Pro tip: If you are a junior, or senior but new at the company, don't start your conversations with:

"We're doing X wrong. At my previous company we did / at school I learned /in this book I read / according to this talk I watched, the right way to do X is ..."

Instead try:

"I'm curious why were doing X this way. I'm used to doing it differently."

I love flat-hierarchy teams, and people who think about flaws in procedures and proactively try to improve the tools we use are awesome, but the next kid walking up to me yelling we use git flow "wrong" will be smacked in the face with a keyboard.

If you come to me with curiosity and an open mind, I'll explain, and even return the favor by behaving the same way when I'm baffled by your seemingly retarded implementations.

Maybe we can learn from each other, maybe discover that "how I learned it" is sometimes good, sometimes bad.

But let's start with some social skills, not kicking off into every debate with a stretched leg and a red face.

One week, and it turned out to be worse than that.

I was put on a project for a COVID-19 program in America (The CARES Act). The financial team came to us on Monday morning and said they need to give away a couple thousand dollars.

No big deal. All they wanted was a single form that people could submit with some critical info. Didn't need a login/ registration flow or anything. You could have basically used Google Forms for this project.

The project landed in my lap just before lunch on Monday morning. I was a junior in a team with a senior and another junior on standby. It was going to go live the next Monday.

The scope of the project made it seem like the one week deadline wasn't too awful. We just had to send some high priority emails to get some prod servers and app keys and we were fine.

Now is the time where I pause the rant to express to you just how fine we were decidedly **not**: we were not fine.

Tuesday rolls around and what a bad Tuesday it was. It was the first of many requirement changes. There was going to need to be a review process. Instead of the team just reading submissions from the site, they needed accept and reject buttons. They needed a way to deny people for specific reasons. Meaning the employee dashboard just got a little more complicated.

Wednesday came around and yeah, we need a registration and login flow. Yikes.

Thursday came and the couple-thousand dollars turned into a tens of millions. The amount of users we expected just blew up.

Friday, and they needed a way for users to edit their submissions and re-submit if they were rejected. And we needed to send out emails for the status of their applications.

Every day, a new meeting. Every meeting, new requirements that were devastating given our timeframe.

We put in overtime. Came in on the weekend. And by Monday, we had a form that users could submit and a registration/ login flow. No reviewer dashboard. We figured we could take in user input on time and then finish the dashboard later.

Well, financial team has some qualms. They wanted a more complicated review process. They wanted roles; managers assign to assistants. Assistants review assigned items.

The deadline that we worked so hard on whizzed by without so much as a thought, much less the funeral it deserved.

Then, they wanted multiple people to review an application before it was final. Then, they needed different landing pages for a few more departments to be able to review different steps of the applications.

Ended up going live on Friday, close to a month after that faithful Monday which disrupted everything else I was working on, effective immediately.

I don't know why, but we always go live on a Friday for some reason. It must be some sort of conspiracy to force overtime out of our managers. I'm baffled.

But I worked support after the launch.

And there's a funny story about support too: we were asked to create a "submit an issue" form. Me and the other junior worked on it on a wednesday three weeks into the project. Finished it. And the next day it was scrapped and moved to another service we already had running. Poor management like that plagued the project and worked in tandem with the dynamic and ridiculous requirements to make this project hell.

Back to support.

Phone calls give me bad anxiety. But Friday, just before lunch, I was put on the support team. Sure, we have a department that makes calls and deal with users. But they can't be trained on this program: it didn't exist just a month ago, and three days ago it worked differently (the slippery requirements never stopped).

So all of Friday and then all of Saturday and all of Monday (...) I had extended panic attacks calling hundreds of people. And the team that was calling people was only two people. We had over 400 tickets in the first two days.

And fuck me, stupid me, for doing a good job. Because I was put on the call team for **another** COVID project afterwards. I knew nothing about this project. I have hated my job recently. But I'm a junior. What am I gonna say, no?

So... I just remembered a story that's perfect for devrant.

My brother got into engineering in university, and during the second semester they had their introductory class to programming. They had weekly homeworks that the lecturer would check and give grades accordingly.

The factors that could influence the grading were: execution (meaning that the code would excecute as intended), efficiency and readabilty. The weeks passed and everyone was doing well, getting fairly good grades. Everyone was happy.

Until one day a random guy we'll call bob got the worst grade possible. Bob wasn't a bad student. He had over-the-average grades in all the weekly homeworks and even impressed the professor in some. Naturally, he was baffled when he saw his grade on the google spreadsheet. He was pretty sure his code ran well. He always tested it on different machines and OSs. So, at the end of the class, he went straight to the helper of the class, in a pretty imperative manner, to demand to know how the fuck he got that grade. It's impossible he got excecution, efficiency and readabilty, wrong. All three wrong? Impossible. Even the stupidiest kid in the class had some points on readabilty.

"Oh, so you are Bob. Huh?" said the helper in a laid-back attitude. "Come with me. Prof. X is waiting for you in his office."

This got Bob even more confused. As they approached the office, the courage he had in a first moment banished and gave way for nervousness and fear.

The helper nocks the door. "Prof., Bobs here"

As soon as Bob sits in the chair in front of Prof. X's, he knew something bad was coming.
"In all these years of teaching..." said Prof. X hesitantly. "In all these years of teaching I have not come even close to see something similar to what you've done. You should be ashamed of yourself." Needless to say, Bob was panicked.

"In all these years I have not seen such blatant mockery!" added the professor. "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU EVEN DARE TO SEND A HOMEWORK WITH SUCH VARIABLE NAMING" That's when Bob realised the huge mistake he made. "NEVER IN ALL THESE YEARS I HAVE SEEN SOMEONE NAME HIS VARIABLES *opens the file on his desktop *: PENIS, SHIT, FUCKSHIT, GAYFUCKING<insert Prof. X's name>MAN, GOATSE, VAGINAVAR, CUMFUNCTION, [...]" The list of obcenities went on and on. In each word, the professor hit the table harder than the last time.

Turns out Bob felt so in comfort with the ease of the course he decided to spice things up by using "funny naming conventions" while coding, and then tidying everything up before uploading the homework. This week he forgot, and fucked it big time.

So remember folks, always check your code before committing/giving it in/production. And always adhere to naming conventions.

