Mom : My washing machine is not working.
Please fix it.
Me : I am a computer engineer.
Mom : You are an engineer though.
Me : That's not how it works.
.
.
.
2 hours and many YouTube tutorials later
Me : It's done.
Mom : Didn't I tell you you can do it.

Mac: Suddenly turns off
Me: Fuck my code..F***
Mac: No response at all
Me: reset SMC etc etc
Mac: I am dead (no battery detection, dies after 10 min on power adaptor)
Me: Skips a heart beat..(Git, oh yea git)

**Takes Mac to store, After diagnosis**

Apple Freaking Genius (AG): Your Mac has a mother board problem it needs to be replaced.
Me: Hmm what is the problem exactly??
AG: Issues in logic board and some other components.
Me: How much?
AG: Out of warranty so $$$ (60% of original amount)
Me: (wtf?) Really
AG: It's entire motherboard replacement .. bla bla

**Bring it home > open > everything seems ok on multimeter as per circuit diagram > finally finds a voltage drop that is not consistent > minute short circuit > remove > check further > nothing else > reassemble > hit power button > starts fine > freaking battery detected > works fine**

0 $ repair

Fixes two more devices @ 0 $ in friend circle

Builds a raspberry pi backup laptop with 3d printed body..Ubuntu.. you know can't live without a computer

#ThugLife #Engineer

This is a fun conversation I had:

Test Engineer: 😑 The test bench burst into flames.
Me: 😪😲 Do what now?
TE: 😐 The test bench burst into flames. It made a pretty impressive fire ball.
Me: 😮 . . . How are you so calm about this?
TE: 😐 Well it's not on fire now.
Me: 😶 Good point.
TE:😧 made me mad as hell though.
Me: 😕 why's that?
TE: 😬 Cuz I only had one damn step left in that test procedure and it was to turn the damn test bench off.
Me: 🤔 Correct me if I'm wrong but the test bench is off is it not?
TE: 😐 Well yeah.
Me: 🤔 and you caused it to be turned off by your actions no?
TE: 😕 . . . yeah . . .
Me:🤔 sounds like you turned it off to me.
TE: 😒
Me: 🙂
TE: 😐
Me: ☺
TE: 😑
Me: 😎
TE: 😐 but it won't turn on again.
Me: 🤔 do you have a requirement to be able to turn it on again after you turn it off?
TE: 😑 It's implied.
Me: 😐 not what I asked
TE: 😧 No not explicitly.
Me: 😎 sounds like you completed the test procedure.
TE: 😑
Me: 😎
TE: 😑
Me: 😎
TE: 😧 that's not how it works.
Me: 😎 doesn't it?
TE: 😑 No.
Me:😎
TE: *walks away* 😧😧😧
Me: *turns back to computer* well I was just trying to help YOU out 😒

I am the best at interpersonal communication.

For the last f***ing time, computer science engineer DOESN'T mean I repair computers!!!

Back in the days...

Parents: get off that computer it will get you nowhere in life!

Me:But im programming not playing games..I want to become a programmer...

Parents:programming or games it's all the same! Take an example of your sister who actually achieved something with her studies (she's a doctor)

Me today asa computer engineer...receiving paycheck higher than my sister who is a doctor and not to mention I got a car of the company and living very comfortably.

Parents can't believe it.

#rekt

Moral of the story: never let anyone tell you what to do. Keep doing what you truly love and get real good at it!😉

So i've been a dev manager for a little while now. Thought i'd take some time to disambiguate some job titles to let everyone know what they might be in for when joining / moving around a big org.

Title: Senior Software Engineer

Background:
- Technical
- Clever
- Typically has years experience building what management are trying to build

Responsibilities:
- Building new features
- Writing code
- Code review
- Offering advice to product manag......OH NO YOU DON'T CODE MONKEY, BACK TO WORK!

Title: Dev Manager

Background:
- Technical
- Former/current programmer
- knows his/her way around a codebase.

Responsibilities:
- Recruiting / interviewing new staff
- Keeping the team focused and delivering tasks
- Architecture decisions
- Lying about complexity of architecture decisions to ensure team gets the actual time they need
- Lying about feature estimations to ensure team gets to work on critical technical improvements that were cancelled / de-prioritised
- Explaining to hire-ups why we can't "Just do it quicker"
- Explaining to senior engineers why the product manager declined their meeting request

Title: Product / Product Manager

Background:
- Nothing relevant to the industry or product line what so ever
- Found the correct building on the day of the interview
- Has once opened an Excel spreadsheet and successfully saved it to a desktop

Responsibilities:
- Making every key decision about every feature available in the app
- Learning to ignore that inner voice we like to call "Common sense"
- Making sure to not accidentally take some advice from technical staff
- Raising the blood pressure of everyone below them / working with them

Title: Program Lead / Product Owner

Background:
- Capable of speech
- Aware of what a computer is (optional)

Responsibilities:
- Sitting down
- Talking
- Clicking random buttons on Jira
- Making bullet point lists

Title: Director of Software Engineering

Background:
- Allegedly attended college/university to study computer science
- Similar to a technical product manager (technical optional)

Responsibilities:
- Reports directly to VP
- Fixes problems by creating a different problem somewhere else as a distraction
- Claiming to understand and green light technical decisions, while having already agreed with product that it will never happen

Friend: You are a computer engineer right?
Me: Yeah
*In my head: Dont ask me if I can hack someone's facebook account.
Friend: Can you hack steam and buy games for free??

FML 😑🔫

When I was a kid I used to play on my old Pentium computer all night after my mother sleeps. One night she caught me playing, she pushed the cabin from the table and broke it 😵. After then I tried to fix it and succeeded. Since then started learning about computers and now a back end engineer..

A Geologist and an engineer are sitting next to each other on a long flight from LA to NY. The Geologist leans over to the Engineer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The Engineer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The Geologist persists and explains that the game is real easy and a lotta fun. He explains, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $5." Again, the Engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The Geologist now somewhat agitated, says, "OK, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50!"

This catches the Engineer's attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The Geologist asks the first question. "What's the distance from the Earth to the moon?"

The Engineer doesn't say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five dollar bill and hands it to the Geologist.

Now, it's the Engineer's turn. He asks the Geologist, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?" The Geologist looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the Airphone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers -- all to no avail.

After about an hour, he wakes the Engineer and hands him $50. The Engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep.

The Geologist is more than a little miffed, shakes the Engineer and asks, "Well, so what's the answer?"

Without a word, the Engineer reaches into his wallet, hands the Geologist $5, and turns away to get back to sleep.

So, I’m a software engineer at one of the FANG companies, and a “friend” from college that I haven’t talked to in years suddenly messages me, asking for my work email. I’m like, why would you ever need that? And he replies, “I’m gonna send you an email with a link, can you open it from your work computer? I’ll pay you for doing that, and it’s totally legal.”

Yeah... how about fuck no.

He blocked me after I refused.

Fuck MatLab. Fuck Mathworks. Why the fuck do I still have this fucking piece of shit on my computer? Even its logo makes me want to puke.

You think JavaScript is bad? Try MatLab, JavaScript will look like a saint.

You are still virgin? Try MatLab, it will fuck you hard.

Give me one fucking engineer who has to use MatLab and love its nonsense, I dare you!

!rant

You know those dudes that dress up spiffy and try to sell you cable providers for tv and shit. Well, i normally stream everything from my computers and do not really have any need for actual tv, my flatscreen is mostly used for my ps4 or switch and das it.

So these guys stop me at walmart and start trying to sell me this provider, i normally listen and give everyone a chance since they b only doing their job. Afterwards I tell them that i use one of those roku or amazon sticks and that I am fine with it. Well one of them insists in that those are not good since **fake made up technical shit** and that unless I am a programmer I would not know how to work around them.

I smile. Hehe.....hehe.....muahahahaha and tell them that I do not worry about such things since I am a software engineer. My wife passes by and confirms "yup, computer scientist, spends his days thinkering with shit"

One of them looks at the other and says "fuck it dude we lost"

Lol, gracious in the face of defeat.

Started university of applied sciences to become a computer engineer instead of a web developer.

Met a lot of kids that are in the "computer studies = games + YouTube".

They struggle hard, but don't do anything to learn...

Then there's this classmate, the guy is 10 years older than me, is trying really hard, and struggles a lot.

I've been helping him out with assigns by asking questions, and he asks me how to solve a problem in general, not the assignments which is super refreshing to see someone that wants to learn.

Currently trying to help him "translate" the simple stuff into c++:

So, if you want the char at a certain position in a string, how would you tell me to do it?

"well, take the list, look at position x and bam its done"

Try writing it like that!

And instead of "[i]" he writes "stringvar[i]"

He really appreciates the help and I hope he'll get the mindset soon :)

Would hate to lose a motivated guy when there's so many idiots copy pasting everything from tutorials...

I'm drunk and I'll probably regret this, but here's a drunken rank of things I've learned as an engineer for the past 10 years.

The best way I've advanced my career is by changing companies.

Technology stacks don't really matter because there are like 15 basic patterns of software engineering in my field that apply. I work in data so it's not going to be the same as webdev or embedded. But all fields have about 10-20 core principles and the tech stack is just trying to make those things easier, so don't fret overit.

There's a reason why people recommend job hunting. If I'm unsatisfied at a job, it's probably time to move on.

I've made some good, lifelong friends at companies I've worked with. I don't need to make that a requirement of every place I work. I've been perfectly happy working at places where I didn't form friendships with my coworkers and I've been unhappy at places where I made some great friends.

I've learned to be honest with my manager. Not too honest, but honest enough where I can be authentic at work. What's the worse that can happen? He fire me? I'll just pick up a new job in 2 weeks.

If I'm awaken at 2am from being on-call for more than once per quarter, then something is seriously wrong and I will either fix it or quit.

pour another glass

Qualities of a good manager share a lot of qualities of a good engineer.

When I first started, I was enamored with technology and programming and computer science. I'm over it.

Good code is code that can be understood by a junior engineer. Great code can be understood by a first year CS freshman. The best code is no code at all.

The most underrated skill to learn as an engineer is how to document. Fuck, someone please teach me how to write good documentation. Seriously, if there's any recommendations, I'd seriously pay for a course (like probably a lot of money, maybe 1k for a course if it guaranteed that I could write good docs.)

Related to above, writing good proposals for changes is a great skill.

Almost every holy war out there (vim vs emacs, mac vs linux, whatever) doesn't matter... except one. See below.

The older I get, the more I appreciate dynamic languages. Fuck, I said it. Fight me.

If I ever find myself thinking I'm the smartest person in the room, it's time to leave.

I don't know why full stack webdevs are paid so poorly. No really, they should be paid like half a mil a year just base salary. Fuck they have to understand both front end AND back end AND how different browsers work AND networking AND databases AND caching AND differences between web and mobile AND omg what the fuck there's another framework out there that companies want to use? Seriously, why are webdevs paid so little.

We should hire more interns, they're awesome. Those energetic little fucks with their ideas. Even better when they can question or criticize something. I love interns.

sip

Don't meet your heroes. I paid 5k to take a course by one of my heroes. He's a brilliant man, but at the end of it I realized that he's making it up as he goes along like the rest of us.

Tech stack matters. OK I just said tech stack doesn't matter, but hear me out. If you hear Python dev vs C++ dev, you think very different things, right? That's because certain tools are really good at certain jobs. If you're not sure what you want to do, just do Java. It's a shitty programming language that's good at almost everything.

The greatest programming language ever is lisp. I should learn lisp.

For beginners, the most lucrative programming language to learn is SQL. Fuck all other languages. If you know SQL and nothing else, you can make bank. Payroll specialtist? Maybe 50k. Payroll specialist who knows SQL? 90k. Average joe with organizational skills at big corp? $40k. Average joe with organization skills AND sql? Call yourself a PM and earn $150k.

Tests are important but TDD is a damn cult.

Cushy government jobs are not what they are cracked up to be, at least for early to mid-career engineers. Sure, $120k + bennies + pension sound great, but you'll be selling your soul to work on esoteric proprietary technology. Much respect to government workers but seriously there's a reason why the median age for engineers at those places is 50+. Advice does not apply to government contractors.

Third party recruiters are leeches. However, if you find a good one, seriously develop a good relationship with them. They can help bootstrap your career. How do you know if you have a good one? If they've been a third party recruiter for more than 3 years, they're probably bad. The good ones typically become recruiters are large companies.

Options are worthless or can make you a millionaire. They're probably worthless unless the headcount of engineering is more than 100. Then maybe they are worth something within this decade.

Work from home is the tits. But lack of whiteboarding sucks.

Feeling of world's best engineer...

me, sitting @ college, soldering together a charging cable

someone: oh wow you can do this stuff? i thought you were a computer scientist, not an engineer

me:...
me: yeah i need an engineering degree to wrap duct tape around cables

Didn't want to post it as there's been already a lot of posts like this. But I just can't help myself to rant over this. This happened yesterday. I helped him earlier with his phone.

