I think that two criterias are important:

- don't block my productivity
- author should have his userbase in mind

1) Some simple anti examples:

- Windows popping up a big fat blue screen screaming for updates. Like... Go suck some donkey balls you stupid shit that's totally irritating you arsehole.
- Graphical tools having no UI concept. E.g. Adobes PDF reader - which was minimalized in it's UI and it became just unbearable pain. When the concept is to castrate the user in it's abilities and call the concept intuitive, it's not a concept it's shit. Other examples are e.g. GEdit - which was severely massacred in Gnome 3 if I remember correctly (never touched Gnome ever again. I was really put off because their concept just alienated me)
- Having an UI concept but no consistency. Eg. looking at a lot of large web apps, especially Atlassian software.
Too many times I had e.g. a simple HTML form. In menu 1 you could use enter. In menu 2 Enter does not work. in another menu Enter works, but it doesn't submit the form it instead submits the whole page... Which can end in clusterfuck.
Yaaayyyy.
- Keyboard usage not possible at all.
It becomes a sad majority.... Pressing tab, not switching between form fields. Looking for keyboard shortcuts, not finding any. Yes, it's a graphical interface. But the charm of 16 bit interfaces (YES. I'm praising DOS interfaces) was that once you memorized the necessary keyboard strokes... You were faster than lightning. Ever seen e.g. a good pharmacist, receptionist or warehouse clerk... most of the software is completely based on short keyboard strokes, eg. for a receptionist at a doctor for the ICD code / pharmaceutical search et cetera.
- don't poop rainbows. I mean it.
I love colors. When they make sense. but when I use some software, e.g. netdata, I think an epilepsy warning would be fair. Too. Many. Neon. Colors. -.-

2) It should be obvious... But it's become a burden.

E.g. when asked for a release as there were some fixes... Don't point to the install from master script. Maybe you like it rolling release style - but don't enforce it please. It's hard to use SHA256 hash as a version number and shortening the hash might be a bad idea.

Don't start experiments. If it works - don't throw everything over board without good reasons. E.g. my previous example of GEdit: Turning a valuable text editor into a minimalistic unusable piece of crap and calling it a genius idea for the sake of simplicity... Nope. You murdered a successful product.
Gnome 3 felt like a complete experiment and judging from the last years of changes in the news it was an rather unsuccessful one... As they gave up quite a few of their ideas.

When doing design stuff or other big changes make it a community event or at least put a poll up on the github page. Even If it's an small user base, listen to them instead of just randomly fucking them over.
--
One of my favorite projects is a texteditor called Kate from KDE.

It has a ton of features, could even be seen as a small IDE. The reason I love it because one of the original authors still cares for his creation and ... It never failed me. I use Kate since over 20 years now I think... Oo

Another example is the git cli. It's simple and yet powerful. git add -i is e.g. a thing I really really really love. (memorize the keyboard shortcuts and you'll chunk up large commits faster than flash.

Curl. Yes. The (http) download tool. It's author still cares. It's another tool I use since 20 years. And it has given me a deep insight of how HTTP worked, new protocols and again. It never failed me. It is such a fucking versatile thing. TLS debugging / performance measurements / what the frigging fuck is going on here. Take curl. Find it out.

My worst enemies....

Git based clients. I just hate them. Mostly because they fill the niche of explaining things (good) but completely nuke the learning of git (very bad). You can do any git action without understanding what you do and even worse... They encourage bad workflows.
I've seen great devs completely fucking up git and crying because they had really no fucking clue what git actually does. The UI lead them on the worst and darkest path imaginable. :(

Atlassian products. On the one hand... They're not total shit. But the mass of bugs and the complete lack of interest of Atlassian towards their customers and the cloud movement.... Ouch. Just ouch.

I had to deal with a lot of completely borked up instances and could trace it back to a bug tracking entry / atlassian, 2 - 3 years old with the comment: vote for this, we'll work on a Bugfix. Go fuck yourself you pisswads.

Microsoft Office / Windows. Oh boy.
I could fill entire days of monologues.
It's bad, hmkay?

