who is empowered to make a decision. I've LONG not been some junior-level schmuck you can feed into your filter to figure out whether I'm worth it. Ok?

I had this amazing boss. He had 25 years of experience in the sector covered by our software, an ERP. He knew how to be a programmer, a boss, a sales manager, a support person.
I learned most of the best practices from him: do not shout in the office, it makes impossible to work. Don't hide something to your coworkers, nobody was trusting him. Be clear with your clients, his subtle mind tricks pissed off a lot of clients. Your client needs to see an economic advantage in your offers, trying to sell gold priced shit is not a good way to stay in the market. The list could go on and on and on.

I learned what happens when you do everything in the wrong way, and I will never forget.

I’ve been coding for over 25 years, for the last 10 years my primary languages are C#, C++, Xaml. Prior to that I used to develop web applications.

Just recently, I’ve totally lost my motivation to code, I used to come home at nights and do stuff for myself, at work i used to develop utilities and apis to help everyone, some of which have been made production ready and released.

Now I just cannot be arsed......

I need to get out of this rut.

☹️😢

As a teacher myself, I will always advice young people to go to school. Though I imagine it differs on the quality of education in your country.

I live in the Netherlands and here it's quite good overall. It's no Ivy League and there are plenty of exceptions but overall any technical study here is a good study.

I also teach at a small school (220 software engineering students) so I actually know my students and what generally need to get ahead.

But my main reasons for actually doing a study instead of going the self-taught route:

1. You spend +/- 4 years in presence of peers that are more or less in the same life phase as you are. You will make friends for life.
2. Companies value a diploma. Good for you that you landed a job on your 19th. Just wait until your 25, wanna switch jobs and don't even get to the second round of any application process because your CV does not list a diploma. This might change in the future but not for the next 5-10 years.
3. You will learn foundational stuff about most thing IT-related. Some things you'll never use. Some thing you'll use unknowingly every single day
4. It teaches discipline without major impact on your life if you fail something. OK, you failed a course. So what? Take it next year and take the time to do a side-project or internship during your study delays. It will teach you some life lessons without it costing you a job or your life savings, and you get some extra time to learn as well!
5. Retirement age by the time you retire will be 75. There's plenty of time to work. Why not spend 4 years with peers in a relatively safe and fun environment first?

TL;DR - small schools are actually fun, attend one

We've got a big legacy app which we have to rewrite. The current client applications are only working on XP(!). We have to move the clients to the browser so we can finally get rid of all XP vm-s. The db schema is complex but still 1000+ stored procedures and functions and about a hundred tables with 13 years of data.
So I ask the guy responsible for maintaining the DB code. (he is ~25 years older than me)

me - Where is the source of the database. Which project?
he - Where would it be? It's in the db.
me - So we've got a huge db without VCS, upgrade/downgrade scripts, etc?
he - Yes. I don't get why young developers always want to use shiny new tech like git just because it is cool. It has nothing that an external usb backup drive can't do.
me - VCS has been around since the early 1980's...
he - If you really want, you can put it under git or whatever, so you can sleep better, but I still think it is stupid and a waste of time.

I get that it's hard to keep up, but getting personal...

I'm working with a consultant group at my company to implement a new authentication strategy for our entire platform.

The senior dev lead from the consultant group has 25+ years consulting and claims to have written a web browser for the blind and all sorts of in-depth accessibility things.

Stakeholders tell us "Don't forget about accessibility compliance on this project"

Senior dev lead with all this claimed accessibility experience asks me, "What does accessibility mean?"

Okay so for all of you who think that you can't do shit without stackoverflow. I'll tell you this, fuck SO. There's this ancient technique of programmers of old probably just about 20-25 years ago called RTFM. Why bother copy pasting some one else's spaghetti(that you might not fully understand) when you can write your own better code! (said in good faith). When something is behaving strange or you don't know what something requires just hit the docs or manual and read about the api because it is describes not only what it wants and needs but also what it does. So try this because it might have more information that you need than stack overflow might tell you

Since JavaScript is so widely used, do you think the market will continue to adopt JavaScript into everything for the next, say, 25 years, or will the market eventually have some catastrophic shift towards other technologies, placing JS back in the passenger seat?

Personally I love JS for some solutions but prefer using a diverse array of technologies for different tasks

Go back in time and follow a dev career.
25 years ago there was no dev jobs in my country except in the capital, so I didn't follow a dev career...
I could be wealthy by now :p

Recruiter from last week told me she will contact me next week with further HR interviews

No contact for the whole week until right now

---

RECRUITER: Hello, colleagues from ShitStain company have provided feedback, and unfortunately, they won't be proceeding with the further process. They mentioned they need someone with more experience and asked me to thank you for your patience and interest. Personally, I've had only positive experiences from our conversation, so if a similar position opens up with another client in the future, I'll be free to reach out to you. I hope we have the opportunity to collaborate again.

