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Search - "drop the ball"
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To those that think they can't make it.
To those that are put down by those that don't understand you.
And to those that have never had a dream come true.
Not a rant, but the story of how I got into programming
I've always been into tech/electronics. I remember being told once that when I was 3, I used to take plug sockets to pieces. When I was 7, I built a computer with my dad.
There isn't a thing in my room that hasn't been dismantled and put back together again. Except for the things that weren't put back together again ;)
When I was 15, I got a phone for Christmas. It was a pretty crappy phone, the LG P350 (optimus ME). But I loved it all the same.
However I knew it could do a lot more. It ran a bloated, slow version of Android 2.2.
So I went searching, how can I make it faster, how to make it do more. And I found a huge community around Android ROMs. Obviously the first thing I did was flashed this ROM. Sure, there were bugs, but I was instantly in love with it. My phone was freed.
From there I went on to exploring what else can be done.
I wanted to learn how to script, so over the weekend I wrote a 1000 line batch (Windows cmd) script that would root the phone and flash a recovery environment onto it. Pretty basic. Lots of switch statements, but I was proud of it. I'd achieved something. It wasn't new to the world, but it was my first experience at programming.
But it wasn't enough, I needed more.
So I set out to actually building the roms. I installed Linux. I wanted to learn how to utilise Linux better, so I rewrote my script in bash.
By this time, I'd joined a team for developing on similar spec'd phones. Without the funds to by new devices, we began working on more radical projects.
Between us, we ported newer kernels to our devices. We rebased much of the chipset drivers onto newer equivalents to add new features.
And then..
Well, it was exam season. I was suffering from personal issues (which I will not detail), and that, with the work on Android, I ended up failing the exams.
I still passed, but not to the level I expected.
So I gave up on school, and went head first into a new kind of development. "continue doing what you love. You'll make it" is what I told myself.
I found python by contributing to an IRC bot. I learnt it by reading the codebase. Anything I didn't understand, I researched. Anything I wanted to do, google was there to help me through it.
Then it was exam season again. Even though I'd given up on school, I was still going. It was easier to stay in than do anything about it.
A few weeks before the exams, I had a panic attack. I was behind on coursework, and I knew I would do poorly on exams.
So I dropped out.
I was disappointed, my family was disappointed.
So I did the only thing I felt I could do. I set out to get a job as a developer.
At this stage, I'd not done anything special. So I started aiming bigger. Contributing to projects maintained by Sony and Google, learning from them. Building my own projects to assist with my old Android friends.
I managed to land a contract, however due to the stresses at home, I had to drop it after a month.
Everything was going well, I felt ready to get a full time job as a developer, after 2 years of experience in the community.
Then I had to wake up.
Unfortunately, my advisors (I was a job seeker at the time) didn't understand the potential of learning to be a developer. With them, it's "university for a skilled job".
They see the word "computer" on a CV, they instantly say "tech support".
I played ball, I did what I could for them. But they'd always put me down, saying I wasn't good enough, that I'd never get a job.
I hated them. I'd row with them every other day.
By God, I would prove them wrong.
And then I found them. Or, to be more precise, they found me. A startup in London got in contact with me. They seemed like decent people. I spoke with their developers, and they knew their stuff, these were people that I can learn from.
I travelled 4 hours to go for an interview, then 4 hours back.
When I got the email saying they'd move me to London, I was over the moon.
I did exactly what everyone was telling me I couldn't do.
1.5 years later, I'm still working with them. We all respect each other, and we all learn from each other.
I'm ever grateful to them for taking a shot with me. I had no professional experience, and I was by no means the most skilled individual they interviewed.
Many people have a dream. I won't lie, I once dreamed of working at Google. But after the journey I've been through, I wouldn't have where I am now any other way. Though, in time, I wish to share this dream with another.
I hope that all of you reach your dreams too.
Sorry for the long post. The details are brief, but there are only 5k characters ;)23 -
I'm fixing a security exploit, and it's a goddamn mountain of fuckups.
First, some idiot (read: the legendary dev himself) decided to use a gem to do some basic fucking searching instead of writing a simple fucking query.
