Welcome back to practiseSafeHex's new life as a manager.

Episode 2: Why automate when you can spend all day doing it by hand

This is a particularly special episode for me, as these problems are taking up so much of my time with non-sensical bullshit, that i'm delayed with everything else. Some badly require tooling or new products. Some are just unnecessary processes or annoyances that should not need to be handled by another human. So lets jump right in, in no particular order:

- Jira ... nuff said? not quite because somehow some blue moon, planets aligning, act of god style set of circumstances lined up to allow this team to somehow make Jira worse. On one hand we have a gigantic Jira project containing 7 separate sub teams, a million different labels / epics and 4.2 million possible assignees, all making sure the loading page takes as long as possible to open. But the new country we've added support for in the app gets a separate project. So we have product, backend, mobile, design, management etc on one, and mobile-country2 on another. This delightfully means a lot of duplication and copy pasting from one to the other, for literally no reason what so ever.

- Everything on Jira is found through a label. Every time something happens, a new one is created. So I need to check for "iOS", "Android", "iOS-country2", "Android-country2", "mobile-<feature>", "mobile-<feature>-issues", "mobile-<feature>-prod-issues", "mobile-<feature>-existing-issues" and "<project>-July31" ... why July31? Because some fucking moron decided to do a round of testing, and tag all the issues with the current date (despite the fact Jira does that anyway), which somehow still gets used from time to time because nobody pays attention to what they are doing. This means creating and modifying filters on a daily basis ... after spending time trying to figure out what its not in the first one.

- One of my favourite morning rituals I like to call "Jira dumpster diving". This involves me removing all the filters and reading all the tickets. Why would I do such a thing? oh remember the 9000 labels I mentioned earlier? right well its very likely that they actually won't use any of them ... or the wrong ones ... or assign to the wrong person, so I have to go find them and fix them. If I don't, i'll get yelled at, because clearly it's my fault.

- Moving on from Jira. As some of you might have seen in your companies, if you use things like TestFlight, HockeyApp, AppCenter, BuddyBuild etc. that when you release a new app version for testing, each version comes with an automated change-log, listing ticket numbers addressed ...... yeah we don't do that. No we use this shitty service, which is effectively an FTP server and a webpage, that only allows you to host the new versions. Sending out those emails is all manual ... distribution groups?? ... whats that?

- Moving back to Jira. Can't even automate the changelog with a script, because I can't even make sense of the tickets, in order to translate that to a script.

- Moving on from Jira. Me and one of the remote testers play this great game I like to call "tag team ticketing". It's so much fun. Right heres how to play, you'll need a QA and a PM.

*QA creates a ticket, and puts nothing of any use inside it, and assigns to the PM.
*PM fires it back asking for clarification.
*QA adds in what he feels is clarification (hes wrong) and assigns it back to the PM.
*PM sends detailed instructions, with examples as to what is needed and assigns it back.
*QA adds 1 of the 3 things required and assigns it back.
*PM assigns it back saying the one thing added is from the wrong day, and reminds him about the other 2 items.
*QA adds some random piece of unrelated info to the ticket instead, forgetting about the 3 things and assigns it back.

and you just continue doing this for the whole dev / release cycle hahaha. Oh you guys have no idea how much fun it is, seriously give it a go, you'll thank me later ... or kill yourselves, each to their own.

- Moving back to Jira. I decided to take an action of creating a new project for my team (the mobile team) and set it up the way we want and just ignore everything going on around us. Use proper automation, and a kanban board. Maybe only give product a slack bot interface that won't allow them to create a ticket without what we need etc. Spent 25 minutes looking for the "create new project" button before finding the link which says I need to open a ticket with support and wait ... 5 ... fucking ... long ... painful ... unnecessary ... business days.

... Heres hoping my head continues to not have a bullet hole in it by then.

Id love to talk more, but those filters ain't gonna fix themselves. So we'll have to leave it here for today. Tune in again for another episode soon.

And remember to always practiseSafeHex

Let's get something straight people, the trend to change terms in programming languages for PC approved ones is NOT for "making the workplace a better place".

If you are one of those who say "oh it's just terms, if it makes them feel better why not?", "I don't care so should everybody else", "the outrage proves we need to change the terms!".

No sir, first of all, since when has programming been about ditching standards to make people "feeel" better? Since when has engineering been about that?! We are engineers, we don't change shit and waste effort trying to fix things that are working.

Second, this word cleansing does NOT come from a well intentioned one, it's not about making the workplace a better place, it's not about minorities, it's about sanitizing language from an ideological and political standpoint to please an agenda pushing minority who doesn't give a shit about any real social issues.

They have done it to movies, videogames, news, political speech, magazines, books and now programming. It doesn't stop and they will never be satisfied, it's not about changing the terms, no one gives a shit about the terms, it's about pandering to ideological crybabies who want to control what you say because it "offends" them or some supposedly oppressed group from which we just hear anecdotal evidence.

Personally I wouldn't give a shit if it was for technical reasons, but it's not and I've seen what this shit does to communities I love and I won't stand it happening to the dev community just because some weak ass, no balls coders decided to pander to the retards on the far left to score virtue points instead of standing their ground.

Are you worried about oppressed groups? Donate money to third world children, speak out about women in Siria, travel to actual shitty 3rd world countries so you realize changing words on a GitHub repo on your expensive ass MacBook, sipping your soy based coffee on an office with air conditioning is not making the world a better place you delusional prick.

You want to ignore the facts be my guest, be willfully ignorant, but I will not police myself and my ideas for your ideological beliefs, not in gaming, not here. Fuck off.

!!rant
!!ANGER

Micromanager: "Hey, Root!

Since you're back, and still not feeling well, we have an easy ticket for you: Rewrite the slack integration gem! Oh, you don't have to re-implement all of it, just make sure it all works the same way it does now. That bitch you worked with once over a year ago who kept throwing you under the bus to management and stealing credit for your work? Yeah, she wrote the original code like four years ago. It's perfect, so don't touch it. but she can fill you in on all the details you need and get you up to speed on how to test it.

But yep! It should be simple. and I just knew you would love this ticket, so I saved it just for you. Nice and quick, too, to get you an easy win.

You know, since you have to repair your reputation with product. and management. and the execs. and the rest of the team. and me. Yeah, product doesn't trust you so they don't want to give you any tickets. They just can't trust you to get them out and have them work. So you have a lot of hard work to do."

Spoiler: The bus-thrower wasn't much help. (Surprise.)
Spoiler: The ticket was already in my backlog -- one of a grand total of two tickets.
Spoiler: I don't find the ticket fun. Maybe if I was to write the entire implementation with a nice DSL? but no, "don't touch the perfect code." Fuck you.
Spoiler: It isn't going to be nice or quick. But, she (micromanager) is looking to lose me, so that really is an easy win. for her.

And. just. argh. fuck you. i've been exhausted and dying for well over a year, but you've kept ignoring that (and still are, despite me providing goddamn legal forms from fucking doctors stating it in plain fucking english, which you also fucking ignore), and you just keep piling on the work and demanding the ridiculous of me despite it. Yeah I can pull it off sometimes. No, I really shouldn't, and I'm surprised I can. (also, "Time off? What, and lower your productivity even more? ____ doesn't even take vacations. And how are you doing on that ticket?") And no, none of my tickets have ever had any fucking problems. Not even when there are upstream service outages. Not. a. single. fucking. one. Ever. And the only things I've ever missed were things that bloody product never put in the fucking ticket, so fuck you with your "repair your reputation" bullshit.

god, i fuckiNG HATE THESESTUPOID ANWETLJAF SAJEWTKW BITCHFACEDUCKFUCKERS

Why the FUCK am I still fucking working here?
Right, because I've been burned out and dying so much I can't pass a fucking interview so I can fucking leave.

jasdkl;fk

ugh. Anyway. If you ever find yourself starting work at a Cali fintech company whose internal mascot is a very fine duck? Just run. I absolutely guarantee you will be miserable.

