Ran into a girl who I had a crush on in high school at a bar last week. Hanged out for a bit, but then I had to run catch the last train home.

Today I get a message from her that reads: "Hey, it was nice to meet you last week. Can I call you some time, there's something I want to tell you. 😉"

I think to myself -- sweet and say that I have no meetings today, call me whenever you can.

A couple of minutes later she calls me, and the first thing she says: "I have this app idea..."

fuck, shouldn't have hyped myself up.

[Client]
We've noticed we gave you the wrong product prices for our new online shop.

[Dev]
Yeah, just login to the backend and fix them.

[Client]
But we don't want to use your fancy backend, we'll be using anyway soon - we want EXCEL!
Could you send us an EXCEL, so we can fix that?
How much will this cost?

[Dev]
Sure... here you are.
Not that much, takes about an hour.

[Client]
Great, you'll hear from us in a few days.

(a few months later...)

[Client]
We've finally managed to update the EXCEL. And btw, we've also added a bunch of columns with product pictures and new properties, highlighted products to delete red, inserted some comments with manual instructions and basically destroyed the entire data structure of this table.

Before I forget... also make sure to get this finished today, we have to go live ASAP. Our marketing campaign is already live.

[Dev]
Well, I'm sorry to say this, but this is not possible.
I'm currently working on another project and it will take me hours to clean up the data you sent me, before even starting to build an import tool for the new data you provided. Better stop the campaign and I'll do my best to get this done by the end of the week. Also it may be a bit costly.

(angry client calls immediately...)

(dev transfers to manager...)

(client transfers to client's boss...)

[Manager]
Ok Dev, I think I was able to explain it to them. However, it would be great if you spend day and night to get this thing out ASAP.

[Dev]
No problem...
I'll just do it by hand to get this out immediately.

(few days later; nearly done, exhausted)

[Client]
Hey Dev, here's another EXCEL.
We've just noticed there were a bunch of errors in the previous one. Please use this instead...

C: application not working
Me: k. What changed?
C: we didn't make changes
Me: k... *gets a tech team (W) on the phone*
W: Hey, what's broken?
Me: C's application. How do things look?
W: running healthy. I'll check logs.
Me: thanks. *gets tech team (S) on the line*
S: hey, everything clear on our end, will check logs.
Me: thanks *gets tech team (U)*
U: hey! They asked us to deploy their new version today during normal deployment time. Is it acting up?
Me: C, what did you change?
C: nothing major, just how we connect to W and S...
W&S: are you shitting me???
Me: U, will you please roll it back?
C: no! Must stay on this version, you need to fix your side!!
Me: nope. *calls U boss (UG)*
UG: U, you have my permission to roll back, they need to fix. C, if your boss doesn't like it, have them call me.
*rollback fixes problem*

IF I FUCKING ASK YOU WHAT THE FUCK YOU CHANGED, YOU BETTER TELL ME THE TRUTH, OR I WILL STRIP YOUR CODE OFF OUR FUCKING SYSTEMS AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT. MY JOB IS TO HELP YOU AND YOU NEED TO BACK TO FUCK UP AND NOT GET IN THE WAY OF MY JOB OR YOU WON'T HAVE ONE ANYMORE.

A recruiter called me today. I had to barracade myself in the laundry room to hear him, and still needed to ask him to repeat himself 7-8 times. he spoke at what must have been 15% volume with a super thick Indian accent. He also couldn't pronounce a full third of the terms.

Here's how it went.

recruiter: you full-stack dev? what experience?
me: yes, about 8 years, maybe 10.
recruiter: you know C#?
me: no.
recruiter: you know java? tomcat? spring?
me: no, I don't know Java.
recruiter: you know react? angular? apache? node?xml? json? html?
me: yes. yes, angular 1. yes, yes, ...
recruiter: ok, i email you java job posting
me: I don't know java.
recruiter: ok, i email you.

Recruiter used "email java job posting." It wasn't very effective.
Recruiter moves quickly! Recruiter used "did you get my email? email" immediately after. It was super effective! @Root becomes angered!

Recruiter calls.
Recruiter calls.
@Root becomes enraged!

Recruiter calls.
recruiter: what [???] [?] [???] [??] java [???] [??] [???] okay
recruiter: You know C#?
me: No, I still don't know C#.
recruiter: ok thank you for time. 😡 *click*

What just happened?
I really don't understand their species.

Worst thing you've seen another dev do? Long one, but has a happy ending.

Classic 'Dev deploys to production at 5:00PM on a Friday, and goes home.' story.

The web department was managed under the the Marketing department, so they were not required to adhere to any type of coding standards and for months we fought with them on logging. Pre-Splunk, we rolled our own logging/alerting solution and they hated being the #1 reason for phone calls/texts/emails every night.

Wanting to "get it done", 'Tony' decided to bypass the default logging and send himself an email if an exception occurred in his code.

At 5:00PM on a Friday, deploys, goes home.

Around 11:00AM on Sunday (a lot folks are still in church at this time), the VP of IS gets a call from the CEO (who does not go to church) about unable to log into his email. VP has to leave church..drive home and find out he cannot remote access the exchange server. He starts making other phone calls..forcing the entire networking department to drive in and get email back up (you can imagine not a group of happy people)

After some network-admin voodoo, by 12:00, they discover/fix the issue (know it was Tony's email that was the problem)

We find out Monday that not only did Tony deploy at 5:00 on a Friday, the deployment wasn't approved, had features no one asked for, wasn't checked into version control, and the exception during checkout cost the company over $50,000 in lost sales.

Was Tony fired? Noooo. The web is our cash cow and Tony was considered a top web developer (and he knew that), Tony decided to blame logging. While in the discovery meeting, Tony told the bosses that it wasn't his fault logging was so buggy and caused so many phone calls/texts/emails every night, if he had been trained properly, this problem could have been avoided.

Well, since I was responsible for logging, I was next in the hot seat.

For almost 30 minutes I listened to every terrible thing I had done to Tony ever since he started. I was a terrible mentor, I was mean, I was degrading, etc..etc.
Me: "Where is this coming from? I barely know Tony. We're not even in the same building. I met him once when he started, maybe saw him a couple of times in meetings."
Andrew: "Aren't you responsible for this logging fiasco?"
Me: "Good Lord no, why am I here?"
Andrew: "I'll rephrase so you'll understand, aren't you are responsible for the proper training of how developers log errors in their code? This disaster is clearly a consequence of your failure. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Me: "Nothing. Developers are responsible for their own choices. Tony made the choice to bypass our logging and send errors to himself, causing Exchange to lockup and losing sales."
Andrew: "A choice he made because he was not properly informed of the consequences? Again, that is a failure in the proper use of logging, and why you are here."
Me: "I'm done with this. Does John know I'm in here? How about you get John and you talk to him like that."
'John' was the department head at the time.
Andrew:"John, have you spoken to Tony?"
John: "Yes, and I'm very sorry and very disappointed. This won't happen again."
Me: "Um...What?"
John: "You know what. Did you even fucking talk to Tony? You just sit in your ivory tower and think your actions don't matter?"
Me: "Whoa!! What are you talking about!? My responsibility for logging stops with the work instructions. After that if Tony decides to do something else, that is on him."
John: "That is not how Tony tells it. He said he's been struggling with your logging system everyday since he's started and you've done nothing to help. This behavior ends today. We're a fucking team. Get off your damn high horse and help the little guy every once in a while."
Me: "I don't know what Tony has been telling you, but I barely know the guy. If he has been having trouble with the one line of code to log, this is the first I've heard of it."
John: "Like I said, this ends today. You are going to come up with a proper training class and learn to get out and talk to other people."

Over the next couple of weeks I become a powerpoint wizard and 'train' anyone/everyone on the proper use of logging. The one line of code to log. One line of code.

A friend 'Scott' sits close to Tony (I mean I do get out and know people) told me that Tony poured out the crocodile tears. Like cried and cried, apologizing, calling me everything but a kitchen sink,...etc. It was so bad, his manager 'Sally' was crying, her boss 'Andrew', was red in the face, when 'John' heard 'Sally' was crying, you can imagine the high levels of alpha-male 'gotta look like I'm protecting the females' hormones flowing.

Took almost another year, Tony released a change on a Friday, went home, web site crashed (losses were in the thousands of $ per minute this time), and Tony was not let back into the building on Monday (one of the best days of my life).

#3 Worst thing I've seen a co-worker do?

A 20-something dev, 'A', back in the early days of twitter+facebook would post all his extracurricular activities (drinking, partying, normal young-buck stuff). The dev mgr, 'J', at the time took offense because he felt 'A' was making the company look bad, so 'A' had a target on his back. Nothing 'A' did was good enough and, for example, 'J' had the source control czars review 'A's code to 'review' (aka = find anything wrong). Not sorting the 'using' statements, and extra line after the closing }, petty things like that. For those curious, orders followed+carried out by+led by 'T' in my previous rant.

As time went on and 'T' finding more and more 'wrong' with A's code, 'J' put A on disciplinary probation. 'A' had 90 days to turn himself around, or else.

A bright spot was 'A' was working on a Delphi -> C# conversion, so a lot of the code would be green-field development and by simply following the "standards", 'A' would be fine...so he thought.

About 2 weeks into the probation, 'A' was called into the J's office and berated because the conversion project was behind schedule, and if he didn't get the project back on track, 'A' wouldn't make it 30 days. I sat behind 'A' and he unloaded on me.
<'A' slams his phone on his desk>
Me: "Whoa...whats up?"
A: "Dude, I fucking hate this place, did you hear what they did?"
<I said no, then I think we spent an hour talking about it>
Me: "That all sucks. Don't worry about the code. Nobody cares what T thinks. Its not even your fault the project is behind, the DBAs are tasked with upgrades and it's not like anyone is waiting on you. It'll get done when it's done. Sounds like a witch hunt, what did you do? Be honest."
A: "Well, um...I kinda called out J, T, and those other assholes on facebook. I was drunk, pissed, and ...well...here we are."
Me: "Geez, what a bunch of whiney snowflakes. Keep your head down and you'll get thru it, or don't. Its not like you couldn't find another job tomorrow."
A: "This is my first job out of college and I don't want to disappoint my dad by quitting. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. All J told me was to get better. What the fuk does that even mean?"
Me: "He didn't give you any goals? Crap, for someone who is a stickler for the rules, that's low, even for J."