ME: Thank you for the response. If me having 5+ years of experience is not enough for them, what exactly are they looking for? I'd like to know more about what they think I'm missing, and if it's indeed a gap, I'll work on improving that aspect.

RECRUITER: Your experience is certainly valuable to offer employers. However, for this position, they specifically need experience in Java, and they're looking for someone who has been focused on that technology for 5+ years. I believe new opportunities will arise soon that I can offer you if you're still interested in making a change. 😊

---

Is she FUCKING STUPID?

I JUST SAID i have 5+ years of experience and she rejects me because they need someone with 5+ years of experience????? (we're both talking about the same thing -- java)

Even if someone has 5+ years of experience THAT IS NOT ENOUGH? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME 96+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE?

Are you Fucking mental?

Am i being fucking gaslighted right now?

Can you fucking believe what kind of retards contact me?

NO ONE even gives a SHIT about the fact that i have a computer science degree from a VERY hard university?

My 5+ years of experience and 25+ years of school is worth between $0 and $500 ?????

I am disgusted

I am absolutely tired and exhausted from interviews

So i wasted last 24 hours trying to satisfy my ego over a shitty interview and revisiting my old job's codebase and realising that i still don't like that shit. just i am 25 and have no clue where am i heading at. i am just restless, my most of the decisions in 2023 have given very bad outcomes and i am just trying doing things to feel hopeful.

context for the interview story-----
my previous job was at a b2b marketing company whose sdk was used by various startups to send notifications to their users, track analytics etc. i understood most of it and don't find it to be any major engineering marvel, but that interviewer was very interested in asking me to design a system around it.

in my 1.2 years of job there, i found the codebase to be extremely and unnecessarily verbose ( java 7) with questionable fallbacks and resistance towards change from the managers. they were always like "we can't change it otherwise a lot of our client won't use our sdk". i still wrote a lot of testcases and tried to understand the working of major features.

BTW, before you guys go on a declare me an embarrassment of an engineer who doesn't know the product's code base, let me tell you that we are talking SDKs (plural) and a service based company here. their was just one SDK with interesting, heavy lifting stuff and 9 more SDKs which were mostly wrappers and less advanced libraries. i got tasks in all of them, and 70% of my time went into maintaining those and debugging client side bugs instead of exploring the "already-stable-dont-change" code base.

so based on my vague understanding and my even more vague memory from 1 year ago, i tried to explain an overall architecture to that interviewer guy. His face was screaming the word "pathetic" from his expressions, so i thought that today i will try to decode the codebase in 12-15 hours, publish a cool article and be proud of how much i know a so called martech system design. their codebase is open sourced, so it wasn't difficult to check it out once more.
but boy oh boy i got so bored. unnecessary clases , unnecessary callbacks static calls , oof. i tried to refactor a few classes, but even after removing 70% of codebase, i was still left with 100+ classes , most of them being 3000-4000 files long. and this is your plain old java library adding just 800kb to your project.

boring , boring stuff. i would probably need 2-3 more days to get an understanding of complete project, although by then i would be again questioning my life choices , that was this a good use of my 36 hours?

what IS a correct usage of my time? i am currently super dissatisfied with my job, so want to switch. i have been here for 6 months, so probably i wouldn't be going unless i get insane money or an irresistible company offer. For this i had devised a 2 part plan to either become good at modern hot buzz stuff in my domain( the one being currently popularized by dev influenzas) or become good at dsa/leetcode/cp. i suck bad at ds/algo stuff, nor am i much motivated. so went with that hot buzz stuff.

but then this interview expected me to be a mature dev with system design knowledge... agh fuck. its festive season going on and am unable to buy any cool shirts since i am so much limited with my money from my mediocre salary and loans. and mom wants to buy a home too... yeah kill me

I subscribe to many copywriting newsletters. Here's an article that shows how it's like on "the other side", marketers struggle, too.

How Kevin's Massive Mistake
Completely Changed His Life

Kevin H. made a huge mistake.

The biggest, he would say, if he could tell you himself.

And he knew it immediately.

It was, he said, "instant regret."

Within milliseconds, he was asking himself "What have I done..."

Kevin, see, had just jumped the rail of the single most popular suicide spot in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.

On average, the site gets another distraught jumper every two weeks. Kevin was one of them.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to quiet the voices in his head. Therapy, drugs, hospitalization.

Time to die, those voices still said.

And yet, in the minutes his bus dropped him off at the bridge, he hesitated and paced with tears in his eyes.

"I told myself if just one person comes up to me and asks if I'm okay... if one person asks if they can help... I won't do it. I'll stop and tell them my whole story..."

But nobody did, so he jumped.

It was in those next milliseconds, he would later say, he knew it was the biggest mistake of his life.

He didn't want to die.

But now, he was sure, it was too late.