Second, security ... didn't just drop the ball, they shit on it and flushed it down the toilet. The gem in question allows users to search by FUCKING EVERYTHING on EVERY FUCKING TABLE IN THE DB using really nice tools, actually, that let you do fancy things like traverse all the internal associations to find the users table, then list all users whose password reset hashes begin with "a" then "ab" then "abc" ... Want to steal an account? Hell, want to automate stealing all accounts? Only takes a few hundred requests apiece! Oooh, there's CC data, too, and its encryption keys!
Third, the gem does actually allow whitelisting associations, methods, etc. but ... well, the documentation actually recommends against it for whatever fucking reason, and that whitelisting is about as fine-grained as a club. You wanna restrict it to accessing the "name" column, but it needs to access both the "site" and "user" tables? Cool, users can now access site.name AND user.name... which is PII and totally leads to hefty fines. Thanks!
Fourth. If the gem can't access something thanks to the whitelist, it doesn't catch the exception and give you a useful error message or anything, no way. It just throws NoMethodErrors because fuck you. Good luck figuring out what they mean, especially if you have no idea you're even using the fucking thing.
Fifth. Thanks to the follower mentality prevalent in this hellhole, this shit is now used in a lot of places (and all indirectly!) so there's no searching for uses. Once I banhammer everything... well, loads of shit is going to break, and I won't have a fucking clue where because very few of these brainless sheep write decent test coverage (or even fucking write view tests), so I'll be doing tons of manual fucking testing. Oh, and I only have a week to finish everything, because fucking of course.
So, in summary. The stupid and lazy (and legendary!) dev fucked up. The stupid gem's author fucked up, and kept fucking up. The stupid devs followed the first fuckup's lead and repeated his fuck up, and fucked up on their own some more. It's fuckups all the fucking way down.rant security exploit root swears a lot actually root swears oh my stupid fucking people what the fuck fucking stupid fucking people20 -
Today is sprint demo day. As usual I'm only half paying attention since being a Platform Engineer, my work is always technically being "demoed" (shit's running ain't it? There you go, enjoy the EC2 instances.)
One team presents a new thing they built. I'm still half paying attention, half playing Rocket League on another monitor.
Then someone says
"We're storing in prod-db-3"
They have my curiosity.
"Storing x amount of data at y rate"
They now have my attention. I speak up "Do you have a plan to drop data after a certain period of time?"
They don't. I reply "Okay, then your new feature only has about 2 months to live before you exhaust the disk on prod-db-3 and we need to add more storage"
I am asked if we can add more storage preemptively.
"Sure, I say." I then direct my attention to the VP "{VP} I'll make the change request to approve the spend for additional volume on prod-db-3"
VP immediately balks and asks why this wasn't considered before. I calmly reply "I'm not sure. This is the first time I'm learning of this new feature even coming to life. Had anyone consulted with the Platform team we'd have made sure the storage availability was there."
VP asks product guy what happened.
"We didn't think we'd need platform resources for this so we never reached out for anything".
I calmly mute myself, turn my camera back off and go back to Rocket League as the VP goes off about planning and collaboration.
"CT we'll reach out to you next week about getting this all done"
*unmute, camera stays off* "Sounds good" *clears ball*4 -
Hey Root, remember that super high-priority ticket that we ignored for five months before demanding you rewrite it a specific way in one day?
Yeah, the new approach we made you use broke the expected usecases, and now the page is completely useless to the support team and they're freaking out. Drop everything you're doing and go fix it! Code-complete for this release is tonight! -- This right after "impacting our business flow" while being collapsed on the fucking floor.
Jesus FUCKING christ, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
If I dropped the ball on a high-priority ticket for two weeks, I'd get fired, let alone for five fucking months.
If I was a manager and demanded a one-day rewrite I can only imagine the amount of chewing out I'd receive, especially on something high-priority.
And let's not forget product ownership: imagine if I screwed up feature planning for someone so badly I made them break a support tool in production. I'd never hear the end of it.
Fucking double standards.
