Yes Linus Torvalds is an asshole and the world is better because of it.

In short Linus's acid takes on code quality over developer fee fee's might be one of the things that has made the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux project such a long lasting open source success and in my opinion the risk of him falling for all this "let's be nice and non offensive" bs trend may impact negatively on code quality.

Being an asshole has it's downsides and it's not always the best response, I'll give you that, but personally I think most of us who are viewed as assholes are seen like that because we put quality over convenience, facts before feelings and dedication over mediocrity; it is not because we hate you, it's because we measure ourselves with the same stick.

It depends on one's character, but when you've been toughened up because of bullying(I don't doubt many devs have been since being a nerd has never been hip) or life in general, you learn to stop whining & pick yourself up and you expect everyone to be competitive and competent as you are and it gets frustrating to manage people who don't fulfill your expectations.

Pros: You get shit done and you do it well.
Cons: People won't like you and you don't tolerate failure (much less mediocrity).

Yes Linus is an asshole, my coach was an asshole, some of my best teacher's have been assholes, I had friends who were assholes, heck I'm an asshole!

But I thank them because they made me better than I was, just as people have thanked me for being the right amount of asshole.

A warm thank you and fuck you Linus, keep being the asshole we need.

Installed TLP on my ThinkPad T470 and god ..

The battery is lasting forever .. !

So, I applied for a job lately and the first interview via Zoom went pretty good. Then I got an invitation for a second interview at the company.

I got there, was guided into a conference room and the two head of departments along with an HR woman joined. After a bit if chit-chat HR rep said I should tell them in the next couple of days if I'm still interested. HR left, the other two gave me a tour of the complex, lasting about an hour.

then we got back to the conference room, waited for HR rep and when she arrived she told me something along the lines of "Yeah, we got an impression of you now and you don't need to contact us anymore if your are interested...."

me to myself: "wait what? that sucks...."

HR: "We are impressed enough of you that we want to hire you immediately. Here is the contract!"

me (completely speechless): "oh... OH... THANKS, but... OHHHH" (having a stupid perplexed grin on my face)

I mean... I got the job and pay is good, but PLEASE don't trick me like that!!! I nearly got a heart attack!!!

How NOT to make applications:

- single GET request called rather frequently
- 3304 SELECTs per request
- Some of them lasting ~50ms

So I used to do some freelancing in web development last year, nothing too fancy just some simple PHP websites. Comes the worst meeting in my life. So I am from India and we have a lot of long lasting business here being passed on over generations. TL;DR the guy was the owner of a very old business which was actually very huge and the guy was educated too, so I assumed that he'll be sensible as compared to other people.

The meeting was in an expensive cafe and he paid for it, he even told me upfront that meeting is on him. Great, right? So we sit down, order some coffee and then start discussing what he needed.
The guy needed an ecommerce website built with backend and logistics system integrated. We discussed possible designs for the website and stuff too and so far the deal looked promising to both of us.
I explained him the cost estimate and told him that I would email him the final quote from myself once we discussed server cost and shit.
So now comes the bargaining part where he asked me to give him server and domain for free.
At this point, I suspected that he didn't know that servers and domains are not something that you make. You have to purchase and renew them periodically.
So I told that guy that he didn't understand the cost estimation and explained to him that X is the cost of making this fucking thing and Y is its monthly maintenance cost, if he wanted annually could be done too. And this Y did not include server and domain costing.
Now came the fucking tide, the guy straight up turned to his shit and told me I am lying and trying to con him. So I gently asked him if he had ever gotten any website made. To which, he said No, but he knows how the costing works.
I was like "Bitch?". So I calmly tried to explain that that's not how websites are done, delivered and maintained.
He didn't seemed to be understanding and kept on fucking repeating that he knows his shit and blah blah.
At this point, I was like "Okay. Fuck this dude then. I can find another project. " and then I told him that he'll need to find someone according to his needs.
Interestingly enough, the guy called someone and then walked out of the cafe while talking on phone. I waited for 5 minutes and he didn't come back so I decided I would pay for my coffee and leave. Turns out the guy had paid his bill before my arrival and ditched me with the excuse of the call.

But oh well, I think working with such an idiot would have been much worse than paying for that coffee.

Story #1: So I took a month of parental leave. And was planning to extend it a little longer to deal with my final exams. I was planning to spend lots of quality time with my wife and newborn son. Little did I know... It turns out that out of 5 OoO weeks I was looking forward I actually had 3 at most. The rest I've spent working remotely as I was insisted to deploy a brand new and poorly tested feature to PROD 2 days before my paternity leave. So I spent 2 weeks debugging things in PROD. Remotely. Needless to say that did suck.