Does anyone remember MUDs? Multi-User Dungeons — working on those in LPC was my first experience with real programming. Before that, I'd only made simple websites.

To get permission to program in one MUD, you had to prove that you knew the world, by reaching a certain level in the game. Death had consequences, with a level being lost, as well as risking loss of your items if someone looted you or your corpse was lost. This alone was hard enough to make most players give up. I played (and played wisely) to get there, being the first of my friends. It was hard work and fun.

After months of playing every day, finally, I was a wizard! Well, first, I had to convince someone else to take me as an apprentice, which was it's own challenge, because I was a 13 y/o girl. I ended up having to wait for an older male friend to get to the proper rank and get made a full wizard himself, because anyone else was reluctant (thinking that I'd just screw up or make them look bad), and no one was very happy about it. After some more weeks, I started programming my own content for the MUD, to share with others. It was a great opportunity to learn and express myself, seeing how creative programming could be.

I got called all kinds of names for asking questions and making mistakes, and I questioned why I even wanted to work with these people who hated my guts and didn't want to teach me anything, but I kept going. As I wasn't allowed to take computer classes in school, being able to do projects on my own like this was the only way to learn. I also became more stubborn, patient, and independent, which has always been necessary for this career.

Most importantly, I saw what could be done with programming, and was inspired to keep going with my own projects, no matter how much hate that I got for it. I went on to work on more games and software, often on my own. I always explore new technology, ignore the haters, and forge ahead with my own vision.

6 months ago:

Boss: We have this idea to improve our onboarding to avoid drop off in the new app. See this section here? Were going to take that out of the onboarding and just let them pass straight through to the app. Then when they get into the app, there will be a banner telling them they should go to settings and set this up. That way they can ignore it for a while and get into the app sooner

Me: Get into the app sooner to do what?

Boss: Explore it

Me: Explore an empty app with no content, as they are a brand new user with nothing setup? While theres a big banner on the screen saying "You have insecure settings" ... basically forcing them to do it straight away anyway?

Boss: Yeah, we can give them some recommendations or something while they click around. It will be good. This is months away anyway, we'll talk again

Yesterday:

Boss: So this weird unexpected thing happened. We showed some beta users our plans to remove this section from onboarding and they felt weird about it. They said they didn't like the idea of the banner telling them they haven't set it up correctly

Me: Thats not weird, I said the same thing 6 months ago

Boss: ......... oh, really?

Me: Yep. Its not an improvement to get them through onboarding quicker, just to tell them they have to now go do it somewhere else

Boss: ... right. Ok maybe we'll build it anyway and see how they feel with it in there hands?

Me: nope

Boss: ... what do you mean?

Me: We are behind, you've asked me 3 times in the last week if we are going to be able to get everything in on time ... and now you want me to build something that everyone, apart from you, says they don't like. So realistically, i'm going to build it, and then remove it next week ... and we'll have a discussion about what has to be dropped because of this

Boss: ........ right .... ok .... hhhmmm

Me: *sits with resting bitch face*

Boss: ... maybe we can hide the banner until later. Not show it to them until they've done something in the app?

Me: ... maybe we can not do any of this?

Boss: right but then the onboarding will ...

Me: *talks louder* ... yes will be the way our users want it to be

Boss: ... hhmm i'm not sure

Me: Ok heres what we'll do, so long as it doesn't delay me getting the designs I need, feel free to have the designer mock up what it would look like using that figma on device preview thing. If users say they like it, i'll build it

Boss: ... right but it won't be real on device app so ...

Me: Its that or we cut feature X

Boss: ... well we need that

Me: ok glad we agree, let me know what feedback the designer gets

Boss: ... ok

The nightmare continues.

Currently dealing with a code review from a “principal” dev (one step above senior), who is unironically called a “legendary dev” by some coworkers. It’s painfully obvious he didn’t read the code, and just started complaining and nitpicking.

It’s full of requests to do things that make absolutely no sense, and would make the code an unmaintainable mess.
• Ex: moving the logic and data collection from the module’s many callers into the module instead of just passing in the data.
• Ex: hiding api endpoint declarations by placing them in the module itself, and using magic instance variables to pass data to it. Basically: using global functions and variables instead of explicit declarations and calls.
• Ex: moving the logic to determine which api endpoint to use, for all callers, into the view.

More comments about methods being “too complex” (barely holds water) right next to comments saying “why are these separate? merge them together!”

Incredulously asking how many times I’m checking permissions and how ridiculous it all is. (The answer? Twice.)

Conflating my “permissions” param and method names with a supposedly forthcoming permissions system overhaul, and saying I shouldn’t use permissions because my code will all have to get rewritten. Even if that were true, and it’s likely not, the ticket still needs to use the current permissions. I can’t just ignore them because they might be rewritten someday.

Requests to revert some code cleanup because the reviewer thought the previous heavily-nested and uncommented versions (with code duplication) were easier to read. Unsurprisingly, he wrote them.

On the same ticket, my boss wants me to remove all styling and clientside validation, debouncing, and error messages from a form. Says “success” and “connection failed” messages are good enough. The form in question sends SMS and email using arbitrary user input for addresses. He also says it shouldn’t be denounced on the server, and doesn’t want me to bother checking permissions. Hello, spam!

Related: the legendary dev reviewer says he can’t think of a reason why we would want to disable the feature for consumers, so I should remove the consumer feature flag.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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.

Tl;dr

Longest Rant I've written so far.

How to manage a school (by out school director):

Did this student do something spezial to emphasize the school?
-No: Ignore him
-Yes: Did the student achieve this with the help of this schools staff?
-No: Take all the credit
-Yes: Hahaha, just a joke, nobody receives help from the school. Goto -No

Q: Should this class get the 5 day trip, they've been waiting for the whole year?
Director: No.
Q: But they don't even participate in other trips just to go there.
D: No
(Good thing she did not have the last word there)

Does the school director need this one week trip to india, just to talk once about stuff, you can talk about via email, to a sponsor?
D: "Of course I deserve it"

D: "We need faster internet in this school"
Network admins: "But it won't be of any use, if the network can't handle it. We'll need better pcs (and network conponents) on top of that"
D: "No, bot enough money available for that one." *browses email with IPad paid by school money*

Teacher: "I want to realize project xy with the students. We'll need around 1200€ (for 20 people)."
D: "Can place xy at our school to as advertise?"
T: "No, but it's be a valuable le-"
D: "600 at most."
(Again denied by people who aren't fcking assholes. We got 1500€, so 300€ per group)

D: So what makes you think you can teach informatics in this school"
Applicant: "Well, I'm friends with one of your teacher here. We went to university together, where I learn't nothing about informatics and I don't even understand the principles of this subject"
D: "Close enough. Hired, you can teach them all the theory stuffy. You don't have to prepare that yourself another teacher has done so. Just read it from his documents."

*In class with the mentioned teacher talking about Threads*
*Le wild code appears*
while (doStuff())
System.out.println ("Thread working...");
System.out.println ("Thread terminated");
T: "... and most importantly, when you have done all the work be sure to terminate the thread with 'System.out.println ("Thread terminated");'"

Should this teacher be allowed to participate in this seminar about burnouts?
D: "No, I can't afford paying the supplenze."

