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Search - "am i good tho"
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I'm a self-taught 19-year-old programmer. Coding since 10, dropped out of high-school and got fist job at 15.
In the the early days I was extremely passionate, learning SICP, Algorithms, doing Haskell, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, writing toy compilers/interpreters, tweaking Gentoo/Arch. Even got a lambda tattoo on my arm after learning lambda-calculus and church numerals.
My first job - a company which raised $100,000 on kickstarter. The CEO was a dumb millionaire hippie, who was bored with his money, so he wanted to run a company even though he had no idea what he was doing. He used to talk about how he build our product, even tho he had 0 technical knowledge whatsoever. He was on news a few times which was pretty cringeworthy. The company had only 1 programmer (other than me) who was pretty decent.
We shipped the project, but soon we burned through kickstart money and the sales dried off. Instead of trying to aquire customers (or abandoning the project), boss kept looking for investors, which kept us afloat for an extra year.
Eventually the money dried up, and instead of closing gates, boss decreased our paychecks without our knowledge. He also converted us from full-time employees to "contractors" (also without our knowledge) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes for us. My paycheck decreased by 40% by I still stayed.
One day, I was trying to burn a USB drive, and I did "dd of=/dev/sda" instead of sdb, therefore wiping out our development server. They asked me to stay at company, but I turned in my resignation letter the next day (my highest ever post on reddit was in /r/TIFU).
Next, I found a job at a "finance" company. $50k/year as a 18-year-old. CEO was a good-looking smooth-talker who made few million bucks talking old people into giving him their retirement money.
He claimed he changed his ways, and was now trying to help average folks save money. So far I've been here 8 month and I do not see that happening. He forces me to do sketchy shit, that clearly doesn't have clients best interests in mind.
I am the only developer, and I quickly became a back-end and front-end ninja.
I switched the company infrastructure from shitty drag+drop website builder, WordPress and shitty Excel macros into a beautiful custom-written python back-end.
Little did I know, this company doesn't need a real programmer. I don't have clear requirements, I get unrealistic deadlines, and boss is too busy to even communicate what he wants from me.
Eventually I sold my soul. I switched parts of it to WordPress, because I was not given enough time to write custom code properly.
For latest project, I switched from using custom React/Material/Sass to using drag+drop TypeForms for surveys.
I used to be an extremist FLOSS Richard Stallman fanboy, but eventually I traded my morals, dreams and ideals for a paycheck. Hey, $50k is not bad, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining? :(
I got addicted to pot for 2 years. Recently I've gotten arrested, and it is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before I got arrested, I did some freelancing for a mugshot website. In un-related news, my mugshot dissapeared.
I have been sober for 2 month now, and my brain is finally coming back.
I know average developer hits a wall at around $80k, and then you have to either move into management or have your own business.
After getting sober, I realized that money isn't going to make me happy, and I don't want to manage people. I'm an old-school neck-beard hacker. My true passion is mathematics and physics. I don't want to glue bullshit libraries together.
I want to write real code, trace kernel bugs, optimize compilers. Albeit, I was boring in the wrong generation.
I've started studying real analysis, brushing up differential equations, and now trying to tackle machine learning and Neural Networks, and understanding the juicy math behind gradient descent.
I don't know what my plan is for the future, but I'll figure it out as long as I have my brain. Maybe I will continue making shitty forms and collect paycheck, while studying mathematics. Maybe I will figure out something else.
But I can't just let my brain rot while chasing money and impressing dumb bosses. If I wait until I get rich to do things I love, my brain will be too far gone at that point. I can't just sell myself out. I'm coming back to my roots.
I still feel like after experiencing industry and pot, I'm a shittier developer than I was at age 15. But my passion is slowly coming back.
Any suggestions from wise ol' neckbeards on how to proceed?32 -
Am I the only one who learns more on my own than at university? It really annoys me when I come here to study but all I do is read devRant posts all day, they are good tho.19
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How I went from loving my job to wishing i dont wake up tomorrow just to avoid it.
Ive been a backend dev in the company im at for 2 years now.
First year was a blast, i loved my work so much, I used to get so many random features to do, bug fixes, campaigns, analytics, etc..
Second year i started getting familiar with the part of the code that has to do with Search in our music streaming app. Nobody wanted to work on it, so i wanted to take initiative and start doing a few tasks.
A few tasks turned into sprints, and sprints turned into months worth of sprints. And because the code was the definition of tech debt, and because it was so messed up that changing one thing can blow up everything else, working on Search was not too fun.
However, people seemed to be happy search tasks are no longer piling up and someone is handling them so that used to make me feel good about it. They also gave me so much freedom and i felt like my own manager because no one told me what to do (not even my actual manager) they just let me be and were happy i was handling the part they want nothing to do with. I was also given an intern to mentor and have her work on Search tasks with me which turned out amazing.
During the last few months, I completely rewrote search, made it 10 times more performant in such a neat way, made an inhouse dashboard to automate certain tasks so we wont need to waste developers on them (all of which were extra effort on my own time without being asked), all meanwhile still tending to the fixes of the old implementation.
I felt so accomplished, and in a way, i felt like a lead (even tho im not managing any employees, i had so much freedom and I was literally responsible for everything about Search and if i decide to play with the sprint task order i can even do that).
Then 6 or so weeks ago my manager left the company, and while i thought id be a standalone team / person (single person teams are not uncommon in the company) i was instead put under someone else. Someone who likes to micro manage the fuck out of me. I have been happy working on shit code because it was my baby, my project, no one interferes and no one tells me what to do and everyone would call me the search lead (unofficially). now if i dont report to that guy every two hours he calls to see if im working. preplans sprints i no longer have a say in, and im the only dev who knows the code so all tasks go to me. I feel i got demoted so fucking much. I felt like a lead on a project and now im back to being a normal code minion. From deciding everything about a project to blindly following a some irrelevant manager's opinion. (who btw is making Search worse) And after all the extra effort i put in, after actually caring, after actually embracing Search as my responsibility i get rewarded with losing everything i liked about my job...My Independence. From feeling like a lead to feeling demoted. I am so demotivated.
