My words to live by...

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++

I have been in this field almost 13 years and experienced multiple burnouts. But now feels different.

I miss those days when i spent all nights doing programming on junior high school.

Once you turn your hobby into a profession, it may ceases to be your hobby anymore.

We've been trying to hire a greenhorn, fresh-faced intern from India for like a month now.
Plenty of applicants, most with very nice curriculums, a few even can think on their feet while grilled by my questions.
I've sent to talk to HR three almost college-graduating candidates, who convinced me they know the subject of data engineering enough to be working with me and that they are actually gonna do the tasks assigned.

The fucking tweep at HR, an old fart who I had to convince that HVAC maintenance is not the job of the IT department nor the data team, calls my approved candidates "too junior".
WTF, I ask. - "Not professional enough", says the human toad.
Yes, they are to be interns! - "But they do not show professionalism", answered the hag.
Yes they do! They were very professional on the interviews! - "That is for me to say!" barked the reptile.

A week pass by while I try to find more just as good candidates who are also "more professional" when the hag has the audacity to say "here, I found someone. He knows everything about computer things and is very professional".
I took like 20 seconds to find out that the kid she'd given my number to, and was now messaging me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT, was her niece's fiancee and wasn't even in uni! He was just a high school graduate!
Seriously, nepotism kids, delete your Instagrams, tiktoks and every single piece of social media.

I scaled the issue to my VP, who contacted the HR VP for India, who gave the worst possible excuse for her behaviour: "She knows nothing about computer things!" for what my own boss said "so why was she assigned to oversee the data team's new hires?!". The HR slug mumbled something and then doubled down with "well, the kids you sent her were all girls! she had never hired a girl to a technical position, she wouldn't know what to look for in an interview!"

What. The. Fuck.
My boss, my VP of a very strategic technical area, happens to be a woman who lives in a place where women's rights are for real. I had *never* heard she swear on a non-football-related context. She did. Loudly. On camera. As if the HR boss was a referee who just disallowed a goal for her team due to an very ambiguous forward pass.

Shit is still flowing, but it seems that the hiring process of the entire company is being restructured because of that.
I guess I've just sped up this process in about one hundred years?

import LongRantKit
import NonRantKit
import TldrKit

I don't like stickers on my laptop because it clutters it up. But today I realized the importance of them.

A few months ago I was sitting at a coffee shop working on a paper and I noticed a guy with this cool sticker on a MacBook Pro: it had the integral symbol to the left of the Apple logo, and to the right of it a lowercase d and another Apple logo. It took me a few hours to realize what it meant, but I finally did and at that point I also guessed that not many people know what it is.

So I, as antisocial as I am, I finish up my work and before I leave I walk up to him and say hi. At this point I'm a senior in high school and I learn he's a junior in the same college I plan to attend. We talked a little before I had to leave and got to know each other somewhat.

After I leave I find him on Instagram and Facebook and friend him and such.

Recently I posted a picture saying I had recently joined the Apple Developer Team, and also recently reposted a memory on Facebook from 5 years ago that was a screen capture of an iPhone 4 simulator running iOS 5 showing off one of my first apps.

Then yesterday I get a message from the guy I met at the coffee shop asking for some help with an iOS project he's working on. We decide to meet today and I spend the entire morning showing him the basics of Swift, Xcode, Interface Builder, etc. I feel like I really helped him jumpstart his app and helped him understand the basics of different concepts.

If he didn't have that integral sticker on his laptop I would have never had this opportunity to finally share some iOS development experience.

For this I would like to thank my high school calculus teacher, with whom I spent many classes at Starbucks because I was an only student. I'd like to thank laptop stickers, and finally I would like to thank the coffee shop.

TL;DR: Said hi to a guy with an integral sticker on his laptop, a few months later he approaches me for help understanding iOS development.

I'm from the UK. My CS teacher took a dislike to me in junior high school, dissuading me from taking the classes I needed to take computer science at college. I ended up starting an economics major and then dropping out.

With the support of my family and friends I started over as a self taught as a developer.

I'm now a Tech Director in New York and love my job.

