Soms week ago a client came to me with the request to restructure the nameservers for his hosting company. Due to the requirements, I soon realised none of the existing DNS servers would be a perfect fit. Me, being a PHP programmer with some decent general linux/server skills decided to do what I do best: write a small nameservers which could execute the zone transfers... in PHP. I proposed the plan to the client and explained to him how this was going to solve all of his problems. He agreed and started worked.

After a few week of reading a dozen RFC documents on the DNS protocol I wrote a DNS library capable of reading/writing the master file format and reading/writing the binary wire format (we needed this anyway, we had some more projects where PHP did not provide is with enough control over the DNS queries). In short, I wrote a decent DNS resolver.

Another two weeks I was working on the actual DNS server which would handle the NOTIFY queries and execute the zone transfers (AXFR queries). I used the pthreads extension to make the server behave like an actual server which can handle multiple request at once. It took some time (in my opinion the pthreads extension is not extremely well documented and a lot of its behavior has to be detected through trail and error, or, reading the C source code. However, it still is a pretty decent extension.)

Yesterday, while debugging some last issues, the DNS server written in PHP received its first NOTIFY about a changed DNS zone. It executed the zone transfer and updated the real database of the actual primary DNS server. I was extremely euphoric and I began to realise what I wrote in the weeks before. I shared the good news the client and with some other people (a network engineer, a server administrator, a junior programmer, etc.). None of which really seemed to understand what I did. The most positive response was: "So, you can execute a zone transfer?", in a kind of condescending way.

This was one of those moments I realised again, most of the people, even those who are fairly technical, will never understand what we programmers do. My euphoric moment soon became a moment of loneliness...

Loneliness is when you implement a compute shader in Unity to render real, user-defined fisheye in RT, and you have no one to share your excitement with.

So I ve been clinically depressed for about 10 years now. Been really great at hiding it. My illness and loneliness was so severe that i made up imaginary friends and that got so severe i couldn't tell what s real and what s not. Then about 5 years ago, i met a girl. As the cliche goes, everything felt better. Sunshine and stuff. I opened up to her. Shared stuff. I started becoming normal. The pain became bearable and manageable. Turned to entrepreneurship. Had goals and stuff. Had 7 failed startups but kept on going. Raised investment for an 8th. It went better than anyother. Was going to become the next big thing bla bla. She became the reason i turned from being a loner weirdo to someone awesome. Anyway, as nothing tends to last, my best friend who had been through thick and thin in my work, quit last year in October. He messed up some work from big client nd we had a fight. He left. In the meantime i scored a big multinational company. I was gonna propose to my girlfriend in March this year. But instead she decided to leave for someone better who left her in 3 weeks lol. Anyways, we broke up. During that time, my second friend decided to fuck up my work with the big company so hard that they were about to blacklist my company. And then he left too. I had a small team. 4 5 people doing their best. By that time, i was the only one left. On 28th feb i had my breakup, on 1st march i was sitting 700 km away from home in an office trying to talk the company out of blacklisting us. It took me around 20 days to make that happen. All the while dealing with the obvious, my depression getting stronger than ever. My imaginations taking shape and fucking up my reality. The voices in my head getting stronget and stronger. 4 months now since she left. I dont think i miss her anymore. She tried coming back once but i didn't let her. In the 4 months, i m at my worst. I am getting government contracts now. But i have no desire to do anything. The pain is unbearable. So much that on its good days it sucks the life right out of me. So much that when it gets severe the urge to harm myself in any way goes of the charts. My best friend and i, we became friends again after my ex left. He s been helping me as much as he can. I have all the good oppurtunities and chances that any entrepreneur who has been busting his ass for 5 years straight would kill to have. But i cant do anything. I m the only one left on my team. I have to handle the business, dev, marketing etc etc ends on my own. I tried hiring and scaling up but i messed that up because of obvious reasons. And now my company has 2 months of runway left. And i know if i bust my ass i can make it to 8 months more and even raise a round a. But its really hard to do when either you re sleeping 20 hrs a day or you re sleeping 3 4 hrs because you re afraid of the nightmares. Or when even you ve had a good day, the pain becomes so much that you lay on the floor having a breakdown. Yeah, i m trying professional help. I m hoping it helps me. Because right now, i dont care about being happy. I just want my sanity. Something i m clinging to with every fiber of my being. Something that s burning out like a candle burning from both ends. I cant give up my work. I dont want to. That s all i have. That s all what i love doing and now i cant even do that. I just want this to end somehow. Either i get better and the pain and the void and silence and everything else goes away, or i do. I dont know what will happen first. And i dont care. I just want to be normal. But i guess that s too much to ask.

