I tutor people who want to program, I don't ask anything for it, money wise, if they use my house as a learning space I may ask them to bring cookies or a pizza or something but on the whole I do it to help others learn who want to.

Now this in of itself is perfectly fine, I don't get financially screwed over or anything, but...

Fuck me if some students are horrendous!

To the best of my knowledge I've agreed to work with and help seven individuals, four female three male.

One male student never once began the study work and just repeatedly offered excuses and wanted to talk to me about how he'd screwed his life up. I mean that's unfortunate, but I'm not a people person, I don't really feel emotionally engaged with a relative stranger who quite openly admits they got addicted to porn and wasted two years furiously masturbating. Which is WAY more than I needed to know and made me more than a little uncomfortable. Ultimately lack of actually even starting the basic exercises I blocked him and stopped wasting my time.

The second dude I spoke to for exactly 48 hours before he wanted to smash my face in. Now, he was Indian (the geographical India not native American) and this is important, because he was a friend of a friend and I agreed to tutor however he was more interested in telling me how the Brits owed India reparations, which, being Scottish, I felt if anyone was owed reparations first, it's us, which he didn't take kindly too (something about the phrase "we've been fucked, longer and harder than you ever were and we don't demand reparations" didn't endear me any).

But again likewise, he wanted to talk about politics and proving he was a someone "I've been threatened in very real world ways, by some really bad people" didn't impress me, and I demonstrated my disinterest with "and I was set on fire once cos the college kids didn't like me".

He wouldn't practice, was constantly interested in bigging himself up, he was aggressive, confrontational and condescending, so I told him he was a dick, I wasn't interested in helping him and he can help himself. Last I heard he wasn't in the country anymore.

The third guy... Absolute waste of time... We were in the same computer science college class, I went to university and did more, he dossed around and a few years later went into design and found he wanted to program and got in touch. He completes the code schools courses and understandably doesn't quite know what to do next, so he asks a few questions and declares he wants to learn full stack web development. Quickly. I say it isn't easy especially if it's your first real project but if one is determined, it isn't impossible.

This guy was 30 and wanted to retire at 35 and so time was of the essence. I'm up for the challenge, and so because he only knows JavaScript (including prototypes, callbacks and events) I tell him about nodejs and explain that it's a little more tricky but it does mean he can learn all the basis without learning another language.

About six months of sporadic development where I send him exercises and quizzes to try, more often than not he'd answer with "I don't know" after me repeatedly saying "if you don't know, type the program out and study what it does then try to see why!".

The excuses became predicable, couldn't study, playing soccer, couldn't study watching bake off, couldn't study, couldn't study.

Eventually he buys a book on the mean stack and I agree to go through it chapter by chapter with him, and on one particular chapter where I'm trying to help him, he keeps interrupting with "so could I apply for this job?" "What about this job?" And it's getting frustrating cos I'm trying to hold my code and his in my head and come up with a real world analogy to explain a concept and he finally interrupts with "would your company take me on?"

I'm done.

"Do you want the honest unabridged truth?"

"Yes, I'd really like to know what I need to do!"

"You are learning JavaScript, and trying to also learn computer science techniques and terms all at the same time. Frankly, to the industry, you know nothing. A C developer with a PHD was interviewed and upon leaving the office was made a laughing stock of because he seemed to not know the difference between pass by value and pass by reference. You'd be laughed right out the building because as of right now, you know nothing. You don't. Now how you respond to this critique is your choice, you can either admit what I'm saying is true and put some fucking effort into studying cos I'm putting more effort into teaching than you are studying, or you can take what I'm saying as a full on attack, give up and think of me as the bad guy. Your choice, if you are ready to really study, you can text me in the morning for now I'm going to bed."

The next day I got a text "I was thinking about what you said and... I think I'm not going to bother with this full stack stuff it's just too hard, thought you should know."

You know who sucks at developing APIs?

Facebook.

I mean, how are so high paid guys with so great ideas manage to come up with apis THAT shitty?

Let's have a look. They took MVC and invented flux. It was so complicated that there were so many overhyped articles that stated "Flux is just X", "Flux is just Y", and exactly when Redux comes to the stage, flux is forgotten. Nobody uses it anymore.

They took declarative cursors and created Relay, but again, Apollo GraphQL comes and relay just goes away. When i tried just to get started with relay, it seemed so complicated that i just closed the tab. I mean, i get the idea, it's simple yet brilliant, but the api...

Immutable.js. Shitload of fuck. Explain WHY should i mess with shit like getIn(path: Iterable<string | number>): any and class List<T> { push(value: T): this }? Clojurescript offers Om, the React wrapper that works about three times faster! How is it even possible? Clojure's immutable data structures! They're even opensourced as standalone library, Mori js, and api is great! Just use it! Why reinvent the wheel?

It seems like when i just need to develop a simple react app, i should configure webpack (huge fuckload of work by itself) to get hot reload, modern es and jsx to work, then add redux, redux-saga, redux-thunk, react-redux and immutable.js, and if i just want my simple component to communicate with state, i need to define a component, a container, fucking mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps, and that's all just for "hello world" to pop out. And make sure you didn't forget to type that this.handler = this.handler.bind(this) for every handler function. Or use ev closure fucked up hack that requires just a bit more webpack tweaks. We haven't even started to communicate to the server! Fuck!

I bet there is savage ass overengineer sitting there at facebook, and he of course knows everything about how good api should look, and he also has huge ass ego and he just allowed to ban everything that he doesn't like. And he just bans everything with good simple api because it "isn't flexible enough".

"React is heavier than preact because we offer isomorphic multiple rendering targets", oh, how hard want i to slap your face, you fuckface. You know what i offered your mom and she agreed?

They even created create-react-app, but state management is still up to you. And react-boierplate is just too complicated.

When i need web app, i type "lein new re-frame", then "lein dev", and boom, live reload server started. No config. Every action is just (dispatch) away, works from any component. State subscription? (subscribe). Isolated side-effects? (reg-fx). Organize files as you want. File size? Around 30k, maybe 60 if you use some clojure libs.

If you don't care about massive market support, just use hyperapp. It's way simpler.

Dear developers, PLEASE, don't forget about api. Take it serious, it's very important. You may even design api first, and only then implement the actual logic. That's even better.

And facebook, sincerelly,

Fuck you.

Shutting down my company 😔,

Can't do it anymore,trying to do the best work for shit pay.

Clients haven't paid... Now I doubt I can even find 10 quid literally don't have 10 quid to my name right now 😔.

Burnt myself out ... I can't even concentrate on my work cause I'm stressing on everything...never ending spiral.... 😢

Going to just get a normal job ... Just lucky I have parents to go back to.

Running a dev company... Really amazing when things go well, it's unexplainable in fact but... Devastating when it doesn't 😞

You know when you break up with a girl you've been with for ages... Like how horrific ... That can be... This is literally worse .. I didn't think it was even possible...

Watch 3 videos about iOS/Swift on YouTube, and now I'm getting a frontpage full of recordings of app development events and iPhone reviews.

Listen to one kpop track on Spotify out of curiosity, and now the recommendation playlist is polluted with music I really don't like.

If we are going to hand our balls to AI and expect it to be a glorious fondling fest, don't cry if it suddenly realizes "nuts? aren't those supposed to be cracked?".

I mean what's fucking next? Where will this "smart" shit end up?

I accidentally click on a my little pony meme, and amazon will drone-strike me with 500 gallons of glitter? I drunkenly mumble "OK google how do kangaroos fuck" in the back of a self-driving Uber, I'm going to be dropped off in a shady alley and raped by a dozen walibis?

STOP FUCKING TRYING TO UNDERSTAND ME, INTERNET. I JUST WANT TO FUCKING USE YOU, NOT BE USED BY YOU, THIS WASN'T THE DEAL.

If you truly understood me, internet, I would probably not even give a fuck about privacy. But you are all building these profiles wrong.

You don't understand that I might be interested in juggling tricks today, tomorrow it might be all about crocheting a wool sweater for my penis, and the day after that I'm curious how many corpses it would take to fill up an olympic swimming pool.

NO I'M NOT ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN THAT QUORA, STOP SENDING ME RECOMMENDATION EMAILS ON HIDING MURDER VICTIMS, MY BOSS WILL THINK I'M WEIRD.

Yeah of course I could pulls some plugs, anonymize the shit out of my online life. I respect those who manage to just say "Fuck you Google, I'm sick of your shit, I'm going cold turkey".

But these platforms are feeding us heroin-laced candy.

All your coworkers friends and family with their oled-lit zombiefaces, staring at tiny screens, all absent-mindedly grasping your ankles whispering "aww take one more hit with us, check out this funny youtube clip, let me send it to you on whatsapp.... what you don't have whatsapp? You deleted your facebook? don't you love grandma anymore? Why do you hate your family?"

Before you know it, you watched ten episodes about cultivating cactuses, have a year subscription to brilliant, skillshare, squarespace and 3 different organic foodboxes are delivered to your door, Netflix is spamming you about a cupcake baking show, and you're thinking about same-day delivery for a baseball bat so you can just beat the crap out of every pretty glass display you see.

I want to break up with you, Internet.

I love you, but I hate you.

Since you passed 2.0, you have grown into a manipulative bitch.

I just don't know if I'm strong enough. It's all "let's just be friends" with you, but I know you'll be trying to reel me back in.

Before I know it, you're feeding me cookies once again, and I'll end up balls deep with your trackers stuck to my dick.

"devRant has changed" "I'm so fed up with this site" "Its a bunch of hate and memes, it was so much better before"

A rebuttal.

devRant is approximately the same as it was when it was just a newborn. Remember the days of semicolon jokes being unironically funny?

Look at the top rants of all time, for fucks sake. #2 ever is:

"A different error message! Finally some progress!"

Posted three years ago. That's the second most upvoted rant in history (Remember, this was a "rant" because the joke/meme category didn't exist back then), it made it's way into the app store screenshots, and was a welcome post.

Now imagine that posted today. It would probably go over okay, in fairness, but it's certainly at risk of any number of pretentious pricks complaining about how this is "devRANT not 4chan" or how they had seen the joke before and it's a shitty repost.

And sure, the repost bullshit is fair. I'm not saying that all the reposts are good content. What I'm saying is devRant has always been full of reposts - they just weren't reposts in the early days. The quality of content is the same.

There's also the common misconception that your posts need to be directly related to tech to post on devRant. This is a myth propagated by 0 IQ heathens that don't read any further than the name of the application. Your posts can be anything that isn't prohibited, like porn, spam, and, importantly, politics (commonly overlooked rule)

"All the memes are just too much". Oh you poor fucking baby, let me pour you a healthy serving of pity juice. First of all, you can turn off the memes category, and while they will still find their way to your feed, the concentration will be much lower and it will once again be bearable for your pitiful, weak little soul. Do you seriously get annoyed that severely by shitty posts that you need to leave the app altogether, or do you just want the attention of being a "cool hipster that hates on xyz"?

"This place is just filled with hate! Why can't you just respect xyz technology, it isn't actually that bad!"

This is probably the most stupid fucking thing you could possibly ejaculate from your fingers into whatever device you are using to type. Welcome to devRant, we hate on shit. That's at our core. No, xyz technology ISN'T actually that bad, you're correct. But we're here to tear it apart because it probably has frustrated us in the past. I fucking hate JS because it was my first language and it confused the shit out of me. JS is a great language. But I still talk shit about it, and that's what we're here to do.

Like seriously, I know a lot of people post stuff they're proud of here, and then they're met with "Would be great if you didn't use xyz tech", and that hurts, but holy shit, this is devRant. If you're sensitive to criticism, or even just straight up being made fun of, don't post shit that you're proud of. You won't have a good time. It's just not what we do here.

Quick interlude before the conclusion, "My girlfriend dumped me after I named a class after her. She felt I treated her like an object." is also on the first page of all-time most popular posts.

In conclusion, devRant has not changed. Reposts have been a nuisance since day 0, and just because reposts look different these days doesn't mean the quality of content has decreased in any manner. The two main sources of your frustration are the volume of low-quality posts (Mind you, not the concentration of them, but the volume of them) and your own prejudices about the platform. You're looking back with rose-tinted glasses.

Here are some tips for a more enjoyable experience:

-Make sure you have the "Hide reposts" setting ENABLED in settings. Any posts marked as repost will be hidden in your feed, pulling down the concentration of low-quality posts.
-Keep to the algo sorting method. Obviously, algo is a bot, and there's still gonna be some shit content in there anyways, but if you're in recent, you are absolutely guaranteed to see low-quality posts. It's unfiltered.
-Keep in mind that what you consider a "quality" post is not what others consider a "quality" post. Just because you don't like memes doesn't mean memes are poor content. There are people here who have never seen the bobby tables comic. And they deserve the same experience we got when discovering dev humor.
-Don't be a prick. And if you cannot help yourself, leave. Ironically, you're making the site worse by complaining about how bad the site is. You can always come back if you aren't a prick anymore. And you can leave permanently if you choose as well.
-Downvote and move on. You're not doing anything but making yourself more aggravated by leaving a shitty comment about how shitty the shitty post is.
-Think critically. Obviously optional, and I know not many people like to use their brain when a phone is suspended between their hands, but if you want a better experience, remember to use your head and not to lose it.

Attended one of the best meetups ever. To give you an idea how awesome it was..

Speaker took the first ~20 minutes introducing himself.
His intro card deck kept referring to himself in the third person (he is the only employee in consulting 'company'). Ex. "Mr. Smith began his humble career .."

The powerpoint presentation began with him clicking each page, not executing the slideshow (ex. pressing F5).
Finally someone asked "Can you make slide bigger?"

S:"You can't read that?..um..sure...I guess .."
Starts fumbling around the zoom ...
Dev: "No, can you start the slideshow?"
S: "I don't know what you mean...there...I zoomed it, is that better? Now I can't see my notes..just sec.."
<fumbles again with the zoom>
Dev: "No, not zoom, start the slide show, press F5"
S: "Oh...you want me to F5 it...OK..."
<he *clicks* the slide show button>

Finally getting into code, trying to get out of powerpoint ...
S: "How do I get out of this fullscreen?.."
Dev: "Hit escape"
S:"No..um.."
<keeps trying to click on 'something'>
S:"I see visual studio, but its not on the big screen... "
<keeps click on 'something', no one is sure whats going on>
Dev: "Hit Escape to stop the slideshow"
<finally hits escape, then able to put Visual Studio on the big screen>
S: "Ahh...there, I figured it out."

Speaker had no end of making wild/random statements like:
".Net Core is the future of Microsoft, if you're using .Net 4.5...forget it, its not even supported anymore."
"When I was at Microsoft Build, I asked them why not put all the required .Net assemblies in one directory. Looks like with .Net Core, they listened to me" (he was serious)
"I don't use SQL Server Mgmt Studio. Its free and it sucks. I use <insert a very expensive SSMS clone>, its great, you guys should check it out", then proceeds to struggle to open a query window to write some SQL.
"When you use .Net Core and EntityFramework, you have to write your own stored procedures. If a developer can't write stored procedures, he shouldn't be in this business."

I was on the edge of my seat, hungry for the next crazy bat-shit thing to come out of his mouth. He did not disappoint. BEST MEETUP EVER!

With the wake of some rants shouting at Linuxers who express their opinion in a considered to be very not good way, I decided to make such a rant. Not to be annoying but because, although I get that fanboyism in that way isn't even good in MY opinion, I do think that one should be able to express their opinion.

But, If you'd like to express your opinion, I think you at least should do that with some good arguments. Not everyone might agree with those arguments but hey, that's the point of opinions sometimes :)

I don't hate windows/mac for being windows or mac. Nope.

I hate the systems for not giving the user freedom to do what they wish with the system but more importantly, for integrating their users in worlds biggest mass surveillance program AND on top of fucking that, not giving peoples the option to look at the source code aka at what's ACTUALLY going on in the system. Next to that, Windows 10's data collection is officially not legal in the netherlands so don't even try justifying their fucking data slurping.

Of course there's a chance that they don't contain any bad stuffs but since the Snowden revelations I don't trust those commercial companies anymore on their 'blue' eyes.

Yeah, I've ranted about this before, I know, felt like doing it again in combination with my reason above. I also know that I will probs receive hate for this but oh well, i'm used to that by now.

So yeah, windows and osx: go fuck yourself.

RANT Incoming
Not necessarily dev related but I need to get this off my chest.

So a bit of a backstory. I had to stay late from school the other day and ended up having to take an Uber home. The ride was fine lady was nice. Everything seems to be going well and there were no signs of any payment failure.

Then yesterday, I had to stay late again. I never said that I had an outstanding balance on my account. Apparently Uber was having problems charging my Android pay account.
So I ended up being stuck at school for like 3 hours. Great!😑

So I emailed Uber when I got home. And this is when I started pulling my hair out. I don't know how many replies I had, but each time I had to tell them that I was not using a prepaid card.

This was one of my replies:
"I'm sorry, are you real? If you are, here is a quick summary of the issue. I am using ANDROID PAY with my CHASE DEBIT CARD. Not, NOT, NOT a prepaid card. I happen to know that CHASE DEBIT CARD(which is the card I use, in case you have already forgotten) works with uber because MY FATHER USES THE EXACT SAME TYPE OF CARD with uber. He uses a CHASE DEBIT CARD(again I use that same type of card as well). So by using LOGIC I am able to deduce that a CHASE DEBIT CARD is in fact compatible. AGAIN THIS IS NOT A PREPAID CARD!!! If the card is incompatible, WHY DOES THE APP ALLOW BE TO ADD IT?!?! Also in response to your last email... Because I am using Android pay, do you really think that an ANDROID would be able to use APPLE pay? Also Google wallet is DISCONTINUED! Finally, PayPal DOES NOT CONNECT TO UBER. Returns a "Server Error." So please stop wasting my time with generic help solutions. Believe me, I have already googled my issue, and nothing comes up. That is why I contacted Uber. I want my driver to be paid, and, uber had made it SO painful with unhelpful "Solutions" to problems that don't even APPLY TO MY ISSUE. No not even mention PREPAID cards in your reply or I will consider you a robot built by monkeys banging their heads on a keyboard. Uber HAS my VALID payment information, USE IT! If there is a phone number I can call, please, enlighten me"

And the response was:
"Thanks for reaching out with this.

Happy to help with this issue you are having.

After reviewing your I can see that the only payment method associated with your account is an ANDROID PAY card and it is also a prepaid card. Some cards and methods are not compatible with our billing processes and can't be used with Uber. This includes prepaid cards."

So I concluded that they are monkeys.

Then Uber banned me from logging into my account because I didn't pay.
So now it is impossible for me to pay because I can't do anything with my account.

Now they want my SSN and a bunch of other shit that I won't give them.

I told them that they were being illogical, and I got the exact same response about the prepaid bullshit.

So I sent them this photo as a goodbye.

I get my driver's licence next weekend, so I won't need Uber anymore. YAY!

Also mind grammatical errors, I talked it in and am to lazy to proofread

Today is a sad day.
A sad day indeed.
I used to live with my parents for pretty much my whole life until the beginning of this year, when I decided to move and starter living with a friend, in his apartment.
By far, one of the things that I've missed most from my parents' house was the dogs. Boy, I love those four pretty little creatures.
Being a fulltime developer in an area that I honestly don't like that much, I really appreciate my after-work hours. Specially because of the time I could spend with the dogs.
So, the first months away were quite hard. Even though I was living with a friend, I couldn't help but feel alone and really depressed at times.
But then, my friend and my girlfriend decided that it was a nice idea to give me something to grow with again. And Jolyne, my beautiful, smart and messy little dog came to the apartment.
Boy oh boy, my bright days were back.
Getting home and seeing those four small legs and a shaking tail running on my direction was everything I could ask for. I was happy again.

Fast-forward to today.
I finally finished the code for a project I was working on. Everything was working fine. A good day indeed, good sir. Have one on me. - then my friend called me, which is weird considering we almost only talk through Telegram during the day.
All he had to say, with a sad voice and painful tone, was "man... I don't know how to tell you this... But Jolyne is dead".

And that was it. Every good feeling I had was now dead. And a part of me as well.
I stood there, speechless. I mean, I just couldn't believe what I've just heard. She was happy by the morning. We were playing before I left for work. Everything was fine.
Then, four hours later, it wasn't. She was gone.
I came home to a friend that didn't have any more tears to shed. And no dog came running to me like usual.
My fluffy little friend was laying on her bed, like she was sleeping normally. Like nothing had happened at all. She was just sleeping and have not noticed me... At least that was what I wanted to believe.
Three hours had passed then... And I just can't fathom the fact that my dog won't be here anymore. That I won't be able to play with her again like I do every night. That I won't listen to her running around with her toys. That I won't be able to hug her anymore.

I still don't know what to do. I mean, she will be buried. I've already arranged everything.
But I don't know what to do about myself. I don't know how to deal with this pain I'm feeling.
But I will try to move on... I just don't know how.

I'm deeply sorry for bringing you this story. For just writing it down here, like you guys need to share my pain...
But I needed to write this down somewhere. And this place is pretty much the only one where I feel comfortable and welcome enough to do this.
Thank you for your time, my friends.
Thank you.

DevRant rant:

I am on DevRant for quite a while now and I really enjoy it here. The overall atmosphere is great, as well as the community. (Yes, that includes you!)
Since I came here I've learned some very valuable lessons regarding work (conditions), annoying coworkers and programming itself. I like to think of DevRant as a huge ball of experience by very talented people, as well as a great place for discussions about a topic we all love: code. But lately I am seeing more and more memes on here, with titles like "I think everybody know this", "I think everybody can relate" and "Soo true". Those posts have no value at all and are (most of the time) reposted from 9gag or similar networks. Sometimes those "rants" don't even have anything to do with devs anymore, but are only here to farm ++'es. In the beginning I really enjoyed funny "rants", but now the majority of them just annoy me. It becomes especially annoying when you see the same meme three times in 15 minutes.
I'd be in for some kind of DevFun section, where everybody is able to post his or hers jokes/memes/etc, but the current situation just really gets on my nerves.

I hope that I am not the only one who thinks like that, because I really feel uncomfortable ranting about something I actually love.

end rant

I'm starting to think customers know when I'm busy and take that moment to break their products.

I JUST WANT TO LET MY LEG SOAK IN EPSOM WATER... your users are going to bed soon, it's a freaking Saturday, and you need to go get laid because you have too much time on your hands. I'm in pain and cannot help you restore service if you don't stay on the line. So please... don't. Fucking. Call me. Unless you're going to stay on the line to test. You're pushing my limits, and if my voice gets any quieter, it means I'm about to find your porn accounts and register you as an amateur, uploading cows fucking to get you banned from all the services. Congratulations sir, you've pissed me off so bad, I'm using my "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" voice I learned from my mother. I hope you're happy. I'm so mad I'm not even swearing anymore. I always swear.

Edit: if my voice ever sounds sweet and demure over the phone, someone is about to get fucked with a red hot fireplace poker. This fucker getting close.

!Story

The day I became the 400 pound Chinese hacker 4chan.

I built this front-end solution for a client (but behind a back end login), and we get on the line with some fancy European team who will handle penetration testing for the client as we are nearing dev completion.

They seem... pretty confident in themselves, and pretty disrespectful to the LAMP environment, and make the client worry even though it's behind a login the project is still vulnerable. No idea why the client hired an uppity .NET house to test a LAMP app. I don't even bother asking these questions anymore...

And worse, they insist we allow them to scrape for vulnerabilities BEHIND the server side login. As though a user was already compromised.

So, I know I want to fuck with them. and I sit around and smoke some weed and just let this issue marinate around in my crazy ass brain for a bit. Trying to think of a way I can obfuscate all this localStorage and what it's doing... And then, inspiration strikes.

I know this library for compressing JSON. I only use it when localStorage space gets tight, and this project was only storing a few k to localStorage... so compression was unnecessary, but what the hell. Problem: it would be obvious from exposed source that it was being called.

After a little more thought, I decide to override the addslashes and stripslashes functions and to do the compression/decompression from within those overrides.

I then minify the whole thing and stash it in the minified jquery file.

So, what LOOKS from exposed client side code to be a simple addslashes ends up compressing the JSON before putting it in localStorage. And what LOOKS like a stripslashes decompresses.

Now, the compression does some bit math that frankly is over my head, but the practical result is if you output the data compressed, it looks like mandarin and random characters. As a result, everything that can be seen in dev tools looks like the image.

So we GIVE the penetration team login credentials... they log in and start trying to crack it.

I sit and wait. Grinning as fuck.

Not even an hour goes by and they call an emergency meeting. I can barely contain laughter.

We get my PM and me and then several guys from their team on the line. They share screen and show the dev tools.

"We think you may have been compromised by a Chinese hacker!"

I mute and then die my ass off. Holy shit this is maybe the best thing I've ever done.

My PM, who has seen me use the JSON compression technique before and knows exactly whats up starts telling them about it so they don't freak out. And finally I unmute and manage a, "Guys... I'm standing right here." between gasped laughter.

If only it was more common to use video in these calls because I WISH I could have seen their faces.

Anyway, they calmed their attitude down, we told them how to decompress the localStorage, and then they still didn't find jack shit because i'm a fucking badass and even after we gave them keys to the login and gave them keys to my secret localStorage it only led to AWS Cognito protected async calls.

Anyway, that's the story of how I became a "Chinese hacker" and made a room full of penetration testers look like morons with a (reasonably) simple JS trick.

Well, it all started off with hardware-level programming involving jumpers and stuff like that... Then came Assembly, which was good.. B, C compilers. Finally came the interpreted languages, and that's where in my opinion the abstraction should've ended. But no, we needed more frameworks, more libraries, even more abstraction! Where does it end? As it seems to be going, I guess that users will have kid toys - no iToys! - for electronics and we'll be programming on with bloated Scratch GUI's. Nothing against Scratch, but that shit ain't proper programming anymore. God I can't wait for the future.

ABSTRACT ALL THE THINGS!!!

Oh and not to mention that all software will be governed in political correctness by some Alex SJW AI shit that became sentient. Not a single programming term will be non-offensive anymore, no matter how hard you try to not offend anyone, or God forbid - don't care about it because you just want to make something that's readable, usable and working!! Terms, UI names for buttons, heck even icons! REMOVE IT BECAUSE IT OFFENDS SOMEONE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT!!!

This codebase reminds me of a large, rotting, barely-alive dromedary. Parts of it function quite well, but large swaths of it are necrotic, foul-smelling, and even rotted away. Were it healthy, it would still exude a terrible stench, and its temperament would easily match: If you managed to get near enough, it would spit and try to bite you.

Swaths of code are commented out -- entire classes simply don't exist anymore, and the ghosts of several-year-old methods still linger. Despite this, large and deprecated (yet uncommented) sections of the application depend on those undefined classes/methods. Navigating the codebase is akin to walking through a minefield: if you reference the wrong method on the wrong object... fatal exception. And being very new to this project, I have no idea what's live and what isn't.

