Hey everyone! As many of you have already seen, @trogus and I are happy to announce the release of devRant++, also know as the devRant supporter program!

devRant++ is a monthly subscription ($1.99 USD) that gives you some cool extra features while also contributing to covering some of our ever-increasing server costs.

Subscribers get:
- a badge that shows up on all of their rants and comments
- ability to edit rants and comments for up to 30 minutes (instead of the usual 5)
- ability to post unlimited collabs for free (so keep an eye out for new collabs, hopefully!)
- a reserved spot on the devRant++ supporter list (you can only move up higher or stay in the same position through the life of your subscription)
- more benefits coming soon!

Why did devRant++ come to be? Basically, we have the most awesome community members and we kept getting extremely generous requests from members asking how they could help devRant stay afloat. Instead of taking donations and not giving anything directly in return, we wanted to give supporters a little extra something to hopefully make the program kind of special.

We greatly appreciate everyone who has joined the supporter program so far. We also realize not everyone has the money to spend or wants to spend, and that's perfectly fine. We also greatly appreciate everyone here who posts great rants and comments, helps spread the word about devRant, votes on stuff, or is just a valuable member of the community in general. @trogus and I value all contributions and we want to make that clear!

Another reason we decided to go ahead with the program is, as I mentioned towards the beginning, our server/technology costs are increasing and we're kind of at a point where we can't afford all of the upgrades we'd like to make. At the same time while we need more hardware, we're trying to get the app to a place where we're not losing money every month, hopefully to the point where we can break even soon.

Anyway, thank you to everyone again for the amazing support and early interest in devRant++. We would love to hear feedback and stuff you would like to see added to supporter benefits, so just let us know!

I love listening to music and reading on the train every morning. On my way to the station, I get a text, "DUDE. ***** committed suicide."

He was a good friends of ours from high school. I remember once he got a few of us to go caving on homecoming since none of us had dates. He'd never finish a candy bar; would give half of everything away. He once drove out to California to try to start over; lasted three days and came home, but through a girl he met he was in Hawaii for a year.

He lived a lot of life, and he had a heart of gold.

I didn't get out my ebook on my phone. I didn't even put my headphones in.

I had lost another close friend from University while I was overseas. I remember being in the city art gallery when I got the news. I walked right out to the harbor, fell to my knees and cried. I always thought one day I'd be home and could shoot the shit with my old roommate. Now he was gone, and the only thing I had from him was a text from 10 days before saying, "I haven't been doing too well, but thanks for asking."

I'm back in another software engineering job, on the train to an 8-to-5, shakin it for the money. I couldn't read on the commute. I just looked out that window as the train car descended into the subway, and thought to myself, "What am I even doing anyway?"

I'm in my mid-30s; too young to be losing people like this.

I'm sorry man. I wish we had caught up sooner. I wish you weren't gone, but I know you're at peace.

Confessions of a Programmer

#1
If a client is an unbearable asshole during the initial communication, I look for every excuse to pad on the hours for the estimate to get paid more. If a client goes above and beyond in their douchbaggery, I tack on an additional $40/hour.

#2
Sometimes I will present an elaborate solution to a client, but really I'm just reading off the features of a plugin or library I'm going to download or buy after the call. Not because I can't build it myself, but because I'd rather spend more time on other/my own projects.

#3
Clients assume because I know one language, I know them all. Rather than turning down the work, I take a crash course to work in that language, or outsource the work and clean it up afterwards, whichever is more practical at the time.

#4
I use cPanel on a dedicated to manage our client websites. I'm not paid enough to bother with setting up everything manually.

#5
Certain projects I build have a 3-day backdoor built into it. If the client doesn't pay upon completion, a unique hash triggered as a GET variable deletes a core file in my work, rendering the work useless. If it wasn't triggered by the 4th day, the file allowing me to trigger this backdoor is removed. This is only used for clients where the project must be launched on their servers, or if there has been a previous issue collecting payment.

#6
I slip in the initial contract that all preceeding phone calls will be monitored and recorded, and that they acknowledge the recordings are admissable in court. This has saved me from losing money twice now.

#7
I have never used an IDE. (I know, I know, it's really inefficient and dumb, but I'm just more comfortable with Sublime. Plus I often find myself mobile and without my computer, so I have to program from my phone.)

#8
Each day resembles a betting spectacle of which work will be late, which will be rushed out and which will never see the light of day.

#9
I have used "sick" and "family emergency" as an excuse to just sleep in far more than I can count.

#10
When a client from hell crosses over the line in their conduct (such as getting very nasty and personal, or sending threats), I anonymously report them to the BBB and on RipOffReport.

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.

I turned 40 yesterday. Here are some lessons I've learned, without fluff or BS.

1) Stop waiting for exceptional things to just happen. They rarely do, and they can't be counted on. Greatness is cultivated; it's a gradual process and it won't come without effort.

2) Jealousy is a monster that destroys everything in it's path. It's absolutely useless, except to remind us there's a better way. We can't always control how we feel, but we can choose how we react to those feelings.

When I was younger, jealousy in relationships always led to shit turning out worse than it probably would have otherwise. Even when it was justified, even when a relationship was over, jealousy led me to burn bridges that I wished I hadn't.

3) College isn't for everyone, but you'll rarely be put square in the middle of so much potential experience. You'll meet people you probably wouldn't have otherwise, and as you eventually pursue your major, you'll get to know people who share your passions and dreams. Despite all the bullshit ways in which college sucks, it's still a pretty unique path on the way to adulthood. But on that note...

4) Learn to manage your money. It's way too easy to get into unsustainable debt. It only gets worse, and it makes everything harder. We don't always see the consequence of credit cards and loans when we're young, because the future seems so distant and undecided. But that debt isn't going anywhere... Try not to borrow money that you can't imagine yourself paying back now.

5) Floss every day, not just a couple times per week when you remember, or when you've got something stuck in your teeth. It matters, even if you're in your 20s and you've never had a cavity.

6) You'll always hear about living in the moment, seizing the day... It's tough to actually do. But there's something to be said for looking inward, and trying to recognize when too much of our attention is focused elsewhere. Constantly serving the future won't always pay off, at least not in the ways we think it will when we're young.

This sentiment doesn't have much value when it's put in abstract, existential terms, like it usually is. The best you can do is try to be aware of your own willingness and ability to be open to experiences. Think about ways in which you might be rejecting the here and now, even if it's as seemingly-benign as not going out with some friends because you just saw them, or you already went to that place they're going to. We won't recognize the good old days for what they were until they're already gone. The trick is having as many good days as possible.

7) Don't start smoking; you'll never quit as soon as you'll think you can. If you do start, make yourself quit after a couple years, no matter what. Keep your vices in check; drugs and alcohol in moderation. Use condoms, use birth control.

