Yesterday: Senior dev messages out a screenshot of someone using an extension method I wrote (he didn’t know I wrote it)..

SeniorDev: “OMG…that has to be the stupidest thing I ever saw.”
Me: “Stupid? Why?”
SeniorDev: “Why are they having to check the value from the database to see if it’s DBNull and if it is, return null. The database value is already null. So stupid.”
Me: “DBNull is not null, it has a value. When you call the .ToString, it returns an empty string.”
SeniorDev: ”No it doesn’t, it returns null.”
<oh no he didn’t….the smack down begins>
Me: “Really? Are you sure?”
SeniorDev: “Yes! And if the developer bothered to write any unit tests, he would have known.”
Me: “Unit tests? Why do you assume there aren’t any unit tests? Did you look?”
<at this moment, couple other devs take off their head phones and turn around>
SeniorDev:”Well…uh…I just assumed there aren’t because this is an obvious use case. If there was a test, it would have failed.”
Me: “Well, let’s take a look..”
<open up the test project…navigate to the specific use case>
Me: “Yep, there it is. DBNull.Value.ToString does not return a Null value.”
SeniorDev: “Huh? Must be a new feature of C#. Anyway, if the developers wrote their code correctly, they wouldn’t have to use those extension methods. It’s a mess.”
<trying really hard not drop the F-Bomb or two>
Me: “Couple of years ago the DBAs changed the data access standard so any nullable values would always default to null. So no empty strings, zeros, negative values to indicate a non-value. Downside was now the developers couldn’t assume the value returned the expected data type. What they ended up writing was a lot of code to check the value if it was DBNull. Lots of variations of ‘if …’ , ternary operators, some creative lamda expressions, which led to unexpected behavior in the user interface. Developers blamed the DBAs, DBAs blamed the developers. Remember, Tom and DBA-Sam almost got into a fist fight over it.”
SeniorDev: “Oh…yea…but that’s a management problem, not a programming problem.”
Me: “Probably, but since the developers starting using the extension methods, bug tickets related to mis-matched data has nearly disappeared. When was the last time you saw DBA-Sam complain about the developers?”
SeniorDev: “I guess not for a while, but it’s still no excuse.”
Me: “Excuse? Excuse for what?”
<couple of awkward seconds of silence>
SeniorDev: “Hey, did you guys see the video of the guy punching the kangaroo? It’s hilarious…here, check this out.. ”

Pin shoulders the mat…1 2 3….I win.

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".

Best way to handle exceptions..

(c) Creative Tim. Worth to read pips!

How to land a programming job

1. ABC (Always Be Coding) - The more you code, the better you'll get.

2. Master at least one multi-paradigm language - Some good candidates are C#, C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

3. Re-invent the wheel - You should implement the most common data structures in your language choice.

4. Solve word problems - Pick those that test your ability to implement recursive, pattern-matching, greedy, dynamic programming, and graph problems

5. Make coding easy - At least, make it look easy.

6. Be passionate - If you don't care, then nobody else will.

7. Don't make assumptions - Ask questions if you're not sure.

I'm hiring and I'm fucking done with recruiters buttering up skills etc and sending me BS candidates.

Interview earlier today...
CV: MySql skill level 10 (out of 10)
Reality: Can't write a simple JOIN!

Yesterday...
CV: PHP 6+ years exp, self proclaimed ninja/jedi/oracle.
Reality:
[Me]: Write me a function to map an array to x.
[Ninja]: What's an array?

I've come to the conclusion that the type of dev I want on my team is highly unlikely to be looking for work much less using some piece of shit shady agent to find work so I need to hunt him / her down personally and can use the phenomenally large recruiters fee as a hiring bonus / incentive.

Only problem now is finding quality full stack devs in the area (Johannesburg, South Africa).

I'm thinking of posting a 'challenge' job add to filter out good candidates - some kind of code challenge to be solved that gives them my contact info. Any one have any creative ideas I could try?

I'm pissed at my cousin who's studying IT at the moment. He wants to copy my thesis project(from 3 years ago) and make it his own for his thesis project this year. Like woah dude! Can't you be creative, work hard, and make a project of your own because that's for your own good? And don't you dare bring up the "I'm your cousin, pretty please"-card up! He also wants me to lie if his professor contacts me and tell that he was part of the project. Are you effin' kidding me? You didn't know how to code 3 years ago! How would you expect me to tell your prof that you were part of the team? I just gave him the documentation(without the source code) and I said I lost the apk. That's just how far I can go for someone like that 😕

You can believe or not but it’s just one of those stories. It’s long and crazy and it probably happened.

A few years ago I was interviewed by this big insurance company. They asked me on linkedin and were interested. They didn’t specify who they were so I didn’t specify who I am either.

After they revealed who they are I was just curious how they fuck they want to spend those billions of dollars they claimed in their press notes about this fucking digital transformation everyone is talking about. The numbers were big.

I got into 3 or 4 phone/skype interviews without technical questions and I was invited to see them by person.
I know that it would be funny because they didn’t asked me for CV so they didn’t know anything about me and I was just more curious how far I can get without revealing myself.

They canceled interview at midnight and I was in the middle of Louis de Funès comedies marathon so I didn’t sleep whole night. I assumed they would just reschedule but then they phoned me at 8 am if I can come because they made mistake.

So at first talk I was just interviewed by some manager I knowed after 5 minutes he would be shitty as fuck and demand stupid things in no time because he is not technical. He was trying to explain me that they got so great people and they do everything so fast.

From my experience speed and programming are not the things that match. ( for reference of my thought see three virtues of a GREAT programmer )

So I just pissed them off by asking what they would do with me when I finish this transformation thingy next year. ( Probably get rid off and fire at some point were my thoughts )

Then I got this technical interview on newest gold color MacBook pro - pair programming ( they were showing off how much money they have all the time ).
The person asked me to transform json and get some data in javascript .

Really that was the thing and I was so bored and tired that I just asked in what ES standard I can code.
The problem was despite he told me I can do anything and they are using newest standards ( yeah right ) the “for of” loop didn’t worked and he even didn’t know that syntax existed. So I explained him it’s the newest syntax pointing mozilla page and that he need to adjust his configuration. Because we didn’t have time for that I just did it using var an function by writing bunch of code.
When he was asking me if I want to write some tests probably because my code looked ugly as fuck ( I didn’t sleep for more then 24 hours at that point and wanted to live the building as fast as I can) I told I finished and there is no time for tests because it’s so simple and dumb task. The code worked.

After showing me how awesome their office is ( yeah please I work from home so I don’t care ) I got into the talk with VP of engineering and he was the only person who asked me where is my CV because he didn’t know what to talk about. I just laughed at him and told him that I got here just by talking how awesome I am so we can talk about whatever he wants.
After quick talk about 4 different problems where I introduced 4 different languages and bunch of libraries just because I can and I worked with those he was mine.

He told me about this awesome stack they’re building with kubernetes and micro services and the shitty future where they want to put IOT into peoples ass to sell them insurance and suddenly I got awake and started to want that job but behind that all awesomeness there was just .NET bridge with stack of mainframes running COBOL that they want to get rid off and move company to the cloud.

They needed mostly people who would dump code to different technology stack and get rid of old stack ( and probably those old people ) and I was bored again because I work more in r&d field where you sometimes need to think about something that don’t exist and be creative.