I love the company, but this is hell for me and this made me hate a job i always loved. I am thinking of talking to the CTO asking to work on other stuff because i no longer want this. If i am to be a code minion at least let it be on code i like, let me go back to dealing with PMs, fuck my new manager I dont wanna work with that guy he can take the project along with all its poopoo.16 -
So, I got a paid internship and was tasked to create a game from scratch. They told me to start by creating an idea and so I started creating a Game Design Document with 40+ pages. Fuckin epic idea. The idea is presented to the boss. "Very good. But I want it to have multilayer" *Sigh* Substantial changes are made and I'm eager to start working on my masterpiece. Everybody wanted to see how it would turn out. 2 months into the internship I have to make a presentation to the boss. He tells me that I won't be able to accomplish anything in the limited time of the internship. They change my work completely and I am now part of the main team. Two weeks later I have another presentation. "You have been here for 2 months and this is what you have? This is you progress? You need to do better". A couple of days later I get an email stating that my performance was unsatisfactory and I won't get paid for those 2 months. Like, ARE YOU FUCKIN KIDDING ME! YOU TELL ME TO CHANGE EVERYTHING! 2 MONTHS OF MY LIFE OF HARD WORK WADTED FOR NOTHING! FUCK YOU! SO FUCKIN PISSED!
I have cool coworkers tho16 -
My college organised some interview with a company, with the whole demn class. We went there, it was quite far away (50km) and the CEO invites us to a meeting room.
Where he bores me for 2 hours talking about their projects in argiculture and NSA like spying systems at tankstations.
They were caputuring license plates at gas stations and with that information gather data about the person, such as salary (by looking at their car), house adres ect. All without people knowing. And than targeting them with specific ads and offers.
The class of sheep were super excited but it pissed me off. Because he told it like it was some awesome advancement in technology that none of us could probably ever do.
He was demeaning us, saying we would do some simple wordpress sites there and other things. We are probably not good enough forc te big stuff.
Asking him some really hard questions about his projects made him so pissed he almost wanted to kick me out.
When it was finally over, there was some test that you have to do if you want to work there. If you were good enough at the test, you could!!!! (YEEY)
Uhm, I said; no thank you I dont want to work here.
Later I talked to my classmate and friend who always thinks he's better then everyone in class even tho he barely understands OOP programming. He was asking me if he should try to get the internship. I told him; dont. They have no value for us and they think they are the greatest company on the planet.
The fucking idiot go so pissed, he stopped talking to me alltogether and blocked me everywere. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING. Just because I gave my FUCKING opinon about a company he likes for no reason.
So this idiot does the test (which was fucking simple btw, I did it too and compared the results and I had 95%) He gets invited for another interview and gets told he will be paid 200 euro's per month 😂. and a free meal everyday!! 😪 hahaha . That doesnt even cover commuting costs!
My "friend" told him that the train costs more every day. You know what the CEO said? "Yeah but you can learn so much here the also brings value and you're just a last year student. But I think you are really brave for asking more"
So in the end, he couldnt take the internship and I was fucking right. Really I hate these kinds of companies thinking they are heaven on earth when they are clearly not.
I am happy I told them no before putting my dignity on thd line.14 -
I'm really close to handing my resignation letter, even if I don't have any other job offers right now.
That might be a good thing tho, as it would be good for me to take some time off and recover from all the toxicity of my current job. Working at this company is starting to take a toll on me, making me more asocial than I usually am. I'm even losing my passion for programming.
So yeah, I think I'll take some time to heal and find inspiration again before deciding what to do next.5 -
College can be one of the worst investments for an IT career ever.
I've been in university for the past 3 years and my views on higher education have radically changed from positive to mostly cynical.
This is an extremely polarizing topic, some say "your college is shite", "#notall", "you complain too much", and to all of you I am glad you are happy with your expensive toilet paper and feel like your dick just grew an inch longer, what I'll be talking about is my personal experience and you may make of it what you wish. I'm not addressing the best ivy-league Unis those are a whole other topic, I'll talk about average Unis for average Joes like me.
Higher education has been the golden ticket for countless generations, you know it, your parents believe in it and your grandparents lived it. But things are not like they used to be, higher education is a failing business model that will soon burst, it used to be simple, good grades + good college + nice title = happy life.
Sounds good? Well fuck you because the career paths that still work like that are limited, like less than 4.
The above is specially true in IT where shit moves so fast and furious if you get distracted for just a second you get Paul Walkered out of the Valley; companies don't want you to serve your best anymore, they want grunt work for the most part and grunts with inferiority complex to manage those grunts and ship the rest to India (or Mexico) at best startups hire the best problem solvers they can get because they need quality rather than quantity.
Does Uni prepare you for that? Well...no, the industry changes so much they can't even follow up on what it requires and ends up creating lousy study programs then tells you to invest $200k+ in "your future" for you to sweat your ass off on unproductive tasks to then get out and be struck by jobs that ask for knowledge you hadn't even heard off.
Remember those nights you wasted drawing ER diagrams while that other shmuck followed tutorials on react? Well he's your boss now, but don't worry you will wear your tired eyes, caffeine saturated breath and overweight with pride while holding your empty title, don't get me wrong I've indulged in some rough play too but I have noticed that 3 months giving a project my heart and soul teaches me more than 6 months of painstakingly pleasing professors with big egos.
And the soon to be graduates, my God...you have the ones that are there for the lulz, the nerds that beat their ass off to sustain a scholarship they'll have to pay back with interests and the ones that just hope for the best. The last two of the list are the ones I really feel bad for, the nerds will beat themselves over and over to comply with teacher demands not noticing they are about to graduate still versioning on .zip and drive, the latter feel something's wrong but they have no chances if there isn't a teacher to mentor them.
