For the love of god, I spent 2,5 hours debugging why Minecraft from the windows store doesn't work...

The game just shows a red message telling you it didn't work.

I checked the logs, nothing just warnings

I re-installed the game, nothing, same error

Updated java and all parts of the store, nothing....

Obviously I had to install Something called the "xbox identity Provider"... You know... On a PC... For a distinctly PC game to work... Installed by the store... And the provider is also on the store... But it doesn't auto-install with the game

Ever since you migrated to the Microsoft Auth the login experience is awful (I ranted about that already)

How about you do the bare fucking Minimum of an User experience and Install the fucking dependencies when I re-installed something your fucking store??!!!

The fucking bare minimum that every package manager ever created fucking has as a basic requirement?! Are you kidding me?

Rename your fucking services so they make sense and please don't waste everyone's time by having both shitty logs and no dep management for your own apps... Fucks sake

I'm writing a huge program of identity management from two months, taking data from different sources and edit them to comply with a lot of cases. Today, my boss told me that he changes idea and my code is now useless... I would cry.

Have you encountered projects that were beyond saving?

Been freelancing for a client via agency for the past year. In the beginning the deal was to maintain identity verification sdk for android maybe 10-15 hours a month or so. Their flow consisted of around 25-30 screens, so I took it thinking it was easy. Boy I was wrong.

Codebase was and still is a complete spaghetti, backend weird and overcomplicated and impossible to talk with someone in backend. Had to reverse engineer their complicated flows many times just to make a small change on the app. There also are lots of issues with capturing/sending camera recordings especially on older devices. The fact that Im the only dev maintaining this doesnt help either.

First few months it was just maintenance, later some small features and soon it become a 40 hour a month gig. I was able to deal with it but then management changed, they started micromanaging me heavily and now they want me to do 60-70 hours a month. Also they asked to implement some unnecessarily complicated features and to be honest without refactoring most of the codebase I cant even begin to think of how to implement them.

Also workload in my main job increased. Started sacrificing my evenings, weekends and basically my wellbeing to work on their product. Tried to relax but then I realized Im just spending my freetime thinking about their project all of the time. Best part is that last few updates fucked up the whole flow and I dont even understand where the problem is anymore: backend, 3rd party integration issues or something else that I did.

Last friday told them that my availability changed and Im quitting. Told them that Im gonna provide support till the end of the month but no big features. Just spent a full shift in my main job and another full shift working on their product, trying to untagle their spaghetti.. Im totally lost and burned out. Meanwhile stupid manager is asking why "simple" stuff according to him is taking too long.

I should receive my last payment from agency this week, also asked them to send it to me earlier but no answer so far. At this point Im so burned out that I dont care anymore about the last payment, even if client complains that everything is broken and doesnt want to pay me. Project is beyond fucked and that SDK as well as their backend is a ticking time bomb. Im done.

Just a couple weeks ago I felt a bit like a hero.

My boss, who seems to have only a vague understanding of realistic deadlines, for once made an error that gave me more time than I needed, not less. I was working on a feature that other work would rely on, so some people had to wait to work on their own projects until I was done.

My boss said it would be done in two weeks, but the only reason why it would have taken that long was because I'd have to submit a ticket to our identity management team to set up the SSO integration with our identity provider, and their turnaround time is two weeks. Or it used to be, but they've actually gotten really fast recently, and as I'd actually grabbed this feature from someone else who had to take a few days off, he'd already gotten the SSO stuff taken care of in advance. My boss promised two weeks and I finished in two days. The shocked silence when they asked for a status update in our next meeting and I told them I'd just finished it was music to my ears.

nice, 10k reached before sidtheitclown! (that’s all that actually matters, heh)

so, yes, as promised it’s me… chris from chris’ full stack blog.