Staff: "We need to talk with the director about this."
S: "Not in her office. The cafeteria maybe"
*Not in the cafeteria either*
S: "Seems like she didn't come to achool today. Let's try tomorrow"
(^ Stuff that happens almost daily. Screw semicolons. I see her only once a month at most)

*Student send 5000 emails by accident* (Shit happens 😂😅😂😅)
D: "You gonna work here for a full afternoon"
*Student arrives for his punishment*
Staff: "Good that you're here. Do this real quick."
*10 min. Later*
Student: "Done"
Staff: "Well, we have no more work to give you, so you might as well leave"

DONE!!! Good job coming so far.

Our school is supposed to be the best, but internally it's one big meme.

Me: Right, its Monday, time for a fresh start. Things have been unbearable, but i've nowhere else to go just yet. I gotta just dig deep, ignore everything bad and just get it done, It's all about positivity right? Lets just ignore the little things and keep moving.

*My morning so far, 2 hours in*

Remote dev: (timezone 5 hours earlier than me) Hey so whats the plan for this quarter?

Me: ... I posted a big detailed plan in the group chat on Friday night so you wouldn't be delayed ... but anyway, lets just move on. I need you to work on A, B and C. A is just copying what Android has already done, for B one of the backend guys working next to you is doing this, he'll be able to help you. C is all documented in the ticket.

Remote dev: cool thanks.

Local dev: So I was just chatting with remote dev ... yeah he told me he has no idea what he's suppose to do.

Me: ..... Ok i'll book a video call with him in the morning. Can't do it right now.

==========

Remote dev: Hey i'm helping the BE team do some testing. I found a bug in Android. Homepage says theres no trips. But Offers screen says there is.

Me: Ok so just to confirm, The "available" offers screen has offers to accept, but the white notification on the homepage saying "You have X offers to accept" is not showing up?

Remote dev: Correct!

*debugging for 5 mins*

Remote dev: actually no, the "accepted" offers tab has offers, but the homepage says there are no upcoming offers to work on.

Me: ..... ok, thats very different ... but sure, let me have a look.

Me: Right so the BE are ... again ... sending down expired offers. Looks like the accepted tab isn't catching it and the homepage is.

Remote dev: Right i'll open a ticket for Android.

Me: ... and BE team.

Remote dev: why?

Me: ... because they once again have timezone issues. This keeps causing issues in random places. BE need to fix this everywhere.

Remote dev: right, i'll chat to them and see if they can fix it.

==========

Product: So this ticket xxxxx is clear right?

Me: eh, kind of, so you want us to add feature X to user type A?

Product: correct.

Me: right but I don't see anywhere talking about the time it will take to build the screen for feature X

Product: What do you mean the screen?

Me: ... well, feature X is only accessible on screen Y ... we would have to change screen Y to support user type A ... you know ... so they can ... use the feature

Product: .... hhhhmmm .... i suppose you are right. Well we can't just add screen Y, we'll have to add W and Z, it won't make sense without them.

Me: ... ok sure, but our estimates put us over for this quarter. I don't think we can just add in 3 screens.

Product: No this is a must have.

Me: Ok so we'll have to drop something else.

Product: hhhmmm, don't think we can ... let me get back to you.

==========

Backend team invited me to a meeting at 6am my time on Friday.

==========

... 2 hours into Monday ... there must be vodka around here somewhere

Can someone tell who the fuck lets morons with absolutely 0 knowledge of how the industry works go on and write articles concerning "what programming languages to learn" clickbait articles?

Look, I never looked into them. Not even when starting, I knew (out of spite) that the people that built Windows Vista were developers and then I went ahead to look what a software engineer was. I went down the rabbit hole from that and my next step at the time (I was on the local library) was to go ahead and look for programming books, C++ and Java caught my eye, so I got them two books and went down. Later on I found about JS and Python and similar shit like that and I just continued to learn. I seldom bothered to learn from internet articles because to my opinion if I needed to read documentation then I might as well fucking read it from the people that designed X technology.

some were good, some were shit, etc etc, but I never bothered to look for "what programming languages to learn" articles because I could give close to two shits about some other dickhead telling me what to learn, I have always been rather hesitant to take other people's opinion into consideration when it comes to my own learning.

BUT today I clicked on one of those articles out of curiosity.....

"Many DEVELOPER (notice the lack of proper grammar) choose to leave Visual Basic in favor of more modern frameworks like C#, Java or .NET"

Ok, so, for whatever the fuck reason Java is mentioned along C# and a fucking framework (.NET) rather than just C# for microsoft shit, is this moron talking about VB.NET at all? is he going about VB6? what? what is going on here?

Obj C is not relevant at all and should be immediately replaced by Swift since it is a modern, and stable language (never mind that each release has breaking changes on entire code bases, yeah, fuck it, just jump alltogether and ignore Obj C and the decades of stable code it has)

"Coffeescript has been replaced by the newer features of Java" <--- ok fam, you lost me here, give me your "ITPro" card please and then kick yourself repeatedly in the groin since I won't be bothered touching you, i might get some stOOpid on me.

Fuck, these articles are all over the place, from idiots like the one above, to the moron raving about pharo smalltalk shitting on every tech you use.

Just.....please bring back shit like byte magazine and shit.....please? or Linux Format, make Linux Format more popular across the board, where people who know their shit think twice before spewing their bullshit to the masses? Some fucking kid there might want to know where to start and these fucking idiots are out there just ruining shit for everything.

Some of the penguin's finest insults (Some are by me, some are by others):

Disclaimer: We all make mistakes and I typically don't give people that kind of treatment, but sometimes, when someone is really thick, arrogant or just plain stupid, the aid of the verbal sledgehammer is neccessary.

"Yeah, you do that. And once you fucked it up, you'll go get me a coffee while I fix your shit again."

"Don't add me on Facebook or anything... Because if any of your shitty code is leaked, ever, I want to be able to plausibly deny knowing you instead of doing Seppuku."

"Yep, and that's the point where some dumbass script kiddie will come, see your fuckup and turn your nice little shop into a less nice but probably rather popular porn/phishing/malware source. I'll keep some of it for you if it's good."

"I really love working with professionals. But what the fuck are YOU doing here?"

"I have NO idea what your code intended to do - but that's the first time I saw RCE and SQLi in the same piece of SHIT! Thanks for saving me the hassle."

"If you think XSS is a feature, maybe you should be cleaning our shitter instead of writing our code?"

"Dude, do I look like I have blue hair, overweight and a tumblr account? If you want someone who'd rather lie to your face than insult you, go see HR or the catholics or something."

"The only reason for me NOT to support you getting fired would be if I was getting paid per bug found!"

"Go fdisk yourself!"

"You know, I doubt the one braincell you have can ping localhost and get a response." (That one's inspired by the BOFH).

"I say we move you to the blockchain. I'd volunteer to do the cutting." (A marketing dweeb suggested to move all our (confidential) customer data to the "blockchain").

"Look, I don't say you suck as a developer, but if you were this competent as a gardener, I'd be the first one to give you a hedgetrimmer and some space and just let evolution do its thing."

"Yeah, go fetch me a unicorn while you're chasing pink elephants."

"Can you please get as high as you were when this time estimate come up? I'd love to see you overdose."

"Fuck you all, I'm a creationist from now on. This guy's so dumb, there's literally no explanation how he could evolve. Sorry Darwin."

"You know, just ignore the bloodstain that I'll put on the wall by banging my head against it once you're gone."

