git pshu
git phsu
git puhs

**when you hear me typing fast**

Lamer rant

For a really long time I said to myself that this is too basic to rant about but lately it became so frequent and extreme that here is my rant about completely clueless users that ask me IT related questions.

Disclaimer: Said users are people that I generally can't avoid. Distant family members, neighbors and etc.

Case 0:
U: I don't know what's happening!! The computer doesn't work!!
M: What do you mean?
U: There's no Facebook! And everything is stuck and no messenger!!!
M: The WiFi on your laptop was off. I turned it on. Still, this doesn't mean that the pc wasn't working.
U: I don't understand this shit!!!

Case 1:
U: I hate this computer!!! It never works!!! Help meeee!!!
M: What now?
U: Where did the internet disappear?!
M: (assuming it's wifi or browser related)
Actually user moved the Chrome window to bottom-right corner and lost it.

Every time I try to show the user how I resolve the issue the user yells that there are too many steps, that they are complicated and that I'm a bad teacher and doing it too fast.

Case 2:
U: My computer is so slow! It barely can load google translate! And I can't listen to music on youtube!! Shitty laptop! It's you! Your computers in the apartment drain everything!!!
M: You have no idea what you are talking about.
U: My husband told me that your computers are heavy and drain everything!
M: What exactly did he tell you that my devices drain?
U: I don't know! All the energy! I believe him! He knows!
M: My computers drain less electricity than your vacuum and I have a separate internet connection. Not only we share nothing but also I drain nothing.
U: Since you appeared all the computers are slow!!!!

Fkk...

Case 3:
U: I don't understand, where is my whatsapp?
M: You can't locate the app on your phone?
U: Yes! F*ck, help me! I'm so angry and I really need this NOW!!!
M: Shut up. I'm already here and helping.
(I open users phone and whatsapp is the active app...)
U: I can' t find my whatsapp with Clara!

F*ck you! F*ck you! Ghckjfshij!!!

Case 4:
(crazy hitting on my door)
U: I don't have THE internet!!!
It's you again! You took all of THE internet!!!
M: No, it doesn't work like that. Your provider is bad, your package is cheap and your cables are of low quality.
U: I need THE internet immediately!!! Stop playing with your typing and fix the facebook or I'll cut the power cables to the house!!

I can go on, just don't think that recalling all those events is healthy for me.

In a user-interface design meeting over a regulatory compliance implementation:
User: “We’ll need to input a city.”
Dev: “Should we validate that city against the state, zip code, and country?”
User: “You are going to make me enter all that data? Ugh…then make it a drop-down. I select the city and the state, zip code auto-fill. I don’t want to make a mistake typing any of that data in.”
Me: “I don’t think a drop-down of every city in the US is feasible.”
Manage: “Why? There cannot be that many. Drop-down is fine. What about the button? We have a few icons to choose from…”
Me: “Uh..yea…there are thousands of cities in the US. Way too much data to for anyone to realistically scroll through”
Dev: “They won’t have to scroll, I’ll filter the list when they start typing.”
Me: “That’s not really the issue and if they are typing the city anyway, just let them type it in.”
User: “What if I mistype Ch1cago? We could inadvertently be out of compliance. The system should never open the company up for federal lawsuits”
Me: “If we’re hiring individuals responsible for legal compliance who can’t spell Chicago, we should be sued by the federal government. We should validate the data the best we can, but it is ultimately your department’s responsibility for data accuracy.”
Manager: “Now now…it’s all our responsibility. What is wrong with a few thousand item drop-down?”
Me: “Um, memory, network bandwidth, database storage, who maintains this list of cities? A lot of time and resources could be saved by simply paying attention.”
Manager: “Memory? Well, memory is cheap. If the workstation needs more memory, we’ll add more”
Dev: “Creating a drop-down is easy and selecting thousands of rows from the database should be fast enough. If the selection is slow, I’ll put it in a thread.”
DBA: “Table won’t be that big and won’t take up much disk space. We’ll need to setup stored procedures, and data import jobs from somewhere to maintain the data. New cities, name changes, ect. ”
Manager: “And if the network starts becoming too slow, we’ll have the Networking dept. open up the valves.”
Me: “Am I the only one seeing all the moving parts we’re introducing just to keep someone from misspelling ‘Chicago’? I’ll admit I’m wrong or maybe I’m not looking at the problem correctly. The point of redesigning the compliance system is to make it simpler, not more complex.”
Manager: “I’m missing the point to why we’re still talking about this. Decision has been made. Drop-down of all cities in the US. Moving on to the button’s icon ..”
Me: “Where is the list of cities going to come from?”
<few seconds of silence>
Dev: “Post office I guess.”
Me: “You guess?…OK…Who is going to manage this list of cities? The manager responsible for regulations?”
User: “Thousands of cities? Oh no …no one is our area has time for that. The system should do it”
Me: “OK, the system. That falls on the DBA. Are you going to be responsible for keeping the data accurate? What is going to audit the cities to make sure the names are properly named and associated with the correct state?”
DBA: “Uh..I don’t know…um…I can set up a job to run every night”
Me: “A job to do what? Validate the data against what?”
Manager: “Do you have a point? No one said it would be easy and all of those details can be answered later.”
Me: “Almost done, and this should be easy. How many cities do we currently have to maintain compliance?”
User: “Maybe 4 or 5. Not many. Regulations are mostly on a state level.”
Me: “When was the last time we created a new city compliance?”
User: “Maybe, 8 years ago. It was before I started.”
Me: “So we’re creating all this complexity for data that, realistically, probably won’t ever change?”
User: “Oh crap, you’re right. What the hell was I thinking…Scratch the drop-down idea. I doubt we’re have a new city regulation anytime soon and how hard is it to type in a city?”
Manager: “OK, are we done wasting everyone’s time on this? No drop-down of cities...next …Let’s get back to the button’s icon …”

Simplicity 1, complexity 0.

