Sharing a short story.
Time: 1:30 am
Conversation between me and a night watchman in my society.
I was walking and this watchman suddenly stopped me and started asking questions.
Watchman: Isn't it late at 1:30am. When do u sleep?
Me: I sleep very late (replied in a very uninterested manner)
Watchman: Which year are you?
Me: Final year of Graduation
Watchman: Which branch?
Me: (a bit annoyed now) Software Engineering
Watchman: So you know programming?
Me: (little shocked that he knows what's programming) Learning
Watchman: So, do your university teaches C, Python and UNIX?
Me:(completely shocked by his knowledge) Yup. Except UNIX, others yes.
Watchman then asked some fees related questions and placements scope.
I was annoyed when he approached me for a little talk.. But had a wonderful experience talking to this person. It's great when you meet such unexpected person having such knowledge.
When I asked him how he knows all these, he said he talks like this to many students and learnt it.
His last line to me when I said that you know a lot, was:
Sir, you are the ocean, I am a needle in it.
Truly awesome moment... Never judge anyone by looks or his occupation... Knowledge is something that anyone anywhere can gain...
Respect to that watchman...

"Hey, Root, someone screwed up and now all of our prod servers are running this useless query constantly. I know I already changed your priorities six times in the past three weeks, but: Go fix it! This is higher priority! We already took some guesses at how and supplied the necessary code changes in the ticket, so this shouldn't take you long. Remember, HIGH PRIORITY!"

1. I have no idea how to reproduce it.
2. They have no idea how to reproduce it.
3. The server log doesn't include queries.
4. The application log doesn't include queries.
5. The tooling intercepts and strips out some log entries the legendary devs considered useless. (Tangent: It also now requires a tool to read the logs because log entries are now long json blobs instead of plain text.)
6. The codebase uses different loggers like everywhere, uses a custom logger by default, and often overwrites that custom logger with the default logger some levels in. gg
7. The fixes shown in the ticket are pretty lame. (I've fixed these already, and added one they missed.)
8. I'm sick and tired and burned out and just can't bring myself to care. I'm only doing this so i don't get fired.
9. Why not have the person who screwed this up fix it? Did they quit? I mean, I wouldn't blame them.

Why must everything this company does be so infuriatingly complicated?

Recruiter: Why makes you leave a company?

Me: When the company don't appreciate their employees, when I have to develop a small system for them and they never use it. when they try to give me the calm down needle.

Recruiter: what is the calm down needle?

Me: It's when I come with an issue i am facing and you tell me you will fix it, and promise me its gonna happen and never do it.

Recruiter: Silence....

Me: "Keep Talking" When you promise some employee and you are not able to deliver your promise .. well, Its just better if you didn't promise him!

Recruiter: Ok, "next question"

Damn I feel like I was so mad and my answer were straight forward with no bullshit. I think I scared her.

It's not that I hate PHP, I just hate the lack of consistency in standard function naming and parameter order, nonsensical attribute access, nearly-meaningless comparison operators, reference handling, case (in)sensitivities, and more!

I mean, look at these functions:
strtoupper(...)
bin2hex(...)
strtolower(...)

And look at THESE FUNCTIONS:
array_search($needle, $haystack)
strpos($haystack, $needle)

array_filter($array, $callable)
array_map($callback, $array)
array_walk($array, $callable)

And let me jUST USE SOME ATTRIBUTES:
$object->attr = "No dollar sign...";
Class::$attr = "GOD WHY";

HOW ABOUT SOME COMPARISONS:
(NULL == 0) // true
(NULL < -1) // ALSO true

Functions AREN'T CASE SENSITIVE (at least variables are).

Wanna dereference? TOO BAD, YOU'LL HAVE TO GET OUT THE TNT.

Alright, yeah, I hate PHP.

worst experience with a manager was the (female) one who got away with harassing a female employee for YEARS and thought it was ok because she thought they were friends.