8) Don't make love wait. Tell your friends and family you love them often, and show them when you can. You're going to lose people, so it's important. Statistically, some of you will die young, yourselves.

When it comes to relationships, don't settle if you can't tell yourself you're in love, and totally believe it. Don't let complacency and familiarity get in the way of pursuing love. Don't be afraid to end relationships because they're comfortable, or because you've already invested so much into them.

Being young is a gift, and it won't last forever. You need to use that gift to experience all the love that you can, at least as a means to finding the person you really want to grow old with, if that's what you want. Regardless, you don't want to miss out on loving someone, and being loved, because of fear. Don't be reckless; just be honest with yourself.

9) Take care of your body. Neglecting it makes everything tougher. That doesn't mean you have to work out every day and eat like a nutritionist, but if you're overweight or you have health issues, do what you can to fix it. Losing weight isn't easy, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be. And it's one of the most important things you can do to invest in a healthy adulthood.

Don't put off nagging health issues because you think you'll be fine, or you don't think you'll be able to afford it, or you're scared of the outcome. There will always be options, until there aren't. Most people never get to the no-options part. Or, they get there because all the other options expired.

10) Few things will haunt you like regret. Making the wrong choice, for example, usually won't hurt as much. I guess you can regret making the wrong choice, but my deepest regrets come from inaction, complacency and indifference.

So how can we avoid regret? I don't know, lol. I don't think it's as simple as just commiting to choices... Choosing to do nothing is still a choice, after all. I think it's more about listening to your gut, as cliche as that sounds.

To thine own self be true, I guess. It's worth a shot, even if you fail. Almost anything is better than regret.

Went to a shop to buy bubble plastic envelopes (gotta send something carefully).

Walked out with a new Bluetooth music headset, couple of charging cables, Ethernet cable and a music input splitter and also those envelopes.

Why am I like this 😓

I hate how willing companies are to let someone go over money.

I’ll use a real life example with someone I knew. This person joined a company at the entry-level developer and worked up to a senior level. His pay rises were around 3% per year with around a 5–7% promotion raise (there were two of these).

At this point, 4–5 years after joining, he was making far under what a senior developer salary was in his area. Eventually, he interviewed on the team of a friend at another company and was offered a 40% increase. Four-Zero. CRAZY.

What the company did is baffling to me.

His boss said they may be willing to increase 5%, but there was no way they could even match what the other company offered, let alone beat it. The benefits were better at the new company, but he would’ve stayed with the original for a salary match.

So he left…

But what did the original company do? Hired a new senior level developer for the same dollar amount the dev was offered at the new one, then lost about 6 months ramping up that developer due to a super complex code base, and the new developer turned out to be much less capable than the one they just let go.

So wtf? It’s flat out stupid on the company’s part. Some sort of effed up pride or something.

They’d rather let someone walk out the door, knowing it’ll cost just as much to replace them, plus losing literally tens of thousands of dollars on ramp up time, and they gamble on getting a capable developer instead of a known, proven, loyal developer.

Thankfully, the younger tech companies understand this, and many pay people appropriate to level and talent, regardless of what they were making before they advanced to that level.

My boss is still forcing us to support IE11. Recently, we started having even more bugs with one of our vendors on IE. We filed bug reports with the vendor to fix it, and they came back with "no. Why would we fix anything for IE11? Not even Microsoft is fixing anything for IE11." Boss's answer: well, let's make a separate component for IE11. Probably using flash and/or silverlight. We asked about redirecting IE traffic to Edge, he said that's "the nuclear option." So, doing the thing that Microsoft suggests, that involves not much work at all is "the nuclear option"; ignoring industry standards and recommendations, introducing well known security vulnerabilities, losing money, and trying to circumvent the vendor that serves out our major product, however, is totally reasonable. Our IE traffic is less than 3% of our users at this point.

So, as the lead UX/UI designer, I was working with the marketing officer on the new e-mail template of the company. It took us at least one week to get a good settle – 'cause, you know, she's so skilled on that – doing back and forth and arguing on every detail.

Then she sent me a PPT file with the content and wording for each kind of e-mail.
After 3 days of work, I finished implementing the template and pushed the project in production.

~3 months later
MO: How's your work going on the template?
Me: Erm, sorry? You mean, the e-mails?
MO: Yes! Can you show me the result?
Me: Well, the result is online for...like...3 months?
*Surprised* MO: Hum, yeah? But I didn't validate it!
*Wince* Me: Well, yes, you did, we worked together on it and we finally found a nice settle.
MO: Yes, but the content? Can you send me one of each kind so I can double-check?
Me: ...
*to the rescue* CEO (and husband of MO): It's OK, I've already validate them.
MO: Oh, ok. But I want to double-check. I'll do it later, ok.

~3 weeks later
MO: Can you tell me how I can receive the registration e-mail?
Me: ...
*to the rescue, joking* CTO: Well, did you try to turn your computer off and on again?
MO: Oh, you really think this will work? Let me save my work first!
Me: *BOOOOM*

TL;DR: The marketing officer of my company does nothing productive and is making the company losing a lot of money, but she also make me lose my time for bullshits.
At least I can laugh about it on devRant.

And then there was this big review...

DEVs:" this bug is hazardous and needs to be fixed quickly! It could crash a productive system completely!"
CTO and DEV teamlead:" shut up! This big exists more than two years! No customer will ever klick this button!"

--exactly twelve hours later--
Customer:"so we clicked on this button and our system crashed! Can you help us quickly? We are losing money!!!"
CTO in the meeting:"who programmed this shit? Are you insane?"
Teamlead:"you are useless !!"

The last 5 months have been tough.... My boss ( who was a close friend) quit and I become interim department head... Trying to run a team who didn't seem happy I'd taken the reigns.

At the same time my wife's ongoing battle with her anxiety had gotten worse and she really needed my help with everything possible at home..

In March I was confirmed as the HoD but I was still doing 3 to 4 days a week on client delivery, trying to support all presales activities, manage a team of 10 people, travel for work and support my family....😩

It really got to me and I was close to breaking... The worry of not replying to an email ASAP no matter what time of day would eat me up, working late every night... It got too much and I was running on fumes with my weekends just me completely wiped out and useless to the family. 😓

.....But.....

I had a escape last weekend to a 🍻 beer 🍻 festival with friends that I was considering not going too and just losing the money but the wife made me go...

And it broke me even more... So much that its somehow put the pieces back in the right order in my brain and snapped me out of my major rut!