1.) Complete knowledge and understanding of C++.

2.) Fast and accurate typing skills.

3.) Ability to sleep peacefully all night.

When you start typing localhost but you are to fast and to furious for the browsers autocomplete and end up searching in google for this...

So far no one has notice but it is only a matter of time before I will be questioned about my Shakira obsession...

I am DONE with this woman.

Background: we're a team of 3 developers and I'm the junior in this team and I've been in this shit for a year now. 2 months ago the team leader left for another project and I had to stand in for him in every responsibility against the PM and other teams.

Now I not only had to endure this insecure woman but I was also supposed to work with her! Fast-forward to today, the team leader is back and I thought I could put my headphones on and work peacefully at last.

But no!

I've found out she's sent a faulty code to production - no big deal - and said that over chat (although she's sitting right behind me):

Me: We need to fix this.
Her: What?

Me: *giving some details about the issue*
Her: Your attitude is important when you ask me to do something. Whenever you're writing to me you're typing on your keyboard like you're going to break it on my head.

*me not knowing what to say at this point because we had something stupid like this before*

Me: So you're offended by the sound my keyboard makes? (I have mx brown switches by the way and they're not even loud)
Her: No you're typing too fast when you're writing to me. The sound echoes in the office.
...

Can you fucking believe this shit? I hate people that think they can educate me but have no idea how to rationally respond to situations and take responsibility! I didn't even say anything!

And she's been saying to me she hadn't had a problem with any other people for gazillion years who knows how long and why would she cause a problem now! And thinks I am the problem, fuck YOU!

Since you don't like receiving orders why hadn't you taken the place when the fucking guy went for another project but I had to take all the responsibility? I know why you fucking entitled bitch.

Because you HAD NO IDEA AND YOU STILL DON'T.

So shut the fuck up and do as I say.

Kind regards

I've recently received another invitation to Google's Foobar challenges.

A while ago someone here on devRant (which I believe works at Google, and whose support I deeply appreciate) sent me a couple of links to it too. Unfortunately back then I didn't take the time to learn the programming languages (Python or Java) that Google requires for these challenges. This time I'm putting everything on Python, as it's the easiest language to learn when coming from Bash.

But at the end of the day.. I am a sysadmin, not a developer. I don't know a single thing about either of these languages. Yet I can't take these challenges as the sysadmin I am. Instead, I have to learn a new language which chances are I'll never need again outside of some HR dickhead's interview with lateral thinking questions and whiteboard programming, probably prohibited from using Google search like every sane programmer and/or sysadmin would for practical challenges that actually occur in real life.

I don't want to do that. Google is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I get that. Many people would probably even steal that foobar link from me if they could. But I don't think that for me it's the right thing to do. Google has made a serious difference by actually challenging developers with practical scenarios, and that's vastly superior to whatever a HR person at any other company could cobble together for an interview. But there's one thing that they don't seem to realize. A company like Google consists of more than just developers. Not only that, it probably consists - even within their developer circles - of more than just Python and Java developers. If any company would know about languages that are more optimized such as C, it would be Google that has to leverage this performance in order to be able to deliver their services.

I'll be frank here. Foobar has its own issues that I don't like. But if Google were a nice company, I'd go for it all the way nonetheless - after all, they are arguably the single biggest tech company in the world, and the tech industry itself is one of the biggest ones in the world nowadays. It's safe to say that there's likely no opportunity like working at Google. But I don't think it's the right thing. Even if I did know Python or Java... Even if I did. I don't like Google's business decisions.

I've recently flashed my OnePlus 6T with LineageOS. It's now completely Google-free, except for a stock Yalp account (that I'm too afraid to replace with my actual Google account because oh dear, third-party app stores, oh dear that could damage our business and has to be made highly illegal!1!). My contacts on that phone are are all gone. They're all stored on a Google server somewhere (except for some like @linuxxx' that I consciously stored on device storage and thus lost a while back), waiting for me to log back in and sync them back. I've never asked for this. If Google explicitly told me that they'd sync all my contacts to my Google account and offer feasible alternatives, I'd probably given more priority to building a CalDAV and CardDAV server of my own. Because I do have the skills and desire to maintain that myself. I don't want Google to do this for me.

Move fast and break things. I've even got a special Termux script on my home screen, aptly named Unfuck-Google-Play. Every other day I have to use it. Google Search. When I open it on my Nexus 6P, which was Google's foray into hardware and in which they failed quite spectacularly - I've even almost bent and killed it tonight, after cursing at that piece of shit every goddamn day - the Google app opens, I type some text into it.. and then it just jumps back to the beginning of whatever I was typing. A preloader of sorts. The app is a fucking web page parser, or heck probably even just an API parser. How does that in any way justify such shitty preloaders? How does that in any way justify such crappy performance on anything but the most recent flagships? I could go on about this all day... I used to run modern Linux on a 15 year old laptop, smoothly. So don't you Google tell me that a - probably trillion dollar - company can't do that shit right. When there's (commercialized) community projects like DuckDuckGo that do things a million times better than you do - yet they can't compete with you due to your shit being preloaded on every phone and tablet and impossible to remove without rooting - that you Google can't do that and a lot more. You've got fucking Google Assistant for fucks sake! Yet you can't make a decent search app - the goddamn thing that your company started with in the first place!?