The naming scheme doesn't help, either: it's impossible to know what's still functional without asking because nothing's marked. Instead, I've been working backwards from multiple points to try to find code paths between objects/events. I'm rarely successful.

Not only can I not tell what's live code and what's interactive death, the code itself is messy and awful. Don't get me wrong: it's solid. There's virtually no way to break it. But trying to understand it ... I feel like I'm looking at a huge, sprawling MC Escher landscape through a microscope. (No exaggeration: a magnifying glass would show a larger view that included paradoxes / dubious structures, and these are not readily apparent to me.)

It's also rife with bad practices. Terrible naming choices consisting of arbitrarily-placed acronyms, bad word choices, and simply inconsistent naming (hash vs hsh vs hs vs h). The indentation is a mix of spaces and tabs. There's magic numbers galore, and variable re-use -- not just local scope, but public methods on objects as well. I've also seen countless assignments within conditionals, and these are apparently intentional! The reasoning: to ensure the code only runs with non-falsey values. While that would indeed work, an early return/next is much clearer, and reduces indentation. It's just. reading through this makes me cringe or literally throw my hands up in frustration and exasperation.

Honestly though, I know why the code is so terrible, and I understand:

The architect/sole dev was new to coding -- I have 5-7 times his current experience -- and the project scope expanded significantly and extremely quickly, and also broke all of its foundation rules. Non-developers also dictated architecture, creating further mess. It's the stuff of nightmares. Looking at what he was able to accomplish, though, I'm impressed. Horrified at the details, but impressed with the whole.

This project is the epitome of "I wrote it quickly and just made it work."

Fortunately, he and I both agree that a rewrite is in order. but at 76k lines (without styling or configuration), it's quite the undertaking.

------

Amusing: after running the codebase through `wc`, it apparently sums to half the word count of "War and Peace"

Application has had a suspected memory leak for years. Tech team got developers THE EXACT CODE that caused it. Few months of testing go by, telling us they're resolving their memory leak problem (finally).

Today: yeah, we still need restarts because we don't know if this new deployment will fix our memory leak, we don't know what the problem is.

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING IN THE LOWER REGIONS FOR THREE FUCKING MONTHS?!?!?! HAVING A FUCKING ORGY???????????????

My friends took the time to find your damn problem for you AND YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS???

It was in lower regions for 3 MONTHS and you don't know how it's impacting memory usage?!?!?! DO YOU WANT TO STILL HAVE A JOB? BECAUSE IF NOT, I CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT FOR YOU. YOU DON'T DESERVE YOUR FUCKING JOB IF YOU CAN'T FUCKING FIX THIS.

Every time your app crashes, even though I don't need to get your highest level boss on anymore for approval to restart your server, I'M GOING TO FUCKING CALL HIM AND MAKE HIM SEE THAT YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT. Eventually, he'll get so annoyed with me, your shit will be fixed. AND I WON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOUR USELESS ASS ANYMORE.

(Rant directed at project manager more than dev. Don't know which is to blame, so blaming PM)

3 rants for the price of 1, isn't that a great deal!

1. HP, you braindead fucking morons!!!

So recently I disassembled this HP laptop of mine to unfuck it at the hardware level. Some issues with the hinge that I had to solve. So I had to disassemble not only the bottom of the laptop but also the display panel itself. Turns out that HP - being the certified enganeers they are - made the following fuckups, with probably many more that I didn't even notice yet.

- They used fucking glue to ensure that the bottom of the display frame stays connected to the panel. Cheap solution to what should've been "MAKE A FUCKING DECENT FRAME?!" but a royal pain in the ass to disassemble. Luckily I was careful and didn't damage the panel, but the chance of that happening was most certainly nonzero.
- They connected the ribbon cables for the keyboard in such a way that you have to reach all the way into the spacing between the keyboard and the motherboard to connect the bloody things. And some extra spacing on the ribbon cables to enable servicing with some room for actually connecting the bloody things easily.. as Carlos Mantos would say it - M-m-M, nonoNO!!!
- Oh and let's not forget an old flaw that I noticed ages ago in this turd. The CPU goes straight to 70°C during boot-up but turning on the fan.. again, M-m-M, nonoNO!!! Let's just get the bloody thing to overheat, freeze completely and force the user to power cycle the machine, right? That's gonna be a great way to make them satisfied, RIGHT?! NO MOTHERFUCKERS, AND I WILL DISCONNECT THE DATA LINES OF THIS FUCKING THING TO MAKE IT SPIN ALL THE TIME, AS IT SHOULD!!! Certified fucking braindead abominations of engineers!!!

Oh and not only that, this laptop is outperformed by a Raspberry Pi 3B in performance, thermals, price and product quality.. A FUCKING SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER!!! Isn't that a great joke. Someone here mentioned earlier that HP and Acer seem to have been competing for a long time to make the shittiest products possible, and boy they fucking do. If there's anything that makes both of those shitcompanies remarkable, that'd be it.

2. If I want to conduct a pentest, I don't want to have to relearn the bloody tool!

Recently I did a Burp Suite test to see how the devRant web app logs in, but due to my Burp Suite being the community edition, I couldn't save it. Fucking amazing, thanks PortSwigger! And I couldn't recreate the results anymore due to what I think is a change in the web app. But I'll get back to that later.

So I fired up bettercap (which works at lower network layers and can conduct ARP poisoning and DNS cache poisoning) with the intent to ARP poison my phone and get the results straight from the devRant Android app. I haven't used this tool since around 2017 due to the fact that I kinda lost interest in offensive security. When I fired it up again a few days ago in my PTbox (which is a VM somewhere else on the network) and today again in my newly recovered HP laptop, I noticed that both hosts now have an updated version of bettercap, in which the options completely changed. It's now got different command-line switches and some interactive mode. Needless to say, I have no idea how to use this bloody thing anymore and don't feel like learning it all over again for a single test. Maybe this is why users often dislike changes to the UI, and why some sysadmins refrain from updating their servers? When you have users of any kind, you should at all times honor their installations, give them time to change their individual configurations - tell them that they should! - in other words give them a grace time, and allow for backwards compatibility for as long as feasible.

3. devRant web app!!

As mentioned earlier I tried to scrape the web app's login flow with Burp Suite but every time that I try to log in with its proxy enabled, it doesn't open the login form but instead just makes a GET request to /feed/top/month?login=1 without ever allowing me to actually log in. This happens in both Chromium and Firefox, in Windows and Arch Linux. Clearly this is a change to the web app, and a very undesirable one. Especially considering that the login flow for the API isn't documented anywhere as far as I know.

So, can this update to the web app be rolled back, merged back to an older version of that login flow or can I at least know how I'm supposed to log in to this API in order to be able to start developing my own client?

For years I've had this friend, since high school, and now we are 21. Our paths had always been different, i decided to go to a technical high school that provides more specialized education (around IT in this case) and he went to a normal high school that provides a more wide range of knowledge and barely anything related to what we both wanted to study. Different tastes for different people huh? Well sure but during that time he was being snobbish towards me because normal high schools are considered more prestigious, or rather, technical high schools are infamous for attracting lazy students or students that don't wanna move up to a university.

We fought a few times over this, sometimes even stopped talking for long periods of time but we always got back together. A few years later, after our university entry exams I joined what roughly translates to technical university, its just more focused on practical IT stuff with a lot of lab courses every semester. He joined a more academically inclined one that is half economics and half IT (applied informatics). And now he has another thing to be snobbish about since the relation between the 2 unis is similar to that between the high schools but I don't care anymore, I don't feel like im missing out on anything with my choices.

3 days ago he called me on discord to check his python script and why it wasn't working. Good Odin that piece of code was worse that anything I've seen. Littered with global variables, inconsistent function and variable names, duplicate code, unused variables. I was honestly shocked and disappointed cos he always mentions different projects he is working on, an aspiring web developer.

I took those 300 hundred lines of atrocity and turned them into 80. But more importantly it was something that worked and did the damn job well. A thing of beauty.

I don't know if he was more surprised that i got it working or that it was so different from his initial "solution".

All of a sudden he is not so dismissive of me...

Fuck you for underestimating me and every choice I made to get here.

P.S. I kept his original code, always gives me a shit eating grin.

I actually wanna RAGE QUIT right about now!!!

I wanna fuck off and go somewhere where my talents are appreciated and I'm actually listened to! I'm reaching the point where I hate my job and don't actually want to be here any more.

I asked to be able to work from home (long story... see previous rants) and that was "shut down" after numerous attempts and even when working from was a prerequisite that somehow got lost in translation.

I was stuck in traffic for almost 3 hours yesterday and it is known that there are currently roadworks on my route, and yet they don't seem to move on the notion of working from home.

When I work it out, I sit in my car on average for over 40 hours per month! That's another fucking work week just so that I can get to and from work everyday. Again, they can say what that want, but I mentioned it several times that I wanted to work from home.

They're story is... "We've never had anyone work from home before so we wouldn't know how to approach it". Ok fine, I guess... FIGURE IT OUT, FFS!!!

The other thing was that I would be the "team leader" of the project. With me speaking to a management, they made me the leader. Big fucking whoop! My next question is the leader of what exactly are you making me? Because at the moment I'm the only fucking person working on the project! The other chap who is on "my team" is so busy with these other small side projects that in the 6 months he's been here, the only time he's actually had anything to do with the project is when he's peeped over my shoulder! Also, there was supposed to be more than just one other developer on the "team", but alas!

I'm not happy here at all anymore and I am actually starting to feel the depression creep in and there's nothing I can seem to do about it! I can't stand the traffic to and from work and they have not tried to make anything worthwhile when I get to work, even after my numerous requests!

So I'm on stack overflow trying to give back to the community that has helped me so much yanno.

So I see a question and decide to answer it but I'm on my mobile and trying to write a well formatted etc. answer is a bit tricky so instead I thought I would answer it as best I could on the phone so at least the OP would be going in the right direction and then when I got back to my computer, I would expand on the answer.

But before I had a chance (within 10 minutes of answering) some 200k+ rep dickhead decided it was his job to tell me how bad I was for not giving a proper answer and i have enough rep to comment and I should know better.

So I responded to him (my first mistake) and told him that my answer was intended to get him going and most likely he wouldn't need any more help but that I was going to update it when I got back to my computer.

Well he didn't like that and continued to berate me for my unbelievable behavior.

I then said that if he was that upset, then report me, or even better how about he actually answer the question instead of being a fuckwit to others that have tried.

I also said that I thought that SO and development in general was not about being given the answer but by finding it yourself and actually learning something and that sometimes you need to be pushed it the right direction to find the answer which is what I did here.

Well he disagreed with that too and downvoted my answer which by that point had been updated (like I said I would).

I just don't get it, what is wrong with these people and why has SO become such a toxic place?

I want to give back to the community and help others like people have done for me over the years, but then fuckheads like this just ruin it and make you not want to be a part of it anymore.

Then I come here to devRant and everyone is so nice to each other, you can see the respect.

From my work -as an IT consultant in one of the big 4- I can now show you my masterpiece

INSIGHTS FROM THE DAILY LIFE OF A FUNCTIONAL ANALIST IN A BIG 4 -I'M NOT A FUNCTIONAL ANALYST BUT THAT'S WHAT THEY DO-

- 10:30, enter the office. By contract you should be there at 9:00 but nobody gives a shit
- First task of the day: prepare the power point for the client. DURATION: 15 minutes to actually make the powerpoint, 45 minutes to search all the possible synonyms of RESILIENCE BIG DATA AGILE INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION MACHINE LEARNING SHIT PISS CUM, 1 hour to actually present the document.
- 12:30: Sniff the powder left by the chalks on the blackboards. Duration: 30 minutes, that's a lot of chalk you need to snort.

13:00, LUNCH TIME. You get back to work not one minute sooner than 15.00

- 15:00, conference with the HR. You need to carefully analyze the quantity and quality of the farts emitted in the office for 2 hours at least
- 17:00 conference call, a project you were assigned to half a day ago has a server down.
The client sent two managers, three senior Java developers, the CEO, 5 employees -they know logs and mails from the last 5 months line by line-, 4 lawyers and a beheading teacher from ISIS.
On your side there are 3 external ucraininans for the maintenance, successors of the 3 (already dead) developers who put the process in place 4 years ago according to God knows which specifications. They don't understand a word of what is being said.
Then there's the assistant of the assistant of a manager from another project that has nothing to do with this one, a feces officer, a sys admin who is going to watch porn for the whole conference call and won't listen a word, two interns to make up a number and look like you're prepared. Current objective: survive. Duration: 2 hours and a half.
- 19:30, snort some more chalk for half an hour, preparing for the mail in which you explain the associate partner how because of the aforementioned conference call we're going to lose a maintenance contract worth 20 grands per month (and a law proceeding worth a number of dollars you can't even read) and you have no idea how could this happen
- 20:00, timesheet! Compile the weekly report, write what you did and how long did it take for each task. You are allowed to compile 8 hours per day, you worked at least 11 but nobody gives a shit. Duration: 30 minutes
- 20:30, update your consultant! Training course, "tasting cum and presenting its organoleptic properties to a client". Bearing with your job: none at all. Duration: 90 minutes, then there's half an hour of evaluating test where you'll copy the answers from a sheet given to you by a colleague who left 6 months ago.
- 22:30, CHANCE CARD! You have a new mail from the HR: you asked for a refund for a 3$ sandwich, but the receipt isn't there and they realized it with a 9 months delay. You need to find that wicked piece of paper. DURATION: 30 minutes. The receipt most likely doesn't even exist anymore and will be taken directly from your next salary.
- 23:00 you receive a message on Teams. It's the intern. It's very late but you're online and have to answer. There's an exception on a process which have been running for 6 years with no problems and nobody ever touches. The intern doesn't know what to do, but you wrote the specifications for the thing, 6 years ago, and everything MUST run tonight. You are not a technician and have no fucking clue about anyhing at all. 30 minutes to make sure it's something on our side and not on the client side, and in all that the intern is as useful as a confetto to wipe your ass. Once you're sure it's something on our side you need to search for the senior dev who received the maintenance of the project, call him and solve the problem.
It turns out a file in a shared folder nobody ever touches was unreachable 'cause one of your libraries left it open during the last run and Excel shown a warning modal while opening it; your project didn't like this last thing one bit. It takes 90 minutes to find the root of the problem, you solve it by rebooting one of your machines. It's 01:00.

You shower, watch yourself on the mirror and search for the line where your forehead ends and your hair starts. It got a little bit back from yesterday; the change can't be seen with the naked eye but you know it's there.

You cry yourself to sleep. Tomorrow is another day, but it's going to be exactly like today.

What's the difference between a wasp and single loose hair?
Apparently none till the wasp stings :/

Yesterday I thought I had a loose hair on my neck.. ok, I shrug it off.. later again the creepy feeling.. shrugs off..

I continue to work, sumberged in code, wanting to find the fucker (bug, not the wasp/hair).. lean in to the monitor... 10 cents away from the screen... Ok, maybe that's it! Feels the hair on my back, near shoulderblades again... shrugging again more violently to get it further down to fall out.. nothing.. ok, got the bug, threw myslef back in the chair with substential force & BAAAAM!!! Motherfucking hair bit me!! O.o

I scream in horror & on top of the lungs (it was late, after work hours so I didn't expect anyone else still at the office) PROKLETA PRASICA (roughly translated to goddamn female swine).. I previously saw some green bug flying around the office and I thought that nasty thing bit me (didn't know they bite soo, much more horror for me).. O.o

Anyhow, I jump up from the computer and see my coworker looking at me all baffled.. I proceed to franticly take of my headphones and hoodie..thinking about wtf should I do now, I cannot get undressed in front of him (not for my sake, bra is the same as top of the bathing suit for me, but still..I don't want anyone suing me for impropper behaviour of undreasing in front of coworkers..), how the fuck should I get to the toilet?! O.o

C: Are you ok?!
M: Um.. sth bit me..wtf?!
C: There was a wasp flying around somewhere some time ago.. are you alergic?!
M: um..not sure, I don't think so..we'll see soon..

I proceed to the WC, to take off tshirt & check/kill off the fucker.. on my way there (walking funny to not press the hair to my body again) I got another surprise, another coworker was working late..

C2: Are you ok?! O.o
M: yeah, sth bit me, probably a wasp..

Ok, finally on the loo..ok, do not lock self in in case it escapes and you need help.. don't even shut the door. Check.. standing between the doors I contemplate on how the fuck should I take my tshirt off without angering the fucker even more and getting bitten again.. O.O

I lifted the tshirt up my back to let it out.. nope, not there..the creepy felling of buzzing around between my shoulder blades continues.. crap.. what to do?!

I stood there & contemplated the task.. ok, roll up the tshirt to the shoulder blades, not against the body (duh) to prevent further stings..tighten the fabric, so it cannot escape, quickly remove the band from the body.. done..reversed the tshirt and straightened it.. bzzz... Fucker fell somewhere.. Dafaq?! Was it really just a wasp?! If yes, no problem...but what if coworker was wrong and I got bitten by that nasty green whateveritsname bug?! Eeeeewwww! Is it poisonous? Gotta find it & kill it for good.. waited a bit, than saw a goddamn wasp crawl from under the toilet.. wasp!! Yess!! Stopm stomp fucker!!

I get dressed & go back to my desk..

C: Did you terminate it?!
M: Yup, fucker went on a toilet paper trip down the drain!!

I sit down, starting to get my headphones back on and proceed to work.., but before I could, one last gem:

C: CTO would say, thank god it didn't sting you in your finger cuz you wouldn't be able to type anymore..

M: O.O so true hahhahahaaa

Disclaimer - I like animals, but I freakking hate wasps..especially if they get under my tshirt to sting.. :/

"Mature codebase"
"Our entire team are senior devs"
"Almost everyone that worked on the project is still here and available, so nothing's lost! We can ask whatever we need to."

You would think this would mean the code was clean and easy to read, and you could ask the person who wrote it for help. But. no. It's kinda the opposite.

Here's an example:
I'm trying to write a mailer, and I have no freaking clue how to get it working. I talked with two of the more senior devs, and both assured me it was very straightforward, and then walked me through the quite complicated mailer structure and got lost. The first pretended not to, but glazed over a few holes in his tour, and said I could figure the rest out. The second one ended up admitting that he's totally unfamiliar with it -- his last commit on a mailer was from about 8 years ago -- and doesn't know how to get it working anymore.

So, I'm on my own.

I wrote a super basic mailer for debugging (no idea if/how it actually sends a mail, but I think I can construct one?). But whenever I call the mailer, it gets run twice? Somehow? Apparently I need to start a bunch of daemons to get that part of the system to work. Which is cool because they don't work fresh out of the repo. Got some further help, and now my ostensibly working code throws errors for an undefined var that i'm not even using, and to make it easier: without a backtrace. joy! There's so much inheritence and extending and including going on that it's going to take me hours to track this down. ugh.

I'm keeping my paystub in front of me for some desparately needed motivation.

!dev && feelsbadman

I don't know what to think.
All I know is that I just went reaaaaal close to a disaster.

Friday morning, my "scariest" manager (as in, if you have to meet with him, it's usally for something serious) told me that he needed to see me on monday (so today) with the lead dev, the project manager and the dude who recruited me.

The meeting was like an arena of 4 vs 1, where they all 4 had problem with the work I do, as in I make a lot of small but stupid mistakes that wastes everyone's time. As an excuse, I suffer from sleep apnea so I wake up as tired I am when I go to sleep, and I snore loud as fuck. I've heard some records, it's not even human. (I'm 1m85-ish for 125 kg, it's BIG but with my morphology it's not like I'm a ball of fat)

Anyway. And since it's not the first time they're reproaching me this kind of stuff, they were all... really angry. Because I'm a nice guy, competent and all but not productive enough and easily distracted.

So, when the manager asked me to meet me, it was to fire me. However, during the lunch break, the lead dev found a solution: I get out of the current project I was in until this morning, and I write all the functional tests for all the projects, because they all lack quality and we sometimes deliver regresses.

They proposed me this in a way I could refuse, and I'd get fired because they had no other options. Obviously, I said yes, I'm not stupid enough to decline a possibilty to avoid a monstruous shitstorm that would have cut me my studies, the money for taxes, and a lot of fun to find a job as fast as possible.

But what surprised me the most is that they were genuinely glad I accepted, like, even though I made my shit ton of mistakes, they weren't pleased at all to get rid of me.

And in a way, I'm the one who won in this story, since I don't have to work with Drupal anymore, excepted to parse the website to write my tests, but my nightmare fuel is finally gone *.*

I don't know where to finish with this rant, but I needed to vent this whole thing, to write it somewhere so I can move forward.

I wish y'all a nice week.

I'M FUCKING SICK OF HOLDING MY SELF TO DON'T MAKE OTHERS LOOK LIKE STUPID, I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ANYMORE ,NEXT YEAR IS MY TIME TO STAND AND LET PEOPLE KNOW WHO I AM. IF YOU FUCKERS CANT ACKNOWLEDGE THAT EVEN THOUGHT THIS COMPANY'S PRODUCT ISN'T SOFTWARE BUT YOU ARE FUCKING WASTING A GOLDEN RESOURCE ( DEV TEAM ) WITH FUCKING USELESS CRUDS AND USELESS SITES NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT I'M GONNA LEAVE.

Manager: Messages not visible! bug ticket!!!!

Dev: oh fuck, there's an issue with our chat system, not good! _inspects ticket_ oh, it's just a display issue that actually is according to the previous spec, yawn...

Dev: please describe the bug better next time, I though we had a major outage, this is simply a small design issue...

Manager: ...

Dev: ...

I think I'm quitting soon guys. I literally do not get paid enough to deal with these incompetent idiots each day.

Meanwhile:

Management: forget your shitty salary, take one for the team, you get 3% of the shares in the company!!!!

Dev: what fucking shares, you haven't even converted to a corporation yet, THERE ARE NO SHARES

Management: ...

Dev: ...

Oh yeah and they called me at 6:30 PM today: "so i guess you are winding down for the day"

fuck outta here i haven't been working since 5 you fucks

jesus i swear some people need to screw their fucking head on straight, so far gone into the hUsTlE CuLtUrE they don't even know what reality is anymore

I love Linux, but its community can be so full of incompetent assholes..

Just now I asked in Freenode ##linux how to get the process ID of my current running process in bash. I got my answer - it's a shell built-in called "$$".

Then people start to nitpick some more - why do you need it? How is that different from an exit? - to which my response was.. well I know the whole idea behind exit codes, and I'd use it whenever possible, in all defined behavior that allows my program to terminate itself whenever it can. This pidfile however would be used to exit itself and provide diagnostic information whenever the program enters undefined behavior - a segfault in C language. Scenarios in which I don't have full control over the script's behavior anymore, such as the system entering an unworkable state where the system stalled, still got some binaries in RAM but the rootfs got unwritable, such as now - very helpfully, thanks HP! - when my laptop likely overheated and shat itself. I issued sudo reboot into it, but even that wouldn't issue properly anymore due to the /sbin/poweroff binary becoming inaccessible too. I had to issue a hard power cycle.. one of the few times in which I'm thankful to HP for actually causing shit like this, lol.

Point is, that undefined behavior is what I'm trying to mitigate against. I certainly can't let any files other than diagnostics remain in nonvolatile storage like that, especially when their state should be predictable in order to ensure good operation (like files expressing whether the script is already running or not, i.e. lock files).

Back to that IRC chat. Aside from the answer, I got ridicule from people who probably don't even know how to properly compile a kernel. Ubuntu users, overconfident scum. Sometimes I feel like I should ask questions in channels like #archlinux only, where such incompetency is ridiculed on its own.

College can be one of the worst investments for an IT career ever.

I've been in university for the past 3 years and my views on higher education have radically changed from positive to mostly cynical.

This is an extremely polarizing topic, some say "your college is shite", "#notall", "you complain too much", and to all of you I am glad you are happy with your expensive toilet paper and feel like your dick just grew an inch longer, what I'll be talking about is my personal experience and you may make of it what you wish. I'm not addressing the best ivy-league Unis those are a whole other topic, I'll talk about average Unis for average Joes like me.

Higher education has been the golden ticket for countless generations, you know it, your parents believe in it and your grandparents lived it. But things are not like they used to be, higher education is a failing business model that will soon burst, it used to be simple, good grades + good college + nice title = happy life.

Sounds good? Well fuck you because the career paths that still work like that are limited, like less than 4.

The above is specially true in IT where shit moves so fast and furious if you get distracted for just a second you get Paul Walkered out of the Valley; companies don't want you to serve your best anymore, they want grunt work for the most part and grunts with inferiority complex to manage those grunts and ship the rest to India (or Mexico) at best startups hire the best problem solvers they can get because they need quality rather than quantity.

Does Uni prepare you for that? Well...no, the industry changes so much they can't even follow up on what it requires and ends up creating lousy study programs then tells you to invest $200k+ in "your future" for you to sweat your ass off on unproductive tasks to then get out and be struck by jobs that ask for knowledge you hadn't even heard off.

Remember those nights you wasted drawing ER diagrams while that other shmuck followed tutorials on react? Well he's your boss now, but don't worry you will wear your tired eyes, caffeine saturated breath and overweight with pride while holding your empty title, don't get me wrong I've indulged in some rough play too but I have noticed that 3 months giving a project my heart and soul teaches me more than 6 months of painstakingly pleasing professors with big egos.

And the soon to be graduates, my God...you have the ones that are there for the lulz, the nerds that beat their ass off to sustain a scholarship they'll have to pay back with interests and the ones that just hope for the best. The last two of the list are the ones I really feel bad for, the nerds will beat themselves over and over to comply with teacher demands not noticing they are about to graduate still versioning on .zip and drive, the latter feel something's wrong but they have no chances if there isn't a teacher to mentor them.

And what pisses me off even more is the typical answers to these issues "you NEED the title" and "you need to be self taught". First of all bitch how many times have we heard, seen and experienced the rejection for being overqualified? The market is saturated with titles, so much so they have become meaningless, IT companies now hire on an experience, economical and likeability basis. Worse, you tell me I need to be self taught, fucker I've been self taught for years why would I travel 10km a day for you to give me 0 new insights, slacking in my face or do what my dog does when I program (stare at me) and that's just on the days you decide to attend!

But not everything is bad, college does give you three things: networking, some good teachers and expensive dead tree remnants, is it worth the price tag, not really, not if you don't need it.

My broken family is not one of resources and even tho I had an 80% scholarship at the second best uni of my country I decided I didn't need the 10+ year debt for not sleeping 4 years, I decided to go to the 3rd in the list which is state funded; as for that decision it worked out as I'm paying most of everything now and through my BS I've noticed all of the above, I've visited 4 universities in my country and 4 abroad and even tho they have better everything abroad it still doesn't justify some of the prices.

