I'm convinced code addiction is a real problem and can lead to mental illness.

Dev: "Thanks for helping me with the splunk API. Already spent two weeks and was spinning my wheels."
Me: "I sent you the example over a month ago, I guess you could have used it to save time."
Dev: "I didn't understand it. I tried getting help from NetworkAdmin-Dan, SystemAdmin-Jake, they didn't understand what you sent me either."
Me: "I thought it was pretty simple. Pass it a query, get results back. That's it"
Dev: "The results were not in a standard JSON format. I was so confused."
Me: "Yea, it's sort-of JSON. Splunk streams the result as individual JSON records. You only have to deserialize each record into your object. I sent you the code sample."
Dev: "Your code didn't work. Dan and Jake were confused too. The data I have to process uses a very different result set. I guess I could have used it if you wrote the class more generically and had unit tests."
<oh frack...he's been going behind my back and telling people smack about my code again>
Me: "My code wouldn't have worked for you, because I'm serializing the objects I need and I do have unit tests, but they are only for the internal logic."
Dev:"I don't know, it confused me. Once I figured out the JSON problem and wrote unit tests, I really started to make progress. I used a tuple for this ... functional parameters for that...added a custom event for ... Took me a few weeks, but it's all covered by unit tests."
Me: "Wow. The way you explained the project was; get data from splunk and populate data in SQLServer. With the code I sent you, sounded like a 15 minute project."
Dev: "Oooh nooo...its waaay more complicated than that. I have this very complex splunk query, which I don't understand, and then I have to perform all this parsing, update a database...which I have no idea how it works. Its really...really complicated."
Me: "The splunk query returns what..4 fields...and DBA-Joe provided the upsert stored procedure..sounds like a 15 minute project."
Dev: "Maybe for you...we're all not super geniuses that crank out code. I hope to be at your level some day."
<frack you ... condescending a-hole ...you've got the same seniority here as I do>
Me: "No seriously, the code I sent would have got you 90% done. Write your deserializer for those 4 fields, execute the stored procedure, and call it a day. I don't think the effort justifies the outcome. Isn't the data for a report they'll only run every few months?"
Dev: "Yea, but Mgr-Nick wanted unit tests and I have to follow orders. I tried to explain the situation, but you know how he is."
<fracking liar..Nick doesn't know the difference between a unit test and breathalyzer test. I know exactly what you told Nick>
Dev: "Thanks again for your help. Gotta get back to it. I put a due date of April for this project and time's running out."

APRIL?!! Good Lord he's going to drag this intern-level project for another month!

After he left, I dug around and found the splunk query, the upsert stored proc, and yep, in about 15 minutes I was done.

Coding has caused a paradigm shift in the way I look at the world. Previously I would look at something and be amazed as to how it happened or was made and then depressed because I would think such things could only be done by geniuses and not by me. Now, I know that complex things are made up of many simple things and anything complex can be kind of deconstructed with enough understanding. Its an empowering feeling knowing that I can create something amaizng.

!dev What pisses me off about today's job market is that the following idea is a naive one:

Let's just find a junior position and learn on the job so you can demonstrate your skills to your employer so they can promote you.

Wroooong. Reality: They only hire the most gifted geniuses who already know everything and they don't have the budget for someone who is rusty.

Welcome to the modern world of the CompSci market, where you are expected to have expert level knowledge in every language, especially in Software Engineering and Algorithms. And if you don't remember how to write an efficient Comparator algorithm in under 3 minutes, you're screwed.

Yaay.

Most satisfying bug I've fixed?

Fixed a n+1 issue with a web service retrieving price information. I initially wrote the service, but it was taken over by a couple of 'world class' monday-morning-quarterbacks.
The "Worst code I've ever seen" ... "I can't believe this crap compiles" types that never met anyone else's code that was any good.

After a few months (yes months) and heavy refactoring, the service still returned price information for a product. Pass the service a list of product numbers, service returns the price, availability, etc, that was it.

After a very proud and boisterous deployment, over the next couple of days the service seemed to get slower and slower. DBAs started to complain that the service was causing unusually high wait times, locks, and CPU spikes causing problems for other applications. The usual finger pointing began which ended up with "If PaperTrail had written the service 'correctly' the first time, we wouldn't be in this mess."

Only mattered that I initially wrote the service and no one seemed to care about the two geniuses that took months changing the code.

The dev manager was able to justify a complete re-write of the service using 'proper development methodologies' including budgeting devs, DBAs, server resources, etc..etc. with a projected year+ completion date.

My 'BS Meter' goes off, so I open up the code, maybe 5 minutes...tada...found it. The corresponding stored procedure accepts a list of product numbers and a price type (1=Retail, 2=Dealer, and so on). If you pass 0, the stored procedure returns all the prices.
Code basically looked like this..

public List<Prices> GetPrices(List<Product> products, int priceTypeId)
{
foreach (var item in products)
{
List<int> productIdsParameter = new List<int>();
productIdsParameter.Add(item.ProductID);
List<Price> prices = dataProvider.GetPrices(productIdsParameter, 0);
foreach (var price in prices)
{
if (price.PriceTypeID == priceTypeId)
{
prices = dataProvider.GetPrices(productIdsParameter, price.PriceTypeID);
return prices;
}
* Omitting the other 'WTF?' code to handle the zero price type
}
}
}

I removed the double stored procedure call, updated the method signature to only accept the list of product numbers (which it was before the 'major refactor'), deployed the service to dev (the issue was reproducible in our dev environment) and had the DBA monitor.