Client: I want a new feature for my chat bot. It should be able to rap.
Me: ... k
*monologue: wait u w0t m8*
Also me: Can you please go more into the details? It should be able to rap. Ok. But how do you want it to look like? How "strong" should be the discrimination level, for instance?
Client: It should beat ass, yo.
Inner me -> core me: Let us just ignore him. We won't be able to do it, since he isn't really explaining his needs. "It should be able to rap". We are not wizards.
Core me -> inner me: Chill. We will just use some insult apis, combine it with cleverb0t api et voila.
Me: Alright. I got an idea for it. I can do it within this week. And if you don't like it, I will ofc do some changes to it.
Client: Hmmm... that's nice and good. But within 1 week?
Inner me: I can't do magic and pull that feature out of my fucking ass!

Clients... clients... clients...
0. Don't expect us to be done in a few days. We are also humans. And not fucking machines.
1. Do us (all devs on planet earth. -Microaggression in 3, 2, 1..) a favor and (kill yourself) learn how to request a feature.

* A job application followup email I received:

Hi [programmerName],
Thank you for your interest in joining [companyName].

While we appreciate your application, we decided to move forward with other candidates whose skills and experience are a closer match to our requirements for this specific role.
Feel free to check back, as we are always adding new positions.

Best of luck with your career search!
-The [companyName] Team

* My (probably trashed) reply:

Hello

I personally ignore this precompiled stuff you HR people send.
I feel this answer will be probably trashed somewhere but I feel the need to write this.

You know absolutely nothing about my skills because you didn’t even talk with me.

Maybe I am not the best person in writing a resume or an introduction letter, the key skill appreciated in companies doing head hunting instead of building a solid corporate culture and cultivating talent. Or at least HR people in such companies.

Please consider that, maybe you didn’t like my resume or I didn't write a list of words matching your check list, but at least I honestly wrote my experience instead of trying to hack my way to a job interview writing a fake one that triggers usual HR patterns.
Consider that I do a job for a living and I don't live or have the time to make the perfect resume, I don’t even apply for all companies I see, I only apply for the ones I believe I can work well because I like them. I am not a professional job searcher, jumping from a company to another.

You keep posting this very same add since October 2019 and probably even earlier.
This sounds to me like:
- or your selection process does not work well and you end up hiring the wrong people
- or maybe your work place is not that good as you describe it, so that you have zero retainment despite your high salary.
But I cannot be sure because, guess what, I could not check personally.

If you want to talk about my skills and compare me to other people please test me otherwise don’t write (copy/paste) this offensive trash.

Best of luck with your career as a HR person in a tech company!

-A person tired of HR managers that do not give a f**k about the word “human” in their job description.

I never thought I'd say this but I fucking hate my cousins and relatives.

Money and fame hungry people, constantly judging and excluding if you are not 'cool' enough. Give them attention, obey their orders, spend your money on them if you want to be considered human by them.

They spend 24x7 of their on Instagram with all their activities and gatherings revolving around the core idea of taking pictures and showcasing on Instagram.

All of them have inherited a fuck ton of fortune from their parents and live to spend. Nothing else in their life.

Their ideology is everyone should spend all their money and even if you have $5 in your savings, you are miser.

Cousins and relatives have bullied so much in my childhood that I had to go for therapy before I stabilised a little. They still fuck around and use me.

Now that I am living a better life than what I used to, they have started mocking my parents for it by shaming and excluding them from the family.

Not only I never wished ill but I prayed for their good health and success all my life. But all they did was neglect and ignore me.

Fucking blood sucking bastards. I still don't wish bad but I never thought I'd see this day where I'd hate them so much.

As I have worked really hard for my current life, because unlike them I had no fortune to be inherited, they pick some weak aspect of my life and poke it continuously to the point that it hurts me.

I never felt so alone. If not for my parents, I'd cut off all the times with such scums and move out for a better life with new people in life.

This is a story of me trying out maintaining a game server and eventually making a mistake, although I do not regret experiencing it.

A month ago I set up a small modded minecraft server because I wanted to experience a fun modpack together with some people from reddit. Besides this, I also wanted to see if I was capable of setting up a server with systemd and screen running in the background. This went great and I learned a lot.

The very next day I was playing with $annoyingKid on the server and everything was well. However the second day, $annoyingKid started pushing the idea to start up a normal minecraft server to build a playerbase.

I asked $annoyingKid 'What about financing, staff management and marketing?'

$annoyingKid: "I don't know much about that, but you can do that while I build a spawn!"

He also didn't want to reveal his age, which alerted me that he's young and inexperienced. He also considered Discord 'scary' because there were haxors and they would get his location and kidnap him, or something. So if he was supposed to become owner (which he desired), he had no way of communicating with a community outside of the game.

He also considered himself owner, while I was the one who paid for the server. 'Owners should be people who own the server', no matter how many times I told him that.

$annoyingKid also asked if he could install plugins on his own, I asked him if he knew anything about ssh, wget or bash because I used ssh to set up the server (I know rcon exists, but didn't want to deal with that at the time), he had no idea what any of those terms meant and he couldn't give proper arguments as to why he should get console access.

In the end, he did jack shit, he had no chance of becoming co-owner or even head-admin because he had no sense of responsibility or hard work. I kept him around as an admin because he was the one who came up with the idea. I banned him on day one after he started abusing his power when someone tipped him of. Even after me ordering him to ignore an annoying player he kept going, of course I could have prevented all this by kicking him earlier since all the red flags around him had already formed a beacon of light. He tried coming back, complaining that he should at least have his moderator rank back, but he never got in again.

A week later I got bored, I had had enough fun with ssh and the server processes to know that I didn't want to continue the small project, so I shut it down and went on to do stuff on GitHub.

Lesson learned: Don't let annoying kids with no sense of responsibility talk you into doing things you aren't sure you want to be doing. And only give people power after they've proved to you that they are capable of handling it.

my staff got selected to go do something RETARDED on site when all restrictions on the city have been lifted and the fucking numbers of covid-19 cases have been rising, last week 4 people fucking DIED and they wanted to put my guys for some RETARDED SHIT THAT can be completely ignored in which they would deal with countless of RETARDS that as I know will probably be ignoring all safety precautions and getting everyone fucking SICK.

I don't give a fuck, my employees are high risk personell, if they get sick they might fucking die, I said no to fucking everyone and had the head of my department to back me up. Fuck this shit man I am so tired of this pandemic since it had made everyone 10 billion percent-o more retarded than they already were.

If the head of department ignores it I will instruct my people to just ignore that shit and don't make themselves present at that bullshit ass fucking event.

See what the fuck they do. I treat my employees as if they were my soldiers, I know what leadership is and they are not making me fucking budge, if your command is bullshit i will fucking say no and you can go ahead and do whatever the fuck you want with that shit, just based on my title and experience I can go where the fuck I want and you will eat dick.

Luckily for me the HOD is on the same boat, he thinks this shit is fucking stupid.

