Its that time of the morning again where I get nothing done and moan about the past ... thats right its practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!

Today I'd like to tell you the story of "i". Interesting about "I" is that he was actually a colleague of yesterdays nominee "G" (and was present at the "java interface" video call, and agreed with G!): https://devrant.com/rants/1152317/...

"I" was the spearhead of a project to end all projects in that company. It was suppose to be a cross-platform thing but ended up only working for iOS. It was actually quite similar to this: https://jasonette.com/ (so similar i'm convinced G / I were part of this but I can't find their github ID's in it).

To briefly explain the above + what they built ... this is the worst piece of shit you can imagine ... and thats a pretty strong statement looking back at the rest of this series so far!

"I" thought this would solve all of our problems of having to build similar-ish apps for multiple customers by letting us re-use more code / UI across apps. His main solution, was every developers favourite part of writing code. I mean how often do you sit back and say:

"God damn I wish more of this development revolved around passing strings back and forth. Screw autocomplete, enums and typed classes / variables, I want more code / variables inside strings in this library!"

Yes thats right, the main part of this bullshittery was putting your entire app, into JSON, into a string and downloading it over http ... what could possibly go wrong!

Some of my issues were:

- Everything was a string, meaning we had no autocomplete. Every type and property had to be remembered and spelled perfectly.
- Everything was a string so we had no way to cmd + click / ctrl + click something to see somethings definition.
- Everything was a string so any business logic methods had to be remembered, all possible overloaded versions, no hints at param types no nothing.
- There was no specific tooling for any of this, it was literally open up xcode, create a json file and start writing strings.
- We couldn't use any of the native UI builders ... cause strings!
- We couldn't use any of the native UI layout constructs and we had to use these god awful custom layout managers, with a weird CSS feel to them.

What angered me a lot was their insistence that "You can download a new app over http and it will update instantly" ... except you can't because you can't download new business logic only UI. So its a new app, but must do 100% exactly the same thing as before.

His other achievements include:

- Deciding he didn't like apple's viewController and navigationBar classes and built his own, which was great when iOS 7 was released (changed the UI to allow drawing under the status bar) and we had no access to any of apples new code or methods, meaning everything had to be re-built from scratch.

- On my first week, my manager noticed he fucked up the login error handling on the app I was taking over. He noticed this as I was about to leave for the evening. I stayed so we could call him (he was in an earlier timezone). Rather than deal with his fucked up, he convinced the manager it would be a "great learning experience" for me to do it ... and stay in late ... while he goes home early.

- He once argued with me in front of the CEO, that his frankenstein cross-platform stuff was the right choice and that my way of using apples storyboards (and well thought out code) wasn't appropriate. So I challenged him to prove it, we got 2 clients who needed similar apps, we each did it our own way. He went 8 man weeks over, I came in 2 days under and his got slated in the app store for poor performance / issues. #result.

But rather than let it die he practically sucked off the CEO to let him improve the cross platform tooling instead.

... in that office you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a retard.

Having had to spend a lot more time working with him and more closely than most of the other nominees, at a minimum "I" is on the top of my list for needing a good punch in the face. Not for being an idiot (which he is), not for ruining so much (which he did), but for just being such an arrogant bastard about it all, despite constant failure.

Will "I" make it to most incompetent? Theres some pretty stiff competition so far

Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!

Today is the 2nd anniversary of devRant unofficial UWP! 😁

Brief summary of the last year:
- A total of 36 updates have been released this year, becoming now 60 in total;
- v2 passed through the closed beta phase with the help of 15 devRanters;
- v2 public beta has been released for everyone;
- The app received (beta) support for Xbox One and Microsoft Hub (becoming available for all the UWP devices: PC, Mobile, HoloLens, Surface Hub, Xbox One);
- The official Issue Tracker on GitHub has been created;
- 35 out of 48 issues/feature requests on the Issue Tracker have been solved;
- The v2 got featured by the official Microsoft Design twitter account;
- The app reached more than 2,000 acquisitions from the Microsoft Store (about 300 active users everyday with an average 20 minutes daily session, ~2.5 sessions per day), +100% since last year;
- Still maintains a solid 4.8 out of 5 average rating on the Microsoft Store (4.9 and even 5.0 in some countries, based on ~300 reviews);
- Softpedia editor has reviewed it 4.5 out of 5, becoming the best devRant client on that website, followed by devRantron (with a solid 4 out of 5);
- Has been featured as "App of the Day" by "myAppFree";

If you're not yet part of the UWP ranters community, download the app now:
https://microsoft.com/store/apps/...

Link to the rant for the 1st anniversary with the full story about this app:
https://devrant.com/rants/599066

//
// devRant unofficial UWP update (v2.0.0-beta)
//

After several concepts, about 11 months of development (keep in mind that I released 20 updates for v1 in the meantime, so it wasn't a continous 11 months long development process) and a short closed beta phase, v2 is now available for everyone (as public beta)! :)

I tried to improve the app in every aspect, from finally responsive and good looking UI on Desktop version to backend performance improvements, which means that I almost coded it from scratch.
There are also of course a few new features (like "go to bottom" in rants), and more to come.