If you don't feel like I do and you are happy, I'm happy for you. My rant is about my personal experience which is kind of in the context of IT higher education in the last ~8 years.

Just letting some steam off and not regretting most of my decisions.

rant, but not an IT kind... okay, maybe not even a rant, more like depressive rambling:

in 3 days, I'll turn 29.
i'm living with my mom, in the apartment where I was born, in the room i've been living since I was born (with the exception of 2 attempts to move out which together lasted 9 months).

my theoretical monthly income should/could be around 4000€, based on my skills and experience.

but I'm a (manic)-depressive, chronically lonely idiot loser (and the manic phases come more and more rarely in recent years), so
my practical average monthly income fluctuates from 0 to about 200.

i am unable to keep a job for more than 4 months, so after being fired from about 20 or so of them since I was 18, it takes immense amounts of mental and emotional energy to even start looking for one now... so I usually don't.

i've been about 12000€ in debt for the past 8 or so years, half of which is just debt collector fees.
it's kinda funny, for years, i've been unable to solve a debt which theoretically amounts to 3 months of my theoretical achievable salary.

my father, who just left without a word of explanation when I was 18, has decided this is not viable anymore, so I'm supposed to move out by 10th of next month, "either to some cheap rooming house, or under the bridge, I don't care", as he put it.

I can't remember how it feels to exist a single hour without feeling existential dread and dreading each next day, not knowing what to do or if i'll even be able to try and do something, because this feeling is so strong that it often blocks me from being able to do anything. i just shiver most of the time that i'm awake, feeling like you feel few minutes before puking and crying at the same time. and that feeling is my "how are you?", "you know... normal".

i can't remember what it feels to feel any other way and can't even imagine it, and can't imagine that I'll ever achieve any less shit feeling.

literally all of my social contact consists of going out once to twice a month with the only 2 friends and 2 aquaintances I have who have the time and will to spend it with me.
oh, and hiding in my room, avoiding talking to my mom, because each time we talk she just reminds me what a piece of shit failure I am, and tells me how it's not that hard to change it, I just have to stop being lazy and start working for it.

she's... kind and caring about it, which somehow maybe makes it even worse.

i have about 10 almost complete game designs, each of them at least 50% more original and interesting (at least to me) than the things that are coming out for the past 10 years, being lauded as "the most original and unique".

I have been trying to make them, ANY of them, since I was 18, but I always lose all the drive and resolve and energy in like 4 months, because it's like trying to build a city on my own on a deserted island. too big for one person, but there was never anyone to help me. closest I ever got was one of my friends telling me "i've been thinking many times that i'd love to work on some project with you, if I had the time".
and second time, when I actually found an artist I was going to pay, and he was awesome, and after two weeks of me telling him how awesome what he does is and how it fits the project and my ideas perfectly, he backed out saying "i'm afraid I can't do the quality you require from me".

never ever in my life did I get actual help with something I actually wanted or tried to do.

i have no idea how it feels to have someone working with me on something I actually consider interesting and meaningful, on any of the things which I wanted to make, which made me learn programming.

I've learned graphics and animation and everything going into game making pipeline on my own because I realized nobody will ever help me, so I'll have to do all of it on my own.

I've tried to make a kickstarter once, but I started crying hysterically in the middle of writing it, because I felt like a begging piece of failure shit, even more than usual, so I deleted it.

most of people treat me like shit failure unworthy and undeserving of living, precisely as I myself know I deserve to be treated, because that's what I am, but when I ask for permission to kill myself, since I see no other solution to stop being a burden, they get angry at me that I'm just emotionally blackmailing them. when I afterwards ask them "so help me in any way to do any of the projects i want/need to do", they respond they've got no time for that.

when I talk about all of this, I get told to stop whining.

happy 29th birthday, me, a piece of shit who should've never survived this long, who should've never been born in the first place.
yay.

also, I know this is not the kind of crap that's supposed to be posted here, but i've got nowhere else. sorry.

Hey guys,

this rant will be long again. I'm sorry for any grammar errors or something like that, english isn't my native language. Furthermore I'm actually very sad and not in a good mood.

Why? What happened? Some of you may already know - I'm doing my apprenticeship / education in a smal company.
There I'm learning a lot, I'm developing awesome features directly for the clients, experience of which other in my age (I'm only 19 years old) can only dream.
Working in such a small company is very exhausting, but I love my job, I love programming. I turned my hobby into a profession and I'm very proud of it.
But then there are moments like the last time, when I had to present something for a client - the first presentation was good, the last was a disaster, nothing worked - but I learned from it.

But this time everything is worse than bad - I mean really, really worse than bad.

I've worked the whole week on a cool new feature - I've done everything that it works yesterday, that everything gets done before the deadline of yesterday.

To achieve this I've coded thursday till 10pm ! At home! Friday I tested the whole day everything to ensure that everything is working properly. I fixed several bugs and then at the end of the day everything seems to be working. Even my boss said that it looks good and he thinks that the rollout to all clients will become good and without any issues.

But unfortunately deceived.

Yesterday evening I wrote a long mail to my boss - with a "manual". He was very proud and said that he is confident that everything will work fine. He trusts me completly.

Then, this morning I received a mail from him - nothing works anymore - all clients have issues, everything stays blank - because I've forgotten to ensure that the new feature (a plugin) and its functionality is supported by the device (needs a installation).
First - I was very shoked - but in the same moment I thought - one moment - you've written an if statement, if the plugin is installed - so why the fuck should it broken everything?!
I looked instant to the code via git. This has to be a very bad joke from my boss I thought. But then I saw the fucking bug - I've written:
if(plugin) { // do shit }
but it has to be if(typeof plugin !== 'undefined')

I fucked up everything - due to this fucking mistake. This little piece of shit I've forgotten on one single line fucked up everything. I'm sorry for this mode of expression but I thought - no this can not be true - it must be a bad bad nightmare.
I've tested this so long, every scenario, everything. Worked till the night so it gets finished. No one, no one from my classmates would ever think of working so long. But I did it, because I love my job. I've implemented a check to ensure that the plugin is installed - but implemented it wrong - exactly this line which caused all the errors should prevent exactly this - what an irony of fate.

I've instantly called my boss and apologized for this mistake. The mistake can't be undone. My boss now has to go to all clients to fix it. This will be very expensive...

Oh my goodnes, I just cried.
I'm only working about half a year in this company - they trust me so much - but I'm not perfect - I make mistakes - like everyone else. This time my boss didn't looked over my code, didn't review it, because he trusted me completly - now this happens. I think this destroyed the trust :( I'm so sad.
He only said that we will talk on monday, how we can prevent such things in the feature..
Oh guys, I don't know - I've fucked up everything, we were so overhelmed that everything would work :(
Now I'm the looser who fucked up - because not testing enough - even when I tested it for days, even at home - worked at home - till the night - for free, for nothing - voluntary.

This is the thanks for that.
Thousand good things - but one mistake and you're the little asshole. You - a 19 year old guy, which works since 6 months in a company. A boss which trusts you and don't look over your code. One line which should prevent crashing, crashed everything.

I'm sorry that this rant is so long, I just need to talk to you guys because I'm so sad. Again. This has happend to frequently lately.

So just finished the presentation for my internship project. I'm free now!(and can sleep normal times too) But I have a few things I need to get off my mind. Dunno if it'll seem a bit stupid to some of you..but yeahh....
Anyway, during my demo yesterday
Lecturer: So this project of yours uses some open-source stuff?
Me: Yeah.
L: And if the company wants to use if for commercialization they need to pay for the license?
M: Thats basically it. Yes.
L: Well, see..thats the problem with your project. You need to think of all this things. If there's no other options then just code the whole shit yourself. Or maybe discuss with the management on this.
Yeah...see, I doubt the management here cares about us anyway. Oh, you're working on your intern stuff. Not important. Just resize the pictures in my powerpoint will you? Oh and you want to use the company computers for your project? No can do..confidentiality stuff. But make sure the thing will work on our system anyway when you're done with it. And even if you use our computers, they restart everytime you open Word anyway..hahaha. You want access to this thing so you can learn a bit on our company's work. Sorry but no. EVERYTHING is confidential so you can't access it since you're interns, eventhough our company is the one that took you inanyway.
Manager: Oh, the thing you're making is pretty cool. You know,all of you can just give your systems to us later.
Friend: Yeah well, maybe we can ask the company for payment? Haha.
Manager: Hahaha well the company can just take your systems for free since you're doing it on our working hours.
Fuck. You. When we ask to do our stuff you said noooo its the company hours. Do our work. And do your stuff back at home or something. Oh, but then we'll drag you around the state to see the clients, and you'll reach home at 8-9pm or something, but of course you're not tired right? So just code then. Or you're not going anywhere today? You're still not allowed to code here eventhough you don't have any work though...so just sit there and be quiet. Or maybe shred my papers for me. Fuck your working hours.
Lecturer: And well, thats the problem with some students *looks pointedly at me* they want to go to non-technical companies so that they can have it easy. Your friends who go to other companies will learn a lot more.
Do you think I fucking want to be here??? This is the only company I got so fuck that. Even when I get different offers and apply to change companies, you go nope. No can do. Stick with your current company eventhough we know that its shit for IT students because its a big company, see? And we have our university's reputation to upkeep. I came here to learn, not make you the No.1 university or something. And its not like you, or the staffs here, help us with anything.
So fuck all of this. We're gonna tell the other lecturers to stop sending students here. You don't learn anything. I'm done with this shit, not gonna think or worry about it anymore..I'll just, go get cake or something. Yeah.

Today I noticed that my first name on my Apple Developer Account was totally wrong, even though the name on my Apple ID account was correct. Trying to fix the wrong name sent me to the Apple ID Account page with the already correct name. I contacted support.

It turns out the developer accounts pull info from your Apple ID at creation time, AND NEVER AGAIN. WTF? So you can not make changes to your dev account, because they are non-updateable..

The fix? Sending a copy of a photo ID to the supporter BY FAX?!?!? This is Apple we are talking about.. in 2017.. I don't know anything anymore

Xpost from /r/sysadmin:
I occasionally see posts from people who seem like they want to spend every waking hour of every waking minute working on home lab stuff and studying for certs.

If you do this, you're missing out on life which you will regret later, but even if you don't care about missing out on life, it actually is hurting your career.

Being well rounded helps you interact with others at work in a number of ways. It makes you less one dimensional as "the computers guy" and it also gives you topics to discuss with people. If you know how to cook, or brew beer, or bake bread you end up using a lot of your technical and troubleshooting skills. Biking long distancing and learning how to fix your bike helps with your troubleshooting skills too. You learn to look at things from other angles.

Reading novels or writing poetry or making art work also helps because it exercises your brain. Woodworking or metal working involve a lot of skills that'd help your IT career including project planning and measuring and budgeting for each project. Working on cars or motorcycles would be similar. You just have to do SOMETHING.

I have a member of my team who literally has nothing going on in his life other than studying for certs. No friends, no hobbies, and he basically eats nothing but McDonalds and frozen dinners because even making a meal takes time away from his studying. He thinks means he's dedicated and will experience great career success.

But instead he has nothing to talk to anyone about, and when I say nothing, I mean literally nothing. It's borderline terrifying. Even if he was into comic books and video games it might help, which might help him relate to SOME of the IT staff even if the rest of the people at the company know nothing about it. But he doesn't even have that.

This isn't a solitary field anymore. Even if you truly are "the best" you still have to interact with other people and stay mentally stable enough to not burn out. Even if you know more than everyone else (or think you do) you have to try to broaden your horizons.

Customer: We don't know what we want, but we want it yesterday.
Sales: No problem.
Me: WTF?
I'm not even mad or stressed anymore. You didn't ask me before, so why should I bend and break, so that you don't have to deal with staving the customer. Most of the time, he changes his requirements or is the bottleneck himself, anyway.

Ooh man, I'm so fucking pissed with these shit MBA fucks who think they know everything about everything about everything but can't even tell the difference between pastry and shit until they dig their mouth into it.

Dick heads want to micromanage me to a point where I don't even have to think.

*Make the button green.*
But that does not follow any design principles.
*We have business research which says so*
What.

Such bullshit, I don't even wanna argue anymore. But man, it's so tough to make something which goes against every principle of what you have ever learnt. I mean, I'm coding it, and my brain refuses to help because the idea is soo bad. God I'm soo frustrated.

I recently ranted so much about languages but here it goes

JS we need to talk. BECAUSE YOU GOT FAT AND UGLY STUPID BITCH! Dumb piece of bloatware. What even is your problem? Depending on a library for strpad and then blow up like Steve jobs ego. Bastardized fuckfest. I used to like you bro and then you screw me over!
It's like you fuck my wife while I try to fix your car. Why can't you even be usefully on your own anymore? I'd be richer than bill gates if I get a dollar for every damn framework people pull from their asses. Are you writing this fuck while shitting so you can compare colors of your outcome?

Normalize the fucking base, don't add to the bukkakke! bitch is drowning already. Why is everyone jerking of to react and angular? When have YOU written something in vanilla the last time? Why even bother? Remove the core and hardcore every damn framework into the browsers. Guess that saves you 200kb. Oh wait I forgot that's about unminified jQuery.

Now I need to load about 2GB of dependencies, some creating code that puts code in my code to load code out of my code which was generated out of something that remotely resembles JS so every browser is able to execute my fancy shit. But hey, it's fast. And of course there are the fanboys. You are worse than apple fags. You sample your own jizz with your friends in a wine glass. there was a Time it was bad practice to mix logic and view. Now you made it mandatory. "Browser does the rendering" ofc you imbecile pile of fuck don't show me a damn preloader for 1 picture and 20 lines of text. Who fucked your brain so hard?

So react seems to be the cool kid now, then I tell someone I know angular it's like showing up in a pikachu onsie to a formal dinner with the queen.

I used to love you girl. I loved how we could dirty things together. Now you are like a pig. Please loose weight bby the sight of you disgusts me nowadays

I'm coming off a lengthy staff augmentation assignment awful enough that I feel like I need to be rehabilitated to convince myself that I even want to be a software developer.

They needed someone who does .NET. It turns out what they meant was someone to copy and paste massive amounts of code that their EA calls a "framework." Just copy and paste this entire repo, make a whole ton of tweaks that for whatever reason never make their way back into the "template," and then make a few edits for some specific functionality. And then repeat. And repeat. Over a dozen times.

The code is unbelievable. Everything is stacked into giant classes that inherit from each other. There's no dependency inversion. The classes have default constructors with a comment "for unit testing" and then the "real" code uses a different one.

It's full of projects, classes, and methods with weird names that don't do anything. The class and method names sound like they mean something but don't. So after a dozen times I tried to refactor, and the EA threw a hissy fit. Deleting dead code, reducing three levels of inheritance to a simple class, and renaming stuff to indicate what it does are all violations of "standards." I had to go back to the template and start over.

This guy actually recorded a video of himself giving developers instructions on how to copy and paste his awful code.

Then he randomly invents new "standards." A class that reads messages from a queue and processes them shouldn't process them anymore. It should read them and put them in another queue, and then we add more complication by reading from that queue. The reason? We might want to use the original queue for something else one day. I'm pretty sure rewriting working code to meet requirements no one has is as close as you can get to the opposite of Agile.

I fixed some major bugs during my refactor, and missed one the second time after I started over. So stuff actually broke in production because I took points off the board and "fixed" what worked to add back in dead code, variables that aren't used, etc.

In the process, I asked the EA how he wanted me to do this stuff, because I know that he makes up "standards" on the fly and whatever I do may or may not be what he was imagining. We had a tight deadline and I didn't really have time to guess, read his mind, get it wrong, and start over. So we scheduled an hour for him to show me what he wanted.

He said it would take fifteen minutes. He used the first fifteen insisting that he would not explain what he wanted, and besides he didn't remember how all of the code he wrote worked anyway so I would just have to spend more time studying his masterpiece and stepping through it in the debugger.

Being accountable to my team, I insisted that we needed to spend the scheduled hour on him actually explaining what he wanted. He started yelling and hung up. I had to explain to management that I could figure out how to make his "framework" work, but it would take longer and there was no guarantee that when it was done it would magically converge on whatever he was imagining. We totally blew that deadline.

When the .NET work was done, I got sucked into another part of the same project where they were writing massive 500 line SQL stored procedures that no one could understand. They would write a dozen before sending any to QA, then find out that there was a scenario or two not accounted for, and rewrite them all. And repeat. And repeat. Eventually it consisted of, one again, copying and pasting existing procedures into new ones.

At one point one dev asked me to help him test his procedure. I said sure, tell me the scenarios for which I needed to test. He didn't know. My question was the equivalent of asking, "Tell me what you think your code does," and he couldn't answer it. If the guy who wrote it doesn't know what it does right after he wrote it and you certainly can't tell by reading it, and there's dozens of these procedures, all the same but slightly different, how is anyone ever going to read them in a month or a year? What happens when someone needs to change them? What happens when someone finds another defect, and there are going to be a ton of them?

It's a nightmare. Why interview me with all sorts of questions about my dev skills if the plan is to have me copy and paste stuff and carefully avoid applying anything that I know?

The people are all nice except for their evil XEB (Xenophobe Expert Beginner) EA who has no business writing a line of code, ever, and certainly shouldn't be reviewing it.

I've tried to keep my sanity by answering stackoverflow questions once in a while and sometimes turning evil things I was forced to do into constructive blog posts to which I cannot link to preserve my anonymity. I feel like I've taken a six-month detour from software development to shovel crap. Never again. Lesson learned. Next time they're not interviewing me. I'm interviewing them. I'm a professional.

My first job was actually nontechnical - I was 18 years old and sold premium office furniture for a small store in Munich.
I did code in my free time though (PHP/JS mostly, had a litte browsergame back then - those were the days), so when my boss approached me and asked me whether I liked to take over a coding project, I agreed to the idea.

Little did I know at the time: I was supposed to work with a web agency the boss had contracted to build their online shop. Only that he had no plan or anything, he basically told them "build me an online shop like abc(a major competitor of ours at the time)"

He employed another sales lady who was supposed to manage the shop (that didn't exist yet). In the end, I think 80% of her job was to keep me from killing my boss.

As you can imagine, with this huuuuge amout of planning and these exact visions of what was supposed to be, things went south fast and far. So far that I could visit my fellow flightless birds down in the Penguin's republic of Antarctica and still need to go further.

Well... When my boss started suing the web agency, I was... ahem, asked to take over. Dumb as I was, I did - I was a PHP kid and thought that Magento, being written in PHP, would be easy to master. If you know Magento, you know that was maybe the wrongest thing I ever said.

Fast forward 3 very exhausting months, the thing was online. Not all of it worked yet, but it was online and fairly secure.

I did next to everything myself, administrating the CentOS box the shop was running on, its (own) e-mail server, the web server, all the coding required for the shop (can you spell 12 hour day for 8 hour pay?)

3 further months later, my life basically was a wreck, I dragged myself to work, the only thing I looked forward being the motorcycle ride home. The system worked though.

Mind you, I was still, at the time, working with three major customers, doing deskside support and some admin (Win Server 2008R2 at the time) - because, to quote my boss, "We could not afford a full time developer and we don't need one".

I think i stopped coding in my free time, the one hobby I used to love more than anything on the world, somewhere Decemerish 2012. I dropped out of the open source projects I was in, quit working on my browser game and let everything slide.

I didn't even care to renew the domains and servers for it, I just let it die without notice.

The little free time I had, I spent playing video games and getting drunk/high.

December 2013, 1.5 years on the job, I reached my breaking point and just left, called in sick at least a week per month because I just could not see this fucking place anymore.

I looked for another job outside of ALL of what I did before. No more Magento, no more sales, no more PHP. I didn't have to look for long, despite what I thought of my skills.

In February 2014, I told my boss that I quit. It was still seven months until my new job started, but I wanted him to know early so we could migrate and find a replacement.

The search for said replacement started in June 2014. I had considerably less work in the months before, looks like he got the hint.

In August 2014, my replacement arrived and I got him started.

I found a job, which I am still in, and still happy about after almost half a decade, at a local, medium sized ISP as a software dev and IT security guy. Got a proper training with a certificate and everything now.

My replacement lasted two months, he was external and never really did his job - the site, which until I had quit, had a total of 3 days downtime for 3 YEARS (they were the hoster's fault, not mine), was down for an entire month and he could not even tell why.

HIS followup was kicked after taking two weeks to familiarize himself with the project. Well, I think that two weeks is not even barely enough to familiarize yourself with nearly three years of work, but my boss gave him two days.

In 2016, the shop was replaced with another one. Different shop system, different OS, different CI. I don't know why and I can't say I give a damn.

Almost all the people that worked at the company back with me have left for greener pastures, taking their customers (and revenue) with them.

As for my boss' comments, instructions and lines: THAT might not be safe for work. Or kids. Or humans in general. And there wouldn't be much left if you put it through a language filter...

Moral of the story: No, it's not a bad thing to leave a place if you're mistreated there. Don't mistake loyalty with stupidity!

And, to quote one of my favourite Bands: "Nothing matters when the pain is all but gone" (Tragedy + Time by Rise Against).

!dev

TLDR; younger brother is an unreliable fuck. Learning to be a pathetic trickster. Penny teller cheap ass jester.

Hello folks. Time for a little family story.

This started around mid June.
I was a little tight on money the past few months. I had a broken laptop, that my brother wanted to buy. So I told him that he can have it for 100 bucks. It was a 1k gaming laptop 2 years ago, (i7, gtx 960m, 16gb ddr4). But I didn't know how much it would cost to repair. So I was happy with the price and so was him.

He told me he would pay by the end of June.

Hi didn't pay. He repaired the laptop for free by asking his boss, that used to be my friend (I'll probably tell you guys about that in another rant, best friend, got in a fight, stopped talking, next day my brother asked him for a job).

A month later, mid July, I told him I needed the money.

He literally said:

"I don't care for what you need. I'll pay you when I think it is a relevant expense, now I have money only for buying tools and investing in my career".

He was buying 15 usd pens (not only 1), because he wants to have expensive crap.

That was a bit disgusting, but not shocking. (I'm used to his little brat attitude, he's 26 btw).

I thought to myself. Ok, you want to be a bitch?. Then pay more.

I told him that he appreciated a good that wasn't his and that he should either pay now or agree to a new price. He didn't like that idea, but eventually we agreed to make it 300usd.

And one of the clauses was.

"I shouldn't ask him to pay." 🙄

He would pay when he could. (entitled brat attitude again). Ok. Fine.

It's been a month from that. He teased that he would pay 3 weeks ago. And he didn't. I asked him how was the "not asking for payment clause", because he did the teasing and I wanted to know if that kind of shitty mind games was part of the deal.

So that's the background story for the laptop.

Now time for a dinner story.

We share dinner once or twice a week. And when any one is short in money we keep a tally on who's been paying.

When I have money I just let the tally go in my favor, an buy him dinner whenever he says his short on money.

Note: Here, fries and soda are not part of the price, so the one that is short on money pays the fries and soda.

Today it was not one of those days. (Dinner here is about 15 USD for 2, with fries, and soda, nothing fancy, nor healthy, but an exuse to hang out with my only brother that would not eat a salad even if it was free).

I owed him 10 bucks, and he owed me 1 dinner. I asked him if he's buying dinner today. He said that the tally is even because last meal I didn't pay the chips. 🧐. (That was settled because I didn't pay once, but made up for it later)

Again with his entitled ass shitty attitude.

I just said. I don't want to hear your excuses. Here's your money. I want my laptop tomorrow, I'll sell first thing Monday. And tell me how much did you spend on repairs and parts and I'll pay you.

And now I'm sad. 🙃

Mainly, because is just so fucking boring to deal with a person that counts every penny. I fed him for 10 year while he was having problems, (alcohol and depression), And now he comes with this shitty ass counting pennies attitude, wtf?

I literally felt poorer just by counting the cents that made part of this story. (Really, who the fucks keeps track of chips and soda??? What are we 15yo??)))

It's one thing to be trapped in a 3rd world country where everyone is trying to fuck you. You learn to deal with that shit. And it's ok.

But seeing that your little brother is learning the same cheap trickery is just sad. The same cheap approach to life. The same easy and pathetic mind games is just fucking sad.

I don't even mind the money anymore. I was short on cash 2 months ago, I'm gladly better now. But finding out that he's becoming a little scammer is a bummer.

I just needed to vent. I think I should stop enabling him. And maybe keep some distance, it is fucking depressing to be counting cents to settle an argument. By dealing with that fucktard I end up counting cents just to figure out who's right.

Frustrated, tired and a bit lost.

I'm a "Senior PHP Backend Dev", which includes not the greatest tech stack nor the best job title, but it pays fine, and the company is awesome to work for.

I suck at writing features, but I'm great at bitching, and I easily put complex abstract concepts into usable models. So I'm also QA, tester, tech lead, database architect, whatever.

That makes writing PHP less annoying, because I create the rules, and whip devs around when they forget a return type definition or forget to handle an edge case. But I don't write a lot of code anymore, I mostly read (bad) code.

Lately I REALLY feel like doing something else... problem is that I know JS/ES6, but really dislike React/Vue and the whole crappy modern frontend toolchainchootrain of babelifyingwebpackingyarnballs. I know Python/Tensorflow/etc, but don't feel like I want to go into data science or AI. And then I'm awesome at the shit no one uses, like Haskell, Go and Rust (and worse).

I got a job offer which combines a very interesting PHP codebase with a Java infrastructure, where I could learn a lot... and I'm kind of tempted.

Problem is, everyone always shits on Java. I always made a bit of fun of Java myself. Don't even know exactly why, probably some really cruel instinct which causes kids to bully the least popular kid.

I know the basics, I've written the hello world, and a small backend app for a personal project. I know how strict and verbose it can be. I love the strictness in Haskell and Rust.... but those are both also quite terse.

Should I become a Java dev? I'm not talking about Android SDK, but an insane enterprise codebase at a life sciences corporation.

To the pro Java devs: What are the best and worst things about your job, about the weekly processes, about the toolchains? Have you ever considered other languages? Do you unconditionally love and believe in Java, or do you believe Swift, Kotlin, Scala or whatever will eventually make it completely obsolete?

Will Java hasten my decline into the cynical neckbeard I was always destined to be?

There are a lot more fun langauges, but looking at realistic demand and career value...

Just now I realized that for some reason I can't mount SMB shares to E: and H: anymore.. why, you might ask? I have no idea. And troubleshooting Windows.. oh boy, if only it was as simple as it is on Linux!!

So, bimonthly reinstall I guess? Because long live good quality software that lasts. In a post-meritocracy age, I guess that software quality is a thing of the past. At least there's an option to reset now, so that I don't have to keep a USB stick around to store an installation image for this crap.

And yes Windows fanbois, I fucking know that you don't have this issue and that therefore it doesn't exist as far as you're concerned. Obviously it's user error and crappy hardware, like it always is.