LONELINESS IS REAL
I am a freshman in a university ( about to complete my first year ) with a girl to boy ratio of around 1:10. During my first semester I was spending a lot of time with friends, chatting up with people and making connections. Due to this my productivity as a dev, if I am even capable of being called that decreased ( I was not a developer before joining , but I had an aim of being one , esp at least the best in my batch ) after 1st year. In retrospect I did nothing productive till 3 months out of 4 in my first sem and the guilt hit me hard . During the last month I had to catch up with my much neglected studies and all I had done was a little bit of html and css, and barely scratched the surface of js( please don't judge me for this :) , I had to start somewhere < although I learned a little bit of C++ > ). BUT I WAS A HAPPY CUNT, and had no sign of lonelines. Now during this sem , I had made progress ( learn js with es6 syntax and still learning, did c++ and extended my knowledge ) . Currently I am working on my Vue full stack app ( along with express and some websocket library , TBD ) < yeh I learnt some backend too > , and increasing my knowledge of dsa using clrs. Although my productivity has increased manifolds but I know feel the need of closure. I am kinda happy with the fact that I know a lot of people around here ( thanks to my extroverted 1st semester ) but sometimes it hits me hard at night when I don't have a monitor to drown my eyes and thoughts in. I have increased my academic performance too but I need someone to share and express my feelings with. I could have made a girlfriend earlier but now most of them are taken and I have lost touch. But believe me, all I want is a companion to spend these lonely days and night ( not talking about as a friend ). Staying away from home isnt easy you know...m :(

KUDOS TO DEVRANT FOR DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE LIKE ME CAN FEEL SAFE IN OUR NATURAL HABITAT. I COULDN'T HAVE EXPRESSED MY FEELINGS ANYWHERE ELSE EXCEPT IN A PERSONAL BLOG ( where no one would have read it )

PS1: I apologise if I sounded arrogant about any of my skill, I didn't mean that way. I ain't even that good, just kinda proud of myself a little for achieving something I couldn't have thought.

PS2: Any type of suggestions and help is much appreciated ( considering I am a college student who went into some serious development 4 months ago , I am pretty impressionable ;) )

PS3: Please don't confuse this with depression. I am HAPPY BUT LONELY

PS4: Is there a way so that I can change my username?

Loneliness

Who else is lonely this new years eve?

How do you guys deal with loneliness?

Anyone got any ideas on dealing with crippling depression, loneliness, a potential breakup, and managing a startup alomg side it?

Me: make me a sandwich
Her: no
Me: sudo make me a sandwich
Her: goodbye

And then I wake up and realize this "her" does not exist. I feel like I have a problem if I'm dreaming about these kind of things....

I know stack overflow is filled with grumpy elitists assholes that will downvote or shit on your question, answer or whatever for whatever reason they can find, and that certain guidelines need to be followed to make a clear, comprehensible question, and I've accepted that.

However today SO hit an all time low for me when a post got shit upon for ending with "thanks In advance".

Have we really come to a point where even the slightest bit of courtesy is frowned upon?

Do we all have to become mindless fucking robots without any sympathy or gratitude?

Ofcourse I understand you shouldn't dedicate an entire paragraph to saying hello, introducing yourself and thanking everyone and their mothers. But what the fuck is wrong with a simple greeting or sign of gratitude.

I even found an entire discussion about wether or not greetings and thanking should be banned by rule. And that really upsets me.

Programmers, nerds and the like are already judged as generally closed people and antisocial. And that may be true. But are we really gonna let ourselves become even worse where we can't thank someone who helped?!

Fucking thank you for reading.

And to the grumpy old diahrea farts, I hope you and your devilish spawn live a life of endless loneliness and solitude

A friend and a co-worker who prefers loneliness and interact only required.
Comes to office morning, connects to WiFi, looks at the mobile, keeps scrolling and laughs for an hour(quite in nature). This is what his been doing since month.
Curiosity among colleagues, we took his phone and found neither WhatsApp, nor Facebook and not even 9gag. His browser history had all dev problems googled..
Then, the day came, when we asked to him and the reply was...
DEVRANT(heard by all for the first time)..
Now many of us into devrant busy reading, ranting and laughing.
The outsiders unaware of such app might look at us think weird.. perspective and awareness matters..