!dev (when do I ever post a dev related story? I only post about my personal life really)

For about 2 years I had a very good friend, and I had a huge crush on her for most of those 2 years. All of my junior year of high school, she dated my best friend, then they broke up the summer after because he'd cheated on her around the time they got together and she had found out. I was there for both of them during the breakup (it was fucking exhausting). The thing is, I was there for the girl more because I had a crush on her, and I started to consider her my best friend rather than her ex.

She knew I had a crush on her for a long time. But she still spent about a year going to parties every weekend, getting fucking hammered, and hooking up with random guys, then proceeded to tell me about it after. I can't count how many times she had to cancel plans because she got hammered the night before.

But I had a huge crush on her, so I essentially put her up on a pedestal, thinking she could do no wrong. Then we hit a point where we didn't talk for a couple months because I hit a low point and she was uncomfortable with me because of it. Around April we started talking again, immediately back to being best friends but my feelings for her came and went for a while. She had a huge crush on our other friend that had a girlfriend at the time. Life went on, she actually ended up being my first kiss while she was drunk one night (I was sober cause I was driving), but I started talking to a different girl a few days before then, so I was very conflicted about everything there.

Then a few weeks ago came. A different friend got a Radeon 5700 XT and I went over to his house to check it out and everything. We ended up talking for a while, and the conversation turned to my whole friend group that I hung out with all the time (the girl being the center of the group). That friend was never very fond of her, and he always made that very clear. Basically he made me realize that she's not perfect, and that I'd been seeing her through rose-colored glasses.

I spent a week or so rethinking our whole friendship, and I realized that she is nowhere near fucking perfect. For example, she ALWAYS has to be the center of attention. If our friend group is focusing on someone else for whatever reason, she essentially throws a fit then gets really quiet to get attention. Also she can't take criticism at all, she always acts like a victim if you try to criticize her in any way. I also feel like every time I tried to better myself in some way, she ended up bringing me down and making me feel like my problems aren't important. She uses her kindness as a weapon, such as "How could you say that about me? I've been nothing but kind to you!" And the list just goes on.

So, about a week ago, I told her that I feel like she's a toxic person, and she does nothing but bring people down over time, because that's truly how I feel. And of course, she couldn't take the criticism, and said "I don't even know why you feel that, I've been nothing but nice to you".

I haven't talked to anyone in that friend group in one week now. And I feel a lot better mentally. Being friends with her felt like a chore. Only one person in that friend group has tried to talk to me, and that was today. Nobody else has texted me or anything since last Monday. And I honestly couldn't care less. I feel like a huge chapter of my life is over, like the depressing chapter in a book.

I don't know how to end this. I'm doing fairly well now, been hanging out with coworkers a bunch lately. Life's actually kinda good for once.

My junior high school computer programming (Visual Basic) teacher.
She was the spoiled brat of our head teacher. Had just graduated and gotten her bachelor degree. Didn't know jack shit about programming or teaching. Would constantly mock and belittle us for not being able to answer the questions and didn't actually teach us anything.

OKAY BUT WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE HAVE TO ACT LIKE THEY'RE SOME KIND OF GOD WHEN THEY CAN'T EVEN PASS AN INTRO CLASS. Some background: I go to an early college in high school program which offers computer science where you take two college classes a semester starting you junior year in high school. AND THIS GIRL TALKS ABOUT THIS PROGRAM LIKE IT'S AWFUL AND SHE HATES IT AND HOW THE PROFESSORS DON'T TEACH AND SHE FAILED AN INTRO TO PROGRAMMING CLASS WHICH TEACHES JAVA BUT THEN SHE ACTS LIKE SHE'S WAY ABOVE THE OTHER KIDS IN MY CLASS BECAUSE SHE'S RETAKING IT. SHE'S ALSO A STUDENT ASSISTANT IN MY CYBER SECURITY CLASS BUT DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE localhost IP IS. I UNDERSTAND THAT I DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING BUT AT LEAST I DON'T ACT LIKE I DO. IT'S SO INFURIATING!!!!!!