And what pisses me off even more is the typical answers to these issues "you NEED the title" and "you need to be self taught". First of all bitch how many times have we heard, seen and experienced the rejection for being overqualified? The market is saturated with titles, so much so they have become meaningless, IT companies now hire on an experience, economical and likeability basis. Worse, you tell me I need to be self taught, fucker I've been self taught for years why would I travel 10km a day for you to give me 0 new insights, slacking in my face or do what my dog does when I program (stare at me) and that's just on the days you decide to attend!
But not everything is bad, college does give you three things: networking, some good teachers and expensive dead tree remnants, is it worth the price tag, not really, not if you don't need it.
My broken family is not one of resources and even tho I had an 80% scholarship at the second best uni of my country I decided I didn't need the 10+ year debt for not sleeping 4 years, I decided to go to the 3rd in the list which is state funded; as for that decision it worked out as I'm paying most of everything now and through my BS I've noticed all of the above, I've visited 4 universities in my country and 4 abroad and even tho they have better everything abroad it still doesn't justify some of the prices.
If you don't feel like I do and you are happy, I'm happy for you. My rant is about my personal experience which is kind of in the context of IT higher education in the last ~8 years.
Just letting some steam off and not regretting most of my decisions.15 -
!dev
I gained 20+ kilos during covid.
By now I have lost about 19 of those. And no, I didn't do any specific sports or diet. I lost them via ✨anxiety✨.
And yes, I am naturally skinny.
I still have a good 20 to lose to be back at my ""usual"" weight tho. ✌️ (Gained those thanks to depression, hormonal disorder, and related meds)28 -
Hey everyone in all seriousness I am gonna be out of the dev field now - hopefully forever. I’m back in school now and hopefully will become employed in emergency response. Before dev, I have had jobs where I could directly help people with their troubles and I could reduce a lot of chaos. I really enjoyed it and I want to kind of steer my life back towards that. I find that while I was an employed dev, I felt like I was contributing a lot towards corporate greed, this wealth gap problem, and a bunch of other stuff. It all felt morally wrong (to me - not judging here). I also felt the worse I have ever felt in a job - constantly burned out, depressed, lonely, sleep deprived, and almost even ashamed of myself of how I constructed my life thus far. I had some good times meeting some cool ass people in some cool ass places tho.
Now, even though I’m still sleep deprived and EXTREMELY poor, I’m very happy now. I am excited to start this thing I’m more passionate about. It feels good to not feel my head hurt every day from trying to fix shit that will always break anyways. I feel so relieved to be away from the meaningless turbulence of it all. Just wanted to share my lil success here!!9 -
Be me
Got on clean Keto, dietitian and everything, been low carb for damn near two years now, constant checkups to see that I am good. I am
Go from 245 lbs (108 kilograms) to 179 lbs(81 k) in the span of time.
Clothes don't fit. Get new ones
Got weights to train at home, cuz there are sweaty people at gyms, and I ain't bout that life fam.
Wake up at 4 or 5 depending on the training routine. Mixed with proper cardio.
Get to work. Unable to have breakfast cuz cafeteria is closed.
Fuck
I can feel my body eating itself.
Looks good af naked tho
die in front of the keyboard14 -
2 things I'm working on now:
#1 a personal project I am hoping to commercialize and turn it into my moneymaker. Hoping it'd at least be enough to pay the bills and put food on my table so I could forget 9/5 for good. But it has a potential of becoming a much, MUCH bigger thing. This would need the right twist tho, and I'm not sure if I am "the right twister" :) We'll see.
#2 smth I'm thinking of opensourcing once finished -- a new form of TLS. This model could be unbreakable by even quantum computing once it's mature enough to crack conventional TLS. I'm probably gonna use md5 or smth even weakier - I'm leveraging the weakness of hashing functions to make my tool stronger :)
I mean how long can we be racing with more powerful computers, eh? Why not use our weakneses to make them our strengths?
Unittests are already passing, I just haven't polished all the corner-cases and haven't worked out a small piece of the initialization process yet. But it's very close6 -
Welcome to Part III of WHY WOULD I WANT TO WORK WITH YOU?, a saga of competence, empathy and me being dick, even tho I didn't want to be one.
This is a follow-up to: https://devrant.com/rants/2363551. It's title is: "Mt 13:12".
We left off the story in the very moment I had received feedback from 3 companies that decided to interview me. A, B and C. We won't talk about A from now on, since I refused their offer to offer me unpaid internship.
It's December 20, 18:00. I am returning home. Earlier that day I emailed guys at C that I need some time with my decision, because I have another offer that suits me better. It was awaiting response from B, obviously. That day they called me and offered me... full-time job. As a fullstack. On a project for a big company, that they described by something like: "They may not be one of the famous X of the market, but they're probably X+1, yeah". Needless to say, that was some bad marketing. I googled them up later tho. Anyway, my response didn't change, altho thing seemed a little big better for me. Except that I was a little suspicious of them too. Were they *that* desperate for a worker?[1]
It is December 24th. 10 am. My phone rings. It's guy from B. He tells me "saito, the recruiter guy is still sick. Since I don't know if we can hire you for sure, it may be better for you to accept another offer, if you got any. I'll keep you updated." That was pretty cool of him. Remember the quote from part II? That's the empathy part. He called me, even tho he didn't really have to. If you read this, monsieur, you're the best. Back to the story now. I emailed guys at C that I am willing to start the job anytime. They told me that CEO is back January 7th, 2020.
It is January 4th 2020, 10 am. Unkonwn number calls. It's actually a guy from B, but the other one. The one that was sick previously. He tells me that he wants to talk about my employment. He talked with the senior dev and he just wants a talk and a small code test in typescript. He told me that it's no prob that I don't know typescript, since it will be entry level and I have time to learn the basics. And so I do. We decide to meet at January 7th. Later on that day guys from C email me that they want to sign the contract n January 7th.
And here we get to the culmination and the lesson of those posts. What should I do? On one side I have a job that isn't 100% comfirmed, but I'm pretty positive about it. The people at B are great, I love them. During my interview I learned some stuff about the project I would participate in, so I didn't go in blindly. It was my field of interest. I was hyped for the possibility itself to work with that senior dev. On the other hand guys at C had their contract ready. They finally were ready to start. I still didn't know for shit what would I do. I knew that I would need to learn basics of data science and stuff. Their interview and CEO left me with a quite bad impression. I didn't really like them. But it was a job.
