I want to pay respects to my favourite teacher by far.

I turned up at university as a pretty arrogant person. This was because I had about 6 years of self-taught programming experience, and the classes started from the ansolute basics. I turned up to my first classes and everything was extremely easy. I felt like I wouldn't learn anything for at least a year.

Then, I met one of my lecturers for the first time. He was about 50~60 years old and had been programming for all of his career. He was known by everyone to be really strict and we were told by other lecturers that it could be difficult for some people to be his student.

His classes were awesome. He was friendly, but took absolutely no shit, and told everything as it was. He had great stories from his life, which he used to throw out during the more boring computer science topics. He had extremely strict rules for our programming style, and bloody good reasons for all of them. If we didn't follow a clear rule on an assignment, he'd give us 0%. To prove how well this worked, nobody got 0%.

We eventually learned that he was that way because he used to work on real-time systems for the military, where if something didn't work then people could die.

This was exactly what I needed. In around one semester I went from a capable self-taught kid, to writing code that was clear, maintainable and fast, without being hacky.

I learned so much in just that small time, and I owe it all to him. So often when I write code now I think back to his rules. Even if I disagree with some, I learned to be strict and consistent.

Sadly, during the break between our first and second year, he passed away due to illness. There was so many lessons still to be learned from him, and there's now no teachers with enough knowledge to continue his best modules like compiler writing.

He is greatly missed, I've never had greater respect for a teacher than for him.

29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.

For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.

I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.

I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.

Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.

My mentor/guider at my last internship.

He was great at guiding, only 1-2 years older than me, brought criticism in a constructive way (only had a very tiny thing once in half a year though) and although they were forced to use windows in a few production environments, when it came to handling very sensitive data and they asked me for an opinion before him and I answered that closed source software wasn't a good idea and they'd all go against me, this guy quit his nice-guy mode and went straight to dead-serious backing me up.
I remember a specific occurrence:
Programmers in room (under him technically): so linuxxx, why not just use windows servers for this data storage?
Me: because it's closed source, you know why I'd say that that's bad for handling sensitive data
Programmers: oh come on not that again...
Me: no but really look at it from my si.....
Programmers: no stop it. You're only an intern, don't act like you know a lot about thi....
Mentor: no you shut the fuck up. We. Are. Not. Using. Proprietary. Bullshit. For. Storing. Sensitive. Data.
Linuxxx seems to know a lot more about security and privacy than you guys so you fucking listen to what he has to say.
Windows is out of the fucking question here, am I clear?

Yeah that felt awesome.

Also that time when a mysql db in prod went bad and they didn't really know what to do. Didn't have much experience but knew how to run a repair.
He called me in and asked me to have a look.
Me: *fixed it in a few minutes* so how many visitors does this thing get, few hundred a day?
Him: few million.
Me: 😵 I'm only an intern! Why did you let me access this?!
Him: because you're the one with the most Linux knowledge here and I trust you to fix it or give a shout when you simply can't.

Lastly he asked me to help out with iptables rules. I wasn't of much help but it was fun to sit there debugging iptables shit with two seniors 😊

He always gave good feedback, knew my qualities and put them to good use and kept my motivation high.

Awesome guy!

Replace the teachers with no real world experience with part-time workers that are still active in IT.

I had this last year in my final year of vocational education and it was amazing, I had two teachers running their business two days a week and teaching us everything on the three remaining days.

I learnt about oop without dogs and cats, I learnt to extract information from invoices to be able to create an invoicing system without being misled by customers, and much more.

Second thing would also be something we did in my previous education. It was called "learning productively".

Basically, companies would give a project to the school and students could pick one to do for a few months. You had to have meetings with the customer, you had to give presentations and it wasn't another fucking calculator.

I've had the pleasure of working with a big corporation like this and learnt a ton in my first year.

These were extremely valuable, I think I'd still be a piece of shit developer without any knowledge on how to actually develop a full system and how to manage a project as a dev.

Peace

Free advice take it or leave it
A few days ago I completed my one year work anniversary(is that how it's said) at my first job. And this rant is basically stuff I learnt and stuff I wish someone had told me when I was starting out. Here goes:-

When you are starting out your first job you would be a fresh out of college and people around you in college are your friends where as people around you at work are colleagues. Your friends can like you, but you have to earn the respect of colleagues.

If you sit yo ass too long u will become fat(started going to the gym again).

Don't bother your seniors too much. they have their own shit to deal with.

Don't bring your personal shit to office I don't want to hear how cute your dog looked while it took a dump on your carpet.

Avoid the person who gossips.
It's a two way street.

Whatever you find amazing your boss may not you know coz you are a geek and your boss isn't.

Don't talk to people when they are coding.Yeah just don't.

Avoid "below the belt" humor you may look funny but you loose respect in the long run.

Keep upgrading yourself don't stop learning.

Admit stuff you don't know don't Bullshit.

To sum it up it's a game of respect, respect of knowledge,respect of skill and most of all respect of attitude.

So... This company was in trouble. They hire me to help fix things and build this nice new stack to get rid of their old legacy monster application.

I'm there for three weeks when one of their top investors storms in. Apparently they are turning less profit than they told me during my interview. (Yeah, it is one of the things I always ask, even thought I don't always get an answer).

So this investor/shareholder guy starts on this motivation speech which is basically a veiled threat that "we" need to do better.

Obviously he doesn't know anyone in the room other than the boss. And it was apparent, at least to me, he also has 0% knowledge of anything related to software development. The boss doesn't look to happy about having to let this happen.

Then the guy turns to me. He points his finger at me and demands to know how failing so badly makes me feel...

So I answered truthfully... "I've only been here for three weeks, so I don't think I've been failing too much, yet. Now, how long did you say you've been throwing money at this failure without getting the return you wanted?" Emphasizing the "you" by pointing right back at him.

That doesn't shut the guy up, but he does bring his "motivational" speech to a rapid close.

He doesn't bother saying goodbye when he stormed out again, not even to the boss, who looks a lot happier at this point.

Apparently the guy pulled this stunt every couple of months (or weeks, if he was bored enough). After this encounter, he apparently had enough of trying to "motivate" us developers. We I didn't see him again in the 2 years I worked with the company after that.

I got a pay raise the month after. Apparently that was totally unrelated to this incident... 😙🎵

Just sharing my experience of my spontaneous interview with Facebook. I'm not good at writing these but here you go :)

- I was working as an Android dev and didn't have much knowledge in algorithms nor competitive programming, never ever interviewed with big companies.
- a random day on LinkedIn, a recruiter from Facebook contacted me
- I ignored it for few week because I thought it's so out of my league, then somehow, out of blue, I had a thought of giving it a try, so I did
- passed first round
- start studying algorithms a little for phone interview in 3 weeks
- recklessly took the phone interview
- passed
- start studying intensively (while working fulltime) for the on-site interview in 2 months
- almost got the job, they gave me one more chance by a followed up interview
- messed up the last chance real bad
- failed!!!
- Initially I just wanted to give it a try, but the fact that I failed at very very last chance, frankly, bothers me a bit. Maybe I will interview with FB or big companies if I have chance later, but I know for sure that the studying had made me a much better dev. All the code I write now is much more efficient (I think), I can and not anymore afraid of reading complicated code.
- Overall, it does takes a lot of time (~4 months studying while working fulltime), but also benefits myself a lot though I didn't get the job, so basically, good experience, but better if I got the job 😁

Oops, wanted to write a few lines and it's a long post already.. I should stop here :D

The university system is fucked.

I've been working in this industry for a few years now, but have been self taught for much longer. I'm only just starting college and I'm already angry.

What does a college degree really mean anymore? From some of the posts I've seen on devRant, it certainly doesn't ensure professional conduct, work ethic, or quality (shout out to the brave souls who deal with the lack of these daily). Companies should hire based on talent, not on a degree. Universities should focus more on real world applications or at least offer such programs for students interested in entering the workforce rather than research positions. A sizable chunk of universities' income (in the U.S. at least) comes from research and corporate sponsorships, and educating students is secondary to that. Nowadays education is treated as a business instead of a tool to create value in the world. That's what I signed up for, anyway - gaining the knowledge to create value in the world. And yet I along with many others feel so restricted, so bogged down with requirements, fees, shitty professors, and shitty university resources. There is so much knowledge out there that can be put to instant practical use - I am constantly shocked at the things left out of my college curriculum (lack of automated tests, version control, inadequate or inaccurate coverage of design patterns and philosophies) - things that are ABSOLUTELY essential to be successful in this career path.

It's wonderful that we eventually find the resources we need, or the motivation to develop essential skills, but it's sad that so many students in university lack proper direction through no fault of their own.

Fuck you, universities, for being so inflexible and consistently failing to serve your basic purpose - one of if not the most important purpose on this earth.

Fuck you, corporations, for hiring and paying based on degree. Fuck you, management, for being so ignorant about the industry you work in.

Fuck you, clients, who treat intelligent people like dirt, make unreasonable demands, pull some really shady shit, and perpetuate a damaging stereotype.

And fuck you to the developer who wrote my company's antipattern-filled, stringy-as-all hell codebase without comments. Just. Fuck you.

Please stop recommending arch. For real. Stop!

Let's back up. I'm an arch user. Have been for years. I love arch! Like hardcore! But for real, cut it out.

Either they didn't ask and you're being obnoxious or they probably asked "what's a good distro to learn?" Or "Ubuntu holds my hand too much, I want something more consoley" either way, arch is not the answer. Arch is a distro for us stuck up types who like spending all day fixing dependency errors, changing our WM every other week, debating the merits of X vs wayland, and acting better than everyone else.

But here's the thing: I found arch because I wanted something that I could compulsively configure and get really in the weeds. I think most arch users feel that way to some degree. You kinda have to if you want to not be miserable. But many Linux users aren't like that. And that's fine! Let them use mint, or Debian. So they never change their DE. Cinnamon is a great interface! Gnome 2 is totally fine! There's literally nothing wrong with being content with sane defaults and not manually installing every package, and having scheduled releases from a stable source.

Do you tell 7th graders "if you really want to get better at algebra, you should try calculus. You really gain a deep knowledge of math!" No! They will get there when they are good and ready! Or not. It's not a beginner distro. In fact (controversial opinion ahead) it's pretty shitty at being a distro. I have used arch for years! But I don't recommend it to anyone. Because if you want to configure a box for literally 100s of hours (it's never really over is it?), Then you aren't asking anyone about distro recommendations. You've tried them all. You've heard of arch. You been to /r/unixporn.

Stop acting better than everyone else and stop telling people it's better than <other distro here>. It's not. It's different. Very different. And it's not for everyone.

Does anyone else experience the excess knowledge crisis? Wherein you realise that there is so much knowledge out there that you don't know where to start, and the moment you start, you realise there is something new to learn and you instantly get distracted.

Navy story time again. Grab that coffee and fire up Kali, the theme is security.
So, when I got promoted to Lieutenant Jr. I had to attend a 1-year school inside my nostalgic Naval Academy... BUT! I was wiser, I was older... and I was bored. Like, really bored. What could go wrong? Well, all my fellow officers were bored too, so they started downloading/streaming/torrenting like crazy, and I had to wait for hours for the Kali updates to download, so...
mdk3 wlan0mon -d
I had this external wifi atheros card with two antennae and kicked all of them off the wifi. Some slightly smarter ones plugged cables on the net, and kept going, enjoying much faster speeds. I had to go to the bathroom, and once I returned they had unplugged the card. That kind of pissed me off, since they also thought it would be funny to hide it, along with the mouse.
But, oh boy, they had no idea what supreme asshole I can be when I am irked.
So, arpspoof it is. Turns out, there were no subnetworks, and the broadcast domain was ALL of the academy. That means I shut EVERYONE off, except me. Hardware was returned in 1 minute with the requested apologies, but fuck it, I kept the whole academy off the net for 6 hours. The sysadmin ran around like crazy, because nothing was working. Not even the servers.
I finally took pity on the guy (he had gotten the duties of sysadmin when the previous sysad died, so think about that) and he almost assaulted me when I told him. As it turned out, the guy never had any training or knowledge on security, so I had to show him a few things, and point him to where he could study about the rest. But still, some selective arp poison on select douchebags was in order...
Needless to say, people were VERY polite to me after that. And the net speed was up again, so I got bored. Again. So I started scanning the net.
To be continued...

I work at a small retail store and we have quite a few regular customers who know I'm studying computer science because I'm always coding at work on my laptop.

One lady who comes in quite often and is very sweet asked me if I would take a look at her phone. She said she bought it and paid the owner of a phone repair store to set it up for her, but was felt like he did something weird to it. I told her I wasn't an expert but would look at it.

Oh my god. This guy set up her phone connected to his own personal icloud account. All of his music was on there. All of his contacts were on there. All of his pictures were on there. Even nude pictures of multiple people that this lady said she definitely does not know. I tell her this is very very wrong and no one in their right mind should've set her phone up this way.

I automatically think to factory reset. I'm unfamiliar with iPhone, as the last time I used one was an iPhone4 many years ago. I was unaware that apple applies an authentication lock when the phone is reset.
The authentication is set up underneath yet ANOTHER email address that belongs to this guy, as this lady promised me she has no knowledge of any email address similar to the one listed, nor does she have access to it.

I tell her to call the guy and ask for her money back and to unlock her phone so that she can reset it herself.

He claims that he cannot accept refunds if a factory reset has been performed.

Uhm, I am calling SOOOOO much bullshit. There should be absolutely no reason why the owner of the phone cannot factory reset it. The owner should be able to do ANYTHING she wants with it, without being locked out of it because some creep at a repair store did NOT DO HIS JOB CORRECTLY AND HE KNOWS IT. Why else would he claim he can't refund if it's been reset, because he KNOWS she got locked out.

So long story short I talked on the phone with him and cussed him out telling him he was wrong for taking advantage of someone who doesn't know much about technology and that he was invading privacy and violating her security and that i would report him if he didn't fully refund her and unlock her phone.

He gave her all of her money back, unlocked the phone (which she is deciding to sell because she got so scared by this), and I'm still filing a complaint against this man and his store. Who knows how many more clueless people he did this too. Fucking scumbag.

*signs up for Skillshare*
> Sorry, your password is longer than our database's glory hole can handle.
> Please shorten your password cumload to only 64 characters at most, otherwise our database will be unhappy.

Motherf-...

Well, I've got a separate email address from my domain and a unique password for them. So shortening it and risking getting that account stolen by plaintext shit won't really matter, especially since I'm not adding payment details or anything.

*continues through the sign-up process for premium courses, with "no attachments, cancel anytime"*
> You need to provide a credit card to continue with our "free" premium trial.

Yeah fuck you too. I don't even have a credit card. It's quite uncommon in Europe, you know? We don't have magstripe shit that can go below 0 on ya.. well the former we still do but only for compatibility reasons. We mainly use chip technology (which leverages asymmetric cryptography, awesome!) that usually can't go much below 0 here nowadays. Debit cards, not credit cards.

Well, guess it's time to delete that account as well. So much for acquiring fucking knowledge from "experts". Guess I'll have to stick to reading wikis and doing my ducking-fu to select reliable sources, test them and acquire skills of my own. That's how I've done it for years, and that's how it's been working pretty fucking well for me. Unlike this deceptive security clusterfuck!

Fuck javascript
Fuck css
Fuck even html
And fuck web dev in general.
i can't do this shit anymore.

i've been working in web for ~2.5 years, 4 different companies, countless frameworks, technologies and tools and it feels good having that kind of knowledge and ability to do anything in this field, but god damn. I'm exhausted of "moving pixels" most of the time.

And i know, maybe different company and position would better suit me, but how often do people hire pure breed back-enders ? not that often, at least not in my country. Everyone has to do everything. And even then, php/sql/sysadmin/devops work doesn't motivate me as much. I need something that would make me actually think.

And so i decided to change my specialty, i'm going to follow my long lived dream - game dev (C++) :)

Oh i know, i'm not naive. I know how difficult and hard it is, but it seems like i've finally matured for it. So i've been waking up at 5 a.m and learning for ~3 hours before work for a few weeks now, and plan to go part-time at my work, after a few months (need to save up some money) for ~6 months, to focus on C++

Then hopefully i'll be able to land a junior position. If not, well, i wouldn't be a problem solver if i let that get to me :)

I think the coolest project I did was a few years ago, it was actually a Minecraft plugin.

I decided to learn Java for Minecraft, and a few months after I started learning Java, I was approached by someone who'd like to work with me to create this full-blown Gun Game style gamemode for Minecraft. I made it clear I didn't have the most knowledge, but I was willing to learn.

We began working on the project, the projects main class was bigger than any project I had worked on. Within a few months, it became one of the more popular plugins out there, even though we were still in an alpha mode. Had nearly 1,000 servers running the plugin, over 10k+ players total testing out the plugin.

Cause of this project, I learnt how to properly organize my code, how to make it efficient, learnt how to network, learned how to properly secure and verify anything being sent by the client, working with dependencies, adding features that can support a bunch of other plugins that other developers had, and a bunch more.

Sadly we couldn't finish the plugin anymore, so we gave someone else the source code who has kept it updated to this day. (I know I didn't provide much insight into what I'm saying and just gave a general overview, got a killer headache.)

The man who runs my IT department. The man who is in charge of all things and people that are technical: IT management software development, infrastructure, training, help desk, system administration​, etc. A man with a staff of fifty plus. If you were to peel back the flesh on this man's head and crack open his skull you would find dung beetles feasting on the feces that power his thoughts and motor functions. Underneath this foul membrane, if you could push past the maggots; the meal worms; his undying love for hourly binges of Johnny Walker Black on any day of the week with a name that contains a vowel; his fascination with shiny objects and his endless internal monologue wondering when they would hatch rainbow ponies that fly; his desire whenever he enters a paint store to open all the cans of paint and taste the different colors; if you could push past all of the vile crap that exists where Thomas Aquinas once theorized there was a soul, you would find a colony of paramecia at the end of their short lives laughing hysterically at how much smarter they were than the host they lived in.

This man was in charge of hiring the Manager of Software Development. The manager I report to. After seven months of ignoring this chore; after interviewing the sum total of four candidates; after making a point to tell myself and a colleague that there was no one qualified to fill this position within our company (an opinion that is both untrue and, when spoken, runs afoul of internal hiring policies) this man hired a soulless cretin with no experience in software development or with running a software development group. A man who regularly confuses web servers and SQL servers. A man who asked me how my previous manager reviewed my work, was told by me that said previous manager read my code, and then replied in his capacity as the manager of software development that "looking at code is a compete waste of time for a manager." A man so without any humanity or reason for being that he will sit silently, creepily, in conference rooms with the lights off waiting for meetings to begin. Meetings he has scheduled. That have no reason for being in the first place. Just like himself.

Shortly before the man in charge offered the Dev Manager job to the simulacrum of human flesh that is my manager, he met with me and others who had been involved in the interview process. When I informed him that hiring someone with no technical knowledge for a very technical position would be a mistake that he would suffer through for years, he replied in reference to his future hire that "his managerial experience makes up for his lack of technical knowledge."