Fast forward 2 weeks, I was attending MS TechEd and I was with another dev mgr, R.

R: "Did you hear? We had to let 'A' go today."
Me: "What the hell? Why?"
R: "He couldn't cut it, so we had to let him go."
Me: "Cut what? What did he do, specifically?"
R: "I don't know, 'A' was on probation, I guess he didn't meet the goals."
Me: "You guess? We fire a developer working on a major upgrade and you guess? What were these so-called goals?"
R: "Whoa...you're getting a little fire up. I don't know, maybe not adhering to coding standards, not meeting deadlines?"
Me: "OMG...we fire people for not forming code? Are you serious!?"
R: "Oh...yea...that does sound odd when you put it that way. I wish I'd talk to you before we left on this trip"
Me: "What?! You knew they were firing him *before* we left? How long did you know this was happening?"
R: "Honestly, for a while. 'A' really wasn't a team player."
Me: "That's dirty, the whole thing is dirty. We've done some shitty things to people, but this is low, even for J. The probation process is meant to improve, not be used as a witch hunt. I don't like that you stood around and let it happen. You know better."
R: "Yea, you're right, but doesn't change anything. J wanted to do it while most of us were at the conference in case 'A' caused a scene."
Me: "THAT MAKES IT WORSE! 'A' was blindsided and you knew it. He had no one there that could defend him or anything."
R: "Crap, crap, crap...oh crap...jeez...J had this planned all along...crap....there is nothing I can do no...its too late."
Me: "Yes there is. If 'A' comes to you for a letter of recommendation, you write one. If someone calls for reference, you give him a good one."
R: "Yea..yea...crap...I feel like shit...I need to go back to the room and lie down."

As the sun sets, it rises again. Within a couple of weeks, 'A' had another job at a local university. Within a year, he was the department manager, and now he is a vice president (last time I checked) of a college in Kansas City, MO.

Wrote my friend Sam a letter when I was still working in support. I think it still holds up today.

---

Dear Sam,

I understand that you will join us in our overseas office. Congratulations on landing that job. It’s good steady work. I’ve been doing it for the last ten years.

Your still young so maybe I can give you some little wisdom that will help you in your working years to come.

Let me begin by shedding some light on phone calls.

I try. I really do try Sam. But it is getting so hard for me to hold back the rage that builds up during certain phone calls. Especially the ‘Sorry, I just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’ ones.

Those are the times that I have no access to what they see. I’ve no team-viewer, can not take over that screen in any other way. And why-oh-why can I not take over that terminal session dear Sam? It’s because the caller can not double-click an icon or find a terminal session number.

And what is the reason for this? Because they ‘just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’. This is a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. Beware of these callers Sam.

There is nothing so nerve-wrecking then finding yourself at the mercy of people describing Internet Explorer (do not even get me started) as ‘the big ‘E’, if they use Chrome for their webmail then they most likely will say ‘Mail’ if they mean Chrome. There is no logic Sam. That is just the way these people work.

They will suck all enjoyment out of your work. They will make you want to hunt them down in dark office hallways and show them your tears Sam. Because cry you will.

Sure, I understand that not everyone can be tech savvy. Why, if everyone would be, where would that leave us? No. I love the technologically challenged. They put the fiber in my internet. They make me LOL for real. After the initial anger subsides anyway.

But just below that well-willing folk, on the other side of that border… there they dwell: Management.

Nice cars, suits and iphones Sam. First thing a new manager will require is a brand spanking new business-card. It will hold his/her new title. Then an iphone or overpriced android model will follow suit.

Then they will barge into your office, holding it like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

Any manager will automatically assume that you will drop anything you are doing at the present moment to acknowledge the presence of greatness. Failing to do so will result in awkward yet fulfilling situations. I recommend that you do not take your hands of the keyboard and give only the slightest of nods after 5 minutes of complete silence and glaring.

Well… you feel the glare. You do not glare yourself. You do not break eye-contact with the monitor. It does not even matter if you are typing for real or not. I once clicked away happily for 5 minutes. I just typed ‘he is still there’ over and over again. Do not break down Sam. This moment will decide your relationship with this individual.

After the nod there will be a flood of words aimed in your general direction. You can disregard anything that is said. It boils down to ‘can not operate device’.

You then take the device from this person and put it next to you on your desk. You’ll ask the name of this simpleton, write it down on a sticky-note, slap that on the phone. Then you’ll write a random date in the not so near future on another sticky and hand that to the bewildered person in front of you.

It will usually utter some incoherent words about ‘needing, time or but’ (I find that ‘but’is a word they like. They tend to use it three or four times consecutive before you usher them through the door).

Now you’ve won Sam. Well… not really. But it will feel good, I can guarantee that.

This must do for now. A new suit is glaring at me for the last five minutes.

Felt good to do something productive with this time.

Take care,

Baltasar

P.s. I just noticed that there is some foam around his mouth. So if you encounter this, don’t worry: it seems to be perfectly normal.

I’m surrounded by idiots.

I’m continually reminded of that fact, but today I found something that really drives that point home.

Gather ‘round, everybody, it’s story time!

While working on a slow query ticket, I perused the code, finding several causes, and decided to run git blame on the files to see what dummy authored the mental diarrhea currently befouling my screen. As it turns out, the entire feature was written by mister legendary Apple golden boy “Finder’s Keeper” dev himself.

To give you the full scope of this mess, let me start at the frontend and work my way backward.

He wrote a javascript method that tracks whatever row was/is under the mouse in a table and dynamically removes/adds a “.row_selected” class on it. At least the js uses events (jQuery…) instead of a `setTimeout()` so it could be worse. But still, has he never heard of :hover? The function literally does nothing else, and the `selectedRow` var he stores the element reference in isn’t used elsewhere.

This function allows the user to better see the rows in the API Calls table, for which there is a also search feature — the very thing I’m tasked with fixing.

It’s worth noting that above the search feature are two inputs for a date range, with some helpful links like “last week” and “last month” … and “All”. It’s also worth noting that this table is for displaying search results of all the API requests and their responses for a given merchant… this table is enormous.

This search field for this table queries the backend on every character the user types. There’s no debouncing, no submit event, etc., so it triggers on every keystroke. The actual request runs through a layer of abstraction to parse out and log the user-entered date range, figure out where the request came from, and to map out some column names or add additional ones. It also does some hard to follow (and amazingly not injectable) orm condition building. It’s a mess of functional ugly.

The important columns in the table this query ultimately searches are not indexed, despite it only looking for “create_order” records — the largest of twenty-some types in the table. It also uses partial text matching (again: on. every. single. keystroke.) across two varchar(255)s that only ever hold <16 chars — and of which users only ever care about one at a time. After all of this, it filters the results based on some uncommented regexes, and worst of all: instead of fetching only one page’s worth of results like you’d expect, it fetches all of them at once and then discards what isn’t included by the paginator. So not only is this a guaranteed full table scan with partial text matching for every query (over millions to hundreds of millions of records), it’s that same full table scan for every single keystroke while the user types, and all but 25 records (user-selectable) get discarded — and then requeried when the user looks at the next page of results.

What the bloody fucking hell? I’d swear this idiot is an intern, but his code does (amazingly) actually work.

No wonder this search field nearly crashed one of the servers when someone actually tried using it.

Asdfajsdfk.

So today my middle company put a meeting with the new HR.

Meeting subject: you can't poach inside the company.

Context: I resigned, and I'll be taking with me 3 profiles.

HR: If you do take them, we'll take you to court.

Me: Why?

HR: It's poaching and by contract, you can't.

Me: You can show which clause?

HR: That's not the problem.

Me: Also in France, you need to notify the employee as you are denying his right to get a job. And pay him for that.

HR: What? That's none sense! Stop talking and listen.

Me: Ok

HR: We'll sue you and crush you. You'll have so much legal problem that you...

Me: I'll just start recording on my phone, so you say that you accept it and continue your intimidation rant.

HR: What? No!! Stop that.

Me: *stop it* Would you rather have my lawyer with us? Because we'll need to reschedule the meeting.

HR: If you continue that way, we'll tarnish your name and no company will hire you.

Me: You really aren't familiar with IT, right? Because I could delete ALL production. No system work. The BCP will kick in. You will lose one or two days. Then make an article of it, showing what kind of process or security should have been implemented. And I will still get a high pay job!!

HR: You know what? Get out! If you want to go to war, your problem.

Me: Ok, so you'll be getting news from my lawyer by mail.

HR: what?

Me: Yeah, that harassment. And my lawyer will get in touch. And I might also post on LinkedIn. And talk about it in the next events I'm invited.

HR: that's, that's...

Me: freedom of speech. Don't worry I'll write it so it's only viewed as my opinion. Have a nice day.

Two hours later my friend, lawyer, send them a mail and email.

Three hours later the COO calls me. Saying that HR was out of line and that it'll no occur again. It was an error and I should be forgiving.

So now all discussion with HR must be held with my attorney :). And middle company pay for it.

Hey @Root! I know you won't have time to finish Ticket A before holiday vacation, so work on Ticket B instead.

I finished Ticket A in time. except for converting/fixing some horrible spaghetti monstrosity. More or less: "we overwrote this gem's middleware and now it calls back into our codebase under specific circumstances, and then calls the gem again, which calls the middleware again." Wtf? It's an atrocity against rationality.