I asked him why it would take so much time so he explained me how they would do the transformation by consolidating bunch of companies and how much money they would make by probably firing people that don’t know about it to this day.

I didn’t met any person working permanently there but only consultants from corporations and people hired in some 3rd party company created by this mother company.

They didn’t responded with any decision after me wasting so much time and they asked me for interview for another position year after.
I just explained HR person how they treat people and I don’t want to work there for any money.

If You reached this point it is the end and if it was entertaining thank YOU I did my best.

Have a nice day.

I like frontend when using no frameworks. I also like when websites use no frameworks and don't write unnecessary code. So that I can use it even if my mobile internet speed gets locked at 16K and from the consumer perspective I think especially in Europe developers should consider this. Moreover I think it's generally more fun to just write your own site from scratch, it will take longer but it will allow one to be more creative and the whole experience will be more fulfilling.

This week Im firing a guy who I hired 5 weeks ago. I cant take it anymore. I setted up a nice environment for him and he keeps taking whole day sometimes two or three to do a 2 hour task. He came from electrical engineering background and never had a software dev job. As a person hes more creative type not logical based type. I dont have nor patience nor resources nor time to teach him basics that be could google but simply doesnt have the mindset to do. Sorry bill gates not everyone can learn how to code, or at least not everyone should.

Advice to other people hiring new hires: test the shit out of them before hiring, dont hire from gut. This guy was giving out a nerd vibe, but the only nerd thing that he has is nerdy puns, other than that as a software dev he know less than I did when I was 12 years old.

[Little perspective: For the last 7 months I'm working in a certain project.]
[The project is full of unimaginative, non-creative devs with 0 initiative and poor technical background.]
[And they're almost all from one country which you all can figure out.]
[But I'm not going to mention it here because I don't want to come up as a racist]
[So there's US (Europeans) and THEM. 3 of US and about 10 of THEM. And we're doing 90% of all the heavy lifting]
---
Yesterday
---
D (Dev from THEM): Hi S, I have a problem with my task
Me: (sighing) Ok let's have a call
* on the call with D we were checking some stuff loosely related to task *
* code wouldn't get invoked at all for some reason *
* suddenly I realize that even if the code would invoke, D's probably doing everything wrong in it anyway *
Me (thinking): I need to double check something.
Me: I can't help you now, I'll get back to you later.
* call ended *
---
Me: Hey J, I need your help, I need to clarify the work package in my mind, because I am no longer sure.
J (my European TL): Ok, fire away.
* call started *
Me: Is it true that [blahblahblah] and so D's task depends on me completing first my task, or am I losing my mind?
J: That is correct.
Me: Well she's trying to do this in [that] way, which is completely wrong.
J: You see, that's how it is in this project, you do refinements with them, split these work packages to tasks, mention specifically what depends on what and what order should things be taken in, and in some cases all tasks from given user stories should be done by one person entirely... But they do it their way anyway, assign different people to different interdependent tasks, and these people don't even understand the big picture and they try to do the things the way they think they understand them.
Me: It's a fire in a brothel.
J: Yup.
Me: I fucking love this project.
J: (smiling silently)
* call ended *
---
Me: Ok D, you can't do your task because it's dependant on my task.
D: Oh... so what do I do?
Me: I don't know, do something else until I do my task.
---
A (THEIR TL) (Oh, did I forget to mention that there are 2 TLs in this project? THEY have their own. And there are 2 PMs as well.)
A: Hey S, I need to talk
Me: (sighing, getting distracted from work again) Ok let's have a call
* call started *
A: S, we need this entire work package done by Friday EOD.
Me: I can't promise, especially since there are several people working on its several tasks.
A: D's working on hers for 3 days already, and she's stuck. We want you to take over.
Me: (sighing, thinking "great"): Ok.
* call ended *
---
Me: Hey D, A instructed me to take over your task. This is actually going to be easier since you'd have to wait for mine after all.
D: Oh, ok.
---
* I switched the Assigned Person on D's task to myself on Azure *
---
This morning, email from D.
"Hey, I completed my task and it's on [this] branch, what do I do now?"

........................................
Me, hesitating between 2 ways to reply:
(and take note there are people in CC: A, J, P - the last one is THEIR PM)
1) "Hi, Unfortunately you'd still have to wait for my changes because your task is dependent on my task - the column to be changed is in the table that I am introducing and it's not merged to develop branch yet. By the way I already did your task locally, as I was instructed to do it, I'm wrapping things up now."
(y'know: the response which is kind, professional, understanding; without a slight bit of impatience)
2) WHAT FUCKING PART OF "DON'T DO THIS I WILL FUCKING DO IT MYSELF GO HOME JUST GO HOME" YOU DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND

I have teens in my classroom who want elite hacker status but complain about doing programming exercises outside of class. >.<

I explain to them that learning to code takes a lot of practice and can be frustrating at first. Some still went to the dean complaining that my class is tough. I work at a private school where open communication is encouraged and social justice is a thing.

So, I'm over here like "How do I reach these kids?"

I'm optimistic and I try different approaches to teaching and learning. Some stuff has worked. A lot haven't.

I figure I'd ask here: Does anyone have a suggestion for any creative programming exercises/projects that are beginner-friendly, legal, and hacker-ish? (I teach intro to Java.)

I wonder if I'm getting tired of making websites for people. I just "fired" two longtime clients today without really caring all that much. Not for no reason. They just were asking too much for too little. And I was getting bored of them. When I think about what I want to do in my spare time, the first thing I think about is creative writing. The last thing I think about is code and website design. It didn't used to be this way.

I'M TIRED OF HEARING THAT DEVELOPMENT IS NOT A CREATIVE FIELD! Creativity is emerging new ideas from non-existent ones. It is not confined to pretty designs or well-written copy. Sure, devs are logical problem solvers – but not a single dev will solve those problems the same way. Code is like the paint on our dark-themed canvases and you can see yourself out if you think devs are just robotic coding machines

Bipolar disorder means that you can code for 14 hours straight, sleep for 4 hours and feel refreshed ready for another round. You can make art and you can express your thoughts in creative, kinda alien ways.

But here are tradeoffs that make bipolar disorder a disease:
- everyone around you is an enemy
- they’re all acting together to harm you
- nobody understands you
- they all make fun of you
- if I say what I mean, nobody will understand me. I’ll scare them
- I’m extremely aggressive towards everything: people, things, situations, problems. Computer lags so I scream, smash it, throw it out of the window and buy a new overpriced one
- constant uncertainty about whether am I acting right or not

Assigned to a new project team..

Using git, in a creative way. So.. "master" is "dev" branch, usually. Everyone can push their branch to dev server .. so it's "dynamic for us". Production branch is whatever, as long as the branch has the release version. Sometimes, the release comes from "master".. that mean "dev" in normal geek..

That's just Git. The source code is a saturated spagetti of Entity framework and Caliburn. It is littered with antipatterns, especially basebean. Holy Christmas and Easter that baseclass do a lot of stuff that has no place as a base class ..

Fucking frameworks, I'm gonna start to evangelize frameworks as the no1 antipattern.

MS SQL as the main DB, but is dumped to json FILES through a scheduled task to increase read performance on web.

There is a soap endpoint to expose the json files, fml..

I am assuming I was placed here to improve stuff, I have never in my life seen anything like this before.

