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I think the weekly rants just exist because @dfox & @trogus got banned from stackoverflow and they still have questions.
When it comes to learning cutting edge tech... Go build already!
I found Rust intimidating.
I read the first few pages of the official book, got bored, gave up.
Few months later, decided to write a "simple" tool for generating pleasing Jetbrains IDE color schemes using Rust. I half-finished it by continuously looking up stuff, then got stuck at some ungoogleable compiler error.
Few months later I needed to build a microservice for work, and against better judgement gave Rust a try in the weekend. Ended up building an unrelated library instead, uploaded my first package to crates.io.
Got some people screaming at me that my Rust code sucked. Screamed back at them. After lots of screaming, I got some helpful PRs.
Eventually ended up building many services for work in Rust after all. With those services performing well under high load and having very few bugs, coworkers got interested. Started hiring Rust engineers, and educating interested PHP/JS devs.
Now I professionally write Rust code almost full-time.
Moral of the story:
Fuck books, use them for reference. Fuck Udemy (etc), unless you just want to 2x through it while pooping.
Learning is something you do by building a project, failing, building something else, falling again, building some more, sharing what you've made, fighting about what you've built with some entitled toxic nerds, abandoning half your projects and starting twelve new ones.
Reading code is better than reading documentation.
Listening to users of your library/product teaches you more than listening to keynote speakers at conferences.
Don't worry about failures, you don't need to deliver a working product for it to be a valuable experience.
Oh, and trying to teach OTHERS is an excellent method to discover gaps in your knowledge.
Just get your fucking hands dirty!12 -
Does anyone else have that one guy or gal you work with that's ALWAYS the one to find the weirdest, inexplicable bugs possible? Yup. That's me. Here's some fun examples.
*Unplugs monitor from laptop, causing kernel panic*
*Mouse moves in reverse when inside canvas*
*Program fails to compile, yet compiler blames a syntax error that doesn't exist*
*malloc on the first line of a program causes a segfault*
And for how the conversation usually goes
Me: "[coworker], mind taking a look at this?"
Coworker: "Sure.This better not be another one of 'your bugs'. ... ... ... Well, if you need me I'll be at my desk."
Me: "So you know what's causing it?"
Coworker: "Nope. I've accepted that you're cursed and you should do the same."8 -
I know a guy who writes everything in Haskell.
He started learning it because his parents got him into a math school (and math schools in Russia use either Python or Haskell), he liked it, but later he dropped out. Today, apart from Haskell, he only really knows HTML and CSS, and maybe some JavaScript.
He writes backend AND frontend in Haskell and uses some kind of JRPC stuff to manage all that. He told me that his life is a pure heaven. He IS RELEVANT (!!!!!!), his apps always run without bugs (because in Haskell you can mathematically prove that there are no bugs), they are performant, faster than C (because you can't write a complex enough app in C that will be as efficient as compiled Haskell, because it's you vs compiler). He doesn't have any problems in life whatsoever. He never got burned out, he never got anxiety or depression. He doesn't act pretentiously and stuff, he's just a normal person who rarely even mentions that he can program.
Science says it can't be done! You can't only know Haskell and be a relevant software engineer! You know what, he didn't _know_ it was impossible. He's like that grandpa from a meme, he got Alzheimers, but because of it he forgot that he had Alzheimers, and now remembers everything.
The fun thing is that he looks like a typical gopnik, with adidas suits and stuff.
What a gem of a person.26 -
I could bitch about XSLT again, as that was certainly painful, but that’s less about learning a skill and more about understanding someone else’s mental diarrhea, so let me pick something else.
My most painful learning experience was probably pointers, but not pointers in the usual sense of `char *ptr` in C and how they’re totally confusing at first. I mean, it was that too, but in addition it was how I had absolutely none of the background needed to understand them, not having any learning material (nor guidance), nor even a typical compiler to tell me what i was doing wrong — and on top of all of that, only being able to run code on a device that would crash/halt/freak out whenever i made a mistake. It was an absolute nightmare.
Here’s the story:
Someone gave me the game RACE for my TI-83 calculator, but it turned out to be an unlocked version, which means I could edit it and see the code. I discovered this later on by accident while trying to play it during class, and when I looked at it, all I saw was incomprehensible garbage. I closed it, and the game no longer worked. Looking back I must have changed something, but then I thought it was just magic. It took me a long time to get curious enough to look at it again.
But in the meantime, I ended up played with these “programs” a little, and made some really simple ones, and later some somewhat complex ones. So the next time I opened RACE again I kind of understood what it was doing.
Moving on, I spent a year learning TI-Basic, and eventually reached the limit of what it could do. Along the way, I learned that all of the really amazing games/utilities that were incredibly fast, had greyscale graphics, lowercase text, no runtime indicator, etc. were written in “Assembly,” so naturally I wanted to use that, too.
I had no idea what it was, but it was the obvious next step for me, so I started teaching myself. It was z80 Assembly, and there was practically no documents, resources, nothing helpful online.
