After spending a whole day "user proofing" a new module I realized something: why do I even bother with all the additional work?

Why you might ask?
A little anecdote...

At least twice a month I get a call that someone deleted - by accident- a patient in their practice management software.
Fun thing is, it's hidden behind multiple tabs and buttons - and you literally have to type in "yes, I want to delete this patient".

Asking how this could happen - by accident - yields a "I didn't know this would delete the patient".

And I really wish I was joking...but it happened just last week..again :-D

DISCLAIMER: I swear to god this is true. This is a completely unfabricated anecdote.

Soon we are moving to a new office space, and my department have been delegated the responsibility of moving all of the computers from the old work space to the new one. I was a little confused at first, because I'm a software developer, not a removalist.
It gets better.

We just had a meeting the other day, and my manager had advised us that we were to be moving the machines on a Saturday. I confirmed whether we were being paid overtime, simply because I had never worked a Saturday before. My manager replied (this is paraphrased but ultimately accurate) - "It's unpaid. Because you get paid a salary, you're expected to do unpaid overtime here and there. We have christmas parties and nights out, all of which come out of the companies pocket. Not all companies do this, so it's only fair you give back".

I honestly couldn't believe it. I was being asked to spend basically the majority of my day off moving computers from one site to another, for free, purely because it's "expected". Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?

Long story short, I went home and started updating my resume.

Little anecdote from my in-house it:

"Our passwords are safe because we change them every 3 months and they have to contain uppercases, lowercases, numbers and special characters. 6 digit length is enough and can't be hacked."

My best CS teacher was the most passionate dev I've ever met. He is still teaching Software Engineering at 65, and he's reached that unreachable level of nerdiness, when you are more of a philosopher than just a coder.

Random anecdote: back in 2010, we both spent Christmas week playing and prototyping with Lego Mindstorms and Android, in preparation for my bachelor thesis project!

I’m working at an architecture firm these days, so I don’t have many “dev” stories to tell. However, I’d like to share this anecdote to reassure (or demoralize) you all that the kind of nonsense we’ve all dealt with as software developers isn’t limited to the software industry.

I’ve been working on a project to build townhomes and apartments on vacant lots in an urban environment.
Space is limited, so the client assured us early on that they would be centralizing all the mechanical equipment (water heaters, air conditioners, etc.) in the basement of each building. We finally got all the apartments laid out and presented them to the client last week. During that meeting, we get a casual “oh, by the way, we need a 3-foot by 3-foot mechanical closet in each apartment.” Did the project manager push back? Of course not. Have our deadlines been adjusted as a result of changing requirements? Don’t be silly! Starting tomorrow morning, the team gets to feverishly search for an extra 9 square feet in each of a couple dozen different apartment layouts that are already “cozy” in time to meet our next deliverable.

Clients suck.
Changing requirements suck.
Pushover PMs suck.
In every industry.

Working with a developer from another company, nominally called Jo. I had a programming session with Jo today.

Sometimes it's hard to succinctly describe an individual developers level of aptitude in highly technical fields to outsiders because it often requires a lot of context relating to the problem being solved and their attempts to solve it.

In this case I think it could be pretty accurately summarised in this little anecdote: there was a 10 second pause in our work today while Jo was trying to figure out how to type '<'

I think this a perfect anecdote of where tech is going nowadays:

I moved my bowels on one of those high-tech Japanese toilets: it allowed you to control the seat temperature, cleaned your butt with spray (with an additional "ladies" mode), had several modes of flushing (1, 2, and "eco"), automatically lifted and closed the lid, played some music for you, had a remote controller for you to flush your shit at a distance.

But, guess what, IT DIDN'T FLUSH SHIT. It pathetically trying to flush my shit with 1000 different kinds of puny jets and draining modes but my heap of shit always bounced back because its flush was so weak that it couldn't push it.

I don't care if the seat warmer went out of control and burned my ass or if the butt cleaning jet didn't reach my anus,
JUST DO WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO AND FLUSH MY SHIT.

At the shop, buying cigarettes.
Me: give me *** cigarettes
Cashier: sure, you want one click, double click...
Me: do you have a right click?

FUCK IEEE 754.
I've always thought that javascript's problem with floating points was just a good anecdote, but it couldn't have serious consequences in real life programming.

Until I've been stuck half an hour with a bug just because (2.8-0.8)%2 was falsy! FUCK, why don't decide to switch to a decent codification of numbers? Fuck them and fuck all programming languages like this

Anecdote from when I used to be an apprentice:
Setting: Small company, number of employees -> ε, direct superior is the founder and owner, no tech background

Boss: I've looked at this backup directory of the ERP /* why is he even going through that stuff?*/, it looks messy as hell, I want you to tidy that up
Me: Those are incremental backups, I can't just go and delete some of them, the application manages them by itself
Boss: Get it tidy!

