You what's been pissing me off this week. The press and social media coverage of this Google guy's gender memo.

Almost every outlet has him saying:

"Women are inferior coders because of their biology"

He ABSOLUTELY does not say this anywhere. He only states that basically less women are attracted to the industry. He doesn't comment at all on the quality of the Women who do go into tech.

It astonishes me the utter ignorance of the media and how they can just print these ignorant errors / lies.

I would wager that most if not all of them never even read his memo.

I am really fucked off by this social media keyboard warrior driven world we live in.

Apparently we value freedom of speech and freedom of expression above all else... UNLESS you say something that pisses off the social media justice warriors. In that case you will be publicly crucified and your life / career will be destroyed.

The annoying thing is in this particular case he didn't even say what they are saying he did.

Laravel is the worst framework ever.

Everything has to be made convenient and easy. That sounds amazing, because developers want to save time, worry less about boilerplate code, right? No more constructors, no more dependency injection, fuck all the tedious OOP shit... RIGHT?

It does one thing well: Make PHP syntax uniform and concise through easily integrated libraries such as Collection and Carbon. But those are actually not really part of the framework... just commonly integrated and associated with Laravel.

The framework itself is completely derailed: You can define code in a callback in the routes file. You can define a controller in the routes file. You can define middleware as a parameter to the route, as a fluent method to the route, you can stack them up in a service provider. Validators can be made in controllers, Request objects, service providers, etc. You can send mail inline, through Mailable objects, through Notification objects, etc.

Everything is macroable, injectable, and definable in a million different places. Ultimate freedom!

Guess what happens when you give 50 developers of various seniority a swiss army knife?

One hammers in a screw with a nail file, the other clips the head from the screw using scissors, and you end up with an unworkable mess and blunt tools.

And don't get me started about Eloquent, the Active Record ORM. It's cute for the simple blog/article/author/comment queries, but starts choking when you want more selective and performant queries or more complex aggregates, and provides such an opaque apple-esque interface which lets people think everything is OK, when in reality it's forcing the SQL server to slowly commit suicide.

(I wrote most of this as a comment in reply about Microsoft buying GitHub on another rant but decided to move it here because it is rant worthy. Also, no, I'm not a Microsoft employee nor do I have any Microsoft stock).

Microsoft buying GitHub makes sense. They contribute more to the open source community on GitHub than any other company. (Side note, they also contribute/have contributed to the Linux Kernel).

Steve Ballmer isn't running the show anymore. Because of that, we have awesome things like:

* Visual Studio Code - Completely free and powerful light weight IDE for coding in just about any script or language. This IDE is also open source, hosted on GitHub. It can be installed on Win/Mac/Linux.

* Visual Studio Community Edition: fully featured flagship IDE free for solo developers and students, can be installed on Win/Mac.

* Fully featured Sql Server running in a Docker container.

* .Net Core, which can be compiled to native binaries of Windows, MacOS AND Linux. You can't even do that with Java, you have to first have the JVM installed in order to run any kind of Java code on any of those operating systems. .Net Core is also an absolutely beautiful framework with so many features at your disposal.

...and more.

Yes, they've done bonehead things in the past but who/which company hasn't. Yes, they have Cortana. Yes, they force Bing on you when searching with Cortana (does anyone actually regularly use Cortana? Or Bing?). Yes, their operating system costs money. Yes, their malware-style Upgrade-to-Windows-10 tactics were evil and they admitted such. Yes, they brought ads and other unfortunate things to Skype. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about that Skype bit translating over into GitHub. BUT, the fact that so many of their employees use GitHub daily means they are dogfooding the platform, which is a positive thing.

Despite the flaws, from the perspective of a software engineer they really should be given a lot of credit for all these new directions they are moving in now. They directly aim to help and contribute to the developer community. Plus, Windows 10 is finally getting a dark theme! haha.

I think Microsoft buying GitHub makes a lot of sense. Of course do what you want about it, feel how you want about it, but casting the same ol' shade at them for anything they do seems a bit like automatic reflex more than anything else.

I'm bracing myself for the impending wave of angry hornets from the nest I just kicked. In all seriousness though, I welcome discussion on the topic even if you feel differently than I do. I'm not saying there's no reason to dislike them, just saying there are lots of new reasons to hate them less and/or appreciate what they are doing now.

Super power to write and understand commentless code !
🤖.
Why?
See picture!

So yesterday was a regular old day where I came into the office and began my work. My office mate that sits next to me happens to be having an issue with her batch script. It wasn't running correctly so she had decided to call in IT and have them take a look at it. What she was trying to do was process some images through a dedicated super-computer located on site.

So as you can imagine with both of them standing right next to me it was hard not to listen in on their conversation. The IT guy decided to go through a barrage of different troubleshooting methods to figure out what was happening with her script. And soon enough they discovered what was wrong. It happened to be an issue with how Windows decides to deal with new line characters. FYI it looks like this shit "\n \r"

The fucking \r looked like a directory to Linux. So it would squeal to a halt every single time she tried to run.

How this happened was due to her using notepad to edit her batch file.

At this point, I made a comment about her use of Notepad.
"Oh, you're using notepad? I've had similar issues like this in the past when I've used notepad. I really hate notepad." I said with a slight chuckle.

And that was pretty much the end of our encounters. However, at the end of the day, she decided to speak up about this.

"I don't appreciate you making comments about my use of Notepad. That was a form of microaggression towards me, and I don't want you to do it again."

Completely taken aback I replied.
"I'm sorry you took it that way, it was a joke and wasn't meant to be taken personally."

"Well, your intent does not change impact. And by the way, I take pride in my code and scripting. I don't need your commentary about my code nor your micro-aggressions." She said in a huff.

"Well again, I'm sorry you feel that way," I replied back

*I'd like to say that this situation is loosely paraphrased, but the essence of what happened is still there.