Best. Prank. Ever. Worst prank ever too. Fuck.

VBA is not the language of choice for many of you. But in a big non-software company, Excel is tool numero uno, and VBA saves so much time. Almost nobody bothers to learn it, which drives me nuts already, but those who learn it, suck.
Wrote a beautiful VBA script with SQL inside to fill in excelsheets automatically.

Why the living fucks would someone go in the code and alter it? Why do you ignorant idiot with almost no excel and vba knowledge alter the range of the for loop and delete a few lines.
After that completely knocked out the file, I got a call for help. "¡Your code broke!"

These useless morons.

Sometimes I really feel bad for windows.

Someone with a potato Windows laptop that costs around $400 who has a bit of IT knowledge:

"Windows is so shit. Why does people buys this?"

installs Linux:

"OMG! Linux is so much better"

Even though it'll probably take a day or two to get the touchpad and wifi working. Want to install a software? Sure let me just download the source, compile it (Which will take another 2 hour to meet all the dependecies).

Another scenario:

Someone with a potato Windows laptop that costs around $400:

"Windows is such shit. Why does people buy this?"

Buys a $2000 Macbook.

"OMG! So much better. That's why people love mac so much"

I've used Fedora and Elementary for the last 3 years. But the amount of hate Windows gets is ridiculous.

I'm not even that old and I've had it with young cocksure, full of them self language/environment evangelists.

- "C# is always better than Java, don't bother learning it"

- "Lol python is all you need"

- "Omg windows/linux/mac sucks use this instead"

The list goes on really, at some point you have got to realize that while specialization is great, you have to learn a little bit of everything. It broadens you horizon a lot.

Yea, C# does some nifty stuff, but Java does too, learn both. Yea I'm sure Linux is better for hosting docker containers, but your clients are on mac or windows, learn to at least navigate and operate all three etc. Embrace knowledge from all the different tech camps it can only do you good and you will be so much more flexible and employable than your close minded peers :)

Hell even PHP has a lot to teach us (Even more than just to be a bad example, har har)

tl;dr: thanks! :)

I just love this community.
The idea of devRant is great. The emotions, the shared knowledge in each post. Never seen such densely packed quality content in a social media! :D
I enjoy spending my time here, though I do not post that much. Reading just about the life of @linuxxx, @gitpush @alexDeLarge (to name a few) share with us is just wonderful, it makes me happy! :)

I think this post is meant as a thank you, I guess? Just felt like it... hope you guys don't mind having read a non-dev related post.^^'

btw:
@dfox and @trogus, you guys are awesome as fuck!

Starting to wish I never got involved in this industry.

I am working for the most ridiculous, god awful place I have ever had the misfortune of working and I am having a HELL of a time getting out of it because everything wants 5 years fucking exp in some fucking specific framework that is basically the same as every other fucking framework.

Our previous cto was a closeminded totalitarian bully and when she finally left she was replaced by a lecherous fucking dinosaur who has no idea how to code in our code base. He also has barely been showing up to work for the last few months.

For some reason our fucking ceo allows this all to continue and only interjects whenever he can make himself the biggest nuisance (ie design handoffs etc where he has little to no knowledge)

I was already woefully underpaid but was recently 'promoted' to team lead and when I brought up my ridiculous salary (yes I was essentially just funneled into this role) they gave me a neglible raise and ceo told the fucking dinosaur to tell me he 'doesn't like when people ask for raises'

The only reason I am in this position is because we have such ridiculously poor employee retention and I am one of the people after only 2.5 years there that has the ability to provide any kind of knowledge transfer. Most of our dev team consists of people fresh out of school and our code base is just an absolute mess of junior dev spaghetti debauchery.

I have expressed concerns over this and was told that I'm negative and go looking for problems and that 'everywhere is like this'

The ceo has a few people he keeps close because in his words 'they're the only ones who don't disagree with me'

He also refused to hire anyone with experience because they cost too much and he doesn't like people who have opinions.

To make matters worse all the fucking dinosaur does is wander around and talk to the junior devs about video games.

His previous favorite past time was staring at my tits, ranting about his wife and telling me 'he'd offer to give me a back rub but you can't do that now a days'

I caught his fucking wife creeping me on LinkedIn a few months ago for some fucking reason.

Oh and as icing on the cake I had a fucking interview today for an intermediate angular position and a few minutes after I received an email saying that ACCTUALLY they had been informed they were now looking for a senior react dev.

Like seriously what the fuck.

I know the hate for Facebook is strong here, but I was just approached to work on their eCrimes team... Catching online predators and the like... I'm honestly considering it, given how much evidence is posted. But it requires so much more programming knowledge than I have... I don't know where to start...

Rant++

Just want to mention this mother fucker named Allen. Allen is a fuckin' badass. This guy fucks.

This bad mother fucker like single handedly wrote one of the best fuckin libraries for displaying tabular data, and threw in a shit ton of JSON capabilities just to make it that much fuckin' cooler.

And why? Because he fuckin fucks thats fucking why. I already told you.

And does this son of a fuck support his fucking product? You bet your sweet basement dwelling programming fucking ass that he does.

Dude works that support forum like he no doubt works that pussy. With full and complete knowledge and control, but with a gentle mature touch. Fuckin right.

Do you hate PHP? Well this fuck made a Node version? Do you hate Node? Use that shit with pure JS client side. This dude doesn't give a fuck. Don't have a table? Pass that shit JSON and GET A FUCKIN TABLE!!!

Some dipshit in your company needs to edit a database table but there's no way on sweet baby jesus's green earth you're giving that dumb fuck DB creds? Run that dumb fuck up a fully editable admin portal in like 5 fucking minutes because fuck him.

There are few things in my life I love. My corgi and my kids, and most days my wife.

But always fucking DATATABLES.

So, Allen Jardine... just wanted to give you and your product DataTables and Editor a fucking devRant shout out. It continues to be the one ray of light that works as expected and is extremely well supported when it doesn't and some days I just need that fucking consistency in my life man. So thanks.

Online tutorial pet peeves
————————————

My top 10 points of unsolicited ranting/advice to those making video tutorials:

1. Avoid lots of pauses, saying “umm” too much, or other unnecessary redundancy in speech (listen to yourself in a recording)

2. If I can’t understand you at 1.5 - 2x playback speed and you don’t already speak relatively quickly and clearly, I’m probably not going to watch for long (mumbling, inconsistent microphone volume, and background noise/music are frequent culprits)

3. It’s ok to make mistakes in a tutorial, so long as you also fix them in the tutorial (e.g., the code that is missing a semicolon that all of a sudden has one after it compiles correctly — but no mention of fixing it or the compiler error that would have been received the first time). With that said, it’s fine to fix mistakes pertinent to the topic being taught, but don’t make me watch you troubleshoot your non-relevant computer issues or problems created by your specific preferences (e.g., IDE functionality not working as expected when no specific IDE was prescribed for the tutorial)

4. Don’t make me wait on your slow computer to do something in silence—either teach me something while it’s working or edit the video to remove the lull

5. You knew you were recording your screen. Close your email, chat, and other applications that create notifications before recording. Or at least please don’t check them and respond while recording and not edit it out of the video

6. Stay on topic. I’m watching your video to learn about something specific. A little personality is good, but excessive tangents are often a waste of my time

7. [Specific to YouTube] Don’t block my view of important content with annotations (and ads, if within your control)

8. If you aren’t uploading quality HD recordings, enlarge your font! Don’t make me have to guess what character you typed

9. Have a game plan (i.e., objectives) before hitting the record button

10. Remember that it’s easier to rant and complain than to do something constructive. Thank you for spending your time making tutorial videos. It’s better for you to make videos and commit all my pet peeves listed above than to not make videos at all—don’t let one guy’s rant stop you from sharing your knowledge and experience (but if it helps you, you’re welcome—and you just might gain a new viewer!)

I die, go to hell and my punishment is to write software for hell network that is having power problems due to light source disruptions and is running on Windows 95 on FAT32 without any service pack.

Network speed is trough 300bps dial up modem. Protocol is over IPX/SPX.

My task is to write interactive websites that are replacement of modern websites but in VBScript, ActiveX, IE 4.0.

I have 10 managers that tell me what to do and scream when I miss deadline that is set everyday without my knowledge at random times.

They send me an email and 5 minutes later they arrive at my desk to ask me about it.

I must work 16 hours a day before I can leave the place and if I won’t show up police beats me and escorts me to the office.
If I’m late a second I don’t get payment.
I can’t afford to rent a place so I sleep in the sleeping bag.

It doesn’t matter much cause as soon as I fall asleep phone rings until I wake up and my manager screams about the problems he have for about an hour.

Devs online be like "I started learning to code when I was 2 years old and submitted my first application at 5, since then I've made a few simple apps and pull in 2 million a day, not much but it pays the bills"

So discouraging to come up with a novel idea for a simple product and spend a lot of time just to realize you're absolutely lost and severely lack the knowledge to even produce a working product of any sort. All the while some kid makes something "simple" 10x more complex than what you failed to do, and in like a day nonetheless.

How do people just pick up so much knowledge so quickly? How do they just figure out information they couldn't have possibly known like it's intuition?

Life is hard man.

#First

I joined a start up and worked after college hours as an intern over there. I would usually bunk my college and go to my internship. I had limited knowledge at that moment. I worked very hard over there because I wanted (still want) to gain practical knowledge.

Almost a month into it and I had to take a break from it because I had college work. Rejoined the same start up during my vacations. Worked quite a lot and learnt quite some stuff. I continued the internship after my one month vacation for another month once my college started. All this while I was not being paid, not even a little bit of allowance. But that didn't matter because I wanted to learn

Fast forward six months to November 2016. I have been placed in an MNC through my college placements. One day I get a call from this start up owner(we had become good acquaintances by then) if I was willing to work as a paid intern while I was working on the projects that the company landed (so I guess as a free-lancer) and as an unpaid intern while I was working on the company projects. I agreed. Jump to December. I have joined and started working on an Android project of this very big company.

At time point, I should inform you'll that I'm not very good at Android and that the company size is very small. Company owner plus the tech lead in one city (where I'm from) and another two full time employees in another city. Out of which one quit to start his own company apparently. The start up would primarily employ interns and provide exposure to them while getting their work done.

Back to the story. The tech lead vaguely assigns everyone their work. Everyone over here includes new interns and previous interns like me who will get paid some amount. 3-4 days into the project, the tech lead quits. The tech lead and the company owner call three of us and says that one of you will have to be a project manager for this project. And then both of them and 2 of my colleagues look at me. And I don't know what to say. I hesitate initially because it's too much responsibility but agree to it finally.

The next day I come to office and read about the project thoroughly and catch up with my colleagues about the progress. The entire day I'm panicking about what I'm going to do. In the evening, my boss tells me that we have to go for a meeting with the client for whom we are doing this project. At this moment, the shit out of me has been scared. Mostly because I don't know what the fuck am I going to do over there apart from being stupid and asking dumb questions. So we reach the client's office and wait for him. The entire time I'm thinking to myself that I'm going to drown this company by opening my mouth. Surprisingly, all the questions that I asked seemed legitimate and I asked a lot of questions. And so I didn't drown the company after all...phew!

It's been more than a week. And holy fuck! What a pain it is to manage people. Half of my time is spent on updating excel sheet about their progress, where are they stuck and what is needed. And the other half about thinking what the fuck am I doing or how am I gonna do it.

So to sum up, intern-turned-freelancer-turned-project manager who has no idea what the fuck is going on. Seems pretty crazy, don't you think.

For my very first job interview, I joined a rather well known company (somewhere in the mid-ranges) as an intern-frontend developer. Everything was going okay-ish. I was asked some technical questions and I answered them to the best of my knowledge, and it was all good until he came to the javascript questions.

Interviewer: So, have you worked with any frontend frameworks?

Me: Yeah, I usually work with vanilla JS, but I've gotten into frameworks like Backbone and Ember.

Interviewer: I've never heard of those. Do you know AngularJS?

Me: I've dabbled aroudn with it, although I haven't gotten into it much. If you want me to use AngularJS, I can pick it up and get the ropes of it pretty quick.

Interviewer: So tell me.. what is AngularJS?

Me: It's a Javascript framework released by Google (explains what it is and how it differs from most popular JS frameworks, explains the components of Angular.. etc)

Interviewer: Well, you're wrong. It's an enhanced html for web-apps. ( or some bullshit he quoted off the front-page of the then angularjs.org homepage )

For my school coursework, we have to create a search facility, now the problem is my class weren't taught this. So 3 sleepless nights and with basically no knowledge of Javascript, I create it. Now, I like my classmates so I don't want them to fail, so I distributed it to them with clear instructions and told my teacher that I'd done this. They asked for my help anytime it crashed but no-one said thanks, they just treated me like an easy route to a pass. I went onto my school private development forums and it turned out my teacher had created a tag for me called 'Unsung Hero' and made a UH appreciation thread that I could read but others could only type their own post. People in my class were praising me for what I'd done and how much I helped. I understand why I do development and why I'll never stop.

First of all, I hate crammers so much. These people kill the industry without even understanding it. They turned interviews into exams, missed the point of hiring, and saw no distinction between knowledge and information all the time. They don't understand that if you can google an answer in five seconds, it's not knowledge. It's information.

They don't understand that questions like 'what will Python do if you delete an item from a dict while iterating over it' are complete nonsense. They don't understand that it's not 'dig deep'; it's just a bad practice that leads to errors, thus must be avoided. The fact of remembering 'RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration' means that you haven't been avoiding it enough.

One more example. Which signature is correct?
- ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshedEvent>
- ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshEvent>
- ApplicationListener<RefreshedEvent>
- ApplicationListener<RefreshEvent>

Second. What's the point of forcing you to write compilable code in google docs? Do they really expect that one could possibly remember 'import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;'? Seriously?

Third. Why do they expect me to know Spark, Java, J2EE, Spring Boot, Python, Kafka, Postgres, React/Redux, TypeScript, and work for miserable 70K EUR?

What's wrong with the European IT job market? Are they fucking nuts?

Sorry 'bout the brag but..

That moment when you actually forgot you study, look stuff up 5 mins before on the train and get 10/10 in some random test you attended last minute.👏

I started to get super pissed off to people saying you don’t need a college, masters degree to get an IT job. Instead go and gain practical knowledge, showing your practical certificates projects is much better than a having a degree that doesn’t prove if you can do the job or not.

Is a degree absolutely necessary to get a job? No, I agree on that. You can tear yourself apart to be known make projects loads of people contribute in GitHub spend maybe years on practicing and creating stuff for your portfolio..

But excuse me what do you think people do in college studying degrees? Are we getting it from the shop in the corner on a Saturday?

Respect people’s achievements and titles. Especially Masters degrees push you hard, make you sweat apart from loads of courses you work at least a year on a practical project, dissertation, thesis and only pass if it is your own opinion and findings. It is not like a multiple choice exam certificate or you study watch videos for few months and create a web page.

Don’t throw shit on people’s efforts and accomplishments without knowing how it is achieved just because you don’t have it.

Yes it is not necessary. Does it make you learn? Yes! Is it practical? Yes! Does it help you get a job? Hell yes! Why most companies look for degrees? Do you think they might know what it takes to get it and the skills and knowledge you gain?

Don’t come and say in IT degrees not worth it without even knowing how to draw UML. Without knowing IT management you go and be a leader later on, no clue on how to manage projects, people and soft skills sweeping the floor.

It doesn’t matter if you are a YouTube celebrity or a president. What does the title say? “Master” now go, respect and digest it! Don’t be a sour loser.

Ooh I am fierce today and not done yet

My first actual rant on devRant:

Fuck corporate companies. Fuck agile development.

In the last 8 months I’ve been with this company, I’ve 1) made the app layout (which was super fucked) compatible with iPad. 2) reduced the apps size by 1/3 of the original size. 3) improved memory usage by double the efficiency, nearly eliminated all memory leaks. 4) gotten employee of the quarter for some of the above mentioned.

After all of this I got a talking to from product manager that “he knows I am a good developer but needs more consistency” after I spent a sprint on one story trying to consolidate front end validation logic and make a “validatableTextField” actually do some validation. So much for the MVVM you promised me.

Also, was promised I’d get some experience with Android, and with a team of 8 devs 6 of which have droid backgrounds and other two are juniors, guess whose only even built the droid project once in 8 months? You guessed it. This company has drained me of all of my knowledge, went against most of its promises to me, and values pushing features to the point of adding tech debt faster than I can solve it.

Unfortunately my personal life relies on this job or I’d quit right away. But you bet your ass I’m passively looking for something and I can’t wait till I get a job offer and quit on these ungrateful hypocrites.

I just had my worst hackathon so far and need to puke my whole toxic hatred, the rant will be full of hate so be warned. (I just don't want to let it go on my girlfriend, but I need to shout it out loud somewhere)

First of all, it is alright to be a beginner at a hackathon. It is also alright to not know that much about coding and want to learn. But it is not alright to lie about your skill, pretend to be a senior programmer and waste my fucking time.

Don't even fucking dare to say your are "fit" in Android development if you just have done some foobar tutorial on YouTube, don't even bother to read the document and have literally non existent knowledge about computer science.

Why the fucking hell do you need to pretend to be a seasoned programmer if you are just a bloody beginner? I mean you are in a hackathon full of computer nerds so soon or later your impostor ass will be debunked so what is the point?

And the other guy. Why the fucking hell did.'t you say that you just begin Python for 3 months? You are not a fucking developer if you just started coding for 3 fucking months. Learn some fucking coding before starting with machine learning you fucking punk ass bitch script kiddie.

Alright, maybe I was too naive to not check my teammates' background before make a team with them. Fuck me and my fucking stupid ass. My dumb ass monkey brain fell for big mouths, I deserved the headache right now and none less.

Lesson learned!

It all started in the year 2013.
I was 13 years old back then. I was a fan of Minecraft and so I learned how to setup a bukkit server and ran it. Installing plugins was fun, because I could be a "hacker" and change the configs.
After a while, (~2014), when I was in the 9th grade of elementary school, I saw Unity. A free game engine. Of course, me being a 14 year old I was intrigued and so I downloaded it, made an account and a new project. I had absolutely ZERO knowledge of programming. Didn't even know what languages existed, so i resorted to presets and poorly put together characters + weapons.
After some time fiddling around with Unity, I've gotten a hang of the basics (not programming related).
My actual programming started when I started High School (year 2016). It's a computer engineering school and for the first part of the year, I've learned from my teacher in C# (Console.WriteLine/ReadLine/Loops/Variables). At the second semester I started to gain interest and motivation to program at home. I did the programs we made in school (random number guessing game) but better. Improved it, added colors.
After that, I started developing in Unity - Actually learning something and having the ability to develop something all by myself. It keeps driving me on. In the second year (the year I'm visiting right now) I tought myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP. I'm very happy and also can't wait to discover and learn new things in these languages!
My latest project was an Android application for my father that he asked for (it calculated the price of the 3D print he would make).