XEN.
This is not bad.
This is more like kill it before it lays eggs.
The deeper I got into XEN, the more I wanted to lay in a bathtub full of acid to scrub of the feelings of shame... How could anyone call this good?!?????

Great (but clueless) client. I went to a meeting with the client to discuss a way forward for his website revamp. First off he showed me his idea, which was a visual of the Windows desktop, with folders for different sections of the website, click on a folder and it opens revealing the different website pages. It went on basically describing how windows works. When he'd finished I said, with a cheeky smile, "that must be one of the fucking shityest ideas I've ever heard". We both started laughing.

!Dev

As a something-designer and content writer, you would say I am pretty much used with people stealing my ideas and then bragging with them, right? Well, yeah, but not when I am fucking backstabbed by my OWN FUCKING ASSHOLE-FIANCE (hi, hun).
In our little depressing family, I am the one with ideas. One day he starts to work at a little very basic app and he starts bragging with it at me (mostly disrupting me while working). So I start giving him ideas based on what he experienced at work and what he could add to this management app so nobody will get the same shit as he did + several things + I basically designed it from scratch, how it should look, what it should do, who should access what etc. Anyway, he starts implementing them and then I told him „Well this is nice, how about we sell it”. I advise him on what kind of possible clients he should search for and how to negotiate and etc. Well, he goes to a meeting with somebody interested in this application, after, he calls me back AND HE HAD THE NERVE TO SAY THIS TO ME :

- Good news, MY APPLICATION would lead us in*blabla* market.

BITCH, YOU BETTER SLAP YOURSELF `CAUZ EXCEPT FOR THE CODE THAT SHIT IS MINE ALMOST FROM SCRATCH. SO SCREW YOU AND YOUR FUCKING NEED TO SUCK YOUR OWN DICK.

(i said that to him on the phone)

I know I’ll get mixed views for this one...

So I’ll state my claim. I agree with the philosophy of uncle bob, I also feel like he is the high level language - older version of myself personality wise.. (when I learned about uncle bob I was like this guy is just like me but not low level haha).

Anyway.. I don’t agree with everything because I think he thinks or atleast I get the vibe he thinks everything can be solved by OOP, and high level languages. This is probably where Bob and I disagree. Personally I don’t touch ruby, python and java and “those” with a 10 foot pole.

Does he make valid arguments, yes, is agile the solve all solution no.. but agile ideas do come natural and respond faster the feedback loop of product development is much smaller and the managers and clients and customers can “see things” sooner than purly waterfall.. I mean agile is the natural approach of disciplined engineers....waterfall is and was developed because the market was flooded with undisciplined engineers and continues to flood, agile is great for them but only if they are skilled in what they are doing and see the bigger picture of the forest thru the trees.. which is the entire point of waterfall, to see the forest.. the end goal... now I’m not saying agile you only see a branch of a single tree of the forest.. but too often young engineers, and beginners jump on agile because it’s “trendy” or “everyone’s doing it” or whatever the fuck reason. The point is they do it but only focus on the immediate use case, needs and deliverables due next week.

What’s wrong with that?? Well an undisciplined engineer doing agile (no I’m not talking damn scrum shit and all that marketing bullshit).. pure true agile.
They will write code for the need due next week, but they won’t realize that hmm I will have the need 3 months from now for some feature that needs to connect to this, so I better design this code with that future feature in mind...

The disciplined engineer would do that. That is why waterfall exists so ideally the big picture is painted before hand.

The undisciplined engineer will then be frustrated in the future when he has to act like the cool aid man thru the hard pre mature architectural boundaries he created and now needs links or connections that are now needed.

Does moving to agile fix that hell no.. because the undisciplined engineer is still undisciplined.

One could argue the project manager or scrum secretary... (yes scrum secretary I said that right).. is suppose to organize and create and order the features with the future in mind etc...

Bullshit ..soo basically your saying the scrum kid is suppose to be the disciplined engineer to have foresight into realizing future features and making requirements and task now that cover those things? No!
1 scrum bitch focuses too much on pleasing “stake holders” especially taken literally in start ups where the non technical idiots are too involved with the engineering team and the scrum bastard tries to ass kiss and get everything organized and tasks working so the non technical person can see pretty things work.