And yes Linux fanbois, I know that I should install Linux on it. If it's that important to you, go ahead and install it! I'll give you network access to the machine and you can do whatever you want to make it run Linux. But you can take my word on this - I've tried everything I could (including every other distro, custom kernels, customized installer images, ..), and it doesn't want to boot any Linux distribution, no matter what. And no I'm not disposing of or selling this machine either.

Bottom line I guess is this: the OS is made for a user that's just got a C: drive, doesn't rely on stuff on network drives, has one display rather than 2 (proper HDMI monitor recognition? What's that?), and God forbid that they have more than 26 drives. I mean sure in the age of DOS and its predecessor CP/M, sure nobody would use more than 26 drives. Network shares weren't even a thing back then. And yes it's possible to do volume mounts, but it's unwieldy. So one monitor, 1 or 2 local drives, and let's make them just use Facebook a little bit and have them power off the machine every time they're done using it. Because keeping the machine stable for more than a few days? Why on Earth would you possibly want to do that?!!

Microsoft Windows. The OS built for average users but God forbid you depart from the standard road of average user usage. Do anything advanced, either you can't do it at all, you can do it but it's extremely unintuitive and good luck finding manuals for it, or you can do it but Windows will behave weirdly. Because why not!!!

I have a project at work that involves learning a bunch of AWS stuff and rewriting a couple credential-generating scripts. I don't even know what the ask is, apart from some high-level "make this SSO" so ... idfk.

I am so incredibly bored of it (and burned out in general) that I can't even look at it.

I would rather see how many times it takes to beat my head against the wall to make a hole than think about this ticket again.

"Oh, I thought you would find that fun" No. No I do not. I can't even bring myself to look at it anymore. "Well, try to push through it and get it outta here!" Ughhhhh

I hope Russia nukes the bloody company.

*decides to take another look at the Arduino Mega and LCD*
*suddenly realizes that this LCD controller that I bought has a different pinout*

"Alright, let's look at the seller's product page and they better have a pinout for this fucking thing"

*tries to log into AliExpress*
*can't login*

"At this point I don't even know anymore if it's China that fucked up again or whether this is another feature from the Facefucks"
"LOG ME FUCKING IN ALREADY YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!"

And honestly, if I want to start a project, I want to work on the fucking project. I don't want to have to deal with all this shit instead!!!

I remember a few months ago at my school we all had taken the Chromebooks (our county's OS of choice) out and put them on our desks. We were in science, and we needed to take screenshots of websites for some reason. "Everyone go to the chrome store," our teacher said, with a look-how-smart-i-am kind of look on her face, "search for the 'Awesome Screenshot Extension.'" Ugh. This was dumb. I reluctantly searched it up and upon bringing up the description and about to press the "Add to Chrome" button, when I stopped, and made a decision I would later regret. Now, I don't really like this teacher, and she thought she was so fucking smart for finding this shit extension. I raised my hand, and she walked over. "Uhh… I'm pretty sure you can just do Ctrl + shift + []|| to take a screenshot" I said. She was fucking dumbfounded. She yelled out "Class, listen up! [Let's call me 'Ben' for this story] Ben just found an alternative [she was trying to make her extension not seem entirely useless, even though she knew it was] way to take a screenshot. Just press Ctrl + shift plus that box with the two lines next to it. You can use my extension or the one Ben found. Whichever is easier [she damn well knew which was easier]." Three times in the span of the next five minutes she said "just a reminder… you can use Ben's way if you want" to the whole class. Everyone kept looking at me. A few minutes later, she called me up to the computer which was being displayed on the big screen in front of class. She said some people were having trouble, so then pulled all the attention on me to come up to the front of class and demonstrate a goddamn keyboard shortcut. She was running windows 8, and I knew it wouldn't work on her computer. I pressed a few random keys on the keyboard and said "uhh, I think it only works on their computers" she let me sit back down. She couldn't handle the concept that different computers run different operating systems. I sat down and the guy sitting next to me raised his hand. He said "you could use the 'snippet tool'" Yes. Some people can. But she can't. I stopped him from doing anymore damage on their small brains by saying "uhh, it won't work on the Chromebooks, so that won't help." I hate that teacher. At lunch my friend came over to me. He has the same science teacher as me. "You know what she's been saying all day?" I was confused. "What?" I said. He almost started to laugh. "All day she's [the teacher] has been telling everyone that you found this amazing new technology in the Chromebooks. [Most of the students were smart enough to know that I didnt] she was like 'Ben, from my 2nd period found this amazing thing'" End of story. And guess what? I still hate her.

I AM TIRED

warning: this rant is going to be full of negativity , CAPS, and cursing.

People always think and they always write that programming is an analytical profession. IF YOU CANNOT THINK IN AN ANALYTICAL WAY THIS JOB IS NOT FOR YOU! But the reality could not be farther from the truth.

A LOT of people in this field whether they're technical people or otherwise, just lack any kind of reasoning or "ANALYTICAL" thinking skills. If anything, a lot of of them are delusional and/or they just care about looking COOL. "Because programming is like getting paid to solve puzzles" *insert stupid retarded laugh here*.

A lot of devs out there just read a book or two and read a Medium article by another wannabe, now think they're hot shit. They know what they're doing. They're the gods of "clean" and "modular" design and all companies should be in AWE of their skills paralleled only by those of deities!

Everyone out there and their Neanderthal ancestor from start-up founders to developers think they're the next Google/Amazon/Facebook/*insert fancy shitty tech company*.

Founder? THEY WANT TO MOVE FAST AND GET TO MARKET FAST WITH STUPID DEADLINES! even if it's not necessary. Why? BECAUSE YOU INFERIOR DEVELOPER HAVE NOT READ THE STUPID HOT PILE OF GARBAGE I READ ONLINE BY THE POEPLE I BLINDLY COPY! "IF YOU'RE NOT EMBARRASSED BY THE FIRST VERSION OF YOU APP, YOU DID SOMETHING WRONG" - someone at Amazon.

Well you delusional brainless piece of stupidity, YOU ARE NOT AMAZON. THE FIRST VERSION THAT THIS AMAZON FOUNDER IS EMBARRASSED ABOUT IS WHAT YOU JERK OFF TO AT NIGHT! IT IS WHAT YOU DREAM ABOUT HAVING!

And oh let's not forget the tech stacks that make absolutely no fucking sense and are just a pile of glue and abstraction levels on top of abstraction levels that are being used everywhere. Why? BECAUSE GOOGLE DOES IT THAT WAY DUH!! And when Google (or any other fancy shit company) changes it, the old shitty tech stack that by some miracle you got to work and everyone is writing in, is now all of a sudden OBSOLETE! IT IS OLD. NO ONE IS WRITING SHIT IN THAT ANYMORE!

And oh my god do I get a PTSD every time I hear a stupid fucker saying shit like "clean architecture" "clean shit" "best practice". Because I have yet to see someone whose sentences HAVE TO HAVE one of these words in them, that actually writes anything decent. They say this shit because of some garbage article they read online and in reality when you look at their code it is hot heap of horseshit after eating something rancid. NOTHING IS CLEAN ABOUT IT. NOTHING IS DONE RIGHT. AND OH GOD IF THAT PERSON WAS YOUR TECH MANAGER AND YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO THEM RUNNING THEIR SHITHOLE ABOUT HOW YOUR SIMPLE CODE IS "NOT CLEAN". And when you think that there might be a valid reason to why they're doing things that way, you get an answer of someone in an interview who's been asked about something they don't know, but they're trying to BS their way to sounding smart and knowledgable. 0 logic 0 reason 0 brain.

Let me give you a couple of examples from my unfortunate encounters in the land of the delusional.

I was working at this start up which is fairly successful and there was this guy responsible for developing the front-end of their website using ReactJS and they're using Redux (WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS TO ELIMINATE PASSING ATTRIBUTES FOR THE PURPOSE OF PASSING THEM DOWN THE COMPONENT HIERARCHY AGIAN). This guy kept ranting about their quality and their shit every single time we had a conversation about the code while I was getting to know everything. Also keep in mind he was the one who decided to use Redux. Low and behold there was this component which has THIRTY MOTHERFUCKING SEVEN PROPERTIES WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS BE PASSED DOWN AGAIN LIKE 3 TO 4 TIMES!.

This stupid shit kept telling me to write code in a "functional" style. AND ALL HE KNOWS ABOUT FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING IS USING MAP, FILTER, REDUCE! And says shit like "WE DONT NEED UNIT TESTS BECAUSE FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING HAS NO ERRORS!" Later on I found that he read a book about functional programming in JS and now he fucking thinks he knows what functional programming is! Oh I forgot to mention that the body of his "maps" is like 70 fucking lines of code!

Another fin-tech company I worked at had a quote from Machiavelli's The Prince on EACH FUCKING DESK:

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

MOTHERFUCKER! NEW ORDER OF THINGS? THERE 10 OTHER COMPANIES DOING THE SAME SHIT ALREADY!

And the one that got on my nerves as a space lover. Is a quote from Kennedy's speech about going to the moon in the 60s "We choose to go to the moon and do the hard things ..."

YOU FUCKING DELUSIONAL CUNT! YOU THINK BUILDING YOUR SHITTY COPY PASTED START UP IS COMPARABLE TO GOING TO THE MOON IN THE 60S?

I am just tired of all those fuckers.

After a few weeks of being insanely busy, I decided to log onto Steam and maybe relax with a few people and play some games. I enjoy playing a few sandbox games and do freelance development for those games (Anywhere from a simple script to a full on server setup) on the side. It just so happened that I had an 'urgent' request from one of my old staff member from an old community I use to own. This staff member decided to run his own community after I sold mine off since I didn't have the passion anymore to deal with the community on a daily basis.

O: Owner (Former staff member/friend)
D: Other Dev

O: Hey, I need urgent help man! Got a few things developed for my server, and now the server won't stay stable and crashes randomly. I really need help, my developer can't figure it out.
Me: Uhm, sure. Just remember, if it's small I'll do it for free since you're an old friend, but if it's a bigger issue or needs a full recode or whatever, you're gonna have to pay. Another option is, I tell you what's wrong and you can have your developer fix it.
O: Sounds good, I'll give you owner access to everything so you can check it out.
Me: Sounds good

*An hour passes by*

O: Sorry it took so long, had to deal with some crap. *Insert credentials, etc*
Me: Ok, give me a few minutes to do some basic tests. What was that new feature or whatever you added?
O: *Explains long feature, and where it's located*
Me: *Begins to review the files* *Internal rage wondering what fucking developer could code such trash* *Tests a few methods, and watches CPU/RAM and an internal graph for usage*
Me: Who coded this module?
O: My developer.
Me: *Calm tone, with a mix of some anger* So, you know what, I'm just gonna do some simple math for ya. You're running 33 ticks a second for the server, with an average of about 40ish players. 33x60 = 1980 cycles a minute, now lets times that by the 40 players on average, you have 79,200 cycles per minute or nearly 4.8 fucking cycles an hour (If you maxed the server at 64 players, it's going to run an amazing fucking 7.6 million cycles an hour, like holy fuck). You're also running a MySQLite query every cycle while transferring useless data to the server, you're clusterfucking the server and overloading it for no fucking reason and that's why you're crashing it. Another question, who the fuck wrote the security of this? I can literally send commands to the server with this insecure method and delete all of your files... If you actually want your fucking server stable and secure, I'm gonna have to recode this entire module to reduce your developer's clusterfuck of 4.8 million cycles to about 400 every hour... it's gonna be $50.
D: *Angered* You're wrong, this is the best way to do it, I did stress testing! *Insert other defensive comments* You're just a shitty developer (This one got me)
Me: *Calm* You're calling me a shitty developer? You're the person that doesn't understand a timer, I get that you're new to this world, but reading the wiki or even using the game's forums would've ripped this code to shreds and you to shreds. You're not even a developer, cause most of this is so disorganized it looks like you copy and pasted it. *Get's angered here and starts some light screaming* You're wasting CPU usage, the game can't use more than 1 physical core, and after a quick test, you're stupid 'amazing' module is using about 40% of the CPU. You need to fucking realize the 40ish average players, use less than this... THEY SHOULD BE MORE INTENSIVE THAN YOUR CODE, NOT THE OPPOSITE.
O: Hey don't be rude to Venom, he's an amazing coder. You're still new, you don't know as much as him. Ok, I'll pay you the money to get it recoded.
Me: Sounds good. *Angered tone* Also you developer boy, learn to listen to feedback and maybe learn to improve your shitty code. Cause you'll never go anywhere if you don't even understand who bad this garbage is, and that you can't even use the fucking wiki for this game. The only fucking way you're gonna improve is to use some of my suggestions.
D: *Leaves call without saying anything*

TL;DR: Shitty developer ran some shitty XP system code for a game nearly 4.8 million times an hour (average) or just above 7.6 million times an hour (if maxed), plus running MySQLite when it could've been done within about like 400 an hour at max. Tried calling me a shitty developer, and got sorta yelled at while I was trying to keep calm.

Still pissed he tried calling me a shitty developer...

Want to make someone's life a misery? Here's how.

Don't base your tech stack on any prior knowledge or what's relevant to the problem.

Instead design it around all the latest trends and badges you want to put on your resume because they're frequent key words on job postings.

Once your data goes in, you'll never get it out again. At best you'll be teased with little crumbs of data but never the whole.

I know, here's a genius idea, instead of putting data into a normal data base then using a cache, lets put it all into the cache and by the way it's a volatile cache.

Here's an idea. For something as simple as a single log lets make it use a queue that goes into a queue that goes into another queue that goes into another queue all of which are black boxes. No rhyme of reason, queues are all the rage.

Have you tried: Lets use a new fangled tangle, trust me it's safe, INSERT BIG NAME HERE uses it.

Finally it all gets flushed down into this subterranean cunt of a sewerage system and good luck getting it all out again. It's like hell except it's all shitty instead of all fiery.

All I want is to export one table, a simple log table with a few GB to CSV or heck whatever generic format it supports, that's it.

So I run the export table to file command and off it goes only less than a minute later for timeout commands to start piling up until it aborts. WTF. So then I set the most obvious timeout setting in the client, no change, then another timeout setting on the client, no change, then i try to put it in the client configuration file, no change, then I set the timeout on the export query, no change, then finally I bump the timeouts in the server config, no change, then I find someone has downloaded it from both tucows and apt, but they're using the tucows version so its real config is in /dev/database.xml (don't even ask). I increase that from seconds to a minute, it's still timing out after a minute.

In the end I have to make my own and this involves working out how to parse non-standard binary formatted data structures. It's the umpteenth time I have had to do this.

These aren't some no name solutions and it really terrifies me. All this is doing is taking some access logs, store them in one place then index by timestamp. These things are all meant to be blazing fast but grep is often faster. How the hell is such a trivial thing turned into a series of one nightmare after another? Things that should take a few minutes take days of screwing around. I don't have access logs any more because I can't access them anymore.

The terror of this isn't that it's so awful, it's that all the little kiddies doing all this jazz for the first time and using all these shit wipe buzzword driven approaches have no fucking clue it's not meant to be this difficult. I'm replacing entire tens of thousands to million line enterprise systems with a few hundred lines of code that's faster, more reliable and better in virtually every measurable way time and time again.

This is constant. It's not one offender, it's not one project, it's not one company, it's not one developer, it's the industry standard. It's all over open source software and all over dev shops. Everything is exponentially becoming more bloated and difficult than it needs to be. I'm seeing people pull up a hundred cloud instances for things that'll be happy at home with a few minutes to a week's optimisation efforts. Queries that are N*N and only take a few minutes to turn to LOG(N) but instead people renting out a fucking off huge ass SQL cluster instead that not only costs gobs of money but takes a ton of time maintaining and configuring which isn't going to be done right either.

I think most people are bullshitting when they say they have impostor syndrome but when the trend in technology is to make every fucking little trivial thing a thousand times more complex than it has to be I can see how they'd feel that way. There's so bloody much you need to do that you don't need to do these days that you either can't get anything done right or the smallest thing takes an age.

I have no idea why some people put up with some of these appliances. If you bought a dish washer that made washing dishes even harder than it was before you'd return it to the store.

Every time I see the terms enterprise, fast, big data, scalable, cloud or anything of the like I bang my head on the table. One of these days I'm going to lose my fucking tits.

If your client doesn't know what the fuck he wants to see on his website even with all text and images included - don't take this fucking job.

They will let you choose a template and you end up switching it 5 times. "Oh we don't like it. What else do you have? Oh, this looks better." Next day "We don't like this theme anymore. We want to switch to what we had before."

If people can't draw their home page on a paper I tell them go fuck yourself straight in a face. I always put these people on my reference list so my future clients know I'm straightforward, not lazy, not low skilled, but honest with dumbasses like some of my previous clients.

You are asking for a basic website with 5 pages, you have a shitty budget and then I have to customize the entire theme and tweak every fucking possible element in CSS, HTML and PHP. Go fuck yourself. All you get for your money is WordPress with 15 min consultation how to copy paste your shit and save it. Never do fixed budgets, never work on projects like this if it's under $500-1000. Meet with the client to understand him/her better and see if he is a jackass-perfectionist or a chill person who won't be picky.

That's my memories of being a freelancer, trying to get any job for any budget just to build my portfolio. Never going back to this, at least not for small businesses with less than $5,000 budget. Reading people before you start working with them is a good thing.

tl;dr - why you no read this?

Here I am pondering why I continue to return to my job everyday when we are currently at month 13 of a 4 month project... yea let that set in for a minute... which is still at least 3-4 months away from being deployed due to annual leave of key stake holders and the whole Christmas period creeping up and things just not going as planned every step of the way.

There's no greater demotivater - is that even how you spell it - then being stuck in a project for so long you really just don't give a shit if it works or not anymore.

This has gone from a simple - relatively speaking - project to some monolithic mayhem of requirement changes and process adjustments, that have not only delayed our team, but 3rd party vendors needing to change things as well, or the requirements being wrong early so when you get up to business testing it's like "nope, that's not what we wanted" .... despite all the sessions of you personally giving the PM all the damn requirements.

But in saying that, they (3rd party) aren't innocent either, we have found nothing but issue after issue with their product since we started this project that who ever signed off on going forward with the thing should have been shot from both sides - it's not designed for the scale we will be using it yet we didn't find that out till we got so far into the rabbit hole we had a chance to be able to do load testing.

Meh, guess I'll go to work Monday and spend another week in misery trying to deliver something that just doesn't want to know what the finish line is.

How lawyers fuck up technology!

I rented a car today, given that I don't want to go by train currently. That was some VW Golf, and it had a lane assist which can't decide whether to be helpful or obnoxious:

Either I kept the steering wheel and still steered myself, in which case the lane assist's actions made the steering feel somewhat wobbly. Initially, I suspected a worn out control arm bearing, but that's a long term damage in aging cars, not in new ones.

Or I just rested my hands on my upper legs, as I usually do (palms facing upwards and holding the wheel lightly), then the lane assist worked by itself. It was even smart enough to deactivate itself upon blinking before changing lanes.

However, it complained after about 15 seconds that I didn't steer. I said, shut up and do your job. The warning intensified, and I said, fuck you. Then it initiated some stutter braking to wake me up. Annoying like a reincarnation of Clippy.

I ended up giving the steering wheel a slight tip to the right every 15, 20 seconds just to let the lane assist know I was still there, relying on the lane assist to correct it again. On a long trip, I would have had to deactivate that crap.

Obviously, the VW engineers did their job, but the legal department feared law suits should anything go wrong and ruined the feature!

What was also annoying is that there is no real hand brake anymore in many modern cars. Sucks when pulling off against a hill. Plus that at red traffic lights, I usually put the gear out (manual transmission) and pull the hand brake instead of keeping my foot on the clutch. That's not the same with this pseudo hand brake!

(In case you wonder why anyone would do that:
it's an anachronism that avoids lengthening the clutch wires, decades after cars switched to hydraulics.)

I am thinking about leaving this platform. To be honest I don't get anything out of it anymore and the only thing keeping me here is the less-rant'ish content like @devNews or the stories.

I am actually a bit disappointed, the quality of devrant really did degrade alot in the last few months. Don't get me wrong but I feel like people have become "normies" over here. I don't mean that in an edgy or degrading way but let me explain. When I started here I had a very high opinion of the people here. Everyone seemed like a passionate / knowledgeable individual from whom you could hear interesting stories or learn. Maybe I just saw it like that because I was still a very inexperienced dev and was looking for a dev community. But nonetheless I think devRant transformed into a place of mediocrity.

Dont get me wrong I wouldn't think of myself as aspiring or generally "better" than anyone else on here, but the content over here got a little stale.

I am not the kind of person who would "rant", in the first place, so I may have a different mindset and to be honest "ranting" has always been a thing I looked down upon. It just does not support my style of thinking. I totally get that people sometimes need to "vent" their feelings but there is nothing productive to gain from ranting, like you ain't not improving your situation by doing it. The more passionate raters over here call people things, I would never even dream about saying to people. Don't worry I'm no sjw or something like it, I don't care if you do it. If it helps you sure, why not. But there is a point where you corner yourself so much that you stop respecting your colleagues because they wrote that shitty code, instead of helping.

Some tech sure is bad, but it is not getting any better by insulting it.

Another thing I use to notice are people, thinking so highly of them selfes / being so close-minded - that they only accept their own views as true. These are the people that I always try to avoid, but that is getting harder and harder as time goes on.

Collectivism and group thinking are very strong on devRant making it really hard to defend a unpopular opinion - I get that devRant is not the kind of platform that would support actual proper arguments/discussions - but I still feels like some people shove opinions down another people's throat with no reasoning behind it.

Arguments on devRant are always won by the person coming up with the most witty response. Having another opinion is always seen as offensive. That's not exactly the definiton of open-mindedness.

Another rather annoying thing are what I call the "non dev, dev's". See: As a developer you should aspire to understand what your doing - I won't get into this too much but one sentencd: How are things like serious "Semicolon memes" a thing? I am as much into memes as the next guy, but debugging 3 hours, just to find out its a typo. I mean come on...

I sure get that devRant is not the kind of place where you would find the people I am looking for, and that's why I am leaving.

My whole post may seem super negative of the platform - and it is to an extend - but I sure also had a good time back in the day - devRant as in "the platform" surely is not at fault, but a forum is only as good as the people on it. Maybe I changed, maybe devRant did. All I know is that it is not for me anymore.

I won't delete my account and I probably will not leave completely, but all I will do is the "once a week" checkout.

TL;DR:
JuniorDev ignores every advice, writes bad code and complains about other people not working because he does not see their result because he looks at the wrong places.

Okay, so I am really fed up right now.
We have this Junior Dev, who is now with us for circa 8 months, so ca. a year less than me. Our first job for both of us.
He is mostly doing stuff nobody in the team cares about because he is doing his own projects.

But now there's a project where we need to work with him. He got a small part and did implement that. Then parts of the main project got changed and he included stuff which was not there anymore. It was like this for weeks until someone needed to tell him to fix it.
His code is a huge mess (confirmed by senior dev and all the other people working at the project).

Another colleague and me mostly did (mostly) pair programming the past 1-2 weeks because we were fixing and improving (adding functionality) libraries which we are going to use in the project. Furthermore we discussed the overall structure and each of us built some proof-of-concept applications to check if some techniques would work like we planned it.
So in short: We did a lot of preparation to have the project cleaner and faster done in the next few weeks/months and to have our code base updated for the future. Plus there were a few things about technical problems which we need to solve which was already done in that time.
Side note: All of this was done not in the repository of the main project but of side projects, test projects and libraries.

Now it seems that this idiot complained at another coworker (in our team but another project) that we were sitting there for 2 weeks, just talking and that we made no progress in the project as we did not really commit much to the repository.
Side note: My colleague and me are talking in another language when working together and nobody else joins, as we have the same mother tongue, but we switch to the team language as soon as somebody joins, so that other colleague did not even know what we were talking about the whole day.

So, we are nearly the same level experience wise (the other colleague I work with has just one year more professional experience than me) and his work is confirmed to be a mess, ugly and totally bad structured, also not documented. Whereas our code is, at least most of it, there is always space for improvement, clean, readable and re-useable (confirmed by senior and other team members as well).
And this idiot who could implement his (far smaller part) so fast because he does not care about structure or any style convention, pattern or anything complains about us not doing our work.

I just hope, that after this project, I don't have to work with him again soon.
He is also one of those people who think that they know everything because he studied computer science (as everybody in the team, by the way). So he listens to nothing anybody explains to him, not even the senior. You have to explain everything multiple times (which is fine in general) and at some points he just says that he understood, although you can clearly see that he didn't really understand but just wants to go on coding his stuff.
So you explain him stuff and also explain why something does not work or is not a good thing, he just says "yes, okay", changes something completely different and moves on like he used to.

How do you cope with something like this?

http requests

literally the bread and butter of any software engineer building applications, you would ASSUME they know what they are doing...

and you're gonna write a seperate http get and post function for every type you have?

apparently stuff like this that is written by "senior" developers? you don't even have a basic understanding of software...

i'm won't do it that way, becuase i'm an adult, not a child

what i'm going to do is write a HTTP request util function that can be used for any type and HTTP verb. DRY, single responsibility, etc.

imagine making the http request itself a responsibility coupled to the type 😂😂😂😂

get a clue and come back later

i can't tell anymore if my thoughts are so outlandish compared to everyone else that no one understands them, or if i've been doing this so long that i just immediately understand what needs to be done and don't know how to explain it to anyone else anymore (or take the mental effort to)

peace out

oh P.S.: imagine thinking the SOLID principles are only applicable to OOP

stay safe out there folks, its getting more painful every day

Imagine asking your friends to help you rate your app on the google play store and instead of saying NO I DONT WANT TO RATE YOUR APPLICATION no... they decide to fuck with your mind.

1)
I will rate it tomorrow. (she never rated it tomorrow nor the next couple of weeks later)

2)
I will keep it in mind and rate it later :). (she never rated it later)

3)
I rated it haha (less than 30 seconds later they deleted the rating)

4)
Send me a link and I'll rate it (i send the link, they never respond or read my message again)

5)
I dont have memory on my phone :) (because 13MB of memory is a lot of storage requirements but taking 1 million selfies of up to 25GB is completely fine)

6)
I dont have memory on my phone what dont you understand :) x2 (this is the second girl)

7)
Your trying to give me a virus?? No (i got blocked multiple times)

8)
You want to hack me by making me install this application from the link that you sent me that leads to google play store? No (blocked)

9)
Rate your app? Haha i dont care about it because it doesnt bring me any benefit only the fat cocks that fill my pussy up satisfy me and not ur app haha

10)
Haha send me a link ill rate it (i send link, 8 hours later no reply or reading my message, i text her back if she had done it and im still put on ignore)

...

