Biggest hurdle? Probably other people telling me no.

- My parents wouldn't let me go to college to study CS because 'this computer thing is just a fad and you won't be able to make a living off it'. Instead they pulled me out of school early and made me go study automotive so I could be a mechanic like my dad.

- At 22, my boss at my first tech company job heard I was taking Java classes in the evenings. Told me to stop wasting my money because I'd never be a programmer.

- Got a job at a game development company as a document writer. I could code by then. When I was done with my work I'd look for bugs and send the solutions to the programmers so they could submit them. Tech lead found out and flipped out. Said I wasn't allowed to look at the code because I 'hadn't been hired as a programmer'.

Today I'm a senior developer and pretty happy with my career.

When people tell you that you can't do something, that should be all the motivation you need to work your ass off to prove them wrong.

I’m kind of pissy, so let’s get into this.
My apologies though: it’s kind of scattered.

Family support?
For @Root? Fucking never.

Maybe if I wanted to be a business major my mother might have cared. Maybe the other one (whom I call Dick because fuck him, and because it’s accurate) would have cared if I suddenly wanted to become a mechanic. But in both cases, I really doubt it. I’d probably just have been berated for not being perfect, or better at their respective fields than they were at 3x my age.

Anyway.
Support being a dev?
Not even a little.

I had hand-me-down computers that were outmoded when they originally bought them: cutting-edge discount resale tech like Win95, 33/66mhz, 404mb hd. It wouldn’t even play an MP3 without stuttering.

(The only time I had a decent one is when I built one for myself while in high school. They couldn’t believe I spent so much money on what they saw as a silly toy.)

Using a computer for anything other than email or “real world” work was bad in their eyes. Whenever I was on the computer, they accused me of playing games, and constantly yelled at me for wasting my time, for rotting in my room, etc. We moved so often I never had any friends, and they were simply awful to be around, so what was my alternative? I also got into trouble for reading too much (seriously), and with computers I could at least make things.

If they got mad at me for any (real or imagined) reason (which happened almost every other day) they would steal my things, throw them out, or get mad and destroy them. Desk, books, decorations, posters, jewelry, perfume, containers, my chair, etc. Sometimes they would just steal my power cables or network cables. If they left the house, they would sometimes unplug the internet altogether, and claim they didn’t know why it was down. (Stealing/unplugging cables continued until I was 16.) If they found my game CDs, those would disappear, too. They would go through my room, my backpack and its notes/binders/folders/assignments, my closet, my drawers, my journals (of course my journals), and my computer, too. And if they found anything at all they didn’t like, they would confront me about it, and often would bring it up for months telling me how wrong/bad I was. Related: I got all A’s and a B one year in high school, and didn’t hear the end of it for the entire summer vacation.

It got to the point that I invented my own language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet just so I could have just a little bit of privacy. (I’m still fluent in it.) I would only store everything important from my computer on my only Zip disk so that I could take it to school with me every day and keep it out of their hands. I was terrified of losing all of my work, and carrying a Zip disk around in my backpack (with no backups) was safer than leaving it at home.

I continued to experiment and learn whatever I could about computers and programming, and also started taking CS classes when I reached high school. Amusingly, I didn’t even like computers despite all of this — they were simply an escape.

Around the same time (freshman in high school) I was a decent enough dev to actually write useful software, and made a little bit of money doing that. I also made some for my parents, both for personal use and for their businesses. They never trusted it, and continually trashtalked it. They would only begrudgingly use the business software because the alternatives were many thousands of dollars. And, despite never ever having a problem with any of it, they insisted I accompany them every time, and these were often at 3am. Instead of being thankful, they would be sarcastically amazed when nothing went wrong for the nth time. Two of the larger projects I made for them were: an inventory management system that interfaced with hand scanners (VB), and another inventory management system for government facility audits (Access). Several websites, too. I actually got paid for the Access application thanks to a contract!

To put this into perspective, I was selected to work on a government software project about a year later, while still in high school. That didn’t impress them, either.

They continued to see computers as a useless waste of time, and kept telling me that I would be unemployable, and end up alone.

When they learned I was dating someone long-distance, and that it was a she, they simply took my computer and didn’t let me use it again for six months. Really freaking hard to do senior projects without a computer. They begrudgingly allowed me to use theirs for schoolwork, but it had a fraction of the specs — and some projects required Flash, which the computer could barely run.

Between the constant insults, yelling, abuse (not mentioned here), total lack of privacy, and the theft, destruction, etc. I still managed to teach myself about computers and programming.

In short, I am a dev despite my parents’ best efforts to the contrary.

1. I'm a programmer, that does not mean I know every possible programming language. Yes, I can build Android apps, standalone softwares, serverside frameworks. No, I do not know how to build frigging websites!

2. "You can build a website in 2 days, you're a programmer". Tell a single mechanic to build an entire car in 2 days or tell a civil engineer to build an entire building in 2 days and I'll build your website in 2 days.

AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!
Why does your family think that being a programmer means being a magician who can just pull any kind of software, hardware, app, website out of their hat?

There’s a fundamental difference between development and other jobs.

Doctor: Hey! My left arm is hurting and has been swollen for a while, I think it might be sprained. *pays $100*

Taxi Driver: Hey! Can you ride me over to this exact address? Thanks. *pays $20 + tip*

Construction Worker: I’m going to need this exact item in the blueprint built here with these materials. *pays $1000*

Mechanic: This part of my car isn’t working correct and it displays this exact warning. *pays $100*

Developer: Yo I need a cool free website that looks pretty awesome with like rainbows and stuff by tomorrow.

Mechanic: How many km’s have you done?
Me: 21 😊

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, are scumbags.

When you progress to a certain level, they offer you a cool new thing — to hatch an egg. You click “hatch”, and then you have to wait 24 hours. This builds excitement — after all, it looks like an amazing new mode, and you can't wait to see what it is.

The reality is, you hatch this beautiful little creature. From here on, you have to FEED it regularly, or it will die. They drew it the cutest way possible. How should a child resist feeding this cutie? When I hatched it, I didn't know what this new mechanic was, and I assume new players don't know either.

You feed it apples. You can find apples on certain levels, but they are scarce. The further you go, the more apples are required to keep him alive. Play the game actively to keep up with it and get apples! Or, you could just… I don't know… BUY them.