The second day after vacation:

Hey @Root, drop Ticket B and work on Ticket C instead. Can you knock this out quick, like before friday? ... Uh, sure. It looks easy.

Ticket C was not easy. Ticket C was a frontend CSS job to add a print button, and for unknown reasons, none of the styles apply during printing. The only code involved is adding a button with a single line of javascript: `window.print()`, so why give it to the chick who hasn't been given a frontend ticket in over a year? Why not give it to the frontend guy who does this all day every day? Because "do it anyway," that's why.

And in somewhere between 13 (now 5) minutes and two hours from now, I'm going to have a 1:1 with my boss to discuss the week. Having finished almost all of Ticket A won't matter because it's not a "recent priority" -- despite it being a priority before, and a lot of work. I've made no progress on Ticket B due to interruptions (and a total and complete lack of caring because I'm burned out and quite literally can no longer care), and no progress on ticket C because... it's all horribly broken and therefore not quick. I assigned it to Mr. Frontend, which I'll probably get chewed out for.

So, my 1:1 with bossmang today is going to be awful. And the worst part of all: I'm out of rum! Which means sobriety in the face of adversity! :<

but like, wtf. Just give me a ticket and let me work on it until it's done. Stop changing the damn priorities every other freaking day!

Internet: YOU are nothing without me.

My phone: Th..That's not true! She cc..can make calls ww..ithout you...and ss...send texts. Sh..Sh..She plays offf..offline games sometimes and has ddd..downloaded music to her storage that she could llii.. listen to and has a sshh..shit load of memes stocked that she sss..sometimes laughs at. I AM usef...ffuul :-/

Internet *lighting up a cigarette*: hahhaa! You can survive without me. If this were 10 YEARS ago! There's not a slightest chance, today.

My phone *starts sobbing*: sh..shut up sshhhuut uu..up.

Internet *blowing smoke rings*: you think you're the ONLY device she owns?? She has too many of them, but guess who is connected to all those devices! ME! She can't function without me. Hell, the world can't function without ME!

Electricity *rubbing it's eyes from sleep* - what's all that noise??

Phone: 😶

Internet: 😶

Phone: 🙂

(I'm about to fall asleep and there's no power right now. Back up ain't working. Life sucks)

Senior manager calls me at 3pm today. I’ve known about this issue since last Friday, one of her pions told me to hold off until Thursday when he’s back in the office and that I could prioritise other tasks.

I have another task with a deadline of the 21st with the potential for fines if it’s not done.

Snr manager: “I’m calling to see how this is going”
Me: “cool, it’s not, bigger problems in the world”
Snr manager: “waah, this has to be done Monday or we face the potential of a court case, fines, this is the biggest problem in the world”
Me: “I’ve known about this issue for a week, have been told not to worry too much and nobody has mentioned the impact or timeline you’ve just given me.”
Snr manager: “so can it be done for monday”
Me: “no chance”
Snr manager: “why not?”
Me: “because it’s 3pm Friday and I have 1 hour of Work left, good luck”

My manager was in the room, he got an arsey call soon after. I don’t really care how that one went but he’s a good guy so I’m sure it was fine.

I also had the joy of asking: so give me an idea of the potential fine... to which they wouldn’t give me an answer.

I need this to weigh up which of the potentially finable tasks takes priority.

The other team that had trouble told me all the dates, gave me over a months notice and the scale of the problem.

If you want someone to help: be polite, give them as much warning as you have and be absolutely honest.

The job’s done cause I’m a fucking legend. But they’re not gonna find out until 5pm Monday. That’s the dickhead tax, they get the dickhead tax for being dickheads.

I’m gonna spend Monday working from home, incommunicado. Fuck incompetent arseholes.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I will mine.

===rant

So I have been freelancing as web developer for 5 years. I was also playing basketball professionally so I was only working part-time, building websites here and there, small android apps to learn the job and I was also reading a lot to challenge my brain.

When I stopped playing basketball about a year ago, I thought I would really enjoy coding full time so I pursued a job.

With no formal education and just a basketball background on paper, in the collapsed Greek economy, as you may assume chances of landing a job are minimal.

After about 40 resumes sent I only got an internship. It was a 4 month, part-time, no pay deal, and then the company would decide if they would like to hire me later.

The company had 4 employees and they are one of the largest software distribution businesses in my area. They resell SaaS bought from a third company, bundled with installation support, initial configuration, hardware support, whatever a client may need.

I was the only one with any ability to code whatsoever. The other people were working mostly on customer support with the occasional hardware repair.

After the 4 month period they owner (small company, owner was also manager and other roles) told me that they are very happy with my work and would like to keep me part-time with minimum pay.

Just to give you and idea if the amounts of money involved, in Greece, after taxes, my salary was 240euros per month. And the average cost of surviving (rent, cheapest food possible, no expenses on anything but super basics) is about 600euros.

I told him I needed more to live and he told me ok, we will reevaluate a few months later, at the end of May 2017.

I just accepted it without having many options. The company after all was charging clients 30euros per hour for my projects so I kept thinking that if I worked a lot and delivered consistently I would get a full time job and decent money.

And I delivered. In the following months I made a Magento extension, some WordPress themes, a C# application to extract data from the client's ERP and import it to a third application, a click to call application to use Asterisk to originate calls from the client's ERP, a web application to manage a restaurant's menu and many more small projects. Whatever they asked, I delivered.

On time, version controlled, heavily documented solutions (my C# ones are not exactly masterpieces but it was my first time with the language and windows).

So when May ended I was pretty excited to hear they wanted to keep me full time. I worked hard for it, I was serious, professional, I tried a lot to learn things so I can deliver, and the company recognized that. YAY.

So the time comes to talk money. The offer was 480euros per month. Double my part-time pay, minimum wage. I asked for about 700. Manager said it's hard but I will see what I can do. So we agreed to keep the deal for June while they are working on a better offer.

During the first half of June I finished my last project, put all my work on a nice folder with a nice readme on every project's directory, with their version control and everything.

The offer never improved, so I said no deal, and as of today, I am jobless.

I am stressed as fuck and excited as fuck at the same time.

I will do my best to survive in the shitstorm that is called Greece.

Bring it on.

"We have another major incident spinning up. QueenMorgana, are you free?" NO, I'M FINISHING UP THE NOTES FROM MY LAST TWO CALLS THAT JUST ENDED, WHY DON'T YOU CALL IN, LAZY FUCKWAD.

Why is it so damn difficult for my boss to cover a call when we're all busy DOING ALL THE LITTLE POINTLESS SHIT HE GIVES UP. He had me follow up from my coworker's call yesterday, not seeing the logic in, IF IT WERE STILL A FUCKING ISSUE, THEY WOULD HAVE CALLED US BACK THIS MORNING.

So now, I have to sit on the line AGAIN and take notes for shit that's not even a major issue BECAUSE IT'S BEEN DOWN FOR A WEEK. IF IT'S DOWN THAT LONG AND YOU DON'T SUBMIT A TICKET TO ME OR CALL OUR MAJOR INCIDENT LINE, I DON'T GET PAID ENOUGH TO RESPOND LIKE IT'S AN EMERGENCY.

Also, fucking lazy asswipe of a "teammate" bitching about being on a call for over 8 hours, while the rest of us are on back to back calls. He's never been on a long call and has been here a year longer than I have. I've been on a 14 hour and a 16 hour, and my other teammate has handled a 26 hour call. 8 HOURS IS FUCKING NOTHING AND YOU WORK FROM HOME SO DON'T EVEN HAVE TO WEAR PANTS.

**spilled 3 cups of coffee this morning, and have an expensive maintenance on my car today, likely to explode on just about everyone**

Quick recap of my last two weeks: 15 year old production server is basically dead, boss has taken over calls and claims credit for "resolving" outages (even though my coworker and I did the work, but ultimately the traffic died down enough to where it wasn't an issue anymore).

I go to a meeting to plan migration to a better server, boss bitches about not getting invited, I tell him I invited myself, and then he lectures about how that's not our job.

Different boss says we're migrating a schema for an application that should have been decommissioned 5+ years ago to use as a baseline. I explain what's going on, he says he understands, and proceeds to tell higher bosses it's perfect because there will be no user impact. OF COURSE THERE'S NO FRICKING IMPACT, YA DUNCE! there are no users!!!!

I merge two email threads together, since they discuss the same thing, but with different insight, and get yelled at, even though they requested it.

The two bosses I like are OOO for the next week, too, so I'm just sitting here hoping I don't say something that'll get me fired or sent to sensitivity training.

I'm just starting my on call rotation and don't know that I can do this. I cry when my phone rings, now, because I experience physical pain with how hard I cringe.

I got yelled at today by a guy because SOMEONE I DON'T KNOW assigned a ticket to him directly, rather than to the proper team (not his team). So I had to look into that, which at least had the benefit of preventing a catastrophic outage to our customers world wide, but no one will know because I don't brag at work; I'm too busy doing my job as well as most of my division/section/larger team, whatever the hell it's called. I saved us probably 25+ hours of continuous troubleshooting call from noticing something tiny that the people "smarter" than me missed.

**edit: sorry for typos; got my nails done yesterday but they feel like they're a mile long and I have to relearn how to type**

Rant1
Company calls today. Offers me a job which is great i have been looking for 7 months.
Rant2
Today hurricane irma is coming its getting close gas stations are out of fuel. No water at stores. Chaos on the roads.
Rant3
Company asks me to come in Tommorow for interview. 😑

Lord forgive me for laughing too hard at this person/situation... I kid you NOT!

So today while everything was going well, we suddenly had network issues at work. We worked to get everything back up online asap and then sent out an email for those affected to either restart their machines or refresh their desktops but we recommend restarting... After some few client calls, this special call came in..

Riiing, riiiiiing, ring....
Me: hi, how can help you?

Client: *laughing.. This is probably a stupid question but I forgot how to "refresh" my desk top..the thing is, I have Febreeze but I don't think that's for desk tops.