Story #2: After story #1 I've learnt my lesson. This summer I took 3 weeks annual leave to renovate my apartment. I asked to not to be disturbed unless there's an emergency. And an emergency it was. One of our app users had a planned hi-load batch job lasting for 2-3 months. Hundreds of thousands of items had to be created and processed. It turns out the _processing_ algo had some flaws and was acting out. I was called out and asked to assist. I knew this sort of debugging is going to take a lot of my time so this time I put my conditions on the table: I will assist but I'll extend my leave by 1.5 the time I spend working now. They took the deal. Instead of 3 weeks I had 5 weeks of vacation!

I don't care that much about my salary. I prefer to exchange it for my time off hence I didn't ask for compensations.

Bottom line: NEVER EVER underestimate or undersell your time and effort. You are a valuable asset and if the team/client needs you on your day off -- make it count. Your time off is YOUR time. Never forget it.

I never understood the appeal of Steve Jobs to other people, and had never bought an Apple product until about six years ago.

However, after buying a couple of Macbooks - including ones, circa 2012/2013, on eBay - it's very obvious that the quality has shrivelled into oblivion after his passing.

If I was to credit him with one thing, Jobs was the ultimate QA guru with long lasting products as his top priority.

Now, Apple sells glue machines and Steve Jobs would be clean slating the entire list of employees - from the top, down - if he was alive to notice how little the company seemed to care about what he had planted as the seed, many years ago.

I think I want to quit my first applicantion developer job 6 months in because of just how bad the code and deployment and.. Just everything, is.

I'm a C#/.net developer. Currently I'm working on some asp.net and sql stuff for this company.

We have no code standards. Our project manager is somewhere between useless and determinental. Our clients are unreasonable (its the government, so im a bit stifled on what I can say.) and expect absurd things from us. We have 0 automated tests and before I arrived all our infrastructure wasn't correct to our documentation... And we barely had any documentation to begin with.

The code is another horror story. It's out sourced C# asp.net, js and SQL code.. And to very bad programmers in India, no offense to the good ones, I know you exist. Its all spagheti. And half of it isn't spelled correctly.

We have a single, massive constant class that probably has over 2000 constants, I don't care to count. Our SQL projects are a mess with tons of quick fix scripts to run pre and post publishing. Our folder structure makes no sense (We have root/js and root/js1 to make you cringe.) our javascript is majoritly on the asp.net pages themselves inline, so we don't even have minification most of the time.

It's... God awful. The result of a billion and one quick fixes that nobody documented. The configuration alone has to have the same value put multiple times. And now our senior developer is getting the outsourced department to work on moving every SINGLE NORMAL STRING INTO THE DATABASE. That's right. Rather then putting them into some local resource file or anything sane, our website will now be drawing every single standard string from the database. Our SENIOR DEVELOPER thinks this is a good idea. I don't need to go into detail about how slow this is. Want to do it on boot? Fine. But they do it every time the page loads. It's absurd.

Our sql database design is an absolute atrocity. You have to join several tables together just to get anything done. Half of our SP's are failing all the time because nobody really understands the design. Its gloriously awful its like.. The epitome of failed database designs.

But rather then taking a step back and dealing with all the issues, we keep adding new features and other ones get left in the dust. Hell, we don't even have complete browser support yet. There were things on the website that were still running SILVERLIGHT. In 2019. I don't even know how to feel about it.

I brought up our insane technical debt to our PM who told me that we don't have time to worry about things like technical debt. They also wouldn't spend the time to teach me anything, saying they would rather outsource everything then take the time to teach me. So i did. I learned a huge chunk of it myself.

But calling this a developer job was a sick, twisted joke. All our lives revolve around bugnet. Our work is our BN's. So every issue the client emails about becomes BN's. I haven't developed anything. All I've done is clean up others mess.

Except for the one time they did have me develop something. And I did it right and took my time. And then they told me it took too long, forced me to release before it was ready, even though I had never worked on what I was doing before. And it worked. I did it.

They then told me it likely wouldn't even be used anyway. I wasn't very happy at all.

I then discovered quickly the horrors of wanting to make changes on production. In order to make changes to it, we have to... Get this

Write a huge document explaining why. Not to our management. To the customer. The customer wants us to 'request' to fix our application.