Ok here's the story,
There is this girl older than me by 5-7years and I worked with her for 2 years in the past...
She's fun to be around, and lights the mood in the workplace...
However one day I found her CV in my machine so I went through it. (It's no crime and it was there in my machine idk y)
And as I went through the list of projects, I was surprised and taken back to see she listed one of my solo project which I managed and developed from scratch as if she contributed to it. 🤯
The management specifically handed me the whole project and I singlehandedly carried it out and finished it and that was one of the projects I was super proud of and elaborated in my interviews.😎
But since she was sitting beside me and she knew basic requirement and the solutions I developed she had the knowledge on the project.
I was bewildered to see she has mentioned that project in her CV which she had zero contribution. I didn't feel like confronting her thinking when someone asks full details on the projects she would have to lie in the interviews cz she wouldn't know much details on it. And hey not everyone has my ethics and lets see how far she goes with hers.(may be this was stupid but I just thought hey we go our own ways lets see how far you go with lies and I forgot about it completly)

But now she's trying to apply to my current workplace where I dreamed of joining and finally succeeded and happy, here they value trustworthyness and quality work ethics above anything else... and without even telling me she has added me as a reference person to get more points to get an internal recommendation.
I certainly don't want to put a good word on her work ethics. Her team spirit and everything is fine but I just CANNOT with correct conscience ignore her bad ethics and recommend her.
What should I do? I don't want to loose her as a friend but I will not and do not want to recommend her to any place knowing she cannot be trusted with work related stuff. I know if I just tell the truth to the company when they ask she will definitely will not be chosen and I might feel guilty knowing I stopped it from happening.... but I don't want to recommend her truly knowing her bad qualities which in my openion cannot be overlooked also.
Should I just overlook it and help, or should I just tell the truth to the company... errgggh

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.

(long post is long)
This one is for the .net folks. After evaluating the technology top to bottom and even reimplementing several examples I commonly use for smoke testing new technology, I'm just going to call it:

Blazor is the next Silverlight.

It's just beyond the pale in terms of being architecturally flawed, and yet they're rushing it out as hard as possible to coincide with the .Net 5 rebranding silo extravaganza. We are officially entering round 3 of "sacrifice .Net on the altar of enterprise comfort." Get excited.

Since we've arrived here, I can only assume the Asp.net Ajax fiasco is far enough in the past that a new generation of devs doesn't recall its inherent catastrophic weaknesses. The architecture was this:

1. Create a component as a "WebUserControl"
2. Any time a bound DOM operation occurs from user interaction, send a payload back to the server
3. The server runs the code to process the event; it spits back more HTML

Some client-side js then dutifully updates the UI by unceremoniously stuffing the markup into an element's innerHTML property like so much sausage.

If you understand that, you've adequately understood how Blazor works. There's some optimization like signalR WebSockets for update streaming (the first and only time most blazor devs will ever use WebSockets, I even see developers claiming that they're "using SignalR, Idserver4, gRPC, etc." because the template seeds it for them. The hubris.), but that's the gist. The astute viewer will have noticed a few things here, including the disconnect between repaints, inability to blend update operations and transitions, and the potential for absolutely obliterative, connection-volatile, abusive transactional logic flying back and forth to the server. It's the bring out your dead approach to seeing how much of your IT budget is dedicated to paying for bandwidth and CPU time.

Blazor goes a step further in the server-side render scenario and sends every DOM event it binds to the server for processing. These include millisecond-scale events like scroll, which, at least according to GitHub issues, devs are quickly realizing requires debouncing, though they aren't quite sure how to accomplish that. Since this immediately becomes an issue with tickets saying things like, "scroll event crater server, Ugg need help! You said Blazorclub good. Ugg believe, Ugg wants reparations!" the team chooses a great answer to many problems for the wrong reasons:

gRPC

For those who aren't familiar, gRPC has a substantial amount of compression primarily courtesy of a rather excellent binary format developed by Google. Who needs the Quickie Mart, or indeed a sound markup delivery and view strategy when you can compress the shit out of the payload and ignore the problem. (Shhh, I hear you back there, no spoilers. What will happen when even that compression ceases to cut it, indeed). One might look at all this inductive-reasoning-as-development and ask themselves, "butwai?!" The reason is that the server-side story is just a way to buy time to flesh out the even more fundamentally broken browser-side story. To explain that, we need a little perspective.

The relationship between Microsoft and it's enterprise customers is your typical mutually abusive co-dependent relationship. Microsoft goes through phases of tacit disinterest, where it virtually ignores them. And rightly so, the enterprise customers tend to be weaksauce, mono-platform, mono-language types who come to work, collect a paycheck, and go home. They want to suckle on the teat of the vendor that enables them to get a plug and play experience for delivering their internal systems.

And that's fine. But it's also dull; it's the spouse that lets themselves go, it's the girlfriend in the distracted boyfriend meme. Those aren't the people who keep your platform relevant and competitive. For Microsoft, that crowd has always been the exploratory end of the developer community: alt.net, and more recently, the dotnet core community (StackOverflow 2020's most loved platform, for the haters). Alt.net seeded every competitive advantage the dotnet ecosystem has, and dotnet core capitalized on. Like DI? You're welcome. Are you enjoying MVC? Your gratitude is understood. Cool serializers, gRPC/protobuff, 1st class APIs, metadata-driven clients, code generation, micro ORMs, etc., etc., et al. Dear enterpriseur, you are fucking welcome.

Anyways, b2blazor. So, the front end (Blazor WebAssembly) story begins with the average enterprise FOMO. When enterprises get FOMO, they start to Karen/Kevin super hard, slinging around money, privilege, premiere support tickets, etc. until Microsoft, the distracted boyfriend, eventually turns back and says, "sorry babe, wut was that?" You know, shit like managers unironically looking at cloud reps and demanding to know if "you can handle our load!" Meanwhile, any actual engineer hides under the table facepalming and trying not to die from embarrassment.

To everyone involved in my last rant, I deleted it because it was just going in the direction of "this guy thinks he's better than everyone, boohoo you have to revert to a perfectly acceptable laptop" and so on.

My intent was to compare my two laptops as a follow-up related to my HDD doing shit, but everyone took it the wrong way. So please, don't continue this discussion over this rant because you think I am spoiled or anything, I get your opinion, I disagree with it, you disagree with my opinion whether you get it or not...

That being said, I still think everyone can rant about what they have (assuming it was bought with their own money) without being called "spoiled". If you own a sports car or a great computer, you can hate the fact that you have to go back to an ordinary one. If you have a great house and it's destroyed in a fire, you can hate having to go back to a normal apartment. If you're a CEO, you can rant about going down to normal employee.

To everyone who has a crappy laptop or whatever that converts to in any other field, I can only wish that you'll upgrade it to a better one. To everyone that has a great laptop that's breaking down, I can only wish that you'll get it fixed and will be able to get off your older laptop you have to use meanwhile. Use your money the way you want, decide for yourself what parts of your life you want " more than average" and which ones you want just average, and live with what you want.

I don't really know what the whole point of this rant is... I wrote it without re-reading it, so feel free to ignore it, but I just wanted to address this. I'll still give updates about me fixing my better laptop, so to everyone wanting to comment on it, do as you wish. I just don't want another "Quality of life" war to happen, that wouldn't lead anywhere.

Sorry for this rant if its stupid, but I'm feeling a bit better now :)

So I am finally plunging into continuous integration. If I make one more deploy script mistake, I've lost enough time to merit having learned a better solution than bash scripting calling git and rhc and py files I wrote. I have failing tests that are failing because they weren't updated after the million and a half urgent changes in the past 2 months, so it's time to act like I am a TDD fanatic and write the tests correctly. So much work. All from me listening to the constant req changes, listening to the urgency, letting non-devs get under my skin if you will. I'm optimistic in all the wrong places - I think I can write that by end of day let's try it. I'm lazy in the wrong places - I think that I can write that test later, because all I changed was XYZ (which took all night but I said I'd get it as close as possible didn't I?). And I think these handful of bash scripts are good enough to make sure I run tests? But remember, I didn't write the tests or I didn't go back and update them. Or the tests that fail, I'm too lazy. And so much of the tests, I would need to use, idk selenium for, and damnit if I really don't want to dig for element IDs to wait for every time I need an AJAX call.