From its highest point, it's a 245-foot plummet into the icy bay waters below.

Out of the 1,700 people that have jumped from the bridge since it first opened in 1937, only 25 have survived.

Kevin, against all odds, would be one of them.

He slammed into the water like hitting concrete. Three of his vertebrae instantly shattered.

When he surfaced, he couldn't hold his own head above water. But, incredibly, a sea lion kept pushing him up.

The Coast Guard soon arrived and pulled him out.

From there, he began a long recovery that required intense surgery, physical therapy, and psychiatric care.

While still under treatment, a priest urged him to give a talk to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders.

Afterward, they sent him a pile of letters, both encouraging and full of their own pained thoughts.

He also met a woman.

Today, Kevin lives in Atlanta and he's been happily married for the last 12 years.

And he tours the country, sharing his story.

So why re-tell it here?

Obviously -- I hope -- you don't get lots of copywriters looking to snuff it after a flopped headline test.

Just the same...

We've talked a lot in this space about the things one needs to get by in this biz.

My friend and colleague Joe, over at the publishing powerhouse Agora Financial, likes to list requirements.

You need intense curiosity...

You need a killer work ethic...

And you must, MUST have... resilience.

Meaning, you must have or find the capacity to bounce back from failure and flops, even huge ones.

Now, again, Kevin's story is an extreme and in this context -- I hope -- a hyperbolic example of somebody giving up. In the worst way possible.

It is also, though, a metaphor.

See, I get a lot of notes from some of you guys... and at conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people...

And I often get the sense, from some folks, that they're feeling a little more overwhelmed than they let on.

Some are just starting out, and they've got a lot on the line. For some, it's everything. And some are desperate to make it work.

Because they have to, because their pride or livelihoods or a family business is at stake, because it's a dream.

And yet, they're overwhelmed by all the tips and secrets... or by piles of confusing research or ideas...

For others, even had some success, but they're burned out, feel antiquated, or feel like "imposters" that know less than they let on, in an industry that's evolving.

To all those folks... and to you... I can only say, I've been there. And frankly, go back there now and again.

Flops happen, failures happen. And you can and will -- even years and decades into doing this -- make the wrong choices, pick the wrong projects, or botch the right ones.

The legendary Gene Schwartz put it this way, according to a quote spotted recently in fellow writer Ben Settle's e-letter...

" A very good copywriter is going to fail. If the guy doesn't fail, he's no good. He's got to fail. It hurts. But it's the only way to get the home runs the next time."

Once more, nobody -- I hope -- is taking the trials of this profession hard enough to make Kevin's choice.

And believe me, I don't mean to make light of the latter. I just want to make sure we hit this anvil with a big hammer. To drive home the point that, whatever your struggle, be it with this biz or something bigger, that you don't want to give up. Press on.

As Churchill put it, "Success, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

Or even more succinctly when he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."

Because it's worth it.
.
John Forde

New management asked us to do an impossible task at work. Launching a campaign with no planning and destined for an absolute disaster. Being me and how I never approved of the new management, I blew up. Guess they will either start paying me better or kick me out.

P.s. they can't function without me. At all. Literally. Impossible. Becayse I am the only one who bothered to join their team. They begged me. Because they know they're useless. And after 25 years. Their ship is literally gonna sink within a year if I leave.

Aside from simple programs I wrote by hand-transcribing code from the "Basic Training" section of 3-2-1 Contact magazine when I was a kid in the '80s, I would say the first project I ever undertook on my own that had a meaningful impact on others was when I joined a code migration team when I was 25. It was 2003.

We had a simple migration log that we would need to fill out when we performed any work. It was a spreadsheet, and because Excel is a festering chunk of infected cat shit, the network-shared file would more often than not be locked by the last person to have the file open. One night after getting prompted to open the document read-only again, I decided I'd had it.

I went to a used computer store and paid $75 out of pocket for an old beater, brought it back to the office, hooked it to the network, installed Lunar Linux on it, and built a simple web-based logging application that used a bash-generated flat file backend. Two days later, I had it working well enough to show it to the team, and they unanimously agreed to switch to it, rather than continue to shove Excel's jagged metal dick up our asses.

My boss asked me where I was hosting it, as such an application in company space would have certainly required his approval to procure. I showed him the completely unauthorized Linux machine(remember, this was 2003, when fortune 500 corporations, such as my employer, believed Ballmer's FUD-spew about Linux being a "virus" was real and not nonsense at all), and he didn't even hesitate to back me up and promise to tell the network security gestapo to fuck off if they ever came knocking. They never did.

I was later informed that the team continued to use the application for about five years after I left.

I've been a consultant in the area of mobile apps for five years now and have stayed at the same company since getting my degree.