I've had my share of incompetent coworkers. In order of appearance:

1. A full stack dev. This one guy never, and I mean NEVER uses relationships in their tables. No indexing, no keys, nada. Couple of months later he was baffled why his page took ten seconds to load.

2. The same dev as (1). Requirement was to create some sort of "theme" feature for a web app. Hacked it by putting !important all over the place.

3. The same dev again. He creates several functions that if the data exists returns a view, and if it doesn't, "echo '0'". No, not return 0 or return false or anything, but fucking echo. This was PHP. If posted a rant about this a few months ago.

4. Same dev, has no idea what clean code is. No, not just reusable functions, he doesn't even get indenting right. Some functions have 4 spaces, some 2 tabs, some 6 tabs! And this is inside the same function. God wait until he tries Python...

5. Same dev now suggests that he become the PM. GM approves (very small company). Assigns me to travel to a client since they needed "technical assistance about the API". Was actually there to lead a UAT session.

Intermezzo, that guy went from fullstack dev to PM to sales (yes, one who calls clients to offer products) to business development, to product analyst in the span of two years.

After a year and a half there, I quit.

6. New company, a "QA engineer" who also assumes the role as the product owner. Does absolutely no tests other than "functional tests" in which he NEVER produces any form of documentation. Not even a set of test cases. He goes by "intuition".

7. Same guy as (6), hands me requirements for a feature. By "hands me" I mean he did that verbally. No spec documents, no slack chat, no Trello card. I ended up writing it as a card in Trello. Fast forward to the due date, he flips out because that wasn't what he wanted. Showed him the card. He walked away, without thinking of a solution how this mess should be handled.

Despite all this, I really don't want him (6&7) to leave the company. The devs get really stressed out at this job and he does make a really good person to laugh with/at.

So we where given a project with a deadline already set behind our backs and we have to give our deadline despite not knowing wtf we have to do exactly ...

They asked us to don't ask too much time because the budget can't afford too much time...

I'm here thinking: WTF?!
THEY PASSED A FUCKING DEADLINE AND PRICES TO THE FUCKING CLIENT WITHOUT ASKING ANY! ANY MOTHERFUCKING DEV ABOUT IT!!!

We asked them so many fucking questions on the first meeting that they were fucking baffled about everything but kept playing cool like "well, this project is already set and we are gonna have to deal with it"

Bunch of motherfucking stupid cock suckers , go die agonizing on your own vomit and if ask my help I'm gonna answer "well, you gonna have to deal with it because you are already fucked"

Every programming language I know of does trigonometry in radians.

Yet I have been puzzled for 4 hours whether JS was broken because it kept saying Math.sin(30) != Math.sin(150), trying all kinds of values, looking up basic trigonometry stuff again and again.

After that, 10 minutes of wondering why my json was invalid... right, you can't comment things out.

Then 15 minutes being baffled by a simple script tag not working, because I wrote script href instead of script src.

Finally, I threw a liter of chocolate milk over a $400 keyboard.

I really need to stop setting up new projects at 3am.

Here's a true story about a "fight" between me and my project manager...

I've been working as a Frontend developer for nearly two years, managed to acquire a decent amount of knowledge, in some cases well above the rest of my coworkers, and one day I got into a bit of a disagreement with my project manager.

Basically he wanted me to copy/paste some feature from another project (needless to say, that... "thing" has more bugs than an ant farm), and against his orders I started doing that feature from scratch, to build a solid foundation from the very start.
I had a lengthy deadline to deliver that feature, they were expecting me to take some time to fix some of the bugs as well, but my idea was to make it bug-free from the moment the feature was released. Both my method and the one I should be copying worked the exact same, but mine was superior in every way, had no bugs, was scalable and upgradeable with little effort, there was no reason not to accept it.

We use scrum as our work methodology, so we have daily meetings. In one of those, the project manager asked me how was the progress on that new feature, and I told him I was just polishing up the code and integrating it with the rest of the project, to make sure everything was working properly. I still had a full day left before the deadline set for that feature, and I was expecting to take about half an hour to finish up a couple lines of code and test everything, no issues so far...

But then he exploded, and demanded to know why wasn't I copying the code from the other project, to which I answered "because this way things will work better".
Right after he said that the feature was working on the other project, copying and pasting it should take a few minutes to do and maybe a couple of extra hours to fix any issues that might have appeared...
The problem here is, the other project was made by trainees, I honestly can't navigate through 3 pages without bumping into an average of 2 errors per page, I was placed into this new project because they know I do quality code, and they wanted this project to be properly made, unlike the previous one, so I was baffled when he said that he preferred me to copy code instead of doing "good" code...
My next reply was "just because something has been made and is working that doesn't mean that it has been properly made nor will work as it should, I could save a few hours copying code (except I wouldn't save any, it would take me more time to adapt the code than to do it from scratch) but then I'll be wasting weeks of work because of new bugs that will be reported over time, because trust me, they will appear... "

I told him this in a very calm manner, but everybody in the meeting room paused and started staring at me, not many dare challenge that specific project manager, and I had just done that...
After a few seconds of silence the PM finally said... "look, if you manage to finish your task inside the set deadline I'll forget we ever had this conversation, but I'll leave a note on my book, just in case..."

I finished that task in about 30 mins, as expected, still had 7 hours till deadline, and I completely forgot about that feature until now because it has never given any issues whatsoever, and is now being used for other projects as well.

It was one of my proudest/rage inducing moments in this project, and honestly, I think I have hit my PM with a very big white glove because some weeks after this event the CEO himself came to the whole team to congratulate us on the outstanding work being made so far, in a project that acted against the PM's orders 90% of the time.

On my first day at work i was given the task to rewrite some code. I pulled the code, started the server and was greeted with a login-page. Instead of asking for credentials i tried good ol' " OR 1=1;#. Instand login, admin account. My boss was baffled, but instead of fixing this he decided other tasks had "higher priority". 3 years later, this still exists. I also heard some client runs the application open on the internet.

Everyone wants security, but some people decide to pull out the bottommost card in the fragile house of cards of security

What's the difference between a wasp and single loose hair?
Apparently none till the wasp stings :/

Yesterday I thought I had a loose hair on my neck.. ok, I shrug it off.. later again the creepy feeling.. shrugs off..