At this point, this is what I have to say about this situation. Why the FUCKING FUCK are you using notepad to program anything. There ARE A SHIT TON of differing programs that are available for your use and you decide to use fucking notepad?!?! $%&*@#$^

You could use notepad++, you could use Sublime, you could use every-fucking-thing except Notepad!!! If anything I think I had every right to make a comment about your stupid use of notepad. And darling, your script not working was well deserved, I hope you run into more errors like this because you deserve nothing less for your arrogance. So you can take your opinions and shove them up your fat-ass because at the end of the day I don't give a FUCK about your opinions on my micro-aggressions that you're spouting off about.
I suggest the next time you feel attacked about your code perhaps you should take a cold hard look at yourself before thinking that I'm the one that is the FUCKING problem.

I HOPED I WOULDN'T BE BALD AS MY DAD BUT AT THIS RATE I WILL BE HAIRLESS FROM TEARING IT OUT ON MY BLOODY OWN

I got hired for cleaning up a 2 year project of rushed spaghetti code , where they previously only had 1 programmer aND HE WROTE 37 THOUSAND LINES OF CODE!

OH WE NEED A NEW FEATURE?! LEMME JUST RESEARCH THIS COMMENT-LESS CRAP FOR MULTIPLE MILLENIA BEFORE I CAN GRASP WHAT THE FLYING FRICKIN FRIDGE CODE DOES

To top it off, I've about ONE MONTH LEFT BEFORE BETA RELEASE TO FIX THE CODE!

I'm super grateful for this job as it's my first programming job BUT I'M GONNA SET THE REPOSITORY ON FIRE SOON AAAAHHHHHH

HOW CAN YOU, THE PREVIOUS PROGRAMMER, WORK IN THIS ENVIRONMENT WHERE MOSTLY ALL FILES ARE +2000 ROWS OF UNDOCUMENTED CODE

OH AND JUST GOT A MESSAGE FROM THE PREVIOUS PROGRAMMER:
"You can just remove the unused code and refractor it some, izi"

IZI MY SHITTY POOP CAR
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Now with that out of the way, how would you recommend handling a stressful release deadline?

When your "senior software architect" comes over to where the rest of the team is working to tell the level 1 developer, "I saw your review and it was so wrong that I didn't even bother leaving a comment." There are no words. Way to help teach, encourage, and bring up the younger, less experienced devs.

Developer came to our area to rant a bit about a problem he was having with Xamarin. A particular android device was receiving a java runtime error trying to de-serialize data from a WCF contract. What he found was not to use WCF and use WebAPI (or a simple REST service that sent back/forth JSON).

When he proposed changing the service (since the data transport didn’t really matter, he could plug the assembly into a WebAPI project in less than an hour), the dev manager shot down the idea pointing him to our service standard that explicitly stated no WebAPI (it’s in bold letters).

I showed him the date on the “standard”, which was 5 years ago. We have versioning on our sharepoint server, so I also him my proposal notes on the change request document (almost two years before that) stating we should stop using WCF in favor of REST based web standards. Dev manager at the time had wrote in his comment “Will never use REST. Enterprise developers prefer RPC.”
He just about fell over laughing when I showed him this gif.

Comment on a GitHub issue on one of my repos:

"Almond I posted this feature request last month, please start to work on it in your free time"

Dude, that's just made it a whole lot less likely I'll even give that feature request the time of day. Take your entitled arse attitude to the bank and pay me to do it if you care that much.

Also, free time?!?! Hahahaha.

You wanted to hear more about my "glorious" teacher. I deliver. So get a cup of tea, take a seat and prepare for insanity.
As I already told in a comment my programming teacher is one special snowflake who lives in his personal bubble. We have final exams in less than a month and he spents at least half a lesson talking about vanishing bees and missing plants from his garden. Other topics he likes to talk about (and tries to turn every freaking conversation into at least one of these):
1. Other students and their stupidity
2. Diesel scandal
3. His sick wife
4. "Why does noone read newspapers anymore?"
5. Why he can't teach Java but really really really wants to and everyone hates him and forces him to do C#.

Even if I try to interrupt him he'll go on until he thinks we gained some "common knowledge" - this is how he justifies these topics.

Everytime he introduced us to a new command he compared it to Java and sometimes he even falsely corrects code because he confuses them.
We are only 6 people including me (another story for another time) and he is not able to help everyone during a 90min lesson. He normally sticks with one person for at least one hour and just talks to them or even do their tasks. This is really annoying if you have a simple question. He won't answer you until he's finished whatever he's doing.

Most of the time he doesn't seem to understand what he's talking about/trying to teach us. He's muttering statements from our textbook to himself switching halfway through to another sentence while drawing not decipherable shit on the blackboard.

Another gem are his "guidelines" for classtests. We are allowed to use any command we know. Except the ones we learned not in class. And the ones he doesn't like. And the ones he doesn't want to exist. And of course not the ones which make you're life easier. So basically we are bound to use his favourite commands or we won't get a good grade. Example: use an array. List is not allowed. Never.
He has some weird fetish with arrays.

I once presented him perfectly fine code I wrote in my freetime and asked what some warnings meant. (Was because of different Visual studio versions as I learned later.) He scolded me for using things he didn't taught us yet and ranted about how I'm pressuring him into rushing these things now - I never wanted to show this to my classmates nor was this anything else than a project for fun and learning something new. (FYI the "new stuff" where classes and objects because i was tired of kilometers of spaghetti code). His rant went on a good 20minutes and - obviously - he didn't answer my question. I asked my fiance that evening and he explained it to me.
This should it be for this time. I'm sure I have more stories to tell for another time!
Thank you for reading. ^^

This was a fun thing that just happened:

I was sent a timed questionnaire by a potential employer for a software engineer job. I'm like okay, I will do it on Monday (today) because that is when I will have a free minute.

Well I sit down to do the thing and I had had a few beers, because the Ballmer Peak is real to me when I have to answer bullshit programming quizzes.

Well F me right in the A, it is a 38 question true or false logic quiz. And I am no longer a college kid trying to get into grad school so I have no patience for that crap, and apparently less with a little beer in me. Long story short, there was no comment section for me to rant in so I decided to go on YouTube and watch cat videos instead.

Inspired by the comment I posted on another rant.

My uni decided to be one of those progressive tech schools that start people with Python. Mind you, I had prepared myself with studying as much as I could with math and programming by automating things and similar stuff in our computer when I was at my previous job, so I had a better idea as to what i could expect.