Usually developers start in a team where there are senior and you are a junior who do things and ask things.
Then there's me that starts alone in a company to develop a software in a machine that you've never seen before (POS) with only 15 hours of preparation class, no documentation and with a apprenticeship contract.
I still didn't start but I brought the POS in my home to familiarize with it and in a week I still haven't be able to execute the sample application.
And you could ask, why did you accept if you aren't able? Well, I need money, he searched me through the high school (I had an high score so a lot of people search me) and he required only C, that I know. FML

was jobless for some time but in those days I was seeing this smoking-hot mulata friend of a cousin. After several visits and "movie days" I asked her out for dinner which, to my surprise because I'm a nobody, she accepted.

we went out and eat some tacos in her favorite soda around the corner. And we went out a second time IIRC.

needless to say, the money that paid that modest dinner with such amazona was earned working as a freelancer in PeoplePerHour doing junior-level stuff in Python, I learned the language during my four last years in high school.

ah, how I miss that girl 🤷‍♂️.

Hate my fucking ‘Logic’ class. Teaching us if, or, and, etc statements and when something is true or false so far. Fair enough, part of logic. But fucking 6 classes on the same topic, isn’t helpful. Especially since it feels like the same shit I learnt myself when I was 13 and a junior in High School.

People are all surprised at it, even the Computer Science majors. This shouldn’t be a shock to you on how these statements work if you’ve coded for a few minutes in the University. You should’ve learnt it in your first programming class.

Ugh, just how I feel about this class. Have to take it to get my degree, otherwise I would’ve dropped it by now >.> Waste of time and money for me.

Found a Junior Dev position for fresh graduates but requires 5+ years of Java programming. Hope I started Java when I was in high school.

My company ex-IT Maintainer, left a long automation script in c++, bit of python 2, and bash for our server which developed long before i went to junior high school. and now, the system is outdated, and have a compability problems. so i got task to give it a fix.

when i opened the source code up. i was like; holy shit who the hell write a code especially c++ all aligned to the left, Yes All of it, not a single line are indented. but in the other side the code seems maintainable, and after autoformat, autoindent and couple of fix later, it was readable. I am just wondering who the hell in the world write a code with a style like that ???? i knew he was aware of code style and indentation since he wrote couple of python scripts. Unbelievable.

sadly i cannot show you the pict cuz of company things.

I'm a junior in high school, and I dabble in a few languages like Python and php. What do you think is a good language to pursue in the coming years? I've heard Ruby and php are some of the top. What is your opinion?

Ok, so I need some clarity from you good folk, please.

My lead developer is also my main mentor, as I am still very much a junior. He carved out most of his career in PHP, but due to his curious/hands-on personality, he has become proficient with Golang, Docker, Javascript, HTML/CSS.

We have had a number of chats about what I am best focusing on, both personally and related to work, and he makes quite a compelling case for the "learn as many things as possible; this is what makes you truly valuable" school of thought. Trouble is, this is in direct contrast to what I was taught by my previously esteemed mentor, Gordon Zhu from watchandcode.com. "Watch and Code is about the core skills that all great developers possess. These skills are incredibly important but sound boring and forgettable. They’re things like reading code, consistency and style, debugging, refactoring, and test-driven development. If I could distill Watch and Code to one skill, it would be the ability to take any codebase and rip it apart. And the most important component of that ability is being able to read code."

As you can see, Gordon always emphasised language neutrality, mastering the fundamentals, and going deep rather than wide. He has a ruthlessly high barrier of entry for learning new skills, which is basically "learn something when you have no other option but to learn it".

His approach served me well for my deep dive into Javascript, my first language. It is still the one I know the best and enjoy using the most, despite having written programs in PHP, Ruby, Golang and C# since then. I have picked up quite a lot about different build pipelines, development environments and general web development as a result of exposure to these other things, so it isn't a waste of time.

But I am starting to go a bit mad. I focus almost exclusively on quite data intensive UI development with Vue.js in my day job, although there is an expectation I will help with porting an app to .NET Core 3 in a few months. .NET is rather huge from what I have seen so far, and I am seriously craving a sense of focus. My intuition says I am happiest on the front end, and that focusing on becoming a skilled Javascript engineer is where I will get the biggest returns in mastery, pay and also LIFE BALANCE/WELLBEING...

