Things I wish I could tell my 18 year old self.

1) Accept you will make mistakes.
2) Truly learn the language you are using.
3) Write idiomatic code for the language you are using.
4) Be upfront about not knowing something.
5) Don't let not knowing something stop you from learning it.
6) None of us knew X until we learned it.
7) Understand your strengths and weaknesses as a developer, play to them.
8) Be willing to try new things.
9) X language isn't ALWAYS the best choice, X paradigm isn't ALWAYS the best choice. Choose wisely.
10) You won't know everything, but you might know more than others.
11) Your ideas and ego don't matter more than ensuring the product works.
12) "Perfection is the enemy of the good [enough]" - Voltaire
13) "Perfection is not achieved when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to remove." - Einstein.
14) Conflicts happen, deal with it.
15) Develop a toolset and really learn them.
16) Try new tools, they may prove better than what you were using.
17) Don't manage your own memory unless you absolutely have to, you are probably not smarter than the collective intelligence of the team that built the various garbage collection methods.
18) People can be dicks, especially online.
19) If you are new and people are being dicks to you, did you skip past the irc message about etiquette? If you did, you're the dick in this situation.
20) It can be tough, but it is fun, so have fun!

Do not ever develop a project for family or friends.
It's the fucking worst decision you will make.
Damn i wish I knew this shit earlier.
They make you become an asshole.

#3 Worst thing I've seen a co-worker do?

A 20-something dev, 'A', back in the early days of twitter+facebook would post all his extracurricular activities (drinking, partying, normal young-buck stuff). The dev mgr, 'J', at the time took offense because he felt 'A' was making the company look bad, so 'A' had a target on his back. Nothing 'A' did was good enough and, for example, 'J' had the source control czars review 'A's code to 'review' (aka = find anything wrong). Not sorting the 'using' statements, and extra line after the closing }, petty things like that. For those curious, orders followed+carried out by+led by 'T' in my previous rant.

As time went on and 'T' finding more and more 'wrong' with A's code, 'J' put A on disciplinary probation. 'A' had 90 days to turn himself around, or else.

A bright spot was 'A' was working on a Delphi -> C# conversion, so a lot of the code would be green-field development and by simply following the "standards", 'A' would be fine...so he thought.

About 2 weeks into the probation, 'A' was called into the J's office and berated because the conversion project was behind schedule, and if he didn't get the project back on track, 'A' wouldn't make it 30 days. I sat behind 'A' and he unloaded on me.
<'A' slams his phone on his desk>
Me: "Whoa...whats up?"
A: "Dude, I fucking hate this place, did you hear what they did?"
<I said no, then I think we spent an hour talking about it>
Me: "That all sucks. Don't worry about the code. Nobody cares what T thinks. Its not even your fault the project is behind, the DBAs are tasked with upgrades and it's not like anyone is waiting on you. It'll get done when it's done. Sounds like a witch hunt, what did you do? Be honest."
A: "Well, um...I kinda called out J, T, and those other assholes on facebook. I was drunk, pissed, and ...well...here we are."
Me: "Geez, what a bunch of whiney snowflakes. Keep your head down and you'll get thru it, or don't. Its not like you couldn't find another job tomorrow."
A: "This is my first job out of college and I don't want to disappoint my dad by quitting. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. All J told me was to get better. What the fuk does that even mean?"
Me: "He didn't give you any goals? Crap, for someone who is a stickler for the rules, that's low, even for J."

Fast forward 2 weeks, I was attending MS TechEd and I was with another dev mgr, R.

R: "Did you hear? We had to let 'A' go today."
Me: "What the hell? Why?"
R: "He couldn't cut it, so we had to let him go."
Me: "Cut what? What did he do, specifically?"
R: "I don't know, 'A' was on probation, I guess he didn't meet the goals."
Me: "You guess? We fire a developer working on a major upgrade and you guess? What were these so-called goals?"
R: "Whoa...you're getting a little fire up. I don't know, maybe not adhering to coding standards, not meeting deadlines?"
Me: "OMG...we fire people for not forming code? Are you serious!?"
R: "Oh...yea...that does sound odd when you put it that way. I wish I'd talk to you before we left on this trip"
Me: "What?! You knew they were firing him *before* we left? How long did you know this was happening?"
R: "Honestly, for a while. 'A' really wasn't a team player."
Me: "That's dirty, the whole thing is dirty. We've done some shitty things to people, but this is low, even for J. The probation process is meant to improve, not be used as a witch hunt. I don't like that you stood around and let it happen. You know better."
R: "Yea, you're right, but doesn't change anything. J wanted to do it while most of us were at the conference in case 'A' caused a scene."
Me: "THAT MAKES IT WORSE! 'A' was blindsided and you knew it. He had no one there that could defend him or anything."
R: "Crap, crap, crap...oh crap...jeez...J had this planned all along...crap....there is nothing I can do no...its too late."
Me: "Yes there is. If 'A' comes to you for a letter of recommendation, you write one. If someone calls for reference, you give him a good one."
R: "Yea..yea...crap...I feel like shit...I need to go back to the room and lie down."

As the sun sets, it rises again. Within a couple of weeks, 'A' had another job at a local university. Within a year, he was the department manager, and now he is a vice president (last time I checked) of a college in Kansas City, MO.

I realize now I probably shouldn't have called out my manger's bullshit if I wanted to keep my job. We were told to work a Sunday and our PO called it a "Smack-a-thon."

I said, "No let's not use stupid names. Let's call things what they are. This is a management failure Sunday."

That was during new hire lunch, in front of my manager.

I worked the first Sunday. I refused to work the second one. I've also been refusing to work over 45 hours a week.

So I guess I could have seen it coming. My manager didn't even have the gums to do it himself. He had the HR lady do it, while I was working remote from home. She told me it wasn't a 9 to 5 shop and that people there are expected to work long hours (People on my team are working 80+ a week for several months).

I took the train in to get my stuff. No one was there. My computer already gone. Couldn't even say "Go fuck yourself to anybody."

So I feel better now. I haven't taken a day of since I started in February, so it's time for some vacation and an unemployment check.

It was a really terrible job, and terribly mismanaged. I'm glad I stood my ground and knew what I was worth. I wish my co-workers had done the same.

I should have tried to start a union.

Buckle up kids, this one gets saucy.

At work, we have a stress test machine that trests tensile, puncture and breaking strength for different materials used (wood construction). It had a controller software update that was supposed to be installed. I was called into the office because the folks there were unable to install it, they told me the executable just crashed, and wanted me to take a look as I am the most tech-savvy person there.

I go to the computer and open up the firmware download folder. I see a couple folders, some random VBScript file, and Installation.txt. I open the TXT, and find the first round of bullshit.

"Do not run the installer executable directly as it will not work. Run install.vbs instead."

Now, excuse me for a moment, but what kind of dick-cheese-sniffing cockmonger has end users run VBScript files to install something in 2018?! Shame I didn't think of opening it up and examining it for myself to find out what that piece of boiled dogshit did.