I feel like I am literally against a wall. A huge massive wall. I can't get constent from my PM to fix the shitty code they have as a result of outsourcing. I can't make changes without the customer asking why I would work on something that doesn't add something new for them. And I can't ask for any sort of help, and half of the people I have to ask help from don't even speak english very well so it makes it double hard to understand anything.

But what can I do? If I leave my job it leaves a lasting stain on my record that I am unsure if I can shake off.

... Well, thats my tl;dr rant. Im a junior, so maybe idk what the hell im talking about.

Just blowing off steam with y'all. It will sound confused, but it's just all of my depressive thoughts mashed up in a rant.

So, here I am.

Surrounded by incompetent professors who are unable to point me in the right direction, that rarely even know what they are 'teaching'. In a moment of total loss, that has been lasting for months. Totally lost my motivation and my will to pursue a career in IT. All I do is game, eat, sleep, repeat. I am exhausted mentally. When I get back from school, I can't think of anything else but to relax and do nothing. I am frustrated. I care about becoming a programmer, but I can't find my inner strenght. School draws all of my strenght and willpower away from me, and therefore I get distracted very easily. I just do not know what to do anymore. I want to keep going, but I am stuck, unable to do so. "Perhaps this is just not for me" is what keeps resounding inside my head, but I do not truly believe it. I just wish that all of this stress would just disappear, and allow me to do what I care about. I need help to find the needed focus to continue.

Who am I?

Some of you, because of the hyperbolic, outrageous, trollish, and often self-satirical nature of my posts, might doubt me. Thats completely relatable.

Heres the truth:
I was diagnosed in childhood with ADHD, fucking everyone, every male, these days is diagnosed with that. I was diagnosed bipolar. Hell anyone reading my posts could see that from a mile away. I was diagnosed on the borderline personality spectrum. Yeah, I could see that.

I was tested. They said I was in the 98th percentile for clerical ability, not extraordinary but pretty good, mathematical ability a little higher than that. My SAT was 1491. Not yale material, but I coulda been someone.

Over the years I studied a LOT of politics and read a metric fuckton of books. (40+ books over the course of three years).

I predicted every single presidential election since bush juniors second election. Three supreme court picks. Senatorial elections. Congresional elections. More than that.

I have a better analysis track record than some of the multidecade analysts sitting in the fucking NSA.

No I am not shitting you. No I am not exaggerating.

It's about the only claim to fame I get to legitimately make.

People ask me, "then why aren't you famous?"

How do you know I'm not.

Look I'm gonna tell you my actual name.
My real name is Lawrence B. Lindsey

Okay, I'm bullshitting for fun. But words I have written on alt twitter accounts have legitimately come out of presidential hopeful's mouths. No, this I am *not* bullshitting you about.

Imagine that. A guy who lived in his parents attic for five years, writing words that came out of presidential candidates mouths.

At one time I was about as popular and influential as that fuckboy catturd.

yes, really. No I am not fucking joking.

Under normal conditions I wouldn't talk about this or reveal it, because who the fuck cares? I'm just some dude on the internet, drunk, both on alcohol, and the pseudo-anonymous equivalent of bragging rights.

You know how many women I turned down because I could? You know how fucking drunk I am? They say a drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts. Well, I'm not usually honest like this because the internet is full of false braggarts, and you tell people the truth and they don't fucking believe you.

I swear, it seems like I made some faustian bargain at some time, and can achieve no fame or lasting wealth in my life--to save my life.

Shit, I was talking to a chinese women who ran a bank in china (yes, really), who advised me to buy into bitcoin early on. Didn't have the money to. Woulda been a fucking millionaire if I did.
*Non-obvious* Ideas that major corporations are now persuing? Yeah those were sitting in my card index since the early 2000s.

I helped two people build and sell businesses. One for me tens of thousands. Another for millions. Yes, really. Got zero, and I mean, *zero* credit for it.

Point is, doesn't matter how famous you are, or coulda been, Doesn't matter the ideas you have, or had.

The world doesn't promote runners-up, or hasbeens, or wannabes, or could-bes.

What matters is execution.

If you're wandering through life, wondering when you're lucky break will be, stop. You have to realize, you make your own luck. Recognize the difference between what you can control, and what you can, and work on promoting your own ideas or business or values, instead of other people's dreams.

And for those wondering, yes I am drunk, and no, I ain't fucking kidding you in anything I wrote here.