She also retaliated (in ways that were hard to prove), played favorites, didn't know metrics or general business sense, couldn't do her employee's jobs but loved to tell them how they were wrong all the time, and then when she was fired, after the female coworker finally reported the ass slapping and the harassment based on disability, she went back into employee only areas with client personal information and thought taking selfies was ok (she was very quickly corrected and had to wipe her phone and memory card to ensure she hadn't been doing it when she wasn't caught, which cameras later proved she had been).

(I only sound calm. I will take a needle to her probably fake boobs and deflate them with glee if I ever see her again)

Working in telecom...

Hello again, everyone. As Sunday comes to a close, and Monday is fast approaching, I'll share with you the likely cause of my death by stroke and/or heart attack:
MONDAY MORNING COFFEE OF HORROR
Disclaimer: Do NOT try this. I am a professional addict. I am not responsible for anything this brew from hell causes to you and/or those around you.
So, I wake up, feeling like I haven't slept for days, or just notice the fucking alarm clock shrieking because I pulled an all-nighter.
Step 1: Silence alarm clock via mild violence.
Step 2: Get the coffee machine to brew some filter coffee (espresso works too)
Step 3: Get milk and ice cubes from the fridge (both are needed, I don't care if you don't like milk, trust me)
Step 4: Get 2 spoonfuls (not tea spoon, and actually FULL spoonfuls) into the biggest glass you have
Step 5: Pour just a little of the warm filter coffee into the glass, just to get the instant coffee wet enough, and start mixing, until the result looks like the horror you unleashed in your toilet a few minutes ago (and will do so again in a few)
Step 6: Mix in 25-50 ml milk, just for the aesthetic change of colour of the devil-brew, and to add the necessary amount of lactic acid to react with the coffee to produce chemical X
Step 7: Add ice cubes to taste (if you are new to this, add a lot)
Step 8. Slowly add the filter coffee while mixing furiously, so that the light brown paste at the bottom get dissolved (it's harder than it sounds)
Now, take a deep breath. Before you is a disgusting brew undergoing a chemical reaction, and your moves need to be precise otherwise it will explode. Note that sugar or any other form of sweetener is FORBIDDEN, as it will block the reaction chain and the result won't be as potent.
Take a straw (a big one, not those needle-like ones that some cafeterias give to fool you into believing that the coffee is more than 150ml). Put it inside the mix, and check that the route to the bathroom is free of obstacles.
Now, clench your abs, close your nose if you are new to this, grab the straw and DRINK!
DRINK LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW!
THAT BROWN DEVIL'S BILE WILL HAVE YOUR INTESTINES SPASM AND DANCE THE MACARENA WHILE TWIRLING A HULA HOOP!
YOUR HEART WILL GO OVERDRIVE HARDER THAN YOUR PC'S CPU WHEN COMPILING ON ECLIPSE AND BROWSING WITH IE AT THE SAME TIME.
The combination of caffeine and lactic acid will bring out the perfectly disgusting combination of sour and bitter usually expected in rotting lemons. After you manage to chug it down (DON'T SPILL OR SPIT ANY!) you have 30 - 60 seconds max to run to the porcelain throne, where you will spend the next 30-60 minutes.
After that, nothing can stop you! You will fix bugs, write entire codebases from scratch, punch that annoying coworker, punch that boss! You will be a demigod among mortals for the next 6-8 hours!
Your recipes for Monday morning coffee?

Me trying to debug CSS compiled from a legacy SCSS-project containing 100+ files and no source maps.

YouTube just deleted my favorites playlist for supposed hate speech. My playlist had like 4k vids in it (none of them uploaded by me) and most of them were just stupid music videos or whatever, nothing even comes to mind that would qualify as hate speech, so because of this alleged needle in a 4k video haystack my playlist got deleted, YouTube did not even show any evidence of the supposed hate speech content within, my appeal was denied instantly. This is why I hate big tech- it is tyrannical and bullshit. It serves as an extra government nanny rather than appealing to its user base. This is because once a social platform grows so large that it has the monopoly on users, it no longer has to appeal to its users, it can then just focus on politics or other agendas. They can do this with confidence that they will not lose their users because they know that the modern internet narcissist will flock to any app that gives them the biggest audience, and since they have the monopoly on users they can rest assured the common narcissist will flock to their app (no matter how shitty or tyrannical) because they’ll get the most exposure there. This is the pattern every big social media platform falls into. At one point YouTube was cool….