Okay wow, I really did rant here. And discredited myself a bit lol I need to ignore the wrong lazy and embrace the right lazy. Protect myself from myself and from contributors. It really is, up to me now, to rescue myself from my bad habits. Bad habits perpetuated by clients urgency every day, to change things, that should have been finalized in November if we wanted a stable flipping system in January. It feels like the blind (client) leading the blind (me, when I do dumb shit like rush features out the door half tested).

Anyway all this came out, because I have been reading about continuous integration and stumbled upon this quote. And thought someone might laugh at the anachronism like I did

Trigger warning:
Emotional !dev love life rant

I think this is not the right place to pour my heart out, but despite its more recent infights I still consider devRant to be a special community to me. And I guess if devRant is my goto place for support that's an issue. But maybe I just need to shout into a void because this is not about you solving this for me.

I have been in this relationship for ~6 years. My first great love. In the beginning, everything was perfect - a love story like from a cheesy movie. We've been through a lot to be together: Long distance, moving countries, a ton of bureaucracy (as she's from another country). So many memories.

It came as a surprise to me when she ended things. It really shouldn't have been. We've talked a lot about the reasons and I now see how much I've taken her for granted and neglected our relationship. I see now how I've been avoiding my problems and how I didn't work on my (mental and physical) health issues as good as I need to - not just for any relationship, but for myself. The regret/shame/guilt of not giving it 100% and of neglecting her weights heavily on me (besides the loss) and I am not sure what is worse.

Besides our relationship withering because of neglecting emotional needs, she also questioned our compability. We certainly have differences and different interests and we're both somewhat uncertain whether we really fit, if we ignore our history/emotions. It is actually a question that popped up in my head before sometimes, but I was too afraid to look into it for fear the answer is no. But here we are and ignoring that didn't help.

For now, we both need time to think about what we really want and whether this includes the other. We agreed that we need some distance to process the feelings. We still live in the same flat but for now she's staying with a friend most of the time and I'll also have a friend's place available soon. If in some time we both feel like we want to be together, we can date again - however she was also clear that she doesn't want to give any false hope and her current vision doesn't include me. If not, well have to hire a divorce lawyer. (Why you need a lawyer for that if both agree is beyond me.)

I am shattered. When it became clear to me that the relationship is over (and I ruined it), I got nauseous to the point that I threw up constantly for 6 hours. For the following 2 days I only cried and haven't eaten. Third day I started cleaning up the flat (long overdue!) - mostly for her tbh but I know it's good for myself, so better do the right thing with wrong motivation than sob all day -
talked to my psychiatrist and she brought some lunch which I could eat. Today (fourth day) she came over and we cooked lunch. I am still feeling terrible but the first days have been the worst I've ever felt and I've been trough quite a bit of (physical & chronic) pain - emotional pain hits different.

Let's see how this works out. In any case I now know very clear that I can't continue like before and need to work on my issues (for my own sake). I want be my best self, even if right now I don't have a lot of energy and am very depressed. I got an appointment with a therapist tomorrow - something I should have done years ago but I was overwhelmed with anxiety and analysis paralysis. I hope the future will be brighter and while I still wish to wake up from this nightmare and realize my faults without this breakup, I also know that I have to face reality.

PS: I do feel better now after writing this out. Thanks for listening, I guess.

We are all about structures, clean code and many other things that make our life easier, right?

Well... It's not all white and black...

As talked many times, projects can be rushed... Client budgets can be low at the start and only then grow...

Let me take an example:

Client X needs a tool that helps his team perform jobs faster. They have a $500 budget. So... Testing, clean architecture and so on - are not really a viable option. Instead, you just make it work and perform that task as needed. So the code has minimal patterns, minimal code structure, a lot of repetitive parts and so on.

Now... Imagine that 3 months pass by without any notice and clients are ultra happy with the product. They want more things to be automated. They contact developers and ask for more things. This time they have a bigger budget but short timeframe.

So once again, you ignore all tests, structure and just make it work. No matter what. The client is happy again.

A year passes and the client realizes that their workflow changed. The app needs total refactoring. The previous developer has no time for adjustments at this point and hires a new company. They look at the code and rants spill out of their mouth along with suicidal thoughts.

So... What would you do? Would you rant about "messy project" or just fix it? Especially since people now have a bigger budget and timeframe to adapt to changes.

Would you be pissed on such a project?
Would you flame on previous devs?
Would you blame anyone for the mess?

Or would you simply get in and get the job done since the client has a "prototype" and needs a better version of it?

---

Personally, I've been in this situation A LOT. And I'm both, the old and new dev. I've built tons of crappy software to make things work for clients and after years - they come back for changes/new things. You just swallow the pill and do what is needed. Why? Well, because it's an internal system and not used by anyone outside their office. Even if it's used outside the office - prototyping is the key. They didn't know if the idea would work or be helpful in any way. Now they know and want it done correctly.

The Zen Of Ripping Off Airtable:
(patterned after The Zen Of Python. For all those shamelessly copying airtables basic functionality)

*Columns can be *reordered* for visual priority and ease of use.

* Rows are purely presentational, and mostly for grouping and formatting.

* Data cells are objects in their own right, so they can control their own rendering, and formatting.

* Columns (as objects) are where linkages and other column specific data are stored.

* Rows (as objects) are where row specific data (full-row formatting) are stored.

* Rows are views or references *into* columns which hold references to the actual data cells

* Tables are meant for managing and structuring *small* amounts of data (less than 10k rows) per table.

* Just as you might do "=A1:A5" to reference a cell range in google or excel, you might do "opt(table1:columnN)" in a column header to create a 'type' for the cells in that column.

* An enumeration is a table with a single column, useful for doing the equivalent of airtables options and tags. You will never be able to decide if it should be stored on a specific column, on a specific table for ease of reuse, or separately where it and its brothers will visually clutter your list of tables. Take a shot if you are here.

* Typing or linking a column should be accomplishable first through a command-driven type language, held in column headers and cells as text.

* Take a shot if you somehow ended up creating any of the following: an FSM, a custom regex parser, a new programming language.

* A good structuring system gives us options or tags (multiple select), selections (single select), and many other datatypes and should be first, programmatically available through a simple command-driven language like how commands are done in datacells in excel or google sheets.

* Columns are a means to organize data cells, and set constraints and formatting on an entire range.

* Row height, can be overridden by the settings of a cell. If a cell overrides the row and column render/graphics settings, then it must be drawn last--drawing over the default grid.

* The header of a column is itself a datacell.

* Columns have no order among themselves. Order is purely presentational, and stored on the table itself.

* The last statement is because this allows us to pluck individual columns out of tables for specialized views.

*Very* fast scrolling on large datasets, with row and cell height variability is complicated. Thinking about it makes me want to drink. You should drink too before you embark on implementing it.

* Wherever possible, don't use a database.
If you're thinking about using a database, see the previous koan.

* If you use a database, expect to pick and choose among column-oriented stores, and json, while factoring for platform support, api support, whether you want your front-end users to be forced to install and setup a full database,
and if not, what file-based .so or .dll database engine is out there that also supports video, audio, images, and custom types.

* For each time you ignore one of these nuggets of wisdom, take a shot, question your sanity, quit halfway, and then write another koan about what you learned.

* If you do not have liquor on hand, for each time you would take a shot, spank yourself on the ass. For those who think this is a reward, for each time you would spank yourself on the ass, instead *don't* spank yourself on the ass.

* Take a sip if you *definitely* wildly misused terms from OOP, MVP, and spreadsheets.