The most important lesson I learned is this:
First work on your own success, before you work on the success of others.

p.s.

I give surprisingly good advice for someone who doesn't benchmark well on traditional measures of success. I know, even I was shocked when I looked at the statistics.

Let’s continue with the last rant.

Sometimes, when I wrote notes to myself that are extremely, extremely secret but I don’t plan to use it for more than a day, I use alef-bet.

I have to admmit I’m a disaster with sofit letters and vowels, and that’s why I don’t make secret and long lasting notes in this alphabet (that actually is not even an alphabet, it’s an abyad).

Well, I guess I have too much deadtime 😂

What I tried to write is “Echar una llamada a las 10:30” (Make a call at 10:30). I hope I didn’t write some stupid stuff instead XD

I’m not jew, but I find this writing interesting 🤔 the most hard way to write I’ve ever tried

7 page resume
13 jobs, some only lasting 3 months
TONS of grammatical and spelling errors.
Descriptions of each job has several lines just saying he "created functions; interfaces; abstract classes; classes".... For a jr/senior level developer job? Why are we interviewing him?

So, idiot me decided it would be a good idea to never get around to configuring my UPS to gracefully shutdown my server after a powercut lasting more than x duration...

Long story short, we had a powercut that lasted 4 minutes or so longer than the battery in the UPS could keep the server up for...

UPS died, server went pew, and after rebooting itself once the power came back on, my raid array wouldn’t mount anymore...

After Googling around, it seemed like running e2fsck would solve the problem.

Didn’t seem to do the trick... and tired me at 3am decided it would be a good idea to poke around.

Pretty sure I ran a command wrong, or two, because now I can’t even mount the fricken array in read only, and fsck complains with a shit ton errors...

Been researching for hours, and no dice...

Test Disk shows the ext4 partition, but fails to list any files...

I may have destroyed the tables or something... I’m a noob at this point.

I’m able to access files with the RStudio tool, however this doesn’t help with file names and directory structure 😭

Is it all over for my 5 years worth of photos and other bits and pieces that I don’t have any backups of ? 😂😭😭

If any of y’all are pros with data recovery and can help a fellow boi out, I’d be more than happy to pay for ya time !

I don't get why nowadays people still buy smartphones with battery capacity between 2500mAh and 3500mAh meanwhile there are cheap enough smartphones with fricking 5000mAh(or more)!

Typing from 3 day averagely lasting smartphone, with my use.

Anyone else have trouble with real life common sense?

Story time:
Yesterday Evening a dog chased my best mate's cat up a tree. Being the genius I am, I decided to climb after the adorable bugger. Fell from about 8-10ft onto concrete slabs on my back.

Main thing first: I got lucky, CTs and X-rays showed no lasting damage. I'm back home and safe now.

What got me was going through the hospital having to hear the story of how I fell out of a tree onto my back and head like an idiot... from medical person to medical person.

I was lying in the bed, thinking "I swear I'm competent!? Why do people trust me!?"

Does anyone else have any weird skill black spots, or common sense break downs?

I was out sick the day an urgent ETL job I was building would be due, so it got reassigned. When I return, I find most of my code commented out and replaced.

The first step was rewritten, with a comment that reads "Made changes to run faster." What used to be a single execution lasting 30 seconds was now a 4 step process taking 5 minutes, and yielding identical results.

Being a one-time execution (not a recurring job), I'm left wondering why they thought execution speed was even an issue, let alone what about their redesign they felt was an improvement...

What's the best laptop for programming?

Not looking for graphics, looking for portability, long lasting battery, good display, SSD

Migration in progress (long one, lasting over a month)

PM: Let's schedule a meeting to discuss migration progress

PM: Let's schedule a meeting to agree on what should we test

PM: Let's schedule a meeting to get specs of the new infra

Seriously, PMs. One 1 hour long meeting costs at least 4 hours of productive time (1 hour for travel, 1 hour for the meeting, 1+ hour for preparing for the meeting, 1+ hour for post-meeting discussions). And more often than not all meetings end with "We will come back to you later in regards to <some question not answered during meeting>" and it always means "we'll continue this chat via emails"

Why can't you first ask "do we need a meeting or can we sort this out via email?" ??? Or are you intentionally wasting everyone's time?

This was a long time ago, when I was an 18 year old junior dev in my first job and still studying at college part of the time.