In the beginning I had an immense passion and worked on a lot of side projects/pro bono stuff during my free time. Around the same time as the pandemic hit I simply lost all my interest and energy, life has been going to work, go home, find something to eat and go to bed. I can't even find joy in playing video games, working out or cooking anymore, it's always browsing youtube/netflix because I can't find it in me to commit to anything that requires focus.

The project I'm currently in no longer gives me the ability to grow technically, it's just the same old stuff over and over with no opportunity to do proper maintenance or explore new approaches/frameworks/etc.

I recently found out that I make around 25-30% less than my peers in the same field and location, this was a blow for me since I keep getting praised both from customers, management and my fellow developers.

A year ago I asked management to find me a new project with the motivation that I don't want to stall my growth, they have yet to heed this request since I'm not easily replaced.

Working in the industry for several years on dozens of projects with little to show. Between clients who can't pay, who abandon projects, who have scope creeped out of control, or are just plain slow to respond, my actual finished project output seems like 25% and somehow we're the ones who get shouldered with all the blame.

Ubuntu has integrated EISA support in kernel...

It's time to find a reliable kernel source that does not support hardware that is dead > 25 years.... Sheesh...

Showing up to work every day after 25 years of this knowing that I really kind of suck at my job and feeling like I’ll never get to a point where I can say I’m fully caught up to the level of knowledge others I work with have or that I’m expected to have. I suppose this is a bad habit of attitude but it seems to be an actual reality for me with every passing day, week, month, and year. It’s all just too much and my brain just isn’t as agile as it once was (and it wasn’t all that agile to begin with).

Be me at new job.
Just learned that bonus is tied to project estimate skills. Range is +- 25% of estimate vs reality.
They are waterfall. I've spent the last three years as Agile.

hey guys i need advise.
I currently got a job that i love with a lot of freedom. but the payment is not good and i am concerned that the company won't be there in the next 5 to 10 years.

I am a 25 years old, self taught programmer and my current employer is the only one I ever worked for. Recently I browsed xing and found a company which searches an employee with exactly my skillset (they need someone for a specific ERP system in which I am damn good at). The company is half an our away - my current job 20 minutes away. Also I think because the person they are looking for is rare because you need technical knowledge of windows and doors and you need to know how to administrate this erp system plus knowing some programming stuff.
There is also a very big company 10 minutes (walking) from home where I could apply. I think at this company i would start lower but could maybe study and working for them with higher expectations in long term (just google Hettich in germany here in the village this is big)

The problem I currently have is the following. If the company I work for is closing in lets say ten years, then I am 35 without a degree. I have a girlfriend - want to marry her and getting a child.

I have holiday now and i will apply for both companies. I feel very uncomfortable doing this because the company I work for is the company of my granddad. I don't have the balls to tell him that even if i get a raise that does not solve the 35 years issue.

Well, first of all I will just apply. Lets see how much value I have.

But I thought that asking you all may give me some other input to take into account. What are your thoughts on this?

PS: just a formal "sorry for my english" and thanks for reading

This question is for the 25-40 years age range.

Are you making an effort to save up for retirement? Or do you have a plan in place for that?

!dev

Personal rant, but as one shouldn't bottle up emotions, probably not so bad idea....

Started with diet and exercise in the vacation, as finally a certain thing starting with C calmed down...

Its maddening how fucked up the world is. Now as a lil private info (that might not be so unknown, shared multiple times here) - my body is a train wreck.

Lungs are fucked, muscle distrophy, some other things are fucked.

I'm the kind of thing every gym trainer dreads - the client that needs not only a lot of ass whooping, but also has a lot of problems that need to be taken care of.

Which is why I rather do exercise at home, cause... My experiences with humans in gyms are bad. Most trainers behave like fucking chimpanzees screaming commands while not listening what one tells them...

First challenge: Find a low impact cardio training.

What one mostly finds is a female chick (which is sad cause I like men more for obvious reasons), that should gain some weight, screaming at ya how great sport is while jumping around like a bunny on ecstasy.
Low impact isn't really low impact when you jump around, lil bunny... And it isn't low impact when you just let yourself fall to the floor and start doing push ups.

If an obese person like me did that, it would end in pain, frustration and an empty fridge TM.

So one has to painfully look and skip through 20 min vids of "Non low impact low impact YouTube / ... vids" to find one that is doable without wrecking the body even further... Yaaaay. That makes one totally not feel depressed :-)

The other thing that I always hate is dieting. Note that I don't have to change much - I'm basically on a diet since years, holding weight the whole time.

The jolly fun is that I can't take off with just an diet. If you never heard that such thing is possible, a lil advice: It is possible. Nothing hurts more than being told that eating less solves all problems magically - cause it doesn't.

What I usually need is added protein, as I suffer from muscle dystrophy in my left side. (hence the low impact vids).

If you go to a grocery store, you most likely find *tons* of protein stuff.

The fun thing is that roughly 80 % of that are - like all things in a supermarket - completely bullshit.