Friend of my dad: Hey, I need your help with my laptop I bought from eBay.

Me: *flashbacks of devRant posts*

Him: Everything works. It's just that nothing comes up in display.

Me: Okay, you need to take that to a repair shop. If at least something came up on screen I could help.

Him: Aren't you a computer engineer? I bought this because I knew you can fix it.

Me: *more flashbacks*

Him: You gotta help me with this. I can't lose money on this

Me: You didn't even ask me anything before buying. Ask your buyer if they have a 30 day return policy.

Him: Why are paying this much to study Computer Engineering? I'll talk to your dad.

This people man. I told my dad and he never received his call anymore

people: What do you do?
me: I'm computer engineer.
people: Ah! You fix things then. Can you fix my TV?
me:

On a french TV show:
Animator: So Jean-Pierre what do you do in life?
Jean-Pierre: well, I'm a computer ingineer
A: Oh, so you're the guy we call when the printer is fucked?
JP: Absolutely not, I'm the one who make programs and softwares that don't work, so they call us again

Literally me 😂

Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.

If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.

First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)

So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.

What the fuck, Dell.

As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?

Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.

VS Code is pretty good, though.

A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a programmer are riding in a car.

The car breaks down and coasts to the side of the road.

"Hang on," says the mechanical engineer. "The problem is probably the engine, let me have a look at it and I'll have us on the road again in no time."

"Wait," says the electrical engineer. "The way it just stopped like that, I think it's the electrical system. Let me have a look and I'll get us going again in a minute or two."

"Hold on," says the computer engineer. "Why don't we all just get out of the car and get in again, and then see if it starts?"

Alternate punchlines:

"Why don't we open and close all the windows, and then see if it starts?"

"Why don't we remove parts from the engine until it starts successfully?"

"So what do you do?"
"I am a software engineer"

3 most frequent conversation routes

1. "I have some great app ideas maybe you could help me..."
2. "My computer/phone crashes frequently, what is wrong with it?..."
3. "so how many software/games/mobile apps have you developed?..."

If I tell normal people I'm a computer programmer, I always get asked to fix something hardware related.

If I tell normal people I'm a software engineer, I get a "that's awesome" and don't get asked to fix anything. I'm sticking with this option.

I remember my first software engineer internship, the boss was terrible. He was cheap and only hired interns we had 0 guidance. This mother fucker would say shit in meetings like "hey we should start providing DBAAS, similar to DynamoDB start researching it I want a prototype by Wednesday" Wtf this guy is nuts. The overall product was suppose to be a fucking virtual machine hosting platform to compete with AWS, Digital Ocean, RackSpace etc designed by BS computer science interns lol. This guy tells us in a meeting one day "You know what's the difference between those guys (the competitors) and us?" We all looked around lost. This pompous ass hole says "Me , that's the difference you guys have me " 😂 what a fucking joke , not to mention all he has is a shitty math degree from a bullshit no name college in India, no developing experience what so ever. Man o man I never met anyone that was so fucking stupid but thought they were so fucking smart

A Geologist and a developer are sitting next to each other on a long flight from LA to NY. The Geologist leans over to the developer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The Developer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The Geologist persists and explains that the game is real easy and a lotta fun. He explains, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $5." Again, the Developer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The Geologist now somewhat agitated, says, "OK, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50!"

This catches the Developer's attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The Geologist asks the first question. "What's the distance from the Earth to the moon?"

The Developer doesn't say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five dollar bill and hands it to the Geologist.

Now, it's the developer's turn. He asks the Geologist, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?" The Geologist looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the Airphone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers -- all to no avail.

After about an hour, he wakes the Engineer and hands him $50. The developer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep.

The Geologist is more than a little miffed, shakes the developer and asks, "Well, so what's the answer?"

Without a word, the developer reaches into his wallet, hands the Geologist $5, and turns away to get back to sleep.

My dad was a Novell Certified Engineer and my mom a Bachelor in Computer Systems, so I kinda admired them until one tragic day my dad suggested "Hey son why don't you make it using Access".

Gotta keep that code DRY...

"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter." -- Nathaniel S. Borenstein, computer scientist

Been reading devrant posts for a month or so, this is my first actual post. I'm hoping it will be therapeutic. ☺️ I need something to keep me from killing my boss when I see him again tomorrow..

Some backstory: Currently working in HR for the last 7 or so years with complete shit for brains boss, even worse when it comes to anything related to technology. For almost two years I've been working to get another bachelor's degree. This time in computer sciences, to make a career switch to systems and software engineer. Last week I roughly had the following wonderful conversation:

Boss: we've needed new Recruitment software for a while now. Can't you make us one as a school project?

Me: 'Make us one?' It's not really that simple.. I'm barely halfway through my education, maybe I could do it, but it would take me quite a long time even if I could work on it fulltime.. Combining a halftime job with a fulltime education is taking up enough of my time as it is and I have more than enough school projects btw..

Boss: it would be a win-win. Work a little harder in your spare time and when you graduate you have a real-life project on your resume.

Me: I'm sorry, i'm failing to see the 'win' for me here.. I work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week on average, trying to combine work and studies. I'm pretty much maxed out..

Boss: Your coworker(also extreme dumbass) told me you wrote some quick code the other day that helped him out. Don't underestimate yourself, I'm sure you can do this.

Me(in complete disbelief by now): I wrote him an Excel-macro! They don't even teach me that at school. It's a very very very long way from actual software development! I'm sorry, it just can't be done.

Boss: Thats too bad. I expected you to welcome an opportunity like this and be more motivated towards this company..

Me: ***more disbelief and silence, just staring at him***
I'm sorry you feel that way.
***walked away***

WTF, I work my ass off for 7 years for this fucking shithead.. Even before I started this bachelors degree I had at least some understanding of the work developers put in their software. It blows my mind, no, it fucking angers me how people think making software is so simple.. Why do you think it's a 3-year education you fucking cunt?

Please, someone tell me how I can keep myself from ramming his fucking head through a wall tomorrow...

I don’t know who recommended this... but I GOT FREE STICKERS 😜

Hello everyone, this is my first time here so hi! I want to tell you all a story about my current situation.

At 18 while in the military I was able to get my first computer, it was a small hp pavilion laptop with windows 7. The system would crash constantly, even though I would only use it for googling stuff and using fb to talk to people. 5 months after I got it and continuously hated it decided to find out why and who could I blame (other than myself) for the system making me do the ctrl alt del dance all the time....

Found out that there are people called computer programmers that made software. Decided to give it a go since I had some free time most days. Started out with c++ because it was being recommended in some websites. Had many "oh deeeeer lord" moments. After not getting much traction I decided to move to Java which seemed like an easier step than C++. Had fun, but after some verbosity I decided to move into more dynamic lands. Tried JS and since at the time there was no Node and I was not very into the idea of building websites I decided to move into Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl and had a really great time using and learning all of them. I decided to get good in theoretical aspects of computer programming and since I had a knack for math I decided to get started with basic computer science concepts.

I absolutely frigging loved it. And not only that, but learning new things became an obsession, the kind that would make me go to bed at 02:40 am just to wake up at 04:00 or 06:00 because the military is like that. I really wanted to absorb as much as I could since I wanted to go to college for it and wanted to be prepared since I did not wanted to be a complete newb. Took Harvard CS50, Standford Programming 101 with Java, Rice's Python course and MIT's Python programming class. I had so much fun I don't regret it one bit.
By the time I got to college I had already made the jump to Linux and was an adept Arch user, Its not that it was superior or anything, but it really forced me to learn about Linux and working around a terminal and the internals of the system to get what I want. Now a days I settle for Fedora or Debian based systems since they are easier and time is money.

Uni was a breeze, math was fun and the programming classes seemed like glorified "Hello World" courses. I had fun, but not that much fun, most of my time was spent getting better at actual coding. I am no genius, nor my grades were super amazing(I did graduate with honors though) but I had fun, which never really happened in school before that.

While in school I took my first programming gig! It was in ASP.NET MVC, we were using C#, I got the job through a customer that I met at work, I was working in retail during the time and absolutely hated it. I remember being so excited with the gig, I got to meet other developers! Where I am from there aren't that many and most of them are very specialized, so they only get concerned with certain aspects of coding (e.g VBA developers.....) and that is until I met the lead dev. He was by far one of the biggest assholes I had ever met in my life. Absolutely nothing that I would do or say made hem not be a dick. My code was steady, but I would find bugs of incomplete stuff that he would do, whenever I would fix it he would belittle me and constantly remind me of my position as a "junior dev" in the company saying things as "if you have an issue with my code or standards tell me, but do not touch the code" which was funny considering that I would not be able to advance without those fixes. I quit not even 3 months latter because I could not stand the dick, neither 2 of the other developers since the immediately resigned after they got their own courage.

A year latter I was able to find myself another gig. I was hesitant for a moment since it was another remote position in which I had already had a crappy experience. Boy this one was bad. To be fair, this was on me since I had to get good with Lumen after only having some exposure to Laravel. Which I did mentioned repeatedly even though he did offer to train me in order to help him. Same thing, after a couple of weeks of being told how much I did not know I decided to get out.

That is 2 strikes.

So I waited a little while and took a position inside another company that was using vanilla PHP to build their services. Their system was solid though, the lead engineer remains a friend and I did learn a lot from him. I got contracted because they were looking for a Java developer. The salary was good. But when I got there they mentioned that they wanted a developer in Java...to build Android. At the time I was using Java with Spring so I though "well how hard can this be! I already use Android so the love for the system is there, lets do this!" And it was an intense, fun and really amazing experience.

-- To be continued.

#LongRant

I AM SO FUCKING PISSED RIGHT NOW OF ALL YOU DICKHEADS WHO DON'T KNOW SHIT 'BOUT PROGRAMING AND STILL QUALIFY FOR THE NEXT ROUND!

Background: I am a final year student of Computer Science. This time of the year, companies come to the campus to recruit potential employees for their vacant positions. But during the COVID-19 times, the number of such companies and jobs have gone a little down. Two companies came to our university for recruitment — DXC Technology and Hanu Software. I cleared the aptitude/code test for DXC and appeared for the interview, which went fairly well. Waiting on the results. The rant is about the other company.

The Story: I am learning and working on Cloud (AWS specifically) for the past 1 year. I have a cloud Certification in Oracle and working my way to get Azure Certified. Hanu Software, which is a core cloud company (works on Azure) came to our campus for the recruitment (Cloud Engineer). Their test had these sections —
1. Personality (54 Questions; 15 minutes)

2. Verbal (20 Questions; 20 minutes)

3. Reasoning (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

4. Technical (25 Questions; 25 minutes)

5. Quantitative (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

As soon as I finished my Interview with DXC, I had my Hanu test within 30 minutes. I have a Mac so the test by default started on Safari. After completing 4 sections, I receive a mail in Junk from Hanu which stated that only Chrome or Firefox can be used to give the test. AHH! And on Safari.. the platform on which the test was being conducted didn't ask me for any camera permission (the test is monitored, can't even change windows/switch tabs). I then changed the browser to Mozilla Firefox and somehow finish the test. After finishing, I call up my classmates to find out how their test go. Know what? FUCKING TWATS USED GOOGLE LENS TO FIND OUT THE ANSWERS!

Last night, the list of qualifying students arrived and obviously I didn't make it to the list, but those dumbfucks did who don't even know what Cloud technology is or how it works. Neither they could do any average level program, nor have the communication skills. HOW?! HOW THEM AND NOT ME? Life is very unfair sometimes. I couldn't sleep at night.

PS: If you made this far, thank you for reading this rant (and sorry for it being so long). Makes it better to be able to share with someone. If you could, then please guide me (online resources/recommendations) to be better at competitive programming, or help me enhance my resume/linkedin or if you could refer me for an entry level position at your organisation, I would eternally be grateful. Thank you once again. And sorry for the long rant.

My dad was a computer engineer, taught me a bit, my high-school boyfriend (now husband) studied computer science, and I studied liberal arts. I couldn't get a job but got at job at my husband's startup. I learned a lot on the job and started doing tutorials online and I am the only person in my MA cohort with a job. Always been comfortable in the tech/dev world but didn't get into it myself until last year.

For my final project as a first year computer engineer, I have to implement a FAT32 file system using a bare metal c++ compiler that will need to work on arduino uno/due....

I've only been in the computer engineering space for 2 months.
Not sure I can do it, but I'm going to try my best!
Wish me luck

Hi everyone, long time no see.

Today I want to tell you a story about Linux, and its acceptance on the desktop.

Long ago I found myself a girlfriend, a wonderful woman who is an engineer too but who couldn't be further from CS. For those in the know, she absolutely despises architects. She doesn't know the size units of computers, i.e. the multiples of the byte. Breaks cables on the regular, and so on. For all intents and purposes, she's a user. She has written some code for a college project before, but she is by no means a developer.