I swear I almost had a nervous breakdown today.

Advisor at college has told me I won't be graduating until Feb 2019, I'll be 29 with a degree in IT and my minor in software engineering. I feel like I'm just playing catch up to the younger crowd who got there sooner.

On top of that all the entry level programming jobs I applied to have rejected me on the basis of not having my degree yet. They're impressed with my work but they want me out of school. I have to wait it out until I'm closer to graduating.

On good days when I code Java web applets love what I do and I wouldn't have it different, but on days like today I feel like shit and wonder if my degree was worth it, especially when I factor in that my degree only went up to pre-calc on the math end. (I'm thinking of majoring in a masters in CS as a way to makeup, maybe)

I'm frustrated and I feel the same kind of loneliness when I graduated HS. I know there's a light at the end but some days it's just hell.

I'm sure a lot of you have gone through this. Any ideas to destress?

TLDR: Read the post.

Bare with me here, I am new to all of this jazz. But I wanted to tell a story.

I have been a programmer for a while now, working on various projects with various companies, doing various things. I know that sounds vague, but it's the truth.

I never work on the same thing, ever, I never work with any fancy IDE, because I don't need one. I personally believe no developer works with the massive huge code base all at once, but instead works on it in pieces. That's a story for another day.

I have seen the shittiest of the shittiest and some how survived, I have been beaten down by code bases that were out sourced yet some how managed to stand up and gain my baring and fight back. I have dealt with clients, bosses and idiots from A-Z. Watching them all scramble around for their pennies like greedy rich white men seeking more pennies to swim in.

Some how I survived all this. I started working from home almost 3 years ago, the freedom is exhilarating. The ability to fuck off for most of the day and work at night, or work all morning and fuck off. There's nothing better.

As you work from home you think, this will be amazing. Until the crippling loneliness takes over and even the 6th bottle of beer doesn't quench the thirst of human contact. The pain of being trapped in the four white walls of your office makes that bottle of tequila, to numb out the emptiness inside look more satisfying.

At some point, you crawl out of your space to find people to interact with, refusing to be beaten down by both shit code and loneliness only to find all your friends, family and significant others are working, in offices, where they cant just fuck off for a day with you. The silence of the house, the office, the what ever becomes deafening.

its crawling all over you like bugs that pick away at your mind, breaking you, hating you. So you decide that a coffee shop is the best place, only to sit there and people watch or check Facebook or what ever else people do at coffee shops that isn't actually work.

The point in all of this, is that working from home is both a positive and a negative. It has destroyed me, created a workaholic and, probably, an alcoholic. There isnt a day I dont wish that I could sleep away the deafening silence of the world around me as every one busies off to the office.

One might think: get an office job, but I have become accustomed to my misery, pain and suffering of working from home, isolated and medicated by vaping and alcohol. the freedom, from what I have found, is worth more then the sacrifice of it - to work around people I slowly begin to hate, people that make me want to overdose on anything rather then see their smug faces and be beaten down by their idiotic words, code bases and money grubbing hands...

I guess I'll get back to work now, in my house, with my cats, my vape and my beer. Here's to freedom and the sacrifices that go along with it.

Loneliness and Depression are my true friends, never left me.😑

Anyone else feel like it's hard to connect with people online? I mean *really* connect. I feel like some of the communication platforms that we use to share our thoughts are not suitable for meaningful exchanges, or are not being used in such a way. Nothing is long lasting. All communication is transient and shallow. Posts get buried underneath new posts. Memes get more interaction than questions or stories. I totally get it - a meme is much easier to digest and to really like and it doesn't require a written response, and there's nothing wrong with any of that, but what happens when you have a legit question or you just need to talk to somebody deeply about a subject? There's always gonna be someone who dismisses it but leaves a snarky comment behind, or somebody answers in such a way that doesn't move the discussion forward. Now that I am writing this, I realize that similar things happen in real interactions. You do small talk, you talk about a movie or a TV show - no problem. But whenever you wanna touch on a subject that doesn't have a clear answer, or is a bit emotionally vague, it seems that people close up a bit or try not to get into the thick of it. Fuck man, I don't need a coherent, well-structured answer, backed by research. I just wanna know how you feel. Do you ever feel like this too? Are you afraid of this, the same way I am afraid of it? Or tell me why you're so excited about this? I don't know, all this is obviously very abstract and I don't know where I am going with this. I suppose there's the fear of ultimate impermanence behind of all this, and I want to share that fear with someone else, not in some kind of hardcore blood-brothers way, but just like fucking wanna feel like we're all in this together, like that we acknowledge each other as something a bit more than just a pixelated avatar (which are funny as hell by the way) somewhere out there on the network. Maybe it's all in my head.