I'm sorry. I'd love to work at Google and taste the diversity that this company has to offer. But there's *a lot* wrong with it at the business end too. That is something that - in that state - I don't think I want to contribute to, despite it being pretty much a lottery ticket that I've been fortunate enough to draw twice.

Maybe I should just start my own company.

I'm a die hard ViM user and throughout the years I managed to put ViM key bindings in everything, from browser to even my cell phone for some reason (back in the day if I had the opportunity to put them in the fridge, I would have put them - people would have a hard time closing the door, though)

The thing is that it had become a liability because I see that, even though I "work really fast and efficiently" using this tool, when I have to use other things, like a different shell (I use zsh with some ViM sauce) or type in another editor, it sucks so hard.
Everything is wrong, nothing works, the typing is a mess.

Now I'm trying to force myself to use Vscode and I removed all those extensions from my browser and shell. It is uncomfortable, but the idea is to "rewire my muscle memory", if there is such thing.

Yeah.

I spent over a decade of my life working with Ada. I've spent almost the same amount of time working with C# and VisualBasic. And I've spent almost six years now with F#. I consider all of these great languages for various reasons, each with their respective problems. As these are mostly mature languages some of the problems were only knowable in hindsight. But Ada was always sort of my baby. I don't really mind extra typing, as at least what I do, reading happens much more than writing, and tab completion has most things only being 3-4 key presses irl. But I'm no zealot, and have been fully aware of deficiencies in the language, just like any language would have. I've had similar feelings of all languages I've worked with, and the .NET/C#/VB/F# guys are excellent with taking suggestions and feedback.

This is not the case with Ada, and this will be my story, since I've no longer decided anonymity is necessary.

First few years learning the language I did what anyone does: you write shit that already exists just to learn. Kept refining it over time, sometimes needing to do entire rewrites. Eventually a few of these wound up being good. Not novel, just good stuff that already existed. Outperforming the leading Ada company in benchmarks kind of good. At the time I was really gung-ho about the language. Would have loved to make Ada development a career. Eventually build up enough of this, as well as a working, but very bad performing compiler, and decide to try to apply for a job at this company. I wasn't worried about the quality of the compiler, as anyone who's seriously worked with Ada knows, the language is remarkably complex with some bizarre rules in dark corners, so a compiler which passes the standards test indicates a very intimate knowledge of the language few can attest to.

I get told they didn't think I would be a good fit for the job, and that they didn't think I should be doing development.

A few months of rapid cycling between hatred and self loathing passes, and then a suicide attempt. I've got past problems which contributed more so than the actual job denial.

So I get better and start working even harder on my shit. Get the performance of my stuff up even better. Don't bother even trying to fix up the compiler, and start researching about text parsing. Do tons of small programs to test things, and wind up learning a lot. I'm starting to notice a lot of languages really surpassing Ada in _quality of life_, with things package managers and repositories for those, as well as social media presence and exhaustive tutorials from the community.

At the time I didn't really get programming language specific package managers (I do now), but I still brought this up to the community. Don't do that. They don't like new ideas. Odd for a language which at the time was so innovative. But social media presence did eventually happen with a Twitter account that is most definitely run by a specific Ada company masquerading as a general Ada advocate. It did occasionally draw interest to neat things from the community, so that's cool.

Since I've been using both VisualStudio and an IDE this Ada company provides, I saw a very jarring quality difference over the years. I'm not gonna say VS is perfect, it's not. But this piece of shit made VS look like a polished streamlined bug free race car designed by expert UX people. It. Was. Bad. Very little features, with little added over the years. Fast forwarding several years, I can find about ten bugs in five minutes each update, and I can't find bugs in the video games I play, so I'm no bug finder. It's just that bad. This from a company providing software for "highly reliable systems"...

So I decide to take a crack at writing an editor extension for VS Code, which I had never even used. It actually went well, and as of this writing it has over 24k downloads, and I've received some great comments from some people over on Twitter about how detailed the highlighting is. Plenty of bespoke advertising the entire time in development, of course.

Never a single word from the community about me.

Around this time I had also started a YouTube channel to provide educational content about the language, since there's very little, except large textbooks which aren't right for everyone. Now keep in mind I had written a compiler which at least was passing the language standards test, so I definitely know the language very well. This is a standard the programmers at these companies will admit very few people understand. YouTube channel met with hate from the community, and overwhelming thanks from newcomers. Never a shout out from the "community" Twitter account. The hate went as far as things like how nothing I say should be listened to because I'm a degenerate Irishman, to things like how the world would have been a better place if I was successful in killing myself (I don't talk much about my mental illness, but it shows up).

I'm strictly a .NET developer now. All code ported.

AAARGH ELECTRON IS SO FUCKING...decently pleasant to use?

So I've been working on a FPGA based synthesizer on a Xilinx Arty A7 board (that little Artix 35T chip is surprisingly capable), and since I hate typing commands into a serial stream for anything even decently complex just like any sane person should, I needed something to build a UI for controlling it and other synth projects while I make the Eurorack compatible enclosure and knobs and stuff. I chose Electron because they said it was simple and easy to make cool looking stuff, fast.

And they were right. In like two hours, with Electron and p5.js, starting from zero since I don't know jack about frontend, I had a pretty nice UI driving the hardware synth and effects modules. Not bad. I should use this more often.

At work:

** fast typing from lead and me fx**

** lead stops typing, scratch record sound and headhphones being taken off fx**

Lead Devel: Yo Al

*still typing fx**

Me: whats good gansgtah

L.D: remember how we talked about bringing in a version manager into that <huge_pilo_shit> program? But we haven't done it cuz we some lazy mofockas?