She has seen me using Linux quite passionately for the last year or so, and a few weeks ago she got so fed up with how Windows refused to work on both her computers (on one of them literally failing to run exe's, go figure), that she allowed me to reinstall both systems, with one of them being dualbooted Windows 10 + Linux.

The computer that runs Linux is not one she uses very often, but for gaming (The Sims) it's her platform to go. On it I installed Debian KDE, for the following reasons:
- It had to be stable as I didn't want another box to maintain.
- It had to be pretty OOTB, as first impressions are crucial.
- It had to be easy to use, given her skill level.
- It had to have a GUI abstraction to apt, the KDE team built Discover which looks gorgeous.

She had the following things to say about Linux, when she went to download The Sims from a torrent (I installed qBittorrent for her iirc).

"Linux is better, there's no need to download anything"
"Still figuring things out, but I'm liking it"
"I'm scared of using Windows again, it's so laggy"
"Linux works fine, I'm becoming a Linux user"

Which you can imagine, it filled me with pride. We've done it boys. We've built a superior system that even regular users can use, if the system is set up to be user-friendly.

There are a few gripes I still have, and pitfalls I want to address. There's still too many options, users can drown in the sheer amount of distro's to choose from. For us that's extremely important but they need to have a guide there. However, don't do remote administration for them! That's even worse than Microsoft's tracking! Whenever you install Linux on someone else's computer, don't be all about efficiency, they are coming from Windows and just want it to be easy to use. I use Mate myself, but it is not the thing I would recommend to others. In other words, put your own preferences aside in favor of objective usability. You're trying to sell people on a product, not to impose your own point of view. Dualboot with Windows is fine, gaming still sucks on Linux for the most part. Lots of people don't have their games on Steam. CAD software and such is still nonexistent (OpenSCAD is very interesting but don't tell me it's user-friendly). People are familiar with Windows. If you were to be swimming for the first time in the deep water, would you go without aids? I don't think so.

So, Linux can be shown and be actually usable by regular people. Just pitch it in the right way.

"I keep telling you, I'm not a pilot"
"and I keep telling you, you fly boys crack me up!"

I'm not a developer, but I'm doing some complex things and I need the benefit of computers to work things out, so I know enough programming to get me by. Recently one of the uppers decided that all the amateur spaghetti python programs I'd quickly slapped together should be developed into tools that the clients engineers can use!

"How long do you need!."
" I have no idea how to make something like that",
"but it's all just maths right! you can figure it out",
"probably, given long enough bu.. "
"okay get started and we'll check in in a couple of weeks" "hold o.." "I'll give your pride and joy to the graduate to fuck up while you're working on that" "wai.. " "anyway got take this call, good luck"
┗|｀O′|┛

So here I am.. I have no idea what I'm doing.

So since I have a working knowledge of python, fortran and VBA, someone suggested I learn nim, which was not what he sold it as. Then a software engineer that went to the same uni as me, suggested RUST! you can't mess up rust, and look at this I created (shows me a decent looking desktop application) "I'll help you out". But it wasn't really that easy.

Then I asked some questions... that was my first mistake, that's not acceptable until you know what you're doing apparently. Especially when the answers are in the docs you can't find in a topic you don't understand for a version you're not using solved with a tool you've never heard of for an operating system you forgot existed. Look at this moron asking a question.

Okay to be fair, I went through the rust docs and it was well written, and I do really like this language. But I do not have a degree in computer science, and so many docs for crates are just written with an expectation of a certain level of knowledge. As soon as there's a build error, it's at least 3 -4 days of me faffing about trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

..and the graduate is about to unwittingly commit manslaughter..

I'm sure whoever needs to fix this mess in the future will post a rant about this train wreck.

A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"

Note:
Ten points for an arbitrarily female Computer Scientist. ;)

I shared public IP of a server to a fellow software engineer. He has ssh login access to that server.

He needs private IP of the same server to run some script.

He is asking me for private IP. Did he really graduate in computer science ?

BTW, his development machine is a Linux machine.

FML.

Do you know when you think "Oh that doesn't look too hard. I bet I can do it in no time"?
That is how I felt when I saw the DIY 3D printer kit Anet A8. It's only 150€ on gearbest so that is pretty cheap.
The reviews said it takes about 3 - 4 hours to build and I though "Ok I am a computer specialist and engineer so 3h sounds reasonable".
When I bought it from gearbest the first problems started: 5 days after the estimated shipping date the packet was still not on its way. After I fucked the support up, it finally arrived 3 weeks after the estimated date.
When I took the first look, everything seemed to be fine except for some small scratches but for that price that is not a problem.
So I started to build the printer at about 14:00 and even if some random sites in the manual were in Chinese I felt confident to get it done in a view hours.
And then it started to get really fucked. The first problem was that 2 screws were unusable and I had to use my own screws instead. The next problem was that the manual was just in the wrong fucking order at some points and I had to reverse multiple steps to get it right.
But the most fucked up thing: There should have been 2 threaded rods with a length of 345mm but the rods had a length of 310mm which was nowhere listed in the parts list. So I had to go buy some aluminium rods to fill the gap temporary so that I can at least go on with the build before getting a replacement. And I could go on and on and with the problems but the point is, it is now 19:30 which is about 5.5 hours after I started and I am still not fucking done with this.

So what have I learned?
Cheap Chinese hardware is good, but only as long as you don't have to assemble that shit yourself.

X: "what do you do for a living?"

Me: "i'm a computer engineer"

X: "so you're like Mr. Robot, right?"

Me: "..."

Once I've worked in a start-up located in an engineering university "incubator", so we had a lot of engineer-to-be students applying for part-time jobs.
One of these kids was hired by my boss who labeled him "highly technical, very skilled in IT".

One day, while very busy with my own upcoming release, I had to help him finding a bug in his (horrible) code.

Me: Oh, that's easy, you need to load the image from the parent directory
Guy: ...
Me: You know how to do this, right? You're 1 exam away from being a computer engineer
Guy: ...
Me: Ok, ok, don't worry. Just type "../" right before the path

The guy starts typing, literally, "dotdotslash" into the path.

I immediately stopped him, almost crying. Then, I asked him to go for a walk.
"Don't mind about your bug, I'll take care"

TLDR: There’s truth in the motto “fake it till you make it”

Once upon a time in January 2018 I began work as a part time sysadmin intern for a small financial firm in the rural US. This company is family owned, and the family doesn’t understand or invest in the technology their business is built on. I’m hired on because of my minor background in Cisco networking and Mac repair/administration.

I was the only staff member with vendor certifications and any background in networking / systems administration / computer hardware. There is an overtaxed web developer doing sysadmin/desktop support work and hating it.

I quickly take that part of his job and become the “if it has electricity it’s his job to fix it” guy. I troubleshoot Exchange server and Active Directory problems, configure cloudhosted web servers and DNS records, change lightbulbs and reboot printers in the office.

After realizing that I’m not an intern but actually just a cheap sysadmin I began looking for work that pays appropriately and is full time. I also change my email signature to say “Company Name: Network Administrator”

A few weeks later the “HR” department (we have 30 employees, it’s more like “The accountant who checks hiring paperwork”) sends out an email saying that certain ‘key’ departments have no coverage at inappropriate times. I don’t connect the dots.

Two days later I receive a testy email from one of the owners telling me that she is unhappy with my lack of time spent in the office. That as the Network Administrator I have responsibilities, and I need to be available for her and others 8-5 when problems need troubleshooting. Her son is my “boss” who is rarely in the office and has almost no technical acumen. He neglected to inform her that I’m a part time employee.

I arrange a meeting in which I propose that I be hired on full time as the Network Administrator to alleviate their problems. They agree but wildly underpay me. I continue searching for work but now my resume says Network Administrator.

Two weeks ago I accepted a job offer for double my current salary at a local software development firm as a junior automation engineer. They said they hired me on with so little experience specifically because of my networking background, which their ops dept is weak in. I highlighted my 6 months experience as Network Administrator during my interviews.

My take away: Perception matters more than reality. If you start acting like something, people will treat you like that.

I've been lurking on devrant a while now, I figure it's time to add my first rant.

Little background and setting a frame of reference for the rant: I'm currently a software engineer in the bioinformatics field. I have a computer science background whereas a vast majority of those around me, especially other devs, are people with little to no formal computer background - mostly biology in some form or another. Now, this said, a lot of the other devs are excellent developers, but some are as bad as you could imagine.

I started at a new company in April. About a month after joining a dev who worked there left, and I inherited the pipeline he maintained. Primarily 3 perl scripts (yes, perl, welcome to bioinformatics, especially when it comes to legacy code like is seen in this pipeline) that mostly copied and generated some files and reports in different places. No biggie, until I really dove in.

This dev, which I barely feel he deserves to be called, is a biology major turned computer developer. He was hired at this company and learned to program on the job. That being said, I give him a bit of a pass as I'm sure he did not have had an adequate support structure to teach him any better, but still, some of this is BS.

One final note: not all of the code, especially a lot of the stupid logic, in this pipeline was developed by this other dev. A lot of it he adopted himself. However, he did nothing about it either, so I put fault on him.

Now, let's start.
1. perl - yay bioinformatics
2. Redundant code. Like, you literally copied 200+ lines of code into a function to change 3 lines in that code for a different condition, and added if(condition) {function();} else {existing code;}?? Seriously??
3. Whitesmiths indentation style.. why? Just, why? Fuck off with that. Where did you learn that and why do you insist on using it??
4. Mixing of whitesmiths and more common K&R indentation.
5. Fucked indentation. Code either not indented and even some code indented THE WRONG WAY
6. 10+ indentation levels. This, not "terrible" normally, but imagine this with the last 3 points. Cannot follow the code at freaking all.
7. Stupid logic. Like, for example, check if a string has a comma in it. If it does, split the string on the comma and push everything to an array. If not, just push the string to the array.... You, you know you can just split the string on the comma and push it, right?? If there is no comma it will be an array containing the original string.. Why the fuck did you think you needed to add a condition for that??
8. Functions that are called to set values in global variables, arrays, and hashes.. function has like 5 lines in it and is called in 2 locations. Just keep that code in place!
9. 50+ global variables/hashes/arrays in one of the scripts with no clear way to tell how/when values are set nor what they are used for.
10. Non-descriptive names for everything
11. Next to no comments in the code. What comments there are are barely useful.
12. No documentation

There's more, but this is all I can think to identify right now. All together these issues have made this pipeline the pinnacle of all the garbage that I've had to work on.

Attaching some screenshots of just a tiny fraction of the code to show some of the crap I'm talking about.

Odd things that non-technically-inclined people do, say, or believe:

"Back in my day we didn't have our faces planted in cell phones!" True, but they sure did love them some magazines and newspapers.

"I don't need internet! I need that 'wee-fee'" -- from my wife's stories about one of her clients, who wanted to set up WiFi.

A restaurant owner who, in 2017 mind you, refuses to upgrade his phone above a touch-tone with a handheld receiver.

When my wife, son, and I were visiting her aunt and uncle in Florida, her uncle kept asking her help on how to configure his smart phone. She's a saleswoman and I'm a computer engineer. Not complaining, just an observation. Actually I'm glad because I can avoid a million questions that I won't ever have time for.

When someone in line at the store causes a glitch in the chip reader because they don't know how to follow directions on-screen. Then they blame "those damn computers!" during a verybquick reboot.

People who enjoy sunshine. I don't understand this obsession that non-technical people have with sunny days. Maybe if I were on a tropical beach drinking whisky all day, but I live in NYS so...

When I'm describing a computer program I put a lot of effort into, only to have the conversation derailed adter thirty seconds by an hour-long family gossip section.

Oh you a computer engineer, can you fix my tv and fridge? :/
Jeez

Had last paper today... Finally 4 yrs of engineering comes to an end. I am a proud computer engineer....

Manager: Hey software engineer, how's the project going?

Software Engineer: Good, just debugging my code.

Manager: Debugging? What kind of bug are you trying to fix?

Software Engineer: The ones that make my computer turn into a lava lamp.

Manager: Ha ha, very funny. But seriously, how can I help?

Software Engineer: Well, I need a bigger monitor. My current one doesn't have enough real estate to display all the errors.

Manager: How about a second monitor?

Software Engineer: No, I need a bigger universe.

Manager: I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, keep coding. We have a deadline to meet.

Software Engineer: No problem, I have all the time in the world. I just need to find a way to slow down time.

Manager: I wish I had your optimism. Just let me know if you need anything else.

Software Engineer: How about a unicorn? I heard they're good at coding.

Manager: I'll see what I can do, but in the meantime, stick to using a keyboard.

!rant
Just overheard a senior engineer say to a junior "I dont tell you to move, I tell you to MOV because you're as stupid as a computer" wow that hurt

I finally fucking did it!