What I did I consider the best thing I could do for myself. I told guys from C to meet someday later. I visited B yesterday, January 7th. I've done the test. It had some code refactoring and implementing some React elements. Basic shit indeed. I am almost positive I would do it even if I didn't visit typescript docs during the weekend. We then talked about it. The dev told me what he would change in the solution, but didn't consider it bad. Then they told me I'm hired. And I emailed C that I can't accept their offer. The guy was pretty pissed. I can understand it, they seemed to be ready to start with me and I pulled out last day, in the evening. I am truly sorry for that. But also I feel no regrets. I have chosen those whom I trusted more. I've chosen guys who took notes of my CV and talked about it in my interview over people who didn't even get that I applied for a frontend positin. That's competence for you. I've chosen guys who actually wanted to talk wih me about me making music over people who sat me down at a computer and told me: "code". That's empathy for you.
Dear recruiters. If you want to attract best candidates, show your competence and empathy.
Dear recruitees. If you're looking for a good job, it may take some time. Also, knowing people helps a lot.
1 – Actually, I wouldn't be surprised, if they really needed someone to help them out on their projects and they didn't get a lot of attention. Why? Well, their webpage was unfinished and kinda sucked, their interview sucked also. I still don't know whether they're a startup or what. I just can't help but feel bad seeing HR and Marketing that bad. Because the guys actually might do a lot of good stuff, and their potential employees didn't get to know that.5 -
There are a lot... I am going to pick the interview dialogue (incl. test) with the government.
Following situation:
-5 recruiters
-3 candidates (including me) who have all passed an online test that did last for 3 hours
The online test was for the government to see how every candidate is good at math, English, situation adaptation, historical questions, a little bit of techy questions like "What does fps stand for?" and basic questions like that.
Even tho I did apply for a job as a software developer, there was not a single fucking question about programming. I shit you not. Anyways...
After everyone did introduce themselves. I was given the following question by one of the recruiters:"How do you think will the regular work look like to you, if you were to schedule it? We will be starting with you, <myName>"
Me:"Since this is hopefully going to be my first job in software development, I can only assume it for now. Based on my knowledge about this specific topic that I have made by reading other software developers' work experiences in form of textual content, I guess that I am going to do this [...] and that [...]. Oh and after this comes the planning phase (I had mentioned the sprints and agile "frameworks") and meetings of how the projects are doing so far.
After this comes the phase of sitting down and getting to work on the project I am assigned to.
At the end comes the "see you tomorrow, xyz" phase and everyone leaves."
Somebody else from the 5 recruiters:"I am sorry to interrupt you right here, but we are not offering you a dev job. It rather is a mixture of dev and sysadmin. You will be working most of the time fixing someone's problem with their PC and not sitting in a dark and empty corner of a warm room."
This was such a disrespect that I could not give an answer to. I was deeply shocked. Developers need more respect. Most of the fucking things you use, are created by developers, you asshole.
"We will be very happy, if you can call us by tomorrow to let us now if you are still interested."
Me does not even bother anymore and blacklists that government as a "trust me. You do not want to work there" type of job offering place.
Since I did not sign any NDA. It is the government of Germany.
PS: I did apply for a *dev* job. But somehow they did decide to create a new job and assign me to it. That is not professional.5 -
!dev !rant
One of my closest friends at work is 50. He is very well kept despise his age and feels like a young soul to me. The man could be my dad because of his age but we still hang out like regular friends.
I am 27, turn 28 this month.
The other day he said that he was glad I went through the military. He said that it was because of that that I matured way past my age and that thanks to all the traumatic shit I have an older soul.
While I don't disagree, I kinda feel sad at it, it was one of the only instances in which i have felt that my military service has brought something semi good from it.
Friends are cool tho.9 -
Well thus far is a bunch of rails small jobs. Funny enough this week I managed to get a bunch of php contracts "with the possibility to extend for larger contracts"
I am not really interested in long term contracts, but being that most developers that I see hired for small php jobs are not used to the patterns of development used for modern php and that i bring in a lot of my own stuff for it I know that I will be maintaining them for the long run.
So good stuff. Lets see how the week pans out. Getting really excited. Even tho I see more horrors in php than even on JS or ASP.NET or Java I still really love all languages that I have used. And normally I work like a mechanic. In which I bill by the hour(i am an expensice hooker...I mean developer) and finish everything as fast as possible to let me lazy around the house. So for example, if something takes 10 hours I will do it i 5 or less and charge all 10 hours, or I would charge per build(custom login and registration that kind of deal) and yeah. Pretty basic.
Good shit man!1 -
It was funny. But when I told the head of my dptmnt that I was getting bored at work they kinda freaked out. I really love my workplace. The people are nice everywhere and this is something I am not used to.
I started working when I was 13 at one of my dad's business. It was a lot of manual labor and every day my hands would be bruised because of all the cleaning and shit I had to do. Then he moved me to another one of his businesses and it was worse but I continued doing it for only 1 year. By 16 I had moved to simpler things, I was a waiter and even tho I hated it I was making enough money to go out on dates and buy whatever a 16 year old wanted. I continued being a waiter until I was 17(changed to two other places) and before I turned 18 I joined the U.S Army. That broke my body in ways that I would normally not believe a 18 year old capable of. It was around the time that I discovered programming but even after I left the military(at 22 I believe) I never worked on a programming job. Back at home I worked in retail. And believe you me....it is far more pleasant to be constantly getting blown up and broken than dealing with the most retarded people imaginable(this is what made me hate Mexican people even tho I am Mexican myself)
Fast forward at 23 and I landed my first programming jobs. As stated in other initial rant it was surrounded by assholes. Assholes everywhere that would cower at the idea of speaking to me face to face due to the possibility of being left as physically broken as I am.
