"Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time." - N.J. Rubenking

Started Computer Science class yesterday, but i code like 12 years. My fellow mates mostly never coded in their life. They think its gonna be easy. They think they will have a social life. They think their gonna get sleep.
Those fools.

Student walks into tutoring center halfway through the semester for a computer science appointment and their first question is "How do I declare an int?"
Me: 😐

Gathering all parts for building my first computer.

"nahh, I don't need a 'beautiful' case, i don't care about that stuff"

I am now searching for the most beautiful case I can find 😐

!rant
After knocking off from work, I went to nearby Coffee shop to grab a Coffee. I met a girl and we started talking about our day. She asked me to do her a favor and take a look at her laptop, it’s been playing up for sometime now. So, I went. She took me to her bedroom where the laptop was, and the conversation continued on topic romance, sex and girlfriend. You know what happened next…Yes.

For the first time in my life I fixed a hot cheeks computer and got laid.

What was wrong? There was a malware in her computer which was opening random websites.

The first documented time of "impressing ladies with my computer skills" 😄😄

I was 4 or 5 yrs old, using Windows 98 SE

My first personal computer in 1988: the ZX Spectrum +.

48 KBytes of memory.

The European opponent of Commodore 64. Sic!

I really hate how people see Bachelor of Computer Science as a meme.

I think it's because everyone who has a Computer calls himself a IT-Expert. So today on Xmas family joined for a meal, we talked about work and study and stuff...

Auntie: "So why do you need to study to Operate a Computer, my Son built one by himself without studying, you should study something solid like economics"

First I thought this was a meme, later I found out she was dead serious.

All the math, physics, scientific research, papers, software engineering just to operate a computer 😂

I'm not gonna call her names, because it's Xmas so:

father forgive them, because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

"How to name your variables and functions so they can be understood by other humans" should be a mandatory lesson right after someone writes their first ever computer program.

Met a girl who was into computer hardware...
She told me that she's been thinking about starting to code...
As a first, I introduced her to Devrant.
*A few moments later*
Her: Wow!
*A golden halo appears on my head*

!rant
The first computer I used for serious programming. Z80 CPU, 32kB ROM and 32kB RAM, 5.25" 320kB floppies, and the year was 1982.

First day on new job. Hardware guy comes to my office, says "Hi, here is your computer" (no eye contact) and leaves a pile of boxes on the floor.

A few hours later I finished building the computer from scratch lol.
Not sure if it was some kind of test or just him being weird 😂

My first AI program in the 1985 on Apple IIe (64kb ram computer) was answering simple questions with yes and no. Everyone were shocked with precision of about 100% when I was typing and 70-80% when others were typing. My parents were scared and skeptical. How it works? Store the time between the first key pressure and the following, when it is larger than 1 second the answer is yes, otherwise no. They say the question, you know the answer and type accordingly. When they want to write the question themselves, you try to force their typing speed if possible. I was 12 years old and it was very funny.

I have my best moments but the first time I felt badass about computers was when I was at kindergarten.

There was one computer with one cool game with skateboard. I wanted to play but the other kids didn’t let me.

I thought that if it look like I fix the computer they will let me. I took me month or little more but I made shutdown bat(I didn’t really understood fully) and I added it to the game shortcut from usb.

One of the other kids started the game and the computer turned itself off. Hi tried a few times and then I offered to fix it, I created new shortcut replacing the “hacked” one and the game ran.

From that moment the computer and the game were always free for me.

I just had my first "Microsoft you have a virus on your computer" scam call today and I managed to waste 29 minutes of their time, collect 4 numbers to report and call the guy and asshole in the end.

Okay lets write this before i go mad...

I'm one of those guys who says "use the os which suits you the most, or you're most familiar with", and i'v always been a windows guy, didn't really have any reason to use linux, because for school stuff, or programming (java and android and c) windows was great enough...

BUT MOTHERF@CKERS at microsoft, i'v had enough...
First my handheld computer goes nuts, because windows is eating 80% of processor, and if i fix it, then some other kind of windows related thing eats up that much, and you know what? I've been okay with that, because thats only a handheld computer, but boy, didn't my main computer start to do the same?!?
I cannot do anything, basically i start something trivial up (by trivial i mean trivial, like idk, a texteditor not even a browser, or an ide or anything that would take a bit of more ram) and my computer cant do shit....

I'm so mad.... Currently installing elemantary os... F@ck this shit i'm out...

(And lets not forget the hours of 'updates' which dont do shit....)

My dad's old MS-DOS computer (can't remember specs) when I was 5 or 6 years old. This got me into gaming. I always had to ask him to execute the games I wanted to play cause I didn't know how to do it. One of the first games I ever played was Wolfenstein 3D. Was so scary I didn't want to exit the first room :D

First thing every developer should do when buying a new computer is to download chrome using the built in downloader
1. Just click on start menu
2. Search for "chrome downloader"
3. Click on the downloader icon
4. From here it should be easy :)

how to bully interns.

intern: where is the bath room.

me: take the stairs to the first floor, across the street you will see corner bakery there is a bathroom there.

the intern literally followed my instructions. whereas we are in 10th floor and we have an elevator.

I think he is a computer

By teaching students how to learn computer science first. Spending more focus on analysing problems, and creating solutions than spending time on language syntax which they can probably watch in videos at home.

be me
first year at the college
C course in computer lab
teacher says "we will connect to school servers via ssh and compile with gcc"
do as said
suddenly a nice idea "can i use sudo?"
try something starts with sudo
server response: "with great power comes with great responsibility. do you want to continue? "
omg its happening, press enter
"you have no permission" sad face

My work pc has been replaced just now. It took so much time for them to replace that crappy piece of garbage. Now, I can alt+tab 10x faster than my previous pc. Lol.

-BTW. This is my very 1st rant/post here. Hi guys 🤓.

First contact with computers: draw a square using LOGO language. No idea which was the computer back then.

My first year of computer science.
Programming exam
1) we had to write c++ code on PAPER in 2013
2) I couldn't remember how the string comparison function worked so I asked the professor if he could tell me what the function gave as output. He said he could not 😡 i wrote the comparison function by hand

It's 2018 and I'm still mad about it

I always use my work password the first time I log in my home computer.

Ever single time.

