well that was insightful.

nixcraft being nixcraft.

i share your rant bro. (well, not actually because i don't use apple :D)

To be a good developer, you must thrive in chaos, and have an insatiable desire to turn it into order.

All user input, both work tasks and actual application input, is pure fucking chaos.

The only way to turn that input into anything usable, is to interpret, structure and categorize it, to describe the rules for transformation as adequately as you can.

Sometimes companies create semi-helpful roles to assist you with this process. Often, these people are so unaware of the delicacy of the existing chaos, that any decision they make just ripples out in waves leaving nearly irreparable confusion and destruction in its path.

So applications themselves also slowly wear down into chaos under pressure of chaotic steak-holders which never seem to be able to choose between peppercorn or bernaise sauce for their steaks.

Features are added, data is migrated between formats, rules become unclear. Is ketchup even fucking valid, as a steak sauce?

The only way to preserve an application long term, is refactoring chaos into order.

But... the ocean of chaos will never end.

You must learn to swim in it.

All you can hope to do is create little pools of clarity where new creative ideas can freely spawn.

Ideas which will no doubt end up polluting their own environment, but that's a problem for tomorrow.

So you must learn to deal with the infinite stream of perplexed reactions from those who can't attach screenshots to issue reports.

You must deflect dragging conversations from those who never quite manage to translate gut feeling into rational sentences.

You must learn to deal with the fact that in reality there are no true microservice backends. There are no clean React frontends. There are no normalized databases. Full test coverage, well-executed retrospectives, finished sprints -- they are all as real as spherical cows in a vacuum.

There is no such thing as clean code.

There is only "relatively cleaner code", and even then there are arguments as to why it would be "subjectively relatively cleaner code".

Every repository, every product, every team and every company is an amalgamation of half-implemented ideals, well-intended tug of war games, and brilliantly shattered dreams.

You will encounter fragmented shards of perfect APIs, miles of tangled barbed documentation, beheaded validator classes, bloody mangled corpses of analytical dashboards, crumbled concrete databases.

You must be able to breathe in those thick toxic clouds of rotting technical and procedural debt, look at your reflection in the locker room mirror while you struggle yourself into a hazmat suit, and think:

"Fuck yes, I was born for this job".

from the comic series "saturday morning breakfast cereal".

behold! wk21 "it's like facebook but..." rants are coming.

I'm starting to think customers know when I'm busy and take that moment to break their products.

I JUST WANT TO LET MY LEG SOAK IN EPSOM WATER... your users are going to bed soon, it's a freaking Saturday, and you need to go get laid because you have too much time on your hands. I'm in pain and cannot help you restore service if you don't stay on the line. So please... don't. Fucking. Call me. Unless you're going to stay on the line to test. You're pushing my limits, and if my voice gets any quieter, it means I'm about to find your porn accounts and register you as an amateur, uploading cows fucking to get you banned from all the services. Congratulations sir, you've pissed me off so bad, I'm using my "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" voice I learned from my mother. I hope you're happy. I'm so mad I'm not even swearing anymore. I always swear.

Edit: if my voice ever sounds sweet and demure over the phone, someone is about to get fucked with a red hot fireplace poker. This fucker getting close.

when it's 36*C / 97*F in the city and you pack your laptop into your backpack and flee on to the swiss alps. To work on a new website at a beautiful landscape, on green meadows, cows and agreeable 18*C / 64*F.
And getting payed for this... This is life!

Still trying to get good.

The requirements are forever shifting, and so do the applied paradigms.

I think the first layer is learning about each paradigm.

You learn 5-10 languages/technologies, get a feeling for procedural/functional/OOP programming. You mess around with some electronics engineering, write a bit of assembly. You write an ugly GTK program, an Android todo app, check how OpenGL works. You learn about relational models, about graph databases, time series storage and key value caches. You learn about networking and protocols. You void the warranty of all the devices in your house at some point. You develop preferences for languages and systems. For certain periods of time, you even become an insufferable fanboy who claims that all databases should be replaced by MongoDB, or all applications should be written in C# -- no exceptions in your mind are possible, because you found the Perfect Thing. Temporarily.

Eventually, you get to the second layer: Instead of being a champion for a single cause, you start to see patterns of applicability.

You might have grown to prefer serverless microservice architectures driven by pub/sub event busses, but realize that some MVC framework is probably more suitable for a 5-employee company. You realize that development is not just about picking the best language and best architecture -- It's about pros and cons for every situation. You start to value consistency over hard rules. You realize that even respected books about computer science can sometimes contain lies -- or represent solutions which are only applicable to "spherical cows in a vacuum".