Me: Wait, what? 🤔 Febreeze for what?😕

Client: You guys sent an email to refresh our desk tops and I said I have Febreeze so how will that get my things in the computer back to show again?

Me: Ohhh, no no. We meant your computer desktop. You don't need Febreeze. Right click anywhere on your computer in the screen and select refresh from the pop up menu. We meant your computer "desktop" not your actual "desk top".

Client: *starts laughing...I told you it was a stupid question

Me: don't worry.. It wasn't stupid.

After I hang up, some of my team members asked me why someone is asking about Febreeze...I told them and they all started laughing hysterically

I was still trying to digest the conversation I had just have on the phone. 😂😂😂

Teaching new recruit some SQL (even though hes supposed to fucking know SQL and have multiple years experience but I was a contractor and idgaf, not messing up my money. Just fucking annoying to have an idiot around you all the time).

Me: Okay, so sys tables, so this one is for jobs yeah?

Him: Yeah

Me: Okay, so in this table, its obviously not one row per job per step cos you have multiple rows for the same job and step. Also, there is a datetime field, so what is it showing?

Him: Hmmmmm..... (after some time, back and forth we get to the answer).... history table

Me: Cooooooool, okay, so, lets say, I have a job with 5 steps. If i run it once, how many rows will be in this table?

Him: 5 rows.

Me: Correct, so if I were to have run this same job, 10 times, how many rows get inserted into the table?

Him: (Now...you have to understand, how long this thought process was, im trying to fill the gap with words but really, he was like, having a flashback or something...I kept quiet but silently wanting him to say anything....then he looks me dead in the eyes).... 10!

Me: Motherfucker what!?!? 10 What? If 1 time == 5, what does 10 times ==?

Him: Hmmmmmmmmm.... (yes...we are doing this whole flashback montage all over again)....... Ohhhhh, 1!

Me: .....Stop, think, its a history table. It holds history, for when every step is run for a job, why would it be only one row?

Him: OMG, I know what a history table is!!!!

Me: (Pissed off cos I don't take disrespect calmly). Fine, genius, answer, go!

Him: (LONGER WAIT THAN LAST TIME!!!!)....is it not 10?

Me: I swear, I'm gonna kill you one of these days.

Him: *chuckle*

Me: No...seriously....

TOOK 20-30 MINUTES FOR HIM TO SAY 50!!!!!!

And even then, I swear he didn't understand why. Serious, he was a special breed, had a manager that was a super tard and when I worked here, the spirit of that manager possessed this idiot, the CIO and his little right hand bitch zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

If there was ever a time I was willing to catch a case at work, it was there.

Bonus: Serious, it got to the point I had to come in and tell this idiot that he can only ask me questions today if he calls me by my name...and my name has changed today...and no, you can't ask me for it cos you need my name to ask me questions.....FUCK OFF kkthxbai.

Picture the situation: My ex-boss (still a friend) has a client that wants a web site. He hired me to to the HTML/CSS and a design agency to design the website.

There was a call on Skype today with me, the ex-boss, the client and a designer from the agency.

They kept arguing about how to client would feel on each page, what content should be in each page and only talked among themselfs.

I was dead silent for the last half and hour and suddenly my roomate yells something and the whole Skype call stays silent as I hear "Were you sleeping?" me: "No, I'm good! Don`t worry about it!". They continued talking and I went to get dinner and asked my ex-boss to tell me later what I needed to know in order to finish the job, which he understood and was really cool about it. I don't think they missed me.

Skype calls can be extremely boring.

!rant
When I was in 8th grade and was learning to code (c++), I sincerely believed that calling a function within a function simply calls it again (like in a loop) . I had never heard of recursion.
And I actually made a small project in which I called a function again and again thinking that calling another terminates the previous one.
No wonder my program kept crashing. I have still kept that code with me as a wonderful memory.

I know this isn't particularly interesting, but I just saw that code today and felt like sharing this...

me: so can i use strlen?
intern: no!! you need it implement it!
me: *calls teacher* hey can i use strlen?
teacher: yeah, do as you please. who told u you can't use it?
me: *points at the other guy*

whoops i think i just got him in trouble today xd sorry not sorry, i want him gone so i can replace him hahaha jk

OMFG I don't even know where to start..
Probably should start with last week (as this is the first time I had to deal with this problem directly)..

Also please note that all packages, procedure/function names, tables etc have fictional names, so every similarity between this story and reality is just a coincidence!!

Here it goes..

Lat week we implemented a new feature for the customer on production, everything was working fine.. After a day or two, the customer notices the audit logs are not complete aka missing user_id or have the wrong user_id inserted.
Hm.. ok.. I check logs (disk + database).. WTF, parameters are being sent in as they should, meaning they are there, so no idea what is with the missing ids.

OK, logs look fine, but I notice user_id have some weird values (I already memorized most frequent users and their ids). So I go check what is happening in the code, as the procedures/functions are called ok.

Wow, boy was I surprised.. many many times..
In the code, we actually check for user in this apps db or in case of using SSO (which we were) in the main db schema..
The user gets returned & logged ok, but that is it. Used only for authentication. When sending stuff to the db to log, old user Id is used, meaning that ofc userid was missing or wrong.

Anyhow, I fix that crap, take care of some other audit logs, so that proper user id was sent in. Test locally, cool. Works. Update customer's test servers. Works. Cool..

I still notice something off.. even though I fixed the audit_dbtable_2, audit_dbtable_1 still doesn't show proper user ids.. This was last week. I left it as is, as I had more urgent tasks waiting for me..

Anyhow, now it came the time for this fuckup to be fixed. Ok, I think to myself I can do this with a bit more hacking, but it leaves the original database and all other apps as is, so they won't break.
I crate another pck for api alone copy the calls, add user_id as param and from that on, I call other standard functions like usual, just leave out the user_id I am now explicitly sending with every call.
Ok this might work.

I prepare package, add user_id param to the calls.. great, time to test this code and my knowledge..

I made changes for api to incude the current user id (+ log it in the disk logs + audit_dbtable_1), test it, and check db..
Disk logs fine, debugging fine (user_id has proper value) but audit_dbtable_1 still userid = 0.

WTF?! I go check the code, where I forgot to include user id.. noup, it's all there. OK, I go check the logging, maybe I fucked up some parameters on db level. Nope, user is there in the friggin description ON THE SAME FUCKING TABLE!!
Just not in the column user_id...

WTF..Ok, cig break to let me think..

I come back and check the original auditing procedure on the db.. It is usually used/called with null as the user id. OK, I have replaced those with actual user ids I sent in the procedures/functions. Recheck every call!! TWICE!! Great.. no fuckups. Let's test it again!
OFC nothing changes, value in the db is still 0. WTF?! HOW!?

So I open the auditing pck, to look the insides of that bloody procedure.. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
Instead of logging the p_user_sth_sth that is sent to that procedure, it just inserts the variable declared in the main package..
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! Did the 'new guy' made changes to this because he couldn't figure out what is wrong?! Nope, not him. I asked the CEO if he knows anything.. Noup.. I checked all customers dbs (different customers).. ALL HAD THIS HARDOCED IN!!! FORM THE FREAKING YEAR 2016!!! O.o

Unfuckin believable.. How did this ever work?!

Looks like at the begining, someone tried to implement this, but gave up mid implementation.. Decided it is enough to log current user id into BLABLA variable on some pck..
Which might have been ok 10+ years ago, but not today, not when you use connection pooling.. FFS!!

So yeah, I found easter eggs from years ago.. Almost went crazy when trying to figure out where I fucked this up. It was such a plan, simple, straight-forward solution to auditing..

If only the original procedure was working as it should.. bloddy hell!!

... no longer on call. Am on hour 12 of a call that has a few more hours to go and have handled 3 others today. Coworker is on hour 36 of a cal with possibly 24 more to go. And 3rd is finally eating as he missed meals all day for more calls than i can count. Who the fuck decided they hate us and want us to die these deaths????

Lets create a library.

Lets use that library in a project.

Lets wrap the library call in a wrapper functione to remove duplicate code.

Lets add an overloaded wrapper call that wraps the wrapper call that calls the library to partially undo the duplicate code removal.

Lets add another overloaded wrapper call that wraps the wrapper call that wraps the wrapper call that calls the library to partially undo the duplicate code removal.

How I love it. Not.

Sometimes redundancy makes sense, especially when it are two lines which make it obvious whats going on vs a single line that leads to a fuckton of overloaded wrapper functions.

Sheeesh.

Today in "code monkeys deserve divine punishment".

Another funny thing is creating a Helper class for Junit 5 tests, making it instantiable and adding to it all kinds of shit like testcontainer creation, applications instantiation, mocks, ....

... Then " crying " why the tests are so slow.

Yeah. Logic. Isolation of concerns, each test should be a stand alone complex.

But that would lead to redundancy... Oh no.

Better to create a global state god object.

Some devs... Really amaze me, especially when they argument in ways that makes one really wonder whether they are serious or just brain dead.

"four million dollars"

TL;DR. Seriously, It's way too long.

That's all the management really cares about, apparently.

It all started when there were heated, war faced discussions with a major client this weekend (coonts, I tell ye) and it was decided that a stupid, out of context customisation POC had that was hacked together by the "customisation and delivery " (they know to do neither) team needed to be merged with the product (a hot, lumpy cluster fuck, made in a technology so old that even the great creators (namely Goo-fucking-gle) decided that it was their worst mistake ever and stopped supporting it (or even considering its existence at this point)).

Today morning, I my manager calls me and announces that I'm the lucky fuck who gets to do this shit.

Now being the defacto got admin to our team (after the last lead left, I was the only one with adequate experience), I suggested to my manager "boss, here's a light bulb. Why don't we just create a new branch for the fuckers and ask them to merge their shite with our shite and then all we'll have to do it build the mixed up shite to create an even smellier pile of shite and feed it to the customer".