And at the same time I recognize that if somebody responds to this post and opens up in some kind of way, any kind of way, I will possibly not know how to open up in return as awkwardness settles in and defense mechanisms go up and just the vagueness and the uncertainty of the whole situation becomes too confusing, and the whole effort drops back to a level of chitchat for a glimpse of a second before it is swallowed whole by the new waves of conversations started by other people trying to connect with somebody else to escape their own loneliness.

I think that nobody captures this kind of abstract stuff better than David Foster Wallace: "You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me."

When I moved away from my family for my studies, I found myself alone for the first time in AGES. It caused bad things to my brain but since, I really enjoy loneliness, peace, and not having anyone to disturb you.

When I check Facebook (from where I'll remove my account soon), all I see is people craving for likes, feng shui bullshit and useless stuff from people I don't speak to since I left my family.

There are these times where I wish I could get off the grid without having to say goodbye, move to Canada, and reset everything, delete all my accounts from everywhere, build a shelter and stay there.

Man, I miss loneliness

I love to program — I discovered that about myself a few years ago. Beforehand, I only KNEW how to program. But then I discovered the power programming gives you to create things, and even help your surroundings. So now, I can surely say, that I love programming. Heck, I am even dating a very talented programmer.

But despite all the pleasure I derive from it, I feel lonely sometimes. True, there are millions of programmers all over the world. I also know I am not the only one who prefers coding over going to the movies, taking a walk, eating or sleeping.

Why do I feel this way?

My loneliness is a gendered loneliness, as there are not many women in my field. For sure, there are women who study computer science in high school or at the university, and some even work as programmers. But they are very, very few!

I often underestimate my abilities and feel intimated for no apparent reason

#random thoughts

100 weeks is ~ 2 years away.

It will be year 2020 then, the year i thought about in highschool 8 years ago wondering what I'd do then since 2020 sounded like a cool number.

It's time to write a letter to my future self.

Dear holodreamer ( version 2020 ),

This is your old version speaking from 2018. I see that you have upgraded to a better version of myself. I see that you are finally financially independent and preparing to move out to somewhere peaceful and better. According to my calculations, you should be feeling pressure from your family and relatives to get married. Looking from my perspective, it seems you had other plans than to settle for relationship this year, like traveling the world, being in the snow, mountains and living an adventurous lifestyle. I want you to know I'm proud of you if you are following though those goals.

Btw, do you remember that random muslim girl you met on the internet 110 weeks ago? Is she still in contact with you every day?! I hope not. Is she still super religious? She was a good chat buddy for me, a great alternative to a chatbots at my time but I hope you didn't get carried away with her and I hope you don't have to resort to chatbots to cure loneliness.

Did AI replace developers? Is JavaScript still the most popular programming language?

I'm waiting for your response.

Best wishes,
holodreamer (version 2018)

!rant

Loneliness feels good. I’m experiencing this amazing feeling being lonely.

Echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/dev/loneliness
Echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/dev/sadness

Okay this is 3.30 AM . Just woke up from bad geeky dreams. My heart is pounding so fast that I could nose bleed and I can't sleep as I am remembering I had the same dream last night.

Dream was about : me being astronaut. Everything was usual. From rocket launch to be in space. Scary part was my ship in orbit of moon.

Seeing dead land from that height chocked me. Imagine you are looking out of the window and all you see a big grey land and pitch black in background. Realising there is no one out there was spooky.

The scary part was I launched some satellite but crash on surface. It was scary seeing something going smaller every time. Crashing on deserted land was one plus on adding fear.

Then my ship leave the orbit (from the reverse shock of that satellite dittachment ) and it flow away in the vastness of space......

Away from the moon and away from the earth in long loneliness.

I wish I could erase this from my memory but I am not gonna watch space exploration video anymore.

I got to say, landing on moon is one thing but being out there knowing one accident and you will be forever there. You need balls to be on such missions.

Create something that will take humanity forward. Not just a utility software but make things that'll help solve the biggest problems humans as a society face - poverty, hunger, loneliness, pollution etc. All these problems are on my radar.