I know one could avoid using protein powder / ... - but that makes dieting a very very very hard task, as one has to not only do a lot of planning, but cooking and eating becomes a depression palooza... It just doesn't make fun when you have to scale components for every meal or force yourself to eat e.g. 250 g of low fat curd cheese to gain the necessary proteins.

Why is supermarket stuff so shitty....

Added sugar / saccharides . When one has been dieting for long for health reasons, one finds out pretty quick that most products (especially those labeled as healthy / fat reduced / "weight loss") are perfectly made to lead to a sugar crisis and binge eating.

I've found protein drinks containing up to 25 g of sugar per drink (330 ml).

A coke has 27 g of sugar per 250 ml...

:) Now isn't that jolly...

I've found my stuff of joy not so long ago (not advertising here, but depending on flavor it has only up to 3 g (!)) of sugar per drink)...

It just annoys me and pisses me off how much money is made - in my opinion deliberately - on the suffering of other people...

Most laws by the way end up being blocked by lobbyists - most nutrient scores etc are just "wrong" or better to unspecific... Making exploitation pretty easy.

It's funny how everyone has an opinion on obese people, everybody is pointing fingers and explaining how stupidly easy it is to take off... And at the same time no one gives a damn about shit like that.

That's all folks. Feeling better now.

By the way, I'm doing fine. I lost 7 kg already, though the train wreck of body was pretty pissed the last two weeks as everything hurts.

Another reason why motivational speeches are dumb in videos: Pain isn't fun. :)

I've stumbled upon some sources (mostly C/C++ and Pascal) during reorganizing backups in home LAN from 25+ years ago. Hell, I've used to be better coder then (code is more optimized and cleaner).

Perhaps it is just hardware (much, much more powerful) and choice of languages/libraries/frameworks I use nowadays?!

a lion in captivity forgets to hunt. a man loosing everyday forget about winning.

I am feeling so sad and worthless right now. Like, so worthless that if I am walking down the street tomorrow and if some car hits me and i die, i wouldn't mind.

I find it questionable about what I am living for? why am i selling myself in front of keyboard till 12 am every day to earn some bucks when all this money is being / will be used to give happiness to a bunch of people that don't give 2 shits about me.

why can't i get some love? why can't i get some respect? i feel like a disabled 5 year old boy trapped in an abled 25 year old body. I can feel my legs, but I don't have the permission to use them. its like i am tied by ropes. and this rope has been on me for so long, that i can feel my legs, but i can also feel that those are having cuts so deep that i won't be able to use them even once the rope is taken out.

being a single child, loneliness has always been my shadow at home. and The middle class poor income, fighting parents, sickness and lack of culture ensured that loneliness remained my friend in school, college and other areas too.

the only goal of becoming an ideal son has shadowed every other thing in life. I can't drink, i can't go outside after 10pm, I can't take a jobbin different city. I can't fucking have female friends or think about relatiion-shits with people. i can't drive the car that was bought by my salary money. the list goes on and on.. i think every Indian (girls more than boys ig) have gone through at least 1 such restrictions at some point of their life. but me? a GUY in his fucking 25 , is going through ALL OF THEM, from day 1.

Plus i haven't started to discuss the weird eccentricities that i have to deal with, which are not so common. we follow a special religion where they have lots of philosophy and additional rules ( like no onion garlic mushroom in foods, mediation + pray for 1 hour twice a day ,... etc)

But i didn't complain, until now. I got sadder and sadder with time, but I cooperated. Whome else to live for , if not for the folks who made you in their womb amd sack? yeah I will fucking stay celibate until you find some willing "cultured" girl from your "religion" and arrange a lifelong existence. yes, i will fucking keep paying the car emis and see it in the parking lot everyday , while traveling via a metro. yes i will stay in your house in front of you all the times and never learn to exist independently coz fuck maturity. yes i will be a static atm machine waiting to die as you please.

but i am still not your ideal son? I say one little thing, and you start shouting at me for being selfish? why is religious superstition and those crime storemies so much deep into your head that you folks are micro managing and criticising every single thing in my life?

why is there a need for repetitive arguments, fights and shouting before evry action? why can't we just be happy for once!

I am shattered looking for happiness. I can't live like this anymore. There are no more than 2 people in my life that i care about and if those 2 are always having an upside down , angered face the what is the point of waking up every day?

wish i could just leave them. But can they live without me? or even can i live without them? and no , not talking about emotionally. I am very strong at the emotional side and i can throw word daggers to even 10+ years of companionships and ruin them. this will be just another long term relationship that i will sour.