N)
more

----

Notice how none of these people have said the 2 letter word: "no".

All of these 10 examples are based on a true story.

All of these 10 examples are different people.

---

How hard
Can it be
To just
Write

no

---

.

---

For all of you who are about to trash talk saying i am desperately trying to beg people to rate my app:

i know all of those people for a long time. But when it comes to asking (and not forcing) someone to do you a favor for free that takes no more than 30 seconds, no one seems to have 30 seconds of their free time. Dont get me wrong, some of my friends did politely rate it and left a review, even the people who i barely knew left a review and rated it, but the people with whom I was closer by, didnt.

---

In the beginning i used to not care about this at all. Then i started falling into depression because of it. I fell then into deep depression. Then i sunk so deep that i couldn't feel any emotions anymore so i laughed as an anti depressive mechanism whenever something depressing happened. Now i cant even laugh because i have no more energy. Now i actually leave man tears

---

The only thing more valuable than people, any materialistic thing, animals, coding and even money - is time....

----

why do you waste my time

if i ask you to do something that takes 30 seconds and you dont want to do it

why cant you just say no

why do you drag me

why do you say you're going to do it when you know you wont do it

what do you gain by unnecessarily lying to someone for such a small thing?

to someone who has been a good person to you?

do you feel superior?

is your ego bigger?

----

This experience has taught me that not even a human from the same blood can be trusted.

All of your are fucked up in the head in your own style and i am guilty of it too, all of us are.

But i have never seen the human evolution went from simplicity to overengineered complexitory bULLSHit where you have to lie to someone and waste hours, days, weeks, months and sometimes years of his time just because you dont want to say a 2 letter word, no.

But when that person becomes more successful than you and achieves higher status, Theen you have those 30 seconds of free time. All of you are fucking cynics. and i am so much overly disgusted by all of this fucking bullshit....

-----

This experience has proven to me to simply focus on investing into myself and learn and improve myself and no one else. To not even bother asking even for a small kind of help, a feedback from my work because people don't have 30 seconds of their free time. That is all.

For the first time that I can remember I see ordinary people everywhere are unhappy with windows. In XP through win8 days I'd see people complaining about one crash here or there, but most of the times you had to be more experienced to notice why windows sucks.

Now, this week I already heard three complaints of people wanting to back to windows 7.

And I feel so happy... I feel waves of joy growing in me, as I burst in a sarcastic, obscure laughter.

Why do?

Because somewhere deep inside I hate windows.

Not becausebthe great amounts of frustration I used to have with it. But because it's so crazy I don't even consider it an OS, but rather a patchwork.

Microsoft's code base must be so fucked up they don't even know what to it with anymore.

That's my idea at least.

Buy it's good to see ordinary people are getting fed up of windows. This might be a way one of my dreams will come true, the day which Microsoft will not be able to maintain Windows anymore, and I think it's not more than ten years until we reach this day.

As a final result, if one day windows really gets to die, I want to be present, but not unnarmed, so I can shoot it at least 15 times, just to make sure this piece of crap is already dead.

Bye

I feel fucked, I feel fucked right up in the ass.

Remember that app I had to do to get the job? I found out the other candidates weren't even able to install Android Studio and that their deadline was postponed. And that they weren't able to complete the app.

I did everything with a really good design, solid programming, even added animations and made it so the recyclerview loads 15 items at a time while you scroll down smoothly. I. DID. EVERYTHING IN ONE DAY. I missed a good night of sleep.

I didn't get the job. They gave it to a fucker that was a web developer. I saw his app. It was really crappy (I'm not being petty or malicious, it was really bad from a dev point of view and a user point of view).

I feel. Disappointed. in this unfair world. And honestly I feel disappointed to the point that I don't even know if I should be a developer anymore. I feel betrayed by the hopes and the good feeling I got from the oportunity.

A (work-)project i spent a year on will finally be released soon. That's the perfect opportunity to vent out all the rage i built up during dealing with what is the javascript version of a zodiac letter.

Everything went wrong with the beginning. 3 people were assigned to rewrite an old flash-application. Me, A and B. B suggested a javascript framework, even though me and A never worked with more than jquery. In the end we chose react/redux with rest on the server, a classic.

After some time i got the hang of time, around that time B left and a new guy, C, was hired soon after that. He didn't know about react/redux either. The perfect start off to a burning pile of smelly code.

Today this burning pile turned into a wasteland of code quality, a house of cards with a storm approaching, a rocket with leaks ready to launch, you get the idea.

We got 2 dozen files with 200-500 loc, each in the same directory and each with the same 2 word prefix which makes finding the right one a nightmare on its on. We have an i18n-library used only for ~10 textfields, copy-pasted code you never know if it's used or not, fetch-calls with no error-handling, and many other code smells that turn this fire into a garbage fire. An eternal fire. 3 months ago i reduced the linter-warnings on this project to 1, now i can't keep count anymore.

We use the reactabular-module which gives us headaches because IT DOESN'T DO WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO DO AND WE CANT USE IT WELL EITHER. All because the client cant be bothered to have the table header scroll along with the body. We have methods which do two things because passing another callback somehow crashed in the browser. And the only thing about indentation is that it exists. Copy pasting from websites, other files and indentation wars give the files the unique look that make you wonder if some of the devs hides his whitespace code in the files.

All of this is the result of missing time, results over quality and the worst approach of all, used by A: if A wants an ui-component similar to an existing one, he copies the original and edits he copy until it does what he wants. A knows about classes, modules, components, etc. Still, he can't bring himself to spend his time on creating superclasses... his approach gives results much faster

Things got worse when A tried redux, luckily A prefers the components local state. WHICH IS ANOTHER PROBLEM. He doesn't understand redux and loads all of the data directly from the server and puts it into the local state. The point of redux is that you don't have to do this. But there are only 1 or 2 examples of how this practice hurt us yet, so i'm gonna have to let this slide. IF HE AT LEAST WOULD UPDATE THE DATA PROPERLY. Changes are just sent to the server and then all of the data is re-fetched. I programmed the rest-endpoints to return the updated objects for a very reason. But no, fuck me.

I've heard A decided (A is the teamleader) to use less redux on the next project and use a dedicated rest-endpoints for every little comoutation you COULD DO WITH REDUX INSTEAD. My will is broken and just don't want to work with this anymore.

There are still various subpages that cant f5 because the components cant handle an empty redux state in the beginning, but to be honest i don't care anymore. Lets hope the client will never find out, along with the "on error nothing happens"-bugs. The product should've been shipped last week, but thanks to mandatory bugfixes the release was postponed to next week. Then the next project starts...

Please give me some tips to keep up code quality over time, i cant take this once more.
I'm also aware that i could've done more, talking A and C about code style, prettifying the code, etc. Etc. But i was busy putting out my out fires, i couldn't kill much of the other fires which in the end became a burning building (a perfect metaphor for this software)

So, I got a new job opportunity at another company, one thing we agreed is that I would need one month to give the notice, and leave the project I was working on with the company I currently work on. Today, after 25 days, they said "the project is not available anymore, we can't hire you", I already give the current company the notice. Making all the wishes possible to keep the current project I work on.

This is life telling me, don't change from what you know to the unknown, even with good positive reviews

I am so mad, I have no words for how fucking much I hate ever having to work or pass work to other incompetent developers or teams, what a fucking waste of time and resources.

After handing off the frontend - for the client to find some team, that would do it in the short time and budget he needs (multiple developers, more fast, much good), he found a team that seemed to be alright for the job and seemed alright to me too, now maybe a month or two later, the client contacts me, that they fucked something up and if I could talk to them.

The email I then received from them seriously made me speechles, mad and sad, all at same time, I spent multiple upon multiple hours, getting a very good readable documentation up (markdown with TOC, properly rendered headers, bulletpoints, all that shit), with all files, all services used, all credentials, even converted all ssh keys into putty ppk format, in case the developers are using windows and are too dumb to do it themselves, nginx configs, it had seriously everything, even too much to list.

They somehow managed to fuck up the entire server, while attempting to "add ssh keys themselves", EVEN FUCKING THOUGH I have included all the keys they need, all the hosting credentials, everything, yet they decided to fuck with shit themselves and completely annihilate the server in the process (HOW?!), so not even the webserver works anymore.

I am fucking speechless, I made it so fucking easy to gather all info and files they need, all properly put into well named folders, along the documentation in an archive and they somehow managed to nuke the fucking server, while attempting to add ssh keys?!

If you don't know how to config a server, then don't fucking touch it and just use everything, that got served to you on a fucking silver platter.

---

I'll just instantly answer the most annoying comment, that somebody could come up with: "why didn't you do it yourself?"

Because in a perfect world, a fully managed team, can do much more than a single developer can, especially in the same timeframe and from what I heard of said client, atleast they did something in terms of developing the system. (which surprises me, considering it's the same people that nuked a server, while trying to add ssh keys)

developer makes a "missed-a-semicolon"-kind of mistake that brings your non-production infrastructure down.

manager goes crazy. rallies the whole team into a meeting to find "whom to hold accountable for this stupid mistake" ( read : whom should I blame? ).

spend 1-hour to investigate the problem. send out another developer to fix the problem.

... continue digging ...
( with every step in the software development lifecycle handbook; the only step missing was to pull the handbook itself out )

finds that the developer followed the development process well ( no hoops jumped ).
the error was missed during the code review because the reviewer didn't actually "review" the code, but reported that they had "reviewed and merged" the code

get asked why we're all spending time trying to fix a problem that occurred in a non-production environment. apparently, now it is about figuring out the root cause so that it doesn't happen in production.

we're ALL now staring at the SAME pull request. now the manager is suddenly more mad because the developer used brackets to indicate the pseudo-path where the change occurred.
"WHY WOULD YOU WASTE 30-SECONDS PUTTING ALL THOSE BRACES? YOU'RE ALREADY ON A BRANCH!"

PS : the reason I didn't quote any of the manager's words until the end was because they were screaming all along, so, I'd have to type in ALL CAPS-case. I'm a CAPS-case-hater by-default ( except for the singular use of "I" ( eye; indicating myself ) )

WTF? I mean, walk your temper off first ( I don't mean literally, right now; for now, consider it a figure of speech. I wish I could ask you to do it literally; but no, I'm not that much of a sadist just yet ). Then come back and decide what you actually want to be pissed about. Then think more; about whether you want to kill everyone else's productivity by rallying the entire team ( OK, I'm exaggerating, it's a small team of 4 people; excluding the manager ) to look at an issue that happened in a non-production environment.
At the end of the week, you're still going to come back and say we're behind schedule because we didn't get any work done.
Well, here's 4 hours of our time consumed away by you.

This manager also has a habit of saying, "getting on X's case". Even if it is a discussion ( and not a debate ). What is that supposed to mean? Did X commit such a grave crime that they need to be condemned to hell?

I miss my old organization where there was a strict no-blame policy. Their strategy was, "OK, we have an issue, let's fix it and move on."
I've gotten involved ( not caused it ) in even bigger issues ( like an almost-data-breach ) and nobody ever pointed a finger at another person.
Even though we all knew who caused the issue. Some even went beyond and defended the person. Like, "Them. No, that's not possible. They won't do such dumb mistakes. They're very thorough with their work."
No one even talked about the person behind their back either ( at least I wasn't involved in any such conversation ). Even later, after the whole issue had settled down. I don't think people brought it up later either ( though it was kind of a hush-hush need-to-know event )

Now I realize the other unsaid-advantage of the no-blame policy. You don't lose 4 hours of your so-called "quarantine productivity". We're already short on productivity. Please don't add anymore. 🙏

When I was in 11th class, my school got a new setup for the school PCs. Instead of just resetting them every time they are shut down (to a state in which it contained a virus, great) and having shared files on a network drive (where everyone could delete anything), they used iServ. Apparently many schools started using that around that time, I heard many bad things about it, not only from my school.
Since school is sh*t and I had nothing better to do in computer class (they never taught us anything new anyway), I experimented with it. My main target was the storage limit. Logins on the school PCs were made with domain accounts, which also logged you in with the iServ account, then the user folder was synchronised with the iServ server. The storage limit there was given as 200MB or something of that order. To have some dummy files, I downloaded every program from portableapps.com, that was an easy way to get a lot of data without much manual effort. Then I copied that folder, which was located on the desktop, and pasted it onto the desktop. Then I took all of that and duplicated it again. And again and again and again... I watched the amount increate, 170MB, 180, 190, 200, I got a mail saying that my storage is full, 210, 220, 230, ... It just kept filling up with absolutely zero consequences.
At some point I started using the web interface to copy the files, which had even more interesting side effects: Apparently, while the server was copying huge amounts of files to itself, nobody in the entire iServ system could log in, neither on the web interface, nor on the PCs. But I didn't notice that at first, I thought just my account was busy and of course I didn't expect it to be this badly programmed that a single copy operation could lock the entire system. I was told later, but at that point the headmaster had already called in someone from the actual police, because they thought I had hacked into whatever. He basically said "don't do again pls" and left again. In the meantime, a teacher had told me to delete the files until a certain date, but he locked my account way earlier so that I couldn't even do it.
Btw, I now own a Minecraft account of which I can never change the security questions or reset the password, because the mail address doesn't exist anymore and I have no more contact to the person who gave it to me. I got that account as a price because I made the best program in a project week about Java, which greatly showed how much the computer classes helped the students learn programming: Of the ~20 students, only one other person actually had a program at the end of the challenge and it was something like hello world. I had translated a TI Basic program for approximating fractions from decimal numbers to Java.
The big irony about sending the police to me as the 1337_h4x0r: A classmate actually tried to hack into the server. He even managed to make it send a mail from someone else's account, as far as I know. And he found a way to put a file into any account, which he shortly considered to use to put a shutdown command into autostart. But of course, I must be the great hacker.

Hi everyone, long time no see. Hope you're all doing fine! 💙

Here's an actual rant: I don't know if I chose the right university course, anymore.
I chose "Informatics", but there are so many subjects that aren't even related to Informatics, and still I have to do them because that's how it is. I just wanna do programming, because I like the creative aspect of it.
I'm getting sick of this to be honest... I'm at my second year, now, and I feel like maybe... I should've just studied programming on my own, and seek a job without going through university.
Though, that being said, I may just be temporarily having a bad time. I don't know, ok?

It seemed I did okay, in my first year, I completed 4 exams out of 7, but now I don't know anymore.
The exams for this semester's subjects are coming up in a couple months, and I haven't exactly learned much, y'know...? I couldn't follow most of what the professors said in the lessons, for whatever reason (some professors talk too quietly, some don't explain well, etc.).

What was your experience with university, if you ever went there? Did you find it helpful, or was it a waste of your time?

Thank you for reading. I hope my next post will be more joyful, sorry for being like this. Love you all! 💙

GMT/UTC
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ACST
CST
PST
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Man Fuck time zones, I don't even know where I belong anymore while keeping track of all of them at once.
Fuck You In The Ass Time Zone

ok, well, I have a list of worst interview experiences. here is one. This was my very first job interview.

[Things differ with places, but where I live, we give a lot of respect to teachers, interviewers etc]

It was my turn for the interview and I forgot to knock the door. The interviewer didn't like that. But I guess he ignored.

I also forgot to ask to get in. So, instead of pointing out my mistake, he taunted me. When I was already in, in front of him, he looked at me and said "Yh, come in!" as in, you forgot to ask that. But I was already more then, just in.

I felt sorry, quietly sat down on the chair. when I was well settled on my chair, he looked at me and said "Yh! sit down please!". Again reminding me I forgot to ask him to sit down.

Should I have apologized atleast? I forgot to do so! So he reminded me again, "Oh that's okay! don't say sorry."

It was enough embarrassing for me already when I hadn't even utter a word. I don't give a damn about interviews anymore, but well, that was my first one! You must know that feel.

Well, he was quite happy with the rest of the interview, so at the end of it he told me "it's okay it usually happens initially. You'll get used to it pretty soon." I ignored that later but could never forget how it all started. 😂🎃

I don't know what to chose.

The fact that for three months, I had to design a 16-page catalog, when I have no experience and my job is web development;

The fact that I have to do SEO for the site, but that means for my boss that for a one-page long text, we have to find at least 60 (sixty! ) times the occurrences of the keywords;

The fact that when I finally have something interesting to do, the boss finds that it doesn't go fast enough and decide to drop the project even if making a whole new dynamic stock system with the db we have is something hard and long to do;

The fact that when I come to work five minutes late, my boss is at the verge on screaming on me, even if I come ten minutes early every other day;

The fact that when I'm coding, I need concentration, I don't need the boss to give me the phone to answer customers, stop everything I am doing and explain them what products we are selling;

The fact that I am paid the minimum wage for a trainee, and when there's no coffee anymore, we have to buy some ourselves because "you drink way too much coffee, you understand" (three a day, sorry for wanting to stay awake);

The fact that I have asked for one year how many days of vacation I still had, and the only answer they gave to me yet was: "Oh, we have to ask the accountant". I still don't know how many days I have left;

The fact that the site is made only by trainees since the beginning, so circa 2008, and the code is horrible but "it works, so don't touch it". The admin part is in CodeIgniter, the front in laravel 4.2, there are a lot of useless code but we can't touch it because the boss doesn't think it is worth the time.

I almost made a burn-out last year, my doc saw my state right before and made me stop for a week. I still have to work there 'till end of august, then I will have my diploma and find another company to work with. Now, I check everyday on my calendar.

So recently I installed Windows 7 on my thiccpad to get Hyperdimension Neptunia to run (yes 50GB wasted just to run a game)... And boy did I love the experience.

ThinkPads are business hardware, remember that. And it's been booting Debian rock solid since.. pretty much forever. There are no hardware issues here. Just saying.

With that out of the way I flashed Windows 7 Ultimate on a USB stick and attempted to boot it... Oh yay, first hurdle to overcome. It can't boot in UEFI mode. Move on Debian, you too shall boot in BIOS mode now! But okay, whatever right. So I set it to BIOS mode and shuffled Debian's partitions around a bit to be left with 3 partitions where Windows could stick in one more.

Installed, it asks for activation. Now my ThinkPad comes with a Windows 7 Pro license key, so fuck it let's just use that and Windows will be able to disable the features that are only available for Ultimate users, right? How convenient would that be, to have one ISO for all the half a dozen editions that each Windows release has? And have the system just disable (or since we're in the installer anyway, not install them in the first place) features depending on what key you used? Haha no, this is Microsoft! Developers developers developers DEVELOPERS!!! Oh and Zune, if anyone remembers that clusterfuck. Crackhead Microsoft.

But okay whatever, no activation then and I'll just fetch Windows Loader from my webserver afterwards to keygen my way through. Too bad you didn't accept that key Microsoft! Wouldn't that have been nice.

So finally booted into the installed system now, and behold finally we find something nice! Apparently Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate offer a native NFS driver. That's awesome! That way I don't have to adjust my file server at all. Just some fuckery with registry keys to get the UID and GID correct, but I'll forgive it for that. It's not exactly "native" to Windows after all. The fact that it even has a built-in driver for it is something I found pretty neat already.

Fast-forward a few hours and it's time to Re Boot.. drivers from Lenovo that required reboots and whatnot. Fire the system back up, and low and behold the network drive doesn't mount anymore. I've read that this is apparently due to Windows (not always but often) mounting the network drive before the network comes up. Absolutely brilliant! Move out shitstaind, have you seen this beauty of an init Mr. Poet?

But fuck it we can mount that manually after every single boot.. you know, convenient like that. C O P E.

With it now manually mounted, let's watch a movie! I've recently seen Pyro's review on The Platform and I absolutely loved it. The movie itself is quite good too. Open the directory on my file server and.. oh. Windows.. you just put db.thumb on it and db.thumb:encryptable. I shit you not, with the colon and everything. I thought that file names couldn't contain colons Windows! I thought that was illegal in NTFS. Why you doing this in NFS mate? And "encryptable", am I already infected with ransomware??? If it wasn't for the fact that that could also be disabled with something as easy as a registry key, I would've thought I contracted ransomware!

Oh and sound to go with that video, let's pair up some Bluetooth headphones with that Bluetooth driver I installed earlier! Except.. haha nope. Apparently you don't get that either.

Right so let's just navigate the system in its Aero glory... Gonna need to flick the mouse for that. Except it's excruciatingly slow, even the fastest speed is slower than what I'm used to on Linux.. and it's jerky as hell (Linux doesn't have any of that at higher speed). But hey it can compensate for that! Except that slows down the mouse even more. And occasionally the mouse driver gets fucked up too. Wanna scroll on Telegram messages in a chat where you're admin? Well fuck you mate, let me select all these messages for you and auto scroll at supersonic speeds! And God forbid that you press delete with that admin access of yours. Oh maybe I'll do it for you, helpful OS I am!

And the most saddening part of it all? I'd argue that Windows 7 is the best operating system that Microsoft ever released. Yeah. That's the best they could come up with. But at least it plays le games!

A /thread.

I have to say something important. As the story progresses, the rage will keep fueling up and get more spicy. You should also feel your blood boil more. If not, that's because you're happy to be a slave.

This is a clusterfuck story. I'll come back and forth to some paragraphs to talk about more details and why everything, INCLUDING OUR DEVELOPER JOBS ARE A SCAM. we're getting USED as SLAVES because it's standardized AS NORMAL. IT IS EVERYTHING *BUT* NORMAL.

START:

As im watching the 2022 world cup i noticed something that has enraged me as a software engineer.

The camera has pointed to the crowd where there were old football players such as Rondinho, Kaka, old (fat) Ronaldo and other assholes i dont give a shit about.

These men are old (old for football) and therefore they dont play sports anymore.

These men don't do SHIT in their lives. They have retired at like 39 years old with MULTI MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN THEIR BANK ACCOUNT.

And thats not all. despite of them not doing anything in life anymore, THEY ARE STILL EARNING MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS PER MONTH. FOR WHAT?????

While i as a backend software engineer get used as a slave to do extreme and hard as SHIT jobs for slave salary.

500-600$ MAX PER MONTH is for junior BACKEND engineers! By the law of my country software businesses are not allowed to pay less than $500 for IT jobs. If thats for backend, imagine how much lower is for frontend? I'll tell you cause i used to be a frontend dev in 2016: $200-400 PER MONTH IS FOR FRONTEND DEVELOPERS.

A BACKEND SOFTWARE ENGINEER with at least 7-9 years of professional experience, is allowed to have $1000-2000 PER MONTH

In my country, if you want to have a salary of MORE THAN $3000/Month as SOFTWARE ENGINEER, you have to have a minimum of Master's Degree and in some cases a required PhD!!!!!!

Are you fucking kidding me?

Also. (Btw i have a BSc comp. sci. Degree from a valuable university) I have taken a SHIT ton of interviews. NOT ONE OF THEM HAVE ASKED ME IF I HAVE A DEGREE. NO ONE. All HRs and lead Devs have asked me about myself, what i want to learn and about my past dev experience, projects i worked on etc so they can approximate my knowledge complexity.

EVEN TOPTAL! Their HR NEVER asked me about my fycking degree because no one gives a SHIT about your fucking degree. Do you know how can you tell if someone has a degree? THEY'LL FUCKING TELL YOU THEY HAVE A DEGREE! LMAO! It was all a Fucking scam designed by the Matrix to enslave you and mentally break you. Besides wasting your Fucking time.

This means that companies put degree requirement in job post just to follow formal procedures, but in reality NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT IT. NOOBOODYYY.

ALSO: I GRADUATED AND I STILL DID NOT RECEIVE MY DEGREE PAPER BECAUSE THEY NEED AT LEAST 6 MONTHS TO MAKE IT. SOME PEOPLE EVEN WAITED 2 YEARS. A FRIEND OF MINE WHO GRADUATED IN FEBRUARY 2022, STILL DIDNT RECEIVE HIS DEGREE TODAY IN DECEMBER 2022. ALL THEY CAN DO IS PRINT YOU A PAPER TO CONFIRM THAT I DO HAVE A DEGREE AS PROOF TO COMPANIES WHO HIRE ME. WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY MAKING FOR SO LONG, DIAMONDS???

are you fucking kidding me? You fucking bitch. The sole paper i can use to wipe my asshole with that they call a DEGREE, at the end I CANT EVEN HAVE IT???

Fuck You.

This system that values how much BULLSHIT you can memorize for short term, is called "EDUCATION", NOT "MEMORIZATION" System.

Think about it. Don't believe be? Are you one of those nerds with A+ grades who loves school and defends this education system? Here I'll fuck you with a single question: if i gave you a task to solve from linear algebra, or math analysis, probabilistics and statistics, physics, or theory, or a task to write ASM code, would you know how to do it? No you won't. Because you "learned" that months or years ago. You don't know shit. CHECK MATE. You can answer those questions by googling. Even the most experienced software engineers still use google. ALL of friends with A+ grades always answered "i dont know" or "i dont remember". HOW IF YOU PASSED IT WITH A+ 6 DAYS AGO? If so, WHY THE FUCK ARE WE WASTING YEARS OF AN ALREADY SHORT HUMAN LIFE TO TEMPORARILY MEMORIZE GARBAGE? WHY DONT WE LEARN THAT PROCESS THROUGH WORKING ON PRACTICAL PROJECTS??? WOULDNT YOU AGREE THATS A BETTER SOLUTION, YOU MOTHERFUCKER BITCH ASS SLAVE SUCKA???

Im can't even afford to buy my First fuckinf Car with this slave salary. Inflation is up so much that 1 bag of BASIC groceries from Walmart costs $100. IF BASIC GROCERIES ARE $100, HOW DO I LIVE WITH $500-600/MONTH IF I HAVE OTHER EXPENSES?

Now, back to slavery. Here's what i learned.

1800s: slaves are directly forced to work in exchange for food to survive.

2000s: slaves are indirectly forced to work in exchange for money as a MIDDLEMAN that can be used to buy food to survive.

????

This means: slavery has not gone anywhere. Slavery has just evolved. And you're fine with it.

Will post part 2 later.

GWT.
Let me explain:
Tl;dr : someone fucked up, I took shit, it was a gwt project. In a sense I don't hate GWT because of the framework itself but because how I was introduced and forced to "work" with it.

Context:
Was working as a paid intern at a small company there were 3 devs 2 interns and one senior employee that only worked from home handling the shit ton of legacy VB6 code he wrote over several year and a boss with no technical knowledge. (Other unimportant people as well)
I was working with their DBA (cool dude) because I was writing statistic and report generating software.