We have a standalone api acting as a legacy adapter to our actual api, and as you can imagine it's a festering hellpit of hacks and workarounds which is not intended to be maintained after its EOL.

I recently had a dream - more of a nightmare - where our actual api had to support the legacy calls indefinitely.

I told our PO about it as a funny anecdote and he gave me 3 days off.

I was walking in the cineplex after watching a movie today and saw an advertisement for "a digital loyalty card platform for retail outlets. Get loyalty cards on your phone!" being used by a big brand in my country.

The thing is, although not a terribly original idea, I first thought of developing a system/platform like this all the way back in 2012. I coded it, I advertised, I lobbied HARD; I poured my damn soul into this thing. Nobody accepted it. I scrapped it because I thought it was just not a good idea, only to see what is essentially a clone of it being shown off and lauded as a brand new innovative solution.

I won't lie, seeing that ad so prominently and proudly displayed really crushed me. I honestly don't know what makes their rendition better than mine, since mine did pretty much the same thing theirs does and my design chops are pretty much on par with theirs. I was rejected and I don't know why and that stings more than the countless other times my other ideas were shot down because of market mismatch, logistical flaws or just shortsightedness on the part of potential customers.

This isn't an invitation to a pity party, and I can't say there is a moral to this little anecdote, but I feel moved to share this experience with you guys.

Pick from it and learn what you will, I hope this falls under the eyes of the right person out there.

If you're subscribed to me only because of my jokes, feel free to ignore this rant. You won't miss anything.

If not, bear with me.

I was wrong about almost everything I can remember. Preaching so-called “conceptual thinking”, I invented a fantasy world of random anecdotes, which turned into a completely false worldview that shaped my reality. I bashed magical thinking, yet succumbed to it. What I believed to be true was just as magical, wrapped into what sounded like science. In the Dunning-Krueger scheme, I was right there on Peak Stupid.

Random hear-say, stupid concepts I invented, random “knowledge” I picked from YouTube videos, all that was rotting inside my head, one anecdote contradicting another. Ultimately, I think this was the reason of my constant anxiety and pointless, never-ending thought process in background.

If you learned anything factual from me and didn't fact-check it, please forget that immediately. The list includes but is not limited to everything on brain structure, everything on philosophy, almost everything on engineering and architecture, almost everything on systems theory and programming meta stuff (declarative, imperative, etc.)

I admit bashing unit tests. The only reason was me disliking writing them in uni. I wrote like three test cases, disliked it, and the rest was history. Everything else was a rationalization on top. If I was right about something, I was just lucky.

I'm not a CSS prodigy. I know stuff that earns me money and impresses my colleagues, but my knowledge is just one step above basics, in one thousand steps ladder.

Don't refractor for fun!

An anecdote from my previous company. A developer had written a shitty java console app for fetching stock prices. About 3000 LOC. just one java GOD class. So, when me and my friend looked at it, we were amazed how that code works with all that if conditions spanning 100LOC. so. My dear friend underestimated the complexity. Since it just fetches stock price and puts in database right. I can write it in few days and much better one. So, he started writing code in an OO way. Three days later I see he still working on it. Having a glimpse at code. The app is now Object oriented shitty and ugly.

Guess what new code never goes in prod too.

Learning
Don't underestimate complexity of app.
Be empathic about fellow developer. Don't think he has written a shitty code. Think why he had to do so.
Don't work on refractors if there is no one to guide you.

Another anectode from my apprenticeship:
Boss comes into the office, looks at my screen: „So Mr Possum, writing scripts again? Process some customer orders instead.“
My Screen: html in notepad++ (as I was also responsible for the company website)
Me: */ wtf man? */ Alright sir.

Literally vs figuratively... That hilarious anecdote where something went derp did not cause you to literally die. You fuckwit.

Well this is in fact just me reminiscing, instead of telling anecdote.

My first PC was a pentium two, the cpu casing being those horizontal ones, and a big bulky monitor resting on top of it; all white. A white mouse, two white speakers (you know the ones). I was perhaps just about 6 years old, and I used it the first bunch of times to play Mortal Kombat, and Sega's Moto Racer 3, and watch animated disney movies but mostly mickey mouse on VCD. I guess my habits of gaming and binge watching started way too early.

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I've always been a coffee-is-the-answer-to-everything kind of a person. It turns out, sometimes it’s actually the barista who comes to save the day.
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Moral of the story: Tip your coffee shop attendants, and for crying' out loud, jot down your passwords

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