The lead programmer saying things like “we [meaning the experienced devs] are alright if this project goes wrong but you need to prove that you can deliver because you could be out of a job”.
Thanks. Mofo set me right up for lasting confidence issues.

Less than two years later I was killing it when the language they used became object oriented. That asshole couldn’t understand any of the concepts.
That feeing of being out of my depth has lingered though.

Fail fast. But also... someone in a different area screwed up really bad.... so everyone can now enjoy this turning kit on productivity called a change freeze... it may be lasting for months... also... we're going to be putting a higher emphasis on productivity. So do more, but also, don't. Because we're freaking idiots.

Now that I'm home feels like starting a new life.
I had millions of these new life but I have no choice but to start again !

All I can say is that I just wish I was a robot ! Logical ... Restless ... Powerful ... Ever lasting !!
Non sense ! I know I can never be a robot !!

What kind of project sizes do you prefer and why? Big one, lasting year(s), or smaller ones, in range of months?

!dev

Childhood trauma has lasting effects and it's our own responsibility to identify them and break our barriers.

I have 2 projects, both of them are stuck because 1. Dependant on other team and I am not able to fix the setup of their service even after seeking help from them; 2. My setup of Android Studio started throwing error out of no where when I am low on time for merging the code to mainline, we need to perform QA and without my build working we might not be able to test a use case.

I have scrum tomorrow, I feel scared to tell this to my stakeholders just because I think they will think it's my problem. Something wring with me. As a child my father blamed me for the mistakes I didn't have any control over, again and again. Whenever I feel awkward in any situation I think that he must have said that how big of a dumb I am. How I don't have any brains to do anything. Those things still come to me. That's why I am scared, people will BLAME me for this. But I have worked on my capacity to solve this. That's it.
That's all that matters. I have seeked help already, now I need to discuss this with the management and not feel scared.

Title: "Wizard of Alzheimer's: Memories of Magic"

Setting:
You play as an elderly wizard who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. As your memories fade, so does your grasp on the magical world you once knew. You must navigate the fragmented and ever-changing landscapes of your own mind, casting spells and piecing together the remnants of your magical knowledge to delay the progression of the disease and preserve your most precious memories.

Gameplay:
1. Procedurally generated memories: Each playthrough generates a unique labyrinth of memories, representing different aspects and moments of your life as a wizard.

2. Memory loss mechanic: As you progress through the game, your memories will gradually fade, affecting your abilities, available spells, and the layout of the world around you.

3. Spell crafting: Collect fragments of your magical knowledge and combine them to craft powerful spells. However, as your memory deteriorates, you'll need to adapt your spellcasting to your changing abilities.

4. Mnemonic puzzles: Solve puzzles and challenges that require you to recall specific memories or piece together fragments of your past to progress.

5. Emotional companions: Encounter manifestations of your emotions, such as Joy, Fear, or Regret. Interact with them to gain insight into your past and unlock new abilities or paths forward.

6. Boss battles against Alzheimer's: Face off against physical manifestations of Alzheimer's disease, representing the different stages of cognitive decline. Use your spells and wits to overcome these challenges and momentarily push back the progression of the disease.

7. Memory anchors: Discover and collect significant objects or mementos from your past that serve as memory anchors. These anchors help you maintain a grasp on reality and slow down the rate of memory loss.

8. Branching skill trees: Develop your wizard's abilities across multiple skill trees, focusing on different schools of magic or mental faculties, such as Concentration, Reasoning, or Creativity.

9. Lucid moments: Experience brief periods of clarity where your memories and abilities are temporarily restored. Make the most of these moments to progress further or uncover crucial secrets.

10. Bittersweet ending: As you delve deeper into your own mind, you'll confront the inevitability of your condition while celebrating the rich magical life you've lived. The game's ending will be a poignant reflection on the power of memories and the legacy you leave behind.

In "Wizard of Alzheimer's: Memories of Magic," you'll embark on a deeply personal journey through the fragmented landscapes of a once-powerful mind. As you navigate the challenges posed by Alzheimer's disease, you'll rediscover the magic you once wielded, cherish the memories you hold dear, and leave a lasting impact on the magical world you've called home.

LMAO

"1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible" - Dieter Rams

O Friends, It Is Great To Be Writing To You Again. Let Me Share With You A Most Amazing A Tale! I Have Spent Some Time Now In CapitalizedCamelCaseLand. It Is A Glorious Land, Where All Written Word, Language, and Culture Is Governed By The Almighty CapitalizedCamelCase. The People Are Productive And Extremely WellTyped (A Phrase They Charish And Use To Mean General WellBeing).

