So this just happened:

Sarah = best friend (random name)

Sister: Hey, could you help, sarah's phone isn't recognized by her computer anymore.
Me: What phone/pc does she have?
Sister: iPhone/Windows.
Me: Has she checked the drivers?
Sister: *tells to check drivers, feedback:* yes, seems to be fine.
Me: *comes up with 1000 other suggestions*
Sister: *doesn't work every time*
Me: Is there any other information that might be useful in this case?
Sister: Well, she dropped her phone in the water earlier, the phone is hardly responding.
Me: THE WAT? AND YOU DIDN'T THINK THIS WOULD BE WORTH MENTIONING IN THE BEGINNING?!? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

I used to get annoyed when my dad(65+ years old) had a simple computer "problem" like copy and paste that I needed to help with.

But then I remembered he showed me how to use a spoon and not shit myself so I guess it all evens out

Me: Hi, how can i help you today?
User: Hi IT, I can't enter to my computer, i put my password and it says it's incorrect.
Me: Ok, hold me a few.

(10 seconds without do anything)
Me: Try again.
User: It worked! Thanks!!

Client: I want all cookies blocked on my computer.

Me: Are you sure? Some things won't work if i do that. Like using online banking.

Client: I don't use it, so it's fine.

*Two weeks pass. I have to come back and see three bankcards laying on the table*

Client: I'm not able to use online banking anymore. Can you fix it?

Come on! You pay me to give advice and help out with problems. The least you could do is listen.

So, my broadband internet is not working. Naturally, i called my ISP and complained.
He enlightened me, "Turn on your TV and watch the news. Theres a deadly computer virus on the loose and it is affecting banks and businesses and everything. So we decided to help our customers by turning our services down for a few days."
What the actual fuck?
Its like to Not eat anything due to a bird flu.
Oh! and i have an exam tomorrow.
Thank you muggles.

Girlfriend (art student): “You’re in CS. Why don’t you use Windows? Macs are terrible for programming.”

Me: “macOS is better for doing command line compilation and shit because it supports Unix terminal commands and stuff with a reliable OS that’s better-supported than most Linux OSes. I also have Windows on my laptop too, for Visual Studio.”

Girlfriend: “Only like 1% of people use command line stuff. Windows is better for programming. I’ve seen a lot of CS majors use Windows.”

Me: “Uh. You watch me use my computer every day. The stuff I do in Terminal takes forever on Windows.”

Girlfriend: “Yeah, but Windows is just better for programming though.”

Help.

IT: Hi, how can I help?
User: Hi, I can't get onto the wifi / internet, my computer says "No Signal".

IT: Hm, we don't have wifi, your on a cable, what exactly is saying no signal?
User: Its just on the screen here.

IT: No but where, are you inside a browser, or is it a popup down the bottom corner?
User: No I haven't got that far yet, it just says no signal on a black screen, then it flashes and says no signal in another position.

IT: ...... did you turn on your computer after turning on the monitor ... thats the screen saying no signal from the computer.
User: ah yep, thats it, thanks!

My grandma comes to me with all her computer problems, but this time she came to tell me a story instead.

She said she was about to call me for help, and then thought about what I would do. "Google it."
And guys, she did. She googled it. And she got an answer.

I taught her to fish, guys :) I did it.
One down, 6,999,999,998 to go...

It's depressing how true this is

Me: "Tech support, how can I help you?"
Them: " I'm not able to log into the website!"
Me: "Okay, what message is it showing when you try to log in?"
Them: "Sir, I am NOT a computer person so I don't know."
Me: "Do you know which web browser you're using?"
Them: "I don't know what that is!"
Me: "Okay, when you want to go on the internet, do you click on a blue E, or a mulicolored circle, or..."
Them: "SIR I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT I AM NOT A COMPUTER PERSON, YOU'RE REFUSING TO THELP ME SO I'M GOING TO HANG UP"

Today (as a joke), I asked my class if there were any “professional HTML programmers” who could help me.

Surprisingly a couple people came over with smirks on their face. I thought they were going along with the joke.

Turns out, they were serious. They legitimately believed that they were professional HTML programmers and talked to me in such a condescending way that I was speechless.

“This is called a file. See that part after the dot? That’s what makes it HTML. HTML is an incredibly hard programming language and powers CPUs and the computer that you are using.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Hopefully they were joking.

Girlfriend: "My computer is so slow!"

Me: "Have you tried turning it off and then on again?"

Girlfriend: "That's not funny, I actually need help."

Me: "Okay babe, I know you think I'm being an ass right now or tying to be funny, but honest to god half of what pays rent here and buys you so many flowers is me telling people to turn something of and then on again. Just try it."

Girlfriend: *Restarts computer*... "You were right..."

Me - "Has anyone changed the password on the print computer"
Him - "It's the same one."
Me - "Carrots99?"
Him - "Yeah, what's the message that comes up?
Me - "Password is incorrect."

The dumbest conversation I've ever had in my fucking life. You little shit, I know you changed the password just to fuck with people. You've been reading too many books on elevating yourself, tried to be important for something. It means fuck all if you can't remember what you changed it to. So you held up two hours of my work, not to mention everyone else, because you can't help but stick your beak in shit. You dont think people can't see what youre doing? Watching you scurry over to the computer with a big smile, only a to fuck off silent as a mouse not to be seen mumbling some shit about a system administrator. Yeah you forgot it you prick.

Stop sucking up to the boss, and commanding people on what to do, when you're as junior as junior gets. Don't change our fucking passwords, just so you can have the whole team approach you the next day asking for you, then not remember them. You cunt.

I'm tired of working for small companies.

I'm always either the sole developer, or the only dev for a specific stack, and therefore don't have anyone to ask for help. If I can't figure something out, it just doesn't get done.

It also means I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off, do code reviews with, or even friggin' have someone who understands what I do.

It sucks.

It would be nice to have someone I could actually ask for help! As it stands, I tear my hair out in frustration until I'm desperate enough to beg for help on discord or SO. whereupon, of course, I get ignored, as per usu. asdjfklasdjf

It really sucks.

It also means that I'm often surrounded entirely by sales people and managers... you know, those super-talkative people? who basically get paid just to talk? and are absolutely computer illiterate? Yeah. Think someone who says "I need my deliverables by end-of-week," "customer success representative," "turnkey solution," etc. completely seriously. (ew).

They're the people who constantly wonder why I can't push `n` features in `n/4` days, and ofc can't understand anything I say in response because of the aforementioned illiteracy. They're also the people who, almost every week, ask how long `y` is going to take, and then yell "But I need it by Friday! I just sold 50 clients on it!" (And they do this, of course, without ever asking for timelines)

It really fucking sucks.

Though I suppose larger companies would still have these problems.

but at least I could ask for help once in awhile. that would be nice.

Relatives: You're a computer guy, right, what are you working on these days?
Me: *should I bother explaining, should I not* Oh, just some stuff.
R: Oh come on, tell us, how difficult can it be?
M: *sigh* I'm working on a custom garbage collector for-
R: !!

They're now under the impression that I'm involved in collecting rubbish from bins. Sigh. My hair doesn't help here, either, lol (I have one of those tangled, unruly mops of hair)

This will take time to explain.

This is Why I give IT support so much respect.

Friend: my computer stopped working can you help?
Me: (porn...again) fine I'll help.
Friend: come over when your ready
Me: Be there tomorrow bro

Next day.....

Me: where is your desktop
Friend: upstairs, I tried everything man
Me: look at the monitor... look at the hp piece of shit.. see green light on... look back at the monitor...no light... look at my friend.
Friend: 😕
Me:😪
Friend:😳
Me: look behind the desk...
Friend: 😰
Me: 😪your monitor is unplugged
Friend: 😅
Me: fuck you lose my number

Help him turn on his computer

I'm proud of my mom.... She's teaching herself WordPress and photo editing so she can help my dad's business :D

I disagree with WordPress entirely, but seeing my mom(who can barely create a new folder) teach herself something computer related is awesome.

I have this old lady that I help from time to time with her computer issues.

She is nice, so I feel compelled to help her.

Get a call one day.

Lady : "hello, my internet and email isn't working, I've tried everything, could you maybe help me?"

Me : "Sure, ill come over after work and check it out"

*arrive at her house*

Lady : "you see, none of the web pages load, and my email refuses to sync. Should I call (insert isp name), or can you fix it?"

Me : I'm sure I can get it, gimme a sec.

*find the issue in a sec or two, dunno how to tell her about it, she isn't totally stupid*

Me : "Uhh, I don't know if you checked, but the ether.. internet cable isn't plugged in"

Lady : *realizes the wtf moment I'm having, obviously feeling very stupid*

Me : "Don't worry, happens to the best of us"

Obviously I lied a little, most of us would probably check the damn cable. Sometimes is just better to make people not feel like its their fault. People learn better when they don't feel like something is making a fool of them.

I have helped this lady with so many things that are just straight out of this world.

The one time she tried emailing 37mb tiff files over her 315kbps network.

Another time she said her email was not syncing, so I went to her house and clicked the "sync" button.

She even once phoned me to get their wifi password.

I just like helping her, somehow it makes me feel as if we all have something to learn.

I haven't told anyone I know yet but yesterday I got a call from a user and she asked me if I could come down and take a look at some software I support. I did and fixed the issue.
She then asked if I could take a look at her computer because help desk and PC team had tried to fix and couldn't.

5 minutes later I fixed it (every site she went to gave cert error in both chrome and ie). I stood up and there was a couple seconds of me and her just facing each other not saying anything. She was smiling ear to ear the whole time. (This issue was weeks old I think). Then she walks towards me......

And hugs me.

Before iPads took over the general population of home computing, I used to do house calls to help people with their computers for some extra folding money. One day I get a call from a regular saying that ever since I last worked on his computer it won't stay on.

He says it comes on for a few seconds, then just shuts down. It never did that before I upgraded the RAM.

So I drive over to his house and turn on the computer. He says, "See, it starts fine, but in a few seconds it'll just shut off. Just watch"

The computer boots up without any issues.

He says, "Well, of course it doesn't do it now that you're here!"

I reboot it a few times, boots fine every time. Suddenly I realize what's going on. I say to him, "Hey, why don't you try turning it on for me?"