Any thoughts, people? I would be interested to hear peoples experiences regarding depth vs breadth when it comes to the real world.

Hi, sorry to bother anyone but I'm a high school junior looking for advice on learning computer programming and related topics
I just want to ask what kind of resources I should look for and some things I should try to learn before I graduate high school (a school with no programming courses. :( sadly)

Any advice or help is appreciated. Thank you for your time

The moment I knew I wanted to be a dev was very early in life, but I didn't realize it until I had gotten out of high school. My parents gave me my first computer when I was like 8 and it was my grandfather's old Windows 95 PC. I loved to play the Army Men game with the plastic figures like from Toy Story. I also tinkered around and found out how Word and some of the other programs worked. About two years later, I got his old Windows 98 PC. I continued to play around in Windows and discover some nuances of the operating system. My parents had a Windows XP machine at the time and they called me in every time they needed help. I got on their computer from time to time to use the Internet, where I discovered so many cool things. In junior high, we were forced to take a typing course where I honed my typing skills through playing games. I soon was able to easily complete all of the challenges. To understand my persona, you must know that I was bullied throughout elementary and high school. I was "the nerd" of our class and I wore that badge even with all of the negative energy that it came with. I received constant criticism, ridiculed for being intelligent (my paycheck isn't too funny now, is it losers?). I didn't care, though, my mission has and always will be to show them their wrong doing. I actually can't wait to have a reunion just to see how UNSUCCESSFUL they are. My parents didn't like my interest in gaming and technology either, but that's a rant for another day. After junior high, I wasn't exposed to much else until I got to college four years ago, where I took Fundamentals Of Computing. My professor was a true nerd (major Zelda fanatic), and he taught us how to program in Python. I began to love being able to create something literally out of nothing. He opened my eyes to a world where there was order and I could have control in a world where I've never had any control in before. Since then, I've only began to love my profession more and more. This is truly what I was born to do.

Fire the teachers who don’t know anything about CS except out of a guide. Make it about CS. Also update the god damn information taught + plus tools used to learn CS.

Another thing is to let people start learning at a early age, not forcing them but atleast offering the option. Like let’s say in Junior High instead of High School.

My biggest regret is not becoming a programmer sooner in life. Ever since I saw the computer wore tennis shoes when I was 5 I wanted to be a computer programmer. But my brother discouraged me saying it was so difficult but no one did it. So I thought I guess if no one is doing it.... Then in both Junior High and High School they have computer classes but you had to be friends with the teacher to even know it existed in the first place. I was not on good terms with him.

Thanks to a very encouraging Teacher at Art School I finally I was able to pursue my lifelong interest in computers.

I started with AP computer science as a junior in high school. We learned Java. It's a powerful thing to show a young person that they can control what a computer does.

I started learning to program through my junior and senior year of high school. It was a required 2-days-a-week course where we learned basic JavaScript on Codeacademy and mapped out logic gates. Loved every second of it.

Since then, I've been using Free Code Camp, many Codeacademy courses, and many YouTube videos alongside my practice.

2nd week at my first job after I got my papers and what am I doing?

Background:
I followed a course of three years where all we learnt was web development with php and javascript. I of course wanted more and spend hours after school learning as much as a could without any help from others.

About the course:
We learn to tinker with code (php, javascript).
There was never a mention of design patterns.
We never got to know about TDD (test driven development).

Now:
Got the papers, found a job as a c# junior development and am currently working on a C# .NET web app using azure cloud and high standards using unit tests to provide a product for the awesome company I work at which should generate a stable income.

Tldr;
Hard work pays off.

It's does not take a huge amount of knowledge and skill to get a program working.Kids in high school do it all the time. young men and women in college start billion-dollar business based on scrabbling together a few lines of PHP or Ruby. Hoards of junior programmers in cube farms around the world slog through massive requirements documents held in huge issue tracking systems to get their systems to "work" by the sheer force of will. The code they produce may not be pretty; but it works. It works because getting something to work-once-just is not that hard.