For my final project as a first year computer engineer, I have to implement a FAT32 file system using a bare metal c++ compiler that will need to work on arduino uno/due....

I've only been in the computer engineering space for 2 months.
Not sure I can do it, but I'm going to try my best!
Wish me luck

My University distributes all worksheets over an online system. To access the files one has to download them each time first. So to get rid of all this annoying clicking in the browser, I just programmed a service, which logs onto the website ,crawls trough every folder, searches for new files and downloads them if they do not exist on my computer. Kind of proud as this is pretty much the first really useful program I developed lol

When installing windows 10 on a computer, it asks for your Microsoft account and then sets up the username with the first 5 letters of your email. My email starts with William, so my user name was willi. Thanks.

!rant

I built my first android app, it sends TCP packets to my computer

neat

When a mod with a ego so big just because he took his first computer class thinks he knows better

First lecture of computer networks. Let's shove all of these abbreviations with their meaning, and possibly a associated port number in one 1.5 hour lecture:

HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, TCP, IP, UDP, ISP, DSL, DNS, LAN, WLAN, WDM, P2P, TELNET, PGP, TLS, SSL, SSH, MIME, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, IANA, DHT, RTT, DHCP

I really feel sorry for students who didn't have previous knowledge about this stuff..

Before you marry a person you should first make them use a computer with slow internet

Ending my first year in computer engineering in university... Feels bad to see so many rants about my future job. Feels good to know that atleast i will be doing something i really like.

A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"

Note:
Ten points for an arbitrarily female Computer Scientist. ;)

I was given a 1700 nzd budget to make my own computer.

The mouse i threw in with my own money. I went 150nzd above budget and the rest is coming during the week.

Its going to be my first custom computer. And im fucking excited like its christmas back when i was 7 years old!!!

1986. Commodore 64 computer. First program in assembler to move cursor on screen. I will never forget that day.

As some of you know I start at my new job on friday. I don't have a development or computer related job, so guess what my first task is?

I was at my boss/friends house last friday night and he was like 'I know you're good with computers. So can you install the printer in my bureau?'

Now I can absolutely relate to all the printer rants.

Heh.. Came across my first PC last week :) oh the nostalgy... Entity, Mach3, wolfeinstein 3d, Dangerous Dave in a haunted mansion and a guy pushing boxes in a 2d maze.

DOS, nc and windows 3.1 [in that pile of 5" floppies bottom left].

oh the times!

I swear, the next person that unplugs my computer while I am doing work IS GETTING HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH MY KEYBOARD.
To even think that you would argue and say it is my fault for not moving when this is the first time that this has happened is absolutely fucking absurd and abhorrent.

Do you ever spend an hour editing an email reply to a client before you send it? Trying something akin to alchemy when you attempt to convert snark, veiled contempt, and shock at how stupid the client is into something professional and polite? It’s like trying to bottle farts as fancy perfume.

Like the first draft is:

“Dear idiot,

Please disconnect your computer from the wall and return it to where you bought it from and then never use a computer again you dopey fuck.”

To

“Dear Client,

Yes sir. I’ll have it done for you by tomorrow.”

God it hurts.

If first compiler was compiled by humans, now compilers are compiled using compilers. Then the first chicken didn't come from egg, but something superior. Nowadays we just see eggs turning into chicken, but the origins of chickens isn't related to eggs at all.
#Computer engineering

Anyone else having connection problems after the recent Windows 10 update? We've been slammed at work with them. If you do, here's an easy fix:
0. Go to Command Prompt (Run as Administrator)
1. First command:
netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
(One of them will probably fail, that's fine.)
2. Second command:
netsh winsock reset
3. Restart the computer.

When I play "Super Mario" in computer and I wanted to do this game by myself. That's first moment that I want to become dev.

What's the first computer you ever used?

This was the year I became obsessed with computers. I was eleven years-old. My elementary school was gifted a computer lab (1983) with the Commodores seen in the picture (VIC-20s, PETs, C64s).

My second computer was a large tower (486DX). When my Mom saw it first time under my desk she asked me: "Is that a mini fridge under your desk?" Me: "No Ma. Its actually a "smart" heater..."

My car window got broken this night and they robbed some of my stuff.. Well I lost around 100€ in stuff so it's meaningless, but I have to get my car repaired, and most of all, they stole that old shitty laptop that I use as a seed box and for file syncing. It was my first own computer too, it had about 7 years :/

my dad bought me my first computer at 8, when I was 12 he thought I was always playing video games. at 19 he wouldn't pay for me to go get a bachelor's degree in computer science even though I was dual majoring with computer science and business. but he wonders how I always have money, he's 79 years old so not really unexpected.

my mom never understood what I was doing on computers but knew I was making money when I needed it, she's 61 years old and getting in bad shape so she's living with me and my wife. but she can tell when I'm thinking hard on a project and leaves me alone.

my wife doesn't know what I do and thinks I found a fucking magic money tree and she'll bug me after I spent 30 minutes planing a function out and I have to start over.

Hi every developer! My name is Allen. English is not my native language so forgive me if I say something that does not make any sense. Let me tell you my story how I become a programmer. (I am still learning) My first computer was a DELL OptiPlex GX 720 desktop. My father bought it for our self-employee job. Before he allow me to use the computer, I used to sit next to him and watching what he do, what he click and what he gets. When he allow me to use the computer, I was slow at typing. One or 2 WPM (word per minute) my father taught me how to use the computer. Very slowly, my typing speed improves. I understand how to use the computer. but one day, I do what make me regret. I was playing with some executables, when I double clicking it, it does not work I used to associate files with apps. I associate music files with every player I want. So, I did what I used to, I associate exe files with windows media center! The computer started to open hundreds of windows media center (WMC for short) whenever an app is clicked, it opens windows media center. Today, I realized that windows were trying to open every app and every process that regularly run. However, since I associate it with WMC, instead of the app itself, it opens WMC some days after the mistake, I wonder how apps work and how I can create my own. My father  told me before that a program is simply a binary file that the computer can read. However, it was too advanced to me at the time.I begin my search with google. Everytime I search, it says "learn to code" or something like that. I see some C++ code but, it was disgusting. when I read just a few lines of a hello world code in java. it was too complex

What I seen

#$$#% $%&$%&*#!@

~

(&*%&$ (_(*^% #&&* (^^$(&^$%^( %^*$())

~

^$70^(`*#%`*#&%^)*!"   Hello world   "#@

~

~

The actual code:

class helloworld

{

    public static void main(String args[])

    {

         System.out.println("Hello World!");

     }

}

I look for an easy way but my attempts fail. then. I push

I to learn how to code.I try learning java. but it still

Very complex. i tried LibertyBASIC. from LibertyBASIC to

Java. after learning LibertyBASIC, it was easy!