Somehow, sitting with friends, making stupid jokes, drinking way too much and blocking out all the work crap gave my brain the hard reset it needed. 🤟

This week I've come back a different person ( wife's words) work is a breeze, exciting and encouraging.... 👊

I can't get enough of playing silly games with my kids all night

And couldn't feel any more positive about things if I tried.... Set that spark back for my wife too! 😏💏

So.... After that long rant 👀

Tl;Dr - work and life got too much... Close to giving up... Too much beer with good company gave me a hard reset and I feel like a new person.... 👍

Plus the team is now loving the new direction and strategy too 👔

Who says drinking is bad for you? 😂🍻

So I made an android app for a client. It's a newspaper type of app for the clients webpage, as he has a lot of traffic on it and about 50-51% is from mobile. Which is all good an everything.

And so I've been working on it for a while now as it wasn't a primary focus, more of a like side project.

I was able to make full working build (publish ready) and sent it to the client for a review.

After about an hour I received an email saying that the app is requesting too many permissions from the user. So I started looking trough my manifest file and all of the 3rd party libs to see what were those permissions.

Well, when I finally installed the app on a physical device and looked trough the permissions in the settings all I found were permissions for the internet and prevent the phone from sleeping.

After asking the client to tell me in detail which permissions raised concerns he told me it were those 2 and if they could be removed.

So I just wasted an hour of my life trying to explain why the app that is losing content from the internet needs internet permissions.

Fml and ignorant people who think they know everything and won't accept anything else.

And all of this because he read on some click bait website how a "real" app doesn't need any permissions and every other is just trying to steal all of your data and money.

What kind of person doesn’t install Windows 10 for a free pre-installation of Candy Crush Soda Saga thrown into the mix? I really enjoy it when my Operating System comes preloaded with bullshit. It’s almost as if I’m losing rights to choose what I want installed on my operating system. It’s really enjoyable when Candy Crush Soda Saga appears in the background in task manager despite never opening this “””game”””. I find it amazing that after building such a powerful computer I can know that my fast 16gb ram is being used to keep bloatware running in the background. Every night I dream of the people who buy new computers with a fresh copy of Windows 10 pre-installed on it to find it has a copy of Candy Crush Soda Saga already waiting to be played! The joy and tears that must come to such a persons eye to know that Bill Gates was kind enough to bless the world with every middle-aged persons favourite game, Candy Crush Soda Saga, to be the first app that appears on their start menu. The thoughts running through every developers mind at Microsoft as they pre-load a copy of Candy Crush Soda Saga onto every copy of Windows 10. They must really feel alive and definitely would not consider doing anything else for a living but copying the files of Candy Crush Soda Saga across onto Official Windows 10 Installations. The rush of blood into their mind as they know that thousands, if not millions, of users from around the world open their brand new computer for the first time to see that King managed to bribe Microsoft with more money that you’ll ever get your hands onto into making them add a free copy of Candy Crush Soda Saga onto their computer. As thousands of those users move their mouse over this work of art, right click it and press uninstall without a second of doubt in their mind, rendering Kings investment to be a waste of time, money and effort. This is a story we will tell for generations and generations in the future of how the worlds most popular Operating System was not preloaded with a free copy of McAfee, but instead a copy of Candy Crush Soda Saga for the entire world to rejoice. Good day to you all.

Lately I have been overthinking a lot. I am stressing myself out on every single decision believing that decisions I make today will define my tomorrow.

In hindsight, all the major and positive impact that have happened in my life were the decisions I took on the fly without much underlying research. The executional part did have me struggle a little but almost all of the best things happened to me were unplanned.

Funnily this has been my philosophy since years but guess what, I failed to follow it this time.

My overthinking and over planning caused me to mess up a little leading to a lot of unwanted anxieties.

Now let's reflect a little on the past, when my first relationship ended.. wait.. even earlier..

When I was in 5th standard, I was crazy bullied at school but I was happy go lucky and things turned out in my favour throughout till date.

I used to do what I loved and enjoyed. I literally never worried or thought about future. Not even once, things just fell in place for me miraculously.

When my first relationship ended, I was shattered. The darkest time of my life and me being all alone, I came out strong.

I used to live happy. I used to do stuff that I loved. I used to not care about what people thought. No socials for me. I used to follow random dark or counter culture stuff and be a little rebel that I am.

I remember, she and I used to go for fuck tons of events, hangout at waterfront of the city, spend time together and just be ourselves.

I never used to compete, compare, or conflict with anyone.

devRant was (and still is) a digital home for me. Wonderful phase of life.

Then shit went south. I joined Reddit. A girl told me about a pen pal app. Met another girl there.

Joined Telegram again to be in touch with her. She wasn't interested but I stayed on Telegram.

I could pick up any girl in minutes and do so effortlessly.

Slowly the twin extrovert in me came out. I started building and maintaining insanely awesome network.

Started spending more time on Reddit and Telegram.

Joined a bunch of professional communities. Career sky rocketd.

I was still happy and living a gala life at this stage.

Slowly, I realised I was underpaid (via professional communities). That unsettled me.

I frantically started hunting for jobs. 2020 and COVID-19 hit. Being indoors sucked more.

Became more aggressive on job hunt, money, building skills, work work work...

Met a hoe who fucked my emotions and ethics even further.

Got a high paying job. WLB went negative.

I started losing myself. I forgot my hobbies. I don't know what happiness is. I don't remember when I last smiled. I started planning my finances. Overthinking and stressing about shit troubled me into sleepless nights followed by early morning calls made things worse to my health.

I lost the clarity of my life. I FUCKING LOST ME.

I want myself back and I am gonna work for it. That happy little rebel Floyd who never gave a fuck about other's opinion on him or his beliefs. That dude who was shy to talk to girls. The guy who'd follow his passion and not society of high paying jobs or shit.

I almost got my finances and taxation sorted. Now I'll work to get my office timings in place. If not then I'll switch and find a job in UK/EU with a good WLB. And at the same time I'll pursue my hobbies.

Enough of rat race shit. Money has always been an outcome of my hard work and high work ethics. I want to live a life and I am willing to trade of extremely high paying/stressful FAANG jobs for a small company keeping me happy.

I'll be the happy Floyd that I was once was.

Because, the heart wants what the heart wants :)

I consider just strangling somebody because iOS14 fucked all legacy Google Cardboard SDK apps overnight.

8 months already, still can't get all my old apps to work, for a thousand reasons.

If I didn't know better, I'd sue somebody. But it's apple, and I'm not Epic, so fuck me.

"Ohh dude why dontya just rewrite your apps to support Unity XR? hurr durr easy peasy lol so cheesy"
I'm tryin, but it's so underdeveloped and featureless, that I need to rewrite and create everything, and in some cases I can't because old apps had many dependencies. I am porting all my prefabs for hundreds of unpaid hours over the last 3 quarters already, and keep getting stuck.

Today I just extended an 8th deadline set by my clients. Each of those are exponentially more explosive and demotivating. It's not just the question of losing money for them - some of their careers depend on these apps I had made. (Long story, but it's exactly like that)

WHAT HAPPENED TO MAINTAINING LEGACY SUPPORT?!?! Nobody asked anyone to deprecate perfectly well working gyro/accel api on all <5 year old iPhones overnight TIM.

