*Cuts 7 slow lines of code down to 1 fast line of code*
*Looks around to see if coworkers can see me*
*Pumps both fists in the air*

So... Just overheard a conversation at an Apple store...

tl;dr;

The customer gets furious for not getting to buy a mac pro for the price he wants and it doesn't even include the monitor there.....

C - customer, S - Sales person.

C: Hey, I've heard that apple released new home computers. May I get one?
S: Hello, they are not out yet.
C: WHAT?! How can they not be out yet? They released it like a week ago.
S: Well, they announced it, not officially released it for sale.
C: Ah, whatever. Can I pre-order it now?
S: Sure, we'll need your details and a deposit.
C: What? A deposit for what? That $1000 machine?
S: Sir, do you know the prices?
C: Of course. They have released a new machine and it will cost like previous ones - from $1000.
S: Then you might be talking about Macbook Air...
C: *Interrupts* No, I'm talking about the desktop computer, the whole box.
S: Ok... It starts at ~$6000.
C: WHAT?! It can't be... Oh well, I'll buy it. I hope it's the fully-specked one. Oh and does it come with a monitor?
S: No sir. It's the base model and it has no monitors.
C: WHAT?! How can this be?
S: You see, these are devices created for professionals. They are not for home users since our iMac line is....
C: *Interrupts again* Are you saying I'm not a professional?
S: I'm sorry but by the questions and lack of information - it seems to be true - you are not a professional.
C: FUCK YOU, I'm going to another store and they will sell it for me for $1000. What a piece of crap is this.
*Customer leaves furiously*
S: *to another S* - What is wrong with that dude? Is he high or what?
S2: *shrugs* and tells that it's the 5th time someone came to order that pc and was scared by the price.

---

So yeah... It's fun to see how idiots think that anything apple releases is for them... Once again I was made sure that apple fans are brainless fucks that will buy anything it produces and if that is not in the right price - they'll get furious.

ps. I own apple product, mac pro 2015. Would never buy a newer one NOR an iphone. I don't think that anyone is dumb just for buying it - people buy whatever fits their needs and that's ok but... More than we would like to admit - people buy it because it's an apple product....

So, I'm using a new MacBook Air (running Sierra), and while I'm still getting used to it (especially the different Sublime hotkeys), overall it really is quite wonderful. I particularly love the magic touchpad and ease of scrolling/swiping between desktops.

However, I ran into an issue this morning that gave me pause: apparent file caching.

My webpack setup auto-compiles my project when files change, and I noticed something was causing errors -- not really surprising since I was in the middle of fixing the project last night. However, the error it displayed wasn't something I was expecting, and referenced a line I was positive I had removed several hours before calling it a night. Whatever, I was probably mistaken, so I went to remove it.

... It wasn't there.

I double checked that I was looking at the right file. Yep, src/styles/header.scss -- that's the correct file. Figuring webpack was acting up, I killed and restarted it.

Same error.

So whatever, maybe Sublime cached it. Rather unexpected, but possible, and I am on a mac now... so maybe. So, I closed the file and reopened it. The line wasn't there. I did this twice more. It STILL wasn't there. Maybe I'm going crazy...? I checked the file with cat. The line was there. I checked with vim. The line was still there.

OKAY. I've seen a lot of people with beef with Sublime, and I often defended it. but maybe they're actually right. maybe Sublime really isn't the way to go. :( So, I killed and reopened Sublime, and I checked the file again.

The line STILL ISN'T THERE.

Maybe I'm going crazy? I double, triple, quadruple checked the path. all correct.
Alright; let's try again and make sure I do it properly. I closed everything I had open in sublime (two projects), and quit. I reopened Sublime, navigated to the correct path, and reopened the file...

The offending line STILL wasn't there.

I'm angry at this point and just mash the keyboard. I save the resulting garbage, and cat the file again. No visible changes.

KAJSFLK STUPID PIECE OF <redacted>

okay, whatever. Reboots fix everything, right? So I reboot, and keep the option to re-open everything again ticked.

The terminal comes back up, along with half(?) my browsers, but Sublime doesn't. grrrrrrr.

so I cat the damn thing.

GUESS WHAT.
THE GARBAGE IS THERE.