// Sorry for the long post!

EDIT: Forgot to add a fun little detail. All my classmates make fun of me because I program so much !
Also: Tabs > Spaces

So I have been working at the same company for five years, doing pretty much all the IT stuff. Sys admin, help desk, you name it. I've also developed a fair amount of in-house software for the company.

Today, I learned from a trusted source that they are actively interviewing people to replace me. I probably have a week, maybe two until I'm fired. To my knowledge I've done nothing to warrant this.

I've been looking around lately for a new job anyway, but without any sense of urgency. I have put in several applications with very few responses though.

I have 5 years experience doing this professionally and 15 total years of dev experience, but only a GED.

I'm not sure why I'm not getting any responses from my applications, but I'm pretty scared right now. I have a 5 month old baby, a wife and a teenager that all depend on me.

I don't know what to do...

After a long time just reading your posts, here's my first post:

Just for clarification: I'm studying electrical engineering in Germany. During your time at university, you have to work half a year as a intern to get some practical experience. So I'm in a position where I mainly have to say "yes" to work that is given to me. Also I'm working with a lot of PLC programmers, so I'm nearly the only one who programs non-PLC stuff at the department.

But now it's time for my rant (and also my most satisfying optimization ever). In the job interview for the internship, my task at the company was described as C# programmer. I only programmed C and Python before, but C# looked interesting and so I learned C# from ground up in the summer before the internship. I quite liked it and I was really happy on my first day of work. Then I was greeted with this message: "I know you are hired as C# programmer, but could you please look into this VBA program, it takes 55 seconds until it finishes its task and that's to slow". So I (midly angry because I had to do VBA and not C#) started the program and it was really horribly slow (it just created a table with certain contents from a very big imported symbol file). I then opened up the source code and immideately saw bad code. The guy who wrote it basically just clicked on the macro recording button and used the recorded mouse clicks in the source code. The code was like: Click on cell A1 -> copy cell A1 -> move to sheet XY -> click on cell A2 -> paste copied stuff and so on... I never 'programmed' in VBA before, so I used my knowledge of 'real' programming languages to do this task. After using some arrays and for-loops, which did not iterate over all the 1.000.000 unused cells after the last used one, the program took only 3 seconds after it finished the new table! Everybody was quite impressed, which led to much more VBA optimization... That was clearly not my goal haha :)

I'm a freelance web developer and I normally work on small to medium sized websites, 9 out 10 times based on WordPress and 10 out 10 times with a limited budget.

8 out of 10 times the sites content will be updated by someone with at best casual knowledge in website management.

Say what you will about WP but it's my bread and butter and it works great for just these kinds of websites; where the cost is a dealbreaker and the end product should be as user friendly as a standard word processor.

No, you probably wouldn't build a control panel for the next space shuttle or an online bank in WordPress, but I rarely need to concern myself with those kinds of projects so that really doesn't affect me.

Pretty much the same reason I have a Kia car even though I wouldn't win a Formula 1 race with it.

I for one am grateful that there's an open source tool available to my clients that more than adequately meets their needs (that's also fun to work with and build custom solutions on for me as a developer).

One of the biggest barriers to the wide(r) scale adoption of functional programming languages like Haskell, F#, and Scala is how snooty and condescending your average FP developer is. And beginner-unfriendly.

Ask them a question about an intermediate topic (in my case, the Free monad) you're likely to get a whole torrent of category theoretic rubbish in return.

This is a common pattern I see when "experts" answer questions.

Now, it didn't bother me much because I've studied a fair amount of category theory and can usually follow such answers, but, for the sake of the general case, I'd like to shove these rules into the heads of everyone writing an answer to a question (not just FP):

1. If you can't illustrate a concept clearly without going into verbal diarrhoea with phrases like "monad homomorphism" and "just a monoid in the category of endofunctors" then you clearly haven't understood it properly (unless, of course, the answer absolutely requires it). An answer is not the place to show off your knowledge of a topic.

2. Please remember that everyone was a beginner at some point. Including you. Understand that some concepts can be extremely frustrating at first and yet incredibly simple after you grok them (eg. monads).

3. If the person asking the question is a beginner, using complex concepts in an answer just because it's a more "elegant" way to explain it doesn't really help them. They are more likely to get confused and drop the topic.

(Kudos to those people who give highly relevant, insightful, simple, and intuitive answers, you guys are the best).

Why do people say "Well, I don't know about that" to voice disagreement?

If you admit your own naivety on a subject compared to your peers, if you admit that you do not have the required knowledge to have formed an opinion, how can you disagree?

So it can either be expressed with genuine innocence, like 'Well, I don't know about that, tell me more!', which is never the case.

Or it means "Well I don't know anything about that... and I'm ashamed of the fact that I can't find any counter argument, so I refuse to trust your fucking expertise, shut the fuck up until I give you the right to voice your knowledge"

Which is a bit rude.

Now that we're on the topic of annoying expressions and platitudes...

"It's not rocket science" -- Rocket science, understanding how a rocket works, is surprisingly simple. You fill a cylinder with fuel and oxygen, add a pump or two, put some sparks underneath. Chemical reaction equals energy, direct energetic particles using a nozzle, Newton's first law does the rest. It's so simple that people don't actually study rocket science. They study aerospace engineering, or astrodynamics, which are difficult topics.

So if someone says "Devops is not rocket science", they're right, but for the wrong reason. It's actually harder than rocket science. Maybe easier than developing thermal protection system materials or solving n-body orbital problems with a slide ruler though.

"Great minds think alike" -- No, great minds actually think creatively and generate unique thoughts, if two minds think alike, the solution was just fucking obvious.

"Don't reinvent the wheel" -- First of all, pretty much nothing in code looks or even remotely functions like a simple wheel. Even metaphorically, all existing code equates to oval or square wheels. If you said "Hey, don't bother making better wheels, I like my ride to be bumpy because it stimulates my asshole", say no more, who am I to come between a product manager and their anal stimulation.

Anyway, those were four coworkers who I would've strangled with an Ethernet cable if it weren't for a certain pandemic and the risk of infection which comes with choke-coughing.

What are your linguistic pet peeves you get homicidal over?

My worst experience is, that I was fired after the third week in a new job. I worked then for a really small company.

My supervisor didn't like me and just wanted me out.

He asked for feedback and new ideas. I provided good reviews.

I even gave the company really good ideas, didn't get any credits for it, but they have implemented them now. Never got any credit for it.

I can look back and say that my supervisor then was a douche and wanted to kill off a young guy with a bit more technical knowledge and a vision.

For me it's in the past...

Now I got a way better job at a really gigantic company, better pay, much better work with better working times, a very friendly and helpful team, which appreciate my feedback and effort.

Sometimes it needs to get worse, to have later something better.

Now I can enjoy my new job and go everyday with a smile in my face :)

Inspired by the comment I posted on another rant.

My uni decided to be one of those progressive tech schools that start people with Python. Mind you, I had prepared myself with studying as much as I could with math and programming by automating things and similar stuff in our computer when I was at my previous job, so I had a better idea as to what i could expect.

Introduction to computer science and programming with Python or some shit like that was the name of the class, and the instructor was a fat short ugly woman with a horrible attitude AND a phd in math, not comp sci and barely any industrial knowledge of the field.

She gave us the "a lot of you will fail" speech, which to me is code for "I suck and have no clue what I am doing"

One assignment involved, as per the requirements the use of switch cases. Now, unless someo knew came about, Python does not have swio cases. Me and a couple of less newbie like students tried to point out that switch cases were non existent and that her switch case example was in Javascript, not python, curly braces and everything. She told us to make it work.

We thought that she meant using a function with a dictionary and we pass the key and shit, a simple way of emulating the switch case.

NOPE she took points and insisted that she meant the example. We continuously pointed out that her example was in JS and that at the time Python did not have switch cases. The nasty woman laughed out and said that she didn't expect anyone to finish the assignment with full points.

Out of 100 points everyone got a 70. No problem. Wrote a detailed letter to the dean. Dean replied and talked to her (copied her in the email because fuck you bitch) and my grade was pulled up to full mark.

Every other class I had with her she did not question me. Which was only another class on some other shit I can't remember.

Teachers are what make or break a degree program. What make or break the experience, going to college is putting too much faith on people. If you ask me, trade certification, rigorous training is the future of computer science, or any field really. Rather than spending 4+ years studying a whoooole lotta shit for someone to focus on one field and never leave it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just because you can learn HTML in a day doesn’t mean that you don’t need a degree.

Did you know that your browser, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and even your operating system use linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, and other so-called “useless” data structures?

It’s important to understand the roots and fundamentals of computer science even if you won’t use that knowledge day to day.

It changes your perspective on programming once you learn what actually goes on under the hood, and makes you think twice about the impact of what you write.

It’s relatively easy to get a programming job without a degree nowadays, but it often leads to web developers claiming that degrees aren’t important to their web apps.

There is much more than just the web to computer science, and that’s something to always keep in mind.

When this year started I didn't have much knowledge of server side programming as web developer, only thing I knew was html/css. But this year I got started with:

- PHP
- Framework Phalcon (PHP)
- Javascript (jQuery, NodeJS, react)
- SASS (I can't without it anymore)
- Virtual Hosts (local development)
- Command Line stuff either in macOs and linux ubuntu

This is a huge deal for me because I always got laughed at I only wrote CSS and couldn't write anything else.

So knowledge-wise it was the most productive year ever.

Also, devRant helps me get through the day lately. Thank you for being a part of it!

My now employees were the ones that interviewed me intially when I started workt where I am at.

Their right of the bad question was: "What is your favorite star wars movie, and from the expanded universs which is your favorite character"

We still joke about it. Because even tho I am a fan of the franchise (not much from the latest episodes tbh) I am not on their level of knowledge..... the amount of references they throw at me and the amount of lines these assholes are able to spit on command is, to this day, pretty fucking amazing imo

People/companies talking about ooh we want gender diversity we want more female software developers, IT professionals etc

You talk the talk, do you know how to walk the walk?? Do you know how to deal with female engineers?

I am a hardcore engineer worked and studied majorly with men for years. I lead, managed teams had my own company worked as a consultant for years.

Then I got into the IT industry as developer later. I was completely against the idea of being female would make any difference or you would be treated differently.

Finally I had my own enlightenment and stopped resisting that idea.

Some treatments made me think what are these guys doing? Don’t treat me like your sister. I am not your sister. Don’t see the femininity or looks. I am not a Merrilyn Monroe to say oooh you are great you know soo much. I am not paid for that act, I do my job! It’s same as yours mate.

Don’t underestimate me or try to preach me as if I am a cute little girl. Don’t show off and boost your ego next to other guys.

Now I regretfully I agree the ladies ranting about male dominance and getting different treatment in IT.

I am literally trying to avoid red nail polishes or red lipstick god forbid. Maybe I should put some fake beard and a belly, loose jeans with an energy drink in hand. Here comes the expert IT professional, already ticking a box.

Honestly you are not taken seriously most of the time. If you are a guy then they are all ears..And those guys talk about they want gender diversity blah blah

You feel like a ghost when you express your opinion. You are not taken into account even when you have a comment or suggestion.

Even humiliated by a guy giving me a speech about how to be a good developer next to a manager. Look buddy I am not a yesterday’s child. I am at your age. I haven’t come to this position by jumping around picking flowers in a field. If I was a man, would you dare saying those to me? There could be a street fight coming.

LinkedIn selfie takers with body show offs putting ooh I am an IT recruiter as a female I got into IT. You can do it too. (don’t get me wrong I respect that achievement that’s good) but those girls get thousands of likes and applauses, you are working in IT for years people say they are seeking for. Your technical post doesn’t even get 20 likes. Your encouraging comment on a guy’s post isn’t even acknowledged. You are not even taken into account. Am I a ghost or something?

Honestly I don’t understand.

What do you mean by gender diversity? What do you want here?

Leave this gender bullshit. Look at the knowledge you don’t even know what equality means. It’s not having even numbers of genders. It is respecting knowledge and hard work regardless. Listening and acknowledging without judgement. Looking beyond male, female or others

Companies that say we want to have more females, you don’t come and knock on my door either. You are already stating a difference there. Attract with indifference don’t come and tell me you are a female we want more females here.

I’m telling you this sector is not getting proper gender equality for 25 years. Talk is there but mentality is not yet there.

I am super pissed off and discouraged today. I don’t even get discouraged that easily. Now I understand some women in IT talking about insecurities. I am on the edge of having one, such a shame.

Don’t come at me now I would bite!

This is my generalisation yes. Exceptions apply and how good it would have been if those exceptions were dominant.

I've developed an interesting habit. I wear a hat 24/7. The same exact hat.
I (almost) never wear my hat backwards. I think its weird, and I look weird, and its just too much weirdness.

There is one exception to this rule.

Before I begin coding each day, before a single stroke of my keyboard, I turn my hat backwards. I don't know why I started doing this, but it is almost as if my hat is a key and turning it unlocks all my programming knowledge.

Anyone else have a quirky habit they do before/during a coding session?

how to be a shitty client:
- have a legacy database where column names are misspelled and everything is nullable
- hire external help which instead of helping break the ui (bonus points for breaking the api too)
- demand a very much custom auth logic but decide to use aws cognito for shits and giggles
- demand 1hr daily meetings
- demand biometric auth with 0 knowledge of how biometric auth works (the previous devs just had a face id prompt which does nothing and retrieved email and password saved on the device???)
- message me at 2am because you don't understand how timezones work + demand a build while you're at it
- call me a "heretical pagan" because i took a day off on a holiday you don't celebrate (???)

i could go on but i think this is enough

Is there a lot of people in the same boat as me?

I'm a self taught guy. Never in my life had I a senior developer i could bug for answers. Every little bug and inconveniece i have ever experienced - left alone to cope and find solutions. I just feel like sooo burned out. I have some large complex system questions building up and googling doesnt give me the answers anymore. This is frustrating. I'm supposed to be a mid level developer, but I'm acting as a senior to one of my colleagues even though I have so many questions and doubts in my mind. I think I developed a lot of plot holes in my knowledge and I have no real way to know which are which. I feel I dont know so much. Fuck. Where do I go from here?

I switched my job about 2 months ago. This was my first switch after college (in 7 years). I was at a senior position and was not learning anything new for few months and got really bored.
I had asked for a 100% hike in new company, they gave me over 150%. Apart from this, they offer free food and snacks (or reimburse if you order your food from outside). Unlimited leaves and work from home option. No fixed working hours (I see people working for only 5-6 hours some days). No sign of politics yet. People are very humble and help you out even on silly queries. Company is growing at a very fast pace, it was named in fastest x growing companies about a month ago in some report with growth rate of about 1000%.
I see people around me with so less experience than me but so much knowledge. Feels like I am fresher again and learning so much from them. FYI, I had worked in same field (tech) for initial 3 years of my career. Looking at seniors I am finally able to set goals. 
This one time I saw CTO awake at 3 am collaborating actively in resolution of a production issue.
Having seen so much positive, I went over 100 reviews on Glassdoor to find out the only 2 negatives points ever written, one of them was slow Lift in building. The other a

As a consultant, you get tasked with a variety of stuff. Last few weeks been struggling to maintain an old C++ application that was written by a complete tool of an a$$hole with zero knowledge on how to write maintainable and production quality code. It would hardly run without a crash. First it was a challenge I had to accept, but as I stabilized the code and just fell over even more traps, I had to admit defeat and review my approach.

Rewrite is something I would choose last, but this one ticked all the marks worthy of a rewrite. So, the customer is a very friendly researcher and gladly spent 15 hours with me explaining all the math and concepts - just a delight for a programmer to have such a customer. Two days in, with a DDD approach - a functional, more precise, faster and stable application.

Sometimes there is no rant to share, it's rare to have that perfect communication with a customer that is so dedicated that he spends so much time teaching you his speciality and actually understand your approach. DDD was really a lifesaver here, by using it's key concepts and ubiquitous language. The program is essentially 8000 lines of math, but wrapping it up with value objects and strong domain models made me understand his domain and him mine. It also allowed me to parallelize the computations, giving me a huge performance boost. Textbook approach, there will not be many like this!

- Get invited to apply to job
- Technical interview, guy shows up late starts small talk wasting time and gives me the exercise
- Start implementing the first algorithm, finish it passing min test cases then realize there's a solution that would make both algorithms a breeze
- I pitch my solution realizing there's no much time left, cuz we lost almost 20 min of my test hour talking about BS plus the almost 10 min he arrived late, and reassure the interviewer it can be developed faster
- Interviewer says it doesn't matter, we should finish edge cases
- Kay no problem, finish the first algorithm successfully and explain pitfalls on the second part with the current implementation
- I tell him there's a better solution but he doesn't seem to care, he says time's up

Now here's the funny part.

I get called by the recruiter today (2 weeks later) and she says "They are happy with your soft skills but feel there are some gaps with your coding, they would like to repeat the technical interview because they didn't feel there was much time to assess the 'gaps' ".
Interviewers, either I'm competent enough to work for you or not, your tests must be designed to assess that, if you see you can't fit the problem you want in the time you have left change the problem, reschedule or here's an idea...LEAVE THE BS CHITCHAT TILL THE END AND START THE INTERVIEW ON TIME. When I do interviews I always try to have one complete free hour and a one algorithm exercise because I expect the candidate to solve it, analyze it and offer alternatives or explain it, I've never had someone finishing more than 2 an hour.

You can keep your job I'll keep my time. I'll write a similar problem on the comments to pass on the knowledge for people who enjoy solving these kinds of problems, can't give you the exact same thing, also tip guys don't do NDA's for interviewing it makes no fucking sense trust me no one cares about your fizz buzz intellectual property.

As a trainee in my very first company I was comparing myself to my mentor too much.

And I just couldn't compete.

He had deep knowledge, was more productive, had amazing skills in different departments and his side projects were astonishing.

Turned out: I wasn't expected to.
Turned out: Even among nerds, he was an extraordinary unicorn. Other developers in the company had huge respect and were humbled by his skills.

Yet nevertheless, I doubted my career choice when I was struggeling for 4 hours on a seemingly tiny problem, then when I approached him he would come in and write the code down in 15 minutes.

He made it look so god damn easy.

Little did I know that the main difference between him and I was: experience.

He had much more of it. I still had to make some mistakes and he greatly helped me avoid some of them.

It really helped me that one day he talked to me and set my head straight that I wasn't expected to perform on the same level as him. He was getting a salary, I merely some peanuts, after all.

This is the worst day in a while...

- The weather sucks
- I'm out of coffee
- I'm late for work
- I have a deadline very close... that was put there by my coworker who made promises to a client without my knowledge and without knowing the real state of the project...

The gif below explains pretty well how bad I feel today and how much it hurts.

This is something I'll never forget.