But at 27 now I found myself in a happy place. With nice people, good coworkers, an amazing manager that also serves as eye candy and good benefits. But the job is boring, boring beyond belief and this is due to the fact that they have a self taught and academically trained computer scientist doing the most menial things on a daily basis. The shit that I do would be more becoming of a designer, which has a different set of mental skills that would probably engage them more. But I really don't want to work on the web unless I am doing something that actually takes some challenge, even tho I maintain Java and PHP web services, the shit is so boring that anyone would be able to finish the proceadures in hours on a day leaving one with nothing engaging to do. Sometimes I let shit get close to the deadline just to feel some sort of pressure that would keep me awake.
I just wanted to vent on how ceremoniously BORED i really am.
I want more shit to do. Can't really have much patience for the freelance shit since it doesn't make sense to hire me in exchange of having some indian dude doing it for a quarter of the price.4 -
Because I am very interested in cyber security and plan on doing my masters in it security I always try to stay up to date with the latest news and tools. However sometimes its a good idea to ask similar-minded people on how they approach these things, - and maybe I can learn a couple of things. So maybe people like @linuxxx have some advice :D Let's discuss :D
1) What's your goto OS? I currently use Antergos x64 and a Win10 Dualboot. Most likely you guys will recommend Linux, but if so what ditro, and why? I know that people like Snowden use QubesOS. What makes it much better then other distro? Would you use it for everyday tasks or is it overkill? What about Kali or Parrot-OS?
2) Your go-to privacy/security tools? Personally, I am always conencted to a VPN with openvpn (Killswitch on). In my browser (Firefox) I use UBlock and HttpsEverywhere. Used NoScript for a while but had more trouble then actual use with it (blocked too much). Search engine is DDG. All of my data is stored in VeraCrypt containers, so even if the system is compromised nobody is able to access any private data. Passwords are stored in KeePass. What other tools would you recommend?
3) What websites are you browsing for competent news reports in the it security scene? What websites can you recommend to find academic writeups/white papers about certain topics?
4) Google. Yeah a hate-love relationship, but its hard to completely avoid it. I do actually have a Google-Home device (dont kill me), which I use for calender entries, timers, alarms, reminders, and weather updates as well as IOT stuff such as turning my LED lights on and off. I wouldn"t mind switching to an open source solution which is equally good, however so far I couldnt find anything that would a good option. Suggestions?
5) What actions do you take to secure your phone and prevent things such as being tracked/spyed? Personally so far I havent really done much except for installing AdAway on my rooted device aswell as the same Firefox plugins I use on my desktop PC.
6) Are there ways to create mirror images of my entire linux system? Every now and then stuff breaks, that is tedious to fix and reinstalling the system takes a couple of hours. I remember from Windows that software such as Acronis or Paragon can create a full image of your system that you can backup and restore at any point to get a stable, healthy system back (without the need to install everything by hand).
7) Would you encrypt the boot partition of your system, even tho all data is already stored in encrypted containers?
8) Any other advice you can give :P ?12 -
Most definitely not dev related..
Guitar tabs that contain arrangements for +5 guitars on a band with just a rythm and lead guitar are fucking annoying.
Fucking hate having to piece the fucking melody by myself. And yes. I DON'T neeed the fucking tabs since I can figure the song by ear, its just that doing it like that takes way too much fucking time.
Getting fucking bored of playing the guitar tho. Been doing it since I was very young and never really liked it. Always wanted violin and then bass.
Have been looking at a nice fender precision bass. Made in Mexico so not really expensive, sounds equally as good and is going for a good $650 bucks plus the amp.
No lie, i am way too interested on getting me that bass already. Have been learning Roundabout by Yes(because I am a progressive rock fan AND a Jojo fan) and practicing with a friends bass whenever I get the chance.
If you already play guitar and you are good with guitar then picking up the bass takes some adjustment, but it's still not as heavy as going at it with no musical training.
Man I just want a bass so bad. I am just so cheap at spending money.13 -
Curious what you guys think about the creator of Node.js saying that he does not think Node is the best tool for servers and that Go is a much better option.
For me at least, I think it is great that people like him become aware of the shortcommings of the technology they devised, but wonder if it is such a good move to say such things (even tho apparently he is not the head of the Node.js project anymore)
I have always been fascinated by Node and the whole JS ecosystem. I think it did wonders for JS developers and it pushed the whole JS experience to a whole new level, but I am also aware of the shortcommings of it just as I am of the other environments that I use.
So, what do you guys think about his statements? Would you consider investing time in Go as a Node developer? Do you think that it will be possible to do a switch or would you rather stay in and advance the state ot Node development?2 -
!rant
I am continuously transforming from being terrified to being sad to being tensed at the moment.Don't know what depression is , but i guess this is not a right phase .
Am just an average guy trying to get my confidences up as a good person/student/professional/whatever. last to last semester when I joined college for a cse degree, i had entered with the brightest face and the biggest smile because of just one thought: "this is where i belong, this is what i want" . i always got excited when i saw little things jumping around in my mobile , calculations being performed instantly, and the day i got my laptop, i knew i want to know every thing of how virtuality works.
I never cared about social life tho, i was a universally lonely introvert single child. Had 2-3 friends in school, who i don't care about much,a lost crush , a great group of home buddies and some friends here and there.
So when i started college i went there with multiple goals: making my career there, finding gud buddies, love again and many more..
But recently, everything is changing: realised that college is a piece of shit, people are always selfish and exploiting, a race is always going on where people are secretly running and you gotta learn by yourself.
So here is the current me: college attendance 37%, not went to gym past 1 week, human interaction last 2 days :2(mum nd dad), whatsapp last message: 4 days ago,sleep timings 10am to 6pm(daytimes lol), currently working on: this project that I took as "my last project that on completing means i know Android,and could code every fucked up app in the market)", which isn't yet completed bcz every-time i learn something in it, i realise their is one more part of the course am following , but i should know because this is useful.