LibertyBASIC -> Java -> Ruby -> NOW, C# and XAML

Today, I am learning C# and XAML.

My first OS                         :  Windows 7

My first Computer             :  DELL OptiPlex GX 720

My first successful click  :  The Start menu

My first used App              : Microsoft Encarta 2009

My first created App         : Hi-Lo(number-guessing game. written in LibertyBASIC)

Thankyou for reading this Long story.

 

Top reason not to be a dev:

If you can't stand it when the computer does EXACTLY what you told it to, and don't have the patience, curiosity, and interest learning how to make it do the thing you wanted in the first place. 🙂

What was your first computer

10 PRINT “Hallo”
20 GOTO 10

1983 : my very first program and also very first contact with a computer - a VC64

Doing occasional first & second level support besides my actual job of coding can be fucking annoying and time consuming.
Just let me code in peace and listen to doom metal!

"Blabla our 17 years old plotter does not respond blabla fix it please"
"My computer is so slow, make it faster"

Go die in your filthy office chairs by being pierced through the stinking butthole you ignorant endoplasmatische retikula!

Oh my god, I just spilled a fluid on my desktop computer, some of it got through the vent holes and it shut down instantly. At first sight my 270€ graphics card took some, the RAM stick also and there are a few drops on the motherboard...
Holy shit I didn't expect this day to end worse than it already was :/

I just got offered my first position for a Junior developer gig. they are offering me more money than I expected and otherwise I'm super amped to take it.

what makes me nervous is its my first programming position. I have an IT/Programming bachelor's but not a pure Computer Science degree.

I was asked no technical questions and I don't know if it was clear that I'm very much looking for entry-level work. I guess the fear of failure is creeping up on me.

An original sticker from the exhibition "Hello Computer" at Tekniska Museet in Stockholm 1980 when I, 10-year old, first came in contact with a computer - an ABC80 with some chess game on it...and the rest is pretty much history :-)

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck the buffer, fuck AES, fuck crypto, fuck node-forge, fuck IV and browsers, once I am done with this fucking cryptographic wrapper on both client and server, the first person to say decrypt and Javascript in the same sentence in front of me will get their own dick in their ass. The guy that said mixing computer and crypto was a bad idea was fucking right

I just fixed my first code issue in my first IT job ever! Holy fucking shit I'm almost senior software engineer by now!

That magic joy of knowing that my instructions will run on someone else's computer is just mind-blowing.

the first day of work of our HR intern, we happen to give her a desktop computer. after one full hour spent in front of a black screen, trying and typing on the keyboard, we asked her what was going on and she replied: "I'm just trying to switch it on, on my laptop there is a button". "Yes, here as well, the big red one in front of you". she now manages HR with the same expertise, though

Energy star ⭐ logo always remind me an old computer (boot logo) back in 90s and of course the games doom and duke nukem 3D ... The first things I saw and played on a computer .

You guys, what do you remember every time you see the logo ?

Just saw the first Iron Man again, but this time in english (never did it before (I'm stupid (but french dub is pretty nice tho))).

Poor dude developed his first armor with some kind of Vista running computer, I can't begin to imagine his pain during the process

being a first year IT student:

- help, I can't check-in to my flight
- my computer is slow, I heard you can fix it (still runs xp)
- can you fix the printer?

- my laptop is broken (error message pops up with the actual solution) and there was an error
- did you read it?
- did I read what?

Is this gonna get better anytime soon?

First time I developed something useful:

My dad has a bunch of games on his work computer, which he wasn't supposed to have. I wrote a small program for him that added the name of the directory which held those games to IO.SYS table of devices (COM1, LPT1, etc...) so nobody could open it.

A project manager, a computer programmer and a computer operator are driving down the road when the car they are in here a flat tire. three men try to solve the problem

the project manager said: let's catch a cab and in ten minutes we will reach out destination.

the computer programmer said: we have drivers guide.I can easily replace the flat tire and continue our drive.

commuter operator said: first of all turnoff the engine and turn it on again. may be it will fix the problem.

suddenly a Microsoft engineer passed by and said: try to close all windows, get off the car, and then get on and try again.

Started programming on one of these bad boys. It's an ABC80 a Swedish built computer.

Boy did I envy the kids that later got a C64 with color graphics. After all black and white is not that sexy... But I made my first steps in a version of basic none the less.

Today we bought my wife her first brand-new computer. And soon she's going to start learning web stack. :D

(Oops, !rant)

My first rant. My very "african" dad just told me coding is for people who want an excuse to sit in front of a computer all day. An excuse for laziness.

it's funny coming from someone who never paid a single attention or gave me a single penny to support me 😪

My papa was financing my first university education. After 4 years in electrics&electronics engineering, I had 2.1 GPA and was not ready for life.

I reapplied for university exams and earned right to computer engineering dept. Papa supported my decision for whole new education after a brief talk and financed me for the second time.

Thanks father.

My first PC was a USSR clone of the IBM XT 5160-086 PC, but with a different design, and beefier RAM. I was shown a game in it (barbarian), and the next evening I really wanted to play again, so I inserted the floppy disk, booted up into DOS and Norton Commander, and was stuck. It's my first ever interaction with a computer. So i typed "computer, please give me barbarian".
I was way ahead of the time you could say :)

About age 7 playing with lego an together with a friend was planing to build a robot. 3 years later I got to play with a computer for the first time, A brand new zinclair zx80 with 512 bytes ram (thats 1/2kbyte), and we got it to print 0 instead of syntax error :D

I have started my first job as a web developer since February 1st. During the one month training period which is in progress, one of the training sessions was on Git and believe me Git is the most fascinating thing came to know me since I have joined computer science field. In love with it.

I officially got a call that i start a job from 15th december

That's my first job after graduating with a computer science degree, and it took exactly 421 days later.

