Went blank when interviewer asked me do I know KITT. I knew that he didn't mean Knight Rider, but I could not think of anything sensible in the few seconds I had time to answer the question so I answered NO. Interviewer said that it is a basic requirement for the job and it seemed that I lacked the basic skill needed for the job.

Needless to say I didn't get the job. Later that day as I was telling my friends about the interview they seemed really confused....

"... but you know GIT very well. You use it on a daily basis. Why did you answer NO ?"

Damn, blew my interview on pronounciation issue :/

PM (on slack): "we’re about to deploy to production".
Me: "ok"
… I keep on working on a task / remain available for any post deployment issues …
PM (5 minutes later on slack): "deployment broke production! We need to handle this NOW!"

My dev colleague has already called it a day, but I’m still online

Me: "ok I don’t have access to prod, can you describe what’s going on? I can’t reproduce on any other environment"

PM: …

10 minutes go by

Me: "anybody there?"

PM: …

45 minutes later, I realize PM is offline

The following day:
PM: "ok we got prod running again" (turns out it was client’s fault for not updating a config we as devs can’t access)
PM: "but we’re REALLY UPSET! You guys need to be available to intervene for any issues following deployment to production! At least one of you should be available!"

Me: "but, but…" 🫠

Client: please be sure to let us know with enough notice if you plan on taking any time off so we can anticipate how to operate during your absence.

Me to client 4 months before vacation: "I’m going to be on vacation in July for such amount of time".
Client: OK thanks

Client 3 months before vacation: are you taking any time off this summer?
Me: yeah I’m taking such amount of time in July.
Client: Ok

Client 2 months before vacation: are you taking any time off this summer.
Me: yeah I’m taking such amount of time in July.
Client: Ok

Client a month before vacation: wait you’re taking time off this summer?
Me: yeah, in July.
Client: oh, we need to start figuring out how to manage your absence.

…client has enough time to figure things out.
——-

Client two weeks ago: we’re switching you to a another project where you’ll be replacing someone who’s leaving; and you’ll be developing alone. You’ll be working closely with our software architect. He’ll be the one who can answer all your questions.
Me totally lost on new project as it’s barely documented, sql tables are a mess with barely any relations between them and data structures are totally inconsistent. Supposed to be getting info from partner APIs but I can’t test them and don’t know exactly what data to expect. Only the software architect has the necessary knowledge.

Client a week ago: hey don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions. We can’t afford to fall behind from schedule.
Me: oh don’t worry, I’m already flooding your guy with questions.

Me last Monday to client: hey do you know what’s up with your architect? I’ve been waiting for him to answer some important questions and it’s going to be hard to move forward without him getting back to me.
Client: you’re telling us you’re not going to be able to move forward efficiently until our architect gets back from vacation in two weeks?
Me: wait, he’s on vacation?
(on the inside: when the fuck were you guys planning on telling me he would be gone???)

Life at work these days:

Manager: we’re not getting enough done
My calendar: 1/3 week filled with scheduled meetings

Manager: we need to use ChatGPT intensively. We'll go a lot faster.
Me using ChatGPT to get it to write an automation script: 2 hours wasted with no success
Me starting again from scratch to write the script: 15 minutes to achieve the desired result.

Thanks for your advice boss

Ha ha ha ha. Fucking morons!

You brag about being a highly skilled company.

You tell me I don’t have enough experience despite three years of uninterrupted activity where I currently work

You’re willing to give me a chance (I just don’t know how to express my gratitude)

BUT among your super talented team members you can’t find anybody capable of conducting a technical interview?? And you’ve been looking for over a month for someone who could do it?

Thanks for wasting my time with three useless HR interviews you worthless DIPSHITS!

Client project manager calls me up one day

PM: hey can you make some precise estimates on some items for a project you’re not working on? It should be easy. It’s very similar to the project you ARE working on and it’s only a handful of user stories, mostly front end stuff. We´ll need this to be done by tomorrow night.

Me: um, I guess if it’s just a few simple items. ok

PM: great! I’ll let you know when you get access to the backlog.