There is a special place in hell for this repository

There's this junior I've been training. We gave him a bigger task than we usually do

"How do I link an object in table X with the corresponding object in table Y?"

"How are objects in two tables usually linked? How did you link Y with Z in the first place?"

"Em... Foreign Keys?"

"Yup"

"But there's not foreign key from X to Y."

"Well, create one. You've got full creative freedom over this task."

I sometimes feel like Juniors are either completely careless about past code or overly carefuly with not editing any past code. Frustrating but adorable

Stepped out of my comfort zone and dropped a Zoom link into the channel for Lambda grads to see if anyone wanted to work through code challenges together. It ended up being enjoyable enough that I’m thinking of making it a regular thing. Meanwhile, contribution graph is still going strong.

Creative dev compliments? Wow, that shows what type of person I am. I only know creative dev insults. Okay let me give it a go!

Wow, I'm gonna star that on GitHub!

Good work! I'm gonna put a shortcut to that right here on my desktop (in the same tone as "I'm gonna hang that on the fridge")

You're so meticulous that the unit tests are to make sure the computer works correctly, not your code.

If you were a web server, you'd always return 200/OK.

Your parents must have compiled you with -Ofast

! exactly dev

I'd ditched Windows and spent a while exploring the Linux ecosystem for content creation. And I have to say, it was not a nice experience.

As much as I respect the Linux mantra of "free as in freedom" and "you need to roll up your sleeves and figure out stuff on your own", it just isn't good enough for non-dev work. Sorry guys, but I need software that gets out of my way and at least does what it's supposed to do. I can't stand a horrible UI or delays and random crashes, which is exactly what happens with most things under Linux.

To replace my Windows workflow I used the following:
1. Windows -> elementaryOS (because Debian/Ubuntu repositories seem to have the best software support, and elementaryOS is the least horrible looking thing that supports that) and then Arch, because, well, Arch.
2. Blender + Maya -> Blender + Maya on Linux.
3. Reaper + FL Studio -> Ardour + LMMS.
4. Photoshop -> GIMP + Krita + Inkscape.
5. ZBrush -> nothing :(

As you can see, my use cases are pretty much all over the spectrum.

Firstly, installing and configuring stuff. A pleasure on Windows, an absolute pain on Linux. Everything just worked on Windows, I had to wrestle with library versions and patches and unstable audio layers (Linux audio just sucks, except for JACK) on Linux.

Out of these, Blender and Maya were the best experience. But even then, both would suffer from random crashes that just didn't happen on Windows.
Ardour is actually really nice when it works. Its use of JACK for routing makes it really really flexible, but it just isn't stable enough to depend on. LMMS is utter crap. I'm sorry, but I just hate the UI. Can't stand it.
GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape can't beat Photoshop, even when you consider them together. Adobe software workflow is just so much better and more intuitive.
Blender 3D sculpting is not bad, but it's nowhere as good as ZBrush.

Also, if you're a C++ dev like me, nothing beats Visual Studio 2017. Nothing. That IDE just blows everything else out of the water. Even VSCode. And it's not slow at all, it handled a fairly large project (PBRTv3) just fine on my Windows development VM. Yes, a VM.

So...I ditched Linux and went back to Windows, but I keep Linux as a VM for when I actually want to mess with Blender or Ardour. Or some dev stuff which Windows sucks at (which is becoming less frequent because of WSL).

Out of all the above, the only one I'd consider ready for production use would be Blender. Developers of open source software, please learn from Blender. Kickass UI and user friendly operation is extremely important, you can't make a random window with GTK buttons and text boxes and arcane config files and expect people to use it for serious work.

Also, Windows beats Linux hands down as an everyday OS. It's always been rock solid, if you take care of it properly (and that goes for any OS). Updates hardly take any time because I run it on a SSD. As for all the advertising and marketing bullshit, you can block a large amount of stuff. And for what can't be blocked, well, I just have to live with it, because the alternative is compromising on my creative output, which is too much for me.

I still run Linux on my server, though. And on my embedded devices (Pi, BeagleBone, etc.). It absolutely rocks there.

I realize that Linux software is not going to improve unless we do something about it, so I'll be contributing fixes and code (the joys of being a C++ dev, yay). Still, I feel that the platform and software as a whole is just not mature enough.

Software Devs are less supportive than the community tries to convey. They're also part of the most self-deluded and obnoxious crowd that exists on earth.

Someone saying they don't enjoy coding 24/7 outside of work? You actually enjoy totally different hobbies that have next to nothing to do with coding?
- Shitty developer, you should probably work elsewhere. Maybe flipping burgers.

"Coding in <Framework X> is SO friggin' easy. You're basically subhuman garbage if you can't learn it within a month!"

Watch some YouTube Videos with the "Freelancer Success Stories" of dudes that haven't - apparently coded, ever - and started to code late in life and tell you how perseverance and learning brings the success and yet you never see any repos of those guys. You see those guys mostly go on for up to half an hour to regurgitate some hot garbage you can read up within two minutes yourself from ANY coding blog.

You're not using a macbook to develop?
- "Oooof, man! How can you?"

You don't really like "Popular Framework X"?
- Especially when it comes to Frontend Frameworks prepare to either die on the hill of your beliefs or die a futile and slow death when people - more or less - snarkily try to dissect your opinion in order to try - again, more or less - to hide their own bias. Because don't forget, your opinion is OBJECTIVELY wrong and you simply happen to a garbage developer for (dis-)liking something.

You DO like "Popular Framework X"?
- Well, rinse and repeat basically.

You struggle to get a new job?
- All your fault. You clearly didn't spend enough time coding; you should have at least 12 Open-Source Projects with at least 100k downloads the week.

There is actually a whole lot more, but I feel I'm basically done with software dev. Software development is neither creative nor terribly fun. I'm just angry at myself that I switched careers for the money.

I love to code, it scratches my creative itch

And i love to work, it drowns my productivity anxiety

But I dread every morning when i wake up to work on my current employer's project

It's that kind of combo of code base spaghetti and all over the place project management that sinks my galleys

Woe is me...

Anyone else annoyed that they can code a really good website (as in PSD to HTML) but just aren't creative enough to come up with a design? I find myself on Dribbble a hell of a lot of the time coding designs that others have done out of boredom, but stunned by how amazing their designs are. I'm just not creative enough.

I'm in search of an inspirational/creative quote not by a big name of a dead person - but by a devRant user :P
starting with:

I code because...

1. Learn to read and understand the errors and exception messages. While writing code you're going to be facing exceptions most of the time and the real cause of them is under a lot of generic error messages. That and a lot of patience and perseverance.

2. You're going to face clients and bosses that ask you to do a temporary "workaround" even though you know there is a best way to solve a problem even if it takes more time and effort. Don't "crash" against their ideas, try to find a mid-term between the fast and easy work around and the best solution and leave it open to improve it in the future. I have met a lot of developers that let the frustration stops them to be creative just because the approved development is not what they wanted to do.

let's try something...
Roast thread, please tag and insult your fellow devRanter in this comment section. Get creative in finding swearwords. Too many ++ bombs, poor code quality or you're just secretly in love with some other Ranter and hate it.

I'm tired of the lack of competition. Open source and public code is supposed to bring people together but a lot of the time it just puts people down and makes them think "why would I recode that if it's already made?" It's going to kill the amount of people actually learning to program because their ideas are just crushed by people who already made them.