And while I'm at it. Some of the code I've seen in this codebase is awful. Uncommented spaghetti, or an unreadable mess with single-letter variables, super-tightly coupled modules so updates are nearly impossible, typos in freaking constants added across sixty+ files, obviously-incorrect comments, ... . I'll have to start posting snippets to show them off. But could I get away with any of it? ha. Hell no. My code must be absolutely perfect. I hear about any and every flaw, doesn't matter how minor, and nothing can go out until everything is just so.
Hell, I even hear about flaws in other peoples' code during my code reviews. Why? Because I should have fixed it, that's why. But if I do, I get yelled at for "muddying the waters."
Just. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
It's like playing a shell game where no matter which shell I pick (or point to their goddamn sleeve where they're clearly hiding it), I get insulted for being so consistently useless, and god damn, how can I never find the fucking pea or follow the damned rules? I'm so terrible and this is why "nobody trusts me." Fuck you.
I'll tell you why I can't find your damned pea: IT'S RATTLING INSIDE YOUR FUCKING HEADS, you ASSHOLE FUCKING IMBECILES.
That's right: one pea among the lot of them.
goddamn I am fucking pissed off.rant drop everything and rewrite your rewrite oopsie someone else made a mistakey double standards shell game root can do no right root swears oh my8 -
Fucking Amazon rant again...
TLDR: Amazon specializes in “the last mile”. They are repeatedly allowing a 3rd party shipper (Purolator) destroy their main value proposition. Thoughts at the end.
Me on the phone with their support...
Me: so it says my package was attempted to be delivered today. I did not get a call or notification or anything and I have been working from home all day to wait for the package.
Support: -Sigh- yes, I can see it was Purolator we have been having trouble with them lately.
Me: ok, so are you able to see what happened?
Support: let me put you on hold.
.......
Support: So they said they will not call for a delivery, did they use your building buzzer?
Me: Nope, just stood outside the building and then left I guess.
Support: -sigh- Well you can pick it up at their depot. Let me get you the address.
Me: The one by the airport?
Support: Yes it looks like it is about an hour away from where you are. And they are only open during work hours.
Me: So, after working from home to get this package you advice is to take 3 hours off work and go there to pick it up?
Support: Well, we can refund it? If thats what you want.
Me: No, I would like the package I ordered please.
Support: There is nothing I can do sir.
Me: So before I hang up let me see if I have it straight. When I order a package from Amazon, do I have an option of who ships it?
Support: No, I’m sorry but that is decided on our end.
Me: And I have had this problem before with this shipping agent. So, your telling me that when I ship things to me with Amazon that I have no control of wether I even get the package? Your telling me it is literally a coin toss as to wether or not I ever get my package?
Support: yes sir, I’m sorry but that is all I can do.
Me: So you realize that, for example, if I went to my local grocery store and it was a coin toss that I could take my groceries home (even after I paid for them) then I will always go to another store....
Support: yes, I know. There is nothing I can do.
Me: So from now on I have to order items, wait for them to be shipped, check the shipper and then cancel the order of it is them?
Support: -sigh- you cannot cancel an order after it has shipped...
Me: wow. Sure is great being a prime and audible member. I get fast delivery of 50% of my packages and no delivery at all of the other 50%. Sorry for the sarcasm...
Support: I’m sorry I can’t help more.
Me: So just to clarify. I can expect NOT to get the package I ordered?
Support: sorry
Me: have a nice day.
————
Here are my thoughts as a student of business...
Amazon specializes in “the last mile” (in their delivery service anyway) and when they deliver the package they also deliver on that value proposition.
However, now it seems that one of their shipping providers is failing at getting packages that last mile, which is resulting and destroying the idea of their value proposition in a customers eyes. (Affecting more than me as the rep said)
Now, instead of believing that Amazon will get things to me, saving me that last mile trip to the store etc., I firmly believe that it is a toss up as to wether I will ever receive my package (based on carrier)
I know that if I was in Amazon’s position (a carrier hurting my overall value proposition with consistently unacceptable service) that I would come down on them with a force they have never seen or drop them entirely.
But of course, every company reaches a point where they have such market share and sway that they take their eye off the ball when it comes to their value proposition to customers.16 -
Story time:
I worked at a firm that had an infernal off the shelf CRM system that they collaborated with the dev company to customise.