Me: sounds good

Link to project is sent to me. Backlog contains over 20 user stories, most of which are backend related. And it doesn’t have much to do with my current project.

I contact PM: this isn’t exactly what you announced when I had you on the phone. If you want precise estimates with a minimum of design, this could take up to a week. I could however proceed to some ballpark estimates (poker planning) for starters if you need this quickly for your roadmap.

PM: no I need PRECISE estimates down to the hour for each item.

Me: ok then, it’ll take up to a week.

PM: 🤬🤬🤬. You told me it could be done in a day. I’m coming to realize your word can’t really be trusted.

Me: 🤦🏻‍♂️

I’m pissed.
I had previously ranted about being assigned to a very messy project. I spent 3-4 months alone adding features and CLEANING things up.

Recently, there had been talks about a new major development phase on this project. But things lingered and the day before I’m to go on vacation, I get the news that this new phase starts in 2 days. Since I’m going to be on break they’re putting other guys on the project who don’t know anything about it.

Fast forward two weeks later.
I’m back from vacation.

I find out one of the guys has strong opinions about doing things certains ways… but unfortunately they are "ways" of unnecessary complexity, abstraction and verbosity.
After just a couple of weeks I’m already lost in the complexity of his code, which supports features of VERY LOW complexity. Fuck, has he ever heard of KISS? Has anybody heard of it where I work?

Now I have to spend my mental energy trying to make sense of this pile of crap rather than actually spending it getting things done.

FaceBook, over the years you’ve proven that you can’t be trusted and you still have the nerve to ask for this type of personal data?

If I could, I would ask the genie to give me the ability to completely disconnect from programming when my work hours are over.

Anytime I see content including this emoji 🚀, I just want to close whatever page or post it’s a part of right away

A little over a year into my job at my current company back in January, I have a yearly meeting with my manager to discuss the progress I’ve made and to talk about what’s next. This is the meeting where we are supposed to discuss a potential pay raise but it’s the last topic of a predefined agenda.
So we spend a couple hours talking about how work has been for me. I started there as a junior developer with very little experience in the field but was quickly able to jump into a project with a fairly large codebase to help out the only other developer working on the project. Before long they’re so happy with me that they actually put me in charge of the application, which means my responsibilities evolve toward a whole lot more communication with the client and everything else that comes along with being in charge, including a lot of stress. I also salvaged another application initially developed by another company but that was so bugged it should’ve just been sent to the pits and rewritten from scratch. I was also asked to develop a couple POCs that were satisfactorily delivered.

Anyway, after almost two hours of going over my accomplishments and getting praises from my manager, we finally get to the part where we’re supposed to discuss a pay raise. He immediately cuts me off by saying the subject is not on the table due to the current crisis and our company struggling to make ends meet. I tell him I understand how hard it must be for them but also explain that I know for a fact other companies in the field are still making financial efforts to reward employees they’re happy with. He responds by saying that he’s aware of that, but he also “knows” that those same companies are laying off people that don’t deserve to be laid off despite the fact that they’re receiving government aid to stay afloat.
In the weeks following that meeting, I find out our company is doing the exact same thing my manager was condemning (laying off good people, taking massive advantage of government aid) and all the while not giving anybody a raise.
In any case, I really felt like that meeting was huge waste of time. What’s the point of going over everything I’ve done, congratulating me for my great work and even promising to give me even more responsibility if you don’t want to reward me for any of it? Do you honestly think I’m working hard so I can get a pat on the back or brownie points from you? I’ve got a family to take care of and I am trying to make their lives a little better each day by putting in hard work. But if hard work and climbing the latter of responsibility does not help me achieve that, what’s the point??

I spend my days in front of a screen working on a product that will be used by other people working in front of a screen, themselves working for other people working in front of a screen

end of rant

In my three years experience so far I can honestly say that 100% of the developers I've worked with are narrow sighted with regards to how they develop.

As in, they lack the capacity to anticipate multiple scenarios.

They code with one unique scenario in mind and their work ends up not passing tests or generates bugs in production.

Not to say I'm the best at foreseeing every possible scenario, but I at least TRY to anticipate and test my code as much as possible to identify problems and edge cases.