He says, "What difference will that make?"

I say, "Just trust me, turn it on."

He bends down, presses the power button, looks up at the monitor and watches it boot. But he doesn't release the button! He just keeps holding it down until it shuts off.

"See!" he says, "why does it only do that when I turn it on!"

I then have to explain to him how holding down the power button forces a shutdown.

But, it never did that before I worked on it!

Electronics store clerk: "Can I help you?"

Me: "Good afternoon sir. I'm a developer and lifelong PC gamer. I received a second hand PS4, and might buy a next gen console at the end of the year. People tell me that in front of this soft wide desk chair people call a "couch", you need some sort of large computer monitor to enjoy console gaming"

Clerk: "Yeah, we sell TVs. What TV do you have now?"

Me: "I don't own a TV. I just want a huge 4K computer display with a good response time, excellent refresh rate, and great contrast"

Clerk: "OK so this is an entry level 55" smart TV. It's 120hz, QLED, has full array local dimming. It's great for gaming. It's €1000. We also have this LG OLED smart TV for €1200, which is a step up in terms of contrast and response time..."

Me: "Wait... Smart TV? No, I don't want a TV with an operating system. I want a computer display."

Clerk: "There aren't a lot of big computer displays. We have this ASUS ROG 55" computer monitor. It's also 120hz. Very similar response time, but the brightness and contrast aren't as great, it's edge-lit"

Me, trying really hard to make out the contrast differences under ugly fluorescent lights of the store: "So it's a worse big couch display, without smart OS. How much is it?"

Clerk: "€3500"

Me: "So what you're saying is that while the displays are similar or even better, the operating system on all these TVs is so incredibly bad, you have to give €2500 discount for people to even buy it?"

Not my mom, but my wife's whole family. I'm a software developer.

So we're invited to her grandmother's 85th birthday celebration with pretty much every family member they could think to invite. 100+ people, and we all sit down in a circle in a huge room to watch a video that my wife's father and aunts/uncles put together.

They start the video and there's no sound. I'm a software developer, so I'm not an expert in hardware issues. I try to turn invisible, because every tech person knows what comes next, and this is in the center of a room of people I don't know.

After about 15 minutes of people struggling to get the audio working, one of the people remembers I "work with computer". Soon I have a dozen people calling me to the center of the room.

I begrudgingly make my way to the computer and projector. Upon inspection, I find that the computer is connected via VGA to the projector.

Me: "This cable only carries video. You need a different kind of cable, or you can hook up an AUX cable--the kind you use for headphones."
Other Guy: "I used this cable earlier and the audio was working."
Me: "...that's weird. Well, can we try plugging in an AUX cable?"
Yet Another Guy: "Will this help?" Holds up an HDMI cable
Me: "Oh, yeah! That should do it."
Other Guy: "I tried plugging that in, but it didn't change anything."
Me: "Hmmm..." Quickly unplug VGA and plug in HDMI, then click play.

The sound comes out in its full cheesy music glory. Everybody cheers, and I walk back to my seat. Throughout the rest of party, I'm approached by various other family members who ask me if I can fix X since I'm a "computer guy". Isn't it great to work in tech?

Picking up my kid in kindergarten, they asked if I had time to help fix the manager's computer. Internet wasn't working, at had been on the phone with support for 4 hours. I accepted the challenge, open prompt and typed "ipconfig /renew". Done. I walked out a rockstar.

Story.
Did you know logging into chrome will auto sync all your fucking bookmarks to that other person's account??
I DIDN'T!!
(I use Firefox mainly and chromium for testing.)
I use chrome only for porn. Got shit tons of bookmarks. I login to my friend's sister Gmail on my chrome(for remote desktop - to help fix her computer. Somehow,remote desktop doesn't work on chromium)
Was browsing her pc via remote session and suddenly all of my porn bookmarks appear at the top bar.)
Had to manually select each bookmark in the bookmark manager and delete since CTRL+A won't work during the remote session. Don't know why.
FML.

Started university of applied sciences to become a computer engineer instead of a web developer.

Met a lot of kids that are in the "computer studies = games + YouTube".

They struggle hard, but don't do anything to learn...

Then there's this classmate, the guy is 10 years older than me, is trying really hard, and struggles a lot.

I've been helping him out with assigns by asking questions, and he asks me how to solve a problem in general, not the assignments which is super refreshing to see someone that wants to learn.

Currently trying to help him "translate" the simple stuff into c++:

So, if you want the char at a certain position in a string, how would you tell me to do it?

"well, take the list, look at position x and bam its done"

Try writing it like that!

And instead of "[i]" he writes "stringvar[i]"

He really appreciates the help and I hope he'll get the mindset soon :)

Would hate to lose a motivated guy when there's so many idiots copy pasting everything from tutorials...

Me: Want to copy this file to another computer
Bluetooth: Use me!
Google Drive: I'm better!
USB: I can help
Network shared folder: I'm in position!

Me: Let me add it as an attachment to a new email and download it on the other computer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Our teacher wanted to show us a video in class so she opened Internet explorer (windows 7) used bing to search for the video and clicked on the link.

The video didn't work and instead there was an error message saying 'Your browser is too old, please use a more modern browser, for example mozilla firefox'

She looked at the error message for around 30 seconds like it had just told her that it is gonna explode in a minute. After some time one of my friends asked if she needed help. Here is what happened:

F: do you need any help?

T: No (very serious voice)

Teacher shuts down computer, stands up, looks at our class angrily and says in a very serious voice:

T: you broke the computer although you aren't allowed to touch it!

Me: mother of god...

Chat with user:
Me: Hi, how can i help you today?
User: IT please come to my place i don't have internet connection and i need to finish my work, please please come quickly
Me: Are you in your computer?
User: Yeah.
Me: Amm, and how are you chatting with me?

Client: I am unable to turn on my computer after running you app. Can you plz help me out.

Myself: Sure, since my app is corporate web app and nothing to do with OS lvl functions but still I will help you. (Didn't really had a choice🙄) Tell me your exact scenario.

Client: I think I was downloading some torrent as well, and then I am unable to turn on my computer.

Myself: Ok, try restarting your computer. Press power button 1-2 times.

Client: Nothing's happening.

Myself: Plug in your charger and try again.

Client: ohh! It started.

Myself: DUCK FACE😑😑😑😑😑😑😑😑😑
( Disconnect the call immediately) And start writing code for people who doesn't even fucking know how to start the computer.

So. A while ago I was on OkCupid, trying to find the Pierre to my Marie Curie (without the whole brain getting crushed under a horse carriage wheel obviously) and I decided the best way was to have my profile lead with my passion for technology. It turned out pretty unique, if I do say so myself.

At the end of it, I amassed some interesting and unique messages:

- A Java pickup line (that I never responded to. Yes I'm a very basic Devranter)

- A request to turn the man's software into hardware (to which I politely informed him that this was scientifically impossible unless a reader proves me wrong)

- Another impossible request to turn his floppy disk into a hard drive (how outdated too, why not HDD to SSD for faster speed amirite? That was awful don't mind me)

- A sincere request to help troubleshoot a laptop (Honestly I would've helped with help requests but this is a dating site...)

- A sincere request to help debug a student project followed with a link to a GitHub repo

- Another sincere request with studying for a computer exam

- And lastly, my favourite: a sincere job offer by a guy who went from flirtatious to desperate for a programmer in a minute. He was looking for *insert python, big data, buzzwords here* and asked me for a LinkedIn. I proceeded to inquire exactly what he wanted me to do. He then asks me to WRITE a Python tutorial and that he would pay a few cents per word written so he could publish it. Literally no programming involved.

Needless to say I went to look elsewhere.

Didn't want to post it as there's been already a lot of posts like this. But I just can't help myself to rant over this. This happened yesterday. I helped him earlier with his phone.

Friend of my dad: Hey, I need your help with my laptop I bought from eBay.

Me: *flashbacks of devRant posts*

Him: Everything works. It's just that nothing comes up in display.

Me: Okay, you need to take that to a repair shop. If at least something came up on screen I could help.

Him: Aren't you a computer engineer? I bought this because I knew you can fix it.

Me: *more flashbacks*

Him: You gotta help me with this. I can't lose money on this

Me: You didn't even ask me anything before buying. Ask your buyer if they have a 30 day return policy.

Him: Why are paying this much to study Computer Engineering? I'll talk to your dad.

This people man. I told my dad and he never received his call anymore

Convincing my parents that I'm doing something useful on my computer and that it can also help me get a job

Slowbro: Do you have time tonight?
Me: No sorry, I can't stay late tonight, I have a thing with my wife.
S: Oh yeah, I'm not staying late either.
M: Oh, so what do you want?
S: Can you help me install linux?
M: Uh no, I can't stay late -
S: No, no you don't have to stay, you can do it from home.
M: What? No I don't have time tonight. Wait you want me to take your computer home?
S: No, no I need to use my computer tonight.
M: So... What do you want me to do?
S: You can do it on your computer.
M: You want me to install an OS on your computer, but on my computer??
S: No, no *sigh* just try it on your computer so we know it will work on my computer. It is a proof of principle.
M: Reinstall my OS?
S: As a proof of principle. So tomorrow when we do it on my computer, we need not waste any time.
M: ... No I'm not going to reinstall my OS just as a test for you.
S: Not a test, a proof of principle.
M: What are you.. I'm sorry, I don't have time for this tonight.
S: Just a proof of principle!!
M: Ok see you.

I have a colleague who has a fear of closing any window. He'll let his Mac run for months on end without closing any of the windows he's opened. He also has all kinds of browsers with tons of tabs open. He's a designer so I get his urge to not do all the technical bits and bobs every day, but for the love of zalgo restart your computer once in a while. Or at least close windows you don't use. It's come to a point where non of us want to help him, because helping him out takes forever with his slow as shit computer. We've asked/told/joked about it too him several times, but he just doesn't want to listen. At one point when I was helping him everything took so long that I decided to reboot for him. And of course Mac had to go and reopen every window that was open during shutdown, which took another good fifteen minutes. Shite OS. And naturally he spent the next hour fixing everything the way he liked it. He hasn't turned off his computer since (couple of months ago), except for when we moved to a new building a month ago.

Just had to get that annoyance of my chest.