Sublime was doing its job. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE FAILED.

(Oh Sublime, why did I ever question you? 💚)

... but seriously, what the fuck could have caused that? Was the OS caching the file for some programs, but not others? Now I'm questioning the macbook...

(Best read while listening to AEnima by Tool, loudly)

Dear Current Workplace,

Fuck you, for the reasons enumerated below.

Fuck your enterprise grey blue offices, the stifling warm air of a hundreds of bodies and sub par "development laptops".

Fuck your shitty carbonated water machines which were a cost saving measure over decent drinkable water.

Fuck your fake "flexi time", "you can do home office whenever you want" bullshit. You're still inviting me to mandatory meetings at 09:00 regularly.

Fuck your shitty, in house, third part IT provider sister company. They're the worst of all worlds. If it was in company, we'd get to give out to them, if it was an external company we'd fire them. And yes, when I quit I will quote the dumpster fire that is our corporate VPN as a major factor.

Fuck your cheery, bland, enterprise communication. Words coming under the corporate letterhead seem to lose all association with meaning. Agile, communication, open are things you write and profess to respect, but it seems your totally lack understanding of their meaning.

Fuck your client driven development. Sometime you actually have to fix the foundations before you can actually add new features. And fuck you management who keep on asking "why are there so many bugs and why is it always taking longer to deliver new releases". Because of you, you fucknuts, Because you can't say "NO" to the customer. Because you never listen to your own experienced developers.

Fuck your bullshit "code quality is important to us" line. If it's so important, then let us fix the heap of shit you're selling so that it works like a quasi functional program.

Fuck you development environment which has 250 projects in a single VS solution. Which takes 5mins plus to compile on a quad core i7 with 32 gb of ram.

Fuck this bullshit ball of mud "architecture". I spend most of my time trying to figure out where the logic should go and the rest of the time writing converters between different components. All because 7 years ago some idiot "architect" made a decision that they didn't have to live with.

Actually, fuck that guy in particular. Yeah, that guy who was the responsible architect for the project for 4 years and not once opened the solution to look a the code.

Fuck the manual testing of every business process. Manual setup of the entities takes 10mins plus and then when you run, boom either no message or some bullshit error code.

Fuck the antiquated technology choices which cause loads of bugs and slow down development. Fuck you for forcing me to do manual tests of another developers code at 20:00 on a Friday night because we can't get our act together to do this automatically.

Fuck you for making sure it's very clear I'm never going to be anything but a code monkey in this structure. Managers are brought in from outside.

Fuck you for being surprised that it's hard to hire competent developers in this second rate, overpriced town. It's hard to hire anywhere but this bland shithole would have anyone with half a clue running away at top speed.

Fuck you for valuing long hours and loyalty over actual performance. That one guy who everyone hated and was totally incompetent couldn't even get himself fired. He had to quit.

Fuck you for your mediocrity.

Fuck you for being the only employer for my skill-set in the region; paying just well enough that changing jobs locally doesn't make sense, but badly enough that it's difficult to move.

Fuck you for being the stable "safe" option so that any move is "risky".

Fuck your mediocrity.

Fuck you for being something I think about when I'm not at work. Not only is it shit from 9 to 5 you manage to suck the joy out of everything else in my life as well?

Fuck you for making me feel like a worse developer every day I work here. Fuck you for making every day feel like a personal and professional failure. Fuck you for making me seriously leave a career I love for something, anything else.

Fuck you for making the most I can hope for when I get up in the morning is to just make it until the night.

"Lockheed Martin Will Replace F-35's Faulty Computer System With Cloud-Based Programs"

WAT

So apparently those jets have such a fucked software that the recommended workaround is to use them offline and only reconnect them once every 30 days to keep the system running. It's so bad that two air force bases went back to an older system and the Israeli air force also replaced it for their own F-35 jets.

And somehow those stable geniuses think the correct solution is to make everything more network-dependent and apparently already put Kubernetes on a different line of jets.

I just can't stop laughing.

Story when I worked as a 1st line technician:

Customer: "Yes hello, I'm trying to install Windows as instructed, but the installer is not starting"

Me: "Ok, have you tried pressing [button] at the bootscreen?"

C: "Yes, over and over, still nothing happens"

This was actually one of my first calls, so my co-worker stepped in to help while I listened.