I suspend my cringe and run it, and lo and behold, it installs. I open the program and am faced with entering a license key. I'm given the key by the folks at the office, but quickly conclude no ways of entering it work. I reboot the program and there is an autofilled key I didn't notice previously. Whatever, I think, and hit OK.

The program starts fine, and I try with the login they had previously used. Now it doesn't work for some reason. I try it several times to no avail. Then I check the network inspector and notice that when I hit login, no network activity happens in the program, so I conclude the check must be local against some database.

I browse to the program installation directory for clues. Then I see a folder called "Databases".

"This can't be this easy", I think to myself, expecting to find some kind of JSON or something inside that I can crawl for clues. I open the folder and find something much worse. Oh, so much worse.

I find <SOFTWARE NAME>.accdb in the folder. At this point cold sweat is already running down my back at the sheer thought of using Microsoft Access for any program, but curiosity takes over and I open it anyway.

I find the database for the entire program inside. I also notice at this point that I have read/write access to the database, another thing that sent my alarm bells ringing like St. Pauls cathedral. Then I notice a table called "tUser" in the left panel.

Fearing the worst, I click over and find... And you knew it was coming...

Usernames and passwords in plain text.

Not only that, they're all in the format "admin - admin", "user - user", "tester - tester".

I suspend my will to die, login to the program and re-add the account they used previously. I leave the office and inform the peeps that the program works as intended again.

I wish I was making this shit up, but I really am not. What is the fucking point of having a login system at all when your users can just open the database with a program that nowadays comes bundled with every Windows install and easily read the logins? It's not even like the data structure is confusing like minified JSON or something, it's literally a spreadsheet in a program that a trained monkey could read.

God bless them and Satan condemn the developers of this fuckawful program.

This rant means YOU if you are one of those people that "fix" their family's computers.

I was visiting my family over the holidays and while I managed to stay away from fixing their computers for the most time, I offered to help my grandfather to update the Garmin navigation device he wanted to gift my father. (They do not use smartphones for navigation, and my father doesn't want "these modern shitty phones".)

When booting up my grandfather's laptop, I realized something odd: Linux Mint boot screen. Wut?

And immediately I said: "It could be impossible to update your navigation device on this laptop."

As true enough, the Garmin Express update software requires either a Windows PC or a Mac; and even though I vaguely hoped it might be possible to upgrade through Linux, I just could not be bothered to find out that day.

What I wondered though is why did my grandfather of all people ran Linux!?

Don't get me wrong, I use Linux myself on my work machine and I never want to work with something else when coding; yet my grandfather is an end user of the show-me-where-and-what-and-how-often-to-click-kind.

What could he gain by it?

As it turns out, the computer nerd's friend of my uncle managed his PC. And my uncle and he decided unanimously my grandfather should better run Linux. Is it something my grandfather needs? No. BUT IT'S RIGHT! Suck it up! (My father's laptop therefore also runs Linux Mint. So he can't upgrade his new device either.)

This is the ugly kind of entitled nerd-dom I truly detest.

When discussing things further, my grandfather told me that he had problems ever since with his printer. Under Windows, he knew how to print on the special photo paper. Under Linux, all he can barely manage is to print on normal papers. Shame, printing photos was the only thing he liked doing on that device. What did my uncle's friend tell him?

"Get a decent printer!"

Fuck that guy.

It's fine if Linux works for you, but before you install it on a PC of a relative, you better make sure it fits their needs! If you have that odd member that only wants to write letters, read emails, use facebook, and wants to play that browser game, feel free to introduce them to Linux.

Yet if they have any special wish, don't stand in their way.

If they want to do something that requires a certain OS, don't just decide for them that their desire is wrong, but help them achieve their goal. If you can't align that with your ideology, then get the fuck out of my way and stop "helping".

For some people, a computer is a device to achieve a certain goal, a work. They only get hindered by your ill-advised attempts at virtue signalling.

To those that think they can't make it.
To those that are put down by those that don't understand you.
And to those that have never had a dream come true.

Not a rant, but the story of how I got into programming

I've always been into tech/electronics. I remember being told once that when I was 3, I used to take plug sockets to pieces. When I was 7, I built a computer with my dad.
There isn't a thing in my room that hasn't been dismantled and put back together again. Except for the things that weren't put back together again ;)

When I was 15, I got a phone for Christmas. It was a pretty crappy phone, the LG P350 (optimus ME). But I loved it all the same.
However I knew it could do a lot more. It ran a bloated, slow version of Android 2.2.
So I went searching, how can I make it faster, how to make it do more. And I found a huge community around Android ROMs. Obviously the first thing I did was flashed this ROM. Sure, there were bugs, but I was instantly in love with it. My phone was freed.

From there I went on to exploring what else can be done.
I wanted to learn how to script, so over the weekend I wrote a 1000 line batch (Windows cmd) script that would root the phone and flash a recovery environment onto it. Pretty basic. Lots of switch statements, but I was proud of it. I'd achieved something. It wasn't new to the world, but it was my first experience at programming.

But it wasn't enough, I needed more.
So I set out to actually building the roms. I installed Linux. I wanted to learn how to utilise Linux better, so I rewrote my script in bash.
By this time, I'd joined a team for developing on similar spec'd phones. Without the funds to by new devices, we began working on more radical projects.
Between us, we ported newer kernels to our devices. We rebased much of the chipset drivers onto newer equivalents to add new features.

And then..

Well, it was exam season. I was suffering from personal issues (which I will not detail), and that, with the work on Android, I ended up failing the exams.
I still passed, but not to the level I expected.

So I gave up on school, and went head first into a new kind of development. "continue doing what you love. You'll make it" is what I told myself.

I found python by contributing to an IRC bot. I learnt it by reading the codebase. Anything I didn't understand, I researched. Anything I wanted to do, google was there to help me through it.

Then it was exam season again. Even though I'd given up on school, I was still going. It was easier to stay in than do anything about it.
A few weeks before the exams, I had a panic attack. I was behind on coursework, and I knew I would do poorly on exams.
So I dropped out.
I was disappointed, my family was disappointed.
So I did the only thing I felt I could do. I set out to get a job as a developer.

At this stage, I'd not done anything special. So I started aiming bigger. Contributing to projects maintained by Sony and Google, learning from them. Building my own projects to assist with my old Android friends.
I managed to land a contract, however due to the stresses at home, I had to drop it after a month.
Everything was going well, I felt ready to get a full time job as a developer, after 2 years of experience in the community.

Then I had to wake up.
Unfortunately, my advisors (I was a job seeker at the time) didn't understand the potential of learning to be a developer. With them, it's "university for a skilled job".
They see the word "computer" on a CV, they instantly say "tech support".
I played ball, I did what I could for them. But they'd always put me down, saying I wasn't good enough, that I'd never get a job.
I hated them. I'd row with them every other day.

By God, I would prove them wrong.