The idea is to use science to solve social problems. And not just stop at that. Make things that will help humans evolve into the next evolutionary phase.

How do you cope with loneliness ?

You know what I !love about summer?

My loneliness seems to just fucking FLY away.
More bugs in my house than in Windows ME

Drowning my sadness and loneliness on Netflix

TLDR: Read the post.

Part of me watches the day fly by as I work through the various stories and issues my company has as we walk through the various phases and clean up of their own stupidity of outsourcing. I guess it would be unfair to say “stupidity” It was really a money thing. Excuses aside, the alcohol today tastes amazing as I work through the issues, nothing is ever the same, nothing is ever redundant or boring. There are times where you want to pull your hair out, jump off a building and question why the hell any one would write code, specifically Laravel this way.

I watch the internet from now and then and see the cry babies whine and complain about GitHub and Microsoft jumping into bed and their favourite, and mine too, editor falling into Microsoft’s hands.

It’s disgusting and completely childish, but I digress. The last time I was here the alcoholism and the loneliness had begun pushing me towards the Nicotine and suicide. I have managed to obviously push through and watch the money come in only for adult life to take it away, I guess that’s life. Complaining about it will do nothing other then show others how much control you lack in your own life. You quiet your complaints and bury them deep inside your mind where they fester and stir and become drowned in alcohol.

Dating is even harder, especially when you work from home, so much so that I have completely given up there, any semblance of social life is buried in Final Fantasy 14 online, where pixels and text other people write have become my friend, at least for a moment or two before the work takes over and I sit in a room blaring music and watching the code I write, appear on screen like some savant who has high functioning autism but can create amazing works of art. I don’t think I am autistic though.

The truth is I don’t mind my job, I love the money and the freedom as I stated before.

Code for me is like a seed of anger that starts deep in my core, festering, eating away at me, killing me slowly and branding me a fool. The problem is the best feeling, when there is a problem I can solve it with code, when there is a problem that cannot be solved by code I take solace in the problems that can be. I don’t like people, I hate offices and I despise dealing with my own personal issues, I would rather drink and vape until the nicotine and the alcohol has made me sufficiently numb.

Code is a place I can escape, a place I have control, a place where I don’t feel like blowing my brains out at the stupidity of other people. Have I mentioned that I hate people?

The internet is full of idiots, people ranting and raving about this and that and how it affects them oh so much, when they don’t even let their own code, there own programming problems, and in most cases shitty solutions, affect them. Look at this GitHub thing, the idiots are running around with their heads cut off, waiting for the world to end or in most cases acting like it has. Companies get bought, bill get paid, people leave each other – Shut the fuck up and deal with it.
I guess if you look back at what I have written you could say the same thing to me, boo-fucking-hoo working from home sucks sometimes, grow up and deal with it like an adult. Fair enough, I’ll take my lumps. Excuse me as I continue to drink this post away and watch the downvotes come in. I guess honesty comes with a double edge sword.

And yes I would rather use alcohol as a solution then deal with the issues.

!rant
Somes of you guys also are working as a video game programmer ? I dont see any post about it

Came across these two given by fortune:
1. "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry." -- Chekhov
2. I am so broke that I cant even pay attention

Too early in the year for goals so far, but I'll give it a shot. Here's what I'm gunning for in the short-term:

Week 85 - 2018 Dev/Coding Goals:
- Continue educating myself in the Rust programming language (I feel like I dropped the ball there last year, Rust is easy to get programmer's block because it's syntax isn't always clear what should be done with it and/or why, the references. Ugghh fml).
- Get feature parity of PYXReloaded with it's predecessor, and get most of the planned features implemented. Friends of mine really want this and like screencaps I've sent already. It's a project I've been working on with @Gianlu for the past few days.

Week 85 - 2018 General/Personal Goals:
- Get over my motivational issues.
- Get over my depression/loneliness
- Get over my social anxiety.

I'm trying to better myself, both in coding and personal life. I fucking love this community. I used to use Reddit to find posts exactly like the ones here, but this is wayyy better and has everything all in one place.

Have a prosperous 2018, guys. Remember not to look at what you want to get done in just 365 days. You need to see the big picture.

Programming myself a telegram bot called SELENA using Python.
#Height of loneliness .
PS:It would be really nice if someone could help me with this by guiding me or sharing their code examples

I don't have a problem about loneliness at senior highschool... I have done anything alone...

But... After I entered a boarding school... Now I think I have some problem about loneliness and can't boost my productivity alone....