So guys i really need your help. My girlfriend started getting phone calls at odd hours, so I got suspicious and started tracking her phone. Then I found out that she has been going to this guys house at wears hours, then once when I was tracking her my computer froze, so what could it be? How do I fix my computer

I am officially my Manager's own personal google.

"What is the Wifi Password?"
"I can't print this, can you help?"
"How do I switch keyboard layout?"
"How do I turn on the computer?"
"How do I close the door of my office?"

Soon she's going to call me "Ok Google, <stupid question>"

So I got a call from a school friend today.

I'm currently doing majors in Computer science and I hadn't talked to her since high school.

She: "Hi! How are you?"
Me: "Hey, I'm great! How are you?"

It's really difficult to talk to someone after 2-3 years, considering you didn't talk much in school also.

She: "I'm great too!"
Me: "So what's up?"

She: "Listen, my friend lost her iPhone today. Cab you help us in retrieving it?"

Me: *hangs up*

I hold two degrees in computer science/engineering and to this day, whenever I have to help my dad with any computer related stuff, he *always* says:

"Good thing we let you study this stuff!"

Yeah, right dad. Fixing your windows problems is exactly what I learned in university 😒

!rant

This dumb pretentious bitch.
We are both computer science students, she is writing her bachelor thesis, I'm in 4th semester, but have 6 years of professional programming experience.
So naturally when she had a problem implementing the MOTHERFUCKING PREPARING SOFTWARE, which she needs to begin writing her thesis I helped her.
First I started explaining every last bit of code, trying to teach her something, so that she wouldn't need my help ALL the time.
After a while I realised that this BLOODY GIRL FROM HELL acquired nearly half her credits by other peoples help, so I just fix the code hoping it would be over soon.
When that software was done, keep in mind, I coded nearly 90 FUCKING PERCENT OF THAT SHITTY ASS PIECE OF CRAP SOFTWARE, she asked me to also "help" her implementing a generator for samples she could test the software with.
Naturally at this point I said I'd be busy with own projects etc. And declined.

So now, nearly 1 Month after she didn't talk to me, THAT ARROGANT PIECE OF SHIT WANNABE SCIENCE BACHELOR asked if I could help her with LaTEX.
At first I was speechless. How could she have that amount of balls, asking me that. As I only am a ranting asshole inside, I declined in the most polite way.

WHAT THE FUCK! I HOPE YOU WILL FAIL YOUR THESIS AND ALL THE 12 SEMESTERS YOU STUDIED WILL HAVE BEEN FOR NOTHING, THUS SENDING YOU TO LIVE ON THE STREET WITHOUT MONEY AND DIE A HORRIBLE AND LONELY DEATH SURROUNDED BY BEGGERS TRYING TO STEAL YOUR KIDNEYS!

Sincerely,
Me.

"So what do you do?"
"I am a software engineer"

3 most frequent conversation routes

1. "I have some great app ideas maybe you could help me..."
2. "My computer/phone crashes frequently, what is wrong with it?..."
3. "so how many software/games/mobile apps have you developed?..."

My PM: I don't like when you get up and help out other colleagues with their problems on their computer. You're not at their service.
Me: okay, I'll refrain from doing so.

The next day, I arrive 5 minutes before 8, I get myself a coffee, talk with a few colleagues, and:
PM: Hey, can you please come and help me review this email?
Me: ** fuck it, I still have 2 minutes ** Yeah I'm coming
PM: Now please.
Me: ...

Also my PM, 5 minutes later: Hey I don't manage to print my document, can you help me?
Me: ...

10 minutes later, I get a call:
PM: did you call XY about ZX?
Me: Yep, sent you a mail about it 2 minutes ago
PM: Really? I don't see it
Me: I sent it.
PM: Can you send it again?
Me: ...

Later that day:
PM: Hey, what are you up to?
Me: Well, I'm working on our improved websi-
PM: Can you please create a new campaign on Mailchimp? We're all under water here and a bit of cooperation from you would be great
Me: ** huh? ** erm, ok?
PM: Do it now
Me: Yeah yeah, don't worry. ** click ** here, done. Now, where was I...

----- PM on holidays

Other colleague from another department: Hey Phlisg! I have a small problem on our platform, can you help me?
Me: ** writes a script to help her out **
Her: awesome, thank you!!
Her own PM, 5 minutes later: Hey! Thank you very much for your help, it helps us out a real lot, very much appreciated :)

I lost my smile at work since the beginning of the year, but that little help I gave my colleague just gave my smile back to me :D

Today my mom gave me a 2 meter by 1,20 meter whiteboard. She says that that might help me to achieve my dreams with what i am doing on my computer. This is amazing.

I have had this conversation well too often:

- (him/her) Do you mind helping me with this problem I have on my computer ?
- (me) Sure, what is it ?
- (him/her) *proceeds to explaining the problem*
- (me) Ok, I don't know about this particular thing, you should try googling it.
- (the pissed off version of him/her) Never mind, I'll find someone who's willing to help me.

Please stop taking that as me not caring about your problem.
Googling things is basically what I do all day as a developer.
You really should try it. That thing is actually pretty useful.

I still can’t code even with all these books right in front of me.

Grandma:you studying programming so you good with computers?
Me: yes?
Grandma:can you help me with a serious computer problem?
Me: Okay?
Grandma:I can't seem to post a picture on Facebook.
Me: 😐

Dad: “Hey son.. I have this new software called blablablu.."

Me: "yeah?.."

Dad: "well it's not working.. there's an error and it's not doing what I want.."

Me: "okay.. I don't know.. sorry.. I don't know that software.. I can't help you.."

Dad: "you're studying computer science... you should know what to do.."

You ****ing serious?! -.-

Lord forgive me for laughing too hard at this person/situation... I kid you NOT!

So today while everything was going well, we suddenly had network issues at work. We worked to get everything back up online asap and then sent out an email for those affected to either restart their machines or refresh their desktops but we recommend restarting... After some few client calls, this special call came in..

Riiing, riiiiiing, ring....
Me: hi, how can help you?

Client: *laughing.. This is probably a stupid question but I forgot how to "refresh" my desk top..the thing is, I have Febreeze but I don't think that's for desk tops.

Me: Wait, what? 🤔 Febreeze for what?😕

Client: You guys sent an email to refresh our desk tops and I said I have Febreeze so how will that get my things in the computer back to show again?

Me: Ohhh, no no. We meant your computer desktop. You don't need Febreeze. Right click anywhere on your computer in the screen and select refresh from the pop up menu. We meant your computer "desktop" not your actual "desk top".

Client: *starts laughing...I told you it was a stupid question

Me: don't worry.. It wasn't stupid.

After I hang up, some of my team members asked me why someone is asking about Febreeze...I told them and they all started laughing hysterically

I was still trying to digest the conversation I had just have on the phone. 😂😂😂

A friend bought a new PC and asked me to help him set it up. He said he got everything working except the CD drive. He said it took him forever just to figure out how to get the keyboard and mouse to work. "I mean, have you ever owned a computer where the keyboard and mouse had to plug into the monitor instead of the computer?"

He bought a desktop PC, and and all-in-one thinking it was a monitor. He had the HDMI going from the all-in-one to the desktop, and was trying to use the CD drive on the desktop.

Wish you could've seen his face when I unplugged the desktop computer and his "monitor" didn't shut off. He looked at the desktop, and then the all-in-one, and said, "Wait... How is it still on?"

He also had his old USB wifi plugged into the desktop thinking that's what was providing him with an internet connection.

*peacefully coding*
Family: can you help me connect to WiFi?
*5 mins later*
Friend: help, how do I download this program?
*5 mins later*
Family: fix my computer, it’s really slow!!

When did I go from programmer to IT help desk?

A Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope no one will get server down or family asking for help with computer!

I've been working exclusively from home for over 2 years now. I've been seeing several posts from people talking about adjusting to working from home, so I figured I would compile a list of tips I've learned over the years to help make the adjustment easier for some people.

1) Limit as many distractions as possible. WFH makes it much easier to get distracted. If you have roommates/family members at home, ask them politely to leave you alone while you're working. Make sure the TV is turned off, put your phone on silent, etc.

2) Take regular breaks. I find it easier to accidentally go hours without taking a real break from work. Try working in half hour intervals, and then taking 5-10 minute breaks. Read an article, watch a youtube video, grab some coffee/tea, etc.

3) When you eat lunch, eat it away from your computer. I often find myself eating lunch trying to wrap up fixing a bug, which makes it feel like I never really "took a lunch." Lately I've been trying to step away and do something else completely unrelated to work.

4) Get ready for work like you normally would. It's very easy to wake up, throw on your favorite pair of sweats and sit at the computer with messy hair half awake "ready" to start the day. Instead try doing your normal morning routine before sitting at your computer. It will help your mind and body go into "it's time to work" mode.

5) Keep your work area clean. I find it very difficult to work when my workspace is cluttered. Studies have shown working in a messy place tend to make us less efficient.

6) Keep your work area work related. Try to only have the things you need for work in your workspace. If you're working from your personal computer this can be difficult. I always end up with camera/music equipment left over from the previous night's photo editing/jam sessions. So try to clean off your desk when you're done for the night so it's ready for work in the morning.

7) Prepare for meetings. I have alarms set 10 minutes in advance so I can go from programming mode to meeting mode. During this time I'll go to the bathroom, grab a snack, water, mute all my email notifications, close any non essential programs, get my code ready if I need to present it.

Stuff is hard & stressful right now, but hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier. If anyone else has any good tips please share them.

So, Today was the last day of my internship.
and it was a great last day but everything was fine until.

I started my computer and for some reason it got caught up in boot. It didnt start Nautilus.

So i asked a Senior Dev for help. Nice as these Devs are, he helped me look for reasons. And we found them. My ubuntu hadnt had enough disk space to start. (On a side note there is nothing but Atom Firefox and a few files on there.) So we looked for the biggest files in the system and found them. Syslog was 40 Gb big. And if you think that is shocking behold. Because Syslog.1 was 290Gb big.

Not really a rant but a Story.