The Honorable Citizens Of CapitalizedCamelCaseLand Have But Few Fears... And I Shrink To Speak Of Them Or Even Write Them Here, As It Is A Heinous Crime To Even Mention Or Write These Words... But I Must Report, As It Is My Duty... So, Their Fears: The Horrible And Most Repellant lowerCamelCaseJavaScriptianDevils, Or Even Worse, The Grisly And Ghastly snake_case_fiends_of_pythonia!!! O My Friends How It Fears Me To Even Form Such Foreign And Strange Characters And Symbols That Remind The Citizens Of CapitalizedCamelCaseLand Only Of Pain And Suffering!

Many Wars Have Been Fought Upon The Lands Of Both JavaScriptia and Pythonia (The Cultural And Correct Way To Refer To These Harsh Lands In Respectable Company), But To No Avail Or Final Stop To The Fighting. While CapitalizedCamelCaseLand Is Currently In A State Of General Peace And Prosperity, There Is Surely A FlareUp Of Conflict To Occur Against The JavaScriptianDevils Or The PythonianSnakeFiends!

For In DevWorldia (The Name Of This Strange Planet I Report From), There Has Rarely Been A Time Of Peace Lasting For More Than About 5 Minutes, Which The Citizens Of CapitalizedCamelCase Assure Me Is Already A Massive Length Of Time And Achievement To Be Cherished.

Alas, I Beleive In The Coming Days I Must Travel To The FarAway Lands Of JavaScriptia And Pythonia. I Can Only Hope That I Am Also Treated With Kindness And Respect In Those Lands By Attempting To Emulate Their Ways, Just As I Have Here In CaptializedCamelCaseLand. I Hope To Write To You Soon And Wish You Well.

Signed And Sincerely,

Language Traveler FullStackChris

Hey, got a sec?

Like age 8?
As a kid I really liked flash games and animations and wanted to get into it. I couldn't do flash, it looked too complicated but I found a little software by the name od KoolMoves that was just a simpler flash animation tool.

I did a bunch of shitty stick figure animations in it (hello to everyone from stick figure death theatre) but eventually I realized that I can make it do things (interactive menus, choose your story kinda things, move the player around, shoot...!)

I fell in love with AS1 and later AS2.0 and made bunch of demos and proof of concepts for systems and games. Most are lost to time and datarot by now)

Age 12
Eventually I found out I can make the entire Windows machine do what I want using first Batch files and later Visual Basic script (made a skype bot!) At this point I was also really into graphics and logo/web design

Age 15 - 20 or so
Then it was pretty natural to move to actual Visual Basic, then C# and finally I to C++. And I had the C family in my heart forever. I managed to get a but into 3D graphics too and got a part-time in archviz

Even by this point I never believed I could be a programmer as a profession. I thought of it just as something I love, but have no chance getting into compared to some of the names out there. I half expected to be either doing graphics (cause I found it simple at the time) or some shitty random job in an office.

20+
Finally I decided to go to uni and study software development, see if I can touch the future I always dreamed of! And... Well... I found out more than 80% of the people there never touch a language up until now and most people are just as retarded as I thought..

For a while I also worked as a game designer (still not being comfortable calling myself a programmer, so I chose a non programming position) but I ended up going into the code and improving and fixing game designer tools (it was unity and C#)

After seeing actual programmers at work in a company, and talking to a bunch of them I realized I already have everything I need to do this seriously and with that experience out of the way I breezed through uni, learned to love Linux and landed a proper job :)

I kinda hope my experience with long lasting self doubt will be useful for someone

So I was looking into phone app development again (as you do) and I'm working on a simple QoL app for me and my SO that will help us automate some home management and finances stuff. Naturally I delved down the rabbit hole deep and wanted to have push notifications so we don't have to check the app periodically to know when certain things happen... Oh boy... Why is mobile development so convoluted, especially if you don't want to rely on Google Services...

It seems that the most accepted way of doing this is Firebase (FCM). Well me being me, I refuse to use google services for this and I prefer self hosted solutions (for data privacy reasons) which eliminates most products out there.

It also didn't help that my framework of choice is Flutter/Dart, because fuck Android Studio and the insane buggy XML stuff and fuck Android and it's constantly changing APIs...