Co-worker: "okay, so when you rebooted the computer, press [button] and tell me what happens"

C: "....okay, I think it's starting"

Co-w: "Great! I'll just wait until it's running"

A minute goes by, installer seems to be running, but then we hear a loud BEEP. It's so loud another coworker hears it from his desk, through our headsets. A moment goes by, and it BEEPS again. Then the sound begins again, but doesn't stop. It's like an air horn at full blow. We ask the customer what he's doing, but he cannot hear us over the constant beep. We're brainstorming what it could be, when he finally says something:

"CAN.. LET.. OF.."

Co-w: "WHAT???"

"CAN I LET GO OF THE BUTTON??"

-----
I think we laughed the whole day

In the before time (late 90s) I worked for a company that worked for a company that worked for a company that provided software engineering services for NRC regulatory compliance. Fallout radius simulation, security access and checks, operational reporting, that sort of thing. Given that, I spent a lot of time around/at/in nuclear reactors.

One day, we're working on this system that uses RFID (before it was cool) and various physical sensors to do a few things, one of which is to determine if people exist at the intersection of hazardous particles, gasses, etc.

This also happens to be a system which, at that moment, is reporting hazardous conditions and people at the top of the outer containment shell. We know this is probably a red herring or faulty sensor because no one is present in the system vs the access logs and cameras, but we have to check anyways. A few building engineers climb the ladders up there and find that nothing is really visibly wrong and we have an all clear. They did not however know how to check the sensor.

Enter me, the only person from our firm on site that day. So in the next few minutes I am also in a monkey suit (bc protocol), climbing a 150 foot ladder that leads to another 150 foot ladder, all 110lbs of me + a 30lb diag "laptop" slung over my shoulder by a strap. At the top, I walk about a quarter of the way out, open the casing on the sensor module and find that someone had hooked up the line feed, but not the activity connection wire so it was sending a false signal. I open the diag laptop, plug it into the unit, write a simple firmware extension to intermediate the condition, flash, reload. I verify the error has cleared and an appropriate message was sent to the diagnostic system over the radio, run through an error test cycle, radio again, close it up. Once I returned to the ground, sweating my ass off, I also send a not at all passive aggressive email letting the boss know that the next shift will need to push the update to the other 600 air-gapped, unidirectional sensors around the facility.

Fuck air line companies.

They always lose your shit.

Like Ensiferum here. Airlines lost their shit so they they have to play acoustic.

Acoustic most pit motherfuckers. That's right. Acoustic. Most pit.

Fucking metal! 🤘

Nothing like good old Adobe flash on Windows 2000 to keep air lines on time... Oh wait, what? Their computer system crashed again? Oh well, never mind :(

Why are OSS maintainers so fucking incompetent and cocky? A documentation clearly says to use "use_parent_assets: true" when creating a child theme. Yet not a single fucking line of code actually checks that value. The fix is literary a single if(value) assets = deepMerge(parentAssets, assets). But because some contributor somewhere didn't write that line to the maintainer's liking, it's been hanging in the air for months.

Take your head of of your ass, there's thousands of people paying for support & addons for your product, and you can't add one fucking line to fix a rather critical bug.

Posting this rant on behalf of a friend.

I cannot install Mac OS-X Sierra on my top-of-the-line desktop MacPro because Apple has decided they want me to buy a new one, therefore I cannot install iTunes 12.5, therefore I cannot sync my iPhone 6s or iPad Air 2 to my music, backups or apps. $&@# you too, Apple! 😡

Ok being a developer and a technical assistant at the same time
Yesterday was out in the field we where fixing network at one insurance company and extending telephone line to of the offices....man what a labor intense job....
we had to drill a whole on one of those metal trunking.... man those fuckers are hard as fuck

having had spent the whole fucking day out the office i get a call saying 1 of the laptops at the office didnt have OS installed and one had a defected screen and they where in stock
and Im supposed to be checking these laptops when they come before going into stock

and Im like WTF!!??? confused and shit + being tired
got back to the office and fuck it was a shit show
the whole technical department got fucked over this and Up to now I have no fucking idea how those laptops got into stock and we missed it
My only answer is they never came for checking and if you try to air that out they will say you are try to blame some1 else for the fuck up and FUCK it

We had to write reports this morning me had 2 from the tender issue
fuck this
fuck this
fuck this fucking shity place

I need some advice to avoid stressing myself out. I'm in a situation where I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place at work, and it feels like there's no one to turn to. This is a long one, because context is needed.