And then I found them. Or, to be more precise, they found me. A startup in London got in contact with me. They seemed like decent people. I spoke with their developers, and they knew their stuff, these were people that I can learn from.
I travelled 4 hours to go for an interview, then 4 hours back.
When I got the email saying they'd move me to London, I was over the moon.
I did exactly what everyone was telling me I couldn't do.

1.5 years later, I'm still working with them. We all respect each other, and we all learn from each other.

I'm ever grateful to them for taking a shot with me. I had no professional experience, and I was by no means the most skilled individual they interviewed.

Many people have a dream. I won't lie, I once dreamed of working at Google. But after the journey I've been through, I wouldn't have where I am now any other way. Though, in time, I wish to share this dream with another.
I hope that all of you reach your dreams too.

Sorry for the long post. The details are brief, but there are only 5k characters ;)

You know, sometimes I wish I had friends who knew how to code or new a bit about the programming world. Then I could show them my projects and they could help out of they wanted. I could also get them to properly criticize my designs and script. Instead of the ones that just scroll past your shit and say nothing at all, you know, people who would actually give a little bit of a shit. Sigh.

So today I basically "lost" the chance to enter this remarkable security StartUp. The dream made true... a couple of Python nice scripts, the logic test that wasn't that big, everything was going well.

I met the CEO, damn! He seems to be a great dude. But suddenly, a wild co-founder appeared.

The dude started to talk about money and how he didn't perceive me as a Senior developer (not even if my results were telling him the oppositive); he ended up with: you seemed to be Mid-advance.
I was like: Ok, I understand. Wasn't that big because I knew that I could have demonstrated my skills.

Then he asked about my salary expectations, I answered to him my realistic expectations, that to be honest, it wasn't a lot of damn money! Because, I really was expecting a chance to learn more, have bigger challenges, bring value, etc.

He said: Okay let me check this with my partner. But, that was a week ago.
Anyway, today I received an email from the CEO, with the typical apologize telling me that the vacancy will be paused by the moment.

Oh, I didn't mention that one friend of mine is working there and he told me a couple of hours ago that they have hired a Junior developer because he was willing to accept what they wanted to pay him. Puff it broke my heart, but I wish him luck because even though I was dying to be on that security StartUp, I’m not at the point to accept a misery of money to work harder, I just felt frustrated with that stingy guy.

TL;DR :

"when i die i want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time"

STORY TIME

Last year in College, I had two simultaneous projects. Both were semester long projects. One was for a database class an another was for a software engineering class.

As you can guess, the focus of the projects was very different. Databases we made some desktop networked chat application with a user login system and what not in Java. SE we made an app store with an approval system and admin panels and ratings and reviews and all that jazz in Meteor.js.

The DB project we had 4 total people and one of them was someone we'll call Frank. Frank was also in my SE project group. Frank disappeared for several weeks. Not in class, didn't contact us, and at one point the professors didn't know much either. As soon as we noticed it would be an issue, we talked to the professors. Just keeping them in the loop will save you a lot of trouble down the road. I'm assuming there was some medical or family emergency because the professors were very understanding with him once he started coming back to class and they had a chance to talk.

Lesson 1: If you have that guy that doesn't show up or communicate, don't be a jerk to them and communicate with your professor. Also, don't stop trying to contact the rogue partner. Maybe they'll come around sometime.

It sucked to lose 25% of our team for a project, but Frank appreciated that we didn't totally ignore him and throw him under the bus to the point that the last day of class he came up to me and said, "hey, open your book bag and bring it next to mine." He then threw a LARGE bottle of booze in there as a thank you.

Lesson 2: Treat humans as humans. Things go wrong and understanding that will get you a lot farther with people than trying to make them feel terrible about something that may have been out of their control.

Our DB project went really well. We got an A, we demoed, it worked, it was cool. The biggest problem is I was the only person that had taken a networking class so I ended up doing a large portion of the work. I wish I had taken other people's skills into account when we were deciding on a project. Especially because the only requirement was that it needed to have a minimum of 5 tables and we had to use some SQL language (aka, we couldn't use no-SQL).

The SE project had Frank and a music major who wanted to minor in CS (and then 3 other regular CS students aside from me). This assignment was make an app store using any technology you want. But, you had to use agile sprints. So we had weekly meetings with the "customer" (the TA), who would change requirements on us to keep us on our toes and tell us what they wanted done as a priority for the next meeting. Seriously, just like real life. It was so much fun trying to stay ahead of that.

So we met up and tried to decided what to use. One kid said Java because we all had it for school. The big issue is trying to make a Java web app is a pain in the ass. Seriously, there are so many better things to use. Other teams decided to use Django because they all wanted to learn Python. I suggested why not use something with a nice package system to minimize duplicating work that had already been done and tested by someone. Kid 1 didn't like that because he said in the real world you have to make your own software and not use packages. Little did he know that I had worked in SE for a few years already and knew damn well that every good project has code from somewhere else that has already solved a problem you're facing. We went with Java the first week. It failed miserably. Nobody could get the server set up on their computers. Using VCS with it required you to keep the repo outside of the where you wrote code and copy and paste changes in there. It was just a huge flop so everyone else voted to change.

Lesson 3: Be flexible. Be open to learning new things. Don't be afraid to try something new. It'll make you a better developer in the long run.

So we ended up using Meteor. Why? We all figured we could pick up javascript super easy.Two of us already knew it. And the real time thing would make for some cool effects when an app got a approved or a comment was made. We got to work and the one kid was still pissed. I just checked the repo and the only thing he committed was fixing the spelling of on word in the readme.

We sat down one day and worked for 4 straight hours. We finished the whole project in that time. While other teams were figuring out how to layout their homepage, we had a working user system and admin page and everything. Our TA was trying to throw us for loops by asking for crazy things and we still came through. We had tests that ran along side the application as you used it. It was friggin cool.

Lesson 4: If possible, pick the right tool for the job. Not the tool you know. Everything in CS has a purpose. If you use it for its purpose, you will save days off of a project.

Don't you just wish you can delete things from the internet forever?

I used to be a host on this show, not telling the name tho. It aired every Thursdays at 10 pm. And in case anyone missed it, the television station would post it on their youtube channel.

I was so desperate to remove it that I flagged it a bunch of times, but I knew it wouldn't work.

I'm dying of embarassment because everyone is finding it. It doesn't air on TV anymore, so that youtube channel is the bane of my existance.

I even got the idea to search myself up and delete any social media accounts, because I want to be nearly invisible on the internet.

That worked out. Except for that damn youtube channel.

I was a fucking 14 year old. I looked weird, acted weird, my mom made me dress weirdly. I was so nervous, I licked my freaking lips ON CAMERA. Not to mention, I had acne, and my skin was dark at the time because I was fresh out of middle school, and I did cross country in middle school.

Now I'm curious. Does anyone else have something embarassing on the internet that they can't get rid of?

Old rant about an internship I had years ago. It still annoys me to this day, so I just had to share the story.