Well In the end I decided on a rather simple solution and self hosted an AMQP service (RabbitMQ in my case, as I have some experience with it already) and implemented a foreground service in android platform specific code on top of my flutter project to kickstart it and made my phone a queue listener... This now means I can push notifications from my server to the Messaging Queue and it will be pushed into my App automatically!

One thing I found out on this journey was that Android now kills most background services and enforces foreground services to have a visible notification in the status drawer... which I actually approve of. It's a bit annoying that you can start a reliable background service, but I'm absolutely on-board with long running processes started by my apps are constantly visible...

Long story short, I love reinventing all the wheels, especially if it's for free and private... And I also went to sleep at 2AM again because this took longer that I'd like to tune... but it works, and it's google free...

I'm thinking of trying to package this up as a flutter module later, but first I want to do testing on battery life and the general life cycle of the service. RabbitMQ says they have the client library optimized for long-lasting connections and it should be just using a tcp socket, which should pretty much be what all the push notification services are doing anyway. I'm also not completely satisfied with how the permanent notification looks.. it isn't collapsible like some of the other ones from other apps and it's about 2 lines high instead of single line... which is something quite annoying and I'm struggling to find any relevant docs on how this is done other than possible making a custom Notification Style... but I just can't believe that everyone is doing that.. there must be a built-in somewhere -_-... Ugh Android is hell...

Anyway, if any android devs here have some hints, tips and tricks on how to handle this type of background/foreground process stuff and I'm doing something wrong let me know, cause googling this shit is a nightmare too!

I've been working in web development and design since 2012 and, while I've worked with others in my field along the way, I've not forged any lasting friendships... maybe I'm just a shitty person? I've burned some bridges that's for sure. Anyway, it all boils down to: I have no one to bitch to when I want to stab someone in the abdomen over frustrations at my current job.

Enter devRant...

I'm coming up on the year anniversary at my new position and there is still a lot to take in. I replaced a "web guy" who had been doing it for 20 years. Anyway, his stuff is all a mess, and what's worse is that the problems I'm seeing stretch far beyond my own responsibilities. I'm in a group of "tech" people who have all been here for a decade or more, and they're almost all like the guy I replaced: set in their ways and years out of date.

There is one gentlemen who is managing a database application and each site links to his ASP (not .NET) pages. Each of these pages looks like the website they were linked from. He showed me how he achieves this and it's just insane - he uses a bunch of files (basically just text files) that make up different pieces of the page to recreate the look/feel of the website on this his server - just to serve the information from the database. God forbid the website changes 'cause then all his little files need to change.

When I suggested that I can just query the database myself and display all that information on the actual site instead of doing all these redundant steps, I get "I think we should stick with the way we've been doing it for now."

*stab stab stab*

Worst dev disaster?

Welp, my now 6 year old Mac keeps sending signal to my monitors that in my experience regardless of OS generally says "my video card is gonna fuckin die soon".

I've re-installed the Windows partition like 3 times, but that responds to the video card problems so bad it pretty much just BSODs... but the Mac side soldiers on, just occasionally having weird visual glitches. Thats fine, I work on the Mac side.

And I don't really want to spend a shit ton on a new computer... but I do want a Mac, so I'm gonna spend a shit ton.

So now I have to decide if I can hold out for an M1 or if I should just shell like thousands for a Mac that will be out of date in like 4 months. After which for development purposes I'd still have to buy at least the M1 dev kit Mac Mini.

All of which hinges on this effing video card lasting another few months.

Because if it doesn't I'm going to have to use my kids 8GB fuckin HP laptop as my main dev machine while I get another Mac in the mail and that would fucking suck not to mention the like minimum two days sleep I'd lose just setting up the required local environments I'd need... not to mention I'd have to do all that in Windows... so I'd have to find Windows equivalents for all my dev tools. Or fuck it, maybe I could just install Putty and server cowboy everything... but it would still suck.

And, of course, I don't have time to do any of that because I have the normal like 2 tight deadlines on shit.

The next few months of my life, potentially my ability to earn a living, potentially my sanity...

Hangs on the health of a fucking six year old heavily abused video card.

Decided on Acer Swift 3. Will be getting it soon. 14", i5-8250U, Nvidia MX150 2GB, 4GB DDR4, SSD 256GB. Added another 4GB. Final at $642.

Frankly speaking I am more of an ASUS fan. My potato used to be an apple in good old days and lasting for almost a decade is something I am very proud of it. I will still be using it as a backup PC at my home.