The people who are going to be more successful are going to be the ignorant ones who don't bother looking if it exists first and that is kinda sad.

Code FUCKING Rape!!! that kids is when companies throw lots of creative and talented programmers / coders / developers at a system and say FIX IT!

Contact wants to discuss a list of projects with me next week.

What's the betting that these are unfunded ideas that need code?

I should just check by email, but it's been a while since anyone walked this path with me, so I'm up for some fun.

I see myself taking an advisory role in these projects for equity.

"First thing you need to do is obtain funding for them all. Then get back to me for my insights on next stage. Not sure how to get funding, but I'm not the the 'creative' side of the team."

Ideas aren't worth shit. I have a bunch every day and they are as worthless as yours.

Ideas without execution are like owning a book without reading it.

As devs, our keyboards are arguably the most used tools in the creative process of software development. Shortcuts are essential for (most of) us.

What's your most used keyboard shortcut in your most used IDE? Please explain what it does in which IDE.

Mine is Cmd+Alt+L in IntelliJ (reformat code, but only VCS changed or selected lines). I press it all the time, almost maniacally, after changing anything.

Close second place candidates: Shift+F6 (rename anything, e.g. file, class, function, variable), double Shift (search everywhere), Cmd+Alt+F (find in path, also in code), Cmd+B (go to declaration).

I'm feeling like writing this down...

So today I got told off by my boss. Why? Because my job bores me.

My current title, "webmaster", is quite similar to "plumber" where I work. I fix holes on our websites, and I tell "qualified" people (external providers) how a project should be made. Nothing exciting, nothing creative, boring.

So I got told off today for being "laid-back" in a newsletter project (GDPR, looking at you) and not being thorough in my procedures of testing and configuration. Fair enough, I didn't care and I admitted it. It's a boring drag-and-drop done in literally 5 minutes, there's no added brain-value here. Plus I got told off by my IT Manager because our Exchange server would not let me receive test emails. Still doesn't work after a day. Yay.

Then she said "we're doing exciting things here, it's not always the case anywhere else you'd work". And I'm like: "really? I love writing code, seeing things coming alive, investigating why things don't run smoothly, writing efficient code (both in performance and in readability)". I hear many friend devs telling me they're doing that and what they do during their "dev-day"... All I'm doing here is "maintenance" (a.k.a boring) stuff that apparently is "exciting". Adding a <script> to handle google tag manager is hell fun, going through compiled CSS and change color values is also thrilling, finding out if a PDF handler application can handle PDF files, re-plugging a computer monitor to make it work...

I think she meant that I'm not at my place here.

Didn't want to tell her that I have no motivation in doing things I don't enjoy making, i.e, my job.

Good thing I have an interview in two weeks

!Rant

Do you guys have a idea how I can call my new snippet manager application? The application allows you to save code and URLs to view Inside of the application. Also the application is highly customizable supporting 42 coding Languages and over 42 Themes. Currently its named: "SNIPR". But i would like a Name thats not directly connected to the application and what it does. Maybe you guys have some ideas? Because im not that creative😀😀👌

This is a example of the main ui using the dark theme

I recently accepted my first "real" Dev position. This has been a huge hurdle for me.

So my degree is in graphic design and it's pretty much what I spent the first 2-3 years after university doing. In fact, when I started at the place I am now (I am still working my notice) I was hired as a creative artworker.

I had always had a website I put together with some basic frontend skills, but always assumed the backend stuff was "beyond me". But, given the option here, I asked to be sent on a PHP course. Holy shit I took to it like a duck to water. Over the next few months I got my feet wet building a new website for the company, building out a little intranet, all that good stuff. I went from procedural spaghetti monstrosities to nice, OOP, documented code. It was beautiful. And no one here really have a fuck.

About 6 months ago, I started trying to leave. This was hard. I actually had several interviews for design positions, but always got turned down for some variation of "you're very technical and we think you'd get bored here" and thank god really, because they're right. I could never get a look in for Dev jobs though, because on paper I had no experience, hell my job title was still "Digital Designer" despite over a year of developing here.

But it finally happened. Through someone I used to know I got my foot in the door for a developer position. In the interview they even told me if it was a junior position they'd hire me on the spot - but sadly it wasn't. I had a good time though, a good laugh, and had a lot of fun finally, for the first time in my life, "working" and talking with other developers.

Over the next couple of weeks the agent kept telling me I had done really well and they were just dragging their feet getting things sorted, but I gave up hope a little. So imagine my surprise when I found out they turned the role into a junior one for me!

And so now, I get to go to a job where my job title includes the word "Developer". To some of you that might not mean much, but to me it's a fucking medal I wish I could mount on a plaque on my wall.

I tried LSD yesterday!

Backstory: I have a weird combo of bipolar type 1 and autism. During the day, my brain works inconsistently. Here how my day usually goes:
09:00. I wake up. Uninterested, cold, masculine. No thoughts in the background. No OCD.
12:00. Brain warms up. Thought process begins. Thoughts are short in their length
14:00. Thoughts start to get longer. Stress starts to accumulate. Background thoughts start, now typically 2–3 at a time.
16:00. Twitching begins. Thought chains are now 5–6 concepts long, one following the other. Perception level rises quickly. I start to feel more feminine. It is in this state that I start to spot imperfections and mistakes looking at code or text without reading it. I see it like a painting, and mistakes appear as “visually wrong” parts. This does not depend on formatting.
17:00. OCD becomes more severe. I HAVE to touch all the surfaces around me, evenly, as if my hands were text highlighters, and I had to paint everything evenly, without overlaps or spots that are brighter or darker than the others. Some surface textures become irritating, and feel quite unpleasant to the touch. If I go for a run now, like 3 km or so, I feel somewhat relieved.
18:00. Things are getting serious. Creativity levels through the roof. I speak in long, never-ending, profound sentences. Background and foreground thoughts almost become one. I appear visually drunk and happy, despite never drinking alcohol. Femininity rises even further. Sometimes, when I speak to a small group of people, especially if I go with friends to meet new people, and we go to some bar, new people ask to record my voice or to write down whatever I’m saying. To be honest, this reason alone is a huge boost to how I see yourself.
19:00. OCD is crazy now. Surfaces have soul.
21:00 <— Gotta take my meds and go to sleep here to prevent what comes at 22:00
22:00. All thoughts, both foreground and background, fully became one. Now my brain officially disobeys me and thinks on its own, and I can ride it like a surfer at best. Twitching becomes concerning. I develop a 1000-yard stare. I am officially a female. Physical strength is somewhat enhanced. Pain tolerance lowered significantly.
23:00. Derealization begins. The world around me appears two-dimensional and flat, like a picture. It is hard to get home on foot, even in close (less than one km) proximity. Brain is fully numb. All that thought monstrosity that was building up is just noise now. Zero “flops” available to think about something I want to think about, like how much money I have on me or what time it is.

I go to sleep. I see nightmares. I wake up, and the cycle repeats.

Contrary to a popular opinion, I never take any “brain-boosting” meds like antidepressants, and I think now you can see why. I consume neither alcohol nor caffeine. Neither me, nor my doctors want my brain to explode. I only take lamotrigine that helps to “lower down” mania, and quetiapine, a neuroleptic, that slows down my brain, like a neuroleptic. Both are there to slow down my brain, to kinda “throttle” my brain like a CPU to cool it down.

