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I’m surrounded by idiots.
I’m continually reminded of that fact, but today I found something that really drives that point home.
Gather ‘round, everybody, it’s story time!
While working on a slow query ticket, I perused the code, finding several causes, and decided to run git blame on the files to see what dummy authored the mental diarrhea currently befouling my screen. As it turns out, the entire feature was written by mister legendary Apple golden boy “Finder’s Keeper” dev himself.
To give you the full scope of this mess, let me start at the frontend and work my way backward.
He wrote a javascript method that tracks whatever row was/is under the mouse in a table and dynamically removes/adds a “.row_selected” class on it. At least the js uses events (jQuery…) instead of a `setTimeout()` so it could be worse. But still, has he never heard of :hover? The function literally does nothing else, and the `selectedRow` var he stores the element reference in isn’t used elsewhere.
This function allows the user to better see the rows in the API Calls table, for which there is a also search feature — the very thing I’m tasked with fixing.
It’s worth noting that above the search feature are two inputs for a date range, with some helpful links like “last week” and “last month” … and “All”. It’s also worth noting that this table is for displaying search results of all the API requests and their responses for a given merchant… this table is enormous.
This search field for this table queries the backend on every character the user types. There’s no debouncing, no submit event, etc., so it triggers on every keystroke. The actual request runs through a layer of abstraction to parse out and log the user-entered date range, figure out where the request came from, and to map out some column names or add additional ones. It also does some hard to follow (and amazingly not injectable) orm condition building. It’s a mess of functional ugly.
The important columns in the table this query ultimately searches are not indexed, despite it only looking for “create_order” records — the largest of twenty-some types in the table. It also uses partial text matching (again: on. every. single. keystroke.) across two varchar(255)s that only ever hold <16 chars — and of which users only ever care about one at a time. After all of this, it filters the results based on some uncommented regexes, and worst of all: instead of fetching only one page’s worth of results like you’d expect, it fetches all of them at once and then discards what isn’t included by the paginator. So not only is this a guaranteed full table scan with partial text matching for every query (over millions to hundreds of millions of records), it’s that same full table scan for every single keystroke while the user types, and all but 25 records (user-selectable) get discarded — and then requeried when the user looks at the next page of results.
What the bloody fucking hell? I’d swear this idiot is an intern, but his code does (amazingly) actually work.
No wonder this search field nearly crashed one of the servers when someone actually tried using it.
Asdfajsdfk.rant fucking moron even when taking down the server hey bob pass me all the paperclips mysql murder terrible code slow query idiot can do no wrong but he’s the golden boy idiots repeatedly murdered mysql in the face21 -
Why I love Salesforce 👀
- Run a test method
- failure: no field found
- checks test, queries field
- checks field security (access permissions) visible to user
- runs test again
- failure: no field found
- adds debug log of queried field
- runs test again
- succes
Thanks, thanks for fucking with me today 🥲6 -
!rant
tl;dr at the bottom
This might not be a popular opinion, so please, if you throw things at me, limit yourselves only to tomatoes and other soft projectiles. Thank you!
So this being said, i must say ut: i actually like how facebook use this data overall. While i am completly against privacy violation, that data is given up by ourselves with a choice to do it, so we can't hand them for it. However, i think the fact that we got ads for what our interests are is quite awesome! For example because of this i found webcomics and artists i curently hold really high in my praises and this might not have been the case if FB had another business model.
This being said, i just think people should focus on problems more important than how social media manages to earn some bucks, and while is our choise to be part of that we can't simply call ourselves "products". History holds many stories about civilization that gaved no choice if you wanted or not to be a product so we could be at least glad it is not the case anymore.
Anyway, if you read all the way down here, tnaks for your time!
TL;DR: Facebook is no holy church but it actually not so bad, we can find things we get to love or actually needed in the first place in their targeted adds system. At least we have a choice to be part of this or not!11 -
Google Business Profile is probably not meant for developers. "Help customers find your business by industry." Dev: set primary category to "Web Developer". Google: We didn't understand your category. Please select from the suggestions that appear when typing. Dev, typing: "Web D"... Google suggests: "Web Designer, Web hosting company, Well drilling contractor, Waterbed shop". Okay, Google, nevermind.