Story:
The other intern was tasked of doing a gwt app that was supposed to use a input file.
Rather than asking the user to upload it with a file picker (I guess they exist in gwt I didn't got to dig in the framework) he was trying to load the file with a http request directed at the same host the app was running on.
It did not work.
Then his contract was other and the app was left in an unfinished state.
The boss then tried to have the app deployed, the remaining dev dodged the bullet invoking some bullshit because he was clearly incapable of doing it.
So it fell on me, couldn't deploy the app because it was not even close to working.
Tried to fix things and make it work.
Turns out he thought it would take me 3h to deploy when I clearly explained that the other guy didn't finish the app.
Boss got mad, threatened to ruin my studies and my future career.
Couldn't because my uni had my back.
Didn't want to see me anymore.
Couldn't break my contract.
Told me to work from home for the end of my internship.
I got 3 weeks early vacation and got paid, fuck him, fuck GWT, fuck his company.
Still got well marked for the internship as my supervisor was the DBA who was happy with my work.

Morality:
Don't let your intern unsupervised, don't let your main dev work from home when you don't know shit, don't piss me off and send me work from home.

I have been working on this software for 3 years now. The code base was a working prototype made by my boss before I came, not more, not less. Php + Angular. Have been refactoring a lot, backend is backed with hundreds of tests now, frontend still lacks a lot. Still a lot of programm structures are still the same weird ones my boss once created in a rush between two meetings while learning Angular to get the prototype finished. Now it's used in production which makes hard to refactor, because we have to maintain backwards compatibility. Neither the parts I added or refactored completely are satisfying, because they are built on this structures, because i never got any feedback for anything I decided and because I changed my own paradigms over time.

So I am all alone on this project. All genuinly new projects are assigned to the new team members (i was the first one, no we are five plus my boss) because I wont have time, have to maintain the old one. So I never can do something new which is quite frustrating.

I did a little side tool, the only thing I invented and did completely by myself in our repertoire - and now some stakeholder shows big interest onto this. Instead of giving me the task to make a real project from this my boss wants to give it to them to develop it. Why? Because I need more time for the main application.

Also the more the software is used the more bug tickets and feature requests come. I was crying for help for months but the others had appareantly more important stuff to do.

This might be true to some extend. Yesterday we had some kind of crisis meeting and my boss wanted again to assing pur junior to help me, who has a shit load of other things to do and is a student. I insisted that this would not be enough, and one of the fulltime devs has to get involved because the thing is our core application and I am only part time btw. So my boss said we wont decide today but one of them should do it. They should have some time to figure out who which is understandable but it's not that I didn't keep saying this for months. Now they are all like whimp whimp when I have to do php i will quit. The new projects are all typescript, with node backend if any. But alas, one of them even said yesterday he doesn't want to do js anymore. Okay... but... this is our tech stack then get another job allready?

And I should do the same probably. But then again I feel very sorry for my boss who helped me in very dark times of corona and more. If both of us leave, the project he worked on for decade (including convincing poeole, collect money..) might be suddenly at it's end while he is so exited about it's access today...

I also get insecure if it's really that they hate php so much or that they don't want to work with me personally because maybe I am a bad team Player or what?

I experienced the same at my old workplace, got left alone with big parts of the project because they didn't want to do php and js in this case and it ended up five devs doing the python backend and me doing the frontend and the php cms part all alone. Then I quit and now everything seems to happen again.

And then again I think I am only fucked up so hard by this stuff because I do not really like being a developer at all. I only do it for the money and because I am good at it (at least i think so. Nobody ever bothers to ever to read my code and give me feedback, because you know, php and js). So I guess I would hate any other job in the field maybe likewise?

This job *is* convinient, salary, office
position, flexibility could not be better. At the end of the day it's not that stressfull. And i don't have any second of freetime (due to family) or energy i could offer a new and more demanding employer, can't work over time or even take a fulltime position, can't home office, can't earn less, can't travel very long to the office and especially can't go back to school to learn something completely new. Some of these constraints are softwe then other naturally but still my posibilities at the Moment are very limited. That might change in about five years if the family situation changed. So it would most likely be reasonable to stay until then at my current job? And bear being alone with this app, don't getting involved on any new project, don't learn anything new, don't invent anything.

There was one potential way out, they considered offering me PHD position to the upcoming ml part of the project... But I learned that I would attend to a bunch of classes at university first, which i would like to, but I don't think i have the time.

I feel trapped somehow. I also feel very lonely in the Office because those fucktards keep saying in home office.

Man, I don't want to go to work today.

Windows 10 updates. I see many posts about singular events that people have experienced, so I thought I'd try to sum up all the problems I have had.

Home computer, always on:
Is scheduled to update during 'inactive hours' but the options for that window are too narrow. So almost daily the 'required updates' overlay pops up WHILE I'M DOING STUFF and I have to say 'Ok' then close the update settings window that opens automatically so I can get on with what I'm doing.
Now, if I'm just browsing, writing or something like that, it's just really annoying.
But when I'm gaming and it causes the game to freeze up (because, you know, ubisoft and ea and such) and I lose my progress, that pisses me off.
When I'm hosting movie night with my friends and the movie gets interrupted, that pisses me off.
Even when I'm just trying to relax with a good show after a hard day and THAT gets interrupted, it really bugs me.
And then when there's a major update and I don't want to schedule it right away, they decide that I probably meant 'do it in an hour'. And then a message pops up every hour with only the option to postpone one more hour. What happened to all the options for scheduling it for several days in the future? Nope! Can't decide? We'll do it RIGHT NOW, NO TAKEBACKS, THAT'S FINAL!
I cannot fathom that they can't find a way to ACTUALLY do the 'inactive hours' thing.

And then there's the work computer. For the last two years, that has been a laptop that I shut down and take home every day. The common problem with that is that it always tells me it has to update when I want to shut down for the day because I have to go home. I can't leave the pc turned on in my bag, it would overheat. So since there is no option to shut down without updating anymore, I have had to rely on the fact that using the power button to shut down circumvents the update.
And if I don't remember to update at home, it's then going to waste my time the next morning at work.
Just give me the option to delay for a bit, then remind me NON-INTRUSIVELY so I can do it when I have the time.
And then there was the update that prevented the machine from booting and I had to waste TWO working days reinstalling EVERYTHING! And we were about 6-7 people hit by that update in our organization.

So yeah. Windows updates are a real fucking problem. Yes, I wan't critical fixes for security problems and other serious software flaws.
But the current policy of 'fuck you, we're doing this' is just not fucking acceptable in any way.

Moral of the story: sometimes you've got to take a hit to be better off in the end.

A client asked me to design flyers for him, at first I was hesitant since this would be a stand alone design task instead of one incorporated with development.

He kept asking since he liked what I designed for my other clients (logos, etc..) So I finally said yes and we agreed to a final preview before he would pay me. I had asked him for color schemes, certain pictures, info, etc. but he told me it was completely up to me.

I finished the design, sent him the preview and he told me it was shit compared to my other work and that he didn't want it anymore 😅. I used to get mad as fuck every time this happened but now I don't even bother .

I know many people are going to say "You should have had him sign a contract, bla bla". I know, I know, but you can't let people sign a contract for every small thing, it completely depend on the situation and I prefer to know which of my lesser known clients are assholes so I can quit accepting tasks from them. This saves me much more time in the end.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from rant import depression as fuck
from WhiskeyBottle import *
import time

while bottle.contents > 0.0 and time.datetime():
fuck.rant()

Yeah ok, this will be one of a few, but I'll try to keep it short. Damn, whiskey is not helping. Nor various smokables.

So yeah, have you ever had a dream? I consider myself a gamer the whole life, always loved creative worlds, dynamics, mechanics, plots, stuff you could and couldn't do. To the point I promised myself I'd make a game - NAH - I'll be making games in the future. You know, good games, that you come back to. Like Doom. Or those porn games.

Never went to Uni or nothing. Was born in a poor European country with Internet more broken than my soul right now. Years later, after acquiring some good hardware, learning a bunch of languages, Unity, Unreal Engine 4 and experimenting for about 10 years now with small scripts, apps and mini-games I've come to this realization.

I only made one "full" "game" in my life, and that was when I was like 16 in Klik & Play (early Game Maker). And it was shit. It was horrible, horrible shit. It literally makes you want to cry when you play it. It's 16-bit brain cancer. And it's the best I've ever published.

Now I've been through countless prototypes, none of which I've developed any further. I had ideas, plans, even made some more advanced roadmaps and dev cycles. Estimated costs, time, mechanics, gameplay hooks.

I never finish anything.

I get bored. Frustrated sometimes. There's always an improvement, something that "if I'd finish that it would be it! Screw this thing I was working on now, THAT will be worth sacrificing it." It's tiresome. I'm getting old.

And honestly, I don't know how people do it anymore. Trying to compromise those side-projects (they take all my free time which is not much) and work is just... draining. I'm losing hope. Maybe I shouldn't be allowed into the gamedev world after all. Maybe I'll just pump half-assed pieces of crap everybody will hate.

Or worse, nobody will care.

My eyes hurt everytime our backend guy gives me a new REST API to implement in our app and always the formatting of the json is something like this. Like why can't you just fucking format it properly so I won't have to look at my code and feel disappointed for writing such ugly code. All because your lazy ass didn't care to understand the fundamentals of how json objects and arrays work !!! It's been a month since I've joined this company and I'm tired of explaining why we should use the status code for failure checking and not this stupid pass/fail status flag. I don't even remember how many times I've brought it up but everytime I get reasons like "Dude, you know what our server is never going to go down or fail so it doesn't even matter". And at that point I feel like I shouldn't even argue with him anymore.

I'm really not sure. When I was 7-8 years old, I liked to view source in IE, then I somehow managed to use Javascript in the browser. First only some dumb opening of windows. And I liked Batch, so I made some files for copying, backup and stuff.

Then I got to PHP during the years from some online tutorial about making dynamic websites. My website was more static than stone, but yeah, I did page loading with PHP! Awful experience anyway, because I had to install Xampp, get it work and other stuff. 11 years old or so. (and I used Xampp only as a fileserver between laptop and desktop later, because.. PHP4... just no.)

As 12 years old or so I experienced my first World of Warcraft (vanilla) on a custom server in an internet cafe and I thought it's a singleplayer game. When I found out that no, I googled how to make my own server (hated multiplayer back then and loved good games with huge storylines). Failed miserably with ManGOS, got something to work with ArcEMU. There I learned some C++ basic stuff, which I hoped would helped me to fix some bugs. When I opened the code I was like: "Suuure." and left it like that. I learned what a MySQL database is, broke it like four times when I forgot WHERE and still rather played with websites i.e. html, css, js and optionally php when I wanted to repair a webpage for the server. With a friend we managed to get the server work via Hamachi, was fun, the server died too soon. Then I got ManGOS to work, but there wasn't really any interest to make a server anymore, just singleplayer for the lore. (big warcraft fan, don't kick me :D )

I think it was when I was 13y.o. I went to Delphi/Pascal course, which I liked a lot from the beginning, even managed to use my code on old Knoppix via Lazarus(Pascal). At this age I really liked thoae Flash games which were still common to see everywhere. So I downloaded .swfs, opened and tried to understand it. Managed to pull some stuff from it and rewrite in Pascal. Nope, never again that crap.

About the same time I got to Flash files I discovered Java. It was kind of popular back then, so I thought let's give it a try. I liked Flash more. Seriously. I've never seen so much repetitiveness and stupid styling of a code. I had either IDE for compiling C++ or Pascal or notepad! You think I wanted my code kicked all over the place in multiple folders and files? No.

So back to Pascal. I made some apps for my old hobby, was quite satisfied with the result (quiz like app), but it still wasn't the thing. And I really thought I'd like to study CS.

I started to love PHP because of phpBB forums I worked on as 15 y.o. I guess. At the same time I think there was an optional subject at school, again with Pascal. I hated the subject, teacher spoke some kind of gibberish I didn't really understand back then at all and now I find it only as a really stupid explanation of loops and strings.

So I started to hate Pascal subject, but not really the lang itself. Still I wanted something simpler and more portable. Then I got to Python as hm, 17y.o. I think and at the same time to C++ with DevC++. That was time when I was still deciding which lang to choose as my main one (still playing with website, database and js).

Then I decided that learning language from some teacher in a class seriously pisses me off and I don't want to experience it again. I choose Python, but still made some little scripts in C++, which is funny, because Python was considered only as a scripting lang back then.

I haven't really find a cross-platform framework for C++, which would: a) be easy to install b) not require VisualStudio PayForMe 20xy c) have nice license if I managed to make something nice and distribute it. I found Unity3D though, so I played with Blender for models, Audacity for music and C# for code. Only beautiful memories with Unity. I still haven't thought I'm a programmer back then.

For Python however I found Kivy and I was playing with it on a phone for about a year. Still I haven't really know what to do back then, so I thought... I like math, numbers, coding, but I want to avoid studying physics. Economics here I go!

Now I'm in my third year at Uni, should be writing thesis, study hard and what I do? Code like never before, contribute, work on a 3D tutorial and play with Blender. Still I don't really think about myself as a programmer, rather hobby-coder.

So, to answer the question: how did I learn to program? Bashing to shit until it behaved like I desired i.e. try-fail learning. I wouldn't choose a different path.

What the absolute fuck is this!
Fucking bash needs to get its shit together with its fucking strings.
I don't fucking know why str1 + var2 = var2tr1
Like who designed this fucking bullshit!

I've spent the past 8 hours today counting all my ' and " and making sure everything is getting passed correctly.

And how do you even google this shit anyways!

And why the fuck is the official suggestion from the bash FAQ to load everything into an array and to call it with "${ARRAY[@]}"

WHO THE FUCK DECIDED THAT WAS READABLE!!

AUGH!!!

In case anyone was wondering. It didn't work anyways.

I think I'm done for today... I can't anymore...

for anyone wondering. This is bash getting executed by nodejs with execSync()
and those tokens are temporary and only exist on my dev machine. Sorry for getting your hopes up.

Alright sit down boys this is gonna be a good tale (also a long one).

I'm currently developing a wordpress site for a Client. Everythings works well enough, I had a few "wtf is this shit" moments. Now we decided to give him access to the wp site so that he can see and change (I know, I know don't judge me pls), so I set up tunneling with ngrok, but that PIECE OF SHIT WP DIDN'T WORK ANYMORE. You asking why? Oh I'm telling you why, wp uses ONLY absolute paths. Well fuck, I ain't gonna touch that piece of shit php code, so I installed a plugin and shit was working.
In short, after a few fucking HOURS that shit finally worked. Well that would be a great fucking end for our little tale right? Yeeeeaaah no, I shit you not, it gets even better!

After a few days my client gets back at me that he can't enter fucking wp-admin to work on the text an stuff (again pls don't judge me for granting him access to the backend of wp during development). So I checked it out and that piece of shit didn't work. If anyone would happen to know why, I would be grateful bc for the love of spagetti monster I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE!
So I said to myself well fuck this shit and put it on a webhoster. Uploaded all the files, and migrated the db. Sounds like it finally worked right? Well guess again buddy. So I needed to go to the database, updated values manually for wp to have the correct url and then still needed to force it to refresh every fucking link.

As it finally works now, this tale is also finished then and I really hope that part 2 is never ever comming!
Sorry for the (somewhat) long rant but this is some next generation bullshit.

After I received my laser eye surgery, I knew it would become painful after the effect of anesthesia would decrease so I got painkillers in advance.

It was nimesulide.

Even in 2008 ISDB raised a concern about the liver damage and asked for it to be withdrawn worldwide, but I didn't knew it.

So the terrible pain started and I took the pill. Just. One. Pill.

This all started in like fifteen minutes. Eye pain won't go away, but it didn't mattered anymore as I felt really terrible. I never experienced that kind of feeling before and I don't even know how to describe it. It felt like a terrible sensation inside my stomach mixed with an urge to vomit. "This is probably what a liver failure feels like. This is it, I'm going do die here", I remember thinking about as I collapsed.

This whole incident led to an investigation about why the doctors "forgot" to give me proper eye anesthesia drops. This got several doctors fired.

This all got me really interested in how different medications work. I started casually reading popular medical literature and when my depression came, I was prepared, as much as you can even get prepared to a mental disorder.

The thing that probably nearly killed me helped me not to lose my sanity later.

Over the summer I was recruited to be a supplement instructor for a data structures course. As a result of that I was asked (separately by the professor) to be a grader for the course. Because of pay limitations I've mostly been grading homework project assignments. In any case, it's a great job to get my foot into the department and get recognized.

Over the course of the semester I've had this one person, OSX, named after their operating system of choice, who has been giving me awkward submissions. On the first assignment they asked the professor for extra time for some reason or the other, and that's perfectly fine.

So I finally receive OSX's submission, and it's a .py file as per course of the course. So I pop up a terminal in the working directory and type "python OSX_hw1.py". Get some error spit out about the file not being the right encoding. I know that I can tell python to read it in a different encoding, so I open it up in a text editor. To my surprise it's totally not a text file, but rather a .zip file!

I've seen weirder things done before, so no big deal. I rename the file extension, and open it up to extract the files when I see that there's no python files. "Okay, what's goin on here OSX..." I think to myself.

Poking around in the files it appears to be some sort of meta-data. To what, I had no clue, but what I did find was picture files containing what appeared to be some auto-generated screenshots of incomplete code. Since I'm one to give people the benefit of doubt even when they've long exhausted other peoples', I thought that it must be some fluke, and emailed OSX along with the professor detailing my issue.

I got back a rather standard reply, one of which was so un-notable I could not remember it if my life depended on it. However, that also meant I didn't have to worry about that anymore. Which when you're juggling 50 bazillion things is quite a relief. Tragically, this relief was short lived with the introduction of assignment 2.

Assignment 2 comes around, and I get the same type of submission from OSX. At this time I also notice that all their submissions are *very* close to the due time of 11:59pm (which I don't care about as long as it's in before people start waking up the next morning). I email OSX and the professor again, and receive a similar response. I also get an email from OSX worried about points being deducted. I reply, "No issue. You know what's wrong. Go and submit the right file on $CentralGradingCenter. Just submit over your old assignment".

To my frustration OSX claimed to not know how to do this. I write up a quick response explaining the process, and email it. In response OSX then asks if I can show them if they comes to my supplemental lesson. I tell OSX that if they are the only person, sure, otherwise no because it would not be a fair use of time to the other students.

OSX ends up showing up before anyone else, so I guide them through the process. It's pretty easy, so I'm surprised that they were having issues. Another person then shows up, so I go through relevant material and ask them if they have any questions about recent material in class. That said, afterwards OSX was being somewhat awkward and pushy trying to shake my hand a lot to the point of making me uncomfortable and telling them that there's no reason to be so formal.

Despite that chat, I still did not see a resubmission of either of those two assignments, and assignment 3 began to show it's head. Obviously, this time, as one might expect after all those conversations, I get another broken submission in the same format. Finally pissed off, I document exactly how everything looks on my end, how the file fails to run, how it's actually a zip file, etc, all with screenshots. That then gets emailed to the professor and OSX.

In response, I get an email from OSX panicking asking me how to submit it right, etc, etc. However, they also removed the professor from the CC field. In response I state that I do not know how to use whatever editor they are using, and that they should refer to the documentation in order to get a proper runnable file. I also re-CC the professor, making sure OSX's email to me is included in my reply.

OSX then shows up for one of my lessons, and since no one had shown up yet, I reiterate through what I had sent in the email. OSX's response was astonished that they could ever screw up that bad, but also admits that they had yet to install python(!!!). Obviously, the next thing that comes from my mouth is asking OSX how they write their code. Their response was that they use a website that lets them run python code.

At this point I'm honestly baffled and explain that a lot of websites like those can have limitations which might make code run differently then it should (maybe it's a simple interpreter written on JavaScript, or maybe it is real python, but how are you supposed to do file I/O?) .

After that I finally get a submission for assignment 1!

Been working on a new project for the last couple of weeks. New client with a big name, probably lots of money for the company I work for, plus a nice bonus for myself.

But our technical referent....... Goddammit. PhD in computer science, and he probably. approved our project outline. 3 days in development, the basic features of the applications are there for him to see (yay. Agile.), and guess what? We need to change the user roles hierarchy we had agreed on. Oh, and that shouldn't be treated as extra development, it's obviously a bug! Also, these features he never talked about and never have been in the project? That's also a bug! That thing I couldn't start working on before yesterday because I was still waiting the specs from him? It should've been ready a week ago, it's a bug that it's not there! Also, he notes how he could've developes it within 40 minutes and offered to sens us the code to implement directly in our application, or he may even do so himself.... Ah, I forgot to say, he has no idea on what language we are developing the app. He said he didn't care many times so far.

But the best part? Yesterday he signales an outstanding bug: some data has been changed without anyone interacting. It was a bug! And it was costing them moneeeeey (on a dev server)! Ok, let's dig in, it may really be a bug this time, I did update the code and... Wait, what? Someone actually did update a new file? ...Oh my Anubis. HE did replace the file a few minutes before and tried to make it look like a bug! ..May as well double check. So, 15 minutes later I answer to his e-mail, saying that 4 files have been compromised by a user account with admin privileges (not mentioning I knee it was him)... And 3 minutes later he answered me. It was a message full of anger, saying (oh Lord) it was a bug! If a user can upload a new file, it's the application's fault for not blocking him (except, users ARE supposed to upload files, and admins have been requestes to be able to circumvent any kind of restriction)! Then he added how lucky I was, becausw "the issue resolved itself and the data was back, and we shouldn't waste any more yime.on thos". Let's check the logs again.... It'a true! HE UPLOADED THE ORIGINAL FILES BACK! He... He has no idea that logs do exist? A fucking PhD in computer science? He still believes no one knows it was him....... But... Why did he do that? It couldn't have been a mistake. Was he trying to troll me? Or... Or is he really that dense?

I was laughing my ass of there. But there's more! He actually phones my boss (who knew what had happened) to insult me! And to threaten not dwell on that issue anymore because "it's making them lose money". We were both speechless....

There's no way he's a PhD. Yet it's a legit piece of paper the one he has. Funny thing is, he actually manages to launch a couple of sort-of-nationally-popular webservices, and takes every opportunity to remember us how he built them from scratch and so he know what he's saying... But digging through google, you can easily find how he actually outsurced the development to Chinese companies while he "watched over their work" until he bought the code

Wait... Big ego, a decent amount of money... I'm starting to guess how he got his PhD. I also get why he's a "freelance consultant" and none of the place he worked for ever hired him again (couldn't even cover his own tracks)....

But I can't get his definition of "bug".
If it doesn't work as intended, it's a bug (ok)
If something he never communicated is not implemented, it's a bug (what.)
If development has been slowed because he failed to provide specs, it's a bug (uh?)
If he changes his own mind and wants to change a process, it's a bug it doesn't already work that way (ffs.)
If he doesn't understand or like something, it's a bug (i hopw he dies by sonic diarrhoea)

I'm just glad my boss isn't falling for him... If anything, we have enough info to accuse him of sabotage and delaying my work....

Ah, right. He also didn't get how to publish our application we needes access to the server he wantes us to deploy it on. Also, he doesn't understand why we have acces to the app's database and admin users created on the webapp don't. These are bugs (seriously his own words). Outstanding ones.

Just..... Ffs.

Also, sorry for the typos.

I turned down another women who was absolutely, 100% flirting with me, because, from what I can gather, she was trying to get out of a relationship with her current boyfriend, a military veteran.

I outright ignored her and then when that failed, I made our work relationship 100% about that, work.
Even though I'm friendly with everyone else.

I'm an absolute shit, aren't I? I feel genuinely bad.
I'm not sure if I did it out of a misplaced sense of honor for a dude who obviously has some ptsd, or because I don't feel like I'm able to connect with anyone anymore.

I feel like I'm alone in this world. Not, like, sexually or anything, but more like I don't want to burden anyone with the shit I'm going through. Like a man on a mission on a sinking ship, and it would be wrong to let anyone else on board.
Like a one-man shit-show, all singing, all dancing, driven to one end, with one purpose. And it'd be wrong to let anyone get attached, or invite anyone else in.

Fuck I got so many irons in the fire. I have an ARG in the works, a full game, a social platform that the code and marketing plan is laid out and I'm saving money for, two more games already planned, plus spending an in-ordinate amount of time with my father and sister and mother as they deal with the loss of my sister, plus volunteering to help the homeless, plus working, plus studying.

I barely sleep.

It's just me. I'm like a cruise missile heading to one destination, to some final destination, I just don't know what. And I don't let anyone in, because then they might see how fucking crazy I am, and how crazy my life is, and how crazy my goals are. Thats not a humblebrag. Thats more of a "wholly shit, I'm so in over my head, I'm fucking drowning" type thing. But I'm not giving up, I'm just going deeper.

And it feels like drowning but somehow I'm okay with it. Like I've passed the crux of loneliness, and settled for going for it all, alone, shooting out of orbit, and saying "fuck it all' to everything and everyone. They say "if you got everything you wanted, everything you wished for, you'd wish you hadn't, which is why god isn't a genie". And lately I've been thinking god doesn't exist, or doesn't care, because he's left it all up to me, and I've fucked it up good and proper, and am on my way to either nothing, or everything I've ever wanted.

Is this what happiness feels like? Or suicide?

I don't know. I mean I really don't. I don't want to die. I think I could stop existing and be okay with it. Having achieved at least a modicum of understanding the universe, at least accomplished something small but meaningful.
Or maybe I'm delusional, driven mad with the full comprehension of human floundering against a meandering existence.

I don't fucking know.

I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, so much, that even two weeks feels like a fucking eternity. I don't sleep anymore. When I do, I escape into my dreams, where I can fly, or float, and the people in my dreams tell me I'm living in the matrix and I believe them..in my dreams. Feel it even.

And when I wake up, the feeling persists. Leaves me in wonderland, for hours after waking.

And I have visions, of going homeless, like some buddha, all the time, and then I say "wake up J, you're fucking crazy! You want to go be some couch surfing homeless bum living off other's good graces? get the fuck outa here! While others suffer, schlep it at whatever job they work, day in day out, toil. In this economy? In this inflation? What a dishonest way of thinking. What a dishonest way of dreaming."

And yet I daydream. Because its the only escape there is from all the world has become.

And I bring joy to others, earnestly, vicariously, because its the closest joy I can feel, when I've become numb.

It is this quasi-permanent sense of alienation that permeates my whole world, a sort of invisible force field that separates me from others, even as I reach out to understand them, to comfort them, to smooth the corners off their world, so that they don't become like I have, something not entirely human, but...other.

Often when we meditate, long and hard enough,
at the center that emerges, at the center of ourselves, we find an abyss, a whole universe, devoid of anything, a perfect silence, mirroring back the cosmos, and other people. Observing, silent, irreducible, implacable.

Sometimes I feel like I don't exist. Sometimes I think others don't exist.

Very often I feel like nothing is real. And that I am playing some sort of game. Not like a video game per se, but that there is a bigger pattern, a hidden pattern to it all, just out of reach, and I'm reaching for it but understanding eludes me.

Not that the universe has made me for some special purpose, but merely that the universe observes me specifically, for no special purpose, other than that it can, whatever trivialities may impede or push forward my life.

As if the universe were bored.