I strapped up, strapped in, strapped on... uh wait what?

I finally made the full dedicated switch to linux on my personal computer. Blew away Windows and installed linux. I was able to get about 95% of the games that I actually play on PC to run under a combo of proton/lutris-wine.

I feel like after working in a (primarily) linux shop for almost 2 years now, I've learned enough to be able to actually troubleshoot if/when something goes wonky. I've been a windows/sysadmin type in my career for about 8 years and only touched small bits of linux here and there or for fun little projects like a retropie setup.

But thanks to this gig I'm working at now, as a devops engineer, I've learned so got'damn much about linux and I've been developing scripts/tools that run on linux I figured I could, or better yet 'should', take the full plunge.

So, I've decided that if there's something I absolutely need on Windows that Linux doesn't support, instead of knee-jerking and going back to Windows, I'm going to just setup a VM of windows and daily drive Linux from now on.

Some gfx tweaks for games were definitely necessary, it's still not quite as plug and play as Windows for games, but the fact that it only took like 1.5 hours to sort out all of my games performance is really impressive. Especially, considering none of these games actually supports linux out of the box and Wine/Proton is being used to get them to work.

!rant
I can never get over this 😥

We were taught 5-6 subjects of electrical or mechanical engineering in out freshman year 😃 and our course is called "computer science and engineering".
We had ONE subject in the whole fucking year that was related to the course,called "introduction to computer"!!!!
The second semester of the freshman year had no subject remotely close to computers, but yeah we learnt about thermodynamics and beams and Trusses and motors and welding 😒.
They should have also told us what we are supposed to do with that knowledge 😒.

What's the point!!!!
Will is make us a mechanical engineer 😒?
Also have you forgotten we are here to learn about computers and not about the tension in the rope of the pulley 😒?
Also we have no subjects,in the 4 year course about actual development 😃 not even old school web development.
Fucking hate this shit

Four engineers and a broke down car

One day, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, chemical engineer, and computer engineer were driving down the street in the same car when it broke down.

The mechanical engineer said, “I think a rod broke”.

The chemical engineer said, “The way it sputtered at the end, I think it's not getting enough gas”.

The electrical engineer said, “I think there was a spark and something's wrong with the electrical system”.

All three turned to the computer engineer and said, “What do you think?”

To which, the computer engineer replied, “I think we should all get out and then get back in”.

So, I'm living in a completely computer illiterate family and I was called to help my father with something on a Laptop where he wanted to stream his favorite Soccer-Club.

So I walk up to him, ask what's wrong, and he says (roughly translated from German) "That thing doesn't work!"

And I'm just like ((Wat u mean))
So I ask him to explain the problem in detail.
Apparently his streaming service wasn't loading his stream.

Well damn I say, try searching for the problem on Google and find a solution.
((But no no no imma just call my son for everything that's freaking wrong with tech, he sure knows what to do))

As I'm not that experienced with Webservices as of yet, I had no idea what to do.

He was fucking furious!

"You always act like you know everything about tech and programs and stuff and can't even help me with fixing this Stream-Thing?!"

I responded simply by saying "It's not my area of work!"

Seems like he didn't know the difference between TECH-JESUS and hobbyist software engineer.

So I stand there and he just goes on one of these typical boomer tech illiterate rants, of which I'm sure you can imagine enough being on this platform.

tl;Dr; It pisses me of big time how people are not even trying to understand technology, nor attempting to help themselves by eG. Googling some simple problem, but rather just ask around and then being pissed off if the asked person just doesn't know the answer or can't help!

I just fixed my first code issue in my first IT job ever! Holy fucking shit I'm almost senior software engineer by now!

That magic joy of knowing that my instructions will run on someone else's computer is just mind-blowing.

“You are on your computer too much”-my girlfriend to me, a software engineer

Before I became a Computer Engineer, (actually, this job is where I learned I loved programming) our manager would pull us into a team motivational meeting.
Except she was a bit of an airhead, so her idea of motivation was having a sing-song and listing our favorite movie quotes.
It was even funnier because there was lots of drama surrounding "how she became our manager," and one of our teammates felt as though she should have gotten the job.
Anyway, none of those were the most ridiculous meeting.
The most ridiculous meeting was when the VP of marketing came to town from Florida to address the brewing drama.
In this meeting, all of my teammates suddenly had the delusion that we were in a union and thought they were protected from getting fired. They threw our manager under the bus. I was the only one who could see that he was there to see if our department was worth saving. They thought they were going to get rid of our manager by shitting on her, but they were just confirming his suspicion that there was a bunch of bullshit going on all around.
So I approached the VP after the meeting, and long story short, I was the only one who got through layoffs with a job offer in Florida a couple weeks later.
I didn't take it, because by that time I decided I wanted to go to school for Computer Engineering.

Person: What are you doing for living?
Me: I am a software engineer.
P: what does that mean?
M: we build applications and websites. basically
P: like what?
M: I don't have an example now, but when you open your computer and navigate to a website, we build similar things..
P: ahhaaah, so you make computers
M: no no, *open Facebook on my phone* see this is an application, we made applications that run on devices.
P: so make phones, that's cool
M: nooo!
P: so you do nothing !
M: yes 🙄

A project manager, a computer programmer and a computer operator are driving down the road when the car they are in here a flat tire. three men try to solve the problem

the project manager said: let's catch a cab and in ten minutes we will reach out destination.

the computer programmer said: we have drivers guide.I can easily replace the flat tire and continue our drive.

commuter operator said: first of all turnoff the engine and turn it on again. may be it will fix the problem.

suddenly a Microsoft engineer passed by and said: try to close all windows, get off the car, and then get on and try again.

I propose that the study of Rust and therefore the application of said programming language and all of the technology that compromises it should be made because the language is actually really fucking good. Reading and studying how it manages to manipulate and otherwise use memory without a garbage collector is something to be admired, illuminating in its own accord.

BUT going for it because it is a "beTter C++" should not constitute a basis for it's study.

Let me expand through anecdotal evidence, which is really not to be taken seriously, but at the same time what I am using for my reasoning behind this, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, for I am a software engineer yes, I do have academic training through a B.S in Computer Science yes, BUT my professional life has been solely dedicated to web development, which admittedly I do not go on about technical details of it with you all because: I am not allowed to(1) and (2)it is better for me to bitch and shit over other petty development related details.

Anecdotal and otherwise non statistically supported evidence: I have seen many motherfuckers doing shit in both C and C++ that ADMIT not covering their mistakes through the use of a debugger. Mostly because (A) using a debugger and proper IDE is for pendejos and debugging is for putos GDB is too hard and the VS IDE is waaaaaa "I onlLy NeeD Vim" and (B) "If an error would have registered then it would not have compiled no?", thus giving me the idea that the most common occurrences of issues through the use of the C father/son languages come from user error, non formal training in the language and a nice cusp of "fuck it it runs" while leaving all sorts of issues that come from manipulating the realm of the Gods "memory".
EVERY manual, book, coming all the way back to the K&C book talks about memory and the way in which developers of these 2 languages are able to manipulate and work on it. EVERY new standard of the ISO implementation of these languages deals, through community effort or standard documentation about the new items excised through features concerning MODERN (meaning, no, the shit you learned 20 years ago won't fucking cut it) will not cut it.

THUS if your ass is not constantly checking what the scalpel of electrical/circuitry/computational representation of algorithms CONDONES in what you are doing then YOU are the fucking problem.

Rust is thus no different from the original ideas of the developers behind Go when stating that their developers are not efficient enough to deal with X language, Rust protects you, because it knows that you are a fucking moron, so the compiler, advanced, and well made as it is, will give you warnings of your own idiotic tendencies, which would not have been required have you not been.....well....a fucking idiot.

Rust is a good language, but I feel one that came out from the necessity of people writing system level software as a bunch of fucking morons.
This speaks a lot more of our academic endeavors and current documentation than anything else. But to me DEALING with the idea of adapting Rust as a better C++ should come from a different point of view.

Do I agree with Linus's point of view of C++? fuck no, I do not, he is a kernel engineer, a damn good one at that regardless of what Dr. Tanenbaum believes(ed) but not everyone writes kernels, and sometimes that everyone requires OOP and additions to the language that they use. Else I would be a fucking moron for dabbling in the dictionary of languages that I use professionally.
BUT in terms of C++ being unsafe and unsecured and a horrible alternative to Rust I personaly do not believe so. I see it as a powerful white canvas, in which you are able to paint software to the best of your ability WHICH then requires thorough scrutiny from the entire team. NOT a quick replacement for something that protects your from your own stupidity BY impending the use of what are otherwise unknown "safe" features.

To be clear: I am not diminishing Rust as the powerhouse of a language that it is, myself I am quite invested in the language. But instead do not feel the reason/need before articles claiming it as the C++ killer.

I am currently heavily invested in C++ since I am trying a lot of different things for a lot of projects, and have been able to discern multiple pain points and unsafe features. Mainly the reason for this is documentation (your mother knows C++) and tooling, ide support, debugging operations, plethora of resources come from it and I have been able to push out to my secret project a lot of good dealings. WHICH I will eventually replicate with Rust to see the main differences.

Online articles stating that one will delimit or otherwise kill the other is well....wrong to me. And not the proper approach.

Anyways, I like big tits and small waists.

Happy birthday, Dr. Nabil Ali!

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Egyptian pioneer of Arabic language computing, Dr. Nabil Ali, on his 82nd birthday. Dr. Nabil Ali’s innovations in the field of computational linguistics propelled the Arab world into the Information Age by creating programs that enabled computers to understand Arabic in digital form.

Dr. Nabil Ali was born in Cairo on this day in 1938. Expressing an interest in art at a young age, Mohamed was inspired to apply his creative passion for visual aesthetics to the world of engineering. After obtaining his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at Cairo University, he spent over 20 years working as an engineer with the Egyptian Air Force, as well as with various computer and electronics companies throughout the world.

For Dr. Nabil Ali, digitization of Arabic, with its complex linguistic rules and morphology, was a way to connect Arabic speakers with the world.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Nabil Ali published a number of papers, books, and technical reports in support of the developments he was making in the field of computational linguistics. His work won him several awards, including the prestigious Saudi Arabian award, the King Faisal Prize, in 2012—recognizing his pioneering contributions to the Arabic Language and Literature.

Life cycle of a Software engineer;P

My family doesn't understand the pain of being a computer engineer and always disturb me when I'm coding infront of them.

Hence I joined devrant.

Yesterday I met my cousins who are old enough to have kids. It was a good talk with them bringing back the old memories. One of my cousins has a barely 5 year old kid. I tried to talk to her and the conversation went like this:

Me: “hey there! Hi, how are you?”

She: “Good. What do you do?”

Me: “I am a computer science engineer. What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

She: “A scientist.”

Me: **thinking calmly, “Oh, what kind of scientist?”

She: “A Data Scientist.”

Me: **Two seconds of silence and decides to leave...

My friend: Got new job? What you do?

Me: Software Engineer.

My friend: oh great, can you check why my computer is so slow?

Me: ......

Friend: Is this Nvidia GTX 440 a good graphics card?
Me: idk
Friend: if i get it how do i put it in my computer
Me: idk
Friend: but you are a programmer
Me: exactly, i am not an engineer

Since I was a kid, I always thought that my dream was to be a Computer Engineer.

As a Engineering Student, my dream is to have a 8h+ night sleep.

How do I really explain to people that I am a computer engineer and not a technician? Seriously. I'm tired of it.

And what is worse, everytime I try someone ends up with the impression that I am some incompetent egomaniac trying to hide his flaws.

$5.625/hour.

Thats the offer.

$5.625/hour.

Thats $900/month.

To work as a:
- devops engineer

Then also as a:
- backend java engineer

And now also as a:
- .NET engineer too

Due to inflation the food and all the bills and expenses in my bullshit country is $800-900/month and increasing.

This salary is not for living.

This salary is for survival.

Do you think

It is

MORAL

To earn salary

Working 2 or 3 dev jobs as 1 person

As a backend/devops software engineer

With computer science degree

In todays economy

In todays inflation

?

"Let's go to buy Laptop for you. You're going to be Computer Engineer"

after 2 months
" What do you do all day spending on laptop?"
"Programing"
"Well, how's that work?"
"It follows some algorithms to get desired output"
"???, Some important files are accidentally deleted from my usb storage. Can you recover those files?"

😮😣

I don't understand working in FAANG. As an engineer, who inherently has an ultimate say in how the computer worlds you construct work, how do you live with acceptance that you have no say whatsoever in how your company is run? how do you accept doing work that you don't always see the product benefit of?

Yes, FAANG pays a lot to ordinary engineers, but when you were dreaming back when you were a STEM student with fiery eyes, did you really want to be an ordinary engineer, no matter the bankroll? After all, it's not the total company's revenue, it's at least the revenue divided by staff count. In Nintendo, salaries are way higher than in EA, because there are way less people working at Nintendo.