“Mom, I need $11.99 to feed Fluffy, otherwise it will die!”

A straight-up scumbag fucking mechanic in a game targeted to impressionable children that will have a hard time seeing this tiny beautiful creature die of starvation. Let's guilt-trip kids into asking money from their parents!

I'm sure this has probably been posted before, but it never fails to drive me nuts, and customers never stop doing it, so:

Why do end users think "it's broken" is all they have to put into the support ticket?

It's a web app, not a goddamn pretzel.

If the turn signal on your car stops working, do you drop your car off at the mechanic, hand them the keys, and say "its broken, fix it!"?

While I'm on the topic, "I tried to do {x} and it gave an error" is better than "its broken", but still: why do you think what the actual error says would be completely irrelevant, especially when we put in the effort to give you relatively meaningful error messages?

I mean, is "there was a problem sending the email" so utterly gibberish to you that it is indistinguishable from "error: 0x000351e6"?

If so, I'm sorry, but you're too stupid to use a goddamn computer!

I think the main issue with Computer Science is that it's considered an Academic study, while 99% of work is very much dynamic, quickly evolving and hands-on.

I think all forms of (higher) education should be part time, starting at 4:1 college/work, gradually moving towards the opposite.

Currently, combining work and study is only done for "lower level" education, at least in my country: For example a car mechanic needs to work on actual cars, and barbers need to cut actual hair.

To me, it makes sense if engineers work on actual software, during their education.

It also feeds back into the education itself, when companies are paying for courses and the course doesn't teach practicalities, there's a lot more feedback to the colleges on how to adjust their material.

Question!

I am 26, and recently diagnosed with autism. An incredibly late diagnosis due to my absolutely amazing ability to keep everything internal.. It has caused my countless headaches and heartaches over the years and its good to finally understand what it is thst makes me how I am...

I am also aware that IT goes hand in hand with autism due to our thought process being so 'logical' and our acceptance of failure is.... Er... Not the best. But we also have the stubborness/determination to keep going, learn what it is we did wrong and improve upon it.

So my question really is, are many of you on the spectrum also? If so, are there any coping strategies that you can share with me/everyone who reads this?

By coping I don't mean just dealing with it, but I mean in the workplace. I've never had a job formally in IT because I never did any qualifications in it. Rebuilt my first pc at age 7 and been hooked since.

I have always been a mechanic because again, logic reasons.

I'm currently in contact with an organisation here in Norway called 'Unicus' who are specialised in employing people on the spectrum, specifically in the IT sector... Have any of you heard of them? They seem promising to me

Thanks for reading guys and please feel free to delete this if this really isn't the place for it, I just feel that within this community there are more of us and I would like to open the door for communication

It has been bugging the shit out of me lately... the sheer number of shit-tier "programmers" that have been climbing out of the woodwork the last few years.

I'm not trying to come across as elitist or "holier than thou", but it's getting ridiculous and annoying. Even on here, you have people who "only do frontend development" or some other lame ass shit-stain of an excuse.

When I first started learning programming (PHP was my first language), it wasn't because I wanted to be a programmer. I used to be a member (my account is still there, in fact) of "HackThisSite", back when I was about 12 years old. After hanging out long enough, I got the hint that the best hackers are, in essence, programmers.

Want to learn how to do SQL injection? Learn SQL - write a program that uses an SQL database, and ask yourself how you would exploit your own software.

Want to reverse engineer the network protocol of some proprietary software? Learn TCP/IP - write a TCP/IP packet filter.

Back then, a programmer and a hacker were very much one in the same. Nowadays, some kid can download Python, write a "hello, world" program and they're halfway to freelancing or whatever.

It's rare to find a programmer - a REAL programmer, one who knows how the systems he develops for better than the back of his hand.

These days, I find people want the instant gratification that these simpler languages provide. You don't need to understand how virtual memory works, hell many people don't even really understand C/C++ pointers - and that's BASIC SHIT right there.

Put another way, would you want to take your car to a brake mechanic that doesn't understand how brakes work? I sure as hell wouldn't.

Watching these "programmers" out there who don't have a fucking clue how the code they write does what it does, is like watching a grown man walk around with a kid's toolbox full or plastic toys calling himself a mechanic. (I like cars, ok?!)

*sigh*

Python, AngularJS, Bootstrap, etc. They're all tools and they have their merits. But god fucking dammit, they're not the ONLY damn tools that matter. Stop making excuses *not* to learn something, Mr."IOnlyDoFrontEnd".

Coding ain't Lego's, fuckers.

My dad is an old-timer and he just recently started using the computer to browse the Internet. He calls me in because the browser froze (Microsoft Edge for the win) but he initially thought that he had broken something on the computer so he grabs his mechanic tools and a flashlight to see if he could repair it. I had a good chuckle.

Being a developer is like being a mechanic at a car manufacturer. Except that everybody else in the company is completely clueless about how a car actually works and the client doesn't have a license.

So I recently had a university project which focuses video game audio. We had to work in groups of 3 students and the task was to create a video game which uses audio as a gameplay mechanic.

Our idea was to create a game where you collect different audio samples which get looped as background music, and you have to select the correct ones to have a nice tune. To make it a bit more challenging we had enemies, guns and grenades plus doors which only open if the correct music is playing.

The guns fire on-beat, and the grenades always explode on the first beat of the next bar.
It was quite challenging to get things synced since even small offsets are noticable.

I wrote some nice code and theoretically it should have worked but for some reason the gun shots and the grenades didn't quite hit the beat of the music.

I tweaked stuff, created workarounds, optimized lot's of code to get execution times down but it still only worked sometimes.

I tweaked more and more only to realize that the timing drifted over time.

At that time I worked 20-30 hours on tweaking and trying to get it perfectly timed.

After recalculating some numbers I realized that all the audio samples are recorded at 135 bpm, but the guys who did the recordings said it was 130bpm.

I asked them if it could be the case that the samples are 135bpm and they said:
"yes, they are at 135 bpm as we told you"

I scrolled back in the telegram conversation only to see that they said 130.
Changing the number to 135 resolved all the problems and all of my workarounds and tweaks weren't needed.