The best motivational comment

I posted a rant in which I mentioned that "few" developers who don't want other to progress and are present to show off at every platform....
Got a comment, which I want to share...
Thanks to @MrCush

Ya, most of them tend to stalk the stack overflow and Arch Linux communities. On stack overflow they tend to refresh their browser nonstop to see who their next victim is on a new question and then spend an abnormal amount of time searching the site for a similar question and then downvote you and report as a duplicate. “Umm ya, the question you linked is similar to mine. I found that one as well but unfortunately it wasn’t in the same environment with the same conditions that I raised and didn’t help me. Oh btw, he posted that back in 2002 and HEY LOOK, he got reported for a duplicate as well. Seems like you reported him as well.” 
The issues of arrogance and being unhelpful on that site are so vast that nobody else that registers can get enough points to be able to be allowed to answer someone else’s question so you never get any new blood.

Arch Linux “elites” like to answer your question with a link that you’ve already been to as they always link the same site. “Dude! There’s a wiki for a fucking reason. Did you read this page?”
Yes I did read that page and it was helpful to a degree but since I’m absolutely new to Arch, a lot of the information on the wiki is a bit too descriptive and over my head. Not to mention every paragraph links you to another wiki page which then links you to another and so on that I have no idea where I left off....
“Dude! If you don’t understand everything on the wiki then you shouldn’t be using Arch Linux man! Gtfo scrub.”
Took me a long time to get comfortable with Arch because of these assholes. You got to start somewhere and doing is the best way to learn.
Reading the wiki on how to install Arch now seems so simple to me because I know what to ignore and what is required but back when I first started it was absolutely confusing.

!dev (feel free ignore my rambling)

Fuck my piece of shit landlord that doesn't want me to provide a next tenant because they already have someone (without visiting, I believe they have some shady dealing since I noticed a pattern in regards to the last two flats that changed tenants) and doesn't give a shit about the kitchen I had built in / says "maybe you can leave it [for free] or maybeee the owner will take it but don't expect as much as 500 or 600€ and whatever the owner proposes is non negotiable [...] if you wanna take it out we'll buy a new one" (i.e. fuck you we rather pay 4k for a new one than give you the 2k it's worth)

(╯° □°） ╯︵ ┻━┻

aaaaargh this certainly doesn't help my stress levels which are already 11/10 with the flat search

Oh god i have been fighting with exoplayer library and ima sdk for past month and yet i haven't been able to figure out how to play multiple VAST tags without using a vmap.. if anyone knows this( or find this relevent and want more info regarding this) please, let's chat.

I am sometimes so irritated with open source. We are grateful that you made a great video player , but please for the love of god , document it nicely. No one can skimm through your 800 fucking classes, especially when a quarter of them are core c++ classes that an android dev never even touches.

Plus no replies on issues! My god, you know after SO, the second tab that's almost always open on my PC is that of some github library or issue. And am sure that must be the case of most of the devs. Then why can't you fucking reply?????

You see, this is typical google.. i am beleive they see everything and ignore it until the right moment comes... Android dev summit is coming, and they won't make any replies now, but would make big changes on the day of their on stage presentations like a boss, recieving lots of applauses, like " yay, they fixed it!! Yess more documentation " bull fucking shit.
My boss knows this and he is on my ass to find solutions before google releases solutions coz he wanna stay ahead of the competition
Thanks for fucking me, open source

Alright guys, I need some advice now from you..

My employer is super impressed with my worked and they are willing to relocate me to the US (Seattle).

As you all are aware that I am actively trying to move out of my country but lately have realised that no matter what, it's home.

Also, I am way to close to my mother and don't want to leave her alone for an extended period of time as both my parents are ageing and I cannot be a selfish fuck to ignore them during their last phase of life.

I want to make the most to spend time with them.

Some key points that I need help with
- I am more inclined towards the UK/EU than US
- Need to spend time with parents/family
- Need to secure some cash for some key life moments

Some challenges:
- Cannot take parents along because they'd not be able to settle for more than 1.5 month outside for various reasons
- If I am moving out, why shouldn't I go to a place I love than a place I don't?

Some plans:
Plan A: Move to Seattle (6 months) > FAANG > Get a high paying high in India (all this in 2 year duration) > Settle down > Periodically travel Europe and explore hobbies

Plan B: Move to Seattle (6 months) > FAANG (optional) > Find a job in the UK/EU (4.5 year duration) > Fullfill EU dreams > Get a high paying job in India > Settle > Continue exploring hobbies

Plan C: Stay in India with current company (6 months) > IJP or EJP to the UK/EU (5 year duration) > Fullfill EU dreams > Get a high paying job in India > Settle > Continue exploring hobbies

I need to pick one while keeping in my that I can spend more time with parents and fullfill my dreams as well. I am confident that money will follow and I'll save enough for my retirement. Willing to trade off some extremely high paying jobs for a happier lifestyle.

This is probably the worst place to start my Rant saga but this is recent (this is one of the last few episodes of a 3 series cluster fuck of a job so you're missing out on all the straws that go into breaking the camels back and making him unaccommodating)

TL;DR I do good work, management dont like me and go out their way to try and fuck up my days

So, lets start, I'm a contractor, got funeral Tuesday, book leave, book WFH for day after.

I leave in 3 weeks, woman who is the CIO's right hand bitch takes me into a room the next day or so in the morning to discuss my WFH day. Leave on tuesday is cool but this WFH day...there's only so long until I'm gone so they want me to stay in for more face-to-face time blah blah blah (considering this woman isn't even part of the project I'm working on anymore because she decided to deflect it onto a underqualified junior with no PM experience)

So I sit there, thinking of all the blood and sweat that I have shed, the mountains I've moved just to be told to move the mountain somewhere else and whether coming in would kill me (in other words im fucking burnt out!!! I have built their GDPR database and app backend single-handedly with no requirements, project managers who can't plan and being chastised for asking for documentation/plan/anything written down and having the CIO who is also the fucking DPO ignore any emails/slack I send him relating to the project and having to keep up with a team of devs....).

So because there was a momentary silence, she decided to fill the gap

"Oh, you've done some good work so far and I wouldn't want you to ruin it all in these last 3 weeks. So just come in on the Wednesday so that we can have you here."

Hmm....yeah...i didn't notice what she had ACTUALLY said there, still thinking about can i be fucked? So she decides to add

"...there's only 3 weeks left, wouldn't want you to burn any bridges. Remember, we still have to give you a reference"

....Okay....shots fired. So i respond

"You saying, if I take a WFH day, you'll give me a bad reference?"

"Noooo no no no, not saying that, just that you've done good work and we wouldn't want you to ruin it"

"With one wfh day?"

"We just want you to come in because the developers might be coming here that week"

"Oh... I hear that...what day?"

"I dunno, it's not been booked yet"

".............................I'll think about it"

"There's nothing to consider"

*Start leaving room* "I'll think about it...."

So cool, obviously, had a think, decide to shoot over an email (or more accurately, a collection of bullets). Which basically said, in devRant translation, "Fuck y'all, I'm WFH on that day, I wish a motherfucker would fuck up my reference, we can go that way if you want it. *snaps fingers* I. WISH. YOU. WOULD! "

Woman says "I wasn't threatening you, was just saying...dont ruin your last 3 weeks, wouldn't want you to burn any bridges and that we still have to give you a reference"

What kind of Godfather comment is that?

Come in today, the CIO, who is a prick who don't like me for whatever reason, sends me long email trying to disrespect me and in the midst says "I’m sorry that you have chosen to react like this, I’m sure that [my bitch] was conveying a position that your last three weeks of contract are crucial for a smooth handover. I have made the decision to not require you to work from home on Wednesday. I understand you are on leave on Tuesday and therefore this is now extended to include Wednesday. I look forward to seeing you back in the office on Thursday. I hope this will make the situation better for all parties."