Introduction to computer science and programming with Python or some shit like that was the name of the class, and the instructor was a fat short ugly woman with a horrible attitude AND a phd in math, not comp sci and barely any industrial knowledge of the field.

She gave us the "a lot of you will fail" speech, which to me is code for "I suck and have no clue what I am doing"

One assignment involved, as per the requirements the use of switch cases. Now, unless someo knew came about, Python does not have swio cases. Me and a couple of less newbie like students tried to point out that switch cases were non existent and that her switch case example was in Javascript, not python, curly braces and everything. She told us to make it work.

We thought that she meant using a function with a dictionary and we pass the key and shit, a simple way of emulating the switch case.

NOPE she took points and insisted that she meant the example. We continuously pointed out that her example was in JS and that at the time Python did not have switch cases. The nasty woman laughed out and said that she didn't expect anyone to finish the assignment with full points.

Out of 100 points everyone got a 70. No problem. Wrote a detailed letter to the dean. Dean replied and talked to her (copied her in the email because fuck you bitch) and my grade was pulled up to full mark.

Every other class I had with her she did not question me. Which was only another class on some other shit I can't remember.

Teachers are what make or break a degree program. What make or break the experience, going to college is putting too much faith on people. If you ask me, trade certification, rigorous training is the future of computer science, or any field really. Rather than spending 4+ years studying a whoooole lotta shit for someone to focus on one field and never leave it.

Definitely Rust, and a bit Haskell.

Rust has made me much more conscious of data ownership through a program, to the point that any C/C++ function I wrote that takes a pointer nowadays gets a comment on ownership.

I wish it was a bit less pedantic about generics sometimes, which is why I've started working on a "less pedantic rust", where generics are done through multiple dispatch à la Julia, but still monomorphising everything I can. I've only started this week, but I already have a tokenizer and most of the type inference system (an SLD tree) ready. Next up is the borrow checker and parsing the tokenized input to whatever the type inference and borrow checker need to work with, and of course actual code generation...

Haskell is my first FP language, and introduced me to some FP patterns which, turns out, are super useful even with less FP languages.

I really need to let this out somewhere...

Why the f...? Srsly.. Why would anyone do that? I'm joining another project. Apparently lead dev has adopted a coding style, where:

1. Every dev writes code however he likes, i.e. no clean-code requirement at all.
2. All services are crud-only. I mean all service classes. All must have those 4 methods; no more, no less.
3. Half of the business logic is inside controllers.
4. Not a single comment... Interfaces, models, etc. -- not a single one.
5. Xmls -- tabs, classes - spaces.
6. Xml schemas are downloaded with each build rather than stored downloaded once and stored locally.
7. I can keep going on and on.

Is it just me or are these some really weird decisions?

Some more of Stux's !dev pet peeves

1) Teenagers who comment shit like "I'm from the wrong generation" or "today's music is trash. This is real music" on songs from like the 70s and 80s. Like shut the fuck up. You can like whatever music you want, but your taste in music doesn't make you unique, so just shut the fuck up and listen to the music. I was jamming out to 70s and 80s when I was 9, so you aren't the first to enjoy older music at a young age
2) "Old heads" who comment shit like "this isn't real *genre*" on a new song that isnt like the older version of that genre. News flash: music fucking evolves. Just because that country song doesn't have a twangy guitar in it, that doesn't mean the song ain't country. Just because the rap song ain't some deep ass poetic shit, it doesn't make it any less of a rap song.
3) People who edit their comments on YouTube to say shit like "wow thanks for all the likes, I wasn't expecting this." Wooptie fucking doo. Your comment got a few thousand likes. Fun fact: those likes are meaningless.
4) Humidity. Fuck that shit man.
5) General education classes. They're a fucking pain in the ass man. Like im 98% confident I don't need art history in the real world. Or mythology. "tHeY tEaCh YoU tO lEaRn." Teach me to learn in degree specific classes then. At least their content will be interesting to me.

My name is Stuxnet. Thanks for coming to my TED talk again.

SM = Scrum Master

SM: "Card #130, you added a comment saying you aren't going to do update the report?"
Me:"Yea, I explained why in the comment"
SM: "Product owner wants it."
Me: "Product owner isn't the manager using it. I talked with Steve, he said the data is accurate and they have to go to the database anyway to verify the error. That report has no way of knowing the message logged could be a false positive."
SM: "That's not our job to decide. If the Product Owner wants the feature, we add the feature."
Me: "It is absolutely is our job. Steve is the user of the report. I could really care less what the product owner said. The only reason he created the card was because Steve told him a specific error logged could be a false positive, and only happens, maybe, once a month. I'm not wasting my time, Steve's time, or this project's time on wild goose chases."
SM: "I'll schedule a meeting this afternoon to discuss the issue with the product owner. Don't worry, if you can't figure out how to filter out the false positives, I'll assign the ticket to me."

fracking fracking kiss ass. I swear, if he goes behind my back again ....I... deep breath....ahhh...OK..Thanks devrant. Work place incident diverted.

Bootstrap 3's source code.
and shit.

Your favourite comment?

My team was working on a legacy system, one part of it is an assistant, sadly required as global variables.

Being a non-english-first-language company, some dev years ago thought shortening said assistant to "ass" would be a wise idea - less to type, right?

When we redid the application 2016 part-by-part, our code needed to define 3-4 global variables starting with the "ass" prefix for the legacy parts to work. The colleague who was tasked with this is a fine gentleman from England.

Later as I read through the commit, I found 5 lines of code following 20 lines of comments explaining and deeply apologizing for "ass", "ass_open", etc.

The same dev also had a "HACK OF THE YEAR" comment he moved around when time constraints made a less-than-optimal fix necessary which was worse than the last "highscore".

Sometimes am really pissed off with stack overflow, it won't let you comment if you have less points.
Its like yeah, you can make an answer with every stupid shit possible but no, you can't comment or get any good author's attention, he might be meditating -_-

There was an android project that I got from my senior.

he told me that another developer already completed most the project and all I have to do is minor changes...

Well when i saw, i was amazed that the code he commented is more than the actual working code without any structure.
He copied most of code from internet.