It's a very huge update, and unfortunately to move forward, improve the UI (add Fluent Design) and make it at the same level of new UWP apps, I was forced to drop the supported for these old Windows 10 builds:
- Threshold 1 (10240)
- Threshold 2 (10586)

Too many incompatiblity issues with the new UI, and for 1 person with a lot of other commitments outside this project (made for free, just for passion), it's impossible to work at 3 parallel versions of the same app.
I already done something like that during these 11 months (every single of the 20 updates for v1 needed to be implemented a second time for v2).

During the closed beta tests, thanks to the awesome testers who helped me way too much than I ever wished, I found out that there are already incompatiblity issues with Anniversary Update, which means that I will support two versions:
1) One for Creators Update and newer builds.
2) One for Anniversary Update (same features, but missing Fluent Design since it doesn't work on that OS version, and almost completly rewritten XAML styles).

For this reason v2 public beta is out now for Creators Update (and newer) as regular update, and will be out in a near future (can't say when) also for the Anniversary Update.
The users with older OS versions (problem which on PC could be solved in 1-2 days, just download updates) can download only the v1.5.9 (which probably won't be supported with new updates anymore, except for particular critcal bug fixes).

So if you have Windows 10 on PC and want to use v2 today, just be sure you have Creators Update or Fall Creators Update.
If you have Windows 10 PC with Anniversary Update, update it, or if you don't want to do that, wait a few weeks/months for the update with support for your build.
If you have an older version on PC, update it, or enjoy v1.5.9.
If you have Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary Update, update it (if it's possible for your device), or just wait a few weeks/months for the update with support for your build.
If you have Windows 10 Mobile, and because of Microsoft stupid policy, you can't update to Anniversary Update, enjoy v1.5.9, or try the "unofficial" method (registry hack) to update to a newer build.

I hope it's enough clear why not everyone can receive the update today, or at all. :P

Now I would like to thank a few people who made this possible.
As always, @dfox who is always available for help me with API implementations.
@thmnmlist, who helped me a lot during this period with really great UI suggestions (just check out his twitter, it's a really good person, friend, designer and artist: https://twitter.com/thmnmlist).
And of course everyone of the closed beta testers, that reported bugs and precious suggestions (some of them already implemented, others will arrive soon).

The order is random:
@Raamakrishnan
@Telescuffle
@Qaldim
@thmnmlist
@nikola1402
@aayusharyan
@cozyplanes
@Vivaed
@Byte
@RTRMS
@tylerleonhardt
@Seshpengiun
@MEGADROID
@nottoobright

Changelog of v2.0.0-beta:
- New UI with Fluent Design and huge improvements for Desktop;
- Added native support for Fall Creators Update (Build 16299);
- Changed minimum supported version to Creators Update (Build 15063), support for Anniversary Update (Build 14393) will arrive soon;
- Added mouse support for Pull-To-Refresh;
- Added ability to change your username and email;
- Added ability to filter (by 'Day', 'Week', 'Month' and 'All') the top Rants;
- Added ability to open rant links in-app;
- Added ability to zoom GIFs (just tap on them in the Rant View);
- Added 'go to bottom' button in the Rant View (if more than 3 comments);
- Added new theme ('Total Black');
- ...complete changelog in-app and on my website (can't post it here because of the 5000 characters limit)...

What will arrive in future updates:
- 'Active Discussions' screen so you can easily find rants that have recent comments/discussions;
- Support for 'Collabs';
- Push Notifications (it was postponed and announced too many times...);
- More themes and themes options;
- and more...

If you still didn't download devRant unofficial UWP, do it now: https://microsoft.com/store/apps/...
If you find some bugs or you have feature suggestion, post it on the Issue Tracker on GitHub (thanks in advance for your help!): https://github.com/JakubSteplowski/...

I hope you will enjoy it! ;)

Hey Guys :)

I'm new to devRant and I already read a lot of interesting stories and jokes and now I would like to post the first thing myself. :D

I would like to present you my new Android app "WhatsBirthday", which I made in order to solve a big problem of mine, friends (and probably the whole world xD). I have (as a Google User) all my contacts (with their birthdays) in the cloud and from there on my calendar. Sadly the Google calendar doesn't allow notifications for the contacts birthdays (I mean whyyy?!). And even if I take a look at my calendar, I always have to write these annoying birthday WhatsApp message to the people ... and these both were the problems I wanted to solve with my app.
So if you join the app, it will start a service (an Alarm / Alarmmanager for the professionals) which will take a look at the contacts every day at 6 am (can be set in the app). For each contact whose birthday is today, the application will send a push notification which if clicked will directly open the contacts WhatsApp chat and prepare a standard message with the name filled in, which could (in theory) directly send. For sure the app won't sends any messages by itself, but it gives you a template you can start working with.
And for sure, you can edit the template in the app & specify the messages for family and friends, which you can choose to use with the notification buttons.

So yeah, that's is and I hope I've aroused your interest ;) if you would like to download it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...

I would be super happy if you could give me some feedback, it's one of my first apps and I would definitely like to improve it! Tanks in previous! :D

And I would like to say sorry for my bad English skills, I'm a German student :O if the translations in the app are not good, please tell me! ;)

As of my previous posts, I wanted to share with you my latest app.

It allows to read feeds from wordpress websites without having to deal with banners, ads, weird fonts and so on.

It's ugly as fuck as it still uses the standard ionic/angular style, but it works, and that's what matters.

Of course it's just for Android, as I really don't want to pay for an app store developer account.

Here the link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...

Any suggestion or comment is really appreciated and I thank you in advance for any download, rating, usage or whatever feedback.
Thank you very much.