"I agree with you mahaDev (when haven't you said that, coont), but the thing is <insert random manger talk here> so we're the ones who'll have to do it (again, when haven't you said that, coont)"

I said fine. Send me the details. He forwarded me a mail, which contained context not amounting to half a syllable of the word "context". I pinged the guy who developed the hack. He gave me nothing but a link to his code repo. I said give me details. He simply said "I've sent the repo details, what else do you require?"

1st motherfucker.

Dafuq? Dude, gimme some spice. Dafuq you done? Dafuq libraries you used? Dafuq APIs you used? Where Dafuq did you get this old ass checkout on which you've made these changes? AND DAFUQ IS THIS TOOL SUPPOSED TO DO AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY PRODUCT?

Anyway, since I didn't get a lot of info, I set about trying to just merge the code blindly and fix all conflicts, assuming that no new libraries/APIs have been used and the code is compatible with our master code base.

Enter delivery head. 2nd motherfucker.

This coont neither has technical knowledge nor the common sense to ask someone who knows his shit to help out with the technical stuff.

I find out that this was the half assed moron who agreed to a 3 day timeline (and our build takes around 13 hours to complete, end to end). Because fuck testing. They validated the their tool, we've tested our product. There's no way it can fail when we make a hybrid cocktail that will make the elephants foot look like a frikkin mojito!

Anywho, he comes by every half-mother fucking-hour and asks whether the build has been triggered.

Bitch. I have no clue what is going on and your people apparently don't have the time to give a fuck. How in the world do you expect me to finish this in 5 minutes?

Anyway, after I compile for the first time after merging, I see enough compilations to last a frikkin life time. I kid you not, I scrolled for a complete minute before reaching the last one.

Again, my assumption was that there are no library or dependency changes, neither did I know the fact that the dude implemented using completely different libraries altogether in some places.

Now I know it's my fault for not checking myself, but I was already having a bad day.

I then proceeded to have a little tantrum. In the middle of the floor, because I DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE AND NOBODY CARED ENOUGH TO GIVE A FUCKING FUCK ABOUT THE DAMN FUCK.

Lo and behold, everyone's at my service now. I get all things clarified, takes around an hour and a half of my time (could have been done in 20 minutes had someone given me the complete info) to find out all I need to know and proceed to remove all compilation problems.

Hurrah. In my frustration, I forgot to push some changes, and because of some weird shit in our build framework, the build failed in Jenkins. Multiple times. Even though the exact same code was working on my local setup (cliche, I know).

In any case, it was sometime during sorting out this mess did I come to know that the reason why the 2nd motherfucker accepted the 3 day deadline was because the total bill being slapped to the customer is four fucking million USD.

Greed. Wow. The fucker just sacrificed everyone's day and night (his team and the next) for 4mil. And my manager and director agreed. Four fucking million dollars. I don't get to see a penny of it, I work for peanut shells, for 15 hours, you'll get bonuses and commissions, the fucking junior Dev earns more than me, but my manager says I'm the MVP of the team, all I get is a thanks and a bad rating for this hike cycle.

4mil usd, I learnt today, is enough to make you lick the smelly, hairy balls of a Neanderthal even though the money isn't truly yours.

SCREWED OVER GOOGLE WITH MICROSOFT!!!! YES!!!

So as I'm deaf, I've always had a problem with captions or lack of them.

I thought Live Captions would fix it but it's only supported on selected devices and not enabled for calls and conferences like Zoom, WhatsApp.

I tried hooking up my sound card with an audio capble to my phone which has LC and also Live Transcribe... but somehow wouldn't pick up the audio.

Then today I was like wait... I could just install a Pixel emulator... excepy seems Google thought of that...

(I installed VB Cable virtual sound card and routed sound out to mic in).

Well first apparently, the emulator does not actually identify as Pixel... it identifies as an Emulator that sorta looks like Pixel...

Which means no LC...

I installed LT and also a sound meter which confirmed it was getting the audio but no transcription...

Though I tried GBoard and it sorta worked..
But I would like continuous transcription... and so I open the app store and try all the apps until I hit MSFT Translate...

Which has a convo mode which seems pretty much designed to screw Google over lol. Just need to start a Convo with myself...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Started spending more time on Reddit and Telegram.

Joined a bunch of professional communities. Career sky rocketd.

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

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

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

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

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

Got a high paying job. WLB went negative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because, the heart wants what the heart wants :)

I work for a small company with about 10 employees working full-time in the office. We all report directly to the CEO, Phil. When the pandemic hit, Phil went into full panic mode and had us all move our desks 12+ feet apart, wash our hands every 20 minutes, sterilize everything in between uses, etc. Nothing super weird, and better than having no reaction at all, but it was a hypervigilant process that made me expect him to be very accommodating when our state went on lockdown.

Boy, was I wrong. Our industry is considered essential so we’re still open, but Phil is being odd when it comes to working from home. For background, about 95% of our work can be done remotely. The other 5% would require about 15 minutes in the office once a week. I was the first one to pose the idea of working from home and Phil nervously agreed, but only let do it three days a week. My coworkers were given similar instructions but were “encouraged to come in every day, if possible.” A few of them do.

Since then, Phil has gotten pretty weird about the situation. He refers to people who are working from home as being “off work” (which is NOT the case, we are all working and available while at home, which he knows because he calls us for work-related things during work hours!). Today, Phil asked me if my coworker Travis was in his office, and I said Travis was working from home, and Phil replied in a sour tone, “So he’s not working then, great.” He has made similar comments about my other coworkers. When I’m working from home, he’ll call me and ask in a sarcastic tone, “What are you even working on today?” Or he’ll give me an assignment and end with, “Can you actually do work on this today? I need you working.” One time, he called while I was in the bathroom and when I called him back less than five minutes later, I was told that I “need to be available and not screwing around.”

The weirdest thing is that none of us has had productivity problems! My job is such that I can tell when anyone is slacking even a little and I haven’t noticed any issues. Personally, I’ve actually been MORE productive! And I’ve never been accused of “screwing around” while at the office before, so this attitude has baffled me.

He is so convinced that we aren’t working that he cut our work-from-home time down two days a couple weeks ago, and now it’s being cut down to one day as of next week – when COVID cases are higher in our city than ever!

My guess is that because Phil isn’t physically seeing us work, he assumes we aren’t working. CCing him on stuff to leave “proof” doesn’t work because he doesn’t read his email. He is also naturally a nightmare of a micromanager (and an across-the-office yeller) so not being as “in control” is probably freaking him out. But what is the best way to handle this?

The worst interview . . . .

So I wasn't looking for a job, but I wasn't happy in mine, and I would listen to pitches. Recruiter calls me about a Java job. I tell him I know JS and it's probably not a good fit. He insists my resume looks good and that they are happy to train. I know just enough Java to relent. Eventually we set up an phone interview for a day I happen to have off anyway because I'm going out of town. Morning of, I'm waiting around for the call. An hour after the scheduled time, the recruiter calls and tells me they had an "emergency" and wouldn't be able to speak today. One whole hour of my day, making me late to leave town: no one anywhere in the whole company could give me a call, no explanation, no apologies, for a job I had told them I wouldn't be a good fit for anyway.

I left them hanging the rest of the weekend and then take my name out of the running on Monday. Respect people's time and lives!

Oh boy, this is gonna be good:

TL;DR: Digital bailiffs are vulnerable as fuck

So, apparently some debt has come back haunting me, it's a somewhat hefty clai and for the average employee this means a lot, it means a lot to me as well but currently things are looking better so i can pay it jsut like that. However, and this is where it's gonna get good:

The Bailiff sent their first contact by mail, on my company address instead of my personal one (its's important since the debt is on a personal record, not company's) but okay, whatever. So they send me a copy of their court appeal, claiming that "according to our data, you are debtor of this debt". with a URL to their portal with a USERNAME and a PASSWORD in cleartext to the message.
Okay, i thought we were passed sending creds in plaintext to people and use tokenized URL's for initiating a login (siilar to email verification links) but okay! Let's pretend we're a dumbfuck average joe sweating already from the bailiff claims and sweating already by attempting to use the computer for something useful instead of just social media junk, vidya and porn.

So i click on the link (of course with noscript and network graph enabled and general security precautions) and UHOH, already a first red flag: The link redirects to a plain http site with NOT username and password: But other fields called OGM and dossiernumer AND it requires you to fill in your age???
Filling in the received username and password obviously does not work and when inspecting the page... oh boy!

This is a clusterfuck of javascript files that do horrible things, i'm no expert in frontend but nothing from the homebrewn stuff i inspect seems to be proper coding... Okay... Anyways, we keep pretending we're dumbasses and let's move on.

I ask for the seemingly "new" credentials and i receive new credentials again, no tokenized URL. okay.

Now Once i log in i get a horrible looking screen still made in the 90's or early 2000's which just contains: the claimaint, a pie chart in big red for amount unpaid, a box which allows you to write an - i suspect unsanitized - text block input field and... NO DATA! The bailiff STILL cannot show what the documents are as evidence for the claim!

Now we stop being the pretending dumbassery and inspect what's going on: A 'customer portal' that does not redirect to a secure webpage, credentials in plaintext and not even working, and the portal seems to have various calls to various domains i hardly seem to think they can be associated with bailiff operations, but more marketing and such... The portal does not show any of the - required by law - data supporting the claim, and it contains nothing in the user interface showing as such.
The portal is being developed by some company claiming to be "specialized in bailiff software" and oh boy oh boy..they're fucked because...

The GDPR requirements.. .they comply to none of them. And there is no way to request support nor to file a complaint nor to request access to the actual data. No DPO, no dedicated email addresses, nothing.

But this is really the ham: The amount on their portal as claimed debt is completely different from the one they came for today, for the sae benefactor! In Belgium, this is considered illegal and is reason enough to completely make the claim void. the siple reason is that it's unjust for the debtor to assess which amount he has to pay, and obviously bailiffs want to make the people pay the highest amount.