And that makes me more sad :/1 -
I legit never understood the hate for VB.NET in the land of Microsoft development. To be entirely fair, I only used it it that one class at uni. But other than that I had never used it in the real world. The closest thing I had done with BASIC was VBScript, and even tho I was ok with it(even liked it) I damn well know that it is not something that I would use to build web apps with anymore.
But I am inclined to give VB.NET a chance only because I remember being able to make sense of my peers code in school. Just by reading it, sure it might be verbose as all fucking hell, but we were using VS(notice that i said VS not VS Code) and we had all the bells and whistles of autocomplete and intellisense.
Currently tho, I somewhat wanted to try a more modular approach to my fucking around with web apps, we are considering Rails and Django for a project at work. But since we already have windows servers we thought about the possibility of using .net core. We all like C# as a language and I did work with ASP.NET MVC before so we are considering that as well. That and our sys admin had tons of experience setting that as an environment. When developers are not too sure it is good to rely on the admin's expertise. -
At work I am "the" programmer and is the first time in which I actually enjoy showing different solutions to problems without having a fear of implementing large things without having any form of recognition.
Seeing someone get happy because of something you created is a great feeling and even tho most of us are misantrophic af we can still appreciate bringing happiness through code.
To me, software engineering is the closest thing to magic and I really believe that.
Two days ago I showed my manager a little utility to build small portions of the site we are building and make changes to it in real time without browser refreshes for whatever change she would like to do. She was super happy and excited and it made me feel real happy.
Such great feeling man. Nothing but good vibes brother!! -
I built my first web server literally from scratch (standard socket lib) today! In Python <3.
It is able to execute php and get the stdout to use it in the Python script afterwards and make use of parallel connections.
Now to the real rant...
I am using HTTP/1.1. I want to use h2 (aka HTTP/2) tho. I am stuck on this. Found the papers to the specs of the h2 and spdy protocols, but they are not really helpful.
Is anyone good in this field? Please let me know :/3 -
**random rant**
So next week I have a technical interview with TripleByte and I'm supposed to spent the next 2 days sorta preparing. Just woke up and had this thought tho:
What's the point? Yes I think I could try to get a better job but been trying for years (banking tech area) but now it feels like I'm at a "local optimum" sort of a sweet spot. Team/company could be smarter/more efficient but...
I've got my own place in a city that's also near NYC. It takes me 20 minutes to get to my current office, fairly flexible with the 9-5 work day, I can work remotely. I get enough money.
And then finding a new job === technical interviews about stuff you will rarely use and usually with no feedback like a pass-fail test where they only tell you if you pass or fail (and for me it always feels skewed towards fail the moment i walk since I'm deaf).
But at this point, I feel more like "you need to convince me to work for you". In my head, the plan is mostly to just have a nice chat and wing the technical questions just to see how good i am without any prep (i.e. poring thru Cracking the Coding Interview or Big O concepts, sorting...).2 -
I’m always tired all the time. Depression and what not but today I am TIRED
Had an interview that requires vanilla javascript but I suck at algos even tho I was getting it done till time ran out. We gelled tho so I hope they see potential and move to next round.
But the good news is. I had a follow up interview based on a challenge. It’s the second I’ve ever had and I did well this time.
So much so that they’re booking another interview for tomorrow.
So I’m done with the technical portions of the process.
This is the first time I’ve gotten this far and I’m so happy. I’m hoping really that this is the one cause I doubt I have the energy and will power to keep going though the processes.
I’m so excited. It’s as if all my work is slowly showing and I’m getting closer and closer
Wish me luck guys. Hopefully I ace it as I come across well In General Chats.
This is my last application. If it doesn’t work I think I’m done with dev life and job hunt.
Fingers crossed I’ve found the one1 -
So.. i have been doing internship with a good startup for last 2 months. It was supposed to be a 3 month internship and then maybe a job offer. I accepted this , but with a disclaimer that i will be taking leaves for exams.
They looked like they didn't liked this condition, saying "we won't be giving pay for those days" , "you will need your manager's approval", etc, but later i took 5-6 continuous leaves for my papers and my manager( aka the ceo) wouldn't even read my approval mail ( i did got deductions for those leaves tho, but i was fine with it )
Now the situation is that my final end term exams are coming up. They are supposed to go on for 15 days somewhere in December beginning, but i also need an extra 10-15 days to cover the syllabus for it. Apart from those, there are other college stuff like Second Sessionals, internal practicals ,minor project report submission , etc are also coming up, that are supposed to take anywhere from 1 to 5-6 continuous days in the first weeks of November.
So i asked my company for 2 months of leave to handle my college environment. The tasks assigned to me are incomplete , but i am well versed in those and might complete it if i had more time. I gave them an option that i will resume my work from January and complete my 3 months of internship ( i currently am about to complete 2 months , November would have been the 3rd) , but they said that they are "freeing me" in the October only ( i guess this means that my internship is being terminated and am off from company's payroll). They also asked me to contact company once all exam stuff is over, but yesterday i got suddenly removed from the company's slack group. I am not sure how to look at this.
They have also asked me to prepare a report on what i have done. Now i can send them a report like what i would have given to my college : containing more useless info and a few points on my work . Or i could provide them with a deep report on what i did each day, what are the bugs , what are the resources that i found , what are the things that need to be enhanced, links to important groups and people... Etc . I have so much of information that i fear they might hire someone else to complete all stuff that i have started and my material would give him a kickstart.
But on the other hand , it was their office that i worked in, their ideas that i built upon, so i feel a moral obligation to provide all assistance to my replacement.
What should i do?
(tldr : company asking for a report on work you did during internship that was supposed to be converted to job . wwyd?)8 -
Random thoughts on more out of the box tools/environments.
Subject: Pharo
Some time ago I had shown one of my coworkers about Pharo and he quickly got the main idea behind it but mentioned how he didn't like the idea of leaving behind his text editor to deal with source code.
Some time last week I showed the dude some cool 3d animations you can do with Pharo while simultaneously manipulating the code to change them in real time. Now that caught his attention particularly and he decided he wanted to know more about the language but in particular the benefits of fucking around with an image based environment rather than a file based.