Basically I had no job or work experience in the field, which is a common issue in the city I live in - developer jobs are hard to come by with no experience here. The municipality tried to counter this issue by offering us (unemployed people with an interest in the field) a free 9-month course, linked with an internship program, with a "high chance" of a job after the internship period.

To lure companies to agree to this deal, the municipality offered a sum of money to companies who willing to take interns. The only requirement for the company was that they had to offer a full-time position to the interns after the internship, as long as there were no serious issues (ex. skipping work, calling in sick, doing a bad job etc.).
On paper, this deal probably makes sense.

I landed an internship fairly quickly at a well-known company in the city. The first internship period went great, and I got constant positive feedback. I even got to the point where I ran out of tasks since I worked faster than expected - which I was fairly proud of at the time.

The next internship period was a weird mix between school (the course), and being at the company. We would be at the school for the whole week, expect Wednesdays where we could do the internship at the company.

When I met at work on that first Wednesday, the company told me that it made no sense for me to meet up on those days, as I was only watching some tutorial videos during that time, while they were finding bigger tasks for me - which in turn required that they got some designs for a new project. They said that due to the requirements they got from the municipality (which I knew nothing about at the time), they couldn't ask me to work from home - and they said it would "demoralize" the other developers if I just sat there on Wednesdays to watch videos. Instead, they suggested that I called in sick on Wednesdays and just watched the videos at home - which is something I would register to the workplace, so I wouldn't get in trouble with the school. It sounded logical to me, so I did that for like 5-6 Wednesdays in a row. Looking back at this period, there's a lot of red flags - but I was super optimistic and simply didn't notice.

After this period, the final 2 months of the internship period (no school). This time I had proper tasks, and was still being praised endlessly - just like the first period.
On the last day of the internship, I got called to a meeting with my teamlead and CEO. Thinking I was to sign a full-time contract, I happily went to the meeting.. Only to be told that they had found someone with more experience.
I was fairly disappointed, and told them honestly that I would have preferred if they had told me this earlier, since I had been looking forward to this day. They apologized, but said that there was nothing they could do.

When I returned for the last school period (2 weeks), the teacher asked me to join him for a small meeting with some guy from the municipality. Both seemed fairly disappointed / angry, and told me what still makes me furious whenever I think about it.
Basically after my last internship period, the company had called the municipality, telling them that I had called in sick on those Wednesdays, and was "a lazy worker", and they would refuse to hire me because of that.
I of course told them my side of the story, which they wouldn't believe (unemployed person vs. well-known company).

Even when I landed a proper job a few months later, the office had called my old internship for a reference - and they told the same story, which nearly made them decline my application. This honestly makes me feel like it's something personal.

So basically:
Municipality: Had to pay the company as the deal / contract between them was kept.
Company: Got free money and work.
Me: Got nothing except a bad reputation - and some (fairly limited) experience..

Do I regret taking the course? .. No, it was a free course and I learned a lot - and I DID get some experience. But god, I wish I had applied at a different company.

Sorry for my bad English - it's not my first language.. But f*ck this company :)

TLDR - you shouldn't expect common sense from idiots who have access to databases.

I joined a startup recently. I know startups are not known for their stable architecture, but this was next level stuff.
There is one prod mongodb server.
The db has 300 collections.
200 of those 300 collections are backups/test collections.
25 collections are used to store LOGS!! They decided to store millions of logs in a nosql db because setting up a mysql server requires effort, why do that when you've already set up mongodb. Lol 😂
Each field is indexed separately in the log.
1 collection is of 2 tb and has more than 1 billion records.
Out of the 1 billion records, 1 million records are required, the rest are obsolete. Each field has an index. Apparently the asshole DBA never knew there's something called capped collection or partial indexes.

Trying to get approval to clean up the db since 3 months, but fucking bureaucracy. Extremely high server costs plus every week the db goes down since some idiot runs a query on this mammoth collection. There's one single set of credentials for everything. Everyone from applications to interns use the same creds.
And the asshole DBA left, making me in charge of handling this shit now. I am trying to fix this but am stuck to get approval from business management. Devs like these make me feel sad that they have zero respect for their work and inability to listen to people trying to improve the system.

Going to leave this place really soon. No point in working somewhere where you are expected to show up for 8 hours, irrespective of whether you even switch on your laptop.
Wish me luck folks.

I wish I knew for sure I wouldn't offend certain people if they read this. I'll be vague for a reason..

WHY THE FUCK ARE. PI WRITING A PROGRAM IN A LANGUAGE OF YOUR LIKING AND THEN TELLING ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHICH FILE TO UPLOAD?!,!,!? How about the ones that make it work?

And why did you send the program, unformatted? This hurts.

I'm trying to teach these children how to fucking be professional in their jobs and this is what I'm working with.

How hard is it to know your tools and pick one that shows you know what you're doing????

And all this after the deadline, and the language written wrong

I wish recruitment agencies knew what they're doing so they could actually send useful job offers... C'mon, seriously? I'm a first year at University, what are the chances I can be a senior linux sys admin and manage a team?

FFS stop squashing commits. If “updated comments” is what the commit was it should show it in git blame. If “fixed null check” is what the commit was it should show it in git blame.

There is no reason to have “ticket-234 service revision” beside 1000 lines of code. How does anyone justify this loss of git info for the sake of “clean history”? Nobody looks at your history and says, “That is bloody clean git history I should write home about it.” People do however look at the code and say, “I wish I knew WTF they were trying to do on that line.”

Never worked before so I'll talk about one of the former staff at my school.

This guy worked as IT and did some teaching in the high school. Early last year, he suddenly disappears for no reason.

Now, I'm going to go in order of what we (the students) found out, not, chronological order.

Firstly, turns out that in class he would make comments about female students. Nothing explicit, just kinda strange. I forget the examples I heard but think like the overly friendly old guy. Those types of comments from a 40-something IT guy. (Some female students knew about this for a long while but I only heard about it after the investigation)

Next, rumor got out that they found some stuff on his computer. I don't know how, but it turned out to be accurate, and we were accurate at the follow-up assumption that it was porn.

After that, the school made an announcement that we had been arrested. Up until then, we just assumed he had been sacked. He was weird sure, but we didn't think criminal.

Some other students looked into the police records, and it turns out this guy had been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography.

Pretty sick right? Its worth pointing out now that our school has Pre-K through 12th grade students.

I gained a new level of respect for my female classmates after that. I didn't even know that was going on, really wish I could have helped out.

Warning: pretty sad thoughts. If you're having a blast of a day, please skip. It's for your own good.

That feeling when you finish watching a piece of art. Be it a film or anime or anything. You're confused why you feel good, but at the same time you're hurt. You smile but the pain is still there when you reflect on the feelings and the experiences you had and you realise that none of it will ever happen again. No art or any of the past will happen again exactly the same way how you felt and experienced.

You think of the best friend you once had. Think of the girl you held hands with and time stopped. The first time you embraced her and knew you loved her more than anything, even if she didn't know your feelings. Think of your first kiss. Your first serious relationship. The last time you saw your parents, your wife, your children, family.