I usually take much more time to complete tasks than my colleagues, but my work usually passes tests and comes back bug free. Whereas my colleagues get applauded for completing tasks quickly but end up spending lots of time fixing up after themselves when tests fail or bugs appear.
Probably more time wasted than if they had done the job correctly from the start. Yet they're considered to be effecient devs because they work "fast".

Frustrating...

HR people on LinkedIn. What the fuck? Do you seriously believe you can attract qualified developers by telling them you’re looking for ninjas, jedis or life savers? I for one am still fairly new to the job so I don’t consider myself to be by any means a coding wizard, and I don’t think any strong senior developer is gonna be seduced by your catchy terminology (I may be wrong about that). Come on, talk to us like any recruiter would in any other line of business. No need to replace the words "qualified" or "experienced" with your stupid magic words, unless you want to sound like you’re desperate

Don’t use Bootstrap

So the other day I randomly checked out a few job postings on some recruiting agency’s website. Didn’t even sign up or anything.
The very next day I get a call from them. The person on the phone tells me they noticed I had visited their website and was wondering if I was interested in applying to any of the offers. Even as a developer I was totally taken aback as to how they managed to track me down based on a single visit.
I believe I ended up on their website by clicking on a link on LinkedIn. I’m assuming it’s via LinkedIn that the managed to get my info (phone etc.). All in all I’m not extremely surprised. But to me it’s downright creepy and it makes me feel like I’m being stalked. Also it makes recruiters look totally desperate and I’m not sure I would want to entrust them with the responsibility of handling my career

Fuck you edge cases! This task was supposed to be a breeze and thanks to you it’s turning into a nightmare 🤯

Product owner (who is also the application administrator): please build feature to allow administrators to create automatic alerts to be sent to application users

Me: ok
Feature gets built, tested and deployed to production

Two months later:
PO: I've noticed in our monitoring tool that there haven't been any alerts sent out to users. What's going on??

Me: well have you created any automatic alerts?

PO: umm, no. How do we do that?

Me (inside): 🤦

[Half question / half rant]

Would you rather work with a laid-back, humorous colleague who produces shit code and won’t understand advice for improvement?
Or would you rather work with someone who’s more serious, even slightly boring, but who takes quality seriously and is open to advice?

Yes I’ve worked with both types. Hands down I prefer working with the latter. With the first dude I’ll have good conversations and a good laugh at his puns and jokes. But at the end of the day I’m pulling my hair trying to make sense of his code and spending a shitload of time reviewing his PRs just to make sure he’s not fucking things up even more.

My company is (supposedly) all about collaborative work, pair programming, getting on calls and cRaCKinG tHinGs ToGEtheR. Also (and rightfully so) we’re not supposed to approve any PRs if tests weren’t created/updated.
Of course that applies to all but the old timers in the company who simply act like lone cowboys. They fall off the face of the earth for two-three days then reappear with monster PRs full of untested code.

Leave it up to the plebe then to try to make sense of the mess they’ve created, to challenge them with the fact that the PRs are lacking tests (only to be met with excuses about not having anymore time to spend on the subject).
Reprimand the plebe for not reviewing PRs thoroughly enough. Leave it up to them to fix the resulting bugs.

I’ve lost all trust in our managers, tech leads, lead devs and their guidelines and rules that only apply to others but rarely to themselves. These people that then have the audacity to criticize the tech team in it’s entirety for not being rigorous enough in its processes.
Fuck them all

!dev
This was a long time ago when I was a pizza delivery guy (summer job). One of my managers could barely handle any pressure. He would often lose it during the dinner rush. He was disorganized and never gave clear directions to his team. One night he totally blew up. He threw a large pizza shovel across the kitchen. It went crashing into the oven in a loud bang. This was in full view of customers on the other side of the counter and several of us workers, all in shock.
It was my last night there as I had handed in my resignation letter two weeks prior. Boy was I glad to get out of there