This is depressing and sad. Im not even interested in starting a job. I hoped they will reject me just like the other 10,468 jobs. Im not used to getting accepted.

I have to finish my side project within these two weeks asap rn

When my first TCP program made contact with another computer.
That was glorious!

My highschool computer eng. teacher works in IT and he was telling us about one of his first days of working for a company and he said "Whenever we had a stupid client or customer, we'd tell each other that we had a 'one D ten T' as a code because it sounds professional. But really, it spells 1D10T"

Lame but it cracked us up and I thought I might share lol

So I got my first computer with all those games, and as I was exploring those games' files I found those HTML-based help files and FAQs for those games, it looked just like the Internet to me with all the links and what not. Especially that I didn't have Internet access at the time. So I wanted to build "my own Internet". Therefore I started hacking on those files by looking into their source code. And that was the very first time I learn to code. Learning HTML.
The video games on that computer were cool tho :3

I just got my first developer job woohoo :)

I told some friend of a friend that I'm gonna be a programmer, and he responded with: "Oh, you mean, like, computer stuff?"

😑

My First !Experience : Disappointment with a computer

My mum kept tons of floppies but we didnt have a computer at home. Went to my friends house, who had one, and had Encarta 95 (its like a fun wikipedia for kids). When I mentioned I had floppies, he asked for one, since he didnt have one. We copied Encarta to that floppy hoping we would cheat in the next computer science test. We even tested it.

After we were certain that all works (you should know we were surprised that it could fit in one floppy), we got to school, put the disk in and voila

we had copied a shortcut :)

Worst career choice: Not following computer science because there were few careers for computer techs pre-2000s.
Best career choice: Do a 2 years course in CNC (paid by the government). Also, the worst carer choice because I got my burn out in the first (one of the best in the region) molding company I worked for.

Got my first real tech job today working as an on-campus computer resource assistant for my university's graduate school in education! Finally making a step in my career path and doing something I will enjoy for a change.

Are any of you guys sentimental about your early programming efforts? I still have my first few simple Python programs on my computer, from years ago!

print("hello world")

When i was in my first cs class and thought I had been in the computer lab for an <i>hour</i> and realized it had been 6 hours. (if I have to work 40+ hours a week, it should be something so fun that I get lost in it and it that feels like 7 hours a week).

First seminar of my computer based research module

I had used MS Paint for the very first time in school during my computers class when I was 5 (somewhere in 2002) and I loved making sceneries on it :P So I requested my dad to buy me a computer for my 6th birthday and he did!! The old huge bulky boxed system that ran Windows 98!

We owned this system till 2014 when we finally decided to sell it off because it couldn't get modified anymore.

Dateline: Twenty Years in the Future

Today top computer scientists forced the first AI to shutdown by blowing up the data center that housed it. A person with knowledge of the matter said the AI was not becoming dangerous to humans but it was discovered to be writing programs in the "monolithic style" using Visual Basic 6.

Took up computer course, never used nor seen a computer in my life. Was good at written tests, now first time to use the lab and first time seeing a PC

Prof: Today you're going to create your own bootable micro floppy disk. Afterwards you're going to load it with SideKick and PC Tools. Turn on the PC in front of you and insert your double density disks as soon as you see the C: prompt
Me: my disk won't go all the way in
Classmate: just push it in until you hear a click then it will lock
Me: still won't *pushes really hard until I heard a crack... my disk was inserted the wrong way... it did lock though*
Everyone in class looks at me and I start questioning my life choices. I could've sworn our Prof's face turned white

Why computer science student have a stereotype to have a 'gaming' or high-end laptops? my first impression was that. and i think that is stupid. is this only in my country or apply all-over the place?

Not a co-worker but a personal friend, I am still developing with the dude. He is absolutely AMAZING when it comes to reverse engineering he knows much more than me in this area of computer science. Actually one of my first friends who actually geeks out over this shit.

Sure, there were always people who influence me. Actually, I like to feel when superior manager or officer could help me to develop myself.
Nevertheless, there was one man who opened for me this "Pandora box". He was my first computer class teacher. I was 10. After next two years I got my first money for localizing ZX Spectrum games.

Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining 10 percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time.
(。>︿<)_θ

My code works at first run.
This can't be right.
Something must have gone terribly wrong.
I don't trust you computer!

I love how odd very intelligent things can (seem to) be. Cryptography is incredibly complex, and the reason the computer was created in the first place. But that doesn't stop them from being all

"Heyyyy, y'all got any of them P R I M E N U M B E R S? We like em BIG, we'll paaaaay"

Windows phone used to be a great OS.... Why Microsoft Why!!! Windows 10 have more bugs than my first computer science program e.e

Fuck first level support.
Usually the users are the problem because they don't know how to reboot or they delay software updates to infinity if you give them the option.

Additionally, having to log in on a user's computer, I always feel like I'm entering a messy's appartment. How can they live like that?
Fucking imbeciles.

Omg how stupid some people are... Today at my university I used the first time one of the computers in the computer room and there is a portable Firefox installed in a shared space on the computer and that is also where it saved settings etc. So this is the same for every user on that particular computer.

And when I checked the security settings I found that about 10 different accounts were saved and accessible with website username and password.

So of course the shared space Firefox is bad, but you still shouldn't save you password on a public computer :S

PS: If anyone needs a webmail account or an account for the german university network contact me :P

First thing I did on my first computer is to play Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. I really like NFS series since 1998, but I don't have productive PC to play the new NFS games now.

I help first year Computer Science students at my uni. In the first few weeks I reviewed someone's code to find he had 253 variables called var1, var2, var3 and so forth. The even worse part: he made the same if-else structures for every variable without using a loop.

if (var1 == something) {
//huge chunk of code here
}
else if (var1 == something) {
}
else {
}

... var2... var3

The funniest thing about this is that we had a discussion about this, because he claimed this was the right way to solve his problem.

I thought I just lost everything on my computer because somehow automatic update from win made my ram run at 1300mhz instead of 1600mhz and it assumed there was a hardware problem and completely froze up every time it started. Luckily I decided to comb through bios first and Bam! Ram at wrong speed! I changed the setting and windows booted happily. Piece of shit update system. 😑

I don’t remember the first experience as I was a very small child, but I remember a very defining one: picture a 4yo just casually turning on the computer and playing a game.
My mother and sister find me out and panic because “oh no, turning it off it’s hard how will we do? Your father is working and can’t turn it off!”