.................................thought you lot needed me in the office to ensure a smooth handover................logic..........people.............where the fuck do you get yours from!?!?!?!? All this just so they can say "We made the decision at the end :cool:"

Alright so I'm in need of a little advice.

So I recently decided to go back and practice basic problem solving and from what I can tell now it's just me not used to JS like I am with python but I want to move on to bigger projects and other basic concepts (like manipulation of the DOM) and move away from basic problems.

But my concern is that I'll look at that list and only pick the ones that I feel I understand I can solve instead of the ones I cant. And theres a large list of them and I see that people are doing a lot of them while I'm just doing a few per page. And I'm afraid I'm just not good enough or stupid if I just ignore the basics and move on because the basics are there for you to figure out the easy stuff.

But I really just want to move on and I dont know when I need to. And last time I asked for advice I mentioned I have been programming for a few years, left out the normal accomplishments I've posted on here but I was just told since it's taking me this long I should just quit I tried to rebuttle but they kept telling me no that literally broke me and my confidence so now I'm sensitive to asking questions also fuck whoever that was.

You might want to disable your virus scanner before trying to install this joke. It's 100% totally legit. Virus free. Just ignore the warnings if you see them. It's the real deal.

Man I'm annoyed!

TL;Dr what does it mean "we're trying to reduce options to a minimum", why don't you go closed source!? why don't you remove themes!?

For anyone who uses rofi, they would know that a few months ago an update made it more compliant with the free-desktop spec, that it only uses the first .desktop file for the given Name tag.

I only found out about this recently as I was only able to update Manjaro recently, and it really annoyed me, cause it took me a while to figure out why tons of my desktop entries disappeared.

Turns out someone made an issue about this, and the given answer was: "that's against the spec". Ok, fine. But when I asked if they could add an option to still ignore that aspect of the spec (i.e. --show-duplicated), the response I got was: "going against the spec is a no-go". WHAT!?

There are so many things that have behavior that goes against the spec (ex. gnu-utils), why can't they add an option to do this!? An OPTION!?

When I decided to try (I don't know C yet) and make a PR, the first and last (it got locked afterwards!) comment I got was:
" As explained on #941, this is a no-go. We want to reduce the number of options to the minimum, and non-compliance to a well-defined and widely implemented spec is definitely not something we want."

Why are you so closed minded!? Yes compliance is amazing, but it's not a safety standard, it's okay if you *give an option* to go against the spec!!!!

WHAT THE HECK!?!?!? WHY!?!?!?

Why is a open source project closed to new features that are part if the scope of the project, and require minimal maintenance!?

Need some advise from all you clever devs out there.

When I finished uni I worked for a year at a good company but ultimately I was bored by the topic.

I got a new job at a place that was run by a Hitler wannabee that didn't want to do anything properly including writing tests and any time I improved an area or wrote a test would take me aside to have a go so I quit after 3 months.

Getti g a new job was not that hard but being at companies for short stints was a big issue.

My new job I've been here 3 months again but the code base is a shit hole, no standardisation, no one knows anything about industry standards, no tests again, pull requests that are in name only as clearly broken areas that you comment on get ignored so you might as well not bother, fake agile where all user stories are not user stories and we just lie every sprint about what we finished, no estimates and so forth, and a code base that is such a piece of shit that to add a new feature you have to hack every time. The project only started a few months back.

For instance we were implementing permissions and roles. My team lead does the table design. I spent 4 hours trying to convince him it was not fit for purpose and now we have spent a month on this area and we can't even enforce the permissions on the backend so basically they don't exist. This is the tip of the iceberg as this shit happens constantly and the worst thing is even though I say there is a problem we just ignore it so the app will always be insecure.

None of the team knows angular or wants to learn but all our apps use angular..

These are just examples, there is a lot more problems right from agile being run by people that don't understand agile to sending database entities instead of view models to client apps, but not all as some use view models so we just duplicate all the api controllers.

Our angular apps are a huge mess now because I have to keep hacking them since the backend is wrong.

We have a huge architectural problem that will set us back 1 month as we won't be able to actually access functionality and we need to release in 3 months, their solution even understanding my point fully is to ignore it. Legit.

The worst thing is that although my team is not dumb, if you try to explain this stuff to them they either just don't understand what you are saying or don't care.

With all that said I don't think they are even aware of these issues somehow so I dont think it's on purpose, and I do like the people and company, but I have reached the point that I don't give a shit anymore if something is wrong as its just so much easier to stay silent and makes no difference anyway.

I get paid very well, it's close to home and I actually learn a lot since their skill level is so low I have to pick up the slack and do all kinds of things I've never done much of like release management or database optimisation and I like that.

Would you leave and get a new job?

Hi So I need some solid advice from you all wonderful people.
I think i am now ready to look into job side of this world, but have lots of doubts , read my story.
I have been learning android for last 2 years. Most of the time i have been trying to understand how stuff works in android , but i have also gained a few other skills ( python programming, kotlin/flutter basics data analysis basics, testing, some graphic designing, aweful web dev ,etc). But i really want to work with Android. I don't have any specific Salary figure in mind, but i guess my knowledge is better or atleast par with most of the good android developers.

So i want to know how is this fresher/placement thingy work?
1.) GETTING KNOWN? : How can i make some good android based company aware that I am available for hiring? Should i start emailing every android related company that i know of? Should i start listing my profile on recruitment sites like linkedin or internshala? This year it is being said that companies will come for placements. From the status of my college, they are going to give me way to less $ , nd i know am not going to like any of them, but i guess i have to sit for them too.

2.INTERVIEW OR DIRECT PLACEMENTS? A little pre-context: i am currently starting my 4th year in clg. Afaik , 4th year isnt that strict and their can be leniency in terms of attendance. But my college is a place full of political cun*s in the name of directors and HODs and I don't know if they are again going to enforce the old 75% mandatory criteria. Plus if the company is from a different state/country , then my attendance would definitely not suffice.
So mainly i am unsure if somehow a company hires me, i would be able to start immediately. I heard that there are interviews for job recruitment after which the candidate is binded with an agreement to do some months training followed by permanent working after college completion.
This type of agreement is very much suitable for me, since from what my friend tells me, trainings can be lenient and understanding regarding exam preparations nd stuff.

So what do company usually chooses? Binding a fresher on immediate working basis or do they consider graduate completion?

Also, i suck at competitive coding. Do i need to polish myself on that or some company is willing to give me chance on the basis of my other skills 🙈(okay, no kidding , that's a serious question. I need to either work on getting better in competitive or build more apps based on that)

3.) ANDROID OR EVERYTHING? From what i have heard, working as a professional fresher is more like being an allrounder than being a domain specialist. But as i already stated, i really dig android and that's no small framework. I may di other stuff too, but won't interest me nd my output might be less efficient than expected.
So freshers can really be asked to do any stuff? Or can i still be in the area i like being into?

4.) COMPANY OR START-UP? Yeah, this is a general debate starter. Ignoring the business side of the conversation ( job safety vs more salary, experience, etc) the thing that's most important for me is the presence of a team. I want someone to assign me a task, whose vision i could follow, from whom i could learn, and some other people who are supportive and doing the same amount / similar work that am doing . This is so much import8 for me that i can easily ignore other factors for a better team. I once took a call from a startup ceo who hired me, a 2 month old android beginner at that time, as the "lead android developer"
But if am being on a team where i am supposed to do any random stuff that is assigned, then obviously this whole point of "visionary, helpful leader, guiding team, "etc goes moot