So, i sent the bailiff a business proposal to hire me as an expert to tackle these issues and even sent him a commercial bonus of a reduction of my consultancy fees with the amount of the bailiff claim! Not being sneery or angry, but a polite constructive proposal (which will be entirely to my benefit)

So, basically what i want to say is, when life gives you lemons, use your brain and start making lemonade, and with the rest create fertilizer and whatnot and sent it to the lemonthrower, and make him drink it and tell to you it was "yummy yummy i got my own lemons in my tummy"

So, instead of ranting and being angry and such... i simply sent an email to the bailiff, pointing out various issues (the ones

I feel so guilty.
I had to make a hotfix today. It is the ugliest piece of shit code I ever intentionally created. But there was no other way. I swear there was no other fucking way!

My boss just assigned this to me. But because she thinks this needs to be a hotfix and can't wait for the next release we just have to change the server and not the client side of our application.
So I had to add a memory to our server so that it knows from which high level method from the client the multiple low level calls to it are coming from.
It just doesn't make sense logically.

I mean I feel like I killed someone. And just so that we get less writes to our DB. I mean yes in some edge cases it is a huge speed-up...
But nothing this fix solves is a new bug.

I'm gonna take a shower now. For like an hour

Ever had a day that felt like you're shoveling snow from the driveway? In a blizzard? With thunderstorms & falling unicorns? Like you shovel away one m² & turn around and no footprints visible anymore? And snow built up to your neck?

Today my work day was like that.. xcept shit..shit instead of pretty & puffy snow!!

Working on things a & b, trying to not mess either one up, then comes shit x, coworker was updating production.. ofc something went wrong.. again not testing after the update..then me 'to da rescue'.. :/ hardly patch things up, so it works..in a way.. feature c still missing due to needed workarounds.. going back to a and b.. got disrupted by the same coworker who is nver listening, but always asking too much..

And when I think I finally have the b thing figured out a f-ing blocker from one of our biggest clients.. The whole system is unresponsive.. Needles to say, same guy in support for two companies (their end), so they filed the jira blocker with the wrong customer that doesn't have a SLA so no urgent emails..and then the phone calls.. and then the hell broke loose.. checking what is happening.. After frantic calls from our dba to anyone who even knows that our customer exists if they were doing sth on the db.. noup, not a single one was fucking with the prod db.. The hell! Materialised view created 10 mins ago that blocked everything..set to recreate every 10 minutes..with a query that I am guessing couldn't even select all that data in under 15.. dafaaaq?! Then we kill it..and again it is there.. We found out that customers dbas were testing something on live environment, oblivious that they mamaged to block the entire db..
FML, I'm going pokemon hunting.. :/ codename for ingress n beer..

A (work-)project i spent a year on will finally be released soon. That's the perfect opportunity to vent out all the rage i built up during dealing with what is the javascript version of a zodiac letter.

Everything went wrong with the beginning. 3 people were assigned to rewrite an old flash-application. Me, A and B. B suggested a javascript framework, even though me and A never worked with more than jquery. In the end we chose react/redux with rest on the server, a classic.

After some time i got the hang of time, around that time B left and a new guy, C, was hired soon after that. He didn't know about react/redux either. The perfect start off to a burning pile of smelly code.

Today this burning pile turned into a wasteland of code quality, a house of cards with a storm approaching, a rocket with leaks ready to launch, you get the idea.

We got 2 dozen files with 200-500 loc, each in the same directory and each with the same 2 word prefix which makes finding the right one a nightmare on its on. We have an i18n-library used only for ~10 textfields, copy-pasted code you never know if it's used or not, fetch-calls with no error-handling, and many other code smells that turn this fire into a garbage fire. An eternal fire. 3 months ago i reduced the linter-warnings on this project to 1, now i can't keep count anymore.

We use the reactabular-module which gives us headaches because IT DOESN'T DO WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO DO AND WE CANT USE IT WELL EITHER. All because the client cant be bothered to have the table header scroll along with the body. We have methods which do two things because passing another callback somehow crashed in the browser. And the only thing about indentation is that it exists. Copy pasting from websites, other files and indentation wars give the files the unique look that make you wonder if some of the devs hides his whitespace code in the files.

All of this is the result of missing time, results over quality and the worst approach of all, used by A: if A wants an ui-component similar to an existing one, he copies the original and edits he copy until it does what he wants. A knows about classes, modules, components, etc. Still, he can't bring himself to spend his time on creating superclasses... his approach gives results much faster

Things got worse when A tried redux, luckily A prefers the components local state. WHICH IS ANOTHER PROBLEM. He doesn't understand redux and loads all of the data directly from the server and puts it into the local state. The point of redux is that you don't have to do this. But there are only 1 or 2 examples of how this practice hurt us yet, so i'm gonna have to let this slide. IF HE AT LEAST WOULD UPDATE THE DATA PROPERLY. Changes are just sent to the server and then all of the data is re-fetched. I programmed the rest-endpoints to return the updated objects for a very reason. But no, fuck me.

I've heard A decided (A is the teamleader) to use less redux on the next project and use a dedicated rest-endpoints for every little comoutation you COULD DO WITH REDUX INSTEAD. My will is broken and just don't want to work with this anymore.

There are still various subpages that cant f5 because the components cant handle an empty redux state in the beginning, but to be honest i don't care anymore. Lets hope the client will never find out, along with the "on error nothing happens"-bugs. The product should've been shipped last week, but thanks to mandatory bugfixes the release was postponed to next week. Then the next project starts...

Please give me some tips to keep up code quality over time, i cant take this once more.
I'm also aware that i could've done more, talking A and C about code style, prettifying the code, etc. Etc. But i was busy putting out my out fires, i couldn't kill much of the other fires which in the end became a burning building (a perfect metaphor for this software)

Rant

I'm tired of this shit!!!

First I receive a task to create a new functionality for the app that I'm working on and some documentation (this is the only good part of all the rant) but no design.

It's been 2 weeks since I got assigned to this and still no design, no assets, no API calls that ACTUALLY WORK.

Today was testing a plist to get a banner link, and for 1 hour that little fucker didn't returned the image I was asking.

Better, I wasn't getting ANY IMAGE. Turns out that the link sends me to a HTML URL that doesn't have any image... go figure!

So I've been working on this from some images inside the PDF with the documentation given.

Oh! Wait! There's more!

The cherry on top is that I'm implementing a chat/voice call/video call into the app and the framework that I will be using is being created now, and it's not even finished!!!!!!

Today morning my sales manager calls me and tells there is a bug in one of the integration module and he tells the client has called us yesterday pls come early to office today and fix it. I asked which end point they have issue, he replies I don't know. I don't know what is the bug where is the bug, but there is a bug when they send data to us, pls find and fix it before 11 am. The worst part of this is that integration module I never worked on and the person who developed it has left the company long before and there is no documentation. when I go to that folder I see many controllers and many end points. now how will I figure out the issue 😂 I don't even know the work flow of that integration. the bug reporter (my sales manager) don't even know at what end point what issue happened.

Today I was debugging some shitty code left by unknown developer whos linkedin account is dead and phone number left in contact card calls local pizza house.

I knew it qould be hard so i've made myself comfortable, gathered 5 redbulls and other items that diabetes people would kill for eating again.

After around 10 minutes i was already frustrated but i kept the pace. "Who is the best, little devie, you!" - I fooled my ego to keep up and shut up.

After around 10 next minutes my attention span has ended. Limbic system started injecting some hormones into my brain, but I remained silent.

First two energy shots were applied. I felt like hero again. Two minutes after I was debugging through some library that was written fo java and found out that it ahots some natives to a c lang lib called "mypreciouslib".

Oh flock, how can i debug it if ita compiled , I cannot do such things, Me be only junior dev. I started swearing, but silently.

Started ollydbg to see what is inside livrary, i searched through but i couldnt match anything it was like mess stirred with fecals of an elephant.

So I opened aida pro " with vitamins" cause obviously, our pm says "but you write in java right " so we dont need those tools right ? Fuck no.

Aida was better at least i could find some funcions calls, but hey, the progress. I was swearing out loud, with earplugs in. And by the time I've sweared all the things in company i got a reminder.

"Hey -insane- stop swearing, the children are here."-sayys pm, it is some kind of " family and work " shitfuck day.

So i asked them: " why wouldnt you buy this fucking tools for programmming for us , you wouldnt have to hear me fucking swearing" . then i realized that , colleagues in room heard all of it, and one of them, total fuckface buttlicker(dev without bit of knowledge) started something like "you are wrong, see how good our software is sellling". Pm was like smiling like he thanked him for buttlicking again. Not to mention he is officially retarded and i know his password to all our services cause he is so smart to put it into text file and then have sharing files in windows turned on.

The other one told aloud, that we would be much better with some debugging tools that are better than fucking eclipse if we have to work without code.

PM told us that he will arrange a meeting. At that point I didnt care any longer. I just fired myself, fuck them.

Please saint Stallman give me hope and joy of programming from my teenage years. Uhhh..

We have a new hire, and he doesn't know much so he is receptive when given feedback on better ways to handle a situation...Or at least, he appears that way. Until the next time and he didn't listen at all.

Today I'm working on the front end to match his API calls. I ask him about a list of options for one of the fields, as he didn't provide that info initially. No worries, there was a lot, easy to miss. He responds with a list of ~100 options, which he copied and pasted from, I'm assuming, their documentation. I tell him that's too many options to hard code, as there is an easy chance to have an error or for there to be one added or deleted, and ask if there is an API endpoint to get the list.

He then asks if I need the key and value, or just key. I tell him if he needs the value(human readable) then he can send me just the value, otherwise both. He says he just needs the key, so I let him know that I need both then, as the value is human readable. He says okay.