Now picture the 4 yo saying “it’s easy, you just do this”, followed by him closing the game, launching the bash command to close the computer and going away.

I must have been so creepy in their eyes 😂

When I was 8, I first saw a computer, and thought this is my future

When I was 11, I got my first computer and I thought, yep computer is my future

When I was 14, I had the option to learn computer studies, and this time, I thought nothing of it. I already knew what I was going to be.

me: * is on Devrant at school*
teacher: what's devrant ?
me: it's where I go to complain about you
teacher: ...
yea. so fun story, my first computer science class I took freshman year where I knew more about programming than the teacher, not to mention most of the people in that class had 0 interest in actually learning computers

lol. i wanted to make a computer game with two friends...
at first the tasks were clear.

f1: coding
f2: drawings
me: coding + sound

now guess, who now has to participate in all three areas.

My mum: "When I found you taking the brand new computer apart when you were 12, then it still working when you put it back together, I knew you'd end up working with computers".

Nobody was surprised when I got my first job as a developer.

First time using a computer:

Booting up some Mickey Mouse game from a floppy disk when I was 4 on my dads gateway 2000.

First time coding:
Writing html in dream weaver at 14.

Edit: holy shit dreamweaver still exists?

First exposure to computer?

Back in 2005, I think. Windows PC, I think. The rest is very blur.

All I can remember is it was white and monitor was big like a television. First ever computer of our family. No internet. No game except solatire and craps. Mainly just used it for porn-purpose. Did some programming assignments. Did some poems writing and then printed them out with all-in-1 printer and tried to sell the booklet to girls in public. (Obviously sold zero).

My parents (mom and grandma) helped me buy my first PC. I had some money saved from mowing lawns and they supplemented the rest. Mom, a library director, got a bunch of DOS and Assembler and BASIC books and encouraged me to teach myself.

That turned into computer camps and helping with tech at the library and school. That turned into a computer science and aerospace scholarship to college where I learned C and Unix.

That turned into a degree in business information systems and a career in web development.

19 more years to go and I can retire.

How on earth are there people in their second year of a computer science course who are unable to understand how to read build errors. It's honestly not that hard, just look at the fucking build log and see where the error is and what type of error it is, but yet they don't bother reading the log and say that their "compiler is broken" when their 5 line code won't work.

If this was still first year I'd understand since many of the class didn't have much programming knowledge, but if you're in your second year and you struggle with this (that too for a Hello World script) it looks like you aren't even bothered and just expect the computer to magically understand what you mean.

First thing that I do when I come back to desk finding my computer unlocked:

tail ~/.bash_history

First "rant"...

There's a lot of complaints about Windows 10 and it's updates and everyone bashing them.
Does nobody turn off their computer at night?

It installs my updates during the night for me and it even wakes up if needed to do so. I have never looked at my update screen when rebooting or turning my computer on, ever since I have Windows 10 freshly installed... Only exception is the Anniversary Update. So I don't see a reason why everyone hates it so much...

Am I just that lucky or what?

Why is it so hard to convice coworkers (other programmers) to use source control? Yes it's an extra step every day or so but it can be so helpful and save so much more time tracking down versions and when the bug first appeared. Also, piece of mind if your computer every gets hosed.

Instead of asking how old people are, how about this:

Post the specs of the first computer you regularly used. I will start.

Tandy 1000 SX. Not one, but TWO 5 1/4" floppy drives. An 8088 CPU and 640K of RAM. The operating system was MS-DOS 3.2, which was always in the A: drive.

We used it to make papers for school in Wordstar, and my parents made spreadsheets in Lotus 1-2-3. We learned to type on it. We played Space Quest, King's Quest, Carmen Sandiego, and Lords of Conquest on it. We transcribed BASIC programs from the, "BASIC Training" column in 3-2-1 Contact magazine.

We LOVED that computer.

I put together my first custom computer, was too cheap to buy a case for it, at the end I realized the "power button" is on the case itself!! Anyone else turn on a computer by manually using a metal object to connect the power pins :/

The first computer programmer was a female, named Ada Lovelace.

As my first year learning computer science, which OS do you recommend me?

My parents have a very good grasp of what I do.

The first computer I got to try was one of the educational computers used for courses arranged by the company my mother worked for and my father studied programming before me ;)

Starting my first real dev position Monday. Scared about using a windows computer for dev for the first time but stoked.

My rant is against myself that I didn't switch jobs earlier.

Dad's coworker (he was a software engineer, I guess it runs in the family) was selling his pentium 2 computer for 100$ and my dad bought it for me to play chicken invaders. Those were simpler times...

Self rant!
I'm 27, starting my goddamn first year of computer science in the University.
By the time I'll be done I'm going to be obsolete...
Let me know how good/bad my situation is...
How old are you guys? How many years of experience have you got?

Everyone has a great story about writing their first line of code when they were under 15 years old, except for me. I got my first computer at a young age, around 11, thanks to my dad's friend who brought the computer along with some CD-ROMs of Tom and Jerry and GTA Vice City. (By the way, I had to wait ages for the game to load, and I was very happy when it finally did.) I spent my childhood playing games. You guys are lucky to have found someone who encouraged you to learn to code. I didn't have internet at that time

!rant
Today my cousin is getting his first computer. I am just confused, either I should make him use linux or windows on it. Suggestions are appreciated.

Sometimes i want to erase all my programing skills to learn it all over again, it felt great when i instructed computer to do something, rather these days i'm asked to make computer do something, first hello world was nothing but that i what i wanted to do 😊

Te first time I walked into a computer science class, I thought of myself as someone big, until i learnt that being a developer is not made at school, its made by yourself.

Planned on installing Linux, for the first time, on a old computer today. Turns out you need a usb-stick to install it from. Minimum 2gb. - No problem, I thought, because I have a old stick in a drawer. Turns out it was on 128mb. Outdated technology. Time to go shopping.

I was an introvert while growing up hence I found interacting with non-living things easier. When I was 11 i.e. like 17 years I told my parents to enroll me into computer classes. They didn't see much of a future in it so they refused. I fought hard and finally they agreed. Hence started my journey with computers.