Google: "Update your customers. Keep your customers up to date about your business!" Dev clicks "add update", adds info about that customer should use different phone number temporarily due to broken phone. Google: "Your post has been removed from your Business Profile on Google because it violates one or more of our post content policies." Okay Google, at least you let me add an additional phone number on my profile without requiring to verify my primary number that I currently have not access to. Anything else?
Google: "Claim your €400 free advertising credit" Dev: clicks "claim credit" Google: "To access this Google Ads account, enable 2-Step Verification in your Google account." How to combine idiocy and deceptive patterns in a single UI: Google knows! Apart from their search engine, their unique business advantage is simple that they suck a little less than Apple and Microsoft. Sorry, not a day to be proud of our profession, once again.5 -
Very senior colleague: *hits a problem that is a minor inconvenience*
VSC: "I have to restart this task, the two weeks I put into it must be deleted!"
Me: "You forgot to do *this* here, add this 1 line and it's ok."
VSC: *An hour of rumbling about the codebase*
VSC: *adds my fix*
VSC: "Ok, it works now, you can review again"
Me: *cries inside*2 -
>Adds new feature
>New feature works fine on dev
>New feature works fine on staging
>New feature doesn't work on live
>You can't easily figure out what is wrong because you need to wait an hour for it each time :|5 -
Intern - adds commit message like "added two files"
Me - Hey Intern, I've added commit lint, please don't disable precommit hooks.. so let's follow standard commit message format
Intern - commits like "feat(app): fix changes"
*later*
Me - Hey Intern, please commit with short meaningful messages like what actual changes were made
Intern - commits like feat(app): whole long story of what he couldn't do and some changes..
Me - 🤦5 -
Today I learnt about Vigil, the programming language that deletes offending functions from your source code, which contain bugs. Vigil adds 'supreme moral vigilance' and 'punishes' code that fails to meet specific programmatic specifications.
https://github.com/munificent/vigil1 -
A customer specialising in identification and security solutions called today, claiming "they" found malware on their website. Then they provided a weird link to some shady malware scanner, and the "malware" turned to be a <noscript> tag which adds ?noscript to the page url, so we can serve no-JS optimised content. As a bonus, the scanner only detected it on two URLs, even though every single page on the site contains that same line of code.
Joke's on them, have fun paying for priority support outside of the business hours for nothing.2 -
One of our team mates is based out of the US office. We are physically distant, but after our manager's departure, we lost touch because our scope of work was different.
Me and two other team members work closely with each other from India and dude is alone, working out of the US.
Super smart, very polite, and a fun person to work and be with. Even when our interaction was less, I learnt so much from him.
Since, I am facing some challenges, I decide to use it as an excuse to connect with him for a coffee and also seek his guidance because he is senior to me.
Some things he mentioned,
1. Our new line manager asks him to do things on spot with no heads up. He has to drop everything and complete the ask.
2. Often times, poor guy, is asked to join meetings on immediate basis. Even while he is having his lunch.
3. He never got support from our new manager. Infact, based on the conversation, I realised that the manager supports me more.
4. He is facing same, if not more, issues with tech. And he didn't have any guidance on how to handle the issue.
5. A lot of times he is facing process and system problems which he isn't able to solve because the org culture is that of working in Silos. And he doesn't get any support from manager.
6. Tech has clearly pushed him back when he asked for help and other teams never respond to him.
My man was still smiling bright and was looking things from a positive lens that all of this is interesting and adds to the learning experience which will be valued when we decide to move on from this job.
These are the people who inspire me. Smiling in the time of adversity.
Even when he had his own challenges, he was ready to guide me and hear my frustrations. I offered him help and will make sure to stay connected so he doesn't feel left out and alone in the team only because we don't work together in physical space.