I've been working on a fairly big CMS based website for a few years that's turned into multiple solutions that I'm more or less responsible for. During that time I've been optimizing the code base with proper design patterns, setting up continuous delivery, updating packaging etc. because I care that the next developer can quickly grasp what's going on, should they take over the project in the future. During that time I've been accused of over-engineering, which to an extent is true. It's something I've gotten a lot better at over the years, but I'm only human and error prone, so sometimes that's just how it is.

Anyways, after a few years of working on the project I get a new colleague that's going to help me on my CMS projects. It doesn't take long for me to realize that their code style is a mess. Inconsistent line breaks and naming conventions, really god awful anti-pattern code. There's no attempt to mimic the code style I've been using throughout the project, it's just complete chaos. The code "works", although it's not something I'd call production code. But they're new and learning, so I just sort of deal with it and remain patient, pointing out where they could optimize their code, teaching them basic object oriented design patterns like... just using freaking objects once in a while.

Fast forward a few years until now. They've learned nothing. Every time I read their code it's the same mess it's always been.

Concrete example: a part of the project uses Vue to render some common components in the frontend. Looking through the code, there is currently *no* attempt to include any air between functions, or any part of the code for that matter. Everything gets transpiled and minified so there's absolutely NO REASON to "compress" the code like this. Furthermore, they have often directly manipulated the DOM from the JavaScript code rather than rendering the component based on the model state. Completely rendering the use of Vue pointless.

And this is just the frontend part of the code. The backend is often orders of magnitude worse. They will - COMPLETELY RANDOMLY - sometimes leave in 5-10 lines of whitespace for no discernable reason. It frustrates me to no end. I keep asking them to verify their staged changes before every commit, but nothing changes. They also blatantly copy/paste bits of my code to other components without thinking about what they do. So I'll have this random bit of backend code that injects 3-5 dependencies there's simply no reason for and aren't being used. When I ask why they put them there I simply get a “I don't know, I just did it like you did it”.

I simply cannot trust this person to write production code, and the more I let them take over things, the more the technical debt we accumulate. I have talked to my boss about this, and things have improved, but nowhere near where I need it to be.

On the other side of this are my project manager and my boss. They, of course, both want me to implement solutions with low estimates, and as fast and simply as possible. Which would be fine if I wasn't the only person fighting against this technical debt on my team. Add in the fact that specs are oftentimes VERY implicit, so I'm stuck guessing what we actually need and having to constantly ask if this or that feature should exist.

And then, out of nowhere, I get assigned a another project after some colleague quits, during a time I’m already overbooked. The project is very complex and I'm expected to give estimates on tasks that would take me several hours just to research.

I'm super stressed and have no one I can turn to for help, hence this post. I haven't put the people in this post in the best light, but they're honestly good people that I genuinely like. I just want to write good code, but it's like I have to fight for my right to do it.

I feel a little sorry for all illustrators and gig-creators of visual things out there. And yet I feel uplifted in spirit at the same time with the new era of midjourney that has just started.

It’s incredible!

Maybe you don’t understand if you are not in software.

It’s a giant leap of such magnitude that it is impossible to comprehend the entire scope of this revolution…

Small gig:ers get their money from very small and small businesses who can’t afford anything else. They are expert digital artists. The excel in being productive and can conceptualize a thought or idea in hours…

These hours have now been removed. Not all. But some. For the entire industry, this is billions of dollars I am sure.

So, they need to adapt to this new realm that we are entering.

It’s just… I mean, I can’t even realize it myself and I have played with prompting now for weeks and months… And it’s just 2023. /imagine what will be possible in 2030. 2050. If we survive.

I created a man (a hedge-fund manager) out of thin air. He stands in the super-market, looking tired, it’s evening… He has had a long day at the office…

And-he-does-not-exist.

And it took me five minutes. A rendering of such sort would probably take at least a day for an expert illustrator in photoshop or whatever.