Both of us reached the conclusion that image based makes file based dev enviroments seem quaint in comparison, but estimated that it was nothing more than a sentiment rather than a fact.
We then considered what could be the advantage/disadvantages of such environments but I couldn't come up with anything other than the system not having something like Vim or VS Code or whatever which people love, but that it makes up for it with some of the craziest IDE tools I had ever seen. Plugins in this case act like source code repos that you can download and activate into your workflow in what feels something similar to VS Code being extended via plugins written in JS, and since the GUI is maleable as it is(because everything is basically just subsets of morp h windows) then extending functionality becomes so intuitive that its funny
Whereas with Emacs(for example) you have to really grind your gears with Elisp or Vimscript in Vim etc etc, with Pharo your plugin system is basicall you just adding classes that will convert your OS looking IDE into something else.
Because of how light the vm machine is, portability is a non issue, and passing pharo programs arround is not like installing Java in which you need the JVM.
Source code versioning, very important, already integrated into every live environment and can be extended to do pushes through simple key bindings with no hassle.
I dunno, I just feel that the tool is too good to be true. I keep trying to push limits into it but thus far I have found: data visualization and image modeling to work fine, web development with Teapot to be a cakewalk and work fine, therr are even packages for Arduino development.
I think its biggest con would be the image based system, but would really need to look into how this is bad by any reason other than "aww man I want vim!" since apparently some psychos already made Emacs and VS code packages for interfacing with Pharo source trees.
Embedded is certainly out of the question for any real project since its garbage collected and not the most performant cookie in the jar.
For Data science I can see some future, seems just as intuitive and interesting as a Jupyter Notebook actually, but the process can't and will not be the same since I still don't know of a way to save playground snippets unless you literally create classes for it, in which case every model you build gets saved inside of an object, sounds possible but, strange since it is not a the most common workflow in jupyter.
Some of the environment is sometimes glitchy, but it does have continuos development and have not found many hassles.
There is a biased factor from my side: I seem to be wired to understand the syntax and simple object model better than in other languages. To me this feels natural as if I was just writing ideas rather than code, mostly because I feel that there really ain't much in terms of syntax, the language gets out of my way and the IDE feels like the most intuitive environment in the world to me. I can see why some people would find it REALLY weird of counterintuitive tho.
Guess I really am a simple dude. -
Fun story, I keep discovering new ways of being shameless.
I had been once caught of basically giving my assignment (not one of my brightest moments)for a course to a friend and surprise surprise the instructor did take disciplinary action but he was a bit pissed so infact, he called out for a viva for all the assignments.
The Vivas went fine but immediately after I was done I was like "sir so I'm having a bit of trouble in this next assignment I was wondering if you could help me out" 😂 I have no clue what I was thinking nor was I proud of that.
Kudos to the instructor tho who calmly responded and actually helped me out with it.
Also due to some policy the action could not go ahead so yea guess things turned out fine. Im now hoping to see if he can keep me as an RA. Again, yes why am I like this. Good instructor tho. -
Tldr: intern here, I like staying in my workplace for longer than my work hours. Is it going to cause me trouble if i become a permanent employee?
Long story: So as per my previous rants i joined a startup as an android intern, company is of around 80-90 employees with many teams and standard/sad rules like 9 hr shift, 1 paid leave per month etc.
I was worried of these rules due to being a regular clg student and living very far from office, so i complained and got a little compensations like 7 hr work shift, few half days and work from home days, etc
Now the thing is : i actually have kind of started to like this work. Its been a month and i took around 12 days leave last month for papers, but marked some of them as wfh and half days, so deductions were not what i expected (although payslip is yet to come, which would have given a better explaination). But overall Pay is decent, work environment is chill ( people work in teams here, but since am the only android dev, i got no timelines, or tech leads. Just the ceo, whom i send a daily progress message), there are good refreshments available and after papers, i am pretty much free.
So I like staying here for longer hours like 8, or 8.30 hours. My family is also working, so they are usually not much worried, tho my mom starts sending messages when i leave after 7. But this friend of mine, keeps saying "its wrong, your managers are gonna call you weak and would force you to work for more hours when they notice you can come for 9 hours , etc"
So am i doing the wrong thing here?3 -
Remember how I was - against all that was promised - assigned to a time-sensitive front-end (so definitely not my forté) project about a month ago? Remember how I struggled with the choices of how to go about it - switching from F# (Fable) to Rust (Yew) to eventually settling in with Vue and TS?
Yeah, I’m glad I went that way, even though there could’ve probably been better choices out there: my part is done now, even though it’s not quite prod ready yet (close tho), the team who’ll maintain it takes it over now, after I finish dealing with my current minor issue. And damn their front-end guy is GOOD. Makes me feel very inferior in that department. Well, I am. Back to back-end, thank you very much...
But I have an issue here, that bothers me. I’ve produced a codebase that’s obviously written on a tight schedule: no tests, no documentation, a few embarrassing hacks/workarounds and so forth. I actually feel bad for leaving it out of my hands to them in such a state...1 -
I am trying to start my career in the world of web development currently I am 16 and in 2 years I have to move out (moms orders) what would be the first move into getting a job as a web developer is it best to freelance or work full time for a company and what certification's would you recommend getting I am already very good with computers both windows and Linux (windows can kiss my ass tho ) and I know html css as well as some php and jquery I even know a little MySQL (I am also very talented at cybersecurity mainly infosec and OSINT )
(I know this question probably sounds stupid but I would like some advice from people in the area recently I told my dad I want to be a web developer my dad then told me I should get a real job )
Any advice would be great7 -
- I love blowing my mind. Even if it is the most confusing thing. Things like security mechanisms, neurons' behaviors, mathematics (even tho I hate it when I fail lol), electronics, medical terminology and chemistry.
- I love collecting rare coins, personally never-seen stones and put them into my collection. I love to be a designer. Not only on my laptop. I have a book shelf and within that book shelf I put stones that create the yin yang sign while pushing the books to two sides. That makes them look like they are levitating. I have stones (including obsidian) that create a triangle and a knife hanging down the wall of my room.