BUT I CAN'T LITERALLY LIVE WITHOUT THEM. i am a useless guy who don't have any social intelligence outside his computer screen. i don't know how to live alone, and exist, or what my goals will be. I never saw a future without thinking about securing their future first, and them being in my future at all times.

aagh fuck. another painful night to survive and exist until i rise again to live like a corpse coz i can't do anything about it

Out of any service industry web dev is the only one that shorts it own market and full of lies making it impossible for any real person trying to make and honest living and everyone seems to be okay with it - no other trade does this 25 years experience haven't found a job yet in a year something's not right too many people are lying making people untrustworthy I know I'm not the only one that feels like this

My life changed when I started typing parentheses and curly brackets using both hands.

Left hand for shift and right hand for the actual symbol.

No more wrist pain and it's 100 times faster.

It took me 25 years to make this amazing discovery, why the fuck am I so retarded

Hi! I am 25 today, stopped programming 3 years ago and only do gaming things for the past 3 years and now I want to start to program again but i think that I am in a rut don't know where to start. Sorry just want to take it out of my chest I feel kinda useless right now need some motivation. Please i need some advice.

!rant
I have my 121 in a few days with my new manager and am trying to get a raise either through moving from junior to mid level dev or being given a significant raise , am being paid a tad below the London market rate's lower range for my skill level.

Any advice on how to approach the topic?

Some bits of my background:

I got almost 4 years of exp :
almost 2 working there...
6 months short term contract as a ruby sql dev another company...
1.5 years worked for an abusive joke of a company who took advantage of my naivety since i was fresh out of uni ( did stuff like pressured me to add more features to a pojo system i made for them) barely learned anything there since i was the only IT person there developing solo, the project lasted 1.5 years and was a total mess to finish, so am not too sure of factoring it into my years of exp.

My Qualifications are:
bsc in information systems
Msc in enterprise sw engineering

My "new" Manager is seeking to retire real soon.

The company isn't doing too well but we just landed 2 big customers who are buying the product my team is working on

I Am one of two last devs on my team and we are barely holding on with the load, can't afford the time to train a newbie to join us

my department is soon to be sold (soon according to what mgr says). They have been saying so for 10 months now.

Last year , since the acquisition Is taking so long and funds were running out We were hit by a wave of redundancies which slashed our workforce in august/ july, told we could last till march this year on our funds . Even senior staff were on a reduced work week...but since we Got new customers then money should be coming in again , this should mean thats no longer the case. Even the senior staff have returned to 5 day work weeks.

Am being given only JavaScript work to do despite being hired as a junior java dev, my more senior colleagues dont wanna even touch js with a long stick

Spoke to 3 recruiters , said they got open roles in the junior- mid level range that pay the proper market range if am interested to put my cv through.
Thats like 25% more than I currently make.

Am a bit scared to jump into a mid level position in another company because i lack a bit confidence in my core java skills.
although a senior dev who used to be on my team thinks i can do it.
i recon i can take on the responsibilities of a mid level dev in me existing company since am pretty familiar with the products

I dont get to work with senior devs and learn from them since we are so stretched thin, hence am not really getting the chance to grow my skills

I know i have gaps in my knowledge and skills having not been able work in java for a while hasn't allowed me to fix that too well. I badly need to learn stuff like proper unit testing, not the adhoc rubbish we do at the moment, frameworks like spring etc

Since I have been pretty much pushed into being the js guy for the large chunks of the project over the last year , its kinda funny am the only guy who has the barest idea how some of the client facing stuff works

The new manager does seem to be a nice guy but he is like a politician, a master bullshitter who kept reassuring all is well and the company is fineeee (just ignore the redundancies as the fly past you)

The deal for thr aquisition seem to have sped up according to rumors
And we heard is a massive company buying us, hence things might pick up again and be better than ever

Any ideas how to approach the 121 with him?

Any advice career wise?
Should i push for a raise ?
promotion to mid?
Leave to find a junior to mid level position?
Tought it out and wait for the take over or company crash while trying to fill the gaps in my knowledge ?

Sorry for the length of this post

A few years ago, while in college, a friend and I were working on a engine as a side project to build experience. 25% of the goals completed and he begins making excuses to not work anymore. I continues working on it and when the project was "competed", I showed it to the head of the department at the college where I was offered a job as a professor and sold the engine for 20k to the department of engineering.

The dude came back claiming recognition and compensation for his effort I told him sure.

When we met, I showed him legal paper stating the engine was patented under my name and I was the only owner.

In reality, I wanted to meet with him to breath his ass then show him the paper but I felt that would be too evil.

I was pretty mad that he came back after leaving but I can't hold good for nothing people.

25 yo european with 3 years of NodeJS backend xp.
Had been earning 2k/month this entire time.
I feel so lucky, that I dont think I am worth any more until I'm a senior pro.
How timid is my brain? What do other kids earn in the EU nowadays?