Now, everyone will use this. You got this everywhere very, very soon. Including the gig expert illustrators! The thing is… I can’t draw a straight line but with text I can conjure up pretty much anything.

It’s magic.

That is what it is. I know it isn’t but it feels like it. For people without software skills it must feel even more like an illusion…

Need twelve icons of bumblebees illustrations to be used as icons on your new web site (as images)? Takes five minutes. An hour at most until you are satiesfied. In specific color ranges? You got it…

That shit cost like $99 bucks before if you needed to own them. And it took a week.

A revolution!

What fantastic times we live in!

And sad times and great opportunities for all visual artists out there.

(I am not at all worried for the dev industry. This will be SO fun!)

So as a personal project for work I decided to start data logging facility variables, it's something that we might need to pickup at some point in the future so decided to take the initiative since I'm the new guy.
I setup some basic current loop sensors are things like gas line pressures for bulk nitrogen and compressed air but decided to go with a more advanced system for logging the temperature and humidity in the labs. These sensors come with 'software' it's a web site you host internally. Cool so I just need to build a simple web server to run these PoE sensors. No big deal right, it's just an IIS service. Months after ordering Server 2019 though SSC I get 4 activation codes 2 MAK and 2 KMS. I won the lottery now i just have to download the server 2019 retail ISO and... Won't take the keys. Back to purchasing, "oh I can download that for you, what key is yours". Um... I dunno you sent me 4 Can I just get the link, "well you have to have a login". Ok what building are you in I'll drive over with a USB key (hoping there on the same campus), "the download keeps stopping, I'll contact the IT service in your building". a week later I get an install ISO and still no one knows that key is mine. Local IT service suggests it's probably a MAK key since I originally got a quote for a retail copy and we don't run a KMS server on the network I'm using for testing. We'll doesn't windows reject all 4 keys then proceed to register with a non-existent KMS server on the network I'm using for testing. Great so now this server that is supposed to connected to a private network for the sensors and use the second NIC for an internet connection has to be connected to the old network that I'm using for testing because that's where the KMS server seems to be. Ok no big deal the old network has internet except the powers that be want to migrate everything to the new more secure network but I still need to be connected to the KMS server because they sent me the wrong key. So I'm up to three network cards and some of my basic sensors are running on yet another network and I want to migrate the management software to this hardware to have all my data logging in one system. I had to label the Ethernet ports so I could hand over the hardware for certification and security scans.

So at this point I have my system running with a couple sensors setup with static IP's because I haven't had time to setup the DNS for the private network the sensors run on. Local IT goes to install McAfee and can't because it isn't compatible with anything after 1809 or later, I get a message back that " we only support up to 1709" I point out that it's server 2019, "Oh yeah, let me ask about that" a bunch of back and forth ensues and finally Local IT get's a version of McAfee that will install, runs security scan again i get a message back. " There are two high risk issues on your server", my blood pressure is getting high as well. The risks there looking at McAfee versions are out of date and windows Defender is disabled (because of McAfee).

There's a low risk issue as well, something relating to the DNS service I didn't fully setup. I tell local IT just disable it for now, then think we'll heck I'll remote in and do it. Nope can't remote into my server, oh they renamed it well that's lot going to stay that way but whatever oh here's the IP they assigned it, nope cant remote in no privileges. Ok so I run up three flights of stairs to local IT before they leave for the day log into my server yup RDP is enabled, odd but whatever let's delete the DNS role for now, nope you don't have admin privileges. Now I'm really getting displeased, I can;t have admin privileges on the network you want me to use to support the service on a system you can't support and I'm supposed to believe you can migrate the life safety systems you want us to move. I'm using my system to prove that the 2FA system works, at this rate I'm going to have 2FA access to a completely worthless broken system in a few years. good thing I rebuilt the whole server in a VM I'm planning to deploy before I get the official one back. I'm skipping a lot of the ridiculous back and forth conversations because the more I think about it the more irritated I get.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the airport, I was at the bars getting shitfaced before my flight. The people all held their luggage with care, in hopes that someone wouldn’t clog the line up for 20 fucking minutes.

The luggage was all nestled and packed with care
And I with my cheese its and Carmel m&ms, would soon to be snacking in the air overhead.