Take any unicorn startup that survived. If you work there, you will have a say, you have an impact, you see the results of your work, and you will earn much more.

I wanted to work at Google as a student, but now I feel like it's just a plastic dream pitched to those inexperienced who don't know any better.

Note that above I don't even touch ethics, like anti-suicide nets in Foxconn factories that make Apple devices, let alone Facebook's and Google's surveillance.

Maybe, if you're somehow an engineer who has proficiency but not care, or if you cared, but was broken, with fire in your eyes extinguished, and now you see your work as "just work", FAANG might be a good choice.

But I can't relate.

I am a scientist. A computer scientist.
I am an engineer. A software engineer.
My lack of a formal college degree does not negate these facts.

It does, however, contribute to the chip on my shoulder.

Being a computer science engineer, my friends expect me to be able to read binary like I read English. Fml.

Ye, so after studying for an eternity and doing some odd jobs here and there, all I can show for are following traits:

* Super knowledgeable in arm/Intel assembly language
* C-Veteran with knowledge of some sick and nasty C-hacks/tricks which would even sour the mood of your grandma
* Acquired disdain of any and all scripting languages (how dare you write something in one line for which I need a whole library for!)
* All-in-all low-level programmer type of guy (gimme those juicy registers to write into!)

After completing the mandatory part of my computer science studies, all I did was immerse myself into low-level stuff. Even started to hold lectures and all.

Now I'm at the cusp of being let free into the open market.
The thing is: I'm pretty sure that no company is really interested in my knowledge, as no one really writes assembly anymore.

Sure, embedded programming is still a thing, but even that is becoming increasingly more abstract, with God knows how many layers of software between the hardware and the dev, just to hide all the scary bits underneath.

So, are there people in here who're actually exposed to assembly or any hands-on hardware-programming?
Like, on a "which bit in which register/addr do I need to set" - kind of way.

And if so, what would you say someone like me should lookout for in a company to match my interest to theirs?
Or is it just a pipe dream, so I'd need to brace myself to a mundane software engineer career where I have to process a ticket at a time?

(Just to give a reference: even the most hardware-inclined companies I found "near" me are developing UIs with HTML5 to be used in some such environment ....)

I struggled to find the interview location as the company as they were using another companies offices. As I sit down, sweating, feeling rushed for barely making it on time the interviewer says: "Tell us a joke"

I should have got up and walked out, but since I was there already I pulled this one out:

One day, a mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, chemical engineer, and computer engineer were driving down the street in the same car when it broke down.

The mechanical engineer said, I think a rod broke.

The chemical engineer said, The way it sputtered at the end, I think it's not getting enough gas.

The electrical engineer said, I think there was a spark and something's wrong with the electrical system.

All three turned to the computer engineer and asked, What do you think?

The computer engineer said, I think we should all get out and then get back in.

Anonymous : You're an engineer? prove it. name every computer ever.

Me : ..
for (let i = 0; i < computers.length; i++) {
computers[i].name = 'ever'
}

Let me recap everything i learned after graduating college with a computer science degree and entering the corporate world

---

1) College is a scam. Literally NOBODY EVER asked me on ANY interviews if i have a degree and if i had graduated university. Nobody cares. They treat me as if im a slave clown who didnt finish any school and thats how they view and treat everyone

2) By having a computer science degree, i do NOT have a privilege of getting hired, I do NOT have a privilege of getting more interviews, i do NOT get a privilege of having a higher salary, i do NOT get ANY benefits or privilege other than wasted time and brainwash.

3) Literally a senior technical software engineer told me on a technical interview "college is not meant to teach you anything useful or valuable, college is there just to teach you how to learn"

The FUCK? I was extremely shellshocked when i heard him tell me that in my face. I was in disbelief and too stunned to speak. if somebody told me that truth before i started college i would have never started college. I can do that on my own for free

4) I have applied to over 100s of interviews and nobody wanted to hire. Everyone wants a Google-Level Senior engineer in 2023 with 50+ years of experience and then pay him 600$ a month.

5) What is happening in this corporate world is absolutely fucking disgusting, sickening and immoral. This is no different than 1800s slavery. This is how modern day slavery looks like. And even when i accept working for 600$ a month i can barely afford to pay to live. I'd get like 50$ leftover every month if im lucky. This is SICKENING

6) "Engineering will make you rich" is a BULLSHIT saying that our parents and friends say. It is FAR from making you rich. You only get "rich" (but slave level rich) once you turn 40-50 years old. Is that success to you?

7) Engineering is so saturated that nobody appreciates this hard work anymore. You're a slave and you have to compete with other slaves by telling your master (employer) that you'll work for slave salary AND you'll work 10x more in exchange to earn 20x less. This is IMMORAL and DISGUSTING

My friend asked me how to root his phone because I'm the computer guy, of course.

I didn't want to be a douche to him so I googled and directed him to a few pages that may help. He kept asking questions regarding rooting until it worked for him and it was all fine by me.

His last question though was how much it cost to replace the broken screen on his tablet!!

What does a computer engineer wear on a Halloween?

Ans:a bit mask or sometimes subnet masks

This is real rant, not one of these funny stories!

So, I spent 4 years to get a Computer Science degree, and did two specializations, 3.5 years more in Uni. I have 6 years of experience working in IT, from support to programming. I also speak 3 languages.

I'm from a South America country, and now I'm living in EU.

I'm 30 now and earning a little more than a MacDonald's cashier earns in the US. I have to live in a shared apartment like a fucking Uni student. I have nothing, no car, no house, no girlfriend. WTF!

IT is a fucking lie! Profession of the future my ass!

In Uni they said that finding a good job was easy, that companies would literally grab us by the neck to work for them. LIE!
I did found a low paying job though, where at least I could learn a lot more.
People were really satisfied with my work and I even received a proposal of one of our clients to work for them, but the offer wasn't good enough.

I tried entering some big companies as a Trainee, but it was so ridiculous, they said they were looking for an IT person, but they asked things related to economy and other stuff that had nothing to do with IT. I always failed in the group work/interview, it was so ridiculous, I remember one candidate saying her dream was to work for the company since she was a child, SERIOUSLY!

When the opportunity came, I moved to EU and now I'm working as a dev. But as I said, I'm not satisfied with it! In the US the yearly average software engineer salary is about 100K, I earn less than 1/4 of it. And don't come saying that US pays more because of the cost of life, here the cost of life is the same or even more expensive, a super small apartment/loft is at least 180K, a simple new car 18K and a Big Mac costs 4€.

In the US, the average salary of someone that just graduated from uni is 60K to 70K! LOL

In EU, it's super hard for someone to earn 100K, that's why many companies are creating offices here, good workforce, 2 to 3 times smaller salary!

IT also sucks because it's too volatile, there's new stuff all the time. Someone always has to come with a new language, new framework, new library, etc etc. And you have to keep learning new stuff all the time.
Also job openings always ask for experienced people, like you must have at least two years of experience with VUE.js, or something.

Do you remember the last time you went to a doctor for a checkup, did they use a new tool, or did something different during the checkup? Probably not, the medic don't have to learn new stuff all the time, he is still using a stethoscope, he is still placing a wooden stick in your mouth to check your throat...
But in IT, almost no one nowadays is going to create code using CoffeeScript, they instead will use TypeScript.

I read an article saying that an IT professional must study 20 hours a week to keep up with new trends. So I must work 40 hours and study another 20? LOL
It's not that I don't like learning new stuff, but this sucks, I want to maybe learn something different or have a hobby.

Today I regret going to uni, I feel it was a waste of time and money. They taught things like calculus and physics that I never had to use professionally, and even programming stuff like linked lists I never had to use.

If instead I had studied dentistry or studied to be a ophthalmologist I think I would be earning more, would be working more independently and wouldn't need to keep up learning new things so much.

Also to work in IT you don't need a diploma, I read an article by a dude that learned programming by his own, did some software for his portfolio and got a job at Google.
When I read these kinds of story I regret even more going to uni, It really feels I wasted my time.

For these reasons I can't recommend going to uni to study IT, if you want to go to uni go study something else!
If you want to study programming do it on your own, there's everything you must know online for free, create a portfolio, and look for a job or even try working for yourself!

Living the life I have now, there's just no incentive to keep going.
Should I keep learning new stuff so maybe I can get a better job that will still pay low, or quit and try creating something on my own?
Or even ditch IT all together and go back to uni? LOL NO!

I just found out my parents have less than $30 in the bank by the end of each month after all expenses...

We are not living. We are barely surviving....

Every day in my house it is dark and the lights are off. They turn all lights off in order to avoid getting a high electricity bill. I have to use my phone's flashlight as the main source of light in my own house, as if i live in abandoned cottage in the middle of a forest.....

Both my parents are jobless (have been their entire lives). They just borrow money from their family members and grandparents to pay these bills every month. They depended on luck their whole lives. A luck in context of "maybe if i dont work anything at all then a huge pile of money will fall down from the sky!".

So now I, as their son, have to grow up in extreme poverty and fight my way up, because of DUMB, STUPID people. They are good people, but what does being a good person bring if you are fucking stupid and valueless?

I knew i was poor but today i found out i was THIS poor. I had no idea we were THIS much poor. Because today my 4g internet got cut off due to not paying bills. The bill is $30. My dad cant pay it cause he doesnt have $30 in the bank. I was in shock. So i had to pay it

My $8.125 usd an hour backend software engineer + DevOps engineer (2 jobs in 1), is considered as LUXURIOUS SALARY, in the most corrupted country of Europe -- SERBIA 🇷🇸

When i tell the world i make $8 an hour with a computer science degree working as a software engineer, they laugh at me. People mock me "bro even a mcdonalds worker earns $17/hour what are you doing" im doing what i was born into -- born into poverty of a third world shithole country.

With my $8 an hour salary, i am in TOP 3% of the HIGHEST earners in serbia. Can you fucking imagine how miserable lives do people live if this is not even an average salary, but among the ELITE salary? Because the average salary in Serbia, is $3.75 usd an hour, sometimes even less than that.

When people say "its not about luck its about hard work", please, GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.

Go and be born in a shithole third world country. Now on top of that be born in poverty due to poor decisions of your parents. Go ahead and try it. Lets see how hard you fucking have to work to get to the same level compared to someone who was born into for example America, where you get paid 6 figures immediately after graduating computer science. Or on top of that, you're born in a wealthy family in america. Did you work hard to be born in the 1st class freak show or were you LUCKY to be gifted such life?

My whole life i have been fighting to get money and escape this misery due to poor decisions of my parents.

Very ironically, my parents have lived extremely luxurious lives in the 90s. They had 5 cars. 1 huge house with a backyard garage private office private jacuzzi private gym. This house was worth at least 500k in the 90s. Today this house would cost at least 1.5 or 2 million. They went to luxurious travels. Hotels of $5000 per night per person. Literally wasted 45k in 3 days just for hotel. They even GAVE AWAY FOR FREE money to our relatives and cousins, taking them on luxurious vacations for free etc. None of those people appreciated them, none of them came to help them in tough times, everyone forgot about them and abandoned us.

Like i said, my parents are good people, but what does it profit being a good person if you are FUCKING STUPID.

They were extremely LUCKY but their STUPIDNESS has made them broke. I couldn't be THIS much fucking stupid even if i tried hard.

Nobody is coming to save us. No one cares. Its all up to me now. All the pressure and stress and poverty is passed and inherited onto my life now. its up to me to either get rich or end my STUPID bloodline

I am living a very difficult life and no one seems to understand this...

Sometimes life takes unexpected turns:

I studied mechanical engineering and did some "computer stuff" in my free time, you know, "programming" with Java, toyed around with HTML/CSS/PHP a few years ago, some local server stuff with a raspberry pi, nothing fancy.

Half a year ago i got hired as engineer first but they said they needed an "IT Guy" also.

What i did since then
*Researching, Testing and Planning the introduction of an ERP software
*Planning, coordinating and (partially) setting up a new server for the company (actually two cause redundancy (heavy lifting got done by our IT partner, its not like i suddenly know how to do the entire windows server administration)
*Writing 3 minor tools for some guys in the company in java
*Creating numereous excel vba scripts that make work a lot easier
*doing all the day to day business that comes up when absolutly noone know how to use a pc in the company
*consulting the boss about webshops and websites in general and finding a decent partner
*and some engineering

Did i mentioned that i studied mechanical engineering? I know nothing about all this, or rather, i know enough to know that i know not enough.

My current side project is creating a small intranet, so creating a new VM in Hyper V, setting up some OS (probably slim CentOS), getting a Webserver running and making it somewhat secure. Then i need to create some content, i am very close to just install a mediawiki and call it a day. If i write anything in PHP i fear that i make way to many erros or just reinvent the wheel, on the other hand, i couldnt find anything resembling what i need. I also had to create the front end side, i knew CSS around 2010, there is probably tons of stuff i dont know and i will make so many errors.