So I worked for nearly 30 hours just because they didn't notice their fault and even when they realized that the timing is off sometimes (which took forever because they never played the game), they didn't even consider that they might have given me the wrong numbers.

This all wouldn't be that bad if both of my teammates had worked for more than 15 hours but they didn't. I did all the hard work and the only single thing they did fucked up my workflow. It fucked up the system I created and it fucked up the gameplay as things got unpredictable. Because of their fucking fault I worked as much as both of them combined IN ADDITION to all the other work I did (built 3 maps, coded everything, created animations, ...)

I love working in teams, but only if the whole team is motivated. Those two fuckers were the exact opposite.
Luckily i found the error so I could fix it, but guess with whom I'll never ever work together again?

Had my first car accident today. I was taking a friend to school, we were down the street from our school. Person in front of me slammed on their brakes for no reason (light was green, nobody was crossing), so I did the same. Almost fucking hit them, but whatever. As me and my friend started to recover from that, we get hit from behind.

I remember just looking over at her when it happened and going "DID WE JUST FUCKING GET HIT?", she looks at me and says "I don't know what else it could have been"

The guy that hit us was a really nice guy. When me and the person in front of me slammed our brakes, the guy behind us followed, but it was raining this morning and he slid into my car.

So the guy called the cops, had an officer come, we exchanged information and everything (wasn't a bad enough accident for an actual police report). I called my insurance company, they said to call his insurance company, so I did. Filed a claim, told them everything that happened, then they called the guy, he confirmed everything and said the accident was his fault. But since my car is fairly old (it's a 2001 model), they said it might not even be worth fixing and they'll probably just end up seeing how much the car is worth and sending me a check.

The fun thing is, my cousin is my mechanic and he can also do body work, and the damage isn't that much, so he said he probably wouldn't charge much. So I'll probably get to pocket a good amount of the money (maybe like $700 max but still)

So, fun day.

So tomorrow I have to explain to my non-technical principal that the "game engine" I say I'm going to make in my senior project proposal is in fact not a car engine in a game. And I also have to explain that a mechanic would not be an ideal mentor for this project.

One of those days when i feel like complete shit and wish i hadn’t woken up.
I heard back from an interview i did last week (one of the faang type) and the recruiter started with “You didn’t impress any of your interviewers”. Man that hurt. I can’t unhear that. He went ahead to say they all recommended a mid-level role for me (they apparently said i had potential and could easily grow into a senior eng) instead of the senior lead i applied for. This is also subject to getting approval to hire mid-level engineers because the team needs more people but they only got approval to hire senior engineers. This cunt also added “dont worry about it. Just go about your usual business and i’ll call you next week if we have gotten the approval”. Ass! All i can do is worry because that is what i do best.
I think i am more sad and disappointed in myself because i thought the interviews went well. Wrote decent code and came up with good solutions on time. Had a good conversation with interviewers. Apparently for a senior, you cannot make mistakes which i did but once the interviewer gave me a clue, i got back on track.
Anyway, i slept with this anxiety, then woke up with tummy ache. On the drive out this morning to go to the bank, i drove my car into a pole and broke off my side mirror. Then my fucking power generator stopped working. And on my way to go and get my fixed mirror from the mechanic, my exhaust pipe broke in half due to a possible pothole i drove into.

Those fucking days where all that could go wrong goes wrong. My head is fucking pounding i can barely move my head without wincing. I am running out of money fast (i support my entire family) and i am worried about not getting a job. This blow to my confidence makes me feel worthless like i am not good for anything. Recruiter suggested i do another senior engineer interview for a different team which i passed the test for but i know the outcome would most likely be the same and i wanted the first team really bad. I just want to lie in bed and cry all day but this fucking headache won’t let me.

Jeep Mechanic duh. Currently code for a living and work on Jeeps for a hobby. It would just be the other way around.

If you're making a game, dont start by thinking about your inventory system. Start by thinking about what you want your player to be able to DO, the cost of those things, and the constraints.

For example, ages of empires didnt have you worrying about unit equipment at all. every villager could do almost any job. while survival games, especially survival horror, like the recent RE remake, severly restrict inventory and stack sizes to make resource managenent more important.

Games like Fallout had list based inventories because lists are cheap, and it allowed a tighter interaction loop. players would loot. go into inventory. close container, onto the next container, keeping the player in the exploration loop longer. neoscav did the opposite *for effect* harkening back to diablo, but taken to the nth degree: *everything*, actions, combat, exploration, character design, all based on an inventory-style grid.
while games like rimworld and dwarf fortress have your inventory represented by zones where items are physically *stored* in stacks on the ground, extending the concept of base management to resource management through physical layout and build optimization.

its important to think about what kind of actions you want players to be able to do, and the kinds of challenges and constraints you want on them at each point of the game and each mechanic they engage in.

other examples, though terrible, include fortnite, where the limitations of competitive play had inventory limited to a resource system and a hotbar. while earlier battle royale and sandboxs games like rust and battleground induced tension by combining loot mechanics and grid inventories with the constant danger of competing players, allowing them to have richer inventory systems at the risk of frusterating players who frequently died while managing their inventory. meanwhile in overwatch, notice how the HUD changes to best represent the abilities of each character.

all in all it is better to stop thinking of inventory systems as a means to an end, and instead as the end representation of desired mechanics, or artificially selected representations for particular effects.

this applies likewise to ui and ux in general. because the design of interface is fundementally about the design of *interactions*, and what you want to enable a user or customer to *do* will ultimately drive those interactions.

About a year ago I was doing work for a client that hired a separate contractor for SEO consultation. I could easily end the rant here.

This lady was trying to convince my client to write the same page or blog article several times over and merely change their physical address at the bottom of the page to one of their many respective clinics.

When I told them not to do this because they would suffer for stuffing and duplicating content, their response was to ask me to be respectful of the other contractor's skills and knowledge regarding digital marketing and to call her and sort it out.

I called. We argued. I called the client back and asked if they should respect the skills of an auto mechanic with pliers to remove a teenager's braces rather than send them to one of their orthodontic clinics.

I decided to fix my car after car mechanic gave up... The backlight was blinking even the car was locked and turned off in the parking. Took me 4 days to figure it out. What I realised is that we are pushing tech to places where tech and electronics shouldn't be... My next car will be 1972 ford c, it doesn't have any of these modern problems.