- I love visiting touristic, historic, naturally-beautiful but also non-touristic (non-touristic? yes. by that I mean visiting e.g. the areas of touristic cities which are dangerous, because you can easily fall down off of a slippery ground and take serious injuries) places around the globe, talk to complete strangers in public (I am trying to be an extrovert), take pictures with my camera and collecting antiquities.
- I love taking risks (no. I don't play any poker games etc on the internet) without trying to put other people in risk. Driving insanely with whatever I have. Car, bike, you name it.
- I love reading books. Books that are about human psychology, fantasy novels and books about programming languages.
- I love to cook (I am at the beginning).
- I love to use the konMari method of tidying up my room.
- I love plants.
- I love having everything in my room tidied up (even if I am too busy with other stuff and skip this cleaning process for a week upto a month sometimes. Sorry, room.).
- I love doing sports. But mostly sport that I have never tried before. This can be, because of my greedy wish for an adrenaline kick. That led me into taking a balloon flight at 4 am (sunrise) and to paragliding at sunset above Mediterranean sea btw. (I am normally afraid of flying, but paragliding was awesome).
- I love swimming. Like, you cannot pull me out of the sea for a minimum of 2 hours, if it is not important.
- I love laying above the sea water and let the sea carry me to somewhere else.
- I love being alone. I love the silence. I love to be free in my thoughts.
- I love watching the sunset, the light that shines through the forest, the moonlight and the stars at night.
- I love dreaming. No, like, lucid dreaming for example.
- I love being open to any opinions.
- I love to learn about other people's views about the world and their religion.
- I love pets and would do anything to keep them alive when they are ill. It hurts my heart seeing them like this.
- I love watching demonic "A: Holy shit! Did you see this thing, too?! B: Yes!" YouTube videos just for the fun of it, but I hate horror movies and games.
- I love trying out new things. The creation of music and video for example.
- I love to give my hair and beard a shape, if I am too lazy to go to the barbershop lol. By that I don't mean just going to the barbershop, but taking an electric razor and cutting my hair myself even if I get bad results from time to time that can be corrected by letting any family member tell me in which area of of my head the hair problem is.
- I don't like disco clubs.
- I don't like toxic people even though I can be a quite toxic person myself without realizing it. If I appear toxic to you, inform me about it. Having so much testosterone in that moment, can make me do things that I don't want to do.
- I don't like drugs even tho I have to admit that I am trying a few from time to time (maybe 6 months in-between) to have a dopamine kick. I am not an addict.
- I hate myself for things that I did in the past.
- I used to watch MMA videos etc.
- I used to use a telescope, but I can't find it anymore.
- I used to have a microscope, but I can't find it anywhere and besides of that the seller did literally piss in it before selling it to me many years ago. Don't want to touch it tbh.
- I used to play games, but I don't enjoy games anymore. That makes me feel sad.
- I miss the old moments of my life.
In conclusion:
I like how things went and go so far. It changed me so much. It made me a good and a bad person. I became more open and confident, but it also particularly made me a leader who can say "fuck off" in a bad way to his family. I would like to undo this particular part of me.5 -
Am a developer I write Python,php and java. .. I joined a telecoms company in my country which is not doing well as opposed to the other 2 telecoms. One reason is that its a government entity And always keep making bad decision which no one take responsible of. .. always good at making bad decision
My previous boss (who just left) conrned me to support a Chinese Software called mobile money full of bugs. And does not do wat they sad it could do in the FRS . . Doccumentation is mess. There a language barier with the support team. .. then there a guy who seem to have temper and looks overworked by Chinese.
I love writing code and learning new stuff
And progressing in my career
But I cant do that if am answering a call every fu*king sec. We are not appreciated as a team by both the business and CTIO even tho we are only the only two engineers in the Dept. .. its sickens me
I dont no what to do now.that my imediate boss is gone to another company . . What thing to do -
I remember an instructor of mine probably gave my class the life advice that will probably keep haunting me in my remaining two years in uni. In the class the day before our lab exam he basically ranted out what I guess we're justified issues he faced with our class(the class ranted about not getting test cases for the assignments). He then proceeded to explain for 1.5 hours why the kind of graduates we'll become we'll prolly be unemployed or doing 100$/month jobs at some shitty local software house. The whole gist of his rant was fuck your test cases, learn to code. But ever since that this thought has stuck with me, am I even good enough. I mean I don't think I'm that shit but my opinion is biased towards obviously considering myself to be above average.1
-
At work thres a legacy "common" DLL, which held a helper function that's incharge of creating Slugs, it takes an MD5 of the current time stamp UTC, removing non-URLable chars, and taking the first N chars that remain then
Ngl I was impressed at first at it, but then I thought, its Uniqueness isnt guaranteed
But then again I thought, the uniqueness can be tested via a call given it's indexed anyway in DB so O(1), and if non-unique, just re-call the function. Even in the worst case scenario the hits won't be that many anyway
I didnt change the code, tho at first I was inclined to given my "it isnt proven-unique" stance but am wondering, if this is a good approach
While coolish, it seems wrong in the back of my mind somehow...1 -
Last week I got a call I thought it was a screen interview, but turned to be a technical interview for a job I probably applied for back in 2015.
Today, I got a call for face to face HR interview next week which is going to be in the middle of the day and the company is about 1 hour away from my home/work.
Right now, I am feeling good at my current company. Nice salary, only me and manager but we are hiring, and its close from home.
The other company, is a bigger company, salary is unknown, and working hours are less but if you count driving hours it will be much longer! And work will be related with SharePoint “0 Experience” and Web Developments.
PS: Both companies aren’t tech companies!
Even tho I am happy here, I have this thing inside me that asks me to change jobs and challenge myself learning about new technologies “Or technologies I have never worked with”!
However, If keep doing this I won’t settle and If I find myself stuck at a job I hate and try to move to other companies, they won’t hire me because I keep moving!
I hate overthinking these stuff,
and just need to get it off my shoulders!1