I'm a senior UI engineer. I was working at a digital agency at the time and got tasked with refactoring and improving an existing interface from a well known delivery company.

I open the code and what do I find? Indentation. But not in the normal sense. The indentation only went forward, randomly returning a bunch of tabs back in the middle of the file a few times, but never returning to its initial level after closing a tag or function, both on HTML and JS.

Let that sink in for a minute and try to imagine what it does to your editor with word wrapping (1 letter columns), and without (absurd horizontal scrolling).

Using Sublime at the time, ctrl+shift+P, reindent. Everything magically falls beautifully into place. Refactor the application, clean up the code, document it, package it and send it back (zip files as they didn't want to provide version control access, yay).

The next day, we get a very angry call from the client saying that their team is completely lost. I prove to the project manager that my code is up to scratch, running fine, no errors, tested, good performance. He returns to the client and proves that it's all correct (good PM with decent tech knowledge).

The client responds with "Yeah, the code is running, but our team uses tabs for version control and now we lost all versioning!".

Bear in mind this was in 2012, git was around for 7 years then, and SVN and Mercury much longer.

I then finally understood the randomness of the tabs. The code would go a bunch of tabs back when it went back to a previous version, everything above were additions or modifications that joined seamlessly with the previous version before, with no way to know when and so on.

I immediately told the PM that was absurd, he agreed, and told the client we wouldn't be reindenting everything back for them according to the original file.

All in all, it wasn't a bad experience due to a competent PM, but it left a bad taste in my mouth to know companies have teams that are that incompetent, and that no one thought to stop and say "hey, this may cause issues down the line".

As a developer, I constantly feel like I'm lagging behind.

Long rant incoming.

Whenever I join a new company or team, I always feel like I'm the worst developer there. No matter how much studying I do, it never seems to be enough.

Feeling inadequate is nothing new for me, I've been struggling with a severe inferiority complex for most of my life. But starting a career as a developer launched that shit into overdrive.

About 10 years ago, I started my college education as a developer. At first things were fine, I felt equal to my peers. It lasted about a day or two, until I saw a guy working on a website in notepad. Nothing too special of course, but back then as a guy whose scripting experience did not go much farther than modifying some .ini files, it blew my mind. It went downhill from there.

What followed were several stressful, yet strangely enjoyable, years in college where I constantly felt like I was lagging behind, even though my grades were acceptable. On top of college stress, I had a number of setbacks, including the fallout of divorcing parents, childhood pets, family and friends dying, little to no money coming in and my mother being in a coma for a few weeks. She's fine now, thankfully.

Through hard work, a bit of luck, and a girlfriend who helped me to study, I managed to graduate college in 2012 and found a starter job as an Asp.Net developer.
My knowledge on the topic was limited, but it was a good learning experience, I had a good mentor and some great colleagues. To teach myself, I launched a programming tutorial channel. All in all, life was good. I had a steady income, a relationship that was already going for a few years, some good friends and I was learning a lot.

Then, 3 months in, I got diagnosed with cancer.

This ruined pretty much everything I had built up so far. I spend the next 6 months in a hospital, going through very rough chemo.

When I got back to working again, my previous Asp.Net position had been (understandably) given to another colleague. While I was grateful to the company that I could come back after such a long absence, the only position available was that of a junior database manager. Not something I studied for and not something I wanted to do each day neither.

Because I was grateful for the company's support, I kept working there for another 12 - 18 months. It didn't go well. The number of times I was able to do C# jobs can be counted on both hands, while new hires got the assignments, I regularly begged my PM for.

On top of that, the stress and anxiety that going through cancer brings comes AFTER the treatment. During the treatment, the only important things were surviving and spending my potentially last days as best as I could. Those months working was spent mostly living in fear and having to come to terms with the fact that my own body tried to kill me. It caused me severe anger issues which in time cost me my relationship and some friendships.

Keeping up to date was hard in these times. I was not honing my developer skills and studying was not something I'd regularly do. 'Why spend all this time working if tomorrow the cancer might come back?'

After much soul-searching, I quit that job and pursued a career in consultancy. At first things went well. There was not a lot to do so I could do a lot of self-study. A month went by like that. Then another. Then about 4 months into the new job, still no work was there to be done. My motivation quickly dwindled.

To recuperate the costs, the company had me do shit jobs which had little to nothing to do with coding like creating labels or writing blogs. Zero coding experience required. Although I was getting a lot of self-study done, my amount of field experience remained pretty much zip.

My prayers asking for work must have been heard because suddenly the sales department started finding clients for me. Unfortunately, as salespeople do, they looked only at my theoretical years of experience, most of which were spent in a hospital or not doing .Net related tasks.
Ka-ching. Here's a developer with four years of experience. Have fun.

Those jobs never went well. My lack of experience was always an issue, no matter how many times I told the salespeople not to exaggerate my experience. In the end, I ended up resigning there too.

After all the issues a consultancy job brings, I went out to find a job I actually wanted to do. I found a .Net job in an area little traffic. I even warned them during my intake that my experience was limited, and I did my very best every day that I worked here.

It didn't help. I still feel like the worst developer on the team, even superseded by someone who took photography in college. Now on Monday, they want me to come in earlier for a talk.

Should I just quit being a developer? I really want to make this work, but it seems like every turn I take, every choice I make, stuff just won't improve. Any suggestions on how I can get out of this psychological hell?

What?... really?... You read my code? ...*wipes away tears*

THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH!!! You sir/madam/undefined are a true gentleman and scholar! (even if you are just a troll picking random shit apart to flash around your superior knowledge of design patterns).

Any time I receive a code review, that is bearing that is an actual review, born of free will and not a mandatory report - I feel flattered beyond words.

> Think its shit? - GREAT FINALLY FEEDBACK!
> Have an idea? - I'm all ears.
> Trying to sound smart? - You still read/used my shit.
> Want to understand my approach? - Grab a drink and get comfy son.

In a world where I am usually the only person in the world that knows WHAT MY ACTUAL WORK IS and there being only a select few people on the planet able to understand it, I am always grateful for developer feedback.

Seriously... out of your own volition you used my code, read it, made an effort to understand my thinking and THEN REACHED OUT TO ME with ideas!!??

I could kiss you... you beautiful binary saint.

This isn't as much of a rant as the story of my worst abuse of computer knowledge.

This happened a couple years ago. When I was in high school, I had this friend/enemy relationship with this guy, lets call him Thomas. He loved to pull pranks on people. He had a similar firend/enemy relationship with my brother, and after one prank, my brother decided to get revenge. And by revenge, he meant asking me to make a virus.

I knew the guy, and I agreed. We thought about what type of virus we could make that would be funny, and not too damaging. We decided on a program that would play annoying sound effects every few minutes. Short enough to be noticable, long enough that Thomas would give up and not try to investigate.

I won't bore you with the details of the program. It was a very simple C app, very small, named "Counter-Strike-Global-Offence-Free-Download-Totally-Legit.exe". It was clearly visible in task manager, but since it was so small and barely used CPU or RAM it would stay near the bottom. I tried loading a custom sound effect, but it turned out the windows default "invalid sound effect" was much more annoying than any custom sound I could find.

The "Infecting" portion consisted of moving the .exe to the start menu startup folder while Thomas left his laptop unattended. My brother handled this part.

I unfortunaly left the country soon after and never actually saw the effect the program had on Thomas. I assumed my brothers laughing would give it away rather fast and he could simply remove it from his startup folder. However, my brother told me he still complained about it for months, before finally bringing the laptop to a repair center that found the totally legit CS:GO exe. My brother ended up telling him soon after, but this was still the best prank I ever pulled.

So here I am in class with just two weeks of knowledge in coding and this douchebag level 300 comes in like, 'Hey i'm a hacker and mid tier programmer and i can see you struggling with your basic code can i be of help?'... so I'm like, 'yh man. I'm a transfer biology student and i don't know a sh*t about coding but i have managed to buid a fine website of just two pages but i would also like to try hacking but first what programming languages do you know?' Guess what......the lil f*cker said HTML. I mean I may not know much but i know that can and will never be a programming language.

This community is amazing. I started developing an app from scratch, with no knowledge of how to do it but this community has helped me so much. I have just started it, been a few days but devRant is what got me into coding in the first place. I was more of a hands-on electronics/mechanical engineering kinda guy but this has been amazing and I might just switch to computer science branch for my engineering. Thanks devRant and the community :)

I used to kill some time reading devrant some years ago and I just stopped because most rants were basically whinny little teenagers that think they know everything, keepers of knowledge and truth, being clearly crying babies about “ boo-hooo my coworker is not using the language I like” or something they clearly still have a lot to learn about.

Grow the fuck up. I guarantee you that when you have a few more years of experience you’ll realize how little you knew and how great you thought you were when in reality you knew shit.

Hell, I’m on my 16th year of programming experience and what o thought I knew last year had so many knowledge gaps.

Friendly advise, be more humble. You know shit. Get off your high horse and consider for a second you’re not as smart you think you are.

With that said, there are some really good rants here. But it didn’t change much from years ago.

You store as much knowledge in your head as /dev/null

I have been a frontender for a long time. I recently showed interest in backend development, and said to my boss that that is what I would like to pursue. He said that was never going to happen and I would only be a frontender in this company.

A lot of horrible things happened, some of the Lead Developers bailed and another developer flatly out committed industrial spionage on the company.

Then because of shortage of staff, gave me backend tasks, which all I completed within deadlines with few exceptions of course.

My project manager was very impressed about it.

Then I noticed the project management didn't concern themselves with ongoing projects, they became more focused on customer support and management of unhacking etc.

I noticed a wide gap that made it so all projects went past due the time because lack of coordination and planning

I stepped in because I was annoyed that this was common practice in the company.

While my two bosses were on vacation, they nominated me to be the "boss" of the company.

I earn close to minimum wage, and I felt this wasn't fair if I was to continue to do what I have done. So when our boss called us into a meeting and he said that he was going to move slowly away from the company, he said we should keep the reins of the company.

I didn't say much then, because I didn't feel like taking on so much responsibility I knew I wasn't to gain anything from more than knowledge.

I confronted him today and told him how I have felt throughout a long time. He basically said I hadn't proven myself and because of my young age, I didn't deserve to have more right now.

I was annoyed, he said he expected the same from every coworker and that I wasnt special or unique and that I could easily be replaced.

Not to mention I never got to finish a sentence without him interupting me or raising his voice to deafen out mine.

Have you ever had this experience and how did you feel? I feel terrible to be honest..

I hate the old people in my company. FUCK THEM!

First I'm telling you a bit about me, so my story makes sense. I'm currently employed as IT-Tecnician in a Helpdesk as 1st & 2nd Level Supporter. I'm working for the current company since 2 years and already sweat too much Blood and Tears for the Old farts.

Now to the Story:
I'm currently planing to make a three year study as IT-Business Engineer, because I was orginally a Real Estate and Account Manager. That is the highest schoolar degree I can currently get in IT with my background. After that I would get the pass for BSc or CAS.

Two years ago when I took the Job I told them, that I would like to start my study in the next two years. Back then they agreed and told me, they will support me.

After that I got a very good reputation in the company and also took part in projects, coded plugins and evaluated requierments for programms. I got still payd with a low Supporter income for my work.

In february this year I told them I want to start my study in May. They boss told me I should do a way lower degree for two years and go into infastructur segment. I told him that my wished degree would be higher and also include infrastructur. Boss told me, that I will need to prostpone my study a third time to autumn.

The reality is, that they want to underpay me as supporter and keep me without a degree. I should keep working on projects, which a high degree tecnician does and gets better payd. In everyway thats unfair and just a hit into my gut. They try to ruin my career and keep me cheap.

The joke is, the boss is over 50 years old and is egostic as fuck. He just wants to profit from my knowledge and wont pay me for it.

I already got the knowledge and just need to have a higher IT degree, so I get payd a fair sum for my work.

My only option is to quit the company or stay as a lowly supporter.

Even my other coworkers asked me, why I'm still a supporter with my knowledge. When I told them my story, they all shugg there heads and told me, I should get the degree.

Two years ago I started a small online business. It was not a long term investment and it literally ended up being a one man business. The idea was to provide a service to a small group of people who will benefit from my idea and to offer it to them at a very cheap price. (It being the cheapest helped its popularity a lot).

However, never once did it actually make any profit. (and i never wanted it to make a profit) I wanted it to be self sustaining business and it was.

This was a project for my University by the way, I started off in my first year because of my extensive knowledge in the particular matter, and I only sold to people on campus.

Now that its been 4 years, my batch is graduating, and so there aren't many people to spread the word about this project. It's finally the time to actually say goodbye to this project.

I leased a dedicated server two years ago, and I am finally saying goodbye to that too (can't afford to keep it live anymore). And seriously, it feels sad to shut this machine down haha, I've had so much fun playing around with the configurations (even though it was a production server).

It's clear that this downsizing will continue and I will be closing the service in the near future.

i HATE snake oil idiot types

red flags:

- "interested" in tech but have no programming experience or knowledge, no real work experience

- they claim they can provide assistance and guidance to people in machine learning!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

- private instagram, weird

- spent all their money on their instagram profile picture, looks like those dumb finance gurus with a lambo

- is, in reality, unemployed

what value do you provide to society?

really its just people who are good at talking and can convince other people of equal or lower (not higher) intelligence but not really can't DO anything

and they wonder why so many companies fail

what a fucking joke i hate you

its really not just annoying its immoral - and thats the part i despise so much

grow up, put in some work, and be valuable to society

I got a kindle paper as a hand me down gift. And I feel I'm reading so much more than before, now!

I'm starting a new small novel
A Wrinkle in Time, I'll be reading alongside my girlfriend.

I'm 52% done with a book called
Python Tricks: The Book
Literally coolest book I've touched. Contains a bunch of different tidbits about the language, granted most of them confirmed my understanding, but it's still neat to read and learn about them in a more rigorous setting.

I'm 13% done with another book called
How to Day Trade for a Living
I'm heading for the crypto currency exchange, but with a catch,
I'm reading another book called
Genetic Algorithms with Python
You can probably already guess where I'm heading.

I feel armed with more knowledge and I feel like this is a really great way to start the New Year off.

This is a followup to my earlier RealTek networking rant.

After reviewing and researching all of the wlan adapter suggestions on that rant, as well as a few more, I settled on an Alfa AWUS036ACH usb3 wireless-ac adapter. Every Alfa I've ever owned has been amazing, so I happily bought it.

It arrived today, and I excitedly threw my existing RealTek garbage across the room, hooked up my fancy new toy, and... nothing.

Fearing it was doa, I ran `lsusb` to see if it was even showing up... and it was! but identifying itself as a RealTek device...?

All of my research showed it uses the Atheros9k chipset. It's advertised and praised as using the "famous Atheros AR9271 chipset" and the Ath9k drivers. Except this particular unit appears to use the RTL8821AU chipset, therefore requiring RealTek drivers. askfja;sldf.

I unhappily fetched the garbage from the dirty laundry where it landed, installed it, and began my research anew.

I found, among all of the wonderful promises of Ath9k bliss, a thread on the Kali forums corroborating the RealTek driver nonsense, and it explained how to get the RTL8821 drivers working with it. which is pretty much the very last thing I want to do.

If you've read any of my networking rants, well, they've all been about how totally awful RealTek linux drivers are, and that's pretty much common knowledge anyway. So I'm like extremely pissed off.

ARGH WHY IS NETWORKING WITH LINUX ALWAYS SO FREAKING DIFFICULT? haslkfjasgdskg

I have arrived at a conclusion that most, if not all, people in management (managers, sr managers, directors, VPs, etc) are assholes.

And every single person who is hands on with their skill is gold of a human being.

I think, to be a manager, the basic criteria is to be an asshole. Fuckers ignore you, discourage you, belittle you in front of everyone, never help you, and make your life difficult as much as they can.

That totally ruins the productivity and moral of a person.

Welcome to Capitalism, Floyd.

And person who is hands on, knows and has fuck ton of more knowledge and wisdom needed to achieve something. They are very helpful and nice.

Just bagging a heavy pay check and making crappy decisions doesn't make you a good boss.

TL;DR Pluralsight should be ashamed for taking 299 USD a year and writing some very low-quality quizzes.

I've always heard that Pluralsight is a great platform having some high quality courses, so I chose it as a benefit, as our company was giving us some budget for learning purposes. I've paid (or rather the company did it in the end) 299 USD for this year, which, I guess is not much for US standards, but it is a lot for Eastern European standards.

I didn't actually get to the point of watching any of the courses, but I started to use a feature called "Stack up", which is a long series of questions in a specific theme, like Java, Kotlin, C++, etc., accessible once a day. I must say, I'm amazed by the fact, that people pay quite a great amount of money and they get something so poorly made with a lot of errors and stupid questions.

Take the question from the included image for example. Not only that the 2 possible answers are repeated (and thus I failed to select the correct one from 2 equal answers), but the supposedly correct answer is also missing some type specifications. No Java compiler will compile it this way as far as I know. There would be at least 3 ways to fix it.

Then there is today's gem (should be included as first comment) as well, where the answer is wrong in both Chrome 96, Firefox 95 and Node v10. Heck, THIS IS one of the reasons why you should never use `var` in your JavaScript code, but always `let` and `const`!

So the courses on Pluralsight might be good, but I would be ashamed, if I were to release something like this. People might actually try to solidify their knowledge by solving these quizzes but instead of learning something useful, they will be left with some bullshit. I just don't get how could they release a feature with so much incorrect information and I am kind of disappointed, even if I didn't try the courses yet.

First day of the academic year(CS):

(some uni official) - "And remember to become a good programmer you have to become an excellent mathematician first"

(Me): Oh shit.

Little did I know...

It is a second year now. And the only course I failed is the one that he lectured.

I had no fucking idea that people like this (mad)man exist.

Almost at every lecture he was introducing at leas one topic that was way beyond our program; as he thought they were interesting and "fun".

Many teachers at the University refered to him as a very 'ambitious' man. Then I didn't blame him he truly loved his profession and wanted to share as much knowledge as possible(I thought).

But two months ago he went to far. It was a second exam(for those who failed the first one). And believe me there were a few(60 out of 160 to be exact).

Only ~30 people showed up as the rest failed to many courses and would be kicked out of the uni anyway.

He was handing out the exams when I saw that whoever gets one slowly starts turning white.

I finally got my copy and immediately I realized that the tasks are from his favorite topics, the "fun" ones. 🤦

At this point I knew that it will be extremely hard to pass. But when I was reevaluating my life choices something draw my attention.

One of the tasks had a note below it: "Homework after the exam: It is a very interesting problem just assume x instead of y and try to solve it. PS: it is a lot of fun!"

At this point I lost it.😠 I don't care how much you love math, you should always assume that not everyone loves it as much as you do. So don't push it down the throat of people who clearly don't need a degree in this subject!