I continue to work, sumberged in code, wanting to find the fucker (bug, not the wasp/hair).. lean in to the monitor... 10 cents away from the screen... Ok, maybe that's it! Feels the hair on my back, near shoulderblades again... shrugging again more violently to get it further down to fall out.. nothing.. ok, got the bug, threw myslef back in the chair with substential force & BAAAAM!!! Motherfucking hair bit me!! O.o

I scream in horror & on top of the lungs (it was late, after work hours so I didn't expect anyone else still at the office) PROKLETA PRASICA (roughly translated to goddamn female swine).. I previously saw some green bug flying around the office and I thought that nasty thing bit me (didn't know they bite soo, much more horror for me).. O.o

Anyhow, I jump up from the computer and see my coworker looking at me all baffled.. I proceed to franticly take of my headphones and hoodie..thinking about wtf should I do now, I cannot get undressed in front of him (not for my sake, bra is the same as top of the bathing suit for me, but still..I don't want anyone suing me for impropper behaviour of undreasing in front of coworkers..), how the fuck should I get to the toilet?! O.o

C: Are you ok?!
M: Um.. sth bit me..wtf?!
C: There was a wasp flying around somewhere some time ago.. are you alergic?!
M: um..not sure, I don't think so..we'll see soon..

I proceed to the WC, to take off tshirt & check/kill off the fucker.. on my way there (walking funny to not press the hair to my body again) I got another surprise, another coworker was working late..

C2: Are you ok?! O.o
M: yeah, sth bit me, probably a wasp..

Ok, finally on the loo..ok, do not lock self in in case it escapes and you need help.. don't even shut the door. Check.. standing between the doors I contemplate on how the fuck should I take my tshirt off without angering the fucker even more and getting bitten again.. O.O

I lifted the tshirt up my back to let it out.. nope, not there..the creepy felling of buzzing around between my shoulder blades continues.. crap.. what to do?!

I stood there & contemplated the task.. ok, roll up the tshirt to the shoulder blades, not against the body (duh) to prevent further stings..tighten the fabric, so it cannot escape, quickly remove the band from the body.. done..reversed the tshirt and straightened it.. bzzz... Fucker fell somewhere.. Dafaq?! Was it really just a wasp?! If yes, no problem...but what if coworker was wrong and I got bitten by that nasty green whateveritsname bug?! Eeeeewwww! Is it poisonous? Gotta find it & kill it for good.. waited a bit, than saw a goddamn wasp crawl from under the toilet.. wasp!! Yess!! Stopm stomp fucker!!

I get dressed & go back to my desk..

C: Did you terminate it?!
M: Yup, fucker went on a toilet paper trip down the drain!!

I sit down, starting to get my headphones back on and proceed to work.., but before I could, one last gem:

C: CTO would say, thank god it didn't sting you in your finger cuz you wouldn't be able to type anymore..

M: O.O so true hahhahahaaa

Disclaimer - I like animals, but I freakking hate wasps..especially if they get under my tshirt to sting.. :/

I’ve started the process of setting up the new network at work. We got a 1Gbit fibre connection.

Plan was simple, move all cables from old switch to new switch. I wish it was that easy.

The imbecile of an IT Guy at work has setup everything so complex and unnecessary stupid that I’m baffled.
We got 5 older MacPros, all running MacOS Server, but they only have one service running on them.

Then we got 2x xserve raid where there’s mounted some external NAS enclosures and another mac. Both xserve raid has to be running and connected to the main macpro who’s combining all this to a few different volumes.

Everything got a static public IP (we got a /24 block), even the workstations. Only thing that doesn’t get one ip pr machine is the guest network.
The firewall is basically set to have all ports open, allowing for easy sniffing of what services we’re running.

The “dmz” is just a /29 of our ip range, no firewall rules so the servers in the dmz can access everything in our network.

Back to the xserve, it’s accessible from the outside so employees can work from home, even though no one does it. I asked our IT guy why he hadn’t setup a VPN, his explanation was first that he didn’t manage to set it up, then he said vpn is something hackers use to hide who they are.

I’m baffled by this imbecile of an IT guy, one problem is he only works there 25% of the time because of some health issues. So when one of the NAS enclosures didn’t mount after a power outage, he wasn’t at work, and took the whole day to reply to my messages about logins to the xserve.

I can’t wait till I get my order from fs.com with new patching equipment and tonnes of cables, and once I can merge all storage devices into one large SAN. It’ll be such a good work experience.

Recruiter: "How do you see the future of the field?"

Me: "... How do I see the future of neurorobotics?"

Hom: "Yes"

Me: 😐 *baffled*

New project at work involving Google Nest Hubs, supervisor asks me to do the initial setup of one of them to start developing with it using its API.

I start looking throughout the documentation and realise that we need to setup a work google account in order to register the devices, pay a fee and only THEN be able to use Google's API for Smart Devices (damn, you, Google!). Supervisor is somewhat baffled by this, and in my head I'm also surprised by his reaction. I'd assume you'd research your devices before you buy them, right?

Later, he comes into the room I'm in (I'm still allowed to work on location), looks at the freshly setup Nest Hub, saying "wow, this sure is a much smaller screen than I was expecting". I mean, you did research these devices before you bought TWENTY of them. RIGHT?!

On my way to fight with this Google device-registration-API-thing now.

To be continued...

One day, I spoke to my team which yubi or nitro key to get.

Senior (s) : but what do you need it for?
Me (m) : for encryption. And securing our password managers. Stuff, I guess.
S : encryption is not gonna be a thing. It hasn't and it won't.
M : *leaves*

I've been so baffled I couldn't cope with the situation.
A few weeks later I left the company. There were too many of such people and those products.

Recently applied at a local company. Webform, "enter some details and we'll get back to you"-like.

Entered my details, hit submit, lo and behold "Error 503 - something went wrong on our end".

I was just baffled. It's a well-established IT company and they can't even get their application form to work?

So I'm sitting there in the debugger console, monitoring network stuff to see if anything is weird. I obviously hit submit some several more times during that.

Eventually I give up.

In the night my phone wakes me up with a shitton of "we've received your application and will review it..." emails.

Yeah they didn't get back to me.

I left my previous company because my tech leadership was insensitive and agressive.

However, I am in a start-up right now and CTO is a nut job.

He creates random Slack threads and keeps messaging me like crazy. The co-founders have shut him down multiple times and yet his only success metric is "number of deliveries".

The other day something broke in production and teams were discussing about resolving the bug in one of the Slack channels.