If it's not working, put in comment else use it.

It took me a whole month to figure out what's going on.

And another 2 months to fix the issues.

Well in last my senior told me that the developer took 1 year to write this code
(to be honest any normal developer can complete that project in less than 3 month)

So... Heard back from a recruiter today. Lovely lass.

I’d passed over a submission for her tech demo.

The brief was basically just to create a small simple module that calculates shit, nae effort.

But, when the recruiter had me on the phone she said “I know it’s a silly small module but try and run it up like you would a production ready app”.

The job spec and recruiter were keen on me demonstrating TDD, not specific on js version, final runtime, etc. The job was a senior spec at a higher salary range. So it warranted some effort, and demonstrating more than a simple module.

“Okay, cool, nae bother, let’s crack on.”

The feedback in the response from the dev today:
“He’s over-engineered tests, build...”

SUCK MY LEFT TESTICLE YOU FUCKWIT.

Talk to your recruiters, not me.

The feedback included a phrase I never hope to hear from a developer I work with:
“Tests are good but...” 😞

It was a standard 98% test suite from an RGR cycle, no more or less than I’d expect in prod.

The rest of the feedback was misguided or plain wrong. It was useful to see because I know now when they say they have “high standards” they mean: we listen to the dude who put the factory pattern in a JS brief.

Oh shit also: “someone’s done chmod 777” was in there as a sarcastic comment in the feedback. It was his fucking unarchive tool 😞

My response was brief and polite: “cheers for the consideration, all the best, James”

It’s honestly not worth warning them. Or, asking why they’d criticise something they’d asked me to do.

If you want a shitty js module, ask for a shitty js module and no more.

Look, I get that it's really tricky to assess whether someone is or isn't skilled going solely by their profile.

That's alright.

What isn't center of the cosmic rectum alright with the fucking buttsauce infested state of interviews is that you give me the most far fetched and convoluted nonsense to solve and then put me on a fucking timer.

And since there isn't a human being on the other side, I can't even ask for clarification nor walk them through my reasoning. No, eat shit you cunt juice swallowing mother fucker, anal annhilation on your whole family with a black cock stretching from Zimbabwe to Singapore, we don't care about this "reasoning" you speak of. Fuck that shit! We just hang out here, handing out tricks in the back alley and smoking opium with vietnamese prostitutes, up your fucking ass with reason.

Let me tell you something mister, I'm gonna shove a LITERAL TON of putrid gorilla SHIT down your whore mouth then cum all over your face and tits, let's see how you like THAT.

Cherry on top: by the time I began figuring out where my initial approach was wrong, it was too late. Get that? L'esprit d'escalier, bitch. I began to understand the problem AFTER the timer was up. I could solve it now, except it wouldn't do me any fucking good.

The problem? Locate the topmost 2x2 block inside a matrix whose values fall within a particular range. It's easy! But if you don't explain it properly, I have to sit down re-reading the description and think about what the actual fuck is this cancerous liquid queef that just got forcefully injected into my eyes.

But since I can't spend too much time trying to comperfukenhend this two dollar handjob of a task, which I'd rather swap for teabagging a hairy ass herpes testicle sack, there's rushing in to try and make sense of this shit as I type.

So I'm about 10 minutes down or so already, 35 to go. I finally decipher that I should get the XY coords of each element within the specified range, then we'll walk an array of those coordinates and check for adjacency. Easy! Done, and done.

Another 10 minutes down, all checks in place. TEST. Wait, wat? Where's the output? WHERE. THE FUCK. IS. THE OUTPUT?! BITCH GIMME AN ANSWER. I COUT'D THE RETURN AND CAN SEE THE TERMINAL BUT ITS NOT SHOWING ME ANYTHINGGG?! UUUGHHH FUCKKFKFKFKFKFKFKFUFUFUFFKFK (...)

Alright, we have about 20 minutes left to finish this motorsaw colonoscopy, and I can't see what my code is outputting so I'm walking through the code myself trying to figure out if this will work. Oh, look at that I have to MANUALLY click this fucking misaligned text that says "clear" in order for any new output to register. Lovely, 10/10 web design, I will violate your armpits with an octopus soaked in rabid bear piss.

Mmmh, looks like I got this wrong. Figures. I'm building the array of coordinates sequentially, as a one dimentional list, which is very inconvenient for finding adjacent elements. No problem, let's try and fix that aaaaaand... SHIT IM ALMOST OUT OF TIME.

QUICK LYEB, QUICK!! REMEMBER WHAT FISCELLA TAUGHT YOU, IN BETWEEN MOLESTING YOUR SOUL WITH 16-BIT I/O CONSOLE PROBLEMS, LIKE THAT BITCH SNOWFALL THING YOU HAD TO SOLVE FOR A FRIEND USING TURBO C ON A FUCKING TOASTER IN COMPUTER LAB! RUN MOTHERFUCKER RUN!!!

I'm SWEATING. HEAVILY. I'm STEAMING, NON-EROTICALLY. Less than 10 minutes left. I'm trying to correct the code I have, but I start making MORE dumbfuck mistakes because I'm in a hurry!

5 minutes left. As I hit this point of no return, I realize exactly where my initial reasoning went wrong, and how I could fix it, but I can't because I don't have enough time. Sadface.

So I hastily put together skeleton of the correct implementation, and as the clock is nearly up, I write a comment explaining the bits I can't get to write. Page up, top of file, type "the editor was shit LMAO" and comment it out. SUBMIT.

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Also hi ;>

Idea: social media, hard mode

- Likes are a currency
- You get one like per day to spend on whatever post you feel is worthy
- After 30 seconds, you are unable to unlike the post
- The poster gets the like, which they can spend
- You can only post once per day
- Each additional post costs a like
- You can only comment once per day
- Each additional comment costs a like
- Sure, why not, sell likes for money. Fuck. Dev's gotta eat.

PROS:

- Less time-consuming by design. Interact without losing yourself in social media.
- Learn financial management
- Encourages only good content
- More difficult to get an inflated ego from

CONS:

- You'll probably get 0 likes on most of your posts, loser
- Limits discussion, as comments are limited

Github 101 (many of these things pertain to other places, but Github is what I'll focus on)

- Even the best still get their shit closed - PRs, issues, whatever. It's a part of the process; learn from it and move on.