(Note for dfox: I love this place and i would really like to have all my posts/ ++s/comment data available to me . Current system does not allow me to see posts more than some months old. is it possible? I hope devrant is not deleting old posts)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stream of thoughts coming through

#justAthought 1
If you feel you are mentally unique (Not in retarded or disable kind of way, but having a different view of thinking, a different perspective, not-a-sheep-in-a-herd kind of mentality) , then you PROBABLY ARE, its just those who are not that mentally unique will find your thoughts absurd until you are proving yourself to be a successful person.
Even though you feel something is wrong in a current situation, and you can put some valid points in your argument, there would always come a point where your personal failures or average-ness would overshadow your valid points (kind of personal experience than a thought :/ )

#justAThought2 (Disclaimer: i am no fraud guru or priest, just a 9-5 curious , sleepless student-cum-professional)
I sometimes feel that the only good, meaningful goal that i could think for my life would be : to earn enough money to set up a small experiment environment , where I would initially take, around 25-30 people for 1-2 years. It would be an environment with totally $0 value for materialistic things like money, jewels, property,etc . Everyone is living free of tensions of basic services like food, clothes, house, taxes, work to live etc. Together we all will be collectively doing just these things: Making ourselves healthy , and more kind, spiritual towards other humans, animals, plants and environment, and thinking of ways to eradicate the value of "value".
We have already reached a point where we are generating even more harmful Technology than useful tech, how about changing the way of thinking and taking a small pause? I know a lot of people would be reluctant to do any work in such environment, but i believe one day or another, every one of these people has to come back to their usual jobs , but this time, not for money but for humanity.
Do you think this kind of environment is possible for the whole world? Because today most, if not all thinks that money is the ultimate goal. can we change that, and would that change be good?

#justAthought 3 (Disclaimer : 1. Its my mom's thought/whatsapp status , i kind off liked it. she is super religious by the way ^_^! | 2. more relevant for india/multi religious countries 3. for Indians: kind of thought from movie "oh my god")

There should be a regional law during so called "acts of god"(floods, earthquakes, other natural disasters) under which the donations given to religious places(temples, churches, mosques,etc) would be used to provide relief to affected areas.

2 years ago(jan-oct 2020) i was a college student giving his final exams. some of my personal stats were:

- current knowledge of Android Framework and associated stuff(android, java, kotlin, making and deploying apps , best practises, etc) : 30%
- current knowledge of Web tech (html/css/js/php): 5%
- current knowledge of creating backend/frontend apps:2%
also
- free time: somewhat
- Personal health: barely caring about

====

Same year i got my first job (oct 2020) which i switched in next year (oct 2021). before joining the next(my current) job, my personal stats were:
- current knowledge of Java : 30%
- current knowledge of Kotlin : 70-80%
- current knowledge of Android and Android Stuff(the framework, making production ready apps, deploying, best practises , etc) : 70-80%
- current knowledge of Web tech (html/css/js/php): 3-5%
- current knowledge of creating backend/frontend apps:1%
also:
- Free time: lol, i was working at 1 am too
- Personal health: even lesser caring about, body fats and thick muscles at various places

====

it will be almost a year of me working for these guys in November and this has been an interesting year so far. the stats are:
- current knowledge of Java : 35%
- current knowledge of Kotlin : 20-30%
- current knowledge of Android and Android Stuff(the framework, making production ready apps, deploying, best practises , etc) : 20-30%
- current knowledge of Web tech (html/css/js/node/react): 20-25%
- current knowledge of new stuff* (cordova,unity,flutter, react native, ios) : 5-10%
- current knowledge of creating backend/frontend apps:10-15%
also:
- Free time: a good amount of free time, like in addition to weekends and festivals, i take 2-4 leaves every month
- Personal health: improving a lot. loosing weight, gaining muscles, getting better stamina at running and other activities

====

So i am currently at a weird place. As from my stats, you can see that previously i was in a android heavy role in a company that put a lot of pressure, but i was able to become a better sellable dev through it.

My current role is also of an android dev here, but we maintain b2b products and i am sometimes asked to fix bugs in hybrid apps like unity, react native and cordova, so gained a few knowledge there too. and since i have a lot of free time in my hand, i explored a bit of web technologies too (apart from enjoying a relaxing life and focusing on personal health)

However my main concern is that am becoming a less sellable Dev. The lack of exposure/will to work on android tech has made me outdated from a framework that was once my stronghold. remember that i joined my first company purely because of my passion and knowledge of android os.

When i got offer from this company, i also had another, $5000/year lesser offer in hand. both of these offers were very generous , but i went with the greed and took the offer from this company despite knowing that they are looking for someone who will act as a developer-maintainer kind of person, while the other company giving lesser pay had a need of a pure android engineer.

So i am currently 24. should i keep on doing this relaxing but slowly killing job, or go into a painful, pressurizing but probably making me a better "android" engineer job ?