** now I stop typing **

Me: .....yes......fuck

Him: yes...fuck

O_o fuck....that bitch is huge man.......

Got fed up with having to use the mouse/trackpad while editing code or using the terminal, so I decided to (finally) learn proper vim keybindings and tmux.

Boooooy oh boy, this certainly changes things.

I think I'm in love with tmux. Damn that piece of software is so sexy. Disabled the mouse, propped up my dotfiles and installed tmux + my conf on all machines I use. It's so useful, so fast and so pretty...

Spent some time with vimtutor too. Finally getting faster with the keybindings. Installed neovim, got some plug-ins (nerdtree, fzf etc), disabled the mouse and arrow keys, and made it pretty. It's actually pretty nice, but I'm not at the "buff gorilla who took speed and pressed 24 keys in a microsecond" typing level yet. One day though.

Also I'm using the Nord color scheme on everything. Overall pretty satisfied with the end result. Still not as productive as I was with VS Code, but I think I'll eventually surpass my previous productivity levels.

If anyone has any tips for vim/nvim or tmux, feel free to share!

I'm convinced that playing the piano has allowed me to type faster and commit keyboard shortcuts to muscle memory faster too. While coding isn't about typing quickly, there's a whole bunch of times when I've had an idea, and had to get that down into code as quickly as possible before I forget it - and that's when I really find fast keyboard work comes into its own.

How I met python
[long read but worth]

There's nothing wrong with falling in love with a programming language for her looks. I mean, let's face it - Python does have a rockin' body of modules, and a damn good set of utilities and interpreters on various platforms. Her whitespace-sensitive syntax is easy on the eyes, and it's a beautiful sight to wake up to in the morning after a long night of debugging. The way she sways those releases on a consistent cycle - she knows how to treat you right, you know?

But let's face it - a lot of other languages see the attention she's getting, and they get jealous. Really jealous. They try and make her feel bad by pointing out the GIL, and they try and convince her that she's not "good enough" for parallel programming or enterprise-level applications. They say that her lack of static typing gives her programmers headaches, and that as an interpreted language, she's not fast enough for performance-critical applications.

She hears what those other, older languages like Java and C++ say, and she thinks she's not stable or mature enough. She hears what those shallow, beauty-obsessed languages like Ruby say, and she thinks she's not pretty enough. But she's trying really hard, you know? She hits the gym every day, trying to come up with new and better ways of JIT'ing and optimizing. She's experimenting with new platforms and compilation techniques all the time. She wants you to love her more, because she cares.

But then you hear about how bad she feels, and how hard she's trying, and you just look into her eyes, sighing. You take Python out for a walk - holding her hand - and tell her that she's the most beautiful language in the world, but that's not the only reason you love her.

You tell her she was raised right - Guido gave her core functionality and a deep philosophy she's never forgotten. You tell her you appreciate her consistent releases and her detailed and descriptive documentation. You tell her that she has a great set of friends who are supportive and understanding - friends like Google, Quora, and Facebook. And finally, with tears in your eyes, you tell her that with her broad community support, ease of development, and well-supported frameworks, you know she's a language you want to be with for a long, long time.

After saying all this, you look around and notice that the two of you are alone. Letting go of Python's hand, you start to get down on one knee. Her eyes get wide as you try and say the words - but she just puts her finger on your lips and whispers, "Yes".

The moon is bright. You know things are going to be okay now.

That awkward moment when your family and friends sit behind you and ask questions;

What is this you're typing on the screen?

Why words have different colors?

Why so many tabs?

How do you type so fast?

....... and more

Share yours.

The worst part of being a dev

My social dilemma

In a fast paced world where the average human spends at least 6 hours a day with technology, deriving basic entertainment, pleasures and engaging in various activities.

Here we are the developers that have to engage with technology for longer hours for a living , having to keep up with deadlines, immersing our minds in complicated algorithms and then the endless possibilities of entertainment from the machine in so few human hours a day , you wonder how you’d get off, and to top it up, I personally work from home.

And then the dilemma of overcoming different suggestions from various parties in taking a break off, a break off to what you later ask yourself, thus creating the shadow of doubt, splitting the fragile programmer’s mind , trying to solve this imaginary puzzle, “this bug of the mind”.

Then the challenge often arises in creating a balance, telling yourself, just catching up with people with this same technology takes a whole day, or then again quitting my Job, but from my little experience of life, nobody likes a poor visitor, this is actually worse than a “bug” and as I bask in this quagmire, “a little voice in my head keeps singing keep doing what you love doing”.

Like an infinite loop of crazy, spiralling back to these machines, trying the find and fix the balance of normalcy. Always remembered the cool years of college tho, with so much people around and then again that was college.

An then the thought arises, maybe something else might be worth doing, but after so much time spent in building your skills and the enormous joy of programming even typing without looking at the keyboard is a real pleasure, and yeah sure the days are short with the reality of a constant need to survive, remain sane, compete and make the best of life in such short time.

Then how do we know if we have fallen off the so-called “social track”, when we have only lived so little to really comprehend the most parts of life? with such constant stream of unanswered question, you’d realise you shouldn’t have burdened the mind creating such questions in the first place

But then again maybe it gets better, one of the above, the disturbed mind or the situation as whole and yes I try oh I try, I place calls, do some visiting, no relationship tho but with a good perspective in mind.

In this race of life, you sometimes ask yourself would you rather be in a different position, or maybe already put exactly where we belong. For this illusionary fight with self is a fight with reality as a whole and true bliss comes from actually letting go as time and people pass you by.

And my greatest achievement to date aside family and my work is getting into the 1000 club on devRant.