I found the specs, and a few terrible docs and other sources, but with only one year of programming experience, I didn’t really understand what they were telling me. This was before stackoverflow, etc., too, so what little help I found was mostly from forum posts, IRC (mostly got ignored or made fun of), and reading other people’s source when I could find it. And usually that was less than clear.
And here’s where we dive into the specifics. Starting with so little experience, and in TI-Basic of all things, meant I had zero understanding of pointers, memory and addresses, the stack, heap, data structures, interrupts, clocks, etc. I had mastered everything TI-Basic offered, which astoundingly included arrays and matrices (six of each), but it hid everything else except basic logic and flow control. (No, there weren’t even functions; it has labels and goto.) It has 27 numeric variables (A-Z and theta, can store either float or complex numbers), 8 Lists (numeric arrays), 6 matricies (2d numeric arrays), 10 strings, and a few other things like “equations” and literal bitmap pictures.
Soo… I went from knowing only that to learning pointers. And pointer math. And data structures. And pointers to pointers, and the stack, and function calls, and all that goodness. And remember, I was learning and writing all of this in plain Assembly, in notepad (or on paper at school), not in C or C++ with a teacher, a textbook, SO, and an intelligent compiler with its incredibly helpful type checking and warnings. Just raw trial and error. I learned what I could from whatever cryptic sources I could find (and understand) online, and applied it.
But actually using what I learned? If a pointer was wrong, it resulted in unexpected behavior, memory corruption, freezes, etc. I didn’t have a debugger, an emulator, etc. I had notepad, the barebones compiler, and my calculator.
Also, iterating meant changing my code, recompiling, factory resetting my calculator (removing the battery for 30+ sec) because bugs usually froze it or corrupted something, then transferring the new program over, and finally running it. It was soo slowwwww. But I made steady progress.
Painful learning experience? Check.
Pointer hell? Absolutely.4 -
Dear Santa, please bring me a compiler that generates compile errors instead of runtime bugs. Thanks.10
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I spent over a decade of my life working with Ada. I've spent almost the same amount of time working with C# and VisualBasic. And I've spent almost six years now with F#. I consider all of these great languages for various reasons, each with their respective problems. As these are mostly mature languages some of the problems were only knowable in hindsight. But Ada was always sort of my baby. I don't really mind extra typing, as at least what I do, reading happens much more than writing, and tab completion has most things only being 3-4 key presses irl. But I'm no zealot, and have been fully aware of deficiencies in the language, just like any language would have. I've had similar feelings of all languages I've worked with, and the .NET/C#/VB/F# guys are excellent with taking suggestions and feedback.
This is not the case with Ada, and this will be my story, since I've no longer decided anonymity is necessary.
First few years learning the language I did what anyone does: you write shit that already exists just to learn. Kept refining it over time, sometimes needing to do entire rewrites. Eventually a few of these wound up being good. Not novel, just good stuff that already existed. Outperforming the leading Ada company in benchmarks kind of good. At the time I was really gung-ho about the language. Would have loved to make Ada development a career. Eventually build up enough of this, as well as a working, but very bad performing compiler, and decide to try to apply for a job at this company. I wasn't worried about the quality of the compiler, as anyone who's seriously worked with Ada knows, the language is remarkably complex with some bizarre rules in dark corners, so a compiler which passes the standards test indicates a very intimate knowledge of the language few can attest to.
I get told they didn't think I would be a good fit for the job, and that they didn't think I should be doing development.
A few months of rapid cycling between hatred and self loathing passes, and then a suicide attempt. I've got past problems which contributed more so than the actual job denial.
So I get better and start working even harder on my shit. Get the performance of my stuff up even better. Don't bother even trying to fix up the compiler, and start researching about text parsing. Do tons of small programs to test things, and wind up learning a lot. I'm starting to notice a lot of languages really surpassing Ada in _quality of life_, with things package managers and repositories for those, as well as social media presence and exhaustive tutorials from the community.
At the time I didn't really get programming language specific package managers (I do now), but I still brought this up to the community. Don't do that. They don't like new ideas. Odd for a language which at the time was so innovative. But social media presence did eventually happen with a Twitter account that is most definitely run by a specific Ada company masquerading as a general Ada advocate. It did occasionally draw interest to neat things from the community, so that's cool.
Since I've been using both VisualStudio and an IDE this Ada company provides, I saw a very jarring quality difference over the years. I'm not gonna say VS is perfect, it's not. But this piece of shit made VS look like a polished streamlined bug free race car designed by expert UX people. It. Was. Bad. Very little features, with little added over the years. Fast forwarding several years, I can find about ten bugs in five minutes each update, and I can't find bugs in the video games I play, so I'm no bug finder. It's just that bad. This from a company providing software for "highly reliable systems"...