He proceeds to make the endpoint, I test it. Then I look at the code he wrote. Not only did he not send me both, he just sent the keys, but he hard coded all 100 keys as opposed to making the call to the external API.

A "partner" company has created a "REST" API we use on an online shop we developed to send all shop-related requests to.
At least once a month, something fails on their end and the customer calls us every time, expecting that we did something wrong, but it has never been us.
These "partners" do exactly zero testing, are extremely slow in solving API bugs, have almost no logging and have no monitoring on the API at all.
Today at noon, suddenly no customers were able to order anything anymore for 4 hours.

How the fuck can you run a business so unbelievably brainless that this keeps repeating monthly?
Time they fire all their "devs" and everyone in charge of the company and operations. TERMINATE.

Teammate has been slacking since a week: not joining standups, not joining calls, stuff like that. Upon asking , he does give info which is needed from him, over slack. He is a pretty good engineer and has won a company award this year.

Today manager scolded him pretty harshly. No direct slangs, but very rude tone and sentences like ‘do you need special invitation to your house to join this meeting?’ , ‘If you don’t want to work, just fuck all this shit’ and things along this line for 10 mins. Basically manager lost his shit completely.

I didn’t like the way he was treated. What options does my teammate have ? We’re based out of Hyderabad, India.

So, today is the final day of my internship, and I was almost done, until my fucking assface of a client calls me, and suddenly want 10000000 fucking things changed in a database, and I'm not just talking "Could you add this field?" Or make this default to that, no I'm talking change of relationships, schemas and the whole shebang, oh and suddenly the product also needs localization for 3 fucking languages, but it hasn't been built for this shit. Thank God my assessment was yesterday, I just noped right out of here.

People, don't be dicks, think what you want your product to be before starting the development

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.

Today I wrote the most epic code.

The kind that breaks your brain, but when you're done with it you know it's time to go home and kick back coz you've done good.

It used recursion, did backflips to avoid unnecessary db calls, featured no code repitition. Hell I even commented the business rules it was following in there to explain what was happening.

I hope it works tomorrow when I test it 😂😂😂

Today after longer vacation I came back to work.

Edit: wrote this rant long time ago, but never finished. Was too pissed.

Some easy meetings, then wanted to start on an easy job.

Just migrating some things from bash regex voodoo to proper tools like JQ.

Finished in roughly 1 h. Lovely.
Made some tea, ate some cookies.

Set up dev environment, found no documentation what so ever, got it running after half an hour.

Annoying, but ok.

Then I tried my scripts...

They worked... Except they didn't.
Console log empty, response code 200 with state: GENERATE_NO_FILES.

Eh. Fuck you. Just fuck you.

Fixed the logging configuration, which was broken since uhm... 2 years plus?

Well... Another half another hour gone...
Kinda pissed now.

Still script return failed...
Poking and trying to sprinkle debug all over that shit cause everything seems ... An incohesive, inconsistent diarrhea.

3 hours later...

Made the ticket to rewrite it.

I did nothing wrong at all.

The API just has no workflow at all. The
*seperate* API calls have to be in an **specific** order - as otherwise the generation will fail, as the prerequisites for the generation are not fulfilled.

Yeah. Completely logical. Especially not to give out any kind of warning or an error message like requirements not met, blablabla.

I drank that evening 2 six packs of beer. I was raging mad....

Then gave that shit to another manager, as I never want to touch that nuclear waste again....

How can someone be so brain damaged -.-

Have some downtime today, so since I lucked out and found some old backups (from before I used Git) of a project I was planning on revisiting, I decided to fire it up and see what I can do to get that going again.

And discovering just how much my coding style has changed since then...

[Code is in PHP, for reference]

* Virtually no documentation (whereas my current style is near-obsessive with PHPdoc blocks)
* Where comments exist, they only use // and are a full tab after the end of the line
* All assignment operators are dutifully aligned on tabs
* Have to update the entire codebase because it relies on deprecated `mysql_*` calls
* Have to flip all of the quotes throughout the codebase because I used double-quotes as my primary at the time instead of single quotes.
* Also relied on magic quotes for injecting variable content into strings
* Associative array practices varied; sometimes the names are encased in double quotes, but I just hit a block where it's all leaving it to the compiler to interpret unquoted string literals

And perhaps the most egregious so far...

* Any time we get database results back the process for cycling through them is to do `$count = mysql_num_rows($result);` (or $count2, etc.), then do a `for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)` (again, or $j, $k, etc.), instead of just a simple `while ($data = $result->fetch_assoc())`

Took a SWAG at stand-up this morning, saying I thought I could resolve a circular dependency introduced in a junior's branch by noon. As the morning dragged on, I became less and less certain of it, but lo! and behold I managed to refactor my way out of hell with 2 minutes to spare!

This calls for lunch beer! Which management has no way of stopping me from doing on a regular day due to remote working, but at least today I've convinced myself I earned it.

Tldr: no router, almost not work.

Ok I recently moved into a new house, and I signed a contract for an Internet line.

Problem is that the router has been sent at the ISP shop, where I was supposed to get it personally. But guess what? Covid emergency happened two days after, and the shop closed.

So, after spending two days calling customer service of both ISP and Postal office without being able to speak to anybody, I received a Sms saying that the pack was not delivered because the receiver was closed.

After some more unsuccessful calls to the same two entities I managed to find the actual shop's phone number, that was actually thw owner's house (he's working from home). I spoke to him, told the problem, and he changed the router destination to my house.

Today I checked the package status on the postal website and I saw that it seems that they tried every day, at 7:02 am, to deliver the bloody package again at the shop! I truly hope this was a bug on their tracking system. It's weird that the hours were always 7:02am, because the package delivery office opens at 8:30 am, so again I'm praying any existent and non-existent god that that's just a bug. I'm kinda tired of being stuck with my phone hotspot with limited GB and with ISP public routers with about 5Mbps.

I wish I had @netikras skills with router building.

Today I was orders to check out one of our applications. Accounting said that the Twilio bill was constantly increasing even if we do not get any new clients. In 10 min I found out what is the problem. All calls are recorded and stored in Twilio, which charges handsomely for such service.
Developers instead of downloading those recording to our data lake, use Twilio as storage, because no coding was involved.
Company lost around 30k dollars this year and around 10k-20k in previous ones, because someone was lazy to spend few days to download mp3 from url.

Ok so today marks one week of harrassing our client to deploy.
Finally she calls in today after agreeing to deploying tonight, and says "oh no! We tested it today, it's not ready, and we'll need this functionality on the backend tomorrow, thanks!"
So, because we don't really have a choice, we must dev a new functionality + API + interface for tomorrow.morning (it's 9PM right now)

Batteries don't like me anymore

Yesterday late evening I was out to bring a festive parcel to someone. I left home with 29% batt, went there and still had 27%. Made 3 short (~1min) calls and headed home. Opened Firefox and my phone crashed. WTF, how could FF crash Android? OS separation failure? I turn my phone back on and it says LOW BATTERY: 0%. wtf... With 27% I should have been good until the next morning with no problems! And now it went 27%→0% in a blink (literally).

Today I decided to stay on my lappy for the morning. YT videos to catch up to, dR posts to scroll through, etc. A few hours later laptop battery is drained down to 29%. I step away for a few minutes for a cup of coffee and when I come back - the battery indicator LED is glowing amber and OS says it's got 6% left

29%→6% in a few moments of idle. Riigghhhhttt.... And I thought I won't want anything for this Christmas.

I wonder what's the significance of 27/29% there...

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

This is why we can never have enough software developers

It's true. No matter how many people learn to program, there will never be enough people who know how to program. They don't have to be very good at it either. It is now a required skill.

Minimum wage in first world countries is way above 5$ per hour. A Raspberry PI 3B costs 40$, or at most 1 day of work for the worst paid jobs. And it will run for years, and do routine tasks up to thousands of times faster than any employee. With that, the only excuse that people still do routine tasks, is the inaccessibility of coder time.

Solution: everybody should know how to write code, even at the simplest level.

Blue-collar jobs: they will be obsolete. Many of them already are. The rest are waiting for their turn.

Marketing people - marketing is online. They need to know how to set up proper tracking in JS, how to get atomic data in some form of SQL, how to script some automated adjustments via APIs for ad budgets, etc. Right now they're asking for developers to do that. If they learn to do that, they'll be an independent, valued asset. Employers WILL ask for this as a bonus.
Project Managers - to manage developers, they need to know what they do. They need to know code, they have to know their way around repositories.
QA staff - scripted tests are the best, most efficient tests.
Finance - dropping Excel in favor of R with Markdown, Jupyter Notebooks or whatever, is much more efficient. Customizing / integrating their ERP with external systems is also something they could do if they knew how to code.

Operations / Category Management - most of it would go obsolete with more companies adopting APIs as a way to exchange important information, rather than phone calls and e-mails.

Who would not be replaced or who wouldn't benefit from programming? Innovative artists.

A lot of it might not be now now, but the current generation will see it already in their career.

If we educate people today, without advanced computer skills and some coding, then we are educating future deadbeats.

With all this, all education should include CS. And not just as a mandatory field or something. Make it more accessible, more interesting, more superficial if needed. Go straight to use cases, show its effectiveness in the easiest way possible. Inquisitive minds will fill in the blanks, and everyone else will at least know how to automate a part of their work.

I made a wordpress website to one of my friends long time back as he wants to teach online and sell his videos. (he is studying MBBS)
Yesterday suddenly he calls me and says our site has been compromised and its not longer secure.
Me: After seeing screenshot, no actually site doesn't have ssl and in recent chrome updates http site is being flagged.
He: Okay, I saw video on youtube how to buy ssl.
Me: its not just installing the certs, all the links and images has to be on https so it will take sometime for me.
He: Today, Website is no longer opening please help after putting ssl as per the video...
Me: What the hell? Who asked you to do that? Are you nuts?
He:................. Sorry, 😐

FUCK APPLICATION LEVEL FIREWALLS!