CTO literally wrote this and I wish I was making this up, "let us not look at the logs and trust our code to work fine."

I was baffled and confused. I realised me leaving my previous organisation because of such tech leadership was a stupid decision.

Crows are black everywhere.

I work for a small company with about 10 employees working full-time in the office. We all report directly to the CEO, Phil. When the pandemic hit, Phil went into full panic mode and had us all move our desks 12+ feet apart, wash our hands every 20 minutes, sterilize everything in between uses, etc. Nothing super weird, and better than having no reaction at all, but it was a hypervigilant process that made me expect him to be very accommodating when our state went on lockdown.

Boy, was I wrong. Our industry is considered essential so we’re still open, but Phil is being odd when it comes to working from home. For background, about 95% of our work can be done remotely. The other 5% would require about 15 minutes in the office once a week. I was the first one to pose the idea of working from home and Phil nervously agreed, but only let do it three days a week. My coworkers were given similar instructions but were “encouraged to come in every day, if possible.” A few of them do.

Since then, Phil has gotten pretty weird about the situation. He refers to people who are working from home as being “off work” (which is NOT the case, we are all working and available while at home, which he knows because he calls us for work-related things during work hours!). Today, Phil asked me if my coworker Travis was in his office, and I said Travis was working from home, and Phil replied in a sour tone, “So he’s not working then, great.” He has made similar comments about my other coworkers. When I’m working from home, he’ll call me and ask in a sarcastic tone, “What are you even working on today?” Or he’ll give me an assignment and end with, “Can you actually do work on this today? I need you working.” One time, he called while I was in the bathroom and when I called him back less than five minutes later, I was told that I “need to be available and not screwing around.”

The weirdest thing is that none of us has had productivity problems! My job is such that I can tell when anyone is slacking even a little and I haven’t noticed any issues. Personally, I’ve actually been MORE productive! And I’ve never been accused of “screwing around” while at the office before, so this attitude has baffled me.

He is so convinced that we aren’t working that he cut our work-from-home time down two days a couple weeks ago, and now it’s being cut down to one day as of next week – when COVID cases are higher in our city than ever!

My guess is that because Phil isn’t physically seeing us work, he assumes we aren’t working. CCing him on stuff to leave “proof” doesn’t work because he doesn’t read his email. He is also naturally a nightmare of a micromanager (and an across-the-office yeller) so not being as “in control” is probably freaking him out. But what is the best way to handle this?

I was baffled when I found out my girlfriend Google's things as actual questions instead of keywords.

I know it's fine considering the search has to work with voice assistant, I just thought everyone did keywords.

When I landed my dream job in 2009 (which is also be my first job in the industry), I had no clue about python. The company just asked me three months after starting with them for something related if I'd like to join the automation team. It sounded like fun to me, so the company paid for me a private remote instructor for a week. Then I went across the world to the main office to work directly with our automation team for two weeks. I picked it up quickly and well (or so I thought) and was churning out scripts for a few years.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I and many others no longer work there. Five years later, I have a renewed interest in Python so I take online courses to relearn it. Why is it so much harder this time around? I do remember it, but not in great detail nor as well as I did, but I'm baffled that I'm struggling so much the second time around.

It's only Python! Still getting enjoyment out of it as I did before though.

I don't know if I'm being pranked or not, but I work with my boss and he has the strangest way of doing things.
- Only use PHP
- Keep error_reporting off (for development), Site cannot function if they are on.
- 20,000 lines of functions in a single file, 50% of which was unused, mostly repeated code that could have been reduced massively.
- Zero Code Comments
- Inconsistent variable names, function names, file names -- I was literally project searching for months to find things.
- There is nothing close to a normalized SQL Database, column ID names can't even stay consistent.
- Every query is done with a mysqli wrapper to use legacy mysql functions.
- Most used function is to escape stirngs
- Type-hinting is too strict for the code.
- Most files packed with Inline CSS, JavaScript and PHP - we don't want to use an external file otherwise we'd have to open two of them.
- Do not use a package manger composer because he doesn't have it installed.. Though I told him it's easy on any platform and I'll explain it.
- He downloads a few composer packages he likes and drag/drop them into random folder.
- Uses $_GET to set values and pass them around like a message contianer.
- One file is 6000 lines which is a giant if statement with somewhere close to 7 levels deep of recursion.
- Never removes his old code that bloats things.
- Has functions from a decade ago he would like to save to use some day. Just regular, plain old, PHP functions.
- Always wants to build things from scratch, and re-using a lot of his code that is honestly a weird way of doing almost everything.
- Using CodeIntel, Mess Detectors, Error Detectors is not good or useful.
- Would not deploy to production through any tool I setup, though I was told to. Instead he wrote bash scripts that still make me nervous.
- Often tells me to make something modern/great (reinventing a wheel) and then ends up saying, "I think I'd do it this way... Referes to his code 5 years ago".
- Using isset() breaks things.
- Tens of thousands of undefined variables exist because arrays are creates like $this[][][] = 5;
- Understanding the naming of functions required me to write several documents.
- I had to use #region tags to find places in the code quicker since a router was about 2000 lines of if else statements.
- I used Todo Bookmark extensions in VSCode to mark and flag everything that's a bug.
- Gets upset if I add anything to .gitignore; I tried to tell him it ignores files we don't want, he is though it deleted them for a while.
- He would rather explain every line of code in a mammoth project that follows no human known patterns, includes files that overwrite global scope variables and wants has me do the documentation.
- Open to ideas but when I bring them up such as - This is what most standards suggest, here's a literal example of exactly what you want but easier - He will passively decide against it and end up working on tedious things not very necessary for project release dates.
- On another project I try to write code but he wants to go over every single nook and cranny and stay on the phone the entire day as I watch his screen and Im trying to code.

I would like us all to do well but I do not consider him a programmer but a script-whippersnapper. I find myself trying to to debate the most basic of things (you shouldnt 777 every file), and I need all kinds of evidence before he will do something about it. We need "security" and all kinds of buzz words but I'm scared to death of this code. After several months its a nice place to work but I am convinced I'm being pranked or my boss has very little idea what he's doing. I've worked in a lot of disasters but nothing like this.