One of my hard drives S.M.A.R.T. said it could fail anytime and I should backup my data. I cut all the files to a new hard drive.

Later that week the new drive fails with the needle falling into the magnetic disks... Fml. 

Should've saved those files on the cloud...

At this point i'd like to talk about the original PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf, who was obviously too distracted by his own beard while watching the NBA Playoffs in 1995 to write a proper language.

There's not a language more inconsistent, ilogical, deficient, and best of all, bad structured.

Seriously, which substances was he smoking when thinking up such things as: non objective strings, incasesensitive functions and associative arrays?

What have objects ever done? any other honorable language does that, python, javascript, rails, C#, take your pick.
Not to mention the order of needle/haystack parameters.

I own my grandfather's Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, probably from the eighties. I absolutely love it — it's just like the standard Unix toolkit. Minimalist, multi-purpose, efficient. This is what I have in my knife:
1. Two blades. I call them master (yes) and slave
2. Corkscrew. I call it "ed".
3. Hole puncher, but not just any hole puncher. Mine has an angular sharp edge to carve holes instead of just punching them. Super efficient for wood, plastic and thick fabric. It also has a hole so it can be used as a needle. I call it "vi".
4. Bottle opener which is also a screwdriver. I call it "more".
5. Can opener. This is my favorite one.

It can help you open just about anything. Any type of cans, closed pistachio nuts, oysters, your barely legal girlfriend's virginity — anything. When I eat pistachios, I'm holding my Victorinox in my hand opening tough ones with the speed of rm -rf ripping through your files. Oh, and it's also another screwdriver. I call it "cat".

But let's take a look at modern Victorinox. Maybe it's better? No, not at all. It's totally metrosexual featuring nail files, nail clippers, nail scissors and a flash drive (not even a good one).

Newer doesn't always mean cooler.

(I have the exact same one, photo from the internet because I'm too lazy)

Was it needle haystack, or haystack needle?

I almost died of hypothermia as a kid. My drunk grandpa went out to drink even more with his friends, forgetting about me and leaving the stroller with me sleeping out there on the street. It was negative forty-two degrees Celsius. I was one year old.
I made it, but developed an awful pneumonia. By some kind of miracle, I made it again, but at the expense of becoming a really weak kid. I had two more pneumonias during high school, plus one case of sinusitis.
Told my grandma I got ear pain in the morning. We went to our local clinic. The doctor there said I have to be hospitalized RIGHT NOW, otherwise it might turn into a life-threatening meningitis. By the time we’re in the hospital, the pain is already unbearable. My vision becomes blurry and dark, I hear my pulse in my head, I lose the sense of time. At that point I’m laying on the hospital bed, motionless, quietly sobbing while the terrible pain is swallowing me, a tiny kid, whole.
I’ll never forget the sound of a sinusitis needle crushing through a porous bone inside my head. A glass worth of pus rushing out. The pain immediately going away.
All that because of one man addicted to alcohol. This is why I don’t drink.

I have this guy at work who does pranks constantly, mostly towards his supervisor. Some of his more memorable ones:

- Placed a ballon at the wall behind the door + stuck a needle to the door in his supervisors office
- Hid a small speaker playing "happy birthday" nonstop inside the roof of his office
- Placed a box full of golf balls in our site manager's mail shelf, carved a hole in the box and waited.
- Threw an orange (yes, actual orange) at his supervisor, and hit him in the throat. Entertaining for everyone but them.

Debugging frontend is like searching for a needle in a pile of shit, that someone sold to a shitdigger in another country.

3D printers are amazing. That's inside the needle hole. Had to share :P

So, today I wanted to program a bit and, after reading the last chapter, I want to see what I able to do.
I run my last Linux distro, I open sublime and I start typing code. I finish, I build. 0 warning, 0 errors. Nice! I execute the code: error.
I watch and I struggle on the code for hours, I search on Google, I search on StackOverflow, but after 1 hour I notice I'm looking for a needle in a haystack. So I search instead for a way to produce a better error. I found it, I'm very happy. Let's try what the error actually is:
Error: success
Ok....
Ok...... Well, maybe.... Uhm......
Ok, I won't give up. I search for a tutorial. Found.
The code is almost the mine, it's actually a usual snippet, nothing new. I compare my code with the code in the example/tutorial.
First line, is the same.
First 10 lines, are the same.
First 30 lines, are the same.
I build and execute the example: it works.
I build and execute my code: still doesn't work.