So i cam online today, thought already lets open the shitty outlook webmail client. Holy crap .... thats way to much mails. Many of them are missed teams messages. So i open up teams and holy crap. Like every third dev in my company send me a message screaming "gitab is not working!!!".

Yesterday i updated it so imediately get in panic mode - what the shitty hack have i done?!

So yeah gitlab seems to be working just fine, everything is speedy and responsive, so i call one of my fellow devs and ask him whats wrong? And he is like oh yeah there comes a ldap error saying timeout or something.

I try to login with active directory. Works like a charm. Try another account, same problem?!

Google the problem, search gitlab tickets. Nope there is no open bug or sth. like this.

So alright lets call the network guy. "Yo, can you check if there is something ldap-like getting blocked to the gitlab server?" - He is like oh yeah damn like almost every damn request is getting blocked. Ah wait, there was an firewall update yesterday too. Yeah ldap is no longer ldap. BLOCK THAT SHIT!

After 10 minutes of figuring out what shitty type is detected by the firewall and what needs to be whitelisted to make it fucking work again it seems to work.

But ha no, there is another update rolling on, so same shit like 15 minutes later.

Now it seems to work and i have to inform every damn fcking developer that it works again. And yeah alright you sent a mail, but fuck it, i will call you though! So yeah just answering calls, mails and chat messages. Like why the fuck cant you read your mails like a damn normal person?!

Im ranting in progress of the issue so i dont get the urge to do any of the things not seem as acceptable to fix this issue.

Issue: yesterday i activated a device i havent had any (even prepaid) service on in years, and had a 'new'(to me) number assigned...

Today, after being sick so muting nuisances immediately for rest, i check, 3missed calls from the same, less spammy looking number. I havent use this number for even a txt code verification at all... aside from 1 call to comcast (for the blissful irony of seeing if its an option (they need to survey physically) since im suing my current isp who didnt take my VERY NICE and explictly required in their business t&c, refund for the issue's duration.. after months of tryjng to directly get a message (not using my not technically hacking expertise like just scrubbing for email formatting and popped up in their inbox (calling them is more frowned upon)...

Their conclusion as to "why" (they nvr solved the issue... dhcpv6 was in aggressive lease mode(no response per lease(NOT batches) of about 60 for about 20 devices which i ofc use my /28 static ipv4 block... not ipv6 (they also claimed there was no logs til i dug and found verbose, long history high/med high debug level logs in their prop. dev's gui... which they forced me to use, has 2 separate cores/stacks which is done for 1 reason only... constant simultaneous ipv4 and ipv6 (so ofc was auto enabled)...

Basically it was spamming do to a config issue with their scripts, and their WAN6 dev/script's config. Have found a single person who knows what ipv6 (or v4) or wan6 device actually means... their conclusion from multiple "specialist departments " ..."we dont support ipv6 so if u had issues caused by using something we dont support it's your fault... sooooo ludacris.

.... ok back to main point.
callback options
1 schedule a call back for "later"
2 dont schedule and hang up/try some other time
3. cancel callback and join the end of the cue(from previous message it told me a callback in 6-10m or lose your place in line and go to the end... hours later no call and they definitely have the number as it reiterated -.-
...
answer to wait in line>
experiencing extremely high wait time
>your current wait time 31-60m
2.5sec later.. let me connect you to a rep ...etc (identical as in callback options intro)
> your current wait time is 30sec
waiting nearly 25min whilst typing this.(i did make sweet potato stuff, propagated a rose, fed JSON some of his new, in closure buffet of things he previously never encounted and bought a literal ton of rubber mulch)40min to a rep 5more to solve (last guy at same position didnt know this option exited, despite me decribing it verbosely to him.

Everything the automated syst asks is about account numer... there is none ive never even had a burner that was at&t brand.

Wzf.

Most illogical thing I had to do today.

Today i received an email from bank to fill an attached form to receive payment from a foreign country.

Face palm no 1: The form they sent was in doc format. The layout of the form was all fucked up.

So I downloaded a proper PDF version of the same form from the bank's website.

I filled the form on my computer and signed it using my pen tablet and emailed it back.

Few hours later somone from bank calls me.

Facepalm no 2: He sounded frantic. He asked me to physically mail the "orginal" of the form!

He was thinking I took the printout of the form, filled it by hand and send the scanned copy.

I told him I filled everything digitally so there is no "original" form in physical sense.

Also since I emailed him the form, it doesn't make any sense at all, for me to take the printout of the digital version and mail it to him when he could just open his email and take a print out.

He didn't seem to grasp that idea at all.

Finally, I agreed to go to a branch nearby me and got him speak to an employee there over my phone and they said they will courier the printout to him.

I don't know if the people there are dumb or I am too smart.

Sometimes its the only way to get project managers off your back...

So i'm a new-baked developer, educated through a company's Accelerated Learning program and starter as a junior consultant this month. I met this guy at a school event and we talked about their company and their future project and we had a good chat. So I asked our recruiters a couple of days later if there was a possibility to be presented as a consultant for the company. A week later or so I receive a call from the recruiter responsible for said company which ends up in a scheduled interview. Yay!

The interview was scheduled for yesterday. In the morning my recruiter calls me and tells me that the interview has been cancelled. She tells me the she had not been given an explanation to why, but that she'll come back to me after lunch with an update. No call..

So after lunch today I try to call her and no response. So I leave a message to show my interest and to aski if she heard anything and if there might be a new date coming up.

The afternoon passes and by the end of the day still no reply. But 2 of my class mates tell me that they're going for an interview tommorrow, after having talked to the very same recruiter on our company. I feel so backstabbed. I started this whole recruitment process and now they've just tossed me out? What the hell is this?!! I'm so raging right now!

Gonna give the recruiter another call tommorrow morning, and after that I'm taking it to her manager. Any suggestions on what to say?

I am going to start a random stuff from dev life diary just for your annoyance… cause I’m bored (and kind of want to see how long I can be bothered to keep shit like this going)

So, work day 1 for 2022. Wrote TS and YAML. Yay, IaC is fun. Also, no one has bothered me with dms or calls or any such shite today, which is the way I like it. Leave me be, mofos!

Should still bother to prepare all the shit for tomorrow’s PoC spec planning workshop… what a chore. Couldn’t be bothered, I’d much rather someone else did the specs and I could skip to design and implementation. But I guess this is yet another context where I have to do it all myself. Woo hoo…

Today the communication is data driven. Telecom operators can offer free voice calls, but no free data.

Started today by solving it, seemingly with no problems at all!

Last week i had extreme problems regarding some async ajax-calls.

Sort of felt like i dreamt about a solution.

[opinions welcome]
I'm just furious right now!!!

So I'm on this project where we have to make a whole *very old* website look like it's brand new.

Thing is, the whole point of the project is to make exactly the same pages as on the existing website smh. No UX or UI suggestions.
Just put the navbar in a component that looks like a tab bar, who cares anyway!?

Btw, I'm in charge of the UI.

My colleagues and I (mostly my colleagues) made a react components library and we use it for this project.
Fucking inputs get thrown into tables and all that, but hey, that's what the client asked for.

So here I am with my shiny new page, and I just hand it over to the front-end dev who just arrived.
She's supposed to feed in the data.
I don't give a fuck you use flow or redux or whatever fancy tooling.
Just call your back-end, get the data, format it and feed my damn table with it. That's it.

So today, after 5 weeks she's in, she calls a meeting where she's screening a presentation to the team complaining about how long it took her to understand what I did and change it completely.
Pieces of code on screen, saying it's crap and it shouldn't be like that.

I'm not responsible for inputs in fucking table, the client is!
Of course I have nested components with data passed through all the way: it's a series of fucking radio buttons within a table within a form!

During 5 weeks, yoy didn't even come to me once saying it's not what you expected or you're having trouble with my work!
And there we blaming my job like I'm the bad guy?!

Tonight, everyone's going home thinking I'm no good at what I do and completely lost, all because of her.

If you got this far, I'd like to hear from you on how I should act with her and how to tell her what she did is awfully wrong?

Thinking to start smoking 🚬

Never tried it once in 26 years not even a sip even refused temptations from school friends

Now by starting a job, i have no security, ironically. I feel like i stepped at the leap of a bottomless pit and tomorrow i jump into it and fall... and fall....and fall..... No end.

I have no idea how to use ansible and rexify.org and thats what I'll need to use. I have no idea how to do devops with Azure, and thats what ill do. I only build devops with terraform on Aws.

The unknown of 9-5 is frightening me more than starting a business. Paradoxically, i think it would come as a relief to get fired within the first week from failing to complete literally everything

On top of that my blonde gf disappeared yesterday for 3-4 hours. No texts no phone calls. Called for 2 times no answer. Called 3rd time and got a voice message the phone was shut down. 3-4 hours later she said she was with mom at shopping and didnt have internet

I also caught her texting some random guy on instagram. They both have vanish mode enabled (texts delete themselves as soon as you leave the conversation). Confronted her today. She wont tell me the truth. Likes his pics on ig. Keeps lying. On a question "why do you have vanish mode enabled with him?" her answer is "well i guess married men always use vanish mode"

Im tired

Too much shit unraveling. The opening of 2024 already doesnt look good

Why do good people die in accidents or diseases but i dont and i live? Shits unfair. Why doesnt nature/God fucking kill me? I beg to die. I hope to die. I pray for something to kill me. It would come as such a relief.

This life is meaningless and empty to me. typeof(life) yields a void. I dont value it. Its shit. Whether succeed or fail its meaningless. Nihilism was right

I am literally a walking dead. Physically moving but spiritually dead. Mentally lost. I am the captain of a ship in the middle of the ocean who no longer knows where the ship is going

Why cant i just get cancer or something. Can cigarettes help me get it? Cause I'll start consuming that shit right away to speedrun that process

End it