One thing I have learned over time is, while I am facing problems, someone out there is facing more and difficult problems then me. I always tend to blow up my problems out of proportion then what they actually are.
I am the dumbest person that I know and mark my words, I'll die because of my empathy. I wish I could help my team mate in any possible way.2 -
[LANGUAGE DESIGN]
What are some interesting / unique approaches you've seen to representing generics in syntax? The only one I know is the Java/C#/Typescript way of using a separate set of parentheses and either specifying all of them or none, and I've already experimented a bit with passing them as regular arguments which works great with autocurry but every syntax option for inference adds visual noise.9 -
I’m goin nuts here. I’m trying to build a website and everytime i think i’m finished the designer adds a little change or an extra page. Meanwhile projectmanager is asking if we can finish asap. Fuuuuuckofffff6
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One day, the Director of Web Ops (marketing role) submitted a ticket to update the list of product categories on the website’s navigation. Sounds like a simple ticket right? Just some html edits. Nope. Every day for three days, she changes her mind and adds new changes. What should have taken me 10 minutes stretched out to three days. She held up code review of my ticket because she kept making changes.
She had plenty of time to sort out what she wanted. That ticket had been sitting in the To Do pile for two days before I touched it.
She was being an asshole because she knew she could get away with it and I had no recourse: my direct manager was on vacation, the entire dev team was going to be laid off anyway so no one was going to defend us on “trivial” matters, and we were going to enter code freeze soon so she’d just argue it was critical business changes for our critical revenue season.
I suspect she was also just not good at her job. I never met her in person because she was hired during the 2020 pandemic and we were all working remotely. I did see her make a five minute presentation during an all staff meeting…and she didn’t come off too well. Her voice was trembling during her turn to speak…like she was not confident or not prepared.
She knew she was causing chaos but she put on this act of not knowing. She was definitely trained on our dev team’s practices for tickets and deployments. She knows about code review, beta testing, and user acceptance testing that has to happen before a ticket can be deployed.
It happened to be before Thanksgiving weekend 2020. Our deploy was going to happen on Tuesday instead of Thursday because Thursday was a holiday (no one would be working) and Wednesday was a half day.
Tuesday afternoon at 1pm, she messages me and the dev in charge of deploy about more changes! My time is already occupied because our Product Manager went on vacation and dumped a large amount of user acceptance testing on me. I scream at my computer at that point because I realize I’m in the ninth circle of hell. I tell the other dev in a separate message that Web Ops has been making changes EVERY DAY since I picked up that ticket.
Other dev tells her that we have to check with the C-suite executive for engineering because we’re not allowed to make changes to tickets so close to the deploy. This is actually the policy. He also tries to give Web Ops the benefit of the doubt because we’re not deploying on our usual day. He had to do that to so she didn’t feel bad (and so she doesn’t complain about us not working towards the company’s goals).
Other dev had to do the code changes because I was otherwise occupied with user acceptance testing. If I were him, I’d be pissed that I was distracted from concentrating on the deploy so close to the holiday.
Director of Web Ops was actually capable of even more chaos. I ranted about it before. For that dramatization and if you want to go down the rabbit hole, see: https://devrant.com/rants/4811518/...4 -
some call
- yo bro do you have some time ?
- quick cause I'm taking a dump
- I think I have been hacked, got black screen kernel panick, linux freeze seldomly I have to reboot, no internet connexion
- save your stuff and reinstall linux
- I don't have enough stockage to backup
- Then buy one and save, probably either OS is fcked up or you have some hdd problems
Time that it will take: ~30min to reinstall whole shit
Peace duration: ~2years
Later on the same day
aunt
- I can't log into windows
- Did you change the password ?
- Yes but it does not work anymore
* looking at shit
* logs successfully. Reason: interface changed after automatic update.
* wait.
* wait some more so fucking windows fucking starts
* Desktop is ugly as fck.