Now look at the perspective of the future and the past you: blissfully ignoring the certain end to all experiences until they all abruptly end reminding you of this and it hurts. Damn it hurts.

I will never be able to see me best friend again, nor will I ever be able to hold hands with her either. First time I kissed is now long gone. It's almost like you wish you were aware of how valuable and important the experience was and to not just throw it away like the last time and the several times before that. But the sad part is, you don't know which experience will make you realise how much you missed it.

But even if you do realise by placing yourself in the place of your future self, and you cherish the experience, you blame yourself because you could have either avoided it's end or did something better.

Like your break up: could it be fixed? Was it worth the little time you have on this plante?
Like your friends argument you had: could you have done better? Could you have stopped it?
Like your parent's death: could you have been a better son to your now overworked dying mum? Could you see how hard they tried even though you thought they were total dicks?

Now you realise that literally anything you do, you will have a problem with somewhere down the line. You're destined to be sad shattered and broken by every day that is tragedy.

But it's similar to art. After all, your life is a piece of art about how you died. Which is why you smile and enjoy the last second of the experience which you just had. That chest warming feeling will only last a little. You smile through pain, yet you realise its not the end.

Then again, its just my thoughts that i need to vent. Take it with a pinch of salt.

In knew it was bad at the time, but holy shit have I realised how shitty my last job was!

Underpaid (though still not doing too badly), underappreciated, and no promotion or raise despite promises of one for over a year. Of course the minute I handed in my notice, they immediately offered me a 15k raise and "oh, we can get you involved in the management side in 6 months".

Guess what bitches, my new job * is * being a manager, and I get a 20k pay rise. 2 weeks in and I'm loving it, wish I'd switched sooner!

The catch is, I'm now a manager. Does this make me the future bad guy?

Wish I knew about this lovely community a few years ago, when a dev in my team asked for help because they couldn't understand why their function was only returning one string... Only you guys would understand my pain when I saw this...

string SomeShitStringMethod()
{
<do stuff>
return string1;

<do stuff>
return string2;

<do stuff>
return string3;
}

>_______<

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. 🙏

Like someone else already mentioned here, remember that interview goes both ways: youre there to gauge wether workplace suits you or no. Always ask to meet teamleads/project leads or potential colleagues before accepting the job and try talking with them.

I applied to 3 jobs and in all of them managers did put a brave face and told me lots of bs just to get me accept the job. Managers live in their own world, sometimes they dont even know what you will be working on.

Once I accepted a job and got stuck with a perfectionist teamlead for 8 months which could have been avoided given I had the chance to catch the bad vibes during the interview.

Another time I accepted a job and had to work with a backend guy for one year and his accent was so thick+stuttering that I had trouble in understanding anything he says. Every conversation felt like trivia contest. I wish I had knew that stuff before accepting the job

You know what sucks?
Having birthday...Literally not an hour ago and nobody showing up...At least nobody who you really cared about. Only people around are there because they knew you some years ago and expect to get a free drink...

Wanna know what sucks even more??
Being heartbroken and even though you felt horrible because of that person it is my minute of the year and the most I wish is her being by my site. Caring about me and just wishing me happy birthday.

Definitely the worst birthday ever but at least I'm drunk so that's that.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Bye and have a nice evening y'all.

When depression set in, I thought pain relief lied in getting duller. People I called “stupid” — who lived simple lives filled with alcohol and lack of any talent or purpose — weren't suffering. Better even, they denied the existence of depression.

My “wish” was granted when they prescribed cariprazine. In two months, I lost my ability to read, let alone code.

Before that, even depressed, writing a simple email/password auth was a matter of ten minutes in any of the languages I knew how to do web in (JS, Python, Clojure, PHP). But on cariprazine, I remember myself not quite getting what an HTML form was.

Tell you what… you should never wish to become dumber. When I was smart and depressed, the pain was real, but it felt like… let's say a breakup. When I was dumb and depressed, it felt like being raped with a red-hot soldering iron. Or like being skinned alive. Or like when 100% of your skin is a third-degree burn. The pain weren't listening to me, as my mouth was glued shut as if I was Keanu in the first Matrix movie. You can't say, do or think anything, at all, to ease your pain somehow. You can't even realize that just DMing or calling someone is probably a good idea.

Instead of you vs. despair situation from when you were smart, now it's just despair that is actively melting you, so you two become one. Even time loses its meaning. There is nothing out there but suffering.

If you're smart(er than I was at my lowest), DO cherish it. Losing that will spell disaster. So stay away from substances that can facilitate that loss.

Storytime!

(I just posted this in a shorter form as a comment but wanted to write it as a post too)

TL;DR, smarts are important, but so is how you work.

My first 'real' job was a lucky break in the .com era working tech support. This was pretty high end / professional / well respected and really well paid work.

I've never been a super fast learner, I was HORRIBLE in school. I was not a good student until I was ~40 (and then I loved it, but no longer have the time :( )

At work I really felt like so many folks around me did a better job / knew more than me. And straight up I know that was true. I was competent, but I was not the best by far.

However .... when things got ugly, I got assigned to the big cases. Particularly when I transferred to a group that dealt with some fancy smancy networking equipment.

The reason I was assigned? Engineering (another department) asked I be assigned. Even when it would take me a while to pickup the case and catch up on what was going on, they wanted the super smart tech support guys off the case, and me on it.

At first this was a bit perplexing as this engineering team were some ultra smart guys, custom chip designers, great education, and guys you could almost see were running a mental simulation of the chip as you described what you observed on the network...

What was also amusing was how ego-less these guys seemed to be (I don't pretend to know if they really were). I knew for a fact that recruiting teams tried to recruit some of these guys for years from other companies before they'd jump ship from one company to the next ... and yet when I met them in person it was like some random meeting on the street (there's a whole other story there that I wish I understood more about Indian Americans (many of them) and American engineers treat status / behave).

I eventually figured out that the reason I was assigned / requested was simple:

1. Support management couldn't refuse, in fact several valley managers very much didn't like me / did not want to give me those cases .... but nobody could refuse the almighty ASIC engineers. No joke, ASIC engineers requests were all but handed down on stone tablets and smote any idols you might have.

2. The engineers trusted me. It was that simple.

They liked to read my notes before going into a meeting / high pressure conference call. I could tell from talking to them on the phone (I was remote) if their mental model was seizing up, or if they just wanted more data, and we could have quick and effective conversations before meetings ;)

I always qualified my answers. If I didn't know I said so (this was HUGE) and I would go find out. In fact my notes often included a list of unknowns (I knew they'd ask), and a list of questions I had sent to / pending for the customer.

The super smart tech support guys, they had egos, didn't want to say they didn't know, and they'd send eng down the rabbit hole. Truth be told most of what the smarter than me tech support guy's knew was memorization. I don't want to sound like I'm knocking that because for the most part memorization would quickly solve a good chunk of tech support calls for sure... no question those guys solved problems. I wish I was able to memorize like those guys.