So I decide to take a crack at writing an editor extension for VS Code, which I had never even used. It actually went well, and as of this writing it has over 24k downloads, and I've received some great comments from some people over on Twitter about how detailed the highlighting is. Plenty of bespoke advertising the entire time in development, of course.
Never a single word from the community about me.
Around this time I had also started a YouTube channel to provide educational content about the language, since there's very little, except large textbooks which aren't right for everyone. Now keep in mind I had written a compiler which at least was passing the language standards test, so I definitely know the language very well. This is a standard the programmers at these companies will admit very few people understand. YouTube channel met with hate from the community, and overwhelming thanks from newcomers. Never a shout out from the "community" Twitter account. The hate went as far as things like how nothing I say should be listened to because I'm a degenerate Irishman, to things like how the world would have been a better place if I was successful in killing myself (I don't talk much about my mental illness, but it shows up).
I'm strictly a .NET developer now. All code ported.5 -
Jeff Dean Facts (Source: God)
Jeff Dean once failed a Turing test when he correctly identified the 203rd Fibonacci number in less than a second
Jeff Dean compiles and runs his code before submitting, but only to check for compiler and CPU bugs
Unsatisfied with constant time, Jeff Dean created the world's first O(1/n) algorithm
When Jeff Dean designs software, he first codes the binary and then writes the source as documentation
Compilers don't warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers
Jeff Dean wrote an O(n^2) algorithm once. It was for the Traveling Salesman Problem
Jeff Dean's watch displays seconds since January 1st, 1970.
gcc -O4 sends your code to Jeff Dean for a complete rewrite
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The best/worst code comments you have ever seen?
Mine:
//Upload didn't work, have to react:
system.println('no result');
//$Message gives out a message in the compiler log.
{$Message Hint 'Feed the cat'}
//Not really needed
//Closed source - Why even comments?
//Looks like bullshit, but it has to be done this way.
//This one's really fucked up.
//If it crashes, click again.
asm JMP START end; //because no goto XP
catch {
//shit happens
}
//OMG!!! And this works???
asm
...
mov [0], 0 //uh, maybe there is a better way of throw an exception
...
mov [0], 0 //still a strange way to notify of an error
// this makes it exiting -- in other words: unstable !!!!!
//Paranoic - can't happen, but I trust no one.
else {
//please no -.-
sleep(0);
}
//wuppdi
for (int i = random(500); i < 1000 + random(500 + random(250)); i++)
{
// Do crap, so its harder to decompile
}
//This job would be great if it wasn't for the f**king customers.
//TODO: place this peace of code somewhere else...
// Beware of bugs in the code above; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
{$IFDEF VER93}
//Good luck
{$DEFINE VER9x}
{$ENDIF}
//THIS SHIT IS LEAKING! SOMEONE FIX IT! :)
/* no comment */5 -
Why do programmers prefer dark mode? 🌑
Because the light attracts bugs! 🐛
"When you try to make coffee but the compiler keeps saying 'Syntax error: Coffee not found.'" ☕😅1 -
Fifty little bugs jumping in the code,
One tracked down and dev started to code,
Developer called the compiler,
And the compiler said
Hundred more bugs (& errors) found in the code
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When your compiler is too smart and inlines and unrolls the function call with its own implementation on a preemptable kernel code a simple memcpy call can be used to destroy the system :D4
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Who else is fed up of memes on Facebook like 'She was upset because I didn't talk to her. She didn't know that it was because I missed a semicolon in my code'
Really?? WTF compiler do you use dude? Because of such shitty memes, couple of my non-dev friends asked me how frequently I miss the semicolon in my code?! I said never because:
1. I am not a dumb coder to compile my programs with any syntax errors.
2. Even if I do, I fix it in a minute.
:| WTF really! These dumbheads don't make memes on bugs.3 -
Kotlin
Look up the Kotlin Puzzlers presentations by Anton Keks, in which he shows the strangest behaviours of the Kotlin compiler. Bizarre syntax, strange results, bugs, etc. Some aren't even edge cases. And he's wearing a captain's hat.
2017: https://youtu.be/ukwVzLq_pHk
2018: https://youtu.be/Xq9vBZs0j-8
2019: https://youtu.be/_AM5VbPTKeg -
Is it possible to have an "epistemological bug crisis"? Because i feel like everything I referred to as bugs in my early career weren't true bugs, they were just bad programming or architecture flaws. I feel like real "bugs" are weird issues with the language, compiler, module, etc... that should work one way but work another way. Anyone else had that experience?
This gives rise to the secondary question: who perpetuates the idea that bugs are just "anything wrong with the current codebase"?3 -
Well. I have to go on a competiton about informatics in two weeks.
This is my programm: https://github.com/MaximilianJugend...
As its a competiton for kids, I dont expect anybody to match a compiler (not trying to be rude. The competitors try to compete with nxt programs.), but it wouldnt look nice, if there were Bugs. So shoutout to german people who are bored to death: could you please test my program and open as many issues as possible? ;) thanks in advance5
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