- Not every maintainer is nice. Not every maintainer wants X feature. Not every maintainer will give you the time of day. You will never change this, so don't take it personally.

- Asking questions is okay. The trackers aren't just for bug reports/feature requests/PRs. Some maintainers will point you toward StackOverflow but that's usually code for "I don't have time to help you", not "you did something wrong".

- If you open an issue (or ask a question) and it receives a response and then it's closed, don't be upset - that's just how that works. An open issue means something actionable can still happen. If your question has been answered or issue has been resolved, the issue being closed helps maintainers keep things un-cluttered. It's not a middle finger to the face.

- Further, on especially noisy or popular repositories, locking the issue might happen when it's closed. Again, while it might feel like it, it's not a middle finger. It just prevents certain types of wrongdoing from the less... courteous or common-sense-having users.

- Never assume anything about who you're talking to, ever. Even recently, I made this mistake when correcting someone about calling what I thought was "powerpc" just "power". I told them "hey, it's called powerpc by the way" and they (kindly) let me know it's "power" and why, and also that they're on the Power team. Needless to say, they had the authority in that situation. Some people aren't as nice, but the best way to avoid heated discussion is....

- ... don't assume malice. Often I've come across what I perceived to be a rude or pushy comment. Sometimes, it feels as though the person is demanding something. As a native English speaker, I naturally tried to read between the lines as English speakers love to tuck away hidden meanings and emotions into finely crafted sentences. However, in many cases, it turns out that the other person didn't speak English well enough at all and that the easiest and most accurate way for them to convey something was bluntly and directly in English (since, of course, that's the easiest way). Cultures differ, priorities differ, patience tolerances differ. We're all people after all - so don't assume someone is being mean or is trying to start a fight. Insinuating such might actually make things worse.

- Please, PLEASE, search issues first before you open a new one. Explaining why one of my packages will not be re-written as an ESM module is almost muscle memory at this point.

- If you put in the effort, so will I (as a maintainer). Oftentimes, when you're opening an issue on a repository, the owner hasn't looked at the code in a while. If you give them a lot of hints as to how to solve a problem or answer your question, you're going to make them super, duper happy. Provide stack traces, reproduction cases, links to the source code - even open a PR if you can. I can respond to issues and approve PRs from anywhere, but can't always investigate an issue on a computer as readily. This is especially true when filing bugs - if you don't help me solve it, it simply won't be solved.

- [warning: controversial] Emojis dillute your content. It's not often I see it, but sometimes I see someone use emojis every few words to "accent" the word before it. It's annoying, counterproductive, and makes you look like an idiot. It also makes me want to help you way less.

- Github's code search is awful. If you're really looking for something, clone (--depth=1) the repository into /tmp or something and [rip]grep it yourself. Believe me, it will save you time looking for things that clearly exist but don't show up in the search results (or is buried behind an ocean of test files).

- Thanking a maintainer goes a very long way in making connections, especially when you're interacting somewhat heavily with a repository. It almost never happens and having talked with several very famous OSSers about this in the past it really makes our week when it happens. If you ever feel as though you're being noisy or anxious about interacting with a repository, remember that ending your comment with a quick "btw thanks for a cool repo, it's really helpful" always sets things off on a Good Note.

- If you open an issue or a PR, don't close it if it doesn't receive attention. It's really annoying, causes ambiguity in licensing, and doesn't solve anything. It also makes you look overdramatic. OSS is by and large supported by peoples' free time. Life gets in the way a LOT, especially right now, so it's not unusual for an issue (or even a PR) to go untouched for a few weeks, months, or (in some cases) a year or so. If it's urgent, fork :)

I'll leave it at that. I hear about a lot of people too anxious to contribute or interact on Github, but it really isn't so bad!

My boss told me(less than a year experience) I am the project lead now.... Makes me nervous that 10 minutes ago I was comment bitch/business analyst..... How much should I panic? He was serious and I command 20 people who have never used git

Storytime!

(I just posted this in a shorter form as a comment but wanted to write it as a post too)

TL;DR, smarts are important, but so is how you work.

My first 'real' job was a lucky break in the .com era working tech support. This was pretty high end / professional / well respected and really well paid work.

I've never been a super fast learner, I was HORRIBLE in school. I was not a good student until I was ~40 (and then I loved it, but no longer have the time :( )

At work I really felt like so many folks around me did a better job / knew more than me. And straight up I know that was true. I was competent, but I was not the best by far.

However .... when things got ugly, I got assigned to the big cases. Particularly when I transferred to a group that dealt with some fancy smancy networking equipment.

The reason I was assigned? Engineering (another department) asked I be assigned. Even when it would take me a while to pickup the case and catch up on what was going on, they wanted the super smart tech support guys off the case, and me on it.

At first this was a bit perplexing as this engineering team were some ultra smart guys, custom chip designers, great education, and guys you could almost see were running a mental simulation of the chip as you described what you observed on the network...

What was also amusing was how ego-less these guys seemed to be (I don't pretend to know if they really were). I knew for a fact that recruiting teams tried to recruit some of these guys for years from other companies before they'd jump ship from one company to the next ... and yet when I met them in person it was like some random meeting on the street (there's a whole other story there that I wish I understood more about Indian Americans (many of them) and American engineers treat status / behave).

I eventually figured out that the reason I was assigned / requested was simple:

1. Support management couldn't refuse, in fact several valley managers very much didn't like me / did not want to give me those cases .... but nobody could refuse the almighty ASIC engineers. No joke, ASIC engineers requests were all but handed down on stone tablets and smote any idols you might have.

2. The engineers trusted me. It was that simple.

They liked to read my notes before going into a meeting / high pressure conference call. I could tell from talking to them on the phone (I was remote) if their mental model was seizing up, or if they just wanted more data, and we could have quick and effective conversations before meetings ;)

I always qualified my answers. If I didn't know I said so (this was HUGE) and I would go find out. In fact my notes often included a list of unknowns (I knew they'd ask), and a list of questions I had sent to / pending for the customer.