I think kiki knew this, as I used to be called fullstackchris… though very briefly... don't know why i was ever worried about the old clowns i used to work for knowing my identity here

i’m a host of react round up, and also an ex-futures trader (that life is / was hidden on Twitter), I’ve recently quit because I’m ALSO still building 4ish SaaS products including The Wheel Screener (wheelscreener.com) and CodeVideo (codevideo.io), over my LLC, Full Stack Craft (fullstackcraft.com)

oh yeah, and on top of that i have a full time job in Switzerland (read: not poor boi 38 or 40 hour work week, 42 minimum)

so yeah, its a fucking lot of shit to do and sometimes it’s too much! glad i have this place to vent

so, don’t be too harsh on me… really, 99% of my bitterness comes from the approximate 5 years of my working life (2018-2023) were taken from me by lying business folk type who actually didn’t know what the FUCK they were doing or talking about, even after promising me they did (at two different companies). Listen, I’m all for people telling me iTs a RiSkY VeNTuRe; i get it. But if you say everything is rock solid (like funding, my future employment, etc.) and it is not, then fuck you; you’re just lying to my face, it has nothing to with management vs employee, engineer vs. non-technical - you’re literally just a *bad person* (sorry, mechanical engineering genes and honesty to the core - sue me) To be sure, I was partially at fault - too optimistic, and too gullible, and I’ve have since learned my lesson. but still working on it. (obviously)

but things are look up - my company is running better than ever, the current job is great with insanely smart people

In the end, it’s always the hardcore engineers who are the most honest, hardworking, respectful, and the best to work with - you people know who you are…

Until then… see you in the next rant!!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Dutifully signed,

🤡

TL;DR: What's cool about your company or what you'd like to have in your company?

I work at a small company (<50 employee) but it has some time around (I'd say almost 20 years or so).

The thing is, the boss here is cheap or inattentive or outdated or all previous options. This translates into a company stuck in the 90's management ways. Well, maybe late 90's.

So we don't have a lot of 'cool' or nice things here; and I've been thinking of coming up with a proposal of a progressive update of some things that gives us (the employees) some sort of identity.

For example, I think that small things like personalized notebooks or post-its or t-shirts give the employees some sort of sense of belonging. We don't have any of that. The only thing we have are business cards and I find them completely useless since I don't visit customers and all my communication with them is via email.

One thing I find very cool is when one employee starts in a company, in their first day they get a 'welcome kit' (example picture): notebook, pen, cup, t-shirt... It may look like stupid shit but it's way better and more motivating than the "Sit here and that's it" welcome I got when I started here.

So I wanna do a proposal of this sort of things that we can adopt, and I wanna know what do you find cool in your company or what would you like your company did so you'd feel more confortable or 'proud' (maybe that's not the word) of working there.

What I write:
select * from x where id in (1,2)

What appears in sql-server management studio:
select * from x where IDENTITY INDEXKEY_PROPERTY (1,2)

Well, this one was very satisfying.

When I resigned from my previous job, there was this one last task I had to finish. The task was to implement an identity and access management system that would work across three different platforms they had. I used to work on one of them which had nothing of the sort but the other two had something of their own. Here lies the kicker, it had to work with existing authorization system in other two platforms. After explaining multiple times why that is a bad idea, I gave up. I created an interface, no implementation, documented how the interface was meant to be used and got the hell out of there.

In SQL Management Studio, why is the Identity Specification so low in the column properties list?! It's so annoying to scroll and find it.

Is this punishment for using the GUI?

Authentication and Identity management are just one giant shit fuck.
Ldap, PAM, OAuth and what not.
Each of them with it's own caveats.

Ldap, supposedly being the most widely used, isn't even an actual Identity management or authentication service, but just a DB misused as one.

The best part is, that if you want to selfhost some apps, you're pretty much forced to host one of these abominations too.
At least if you don't want to manage each service account's separately.

It's been awhile, for the heads up I'm that good dude applied a job as MIS few months ago, knows a little bit python and the manager finds out, he told me I gotta make a Warehouse Management Software for the company in C# PLUS MIS regular work(server management, user trouble-shooting and stuff).

after I finish my Warehouse Management Software about a week ago, my manager told me which I quote:

"wpf is not enough! we gonna bring it to multi platform like a web interface can be use on employee's phone as barcode reader and do things can be done as wpf can.

aaaaand we need RFID integration for the whole system working with Identity Server on Azure.