A morbid realization (I am just wasting your time keep scrolling)

Unless someone takes a stand for the user, and their comfort and requirements, unless someone looks a client straight in the eye and says "no, I will not do that, and neither will my team" and denies them their request, nothing will change, good devs will keep losing their spark to save themselves frustration, good people will walk away and the tyranny that we face daily grows... unless someone stands up, someone who cannot be knocked down, or reprimanded and told they're wrong for fighting for what's right.. unless someone stands up for what is right and fair... nothing changes... and nothing ever will... poor programs, bad games and content, lower standards, frustrated users, annoyance that you don't matter as a user or a dev will never go away... unless someone says enough. But no one will, money is the boss, morality a liability, and people an abundant resource. This world is backwards, devs are carrying the blame and no one who is able, cares enough to say "that's enough!".

Ok so to recap, we had shit beginning. We couldn't find client like 3 months and thank god that we agreed that we don't register the firm right away. If we did we would be broke a long time ago.

We found first client and he wanted to build some scrapers with gui. So me being BackEnd developer I created API for scraping (boredom) and my friend created website for that api and I just created gui that displays that site. The project was about 1200$. And since there are 3 of us we splited it into 3x400$.

After that it was again really hard to find clients again. We thought of quitting and just going to uni or something but we really didn't want to and anyways we needed to get money for uni ourselfs if we wanted to go.

So we said that as we are not paying anything and not losing money we will continue as long as we can.

And after we managed to get a hold of it and now we have 2 clients and after we finish them we have 2 more.

So I think the most important thing is that you help your coworkers. My friend who finds clients had a rough time at the beggining as I mentioned. So all 3 of us got together and started spamming people for few weeks. That's how we found our first client.

So now we are running. Not a milion dollar company but we are happy that we are doing what we love and that we have money doing it. We aim higher but we don't want to hurry and screw things up as we are young still.

Also thank you for getting interested after 300 days :)

Just had a company meeting. Basicly the company blamed all devs that they are losing money. Is it normal? It's my first workplace so I simply don't know. It felt bad, they low key threatened to firing lowest performing people. And said they will look at everyone's performance individually and eveluate if they are earning money from each person.

Idea: social media, hard mode

- Likes are a currency
- You get one like per day to spend on whatever post you feel is worthy
- After 30 seconds, you are unable to unlike the post
- The poster gets the like, which they can spend
- You can only post once per day
- Each additional post costs a like
- You can only comment once per day
- Each additional comment costs a like
- Sure, why not, sell likes for money. Fuck. Dev's gotta eat.

PROS:

- Less time-consuming by design. Interact without losing yourself in social media.
- Learn financial management
- Encourages only good content
- More difficult to get an inflated ego from

CONS:

- You'll probably get 0 likes on most of your posts, loser
- Limits discussion, as comments are limited

I hate silicon valley.

They enable so much of the state's and federal government's bullshit, the corporations and the banks subversion and destruction of society.

It's time to pop their fucking tech bubble.

From here on out, any time you hear or read the words 'startup', be sure to comment with "you mean speculative marketing investments?"

Because most tech runs on shit-tier semi-polished iterations of glorified CRUD anyway, thats all most of it is. And it 100% relies on grabbing network share through massive advertising and presence campaigns. A lot of vc money is being flushed straight down the toilet and this is a point to emphasize. Crash the fucking tech sector. Do it.

It'll have a knock on effect to the advertising space, which will put the hurt on google's bottom line when they and their ilk are already under pressure for all the poisonous, monopolist shit they pull like helping china build their surveillance tech.

Extra points for emphasizing "pot-fueled ideas sketched out on napkins while sitting in fucking chipotle, in unwashed sweater vests, originated by guys who are fresh out of college and never ran a business in their life. 90% of them fail in the first year. VCs and investor are losing their shirts." etc.

The entire dishonest fucking trade relies on other people's money, being bought out in either techno land-grabs or turf-protection e.x. atlassian acquiring trello, a **glorified todo app**.

Thats the business model. Hell go build your own and make a buck.

Build your own. Build something better and most of all... *fuck silicon valley*.

Let it burn, let burn, let it burn.

It is exactly 4 in the morning and instead of sleeping i am crying so hard because the regret of going to college is eating me alive..... I feel like such a wasted fucking potential, a failure who can't provide money for my family in need because i focus studying shit i will never use for over 4 fucking years....... I can not fucking describe how much i regret going to college, i can safely say i would rather go and fucking die than go to fucking college........ Can't even sleep from this fucking bullshit i feel i am wasting my fucking life and losing my fucking mind on this.............

A random story that just popped back into my head while reading another rant:

Long ago, we developed our own webmail platform at the request of clients. After it was finished, it was never updated and eventually turned into an outdated insecure steaming pile of crap. Up until ~2015, it looked like the first iteration of AOL Mail from the 1990s (and it functioned as such too.) Years, we decided to sunset the platform, and allotted 6-months or so to transition all the active users off the platform and over to an alternative email provider. We had to call each client multiple times and send multiple emails with a deadline detailing when the service would be shut down, and we'd explain that if they didn't transition over to a new service and transfer all their emails before that date, then the emails would be lost forever. Lo and behold, a handful of clients ignored our repeated contact attempts, and we shut down their email service (as we told them that we would.) Of course, they called screaming and panicking "OUR EMAIL IS DOWN OUR EMAIL IS DOWN WE'RE LOSING MONEY FIX IT NOW!!!!," and we told them "We attempted to contact you multiple times, and you neglected to return our numerous calls or emails. We're happy to help you transition your old email addresses to this new provider, but because you neglected to follow the cushy deadline we provided you, all of your emails are gone."

Of course, they denied having ever received our calls/emails, and we'd have to provide them with our outgoing call recordings to prove that we did in fact contact them multiple times. Then they'd blame the mishap on their secretary, who would blame it on the intern, who would blame it on the IT guy, who would blame it on the janitor, and so on and so forth.

Moral of the story: always keep outgoing call recordings when you're sunsetting a product.

For two projects, I have been in a solo work pattern, been a time bottleneck, and been irreplaceable on the projects. Four months ago I told management, "If anything happens to me these projects will be in trouble. I want to train a backup. I can't sustain this momentum. It isn't good for me, or for the success of these projects."

Four months later I still have no backup. They decided to diversity hire some new developers in the wrong area and now there is no money for a backup for me. I can't do all the work on both projects as a solo developer. I could have if I wasn't pushed into doing trial and error development on a poorly defined MS Dynamics API. Since the projects were behind schedule the customers lost confidence in the company to deliver. So the executives railroaded both project managers to save face.