In the future, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I'll answer
-"I'm a programmer" [1 sec pause] "I'm not a printer mechanic".

Dad: You should rather consider being a mechanic.

Mother: Why can't you finish university and work as a banker?

Me: I don't give a heck

In game development feature creep tends to kill games because it's just as much about what's NOT there as what IS there.

Take The Last of Us for example. Would a strategic tower defense segment make sense? No? And if it was a *hugely* popular mechanic at the time of development is there a real chance they would have included such a segment in TLOU? Yes.

Don't just believe me. Go take a look at what happened to the original Fortnite versus the hills-have-eyes inbred offspring that it became all because PUBG and its format were cancerously mega popular at the time.

That's why while developing my game Atom Ranger (now with 100% less multiplayer!), a mix between metro and don't starve, I spent six years *pruning* features. You can click my referral link and get 50% off the opportunity to become an unpaid tester of the pre-prealpha right now, "for hardcore players only!" (Tm)

My game:

As a person who has a problem with authority (in group projects, not the law), I never really understood the need for the boss until I started making a game with a few friends.

IT.WAS.BAD!
I'm not just taking about noone actually doing anything other than throwing ideas ifbthey bothered to show up at all, but...and this is the worst of all, whenever we came to a mechanic that we all agreed upon, everyone had their own vision for it, that they defended like it's their firstborn. For two months we accomplished nothing, other than a few half baked ideas.

It wasn't until we "promoted" one of us to a "boss" status, that people actually started working.

Let's see if my cover really stores heat...
I'm Melting in the shade :( can't work like this.
My nephew and I tryed my convencional milling machine, written half his name. I still got it

Funny thing, I'm noticing now... All the man from my direct family are crazy.
I was helping the mechanic yesterday, telling my adventures and he was always, lik he said father like sun.. The inventors...
Today I finally got my brother for an hour.. He is even crazyer then me, told me just a few of his diys and I'm like... Wow

- a split keyboard with a touchpad in the middle that will let you control all gestures on a computer

- a set of desk/monitors that adjusts perfectly for ergo for anyone

- a vertical laptop dock that is modular so you can add extra memory/video processing power and only using your laptop as a CPU/secondary graphics card

- a set of kitchenware and plates that would be so easy to clean and would never get stained

-an insect home alarm system that tells you where the fucking insect is so it doesn't take you by surprise/you can call someone to remove it

- a clothing brand that has a buy one gift one operation mechanic, where you buy a shirt and an article is donated to a local charity

- a restaurant

- a simple, yet robust database option that walks users through creating good databases that is super user friendly

- an app that takes tattoo designs in any format, converts them, allows for editing, and then can hook up to a special printer that gives you the transfer you will use on the client

Well thus far is a bunch of rails small jobs. Funny enough this week I managed to get a bunch of php contracts "with the possibility to extend for larger contracts"

I am not really interested in long term contracts, but being that most developers that I see hired for small php jobs are not used to the patterns of development used for modern php and that i bring in a lot of my own stuff for it I know that I will be maintaining them for the long run.

So good stuff. Lets see how the week pans out. Getting really excited. Even tho I see more horrors in php than even on JS or ASP.NET or Java I still really love all languages that I have used. And normally I work like a mechanic. In which I bill by the hour(i am an expensice hooker...I mean developer) and finish everything as fast as possible to let me lazy around the house. So for example, if something takes 10 hours I will do it i 5 or less and charge all 10 hours, or I would charge per build(custom login and registration that kind of deal) and yeah. Pretty basic.

Good shit man!

!rant real talk though.

I am frustrated. Lately i have been having a slow time on the job, and it somehow dulled me down a lot.

In games you often have to think about transforms and rotations and offsets and hell knows what else.

I am usually pretty good at 3d object manipulation, it's one of those IQ test skills i generally score well on.

However lately i have not been able to come up with jack shit, i am simply unable to coherently think through a set of positioning and rotation changes to aquire the correct outcome for a mechanic and it pisses me off.

I have to fall back to slow as all hell trial and error and i don't even know what to do otherwise. It's been months now, do i have brain cancer or some shit? Arrrrrrg!

My uncle wants me to get a faster OS on this (I'm thinking android since its touch screen) he wants to embed it in his car as a GPS computer (older car) he's an actual mechanic don't worry lol so he won't fuck up any car wiring

But this monster doesn't have a USB-A it has usb-mini. Oof. Wish me luck while I try to figure this out

Two of em.
The first one was making a project following mvc patterns for my last job in which the structure was so easy to follow that my buddy has been able to move allong with it and do more projects out of it. He had a hard time with web development and the boss would have him do it and learn on the job.
To this day that application remains as a "framework" of sorts.
It was made in an unholy comb of js for the front end and classic asp for the backend with restful endpoints and all that shit. I was drunk when I coded most of it.

The other one was during my time in the u.s army. I was a mechanic, a really shitty one mind you. But i knew how to read manuals. All and every task was accomplished to the point in which they had me basically rebuild a vehicle that was beyond salvation. Got it done in 2 months and command was so impressed they set me up as the brigade commander's personal driver and mechanic. I was also drunk for the most part, but then again so where the rest of my brothers.

A little example of how recriutment in IT works.

Mechanic gets a live mechanic skill test to get a job, as he really wants this job because of lack of money he asks recriuter couple of questions.
Mechanic: do I need to bring my own tools ?
HR: no everything will be provided in place
Mechanic: what would I do during this test ?
HR: everything will be explained just before the test I’m not an engineer so engineer will explain everything to you

The test day, mechainc goes to the test place and the recriuter says:
Recruiter: Your first task is really simple, please tighten those screws, you have 10 minutes
Mechanic: But I don't see the screw driver

Recriuter: I can't say to you how to do it, you figure something out
Mechanic somehow manages to tighten those screws using his belt

Recriuter: Ok so now tell me what force is needed to unscrew them and tell me if you did good if I’d say you need to tighten 1 million screws
Mechanic: I just want to do my job

Recruiter: Hey we are looking for people with broad experience for this position, of course you wont be asked to do that task but we want to know if you’re capable to do the job if we ask you.
Mechanic: answers the question that he will use tools and what devices he will use to measure the force

Recriuter: Can you write this as a mathematical equation ?
Mechanic: don’t know that
Recruiter: Well we can’t hire you we are looking for someone with more knowledge about the topic

Mechanic: But you keep asking me about the fucking screws
Recruiter: Watch your mouth sir because for me you are junior mechanics, you don’t know how to use proper tools and you barely manage to do the first task in time I would use: started elaborating about tools to tighten many screws at a time in a distributed fashion

Mechanic: but to run those tools I would need more than 10 minutes and besides that those are not here
Recruiter: yes they are, we open those doors to get them before our work you suppose to know that and we use those all the time, it was in job description, besides that it is recommended by company xyz to keep those tools behind blue doors, there is nothing here besides blue doors and room with tools and you didn’t know what blue doors are for, you need to learn the basics first

Mechanic resigns. 90% luck 10% skill
Every fucking time.