The super smart tech support guys, they had egos, didn't want to say they didn't know, and they'd send eng down the rabbit hole. Truth be told most of what the smarter than me tech support guy's knew was memorization. I don't want to sound like I'm knocking that because for the most part memorization would quickly solve a good chunk of tech support calls for sure... no question those guys solved problems. I wish I was able to memorize like those guys.

But memorization did NOT help anyone solve off the wall bugs, sort of emergent behavior, recognize patterns (network traffic and bugs all have patterns / smells). Memorization also wouldn't lead you to the right path to finding ANYTHING new / new methods to find things that you don't anticipate.

In fact relying on memorization like some support folks did meant that they often assumed that if bit 1 was on... they couldn't imagine what would happen if that didn't work, even if they saw a problem where ... bro obviously bit 1 is on but that thing ain't happening, that means A, B, C.

Being careful, asking questions, making lists of what you know / don't know, iterating LOGICALLY (for the love of god change one thing at a time). That's how you solved big problems I found.

Sometimes your skills aren't super smarts, super flashy code, sometimes, knowing every method off the top of your head, sometimes you can excel just being more careful, thinking different.

my fist job... i get to edit a c++ code written by a (mind you) programming company that they teamed with for the past(mind you again) 3 years ...
now just for starters, this code was edited by self taught coders that are really good engineers(they are really good), that didnt really know how the code worked before yet they still changed it, and it worked, how ever they wanted some changes.
i get the project files, and there is not one single comment describing what is happening... only code commented out... and no documentation what so ever were done....
so below are some of my comments that i wrote after i finished adding what i had to add, and fixing what i had to fix:

/*first rule of C anything coding, no actual functions in the header, well let me introduce you to a fully functioning thread running program all in the header, enjoy*/

//used to control the thread
// i honestly dont know why, but it worked soooooo yea...

// TG uncommented // for absolutely no reason what so ever...

//used to communicate with the port

//the message to be sent to the inverter, which has a code that will handle it
//hmmmmmm...

//again not usefull since we are using radioButtons
// same ...
// same ...
// same ...
// they said they dont even use this mode, but none the less, same ...
// calculate the checksum for the message
// ....
// one of the things that work, and god forbids i touch
// used for the status displayed on screen
// used for the (censored :P) status in the message
// used for the (censored :P) status in the message
// not used at all, but the message structure contains it and i refuse to edit that abomination
// used for the (censored :P) status in the message
// used for the (censored :P) status in the message
// just dont ask and roll with it, i didnt want to touch this
// saaaaame ...
// if before true this saaaaaame ...
// value of the (censored :P)
// it pains me to say it again, but this is no use
// (censored :P) input
// (censored :P) input
// only place seen , like for real it was just defined,sooooo yea :D
// well you know how it is
// message string
// check sum string
/****below from feed back****/
// (censored :P) coming in
// (censored :P) coming in
// (censored :P) coming in
// (censored :P)
/****below is the output to the receiver ****/
//(censored :P)
// (censored :P)
// (censored :P)
// (censored :P)
//you thought we were done.... nope, no idea. it comes in the feedback
// not used, literally commented out the one time it was used
// same ...
// XD, man this is a blast, same ...
// nope ...
// used to store the port chosen for the communication
// is a static for the number of data we have recorded so far, and as a row indicator for the recording method
// used to indicate the page we are on in the excel file, as well as the point in physical point in the test
// same ... oh look at this a positive same :D
// same ...
// same ...

A while a go, we got a Feature Request by our client, which was a bit of a stretch. and by a bit of a stretch i mean horrible shit which is totally unusable, a technical nightmare to implement with almost no accessable data.
well, the pm gave me the Ticket. when I First read it, I wanted to puke.
since the pm wasnt in a good mood, i just wrote a large comment on where to implement that Feature to be a much less pain in the ass.

many discussions with the pm and the Client later, i Had to implement it the way, they wanted. so i started.

after one and a half week, i was almost ready, just a few hours left and the nightmare would be over
what i didnt know is that the Client came over to discuss a few things with my Boss
suddenly my Boss walks in and asked, how much im ready
then He told me THE message

i should should Revert everything ive done the last 1 1/2 weeks and implement the Feature the way, i told was better

worst friday ever

Spend 3hrs on a coding excersize for a job interview and recieve the following as the reason they are not moving forward

"Coding style and an error"

Ask for a less vague reply and they specify a problem my code not only accounted for but had a comment specifying how it accounted for it and a spelling mistake in my GitHub repository

Goddam looking for a job is soul destroying

!dev

i think i need to control my emotions and expression around girls. things are going quite wrong and i am not sure i am able to interact with this beautiful gender correctly.

<misc: somewhat unrelated event. need to vent>

- got called out "a creep", "jerk", and "hypocrite" by this girl. she may be totally correct in calling me these but these words made me think about my behavior and therefore this post .

- characters? she: a friend of a friend, to whom i have met 3-4 times, in trips where we drank together, danced together nd talked till late night, among other people.
me : well me . based on previous allegations you can also label me as creep and hypocrite , but i would describe myself as an introvert, nerdy person who talks better on a keyboard than real life (otherwise i wouldn't be typing this post but whatever.)

- action : i made a comment on her insta story

- action details:
• we follow each other on insta. it was 12 am and i was in a half sleep state, scrolling the damn app before falling asleep
• saw her story with his 3 girl nd 2 guy cousins probably, so out of fun, replied her about how all of their specs look the same and if they all take out their specs from the same shop (cheeky comment, i know)
• she just erupted. from asking whether i also wanna buy from the same shop, to why am i talking to her, who gave you the right to compliment, jerk, hypocrite who can't talk in real life but compliments on keyboard, to creep and "stay away"
• I really wanted to say sorry at some point, but i kept making more cheeky comments in between. i was like , yeah she is my friend going through something and bursting her anger on me, she will come back and laugh, but she kept going towards hypocrite, jerk and finally stay away thing

• after that i knew i crossed the line and immediately got out of the conversation. i didn't apologize though.
• as of now am calm and don't mind the current situation of she being angry at a person who means nothing to her and me realising she is not a friend but a common connection . and till the time i was making cheeky comments, i saw her as my homie friend, so i am not bothered if she is angry
</misc>

I think i am a very needy person. i didn't have many friends in school time and i didn't had any relatives/cousins/siblings to get a lot of affection. a 25 yo horny virgin with no relationships till date does give a bad personality vibe from far, but keep in mind that i have mainly focused on personality growth and a conservative chsracter development my whole life. i do not act on my lonly feelings, but i try to be helpful and nice to everyone (which might be a suspicious/bad thing. just trying to defend my character, but feel free to judge)

every girl that talks nice with me, i get very helpful, nice and cheeky with them. most girls likes nd ignores these things, but some also get along, trust me and are willing to spend more time with me.