Instead of addressing the development issues they did a bunch of other silly things. I got a job offer lined up and issued my resignation. That news absolutely exploded. After resigning my executive decided to say how awful I am in front of the customer in an attempt to save face for the company. The customer contacted the recently railroaded project manager and asks why. Former project manager tells customer, "You noticed how much faster the development of that part of the application went when he joined. You noticed how much better the quality of the project was. What do you think is happening? Do you think that a very good developer and an experienced project manager are to blame for the failures here?" So the executive is 13/10 pissed off because I may have accidentally struck a death blow for millions of dollars of business. I committed to taking care of the handover to the customer, and the company can't afford to get rid of me without completely losing confidence of the customer. The developers that I work with don't blame me at all and they are disgruntled that executive tried to character assassinate me and realize that it could have been them. I sense that I also may have initiated a developer mass-exodus. So the last few days have been the most stressful of my career but none of it is sticking to me because I followed all of the correct process.

You play stupid games you win stupid prizes.

The global joke of Information Security

So I broke my iPhone because the nuclear adhesive turned my display into a shopping bag.

This started the ride for my character arc in this boring dystopia novel:

Amazon is preventing me from accessing my account because they want my password, email AND mobile phone number in their TWO.STEP Verifivation.
Just because one too many scammers managed to woo one too many 90+y/o's into bailing their long lost WW2 comrades from a nigerian jail with Amazon gift cards and Amazon doesn't know what to do about anymore,

DHL is keeping my new phone in a "highly secure" vault 200m away from my place, waiting for a letter to register some device with a camera because you need to verify your identity with an app,

all the while my former car insurance is making regress claims of about 7k€ against me for a minor car accident (no-one hurt fortunately, but was my fault).

Every rep from each of the above had the same stupid bitchass scapegoat to create high-tech supra chargers to the account deletion request:

- Amazon: We need to verify your password, whether the email was yours and whether the phone number is yours.

They call it 2-step-verification.

Guess what Amazon requests to verify you before contacting customer support since you dont have access to your number? Your passwoooooord. While youre at it, click on that button we sent you will ya? ...

I call this design pattern the "dement Tupi-Guarani"

- DHL: We need an ID to verify your identity for the request for changing the delivery address you just made. Oh you wanted to give us ANOTHER address than the one written on your ID? Too bad bro, we can't help, GDPR

- Car Insurance: We are making regress claims against you, which might throw you back to mom's basement, oh and also we compensated the injured party for something else, it doesn't matter what it is but it's definitely something, so our claims against you just raised by 1.2k. Wait you want proof we compensated something to the injured at all? Nah mate we cant do that , GDPR. But trust me, those numbers are legit, my quant forecasted the cost of childrens' christmas wishes. You have 14 days or we'll see you in court haha

I am also their customer in a pension scheme. Something special to Germany, where you save some taxes but have to pay them back once you get the fund paid out. I have sent them a letter to terminate the contract.

Funniest thing is, the whole rant is my second take. Because when I hit the post button, devrant made me verify my e-mail. The text was gone afterwards. If someone from devRant reads this, you are free to quote this in the ticket description.

Fuck losing your virginity, or filing your first tax return, or by God get your first car, living through this sad Truman dystopia without going batshit insane is what becoming a true adult is.

I am grateful for all this though:

Amazon's safety measures prevented me from spending the money I can use to conclude the insurance odyssey, and DHLs "giving a fuck about customers" prevention policies made me support local businesses. And having ranted all this here does feel healthy too. So there's that.

Oh, cherry on top. I cant check my balance, because I can only verify my login requests to my banking account wiiiiiiith...?

Hopefully, you already know that the company controlled by the alledged reptiloid subhuman and olimpic testicle juggler formerly known as Mister Zuck My Tits is not to be trusted.

But as is always the case in this bitch, I've been forced into cowjizz flooded swamps' worth of stinking shit platforms for the sake of avoiding isolation.

And so, I've just found yet another way in which Facebook **THUNDERSTRIKE** ... the company, not the geriatric ward, is one of the CROWN ACHIEVEMENTS of human civilization.

Let me tell you something: some people are fucking broke. Hell, some people sleep on the streets, live on scraps, and willingly engage in acts of public defecation when provoked. But I'm not even talking about them no, just plain *broke*.

And so imagine being that guy who doesn't really use his phone much, except maybe for sharing cat pictures with mom because that's what being an absolute chad is all about. You don't get a new phone, because money is a __little__ bit tight. But THEN...

The dreaded CAPITAL strikes, and requests of you to bend and fall onto your knees so as to provide intense, intimate and manual -- as well as oral -- PLEASURE to the [NOT SO] METAPHORICAL PENIS of the """SYSTEM""".

Oh, what an abominable, drooooooling revenant that lies before you!

"Gimme your ass... " he says, menacingly, as you wail about in a futile attempt to guard and preserve the very last vestiges of your own anal virginity.

And so you fight, and kick him in the NADS with everything you have, down to the final shreds of vigor. Victory! Or so you thought...

"You must... " he mutters, mortally wounded "update WhatsApp... "

"Still you breathe?!" you exclaim, suddenly transformed into a heroic, sexy moustachoed arquebusier "After I'm done ~OILING~ my VICTORIOUS CHEST, I *shall* bestow DEATH uppon you!".

But as you rip open your shirt to apply sensual oiling to your marvellous frontal assets, your nemesis reveals it's portentous Portugal: "this new version of Android... " he gasps as he perishes "is incompatible with your device... "

"Ughh! Sacrebleu!" you shriek out in pain, realizing that you are now unable to ACCESS THE FUCKING DATA THAT IS IN YOUR OWN FUCKING HARDWARE BECAUSE OF A STUPID FORCED BINARY INCOMPATIBILITY.

That's right. Now even if I *do* get a new phone, I can't do shit about losing all of the family memes. And contacts and all of that shit, but the stickers are more important. A minor inconvenience, yes, and it didn't need all of this preamble but I was doing the dramatic fight scene bit inside my head as I was writing and I got into it.

Because the only documented way to transfer all of that data is to OPEN THE APPLICATION and scan some code, but everytime I go to do that, IT TELLS ME I NEED TO UPDATE. And every time I GO TO UPDATE, it says that MY PHONE is TOO FUCKING OLD!! AAAAAAAGHGHGHGHGHGHGHG!!!!

And you too, might be a dashing french man from centuries past, with both balls and tits down to your fucking knees, folding your arms in a position that exhumes smugness in a disgustingly irreverent and self-aggrandizing way, looking at me as a mere plebeian who cannot wrap his head around the mystical art of interacting with Google's black deuce box.

And you would be somewhat right in your judgement! But just having to fiddle about with these fucking pocket Elmo screens is such a traumatic experience for me that I'd rather lose my stickers.