M - Me
F - Family member

F: So you study computer science... Could you recover my Gmail login data? I don't remember my email address, password or security question. (7th request to me like that from the same person, they don't bother to write down the recovered pw)
M: I can't do it if I don't know any of the above
F: Wow, I thought you're a good student... Could you at least create a new account for me?
M: But you won't even remember the new... [gets interrupted]
F: So, are you going to talk trash or get to work? You would have already been 50% done

PLEASE I'M SO TIRED OF IT. HOW DO I DEAL WITH THESE OTHER THAN TELLING THEM WHAT I THINK ABOUT THEM. I SEEK HELP

Tired of stereotypes. It seems that if someone uses a Mac, is posh; if someone uses Windows is a silly cunt, and if someone uses Linux ... well, it seems that's the way to go, right? Well, no.

Suddenly the world is filled with script kids who come and indirectly recriminate you that you have no idea of computer science because you use Ubuntu instead of Arch. That has happened to me with a recently graduated kid.

Really? Do you really consider yourself a good developer only because you have Arch installed and you hate Windows and Apple?
Let people use the system and development software that they prefer most (or that one that their company forces them to use).

This kids have to be more humble and focus on creating better code, help their colleagues and know how to deal with clients.

I once worked Tech Support for a point of sale software package. There was really no internal help desk, so we got all of those questions as well.

One day our front receptionist that her computer is being really weird and she can't type - it keeps inserting 3s in the middle of what she is typing.

I take the short walk down the hall to her desk and see that, indeed, a never ending string of 3s is being input to her screen.

"I can't figure out what's wrong." she says.

Then I reach over and remove the edge of an open binder whose edge was resting on the 3 key and enter key on the num pad.

"That should fix it."

Walked back to my desk.

I coded for a whole day (uninterrupted, literally woke up, grabbed my laptop and headphones and started) and suddenly, let wild parent shows up.
"Aren't you going to go out? You need to see some friends"
My response: As stated before, I have no friends, now leave
**Leaves**
**Comes back 2 hours later**
"Hey can you help me with my computer?"
Me: you didn't state the issue, what computer, what os, what you have done to fix it, have you even tried rebooting?
"Don't talk like that to me! Now come and help me!"
Me: nope, hint, answer the questions about your issue
"You rude piece of..."
**Starts screaming bla bla bla**

Wow, it has happened before that I treat people wanting help like me trying to debug, but I usually correct myself. I took it way to fucking far this time...

Dude: Hey, can you help me with my website? It's for the final year project (IT and Hardware related degree).
Me: Sure, let me see.

Sends a .txt file with two <html> tags, not even closed.

Dude: Can you fix it so it appears with a menu on the top and news on the middle?

This guy got his degree and I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know how to enter to the BIOS of a computer.

He probably doesn't know what a BIOS is.

I have just thought of the perfect solution when support for fucking ancient IE versions creaps in the requirements (and asking the assholes to produce numbers to support the crazy does not help)

Just do browser detection and if IE < 9 Replace body with one of those winXP alert boxes that tell them there Computer is infected and that they can get a free scan (it's what they are used to anyway). Put a link to the installer of your favourite browser over the entire image.😎

Good news is 100℅ code reuse! Works on every outdated IE and every website that requires IE support.

Worst part is having every single idiot you know (and their friends) ask you for computer help.

A colleague of mine from the administration department suddenly enters my room where my team and me are all busy and, without considering I'm talking with someone else, interrupts us.
he: "I needed to call you but your phone is in do-not-disturb mode"
me: "that's because I'm busy working on something urgent and I don't want to be disturbed"
he: "but I need your help!"
me: "we're working on a urgent thing, but, anyway, what's the problem"
he: "I need help with digital invoicing"
me: "I deal with programming, I don't think I can help..."
he (interrupting): "I created a digital invoice but I need to send a printable version to a customer"
me: "digital invoices should be XML files so you can't simply take the file's content and paste into Word and print..."
he: "in fact that's what I did and the result was horrible"
me: "I was saying just that. I'm sure, anyway, there should be some online tool for producing a well-formatted PDF from a digital invoice"
he doesn't say anything
me: "you can try with a search on Google..."
he: "but I'm not an IT guy, that's not my business"
me: "this has nothing to do with programming, you simply need to find a tool online for doing this"
he (disappointed): "ok, but this is computer stuff, I'll try..."

My work laptop (windows) updated yesterday. Today my monitors keep flickering, hanging, and going black for a few seconds then come back with an error that my display drivers crashed. Since I have basically zero access to anything admin on this machine, I put in a help desk ticket with all the details, the error message, even screen shots which took forever to get because of all the crashes.

They finally respond after about an hour, and tell me that my computer does not support 3 screens so I will have to use 2, and that is what is causing the crash. Well I have been using 3 screens with this computer since I started there in 2014, and it has worked perfectly until the update, so I asked if they could revert the update.

He told me that they could not revert it, and not only that, but I couldn't have been using 3 monitors before because the computer doesn't support it and never has. REALLY??? I just freaking told you I have been doing that for over 3 years so obviously it does support it you deaf, stupid retard. Try using your brain for 2 seconds and work on a solution instead of calling me a liar and dismissing my issue without thought.

After going back and forth for about 5 minutes I gave up and hung up. Finally I fixed it by switching out my docking station with another one I found laying around. Not sure why that worked, but I'm back to working on all 3 monitors. I called the guy back to tell him it's working and sent a picture of my setup, his response: "Well I don't know why that works because your laptop is too old to support that."

Useless...

I worked at a computer store for almost 4 years, don’t really have any seniors since the first year and if I don’t understand something google are my only hope

So during 4th year it got worse, I got college final project also tons of work. That last year really burn me out like crap. No one’s complaining if I can’t troubleshoot something (even the boss or client) but I feel depressed if I failed to help them

I quite 3 months ago and currently on another city with a software company, first 2 months was great, tons of senior and I can finally rely on someone instead of pulling my hair by myself

P.S. The store working atmosphere was nice, but I just don’t wanna be last man when shit happens. Especially if it’s my 1st job

So we are in computer lab with some bitch ass c++ program on the board,,its approx. 150 sloc with lot of if's and else's...halfway into the session my friend rolls on his chair comes to my system asking for help, i say sure dude why not.
So we both roll to his system and that bastard has 0 indentation,a set of brackets for every if else even for non-compound statements with every bracket in a line of its own.......
With great difficulty of restraining myself from punching him in the face,,,i politely ask him"Have you ever coded in python"
He says no
I say "that was a rhetorical question"

Everyone around us bursts into laughter and that poor lad still has no idea what just happened

Python should be made compulsory for fags like these,, they'll know the meaning of indentation only then

Currently i have a small web dev project and i set up a live preview website so he cant see it developing and This literally Just happened

Client : hey, are you currently working on my website?
Me : Yes on my computer and working on it, can i help you with something?
C: yeah just a little bit, that logo on the top left are just a bit squeezed in size and stay like that since 5 days ago and it's bothering me, can you fix it?
Me : nah, its just a simple thing. give me a sec and try reload--
C: why is your voice echoing? Don't tell me you are coding in the bathroom
Me: ummm.. No... I guess...? (I Am)
C: 🤣
Me: sorry 😅

Finaly! I dont work anymore!
Few days ago my contract had ended. I dont need to go to that stupid factory and process 400 to 800 gears a day! Finaly I wont be all dirty, oily and dusty constantly!

Three months ago I decided to earn a bit of money to not waste my holiday time. (I could do my projects but im a lazy fuck and i would propably end up playing pc games). It was worth it. I earned aproximatley 500 freedom cash per month. (Thats A LOT in my country). It wasnt plesant experience tho. Dust was everywere, i had been working at heat treatment section of that factory (but i was using grinding machine, so yeah perfect place for that) so temperatures were ranging from 40°C to 50°C. I had to wear protective equipment as well!
If you think 36°C is hell try working there!

Im currently at student integration camp for new students. I hope that im going to have great time! Also lectures start next month. Im going to study electronic and computer engieering in english (in poland).

When the school finaly starts Im going to join few student clubs and i hope they are going to help me with my computer and electronic projects.

Thats all! Time to get drunk!

I just overheard that someone tried to clean up their computer by going into the C drive, selecting all folders, and pressing delete.

They called the help desk because it was taking a long time

The definition of torture: watching your non-techie wife attempt to setup a new computer and refusing to accept help.

... there are so many metaphors I can put here but if she sees any of them it would be grounds for divorce so I will leave it at that.

That moment when you get called by an 'Microsoft help desk' telling you have a problem with your computer...

I run on Ubuntu 16.04... Server....

So, as a programmer, I'm basically the go-to tech support guy for my family (and now my gf's family).

So, my gf's mum updated windows and her computer stopped playing around through headphones, asks me for help.

I've got no fucking idea, I don't even use windows.

She's like "if your computer did this what would you do".

"I'd google the problem and randomly try solutions until it started working again. And hope I didnt break anything else."

She didn't seem happy with my debugging technique...

TL;DR — Never ever use work chat to gossip about work. NEVER.

—

Just some minutes ago, my boss asked a mate to move aside from his computer and began checking out some docs.

By the tone he used, I assumed something was wrong, I stood from my workplace and went to grab something from the kitchen. Came back and he was looking through a thread in slack between a mate and another work mate.

I thought he was going to send something to himself but then he asked me if I could help printing out the screen. Took a quick look and they were talking shit about him.

Now, it'll be an awkward silence until I go home and those two stay to argue about that thread.

Sheez.