Isn't a dev using the laptop keyboard like a professional mechanic using the toolkit that comes with the car?

My most successful project was in the fisrt year of University in 2016. We had to build a robot from scratch with all the mechanic, electronical and software components, which could solve a given problem, in our case defusing a bomb, in collaboration with an other team. After a lot of frustration, late night debugging and many beers, our team managed to win the competition against 8 other teams.

A brilliant oldtimer auto-mechanic asked me to get Audi MMI and maps update for him from the internet. For the Christmas, you know..

So I found the source (mega.nz). It's 22.3GB.

Spent a whole day downloading it (5GB download allowed in 6 hours for free tier), downloaded 21.15GB and some fucked up error appeared "Your In-Browser Storage for Mega is Full".

Couldn't work out the reason nor the fix to recover and complete the already downloaded data. Had to redo it all.

Whole day wasted
damn it

void rant(){
Pokémon go is fun, but it's not great.
Doesn't everyone think that it would be better to actually battle for your Pokemon's level?
They could perhaps keep a similar evo system (Everytime you fight you get like 1 poke candy)
This catch and release system is getting kind of annoying in my opinion.
I want to get attached to my Pokemon and actually feel like a trainer, not a garbage disposal for Pokemon.
They already have a battle mechanic, they would just need to enable ai battle algorithms and ambient encounters.
}

Not my story, but something that my friend did which inspired me a lot. So, a friend of mine who just graduated with a bachelor's in physics, had a month off after one of his semesters, and while most of us ended up doing internships in companies, he decided to do something else. He decided to go up to a local mechanic and ask him to teach him how to repair bikes for a month. Now in India, a mechanic is sadly one of the least reputed jobs, so for him to go there and work for free was unusual. After working there, he told me about the things he learned and to what an amazing extent he could apply that practical knowledge he gained. It was truly impressive. Which is why I have decided to do something like this in the future as well. With enough savings, I'm sure all of could survive a month. I can't even begin to imagine the potential of this, you could learn so much practically.

Headsup: if you're making a game, or want to, a good starting point is to ask a single question.
How do I want this game to feel?

A lot of people who make games get into it because they play and they say I wish this or that feature were different. Or they imagine new mechanics, or new story, or new aesthetics. These are all interesting approaches to explore.

If you're familiar with a lot of games, and why and how their designs work, starting with game
feel is great. It gives you a palette of ideas to riff on, without knowing exactly why it works, using your gut as you go. In fact a lot of designers who made great games used this approach, creating the basic form, and basically flew-blind, using the testing process to 'find the fun'.

But what if, instead of focusing on what emotions a game or mechanic evokes, we ask:
How does this system or mechanic alter the
*players behaviors*? What behaviors
*invoke* a given emotion?

And from there you can start to see the thread that connects emotion, and behavior.

In *Alien: Isolation*, the alien 'hunts' for the player, and is invulnerable. Besides its menacing look, and the dense atmosphere, its invincibility
has a powerful effect on the player. The player is prone to fear and running.

By looking at behavior first, w/ just this one game, and listing the emotions and behaviors
in pairs "Fear: Running", for example, you can start to work backwards to the systems and *conditions* that created that emotion.

In fact, by breaking designs down in this manner, it becomes easy to find parallels, and create
these emotions in games that are typically outside the given genre.

For example, if you wanted to make a game about vietnam (hold the overuse of 'fortunate son') how might we approach this?

One description might be: Play as a soldier or an insurgent during the harsh jungle warfare of vietnam. Set ambushes, scout through dense and snake infested underbrush. Identify enemy armaments to outfit your raids, and take the fight to them.

Mechanics might include

1. crawl through underbrush paths, with events to stab poisonous snacks, brush away spiders or centipedes, like the spiders in metro, hold your breathe as armed enemy units march by, etc.

2. learn to use enfilade and time your attacks.

3. run and gun chases. An ambush happens catching you off guard, you are immediately tossed behind cover, and an NPC says "we can stay and fight but we're out numbered, we should run." and the system plots out how the NPCs hem you in to direct you toward a series of
retreats and nearest cover (because its not supposed to be a battle, but a chase, so we want the player to run). Maybe it uses these NPC ambushes to occasionally push the player to interesting map objectives/locations, who knows.

4. The scouting system from State of Decay. you get a certain amount of time before you risk being 'spotted', and have to climb to the top of say, a building, or a tower, and prioritize which objects in the enemy camp to identity: trucks, anti-air, heavy guns, rockets, troop formations, carriers, comms stations, etc. And that determines what is available to 'call in' as support on the mission.

And all of this, b/c you're focusing on the player behaviors that you want, leads to the *emotions* or feelings you want the player to experience.

Point is, when you focus on the activities you want the player to *do* its a more reliable way of determining what the player will *feel*, the 'role' they'll take on, which is exactly what any good designer should want.

If we return back to Alien: Isolation, even though its a survival horror game, can we find parallels outside that genre? Well The Last of Us for one.

How so? Well TLOU is a survival third-person shooter, not a horror game, and it shows. Theres
not the omnipresent feeling of being overpowered. The player does use stealth, but mostly it's because it serves the player's main role: a hardened survivor whos a capable killer, struggling through a crapsack world. The similarity though comes in with the boss battles against the infected.