Facebook 2FA:
Want to log in? Sure, authorize your login. Oh you've authorized it? Nah you can't get in. Log in again.
2FA, excellent technology, except when it's implemented by "move fast and break things" Facebook.

Facebook Marketplace:
Want to buy $listing? Sure, you can send a message to the seller to ask for details. Oh, you want to send them a message? Nah sorry, you can't send messages to this person. You'll have to go to their profile, send them a message there and do it not with our le fancy instant messages but by manually typing it in. Because you know, reasons. Message approvals or something like that probably. Because why on Earth would Facebook support its own ecosystem?!

Move fast and break things. And breaking things those certified enganeers at Facebook sure do. Fucking pieces of shit.

I have finally decided to work on my keyboard typing. I want to type FAST!

The fucking defective Caps Lock on Apple keyboards drives me fucking ballistic!

WHY would they ever think it would be a good idea to introduce a minimum press time for a key?!?

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME. I use the damn thing it inevitably fails and I have to backspace, delete the non-caps text I just entered after HITTING THE FUCKING CAPS LOCK KEY, tap the damn thing again (harder this time) and try again. It usually takes 2 or 3 tries before it actually catches. I'm sorry, but training myself to type slower is not as easy as you think!

Who the fuck thought up this nonsensical bullshit?? And who the fuck is going around accidentally tapping their caps lock key to the point where such a delay would be needed?? Do you not know where your own fingers are??

Seriously, all this does is penalize fast typists and people who actually want to USE the caps lock key for what it was meant for.

I swear to god this one little thing pisses me off SO much. And what's worse is they don't even give you an option to disable it, AND it's bloody fucking impossible to disable yourself even through the terminal.

(Also, typing this rant with so many caps was probably not as cathartic as I was going for!) 😂

Typing 100 words a minute while your pair types 30 😂 oops

How many times do you mistype "git status" a day?

I will propose "git stauts" to be added as a valid command.

Do you use the well known "pattern" for positioning fingers on the keyboard for faster typing, or you just came up with your own "pattern" as time passed?

Context: Madre recently got a new laptop to replace her old HP, but since she doesn't know much about computers, I picked it out for her. I went a little overboard on the specs because I new it was a "family laptop" and I would end up using it more than she would.

Mum: *yelps after typing on computer*
Me: "What's wrong"
Mum: "This computer is too fast!"
Me: 😐
Me: ... "What?"
Mum: "It loads things too fast"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Mum: "When I click on the apps they open almost immediately"
Me: "That's a good thing"
Mum: "No it's not, it startled me!"
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: ...
*goes back to reading book*

C# developer: static typing and precompilation make my language really fast! *writes service that makes 50 synchronous database calls for every request*

I don't scream because my teams are in a different country and we communicate by IM and email.

I do write long ranting/passive-aggressive emails or type really quick replies when I'm pissed though. .

An example of the latter:

Boss: I need you to make a "quick" fix...
Me: hmm ok sounds like we should implement it like ...
Boss: I was thinking something like this... since it's a temp fix
Need: (typing faster) why is it a temp fix... why not builds it properly so it can be reused
Boss: but that takes time, this is quicker
Me: it's bad design because ... (Typing so fast I'm making typos)... Anyway I can do it. This is better...
Boss: ... ok fine... if you can finish it before deadline

If any lecturer in my department discovers you are very fast in typing, the lecturer will turn you to a typing slave.

Lecturer: Just type, I will give you something

( 2 weeks later nothing )

Lecturer sees you in class, he ignores you.

(After graduation)

Lecturer sees you
Lecturer: Congratulations Mr. ***. The department is going to miss your fast typing, but i might call you on occasions to type for me. Will you come

Me: Sure Sir
MY MIND: STUPID FUCKING OLD FAG ASSHOLE, I HOPE YOU DIE A SORROWFUL DEATH, GREEDY FUCKING BASTARDS, AM NOT YOUR SLAVE, I WILL BLACKLIST YOUR NUMBER. BASTARD

Suggestions for a good speech to text program for someone who mumbles and talks too fast?

I sliced my thumb while washing a knife and typing on my computer without it is getting annoying

Here, a full retrospective of my Apple products ownership.

iPhone SE – after Android, I was absolutely amazed by how fast it worked. No UI lags, camera works absolutely instantly no matter the light conditions, all the GPU-heavy games work butter smooth.

After camera and charging port failures on Xperia flagship and CPU literally melting through screen rendering it unusable on Meizu, it was enough to make me interested in Apple products.

When I was using Meizu, I actually got a twitching eye which was triggered by UI lags. After two months of using iPhone, I noticed that something was missing – my eye wasn't twitching anymore.

iPhone actually cured me.

MacBook 12 – a 900 grams laptop with passive-cooled mobile CPU running many Chrome tabs, heavy Webpack HMR build, VSCode and Slack just fine. Yes, you can't play games, but I don't even require it from a laptop this tiny.

Butterfly keyboard that internet hates so much actually increased my typing speed and comfort compared to MX Red mechanical keyboard, and ForceTouch trackpad made me forget about mouse. I learned how to disassemble the Butterfly keyboard if I ever need this but the keyboard never failed.

I use this laptop to this day and it still even smells like the day one, a beautiful smell of a new Apple product.

iPhone X – got it because of the camera, stayed for great battery life and amazing OLED display. I use telephoto lens exclusively and it made me lay off my Canon DSLR with Helios lens which stays on my bookshelf covered in dust to this day.

True black of OLED display which is undistinguishable from the screen bezel is stunning. To this day, battery surely works for one and a half days and I watch youtube really often.