I won't give up, I said it. I won't give up.

I wonder if there's a tool like git diff, so I can see what the differences are, maybe I've no good eyes.
I search, first Google result, "diff"
diff myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

...thank you
I search for a better command
diff -y myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

I search for a still better command
Found. StackOverflow stroke again.
sdiff myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

.....
....

.....

I gave up.

Ps. I've 10 years of experience in programming

Which place do y'all go for developer related comics and memes ? Besides devrant ofc.

I actually wanted to use some in a boring article am about to write. Something with a sword and needle context, like people using heavy frameworks when a small snippet of native code could do just fine.

Tell me what you want but ChatGPT is the best dev companion ever.

I've just submitted 700 lines of JS code with various complex functions because I had an issue for some specific cases I couldn't identify.
In less that a second ChatGPT noticed a missed argument in one of the many function calls... mind blowing.

It's something I would otherwise notice after hours of debugging, looking for a needle in huge functions.

My dad asked a facebook group for help decoding a calibration script I wrote for the new 3D printer, instead of just asking me, and every single person yelled at him that "oh that's so dangerous if you didn't write it yourself don't run it, if you can't manually write gcode sell your printer" etc.

why are these groups always full of degenerate assholes? (and why do they legitimately think calibrating a printer has to be done by manually writing bits to the EEPROM with a needle, or it's not worth having a printer?)

Yesterday at my career progression chat my manager told me that to showcase more seniority I would need to "stop moving the needle by myself and become a multiplier".

So in order to progress I need to change from being a sewing machine to a mathematical operator??!!?!?
Thanks, that's very fucking helpful.

22.30 PM: "Please ceheck all the points in (30 pages long extremely bad and scarce) documentation. Import doesn't work and customer is pretty unhapy."

me: "So do we have an error or am I searching for a needle in a haystack?"

PM: "Just general error."

FFS i'm sick of this. I can't even test the import because it's on a stupid retarded 3rd party software that expexts CRs on new lines and craps all over the place if it sees a Line Feed&#^$/!&@$&'

Probably those methods & functions that swap between haystack and needle as they see fit..

Why the fuck nobody talks about Multi-page apps?! We went from a Web where everything was Multi-page server-rendered, and now everything for Web developers is "Single-page apps".

What about websites who can't do that? Not everything can be a single-page app. Only my uncle's restaurant website, or something which is TRULY a full app. No half choices.
If your website is a multi-page app/portal which actually PRELOADS data, instead of doing 100 fetch to an API within a page that is full of loading bars, well, your life is a pain.
When you want a first contentful paint which isn't a white page, well, your life is a pain.
What are React, Vue, Ember, Angular (let's exclude Svelte and Marko) going to do about Multi-page apps and SSR?

React-router sucks to me. It's performance is weak and it's useful only when you have an SPA with multiple sections which can be treated as pages (e.g. A single SPA divided in tabs).
Server-side rendering is the worst pain ever made by humanity, in React (and prob Vue, I didn't try but I can bet). And even when made easier from libs like Svelte and Marko, I (personally) can't get it to be faster enough compared to a traditional website without a JS framework and with a templating engine.
Anyways, if there's anything that I learnt from React, is to stay away from Next.js. Perfect, beautiful, mess.

All JS frameworks just seem to bloat the code and make it worse and slower, even though they're REALLY helpful.

Why? Why everyone loves them if their downsides are so clear? Why 3 projects out of 3 I made (1 React SSR, 1 Vue, 1 Marko SSR) are and will stay painfully slow and bloated, full of shit, even if in 2020 we should have evolved with the famous three shaking, with the famous lazy loading, etc.?