* Some stupid settings messed up (like high contrast set, black theme or so)
aunt (the same)
- I can't log into my (other) laptop either
* logs
* wait more more more
Guess what: automatic updaaaates. Freezes 100%cpu
* Being a very experienced user: wait before reboot because this suckass os will probably fail to boot otherwise
* Blackscreen with a percentage: Installing updates...
* reboots
* Blackscreen with a percentage: Installing updates continuing...
* finally boot (feels like a miracle windows succeeds lol)
* still slow
aunt now sleeps
* look at running process and install programs
* sees shits like camera recognition (vendor installed), candycrush
* occasionnaly get adds
time lost: 2h
peace duration: ~3month
FFS I am a dev, not a fucking trash lover
It is already pain to fix someone os, but windows is the cream of cream
It brings no ease of use for novice user
It is so insanely slow
It has stupid settings set up by default!!!!!!!! Who FFS wants candycrush and ads
The maj are so fcking hazardous. It is 2022 pretty much the same as 15y back then. Updates take fucking eternity. And needs reboot. and are not even finished!!!
I swear I am gonna stretch my ass and install linux and any fckin other toolsuite needed so they can use Micro$$ word, which is the only fucking usecase they need windows for in the first case anyway
I SO wish this OS would die
I mean, even more than safari8 -
stateofjs survey reminds me of all that's wrong with JavaScript: too many frameworks each of which has to reinvent the wheel and depend on too many node_modules child dependencies, most don't support TypeScript properly (ever tried to convert a node-express-mongoose tutorial to TS?), there is still no proper type support in JS core language, and browser features get added in form of overly complex APIs instead of handy DOM methods.
Instead the community gets excited about micro-improvements like optional chaining which has been possible in other languages for decades.
At least there is something like TypeScript, but I don't like its syntax either, it's overly verbose and adds too much "Java feeling" to JavaScript in my opinion.
Also there is too much JS in web development, as CSS and HTML seem to have missed adding enough native functionality that works reliable cross browser to build websites in a descriptive way without misunderstanding web dev for application engineering.
After all, I'd rather have frontend PHP than more JavaScript everywhere.
Anyway, at least the survey has the option to choose how satisfied or unsatisfied people are about certain aspects of JS. But I already suspect that most respondents will seem to be very happy and eager to learn the latest hype train frameworks or stick to their beloved React in the future.5 -
So apparently jupyter / ipython adds the current workdir to kernel library path, and it crashes if you happen to have a file named something like "tokenize.py" in your workdir because it gets prioritised over ipython's builtin module with the same name. What a great design for something which is specifically made to run isolated chunks of code, that it can't even properly isolate itself from the workdir.1
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So I got accepted into a Master’s programme for CS - which is kinda cool but hardly unexpected. Guess I should feel elated about it, but honestly, I don’t know how I feel about it. Really it only adds additional complexity into the next few years of my life: I feel a little gutted that I have to switch over to my plan B regarding the sporting side of my life (there’s no way I can work full-time, study AND train for IM simultaneously - there’s just not enough hours in a day…), but that’s okay. At least I had a plan B knowing I might get accepted to these studies now.
What it really complicates is decisionmaking regarding this: https://devrant.com/rants/5571843/...
At my current workplace, I have officially 2hrs each week + an additional full work day a month to use for studying during work hours (in reality I tend to use more than that because I can, whenever there are no pressing matters need doing), and my gut is saying that’s unlikely to be possible in a consultancy position in a startup. Maybe it is, I don’t know. Need to ask.
In life, very few things are ever straightforward, aren’t they? But hey, at least I get to do my Master’s and I get to do it in a quality university! -
I think I have a slight problem in my API.
Snapshot 1 : API entrey point
Snapshot 2 : on "return" statement from API.
No biggies, 8 GB of RAM used.
The API ? Adds 1 ligne in database.
That's gonna be a fun debug8 -
Me, two days ago: Man, I should try to drink less caffeine, I felt pretty shit when I didn’t had coffee… :(
Me, at 2am: *adds 6 tubs of gfuel to cart*
*proceeds to checkout*4