Then you get to the third layer: Which is about orchestrating migrations between paradigms without creating a bigger mess.

Your company started with a tiny MVC webshop written in PHP. There are now 300 employees and a few million lines of code, the framework more often gets in the way than it helps, the database is terribly strained. Big rewrite? Gradual refactor? Introduce new languages within the company or stick with what people know? Educate people about paradigms which might be more suitable, but which will feel unfamiliar? What leads to a better product, someone who is experienced with PHP, or someone just learning to use Typescript?

All that theoretical knowledge about superior paradigms won't help you now -- No clean slates! You have to build a skyscraper city to replace a swamp village while keeping the economy running, together with builders who have no clue what concrete even looks like. You might think "I'll throw my superior engineering against this, no harm done if it doesn't stick", but 9 out of 10 times that will just end in a mix of concrete rubble, corpses and mud.

I think I'm somewhere between 2 and 3.

I think I have most of the important knowledge about a wide array of languages, technologies and architectures.

I think I know how to come to a conclusion about what to use in which scenario -- most of the time.

But dealing with a giant legacy mess, transforming things into something better, without creating an ugly amalgamation of old and new systems blended together into an even bigger abomination? Nah, I don't think I'm fully there yet.

the new fanboy corner on my room wall :)

Yesterday, my girlfriend caught a virus. There were 5+ running programs, in program files, program files x86, system32, basically everywhere. The virus modified chrome, firefox, edge (and even installed a false uc browser assuming we had one), there are many entries at startup programs, also running daemons, once you kill one of them, the others detect it and replicate their killed fellows. Tried to run a linux live usb disk for a cleanup, but the computer hibernates instead of shutdown, making modifications on disk risky.

I spent hours trying to suppress the processes, do a manual cleanup and antivirus search. It looked all cleaned up, then I reinstalled chrome, and now it switches its homepage everytime I open it, it also injects batch arguments to desktop link forum chrome (deleting it manually does not help, it comes back). I'm a linux guy, and in a few hours, I hated windows more than ever.

If anybody knows the authors, I *really* want to meet them. I promise I'm not going to punch them, but kneel down, bow my head in respect, and say "teach me master."

Anybody: so where do you work?
Me after a pause: i milk cows at local farm...

(too hard to explain afterwards, also avoid "fix my computer, phone, printer..." and "lets make a bitcoin mining app")

i rant that i live in a dictatorship with an idiot president who bans whatsapp and facebook to prevent protests (in reaction to having arrested opposition party members of parliament), and github (yes, github) to prevent the spread of a minister's leaked e-mails. now the government is seriously considering shutting down vpn services to prevent by-passing the bans.

on the other hand, it's a nice time and place to continue ms studies on ad-hoc networks - that is of course if i can avoid being arrested or killed before i even start my thesis.

!dev

I come from a small shitty valley where all that people want to achieve is getting approved for loans to buy more cows and shit.. My only friend comes from there as well but he’s different, more like me.. build a life, get out and pursuit something better and bigger..
We grew up smoking everything we could and drinking everything we got because what else are we gonna do, put shit on fire? Been there, done that.. it sucks growing up on the poop hole of the world.
We both left that shithole and started careers but he’s throwing it all out the window.. he’s getting caught with weed, DUI and shit. just a few years ago he got off of more serious drugs.. He built a career and shit for about 10 years but right now he’s just throwing it all away because drugs are in his comfort zone. But he has to go give Pias samples for a while now and if he doesn’t stop he is not getting his license back and the unemployment insurance won’t even pay him because (although he lost the job because of Covid) they said it’s because he smokes weed.
Without the license goes his career as he’s a service electrician.

So fucking hurtful to see, man.
And so hard to accept that he won’t listen and than I’m not his dad who can tell him what to do..

90% of the kids I grew up with who managed to leave that shit hole ended up as homeless junkies.. I guess I’m happy to have the mindset to not end up like them.. and that’s really all it is, the mindset is the only difference (which is complex in itself of course like parenting and stuff)

that feeling when your new toys from aliexpress get delivered earlier than expected... i feel so happy unpacking those sensors, capacitors, heat sinks, microchips, breadboards and all. i feel like i have a geeky shopping addiction, i probably won't have the time to play with them from all the work and other personal projects, but still i hoarded enough electronics to invade the world with a drone army in case i have a few weeks me-time.