We are building an API, I could use something open source to help with anything from validations, routing, ACL but he ends up reinventing the wheel. I have never worked so slow, hindered and baffled at how I am supposed to build anything - nothing is stable, tested, and rarely logical. I suggested many things but he would rather have small talk and reason his way into using things he made.

I could fhave this project 50% done i a Node API i two weeks, pretty fast in a PHP or Python one, but we for reasons I have no idea would rather go slow and literally "build a framework". Two knuckleheads are going to build a PHP REST framework and compete with tested, tried and true open source tools by tens of millions?

I just wanted to rant because this drives me crazy. I have so much stress my neck and shoulder seems like a nerve is pinched. I don't understand what any of this means. I've never met someone who was wrong about so many things but believed they were right. I just don't know what to say so often on call I just say, 'uhh..'. It's like nothing anyone or any authority says matters, I don't know why he asks anything he's going to do things one way, a hard way, only that he can decipher. He's an owner, he's not worried about job security.

My preferred stack is Rails/NginX/Postgres, or Node using the same.

I have a fair amount of material for this week's rant, but in my stack's defense, the quantity is primarily because I've been using it for so long, and I'm apparently a talented breaker. I may share other stories if the motivation arises.

However, today I ran into something definitely deserving of calling out.

The default datatype for a Date+Time column in Postgres is `datetime` which means "date+time without timezone". (while `datetimetz` instead stores the timezone).

Apparently when comparing a datetime with a datetimetz, Postgres doesn't compute the timezone difference correctly, leading to some very unexpected and confusing query results.

Today, I had a record that was both pending (expires_at > now) and expired (expires_at <= now), where now is a DateTime (with tz) literal from Rails. After half an hour's frustrated delving and baffled expressions at query results, I finally figured out that the database's math was incorrect when comparing UTC (+0) and PST (-7).

This during a semi-high-priority bugfix that's blocking for a coworker.

While Time and all of its nuances are honestly extremely difficult to handle correctly, I didn't expect Postgres to get this relatively simple part wrong.

Shame on you, Postgres.
I expected better.

Just purchased a new house and was looking for a new ISP. Found a local ISP that is still offering dial up services and "Professional Website Design". Their website was obviously pre-web 2.0 all static nested tables and sliced images.

We literally have Ph.D's here who dont know how to use a Linux CLI... I'm baffled as to how you get into the security industry without understanding actual security. The only thing your Ph.D. counts for is understanding the rules that allow you to ball-bust people into paying your salary.

Angular is still a pile of steaming donkey shit in 2023 and whoever thinks the opposite is either a damn js hipster (you know, those types that put js in everything they do and that run like a fly on a lot of turds form one js framework to the next saying "hey you tried this cool framework, this will solve everything" everytime), or you don't understand anything about software developement.

I am a 14 year developer so don't even try to tell me you don't understand this so you complain.
I build every fucking thing imaginable. from firmware interfaces for high level languaces from C++, to RFID low level reading code, to full blown business level web apps (yes, unluckily even with js, and yes, even with Angular up to Angular15, Vue, React etc etc), barcode scanning and windows ce embedded systems, every flavour of sql and documental db, vectorial db code, tech assistance and help desk on every OS, every kind of .NET/C# flavour (Xamarin, CE, WPF, Net framework, net core, .NET 5-8 etc etc) and many more

Everytime, since I've put my hands on angularJs, up from angular 2, angular 8, and now angular 15 (the only 3 version I've touched) I'm always baffled on how bad and stupid that dumpster fire shit excuse of a framework is.

They added observables everywhere to look cool and it's not necessary.
They care about making it look "hey we use observables, we are coo, up to date and reactive!!11!!1!" and they can't even fix their shit with the change detection mechanism, a notorious shitty patchwork of bugs since earlier angular version.

They literally built a whole ecosystem of shitty hacks around it to make it work and it's 100x times complex than anything else comparable around. except maybe for vanilla js (fucking js).

I don't event want todig in in the shit pool that is their whole ecosystem of tooling (webpack, npm, ng-something, angular.json, package.json), they are just too ridiculous to even be mentioned.

Countless time I dwelled the humongous mazes of those unstable, unrealiable shitty files/tools that give more troubles than those that solve.

I am here again, building the nth business critical web portal in angular 16 (latest sack of purtrid shit they put out) and like Pink Floyd says "What we found, same old fears".
Nothing changed, it's the same unintelligible product of the mind of a total dumbass.

Fuck off js, I will not find peace until Brendan Eich dies of some agonizing illness or by my hands

I don't write many rants but this, I've been keeping it inside my chest for too long.

I fucking hate js and I want to open the head of js creator like the doom marine on berserk

tfw...

• the new "sr dev" asks what the point of TDD is
• being polite, I answer in an ELI5 format
• rest of the room nods head in agreement
• new "sr dev" still has baffled look on face

What kinda blockhead moron at my ISP decided that I require a new modem & router that is managed by THEM! I'm not really baffled by the privacy concerns but more about that I am unable to manage my home network. I literally cant open ports, manage ip adresses and do other shit I NEED FOR WORKING AT HOME.
I cant print!
I cant read mail!
I cant access my network drives!
My website is down!
Colleagues are asking why the Minecraft server is offline!
And using the new brick they gave me as a modem only, is not possible as there is no setting to be found to turn the router off!
And if I call their imbecile's of support they tell my that if they change a setting, that my phone will disconnect. (The phone line is also connected to the modem!) And right after the support guy said that and wanted to start explaing me further steps, his settings apply and I get kicked off the line. Bruh! You knew this would happen so why didnt you work around it?!?!?!!
Thing is, this new modem isnt even necessary as it doesnt use a different standard like fiber for example.
If I cant figure out how to get my stuff to work again, I swear to god I will turn on full Karen mode and ramble into their next store looking to get some manager fired!
(Ill post an update soon!)

Can I have a big applause for this recruitment agency that baffled me in a good way?

No I'm not kidding! Their employers are actually not total fuckwits at all, as opposed to ALL previous recruiters I've had the nauseating displeasure of meeting.

They really found me 3 perfectly fitting jobs! (and I'm known to be picky)

We had a Christmas party at work. We did a traditional white elephant gift game. I stole some larping swords from one guy, somebody else stole them from me, and another guy named Bilbo stole them and ended up with them.

After the party I am at my desk. Bilbo comes over with the swords and gives them to me. He said, "You looked like you really wanted these." I said thank you. I was really touched by that gesture.