I sometimes struggled to unlock iPhone SE with wet fingers, but with FaceID, as soon as I look at the screen the phone is unlocked. Works perfect every time, never had an issue with this.

Stainless steel body feels premium compared to aluminum. Stereo sound is a major selling point if you're like watching videos and playing games on your phone. Overall amazing product and a huge improvement over SE.

Apple Watch series 4 – really comfortable fit. Nice battery life, once I forgot about it for like ten days during lockdown and it was still working, even though on power reserve mode. Really reliable in terms of battery life and liquid protection. Very satisfying Taptic Engine crown clicks. I run every day and Apple watch always measure my heart rate correctly, and the running app is well designed and a pleasure to use. Overall a nice accessory to have if you use iPhone.

Powerbeats Pro – great sound and battery life. I switched from Shure SE215 which was great, but it had wires. I listen to a lot of music so the sound quality is important for me. When I was choosing earphones I visited a store where you can listen to them all. I listened through earphones like Noble Audio Kaiser Encore and JH Audio Layla, and of course $4000 Laylas sound better than $249 bluetooth earphones, but the difference in sound doesn't justify the difference in price to me.

Powerbeats pro is the Apple H1 chip true wireless earphones with largest driver of them all which makes them sound better than AirPods Pro – it's just physics. Bass in Powerbeats is amazing, which is also true for my Shures, but Powerbeats also win in clarity.

It connects seamlessly to both my MacBook and my iPhone, and everyone in voice chats can hear me really good.

Huge case is a major throwback compared to AirPods, but the battery life of earphones themselves is so great that I just leave the case at home and only carry earphones and it works for me.

Apple Link bracelet in space black – really better than I expected. Intricate detailing, literally the steel that Rolex uses, top-notch finishing and polishing – all that for just 450 dollars. I only used it for several days now, but it already feels like a really satisfying product.

Before all that I was using Linux. It took a year for elementaryos devs to fix wifi for my laptop. Ubuntu looks and feels ugly. Pop OS felt like garbage. Manjaro was also just that – garbage. KDE Plasma – I don't even want to talk about that. A monstrocity where you accidentally click a wrong switch in the settings and your system won't boot up again. Also, PulseAudio. Struggles with proprietary drivers and software updates.

Windows? I serviced a lot of Windows PCs through my career and it never, never worked as intended. I'm no dumbass, I always managed the rights correctly and never installed sketchy apps. My latest ryzen gaming build with a lot of ram also lags somehow even in Windows 10 UI.

Before I switched, I defended Linux.

My life was a lie.

I'm sorry to everyone who I offended based on their opinion on Linux.

Trying to learn 10 finger system as a gamer, fucking WASD was burned in my mind for a long time already...

Yeah, I never bothered since I'm pretty fast at typing anyways, but I'm hoping I could get a little faster like this, for the long run
Ah yeah also to stop looking at the keyboard

Now I'm curious, what do you guys type like?
If that makes sense

The Zen Of Ripping Off Airtable:
(patterned after The Zen Of Python. For all those shamelessly copying airtables basic functionality)

*Columns can be *reordered* for visual priority and ease of use.

* Rows are purely presentational, and mostly for grouping and formatting.

* Data cells are objects in their own right, so they can control their own rendering, and formatting.

* Columns (as objects) are where linkages and other column specific data are stored.

* Rows (as objects) are where row specific data (full-row formatting) are stored.

* Rows are views or references *into* columns which hold references to the actual data cells

* Tables are meant for managing and structuring *small* amounts of data (less than 10k rows) per table.

* Just as you might do "=A1:A5" to reference a cell range in google or excel, you might do "opt(table1:columnN)" in a column header to create a 'type' for the cells in that column.

* An enumeration is a table with a single column, useful for doing the equivalent of airtables options and tags. You will never be able to decide if it should be stored on a specific column, on a specific table for ease of reuse, or separately where it and its brothers will visually clutter your list of tables. Take a shot if you are here.

* Typing or linking a column should be accomplishable first through a command-driven type language, held in column headers and cells as text.

* Take a shot if you somehow ended up creating any of the following: an FSM, a custom regex parser, a new programming language.

* A good structuring system gives us options or tags (multiple select), selections (single select), and many other datatypes and should be first, programmatically available through a simple command-driven language like how commands are done in datacells in excel or google sheets.

* Columns are a means to organize data cells, and set constraints and formatting on an entire range.

* Row height, can be overridden by the settings of a cell. If a cell overrides the row and column render/graphics settings, then it must be drawn last--drawing over the default grid.

* The header of a column is itself a datacell.

* Columns have no order among themselves. Order is purely presentational, and stored on the table itself.

* The last statement is because this allows us to pluck individual columns out of tables for specialized views.

*Very* fast scrolling on large datasets, with row and cell height variability is complicated. Thinking about it makes me want to drink. You should drink too before you embark on implementing it.

* Wherever possible, don't use a database.
If you're thinking about using a database, see the previous koan.

* If you use a database, expect to pick and choose among column-oriented stores, and json, while factoring for platform support, api support, whether you want your front-end users to be forced to install and setup a full database,
and if not, what file-based .so or .dll database engine is out there that also supports video, audio, images, and custom types.

* For each time you ignore one of these nuggets of wisdom, take a shot, question your sanity, quit halfway, and then write another koan about what you learned.

* If you do not have liquor on hand, for each time you would take a shot, spank yourself on the ass. For those who think this is a reward, for each time you would spank yourself on the ass, instead *don't* spank yourself on the ass.

* Take a sip if you *definitely* wildly misused terms from OOP, MVP, and spreadsheets.