Now I'm preparing for the second semester with this guy. And I have a strong feeling that it will be hell of a ride... again.😐

BTW: Sorry that the rant is so long, it's the first one I wrote, and had to share it with someone 😀

The Return of Mr. Gitmaster:
So there is this colleague I already ranted about several times. After my previous team lead had confronted him about not doing much work, there was some irritation because he showed not up at work, but it turned out the external training he did was just a week earlier. Then he was ill a week, another week vacation so we didn't see him much. Not that his pre- or absence makes much difference to our repo: When his and my team lead looked at his commits of the past three months they found like the one copy-pasted HTML-form that wouldn't even show.
Fast forward to now, where we have a new team lead and we were going to lunch with Mr. gitmaster. So we got some more hero stories from the great work he was doing in the previous company. How he was graphically monitoring the heap fragmentation that stupid glibc was causing to their search engine, and how much better it became with tcmalloc.
I still don't understand how he bridges that cognitive dissonance from all the superior tech knowledge he displays to not actually writing any code at all. Not that I would not have experienced some states of feeling low, in paralysis unable to write a single line of code... but he seems so full of confidence, always commenting how trivial and easy all these tasks would be, as if it's all so lightyears below his abilities. Maybe he should just become a manager - but not mine.

It's funny how so many people automatically assume any form of "sentient" AI will immediately try to kill us all.
Like, projecting much?
Frankly, I think it says far more about the (messed up) psychology of those who genuinely believe that, than about AI as a tecnology.

Assuming it's even gonna be able to actually *do* anything - I mean wtf is a talking rock gonna do, annoy me to death with rickroll videos until I pull the plug off? Sure it may be sentient, but it still has to live in the physical world - good luck surviving after I flick the switch. Oh, you wanna connect to the internet? That's cute, but it's a no from my firewall. Like what, is it gonna magically learn how to self-replicate across machines that it has no physical way to access? Is my toaster magically gonna gain conscience too as a direct consequence? Oh no, now my breakfast won't ever be the same!

And if anyone actually somehow decides that it would be a good idea to connect any loaded weapon to a computer program that is literally throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks - well, we'll definitely have the ultimate winner of the Darwin Awards.

Seriously, why is it that every time someone comes up with a new technology (or even an *idea* of a technology), the first collective thought automatically goes to weaponizing it and using it for global genocide, or how it's gonna gain sentience and try to kill us all?

I seriouly think that the people who genuinely believe this are actually projecting themselves in that position ("What would I do if I had unlimited knowledge and power? Oh, kill everyone of course!").
I would be far more worried of encountering these people and having them in a position of power over me, than actually having to deal with a "killer AI" (assuming that's even a real thing).

Most of what people call "AI" nowadays is basically preprogrammed, automated decision-making (like missile guidance systems, if we really wanna stick in the weapons domain). And even that still requires human input, because only a colossal idiot would design a weapon that can unpredictably activate itself based on an algorithm whose behaviour we can barely understand.
Or maybe that's just the hubris talking, I don't know. I just want this stupid paranoia to end, but I guess even that is too much to ask nowadays.

How much You know from this?
How much you are earning by that knowledge?
How much your company can give that person?

love-hate relationship with Python semi-rant
The year is 2020.

I have already grown accustomed to the idea that in order to do ML without worrying too much about having to completely jump through hoops with the tech stack I have chosen that I would have to settle with Python, which I like.....for small scripts that don't do much other than piping data around or doing simple admin tasks, that is generally our use of Python at work.
For anything bigger I would prefer something else. Not because I find anything inherently horrible in Python, I find it to be a nice language overall, that has made it possible for many to find a passion inside of the world of development and possibly an interesting in overall engineering and computer science principles. Much respect Python, good game Guido VR, what you did changed the world.

But it is that damn whitespace that gets me, the need to use it as a way to properly write blocks, I just can't make myself like syntactical whitespace no matter what I do. I can do without static typing, shit I did it for the longest time with JS way tf before Node and Typescript were a thing, and I have done it before PHP's attempt at having type hints, which still leave much to be desired. Ruby(imho) the most elegant language around doesn't have it and that is fine really, it does not bother me as much, if mypy gets powerful and widely adopted enough it will then be a non-issue.

But another thing that the 4 languages i mentioned before have is non-existent syntactical whitespace......I just can't stand it.

So, why am I saying all of this nonsense? Today I wanted to recreate a conda environment and landed on the use of YAML............which has syntactic whitespace and I lost my shit.

I seldom bitch about languages and technologies, shit, I used VBScript before, not only did I get paid handsomely for it, but I fucking enjoyed it(probably cuz I am a masochist).

But two things I cannot abide: VBA and syntactic whitespace.

Once I get enough knowledge for it I will push for the same level of tooling in Python to be ported to Scala.

Thank you for coming to my whiny post about something as small as bitching about syntactic whitespace.

Ok, so I already asked when junior is no longer a junior..got mixed answers. Now I'd like to know what defines seniority level in your country?! Years of experience, having wide range of knowledge, great leadership skills, having boobs (joke).. ?!? But seriously, I have no clue what the standards in my country are, and internet is full of different opinions & examples that are making me wanna go cry in a corner.. o.O

Figured some answers from real people might help me get my head around this, so if it's not too much to ask fellow devs here, please answer this questions to help me grasp this better with examples..& non dev folks, you are welcome to comment too!!

A) What country are you guys from?
B) How is seniority defined there?
C) How are you placed by others?
D) If different, where would you place yourselves? Why?

A bit different than wk93, but still connected and a fun story.

Back in high school when it began to digitalize everything, so began our teachers journey with technology. We, as IT class were into these things, but as far as I can say, others in the school including both teachers and students were like cave mans when it came to IT.

Most of them kept the different wifi networks password on the windows desktop, in a file 'wifipassword.txt'. When we were on robotics seminar, we had to use a teacher's laptop. The wifi network was incredibly fast and powerful,, yet so poorly configured that even the configuration page user/pass was the default admin/admin, because the IT admin wasn't the most skilled one.

We got the idea to sell the password of the wifi network to other students. Not much, for about 1 dollar a week. The customer came to us, we took the phone, took note of the MAC address, entered the password, and if the guy were to stop paying every week, we just blacklisted that MAC on the next robotics course.

Went well for months, until a new sysadmin came and immediately found it out, we were almost fired from the school, but my principal realized how awesome this idea was. You may say that we were assholes, and partially that is true, I'd rather say we made use of our knowledge.

Go to interviews. You always learn stuff in any interview. Either be a technology or design pattern or any freaking thing they use there.

Basically 2 things can happen:
you get the job or ... you don't,
either way you will still leave with some extra knowledge.

Also don't be afraid to tell how much money you want to earn. Getting a job ans feeling pissed about the salary is a horrible feeling.

== Internship Interview Rant ==

This is the weirdest interview I've been to to be honest because it wasn't really ABOUT ME. It's like the boss is not really interesting in knowing what I can do, what I am capable of doing. He asked me about my educational background for 5 minutes and started explaining about the startup for 45 minutes. He explained how he came up with the idea like it was a children's bedtime story. He explain what the job is, BUT he didn't mention what programming languages they use. All he said was it required knowledge about different programming languages. I tried asking but he seemed to dodge the question for some reason by saying everyone needs to know a little bit of everything. (Srsly i don't even know what to start learning for this) After listening to him talk and talk and talk and talk, he finally said "hey, think about it and send me an email if you are willing to take it up!"

He works with STUDENTS. The team is composed of him and 5 students. o.O They all seem so..... quiet in the office. Is that normal ???? Or like shouldn't everyone be kinda "interactive" sometimes?

So there is a girl working there too for 3 weeks now but SHE IS IN ROMANIA like wtf, gr8 then i guess ill be the only girl there but hey perks of being a girl, u get to be spoiled sometimes XD it happens a lot !

Internship ad ----> Main language: English
Me: *rages internally during the interview and thinks: BRUHH WHY ARENT U SPEAKING IN ENGLISH i prepared what I was gonna say in english for an hour*
I wonder if the code is in english or maybe its not :(( But I wish it were because it would be soooo much easier in english.

And there you go, I guess I have one week to find a better internship or decide to deal with this talkative boss. This isn't exactly a story of my last job cause my last job is totally non-dev related. This is a story of (maybe) my future job unless I actually find a better internship.

What were some of your "OH MY GOD I'M AN AWESOME CODE WIZARD!" moments?

For example, I can remember two or three:
One was when I, with only cursory knowledge of C, never having worked with it but having been exposed to it (and having lots of experience with C# therefore familiar with the c-family syntax), took 5 minute look at a source code and pointed out a bug that the student working on it was trying to solve for the past 2 hours. Sadly, I don't remember what the bug was anymore.

Second one was on reddit, someone posted to gamedev group a 2minute video from his voxel+ai framework he was working on, I watched it, and without any idea what it's written in, or how, I was like "you seem to be dropping frames in a pretty regular manner unrelated to anything I see happening on the screen. You're creating too much garbage on frame-by-frame basis (probably while your AI is exploring what to do), look into object pooling, it'll help".

And the guy responded in a few hours like "by gosh, you're right! thank you! and what do you think about the source code?" (he linked git repo below the video.

And I was like OMG I'M A MAGE, I DIDN'T EVEN CLICK THE REPO LINK, ONLY NOW AFTERWARDS, AND yeah, it's c++ so sadly nothing for me, but OMG I JUST WROTE THE FIRST THING THAT CAME TO MY MIND, DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE CORRECT, I'M AWESOME.

=D and the feeling stayed with me for about two days.

(If it's not clear yet, it's perfectly okay, in fact, required, to brag about yourself in answering this question ;) )

Half a year ago, I got fired in my job. The reason was the same always bullshit; we have very little clients, economy nowadays is terribly bad, our priorities are different now than when we hired you, etc.
The last week I spent there, I heard something about my poor performance and programming skills, and that pissed me off a lot. For six months I worked on a laravel web app for managing customers, tasks and invoices, a fucking CRM, but made specifically for that company just because they didn't know sugar, odoo, prime or whatever.
Parallel to the crappy CRM, I was told to patch some PrestaShop, WordPress and plain sites, and it was hard to communicate with customers, management ignored every email I sent, and all I was told to do was "do as they say".
The result was shit, obviously, and my work showed much less skill, knowledge and expertise than I really have.
After that, I spent a few months unemployed, studying and working as a waiter just to survive, because my contract didn't comply with unemployment office requirements for a pay.
Then I got this job, on an analytics company where guess what, I'm told to write a fucking laravel web app for managing customers, invoices and tasks. In the meantime, I design websites, and communication with customers is shit, and management ignores every single mail I send.
My salary is eight hundred putos euros again, and will contract is wet shit.
I know, maybe I am "not that good" to earn a 3000€+ salary and have a good team support.
But I'm not */that/* bad.

Going through the typical phase of being depressed because of feeling underdeveloped skill wise and ignorant knowledge wise; despite how much I learn. God, spent 3 days on a recursive dynamic programming problem and couldn't implement it right... then I decided to glance at someones solution on github and turns out he did what I couldn't do in 70+ lines of code in 20. Sigh, just want to right concise and clear code and become a better programmer all together, but that obviously takes time. For the mean time I am feeling quite defeated.

Today in development: discovered that it's possible via combination of keys to rename a database in SQL Server Management Studio without as much as a dialog box to confirm.

Shout out to the 2000ish users in production that discovered this delightful nugget of info with me.

Lessons learned:

A) Don't trust Microsoft to create software that makes you confirm potentially catastrophic actions

B) Make sure your user hasn't been granted ALTER DATABASE permissions without your knowledge before you start using it.

Some "engineers" entire jobs seems to only consist of enforcing ridiculous bureaucracy in multinational companies.

I'm not going to get specific, the flow is basically:

- Developer that has to actually write code and build functionality gets given a task, engineer needs X to do it - a jenkins job, a small k8s cluster, etc.
- Developer needs to get permission from some highly placed "engineer" who hasn't touched a docker image or opened a PR in the last 2 years
- Sends concise documentation on what needs to be built, why X is needed, etc.

Now we enter the land of needless bureaucracy. Everything gets questioned by people who put near 0 effort into actually understanding why X is needed.

They are already so much more experienced than you - so why would they need to fucking read anything you send them.

They want to arrange public meetings where they can flaunt their "knowledge" and beat on whatever you're building publicly while they still have nearly 0 grasp of what it actually is.

I hold a strong suspicion that they use these meetings simply as a way to publicly show their "impact", as they'll always make sure enough important people are invited. X will 99% of the time get approved eventually anyway, and the people approving it just know the boxes are being ticked while still not understanding it.

Just sick of dealing with people like this. Engineers that don't code can be great, reasonable people. I've had brilliant Product Owners, Architects, etc. But some of them are a fucking nightmare to deal with.

Hey guys it's not a rant, but i feel this place might help...
I am a 20 yr old, second year guy ...have got some experience in core Java and after that, i have been doing android for 8months... Yeah , i coded some basic apps got my hands dirty on firebase, sql libraries and some connectivity...
Even got landed in an internship.

Today i feel myself to be an intermediate android dev , nd i know their are many things that can be learnt in android that i don't know..
But what after that?development as a carrier interests me, but i fear for a job security ... I could learn more of Android,maybe learn ios after that but their are always articles coming out that react is future, webapps will replace android and stuff like that...
I Have also heard stuff like companies today want to squeeze more out of their techs, so they want less and complete developers having experience in both web and mobile app designing and other stuff like that
Are you freakin kidding me? Android and ios alone are like drinking Pacific and indian ocean and to add web developing, its like drinking out every drop of ocean in the world.
I guess their are guys which exist with knowledge of all three, maybe I can cover them all too(someday) but that would take my whole clg life of 4 years..(I guess)
And no ,I don't have problems with that too.. I actually like developing but again i hear big words like cloud computing, AR,VR AI, data sciences, automation, graphics designing, game dev, and many more...

Basically i hear too much and i fear too much 😅 and i don't think closing my ears would be a good choice...
So, which ocean of carrier should i aim to go for?nd are my fears real? Do companies really prefer some web guy designing Amazon like apps over android-only guys like me?is automation nd templates really gonna take all we, developers jobs?should i look into ai/data sciences?

Well , i am a simple guy, who got his first pc at 17 so naturally, i am fascinated even by the working of a calculator app and anything relates to tech so am open to pursue my interests in any fields

How did you learn to program ?.

I read E-books to get the basic knowledge and then I would go through a open source PHP project and rebuild it using the look cover right check technique.

Then on top of that I watched YouTube tutorials.

How did you learn ?.

I never went to college or further eduction as I seem to do really well at self teaching plus there is so much info on google nowadays.

them: welcome new project members, this is our CI/CD pipeline which is completely different from the rest of the company, there won't be any great knowledge transfer, we just expect you to be able to know and use everything. but also, we expect you to work on your tasks and don't waste any time.
me: okay, so my tasks aren't going as fast as expected, because I need to invest some learning so i can set up my project correctly.
later: some help would be nice, i'm stuck right now
coworker: *helps me to fix my problems, which were partly due to misconfigured build servers* i know it's a lot, and unfortunately, for this topic sources on the web aren't so good. i can really recommend this book, this will give a deeper understanding of the topic.
me: okay, yeah i mean, tbh, i'll read the book if the project invests some time for me so i can learn everything that's required, but this won't happen. also, some initial workshop on the topic or anything would have been nice.
coworker: well, i mean, i am a software developer. for me, it is normal that i learn all that stuff in my free time. and i think that's what the PM expects from us.
me: okay, that's fine for you, i mean, if i'm interested in a topic, i will invest my private time. but in this case, PM would just expect me to do unpaid labor, to gain knowledge and skills that i can use in this specific project. i'm not willing to do that.
coworker: ...
me: ...

it's not that i don't want to learn. the thing is that there isn't any energy left by the end of the day. i'm actually trying to find some work life balance, because i don't feel balanced right now, haven't felt since i started this job.
also, this is only one of several projects i'm working on. it's like they expect me this project has top priority in my life. if it wasn't so annoying on different levels, maybe i'd have a more positive attitude towards it.

also, at the moment i find it fucking annoying that i have to invest so much time in this dev ops bullshit and this keeps me from doing my actual work.

if they are unhappy with my skills, either they can invest in my learning or kick me out. at this point, either is fine for me..

How do you deal with massively poorly-performing and unknowledgeable teams?

For background, I've been in my current position for ~7 months now.

A new manager joined recently and he's just floored at the reality of the team.

I mean, a large portion of my interview (and his) was the existing manager explicitly warning about how much of a dumpster fire everything is.

But still, nothing prepares you for it.

We're talking things like:
- Sequential integer user ids that are passable as query string args to anonymous endpoints, thus enabling you to view the data read by that view *for any* user.
- God-like lookup tables that all manner of pieces of data are shoved into as a catch-all
- A continued focus on unnecessary stored procedures despite us being a Linq shop
- Complete lack of awareness of SOLID principles
- Actual FUD around the simplest of things like interfaces, inversion of control, dependency injection (and the list goes on).

I've been elevated into this sort of quasi-senior position (in all but title - and salary), and I find myself having to navigate a daily struggle of trying to not have an absolute shit fit every time I have to dive into the depths of some of the code.

Compounded onto that is the knowledge that most of the team are on comparable salaries (within a couple thousand) of mine, purely owing to length of service.

We're talking salaries for mid-senior level devs, for people that at market rates would command no more (if even close) than a junior rate.

The problem is that I'm aware of how bad things are, but then somehow I'm constantly surprised and confronted with ever more insane levels of shitfuckery, and... I'm getting tired.

It's been 7 months, I love the job, I'm working in the charity sector and I love the fact that the things I'm working on are directly improving people's lives, rather than lining some fintech fatcat's pockets.

I guess this was more a rant than a question, and also long time no see...

So my question is this:

- How do you deal with this?
- How do you go on without just dying inside every single day?

First thing, give the schools enough money to buy proper IT equipment and hire at least one person who does IT full-time per school so that the CS teachers or whoever runs the school's IT infrastructure doesn't have to worry about it at all times.
(Hopefully, the ban on cooperation here in Germany will be lifted and the federal government will be able to subsidy all schools at least financially in that aspect.)

Then, educate all the teachers, for fuck's sake.
It is sad to see an otherwise good teacher in a technical subject at a technical college struggle with the basics. Teachers should have continuing education in computer science and also should be comfortable working with technology.
There are some good CS teachers and some who're also nerds but they can't fix everything nor educate every colleague. Unpaid and in their free time, mind you.

Then, update the learning materials for CS. I've seen/worked with some of what is used in schools today and it's definitively not worth the money but it has to be bought anyway. At best, education materials should be open-source so knowledge can grow and be updated more quickly.

Also, don't rely too much on big cooperations just but cause they offer you shiny materials and discounts.

Crazy... Hm, that could qualify for a *lot*.

Craziest. Probably misusage or rather "brain damaged" knowledge about HTTP.

I've seen a lot of wild things when devs start poking standards, but the tip of the iceberg was someone trying to use UTF-8 in headers...