First ever laptop was an Acer and it was ok but didn't have fond memories since it didn't even last for 4 years 😐 Hope Acer has improved their quality in this 9/10 years time. 🤞

I'm not gonna be greedy and unrealistic 🤫

1) good and long lasting desktop (equivalent or similar to i5 + 32GB RAM + SSD + Graphics Card 4GB + good cooler)

2) 1 ultrawide monitor

3) 1 regular monitor to use portrait mode

// I know that I could just ask great amount of money and ask two more wishes but meh. These are all I wish I could get for my dev career.

So, my goal for 2023 was to survive it without a burnout. I spent 8 months on sick leave with nearly constant migraines (approximately 25 days a month, episodes lasting the whole day). I guess I'm kinda wondering did I succeed in my goal or not...?

Question about conditioning my new android lithium battery.

I dont understand what's happening with my phone. Have old Xperia Z3 D6603 (running android 6.0 marshmallow).

Had problems with battery since it was not lasting even 5 minutes so bought a new battery from ebay and installed it yesterday.

So first time I put it to my phone it showed that it had 70% of charge. I've read in battery description that I have to discharge the battery and recharge 3 times.

First time I wanted to discharge from 70% to 1% and with a battery discharge app + youtube 1080p videos + wifi signal it took only around 1 hour and phone was at 1%. From 1% till complete discharge it took me extra hour and then phone died.

I plugged it to charge and after 15 minutes it showed that battery now is at 100% (which is insane, it should take 2-3hrs to charge it up to 100%). So I charget it for 2-3 hrs ignoring that it said 100% already.

I discharget it from 100% to 1% in 1 hour and now again phone is stuck at 1% and it took me 2 more hours to discharge phone until battery died completely.

I don't believe that this behaviour will fix itself. How can I fix this problem so that battery percentage would be distributed evenly? Now it drops from 100% to 1% in 1hr and then from 1% to 0% in 2 hrs.

Make us a webshop, they said. But we'll handle everything from the checkout and after ourselves, they said.

Help us, they said. We can't get the grips on checkout and thereafter, they said.

This is going to be a long-lasting project.

AWS or Digital Ocean?
What will be the best choice in case of costing as well as managing by single developer? 😅
I'm having difficulty to choose one for a long-lasting project of mine. Kindly, your suggestion with explanation will be helpful to me.
Technology: Spring Framework
Thank you.

!comforting
TL;DR - I’ve done some thinking about operating systems and sticking to one

Mk
so I, like many of you, have seen far more than my fair share of “X operating system is perfect for it all, so don’t use Y operating system because it’s just awful” posts.
Over this week i’ve really done some thinking and experimenting with multiple devices and OSes and programs for various tasks. People coming from windows over to linux (like myself) tend to diss windows (rightfully so for the most part, but still). I’ve also noticed that the android vs. apple debate can get heated among users.
Listen guys,
iOS has its shortcomings obviously, UI being kinda a big one; but no one can deny that apple shoves some of the nicest hardware into their devices. Yes, this stuff is pricey as hell obviously, but the new macs come with an i9 and quite a bit of memory as well. Apple devices tend to have longer lasting batteries too - i cant count the times where i’ve just turned on my mobile hotspot, and stuck my android in my pocket to use my iphone (its a wifi-only 5s). the applications run nicely on apple hardware.
i couldnt learn even half as much programming as i do on my android though; Termux is a godsend, and im able to run and test scripts right there in the palm of my hand. can’t get that on an iphone.
Some of my favorite game developers only develop for windows; I’m dual booting for that sole reason (warframe and the epic games launcher don’t properly run through wine).

Just boil it down inside for a second; You might have come from a more “user friendly” operating system, to learn on one that is less so - wether you wanted the freedom and wiggle room for customization, or just a more developer friendly working environment (God bless conky and its devs) - so you didn’t have to be locked down into one way of seeing things. Putting a previously used OS down directly violates that thougjt process, and at that point you’re just another windows hater, or arch junkie, or whatever. I think we need to be open to appreciating the pros of every system, even if we almost never use some of them, and we should try not to put down other devs-to-be or csci/sec enthusiasts down because of that either.

Is there anyone in the whole of devRant working with VR, AR, speech or motion detection?

I keep thinking that those were just fads that disappeared, because I'm still to see a single lasting-success product.
It might be temporary, someone might invent motion control that actually works or an Alexa that does not suck (unless you speak English with an toothpaste-commercial accent), or a non-goofy AR set.

But if not a single dev in devRant is working with it, it does not seem likely.