This is frustrating, everything i touch feels like i am venturing the beaten path but noone ever showed me the ropes so everything i do feels like childs play. I need an adult. Also the biggest Question remains: What i am?

*sometime during my sophomore year in university. I was a Biology major and just switched to Computer Science. I'm currently a senior graduating in the Spring.*

Me: "Mom and Dad I changed my major to Computer Science!"

Parents: "How will you be able to make a living playing games?"

Me: "I won't be playing games, I'll be coding/programming things and building software."

Parents: "I thought you wanted to become a doctor?"

Me: "Well I decided I wanted to choose a career that I like and I also didn't want to stay in school for 8 years. Also, the salary I can make as a developer/engineer is close to that of some doctors."

Parents: "Well we wanted you to go to be a physical therapist. We feel that it's the best option for you."

Me: "I think this is my best option because there aren't even enough people available to fill the jobs that will be around when I graduate. Which also means that I can make a higher salary."

Parents: "Well I guess we'll see if you can make a living and provide for a family just playing/making games."

Me: "That's fine I never needed your support anyways."

*My parents thought that if the job wasn't physical labor then it wasn't a "real job". (Idk how they decided that a Physical Therapist was a "real job") I moved out less than a year after this argument because I was constantly put down by my parents for coding/programming as well as playing video games in my spare time. They thought it was childish. This has shown me what I won't do when I become a parent.*

*Just a side note: I have paid for everything I own that wasn't gifted to me since I was 18 and had a job while attending college. I also got a scholarship to go to college, so my parents didn't have to pay for any of it.*

That moment when you just quit your successful paying job just to have more time to study and try to pass the fucking piece of trash math exam.

Fuck my asshole, fuck my life and fuck that motherfucking college degree. If I don't pass, I will eventually kill my self or quit college.

Jeez, I wonder what was in my head when I enrolled in college, oh wait.. Parents, society brainwashed me to think I need top tier education to be a successful computer programmer engineer.

Fuck you society, fuck my brain, fuck everything.

yeah I am a software engineer.
yea I am a programmer too.
yeah I am behind my laptop all the time..

but no I don't want to fix your computer.
I have no interest in changing your windows, installing antivirus on your pc and so on..

just understand it , God damn these shit people :(

Can a front end developer themselves a software engineer? I am really confused with these terms. Or a programmer? Or a computer scientist? I didn't go to a school, so I am not sure what are the differences..

It's been a long time since I've felt the need to rant about anything here. This is the only appropriate place other than Reddit I can think for for now.

Why the ever-living FUCK does every 'entry-level' tech job, even fucking DESKTOP SUPPORT, require more experience than the fucking DEVELOPER AND ENGINEER OF THE INITIAL SYSTEM COULD POSSIBLY HAVE?! I'm a fucking high school kid trying to find a decent job that doesn't involve sales bullshit, because if I go into sales I'll want to KMS. Put me in a back room fixing shit, monitoring shit, better yet scripting shit or something like that and I'll be FUCKING PEACHY. I will do wonders. But no, these people must think that my resume (WHICH IS 3-YEARS STACKED WITH INTERNSHIPS ***IN TECHNOLOGY***) is bullshit. WOW.

Fuck this. I'm sick of looking for these shitty jobs that'll make me want to jump off of a bridge into a cliff which I'll then voluntarily fall off of into shark infested piranha water. Can't there just be a simple "Hey, we need a guy who can fix tech, maybe help people within the company with their computer issues, you look nice" kind of job? I haven't had fucking TIME to get any kind of certifications yet. I just got into fucking college, FOR BUSINESS IT NONETHELESS. DOES THAT PROVE I'M AT LEAST FUCKING INTERESTED IN WHAT I SAY I AM FUCKERS?!

JavaScript has an exciting API for monitoring changes made to HTML elements. The API is called the MutationObserver API, and it was invented at the prestigious W3C—the global organization comprised of our genius software engineer overlords.

Unfortunately, the W3C has a history of occasionally forgetting to proofread new specifications before publishing them, after their large army of monkeys with typewriters have produced working draft specifications, but I'm sure those mistakes are all in the past. The MutationObserver API is receiving praise online. I'm sure it's well designed!

Let's dive in to how it all works.

The API works by calling (1) a specific function of yours any time (2) a specific kind of change is made to (3) a specific HTML element—all three configurable by you.

When a change occurs, your function is passed a collection of information about the change, known as a "record".

If you ask, that record can even include information about the state of the HTML element before the change occurred, available under the `oldValue` property. How convenient!

Oh, and one more thing. If several changes happen in a short window of time, your function may receive a whole list of records—instead of being run once for each change. You know, to save on computer resources.

Anyway, let's start using this powerful API! But wait, what's that?

The record doesn't contain the state of the HTML element when the change occurred?

No problem! That information doesn't have to be included in the record. I can just look at the element as it appears right now.

But what's this, now? I'm receiving a long list of records. I guess lots of changes happened in a short window of time, so all the records are bundled together.

So how do I know what the state was for each record?

If I look at the element as it appears right now, I can only see the end result. That won't tell me what the state was after each individual change.

I guess there's only one way to find out. For each record, I need to look at the next record and check that record's `oldValue` property.

I need to write look-ahead logic just to see the state at each record!

What kind of monkey wro—oh, right. The W3C wrote the MutationObserver API.

Just forget that I asked.

I am a computer science student and have worked with Java and C++ until now. A week ago i started in a job i have gotten from my professor. I have to reverse engineer a big python project and figure out how some things work on the serverside. This is the first time i have to work with python.

I get that you can write code fast with this dynamically typed language, but BOY. Is it just me or is this language fucking hard to reverse engineer? I mean what the fuck. There are some member variables in which can be anything. Like you suggest there is an object of this and that and then python comes in and is like: Good guess, but fuck you.

As a computer science graduate, I'm still trying to convince the people around me that I'm not a computer engineer.

I’m one of those who learned in adulthood. I had lost track of my life and tried to find something to grasp on to. I found inspiration from two friends I have. One who’s been a very gifted software engineer since his early years, and the other who one day unexpectedly turned to university and computer science and started a good work life right away after the studies. After failing miserably at my previous attempt at university I decided to jump ship and give CS a try. It was the best decision of my life. To my surprise programming very much matched many of my personality traits and how I think and make desicions in games and everyday life. After my first few lectures It all came very intuitively to me. Then thruout most of my education (and this is one of my less ”grown up” thoughts) it felt as though I could as well have been a student at Hogwarts and my professors were witches and wizards. Anything was possible and each day we learned new tricks to create the unimaginable. That aside, I now work as a software engineer, but I feel as though the list of things left to learn is endless. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning.

1 - I love coding because since when I was a kid I really loved to solve problems and create things

2 - I always tried to understand how computers worked, and how could yo make a program because when I was a kid I was almost always on the computer and my dream was to create a virus 😂

3 - I was studying my baccalaureate and I hadn't decided what to study in the university. I was only playing videogames and installing software to make jokes. So, my computing teacher taught me to code in VB.net and how to manage a local network so I decided to study and IT degree before going to the university, and when I was studying that I falled in love with programming so I'm currently in the university studying software development engineer

5 years of leetcode with no progress. I'm giving up.

First some background, I have an undergraduate degree in computer science and one and a half years of professional coding experience which ended when I got fired for performance issues. I have worked diligently at Leetcode for those 5 years (exceptions occurred when I got ill). I have been personally coached by a google software engineer for months. I have done and given 100s of mock interviews and paid for some to be done by professionals. I have spent 100s if not thousands of hours on Leetcoding and algorithms trying to improve in any way I can imagine. I'm still not good enough.
This all came to a head yesterday when someone on Leetcode made a post about being able to solve every single Leetcode problem in a year within a year while managing a post doc degree and having almost no programming background (link at bottom of post). It made it clear that Leetcode is a game of talent not hard work. The difference between someone like her and someone like me must be noted by the programming community. The majority of people would not ever be able to accomplish that. I dedicated myself for 5 years to Leetcoding almost exclusively and still am no where near what that person has accomplished. I have put in much more work than that person and have gotten much less from it.

I believe the programming community can learn from this contrast. The culture of always trying harder and thinking success stories apply to everyone that is pervasive in programming circles is toxic. The is reality not everyone is lucky enough to be intellectually gifted to succeed and not all hard work pays off. I am proof of that and this is the type of story that needs to be shared and heard too.

I am quitting programming out of humility and recognition of my limitations. It’s ok to give up and wise to do so when you aren't good enough for something.

Dad's coworker (he was a software engineer, I guess it runs in the family) was selling his pentium 2 computer for 100$ and my dad bought it for me to play chicken invaders. Those were simpler times...

Just bought a laptop for my grandma. She is a very intelligent person, used to be an engineer and traveled across the globe, but she missed out on the computer revolution. Now she's stuck at home alone and terribly bored, so we will introduce her to the internet to socialize and join our zoom parties.
What advice do you have for someone who has plenty of life experience but is completely new to the internet?

My first experience was in 1998. My grandfather had a computers and even tho he was hesitant to let me use them my mom convinced him saying that I may eventually turn into an engineer like him. I used them mostly for paint and a couple of space shooter games he later got for me. It was great. They always had computers, they even had a c64 at one point and i remember playing with that one as well.
My first computer tho, it was in 2010 while I was in the Army. Still have that lil hp in my office although it does not work anymore.
Nothing speciall really. I've had computers all my life and a mother that was passionate about them. I owe everything I am to my mom. I think that it is because of her that I became a computer scientist.

So I'm a junior in University for Computer Science and software engineering and while I'm a decent coder, I've noticed that I'm not as interested in the Coding aspect of it as others. I don't really think about doing projects of my own and tend to just focus on the schoolwork. I feel like I recognize patterns rather than fully understanding what's going on. I did extremely well in the Coding bootcamp I went to, better than most. But I'm worried that I'm not as into being an engineer as I think I should be. I love working with computers and the process of making something, but I'm always second guessing being an engineer.
Am I just worrying too much? Imposter syndrome?

I realized I wouldn’t be great electronics engineer so I switched to computer enginering. Best decision of my life. I have so much comfortable work experience because I am natural in this job

I'm working as an intern in a company and i have another intern that i must supervise (it like internception) .here is my daily nightmare :
- To start this intern never google something she copy paste from my code and if she got an error she send me a screenshot . Once the error message clearly said "cannot call function from array" and even that she didn't know what's the problem (she was supposed to it on array items)
-Before we started working together she spent a week complaining that a sending email function didn't work for her so the manager called me to check what's her problem. She had an antivirus that blocked request via ssl port.all i had done is open the log file and read the errors.
- She had a function should iterate over an array and for each item check a condition this is a part of what she wrote :
For ($i=0;count($categories);$i++){
if ($getrelativepath=null)
{
....etc other​ stuff she copy pasted.
Ps: the name of the function that she must call on array items is getRelativePath

- she wrote once
$response=array();
for (...){
array_push($response,$data[$i]);
return $response;}
She thought the function can iterate and return response at the same time.
- we are working on a website and she told me she doesn't know how to code Javascript and jquery (she think it's a language) and she never knew what ajax is.
- without mentioning the hundreds of empty spaces and multiple empty divs in html .
This year she'll become a computer science engineer .

Kind of dev related, during a Firefly one-shot roleplay:

GM: So you have a data chip in your pocket. Do you want to see what's on it?

Me (hesitant): ...Kinda. *wait* Okay, I put the chip into one of my computers.

GM: The data chip shows random gibberish--it's encrypted. Your engineer may know how to decrypt it.

Me: Okay. Hey, Engineer! *holds imaginary data chip out to her* Decrypt this!

Engineer: No. *pause*, *sighs* Fine. But we need to be careful.

GM: Yes, now time for technobabble...

Me: So once we decrypt this, it's probably going to look for the MAC address, so we need an air-gapped machine--a machine that's never been online before--and a TAILS LiveUSB. We'll decrypt the data chip and then destroy the computer.

GM: ...Technobabble.

Fighter: ....I actually understood that and it actually makes sense. Good job. *fist bump*

My friend who is a computer engineer doesn’t know to code 🥲

Computer science vs software engineering?

Software engineering is all about people. You have to communicate with the business, realizing their needs, figuring out their processes, optimizing them, all this before the first line of code is written. Then, you have to manage your direct reports, and if you have none, write code with people in mind, people who will read it after you. As they say, code is for people, not for computers. Then, you have to improve the app listening to users, again, people.

I can’t assign a software engineer a role higher than middle if they’re bad with people.

If you wanna do cool stuff with computers and be a misanthrope, do computer science! It’s a very prestigious field where you are left alone with scary math and fundamental concepts. If you’re successful there, you’ll have a mad asocial scientist card, and no one will ever insist to you that people is important. They will just accept that they shouldn’t annoy you, and you are “allowed” to yell at them because you’re “special” and a “genius”. You can hate them 24/7.