This makes me not only be more nice and cheeky with them but also start developing feelings for them and imagining my future/relation with them.

as of now i think there are 12 or 13 girls with whom i got into "vibing" (here, assume that vibing means me talking with them, cracking jokes nd compliments, meeting them alone ,etc. no adult stuff ofc), nd then after a few days told them directly or indirectly that i like them ( in a hope of getting some affection back i guess), getting rejected and still trying to keep the "friendship"

i think this needs to be changed. the people calling me creep, despo, perv , whatever might be correct in calling me those till now(based in my behavior) but i don't wanna be that.

i need to understand the girls might not want anything more than just a help at some point and then be done with it. I shouldn't be going out a limb and trying to get i to conversation/flirt/whatever.

i just am too emotional to let any person go away from my life just because our reason for interaction is over.
If I am commenting on a girl's post to whom i met on some trip, i will be commenting on a guy's post (to whom i met on a similar trip) too , in a similar manner,

if i see a post from one of my school's batchmates , and i find it nice/funny/weird, i will comment as if me and this batchmate met yesterday and not for 1 hr 10 years ago (irrespective of the gender)

and even after that if people are so intolerant, then maybe i am wrong and rather should start forgetting every person with whom i have spent less than 50 days alone.

hope this is the correct math and i could expect people with 50 days = 600+ hours of daytime to be enough to not see me as a stranger

Round two, guys.

Lets continue that 3-word story, but first comment with more or less words ends it!

A while ago,

You had that moment when you agree with someone and given a ++ because it takes less space in DB than comment?

Dear reviewers, feedback givers, coworkers, clients and critics...

There is a subtle difference between constructive criticism and just spewing hate!

One offers advice & points in the direction of a better solution, while the other one makes me value you less, as a human being...

If your comment/review/feedback is:
“I don’t like it, I don’t know why, I just don’t” - please keep it to yourself because it makes us less likely to listen to you when you actually have something worthwhile to say...

Yours,
Any and all creative professionals,
including developers.

I don't know if someone has noticed but I haven't been on DevRant lately. It's not that the community is awesome. In the last month or two, I've had a blast of an experience here. I've just been avoiding screens, specifically texts in screens. I think something snapped on my head last week. Here's why:

As I've said in other rants/comments, I study history, and at the moment, I haven't found any career that has to read more than this one. Sometimes I've had to read about 1200 pages in less than three days. Last week I had to read 6 books which accounted for about 3500 pages. I was actively reading more than 600 pages a day. Now, this was for an investigation, and each of these reads had to be properly summarised with their respective arguments, thesis, etc. So I intensely read everything before Thursday, the day in which I had to present my work, in which I referenced about 10 books.

Apart from that, daily, I spent 4 hours coding. That's been the minimum I've done daily since I started learning.

I wasn't too tired. I'm used to read a lot, and coding is always fun. But the problem came in Friday when I woke up with a strange headache that spanned from my eyes to the back of my ears. Hurting especially on the sides of my forehead.

It eventually dissipated, but whenever I read something, the ache slowly came back. Loud noises and bright lights also brought it back. So you could imagine, everytime I tried to read a Rant, comment, etc, the headache came back. The same for coding and reading. For fucks sake I feel like I'm fucking crippled.

And no, the pain isn't the worst. Pain is pain and you can't do anything about it. The worst is that I'm developing some anxiety here. In all this time I have been learning daily nonstop. Coding was something I craved for everyday. Now I'm fucking wasting entire days in non-productive activities. I'm losing my fucking time here guys!

I'm afraid I have some anxiety problem with time. I've already fucking wasted entire years, now I don't want to continue wasting them and push my goals further away, I want to get to my goals as soon as I can because time and life can't be stopped and once time is lost, you can't fucking get it back. And, considering I'm still 21, I do notice this feeling is somehow irrational, but for fucks sake, I'm wasting fucking LIFE :(

Maslow's Hierarchy breaks down five human needs. You need to meet the lower numbers in order to feel fulfilled in higher levels (i.e. You likely don't feel like you belong to a community when you're struggling to find food & water.) :

1. Physiological (Foods, Water, Clothes, Sleep)
2. Safety & Security
3. Love & Belonging
4. Esteem
5. Self Actualization

The company I'm at is struggling financially so nobody received raises. There were no promotions to celebrate this year. There was diminishing pride in working here. Multiple re-organizations shatter my view that I belong to a team. Multiple rounds of layoffs shattered my feeling of job security. Multiple meetings start with my co-workers buying time to brush their teeth, scarfing down what food they can eat quickly, brewing another cup of coffee.

I firmly believe it's a manager's job to watch out for the culture and build up their employees through this process, but the managers are watching out for their own backs, and probably struggling with the same things we are as individual contributors.

Hey corporate management, while you were off at your executive off-site, your employees are failing to meet some basic needs. You wonder why we bitch about 4-day work weeks and needing less meetings. You think we're entitled when we ask for food and snacks delivered to our door.

We're not entitled. We're broken.
We're not lazy. We're burnt out.

You say we get unlimited time off, but you frequently comment about how much time we're taking off in public forums.

You say you pay us competitively, but that was last year, and shit costs 60% more now.

You say we're responsible for the success of the company, but you're responsible for the morale of the company.

I am honestly flattered by the fact that @scor really, unironically thinks that “by the frequency and varsity and depth you post and comment and self imaging”, I can't be a single person, and there is a whole TEAM behind me!