AAAAAAND we need it online before Feb 2020."

I guess after C#,
I'm learning typescript and angular now.

oh by the way my position is MIS with MIS salary.
Does this means after all these shits. I can apply as RD my next job right?

[CONCEITED RANT]
I'm frustrated than I'm better tha 99% programmers I ever worked with.

Yes, it might sound so conceited.
I Work mainly with C#/.NET Ecosystem as fullstack dev (so also sql, backend, frontend etc), but I'm also forced to use that abhorrent horror that is js and angular.
I write readable code, I write easy code that works and rarely, RARELY causes any problem, The only fancy stuff I do is using new language features that come up with new C# versions, that in latest version were mostly syntactic sugar to make code shorter/more readable/easier.

People I have ever worked with (lot of) mostly try to overdo, overengineer, overcomplicate code, subdivide into methods when not needed fragmenting code and putting tons of variables.

People only needed me to explain my code when the codebase was huge (200K+ lines mostly written by me) of big so they don't have to spend hours to understand what's going on, or, if the customer requested a new technology to explain such new technology so they don't have to study it (which is perfectly understandable). (for example it happened that I was forced to use Devexpress package because they wanted to port a huge application from .NET 4.5 to .NET 8 and rewriting the whole devexpress logic had a HUGE impact on costs so I explained thoroughly and supported during developement because they didn't knew devexpress).

I don't write genius code or clevel tricks and patterns. My code works, doesn't create memory leaks or slowness and mostly works when doing unit tests at first run. Of course I also put bugs and everything, but that's part of the process.

THe point is that other people makes unreadable code, and when they pass code around you hear rising chaos, people cursing "WTF this even means, why he put that here, what the heck this is even supposed to do", you got the drill. And this happens when I read everyone code too.

But it doesn't happens the opposite. My code is often readable because I do code triple backflips only on personal projects because I don't have to explain anyone and I can learn new things and new coding styles.

Instead, people want to impress at work, and this results in unintelligible, chaotic code, full of bugs and that people can't read. They want to mix in the coolest technologies because they feel their virtual penis growing to showoff that they are latest bleeding edge technology experts and all.

They want to experiment on business code at the expense of all the other poor devils who will have to manage it.

Heck, I even worked with a few Microsoft MVPs.
Those are deadly. They're superfast code throughput people that combine lot of stuff.
THen they leave at you the problems once they leave.

This MVP guy on a big project for paperworks digital acquisiton for a big company did this huge project I got called to work in, which consited in a backend and a frontend web portal, and pushed at all costs to put in the middle another CDN web project and another Identity Server project to both do Caching with the cdn "to make it faster" and identity server for SSO (Single sign on).

We had to deal with gruesome work to deal with browser poor caching management and when he left, the SSO server started to loop after authentication at random intervals and I had to solve that stuff he put in with days of debugging that nasty stuff he did.

People definitely can't code, except me.
They have this "first of the class syndrome" which goes to the extent that their skill allows them to and try to do code backflips when they can't even do code pushups, to put them in a physical exercise parallelism.

And most people is like this. They will deny and won't admit, they believe they're good at it, but in reality they aren't.

There is some genius out there that does revoluitionary code and maybe needs to do horrible code to do amazing stuff, and that's ok. And there is also few people like me, with which you can work and produce great stuff.

I found one colleague like this and we had a $800.000 (yes, 800k) project in .NET Technology, which consisted in the renewal of 56 webservices and 3 web portals and 2 Winforms applications for our country main railway transport system. We worked in 2 on it, with a PM from the railway company.

It was estimated 14 months of work and we took 11 and all was working wonders. We had ton of fun doing it because also their PM was a cool guy and we did an awesome project and codebase was a jewel. The difficult thing you couldn't grasp if you read the code is if you don't know how railway systems work and that's the only difficult thing.

Sight, there people is macking me sick of this job

What are your personal goto identity management providers?
I am currently looking at Firebase and Auth0