I am just frustrated.
And let's not even talk about Webpack, Rollup, Lasso, those module bundlers shit which are harder to configure and understand than finding a needle in a haystack.
Lasso was the easiest to configure but I anyways can't understand it. Webpack seems it was made to handle SPAs, as any tool in this freaking world, and not even considering an easy way to integrate multiple bundles for multiple pages (I know it's pretty easy, but with component sharing between pages and big unique bundles Next.js handles it soooo bad it feels like hell).

Am I the only one?

Sorry for the long rant. I just needed to rant right now.

Went for a hand surgery, the anesthetic doctor is learning swift and then he put the needle in the wrong hand.
Lesson learned: never trust a programmer with your life

Just got made regular at my current employer, but the last month or so I've been threading the needle on whether or not to take it (unfortunately, financial woes made the decision for me, but I digress). Thing is the company culture rewards dishonesty and is slightly toxic with middling managers, even if the work is good.

That said, given the circumstances above, how long would you consider it reasonable to stay at such a company before resigning or interviewing for a new job? Give it a year, or six months, or wait for a dealbreaker like a delayed paycheck?

I don't want to be a jerk just because I work for jerks, but the lack of positive change in our workplace is just demoralizing. Being offshore as well doesn't make it easier.

I think it will be hard for Facebook to recover from this.

It seems like most people can tell that it is toxic.

Of course, a heroin addict would tell you they know heroin is bad, that doesn’t mean they are gonna stop using.

So FB isn’t going anywhere (they already have their needle in a lot of veins), but I’m not sure that even the addicts will see them the same way again.

Don‘t we adore it when month in advance requested vacation does not get confirmed and 3 days before the due boss comes in: „you need to finish your tasks, fulfill yet 5 hereby new assigned tasks but all 1 day in advance because if client comes back with questions. If all is done you can have your vacation!“ the new assigned tasks are ofcourse a whole weeks known project with tons of undone work and no one did any preparation for that in advance 💉needle wanted 😂

Unlimited time is impossible... But I don't wanna ramble.

The one thing that I absolutely miss in my kind of work is something that does exist in dozens of flavors and each existence promises to solve some thing...

It's "bug tracker" / "time management" / "ticket management" / "board" / "kanban" or what ever pervert method you prefer software.

I haven't seen a decent one.

I'd think I'd want to build one - it would be definitely an all time consuming effort, since I would be in dire need of specialists.

The thing with nearly all of the solutions is that they lack ... an associative mindset.

Simply put, what we humans can.

The longer a project exists, the more it's housekeeping (guess that's a better word for it) turns into maintenance nightmare.

I remember quite well the joy of puzzling together eg Jira / Bugzilla / ... complex search formulars trying to find the needle in a planet of hay.

If you're read so far and have had similar experiences, think about how nice it would be if you had a mixture of AI and BI doing exactly that.

BI / Business Intelligence to get meaningful statistics is possible, but without AI it's a lot of work.

The AI would need to do several things...

- Match information (eg version XY was released at XY, so each bugreport after XY belongs to version XY and higher if no version matched)

- Tag and categorize (crashed / faulted / fried / ... - tag crash)

- "do the mundane work": ask nicely if the marching / tagging and so on was right, ask for missing info, require feedback etc.

There's a lot I could write more about that topic. But that's the gist. ;)

Sometimes I really wonder about the elites supporting the woke culture, BLM movement, to the point saying "All lives matter" they go nuts is rather sinister. ie push the needle too far beyond the cringyness and use reverse psychology mechanism to bring maximum hatred as possible to the opposing group to the point of creating wars and conflict

There is a saying that goes "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change." So could be that to bring back the war economy.

I mean history is filled with such tactics on a grand scale: Nero, Hitler, Neocons such as strauses, Wolfowitz (lookup wolfowitz leaked doctrine), drumsfied, nuland leading the Iraq war (it did bring people together for a while before they realize it was a sham). And now same thing with China and Russia.

It makes no sense otherwise for the elitists to support it.