That said, 100ug of LSD just… brought me my usual 18:00 state, but in the morning?

All that small-dose recreational ordeal? The thing that helps people feel more energetic and creative?

People pay money… for that? To feel the way I feel every evening?

This isn't about dev, but is related as it was one of my first times seeing how tech could be abused or used in a creative way.

When I was a kid doorbell ditching was a thing. Also, flashing was a thing. Dudes would be naked in a trench coat and flash random people. The 80s was a strange time.

Anyway, my brothers liked to pull pranks. So they took apart a flashlight and mounted a switch into some wires to hold in their hand. They wore a trench coat, had all their clothes on, but wired the light part of the flashlight to their belt at about crotch level.

Then they went to houses at night, rang the doorbell. When people opened the door they flung open their trench coat and blinked the flash light a couple of times and ran away. Everybody in the neighborhood thought it was hilarious.

Ever since then I have had an interest in repurposing technology and code for fun things.

Ah, developers, the unsung heroes of caffeine-fueled coding marathons and keyboard clacking symphonies! These mystical beings have a way of turning coffee and pizza into lines of code that somehow make the world go 'round.

Have you ever seen a developer in their natural habitat? They huddle in dimly lit rooms, surrounded by monitors glowing like magic crystals. Their battle cries of "It works on my machine!" echo through the corridors, as they summon the mighty powers of Stack Overflow and Google to conquer bugs and errors.

And let's talk about the coffee addiction – it's like they believe caffeine is the elixir of code immortality. The way they guard their mugs, you'd think it's the Holy Grail. In fact, a developer without coffee is like a computer without RAM – it just doesn't function properly.

But don't let their nerdy exteriors fool you. Deep down, they're dreamers. They dream of a world where every line of code is bug-free and every user is happy. A world where the boss understands what "just one more line of code" really means.

Speaking of bosses, developers have a unique ability to turn simple requests into complex projects. "Can you make a small tweak?" the boss asks innocently. And the developer replies, "Sure, it's just a minor change," while mentally calculating the time it'll take and the potential for scope creep.

Let's not forget their passion for acronyms. TLA (Three-Letter Acronym) is their second language. API, CSS, HTML, PHP, SQL... it's like they're playing a never-ending game of Scrabble with abbreviations.

And documentation? Well, that's their arch-nemesis. It's as if writing clear instructions is harder than debugging quantum mechanics. "The code is self-explanatory," they claim, leaving everyone else scratching their heads.

In the end, developers are a quirky bunch, but we love them for it. Their quirks and peculiarities are what make them the creative, brilliant minds that power our digital world. So here's to developers, the masters of logic and the wizards of the virtual realm!

License code under creative commons. Only sometimes though (I mainly use GPL)

Have someone did creative code?

If [ "$answer" == "yes" ] ; then
share_experience_please
fi

If you've ever tried using Go plugins raise your hand.
If you've ever tried doing plugins in Go, raise your hand.
If you think that the following rant will be interesting, raise your hand.
If you raised your hand, press [Read More]:

This is a tale of pain and sorrow, the sorrow of discovering that what could be a wonderful feature is woefully incomplete, and won't be for a very long time...

Go plugins are a cool feature: dynamically load pre-compiled code, and interact with it in a useful and relatively performant way (e.g. for dynamically extending the capabilities of your program). So far it sounds great, I know right?

Now let me list off some issues (in order of me remembering them):
1. You can't unload them (due to some bs about dlopen), so you need to restart the application...
2. They bundle the stdlib like a regular Go binary, despite the fact that they're meant to be dynamic!
3. #2 wouldn't be so bad if they didn't also require identical versions of all dependencies in both binaries (meaning you'd need to vendor the dependencies, and also hope you are using the right Go version).
4. You need to use -trimpath or everything dies...

All in all, they are broken and no one is rushing to fix it (literally, the Go team said they aren't really supporting it currently...).

So what other options are there for making plugins in Go?

There's the Hashicorp method of using RPC, where you have two separate applications one the plugin, one the plugin server, and they communicate over RPC. I don't like it. Why? Because it feels like a hack, it's not really efficient and it carries a fear of a limitation that I don't like...

Then we come to a somewhat more clever approach: using Lua (or any other scripting language), it's well known, it's what everyone uses (at least in games...). But, it simply is too hard to use, all the Go Lua VMs I could find were simply too hard to set up...

Now we come to the most creative option I've seen yet: WASM. Now you ask "WASM!? But that's a web thing, how are you gonna make that work?" Indeed, my son, it is a web thing, but that doesn't mean I can't use it! Someone made a WASM VM for Go, and the pros are that you can use any WASM supporting language (i.e. any/all of them). Problem inefficient, PITA to use, and also suffers from the same issues that were preventing me from using Lua.

Enter Yaegi, a Go interpreter created by the same guys who made (and named) Traefik. Yes, you heard me right, an INTERPRETER (i.e. like python) so while it's not super performant (and possibly suffering from large inefficiency issues), it's very easy to set up, and it means that my plugins can still be written in Go (yay)! However, don't think this method doesn't have its own issues, there's still the problem of effectively abstracting different types of plugins without requiring too much boilerplate (a hard problem that I'm actively working on, commits coming soon). However, this still feels to be the best option.

As you can see, doing plugins in Go is a very hard problem. In the coming weeks (hopefully), I'm going to (attempt to at least) benchmark all the different options, as well as publish a library that should help make using Yaegi based plugins easier. All of this stuff will go (see what I did there 😉) in a nice blog post that better explains the issues and solutions. But until then I have some coding to do...

Have a good night(/day)!

I know this sounds odd, but I really find algorithms things of delightful beauty.

A creative solution to some very deceptively complex problems.

Sure, some implementations aren't the best, but seeing them after just makes me appreciate the time and effort that must have gone into designing things like Merge Sort, Binary Search, Greedy Algorithms, BST, and Dijkstra's Algorithm.

So! If your code is unoptimal, looks terrible, or is a sheer abomination, take a moment to appreciate the little piece of art you've made before you go and make it better.

I've found a very interesting paper in AI/ML (😱😱 type of papers), but I was not able to find the accompanying code or any implementation. After nearly a month I checked the paper again and found a link to a GitHub repo containing the implementation code (turned out they updated the paper). I was thinking of using this paper in one of my side projects, but the code is licensed under "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License". The question is to what extent this license is applicable? Anyone here has experience in this? thanks

Mornings. Not just the run of the mill “I’m not a morning person” but I legitimately would be more productive if I could work night shift. It’s easier to think at night, and easier to sleep during the day. Not just a night owl, but it’s hard to breathe laying down at night sometimes. Sometimes I randomly can’t sleep. I’ve never had this trouble during the day during the occasions I get to sleep for long periods during the day. The morning is prime sleeping time IMO. Not wanting to wake up is one reason, but the changing weather helps and it just feels right.

I also don’t feel awake til the afternoon usually. Even if I get enough sleep and coffee. Code churns slow in the a.m.

I dream of night time being work time with long, restful naps durning the day. I feel more creative at night, and it’s easier to focus. There’s less thought of “oh it’s a nice day I should do x”

Just sucks that it’s not largely accepted and there’s not enough other night hawks to hang out with on my off days. And my work won’t let me do such a schedule. Everyone is an insufferable morning person.

Early to bed early to rise is a load of shit. We should be allowed to sleep at times it makes us happy.