Hi there fellow Devranters,
I am new here but my problem is pretty old. You see i stumbled into coding totally by accident. That was about 5 years ago. I have been learning ever since.
But the problem is that each day I just feel less and less of a programmer, more of a failure. I started with python, from sololearn to various ebooks.Then C++ and finally Ruby. But I still feeal weak.Despite the projects that I have worked on I still don't feel good enough. Most especially in Ruby.
I have a friend who is also into coding and coincidentally started about the same time as I did.The difference is that he learnt at university and I am self-taught.We used to talk a lot but we don't anymore,I feel too ashamed, an impostor even. I am scared he'll ask me something and I won't know anything about it.And I once taigjt him OOP. Right now I can't even code a hello world program without reading a whole ebook on python just to be confident.
We had dreams with my friend on a dozen or so projects that would have put us on the software dev map, but I keep avoiding him so much we have barely started any. I am afraid he'll find me too amateurish to work with.
I learn everyday to expand my knowledge,I have subscribed to a gazillion software related stuff on all social media platforms I happen to be in.But deep down I feel insufficient. I have been going through rants since the few hours I joined and it doesn't sound gibberish to me.Neither does other people's code when I go through it.But I am ashamed of mine I end up deleted after it runs successfully.
I just don't feel like a software developer, I don't even know what it takes to be one even. I learned 10 languages focused on 3, laughed at memes only devs get, used linux and loved it too but still I feel like an impostor. I used to be happy about all the things I taught myself, I onced dreamed of working at Google and later having my own startup back home.Now my friend and a couple of his friends have a small start-up and I feel ashamed of myself.
I don't feel like what I know is enough and learning only makes me feel worse, so bad I am scared of coding again now.Yet I just can't stop learning, I feel incomplete when I don't do anything dev related,but I don't even feel my speed is fast enough when I type on my keyboard.
😥😥

Hey! This is a followup to my last story.

TL;DR: I thinking of quitting my old job, got an offer at a startup, about the same pay, but much better working conditions.

First of all, the meeting with my lead. It was a performance report on her side to me, and I got 100 to 110% in performance in all points. My lead said "this team without you wouldn't be this team anymore" - which makes me feel a little bit bad for her if I decide to quit. She is a great team lead, but I don't belive the old company is worth my time anymore.

Now to the new company. Shortly after that performance report meeting, I had a call with the ceo, and what do I have to say besides: What a cool dude. He listened to me, asked me questions about my previous jobs (not just as programmer) and so on. But because first looks are deceiving, I went to their office last thursday. And wow. Their are exactly what I imagined them to be. Cool, young folks, 100% tech enthusiasts, and open minded.

One of the new hires in the new company wanted a 6 months internship between his studies. Instead they offered him a full time job - for the 6 months. They even offered me to pay back my scholarship that I will own my old company for leaving early. This is awesome.

The only things that will be worse than my old job are, that I have to negotiate payment instead of yearly increases, 4 days less paid vacation, so only 26 days, and 40h weeks. And they have no workers council, which isn't good, but it's not the worst either.

I got them fixed on 57.000€, not including an up to 10.000€ annual bonus. The way you achieve your bonus seems good to. It's split in two parts, internal and external bonus. Internal bonus is when you engage with internal events like tech calls, sharing your knowledge on your main IT topics, etc. External Bonus is a bit more complicated, but also straight forward. You work on projects for customers, and if you have less than 3 weeks a year that you dont participate in an project, you get the full bonus.

Last friday, I filed a request for a certificate of employment from my current team lead, this is odd for her because I have never done it before, and she asked why I requested it. I said to her that we can talk about it, and she agreed but didn't call me, yet.

Lastly, another good friend of mine will be employed by my team soon, but for a fraction of the payment that I currently receive! He is doing the exact same work, and even worse, he is doing project managment for his main developer project too! And is getting less paid... I just cant...

Yesterday we needed to update a few cloud instances, the only other person who knows about setting up CICD and our OpenShift Containers than me is only in part time and works two days a week, his trainee didn't know anything, so it's up to me. This isn't hard or anything, but it shows that this system our mangement maintains will fail soon, maybe even with me going? I sure hope so tbh.

One of you guys said, I should go to my team lead and negotiate a higher pay, but the truth is, that because we are a big ISP we have an collective agreement for payment and are grouped by tasks (which is bull shit btw, because I'm doing tasks much higher paid than currently). This also means that I cannot simply jump in another group, and can only increase my current pay to about 115%, which is done automatically every year by 5% up to 115%. Anything above is considered extra, but I don't think they will go with it.

I will decide this week about my future at the old company, but I really don't know what to do...

I haven't felt an urge to post on here in a while just because things have been going so well. But this month, is just not that kind of month anymore.

I'm upset. I'm upset by how I've been uprooted from my routine. I know I shouldn't be that bothered by it and things always change. But what the fuck is this company thinking to be using it's own fucking home baked ticketing system!

WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK IS THIS SHIT!

Let's go over the issues it has
1. I can't fucking email my clients through it
2. all emails are not recognized automatically. In other words each new email creates a new ticket if it does not have the tracking number attached to it.
3. I have to fucking hunt around in my inbox that is now bombarded by every email that is created for this ticketing system. Slap on a fucking tracking number. And then HOPE TO FUCKING GOD that the person on the other end doesn't erase the subject and cause the system to create a new ticket just for it.

Let's go over Zendesk which they've decided to decomission.
1. I. DON'T. HAVE. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT. FUCKING. SHIT.
2. That's it. It's fucking simple

Seriously. They forced me off of my original platform because this company already had a "ticketing system", if you can even fucking call it that, working.

And just if you weren't aware, all of this change happened because my company got bought out. It got bought out by this behemoth company that isn't willing to let me continue using a system; that has been very efficient, mind you, and instead make me use their system.

I. FUCKING. HATE. THIS.

Every fucking day! I have to do this stupid bullshit of emailing clients from my personal work email instead of on the direct ticketing system.

When I first started using this thing I actually thought I could use it to email the clients. For a solid two weeks I was "communicating" to clients through their ticketing system. Only to find out that the entire time those clients were not getting my actual fucking email! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

Then these guys tell me after the fact. "Oh that's strange... We never noticed that you can't send emails through it... We always just had used our work emails."

Are you fucking jerking my chain! You guys have literally been sitting in this slimy pit of hell for so long that you don't even know there are better options out there!

You don't have to fucking live this life!!

I don't think I'm going to make it. Something needs to change. And I know upper management isn't going to do it, because I fought hard to try and keep Zendesk. They are not keeping it. After this next quarter it is officially gone.

I'm trying to think of coding solutions to make my situation better... But I shouldn't have to fucking do that! There are perfectly good working solutions out there, and this company doesn't want to budge because "that's the way we've always been doing it"

I'm going to fucking rip out my hair.

Fucking microshaft! I bought a custom controller from their shop as a birthday gift to my brother. Fucking first thing the website crashes with 500 with my main account so I call support. Said them its a backend issue and they should let the devs investigate. Support says they can't even contact them in anyway shape or form. Fucking great!
So since my account seems to has broken their backend I create another account using some random email while support tells me to fucking log in and out again (yeah man I tried that). OK wonderful new account worked I can buy the controller.

Now one year later the controller just fucking stops working (probably why its called Xbox one! controller). Wonderful I paid 90€ for that shit thing and now it won't connect anymore. Tried everything and searched countless forums, nothing helped. Fuckers say: JuSt ConNeCT iT tO YoUr XbOx oNe and it might magically work (TM). You fuck I bought it for PC why the fuck can I not just fix it using a PC. Do you want me to buy a fucking Xbox for 500 bucks just to get the fucking controller to work!? You shitfaced monkey!

OK then lets try that support again because that worked so well last time. I put in the serial number and... Fucking unrecognized number. Unrecognized number my ass. Go suck on a spiked club you buffoon!

Now I'm fucked because I don't have the fucking receipt anymore and the email was send to that fucking temp account I don't even know the email address for anymore (ノ°益°)ノ

FUCKING MOZILLA!
>Quantum
>over9999 times faster
-Ughm, okay, but what is the trick?..
-THE TRICK IS THAT NONE OF YOUR FAVORITE ADDONS WILL WORK!!!

Seriously this is fucking insane! Several of my addons which were essential for me to stay sane is gone and I don't even know how to live without them. And all this bullshit is happening because these idiots in Mozilla decided to enforce use of WebExtensions. For ones who unaware, WebExtensions is much, much poorer framework and many cool addons simply unable to work under WebExtensions because of its limitations.

Are you the one who loved the speed and joy of using mouse gestures? GUESS WHAT ­— IT'S GONE.
Maybe you made your browsing activity super efficient with use of the “Tab Groups” addon that used to allow you to group your browser sessions? SAY BYE-BYE TO IT!
And many more!

Most importantly, I cannot understand why would a company enforce use of a framework that will decrease functionality of a product.
Anyway, it seems like Firefox is not a browser for addon enthusiasts like me anymore; got to find a new one, any recommendations?

Dear php. You weren't my first one. But you were my first serious one. The first i made money with. We had a great time together until ajax came. Do you remember? I did more and more with js later but you still where my main. You even exposed your source code to me. Time changed. They started to hate you. And yes, they where right in some points. But they never saw your good sides. I saw them. I stood with you. But i was froced to wrote backends in typescript, in Java. And you know what: i didn't feel so bad. For gods sake, I fucking enjoyed it, php!

When did we become so alienated? When did I staet to write my dayly heller scripts in bash instead of you?

Yes, you improved. Hack came, than php7, php8. You archived a lot. You finally brought types. There was a time when I thought everything that stood between us will be overcome. That we will be together forever.

But recently i had this conversation on DevRant with nmeri and did some research afterwards. And I learned, maybe you will never have generics. It just don't work out, php, I am sorry. It's not your fault, it's mine. But i dont think i can live without a proper type system for the rest of my life. Not after i taszed those other languages.
I don't know when it will happen. When i switch projects this summer maybe. Maybe next year, when i start a new job. Who knows. But it will happen: you won't be my main anymore at one point. Maybe we can stay friends but i want you to know, that i am open for something new in my life. Something with generics.

When my manager, blatantly miscommunicated several things to me a couple of years ago, and scapegoated me by saying a comment I NEVER once heard said about me, in any context ever, "you communicate badly-- you need to communicate better", I took it seriously.

Fast forward, two years later. I'm doing wonderful at my job, yet I cannot get over that incident. I thought about it some more. Why did she say that to me? Why did she address it to me after her mistake? Why was she not aware of the real reason I missed the meeting?

Out of all useful bits of knowledge I gathered over the years, it's kinda comical that psychology came in the most handy at the workplace. There's very little to be gained from trying to psychoanalyze strangers, friends, and family... but it's almost saved my life at the job.

You see, if I attack an approach even in the most formal tones, or even worse, defend my approach, there's nothing coming from that. The situation now becomes my situation. When I become "aware" of the truth of the situation I become able to control the situation, not just myself. That way, you're not in a fisticuff fight with your boss, and you are not left defeated by the situation. Exercising control of the situation in such a manner that they are left defeated by the situation, not by you directly, is the only way you can win as an employee.
Any other way, you'll get under-appreciated, underpaid, overworked, overlooked, etc.
So, my boss at the time, was defeated by the situation of her being a bad leader; and instead of clarifying those feelings to me or ignoring them entirely... she validated her false self using her real emotions.

You can only reverse that, by developing fake emotions, to display a real self.

They can't blame you, and when they feel self-defeated, they cannot pretend it was you who caused it (bringing it back to a sane level of reality). They might rage if they're childish but it will not cause a single hair in your body to twitch because you did not "respond to their email" or "throw someone under the bus for their convenience", the situation did, they beat themselves by attacking you while the situation came down on them.
If I had to explain I would say that the situation is controlled by creating a mirror of the employee that follows their orders perfectly. That employee won't feel defensive: they already do everything right. The employee is crafted by becoming aware of the teams impacted in the situation and their true intent and creating "the situation", "the owner".
"The owner" reflects to people from the perspective of the situation and not from your own. This way you can't make a wrong move and are not emotionally involved with yourself.
It enables you to emotionally notice others. It also makes you safe, because you have the situation-mirror that's really doing the battling. The situation-mirror eventually creates a situation where the other person starts attacking reality (the situation) instead of attacking you.

Now, it's up to you whether you want to use that as a way to cooperate with your boss to beat this new reality, or as a way to gain coherence on your reality outside of your boss. I have noticed most people tend to realize this somewhere along the line and retreat and stop fighting, and quit their jobs.

I've been doing this in a corporate environment for a couple of weeks. I have already become greatly stressed and subjugated by the company for which my company works for. 20 of them sit here every day and devalue everything. Yet.... They're completely incompetent, spoilt, lazy and worst of all, they control how the software is being created. There isn't a single person on their side responsible for their requests to make sense and work with each other. So you can imagine how much blame they need to assign to us devs. They don't know what they want but want something anyway and then they'll see if that's what they want but everything under the tightest deadline possible. They're all clients and they all escalate to the board of directors any bad word directed at them. So you can imagine the narcissism that develops in that environment.
I have made them argue with reality and self-defeat numerous times. They have now started to back off and are being more polite and courteous. They have also not escalated anything anymore. Just as I was faking "happy" while I felt intimidated by them. I have not committed a single angry act and yet they are not feeling superior anymore. The reality of the situation is that we need to make a software and if you make them battle this instead of battling you, they can't beat you.

I have so much work to get done I don't even know where to start anymore. I've got 6 sites in development, 20 sites with continuing maintenance, and I'm in charge of everything IT in my office.

Today I asked if the other developer on our team could help out and take a few maintenance clients off my hands so I could work on getting builds done.

We called a team meeting where I explained my workload and pointed out that in order to make the deadline of next week on two of these builds our other developer is going to have to help out with some of the work on my plate.

Other dev: Well I've already got 3 sites that still need maintenance this month and I'm still working on $client site.

Me: Ok well today is only the 3rd so you have all month to do the maintenance on those sites, these two have to be online next week and I still have 100 hours of work to do between the two of them.

Me to CTO: can I get some backup here? Or can we hire me a monkey (my term for interns) for a couple weeks so I can focus on building?

CTO: We'll have to talk about that at our meeting next week. In the mean time, just do what you can to get the sites done and let me know if you think we aren't going to make the deadlines.

Me: That's what this conversation is, I'm telling you now, and I've been telling you for 3 weeks that we were getting close to my limit for my workload. We have approximately 175 work hours in a month, maintenance contracts alone accounts for 120 of those hours.

CTO: Alright, well if after Monday you don't think you're going to make the deadline (Thursday), then we'll see if we can find a solution.

Fuck this shit, I get paid the same whether the client is happy or not, I get paid the same whether we reach the deadline or not. I asked that salespeople stop making deadline promises before developers get to look at the scope but that's not the way we do things here. At least one of these sites is not going to be online Thursday, probably both.

I'm gonna kill him...no don't defend him, you lot are meant to be on my side!

IT'S FUCKING HUNTING SEASON.

I know, I know, you want context but I just can't now. I'm completely annoyed. Fuck data integrity, just duplicate rows randomly cos fuck you.

Work is about to turn into a murder mystery...without the mystery 😒

He doesn't even work here anymore, hope he forgets his password and gets locked out of everything he has.

Woosah....

I wrote a blogging platform around 3.5yrs back in PHP. My friend uses that, and apparently wants me to update the code. To which I refused saying that I am too busy. But the real reason is that it is one of the purest form of cancerous shit I ever wrote. I can't even look at that code now. Its like abandoning your own child, because it is too ugly... Here's a snapshot of the code, I don't even know what this does anymore..

Moral: Don't give your code to your friend no matter how shitty it is, you will end up providing lifetime support for it.

Finished work early and raced home to have a telephone interview and the company "forgot" to ring me 😣

Next day they emailed to say sorry, mix up at our end, we'll send you some new times. 3 days later I get an email with a list of times and they are all mid morning or afternoon, so I'd need to book time off work for them

Really don't know if I can be bothered anymore, the thought of working for them has lost its appeal already and I've not even had the first interview yet.

Also, I wonder what would have happened if id forgotten to attend the interview? Doubt I would have gotten a second chance...

Not imposter syndrome but definitely a moment of self doubt.

Am I good enough?

Been applying for jobs and couldn't get through.

Most of my applications are in neighbouring continent and visa is the primary filter to get rejected. Thanks to COVID-19, it is even more difficult than ever.

And for those applications where I land interviews, I am being ghosted in final rounds.

Quite strange that teams don't even care to reject anymore. Just leave me hanging to assume the worst, the truth, the reality which I don't want to face.

And self doubt creeps in where I see people with average/below average capabilities and skillset are able to find better jobs.

I am not comparing myself, undermining their struggles, or playing the blame game.

All I am saying that luck plays a huge role in how things work out.

You can still fail even after doing everything right. Or am I just dumb enough to not know where I am going wrong to improve?

At this point, if I reflect on past, seems like all the offers I have got in past were purely based on luck.

I am aware that this is temporary and things shall change for good but boy, this feeling sucks.

There's too many web apps out there that advertise having great accessibility, but whose only claim to that is that they work okay-ish with screenreaders.

There's more to accessibility, darnit! Not just blind people, also remember people with impaired colour perception, people who have to use increased font sizes, people with poor contrast perception (can we please not do light-gray text, links, or buttons on white background anymore?), and many more.

The amount of apps alone that just are impossible to use properly with increased font sizes due to cut-off unscrollable text or buttons pushed out of the visible part of the page is staggering. Or where you get permanently stuck inside a rich-text editor if you can only navigate by keyboard, or where whole parts of the page are impossible to properly use with background images turned off...

I'm aware this might sound unreasonable and I know it's extra effort to learn all the rules, but once these things are not an afterthought, but rather something to take care of starting even during first implementation, it starts to come naturally.

But would it be unreasonable to ask of an architect to not put the restrooms, conference rooms, managers office, where they can only be reached by stairs? I don't think it would be. Sure it makes placing them more complicated, but excluding people from being able to use the building due to circumstances beyond their control feels a bit elitist and snobby to me.

Saw an app last week where a lot of features were behind click-handlers on elements that are not supposed to be interactive like <div>, <li>, and <span> tags. How's someone who can't use the visual clues even supposed to know that the element is interactive?

And yes, there's some of these points where ensuring accessibility is not just the devs job but also the designer's responsibility (contrast rules for example), but in my experience if the devs notice "oh hey, this could be problematic" then the design people usually listen.

Honestly in the case of accessibility I believe that putting off some features for later to make time to ensure that what's there is accessible, even if it only affects 1% of visitors, belongs into the "social responsibility" category, and most clients I've worked with were open to the subject.

I do believe it's something that everyone should take time to learn.

PS: I don't mean to attack anyone, I just wish it were something that more people watch out for.

I have a nightmare project that I will probably be ranting about quite a lot in the coming weeks, but I don't want SEO to pick up the specifics on the off chance my peers Google the issues we're facing and my profile comes up.

Let me set up the scene by describing the predicament, and then I'll get to the most outrageous thing I've heard while working at this job. It gives you a CLEAR idea of why we're in this situation in the first place.

Anyways, the nightmare project only runs in IE with compatibility mode set to version 6. So it only runs in IE 6 at the latest.

And it is massive. I'm talking real, real enormous.

The most recent roadblock I ran into while Chrome-ifying it is the extensive use of a browser API that was removed 8 years ago.

It involves synchronous data input and I know for a relatively certain fact there's no way to fix it without combing through every single reference to this API and converting the ones that need sync data (not all of them do) to callbacks. How big of an issue is that?

Well, just one of that 15-ish modules has over 900 references to it. Even just creating a spreadsheet of "commented out / doesn't need a fix / needs fix" for each reference in 1/15th of this project would take days of manual labor.

Here's the rant.

So after discussing this issue in the meeting (we ended on "they don't believe me that we can't just replace it with jQuery") I brought up the next issue. One of our 3rd party libraries is so old it doesn't work anymore and we can't modify that code (it's compiled).

They said that even if it was backwards compatible (no fucking way. This version is like, at least 10 years old, I guarantee it) they can't simply replace it because we don't have a subscription to this product anymore (suggesting we find an alternative).

And I fucking kid you not, this is what happened next.

They then began discussing how this is why you shouldn't use 3rd party code. Because it becomes obsolete and you can't even fix it yourself because it's not yours to edit.

Yes. They said this DIRECTLY after we discussed our 900+ references to a browser API >>REMOVED<< 8 years ago. Yes, they said this about a 3rd party library that receives regular support but is totally FUCKED because we NEVER updated it after adding it and we never even renewed the LICENSE.

What the FUCK

Seriously guys, how do you deal when remotely collaborating with lets say not the most motivated and competent devs?

Our scrum team got formed about 6 months ago from leftover devs of other teams, choosing a couple competent devs at the core and other devs who were kinda gotten rid of by their old teams, and after 6 months of working together I can see why.

Situation is that we are 7 devs in our team and 4 of devs are not pulling their weight. They are seniors on paper, but in reality not really.

They rarely take something complex to work on and even if they do, they make sure they take as much time as possible. Two of them are contractors who I imagine decided to treat the job as a paycheck and nothing more. There is no initiative, no push to make things better and in general attitude is to do bare minimum: only what is being asked and then delaying the hell out of tasks.

Im not exaggareting: Im talking about every possible way of dragging out the tasks: delaying communication, sitting around for a few days while not asking for new tasks to work on if they are blocked, also avoiding standups. Working for days on very basic comments in their MR's. Getting "sick" for a couple days on deadline when things get tough, so that someone else would come in, refactor and save the day. Once or twice it could be a coincidence, but nowadays I can already guess ahead of time what kind of trick they will pull now.

Our project is an android app where we have to support few different tablets, so the most recent new trick that I witnessed is devs avoiding hardware delivers, sometimes for months. Idea seems to be if you dont ping your team that you dont have hardware, then you can avoid working on related tasks with that hardware.

Worst part is that they get away with it. Our teamlead is a senior dev who is first time teamlead, doesnt code anymore and doesnt want to rock the boat. He is the type of teamlead who sets arbitrary deadlines, makes it sound that they are urgent and takes a few days off in the middle of chaos just before deadline. Restrospectives don't help at all and if I try to bring up stuff directly to him he tells me to bring it up during retrospectives. We discuss issues, rant a bit ant then continue carying on like nothing happened and nothing changes.

So little by little in the past 6 months we came to this point where 2-3 devs are carrying the weight of the team and are in a constant crunch mode, while others are allowed to slack. Its becoming ridiculous.

Problem is that this is starting to affect our morale. Only way that is left to keep my sanity right now is to pull away sometimes and also slack. Then I come back at full capacity, give my best for a couple weeks until I have to go and fix some basic leftover task that has been purposefully dragged out for 2 months and left unfinished, then I just want to scream and I know that its time to disconnect again.

Build my own phone and support the Zerophone project by writing code.

Seriously what the fuck is going on with the development of major companies smartphones. Every year all there is are larger displays, better and more cameras, faster processors and some more 'AI' thrown into the mix.

What the heck am I supposed to do with a phone costing multiple hundreds of euros but locked down with an OS spying on you. The processing power available is hardly ever used because most people just use apps like Instagram, WhatsApp or other messaging services.

I get why larger screens are useful but at some point it gets ridiculous.
Better cameras are useful to some degree as well but there's a limit to it.
If you really want to get into photographing then please buy an actual camera.

Another aspect I'd of course like to talk about is privacy. It's hardly existent on IOS or Android smartphones with Google services. Of course one can install different ROMs like Lineage OS but if I already pay multiple hundreds for a device then I'd prefer it working for and not against me.

And dare you break a single part of your phone. You can't really repair it yourself anymore and one can't even change its battery. Most people either have it repaired or just buy a new one and throw it away. There is so much electronic waste, very difficult and expensive to dispose of, just buried in the ground somewhere.

Summing up: I don't really know where the development of smartphones is heading. A phone is a device you carry around with you almost everyday so I'd like it to be tailored to me and not spy on me.

I hope the Librem phone will be a success and other open source phone projects will gain more attention. I want a phone I can repair myself and tailor the software running on it to my needs. I'd like to write messages, listen to music, make calls, run a WiFi hot-spot on the phone and maybe play some tiny games on it once in a while.

Me, working hard on a SQL project with a deadline that is half what it should be with no support from the other people on the project and was mostly made with with data I imagined would be in there cos no one could get me any fucking shit done (i.e. effectively designed, built, tested, fixed, upgraded, documented on my own for an entire weekly/monthly/ad-hoc analysis process that would output various reports for internal/external/management)

Manager - man who is a known waste of space but for some reason is in charge of the smallest part of the project, shouldn't have been fucking involved fucking management guzzling stain magnet...

Manager: Hey, do I need to refresh the database?

Me: .................

Me: .................

Me: ............I dunno, do you think we should refresh the database that this entire project is reliant? I mean...why do we need up to date transactions to analyse? Wait....you telling me it's not been being refreshed this ENTIRE time?

Manager: No....you never said I should. So should I?

Me: ..................I never said you should!?!? Are you not in the meetings talking about dependencies?????? Do you think i should have up to date trans or just run this with old stuff????? Why would you not update it!??!!?!?!? Its transactions...... (Desperately trying not to punch through my screen, through his, into his throat)

Manager: ..............

Me: .................

Manager: I think i'll refresh it and add it to the job?

Me: ....................(goes back to work cursing with music in so I think its quiet but who knows).

Tard, don't know how he even gets to work without someone holding his fucking hand.