Interestingly enough, the worst JavaScript code I’ve ever had to deal with was written by back-enders coming from a Java background. The app was unusable and it took me a few weeks to put it back on track.
So is JS the culprit, or is it the elite backend community that fails to even try to make good use of it? 🤡

Mac fucking book pro! No! Just because I brushed up against you doesn’t mean I want you to boot up! Do you think I’m that eager to turn you on? Is the usual brain dead Apple user that fucking lazy to not wanna press a button to turn his computer on? And there’s no fuckin’ way to change this behavior!? I tried changing system variables but none of the suggested tips work. And you even have Apple support people ask: "why WOULN'T you want it to boot up if you sneeze on it?" FUXKKLK

Here I am for three months trying to implement TypeScript in this project that was a dump when I picked it up.
And then some morons get assigned to the project and just start adding @ts-nocheck everywhere?
Like, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

And then you wonder why the project is bug-ridden??
FUCK THESE PEOPLE THAT CALL THEMSELVES JAVASCRIPT ENGINEERS!! NO WONDER JS GETS SUCH BAD PRESS WITH ALL THESE CLUELESS IDIOTS TO WHOM STATIC TYPING IS JUST AN OBSTACLE TO THEM CHURNING OUT LINE AFTER LINE OF "CODE"

Exploring new ways to learn how to code

You don’t have a choice

So about two months ago in my consulting firm I was asked to replace a colleague on a project (node and Angular). The project is only a few months old but it’s already a total clusterfuck. DB is very poorly designed. It’s supposed to be a relational database but there’s not a trace of a foreign key or any key for that matter and I’ve seen joins like tableA.name = tableB.description (seriously, that’s your relation??). The code is a mess with entire blocks of code copied from another project and many parts of the code aren’t even used. He didn’t even bother renaming variables so they would make sense in the context they were shamelessly thrown into. The code is at best poorly typed if not typed at all.

During our dailies I sometimes express my frustration with my other colleagues as I very politely allude to my predecessor’s code as being hard to work with. (They are all “good friends" with him). I always get the same response from my colleagues: "yeah but you’ve gotta understand Billybob was under a lot of pressure. The user stories were not well defined. He didn’t have time to do a proper job". That type of response just makes me boil inside.

Because you think I have time to deal with this shit? You don’t think I’m working with the same client and his user stories that are barely intelligible? How long does it take to write type definitions for parameters going into a function? That’s right, 30 seconds at most? Maybe a minute if it’s a more elaborate object? How much time do you think you’ll save yourself with a properly typed function or better yet an interface? Hard to tell but certainly A LOT MORE than those 30 seconds you lost (no, the 30 seconds you INVESTED) in writing that interface!!!

FUCK people with their excuses! Never tell me you don’t have time to do a proper job! You’ve wasted HOURS of my time just because you were too fucking lazy to type your functions, too lazy to put just a little more thought into designing your tables, too lazy to rename a variable so that it’s name actually makes sense where it’s being used. It’s not because you were short on time. You’re just lazy!
FUCK!!!!!!

Thursday afternoon. Client gives us the go to deploy the latest release to production.
Friday late afternoon; my colleague - "wait, did we ever deploy"? Me - "uh, nope".
"Alright have a good weekend"

Today was a bad dev day working on a shitty React project. Not that React in itself is bad, but it can be hell to work with when the code is a big pile a crap full of anti pattern code. I spent the day refactoring to try to fix a bug, but to no avail. It would take days if not weeks to put some order in this mess and to prevent such bugs.

Many "purists" love to piss on JavaScript and web development. And to an extent I can understand ostream’s frustration with these people.
It’s easy to criticize because yes: many web projects are indeed shit.

But I’d like to argue that the reason why so many of these projects are crappy is because of bad management:
- unrealistic deadlines
- no clear testing strategy
- or no testing at all because of deadlines
- no time allotted to catch up on technical debt
- etc.

This type of management is far more commonplace in web projects because things need to get delivered quickly and if they’re delivered with bugs, it’s no big deal as lives aren’t at stake.

I doubt this type of management is tolerated in projects where you’re working on software for welding machines (for example), where the stakes are that "you’re expected not to kill anyone" (to quote demolishun)

So in these types of projects, management can’t tolerate anything much below perfection and thus has to adapt by setting realistic deadlines that take into account the need for quality processes and thorough testing.