I really resent people who reduce the occupation to tickets. Our world is just tickets, tickets all the way down.

"well the ticket just says this, but that's vague, so what should I do?"

You either ask for clarification, or you get creative with the blank canvas you were handed.

"well that edge case wasn't called out in the ticket's specs"

this is _why_ we do TDD - to design our code to be able to function as expected for ALL cases

"is there a ticket to refactor that?"

what?! no, it's your job to always leave code better than when you found it (within scope/reason of course)

FFS we are not hired to be code monkeys or glorified typists. There should be joy that comes from getting to be more clever than the average bear and to solve problems and improve things with your code and logic.

shit bums me out.

Does any developer here does design work as well as code. I got pulled into it. was expecting a only dev job, according to the job description" but the creative team start handing me InDesign task and Photoshop task with no experience in design. is that crazy or normal for front end developers?

How do I convince a dev department to take source control, peer code review and unit tests seriously?

I'm a recent software grad with internships that recently started at a smallish company (less than 20 employees but has been around for 10 years, with most senior non-mgmt employee around 6 years). I've been working here for less than a year (approx 5 months) and I love the company - lots of talented and passionate people.

We are a creative industry with a handful of devs and one of the issues I'm seeing is that often devs are working in silos. I'm trying to make suggestions to upper management like encourage more usage of source control, documentation, etc and most of the senior devs are pushing back - saying that they don't feel that it is necessary and due to the fast moving nature of our projects that all this would be a total waste (they were so fast on the idea of not having PR's because it would be "too much of a blocker").

I understand that a large part of this has more to do with shifting the culture in the department and that can be very hard to do, especially since i'm fresh out of school, but I see these devs have so much potential but it seems that they think having these implementations in place would mean more rigid rules and bureaucracy.

I've been speaking to some of my engineering friends and they're pretty much all just telling me that I am shooting myself in the foot if I continue to stay at this company because I'll be behind skill wise, but part of me isn't ready to just give up yet.

looking for some advice

Hi there, First “rant” here, although it’s more of a question.

I have been working on a side project for some time and it has come to the point where I feel it might be prudent to protect my work with a patent or something similar.

The project in question is a multiplayer browser based game. The code is currently open source, but that can always change.

Given this is software people use rather than a service that developers might build off of, is copyright more appropriate than creative commons?

Based in the US if you can't tell and I'm above the age of majority luckily.

Thanks for any advice!

Today I read a comment on devRant about somebody asking what 1337 means. I think most of us know (almost trivial, maybe?), but what is really great is that so many people replied explaining what it means. Some replies were awesome, some were creative, some were just a basic answer to the question.

But none were hateful. ❤️

DevRant is a place for awesome people like you who understand that every one of us doesn't know something every day. That's developer life. That's devRant life too! The other day I told a senior developer about a Haskell project of mine and he asked: 'What is Haskell?' I was impressed, but it taught me a lot.

On devRant I see no troll comments like 'omfg fucking retard, you must be a faggot and live in a dumpster', which are common on the www nowadays and could have been found under a question like 'what is 1337?'. But not here. And this, while I see the occasional swearing in rants, but never at other members.

So thank you for just being normal people among other normal people. We swear at each other's fugly code sometimes, but we are a creative bunch of smart asses that stay classy at it.

👊

Sharing a first look at a prototype Web Components library I am working on for "fun"

TL;DR left side is pivot (grouped) table, right side is declarative code for it (Everything except the custom formatting is done declaratively, but has the option to be imperative as well).

====

TL;DR (Too long, did read):

I'm challenging myself to be creative with the cool new things that browsers offer us. Lani so far has a focus on extreme extensibility, abstraction from dependencies, and optional declarative style.

It's also going to be a micro CSS framework, but that's taking the back-seat.

I wanted to highlight my design here with this table, and the code that is written to produce this result.

First, you can see that the <lani-table> element is reading template, data, and layout information from its child elements. Besides the custom highlighting code (Yellow background in the "Tags" column, and green gradient in the "Score" column), everything can be done without opening even a single script tag.

The <lani-data-source> element is rather special. It's an abstraction of any data source, and you, as a developer can add custom data sources and hook up the handlers to your whim (the element itself uses the "type" attribute to choose a handler. In this case, the handler is "download" which simply sends a fetch request to the server once and downloads the result to memory).

Templates are stored in an html file, not string literals (Which I think really fucks the code) and loaded async, then cached into an object (so that the network tab doesn't get crowded, even if we can count on the HTTP cache). This also has the benefit of allowing me to parse the HTML templates once and then caching the parsed result in memory, so templates are never re-parsed from string no matter how many custom elements are created.

Everything is "compiled" into a single, minified .js file that you include on your page.

I know it's nothing extraordinary, but for something that doesn't need to be compiled, transpiled, packaged, shipped, and kissed goodnight, I think it's a really nice design and I hope to continue work on it and improve it over time

So I found a variable in some leagcy code with the name "abcdefghij".

I mean wtf, I could've understood qwerty or something, but, abcdefghij, real creative...😤

I have just slept for a minimum of 5 hours. It is 7:47 PM atm.
Why?
We have had a damn stressful day today.
We have had a programming test, but it really was rather an exam.
Normally, you get 30 minutes for a test and 45 minutes for an exam.