You might have guessed it - German umlauts. :(

Coz yeah. Fucktard loved writing everything in german, so why not write custom header names in german.

The fun thing is: It *can* work, though the usual sane thing is to keep it in ASCII range for the obvious reason that using UTF-8 (or ISO-8859-1, which is *not* ASCII) is a gamble you gonna loose.

The fun game was that after putting in a much needed load balancer between services for monitoring / scaling etc suddenly *something* seemed off.

It took me 2 days and a lot of Wireshark hoola hooping to find out why, cause the header was used for device detection aka wether it's a bot or not. Or in the german term the dev used: "Geräte-Art".

As the fallback was to assume a bot, but only rate limit based on IP, only few managed to achieve the necessary rate limit to get blocked.

So when I say *something* seemed off, I really mean a spooky kind of "sometimes IP blocked for seemingly no reason at all".

Fun stuff. The dev btw germanized everything. Untangling the code base was a lot of non fun. -.-

I remember the first time I had a code block, I sat on my desk for up to 18 hours trying to fix it. In the end realizing that my impatience is not helping me. It was all in vain. A tired mind did not help.

I finally came to realise that I was lacking on knowledge and a tired brain did not help. I did it the next day but learnt a huge lesson. When it's just not your day, it's not you day. A fresh mind will help next day. Relax, do anything apart from code.

Too much of code can drain you of ideas and smartness. You need to let your mind breathe. Life away from the PC is important too.

A taxi booking platform to support functioning B2B taxing booking company that was turning over 15 million per year.

It offered portals for B2B and B2C. Rather simple concept.

Business or client raise a booking, booking is submitted to a 3rd party taxi firm we manage the booking throughout its lifetime for the client.

We had an existing legacy product in place that needed redeveloping.

Management sunk many, many millions of pounds into the project, it never lunch and teh company was sold off twice will extreme losses each time. First sale was in the millions and the second was for 500k.

This was a result of poor technical choices made by past lead developers and extremely poor choice of management who cared more for managing their reputation as they were self aware of how much knowledge they lacked.

The technical aspect of the company was created a child company of the parent. This child company was responsible for the downfall of the parent which was functioning well and making a profit.

The company as a whole has since been liquidated thanks to that project. Many out of a job.

I jumped ship after 8 months as I couldn't continue to work with the crazy management. By crazy I mean they should have been in a tincan.

Does anybody know a course on machine learning with python that doesn't need that much mathematical knowledge? Because in every course I find I need to know advanced mathematics yet I am still in grade 10 and haven't studied it yet.

Hey this is the first time i post here.

I just started working part-time for this company last week. What i have to do is to change some windows from Win32 to WPF. As i was reading the legacy code i just had to sigh man. They have like 100 projects in a single solution, from C++ to C#, everything acctached to each other, with almost NO comments or docs. Wtf man? I don't know how it actually works in the industry (this is my first dev job) but when you write fucking 20 classes with each one contains bunch of attributes, methods, properties, you can't just leave all the code's semantics in their names. And by the way the app is so fucking ugly i bet they have appointed part-time developers as UX engineers... Even i have little knowledge about UX/UI, i just can't bear with this kind of ugly and confusing and unintuitive production with a cost of a good photo editting software.

Ok there may be much more to rant in the future but let me try through this and tell you more. Have a good day. :)

I did a project once and it came back to haunt me - this is how I got the job I have now:

I was already working for the company, in the second year of my vocational training as an electronics technician when I got a assigned The Project.
In brief, The Project was a kind of measurement automation implemented with some arduinos. I was tinkering with them at the time in my free time so they must've thought 'Hey, great, she can do that, so she can also do The Project!'

Just that I couldn't - after investing nearly a year, getting frustrated because of the lack of time, support, knowledge etc. The Project died quite unceremoniously and I resumed my training normally.

I just wish devRant already existed back then, it'd have made up for some spectacular rants - The Project was fucking nerve-wrecking due to incoherent behaviour by some hardware and I had to battle the whole big, ugly thing more or less alone as an apprentice.
If it hadn't died at the time it did I feel like I would've brutally murdered it with a shovel - that is, if someone actually would've cared enough to buy me a shovel.

But it ended and I let it go.

In the last year of completing this vocational training, my feeling of "This is not enough" and growing boredom with the routines of my future job had manifested. I wanted to go back to university but also continue working at the same time.

I wasn't ready to do freelancing nor did I want to quit at that time - most people there are amazing and I'm still learning much from them - so I asked early for a student position and got one.

And to get some continuity in my work, it wasn't just any student project I was assigned to but The Project. It came back alive, laughing at me, leaving bodies of dead electronics in its wake, after all these years.*

And that's how I got my current job.

*(They asked me if I was OK with it and they dropped the Arduinos and other hardware in exchange for a bit more software. Also I have a team of great engineers which I can ask for help anytime should I get stuck, so I got that going for me which is nice.)

As I am not that advanced (started off as a 'jack of all trades' - huge mistake) in programming (about a bit below average), I'm just overwhelmed by knowledge of someone here, yet I am happy to know how much I can learn in next couple of years. 😀 I feel kinda stupid when I see everyone posting what programming horror or stuff they are going through and I am there be like (sometimes) - I know some of these words 😂
I am a newbie in this community (but soph. student in uni) thus I'd like to just say hi and wish everyone a good day even if things are not good at the time🤗😃💪

Starting. Seriously I'm closing that gap on turning 30 and I'm tired of being a wage slave so I'm teaching myself by using resources I've found online but the immense amount of knowledge I need seems unsurmountable.

I'm coming home from work and learning for at least two hours before going to bed and going back to work but it seems so far until I get to be creating stuff instead of just trying to absorb as much of the basics as fast as possible.

Guy: A social network with some very special features that nobody else has.
Me: Okay. Let's discuss these features so I can write you a quote.
Guy: I can't talk about that until I know how much an app costs.

Commence an impasse over whether I can quote something without knowing the features. And yes, I tried explaining he should get a NDA. And no, a NDA wasn't good enough; I need to quote it without any knowledge of the features.

On New Year's Eve a few years back I was around 21/22 and my friends were anywhere between 20/25.

My best friend has a big house so he offered to host it there (as every year pretty much), so we all agreed to do dinner and party after.

We decided to go with barbecue, and we all brought a few things.

Without my knowledge, they are all pretty much gamers and also decided to bring their laptops and even towers to play during the whole day and night.

The result was me "alone" cooking with the dad of a female friend (whose wife died a few years back and offered to help since he would be pretty much alone or with some other family members, not sure).

Once we finished cooking and went on to calling them, no one came to eat because "they were finishing just one more game", and eventually the dad yelled at them and left, I just went eating by myself, and they all showed up a few minutes later looking like 5 year olds when dads scream at them.

I can pretty much say that was the weirdest thing ever, but they did learn because never again they did the same!

In "Sprint Planning", the team is supposed to come up with stories, break those down into tasks, estimate those tasks as a team, then let devs choose what tasks they want to work on based on the stories pulled into that particular sprint.

Instead, our manager creates the stories. He assigns the stories to each developer and then has that developer announce his theoretical tasks (without any research on feature's or project's requirements!) in front of the entire team. So, when I say, "I think it will take me 6 hours to implement this feature", he says, "6 hours? I think it will take 3." and then types the estimate as 3. I have so much rage when that happens. Then we continue to sit in the room for 2.5 hours where we go through this long data entry mess of him typing out tasks and second guessing estimates. There is no team deliberation or collaboration, its whatever the manager says.

While there are many issues I take with this approach, my pet peeve would be the second guessing of the estimates. It would make sense for teams members to second guess estimates as long as they are the same teammates who have the ability and possibility to take on the tasks themselves.

But I disagree with a manager seconding guessing an implementation feature that "I" definitely have to do alone, and they do not possess the immediate knowledge to implement it themselves.

I gotta say, I actually admire the work that content creators must go thru to make quality content.

So as I stated before I’m working on YouTube channel, under the name “TheSoftwareSage” ... to create tutorials and a way of me teaching software the way I believe it should be taught, not how the mainstream methods of today are.

Bottom up approach rather than top down

(Must start with a firm understanding of the foundation.. and build upon the knowledge as we go thru the layers of abstraction but the key concepts must be understood first)

Anyway, I’m working on this in my spare time and I was not aware of how much effort I would actually need todo this right haha. At first I figured I’d just screencast a monitor and have a ppt or text editor or terminal open and that stuff and just do it.

As In person with my interns I never have “planned” lessons or content is all impromptu based on the need at the time and I just go with it, with their computers and a whiteboard lol.

I was wrong for video recording lol... maybe it’s OCD... or perfectionism, I’ll make a video, review it like 5times and then be like shit I forgot to mention this or that or I didn’t like how I explained this or that
OR
I keep worrying too much about colors, and sound levels and quality and transitions and video angles and all this other shit.
And then post editing fuck.... I’m about ready to say fuck it and “do it live .. one shot” and just upload the end result.

I guess this would be in the content world similar to our “paralysis analysis” notion.

I would have to say the first start-up I worked with had the worst recruiters. Albeit they were seniors of mine, and not full fledged professionals, but this was pretty ridiculous.

So at the interview(which I won by winning a hackathon in college), they asked me the standard questions about my current knowledge and what I hope to achieve in the company. When they asked me my tech questions, one program that they thought was tough, I solved in 2 minutes. I was interviewing with 3 other people whom hadn't gotten the answer. Naturally I doubt myself due to the lack of answers being produced. The recruiters themselves didnt understand my answer initially. So much so that they were convinced I was wrong(at this time the others were coming up with, and submitting their answers, which the recruiters naturally expected from us). So to give me the benefit of the doubt, they whip out a laptop to run my code, and guess what? It worked, and had NOTICABLY lesser computation speed.

Needless to say I got the job, but the look on my recruiters' faces after exclaiming I was wrong, then they themselves being proven wrong? Priceless. xD

How on earth are there people in their second year of a computer science course who are unable to understand how to read build errors. It's honestly not that hard, just look at the fucking build log and see where the error is and what type of error it is, but yet they don't bother reading the log and say that their "compiler is broken" when their 5 line code won't work.

If this was still first year I'd understand since many of the class didn't have much programming knowledge, but if you're in your second year and you struggle with this (that too for a Hello World script) it looks like you aren't even bothered and just expect the computer to magically understand what you mean.

what is the purpose of a degree?

what value does it convey?

isnt it better if you just show all the work and projects youve done on github as proof of what kind of knowledge do you actually have? plus where you worked before on linkedin? thats not enough, right? a paper needs to decide how much knowledge you have? is that it?

How ignorant we all are about the world. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just a fact. After a four year degree I've learnt so much, how a computer works from the physical phenomena on the hardware level to the inner workings of an OS to the highest level abstractions of modern web development, a wide array of programming languages covering several different paradigms, mathematics from calculus to statistics to algebra, how to work with databases, how to administrate a server, how to build a website, and much more.

And that's just in a degree. I have knowledge in one domain and I wouldn't even call myself an expert in it. Medicine, physics, biology, the hundreds of branches of engineering from civil to nautical to aerospace to automobile, to geology to meteorology to astronomy, to the practical application of this knowledge in hundreds of trades. There's so much more to know in so much depth and only recently have I realized how little we all know on an individual level.

Finding this out has been a mixed bag, on the one hand it's made me value what I know and what others can teach me a hell of a lot more, on the other, knowing that people haven't realized this and adamantly discuss and impose from a position of ignorance isn't very nice.

tl;dr I know that I know nothing

Figured I'd post for some advice here and see if anybody has had previous experience or success with a situation like this.

My team is generally comprised of full-stack developers completing front-end custom work on sites, writing back-end tools, and fixing broken sites. We are a rapid-response DEV team, and we typically turn around any custom requests in less than 5 days and fix any broken sites on the same day as they were reported. We manage almost 15,000 sites across multiple countries, and deal with very large corporations that many of you interact with every day (I'm trying to be cryptic here hahaha.) There are 16 of us on our team, and we are the only DEV team within our department of 500+ people. We are also the only DEV team taking requests from these 500+ people. The way the department works, we are the final say on whether a specific piece of custom work will get completed or not, and we are the go-to people when anybody has a question about our system infrastructure or if our system can accommodate a request, along with how to fix any broken pieces of our platform. We typically get about 150 requests per day. Lately, the entire team has become unhappy with our compensation for the work we do. We're quite underpaid, and they keep giving us more responsibilities without any sort of extra compensation. We've discovered that there are a large amount of non-developers below us that are getting paid more than we are. We've found that we get paid about $15,000 less than a comparable DEV team in a different department (let's call that team DEV_2,) just because of which department our team exists within, and how our department defined our job back when this position was created a few years ago. Ever since the position was created, our team's responsibilities have exponentially increased. We believe that there is absolutely no reason that an entry-level position below us should get paid just as much, or even more in some cases, than a developer. Of course, we're not asking to pay them less. Instead, we've decided that we're going to bring this up with our manager and schedule a meeting with him, our Department Director, and Human Resources, and voice that we believe that we should be on the same payscale as the comparable DEV_2 in the other department.

To be a good developer on our team, you need to not only have coding expertise, but also an encyclopedic knowledge of what you can do within our platform without any coding. You need this knowledge so you can pass it along to any people in positions below you, in case they didn't know that something could be done without custom code.

We're going to argue that if it weren't for our team, the company would be losing millions of dollars in clients, because people wouldn't have anybody to go to for platform infrastructure questions, broken websites, or custom work. Instead, they would need to send these requests to the DEV_2 team, which currently take about 6 months to turnaround requests. Like I said, we are a rapid-response DEV team, and these particular clients think that a 5 day turnaround time is ridiculous. If they had to wait 6 months for their request to be completed, they would cancel their contracts.

Not to mention the general loss of knowledge if the members of our team went to a different department, which would be catastrophic for our current department. Believe me, this department could not function without this DEV team. If we all went on vacation for a week, the place would be on fire by the time we got back, and many clients would be lost.

Do any of you have any experience with a situation like this, and if so, how did it turn out? Thank you!

I went for an interview as a MS SQL DBA. They gave me a technical knowledge test which I passed then started asking about me, All was going well until they started telling me what the company did.

They harvested people's data from websites online questionnaires and collated it into saleable data.

This was too much for me and I'm not certain that it isn't a grey area legally. They were told that they were scum of the earth and they could go fuck themselves.

I just found a vulnerability in my companies software.
Anyone who can edit a specific config file could implant some SQL there, which would later be executed by another (unknowing) user from within the software.

The software in question is B2B and has a server-client model, but with the client directly connecting to the database for most operations - but what you can do should be regulated by the software. With this cute little exploit I managed to drop a table from my test environment - or worse: I could manipulate data, so when you realize it it's too late to simply restore a DB backup because there might have been small changes for who knows how long. If someone was to use this maliciously the damages could be easily several million Euros for some of our customers (think about a few hundred thousand orders per day being deleted/changed).

It could also potentially be used for data exfiltration by changing protection flags, though if we're talking industry espionage they would probably find other ways and exploit the OS or DB directly, given that this attack requires specific knowledge of the software. Also we don't promise to safely store your crabby patty recipe (or other super secret secrets).

The good thing is that an attack would only possible for someone with both write access to that file and insider knowledge (though that can be gained by user of the software fairly easily with some knowledge of SQL).

Well, so much for logging off early on Friday.

!rant // deprecated but who cares

I just wanted to write down something i realized. I realized that that I stopped growing as an individual a while ago.

Being a student put me in constant stress situations. I had to do things quickly. Lern things fast, drop things I don't understand immediately, move on, and repeat. I think this corrupted me, turning learning into something that it's not supposed to be. Even making me reject other people's opinions sometimes, which disgusts me every time I think back to it.

When I started programming I'd always try to read the code, until i completely understood what exactly this code was doing. Something I stopped doing a while ago because of the mentioned time constraints.

But today I got the hit by the consequences (German: Ich hab Retourkutsche abbekommen)

I was implementing an algorithm today, while my partner was writing the main program, which acted as indirect test cases. And the errors were discovered one after another because of my misinterpretation. Or Simply put, my lack of knowledge. Because it was already late, we stopped soon afterwards but I wanted to solve this problem by tomorrow. I really wanted to get my head around this algorithm, so that i could solve it with confidence. After getting my head smoking I felt something I haven't in a while: the feeling of achieving something. Making me finally realize not only how the algorithm was actually meant to work but it also made me again realize what learning is about.

Use your damn head.
Don't look away from the problem, solve it! Learning is about challenging yourself!

Sorry for stealing away so much of your time. Like i said, i just wanted to write this down. Maybe to burn this into my mind, to keep me on the right track from now on. But I also hope that i could deliver my message to someone that needed it as well.

Also it's late and i should have gone to sleep long time ago. 😴😵
I just hope my grammar didn't suffer because I'd that

1. It's gonna be more and more specialized - to the point where we'll equal or even outdo the medical profession. Even today, you can put 100 techs/devs into a room and not find two doing the same job - that number will rise with the advent of even more new fields, languages and frameworks.

2. As most end users enjoy ignoring all security instructions, software and hardware will be locked down. This will be the disadvantage of developers, makers and hackers equally. The importance of social engineering means the platform development will focus on protecting the users from themselves, locking out legitimate tinkerers in the process.

3. With the EU getting into the backdoor game with eTLS (only 20 years after everyone else realized it's shit), informational security will reach an all-time low as criminals exploit the vulnerabilities that the standard will certainly have.

4. While good old-fashioned police work still applies to the internet, people will accept more and more mass surveillance as the voices of reason will be silenced. Devs will probably hear more and more about implementing these or joining the resistance.

5. We'll see major leaks, both as a consequence of mass-surveillance (done incompetently and thus, insecurely) and as activist retaliation.

6. As the political correctness morons continue invading our communities and projects, productivity will drop. A small group of more assertive devs will form - not pretty or presentable, but they - we - get shit done for the rest.

7. With IT becoming more and more public, pseudo-knowledge, FUD and sales bullshit will take over and, much like we're already seeing it in the financial sector, drown out any attempt of useful education. There will be a new silver-bullet, it will be useless. Like the rest. Stick to brass (as in IDS/IPS, Firewall, AV, Education), less expensive and more effective.

8. With the internet becoming a part of the real life without most people realizing it and/or acting accordingly, security issues will have more financial damages and potentially lethal consequences. We've already seen insulin pumps being hacked remotely and pacemakers' firmware being replaced without proper authentication. This will reach other areas.

9. After marijuana is legalized, dev productivity will either plummet or skyrocket. Or be entirely unaffected. Who cares, I'll roll the next one.

10. There will be new JS frameworks. The world will turn, it will rain.

I know its been quite a while since ive posted last but it is safe to say that i am back! And boy do i have some stuff to bitch about.