They were seriously behind the competition, and didn’t have any app or web presence for interacting with their system, instead relying on people calling (fine for the nature of the business, but competition was leaving them in the dust).
They decided that they needed to redevelop it in-house, with a focus on supporting the web and apps.
I was hired for this purpose.
It was me and one other dev, who was also the head of IT.
He’d built a small prototype, and was new to the whole WPF / MVVM thing for the in-house app, so with my previous experience it was clear it needed to serve as an example only, and that it would need redeveloping.
I was only there three months.
In that time I singularly (he was pulled away to troubleshoot their VOIP installation - yes, for three months as other companies kept dropping the ball) built:
- A WebAPI with JWT auth
- An MVC skeleton frontend
- A WPF desktop app
It had all sorts of cool shit in it, 2FA, Reactive UI, Reactive extensions, server push to desktop, a custom workflow and permissions system.
It was pretty dang cool.
End of the three months rolled around, and the non-technical managers were concerned about time to market, so they decided to drop me as I’d “not made enough progress”.
I’d also had a bit of absence which they were aware of and were supposedly supporting me through.
But MFW three months is assumed to be enough time to build such a system with one dev.2 -
> Tries to be slightly festive by making a ball drop website on my phone using an app called play.js (its an app that lets you play around with nodejs, react native and react)
> Make some progress
> Gets tired of phone keyboard once back at the house so tries to upload to GitHub
> app makes a repo by default so when I made a new GitHub repo it had a different .git history, so i cant push to it
> copy files manually
> JavaScript happened
> Deletes code off pc and deletes GitHub repo. -
How about this..
So a few months ago there's this guy
He coughed.
He did nothing else.
He did not cover his mouth.
He did not even do it in his elbow.
He just did it.
He did it at a fish market in china..
...
And now today as the world is grinding to a hault I just hope he is satisfied.
ARE YOU HAPPY NOW??!
So anyway trapped at home. Nothing to do. Its cold today. Got to reduce the fan speeds on that rigs and bump the power a bit. There not so cold now :)
Ok on a serious note that coughing idiot is to blame for this cold.
One ICE AGE coming up. Global warming fans hold on to your chai. This one is a shocker..
So it turns out shutting down the world have caused CO2 levels to drop as cars dont drive and factories dont work and all the powerplants suddenly find people no longer want more power.
Thing is plantd are addaptive and they enlage the pores on the underside of thier leaves depending on the CO2 levels.
So the plants been running at 100% eat CO2 for a while now.
Then CO2 supply drop to lowest in 100 years.
Plants still eating CO2 at 100% so they did not get memmo yet. CO2 now getting used up faster than being made. Greenhouse no more.
Polar ice caps nows your turn.
First up south pole winter is coming your way.
It will freeze ice cap bigger than past 100 years. The ice will sit there making earth lobsided with all the ice on one end and none on the other .
Lobsided earth is a spinning ball
Lobsided balls change how they spin
The rotation of earh now affected by a cough.
In 6-8 months winter goes north.
CO2 all but eaten up by then. World still rather dead as the afternath is felt.
Northen poler cap freeze all the way to london again. First time in 5000 years.
All because of a bloody cough.
Its the end of the world as we know it and here i am waiting for unreal to complie just like usual..
So remember dont cough near others if someone cough near you then tel them to
Far cough24 -
Had to face the music and make the jump from Ubuntu 22.04 to Fedora 36. Am I have to say it’s been night and day so far. Everything is snappier. Yeah dnf is very slow in comparison to apt but there’s changes you can make to speed things up and the nifty terminal interface is a great change and helps to make up for the speed issues.
Came with Python 3.10 installed, Gnome and gtk4 apps are nice, fluid and up to date and the random slowdowns, freezing and restarts of Ubuntu running the version of Gnome are nonexistent.
For the life of me I can’t see why Ubuntu would drop the ball like this. I have a Dell XPS 13 developer edition and this is the best it’s ever ran. Even wifi connectivity is better despite of the crap WiFi card that ships with this machine.
I want to love this version and while it is the most graphical appealing and functional version of Ubuntu I’ve ever used. The memory management issues make it damn near unusable.9