'yes' in linux shell has become my favourite command when i discovered it. it has a careless touch to it, like "yeah whatever just do the thing".

also, i like glutMainLoop. a saw doll inside my head says "let the game begin!" each time i type this function.

packet received. thanks for all the fishes.

oh what a fine young mkfs. thank you my dear, have a nice day yourself.

maybe it's time feature is added for devrant simple community dev projects. there could be games, parody websites, you name it. projects could be hosted on github, and indexed at a "projects" tab here on devrant, so we can choose something and start rolling with our pals from devrant when we get bored at work :) @dfox (inspired by rant from @Notebookdeviant)

didn't anyone go for the "#define true false" joke? i didn't actually see it in action, but it would be a pretty harsh one.

Today I learnt you can ride cows like you can a horse

Working on my personal projects really shows me how rushed the work is were I work, and it drives me crazy.

I know my code works 100% in my current project as it is unit and e2e tested, so I can edit it until the cows come home.. at work though, different story.

Imagine going on quora and answering somebodies carbon offsetting question by pushing your own stupid fucking agenda with propaganda answers like

"oh we need rainforest money!"

"oh we need grassland!"

"oh support the cows"

jesus fucking christ, THIS is why we have a problem with people not accepting climate change, becuase every fucking liberal wants to pile on one another and have their 'most important' cause behind it

give me a break you fucking idiots, it won't be solved by acting this way

sorry this is in no way software related, but it's the only place left i have to rant (however in some ways it is somehow software related, due to being able to think about the real world without being an absolute idiot and pushing some stupid peer pressured political idea because your social identity and friends are more important than actual facts, but whatever)

Is it possible to have a midlife crisis at 27?
The "software biz" swallowed me up and except for money and a career I don't have anything.

Turned down multiple management positions because I dont wanna deal with other people, I just wanna be challenged while being let alone

I know I said this before but once again I'm thinking about buying a small house with lots of land.. get some cows, maybe chickens, work remotely and make my own life on my little property.

*Going in holidays with my family *
*We where in the french state named "Creuse"*
*Decription of the town where we stayed at: more cows than inhabitants *
*No 4G, just 6Kb/s McDonald's wifi connexion*
*Me: "end my suffer"*

This is an anti-rant...

I had a problematic arch-dwm setup which i've been struggling with for a looong time, and when i thought i still needed quite some time to solve all issues, yesterday i somehow managed to hit the right solutions for each problem in a single evening. My setup is now in its most stable and usable state ever, and rsynced to a flash drive. I am no longer forced to use windows for my daily needs.

Praise be to holy gnu and holy tux! Do you think maybe i should sacrifice some electronics for the souls of st. ritchie, st. thompson, st. stallman and st. torvalds?

Become a farmer within a tight-knit community of some 100 people. Have a couple of cows, chickens, sheep, crops, fruit trees, ... Everybody takes care of each other and we're (mostly) self-sufficient.
Preferably with some good hiking areas and nice vistas nearby.

i found this beauty on diaspora (in tribute to the comic artist frank franzetta)

p.s.: i asked the artist if i can use it here, but got no replies. i hope it won't be a problem for him/her.

!rant
Cold, rainy, spring this weekend.
rant
Cold, rainy, spring this weekend.

When the OS literature teaches you that processes aren't cows since cows needs two parents to spawn a child while a process only needs one.

I'm not always out of sigarettes but when i am, it's on a fucking Sunday and the store just opens at 13:00. Suffering here. And - yes, we only have one store open on Sunday. I live alone in this village. All my neigbors are cows and stuff

"rose" of alphonse mucha is my favourite desktop item for the time. she watches over me as i code at home.

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Cows go.
Cows go who? No, cows go moo.

in the workplace, i have no access to internet, am not admin to my own computer and am not allowed to install anything (due to security reasons). i also happen to have quite some spare time so i'm writing nokia's good old snake game in visual studio and opengl so i can amuse myself both coding and playing. in a way, company pushes creativity and productivity even for slacking.

this is a repost organization post. each time you are going to post a classical joke, please find it from items below, and write as comment, the number of the repost. and people will give you ++'s to your comments as if you actually reposted the post. also, feel free to make additions to the list. syntax is:

"(n): [repost context]" for a new item (please do not mess with the order)

"-- [n]: [personal comment]" for simulating the repost.

here we go:

(0): the comic strip about rescuing princesses in different languages.

(1): in case of fire git commit, git push, leave the building.

(2): wanna hear a udp joke? i don't care if you get it.

(3): that joke about java devs wearing glasses because they can't c#.

--------------

An example repost:

-- 0: omg princess lol :)))

Where do young cows eat lunch? In the calf-ateria.

my 4th gen. amazon kindle has been one of my favorite work buddies so far. i spend most of my midday breaks with it, kept me pretty good company so far.