Scrum master is a gate keeper and is not needed and actually hinders the whole process of making a undisciplined engineer into a disciplined engineer, makes the undisciplined engineer into a “forever” code grunt... filling weekly orders of story points unable to see the forest until it’s over because the forest isn’t show to the grunt only the scrum keeper knows the big picture..... this is bad this is why waterfall is needed.

Waterfall has its own problems, But that’s another story for another day..

ANYWAY... soooo where were we ....

Ahh yess....

Clean code..

Is it a good book, yes.. does uncle bobs personality show thru the book .. yes lol.
If you know uncle bob you will understand what I just did with this post lol. I had to tangent ( at least mine was related to the topic) ...

I agree with the principles of the book, I don’t agree with the extreme view point. It’s like religion there’s the modest folks and then there are the extremists. Well he’s the preacher of the cult and he’s on the extreme side.. but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.. many things he nails... he just hits the nail thru the wall just a bit.

OOP languages are not the solution... high level languages do not solve everything.. pininciples and concepts can be used across the board and prove valuable.. just don’t hold everything up like the 10 commandments of which you cannot deviate from.. that’s the difference here I think..

Good book, just don’t take it as the Bible as a beginner, actually infact DONT read this book as a beginner. Wait a bit learn then reflect by reading this.

Hello,

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice regarding stress management.
I am a sys admin of a continually amount of growing servers (now at over 130) and I do coding when I am not busy being screamed at by users. The stress is coming from the workload, but also the way that the workplace is running. The manager left, and now I am handling all his shit, and my own shit as well, and all his accounts have been handed over to me (accounts being clients here). The other IT guy who is supposed to help out with the server admin just finds other work to occupy himself, and I am losing my mind. There is literally an insurmountable amount of work that needs to be done, and it just cannot be done in the time that is allocated in the working hours. I am working overtime, unpaid overtime by the way, until 9/10PM at night to try and get through everything (*cannot apply updates and work on the app server while the users are live) and I am just starting to lose grip. I am taking my stress home with me (not taking it out on anyone), but I am not sleeping, not eating properly and even starting to dream about possible ideas to fault resolution when I sleep. I find that I am constantly tired, and it feels like a world is about to cave in on me. There is literally too much work to be done in too little time, and although I am more than capable of doing it (and will get it done, or the director will physically assualt me and accuse me of being useless, again) I feel that the struggle is just a bit too much.

Can anyone give me some advice on how to "wind down" or to "let go" just for a few minutes a day at least, so that I don't feel like I am on the job 24/7.

Thanks.

So I'm currently working on a chat app that deals with astrology..dealing in the sense we are building an AI which gives prediction based on ones date of birth, time of birth and place of birth, you can ask it questions (currently only career related) and you get some prediction..it's an in-house project, we have a client who is an astrologer who gives us the logic to compute the predictions ..it's still a long way from being an AI ...so our CEO walks in one day with his huge plans for the product...decides to ditch the app completely, on which we have invested 4 months of our time and instead make an appointment scheduling webapp for our client as he felt that would fetch us some green stuff..so I was like why ditch the app when we can have the same module in the app itself and ask the astrologer to make his clients install if they want to book future appointments, he completely disregarded my idea and said that is bad marketing and all other shit and he went on to explain his other ideas ...I didn't think much of it at that time , then the CEO and the director of technology had a separate meeting where the director has made the same points which I had told him(ceo) that it is a bad idea to ditch the app (I wasn't aware of this meeting untill later)...so after a week we have a team meeting with the CEO, director of technology ...where he starts telling how it is not so wise to Chuck the existing application and build a new one which is totally unnecessary and we can have it as a module in the existing one...and I'm like sitting there thinking to myself da fck is he talking about...so i decided to stay silent and listen to his bs...my marketing lead leans over and ask y so silent ....I tell her whatever he is talking now is the same thing I told last week which he rejected blatantly... And then he had the nerve to ask me any inputs to this plan...I couldn't hold back ...I told him that this is the exact same thing I told u last week , to which his reply was focus on the future and forget the past ....I was like mother fckr woooooot ...I realised the power of position !! Fuckol man