The moment you're declaring variables but keep writing "ASS" because you're typing too fast...

Happy Monday!

How many of you guys use vim?
How many hate it? Why?
How many haven't tried it yet?

I've been using it for a month and it feels great. Everything is fast and customisation is great and fairly easy (just vim ~/.vimrc). With a little bit of searching abilities, you can do pretty much anything you want by configuring the vimrc. And besides the initial learning courve of having no UI, it feels much more intuitive to just use the keyboard.

I used it by a necessity to edit stuff from the wls, but fuck, now I'm fucking addicted to it. Every new command I learn is a fucking drug for my hands.

I totally recommend it and personally feel a tad sad when vim gets hate. I understand jokes though. I also struggled at first to use "i" to start typing, "hjkl" to move around, and got stuck with the good ol' ":q". But it's worth it.

Teaching advanced IT topics like programming or system management has become much harder in only about five years, because many 20 year olds do not know how to effectively work with the file system. I don't blame them: the Microsoft Office applications nudge you strongly towards storing everything in the Cloud (saving files locally requires extra clicks), and on Windows, the folders C:\Users and C:\ are almost hidden in he respective dialogs (open file, save file). Same on macOS. Students also keep loosing files. This used to be an excuse for not doing the work; nowadays, you're able to find the files on their systems by using appropriate tools (e.g. `find`, installed with Git Bash on Windows). And don't get me started on touch-typing... hell, those kids were fast ten years ago with a proper keyboard! Now they're fast with their smartphone, but painstakingly slow on an actual keyboard.

My colleague taped me, while I am working hard at Friday night.

Ahh, that increadible feeling when I start typing to the rythm of music. Especially fast math rock.

Listening to "And so I watch you from afar" right now, it's almost like I'm part of the band 😅

I have sort of an embarrassing question...

I never learned touch typing, hated it as much as I hated my calligraphy lessons in elementary. Forward a couple of years, I'm a developer and trying to dig deeper into vim seems to require learning touch typing... it has been a struggle to say the least and lowered my speed to a frustrating rate. 😥

I know the arguments for putting the work and learning proper technique but, are there any other arguments out there? I mean, as a developer I find myself using a lot of numbers and symbols which are not totally covered in touch typing curricula, together with a bunch of key combinations...

Idk, maybe I'm just asking for encouragement or different perspectives or unknown advantages about learning touch typing even when you feel fast and confident without it... Thank you guys!

Ok, so: I have a macbook for work. And for the most part, I love it. Its a good looking device that has a fast cpu, enough ram to run stuff locally for testing, even multiple services / environments at the same time without getting overly sluggish.

And, the best thing: It isn't Windows. I have a good, working shell (zsh), so I can use all the command line tooling I could wish for, I have a somewhat working package manager and everything.

But there are just some little things I really can't wrap my head around. And since everything is so locked in by Apple, there are no sensible ways to fix those things without having a bunch of extra programs / services running all the time, introducing overhead, configuration for things I neither want nor need, and so on.

First of all, why the hell did you think the normal way of typing "@" on a german iso keyboard is the key combination for closing the currently focused application? I am a daily user of macos for over 2 years now, and I still keep quitting applications regularly, almost every day.

Or, scroll direction: I use a mouse (g pro wireless) and not just the touchpad, but when I am in a meeting or something (or when I take my macbook with me to configure a switch that isn't accessible over the network), I don't want to take the mouse with me, the touchpad is pretty good, it is big, precise and everything. But for some dumb reason, they decided to reverse the scroll direction for the mouse by default, so if you change that to use the mouse like a normal person, it also changes the scroll direction for the touchpad. And, the worst part is: there doesn't seem to be ANY easy way to separate those two settings, or to automatically set the scroll direction when a mouse is connected.

So every time I use my laptop somewhere else, wich also happens regularly, the scroll directions is wrong, which means I have to go into the settings, change it, then change it back when I am at my desk again.

It just doesn't make any sense, stop trying to "know what our customers want", and please, dear Mr. Tim Apple, give your customers the freedom to know for themselves what they want.

Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

Rant!!!
Recently, there has been this issue on StackOverflow not been friendly to beginners. I don't fully agree with that. SO is strict and rightly so because if not that, we will be flooded with repeated questions and low value answers. As a programmer, I believe when I go to SO, I want an answer quickly and fast because most at times, I'm programming and the problem I have is preventing me from moving forward. To be flooded by repeated and low quality questions and answers wouldn't help anyone. Also, on most beginner programming tutorials, were people are advised to check sites like SO when they have problems, most of them tell their listeners or readers to check if the question has been asked before, before going ahead to ask. Even SO assists you when typing your question with similar questions just to make sure you don't ask repeated questions. I rarely downvote but I understand those who do. Also, there is this talk about 'inclusivity' and some relating it to gender. It looks like people tend to slap gender and race on everything these days. To make this clear, I'm not a white male so that one wouldn't say the system favors me so I don't see the problem. The fact SO collects data about developers and it comes out that, most of the partakers are males doesn't mean SO is favoring males. SO doesn't show your gender when you ask a question. It doesn't even show your gender in your profile so what's the issue here? It will be better to get to the root of why there are few females in computer engineering and solve it there rather than blaming a site because of data collected. To know where this rant is coming from, just search StackOverflow on twitter and read the recent tweets.

I was going to rant today about lack of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in some developers, this rant was based on the interviews I have seen flop over the years.

But then, as I am typing it, people in my office start having this exact conversation. We get together and discuss it and in the end we come to the same conclusion as my rant.

Now it feels like a waste to rant about something on the internet when I got to have a real in-person discussion about it.