The enemy in these fights is almost unstoppable, they're a tank, and the devs have the player running from them just to survive. Many players cant help but feel a little panic as they run for their lives, especially with the superbly designed custom death scenes for joel. The point is, mechanics are more of a means to an end, and if games are paintings, and mechanics are the brushes, player behavior is the individual strokes and player emotion is the color. And by examining TLOU in this way, it becomes obvious that while its a third person survival shooter, the boss fights are *overtones* of Alien: Isolation.

And we can draw that comparison because like bach, who was deaf, and focused on the keys and not the sound, we're focused on player behavior and not strictly emotions.

I've thought of the perfect analogy for people who constantly interrupt us while we are coding.

It's like you're a mechanic and you are working on a complex engine. You're focused on what you're doing, your hands are filthy, and you're just about to fit the part in that you've been trying to fit in for the past hour.

Someone comes along and asks you to help them open a pickle jar in the middle of your work. So you have to stop what you're doing, wash your hands, and then help them open the jar. By the time you're done your focus has completely shifted, you lost all momentum, and your progress comes to a complete halt.

This is what it's like for us when you come into our office or call us to ask us a question that isn't important or urgent whatsoever. It's especially frustrating when it's the same question that has already been asked 100 times.

About a month ago I sorted out some old electronic stuff and found my old laptop from 2011. A 2:nd Gen i7 8gb ram. I replaced it due to several bluescreens a day that later turned out to be caused by a faulty RAM module (was 16Gb back then).
Well, back then it became a backup laptop and went on the shelf and almost forgotten.

I went through all the old files on it and copied them to the NAS, replaced the mechanic drive with cheep SSD.
Used the old Win7 license key to upgrade to win 10 , dust off the fan, and it turned out to be usable.

I have much better computers so I would not use it for anything but today I gave it to my 6 year old nephew so he can start using a computer and build his knowledge. Worse case; If he spills soda on it he'll learn not to do that with the more expensive computers he will use in future.
So win win. I got to get rid of some junk that had been gathering dust for many years by giving my nephew an opportunity to get started with computers.

Finally, the timing: Microsoft announced a few days back that any new upgrade from windows 7&8 to 10 is no longer supported, but that computer still has a valid win 10 license as it was updated a month ago.

Usually I use my laptop which has ubuntu installed but sometimes if I'm doing something for long period of time I use my desktop which has windows 7 installed. You know for games and shit.
Here is the bad part about all of this
*Rant incoming*

This fucking piece of shit ass licker. Deleted my entire god damn paths.
And if you don't know if you don't have the right paths you can't do shit basically. This fucking piece of smelly shit. DELETED THEM FUUUUUCJDUCKFUUUCKKKKFUUUUUCK NOW I HAVE TO WRITE ALL OF THEM AGAIN ?! FUCK YOU FUUUUUUCKKK GO SUCK A BIG DICK FOR MAKING A FUCKING SYSTEM MECHANIC THIS FUCKING FRAGILE. WHAT THE FUUUUCK AND ITS SO HARD TO FUCKING GET THE PATHS RIGHT TOO. SHITSHISHIT AND I CAN FORMAT TO A NEW OS BUT IF ITS WINDOWS I NEED TO INSTALL EVERY DAMN BIT OF DRIVER AGAIN FUUUUUCK THIS MOTHER FUCKING SHIT
linux i'm sorry I was cheating on you with that piece of shit cheap whore. You are the right one for me. Even though If I need to work hours to make a software work on you l, when you work you work for good, not like this piece of shit that decides to delete important information out of nowhere.

When a client wants java, c, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, html, css, data mining, AI, bot development, Android development, iPhone development, Amazon services, masonry, Kung Fu, cooking, driving, flying, deployment, mechanic, electrician, plumbing as required skills.

No one happens to play Scrap Mechanic, right?

Unexpectedly a feature status changed to disabled:
"It doesnt matter. If nobody noticed, it means that nobody is using it."

After that my point of view is:
Just because you dont use your Car Airbag everyday, it doesnt allow your mechanic to keep it disabled.

So I was messing around in unity, as you do. And I made an explosion mechanic platformer. The scripts were all working well. I saved it for the day.
The next day I booted unity and my scripts were gone, and the scene switcher won't work.
So I mean, partly my fault. Partly google drive's fault and partly unity's fault.

!rant
Went from uni to my car to drive back home. Engine doesn't start, And report of low oil level is showing up. Hmmm. I've opened hood and checked oil level. It was empty. First thought. I drove here with no oil so I broke the engine. Great... I bought some oil and refiled it. Still same problem. I've called my insurance company and my mechanic. And then. Brilliant thought evolved. Did I turned off ignition on secret switch today? Yea it was it. Had to call everybody again and cancel my AC request. Gosh, I hate having memory of golden fish...

Also. Hi everybody. my first !rant

So I work at a big IT company. Keep in mind you could say I'm lucky to be here my last job was as a mechanic. So they put me on this team filled with the most draining kunts I've ever seen.

I have been here for about a year and I am yet to be put on a project, so im just training. They asked me to get certified to be on a project which is complete bullshit because every other fuckwit is on a project and noone is certified.

ONTOP of this, there's no work to be done anyway, yet they keep hiring fucking Grads. LIKE FUCK OFF, get work for the rest of us first you fucking IDIOTS.

Anyway, the cert is the driest fucking content, like kill me now, I try to read about it and I just want to blow my fucking brains out.

Like is IT all like this? I used to work at a web design company and that shit was fucking fun, but paid like $2 an hour the cheap fucks.

Anyway that's my rant, I'm sitting my exam tomorrow for this cert and honestly, I don't even know why. I literally know ZERO. fucking going in to guess this shit. would rather go down to bunnings buy the coarsest piece of rope and just dangle like a fat dick.

Anyway cheers lads. have a great day

#storytime

Soon I'll start moving to a new place on the 16th and I wanted to change my address at the Internet provider (T).
go to provider website (T) reading that I need to call them...

CALL (T): .... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 30 minutes later:

Operator: Hi moving, yes.. When? we send you an email with details to send Mechanic.

Next day: waking up. clicking mail on my phone in bed half sleepy. select 15th. next. next. next. accept. done.

Me happy :) .... One hour later realizing I said 15th.. and it should be 25... FUCK!!! Me Mad! Knowing what's going to happen...