Bilbo had tried to get golf balls during the game and lost them. So I went to the store at lunch today and got him a 12 pack of Titleists for $25. I don't golf, but people I work with say they are good. I left these on his desk. He comes to me later and says, "I cannot accept these. It is just too much money." I said its not too much and explained I was touched by his gesture. He tells me to take them back and get something nice for myself. Which is another nice gesture. Bilbo said when we get back from Christmas break we can do lunch.

So I am a bit baffled. Did I cross a line I shouldn't cross? Is Bilbo just too nice? I was really hoping he would enjoy this. I get it. We are coworkers and not family. I truly respect and like the guy.

Anyway, I am unsure what to do with them. I didn't really want to take them back. I tried to give them to another guy I work with and he wouldn't take them either. One talked about paying for them then decided he didn't want them. I have more shopping to do so I can take them back then. It kind of weirds me out to say $25 is too much money. I can hardly go a day without spending that much on a couple of random small things.

Any good tutorials for learning linux internals out there? I'm baffled by what are /etc, /opt, and so forth...

Seriously swimming in murky waters for now.

Also, what are your launchers of choice? I am contemplating should I dig into unity / dash, or try smth else?

@linuxxx

Went late in life to college.
Got my first IT Dev Job at 30
Now almost five years later, I'm depressed, realizing that I can't do this. I'm a horrible dev and not the kind of "horrible" that writes blog posts about how horrible they are while they maintain several libraries and casually make tutorials on YouTube.

I'm genuinely bad.

I tried learning and improving myself. But I'm always overwhelmed and frustrated, because there are so many things I don't understand. Learning anything takes me an incredible amount of time and then it's only on a superficial level, to the point I mostly memorise patterns but never truly understand. While others go through documentions and they understand everything, I have to find articles that explain solutions and concepts with super simple examples. Without Google I would be lost.

Online or in real life, I'm just getting baffled how poorly I compare to others.

I can't sleep, it's 3 am and I have a meeting in the morning. I still wasn't fired so far, but I should be fired. I messed up in all aspects of life, but realizing your choices were all wrong is dragging me down.

I was genuinely baffled by this until I read up more on regex flags and realised that this is the intended behaviour😂

Over the summer I was recruited to be a supplement instructor for a data structures course. As a result of that I was asked (separately by the professor) to be a grader for the course. Because of pay limitations I've mostly been grading homework project assignments. In any case, it's a great job to get my foot into the department and get recognized.

Over the course of the semester I've had this one person, OSX, named after their operating system of choice, who has been giving me awkward submissions. On the first assignment they asked the professor for extra time for some reason or the other, and that's perfectly fine.

So I finally receive OSX's submission, and it's a .py file as per course of the course. So I pop up a terminal in the working directory and type "python OSX_hw1.py". Get some error spit out about the file not being the right encoding. I know that I can tell python to read it in a different encoding, so I open it up in a text editor. To my surprise it's totally not a text file, but rather a .zip file!

I've seen weirder things done before, so no big deal. I rename the file extension, and open it up to extract the files when I see that there's no python files. "Okay, what's goin on here OSX..." I think to myself.

Poking around in the files it appears to be some sort of meta-data. To what, I had no clue, but what I did find was picture files containing what appeared to be some auto-generated screenshots of incomplete code. Since I'm one to give people the benefit of doubt even when they've long exhausted other peoples', I thought that it must be some fluke, and emailed OSX along with the professor detailing my issue.

I got back a rather standard reply, one of which was so un-notable I could not remember it if my life depended on it. However, that also meant I didn't have to worry about that anymore. Which when you're juggling 50 bazillion things is quite a relief. Tragically, this relief was short lived with the introduction of assignment 2.

Assignment 2 comes around, and I get the same type of submission from OSX. At this time I also notice that all their submissions are *very* close to the due time of 11:59pm (which I don't care about as long as it's in before people start waking up the next morning). I email OSX and the professor again, and receive a similar response. I also get an email from OSX worried about points being deducted. I reply, "No issue. You know what's wrong. Go and submit the right file on $CentralGradingCenter. Just submit over your old assignment".

To my frustration OSX claimed to not know how to do this. I write up a quick response explaining the process, and email it. In response OSX then asks if I can show them if they comes to my supplemental lesson. I tell OSX that if they are the only person, sure, otherwise no because it would not be a fair use of time to the other students.

OSX ends up showing up before anyone else, so I guide them through the process. It's pretty easy, so I'm surprised that they were having issues. Another person then shows up, so I go through relevant material and ask them if they have any questions about recent material in class. That said, afterwards OSX was being somewhat awkward and pushy trying to shake my hand a lot to the point of making me uncomfortable and telling them that there's no reason to be so formal.

Despite that chat, I still did not see a resubmission of either of those two assignments, and assignment 3 began to show it's head. Obviously, this time, as one might expect after all those conversations, I get another broken submission in the same format. Finally pissed off, I document exactly how everything looks on my end, how the file fails to run, how it's actually a zip file, etc, all with screenshots. That then gets emailed to the professor and OSX.

In response, I get an email from OSX panicking asking me how to submit it right, etc, etc. However, they also removed the professor from the CC field. In response I state that I do not know how to use whatever editor they are using, and that they should refer to the documentation in order to get a proper runnable file. I also re-CC the professor, making sure OSX's email to me is included in my reply.

OSX then shows up for one of my lessons, and since no one had shown up yet, I reiterate through what I had sent in the email. OSX's response was astonished that they could ever screw up that bad, but also admits that they had yet to install python(!!!). Obviously, the next thing that comes from my mouth is asking OSX how they write their code. Their response was that they use a website that lets them run python code.

At this point I'm honestly baffled and explain that a lot of websites like those can have limitations which might make code run differently then it should (maybe it's a simple interpreter written on JavaScript, or maybe it is real python, but how are you supposed to do file I/O?) .

After that I finally get a submission for assignment 1!

Error reporting was flooded with failed database connection connections with me being baffled what was causing it.

Yeah, fucking network operator didn't tell us anything about maintenance work. Fuck you, too.

From the moment I started working I knew I wasn't changing the world, creating a new paradigm for the best and all that (even if I avoided working for the best Depression Providers aka Social Medias and other addiction providers)... BUT I never thought about how kind of useless my job was on this "worldly" level...
And lately talking with other seniors profiles in my network (friends having "good careers" ) we kind of concluded that 90-95% of our resumes where in fact CRM/ERP/E-Commerce with a twist...