TL; DR: please save me from IT hell

Note 1: this is a rant that comes after a couple other rants I'm going to call "family business saga" from now on because I feel like this is gonna go on for a while

Note 2: the following may look exaggerated but it's because of how pissed off I am at said person

So I have to help this one family member with his computer but he's worned me out so much last summer that I can't stand him (it's all tech based). At all. Both in person and via text calls. I dread and become pissy each time he's nearby, just his presence makes me want to jump in a hole and stay there for eternity.
And he's not the smartest cookie in the jar when it comes to tech, so he comes to me for help (instead of going to my brother. Aaagh why doesn't he go for my brother as well, it's mentally tiring having to "help" him - as he doesn't learn what I'm trying to teach him even after several attempts). I don't really mind being sought for help when it comes to tech, but this guy takes it one step further.
He entered my room with his computer in his hands saying this friend of his has installed W7 on his PC (why didn't he handle all the things he wants to do, it would save me a lot of anger containment) and that I *had* (it's always "YOU HAVE" because I'm a tech-ish person and I'm in uni for CS) to help him do a bunch of things.
So he boots up the thing and there are 32 updates to do, so I'm guessing that he didn't boot it up after the OS update until now. He leaves my room and I sigh out of relief. He comes back with the AC remote complaining it's too hot in my room and that he's gonna put it down a degree or 2. Jesus christ do not tamper with my AC settings, it's fine to me. The updates are still going on. He leaves again.
The computer takes its time to update and so does he. I'm happily playing minecraft when he comes back, the computer off after updating. He looks at it and says "why is it off?". I reply back "it finished updating.", trying to keep my cool. Even the most simple questions are irritation inducing.
He reboots it and lets it run. After it boots and it's ready to go he just stays there for like 2' without doing anything because the hard drive light was going off. I think he thinks the computer is going to explode if he touches it while the light is blinking 😬
He goes to connect the computer to the internet and gets all surprised that the computer doesn't recognize our home's internet (he has been here before with his computer, I guess, so he had connected, so I think he was expecting it to auto connect like that). I tell him that the computer doesn't recognize our home's connection because it has had a fresh OS installation and so it didn't have any connection registered. He types in the password and the connection is established.
He them starts going on about that he wants to get these pics on the business' website and how does he put them in his computer and all that. I do that for him and he's all like "how did you do that?? 😮" like it's a magic trick
And he's always going on at everything as if it's all a big undoable thing. "How do I do this? You know what, do it yourself and show me because I don't wanna fail". Dude. Bro. Everything - EVERYTHING - you are afraid of doing is undoable. EVERYTHING. Good christ.
I swear I've never felt so glad I'm going back for uni next week

I have nothing wrong with being frequently asked what I am majoring in. However, I am going for COMPUTER SCIENCE not FUCKING IT. Please for the love of fuck stop suggesting I try to get a job with some shitty company as an IT guy. I have no interest in being an IT guy. I want to fucking code shit, not fix your shit and help you do basic shit that you're too fucking incompetent to figure out.

Tomorrow is my 19th birthday and I'm very excited about it. 😀🎂
Wanted to do something special as a computer geek but wasn't sure.
Hope you can help me !

Thanks 👍

So I'm 17, I go to a vocational school and I'm in a computer IT and networking class as a junior. We have learned programming in HTML and CSS and whenever I'm programming I'm having the most fun, so I am teaching myself C++! I don't really feel welcome due to my age but I hope all of you can help me in the future!

Once I've worked in a start-up located in an engineering university "incubator", so we had a lot of engineer-to-be students applying for part-time jobs.
One of these kids was hired by my boss who labeled him "highly technical, very skilled in IT".

One day, while very busy with my own upcoming release, I had to help him finding a bug in his (horrible) code.

Me: Oh, that's easy, you need to load the image from the parent directory
Guy: ...
Me: You know how to do this, right? You're 1 exam away from being a computer engineer
Guy: ...
Me: Ok, ok, don't worry. Just type "../" right before the path

The guy starts typing, literally, "dotdotslash" into the path.

I immediately stopped him, almost crying. Then, I asked him to go for a walk.
"Don't mind about your bug, I'll take care"

My mom passed away in 2014. Were it not for the pain she was in all her life, I’d love to have her back and I’d gladly provide all the computer help she’d need.

Dad called me over for "tech support". He'd bought a wireless mouse and keyboard and couldn't for the life of him get it working. The issue with my dad is that he never lets you touch the computer when he needs help. 20 minutes and 20 questions later, I finally ask if he plugged in the USB receiver. Answer? "It's wireless, it should just... work!"

Most Computer Science courses at my University begin at 7:30 am. I live an hour and a half away. Having to get up around 5 am sleeping less than 4 hours a day. Help

When I was 17 years old. I had difficulties in understanding math problem “Calculus” (I can’t remember which one was it). This one day when we were in a Computer Lab, our teacher was showing us how really software’s are made. During my time, it was vb6. I paid close attention. When I went home, I started to think things that I can make using that software so one day I went to my teacher and asked if I can have a copy of the vb6. He gave vb6 and told me that inside are few eBooks that will help in learning.

Fuck School, from that day I started to concentrate on programming only. Made a small calculator which will help me to understand a Calculus problem and double check my answer. From that day, I love programming.

I’ m 26 now and a full stack software developer. All I want to do it build cool shit, something that will blow the eyeball of my friends and that eyeball should pop out from their asshole.

Joke: The person who scored highest in the computer class was afraid to switch on the PC.

One of the more memorable computer problems I solved were when I added some lego blocks to solve a recurring windows bluescreen
A friend had a Pentium 3 (slot 1) that kept throwing him several bluescrens per day so I decided to help
I open up the computer and saw that the processor were not properly securred in it's place and the plastic pieces that should have holding it in place were gone, so I improvised pressing in some lego pieces that I found somewhere to secure that the processor didn't move if someone were walking close to the computer and after that he didn't have any more bluescreens than the rest of us

So, I'm living in a completely computer illiterate family and I was called to help my father with something on a Laptop where he wanted to stream his favorite Soccer-Club.

So I walk up to him, ask what's wrong, and he says (roughly translated from German) "That thing doesn't work!"

And I'm just like ((Wat u mean))
So I ask him to explain the problem in detail.
Apparently his streaming service wasn't loading his stream.

Well damn I say, try searching for the problem on Google and find a solution.
((But no no no imma just call my son for everything that's freaking wrong with tech, he sure knows what to do))

As I'm not that experienced with Webservices as of yet, I had no idea what to do.

He was fucking furious!

"You always act like you know everything about tech and programs and stuff and can't even help me with fixing this Stream-Thing?!"

I responded simply by saying "It's not my area of work!"

Seems like he didn't know the difference between TECH-JESUS and hobbyist software engineer.

So I stand there and he just goes on one of these typical boomer tech illiterate rants, of which I'm sure you can imagine enough being on this platform.

tl;Dr; It pisses me of big time how people are not even trying to understand technology, nor attempting to help themselves by eG. Googling some simple problem, but rather just ask around and then being pissed off if the asked person just doesn't know the answer or can't help!

Me: Hello! Welcome to {Company} tech support. How can I help?

Caller: I'll just run through the situation. I got locked out of my apartment and my friend is still inside. I tried calling him but his phone is either off, Do Not Disturb, or something. Anyway, I've tried remotely SSHing our desktop computer from my laptop and using the say command to get the computer to tell him to unlock the door. Unfortunately the volume is too low. I tried Googling how to increase it via command line. But I found nothing. Is there a way to do that?

M: I suppose the doorbell doesn't work?

C: *click*

I hate SQL Server so much, don't matter how Microsoft say they improve themselves at SQL Server.

There's a lot of fucking bloat, messes your system and your services, adds tons of crap in your system registry, while more advanced SQL engines such MariaDB/PostgreSQL are more contained, and its very small.

Why SQL Server has to mess with Windows' ACL and his own privilege systems?.

Uninstall it and a lot of components remain hidden and tons of registry entries, not even TotalUninstaller or CCleaner can help.

I hate it since my technical high school and my goddamn college is forcing us to use SQL Sever for EVERYTHING, instead of good alternatives, messed my computer entirely requiring to format.

I try always to convince my freelance clients to use open-source alternatives, and say how SQL Server is so crap, (i had variant degrees of success).

Teacher requests help with projector. I go to the classroom.

Me: What seems to be the problem?
Teacher: Yes, I just can’t get this projector to show image from the computer! I’ve hit every single button on the remote!
Me: .. The computer isn’t on?
Teacher: Huh?
Me: There is no power on the computer? Have you turned it on?
Teacher: .. What?

I thought maybe she had accidentally shutdown the PC, but no. She had just walked to the classroom and just turned on the projector.. Didn’t even touch the computer..

Heard the students snickering when I left the classroom.

If it is lunch time and I have a sandwich stuffed halfway in my face, do not walk up to me with your computer asking for help. It doesn't take me long to eat so give me 3 fucking minutes to finish.

I will help you...I will touch your keyboard with my greasy fingers...I will touch your screen...multiple times.

You're welcome.

I do IT work along side my dev work. I had a Dr come up to me and ask me if I had time to help him pick out a personal computer... (Mother fucker I am on lunch break) "Sure" I say... "What's your budget, what will you be doing with the computer?" Dr - "I don't mind spending $6,000 and I want it for minor gaming..."

MUST BE FUCKING NICE!

"Aunt": I know that you have a bachelor's degree in computer science so you are smart with the computer...can you help me to pair new universal remote control for my television?

So there is this really cute guy in my class and he recently started to learn coding. Since I am 'the computer guy' in school, of course he got to me and asked for help. I introduced him to C# and for the next two weeks helped him learn and understand the language. It was so neat and he was so cute, doing all the mistakes I did too (1+1=11, that kind of stuff)

Now he informed me today that he switched to Java. Of all the languages, Java!! Guess I'll need to search for a new Padawan, fml

Hey there! -first rant-

I need your advice mighty ranters.. I'm an introverted gal studying Computer Science at uni, and i love this field. Wanna be a web or app developer..

I need your help about 2 things:

1. Literally ANY advice, or things you wish you knew, when you were a rookie

2. I'm currently living in solitude, because of hard times in the past and i find making friends much more difficult at uni than in high school. It even starts to affect my productivity in a bad way. I have a hard time trusting people.
So any advice about this? How do you cope with too much solitude? Is there maybe a group for girl programmers? I don't know..

All advice are welcomed! (and IT jokes too, to make my day :D )
Thanks a lot !

Ps.: You are great! Awesome community.

As we're all going about our various Easter, Passover, et al., family celebrations, I have the perfect solution to help train your families to stop asking you for help with mundane computer stuff:
Every time someone asks you to do/fix something, give them a full talk about what is going on in their computer around that system.
Don't forget you can talk about lots of things too:
- concurrency
- TCP IP / socket networking
- multi-threaded programs vs. single threads
- RISC vs. CISC processors
- Why linux is better than Windows or Mac
- algorithms
- logarithmic runtime
- teach them how to convert between hex, binary, and base ten
Really pour it on too. Soon they'll either figure out that you are a highly-skilled individual who is not their personal geek squad, or they'll be too afraid of a big lecture to ask for help.
Works with my in-laws like a charm.