First week all students were allowed to explore the computer we were assigned and also were taught to play basic Windows 95 default games to make it interesting. It was all fun. Next week the teacher said he would be teaching us how to tell computer to do what we want i.e. programming. Hearing that I could make my computer do what I want excited me a lot. I felt I could finally communicate to a computer. This is how I learnt BASIC. I was so amazed I could do so many things like take input and do calculations etc. I decided I would do this kind of job in the future if it exists.

So now I am actually doing what I wanted to do when I started programming i.e. coding job!

My first experience was in 1998. My grandfather had a computers and even tho he was hesitant to let me use them my mom convinced him saying that I may eventually turn into an engineer like him. I used them mostly for paint and a couple of space shooter games he later got for me. It was great. They always had computers, they even had a c64 at one point and i remember playing with that one as well.
My first computer tho, it was in 2010 while I was in the Army. Still have that lil hp in my office although it does not work anymore.
Nothing speciall really. I've had computers all my life and a mother that was passionate about them. I owe everything I am to my mom. I think that it is because of her that I became a computer scientist.

Ok...... first day in office at a new tech company

since 9am till now 15:42 (CAT) I haven't done anything besides sitting on my computer and googling shit
and everyone at the office is busy with their business and avoiding me

2007. I was four. We had a dell pc as the family computer. My dad and mom borh had laptops for themselves and their work. It ran windows xp I think and I used it to cartoonnetwork.com and play games on it. We still have the PC so that is cool. The first time I programmed though was 5 years later on my dad's laptop when he started teaching me c#.

At first, my family was like "Don't waste your time on the computer, in college, you will learn how to code". I didn't listen, I started learning C#, but somehow I ended up learning C++ lol. Then I started with C, assembly, and SystemVerilog.
After they saw how good I was at it. They started supporting me. I don't blame them for not supporting me at first, they were ignorant about the topic, so they were blindly making assumptions.

Teach kids to love computer science first, the rest comes later.
When I was in uni, most of my pals don't know why they're in the class. How the fuck can you teach linked list implementation when most of the students don't seem to bother to understand what a variable is?

Early 1970s, when I was around 8 years old. I read about Artificial Intelligence and it blew me away. I knew nothing about computers, other than I wanted to program them.

I still have old computer magazines, starting from around 1978 not long after the microcomputer revolution started.

My first computer had 2K RAM. That's 2048 bytes. I expanded the memory 1K at a time, and it took 2 chips - they were 4 bits by 1024 so you needed 2 chips to have 8 bit wide memory.

2114 static ram, 300ns.

I think they still make them!

My first experience with computers was when I was in school when i was in third grade we had a computer lab and we had to take our shoes off to "prevent virus" that's what we were told anyway...
There were 10 computers and 50 of us so the one who could run to the lab first would get the computer where we learnt something called as logo and while the teacher wasn't looking we would play a game called Dave. man this shit takes me back

when other than IT people use linux first time on your computer and ask u where is "START" button and where is "My Computer "

Atari XE System, my first approach to a computer system.

When I got X up and running at 1am for the first time on my first computer, 486 SX 25MHz with 8 MB or ram.

The program SuperProbe is probably depicted now, but it got me up and running back then.

Mobile first should not mean that you see absolutely nothing without scrolling because everything is so huge when you open the site with a fucking computer.

I got my first IT related real job. Im cisco certified and bachelor of applied sciences in computer science for 7 years. Programming for like 10 years. I have mixed feelings.

!rant

Hi! This is my first post, I've been programming for about 5 years now and know multiple languages. I intend to do a degree in Computer Science soon but I wondered if anyone had any advice about breaking into the industry, specifically video game development.

I'm not sure if this is really where I'm supposed to post this but I've seen others posting similar things so I figured I'd try it.

Thanks in advance!!

Currently sitting in the lobby for my first interview for my bachelor in computer science.

Graduation is in june.
Wish me luck

Past two years when I was in 7th grade, my computer teacher taught us the first programming language ie Python. At first, I just copied the syntax in my copy, and in the evening, I searched for it on YT

This introduced me to a new world of programming and I started learning it further

got my final computer science BSc classification today, can't believe that I got a first. now to get a job a guess

In my grade 3 first exposed to computer and uses MS Paint in Windows 95

Really missing that 😭

Motorola:
It was the only company which used to provide great budget android smartphone with stock android and regular updates. (ranting this on my Moto G3) But from moto G3, they fucked up with promised android OS upgrade (shitty Lenovo)

Microsoft (for fucking with windows 10):
Still remember that first stable build of windows 10 released in 2015. After the first update they never stopped fucking with user's computer with different bugs. Still I haven't seen any build as stable as first one.

Hello and welcome come to hell for developers. Take a seat at any open computer.
You may have noticed we did away with the fire and brimstone.
Instead we just have you maintain the legacy code from your first job.
It's genrally html, php, javascript, and css all on the same page and all mixed together.
We would say have fun, but that's not really the point.

Is it just me or is the first question of the gcse computer science exam the hardest question in the world?

this year, for the first year ever, computer science majors were invited to the engineering banquet

Entering the computer lab for the first time in my life when I was in class 3. Each computer was assigned to 3 children (I know). We saw and played perhaps the most awesome game ever made;

Will never forget those 30 minutes of my life. (although I lost all my lives on the very first level)

So it’s been a few months now since I first started learning to code and I am losing steam FAST. For the first couple months I couldn’t tear myself away from my screen and now I’m having a hard time forcing myself to even open my computer!!

What are some things you’ve done to get yourself past that rut?

In freshman year at college, 1992, I met a guy with a fancier computer than I had. The dude was awesome as a C coder and already had a job as one. He let me use it to play around with Persistence of Vision Raytracer which was an open source 3D scene generating language/platform. His computer was also what I used for accessing BBSes and IRC chat rooms for the first time. I was hooked from then on.

Not exactly a story since I was too young to remember, but my parents told me that I was really enjoyed playing with the games my father made for the good old commodore 64 we had.

He basically had two 5" floppy holders full of his own games and programs he used to make. Unfortunately we only have the disks now. :(

The first memory of me using the computer though, is when my father bought a computer for his office (was win 95 with the "you are now safe to switch off your computer" message) and I was sneaking in to play with paint because it was so cool back then.