Ever experienced that moment when you spend hours debugging a complex issue, only to realize it was caused by a single missing semicolon? It's like searching for a needle in a haystack, only to find out the needle was hiding in plain sight! I guess we should add 'semicolon detective' to our resumes. Who knew such a tiny character could wreak such havoc? Let's all take a moment to appreciate the power of the semicolon and the bittersweet triumph of finding it missing!

if (in_array($needle, $haystack)){
return true;
}else{
return false;
}

# yeah, I did it.... wtf brain!!

Can you give me some tips on how to debug a massive app? (Android app running on android studio which is basically intellij idea).

For example I need to fix a bug where a certain action results in unexpected behaviour.

But oh my god the codebase is so large (mainly architecture is MVVM and rxjava) that searching for the specific place is like searching for a needle in haystack.

For example I added a breakpoint in few places, but I can see only like 4 or 5 last frames in the stack that led to the current action, last frame is a lambda which doesnt help me so frankly Im unable to even track where current event started. I am loosing my mind. I cant even find where the buttonclick action started because everything is reactive and done with observables which can be anywhere.

Any tips on debugging will be appreciated

CraZy 🎶 crazy for feeling
So lonely
I’m crazy for lying
Crazy for dying 🎶

*needle scratches*

SO QUIT FUCKING LYING YOU AWFUL INSANE FUCKING BASTARDS !!!!

Here I’ll give them another chance
Did this happen before ?

When 3 days of trying to fix a problem is done in one line of code. Needle in and haystack.

On arriving in the corpse of a once proud city I was less than astounded as I walked out the station to see everyone I’d seen before
Literally everyone
There they were in walking denial of almost a decade or more in some cases
Sitting having the same prepared conversations
Driving by blasting music
Walking their I dog
Shoplifting the same goods

And their repetition as usual causes wildlife to become confused and perform the same activities
The rats ran about
At least five of them in familiar scurrying movement
Over bold from being ignored and well fed
Filthy dirty rats
Just like the people
Filthy dirty monsters
Living like the needle in the groove
Eating away at my brain
With such violence I want to leap into an unsurvivable scenario and return back to where I just came from just to see a different brand of freak do nothing in a different fashion and throw off the routine

Using twig templating language. It gives you error messages, but it only tells you the error of the line in the twig template. This is ok until you go to that line and it calls a twig function, which goes off to a load of different classes. Why not tell me the exact class where the error is, or even the line number in the class. Instead you have to unpick it until you find the bug yourself!

Am I missing something? Or is this just the way it works?

which type are you ??

**Manager:** Hey, we've got a little hiccup in the production environment. I know it's Friday evening and you're probably daydreaming about pizza, but could you give it a peek?

**Type 1:** Man, this is like finding a needle in a haystack while wearing sunglasses at night. Might take me a few hours... or days. But hey, wish me luck and have an epic weekend!

**Type 2:** Eureka! Found the gremlin. It looks like XYZ person tried to be a bit too creative on commit number 2234324. Maybe they had too much caffeine? Anyway, could you have a chat with them? And oh, may your weekend be as smooth as a fresh jar of peanut butter.

**Type 3:** Detective mode activated! Found the sneaky bug. It was XYZ person's "masterpiece" in commit number 2234324. But fear not! I've put on my superhero cape and fixed it in commit number 345453345.

**Type 4:** This issue again? It's like a recurring bad dream about forgetting your pants! I've revamped the whole thing so we don't have to relive this nightmare. If someone tries to pull this off again, our CI/CD will roast them like a marshmallow over a campfire.

**Type 5:** Ta-da! Fixed the glitch, jazzed up the design, and sprinkled in some extra logging magic. Now, troubleshooting will be as easy as pie. Speaking of which, I've got time for a coffee and maybe a slice of pie before heading out. Cheers!
Type 6 **Gloomy**: Oh, the digital clouds have gathered again. This issue is like a never-ending rain on a Monday morning. I've peered into the abyss of our code, and it's... well, it's deep and dark. I'll need some time, a flashlight, and maybe a comforting blanket. If you don't hear from me in a few hours, send in a search party with some hot cocoa.

Bitbucket's Javascript bullshit... gotta fucking have fast clicking fingers on a merge before the browser js crashes AGAIN... Firefox never threads the needle but you might just get it if you go fast on chrome...