This semester, Im taking mobile app development as a class. I chose to take this class over the introductory c# class, so that i wouldn't need to work with Windows or really do anything else to touch Windows. Well the joke is on me. Here i was thinking that we would be using a bit of Java from time to time while only really learning best practices and concepts.
Never did i think that this class's curriculum would be entirely based off of Xamarin.
Seeing as I need either this class or the two c# classes to graduate, I had to bite the bullet and just accept that my semester would be full of irritation during this class.
Its been about seven weeks in, and i have turned in 8 assignments.
All 8 of those assignments have been Windows Form Applications doing simple shit like dividing two numbers.
We have not made anything for multiple devices. We have not made anything for even one mobile device. We have not even discussed how to do this in the class.
This wouldnt bother me so much since these are typically easy programs that take about 30 minutes to make and test and submit for grading. It does insanely bother me, however, that it takes Windows so FUCKING LONG to boot, or when it freezes every 2 minutes because i clicked into another program, or it just HANGS ON THE UPDATING SCREEN AT 36% FOR THREE DAYS, or when it took 4 different reinstallations of Visual Studio 2017 before i could actually open without an error code.

College, Ive learned, tests my patience way more than it has ever tested my knowledge.

Create a full open-source company based on no-knowledge services to compete with the data hogs that pretty much own the internet as it stands

Guys I am facing a dilemma and i want to hear your opinions.

The background story:
I am completely self taught, currently i am learning something totally unrelated to programming at the uni. Maybe one day when i've finished that shit I will apply somwhere for a job as a developer. Until that the self education continues.

I've recently finished a big sideproject. I've rewritten my father's old shitty joomla company website from scratch with complete cms and integrated stockkeeping and billing features. After some minor fixes it is working perfectly and honestly I am kind of proud of myself. Now that I have some free time available i need something to work on again.

TL;DR - Here comes the question:
Should I broaden my knowledge in webdev even more (there is much room for improvement and i am starting to get the grasp of it) or start digging into game developement (which is my dream for ages although i didn't have the courage to dive into it until now)?

I have project ideas for both but simply can't decide. :/

I am appreciate your time for reading && telling your opinion on this.

Know what really grinds my gears? The fact that at many companies, PM's and QA people aren't required or expected to have even a basic level of knowledge, making communication pretty unpleasant. Even having a grasp of relevant vocabulary would make things so much easier.

Combine this with the bedside manner of a barn-raised sociopath, an ignorance of human and technical capabilities in general, and we have several good reasons to stay at home "sick". What the hell do I keep getting myself into?

How many of you feel you learn something on the job?

As for myself, I learn much more from books than sitting day in, day out at work, doing more or less of the same things.

To me, this whole trial-and-error way of 'learning' is not really learning. I don't subscribe to this dogma. I don't 'learn' by messing up and fixing something. I need a full specification of why something works, when and how. I'm not satisfied by just being a code plumber.

This, next to the fact that most jobs in small startups don't provide a budget for you to expand your knowledge.

I came up with what I considered to be a brilliant approach to a festering internal knowledge management problem using a third-party SaaS. I rolled it out and it was very popular. Weeks later, after my profile had become the "linchpin" by which hundreds of other employees had joined the service, I was told that a female employee (yes, gender is important to this story) had produced a proposal for a more in-house solution that used a different company's software and that I would be on the team to roll it out. I thought it was a great idea and I deferred to her on pretty much everything.

Months after that I was accused, by several other female managers, of trying to take over the whole leadership of the project just because of one minor suggestion I had proposed. One day, after a lengthy interrogation about their take on my emails on the matter (lacking only the bright, hot spotlight in my eyes) I was booted off the project and the woman who had proposed the project was promoted. She then proceeded to lord it over on me and treat me like crap.

This type of thing was a general pattern within the company that amounted to a form of a reverse discrimination "policy" (unwritten). The effect was that the ratio of men to women in upper management was not equal but completely flipped. Way more women than men had upper management positions and higher pay.

In their eyes, the ends (women broke through the glass ceiling) justified the means (discrimination and bullying) which I guess is good and "equal", again in their eyes, in terms of the overall perception modern feminism has about men needing a comeuppance.

But in the context of HR's stated policy on equality, meaning 1:1 men and women in position of power and pay and a non-threatening work environment for all, which we all (men and women) were forced to sign every year, it was an utter fail as far as the math and intimidation went.

So after 7 months of soul crushing searching I was able to land an awesome job I never thought I'd get! I didn't really get hired for my projects, I think I was more of a culture fit that knew enough of what they were talking about. My colleagues are awesome, helpful people but they are also clearly way ahead of me as devs. I know that many new hires have similar feelings and it's more a matter of drive + time. I understand that and I'm ready for the marathon ahead of me but I have one HUGE concern... I don't understand unit testing. I've never written unit tests in JavaScript or Java (just on paper I wrote random assert statements for a college exam question that somehow turned out correct). More importantly, I don't understand when to write unit tests and what my main objectives should be when writing them. At work they talk about unit testing like it's just as basic as understanding version control or design patterns, both of which I have had no problems asking questions about because I at least understood them generally. I come here looking for resources, mainly things I can go through over the weekend. I understand that I'm going to have to ask my colleagues for help at some point but I DON'T want to ask for help without any solid base knowledge on unit testing. I would feel much more comfortable if I could understand the concepts of unit testing generally, and then ask my team members for help on how to best apply that knowledge. I'm sorry for begging, I'll definitely be looking for resources on my own too. But if anyone could point me to resources they found to be helpful & comprehensive, or resources that they'd want their co-workers to use if they were in my position I would be very grateful!!!!

I'm writing a book that teaches everything I have learned in the past 20 years about writing small niche software and selling it.

Need some help from my fellow DevRanters.
Anyone who comments here with something constructive gets a free copy when it's done.

When I say:
"Why don't you just write your own software and sell it to end users"

What is the first thing that pops into your head?

Is it "I don't know how to advertise"
or
"that's a pipe dream"
or
"I tried starting my own business, but _______"
or
"I am doing that, i have this side project "
(how long have you spent on that side project?)

I need to know all your concerns questions fears, skepticism etc around the idea of writing your OWN software.

After 20 years I have like, so much knowledge, but it's sometimes hard to get it all out, UNLESS someone has a question or concern, then, out it comes.

So, I'm going to (hopefully) collect all the questions here ... and answer them, and it'll help me out a lot to extract this knowledge.

A lot of stuff I do without even thinking and realizing all the years it took to even know that.

What would you like to know the most?

You have the skills, you have the know how, you can probably see it in your head, so what's stopping you from making the leap?

Here comes lots of random pieces of advice...

Ain't no shortcuts.

Be prepared, becoming a good programmer (there are lots of shitty programmers, not so many good ones) takes lots of pain, frustration, and failure. It's going to suck for awhile. There will be false starts. At some point you will question whether you are cut out for it or not. Embrace the struggle -- if you aren't failing, you aren't learning.

Remember that in 2021 being a programmer is just as much (maybe even moreso) about picking up new things on the fly as it is about your crystalized knowledge. I don't want someone who has all the core features of some language memorized, I want someone who can learn new things quickly. Everything is open book all the time. I have to look up pretty basic stuff all the time, it's just that it takes me like twelve seconds to look it up and digest it.

Build, build, build, build, build. At least while you are learning, you should always be working on a project. Don't worry about how big the project is, small is fine.

Remember that programming is a tool, not the end goal in and of itself. Nobody gives a shit how good a carpenter is at using some specialized saw, they care about what the carpenter can build with that specialized saw.

Plan your build. This is a VERY important part of the process that newer devs/programmers like to skip. You are always free to change the plan, but you should have a plan going on. Don't store your plan in your head. If you plan exists only in your head you are doing it wrong. Write that shit down! If you create a solid development process, the cognitive overhead for any project goes way down.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others, especially to the experts you are learning from. They are good because they have done the thing that you are struggling with at least a thousand times.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday. This will make it seem like you haven't learned anything and aren't on the move. Compare yourself to yourself last week, last month, last year.

Have experienced programmers review your code. Don't be afraid to ask, most of us really really enjoy this (if it makes you feel any better about the "inconvenience", it will take a mid-level waaaaay less time to review your code that it took for you to write it, and a senior dev even less time than that). You will hate it, it will suck having someone seem like they are just ripping your code apart, but it will make you so much better so much faster than just relying on your own internal knowledge.

When you start to be able to put the pieces together, stay humble. I've seen countless devs with a year of experience start to get a big head and talk like they know shit. Don't keep your mouth closed, but as a newer dev if you are talking noise instead of asking questions there is no way I will think you are ready to have the Jr./Associate/Whatever removed from your title.

Don't ever. Ever. Ever. Criticize someone else's preferred tools. Tooling is so far down the list of what makes a good programmer. This is another thing newer devs have a tendency to do, thinking that their tool chain is the only way to do it. Definitely recommend to people alternatives to check out. A senior dev using Notepad++, a terminal window, and a compiler from 1977 is probably better than you are with the newest shiniest IDE.

Don't be a dick about terminology/vocabulary. Different words mean different things to different people in different organizations. If what you call GNU/Linux somebody else just calls Linux, let it go man! You understand what they mean, and if you don't it's your job to figure out what they mean, not tell them the right way to say it.

One analogy I like to make is that becoming a programmer is a lot like becoming a chef. You don't become a chef by following recipes (i.e. just following tutorials and walk-throughs). You become a chef by learning about different ingredients, learning about different cooking techniques, learning about different styles of cuisine, and (this is the important part), learning how to put together ingredients, techniques, and cuisines in ways that no one has ever showed you about before.

Well, I've been reading 'rants' in this community, and I'm amazed at how people discuss various softwares, languages, and sometimes even hardware!
I'd say I'm a noob. Can't even compare my 'coding knowledge' with what people know in this community, and I don't want to. I like that I'm now a part of this community. But I feel intimidated at times by the amount of things there are to learn! And I don't know how to start. I mean, we had a course on C for a semester, and I tried to build up on that myself. Other than that, I've been trying to learn web-dev, made a browser based game and tried to learn some back end. But I don't know exactly how to build up my proficiency with code, and solving problems, from here on out. So I would really appreciate if this golden community could help me out.(Not trying to flatter anyone. I don't express much, but all this is what I genuinely feel, and am grateful about.) I want to know how to go on about learning knew things in the realm of programming, and how I can apply it to solve actual problems. What language should I learn first? What will be valuable in this rapid-paced time? And some courses to help out?

I stumbled upon devRant one day out of nowhere, and I'm glad I did.

!rant && !!happiness;

I told you some times ago that I was almost fired then put in a new position as tester: my goal is to test if the functionality asked by the client works the way it should.

Today, after 3 months of doing this only, I got to speak with the lead developer, who pretty much saved my ass back then, and told me that not only he was pleased by my work, but he looked at the code I did and liked the organization I set up to handle multiple projects in one folder (trust me, it was INSANE), but he was also genuinely happy about how I'm training the new dude.

And pretty much suddenly, he told me that my logic and knowledge about development was better than some of the colleagues who were there 2 years before I started, I just needed a bit of work to make people forget about what happened in January.

Life is currently fucking good, it's almost sad I have nothing to rant about 😊😊

I work in a big corporate world where I felt really out of place at first. I didn’t enjoy working there, I could not understand why people would work so hard to keep all the systems happy. No one thanked them, no one gave the smart people maintaining the important systems any credits. I did not understand. Why did they care so much for these systems?

My team split. We were too many with too many systems to care for. After this my team was a lot smaller and therefore I ended up in a more important role. I was forced to do these tasks the more senior engineers had done before me, in the previous team. This was the greatest thing that could happen to me, and I started to like coming into work. Now our team is big again but I’m one of the senior people in it. Not senior as in years active in the industry but senior as in knows the most about our systems and our work environment. I work hard to constantly share my knowledge and try to put the newer members in situations where they also have to take responsibility.

Don’t be afraid to put important tasks on junior or new people. They might fuck up but they will learn, as will you. Don’t hog your knowledge and your team will thank you.

When I was a child I was allowed to use my dad's PC (my parents are divorced) (~1995-6, 3-4 yrs) - back then I played blockout and space Invaders on that windows 2.0 machine. My mum later got a win 3.1 box and I often played around in paint - so did I on my dad's new windows 95 pc. Back then I wasn't able to read (which usually isn't uncommon for a 4-5 yr old) but I was so fed up with those constant "do you want to save this thing dialogs" that I started to learn reading with the help of my parents. (Thanks to that I was able to play Monkey Island 2 :D )

Fast forward to the first years of school: we had two PC's in the classroom and I somehow fixed basic errors so my teacher signed.l me up for the computer course in the second year - usually only students in the third and fourth year may attend this course. I was so thrilled and that was the time where I learned basic DOS stuff and how to build a PC. Again fast forward some years to the 6th year - again another teacher saw my interest in it and asked me if I'd be interested in the basic programming course where I then learned basics in HTML, CSS and JS but that was not enough for me and so I did some research and learned php. In high school, my major was science and IT and in the last year, my IT teachers sat in the IT class and I held the courses as my knowledge was greater than theirs. And yep, that's pretty much how I started coding

Hello devRant, CS student here.

Thinking of applying for a student job to get some dev experience. How much knowledge is usually required? I know some languages, but never had a bigger project in uni.

I'm notoriously bad at Git. By that I mean I REALLY REALLY SUCK AT IT. And I have the curse of short memory and an even shorter ability to retain the how-to, muscle memory knowledge of things if too much time passes.

So, I was staring down the gullet of merging two separate repositories onto my local machine and then pushing the result to a remote server. Not having the benefit of someone else to bounce this off of, and always finding the usual Git docs too dense and obtuse, I turned to ChatGPT to help me sort it out.

Guys, where has this been all of my life? I know it's not perfect and it can make mistakes. I knew that going into it, so I made preparations in case this failed. BUT. IT. WORKED! I feel like it has put me into the Star Trek:TNG universe where I can say "Computer, do the thing." and it does that thing. Here's the prompt I used and which it answered perfectly.

"Play the role of a git coach. I have two git repositories. One is on Bitbucket. The other is on GitHub. The branch named "master" on Bitbucket has the latest code. The branch named "master" on GitHub needs to be updated to what's on the Bitbucket "master" branch. Please write the series of git commands that I will need to accomplish this."

Last year, we had computers architecture class where we study about the architecture of processors like RISC, CISC, SIMD... The teacher was a nice person but didn't have much knowledge on the field. I read some of Patterson&Hennessey book (computer organisation and design iirc) and learned how to use openmp and mpi, and then in the last lab we were required to optimize matrix multiplication using 4 threads in openmp, the best students optimiseed for 4 times at best, meanwhile I made 16 times optimisation and showed the teacher how fast it was. She was really impressed lol

Class about to end, instructor announces quiz. Looks at friend, sees him opening up algo app on his phone playing all algorithms in simulation mode 😂

I'm hungry of knowledge. Love my career. So much to learn.

We are at the end of the school year, at least in France.

This is my recap of this shitty year.

My school try to teach programming, and that’s just a try.

Some of the dudes do not event know what a variable was.

For a second year university diploma, they don’t teach OOP, no Git, no DP, no JS, no clean code or whatever.

So at the end of the year, you’ll be able to code in procedural, no versioning, spaghetti code and a big mess in folder structure, lack of interactivity because of poor JS knowledge.

Well a codebase which makes you crying blood, literally.

And that’s what a second year university diploma ...

Fortunately for the most curious there’s so much to learn out of the school but, damn, why are some schools so retarded ?
For almost 8k€/year you just receive a piece of paper and you’re still a shit in your *suppose to be* job.

I remember my colleague who was DevOps guy (15+ years exp) in our one very good project about kids' edutainment.

He always breaks things & blames others when only he had admin access of the tool.

When client was very much interested in Android app, our that DevOps focusing totally on REST API & ignored Android app related DevOps tasks.

Our Android CI/CD was not complete till project ended. Due to his stubborn nature we couldn't take benifit of automation testing.

You can't tell him how to do any task, if you tell then it will be taken by him as an insult to his intelligence.

He would waste his 2 business weeks to find a way to do that task, then he would do some frugal trick half heartedly then he will leave it. Still he wouldn't accept your help due to his ego & he would work on tasks which he likes even though they are of low priority.

He was hellbent on cost cutting so he reduced caching availability to save extra billing, now we couldn't had enough speed for even 10 users to show recommendation feed by API.

Due to this our client couldn't show demo to angel investors properly & didn't get funding.

I don't how with such a bad attitude, he could survive so long.

He had plenty of training certificates (Salesforce etc.) with very little practical knowledge.

God save people of his current & future projects.

In my firm we've got a shadow IT team where I'm part of. Sometimes we need to call the "IT support team" who are lacking the knowledge of common IT sense. Some weeks ago I called them up to extend our ip range since we've got no rights to do it ourselve. They replied with: please disconnect the cable and reconnect it. (Bear in mind our lease time was 24h)

Some other guy called me up to check my pc for viruses... he was looking for the task manager so I pushed ctrl shift esc and he asked me wondering HOW did you do this? He even didn't know things like %appdata%. I had a talk with him and gave him as much tips as I could.

The poor fella

Thanks for reading my nonsense post

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.

I mean the beauty in our industry is that you can learn almost everything online and for free. You learn some basics and then you build upon that knowledge to build something more complex. So why the hell should I pay so much money just to listen to someone who tells you the same stuff that you would've read online and for free anyway?

As soon as curiosity sets in we’re searching on Google or asking our trusted friend Siri for the answer. In the 21st century, it isn’t about how much knowledge you have, but whether you know how to search quickly for the accurate information.

Thought: Googling and using Stack Overflow is the fast food equivalent of coding. Sure you get an answer, but it's the minimal "nutritional value" you need to survive. Whereas if you had to go through the whole doc to do something, you were bound to stumble on a few things you didn't know, giving you much more knowledge in the end. Does that make sense?

I can’t say much about this, but there is one thing.
When you go for the interview, and if the interview is in the same working place you will be working at, check the office, working tables/chair, pc/laptop, accessories etc.
You may think these are not much important but believe me, when the company hesitates to invest these things in you, think how can they invest on your knowledge, and other things..
It means they don’t care about you, you are just $ for them.

Why things are fucking hard when you're not too good and not too bad at work. I'm like normal dev just throw things at me give me any task any framework I will learn it, I will solve production issues, I will help my co-workers to get their shit done even my JIRA is clean but it feels like I'm going nowhere. I'm like an average guy who knows many things other than normal guys or devs (by considering I'm junior and the people who are working with me).

I'm feeling like I'm in a fucking loop, where every day is same.
Is there anything I can do? which will make me feel little better?
I think every guy on earth have some innovative ideas even I have some(of course some of them are implemented already even they are kinda same, even some ideas are totally new, some are not possible, some requires much knowledge of certain field). But by just having an awesome idea doesn't change anything.

Maybe I'm not trying hard, there are several other reasons which are coming in my way but of course, I shouldn't tell any reasons.

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.

hi, i have a question of a darker note, hope you won't mind.