Any android devs freelancing/working anywhere in Europe?can you post your hourly rate (before tax), years of experience and country where you worked on? I have 2 years exp as android dev and worked in france remotely for 20eur/hour but that was 2 year ago. Wondering how much I should charge nowadays if I have 3 years experience? I guess i should go for atleast 25 euro/hour?

How old do you have to be to rent a car in the US?
I first flew alone to San Francisco when I was 20 years old. I wanted to rent a car to see more interesting places in San Francisco. As it turns out, rental car age requirements are important when you're on the road. However, people under 25 can rent some vehicle classes for an additional daily fee.

Hussain Al Nowais

Address: P.O Box: 54457, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Phone: +971 2 6918000

Hussain Al Nowais is a global industrialist and business strategist with over 25 years’ experience in business management, banking, project finance, investment, industrial and real estate sectors. Mr. Al Nowais has a proven track-record in the development of industrial, infrastructure, and energy projects; and in the development and acquisition of businesses in the MENA region.Hussain Al Nowais is the founding member and Chairman of Al Nowais Investments. Currently, Mr. Al Nowais is spearheading the firm’s strategy of global expansion and strategic project development in energy, industry, infrastructure, oil & gas, healthcare, information technology, hospitality and real-estate.

#International Business, Hussain al Nowais #Hussain al Nowais

Noneof them needs a vaccine!

HTML is 28 Years old
Javascript is 26 Years old
CSS is 25 Years old

i am so fucking conflicted right now. seeing my fiture getting ruined in front of my present eyes. Life always gives me a chance to jump out of a ship that's about to fucking blow , i took it the first time, but this time i missed it for bravery ( and stupidity), and now am sinking alongside this fucking ship

my first job was amazing. decent work, sometimes a lot and sometimes too less. i would learn new things ,interact with people, handle a lot of fuckups . at one point i felt like looking for another opportunity , got one giving 50% hike , so i jumped the ship and sent a resignation letter. the noitice peripd was less, so i enjoyed my days applying to other ships. got even a better offer with 100% hike, so from one boat to another to now a literal cruise.

later i got to know that my original company got bankrupt and fired 85% staff. the next month the company that gave me the first offer layed off 30% staff.

now the waters are tough and my cruise is also getting impacted. but instead of firing, they are asking us to come to the office permanently. their office is in a fucked up place: you need 8$ just to breath the fucking air there. its the city of blood and money. and you will be giving away both things there.

my brain got split into 2 parts after this announcement: my stupid self was still considering this while my sensible self started applying for jobs. my stupid self was thinking that this is a great opportunity to leave my fucking nest of a home , where i am liv8ng woth my parents for last 25 years, and learn to live alone. clean utensils, cook food , wash clothes... i wanted to live the life the harsh way.

but life still took a pity on the fool that j am and gave me an opportunity. an opportunity to work with a big brand who hasn't done any layoffs in their 40+ yrs of existence (but also known for giving shit increments)
the offer was just a 40% hike but it was near my home. i could be in office in 1 hr in less than a dollar a day and still earn more than what am earning now.

plus my notice period is now 60 days , so who knows what other offer i could have got in those 60 days ( when i would keep my profile with a big green "immediately available to hire" circle on me.

however this time i didn't jump the boat. i asked them for a bigger raisez they declined and my stupid self was more than happy.
now the company has started to send mails regarding relocation and yepp the cruise is sinking , atleast for me. if i was savingsx in this company, my savings would become x/8 if i go to that city. in the new offer it would have at worst remained x.

and that's not even half of what's bothering me. i had accepted the money loss in exchange of what that city and my company had to offer : a chance to experience WFO, a chance to live life like a mature man and not a kid in his mom's house ,and a life full of hurdles and strangers.

however i always like to keep an emergency fallback mechanism on me , for if things don't work out. I don't wanna go depressed and cut my wrists there, I don't want people to hurt me so much that I can't recover. i want to run away from that wreched city the moment i start to loose the battles there and the city starts taking over me.

but what the holy fuck? my company's notice period is 60 days, and my rented room's security deposit is 6 fucking months? i will be giving 6 months of deposit + 1 month of brokerage + 1month of rent on the first day i put my steps on that wretched land after travelling in a 100 dollar flight! where am i supposed to get this much money?!
and okay, somehow i manage this. say i did an 11 months agreement, paid the fucking 8 months of rent at one go and simply started living a shitty life there. in month 2 i break down and wanted to implement my escape mechanism. it would go like this : i will suck up and try to live for rent free for next 6 months. but wait, THAT'S NOT FUCKING ALLOWED!! iam supposed to get my security AFTER 11+1 MONTHS!! why not freaking adjust it in my rent?

I can't think straight . 6 months of security deposit has blown my brain. i am regretting anything and everything. I can't think of my roommates situation, home safety, room location, whatever the fucks we think while looking for a room . all i can think is ...WHY SO MUCH MONEY NEEDS TO GO AT ONCE!?

FUCK