And fuck, it sucks!! It's useless as fuck at best (let's not talk about the worst cases)... Also, that's most of the startups "innovating" I have met/know... Which also sucks...

I'm baffled by it... And I feel so fucking useless...

fuck... I knew having children was not the best idea...

Do u all have a coworker that makes you astonished and baffled how they possibly got some poor sucker to get married to them?

I just recalled I once had to explain to my CTO what’s the difference between stack and heap memory

It baffled me a little bit, but contrary to what one might perhaps expect, this was a guy who was already making a living off of programming for about ten years selling his software to various clients, so he was clearly competent enough to create software that works, and he had in fact put this startup on its feet operationally with it already being profitable before outside investments were secured

And here I was with my theoretical CS knowledge making zero bucks before getting this job

I once baffled a colleague by showing him that you don't have to (and shouldn't!) use memcpy to copy struct-instances into a different variable in C, which in turn baffled me.

Good times!

WCF doesn't like me adding to lists...

I have to make an uno game that supports multiplayer with WCF for school...

I have a player class that has a list of card classes.

I have a function called dealHand, it adds Cards to the hand list...

I also have a callback function for updating my wpf gui...

For whatever reason if when the gui calls dealhand and I try to use myList.add(new Card()) then the updategui function in my wpf client doesn't fire...

But if I take a seperate method called makeHand which returns a list of cards, and just do myList = makeHand() then that works fine...

Never been so baffled/cursed so much at code before... Is there something about Lists that WCF doesn't like? Seriously... was weird...

Hopefully that was somewhat coherent...

not dev.

HSBC rejected my request to have my credit card limit increased. I call to ask why and after 38 minutes of holding she comes back and says the system automatically rejected your request because of "poor account conduct" and "unusual activity.".....

w h a t t h e F U C K does that mean???

She was unhelpful in explaining what that meant, and I'm honestly baffled. I've always paid my cc balance in full every month, never went over my limit (in fact, utilisation was almost always below 30%), always had enough balance in my account to cover any Direct Debits, Standing Orders and other purchases (I don't even have overdraft), and my credit score is practically excellent.

Then she proceeds to say that I can try applying again in 3-6 months but she can't guarantee approval. HAH as if. They can suck it.

I moved away from Lloyd's bank because they were shit, and now this. Are all banks this shit?

I sent them a complaint and they said they'd get back to me in 5 working days... let's see.

So today was a normal day at the office. My brain stopped functioning after helplessly trying to debug ES6 code for IE 11. So I put my headphones on and went to the loo. (Mind you my headphones have a heavy bass, so they are quite larger than other traditional headphones.)

As I was coming back to my desk, my project manager laughed, pointing to my headphones, and said, "What are these?"

"Headphones!", I said, silently judging him.

He said, "Can't you even put those down for two minutes? You wear them even in the loo!"

Baffled by his utmost stupid sentence, I did the most obvious thing, ignore him.

After about 10 minutes, the manager came to my desk and said, "See, when you walk around with these headphones, people get 'distracted' and are unable to work. So I'd suggest you wear them while still on your seat and remove them when you have to leave the seat. Even the clients might think of you as a weird guy. Okay?"

And I couldn't do anything. I just sat there, nodded and went back to work.

Two senior developers were baffled at why their Web application built using sql server wouldn't just instantly work using sqlite... The Web application uses some pretty advanced queries and ORM.

I'm working with an API where, for some reason, half of the numbers are returned as numbers and half as strings. I'm baffled more than David composing hallelujah.

Thanks to all of you that gave me suggestions about my neighbours. I probably shouldn’t be surprised at how many of you that have shot neighbours as well, but damn. I am kind of baffled by how many shitty people there are.

Anyone reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber? My job is not the duct-taping or box-ticking described in the book, but I'm catching myself too often seeing my job as buying 40 hours of my time each week instead of my actual development work.

“if an ancient Greek or Roman saw a potter, he could imagine buying his pots. He could also imagine buying the potter—slavery was a familiar institution in the ancient world. But he would have simply been baffled by the notion that he might buy the potter’s time.”

Are any of you "cursed" with a particular set of software tools/programs?
Take me for example, I cannot use Adobe shit or it crashes. The same thing can be said for Microsoft Office. Anything in there, it does not matter. It always crashes on me. I continuously get the "Not responding" status. Regardless of operating system.

This has made me absolutely *despise* anything that is Microsoft Office or from Adobe. Now, I am sure you can all guess how and during what circumstances I would have to touch Microsoft stuff, work and the like.

But Adobe, mainly photoshop because it is what my designer uses for mockups and the sort. Dude has been constantly baffled when I show him me trying to open something only for it to crash. And we have made the experiment, in which two of my other employees would use MY COMPUTER to open something in Adobe and it would not crash on them. But the fucking moment I attempt to open anything in these two pieces of shit, guess what? it crashes.

I fkn hate Office and Adobe products

Have been thinking of a new job opportunity so started looking and applying a few places. I have mostly been interested in senior software eng positions so had a few calls with companies directly and some recruiters. Seems to be mostly going well and normal.
However received a tech test from one place and one of the questions in the test was "Name 5 microsoft office products and give examples of each with benefits of its use". I am not even paraphrasing it, rhat was exactly how they worded it with 5 bullet points below to provide answer. I am just baffled as to understand if that was a joke or someone had no idea how to test someone for senior position.
I felt bit cocky so answered with "office 365 (or go linux and use freeware or open source)" and left it at that.
Let's see what (if any) feedback I get. 😂😂😂

I still feel crossed because my linux workstation just died without any usable error message, the only thing that saved the day is my second unplugged hard drive with windows installed in it, it was working fine last night, i always shut it down properly and i only ever used it for dev. i'm still baffled and a bit furious about it, its ubuntu for god's sake, I switched to linux months ago and loved it, but now i feel as if i was betrayed.

Rant and geniune question:

How can a group of 'devs' make 2 functional(enough unfortunately), many active users, phone apps, not just basic af, over a few years... but apparently not know how to make a working referral link of any kind???