If this type of management was more common in web development, I can guarantee that web applications would be much more reliable and of better quality.
I can also guarantee that poorly managed non-web projects as outlined above would be just shitty as many web products.

My point being that’s it’s really DUMB to criticize fellow devs that work with web technologies on the basis that the state of websites/web apps is a mess. It just so happens that JS is the language of the web and that the web is where things are expected to be delivered quickly (and dirty … but we can fix it later mentality)
Stop acting like you’re the elite. I have no doubt you’re super smart and great at what you do. So be smart all the way and stop criticizing us poor webdevs that have to live with the sad state of affairs. ❤️

When is this ever NOT the case ?

Devs who use the array map method for purposes other than generating a new array, and who use an empty return statement to satisfy the linter, should receive a slap in the face. A gentle one, but a slap nonetheless

Me reviewing PRs lately:
"Should I fight it now, or should I let the abscess grow?"
——
But in my distress/demotivation it’s usually: peace now, pain later

JavaScript is to programming languages what English is to natural languages.
You heard me!

In my previous job, they made me feel like they were lucky to have me. In my current job they try make me feel like I’m lucky to work for them.
I certainly preferred the precious position where I felt valued for what I brought to the company.

If I have any advice to give, it’s the following: if your current employer appreciates your work and treats you well, you should stay there a long as possible.

Also I’m wondering if my current employer purposefully makes its employees lose their confidence so they don’t go job hunting as they may feel they’re not good enough anymore to apply elsewhere.

I’m thinking of jumping ship but damn have I lost confidence over the past months…

Improvement request: if search doesn’t return anything the search text is erased. It’d be nice if it didn’t so we can amend our search more easily.
Thanks 😀

This is how it works in my company:
-> Spend entire day in meetings - don’t get anything done.
-> Start working at 6pm if you want to get anything done.

Those who have gotten promotions are the ones that have bought into this system.
I guess I won’t be getting a promotion any time soon

I’m an app developer and my company wants to take away admin rights on everybody’s PCs (Windows). I won’t even have the right to adjust my computer’s clock time. I’ve been working there for over a year and a half. There haven’t been any issues whatsoever, and now this. To be frank I’m a bit pissed about it. Nothing is on premise, the projects I’m working on are apps hosted with Azure / gitlab.
I’d be curious to hear about your experiences related to this topic. Also if you have any opinons against or for such measures, if be happy to hear.

I’m rarely at the initiative of a meeting, but when I am, my approach is: what questions need to to be answered? Time spent in the meeting is answering those questions without beating around the bush. I request precise answers, no "we shoulds" or vague responses. Meeting usually ends with clear answers/resolutions written down and shared so there aren’t any "that’s not what we agreed upon"

I feel like some developers focus too much on concepts like clean code, software craftsmanship, TDD and so forth, to a point where they almost forget end user needs (ease of use, intuitive experiences, general UX principles).
Don’t get me wrong. I do my best to stick to a decent standard of quality and maintainability. However my solutions are adapted to the specific needs that are being addressed rather than the other way around.
I’ve heard some devs say things to the effect of ”well I know that’s not most intuitive behavior for the user but it’s the cleaner way to do it, so the user will just have to figure it out“. So in essence they’re just coding for their own pleasure rather than addressing user needs

A programmer must have named this place

I’m sooo excited when any new frontend JS framework is available. Angular, React, more recently Vue, Svelte. Bring ‘em on. I wanna try them all.

Just kidding…
As long as the tools at hand allow me to get the job done, keep clients and end users happy, I don’t give a fuck.
This meme is actually the epitome of what I hate with a lot of web developers I’ve encountered

devRant has become such a dump. At this point I’m wondering when dfox and trogus are finally going to decide to pull the plug

Happy Easter!

A colleague changes the location of a test helper file imported in a bunch of tests. Doesn’t bother to check where that file is imported (except where he’s specifically using it himself).