Shipping company sending e-mails regarding cases to our ex-Intercom addresses instead of our registerd contact e-mail.

Intercom was turned off months ago.
I can not reach any old communication.

Of course certain claims expire... and we're ending up with sad and mad customers.
Let me be the shitpole to fix it... again.

FML, where's my long awaited customer service colleague!? /sadface

Have any developer here ever gone on strike?

I've been at my company for two years, and know engineers that have been here for 3 years that have never got a single salary raise. A lot of the engineers are afraid to step up to management because of their visas literally being in the company's hands (lucky I'm not one of them).

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my company playing ring around the rosy with raises and treating engineers like we're not human. Treating us just as cash cows. Yes, it's a business, but if sales, data science, and PMs can be treated with respect, we should as well.

rust anyone? i am a c++ person, and it caught my attention as having an oopish-but-actually-functional new programming paradigm whatever... also (don't know if it's just mozilla's successful marketing) i had the impression that people see it as the new whiz kid in town. do you recommend indulging in it for the sake of trying something new?

on a 5 day rock festival vacation... a band with songs i barely know is on and i'm a bit high... there's a cool set of animations playing at the stage background and i spent the whole concert trying to figure how i could write each animation in opengl. i'll give them a shot back home, if i don't forget.

So, I heard this pun about cows, but it’s kinda offensive so I won’t say it. I don’t want there to be any beef between us.

does anybody here use diaspora*? for those who don't, it's a free (as in freedom) social network and protocol thereof, and it employs a decentralized, distributed approach. you can choose a "pod" to store your data, and search for people and content inter-podly. as a decentralization/distribution/foss enthusiast, i love the project and check regularly, but sometimes i get the feeling that i'm all by myself there, as i have no friends yet and all the content i see is just my followed keywords. (so befriend me, maybe? :D)

i got a dev!rant nostress ball, because i didn't have any serious rants and used the app for fun purposes.

edit: do you think maybe it can also help in debugging, although it's nothing close to being a duck.

unigine sim engine has the worst documentation i've ever seen. it was written in bad english, occasionally did not follow a word convention (i.e. functions doing analogous work used different keywords), most items were just reiterations of function names (made up example for clarification: getAngularVelocity(): gets angular velocity...). i had to use it for my first ever job, and had to learn in from scratch, mostly by trial and error. it's been months since i switched jobs, and they were rolling a version 2 when i left, i hope they improved on their docs.

If you want the ridiculous behavior “required” by POSIX, you must set the environment variable ‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ (which was originally going to be named ‘POSIX_ME_HARDER’).

You just read a line from GNU's official coding standard document :D

trying to make a live usb disk. i took shots at random combinations from 2 usb sticks, 2 oses, different tools or technics on each os... each failed with a different outcome. then i realized i should have kept a failure matrix so that i don't try the same combinations, or can trace the roots of the problem.

each time i need to build a live disk, a part of me dies inside.

"In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?" - David Ogilvy

i want to find the person who proposed to force mtp in android for file transfers, and bash them in the head with a plush android toy till they're knocked unconscious.

all i want is to make a file transfer between my phone and my computer, and rather than plugging my phone's usb, i find it easier to set up an ftp server over local network. and when that doesn't work, i might as well hexdump the file, and copy it char-by-char manually, than use mtp.

i just learnt how much clearcase sucks the hard way. i always used git for personal projects and am used to finding a simple solution to any problem at most one stackoverflow away, i just messed up my local repo, and experienced people could not manage to undo it. i mean come on, this is a f**king versioning software, how hard can it be to delete everything local and re-pull from remote without messing up configuration files? either clearcase has some serious design shortcomings for my understanding of a versioning software, or it is so overly complicated that nobody actually knows how to revert this mistake.

I hate menagers...I had request to make first name field translateable in module for team members, bcs they decided to use that module not just for people but also for cows. I hate adhoc solutions and hacking...

i've been using debian with xfce for 2 years, and i'm now planning to migrate to arch with xmonad for some freshness. i'm reluctantly peeking out of my comfort zone and sniffing like a cat, any tips appreciated.

See GitHub gets it
There’s something fucked about time right now

Also send me your wives unless they’re land whales or even sea cows

Cows be like...

"Mooh."

anybody else has a "polish notation fetish"? i never actually learned lisp, but since i first saw its style, i find writing functions like "+ 1 2" instead of "1 + 2" both aesthetically and functionally more appealing. i think the infix notation is just being kept because of well-established habits.