Nightmare IRL:

Your colleague is in PTO for 2 weeks.

You are in charge of maintaining his project along with yours, CI, code, tests and everything.

Your colleague's code base is a real master piece of shit when you look at it closer. By shit, I mean hardcoded values everywhere, random sleeps now and then, 20 if branches that could be replaced by maps, variables named a b c d everywhere, try catch to silence errors that should not be silenced, etc.

Your colleague left the CI and code broken as shit. Takes forever to run on my goddamn computer.

PMs are spamming you: "What is going on? It's red everywhere. Help! Plz fix this! We are going to release tomorrow!"

FML

I grew up with a hacker for a brother, always tampering with shit and my dad was always taking computers apart and repairing them. Although I was too little to be of any help, I was dumbfounded and couldn’t get enough. To be cool, I took all my toys apart to see what made them work. My brother taught me the dark side of a computer and my father the light side. I could go on and on, but meh.

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?

In the past, the company that i worked gave to all the employees usb to save whatever they want, after that, this happened.

Me: Hi, how can i help you today?
User: The USB that IT gave to us it's broken.
Me: Broken?
User: Yeah, i can't plug-in in my computer.
Me: Did you try turn around?
User: Of course i.. ah, f**k yeah.

And ends the call.

To any and all family members, before requesting my help with the printer/computer/electronic device follow these steps to make sure I don't get irritated.

1. Make sure it's plugged in.
2. Turn it off then back on
3. Turn it off, unplug it for around 30s, turn it back on.
4. Request help

Why is this so hard to grasp? I don't want to stop my workflow with an issue that could be resolved in less than a minute!

Probably a little different shitty teacher!

Had a course in basic computer architecture and the teacher was way to over qualified to have that course. This is a guy who presents his research to Nvidia and Intel but is forced to teach a intro level course...

The result? He was completely unmotivated and unprepared for the lectures and was of no help on the assignments. Fortunately we had a awesome teaching assistant who saved the entire course for me and my friends. Seriously, kudos to that guy!

Public CSS discord: "Oh, awesome thanks, man! No need to apologize, I'll check the code. I DM'd you."

DM: Total meltdown cry baby freak-out... "Oh yeah... well, if the code is broken - then why does my repo have 63 stars? I think I'd know if my code didn't work - it must be your computer. Why won't you let me team-viewer into your computer and see your screen? I don't care about your personal information. It's made with React, not CSS. I thought you would be helpful - but you're not at all. You aren't professional..."

Uh... (I can see the code... team-viewer isn't going to help you... and I'm at work... and I already spent 15 minutes helping you - you fucking prick)

General approach : I'm wasting my time by just sitting in front of computer all day. Since I'm freelancer, almost all of my work can be done at one place. They think, I should get a REAL job.

When they need help with tech : I'm the guy who knows everything about tech and can fix their mobile, printer, toaster, washing machine and nuclear warfare.

When it comes to admiring what I do, I'm just a useless piece of shit but, when they need technical assistance I'm their lord and savior!!

Circa spring of last year, Computer Science 1

The guy sitting next to me asked me a clarifying question about what our professor was mumbling and scribbling illegibly on the board.
I start to respond, only for the professor to YELL at me in front of the class for helping him, saying that programming was a personal affair and that I should be minding myself.
He even yelled at me for helping someone that is "too stupid help themselves" and that I shouldn't worry if the person next to me doesn't get it.
I felt bad, the kid next to me felt bad, and I avoided a semester of computer science just to not have him again.

Installs Ubuntu 16.04
Try to put my favorite software installed.
Reboot failed, drops to BusyBox shell.
Me thinking : I fucked up.
Friend walks by, couldn't read shit.
Friend: Look at his kid, he's trying to hack into someone's computer.
Me: (Agrees just for reputation) Yeah, damn teachers been giving me bad grades.
Friend: Could you help me too?
Me: (Don't have hacking experience, making shit up) NO, because your not my best friend. And school security is hard to crack.

Got away safely

Breaking news!
An anomaly in human communications was discovered!! It appears that when a person asks a tech oriented friend "can you help me with my computer?" And receives a positive response, what he actually hears is "yes, I agree to be your slave for any technical issue you have from now and until the end of time"!
Scientists are investigating...

Today I was working in a university studyspace. Some girl noticed my dark theme IDE, running some tests and such and assumed that I'm a computer guru. She then asked me if I could help her with MS Excel or MS Word. To which I answered "sorry, no". She might've just been trying to start something with me, but that was a deal breaker hahaha (seriously tho, if I were in a better mood I would have helped her)

Just because I know how to program doesn't mean I know how to fix your goddamn computer. We have an IT support team. Call them!

Don't come to my desk asking about a computer problem, then stand there with a vacant stare when I say I can't help you. I've given you the support team's contact info several times already. I assure you, they specifically get paid to configure your emails, install printers, setup your VPN, etc. Now where the hell was I at...

The TA for my computing lab in uni consistently shows up 45 minutes late. I'm usually done in 20 because I use the rest of the time to work on the next lab.

He walks through the door, lets out the biggest sigh, sits down, sighs again, opens up his laptop, and sighs once more. When someone asks for help, he sighs so hard you can see his lungs shrivel up as he exhales, and then provides them with a pointless answer.

The best part about the cs department here is that when you join cs, you are given an account to use with the ubuntu machines in the computer labs. They send you the password over school email, and you can't change it on any system they provide.

Every time the support suggest that I update and then restart my computer, I can't help it but think:

"oh crap they don't know shit about what causes this bug 🐛"

//computer class at school doing html

classmate:"Hey can you help me? that img isnt showing."

me:"Yeah of course" *look at screen and see a single line if code without spaces or anything*
"What are you doing? Why do you write everything in one line?"

classmate:"Ohh you can write it over multiple lines?"

me:"...."

At that time we worked with html for around 2 weeks

"You know computer programming?! Can you help me hack this game?" .........................

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

When you are the go-to computer-guy

I feel like "programmers are not computer technicians" joke is kinda overused lately. It doesn' matter if we are not technicians, we are very knowledgeable in computers and people knows that. People of course will try to get help from you when they can so it's not a wonder that they ask you to help with something they are not confident. Everyone that exercises practical professions lives through that. If your sister-in-law is a mathematician it's normal to ask for help if you are not able to come up with the right algorithm for the task. People depend on each other. That's how we survive.
But I'm not saying start helping everybody that can't open a pdf file. Just know who to choose to help. If they are a capable person or someone that's a part of your everyday life they will most likely repay you when you are also in need. Believe me everyone needs help time to time.

My Grandma: Go with your aunt to help her buy a refrigerator.
Me: But I don't know anything about refrigerator
My Grandma: But you spend all your time on computer, and it is just technology
Me: But its not the same thing at all
My Grandma: And I thought you were smart

Me: 😑

Anyone here has posture problems like anterior pelvic tilt or rounded shoulders form sitting in front of a computer all day?
I have them both and it
It basically makes me look like shit when I walk. Will strength training help with these issues?
Edit: tags

I see loads of rants complaining about getting asked for tech help. And then I see Linux getting recommended as an OS.

Me? I'm telling everyone to use ChromeOS so they leave me the fuck alone.

In the future, I'll tell everyone they are too fucking stupid to own a computer and phone is the way to go.

Systems thinking, people.

Have higher technical schools with computer science as one of their topics (such as the one I visit) introduce people to how RAM works in detail earlier than in fourth grade, which would really help some of my classmates.

I still can't get it why people looks at IT people as lowlife. If you need a new computer in your office I can get the right spec and help you to buy it. But moving the computer table is not my job 😠

So I decided to help my Mom's Mom setup an Amazon Fire TV. Now I've been here for about 3 - 4 hours and I'm setting up 2 Fire Tv's, A Router, Writting down passwords, setting up an Amazon account with Prime and fixing her computer.. 😤😢

I have a presentation which takes 10 min and must be about anything relative to computer .
Since the other students are very stupid , I might not choose a very advanced topic ( after thinking about encryption i realized this)
So i need help!

What is your recommandation for the subject?

Hey so this may be a harsh one. Me and my friend are computer science and game development students and he's now in Programming 2 and he's not understanding day 1 concepts (i.e. "you dont have to redefine a variable every time you use it", "That's a string why are you setting it to 0?", "the program needs to take in user string input how would you do that?", etc.) and at this point I don't know how to help him actually understand and retain information. What do I do?

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.

Hi, is there anyone who could help me with a computer problem?

Doing college homework! Computer graphics and multimedia! Yaaaay!!
Except....

Well I have to WRITE BY HAND the entire programs ( net about 500 lines, phew ) on PAPER!!

Reason?
Professor: it will help u get thru exams and is a requirement for university. They don’t permit printed. It is a better habit to write ur code than print it.

Me: goes to my corner and cries listening to sad music 😭😭😭
WHHYYYYYYYY!!!!!! Why do they have to follow prehistoric rules yet!!!!!!!! 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

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.

When you try to help someone clean their computer over the phone, and they install a new program to "clean" their computer mid-call.

Ok guys. I have a very important question to ask you.
I need your help. How do you explain to your girlfriend/boyfriend that you are a developer so you need to spend a lot of time on your computer? My new girlfriend does not want to understand.
Thanks guys.

I just hate it when you're happily coding along when a colleague asks you to help him. You try to help him at his computer, but that thing is always slow as shit and has these weird workings. So you go ahead and try to do it quick on your computer. Then during the setup you run into problems. Being the good dev that you are you try and fix those along the way, but somehow you get sucked deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. The next thing you know you've been working an hour on some shit which should have taken 5 minutes. To top it all off you want to return to what your were actually doing and say "screw it". But there's this nagging feeling and you can't help but finish what you started. Worst of all your colleague hasn't advanced one bit.

Somehow I always feel like a jerk afterwards. Either I quit and didn't help (and didn't fix what needed fixing), or I did help and it took too much time away from stuff I should have been working on :(

Boss: Let's hire a new person to help us recreate our website
Us: sounds good!
Boss doesn't hire anyone and starts the website on his own
Boss: I started the new website. It's in server X and the address is test.y.com. I also want all of us to work on it
Me thinking: great he just wants us to modify the hosted files like he does 🙄
Me: I'll move a copy to GitHub for version control.
Boss: Great!
Boss creates a backup folder on the same computer and folder path that the hosted files are on.