The two devs and the manager are grumbling and mocking the changes (they never looked, they assumed I wrote some threading monstrosity) then the DBA walks up..

DBA: "We're good. You hit the database pretty hard and the CPU never moved. Execution plans, locks, all good to go."
<dba starts to walk away>
DevMgr: "No fucking way! Putting that code in a thread wouldn't have fix it"
Me: "Um, I didn't use threads"
Dev1: "You had to. There was no way you made that code run faster without threads"
Dev2: "It runs fine in dev, but there is no way that level of threading will work in production with thousands of requests. I've got unit tests that prove our design is perfect."
Me: "I looked at what the code was doing and removed what it shouldn't be doing. That's it."
DBA: "If the database is happy with the changes, I'm happy. Good job. Get that service deployed tomorrow and lets move on"
Me: "You'll remove the recommendation for a complete re-write of the service?"
DevMgr: "Hell no! The re-write moves forward. This, whatever you did, changes nothing."
DBA: "Hell yes it does!! I've got too much on my plate already to play babysitter with you assholes. I'm done and no one on my team will waste any more time on this. Am I clear?"

Seeing the dev manager face turn red and the other two devs look completely dumbfounded was the most satisfying bug I've fixed.

"Lockheed Martin Will Replace F-35's Faulty Computer System With Cloud-Based Programs"

WAT

So apparently those jets have such a fucked software that the recommended workaround is to use them offline and only reconnect them once every 30 days to keep the system running. It's so bad that two air force bases went back to an older system and the Israeli air force also replaced it for their own F-35 jets.

And somehow those stable geniuses think the correct solution is to make everything more network-dependent and apparently already put Kubernetes on a different line of jets.

I just can't stop laughing.

"how did you make that app?"
"nice website, how'd you make it?"
"I thought only geniuses could make x? how'd you make x?"

maybe because I put in half a fucking ounce of effort into making it. please kindly shut the fuck up and realize that I don't care enough to tell you how I did it, because it would take more fucking effort to tell you than to walk away (surprise?). no I will not take your idea in consideration. why? because it's not worth fucking considering. go fuck yourself. and don't ask me the same thing tomorrow you cunt.

I absolutely love working with devs smarter than me. It's so rewarding.

Of course I want them to grow and move forward but I can't help but hoard their talent lmfao.

Dammit. If only yall knew the geniuses I work with. 🥹

There is this general idea that people have that when programmers are able to run their code in their first attempt, without any error, they think of ourselves as geniuses. But i think that is the case only when you are starting to code. If a programmer with enough experience runs his/her code in their first attempt without any issues, he/she just says their thanks and moves on, because they know that the code can sense cockiness and if they get too carried away now they'll have to pay the price in future.

Ok, so the new programming language Q# is out. VERY exciting for me! I love the idea of quantum computing! Then I realize that developers will need to know the basics of quantum physics to use it effectively. Yay or nay? Welp, those extremely big, expensive machines won't program themselves (yet).

There are so many movies that explore the idea of the "void". A world between worlds where dark forces are at play. Only necromancers and evil geniuses dare touch the void.

Programmers be like:
void doSomeDarkShit(void* magic);

Took my three weeks paid summer vacation, but ended up coding almost two of the three weeks.

The geniuses in charge decided that everyone should be forced to take vacations anyway due to corona and it under no circumstances could be postponed.
Only SLIGHT FUCKING PROBLEM is that our product delivery is in 2 days.
Lets send the lead developer, and most of the seniors away the month leading up to the release, that could in no way go wrong.

Predicting a hilarious explosion of urgent tasks the second i step in the door :D

What's the general consensus on the forced training courses? We now have a 3rd party arranging a course about FooBar and our managers though it was a great idea for everyone in my team to participate. Since...well you don't know when you need FooBar, so it's good to learn it now! And any education is only good. Makes employees smarter.

Except that I am not interested on FooBar. I don't use it. I can google it when I need it. I can read a book. I could travel to a 3-day course with 9 hours of straight lecturing per day and 200 slides with 10 second pause between them. But I am dead shit sure that after 30mins you lose the focus and after 1 week you remember nothing.

And everyone who's ever been on any company arranged courses, you know that there's always some guy who already knows everything. So starting from the first second he wants to challenge the trainer. Have a dialogue. Discuss about the problems that he has seen. Noone else cares. So you have 30 people listening to 2 guys debating.

But hey, maybe after 6-12months our company starts using FooBar and then we have a couple of dozen geniuses who have taken that multi-thousand-euro class. Or not.

At least you get a cup of coffee and a sandwich on mornings and afternoons.

relativity of paths:

the fact that "paths relative to where the user is launching the program from" EVEN FUCKIN EXIST is such a fuckin idiotic thing.

it means that there's ONLY SINGLE ONE SPECIFIC (unknown to the user) PLACE FROM WHICH TRYING TO RUN A PROGRAM WON'T FAIL.

which is the most moronic thing ever.
and, as usual, linux bullshit turd smell. nobody except linux geniuses could have ever come up with such galactic size bullshit.

Okay people couldn't get a response anywhere so I'm going to do this here considering we have a bunch of geniuses here. I need to create a tunnel in nodejs or java to forward connection from client to server. Need to do this because my damn client can only use ports 80/443. Anybody wants to brainstorm?
These people have so much of garbage data yet want to keep everything secure as hell.