As a result good dozen tests fail later on. The culprit doesn’t realize. And the rest of us have no clue why.

Multiple people are asked to look into why the tests are failing.

"Ok, who’s working on what?
We’ll create a shared document to track who’s working on what test."

Document is created, people get assigned.

"Hold on, looks like it’s just a faulty import." "Oh yeah same here." "Yeah for me as well."

"Ok we could simply appoint one person to fix all the imports."

"Well I’ve already gone ahead and opened a pull request to fix the test I was appointed to."

"Ah ok, well who can take care of the rest?"

"Wait I also opened a PR."

"Ok so I guess we can each open a PR?" "No we can just have a single branch we can all push to".

"Sure, who’s branch are we using"

"You can use the branch of my PR"

"Guys let me handle this, it’s ridiculous for us to all be doing this separately."

"You’re right, go ahead".

——

The culprit? A senior dev.

What would have literally taken a minute to do (or even no time at all with proper use of the IDE) turned into hours of wasted time. People getting interrupted, having to drop what they were doing to fix the consequences of this guy’s laziness (seriously don’t know what else to call it).
Ok maybe our reaction could have been more efficient, but we never should’ve even gotten to that point in the first place.

Non tech hobby of mine: bird watching (you may have guessed based on my username). Although it’s a non tech hobby, there are so many great apps to help identify birds and learn about them. EBird, birdnet, Merlin, picture bird etc. I also have a few books about bird watching.

Crazy how many different kinds of birds you can see when you really start paying attention.

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

Can PMs still reasonably require web apps to be compatible with Internet Explorer? Does the "you gotta to tailor to everyone’s needs" argument still stand nowadays? I ask this because I’ve been working on a client project for about two years now and last time they asked for IE compatibility was about a year ago. I’m preparing for the next time it absolutely stops functioning with IE to debunk their desire to remain stuck in the year 2003.
I know Microsoft simply isn’t supporting it anymore and are discouraging anyone from using it. I feel like it should be enough of an argument. However, often times enough isn’t enough. Anybody have any arguments or examples of why it’s a terrible idea to stick with it?

How can someone be applauded like a hero for fixing a bug when he’s the one who caused it in the first place?
Gosh Bill, thanks for saving the day! The least the guy could do is acknowledge he fixed something HE broke. But that’s wishful thinking on my part, isn’t it…

How do I always misspell checkout?! Needing to switch branches is the bane of my existence when I use terminal.

And yes, I did put an alias. Hopefully I'll get used to using it :)

There are as many "good practices" as there are developers. Everyone holds the absolute truth. (At least it’s the feeling I get, and it drives me crazy sometimes)

How do you guys deal with looking for a new job while still working at your current job?
I’ve been having to sneak out of the office for phone interviews. Not fun…

I don’t get people who introduce their messages with TLDR.
Dude if it’s too long, then make it shorter! Or simply don’t start with TLDR if your content needs to be lengthy

Anyone here use generator functions in JS? Seems like it could be useful but whenever I explore the possibility of using one, I usually end up going another route

Lately with our client, everything has become very "urgent" and top priority. So much so that I’m asked to drop a top priority issue to tackle a new top priority issue, and then asked to drop that one too to take on another new “even more“ top priority task. In the end they’ll all have to be dealt with but dang I’m losing all sense of continuity, I’m losing my efficiency as my flow keeps on being broken by something new I have to jump to and in the end I’m kinda losing my sanity. Fuck this!

I was a bootcamper. I’m on my first job now (I’m still currently at the same place after a year and a half). Doing web development (all JS/TS) with node, react and angular. I started it out working with another guy and now I’m alone. I’ve made more progress being alone since I’ve had to take on stuff my colleague was doing. But with being alone comes more pressure as it’s all on me and when shit hits the fan I don’t really have anybody I can fall back on. Also I feel like I’m missing out on team dynamics and learning from other people I could be working with. In any case I’m learning a lot, I’m meeting the deadlines and getting the job done. It’s a good first experience.

Being lazy sometimes and writing type definitions after I’m done developing something rather than before (hence wasting time as doing that work is meant to help with the development process in the first place...)