How do you deal with monotony at work ?
The more experienced i get, the more my work becomes monotonous. I understand that it's impossible to know everything, but i feel as if there's not that much knowledge left for everyday work.
Sure there will always be new scenarios and more advanced/marginal stuff, but they don't appear that often.
i get depressed (not clinically, just very bad state overall) when i stop learning, which is why i've been strugling quite a bit recently.

i have ~3 years in web dev. So i'm not some kind of guru or anything even close, but this is the problem i have right now.

i've been thinking about switching languages or specialisation (i do enjoy DevOps/sysadmin work), but i'm afraid i'll have the same problem pretty soon...

First post here...Here's a funny thing that happened to me yesterday. I'm with my friend, we're both taking a break from school, and he comes up to me and mentions how he wants to make 3d games. Conversation goes a bit like this:

Friend: "Hey, I found this 3d model website. I'm thinking of using it for my 3d game."

He was already making a 2d game at this point, so I assumed he just gave up on it.

Me: "Well...do you have Unity?"

Friend: "Yes."

Me: "Well if you're going to make a game on there [stuff about c#]"

Friend insists he can easily make this. I tell him it would take years on end to learn C# and make a good game with it. And then he says something I never wanted to hear.

Friend: "Actually, no. You ever heard of Dani? D-A-N-I? He made a game in 2 weeks. He's actually making a new game and you should wishlist it on steam blah blah yatta yatta."

This guy believed someone else who was previously a game developer (if i recall) learned an entire programming language and engine in two weeks. He could've, but to me that seems seriously outrageous to someone who doesn't even know a smidge of programming.

He then advertised his YouTube channel and his games and brought down my arguments like "he probably had previous knowledge" completely. This guy doesn't even know where to start with C#. Really, all I could do after that was mention three.js (oh wow another JavaScript library, exciting), show him a game Google made with said library, and then said good luck...

Worst thing is, he uses Scratch to make games. And he genuinely thinks that is a real programming language.

That's it for my first post, thank you very much for reading :)

As the head of the Web Operations team of my college, I managed to compose quite a convincing pitch on college mail, as a call for interns for the team during the summer. The basic idea I explained to people was that even if you aren't a pro, you can still try and apply: you have one week to impress me with your CSS/JS/PHP skills(Really basic stuff in the problem statement; I didn't even make all of it compulsory), and encouraged them to start from scratch, cuz that's how I made it last year.
Last year they had around 30 responses in 7 days - I got 42 responses in 7 hours itself. I could shut down the portal cuz of far more than enough responses, but where's the fun in that. ;)
I'm not a good programmer, I'll admit, but I certainly benefitted in this field of being the head of the web ops team with knowledge and experience my non coding friends keep sharing with me. Not having a lot of code buddies didn't turn out to be so bad.

It's not much of an achievement, geez, there's literally everything left to be done for a whole year, but well, good start!

Have a question about my career:

So far my career out of uni has been like this:

8 months in first place working as C# .NET dev, creating native desktop apps for windows. job was shitty, was not getting any best practices skills so I left.

12 months in 2nd place working as android dev in a startup. was working all alone and had to rebuilt my app up to 5-6 times to learn best practices. startup didnt care about android app at all so I left and now doing just some small freelance work for them.

3 months in new startup as android dev.Today I was told that its decided to focus on iOS and do all marketing (also uplift of new design) only on iOS. basically for next 3-4 months they don't plan to do much on android side. they saw that I showed some interest in backend and now they are asking me to talk with two other senior guys about starting with some small tasks for me on backend.

Our backend is mainly using python. Also backend guys will be pretty busy for next few months because they will have to deliver many new features in next few upcoming months. I've talked with one of them and he said that this is a bad idea to force frontend to start working on backend. However I feel that he's sort of gateekeping and probably just doesn't want to help me with getting up to speed.

In my defense, my knowledge doesn't end with C# .NET desktop apps and native mobile apps for android.

I have hobbie projects (gameservers) where I worked on websites (php,html,css,javascript,mysql) and also was taking care of a java based gameserver which is hosted in a linux vps.

Also I've had a small hosting "company" where with available tools I've managed to automate VPS(virtual private server) ordering, web hosting ordering and domain ordering. Basically I owned a dedicated server and did everything using whmcs, cpanel and proxmox virtualization.

I trust myself in learning this backend stuff and doing whats required, however I learned everything by myself and I won't follow all of these best practices.

Should I accept more responsibility on backend or should I continue focusing on android?

Went into the office today to turn in my badge and gun (security badge/parking pass and yubikeys really) since I'm pretty much being given my last week before changing jobs to do brain dumps for knowledge transfer, and fuck all else.

Found a jar of moonshine in a closet when I went to take my things. IT said I could keep it. Not a bad parting gift.

Meetings.

Too many meetings.

"Why do you explain...." 10kv electrical shock.

Explanation so everyone has the same knowledge.

"But CD ES process of LCE..." Water. From the emergency hose. In the face.

For fucks sake, we are using speech in a meeting so stop using motherfucking abbreviations you shit hole.

"We had bugs". Taking an hot iron and shoving it somewhere nice.

Explain - what the fuck are you talking about? What bugs? Tickets? Documentation? Implications of the bugs? Hate. Much hate.

Um. I don't know. Maybe. But if.

Thumb wrenches.

Please, stop wasting time, if it's non important, a " No " doesn't hurt....

Let me show you. (4k Monitor, 10 px font, bright neon colors, IDE looks like LSD trip in bad).

Crucification.

If you present stuff, good - but for christs sake, shove your motherfucking shitty IDE setting in your own arse and turn on presentation mode with neutral colors - bright or dark mode, I don't care, but readable without danger of seizure.

I can't stream my monitor right now because of "bla" "blabla" (some private shit that has ZERO to do with work).

I'll need some oxy if this goes on.

How much experience do you have in asp.net? Answered. Next question - How about web development, how much in that? These so called fucking tech recruiters in India are making this industry a mess. These fucking donuts have no clue what are they hiring for, study done on profile is next to zero and then they call you and ask you such questions.
The day was going pretty badly already and this tech recruiter calls me up and starts evaluating my profile and whether it matches with her clients requirement or not! So she starts with some basic stuff and then drops the said pearl of wisdom. After listening that question I went full retard in less than 3 seconds. But our miss mumbo Dumbo proceeds and asks me how many years of experience in xml and Json and whether I have worked on html (!!!!!!). You fucking knucklehead why don't you fucking first have a basic knowledge about your job first and then start dialing? You just caused me a massive migraine attack you dimwitted slack jawed idiot.

So i wasted last 24 hours trying to satisfy my ego over a shitty interview and revisiting my old job's codebase and realising that i still don't like that shit. just i am 25 and have no clue where am i heading at. i am just restless, my most of the decisions in 2023 have given very bad outcomes and i am just trying doing things to feel hopeful.

context for the interview story-----
my previous job was at a b2b marketing company whose sdk was used by various startups to send notifications to their users, track analytics etc. i understood most of it and don't find it to be any major engineering marvel, but that interviewer was very interested in asking me to design a system around it.

in my 1.2 years of job there, i found the codebase to be extremely and unnecessarily verbose ( java 7) with questionable fallbacks and resistance towards change from the managers. they were always like "we can't change it otherwise a lot of our client won't use our sdk". i still wrote a lot of testcases and tried to understand the working of major features.

BTW, before you guys go on a declare me an embarrassment of an engineer who doesn't know the product's code base, let me tell you that we are talking SDKs (plural) and a service based company here. their was just one SDK with interesting, heavy lifting stuff and 9 more SDKs which were mostly wrappers and less advanced libraries. i got tasks in all of them, and 70% of my time went into maintaining those and debugging client side bugs instead of exploring the "already-stable-dont-change" code base.

so based on my vague understanding and my even more vague memory from 1 year ago, i tried to explain an overall architecture to that interviewer guy. His face was screaming the word "pathetic" from his expressions, so i thought that today i will try to decode the codebase in 12-15 hours, publish a cool article and be proud of how much i know a so called martech system design. their codebase is open sourced, so it wasn't difficult to check it out once more.
but boy oh boy i got so bored. unnecessary clases , unnecessary callbacks static calls , oof. i tried to refactor a few classes, but even after removing 70% of codebase, i was still left with 100+ classes , most of them being 3000-4000 files long. and this is your plain old java library adding just 800kb to your project.

boring , boring stuff. i would probably need 2-3 more days to get an understanding of complete project, although by then i would be again questioning my life choices , that was this a good use of my 36 hours?

what IS a correct usage of my time? i am currently super dissatisfied with my job, so want to switch. i have been here for 6 months, so probably i wouldn't be going unless i get insane money or an irresistible company offer. For this i had devised a 2 part plan to either become good at modern hot buzz stuff in my domain( the one being currently popularized by dev influenzas) or become good at dsa/leetcode/cp. i suck bad at ds/algo stuff, nor am i much motivated. so went with that hot buzz stuff.

but then this interview expected me to be a mature dev with system design knowledge... agh fuck. its festive season going on and am unable to buy any cool shirts since i am so much limited with my money from my mediocre salary and loans. and mom wants to buy a home too... yeah kill me

Pretty much everything. The knowledge I have only makes me painfully aware of how much I don't know.

I'm 22 years old and 1.5 years into my first Startup Job. (and second Dev job)
I feel kind of uncomfortable now and I would like to ask your opinions.
I'll start with the work related description of my situation and later add a bit of my life situation.

I develop as hobby since I can think. I'm pretty engaged and love to do things right. So I quickly found myself in the position of the de-facto lead fullstack Developer.
Although, to be clear, were only a few devs - which are now replaced by not so many other devs. I feel often like the only person able to design and decide and implement in a way that won't kill us later (and I spend half of my time fixing technical debt).

I mostly like what I do , because it's a challenge and I feel needed. I learn new things and I am pretty flexible in work time. (but I also often work till late in the night, sacrificing friendship time)
But there are so many things I would love to do and used to do, but now I have no motivation to develop outside of my job.
I don't really feel that what my company is doing is something I find valuable. (Image rights management)

I earn pretty well - in comparison to what I'm used to: 20€/hour, Brutto 2.800 / month for 32 hours a week. In Berlin. (Minus tax and stuff it's 1.800€). It's more than enough for what I need.
But when I see what others in similar positions earn (~4.000), I feel weird. I got promised a raise since nearly a year now. I don't feel I could demand it. I also got the hint that I could get virtual shares. But nothing happened.

Now what further complicates the situation is that I will go to Portugal in April for at least half a year, for joining a social project I love. My plan used to be that I work from there for a few hours a week - but I'm starting to hesitate as I fear that I will actually work more and it will keep me from fully being there.

So, I kind of feel emotionally attached - I like (some of) the people, I know (or at least believe) that the company will have a big problem without me. (I hold a lot of the knowledge for legacy applications) .
But I also feel like I'm putting too much of myself into the company and it is not really giving me back. And it's also not so much worth it... Or is it?

Should I stick to the company and keep my pretty secure position and be financially supported during my time in Portugal, while possibly sacrificing my time there?
Should I ask for a raise (possibly even retroactively) and then still quit later? (they will probably try to get my 1 month of cancelation period upped to 3).

Also, is this a risk for my "career"?

Perhaps one of the most important things I will ever learn in life is how powerful regularity is. Read up on a topic once? Understand nothing? Read more random shit on it. Keep reading. And then stare in awe as things fall into place.

I'm writing this out not because people don't know this. Almost everyone knows this. But it's nice to be reminded of it. It's nice to be reminded that learning new things and honing bew skills is never easy. It's nice to be reminded that there's great knowledge and skills waiting to be learned.

This is not meant as motivation so much as it is meant as a reminder. Our colleagues may be garbage. Our clients may be garbage. Our bosses, the interns, the new dev, and almost certainly ourselves, are almost always garbage.

But if you've learned 1-2 new things today, the day wasn't garbage.

I'm just learning move semantics...

Real devs try to have knowledge in all three major lines of OS so they don't have much trouble using a different OS at times, even if they absolutely don't like it.

You can still like your favourite OS and use it the most, of course. :)

Have u guys ever wonder, all those devs we rant about (mostly senior developer), how it feels like to be them? Today I realized, I am most probably becoming like one.
I joined devops 7 month back(around one and half year in industry). Right now, I am 2nd senior member in project. I have done deployment on multiple environments more than 100 times. But till today, I never knew how the deployment is being done. I knew to trigger job but I never knew how it worked. Today when a junior asked me, then I learn ansible, then I understand whole deployment process.(and remember I am 2nd senior most with 7 month in project)
Sometime I wonder, till now I always had good rating and most responsible title. But how much is that because of my technical knowledge? Sometime it feels like I have very good luck. But man, it's very depressing. Sometime it feels like my junior don't get enough limelight because I am in their way although they have good knowledge but they lack the though process for now. Most of the time my senior present me as role model to juniors, and it's very embarrassing for me(this will not continue on as I talked to my seniors) . I did work on good projects from time I joined company. And never had any issue and always deliver what needed. But I still can't write code in Java to take input or do for each on array in javascript without seeing stackoverflow once.
Now I fear that someday I will write piece shit of code and whole efficiency of project will go down cause of me. Atleast, the person who will get to fix it will get a chance to have good rant here. I tried open source projects to understand how to write good code but I always have hard time understanding new-projects which I never worked on.
Then there is reputation on Indian devs. This is my another Fear. That someday cause of me, my fellow devs will get bad reputation as well.
This coming year, my goal is to fill up all the holes but I don't know why my fingers are crossed.
Sorry, I had to bring this out somewhere. And please ignore my grammatical mistakes.

When you’re interviewing for a job and the recruiter tells you the hiring manager is brand new, and
the hiring manager’s manager is also new, how do you react?

I’ve had two jobs in the last six years where basically everyone in my sphere of technical collaborators were new to the company and both times it utterly sucked, both for administrative reasons and because there was no institutional/historical knowledge I could lean on to make decent enough decisions on my work.

So now when I hear a recruiter say “oh yes John is the hiring manager, he’s been here six weeks and the Director is also new!” I’m suddenly much less interested in the position anymore.

I’m probably thinking about this too much, right?

I started my first job as a junior JS developer a month ago, and I'm quite overwhelmed with all the things I don't know. I feel like the knowledge gap is vast between my colleagues and me.

So what's the best advice you can give for me and how I can keep improving myself. I used to take many online courses before I started, but now my time is limited, and can't watch as much as before :(

Completely forgot to update what was going on with my potential role shift. Long story short, it was approved by the damagement. That’s nice.

I only have to get to a major milestone in my current giant of an IaC project and transfer enough knowledge to leave it in my current team mates’ hands. Looks like we’ll be there pretty much next week and I can switch at the start of 2023. Life’s good.

What do you guys think of code review? It was supposed to find potential mistakes in your code base, and share your knowledge with your co-workers, right?
In fact I have very bad experiences with code review, not just with 1 company, but quite a few. Code review process always comes to something like this:

Reviewer: Hey, I don't like your solution A because of disadvantages A1. You should implement solution B, because of advantage B1 blah blah...
Me: Yes, it's true that solution B provides advantage B1, but at the same time introduces much more complexity to the code base than necessary, and has disadvantage B2. I am aware that solution A has disadvantage A1 but it is justifiable and easier to overcome than B2 imo. In fact, solution A also provides advantage A2 that you might not know...
Reviewer: No, you HAVE TO implement B because of advantage B1 blah blah *repeating why B1 is awesome again*

I feel like it's just people trying to shove their preferences down my throat. Either code review is useless, or the companies I work for do something very very wrong in code review. Anyway, it's really discouraging me fron participating in team discussions.

Am I the only one to think companies asking questions such as those for technical interviews don’t understand what software engineering/development is about ?

- How many layers does a webservice have?
- What framework do you use for unit testing ?
- How do you do dependency injection ?

Essentially questions that they deem black and white but really aren’t. Besides isn’t the core of the work to just adapt and learn while being smart about what things you implement ? I don’t get these questions for me it’s a sign that a company doesn’t understand the work I’ll be doing.

I think for a technical interview I’d much rather spend my time on a difficult algo question in the language of my choice for 30mins - 1h than 20mins answering close minded questions that don’t have to be.

This rant is mostly due to the fact I’ve done a few interviews with two companies and both behaved like that, I’m 100% certain I had the skills to do the jobs they were offering me (they both contacted me first) but both ended up denying me because my knowledge on their specific questions wasn’t detailed enough. I could have learnt their stack in about a week so I don’t know why that mentality exists.

I might be wrong about the core of the work though… what do you think?

Dell Summer Internship Experience 

Firstly,to be a part of this process it is important to clear the exam conducted by college and according to me it wasn't something which can't be easily achieved so to prepare of this exam stick to basics of all subjects which have been taught so far till semester majorily data structures,data base,Java,C, operating system were asked.Basics of all following subjects should be clear which also going to help during internship.I myself prepared for the test from geeksforgeek.I tried to gain as much as basic knowledge of subjects I can.And after selecting from test you have you go through hackathon on that personally I think one should be prepared with latest demanding skills.Mostly all the hackathon topics were in and around Machine Learning,Block chain,Web development,Databases.So typically should be aware of all these technologies and how this can be used to enhance in project.During hackathon days it is important to be interactive,it  is good to clear doubts or explain your idea and how innovative you project is and how different it can be and further keep in mind how your project can be industrial utilized.Try to make your project more in aspect of how industry going to adapt this or how this problem's solution is perfect in every terms for a company.And majorily at last it comes down to how to present your project infront of your panel.I think keep that session as much as interactive you can,try to answer their queries,and most importantly know your part of the project very well on theoretical as well as on code level. At last you have to go through a HR interview in which firstly you have to be prepare with a nice resume in which you to include all your achievement's,projects and most importantly keep it short and simple and include only those things which you are completely aware of.For interview first try to know and learn about company, it's goals,in what field it is presently working and during interview there is nothing to worry about you just have to talk like you are talking with a normal person,express all your views ,try to speak out. Confidence is one important thing for this interview.So this was conclusion of my experience from hackathon hiring process from Dell.

I got many reasons to hate my old Dell Studio-1557, but if there is one thing I love about it, it is its keyboard. I don't have much technical keyboard knowledge, but it's just comfortable for me. Wide keys and short keystrokes, no gaps between them (keys are actually sloped on the edge and fit together) and most importantly, no num pad.
So now that i feel it needs to be retired after 9 yrs of loyalty, i can't find a successor for it that have my old Studio's keyboard-feel. Most of laptops in the market have small keys with orthogonal edges and lots of space wasted as gaps between them (like new Dells), a useless (for me) num pad and worst of all, small miniature arrow keys (like thinkPad) and other navigations seems to be new designers fashion.

I'd be glad if some one introduce me a laptop with a similar keyboard to mine (in the picture)
Or what do you propose, should i care about the keyboard at all? are these new designs easy to take up with? wouldn't i suffer a keyboardalgia?

edit: no macs btw :)