I spent 4 months in a programming mentorship offered by my workplace to get back to programming after 4 years I graduated with a CS degree.

Back in 2014, what I studied in my first programming class was not easy to digest. I would just try enough to pass the courses because I was more interested in the theory. It followed until I graduated because I never actually wrote code for myself for example I wrote a lot of code for my vision class but never took a personal initiative. I did however have a very strong grip on advanced computer science concepts in areas such as computer architecture, systems programming and computer vision. I have an excellent understanding of machine learning and deep learning. I also spent time working with embedded systems and volunteering at a makerspace, teaching Arduino and RPi stuff. I used to teach people older than me.

My first job as a programmer sucked big time. It was a bootstrapped startup whose founder was making big claims to secure funding. I had no direction, mentorship and leadership to validate my programming practices. I burnt out in just 2 months. It was horrible. I experienced the worst physical and emotional pain to date. Additionally, I was gaslighted and told that it is me who is bad at my job not the people working with me. I thought I was a big failure and that I wasn't cut out for software engineering.

I spent the next 6 months recovering from the burn out. I had a condition where the stress and anxiety would cause my neck to deform and some vertebrae were damaged. Nobody could figure out why this was happening. I did find a neurophyscian who helped me out of the mental hell hole I was in and I started making recovery. I had to take a mild anti anxiety for the next 3 years until I went to my current doctor.

I worked as an implementation engineer at a local startup run by a very old engineer. He taught me how to work and carry myself professionally while I learnt very little technically. A year into my job, seeing no growth technically, I decided to make a switch to my favourite local software consultancy. I got the job 4 months prior to my father's death. I joined the company as an implementation analyst and needed some technical experience. It was right up my alley. My parents who saw me at my lowest, struggling with genetic depression and anxiety for the last 6 years, were finally relieved. It was hard for them as I am the only son.

After my father passed away, I was told by his colleagues that he was very happy with me and my sisters. He died a day before I became permanent and landed a huge client. The only regret I have is not driving fast enough to the hospital the night he passed away. Last year, I started seeing a new doctor in hopes of getting rid of the one medicine that I was taking. To my surprise, he saw major problems and prescribed me new medication.

I finally got a diagnosis for my condition after 8 years of struggle. The new doctor told me a few months back that I have Recurrent Depressive Disorder. The most likely cause is my genetics from my father's side as my father recovered from Schizophrenia when I was little. And, now it's been 5 months on the new medication. I can finally relax knowing my condition and work on it with professional help.

After working at my current role for 1 and a half years, my teamlead and HR offered me a 2 month mentorship opportunity to learn programming from scratch in Python and Scrapy from a personal mentor specially assigned to me. I am still in my management focused role but will be spending 4 hours daily of for the mentorship. I feel extremely lucky and grateful for the opportunity. It felt unworldly when I pushed my code to a PR for the very first time and got feedback on it. It is incomparable to anything.

So we had Eid holidays a few months back and because I am not that social, I began going through cs61a from Berkeley and logged into HackerRank after 5 years. The medicines help but I constantly feel this feeling that I am not enough or that I am an imposter even though I was and am always considered a brilliant and intellectual mind by my professors and people around me. I just can't shake the feeling.

Anyway, so now, I have successfully completed 2 months worth of backend training in Django with another awesome mentor at work. I am in absolute love with Django and Python. And, I constantly feel like discussing and sharing about my progress with people. So, if you are still reading, thank you for staying with me.

TLDR: Smart enough for high level computer science concepts in college, did well in theory but never really wrote code without help. Struggled with clinical depression for the past 8 years. Father passed away one day before being permanent at my dream software consultancy and being assigned one of the biggest consultancy. Getting back to programming after 4 years with the help of change in medicine, a formal diagnosis and a technical mentorship.

TLDR; After my dad was lazy, I assembled the parts myself.

As far back as I can remember, if I think of my father he is sitting behind his pc playing games. It was like me, his escape.

When I was between 3-5 years old he upgraded his pc to one that supported windows 95. The most exciting thing I remember about his new pc is that it had a sound card or what passed as one anyway - think polyphonic ring tones in place of onboard beeps. It was fucking awesome.

He gifted his old 386 to my brother and I which we spent a blissful year or so playing DOS games on until it finally died. I wouldn't have access to a home computer again until I was 11 - touching my fathers computer was out of the question, never mind actually using it.

The reason I didn't have access to a pc was simply because he didn't replace his pc - he made minor upgrades to it until he died with a whopping 512mb of RAM. Seriously his pc specs were a bragging factor like geek porn - better than any else's I ever saw including his I.T friends (he was an electrical engineer), everyone knew this apparently aside from his boss...

Auto-cad started becoming a thing and my father for the first time ever had a reason to actually do work on a computer, he immediately used the opportunity to leverage his company into paying for a pc. To get better "value" for the company he ordered the parts in place of a pre-built machine - in reality he blew 90% of the budget on a new motherboard and graphics card to upgrade his own pc and the cheapest entry level components for everything else. The day they arrived he upgraded his own pc, threw the excess parts into a box and told us it was our new computer which he would put together over the weekend. He didn't.

After 3 months of nagging I was fed up and taking liberties with him that landed me more than one hiding, at some point he was over it and told me if I wanted something that badly I should do it myself. He walked into my room after becoming concerned if I had run away/hurt myself since he hadn't heard a whistle from me in 6 hours and I was battling my ass off trying to install windows 98.

He inspected my assembly gave me an approving nod and showed me that the hard drives physical jumper was set to slave and the rest is history. I hadn't used windows before, or built a computer let alone used one in years but somehow I always knew, it just clicked and made sense to me.

I didn't truly recognise just how much I had learn't watching him play DOS games over his shoulder and clean/upgrade his pc. It changed everything and thanks to only being allowed to watch him use a pc, once I finally had access to my own computer again I revered it and all it's possibilities. I knew I should use it to do something special.

"Programming is a craft. At its simplest, it comes down to getting a
computer to do what you want it to do (or what your user wants it to do). As a programmer, you are part listener, part advisor, part interpreter, and part dictator. You try to capture elusive requirements and find a way of expressing them so that a mere machine can do them justice. You try to document your work so that others can understand it, and you try to
engineer your work so that others can build on it. What's more, you try to do all this against the relentless ticking of the project clock. You work small miracles every day.

It's a difficult job. "
- The pragmatic programmer

Friend (civil engineer) : bro do you have windows cd?
Me : no but why?
F: I want to format my pc.
M : then buy genuine copy.
F : don't want to waste money in that.
M : then don't cry for lagging windows 😂😂😂
F : do you have any cost efficient way?
M : yes ,but tell me one thing ,why do you need a computer?
F : browser , office , Dropbox ( cad installed in his desk which have genuine windows)

*After 10 minutes of conversation*

F: I will bring laptop , install Ubuntu in it

Do all the things people think I can do because I am a computer engineer.

When I have started working as engineer, coworkers addressed to me as a programmer or software developer. It was irritating since I am an electrical engineering and those days I didn't have much respect for computer science. Nowadays I know how hard is this field, since I have to define and code my soft, and I am proud if someone call me software developer or programmer

The only thing that sometimes bothers me about having IT knowledge (specially now that I'm officially an IT Engineer graduate) is that I still have friends that can't do simple things that they asked me when I was at highschool.

"My computer is not working", " I can't install this game", "My computer doesn't start".

Since I'm okay with helping others, I always try to help. The thing is that everytime I help is always something I google at the moment. And most of times is simple problems that don't even need to be googled

As usual before sleeping i set a timer for shutdown cuz i use my hotspot to surf devrant in bed before sleeping.

My roommate( lets call him AB) sees me writing the command.

AB: what are you doing?
Me: setting a timer to shutdown my computer.

AB: oh nice i want that too... is it just a linux thing?
Me: nope u can do it on windows.. just search the cmd command on google and u are good to go.

AB: you do it. You search.
Me: huh? Why would i do that? Bitch it is simple just google "cmd command shutdown timer" and open the first result.

AB: *extremely dissapointed face and starts searching* i dont understand anything.
Me: AB! The instructions literally explain everything! I can see!!

AB: you are good at computers, u are a computer engineer (im just a second year student)
Me: fuck off *i go to sleep*

Next day i learned that he did it after i left him, and that it did shutdown but he wasnt done with his work and he was too lazy to google how to cancel it.... JUST GOOGLE DAMMIT!!!

I love how all foreign people around this floating piece of shithole rock in the middle of nothingness always get flabbergasted when i tell them i earn $3.75 an hour as a software engineer with computer science degree. Trust me I'm flabbergasted beyond you

Garbage collector, toilet shit cleaner, waiter, barber, mcdonalds worker, all of them earn way more than me, as a software engineer with computer science degree

If every computer of a relative has been at least once brought to you for formatting and windows setting up, then you're an engineer.

Real question, not troll. There is debate about it and I really can't figure it out.

Besides having the title software "engineer," is there really such a thing as a software engineer?

In the US, to be an engineer you have to be regularly tested by a regulated governing body, apprentice under another engineer for years, and be certified on a state level. Whereupon you are personally liable for your designs being FREE from errors.

For one thing, nobody can write bug free code, and the idea of being personally responsible for each bug is terrifying.
And two, I've seen news of people calling themselves software engineers in the USA and Canada and getting a cease and desist or sued for it, despite any level of qualification.

I'm sure there are engineers, especially electrical, computer engineers who also program.

But... ?

I don't know, I can't say either way.
That's why I'm asking.

I just went to a new barber for a haircut. Costed me $8. The barber earned $8 in 20 minutes and immediately went to cut another guy. This means the barber earns $24 per hour.

I, a software engineer with a computer science university degree working in IT tech field as a java backend software engineer on complex government software that sells gas & energy, get paid, and I will be exact to the cent: $3.75 per hour.

This means a barber earns 6.4 TIMES MORE per hour than I do as a software engineer with a computer science degree.

This also means that, it takes me 1 WHOLE DAY to earn as a software engineer with computer science degree, what the barber earns in 1 hour.

Therefore, this further means, after all of life expenses food bills rent taxes etc, that i can barely afford to go to barber. A barber for $8, is not very cheap for me as a software engineer with computer science degree.

I can not explain the utmost disrespect towards me and disappointment to be working as a software engineer with computer science degree.

I, as a software engineer with computer science degree, feel like I am used as an african wage slave to work extremely hard jobs for a below average wage. I am saddened and disgusted. This is shameful and must be illegal.

After all of what I've been through and everything I've seen, it turns out school was everything BUT the path to success. School was a path to failure... A path to eternal wage slave and poverty...

So I started work as a software developer during college, and the people there were really nice to me and endured my constant absence from work because of college stuff.
Now that I graduated, I got an offer as a software engineer for 1.5 times the salary I currently have.
Should I take this job and forget what the people at my current work did for me?

Now im eating some cheap food. Holy shit how GOOD it feels to eat food. I cant believe as a software engineer with computer science degree earning $3.75 usd an hour feels so good to eat some cheap food

I got a new computer recently. I got it with an evo 970. I tried installing the Samsung controller software so that I can view the health of the drive.
No go. Why?
Looked around and everywhere they are saying turn off raid. I checked in bios. Says my drive is not in a raid volume.
Okay, now what?
Look at manual of laptop maker. Says there is a mode that allows you to use either VMD or RAID on the drive. Apparently I was in VMD mode. I had already backed up the computer at this point. Yes, I suspected this was coming. So I changed the mode.
No boot.
Okay, I have Aomei backup and linux boot disk I made using Aomei. Linux boot disk won't boot... Well fuck.
Luckily I have my old computer and a Windows 10 install disk. I install Windows 10 again, install Aomei and proceed to try and restore.
4 hours later... I dunno how long. I went to bed.
Wake up and test.
No boot.
I try disk repair.
No go.
So I boot into Windows 10 install disk to look at partitions. 5 or 6 fucking partitions. It has installed 3 partitions into the space of one.
Delete all the fucking partitions. Cause fuck you!
Okay, lets try this again.
I make a window pe boot disk this time.
It boots.
I do restore while I am at work.
I get home.
No boot.
Check partitions and find only 2. Better than last time.
I try disk repair.
No go.
Search the net. Literally: "Aomei restore no boot"
Someone says, just assign drive letter with drive C using diskpart.
Seriously?! Disk repair couldn't figure this shit out by context?
Seriously doubting this solution.
Solution works...

Now, I am an engineer/programmer/computer genius. I have been learning how to fix this shit for over 30 years.

How the fuck is Joe Bloe ever going to fix an issue like this? I feel sorry for the technically un-inclined. I honestly don't know how neither Aomei nor Microsoft cannot solve restoring disk images by setting a drive letter. How did this not get backed up by Aomei? How did this not get detected as one of the most common problems with a disk restore? Why has this been a problem with Aomei restore for over 3 years? I love Aomei. It works most of the time. But this is terrible. The tech world is definitely a shit show at this point in time.