Click link in mail to change date. You need to call (E).

CALL (E) : ... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 1 hour later.... Give up..

CALL (E)(2): ... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 1.2 hour later.... Give up..

Next day CALL (E)(3): ... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 45 minutes later....

Operator: Hi, yes we can move to date 21. you need to call (R) to change fiber mechanic I'll patch you trough
CALL (T) : ... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 30 minutes later....
Operator: You need to call (K) Here is the number 123456789..

CALL (K): ... Automatic answering machine.. ... longer than normal, covid19, 20 minutes later
Operator: This department (R) can not be reached by phone we will call you back.

Next day:
Incoming call from (K). Because you are moving to a new house you do not need (R). have a nice day.

Have a nice day to you too calm and friendly.
hopefully I won't be without internet for a couple of days...

Serverless and death of Programming?!

_TL;DR_
I hate serverless at work, love it at home, what's your advice?
- Is this the way things be from now on, suck it up.
- This will mature soon and Code will be king again.
- Look for legacy code work on big Java monolith or something.
- Do front-end which is not yet ruined.
- Start my own stuff.

_Long Rant_

Once one mechanic told me "I become mechanic to escape electrical engineering, but with modern cars...". I'm having similar feelings about programming now.

_Serverless Won_
All of the sudden everyone is doing Serverless, so I looked into it too, accidentally joined the company that does enterprise scale Serverless mostly.
First of all, I like serverless (AWS Lambda in specific) and what it enables - it makes 100% sense and 100% business sense for 80% of time.

So all is great? Not so much... I love it as independent developer, as it enables me to quickly launch products I would have been hesitant due to effort required before. However I hate it in my work - to be continued bellow...

_I'm fake engineer_
I love programming! I love writing code. I'm not really an engineer in the sense that I don't like hustle with tools and spending days fixing obscure environment issues, I rather strive for clean environment where there's nothing between me and code. Of course world is not perfect and I had to tolerate some amounts of hustle like Java and it's application servers, JVM issues, tools, environments... JS tools (although pain is not even close to Java), then it was Docker-ization abuse everywhere, but along the way it was more or less programming at the center. Code was the king, devOps and business skills become very important to developers but still second to code. Distinction here is not that I can't or don't do engineering, its that it requires effort, while coding is just natural thing that I can do with zero motivation.

_Programming is Dead?!_
Why I hate Serverless at work? Because it's a mess - I had a glimpse of this mess with microservices, but this is way worse...

On business/social level:
- First of all developers will be operations now and it's uphill battle to push for separation on business level and also infrastructure specifics are harder to isolate. I liked previous dev-devops collaboration before - everyone doing the thing that are better at.
- Devs now have to be good at code, devOps and business in many organisations.
- Shift of power balance - Code is no longer the king among developers and I'm seeing it now. Code quality drops, junior devs have too hard of the time to learn proper coding practices while AWS/Terraform/... is the main productivity factors. E.g. same code guru on code reviews in old days - respectable performer and source of Truth, now - rambling looser who couldn't get his lambda configured properly.

On not enjoying work:
- Lets start with fact - Code, Terraform, AWS, Business mess - you have to deal with all of it and with close to equal % amount of time now, I want to code mostly, at least 50% of time.
- Everything is in the air ("cloud computing" after all) - gone are the days of starting application and seeing results. Everything holds on assumptions that will only be tested in actual environment. Zero feedback loop - I assume I get this request/SQS message/..., I assume I have configured all the things correctly in sea of Terraform configs and modules from other repos - SQS queues, environment variables... I assume I taken in consideration tens of different terraform configurations of other lambdas/things that might be affected...

It's a such a pleasure now, after the work to open my code editor and work on my personal React.js app...

I'm more of a computer person (obviously, that's why I'm here), but I'm super proud of myself that I was able to replace a belt in my car!

Next comes the brakes, but that one can wait a week or so...

At first i was told to go to college BY PEOPLE WITH NO COLLEGE because i wouldnt be able to find a job without degree

Like a sucker i fell for it and believed in those LIES so i sacrificed my life for school

Then later i found out PEOPLE WHO FINISHED COLLEGE told me i just need knowledge in order to be hired, and turns out degree is unimportant

Like a sucker i fell for it and believed in those LIES so i studied and worked on practical projects and gained knowledge

Now when I try to get hired, they admitted that i am able to complete complex projects and i know how to solve the problems even if i see them for the first time. But they rejected me because "im not sure why the car leaks oil".

I have to understand and know what the whole framework is doing under the hood, how everything works, how dependency injection works under the hood, SOLID principles under the hood, decorators how they work under the hood etc.

So now it turns out
- sacrificing life for school is not enough
- sacrificing life for degree is not enough
- sacrificing life for learning and gaining knowledge is not enough
- now the new trend is i have to know not only how to drive a car like a professional formula F1 driver, i also have to be a mechanic and know how to fix the car if it breaks.

MATRIX IS A BIG FAT BULLSHIT AND A LIE.

I feel like they're looking for a senior developer knowledge to pay him junior developer salary

WTF IS THIS BULLSHIT?

I sacrificed 10 days of my life for their bullshit to build this project from scratch as a technical interview. They never said congrats on all the parts that were built right, but only complained about the small portion of bugs i didnt have time to fix.

ALL OF THIS FOR A SALARY OF $1500/MONTH THAT I ASKED. THATS LESS THAN 20,000$ A YEAR. THEY EITHER GAVE ME AN OPTION TO WORK FOR WAY LESS (500-600$/month) OR CALL THEM BACK IN A FEW MONTHS.

I JUST FINISHED COLLEGE AND THEY EXPECT ME TO HAVE 20 YEARS OF SENIOR DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE.

WTF IS THIS SLAVERY BULLSHIT?

HAVING A 500$/MONTH AS ENGINEERING SALARY WITH A DEGREE IS BELITTLING OF THIS JOB.

NO I DONT LIVE IN INDIA I LIVE IN SERBIA. MY DOG IS SICK AND IT COSTS 100$ A DAY JUST FOR HIS TREATMENT. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE WITH A SLAVE SALARY IN THIS ECONOMIC CRISIS.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

So I had this conversation yesterday while fixing yet another Windows laptop for someone else.