[ADBREAK] Are you a debonair victorian undercover butt pirate, taking unparalleled care of your Falstaffian, highfalutin poils pubiens? Need your "sword" sharpened, as you browse through the pages of this magnanimous lexicon? Would you rather allocate final death to your coworkers than learn one more synonym for sonorous, supercilious and pontifical?

We all know that ALL you need to help keep that honor intact is slaying your enemies in high-stakes combat. But how to satisfy less gallant needs, when male prostitution is outlawed in more than sixteen duchies?

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Get your bottle of scents, sensual Portuguese chest oils, and fucking designer-drug bath salts for the low, low price of a passionate, unceassing self-blowjob! And use my code FRONTALASSETS for 60% OFF in your next soul-robbing foray into the felational dark arts!

Big ups to BloodCurse for sponsoring this RRRRRRRR~$RRR$$RR%5RRRRR$0000:>A48CC50A E3A1B22A : 330D4750 7C24E5A5|.......*3.GP|$.. 5262E7D5 0D1C24E6 : 85594B39 1CB7593E|Rb......YK9..Y>

:~

I hate my brain.
Got a compliment, my brain automatically rejected it and judged it.
Then it started to judge the judgement. Then the judge^3.
Then go all the way to the recursion.

For the last few days my brain is making me lose focus on everything because of this.
And the most fucked up thing is, I am paranoid of my own brain, so I really judged my memories and shit. I think I am losing my mind, my uni doesn't have consulting for students either nor I have money.

Any advices from ppl who went to a psychologists will be appreciated. A lot.

Needed money for my company, not enough clients to support business on SaaS alone. Took on a 5k / month job building a platform that competes with my SaaS (more niche, less generic). Also sign up new client who that company's owner is part owner onto my current SaaS. Win / Win?

I do a lot of custom work to my platform to fulfill their needs, which is why I ran out of time for the 5k / mo project. I did these customization for free. Losing money to keep client, but also improving my system.

Work gets busy, I need to drop the 5k project. Client is upset I am working more on his other company (he is not majority owner). I return 1 month of funds to the owner and say I cannot continue.

Owner threatens to make other company that he is part owner stop working with my software if I do not complete project. Blacklisting...great. I agree to work with an overseas developer to do it and PM it for 3 months at least. Making nearly nothing from it (now 1k / month for PM), working nights to deal with India, losing sleep...

Other company suddenly folds due to conflict of egos with that SAME owner. Users drop from 16 to 1. I drop the project, no more strong arming me. Everything is a loss, all effort and money lost for nothing. Bad bet..however...

Owner becomes 100% owner of the other company, and of the software company. I transition him to PM his own project, he still uses my software because It doesn't, nor will it, ever do what the one he is building does. Also, partners from previous company break off and use my software again. New Client. #profit.

But holy hell was it stressful in the interim. People's business tactics are disgusting. Stay calm, play it neutral. Win. Sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do in order to succeed...at least for a little bit.

I was so scared that how he screwed his partners he would screw me over as well if I built one of the modules I have planned for my System, but haven't done yet.

If I did it for him first and then built my own (totally diff codebase) I really didn't want to run into any legal issues considering the schematics he has now are mine, but I didn't finish that part of the system for him. He is obivously highly competitive. Even though he wanted me to, and still does, want me to run his company for him.

Who knows, maybe in the future. To be CTO / COO of two SaaS CRM's in the same space may make sense. But I will never sell my software to him or partner with him. Too much drama. Avoid the drama. Be careful out there fellas.

If you are a creator, people will take advantage of you in every way imaginable. Read the fine print, read the people, document everything. Don't put yourself at risk.

Rock, meet hard place. I’m losing my employment again. I’m tired of web development, which I’ve never been super great at, and want to switch to something else. But how do I do that and what do I switch to if this is what I’ve been doing for over 20 years and I have to get a new job soon without time or money to get a whole new education and career path? Getting older also means this old dog is having a harder time learning new tricks. Wish I could just retire early.

The thing that I hate more is when I want to pay something but I can't, because of system or technical problems. Do you imagine how much money are you losing? It's your interest, you should make everything possible to earn money, I can't flip out only to make you happy. Come on bro. I wanted to buy a thing, the website has a mobile version but in the mobile website I can't use credit card. And if I set the desktop version, the website identify the resolution of screen and it redirects me in the mobile version as well. Are you kidding me?

When your legacy retarded old as fuck frameworks are slowly dying and instead of migrating to new backend framework, losing some money but improving quality of our products dipshits in charge hire vue.js developer to try to replace jquery with vue just to keep this 10 years old legacy zombie crap alive for 2 more years..

How can you be this fucking retarded greedy motherfucking morons... it shouldnt even be possible

I'm mostly .NET Dev, working on OCR thingy, but I started as Java, Android Dev. After my boss's crappy management and burning out our two mobile devs he has assigned me to finish one app. For past four days I've worked around the clock to finish as much of functionalities as I could but it simply wasn't possible, especially because project was still changing when though deadline was around 15.12.17. Yesterday I've done as much as I could and now we have to wait for the client to either accept it or break the contract.
To be frank, I think that losing money would be like a bucket of cold water for my boss. All of us, me and those two mobile devs I have mentioned earlier, are students. We have exams right now. "Senior" Dev is only year older and will soon be applying for his engineering degree. Year after year situation like this occurs and boss haven't learn a thing.

!dev

Even though I bought Prime for cord-cutting now whenever I need to buy something I have an urge to just buy from Amazon because I feel like I'm making back what I paid since shipping is now free 2-day for anything and 5% cash back...

And when you search for anything, there's usually 1 result that's like Amazon Choice and I see there's a price huge price cut...

But in the back of my mind, I stop and think does this make sense. Could be cheaper elsewhere? Are these deals really deals...
And that $120 was for video and I'm pretty sure Amazon is not losing money no matter how many orders I make our how much I "save"....

And why am I even trying to make back X by doing Y....

Yes totally random but thoughts, how do you think about this?

Work is still going great, but I'm killing myself with general anxiety about other things...

Covid, laptop is gone for now, phone is acting up, I don't have any backup device, I'm running out of money, need to fix my teeth soon enough, health-wise I'm pre-diabetic and almost obese, (not look-wise, rather weight-wise) as well I will need to check for hormones because I'm growing body hair more than I should and still am losing head hair more than I should, and I should quit smoking.

... but I still love the work I do, so what does life and gods have against me? :|

I have been taking deep breaths more often to just not lose my shit these days. Like, unless I end up in a great situation next, this all is so unfair.

so far so good... or is it?

after a party-beach-mountain-beach session :

the mood is high
the money is low
the relationship is at crisis ( the gf wants a baby and I'm not sure if brake up isn't better for me )

jobless on the way losing the flat too...

anyone any advice?

Well here I go my first rant.