I also read that VMD actually makes the communication to the drive a bunch faster. Not sure if the samsung drivers do the same. So there may be a tradeoff. Oh well. I can see the temperature of my drives now! Woot!

The importance of not using static salt / IVs.

I've been working on a project that encrypts files using a user-provided password as key. This is done on the local machine which presents some challenges which aren't present on a hosted environment. I can't generate random salt / IVs and store them securely in my database. There's no secure way to store them - they would always end up on the client machine in plain text.

A naive approach would be to use static data as salt and IV. This is horrendously harmful to your security for the reason of rainbow tables.

If your encryption system is deterministic in the sense that encrypting / hashing the same string results in the same output each time, you can just compile a massive data set of input -> output and search it in no time flat, making it trivial to reverse engineer whatever password the user input so long as it's in the table.

For this reason, the IVs and salt are paramount. Because even if you generate and store the IVs and salt on the user's computer in plaintext, it doesn't reveal your key, but *does* make sure that your hashing / encryption isn't able to be looked up in a table

TLDR: I didn't & still not sure if it is..

I love bug hunting & fixing & figuring out how stuff works, but many will argue this is not even real programming..

Long version how I ended up programming:
Back in highschool, I was deciding between english and mathematics & computer science.. I filled in the form for the latter. Got a change of hearts but I already gave the extra/backup empty form to schoolmate..

Figured it's for the better because it's a hell to get a job as an english teacher/prof anyways + I dislike comunications with people + documentation (if any) is in english etc..

At the end of first year, I didn't even apply for all the exams because you had to have both programming 1&2 to pass or even be eligible to take the year again.. I figured I'd fail them, so once I actually passed both (& actually not with bad grades), I was fucked.. had to retake the year, which means I lost time + still had to pay the rent etc.. decided to drop out and return home and do the IT engineer course instead to at least have some formal education to help me find a job. Finished that without problems, I 'specialised' in network administration.
I got a job straight out of school as a web developer.. the irony.. got some conflicts with the boss and was terminated (material for another rant).

Later I sought out admin jobs, but got declined because I was overqualified and had programming experince. FML, right?

Ended up sending out mandatory job applications for IT administration & programming to not lose the bonuses & got called up to a meeting in the company I work for since then.

No qualifications for .net & MS technologies, but they liked my CV so the ended up setting up the interview anyway. I didn't know half of the technologies and concepts by proper name, but they figured I understand enough of the content to give me a try. A few years later, I got the most fucked up project they have because of my love for new thigs and trying to understand everything. It's aaaalmost bearable now.. still needs a lot of work, but I'm happy where I am. Saddly, I'm still second guessing if I'm doing a proper job as a dev, but they seem to be very ok with my work. (:

What, according to you, is the average retirement age of a computer/software engineer?

Warn: long rant is long

So for the past couple of weeks I've been frustrated/confused over my thesis course with the kids gloves the professor gave us. This week I found out that in actuality this class isn't just for the IT majors, but a mix of Software Engineering majors, IT majors with minors in the SE department (me), and Information System majors who do product management but don't know much about coding anything.

As a result, we have this really strange set of discussions going on where on one hand we have the professor giving the okay to students making a website in !!Wix because they don't know much about HTML and CSS, to students like me busting ass to get a Java/MongoDB/Bootstrap web application off the ground from scratch.

I'm not as nearly upset as a I was, but it's still a really bizarre thing to lump these two departments together and getting it all coherent. The SE and IT majors is a much easier fit as there's so much overlap between the two that it's next to impossible to see any difference, it's the IS majors who are off in their own little world.

One thing is relieving to me from all this. I've realized I didn't need to major in Software Engineering to become a competent software engineer. It's amazing what one can self teach in 2 years to get the equivalent knowledge and skill sets. In the end this makes it all up for when I dropped out Computer Science in my mid 20's.

It's jaw dropping to me how much my perception of the education system for STEM has changed from when I was freshman to being a senior.

One hour to go and our plane will set off.
It wasn't a good idea to read Homo Faber before this flight.
My German Teacher says he's waiting for a new Film of the book. Instead of this "engineer" back in 1954, you should just a computer nerd xD
I wanna see that

Have you ever considered switching to IT support/help desk?
I mean, sometimes I try to analyze my own situation from a 3rd person perspective and I realize I could have a pretty much stressless job with still enough money to live a normal life.
I have a BSc and MSc(soon to have) in CS, with focus on AI/ML. I've always been a geek with a problem solving attitude, that's why I got into computers in the first place. And now I'm pondering if I should just try an IT Support position, it's the kind of things I used to do as a teenager when a classmate had a network/computer problem, it doesn't even feel like a job to me. I could call it a day, get home at 5/6pm, and spend time on my personal projects (software, infosec) with a fresh mind, going to bed (and sleep) knowing that the next day would be a nice one. No clients wanting a new feature that you gotta implement and push on a production server friday afternoon because your ceo(who is also a pseudo proj manager) just said:"Yes, we can", while you watch the technical debt rising like amazon's stocks.
Maybe this is just the burnout talking, I don't know. Maybe I should just try being a software engineer outside of Uni in the first place, and only then start pondering.
Maybe a sysadmin position...
Have a nice day

You are an eletronics engineer --> you can fix my TV set then...
You are a computer engineer -> you can fix my my Windows laptop...

Life is tough for tech oriented people....

They don't really know what I do, I guess. They listen to me with patience when I explain them something about what I'm doing, they forget what I said and then tells friends, coworkers and costumers that I'm a computer engineer. And also I can install Linux on a computer.

A mechanical engineer, a computer scientists and a business owner go for a drive and the breaks go out. The driver struggles with the handbrake, but eventually brings the car to a stop. The business owner knows a guy who owns a tow truck who can get them back on the road in no time. The engineer says, "Let me take a look at it first. Let's see what the problem is." The Computer Scientists says, "It was probably a fluke. Let's just get in and see if it happens again."

Hey guys!

I'm a senior computer science student at a big ten university graduating in December. I'm thrilled to have been offered a full time software engineer 1 position on a QA team. I just wanted to ask, I ultimately want to be a software dev, would taking this QA position make that more difficult in any way? Or is it a great place to start? Because it is a software engineer position, but not directly doing software development.

Thanks for your input!

My father is an electrical engineer and using computers from MainFrame times. So, duirng my childhood I always see computers arround me. This is the first reason I fall in love with computers and programing.

I think I am using a computer since 3rd grade. Or mightbe erlier. doesn't remamber.

Hey all. So I'm a bit of an aspiring developer/engineer. I am in highschool right now and am getting to the point where I should start looking at colleges. Ive wanted to do something computer related and for a while now ive had my heart set on some sort of security engineer/tech/researcher what have you. But it has been pointed out to me that computer sciences often require several high level math courses namely Calc. Problem being I'm pretty bad at Calc and haven't been able to do too well.

I'm not too sure what I should do. I'm struggling with my highschool calc classes and and fear that college level course will just go over my head. Ive never had issues with math before until I got to Calc. Ive got some of the basics of cryptography such as hashes and cryptographic alorithms but thats about it. Do computer science degrees really rely that heavily on Calc?

I was 7 years old, and my mom’s friend brought me their old computer as a new year present. I was absolutely happy that day, because I wanted my own computer as far back as I can remember. I spent that evening exploring russian psychological (!) sex quiz (!!) with pictures (!!!) :D I found it on C:\

Actually no, there is an earlier memory. I was four, and I really wanted to mess around with my sis’ computer, it was some kind of holiday, maybe the new year as well. They won’t let me do it, and being an engineer, I took a rectangle-shaped candy box and made a “laptop” out of it. I remember drawing the screen, the icons and stuff. And plastic mold that actually handles candy, I turned upside down, and the candy cavities became sort of “buttons” I could press.

I don't, I just started doing it out of spite. The first pc i ever had for myself was a windows vista hp laptop. It ran like absolute shit. Yes I had used many computers before that, but this was the first one i got for myself and i was honestly sad I could not get it with xp.

Because it ran like shit, I decided to investigate as to why, i wanted to understand the people that did the system before I was to blame and talk shit about them.

Down the rabbit hole. Thank you vista, had you not been shit on MY computer I would have never gotten here. Also my mom always wanted me to be an engineer so there's that.

❤️

I am quite worried about the approach users have towards technology...

I am starting now to work to my bachelor thesis research in algorithm, so I'm still very young.
But when I think about which mental process guides people when they use or try to fix their pcs is very worrying...
I mean I am no mechanical engineer but I don't pretend to know perfectly how an engine works. But I try anyway to understand it the best as I can...

Instead I see users that don't try to know at all our products... People (and not only elderly) which think that Facebook and Internet is the same thing, people that think that you can find anything one the net, while I found myself stuck many times in the middle of a research for something...

I had a course in human computer interaction... And I see the point of simplifying the user experience... But I fear that it will be soon to much :s

Just saw a job listing looking for an advanced web engineer using JAVA and one of the requirements was a bachelor in computer science...

Hate to tell you guys but anyone with a bachelor in computer science is smart enough to not touch Java, even with a NullPointerException();

Any suggestions on the best laptop/desktop for a software engineering student?

Typically every computer science major begins with either C C# C++ java or python , creating so much abstraction from the hardware which just loads your mind with questions that remain unanswered.When ever i program something i always think of how the under lying stuff is working.They never explain how and where software meets the hardware.Why are they keeping students away from the hardware. I think a cs graduate without knowing the underpinning of a computer should not be considered a cs graduate as opposed to being a software engineer a computer science major relates to everything that is a computer that includes the theoretical stuff and a little bit know how of computer hardware. Instead of teaching this stuff and assembly as a language in the first semester they teach you java or C++. Could not speculate on why this is so.

I do not feel insecure in my competency as software/Firmware engineer but i started feeling really insecure about being an engineer , mostly because the way Society in general place us
usually it's like

surgeon > physician > Scientist (or any basic science person) > engineer

i didn't realise this before but recently i noticed and i stopped introducing myself as engineer to the people i meet either from my family or from dating apps. Here is the conversation that usually happens

Person: what do you do ?
Me: I build things
Person: so what do build ?
Me: My work involves building lot of things related to smart phone's wireless capabilities.
Person: oh so you manufacture phones ?
Me: No i work in connectivity part of it like bluetooth , wifi
Person: I don't understand, does it involve staring at computers all day (makes a face )
Me: yes 90% of it , I like building things making something new HW or SW and most of them do require a use of computer , even if I was a mechanical engineer computers would be necessary
Person: Hmm if i was not a surgeon i would be hair dresser , because i can't do anything that involves staring at computers all day.

same conversation happened multiple times.
no matter how good you are at writing code or how important task that code is performing , society consider's Software Engineering as a mundane task of " staring at screen "
if that song Remember the name is written for software engineers it will go like

This is ten percent luck
Twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure
Fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to live in disdain

Fill it in!!!

Firstly give me the skill equivalent to the best in the field. If the rules allow it all of these skills listed and if not any of these :-
1. Computer networking to the point of having the same knowledge as the best in the field. Why? I am curious about that stuff and being able to work as a network engineer if I don't get a good Dev job

2. Cyber security. Why? I enjoy it and being able to make sure my code is not easily exploitable is a cherry on top. Also having a backup job in case I don't get a good dev job

3. Being able to communicate with non dev people about developer or non developer stuff easily and being a really good leader.

4. Being a good developer in whatever language I use and instantly being able to learn new programming languages and frameworks or libraries with ultra in depth information.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

So last summer I got a job as a software engineer. It went great for a while, and it came time to go back to school. I'm a senior in high school, and the Sterling Scholar for computer technology, plus I'm in charge of my high schools website. It's getting pretty hard to balance this all out, and I've been considering pausing work until school is finished. What do you guys think? 😐

My family got our first computer when I was in the 1st grade and I really liked it a lot.

After some years I saw someone code and I was like "What's that?". After they explained me what they were doing I was totally hyped and started searching tutorial videos on how to do simple stuff on VB (this was in my 7th grade, I believe).

By the end of my 8th grade I was introduced to a Computer Engineer that lent me a RoR book and tried to teach me the basics.
(Fun fact: around this time I was doing a Habbo clone server with a friend of mine so that we could play with our friends without all the other people poking around).

In high school I took a Computer Technician course where I learnt stuff like VB, C#, PHP, MySQL, some basic CSS/HTML plus some hardware fundamentals.

After that course I tried to enter college and I failed on my first try, so I took a gap year were I worked as a dev for my family's computer repair shop. It was really a good experience to have time for myself while working on what I loved.

Now I'm on the 2nd year of a Bachelor in Computer Engineering (It's more about software than hardware actually), currently working with Java, C, IA-32 Assembly and PL/SQL. My goal is to get a Masters in Software Engineering after it.