But memorization did NOT help anyone solve off the wall bugs, sort of emergent behavior, recognize patterns (network traffic and bugs all have patterns / smells). Memorization also wouldn't lead you to the right path to finding ANYTHING new / new methods to find things that you don't anticipate.

In fact relying on memorization like some support folks did meant that they often assumed that if bit 1 was on... they couldn't imagine what would happen if that didn't work, even if they saw a problem where ... bro obviously bit 1 is on but that thing ain't happening, that means A, B, C.

Being careful, asking questions, making lists of what you know / don't know, iterating LOGICALLY (for the love of god change one thing at a time). That's how you solved big problems I found.

Sometimes your skills aren't super smarts, super flashy code, sometimes, knowing every method off the top of your head, sometimes you can excel just being more careful, thinking different.

Not dev related
Worst Team work fail...
I was hired to a Steel werehouse to join a team of two...
One month latter I was working alone while my coworkers spent their time on the bathroom watching manga and playing rpgs on their android phones...
One year latter I was fired, got Hurt because of the heavy weight (Steel weights a lot) and because I was a temp they just fired me (toke me a year to recover)
Two months latter both my coworkers were fired.. Guess that without me the work didn't do itself...
Wish I knew back them they couldn't fire me while I was Hurt...
Oh and I didn't complain about my coworkers because I don't like to talk bad about others...
No matter.... Got a better job latter on and the company lost clients... So fuck you smart ass engineer....

!rant

I would like to present you the story that I tell everyone who is afraid of expectations, stressed to impress interviewers etc. Story about how I got my first job.

A little of backstory:
I always was good with computers, not like expert, but good. Of course parents were against giving me admin rights, so I just played games or such. When time came to choose my path throgh life, I've chosen to go medicine-related way, and chosen high school with such profile. I did my exams terribly, cause I never cared about marks, so I applied to uni for Information and Communication Technology course. I've learned basics of coding there, much stuff I don't really need right now, but in the end it was the best choice I've made.

With that way too long prologue...

I had to do internship for my uni and decided to try and find some year earlier. There was a lecture about multiplatform coding held by company my uni had partnership with. I've filled a questionare and few weeks later they invited me for assessment - event where they will choose who is good enough.
Of course I didn't believe in my chances to win an internship (1st place got full time job). There were 3 stages:
- solo coding (C/C++ own implementation of list)
- group designing (UML and presentation according to specification)
- interview (talking about code from stage 1, some questions, theory)

I failed 1st stage miserably... so I decided to don't give a shit and bravely presented our group project. A guy asked why we did not included a thing on UML, so I told him that it was not in specification - he was suprised but took it as big +. We "won" that part. When it came to interview... I was myself, cool headed, admited when I don't know things.

I thought that was it.

Few weeks later I received email - they invited me for internship.

They put me into Python project, language that noone in our trainee team knew. Told us 2/4 will be hired. At first I was not interested, wanted to finish my degree. But they convinced me. Now I'm here +2 years.

I am aware there are not many companies like that. Here, the people matters - you don't have to know everything, as long as you are getting along with others.

My tip for you though is: BE YOURSELF, NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY 🎶

And I wish us more companies like that.😉

(not really dev related, but a rant nonetheless)

I just got a new 3D printer, and all of a sudden, people are giving me print requests. I don't think that they realize that I don't just tell the printer that I want whatever, but that I have to either find the model online or design it myself.

Also, I have more friends now. Yay?

Fuck I wish I knew what to do about low motivation!!! I have some ideas I think are really great, some that might be profitable, and fuck I just don’t do any of them. I spend more time panicking about what to do than anything else. But damn so much time wasted when I just needed a little guidance or a little planning or a little like less than $100 more money. That frustrates me to no end.

There’s so much bullshit to everything. This does follow up to my wk106 rant, where I’m trying to rationalize the tons of code that are behind the smallest features. How many thousands of builds go into a deploy. Just swallowing how much rite in software.

I feel like a failure at my job at times but what sucks is I’m just in the middle. Not the most experienced dev, not the least. I’ve got my feet wet in a number of things, but not a solid enough stack for a lot.

BUT SOMEHOW I GOTTA BE MOTIVATED TO LEARN. FFS I CAN DO BETTER BUT MY INSIDE IS BROKEN SOMETIMES AND I JUST WANK OFF FUCK GET IT TOGETHER.

Yea, I fight with myself a lot. I have a big ego and I’m a piece of shit at the same time. Idk. That is annoying too. If only I could get really motivated and focused on some of these projects I could do amazing things. I’ve never struggled with a subject I applied myself to. I just wasn’t motivated. I don’t know how to fix it and I wish I did. I also don’t know what the end game for me holds.

This whole complex really scares me for later life. I will have regrets because my mind builds impossible plans for good, but if I achieve any of it I WILL THINK damn I should have not dealt with this and done x. Like I could make world peace but be like damn coulda rebuilt cars or some stupid shit.

So I’ll conclude with that I’ve done a lot of jobs around the house, and yes working with drywall sucks. So sometimes I’ll think about that. But damn. That doesn’t last because I know I can do it well if I apply myself.

All this leads to getting overextended which is another huge motivation killer. I’m trying to learn self control and focus. But also I need small victories along the way. Very annoying.

Well at least I was motivated to finish this rant. I have a few weekly rants I wanted to participate in but couldn’t even find the motivation for that. There was a toxic person in my life then and I’m slowly getting back to normal but I know that even normal me struggles with motivation. Plus that toxic person was my friend and I’ve lost a lot of (long term) friends recently and that is a real drag. But they needed to go. But I wish they had just shut up sometimes then they wouldn’t have been so toxic. But I digress.

I know I have so many ideas I can’t do them all even if I am motivated and for some time is of the essence.

So look out for some collabs. And grab that motivation wherever you can find it.

Bought a new toy drone to play with at home, Ryze Yello. It boasts an Open SDK on the box and claims to be programmable. Awesome, I think, I end up buying and going home to get to work.

All is great using the app, I can fly the drone and the video feed is mostly usable. Now let's get in to the SDK and see what we have.

Docs say I've got a few basic commands, 8 directional flips, 6 directions of movement, rotate, takeoff, and land. Plus a config option to set the speed. After a bit of tinkering I discovered that only 3 commands actually work: takeoff, flip, land. The rest error out with no (currently) useful message.

A bit more searching online tells me that they borked the commands with a recent firmware update and are working on it as of 3 months ago.

I wish I knew more about firmware or deconstructing the wifi packets from the app so I could try to do something useful.

So many stupid things I wanted to do with an automated drone and I'm stuck waiting for them to fix their firmware to put functionality back into the device.

Worst interview rejection.

I was just out of college and making the interview rounds set up through my college's job placement.

I wish I still had the letter (I would have attached a screenshot), which
started out nice enough with the usual 'It was a pleasure meeting you and thank you for your interest in the position..' blah blah blah.

Ending with "You will never be considered for a developer position here at MFA Oil."