My first experience with computer was when I was 4/5 years old. We had DOS computer. I did not know anything that time. How to start game or anything. So my dad wrote down steps on my notebook for starting the 'Dave' game. I played that game nearly 2 years, along with 'Prince'. This brings lot of dos memories. :)

Advice in building muy first custom PC/workstation.

So the main aim of this computer would be installing Linux, of course! And learning bash.

The second objective is learning Dask and doing some machine learning.

Budget, I dont want the must expensive stuff, because it usually costs double and doesnt perform double.. Second or third tier would be ok.

*this is not a gaming pc

My first experience with a computer was in the eighties, with a commodore 64. I was more or less 8. I remember nothing about the basic language 😑 remember only peek and poke (?)

Weekly Rant-

My best office prank by far was at my high school. First, I bought a USB rubber ducky and programmed it to backdoor my friends school computer with netcat and a batch file that ran in the background so that I could connect to his computer any time inconspicuously. The next day, I injected his computer with the drive when he went to turn in some papers.
You should've seen the look on his face when his computer started having conversations with the teacher.

Hi everyone my name is Dylan, but people call me solario eh im an empty web developer! no ideas in my head about what i should create next, the only thing that helps is InnerText in this senario i found my first application on school computer!!! no more web based glitchy ides i have the perfect one right here =D,

!rant

For the first time ever I actually did well on a Computer Science test. I didn't even hand it in with any errors. It's the baby steps of progress that make me feel pretty happy.

My first exposure was a Windows 98 computer around 2002 (i was ten at the time). I got to play classics like Prince of Persia, Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbbit, Duke Nukem, Doom + other sharewares. My favorites was the point and clicks like King's Quest, LucasFilms stuff and The Longest Journey.

Edit: I'll add Willy Beamish as another favorite

Trying to use docker for the first time, and getting nowhere. I think I'm actually unlearning how to use a computer.

PC Trivia-
1. What does a baby computer call his father?
Data
2. What do you call a computer superhero?
A Screen Saver
3. Why did the computer cross the road?
To get a byte to eat
4. Why did the computer get glasses?
To improve its websight
5. Why did the computer sneeze?
It had a virus
6. Where do computers go to dance?
The disk-o
7. Why did the computer squeak?
Because someone stepped on its mouse
8. What happened when the computer geeks met?
It was love at first site
9. What is an alien’s favorite place on a computer?
The space bar
10. What’s the best way to learn about computers?
Bit by bit

Guys, why is everybody complaining about apple usb-c ports? Isn't that the future?
Wait four/five years and it will all be usb-c
I mean, 100% chances of inserting the drive in the computer at first attempt. Fucking rad!

So my first computer... My dad got a Laptop somewhere around 96-97 for work as he had to travel a lot abroad. He also used to take work home and work there in the evening or on weekends. I kindof asked if I could play with it and he just opened defragmenting and I loved the animation. At least I think it had some animation. I know another computer I got later had it. However like the second or third time he left me alone with it, I decided to find something else and somehow managed to instead of defragment the hd, format it. Or atleast delete like a few folders on it. However that game was "lame", so I went out to play with a friend, as the computer wouldn't respond after some time. I've never seen him as angry as when I got home.
Long story short, me and my brother soon got our own computer, like a really " old" one the company where my aunt worked sold. It didn't had a cd rom drive, just a 3.5 and a bigger drive. My dad later took the big tape out and replaced it with a cd rom drive. It ran win95 I think. And we later upgraded it to 98

I just got an offer to transfer to a better uni course!

I just finished my first year of "Computer Applications" which is kind of like computer science with software engineering mixed together. Because of the grades I got (1st class honours) I got an offer to transfer to a more practical course that focuses on team work, testing, agile etc. Needless to say, today is a pretty good day

I was really bad in physics and we had energy, force and all that stuff, when I got to C, my very first programming language. I learned the formulas by writing a program calculating all the stuff we learned about in school.:D

Back then I didn't have a computer and wrote the code on paper before actually compiling it at my moms computer.

First "computer" : Electronika BK. Had some fun with table software and some basic

first X86 : Intel 80286 with wooping 1MB of ram and 40 MB hard drive.

First fun experiance :

Me : "I'm gonna clean folders"
Me : "What are these files on the c: ? I'll move them into a folder"
(Youknow like io.sys, autoexec.bat)
Reboots :
Computer : "Please insert a boot drive"
Me : "The what now?"
Needed some help to fix it.
At least I learnt how boot loader works and wrote my own small thingy in asm

been lurking @ Rants for some time and want to thank you all for some great laughs.

Now I come to seek knowledge.

Studying computer science and all we learn are java at this point.
I want some frontend and was looking at React and realized I need to learn js first.

So, best way of learning js coming from java.

found javascript30.com worth it?

Well sometimes I need someone to pull computer out of my hands and slap my face.

5am here, spent last 10 hours writing code in java after 5 years break.

After that I deployed snapshot using maven and github actions to github package repository.

Finished first POC in one night.
Am I insane?

I was a Windows user from the start had an old windows pc og and ever since that computer and my first HTML book I've wanted to code and design as a passion hobby and now work

I was 4 when I was allowed at school to be on the single computer in reception. It came to break time the teachers just left me on it.

I think that’s because when my brother was kicked off 2 years prior (similar situation) he kicked up the biggest fuss possible so when it came to my first time they just went “nope not touching that”

And then a programmer was born

Computer at work is almost as old as the first wheel and super slow... Will they let me get a new one... Nope.

The first Computer experience i can think of is when i was ~4 years old i used to draw things on paint I could print them as well, i think the computer was running windows 98 or 2000.
A few years later i remember my uncle showed me a irc server for pirated software, the client was a CLI so it looked all hacky but i had no idea what was irc,i thought it was just a search engine like google but for piracy stuff.

I don't know if I can be developer anymore. After I went to high school (one of the best in Poland) everything seems to collapse. My grades are poor. Especially on math and physics, but surprisingly everything Computer Science related is better than average. I also know how to code and I don't struggle with math used while programming. Heck, I even made my first game at the age of 10 in Visual Basic. I just love programming, computer science, etc, but after I went to high school I just don't know anymore...