A little bit of background:
So I started working my first job a little over a month ago. found devrant about a week in. I was lucky that at a very young age I found programming and liked it (about 6 or 7). I went to college just to get a degree (bachelors of game development).

The job that was a "Great" opportunity that would be bad to let slip by (not a game dev job sadly). Well during the interview they asked me simple thing like what programming languages I know and some simple stuff like that, they never did ask me to demonstrate my knowledge though. Then they went to the weirder questions.
Do you know SQL? yeah at a very base level.
Do you know Excel? I mean I used is a bit, but not very much.
Etc.
A few of the questions felt a little out of place for the field, But it was the only "programming job" that would hire an experienced junior developer, so I took it. Guess I should have asked more questions.
Now I'm here at a job to help replace someone who is retiring. He wasn't a programmer really, but he wrote some code out of necessity well his platform of choice was VBA in Excel. Oh, and that's not the best part, he also dealt with mistakes that happen in the lab (electronics shit). So when ever there is a fuck up I have to go figure out how to search a poorly designed database (that is constantly changing), and today is the day he leaves, so no more help after today. My biggest fear currently is that I wont be able to fill a request that someone makes and I'll be the reason the company is losing money. And with all the stress/burn out that's building up I haven't been working on personal projects, which being my main source of entertainment might be making me depressed. Even when I do work up the effort to work on my projects I don't get very much entertainment. (If anyone has a suggestion for this that would be helpful.)

TIL: Even if the job is a great opportunity don't stop searching and ask a lot of questions.

I had a project that took most of 2018 that involved a hell lot of people costing millions to the company in dev hours.

Just informed that the feature was turned off because the company was losing money with it...

!dev

my problem with gaming in linux is not really inherent to linux.

my problem is that there are no linux game torrents.

and torrenting for me is a way to know if I'll be playing a certain game for a while, and eventually buy it.

I can watch all the trailers in the world for a game, but I truly make up my mind after the first few hours of direct playtime.

so I'm not interested in spending money on a game that I might like because it looked nice on the trailer only to find out I hate playing it.

the problem with torrents is that once users get the game, and the game works, they're probably like
"why bother buying it? the game works right? why risk losing the progress i achieved so far by moving save files?"

on top of that on linux, you need to check protondb to see how compatible the game you found is, so an extra layer of difficulty.

I guess I would like to have legal demo versions of games, but I see very little devs doing that so maybe that commercial model failed? I don't know really.

Juat started a redesign of my portfolio & this is first time I've actually been genuinely happy with it. Every other time I just say fuck it and launch with a design I'm not happy with because I wasted so much time trying to make it perfect that I'm not focusing time on client work and losing money.

tldr: stoked on my new portfolio design

I started the job I'm currently at some months ago, and since then I've been pretty shitty. There are some days where I feel less shitty, I feel like I accomplished something, but at the end of the day, it feels shitty.

I had been here previously, and my gut had told me since then to quit, and it did the same again since I started working here again. I'm afraid I'm losing my time here, time that could be precious doing something else that would mean more to me.

They didn't keep up with some parts of the contract, I'm receiving pretty much nothing since I'm in a non-existent "formation", it's overall a whole load of crap.

I was supposed to do some stuff with Python, but then they told me to focus on Java and do some stuff after I was trying to learn (by myself) Python for a month, then they told me to do stuff with another completely different language again. WTF? I felt like I was shit.
Even in the last time I was working here, I was feeling the same, people were asking me to do webpages and other web things and then discarded them (literally) after I worked on them for weeks or they asked me to remake them COMPLETELY.
I had also been promised money for some side-jobs like doing websites for their friends, but in total I've received like 2/6 of what I was supposed to get.

Overall, I feel like my experience here has been shit, but I'm scared I won't find another job for these next 6 months (I'm taking a year off college to get some money)

If I follow my gut, my heart, and try to "fight" for my happiness, I'm leaving
If I follow my brain, and possibly become even more sad and miserable, I'm staying.
Who's the strongest?

I know you might even say "it's just some months" but those months will make a complete difference when I look backwards at my journey. I believe we cannot waste any time in life being unhappy.

Why couldn't they keep all their promises, not take advantage of me paying me so low... I'm completely sure I would receive more money somewhere else.

Well, I guess this rant is about my employer and the conflict between my gut and my brain.
Why can't y'all be friends and be on the same page?

7:45 am
get broken by alarm #1, fall asleep

7:50 am
get broken by alarm #2, fall asleep

7:55 am
get broken by alarm #3, fall asleep

8:00 am
get broken by alarm #4, fall asleep

8:10 am
get broken by alarm #5, fall asleep

8:20 am
get broken by alarm #6, fall asleep

8:30 am
get broken by alarm #7, get up

8:35 am
Prepare for work

8:40 am
Go to office job

9:00 am
Slave for $8.125 an hour matrix job

5:10 pm
Come back home, hungry, exhausted

5:50 pm
Finished eating, take a break

6:10 pm
Finished taking a break, time to start working on my side project

8:00 pm
Feeling exhaustion and stunned, as if i got hit by a flashbang grenade

9:00 pm
Exhaustion exponentially increased. Yawning. Eyes barely open. Extreme tiredness. Head movement started producing motion blur. Body just wants to shut down and sleep

10:00 pm
Start losing concentration while coding my side project. Start making stupid beginner bugs that i fail to debug

11:00pm
By this time i am barely functional so i have to go to bed. Sleep and repeat all of this bullshit every day

---

Is....this...the life thats awaiting me for the rest of my life if i dont earn millions asap? If so then i dont want it. I reject this type of life like satan rejects cross. I do not want to be a part of this clownery.

REALISTICALLY getting 2 hours per day of optimized time and energy to work on my project, is not enough. Even 8 hours a day is not enough. I need full time work on my project. Thats how valuable it is.

This job is draining me. I feel like i signed a contract with the devil to drain my soul. Fuck. Seems like all contracts we sign is the same shit as selling our soul for money? WTF think about this bullshit! Celebrities seem to be the smartest then. They sign contracts to perform satan rituals in exchange for MILLIONS of dollars while we sign a contract to work for satan and get paid $8.125 an hour like fucking losers.

I cant believe nobody warned me about this satanic society since i was a little kid

“Lazy mom lazy wow” presented by Gail Swanlund was probably the most impactful piece of art to me.

Through simplistic form, this art piece presents the idea of caring about oneself and quit the eternal rat race for money. But somehow for its metaphor, Lazy mom lazy wow chooses the notion and aesthetics of death and decay. The closest analogy I can think of is the music of American Football. Some kind of liminal, eerie aesthetics. Also, the movie Gummo and the game Life is Strange, part one.

The piece deliberately avoids being aggressive and celebrating its notion. It’s not “quit the rat race and celebrate because life is so good”, it’s “quit the rat race by putting yourself into coma so nothing matters anymore”. The descent into eternal comfort of realization that you don’t have to do anything anymore, but also sorrow of losing meaning.