I was like "What the hell happened?!" I thought the interview went great..I had no experience and she made it clear they were looking for experienced developers, but no weird questions+answers, nothing. If anything, I had to be the most vanilla of the 10+ other college-grad devs waiting in the waiting room. Interview was maybe 10 minutes with the standard script of questions like 'Where do you want to be in 5 years?' which we all knew and rehearsed.

My only guess was they had me confused with someone else.

Ok. I am trying out a new thing. My colleague told me about a technique worth giving a shot. So basically you should ignore the negative things and only focus on the positive ones making your mind shift states and boost your productivity although sometimes really hard. It’s working for me quite well so far, so here’s my two cents on today:

Thank you my dear designer fellow to making all the screens more beautiful than they were already. Big respect for you for not worrying about deadlines and for for inspiring me to be a faster programmer. I knew I can count on you. Being such nice to me leaves me speechless sometimes, but not today. Today I wish you soon get all the anusroses to smell right next to your beautiful face

Things I wish I knew when I was younger:
- no matter how clean your teeth are, bad breath won't go away until you clean your tongue. Buy a tongue cleaner and use it after you brush your teeth
- whitening toothpastes don't work, while desensitizing ones work well.
- after you brush your teeth, spit but do NOT rinse!
- when brushing your teeth, keep the toothbrush angled 45 degrees. The bristle ends should touch the area where your gums meet your teeth.
- use sunscreen every morning.
- don't waste money on acne-treating products unless they contain salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, tretinoin or adapalene.
- if you want to lose weight, you have to eat MORE, not less. But, that “more” should be protein.
- showering every morning feels like “humanity restored” thing from Dark Souls. Also, clean your damn room and wash your damn windows.
- APS-C DSLR cameras make no sense. For their weight, you can get a full-frame camera, and for their price you can get an APS-C mirrorless cam that will be way lighter.
- If you want a damn thing, save up and buy that damn thing. Don't buy the alternative thing you don't want. You'll be asking “what if” till you either die or buy the original damn thing.
- people aren't replaceable, but many people can fit their designated role. Not being able to replace your ex-boyfriend with his exact copy doesn't mean no one else can be your boyfriend.
- try a MacBook & iPhone as soon as you can to check whether it's your thing or not, because if it is, oh boy are you in for a treat.
- added sugar is evil, but it's beneficial for the economy. It makes you fat, so you need a car, so you buy fuel. Also, you feel guilty because you're fat, so you buy diet products & things to compensate because you hate your reflection in the mirror. You also pay medical fees to treat your newly developed health problems, and you die a day before retirement. Everyone makes a buck on you eating added sugar but you.
- you can use the freshly removed sticker to remove the sticky residue left by that same sticker.
- static typing doesn't solve jack shit.

Those of you who did some kind of programming class in highschool, did they teach you about git?

I was talking to a friend the other day and we both said the one thing we wish we knew back then was git. Both us had projects go completely missing or fubar at T-10 seconds. I don't recall even knowing that version control was a thing

How much zucchini is too much zucchini?

I know I have WAY too much...

I knew at least when 1st considering D20 zucchini breads.

then when i began to wonder if the remaining batter would work with my death star waffle iron...ill know tomorrow!

....ran out of typical pans, incl foil ones(normal and mini for easy gifting)

- gave 1 away (similar sized as in pic)

- approx. 2 lg zucchini bread loaves in fridge (gave away 2, ate a ½)

- cut up\froze enough onions\peppers\pak choi to a min. acceptable zucchini : everything else stir fry ratio... x20 servings

- similarly, green onions, pak choi, marinated sesame fried tofu bits, zucchini and miso (quick miso soup) x16

- thinly sliced enough to layer it into ~20 lg servings of lasagna.

... zucchini in pic is slightly larger than the one that made the many aforementioned and pictured loaves of zucchini bread

apparently, in a week tops, I'm gonna have at least another 3 more THAT size needing to be picked

anyone in the continental US want some zucchini bread? or, if in michigan, zucchinis?

i didnt even plant much... actually only about ½ of other years.

i am also having some serious overflows coming of (at least) grapes and watermelons.

grapes...
when i bought this place, this odd, square, surrounded by cement walkways, area, with an increasingly problematic tree (risking cable\electric lines, foundation, etc) and so dense with weeds that I learned, dandelions have a giant, bush-like form, with heights beyond 8ft tall.

i grew up hanging out in the nearby woods, noticing that weeds lost the fight vs raspberry\blackberry plants. being handicapped\lazy\experimental, w\ev, i figured id just kill it all then fill it with random berries... knew nothing about grapes so just got 4+ random types... apparently they are all fancy\expensive grapes... and reeeeeaally produce. i already had to pick ~10lbs.

watermelons-
idr if i planted normal ones and little ones or just little ones... idk how to tell without cutting them open or maybe just watching a long time to see if they stopped growing?
anyone with advice (or seeking watermelons) is welcome.

assuming (hoping) they are mini ones there's at least 2dz that are at least ping pong ball size.... and around 100 little yellow flowers still.

i totally get that my frustrating problem with produce here would be beyond welcomed by most people... but seriously... wtf do i do with a few dozen to over a hundred (hopefully mini) watermelons, so many zucchini that, despite personal daily consumption and at least a half dozen friends that love zucchini bread and\or my secretly healthy lasagna(my friends tend to be guys), but have their limits capping out, plus mine, at less than ½ whats rapidly being produced and, apparently, thousands of dollars worth of hundreds of pounds of fancy grapes???

there's an interesting old lady across the street who'll take at least what her and husband can possibly consume,.. even makes grape jam, but thats still only a few dz lbs tops.

it seems wrong to kill the plants (or even to remove a large amount of blossoms and feed them all to JSON (lil tortoise)... pretty sure he's already getting tired of them just from the few that fell off in the wind or something.

i wish i knew some farmers that do farmers market things... but that kinda seems super suspicious... 'hey mr farmer... want a large supply of expensive grapes, watermelon and zucchini, for free? you can sell them to random people, or just give them away. i dont want money or anything...' idk... seems like the beginning of one of those movies that either has evil alien plants assimilating all land mammals, or where there's some crazed medical researcher convinced that there's a massive, underrated threat without enough attention for vaccination production funds-- so they are gonna release some deadly virus supposedly to save the world.

ive been cooking too long.

ideas pl0x?

Tired of seeing people showing off their bootcamp certification on LinkedIn as if they had just climbed Mount Everest, and as if they were about to enter the most glamorous field of work one could imagine.
OK I went through a bootcamp myself but I certainly knew I was still a baby upon completion of the journey and still consider I have a veeery long way to go today after two years of dev work experience. Also I knew working as a developer probably wouldn’t be as awesome as these bootcamps make it out to be. In fact it’s everything but glamorous when you take into account the stress, the dynamics with coworkers, POs, PMs, shitty management, wacky clients, weird demands, deadlines etc.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy being a developer and have more or less been able handle the workload and expectations. But for goodness sake stop drilling into bootcampers’ heads that it’s gonna be amazing and that they’re doing incredible things. Congratulate them for their hard work and then wish them good luck because they’re going to need it. Bootcampers, stay humble. Be prepared for the worst while hoping for the best

Once I had a junior who was the child of the boss, whom would refuse to listen because they thought they knew better. That junior was ambitious and always wanted harder tasks even though at the end of the day, someone would need to “pair” with them (aka go and do the task for them).