Honestly, I don't care about insults. Neither yours, nor of that schmuck that is salty because he posted some stupid misogynic shit a while ago, I reposted it as a screenshot, and he was obliterated by the community.

I'm only posting this because people out there legitimately think I'm a hive mind. It's not every day that you're told whatever you do cannot be done by one person. To me, this is more of a compliment.

Looking past devRant, I would like to meet @scor and other haters IRL. I have no hard feelings. I'm just an autistic person with bipolar disorder. I post whatever I want, as it's somewhat therapeutic.

You don't have to acknowledge it, but here's an honest, personal message: if you at any point compare yourself to me and lose, remember, my personality and creativity is a negligent, slight payoff for a literal hell that is a mental disorder. My thoughts are thinking themselves. I can't control them. My body is twitching constantly. I'm both actively anxious and always tired. My intellect suffers a massive penalty in a depressive phase, like now.

Finding at least some positive side to that hellscape is absolutely vital, and any person with a disorder can tell you that.

The fact that I'm social, I have friends and a job is a miracle. I'm privileged. I've seen a lot of people less lucky than me. They weren't able to monetize their troubled, sharp brain. I was.

Over the last few years, i explored the DMZ between dev's world and customer's world. It is a DMZ where both are in contact, ones trying to convince the others to invest on them, and i was just shocked !
People are so stupid and Elitist, they think that an ultimate great godly dev exist !
It is totally fake for sure, they image that a good have to know absolutely everything about all the damn languages (while everyone googles every single comment received, even the most "advanced" dev)
I am shocked to see how people apply their everyday life metrics to the dev's world, i mean, there are a lot of devs around, everyone coding his way to self-improvement, we are all different, we have trends, and we can definitly define groups of developers and types of developers, but people think that a good dev have to come from silicon valley ! Does it means that a dev coming from Vladivostok is less worth ? even he is more dynamic in his approach ? even if he yields more results in terms of solutions ? (SV devs tends to be too much technical, while russians tends to be in the heart of action directly).
Common people shouldn't mess with what they know nothing about, and stay at their "Consumer" position.

!dev

I fucking hate with all the strength in my body this meme format:

nobody:
someone: wacky unpredictible quote

fuck that bitch ass, lazy, unfunny, uncreative format. It fucking sucks dick. It's not funny!

Jesus fucking christ, it was funny the first month.
But month after month after month, this fucking thing won't die. It's way way below the average meme format, and that's saying a lot considering what the average is.

I check youtube comments and for every funny and thoughtful comment there's one from these fucking idiots that shouldn't be alive parrotting this unfunny shit.

Just include the goddamn fucking quote, that's it.

Even less points to the motherfuckers that write:
nobody
not one on person on earth
not even a single person on the universe
person: <quote>
those deserve the worst type of cancers or torture forms described in wikipedia.

This is a stuxnet level post, I need to get a life.

{TL:DR/ a super non web dev non frontend non interested person aka me somehow cracked the interview(through wrong practices i guess) landed into an internship that would have gone to a better person.I cracked the interview but am shit scared if i could stand the job}

- So 3 days ago i was talking to my friend regarding random stuff, when he told about needing a front end dev for making static template based html pages for their company.

- (I haven't ever worked in deep with web dev, just generated a few websites using mardown to html convertors, and was recently trying to learn flask/bootstrap/js) I was in need of some work so immediately requested him to talk about me in their company.

- yesterday i get an interview call from the hr of that company . She ask what i know, what they want and if i could do. I honestly tell them about my experience with web dev( with some maybe's)

- moments later , she adds me to a group with another guy, and gives us both a task to use create a clone of same website in 2 days.

- The website is a super graphically designed web page with lots of animations, custom mouses and what not. I could sense the basic elements out of it , like the nav bar and the carousals, but those animations were way beyond my knowledge. yet i start working on it

- I try with taking the clever top down approach of cloning the website and fixing its structure. It has such long code files of 10k+ lines, but i was still able to clean the css and html files and some of js code to make the website work

- later my friend calls and tells me that the other guy is a 1st year student / his brother and he doesn't know much stuff so he's kinda like me.

- He shows me a video of his code that he sent to him. That guy took the honest, bottom up approach, used the design as inspiration and was trying hard to create the similar design and animations via js.

- among other things, he also tells me that this challenge is super difficult and the level of difficulty in the work is certainly going to be lesser than this.

- In my task, I was super stuck at js because i haven't learned it much, therefore after spending 1.5 days, i made a submission without the main thing, i.e one particular carousal working

- later I get a call from another friend (B) of mine and while discussing random things, i show him my code over anydesk and ask him if he could somehow get my code to work. He asks for some time and sends me a complete refactored version of code with the same design but fully working carousal and other stuff.

- meanwhile i get to see the other guy's code and he had legit made all the designs and functions by himself, but his code looked less polished and different from the design.

- I pushed my friend(B)'s refactored version and added a comment on the group the carousal in mu code is now working.

- later at night my friend1 calls and tells me that their company was considering my submission and i would be getting the selection call

- I feel like a crazy fraud who somehow cracked the interview but is going to get his ass whipped. Where and how can i learn js, and jquery?

Oh boy this may be my best product review yet. I'm totally smitten with GitHub Copilot! I always put off trying it, but I finally gave it a try recently. Man, oh man, once I got a taste of it, there was no going back. This auto-suggest feature is pure sorcery! It throws out complete function suggestions while you type, and it's all based on the context of your code.

Let me tell you if you have never tried it, it's freaking awesome and super handy! I've been learning Python for less than a month, but thanks to the freaking Copilot, my Python skills have skyrocketed like for real. I know this because I tackled a Python project and nailed it. The client was stoked because it worked flawlessly, even though my Python skills are still a bit rough around the edges.

The coolst thing is hw clean my code looks, especially for a beginner. all I have to do to add a comment is type a double slash, and Copilot takes care of the rest. It suggests what should go on each line as I type, and it's scarily accurate.

You know what's wild? On the GitHub page, it claims that Copilot writes 50% of the code. But, dude, for me, it wrote way more than that!