Other Guy = OG
Me = Me (Duh)

OG: So what are your plans after your apprenticeship?
Me: Uh, I'll probably start somewhere that's e-commerce related, kinda like my current company but somewhere else.
OG: Uh have you thought about being your own boss?
Me: Well yeah, but I wouldn't know how to attract customers and shit

-- This is the moment shit gets real
OG: OH BTW I heard that Germany is lacking AI developers, you should do that! It earns you shitloads of cash!
Me: Uhm.. well, that might be true b-
OG: There's no but dude, it's free money, you're smart.. I mean you can fix any computer, right? AI will be just as easy
Me: It's not like-
OG: Duh, don't make yourself look so bad I know you can do it!
Me: B..But I'm not interested in it at all
*silence for 5 seconds*
OG: Well.. I guess you do you then

After that we continued to have random chit-chat about his job and experience (He's a mechanic)

God I hate when people throw buzzwords around and try to convince other people to do what *they* want.
No, I don't want to develop a structure of 1000 ifs/elses, I'd rather keep doing what I'm doing, thanks!

I see a lot of people saying they are programmers and they can't fix other shit. But I mean, using that brain to do other things won't surely kill you. I know you don't have time, but it may be worth taking a while to focus on fixing something else. Just to know how to do it. I do a lot of electronics, but occasionally I've been a plumber, an electrician, a painter and a mechanic.

That said, I know, I'm 17 and I surely hadn't the full programmer experience yet, but I'll try to keep this attitude when I grow up.

I'd say a car mechanic, since I'm a petrolhead. But this also will be eventually replaced by robots and AI, so no job for me...

1. I like problem solving.

2. I like mucking about in systems that consist of many interrelated parts and learning how they interact. I like to imagine that I'd make a decent mechanic.

3. I'm fond of building stuff with abstractions and concepts. I'm not the brightest, but I'm drawn to intellectual and creative endeavors.

Mechanical engineering is just "drag and drop" with shapes

At the phone with the client, (some days before i sent him the release of the software he commissioned to me with 2 lines of instructions referred to the files name)
Him: I've got a problem installing the software can you help me?
I: Of course, what is the error message?
Him: some kind of error Driver SQL ODBC not found, i don't know...
I: Did you install the drivers?
Him: i'm a mechanic i don't....
I (interrupting him): The file is in the same folder as the exe, I mentioned that step in the mail:
Him: oh ok it's that i read the mail some days ago.

"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutio­nary strategist." - Buckminster Fuller

Scrap mechanic survival goes live 7 may! Excited? Yes!

What keyboards do you use?

Well atm i use a cheap mechanic keyboard which i got since my last one died. I can afford a new one and looking for options. I prefer tenkeyless keyboards. What do you use? Mechanic? Slim? Anyone uses mac keyboard with linux? Any suggestions would be very helpful.

what is life if not an eventual step towards sadness?

i have been working professionally in wfh setup since 2020 nd have seen my dad work as a businessman for 20 years , then a fulltime wfo job employee for 5 years. i have been a wfo*(hybrid) employee for last 2 months as this is my first wfo job.

everywhere i go, i am told that the "work-life during covid is a lie, a mere anomaly in otherwise horrific work lifestyles" .

let's consider 3 lifestyles.

1. a software engineer graduated in 2023 and starting his first fulltime office job.

- guy goes to office everyday, travels for 2 hours, changes between a metro , rickshaw nd physical walk, works 9 hours in office, again travels b/w different modes for 2 hours to reach back home, have his dinner, watches some videos nd goes to sleep.

- in office there is no one happy, everyone is either bitching about or buttering someone.

- later he moves naar to office in a rented flat and his travel time is replaced by daily chores, like washjng clothes , cleaning home, stockings supllies and cooking etc.

- life goes on. he eventually starts making some assets (home appliances, car, home etc) and starts saving money. he also gets into relationship , then marriage happens, then kids come. the office days are full of office for all nd weekdays remain source of fun and entertainment for all. kids grow, move out and do the same thing over. death

>> souce of sadness :a monotonous life with no time for happiness in everyday life. he even meets more sad people everyday who are again just bitching, cribbing and lamenting

------

2. a small scale car mechanic with 2 labour.

- almost same life, just a bit more pressure, as he not only has to make sure that his employees are giving him enough output for their income, he also has to ensure that the business keeps running and generating revenues.

for him, their are no time shifts , he needs to ensure the shop door opens at 9am and closes at 9pm for business, while ensuring all the stocks remain available , revenue and sales are documented and business dealings are done. fuck the family fuck the food, fuck the home, he would sleep in his shop if needed and his future family would be just their to unfuck/provide these ignored essentials.

>>> source of happiness : no time/people to emjoy life

----

3. a social media influenza/motivational speaker : these guy hates himself from day 1 . they know they are just a fluke and even though they say they are "not working", they are pulling all the legs to keep their revenue source running : sending posts on trendy things asap, cold mailing, begging for sponserships, publishing content asap.. not sure if a single person exosts who has been a happy social media influenza for last 30 years.

>>> source of sadness : unsatisfactory work, delusional life

---

so what the fuck is wrong with life. i have a board that says "make dotenvironment @64 proud" . i am 24 and following the path of guy 1 in above post. i can prob make myself a proud man by 64 but how can i make myself a "man who lived a happy life" by 64?

This moment, you know ur movement mechanic in Unity works just as u want it to be. But its so damn hacky, u are afraid of refactoring, because u know.. u would break it...

Choose tools that fit the task, don't force your task to fit the tools. Don't be afraid to leave your comfort zone, because for a good mechanic every screwdriver is useful.

Scrap Mechanic survival mode - way above my expectations. Anyone feel like playing? Seems like it would be fun with a large group of people.

An OS, an IDE are just a tool to get the job done. Switching to a new brand does not make you elite.

I used to be a mechanic and some guys were driven to use airtools because it made them feel powerful other guys use hand tools. Just personal preference at the end of the day same job still gets done.

The build broke right before code review with the Lead. It didn't just break in one place, oh no, that would be too simple. It broke everywhere, right down to the core mechanic. I spent the next 3 hours trying to find out why it broke, checking everything involved in this part of the system. It was a freaking Initialization call placed inside a conditional statement instead of outside.