Someone please nuke that server so my boss learns version control like I've asked before. I think I'll opt not to work on a website where he and my other co-workers will just overwrite each other's changes because he doesn't want to learn to git 😑

My friend asked me how to root his phone because I'm the computer guy, of course.

I didn't want to be a douche to him so I googled and directed him to a few pages that may help. He kept asking questions regarding rooting until it worked for him and it was all fine by me.

His last question though was how much it cost to replace the broken screen on his tablet!!

A year ago I was hired as a Jr dev to assist the senior dev because he was so busy. Within 2 months he was pushed out and I replaced him. I thought maybe he just got busy with other things or found a new job.

After working alone this past year, I was told last week that since I am so busy with things outside the job, they were hiring someone to help me finish the project I'm currently on.

(for context : I work as a contracted dev for a small dev company of 5 or so people. One for each language/os.)

I can't help but think that I'm probably being pushed out and replaced. I flat out asked that, but never got a reply. Now I'm 70% through a project and disgruntled with everything. Not sure how I'm supposed to feel really.

If they want to replace me for one reason or another that's fine, I just wish they weren't shady about it.

I should probably be working right now, but I'm going to take my kids to the pet store to clear my head. I'll enjoy a little time away from my computer.

Hey devs, really need some help here. This is driving me crazy...

We're currently taking issues from the company via mail. We've got a group mail that goes to the three of us at the IT department. Problem is, colleagues just forward customers emails without event trying to help, which means that we get stupid issues like "I can't sign in", and no further information. We're currently using Jira, and I was thinking perhaps we can set up a Jira Service Desk? Then we could have an internal help desk where issues could be submitted, and require some important fields, and perhaps add a checklist. Have you had any experience with Service Desk? Do you think it would be a good idea to have a "normal" person have an account there as well to filter out the normal "Have you tried restarting your computer" stuff? Is it suited for non-developers?

Any other ideas?

Yeay, messy question, but I'm fucking desperate...

For as long as I can remember I watched my dad at his computer doing work and programming, so I got interested in computers. I started using and mastering computer skills when I was 5 and helped people with their computer problems. I was hesitant to learn how to program because it looked hard, but I eventually have I'm and started to learn Java at 12. I started by making Bukkit plugins for Minecraft (1.7.10). I learned to program, because I knew that computers will one day help people, and I wanted to help people too.

My dad thinks I'm a Java developer and shows me corporate job opportunities in that field. He thinks Java = JavaScript. Doesn't matter how many times i try to make him understand.

My mom just knows that i do computer and can help her when she needs tech help.

😁

Don't feed the pigeons.
A cautionary tale.
When you feed the pigeons they keep coming back. They don't stop pestering you for help, and they don't ever listen to you.
I gave my father-in-law my old laptop, and installed the latest version of Office 2016 because I'm a nice guy.
Now, every week at family dinner there's something he needs me to help him with.
Mind you, his previous computer had Windows XP and the one I gave him had Windows 7. So it was quite the texh upgrade for him.
Except one of his octagenarian siblings wrote a family recipe book, and wrote it in Word Processor. (because Old People!) Well fuck of course it has pictures, clip art, special formatting, vertical and horizontal lines. It worked fine on XP because Word Processor was supported by XP.
The following is me explaining to him over the phone why his recipe book wouldn't load into Word. I was in his house picking up 2000 rounds of ammo for my and my wife's pistols (target practice) while he was out and about.
FIL: "It's the link on the desktop. It comes up in Word on the old computer but when I tried to put it on the new computer it wouldn't work. I used a thumb drive."
Me: "Okay well I tried to..."
FIL: "I don't know why it would work in Word on one computer and not the next."
Me: "Okay, well I clicked on the link to the file on your old desktop and it opened in Word Processor, not Word."
FIL: "No it opens in Word on the old computer, but it won't open on the new one."
Me: "It opens in Word Processor on the old computer, it won't open in Word on..."
FIL: "Which computer are you sitting at? The old one is on the left." (as if I wouldn't recognize the computer I had for three years and just gave him a month ago!)
Me: "The old one."
FIL: "Okay so it should open in Word on the old computer."
Me: "It won't. It will open in..."
FIL: "I was thinking maybe it had something to do with a screen that popped up when I logged in to the new computer. Something about antivirus software?"
Me: "It will open in Word Processor on your old computer, but it isn't formatted..."
FIL: "Yeah, it's a '.-w-p-s' file so it should work in Word."
Me: "Word Processor is a different program from Word. This opens in Word Processor."
(long silence)
FIL: "So which one do I have?"
Me: "You have Word Processor on the old computer."
FIL: "So how do I get Word Processor on the new computer?"
Me: "You don't. It is defunct software, it was discontinued ten years ago. You can try to get a converter online, but there's no guarantee it'll work."
FIL: "Alright, I'll be home in a few minutes. I'll take a look then."
This was at 10pm last night, and I'd been out all day since 7:30am. He still didn't believe me that the book was written in Word Processor until I showed him the different startup screen for Word Processor, where it says "Word Processor" plain as day.
I fed the pigeon. And it looks like there's more of this to come.

My mum wants to learn how to use a computer. She wants to help my dad in his business in case something needs to be done and neither me nor my dad are (currently) available.
Will be .... a great challenge, since she didn't use a desktop computer almost ever, but i'm nevertheless proud of her and will try my best to help her😍😊😎

Is the way people solve problems intrinsic to the native language they learned growing up? Can the shape of our thoughts be optimal for solving certain kinds of problems? Like sentence structure, grammar, etc.

If the pattern of thoughts a language promotes can help us solve problems. Then is there a spoken language that can help promote solving computer science problems?

I know I have to work to think differently to program in different styles of programming. I wonder if we can learn from different spoken languages patterns of logic that are applicable to engineering.

Mathematics, while not a spoken language, has helped me re-frame things in programming. I think programming has also helped in other areas. Like using binary search to find the end of a pipe in the ground.

!Dev

I dislike the idea of therapists. I mean, not the people who study human behaviour to help understand it but the people who try to "fix" another person's problems.

My reason for this is that they're human themselves and I'd say it's pretty obvious that we don't know exactly how the mind works so it's basically like trying to fix an airplane with only half or even less of the blueprints.

The reason I don't like them being human themselves is because we are fallible, you can't guarantee or at least have a extremely high probability of the same prevention or treatment rate as you maybe could with a computer. It's not repeatable. Then again, we don't have the "blueprints" so to speak so it's kind of hard to say.

Your thoughts?

First exposure...
When I was a kid, my parents would put on Tom & Jerry and other cartoons on an old family computer (you know - yellowed plastic, big, bulky tower, and an even bigger CRT monitor) for me to watch (Windows 95 didn't cut it, so they booted up Geexbox from CD)... Sometimes the playback would stop / the volume would be too quite - so I had to figure out how to control it by myself, without the help of my parents... Slowly, I was able to boot up Windows, and use my father's CD collection of All-In-One CDs (utilities and games). Later we were able to afford connecting to the internet through our phone landline - it was all downhill since then. Nowadays I'm helping my dad when it comes to computers (he's currently learning how to use Excel properly). :-)

Hello devRant !

I'm a student in computer science, in my last year. In one course, I'm asked to make a contribution on an open source project and participate in it's community.
Since I love the people here, I was wondering if you could point me something not too big I can help with that would be useful. To give you an idea, I have some experience in both Android and web development, but none in anything iOS.

Anyway, thanks for reading and you're awesome ! (Tagging dfox 'cause you know, helping the project ^^)

the look of disbelief you get from non devs when you Google how to fix a "generic computer problem" they have asked for help with... as though it's your job to just know every minute detail

Back when I lived in my university dorm I shared my room with internet admin. Usually I helped people with internet problems when he wasn't there and I've placed FAQ on the door how to fix common stuff with a little note, that I can help only with internet problems and only with those that aren't listed. It worked for most people, but one guy knocked and messaged me around 5 times a day to fix his system. So I've decided to finally do what he wants.
He: come on, I heard from XYZ that you are an admin in job and you fixed her computer.

Me: but I work only with servers
He: what's the difference? Just copy my photos to my external drive and install new system on my laptop, just like you do it in job.
Me: so this is that simple job?
He: yup, but I need a laptop tomorrow, because I have something to do at the evening.
Me: okay

I've used find to copy all the photos from his HDD and installed minimal Debian without xorg on the laptop. He hasn't come back after picking up his computer. And that's the way to get rid of leechers that whine for fixing everything because you are IT guy :D

Just got off a call doing some classic "I know you are not tech support but please help me connect my iPhone to my computer", and I heard the following words:

"What's the Windows start button?"

This was not a boomer. This was not a Gen Y, Gen X, or even Millenial!

I shit you not, a zoomer did not know what or where the windows start button was.

One of my coworkers calls Firefox "Google". Oddly enough she also uses Chrome but calls it "Chrome". I get confused every time she asks me to help her with her computer.

So I'm working our remote build/testing server, and all of a sudden my computer just turns off. No crash message, no error, just turned off. My co-worker tries to help troubleshoot the problem.

Nothing.

I take the computer downstairs to the hardware department. They plug it in and it starts no problems.

After it finishes updating, I take it back upstairs and plug it back in.

Nothing.

I suggest that it is the power cable, and my co-worker looks under his desk. Turns out he had kicked the switch on the surge protector. 😑

Looking for a cool pc game or movie about computer , robots , hacking , etc.
Can you help me?

I haven't been able to work on the computer without getting a headache very soon after for almost 2 weeks straight now.

I presume I have grown a sensitivity to bright light, stemming from the time I dimmed my phone all the way about 5 months ago and never set it back until just now.

In my classes I will get random headaches that hurt like heck and make me feel groggy, making me unable to focus at all. And while doing computer work, I'll get the same thing.

I've tried getting my eyes checked again, and got new glasses about a week ago - still no help.

Prior to this incident I was working hard on a volunteer project with a small team. Since then my progress and commits have dwindled greatly, and I feel stressed out because I can't do what i want to do without hurting and feeling like absolute shit!