I left that place. Now I have a junior who knows so little that if they came and told me they don’t know how to turn on a computer, I wouldn’t be surprised (yes, unfortunately the bar went down incredibly fast).

I feel sorry for the new junior. I don’t have bandwidth for all of this. Nobody in the team has.

I do think it sucks that companies in general are so against juniors, but I wish at least that the ones who still make the cut were a little bit more prepared.

I'd really wish girls/women knew how fucking annoying it is when they are speaking loudly with each other at the company toilets, and stays there for 5-10 minutes to discuss what they did this weekend.
There are only two things I want/need to poop: SILENCE! and my phone.
I don't need the feeling of sitting in the middle of a Starbucks while taking a shit.

Being pretty much the only one who has some knowledge of how to code and get my way around tech (even if minimal, I'm too lazy for my own good) in my familiar household - and by extension, my family (Family extends FamiliarHousehold - LoL I'm sorry) - (my brother is on his first grade of a programming course in high school, I'm a 2nd grade uni student aiming to become a game dev) sometimes I wish I knew nothing of it.

Don't get me wrong, I do like working on code (if in Java. C is making me wanna tear my eyes out) but sometimes ignorant family members push me through the edge.

I worked on a business thing my family started this summer and one of the "jobs" was managing everything via a website.
Fair enough, I knew nothing of it when I started but I learn fast and just like that I knew my way around it. The problem came when I had to teach the person who started the project how it worked. This doesn't sound all that bad except he is kinda in the stone age regarding informatics.
He got a computer a few years ago and he pretty much only played poker in it, and he still had one of those old nokias you could throw to a wall and get a hole into it. The computer is like 9y and runs like crap.
To make things worse he bought a new phone, a smartphone, and pestered me to teach him. I swear trying to teach him is like repeating the same thing 1000x and pray he keeps it in his head. Spoiler: he doesn't. ( sanity--; )
So to try and easy my suffering I decided to make a manual for the website (which is outdated by now because the team behind the website did a 180 and some things looks different), but it acted as if I'd done nothing. ( sanity--; )
To top this off he keeps on saying I don't wanna help him. ( sanity--; )
This kept going for the whole damn summer, and meanwhile I had to go back to uni and in the first days I still got like 4-5 calls/day, half of those might about the smallest things because he's so panicky.
Like (both examples happened while I was still there but it kinda goes along those lines sometimes):
- (During the period they changed the website the first time since we're there; they were mostly doing changes back and forth and testing because it had a new layout for a day or 2 before going back; also the site was totally functional, except for a thing or 2)
Him: "They're changing the website, why are they doing that?"
Me: "Because it's their website and they can?"
Him: "WHY DIDN'T THEY LET US KNOW"
Me: "They don't have to, they don't work for you." ( sanity--; )
Or (during the same period; the pages have a menu on the left; one of the submenus has a counter that resets every time the session ends; during that maintenance time they must've "disabled" the function because the number kept growing even after the session ended):
Him: "WHY IS THE NUMBER GROWING?"
Me: "They're working on the code, relax, it's nothing."
Him: "But why." ( sanity--; )

The only quesion he pretty much hasn't asked me yet is why "Is the website's colour this one and not that one?".

Guidance is a key to sucess of one's life.
What i mean to say here? I'm a student from a very low ranked college and here we don't get much of guidance on diverse fields. I totally agree that its not all college fault, i'll clarify in end.
When I was in my 1st year i had no clue from where to start, i did my research and got to know about git then i asked my teachers about it and they said they don't know what it is. I was like now what to do, i started exploring on my own. I wasted my 1st year , just learned c and c++, then 2nd year came, i got introduce from linked in i started exploring it but didn't got anywhere, i asked for help but didn't get much of some path i can walk on. Now it's3rd year and now i'm aware of many things that i wish i did in my previous years, so I'm exploring it now. I'm now the Google DSC Lead for my campus which is the first ever official group of my college as well as my university. I'm hustling, fighting, trying to explore as many things possible. But some things that i wish i knew but it's alright, now i am at the right path, and i will for sure add this too my sucess speach that i was nothing and now i'm something.

I stopped blaming my college long time ago because world is not here to listen my excuses they want results and i'm fine with that.

I'm looking forward to opportunities that will come to my way.

Also i forgot to mention that when i wasn't able to crack premium colleges and i can't go to private college i decided to work hard
From 60% scoring student to topper of my class, its just when you realize you are good to go. Just don't stop and give your best.

Thanks
Hitesh Tomar

Before he began dropping the 20K proposed to remodel my flat, I told my father I much preferred a contractor who was recommended by someone I knew, as opposed to using a big corporation like Home Depot. FAMOUS LAST... a neighbour in my building highly recommended the contractor we chose. And, week 7 [or is it 8?] of what was proposed to take no longer than two weeks has begun afresh!
On Friday the fellow who is the owner of the contract remodeling company was here touching the paint. He was here because I forbade the two painters he sent to do the initial painting job.
My internet cut out suddenly around 1300 Friday. He set to leave for the weekend shortly after that. I mentioned the outage to him. The essence of his reply was that there was no way it could have had anything to do with him. The following day, my internet provider sent a tech out to diagnose the problem. What was the problem? The head of the remodeling firm removed a face plate from the wall where there were telephone wires and disconnect them when he tore the wires as he replaced the face plate.
Although the tech told me he wasn't going to charge my account the $85.00 fee for his services because the outage was caused within my flat, I wish to be sure of this. Which brings us to the punchline.
My internet provider is a lame ass business model, dreamed up by a squint-eyed ex-circus monkey, never well endowed in the top story, and now just plain sad.
There were some 911 outages in Washington State last Thursday night. All during the day Friday when you dialled their freephone #. the recorded announcement, before saying anything else, told you they were experiencing heavier than usual call volumes, and my wait would be greater than `10 minutes. Fine. What fried my La Croix silk was that after their customer service dept closed for the weekend, that outgoing message remained.
Today, I wanted to contact my provider to see if they would know if the $ was going to be charged to my account. After pressing the 'send' key, my computer came back with an error message, saying they were having technical difficulties. So, I went on over to the 'chat' page. There's nothing to click on to take me to this enfabled location. So, can't reach them by phone unless I want to hear, every 30 seconds whether or not I wish to, how sorry they are for my delay.
A few years ago I would've used this as an excuse to have a technicolour meltdown. The reason I'm posting this is that I am now able to see beforehand what I'll be doing to myself getting upset over the circumstances. When I do reach somebody, I'm going to tell them as lightly as possible, that if they were an airline, I wouldn't board any of their aircraft. Ever.