Happy ending, I don't work there anymore :p

Sad ending, his spirit of tard follows me to my new jobs and possesses someone (or three sometimes)

i don't understand what would be termed as "relaxing" for me.
when i was in college , i watched a lot of movies on romance, bromance and friendship. being from a very angry , isolated family with bitter relationships from relatives, we had almost 0 people to interact with.
i personnally was also very different from society and struggled making friends.

as of now i did have somewhat come over this problem and have a good number of "known people" (atleast 500+) that i can categorise into'
- A just people with whom i shared a situation( college, office, tutions)
-B people with whom i have spent my free times in those situations (aka friends, and free time = lunch breaks, seat sharing, projects with them, etc)
-C people with whom i spent some time willingly( aka close friends from college, tutions and home, with whom i played cricket, went on partying/touring places , etc)

-D people whom i liked but never got a love back( aka girls to whom i told i like them. they mostly belonged to category C but eventually went to category A)

previously the category C people were special for me and i would weave my life around them. like all those bromance and friendship movies? these are the guys with whom i would do that. world tours and awesome weird shit? these people will be their in the pic... i would wish them on birthdays, i will call them every few days, go meet with them , have a bite, plan trips, movies , etc...

but today i feel am so done with everyone. i feel like everyone is so fake and forgetful, no one is worth my attention. i can easily forget wishing them birthdays or calling/meeting them every few weeks, because i don't want to or care about it.

friendship , from what i have realised, is just a means of dealing with a task in a group. it just provides a herd immunity and herd advantage . and once you learn how to survive alone, you don't really see a point in it. after coming out of college i was alone in the world, as my friends were from different fields. before college, i thought these were the guys with whom we will be living as F.R.I.E.N.D.S, not just in terms of relation, but rather in a symbiotic way: each one helping each other.
today, i feel criingy just thinking about it.

no friend will remember you for more than a year if you die now. everyone will move on. and in the struggling phase that me and my friends are right now (20-30s), we don't even need to die to forget our friendships.
my so called friends have wished me less on my birthdays than the lifeless apps i have on my phone.

so neither i am expecting someone to do something for me, nor do i think i want to do anything with anyone

------
so back to the problem, i don't know how will i find some relax or meaningful time anymore.
i am always up for trips and one of the first person to say yes to plans.

once upon a time i had this realisation that in a trip, we can enjoy 3 things:
1. the people with whom we are
2. the place we are visiting : the locals, the foods, the nature
3. the mode of travel : car on highways, bikes or flights above the clouds , or some memorable train journeys, etc.

but lately so even that seems to be not working out.
- the people are shit
- places feel like somewhat same everywhere . it's either : rocks/mountains or snow or water or buildings and population. it's just a temporary change of scenary and doesn't really gives a feeling of peace. same for mode of transport.

if i rule the going out part, the things that remains is to enjoying your job, home family and daily life. that i do , but that's the thing that creates an environment of "bored-out"-ism in my mind.

i don't know what i am looking for. the only thing i have not experienced is that class D of people. to have a token of faith/respect/appreciation/love from a non blood related person. to have someone with home i will not feel "bored out" when am planning a journey with them.

mathematically , it seems so far fetched and crazily impossible. like if get bored out and loose trust on people whom i shared most of my life after 50-60 meets, how can i be not bored, and be unhappy with a person to whom i have to see each day?

but since this happens for most of the couples, i will say the mind is the biggest and the most fantasizing mystery of human body ❤️ 💔

Aaaaarggghhh

Having to think about what and when to eat is such a fucking pain in the ass. I don't want to search for recipes. I don't want to think about nutrition. I don't want to count calories. I just want something to tell me exactly what to eat, when I should eat and what to buy. Same goes for workout routines. Just tell me what to do I'll do it. I want an autopilot for that sort of stuff so I don't have to ducking think about it anymore. It's such a giant waste of time to have to manually plan this shit through, I want to use my brain for other things like math or chemistry or Programming. In fact I don't even want to cook because I am alone and cooking for one person is so ducking pointless. I lost over 40kg in the last years. I learned my lesson, most things taste like shit now because I associate food with all the pain and depression that I had to overcome to achieve a normal weight and fit body. Food went from being a joy to being an annoying necessity. I got fit and I want to work out even more but I really don't want to think about this shit. The exercises and pain and hunger are all nothing but planning is my true enemy. It bores me to death, it's more painful than running until I break down I absolutely fucking hate it.

I am really close to start some kind of open source food planner where you can type in your goals ( weight loss, muscle gain etc.) In great detail with all kind of options ( vegetarian, vegan, allergies, budget, country where you live in for local recipes etc.) And it generates a food plan for you with exact details of where exactly to buy the ingredients how to cook them etc. No fancy Ui No bullshit ads for some kind of wonder drug nothing annoying. Something so easy that it can be used as an autopilot for ones fitness and life. Do what it says and you'll look decent, don't think about the rest. Having that would be so great and I could finally think about more important shit than this. Less overhead more time for things that can't be automated.

And Yes I know that this is exactly what a personal trainer would do, but I am not going to spend 600€ a month for someone to tell me exactly what to buy, what to eat and how to work out.

!dev, just rant

what the fuck is wrong with these people. yesterday i wrote him if we can meet to sort out my medication, no response,
ok, normal.

this morning he writes me "i wasn't home yesterday, i am today".
wow, actually a a proactive and early info! that's... unusual.
so i go "hmm, maybe even right now?"
he's like "no, sometime from 14:00 or 14:30"
ok.

so i wait until 15:00 to give him a bit of extra time, i hate rushing people. "so can i stop by?"
he's like "i'm going out in a short while, i'll let you know"
okay.
i hate these "bind a listener to me and wait until i ping you", but okay short while is fine.
so I wait. for half an hour. I mean... i'm bad with time management, but even I don't call half an hour a "short while" anymore. so I'm like okay, I think I know where he's gonna tell me to meet, it's gonna take me about 10 minutes to get there, they tend to be impatient so if if start walking there, by the time i get there he's gonna write me to come, and i'll already be there so he won't have to wait for me, because surely even for him "a short while" can't be more than 45 minutes.

so i get there, wait for 5 minutes... 10 minutes...
so i write him again "approx how much longer? i'm waiting nearby".

and he's like "i didn't call you, i have no idea why you came here, who told you to"

so i tell him "okay, sorry, i'm gonna get myself not nearby and wait there, i thought by the time i get here you're gonna call me anyway, sorry"

nothing.

i wait for half an hour more.
then (two and half hours after he said he's gonna go out "in a short while" and he'll let me know. at the same time 5 hours after the time he said he's gonna be available from), i write him: "so will we actually manage to sort this out today?"

no answer. most likely for the rest of the day.

what the fuck is so difficult about conveying actual information in communication? what the fuck is so difficult about a single fuckin message "at this time, at this place", so i can just be there, he can intersect his route through there, and in a literal minute we're sorted out? instead of fuckin nothingmessages which waste me three hours and make me have to bother him to at least have a chance at getting an idea what the fuck is going on, and him being annoyed at me trying to cover for his fuckin inability to do it like any other sane dude, with one fuckin message in the fuckin form of "this time, this place", which would fuckin sort out the whole thing in two messages and 5 minutes net time invested into the whole thing by both sides, instead of fuckin 3 hours?

fuck.
i miss my old dude.

So, I work as a sysadmin junior (6 months and going), and in the past few months, I learned what my boss warned me about - Devs don't understand us admins, and we don't understand the devs.

We have this huge client who is about to migrate to our company (We do mostly server managment/Housing/Renting), and I am so gald I don't have to work on the migration myself!

Just hearing what the company devs say makes me facepalm: No, it won't work. It cannot work on just 3 machines (They use like... 20 in total), no, we won't get rid of our docker swarm, that's essential (Doing the absolute minimum in their infrastructure, just a fancy buzzword to lure people on. Though they've spent like 2 years developing the app that uses it, so they my not want to give it up).

I kid you not, once, they replied to an email that contained the phrase "To be afraid of/worried about" something during the migration, that something could break, not work, be unstable. 7 times.

Might not sound as bad, but it was a rather short mail, and when they're so afraid of everything, its kinda hard to cooperate with them.

My colleague literally spent this entire week mapping out /their/ infrastructure, because they were unable to provide us with the description themselves.

And as a cherry on top, they sent us a "graph" of relationships of all the parts of their infrastructure that was this jumbled mess of rectangles and arrows. Oh, and half of all the machines were not even in the graph at all! Stating that "We also have all this, but I really don't know how to ilustracte the interactions anymore"

Why do companies like that exist? If you build an infrastructure yourself, shouldn't at least someone know exactly how it works?

I am sitting here fixing some asshole's fuck up (he went and fucked around with the certificates on the Sonic Wall - now DPI SSL doesn't work anymore and people are wondering why things aren't working as they used to).

I have been offered an opportunity to work in a place that is about 1000 miles from where I currently work. The pay is a bit better, and I get benefits (like health, pension, etc - where here I don't get shit).

The issue is that my family and what not are this side. They are begging me not to leave. They don't know that I have been considered for the job.

Not going to lie, the last time I moved away, I nearly died because I have a family to support, and I was porting all my funds back to them (yeah - the one who cheated).

I am anxious as fuck, and today I have an interview.

I don't know if going is the right thing to do. There is so much opportunity, and I might stuggle for about a year - but is the struggle worth it.

I cannot take it where I am now. They appointed a new guy, and he is monumentally fucking everything up. He also doesn't shut up. Even if you ignore him, or tell him that you are busy - he just goes on and on talking. Fuck my life.

Anyways, will see how things go - I don't know what is right - perhaps it will come to me.

I'll let you guys know what happens, not that anyone might directly care - which is fine.

Time to go fix CA, and then code until I die.

Hi Guys, I so confused. I'm giving interviews and constantly failing them. I'm not able to clear the practical round. In most interviews, I was able to achieve the goal which the interviewer gave me.

But somehow I didn't get selected. i'm applying for Android Developer positions. just to give you
guys an idea.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Right now I just am so depressed that I don't even want to give no interviews anymore.

Any suggestions or advice is much appreciated

!dev
There are no right answers in parenting, but there are sure as hell wrong ones and if the fucking backfire effect is too much to keep you from realizing that half of your stupid fucking decisions are delusional at best then you should probably start rethinking some things. I fucking hate dealing with other people fucking up and being stupid and I know I'm going to have to keep dealing with it in one form or another but god why I'm so done with this I just fucking don't want to deal with anyone anymore I don't want to deal with myself anymore

I dunno I don't have anyone to rant to so I can't like be specific here because it's public af but you know typing this makes me feel a little better but I still just don't want to deal with this shit anymore I don't even know what I do want to do there's like nothing the positive feedback is going away and I don't know what to fucking do with myself and I don't know how to change anything I can't fucking fix anything I mean I can fix my shitty code but I'm never getting anywhere with that and whenever I want to fix anything that's actually important I just fuck up regardless of how hard I try I just don't want to fucking try anymore I don't know if I'll actually hit post but I have to put this somewhere so probably but ugh I don't even fucking ugh literally all of my problems are so fucking dumb and small and elementary but I CAN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING I keep ranting about these fucked up people I have to deal with and yeah they fucking suck and sometimes I wish they didn't exist but I know I'm just as if not more of an idiot and everyone would probably be better off if I didn't exist but wait no that would have happened but you guys don't get to know about that because it's specific and putting that here would fuck shit up but someone else could so that so much better and I don't know everyone who interacts with me is just hurting themselves like fuck why do some friends like blades better than me maybe because I'm even less caring and even more damaging than a stupid fucking inanimate sharp piece of metal god fucking ugh okay I can't focus on anything why is this even okay side rant why are atheists so fucking hated like yes maybe some can't understand their motives for like doing things but nobody can really understand each other's like religious people all use god or gods in their own way why do you have to think of people who have zero gods as opposed to your nonzero as less human than you there's so much wrong with that okay that side rant is over but this whole thing is a side rant so cool fuck my life lol uuh I don't know I don't want to stop typing I don't know why though I guess I just actually I have no fucking idea I'm just here doing this I should be like fucking asleep I'm passing the fuck out after this ugh okay okay okay okay okay okay okay umm I really want to quote a certain person that I really hate right now and dissect them and prove every single fucking stupid argument they make wrong but I feel like that would not be good since this is so public but I swear I hate this and you know what if you're thinking that yes I AM A FUCKING WHINY BITCH DEAL WITH IT I'M WHINING YOU DENSE FUCKER YOU DON'T HAVE TO POINT IT OUT AND FEEL SMUG IT'S BETTER TO VENT HERE THAN A LOT OF OTHER WAYS SO JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP OKAY ACTUALLY FUCK IT CALL ME OUT ON IT I NEED SOMETHING TO TAKE THIS OUT ON GOD AAAAAAH okay uuh yeah that's fun I'm a fuck up okay okay so you ask "how can you be a fuck up you're so young her der" okay being young generally is a disadvantage because you haven't had opportunity but boy have I and I sure fucked every single one of those up so yeah fun stuff you know woo haha mmkay I wish I had friends online this late because then I could like rant to a person and shit I mean this community is people but not people I know and it's not really back and forth as much and ugh okay right uuh yeah good um ugh I used to be able to get this shit out by doing something I'm good at but now I'm shit at everything and I can't motivate myself and it's all just bottled up and there's so much shit and nothing works and fuck there's probably a simple solution to everything I'm facing but I'm such a dense piece of shit that I can't find any of those stupid fucking ugh okay now I'm looking at my stupid hands typing ugh I hate the things right back up here uuh uuh I have 500 charas left lets fucking go I don't want to stop I mean I do want to stop but like by that I mean I just want to not exist I do want to keep typing here because it's the only thing distracting me but yeah uuh right um some people were like wtf happened with your stalking thing and this isn't where I should put it but fuck it whatever some weird guy just logged on for 10 mins to take a screenshot of the time being 2:22:22 and logged off and boom the school year ended uuh yeah kay right fuck I have to end it now
Aaaah okay uuh right bye I'm really sorry if you actually read that whole thing

All parts of the body were having a meeting one day to choose who should be tagged as the leader.

Legs: We should be in charge because we literally carry the whole body the entire day, and without us, nobody is going anywhere.

Asshole: Without me, we cannot get rid of all the things we don't need anymore. I deserve to be in charge.

Brain: Hold up, guys, hold up. Feet, you can't move unless I tell you to move, and you can't even figure out how to put one foot over the other. Asshole, all you do is open and close; you don't even know how things are made. You have nothing to say here.

(The feet agreed, but the asshole took it personally. So he decided to go on strike and stop working for three days. The entire body went into chaos, and they pleaded with the brain for several hours.)

Brain: Okay, Asshole! You can be in charge.

The moral of the story is that sometimes an asshole is in charge not because they're the smartest ones for the position, but because sometimes assholes are in positions of power.

Let's start by saying that I fucken know nothing.
Not even how to fucken start this rant.

I have to build a simple game for a university project.
In Java.
Since everyone in my team chose plain swing/awt, and for many other reasons, I jumped on that band wagon.

Knowing myself and that I quit the project last year, I chose an extremely simple type of game with very simple goals and Use-cases.

So far so good.

Logic, layer, and nearly everything else is nearly finished.
Since about 3 month.

Friends helped me restructure my game for better layer separation and I couldn't be happier with how that turned out.

But all those 3 month, my main problem has persisted.

I can't get it to draw a thing on the jframe.
For 3 month.
3 fucken month.

And now I don't even get a jFrame anymore.
WHAT THE FUCK

Git, tell me, what have I changed?

...
Nothing related to construction of the frame?
Ok, I removed a call to repaint there.
Let's putt it back.

NOPE, no JFrame.

What the actual fucken hell?

This is where you can stop reading, after this there will only be me crying about everything.
Sweet tears. 😭

In-between I got a frame, and something was drawn onto it.
But only on construction.

I couldn't get the paint chain to run a single time after that.

I have a nice thread with some loops that is supposed to update the logic and make a call to repaint/ update/ refresh the frame so that the game runs nicely with 60fps.

Logic works fine, but no call to what ever does anything related to painting.

This morning I had the idea that it might be because of the thread.

Refactored that the game loop runs in the main thread and here I now am without a jFrame.

And still 3255 letters to go.

I don't even even even even even..,...

a lion in captivity forgets to hunt. a man loosing everyday forget about winning.

I am feeling so sad and worthless right now. Like, so worthless that if I am walking down the street tomorrow and if some car hits me and i die, i wouldn't mind.

I find it questionable about what I am living for? why am i selling myself in front of keyboard till 12 am every day to earn some bucks when all this money is being / will be used to give happiness to a bunch of people that don't give 2 shits about me.

why can't i get some love? why can't i get some respect? i feel like a disabled 5 year old boy trapped in an abled 25 year old body. I can feel my legs, but I don't have the permission to use them. its like i am tied by ropes. and this rope has been on me for so long, that i can feel my legs, but i can also feel that those are having cuts so deep that i won't be able to use them even once the rope is taken out.

being a single child, loneliness has always been my shadow at home. and The middle class poor income, fighting parents, sickness and lack of culture ensured that loneliness remained my friend in school, college and other areas too.

the only goal of becoming an ideal son has shadowed every other thing in life. I can't drink, i can't go outside after 10pm, I can't take a jobbin different city. I can't fucking have female friends or think about relatiion-shits with people. i can't drive the car that was bought by my salary money. the list goes on and on.. i think every Indian (girls more than boys ig) have gone through at least 1 such restrictions at some point of their life. but me? a GUY in his fucking 25 , is going through ALL OF THEM, from day 1.

Plus i haven't started to discuss the weird eccentricities that i have to deal with, which are not so common. we follow a special religion where they have lots of philosophy and additional rules ( like no onion garlic mushroom in foods, mediation + pray for 1 hour twice a day ,... etc)

But i didn't complain, until now. I got sadder and sadder with time, but I cooperated. Whome else to live for , if not for the folks who made you in their womb amd sack? yeah I will fucking stay celibate until you find some willing "cultured" girl from your "religion" and arrange a lifelong existence. yes, i will fucking keep paying the car emis and see it in the parking lot everyday , while traveling via a metro. yes i will stay in your house in front of you all the times and never learn to exist independently coz fuck maturity. yes i will be a static atm machine waiting to die as you please.

but i am still not your ideal son? I say one little thing, and you start shouting at me for being selfish? why is religious superstition and those crime storemies so much deep into your head that you folks are micro managing and criticising every single thing in my life?

why is there a need for repetitive arguments, fights and shouting before evry action? why can't we just be happy for once!

I am shattered looking for happiness. I can't live like this anymore. There are no more than 2 people in my life that i care about and if those 2 are always having an upside down , angered face the what is the point of waking up every day?

wish i could just leave them. But can they live without me? or even can i live without them? and no , not talking about emotionally. I am very strong at the emotional side and i can throw word daggers to even 10+ years of companionships and ruin them. this will be just another long term relationship that i will sour.

BUT I CAN'T LITERALLY LIVE WITHOUT THEM. i am a useless guy who don't have any social intelligence outside his computer screen. i don't know how to live alone, and exist, or what my goals will be. I never saw a future without thinking about securing their future first, and them being in my future at all times.

aagh fuck. another painful night to survive and exist until i rise again to live like a corpse coz i can't do anything about it

TL;DR I just recently started my apprenticeship, it's horrible so far, I want to quit, but don't know what to do next...

Okay, first of all, hey there! My name is Cave and I haven't been on here for a while, so I hope the majority of you is doing rather okay. I'm programming for 6 years now, have some work experience already, since I used to volunteer for a company for half a year, in which I discovered my love for integrations and stuff. These background information will probably be necessary to understand my agony in full extend.

So, okay, this is about my apprenticeship. Generally speaking, I was expecting to work, and to learn something, gaining experience. So far, it only involved me, reading through horrible code, fixing and replacing stuff for them, I didn't learn a thing yet, and we are already a month in.

When I said the code is horrible, well, it is the worst I have ever seen since I started programming. Little documentation - if any -, everywhere you look there is deprecated code, which may or may not been commented out, often loops or simply methods seem to be foreign for them, as the code is cluttered with copy paste code everywhere and on top of that all, the code is slow as heck, like wtf.

I spent my past month with reading their code, trying to understand what most of this nonsense is for, and then just deleting and rewriting it entirely. My code suddenly is only 5% or their size and about 1000 times faster. Did I mention I am new to this programming language yet? That I have absolutely no experience in that programming language? Because well I am new and don't have any experience, yet, I have little to no struggle doing it better.

Okay, so, imagine, you started programming like 20 years ago, you were able to found your own business, you are getting paid a decent amount of money, sounds alright, right? Here comes the twist: you have been neglecting every advancement made in developing software for the past 20 years, yup, that's what it feels like to work here.

At this point I don't even know, like is this normal? Did git, VSCode and co. spoil me? Am I supposed to use ancient software with ancient programming languages to make my life hell? Is programming supposed to be like this? I have no clue, you tell me, I always thought I was doing stuff right.

Well, this company is not using git, infact, they have every of their project in a single folder and deleting it by accident is not that hard, I almost did once, that was scary. I started out working locally, just copying files, so shit like that won't happen, they told me to work directly in the source. They said it's fine, that's why you can see 20 copies of the folder, in the same folder... Yes, right, whatever.

I work using a remote desktop, the server I work on is Windows server 2008, you want to make icons using gimp? Too bad, Gimp doesn't support windows server 2008, I don't think anything does anymore, at least I haven't found anything, lol.

They asked me to integrate Google Maps into their projects, I thought it is gonna be fun, well, turns out their software uses internet explorer 9.. and Google maps api does not support internet explorer 9... I ended up somehow installing CEF3 on that shit and wrote an API for it in JS. Writing the API was actually kind of fun, but integrating it in their software sucked and they told me I will never integrate stuff ever again, since they usually don't do that. I mean, they don't have a Backend as far as I can tell, it looks like stuff directly connects with their database, so I believe them, but you know... I love integrating stuff..

So at this point you might be thinking, then why don't you just quit? Well I would, definitely. I'm lucky that till December I can quit without prior notice, just need a resignation as far as I can tell, but when I quit, what do I do next? Like, I volunteered for a company for half a year and I'd argue I did a good job, but with this apprenticeship it only adds up to about 7 months of actual work experience. Would anybody hire somebody with this much actual work experience? I also consider doing freelancing, making a living out of just integrating stuff, but would people pay for that? And then again, would they hire somebody with this much experience? I don't want to quit without a plan on what to do next, but I have no clue.

Am I just spoiled, is programming really just like that, using ancient tools and stuff? Let me know. Advice is welcomed as well, because I'm at a loss. Thanks for reading.

Was so worried with all the whining about the windows fall update thinking my pc sucks so it will break for sure. But seems I have had it for a week now and not noticed.

I need help.
I don't know if I can do this anymore.

As much as I love coding, what I do and making new things, I feel like I can't handle it as well as I used to be able to. I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety (amongst other things) and it's taking a toll on me. I can't work on problems as well as I used to. I overlooks simple errors and typos and spend hours trying to fix it. I can't focus on anything or even remember what I was doing a minute ago. I seem to constantly miss deadlnes. My performance has taken a nose-dive and I'm in constant fear of losing my job. I'm the breadwinner for my household (dad doesn't work, mom doesn't make enough) and much of my salary goes towards my family and rent.

I have a couple of attempts, and one of my recent ones got me fired from my previous job. I've tried to get help. I've gone to therapy, I'm on a shit-load of anti-depressants and trying to change the outlook of my life, but nothing seems t work.

I don' know what to do. I needed to vent out. What do you think I should do?

I'll try to make this short:D
I'm a CS student atm. at 3 sem.

And I just wanted to ask you guys, how did you improve back when you started developing?

The assignments we get at school never really challenge me, so I've spent a lot of time doing "programming ideas"(from sub reddits and ideabag2) on the side.
But I feel like I've hit a brick wall, as in, I don't think I learn super much from them anymore.
Which is why I've tried to "help" others, but when I go onto stack overflow or try to help on open source projects, I understand nothing and I'm definitely not able to help with anything. (They're all about things/subjects I've never heard of before)

So my question is mostly, how did you guys get from where I am today, to where you are today?

Thanks for even reading this.

(I know java, android dev, and Js/node.js)
(Sry about the English ;D)

Liferant. I feel annoyed If I compare my efforts to efforts of my "friends". I put 500% more in my self education, my career and professional life and I earn just a tiny bit more. I don't even know if I have friends anymore. We do not have a single thing common. While I want to develop, learn something, build something useful for people, they only want to drink, going out etc. Before we had some lan parties some game night but it was long ago. I lost any interest in travel and parties. I don't enjoy alcohol, I still consume it when I'm with them because there nothing else to do. I also become vegan about 2.5 years ago and those bbq`s are just pain in the ass. Plus I heard the sentence "show me your friends and I tell you your life" - uff.. I had never a single person who I knew personally and who has similar mindset like I do. Shall I start to look for friends? Even the thought feels kind of pathetic to me. I'm a freaking island in middle of the society who is trying to make it better but it's fighting against it with full force. I'm tired. I'm not suicidal and I still enjoy the life, but I'm crazy alone in what I like to do.

all this talk of australian crypto laws got me thinking. here's a hypothetical (this might get a little complicated):

for the sake of the security facade, the government decides to not ban encryption outright. BUT they decide that all crypto will use the same key. therefore you can not directly read encrypted things, but it's not really encrypted anymore is it?

part two: there's a concept called chicken sexing, named after people who determine the sex of baby chicks. male chicks are pretty useless and expensive to keep alive, so they are eaten. female chicks go on to lay eggs, so ideally, from a financial standpoint, you only raise hens to maturity. this is nearly impossible to discern early on so at first you're just straight up guessing. is this one female? sure? that one? no? really 50/50. BUT if you have a skilled chicken sexer looking over your shoulder, saying right or wrong, then eventually you get better. why? nobody knows. they can't explain it. nobody can. you just sort of "know" when it's female or not. some people can do 1000s of chicks/hr with success up to 98% but nobody can explain how to tell them apart.

part three. final part:

after years, even decades of using this encryption with only one key, I wonder if people (even if only people who are regularly exposed to crypto like NSA analysts or cryptographers) can ever learn to understand it. in the same way as above. you don't know exactly what it says. or how you know it. you didn't run an algorithm in your head or decrypt it. but somehow you get the gist.

28464e294af01d1845bcd21 roughly translates to "just bought a PS5! WOOT!" or even just pick out details. PS5. excited. bought.

but how do you know that? idk. just do.

oh what a creepy future it has become.

Hey guys, need your advice please.

In september Last year I've started my apprenticeship. Before that I made a year internship and developed a Software for them.

After I've left the internship, my Old Boss (Boss from internship) asked me if I can support the Software a while. So, I set Up a git, made it available in github, but private (had to paid for it - from my own Money). After not hearing something from him - He didn't understood how He Can Log in Into GitHub -.- WTF ! I wrote him multiple instructions but it was useless.
Because I don't have the desire and patience anymore - and don't want to pay with my own Money to Make it available for them - pay for something they can't even Login because they are ... Yeah.. I've decided to cancel the membership in github some weeks ago.

Today my Old Boss contacted me via E-Mail, after not hearing something from him in months.

Now I don't know how to react - He wants that I Code for him, the Software again.
on the one Hand I don't want to "leave him alone" but on the other hand I don't want to Support this Shit anymore.

What should I do?
At least I want to get paid for my Work. But I don't know, if this is legal to earn Money next to your apprenticeship. My current Boss Said one time that this would be No Problem, but I'm not sure about it.

Would be glad about any help and advice from you.

Thanks.

Ok, there is one good thing. I've reached 333 +1's. Thank you all guys!

Sooo... a few days ago my Power supply from my home pc died. It was a good one, but I don't know.. it just burned nearly..
Today I've received a new one.
Plugged everything in. PC runs - or not?? WTF! Windows (yeah, at home still Windows ) isn't booting anymore. Hardware changes detected. I think, through the broken Power supply something got damaged.. shit.. and know what - don't have any Backup. Shit. At least some important data is on another hdd, which hopefully is fine. Now I'm trying to rescue the data with another hdd installing a fresh Windows.

Whish me luck!

PS: No, the power supply wasn't from Samsung, even when it exploded nearly :P