Am i missing something like referral code link logic being extremely hard for typical devs to understand? Or some odd or trending reason for for forcing manual, explicit, referral code binding instead of a simple (imo) link that attributes the new user account to the referring user's? If you dont believe me u can check either/both of their actively running, decent/moderate size user base apps, claw eden (on play store) and/or claw party (possibly only via finding an apk... at least not on google play).

They have legit rewards, relatively very fair/honest policy... etc... i get 60+ items won/delivered a month (i have paranormal crane game skills #AutisticSuperpower) which i donate the vast majority of to charity (1 of 3 reasons the IRS reeeeally dislikes me).

Im just baffled by this apparent inability.

!Dev

I'm looking to rent apartment and I'm baffled by this very weird potential scam.

The landlady wants me to pay the security deposit and the first month's rent using a recharge coupon of a prepaid cash card called Transcash. This is in France btw. But she tells me that she shall provide me the agreement and key on the spot of transfer of the coupon. She also asked me to click a picture of the coupon and send it to her when I buy it as a proof that I'm genuinely interested in renting the place and her trip (she claims to live in another city) will not be in vain. Looks clean but my instincts are screaming that this is a scam. But the only scenario I can think of is them beating me up and stealing the coupons from me instead of giving me the agreement and keys. If it is a scam, I really want to know how they plan to execute it.

In a Phaser game, I was unknowingly overriding a method of a parent class. It must've been Phaser.Group or Phaser.Sprite that my class was extending, I was calling destroy() on it without realising I was calling the parent class' method too and was baffled about why shit wasn't working. Found out maybe two days later and changed the method 'destroy()' in my class to 'pokeItWithAStick()'. This was at a previous job, but I'm mostly sure that it stays that way in the codebase three years later.

Been using a jump drive compiled as NTFS for my sneaker net. I copied some file to it from Ubuntu 18.04. I take to Windows machine and it says there are errors (does this a lot). Usually it works fine. The files I copied are not there. They were downloaded web pages as Windows machine is not on net. I noticed the file names have characters like #, ? and ` in them. So I reformat the jump drive to exFat. I copy the files from Ubuntu plus a bunch of other files. It errors like crazy on stuff that copied fine before with NTFS. Not a solution. So I find an alternate downloader for web pages I want to copy (does not have funky characters in filenames). I reformat back to NTFS on jump drive.

So basically if I want to copy files from my Ubuntu system I am stuck with NTFS and always repairing the filesystem. Yes, all my libraries for exFAT are up to date in Ubuntu.

Is there ever going to be a better way?
When is Windows going to grow up and support ext4?
Why?

Its 2019 and we still have incompatible networks and filesystem formats.

There needs to be a new (MOOC) class for people like me.

Hi, I'm William. I can't get my head around designing systems. I've read GoF and a few breakdowns of it as well. I find some patterns obvious for my field of interest (game dev, woot!) while I'm reading through the stuff, but have a pretty hard time retaining much of it. I'm aware of the danger of over using patterns, so I don't worry that much about it. I'll look something up when I'm sure I need it.

Still, I'm tired of the tutorial blues. I can watch a few different people write entire games, usually not in the language of choice, but that only helps me so much.

How do I fight scope creep? In the meantime, how can I make things extensible? Scope does need to creep some, after all.

People joke about starting with (visual) BASIC ruining you forever. I don't believe in that crap, but is this just denial? Am I too dumb for this? Not that I'd ever seriously blame a language for that.

I've been a hobbyist for well over 10 years, please don't make me count exactly how long I've been unsuccessful.

I'm baffled by Löve. I think it's the coolest shit I've seen, maybe ever (unless we're counting IPFS).

I think what really prompted this rant, apart from the obvious degradation of my mental health, was my search for an entity component system for Löve/Lua. Hold your replies. I know there's a few of them, and I'm positive that they're fantastic. I'd roll my own, but that requires actual Lua specific knowledge that I just haven't dug all that deep into yet. I can't wrap my head around the ones that exist, even though I can tell their complexity is next to none really.

I have severe tool anxiety, I'm shocked that I've stuck with ZeroBrane Studio as long as I have. It feels good though.

Sorry to use this as "Devs Anonymous", but I think that's how this community helps (me) best.

I feel like I should stop now and just say: Advice? before this gets much deeper/less readable.

Last week I conducted a FE React-JS tech interview (high-level, no coding challenge) with a potential new hire. He knew his stuff in React 16.8+ but I was baffled npm install was the only npm command he could name, he'd never heard about semver, never used SASS, and didn't have any Nodejs exp. I asked him to name a tough situation he encountered and solved in React, and he said "too many re-renders, so we used useMemo and useCallback" but that's kind of basic and it was evident he didn't understand this meant passing props by reference under the hood. So I wrote a very mixed report, but this is only the 3rd interview conducted. Was I too harsh? To me this signaled a lack of curiosity (especially for a self-taught programmer which he was). My manager was kind of disappointed about the guy following my report.

I am truly baffled. How in the world am I receiving 2-10 spam wordpress account registrations EVERY DAY for a website which I've never let be crawled by search engines yet? These mail.ru accounts keep coming and seemingly for no reason. Who the fuck wants to register so many accounts, and how the fuck did they find my site to begin with? 😲
These registration emails are seriously annoying now and the site now has hundreds of fake accounts on it...

Manager informed me that I need to go on business trip abroad (only 2000+ kilometers, two, perhaps three flight exchanges) in three days at customer's plant for (at least) two weeks. Of course, he only hinted vague details what I should/would do there. I must admit that I'm a bit baffled but ...

Please note that, because of health issues, i didn't leave home town for more than 5 years and didn't leave country for more than 20 years. ;)

Oh, joy ...

I recently refactored a form with complex client side interactivity for one of my clients replacing jquery with vuejs in the process and I'm absolutely baffled by how easier it is to reason about everything when you think of the UI as a function of the state. Only devs who have done both imperative and declarative DOM manipulation at some point in their life can understand the joy of doing this. And all of this can be done with just a simple script tag without having to bring in complex build process that has plagued the Javascript ecosystem.

Back in college I was writing a parser for a personal project in python. I was adding nodes to a set, but somewhere down the pipeline, some of the items I added to this set mysteriously disappeared!

I never removed anything from this set, nor did I replace it, so it baffled me that I couldn't find some items in the set.

It turned out the problem was I updated fields in these nodes that were used for taking the node's __hash__, which would prevent them from being found in the set

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