In this "test" we have had to explain what 'extends' does and name a few advantages of why one should use it.
Check.
Read 3 separate texts and write the program code on paper. It was about 1 super class and 1 sub class with a test class in Java.
Check.
Task 3: Create the UML diagram of the code from above. *internally: From above? He probably means my code since there is no other code there. *Checks time*. I have about 3 minutes left. Fuck my life.*
Draws the boxes. Put the class names in each of them. A private attribute for the super class.
Teacher: Last minute!
Draw the arrow starting starting from the sub class to the super class.
Put my name on each written paper. And mentally done for the day. Couldn't finish the last task. Task 3.
During this "test", I heard the frustrations of my classmates. Seemed like everyone was pretty much pissed.
After a short discussion with the teacher who also happens to be the physics professor of a university nearby.
[If you are reading this, I hope that something bad happens to you]
The next course was about computer systems. Remember my recent rant about DNS, dhcp, ftp, web server and samba on ubuntu?
We have had the task to do the screenshots of the consoles where you proof that you have dhcp activated on win7 machine etc. Seemed ok to me. I would have been done in 10 minutes, if I would be doing this relaxed. Now the teacher tells us to change the domain names to <surnameOfEachStudent>.edu.
I was like: That's fine.
Create a new user for the samba server. Read and write directories. Change the config.
Me: That should be easy.
Create new DNS entries in the configs.
Change the IPv6 address area to 192.168.x.100-200/24 only for the dhcp server.
Change the web server's default page. Write your own text into it.
You will have 1 hour and 30 minutes of time for it.
Dumbo -ANGRY-CLIENT-: Aye. Let us first start screenshotting the default page. Oh, it says that we should access it with the domain name. I don't have that much time. Let us be creative and fake it, legally.
Changes the title element so that it looks like it has been accessed via domain name. Deletes the url and writes the domain name without pressing Enter. Screenshot. Done. Ok, let us move to the next target.
Dhcp: Change lease time. Change IP address area. Subnet mask. Router. DNS. Broadcast. Optional domain name. Save.
Switches to win7.
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
Holy shit it does not work!
After changing the configs on ubuntu for a legit 30 minutes: Maybe I should change the ip of the ubuntu virtual machine itself. *me asking my old self: why did not you do that in the first place, ass hole?!*
Same previous commands on win7 console. Does not work. Hmmm...
Where could be the problem?
Check the IP of the ubuntu server once again. Fml. Ubuntu did not save when I clicked on the save button the first time I have changed it. Click on save button 10 times to make sure it really is saved now lol.
Same old procedure on win7.
Alright. Dhcp works. Screenshot.
Checks time. 40 minutes left.
DNS:It is your turn. Checks bind9 configs. sudo nano db.reverse.edu.
sudo nano db.<mysurname>.edu.
Alright. All set. It should work now.
Ping win7 from ubuntu and vice versa. Works. Ping domain name on windows 7 vm. Does not work.
Oh, I forgot to restart the bind9 server on ubuntu.
sudo service bind stop
" " " start
Check DNS server IP on win7. It looks fine.
It still doesn't work. Fuck it. I have only 20 minutes left. Samba. Let us do this!
10 minutes in. No result. I don't remember why. I already forgot why I have done for it. It was a very stressful day.
Let us try DNS again.
Oh shit. I forgot the resolver!
sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
The previous edits are gone. Dumb me. It says it in the comments. Why did not I care about it. Fuck it.6 minutes left. Open a yt video real quick. Changes the config file. Saves it. Restarts DNS and dhcp. Closes the terminal and opens a new one. The changes do not affect them until you reopen them. That's why.
Change to win7.
Ping works. How about nsloopup.
Does not work.
Teacher: 2 minutes left!
Fuck it.
Saves the word document with the images in it. Export as pdf. Tries to access the directories of the school samba server. Does not work. It was not my fault tho. Our school server is in general very slow. It feels like they are not maintained and left alone like this in the dust from the 90s.
Friend gets the permission to put his document on a USB and give the USB to the teacher.
Sneaky me: Hey xyz, can you give me your USB real quick?
Him: sure.
Gets bombed with "do you want to format the USB?" pop-ups 10 times. Fml. Skips in a fast way.
Transfers the pdf. Plug it out. Give it back.
After this we have had to give a presentation in politics. I am done.

OH MY GOD REFACTORING FEELS SO AWESOME

I just finished spent 4 weeks of crazy busy summer camps and I get back to a project I was working on.

Refactoring.gif

It feels so awesome to just effortlessly move stuff into methods and have it work pretty much first time.

To be fair I’m the only one working on this right now so I pretty much already knew the code but still holy cow it’s so much simpler now.

Moral of the story: Appreciate your time off and use it to unwind and let your mind wander to more creative heights before taking advantage of it after and only after you get back to the project

1. Solving problems gives me orgasms
2. Code allows me to be extremely creative
3. I love logic (and maths too, but to a lesser degree)

Theorem 2.71 All software is shit.

Corollary 3.14 So stop the braindead OS wars. All OS are shit, too.

Proof. The only software that can stay beautiful and clean is software that is never used. Maybe if you are Dijkstra or live in a Haskellian world, you might come away with it, but for the rest of us our artifacts have to interact with other artifacts or are build upon strange historically grown systems, they have to deal with users who will put it to creative use.. and in the process we also actually might have to alter some state.
Or put another way: code is a social construct. Like science are the beliefs and superstitions grown by a scientific community, software is the montainous dunghill produced by our laborious efforts to make shit even work. Of course this only piles the stack higher and higher until you can already smell it from the moon.

TL;DR: Computers and I go way back, but I don't know how I ended up as a dev - and am still not certain that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Rewind to the early 80's. My friends at the time got the Comodore 64 one after the other. I never got one. Heck, we didn't even have a color TV back then. Only a 12/14" small B&W TV. It's easy to conclude that I spent a lot of time at my friends'.

Back then it mostly was about the games. And, living in the rural countryside, the only way to aquire games was to pirate them. Pirating was big. Cassette tape swapping and floppy disk swapping was a big deal, and gamers contacted eachother via classifieds sections in newspapers and magazines. It was crazy.

Anyways. The thing about pirated games back then is that they often got a cracktro, trainer, intro or whatever you want to call them - made by the people who pirated the game. And I found them awesome. Sinus scrollers, 3D text, cool SID-tunes and whatnot. I was hooked.

My best friend and I eventually got tired of just gaming. We found Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit, which was an easy point-and-click way to create our first little game. We looked into BASIC a bit. And we found a book at the library about C64 programming. It contained source code to create your own assembler, so we started on that. I never completed it, but my friend did.

Fast forward through some epic failure using an Amstrad CPC, an old 486 and hello mid 90's. My first Pentium, my first modem and hello Internet! I instantly fell in love with the Internet and the web. I was still in school, and had planned to enter the creative advertising business. Little did I know about the impact the web would have on the world.

I coded web pages for fun for some years. My first job was as a multimedia designer, and I eventually had to learn Lingo (Macromedia Director, anyone?) And Actionscript.

Now I haven't touched Flash for about 7 years. My experience has evolved back to pure web development. I'm not sure if that's where I will be in the future. I've learned that I certainly don't know how to do everything I want to do - but I have aquired the mindset to identify the tasks and find solutions to the problem.

I never had any affiliation with the pirate scene or the demo scene. But I still get a little tingling whenever I see one of those sinus scrollers.

Making sure you can't be fired 101:

The docs for your code should closely resemble that creative writing assignment you turned in a week late in college.

This is a rant about the passion of programming and building in the business world (AKA corporate/startup world)

I speak for myself and I believe many programmers out there who set out on their journey into the world of programming by a certain interest kindled some time when they first wrote their first line of code. We innocently eager, and dream of working for large fancy companies and start making money while doing the thing we love doing the most.

And then... reality hits. We find that most companies are basically just the same thing. Our supposedly creative and mind-challenging passion is now turned into mundane boring repetitive tasks and dealing with all kinds of bazaar demands and requirements. You suddenly go from wanting to change the world to "please move this to left by 10 px". And from experience that drives people to the extent of hating their jobs, and hating the very thing they were once so very infatuated with.

One narrative I see being pushed down the throats of developers (especially fresh young eager developers with no experience) mostly by business people/owners is "WORK FOR PASSION!". I personally heard one CEO say things like "It's not just about a salary at the end of the month. IT IS ABOUT A MISSION. IT IS ABOUT A VISION"...bla...bla...bla. Or "We don't work for money we work for passion". Yeah good luck keeping your business afloat on passion.

What irritates me the most about this, is that it is working. People today are convinced that doing shit jobs for these people are all about passion. But no one wants to stop for a second and think that maybe if people are passionate about something, even if that thing is in the field in which they work, they're not passionate about working for someone else doing something they hate? If I am really working for "passion" why don't I just quit and go work on something that I am ACTUALLY passionate about? Something that brings me joy not dread? It's a simple question but it's baffling to me why no one thinks about it. To me personally, jobs are just that; jobs. It's something to make a living and that's it. I don't give a fuck if you think you're building the next "innovative", "disruptive", "shitluptive" thing :D. Unfortunately that is viewed as "negative limited mentality".

I am quite passionate about programming and making things, but I am not so passionate about building your stupid app/website with a glue code everywhere!

My mom was a media designer and as a kid I liked watching her doing stuff with CorelDRAW. And as soon as she played Sims in the evenings I really wanted to learn how to make a window and stuff in it happen.