It feels like launching Counter-Strike Source in the year 2051, only to walk around cs_office and realize there are no players anymore, and they will not return ever again. The sense of watching an old VHS tape of you having a conversation with your mom in the hospital as she’s counting her last days because of cancer. The sense of comfort of coming back to your hometown. You remember your childhood and your high school crush, only to realize that those moments won’t happen ever again.

Someone in the #us slack channel posted about how, if other Americas were dealing with roe v wade, they could come to the mental health channel.

I really want to respond about how Americans are a diverse group, and some are thankful for a judgement that preserves what some consider life, and to keep our diverse opinions in mind.

But I'm not going to. I'm not stupid. It's not worth starting a fight or potentially losing a job over. So I remain silent, like a coward.

I earn a lot of money, enough to ignore ideology I don't agree with, and messages that would have been considered totally inappropriate at one time.

As someone who has been developing a game (not even close to 20% done) and dealing with bug reports, I'm pissed off by this one report from a game I play, which I'll just shamelessly copy-paste it here for y'all to read and rant
"Title: [sic]lag never fixed
[sic]i dont wanna report lag doesnt mean there's no lag ,
the LAG is real, and is getting worse and worse everyday, vespa please fix the problem,
i used to think i could bear this lag, but i cant ,i just cant, after 5+ times game crashing everyday,my patient is losing . you say u are fixing it every maintenance,but what is this BXXX SXXX?all i could see it you are trying your best to grab money from my wallet(well u FXXXING successed),and the promise you made to fix the lag never ever ..........
sorry for my bad Chiglish, but./......"

I'm not a developer of the game, but this pisses me off. The guy wants fixes on the "lag"; which lag?? latency?? FPS?? random freezes??; while giving absolutely ZERO details on the "lag" AND accusing the company of stealing money without doing sh-t, which is not true as far as I can tell in-game. So, I instinctively waltzed in and ranted at how sh-t the report is in detail, and accused him of inhibiting the game's development because of his sh-t report, and he replied with this (I told him I'm a game dev in the reply I mentioned):
"[sic]as a person who made this game should know what lag is just like u know what fuk is as a human being,and i said game crash ,thats the best way i could explain as a normal player not like you an arrogant indie game dev!and if u cant understand what course the game crash,as a player like me how could i know, thats the reason im asking for help here,and i hope they dont have such indie game dev like you who doesnt know lag(game crash)"

M-th-rf-ck-r. For the first time, I see true ignorance. While writing this, I'm typing my next reply for the m-th-rf-ck-r that lacks common sense on reporting a bug. For f-ck sake if I found him I'll put a bullet through his head.

Let's talk about borrowing/lending money.

Will you lend money if a friend or family asks?

At the moment, it's an immense hassle to get back the money I'm owed. I don't mind at all but the idea of losing money down the drain for no reason is idiosyncratic.

I'm working at a startup and one of the founders asked the accountant to prepare a presentation for the company's financial state. This was back for the first trimester of 2023. It said that we are losing money but not to worry because x,y,z (believable reasons).

I had yesterday a lunch conversation with the office (except the founders) and the accountant said that we are bleeding quite a lot of money each month and the company is not looking healthy.

My boss (previously CTO, has stepped down) also left the company for unrelated reasons (mainly the childish behaviour of the CEO, increased stress, devs being fired for no good (humane) reasons, stupid decisions, devs leaving and the projects going to shit due to unrealistic deadlines by new COO) .

So does anyone has any advice for job hopping for a junior front-end dev that wants to do more back-end development in the next company :)?

god i need more money... sigh and the whole 'oh he wants his own money too' yeah no shit.
motherfucking economic downturn, motherfucking stupid ruffneck baby touching garbage! fucking bitchy resentful stupid, retarded, ugly, bottom of the shallow side of the gene pool motherfuckers !

and their stupid whore young adult offspring !

and you know what reallllly gets me ?
my expectations from life, have yes fluctuated, but they were never really that inflated.

no shoveling shit
nothing that destroys me
everything that inflates my health and prolongs my life, youthfullness, libido, and frees me of toxic creatures pretending that everyone else is toxic because they're soulless meddling trifling underhanded backstabbing sadistic hateful trash !

and you know, a career in something i would consider meaningful would have been nice, but i'm fine with extra money, a woman and a place to live that i'll never have to worry about losing and people butting the fuck out of my affairs when their private lives are horrific to the extreme !

#Suphle Rant 2: Michael's obduration

For the uninitiated, Suphle is a PHP framework I built. This is the 2nd installment in my rants on here about it.

Some backstory: A friend and I go back ~5 years. Let's call him Michael. He was CTO of the company we worked at. After his emigration, they seem to have taught him some new stack and he needed somewhere to practise it on. That stack was Spring Boot and Angular. He and his pals convinced product owner at our workplace to rebuild the project (after 2+ years of active development) from scratch using these new techs. One thing led to the other, and I left the place after some months.

Fast forward a year later, dude hits me up to broach an incoming gig he wants us to collab on. Asks where I'm at now, and I reply I took the time off to build Suphle. Told him it's done already and it contains features from Spring, Rust, Nest and Rails; basically, I fixed everything they claimed makes PHP nonviable for enterprise software, added features from those frameworks that would attract a neutral party. Dude didn't even give me audience. I only asked him to look at the repo's readme to see what it does. That's faster than reading the tests (since the docs are still in progress). He stopped responding.

He's only the second person who has contacted me for a gig since I left. Both former colleagues. Both think lowly of PHP, ended up losing my best shot at earning a nickel while away from employed labour. It definitely feels like shooting myself in the foot.

I should take up his offer, get some extra money to stay afloat until Suphle's release. But he's adamant I use Spring. Even though Laravel is the ghetto, I would grudgingly return to it than spend another part of my life fighting to get the most basic functionality up and running without a migraine in Spring. This is a framework without an official documentation. You either have to rely on baeldung or mushroom blogs. Then I have to put up with mongodb (or nosql, in short).

I want to build a project I'm confident and proud about delivering, one certified by automated tests for it, something with an architecture I've studied extensively before arriving at. Somewhere to apply all the research that was brainstormed before this iteration of Suphle was built.
I want autonomy, not to argue over things I'm sure about. He denied me this when we worked together. I may not mind swallowing them for the money, but a return to amateur mode in Spring is something I hope I never get to experience soon

So, I'm wondering: if his reaction reflects the general impression PHP has among developers globally, it means I've built a castle on a sinking ship. If someone who can vouch for me as a professional would prefer not to have anything to do with PHP despite my reassurance it'll be difficult to convince others within and beyond that there could be a more equipped alternative to their staple tool. Reminds me of the time the orchestra played to their deaths while the titanic sank