I'm currently trying to get my eyes used to bright lights again by setting things like my phone screen to a brighter setting, changing some dead light bulbs in different rooms of the house, and getting more involved outside.

I hope this goes away soon - I don't want to have this stupid headache every time I go to code or work in class.

When your the IT guy and you computer is broken

hey, can i please speak to myself?

Todo list when you tell someone you are developer:
1. Fix slow computer
2. Remove virus.
3. Help with Microsoft Word
4. Check why printer is not working

Does anyone know how in Movies and TV shows do all those computer sites/software are done?
Like when we see a cia mission room for example, and there after agents running a face recognising and get 50 popups with information, or location some secret hide out place and super cool screen with 10 widgets show us location..
That can't be real.. But i have no idea how it's done.. is it green screen replaced later with fake video, or something similar? Please help, I MUST KNOW THE TRUTH!!!!!!!

I'm in a small company so they don't have a big budget.

The previous I.T guy went full retard and decided that it would be a great idea to buy a shitty 200$ laptop with a soldered eMMc hard drive for accounting.
Since they NEVER use the cloud and just pass around excel files, the files aren't really saved anywhere but on the USBs and the computer.

Guess what ? The motherboard fucking fried and almost 6 MONTHS of accounting work was lost. Out of warranty of course, not that it would help since the eMMc chip is also fucked.

That's what you get for trying to cheap out on hardware and not choosing the right stuff.

When I was in school I was in a vocational school and my program was a Computer Service and Networking class and that’s what it taught it’s pretty self explanatory. BUT we also did some programming.

I was the only one interested in programming really considering everyone else loved the hardware. But when they would ask for help it was awful.

The book we used didn’t format the python properly on the page so you can’t really tell if there’s an indent if you dont know python well (they didn’t) which is okay.

But what isn’t okay is asking me for help and SENDING ME A FUCKING VIDEO OF THE COde LIKE FUCKING WHAT THE HELL MAN THAT SHIT ISNT EVEN READABLE AND YOUR HAND IS SHAKING LIKE YOURE HAVING A STROKE AT LEAST SEND ME THE CODE OR WORST CASE A PICTURE.

This happened more than once. 😤

So the other day my car broke down and since the shop wanted a lot of money I asked a friend of mine who knowns his way around cars for help.
Just when we finished repairing it I was like "whenever the Zombie apocalypse starts you'll be really useful, me instead won't be since no one might need computers anymore" . His response was epic:
"Nah, you will simply build a terminator with your computer skills and it will kill all Zombies!"
Now I am actually looming forward to the Zombie apocalypse!

TL;DR: us geeks will build terminators in case of zombies!

when you have a friend who doesn't know why she's studying computer science, and has lesser knowledge and passion in programming than you... Receives help from you and get a distinction while you get an A...

Algorithms teacher: I don't know how to work this thing. (computer) ... Students constantly have to go up front and help him do basic computer stuff. Even worse, he types with two fingers! Why education system must you suck so bad???

Hello there devranters, long time no see
I have a question for all the computer scientists and students out there. Do you have book recommendations especially for the maths part? I'm in the process of buying some books, they're very expensive but if I'm going to buy they might as well be useful books.

I get some error when deleting an azure service so I put a support ticket asking for help. Just as I am about to close my computer for the day I receive an email saying:

"Product team will disable the account xxxxx from backend".

The xxxxx is our subscription number. The subscription that hosts not only that service but also production servers and databases, storage accounts containing backups, etc.

I replied to the email so hopefully disaster is avoided otherwise tomorrow wont be a happy day.

Looking for computer geeks to help with an app I'm working on.

1] Being able to say "the easy way or the hard way" when people ask if you can build them a website/app

2] Telling people they can't afford me when they ask if i can help them with something computer related

3] The feeling of encountering a problem and solving it gives me a drug-like high when i've finished a project. Even the feeling of finishing all the day's tasks and having time to work on ongoing greater tasks fills me with a sense of accomplishment and victory.

Here's a nightmarish tale that happened to me not long ago:
One of our stores was moving, so they asked me for help with the systems. Thinking it'd be fun, I said yes, and went. All I had to do was unplug everything and reorder it at the new location, sounds really easy right?
They hadn't cleaned the computer area in ten years.
Each time something broke, they replaced it...and left the old cables there. But that was nothing compared to just a little later, when I tackled the network situation.
For two stations, they had:
2 routers. 5 switches. A wi-fi adapter, even though the routers had that capability, an adsl modem backup and a...56k modem. ALL plugged. ALL linked.
Turns out they switched providers, and they didn't bother removing the old equipment. They just linked everything together.
Man, what a night it was -_-

When people (mostly girls) ask me what I study in college and immediately answer themselves with "oh it's IT or something like that, right?" a part of me just dies. They literally think I'm studying how to work at help desk or fix printers. I'm not even exaggerating, a girl once told me she actually thought that. I'm not sure if she's just dumb as fuck or if most people actually think that about computer science, hopefully it's the former...

being the good guy that I am I was helping out a family member over the phone. Frozen computer was the verdict... Eventually it turned out the computer wasn't frozen at all, the batteries of the magic mouse had died... thanks for wasting my valuable time! I then told em I would only help if they used cables for everything, including wifi. It took 3 weeks for them to realise Wifi cables don't exist. revenge can be satisfying sometimes!

Hello everyone, I've been looking for a long time to switch from Windows to Linux (on my tower, I have a macbook). The only problem being that I can't decide at all. I've heard a lot of good things about Linux Mint, Manjaro and Arch (especially here for him), I don't know which would be best for me (I'm in my last year of a master's degree in computer systems architecture) because most of the time when I use a Linux it's a simple Debian in CLI.

Also, I have no idea which GUI to choose between KDE Cinamon and other modern not too childish GUIs. Can you help me find arguments to choose the right one?

I also like sometimes playing video games like WoW or Diablo 3 but I guess it will work with Winepak with Flatpak.

Thank you in advance for your help and thank you devRant to exist :).

PS: Si il y a des francophones, Faites moi signe :)

I want to build my lab at home, a useful lab, what can I buy to make a lab that I will use almost everyday please? I already have MacBook pro, an HP elitebook on OPENSUSE, my main gaming computer on Windows, a Raspberry Pi, tons of cables and a bit of money. Can you help me to find?

Turns computer into a smart Artificial Intelligence to help you with your bullshit ideas

I study Computer Science. At school we have a little project group that help others students in different fields with their computer problems.

A guy came and he says that he tried to removed the jack from the audio jack - he broke it for whatever reason - with a stick with hot glue on it's tip saying he saw this on Youtube. The glue got stuck in the jack... We had to buy a new headphone jack card for his laptop.

Last night my friend started messaging me to help her install windows 10 onto their computer. She said her and some idiot with less tech credibility then a rock tried everything they could think of. First they downloaded the windows 10 ISO from the site, good so far, then instead of burning to a disk or USB, they thought 'copy and paste' would be enough (no googling at all) obviously the image wasn't attatched correctly, so they say they spent an hour doing IDEK to get the disk to read before messaging me. I talk her through getting the ISO mounted and then it asks her for the product key, she got pissed at that and said 'They gave me the ISO for free why do I need to buy a product key'
this is why I despise my friends some days

!rant

I'm a computer engineering student.
I'm very much interested in Systems and networking.
That's why I was thinking of persuing cyber-security as a career option.
But I'm not quite sure if that is a good choice.
Also I don't know how to proceed in order to achieve excellence in cyber-security.

It would be a great help if you guys could help me.

Thanks :)

!rant

I always hear stories about someone hearing one of our developer friends is a developer and assumes that means they know everything about computers. Hell, I've had it happen to me before (usually the common "oh I have an app idea that's better than facebook! you just have to build it")

A big one I hear if someone asking a developer that has only worked with software to help fix a hardware issue or build a computer. Personally, I'd prefer if someone asked me about a hardware issue (except printers, fuck printers) or to build a computer for them. I've been called a rare breed for knowing about an equal amount about computer hardware and software.

I'd much rather do some physical work building a computer (as simple as a hello world program, a lot of it is putting shit where it fits) than build an entire website or program for someone. But I mean, I might actually know hardware a bit better than I know software, and that's just me. (Obviously never do anything for free when you could be paid for it)

I was having internet issues -
I'm running an nongenuine iso of Win7, and installed the driver for my wifi adapter (ralink)
i performed this process three times after it one day stopped working.

i stared directly at my wireless networking button. which wasn't lit.

and then i continued searching for help on my second computer (hp stream, i cry)

and then it fucking hits me

the networking button
wasn't
fucking
lit

so i pressed the button, what you're thinking happened happened, and i both had all the motivation in the world to continue living, but simultaneously wanted to die a thousand deaths becaus I was that fucking STUPID.

have a blessed night,

write code like God's reading it ,and satan's using it.

Either "He's addicted, he only plays on the Computer" or "Hey, you know some things, can you help me repairing my Computer?"

I wonder if you guys can help, nobody else seems to.

Nine months ago I packed my desktop away because I had to move.
I then turned it on a few weeks ago and noticed a curious problem: the audio and video stutters.
I don't know why this happens.

I tried booting into Linux, and didn't see any stuttering. I went back over to windows and updated all the drivers, but nothing worked.
Last night I did a full system wipe, and re-installed windows without leaving any of the old files.

The error still persists.

I have no clue what might be wrong with the computer.
For all I know it's the hardware that's failing, but I don't have any idea which component in the system is leading to this strange behaviour.

Maybe you guys know enough to shed some light on this?

When the new head of the Computer Science program at our university comes to our help desk and needs help getting a Kali Linux box to connect to wifi... we have lost all hope (back story this guy is only head because he was the only one to take the job. he is a total tard... it's scary)

So Today I completed an android app I have been building for like 2 months then this asshole who does education looks at the app and says "This simple thing is what you have been working on for 2 months?".
This is a guy who wanted may help sometimes back on a problem with his phone when I told him to reboot the phone he even couldn't understand what rebooting is.
Such guys usually piss me off very bad. The fool even doesn't know even what coding is.
I really hate such ignorant fools who think creating anything in a computer is a very simple task.
Day ruined by this dude I feel like beating the shit out of him.
Guys who have been in this situation how do you deal with such fools.