It’s like devRant in real life!

——

The outcome of the offline chat...

- Have a cultural policy that is strictly NO ASSHOLES
- Watch for people who are nasty on the internet, especially LinkedIn
- Be careful with people who have a lot of questions for you but answer your questions with “we are in stealth mode” or something similar
- There is no point in wasting your time on these folks in an interview, just politely conclude it as fast as you can and move on

emacs, git and a decent shell like bash with at least gnutools

emacs, because I was searching for the right editor for years
- multi-platform
- extensible
- ready to type (no fucking mode change for typing like vim)
- programming functions like auto indenting, syntax highlight, auto complete, etc.)
- multiple windows in any arrangement
Additionally
- it is completely programmable to do anything you want
- you can find a solution to most common development needs on the web

git, because
- it is usable from small personal projects to heavy duty development
- fast branching and checking out, switching between different workpaths within seconds
- basic version control offline, you only need to be online for remote consolidation
- you don't have to think much about structure from the beginning, if in doubt just commit and your work is saved, then arrange the result when you're ready

sh/bash-like shell with gnutools, because
- simple tools do their job and try not to be smarter than the user
- tools can be combined in any possible and impossible variants
- powerfull scripting (although sh-syntax is often annyoing)
- open as many shells as needed, no single-instance problem as with some GUI-tools
- extensible with gazillions of other tools

And best of all, all these tools are available on all widely used desktop OS.

How many of you guys actually do the eight finger touch typing? Is it common among younger devs? And for those who don't, how fast do you consider yourself while coding (like actual mechanical typing of code)?

I'm starting to get annoyed with Android Studio. I generally enjoy it as far as an ide goes, but why does it need to update so often??? Seriously it feels like every time I open it I get a notification saying to update something or other.

On a somewhat related note but not actually Android Studio's fault, I have decided that IdeaVim sucks. It's good sometimes, but it can't keep up with my keystrokes, so I end up with random characters in my code because even though I hit "jj" (remapped to ESC) then start typing other commands, I end up with the next command being read as still in insert mode, then it catches up with the escape and pops me back to normal mode. It drives me crazy because then I have to go back and undo the extra characters, then redo my command and it kills my flow. I'm not even that fast of a typist, it shouldn't be that hard to keep up...

i am taking some pills for hemorrhoids and yesterday i was combined them with my third coffee. Somehow i was full of energy and i started coding like f crazy. I was literally writing code withe the speed and tension you see in movies, or if you like it, like our non tech bosses are thinking we work 8 hours a day for granted. I did not know what was happening, i was typing correctly, fast, and i want to live it again. Dope, adrenaline, aggression!
The code must fear us, not we the code!

I've been a dev for more than half my life now and it still kind of surprises me the ability of typing fast and precise without looking at the keyboard.

I know it's silly but is a pretty neat self-taught-through-practice ability.

Good for you, everyone who types without looking at the keyboard.

How do you manage to explain to a boss who thinks all devs can solve problems by typing on their keyboard fast, that it’s almost always fantasy?

Don't you hate it when you are typing too fast in him and you accidentally capitalize your commands?

So here is a mini rant from an amateur/hobbyist developer (me).

Over the past week, I've taken on a project that is much larger than any other projects i've attempted to handle (steam trading bot). This meant that there would be logic flaws, weird bugs due to unexpected behavior from shitty web apis (and their poor documentation hmmmm).

Anyhow, fast forward a few days and the code is complete. It's mostly functional, apart from a few glitches and unexpected behavior here and there...or so i thought. Apparently if someone trades and item to me that isnt in my pricegrid, the bot freaks out and kills itself, relaunches, and repeats this cycle (pm2). And i only found out about this on my way to school

So in desperation to fix such a critical flaw in my code (if my bot breaks a lot and doesnt accept trades, i can get banned from backpack.tf), i bust out my only device which is my phone, and start editing away (JuiceSSH and turbo client is godsend ty). 30 minutes later, after toiling through code with no indentation or syntax highlights (mobile pls), ive fixed it. So i push to live and alls well.

Then I arrive at school, pull out my laptop and decided to check up on my code to see if anything needs fixing.

Oh look in one line i used '||' instead of '&&'.

ok lets fix it.

ok lets push to live again.

I launched WinSCP to move the files onto the server, and just as the loading bar finishes and the file is overwritten, i realized; FUCK the code i had on my laptop wasnt the latest version i just worked on on my phone.

So that's that. 30 minutes of typing code without indentation and syntax highlighting on a 5 inch screen and it's all gone.

TLDR:
Version control is a must.

Typing fast is something every dev picks up as a skill because of course, its the natural progression.

But it's amazing how this skill goes to shit when your crush needs help and is watching you type something.

So me and my team went to this hackathon, and we were in the last 4 hours of the event.

Me being the dumb type, I forgot that my laptop's keyboard was broken (when numlock is pressed the whole keyboard spams everything, weird).

I was typing up my last lines for the algorithm and instead of enter I end up hitting guess what, the numlock key.

I should've told you that when I hit the numlock key the keys go crazy, I cant stop it. The numlock wont shut off after i tapped on it again. The only way to fix this is by restarting the computer.

I try to backspace the crazy spam that happened (this was before restarting) the keys typed so fast never got the chance to select the stuff.

I end up restarting my laptop and turned out I selected most of my algorithm, instead of the spam, and now thats been replaced by the spam.

I couldn't ctrl z cuz I restarted and Android Studio auto saved. Had to freakin write everything from scratch and my team ended up not doing 2-3 features that were originally planned.

Rip. Gotta get the keyboard fixed ASAP.