So I started learning C, because my stepdad had a book laying around. (He did not know how to code by the way, now I'm asking myself why we even had this book)
But never got further than a few console applictions asking for input, messing with it and printing something.
Later I got into HTML/CSS/JavaScript (in that order over a course of a good 3 years or so) because I wanted to do stuff people can see and easily reach (an exe wasn't the nicest way of showing people something imo)

And that's when I totally fell in love with JS and it never stopped from then.:D

I did a few excurses to C++, Java, VB, C#, such kinda stuff and learned many many things about how stuff actually works. C being my very first language immensely helped with that.

I'm also trying some game development, as this was one of the main reasons I started coding, but I'm not creative enough and do it less and less.

Nowadays I do HTML, CSS, JS, TS and PHP for a living and I love it.:D

I always procrastinate a lot, but often it's more like taking a creative break so in fact it can make me more productive once I get back to my desk and start "doing actual work" typing code into my keyboard again.

Procrastination becomes unproductive when I have reasons not to do the work, like it's an rude customer, uncooperative team leader, a useless requirement or involves inappropriate or terrible tech stack and legacy code.

Sometimes all of that comes together, but I found even in that situation when procrastinating on devRant and swearing every other minute, I seemed to be above average compared to my team mates who probably felt the same.

Most of us quit the company at some point of that ongoing project.

Change is truly a difficult thing. I've been trying to introduce my group colleagues to GitHub, I even gave them some tutorials that I used. I'm not saying I know everything about Git or GitHub but the pros of using it or any VCS outweigh using Google drive, zipping and email each other the code and many other creative ways of sharing work. Let's just say two months have passed there haven’t been any change ☹

!rant

random question.

Let's say you are making solo project. What is your approach?

Maybe you start writing some classes or generally some code, independantly, than plug things together

Or maybe you write recursively, so like "okay, im writing this method, and now I need other method to complete this one, so I write the other one"

Or maybe you try to make frontend first and do many atomic things, one by one "filling out" frontend? Or maybe frontend is last thing you do?

Just curious, probably as many devs, that many approaches, but Im just curious what kind of creative anwsers will pop out here ;)

ChatGPT is blocked in my country, I had to get creative to finally create an account but holy shit it was worth the effort. That thing is freaking fast and I am honestly a bit worried about how these technologies will evolve in the future. Well time to make my boy GPT write me some code 🤪

When I first got started in web development I had to think really hard to write code to solve real world problems. It was rewarding and creative process. Nowadays most of my time is spent just trying to get bloated frameworks and plugins to play nice with one another! I hope the pendulum swings back at some point.

Struggling to write my Engineering Thesis code. Not because I'm afraid of tech, but because I have no idea what it should do.
I'm testing mobile apps performance, but getting the right idea is pain in the ass. :(
Never been too creative, but always have been over ambitious and lazy.
So the deadline is coming slowly, I have specified my 'tests' (authorization, API connection, heavy calculations, graphics, database handling) and still don't know what my app should do.

And ideas or suggestions what else is to test?

Guys, I want to confess something.
I redundant code.
Actually I don't want to, but it's to match the timeline.
I know I'm a bad programmer. I can't create creative UIs. :(

Rules of lazyness

1) legacy code is a creative way of coding
2) when something doesnt appear on the first google page, it doesnt exist
3) Nout you are the Problem, ur boss is

I've been working on this personal project for awhile, I showed some screenshots, then I showed some updates (which I promptly deleted cause it was plain ugly). A website aimed at the "not-so-seasoned" devs, and I've been at a creative plateau for about 3 days now. I try to do some front-end, when I like what I see, I take care of the corresponding server-side logic, but for some reason, I'm having "Developer's block" (is that even a thing?).
Every second that goes by I try to do something else none code related, but I can't shake thinking about the project, but once I switch back to it, fuckin crickets.

I'm not asking a question this time (for once lol), just a mini dev's block rant.

Working on maintenance suck, but that's why most of the software developers do. Stable job and higher pay. Mundane tasks like fix bugs or modify small part of the software.

Working on an idea is interesting in startup. You don't see shit code and code from the ground up. The work is creative. But the pay is low because the company is not profitable.

Which one is your choice?

What are some creative ways you’ve seen of hiding an author’s name in code?

which type are you ??

**Manager:** Hey, we've got a little hiccup in the production environment. I know it's Friday evening and you're probably daydreaming about pizza, but could you give it a peek?

**Type 1:** Man, this is like finding a needle in a haystack while wearing sunglasses at night. Might take me a few hours... or days. But hey, wish me luck and have an epic weekend!

**Type 2:** Eureka! Found the gremlin. It looks like XYZ person tried to be a bit too creative on commit number 2234324. Maybe they had too much caffeine? Anyway, could you have a chat with them? And oh, may your weekend be as smooth as a fresh jar of peanut butter.

**Type 3:** Detective mode activated! Found the sneaky bug. It was XYZ person's "masterpiece" in commit number 2234324. But fear not! I've put on my superhero cape and fixed it in commit number 345453345.

**Type 4:** This issue again? It's like a recurring bad dream about forgetting your pants! I've revamped the whole thing so we don't have to relive this nightmare. If someone tries to pull this off again, our CI/CD will roast them like a marshmallow over a campfire.

**Type 5:** Ta-da! Fixed the glitch, jazzed up the design, and sprinkled in some extra logging magic. Now, troubleshooting will be as easy as pie. Speaking of which, I've got time for a coffee and maybe a slice of pie before heading out. Cheers!
Type 6 **Gloomy**: Oh, the digital clouds have gathered again. This issue is like a never-ending rain on a Monday morning. I've peered into the abyss of our code, and it's... well, it's deep and dark. I'll need some time, a flashlight, and maybe a comforting blanket. If you don't hear from me in a few hours, send in a search party with some hot cocoa.

We have an internal nuget package that wraps up the IConfiguration+ConfigurationBuilder for various .net core console/service apps (TL;DR, because people got creative), and it has a dictionary property for the common sections we use. AppSettings (for backward compatibility), ConnectionStrings, and ServiceEndpoints. If the need arises, I can add methods to return any type of object (no one has requested yet, we try to keep configs dead simple)

ex. var myDatabaseConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyDatabase"];

Code review for someone who updated a .net framework app to .net core and they wrote their own IConfiguration wrapper for accessing the appsettings.json file, so I pointed out that we already had a library for that.
In the reply, he said he couldn't use our library because it had an 'AppSettings' property and since his appsettings.json file didn't have that section, he didn't want to cause a runtime exception.

OK, WTF...I even sent him a link to the documentation (includes explaining the backward compatibility part)...why the frack would you think because a property exists and you don't use it, that would cause some kind of runtime exception?
We have dozens of .net framework apps migrated to .net core with zero code changes and no one ever brought this up as a concern (because, why would they?)

Deep breath...ahhh...I respond that not having an AppSettings section in the appsettings.json file won't cause an exception, if you don't have one, don't need it, you don't have to use it.

He went ahead merged+committed his code anyway with his own IConfiguration+ConfigurationBuilder plumbing.

Code addiction is real kids...it's real.

Man people posting video of them copying code from code pen and say it’s their most creative login form so far

Like you can say today I’m gonna show you some code I found, but saying it’s your own code is just pure dumb, you are not that creative, you are dog shit