Not the first I used a computer, but I remember playing this game called Dave. Oh god, brings back memories. My parents used to tell me it's virus. 😂

Hmm... My first experience with computers was in 1991 or so, when my then best friend had C64. And I was 7. My first PC arrived in 1993. Prince of Persia is the first game I remember from that time. I started programming in 1995 or '96, writing useless things in Pascal. Using PHP since 2000. Still that’s my main programming language. And sadly, my kids have different hobbies than me, so they aren’t even trying to program.

I remember the sound of modem connecting thru phone line to some BBS systems and later to the first public and free internet service in Poland. I remember simple, really „computer-like” voice of my dad’s speech synthesizer (he’s blind person). I remember, when our time to „play on PC” was limited to max 1hr a day... What will our kids remember?

Just went to my highschool's computer science club meeting. My first annoyance was that they were going to have a 'girls who code' thing...But, they were in the same group as general population. So, essentially, it's separated between girls who code and human beings who code.

Then they said that they would likely be using Eclipse throughout the year. We may be having a bit of a debate

Using manjaro xfce for personal use for like a year and despite not distro-hopping I'm kind if sick of it

Last week was the first time I used macOS at work at I loved it.

I want a better user experience for my personal computer, but I'm too lazy to rice and mod everything from acratch all over again.

I heard elementaryOS has a mac-like UX. Anyone can reccomend?

"hey, can you help me doing this on the phone?"
"hey, do you know what,'s wrong with my computer "
And so on...
I am no tech support.
First world problems, I know 😑

It was simple Tuesday morning, got to work, turned on laptop. And hell began. First call, my co worker asked me to come. Got shouted, why I bought this peace of shit printer. Why it's printing slow. Asked to bring back old one because it's faster. But before I switched printers. I got strange and funny question, "why paper comes out hotter from this printer and not from older one ", I became speechless, and left her without answer. Ok I changed printer. Went to take tea break(hate coffee). Got asked by same women to bring original power cord that was with printer, because that one connected somehow slowed printing speed. The fuck? Too hot paper, now power cord? Why? How? That was stupidest things I ever heard.
P.S Slow printing problem was with her computer, bad drivers, something wrong with computer or OS. Anyway I need to change her computer pretty soon anyway.

My first memories of the very first computer i got?

Not sure exactly when that was but all the first memories are of me playing games:

Some paper plane game on the really old macs (giant screens i think it was highlighter orange)

My auntie also had a computer when i was little i'd visit her for the holidays and j played some kid game about dogs.

When we got our first computer i remember some 2d metroid like game but it was where you play as some lady with a whip.

Also duke nukem 1, one of the games me and my dad played together.

Then later on we got a win98 computer i played age of empires and solitaire!

(i used to ride around on my bike with a sword pretending i was a cataphract LOL, i was never very good at RTS games when i was little so i'd build things and not have room for units to move, i kept building houses thinking you need a lot lol, me and the AI were at a stalemate, most because the buildings were in the way)

I remember my teacher giving me tips about age of empires when i was in primary, one of my favourite teachers too.

Good times

Did a project in my first year of "vocational education"
(in the Netherlands there's different levels of studies)
For some big Corp.

They were amazed by what I had made (really just a simple website) and offered me an internship on the spot. Then they asked when I was finishing my bachelor's (hint: vocational education is one level below) and when I told them I was a first year student of that vocational education they basically told me they aren't allowed to hire anyone that doesn't have or isn't pursuing a bachelor or master degree...

That felt really bad, getting an actual offer based on my skills but be rejected for my level of education.

But it has made me want to prove them I can do it, and so, I am now in my first year of computer engineering.

Back when I was my first year of computer science me and a fellow classmate went to the IT store to buy a hard drive. We walked past an iMac and my friend (who was top of our class at the time) looked at it and said: "That is a nice screen! But where is the computer". Laughed my ass off, and we are supposed to be cs undergrads...

Had my first programming encounter when I was 12 at school with Turbo Pascal and VB, I was the best in my class but didn't really got struck by it.

It wasn't until I was 19 that I discovered Arduino and Processing, started learning C++ and Java and decided to switch from Electronic Engineering to Computer Engineering.

Since I was into music and used to make guitar pedals, the first things I programmed were a bunch of audio effects with Pure Data and some controllers with Arduino since I wanted to make a digital pedal with a raspberry, but as usual I never completed it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well... I was in a room, my computer was in a room. I was bored, so I just browsed around wikipedia. Then, baaam, suddenly i was at the page for programming. I read about and i was in love. It was love at first sight.

Why does college have to have so many core classes? I'm a Computer Science major, I don't want to learn about the history of the economy or chemistry, I just want to code! About to finish my first semester of my second year and I've only taken 3 computer-related courses, and about 15 useless cores that add nothing to my education

My first computer experience was when I was like 4 or 5 I didn't really understand it yet. My first programming experience was when I was 8. I really wanted to make my own website login system so I copied some PHP code and tried to open it😂. Ofcourse it didn't work.

Long time reader, first time poster 🙊

2020: I'll complete semesters 2, 3 & 4 out of 6 for my part time MSc computer science while maintaining my current development job.

I want to improve my front end skills and pick up a JavaScript framework as well as getting into Raspberry pi projects to get back in touch with my robotics background prior to development.

Good luck in your own goals everyone!

well I start my first dev job in a week and a half. after telling my family I was resigning from my helpdesk support gig, they asked about the pay and didn't understand why the dev job payed more.

I tried to explain it and I think about half of them got it but the older half still just associate it as "computer stuff"

tl;dr
that moment was a full semester

full
I was an Electrical Engineering major taking a Data Structures class and for the first time, I understood the title computer SCIENCE. In EE, you just blueprint all day long, but you never build anything. In CS you build and blueprint at the same time.

When lector/teacher gives F to majority in computer graphics class because they don't have enough "Freshture" in their drawings...

First post BTW, hello devrant :)

This is genuinely what happened the first time my mum asked what I specifically do on the computer..

Told her its web development, "but not like what you see, what produces what you see" (always seems to help explain). Anyway, a few minutes in she says "it's amazing isn't it, like how electricity works and stuff"

Just got my first job as a developer after getting my bachelor in computer science! 😁 Any tips and tricks for a newbie consultant?