Got this from a recruiter:

We are looking for a **Senior Android Developer/Lead** at Philadelphia PA

Hiring Mode: Contract

Must have skills:

· 10-12 years mobile experience in developing Android applications
· Solid understanding of Android SDK on frameworks such as: UIKit, CoreData, CoreFoundation, Network Programming, etc.
· Good Knowledge on REST Ful API and JSON Parsing
· Good knowledge on multi-threaded environment and grand central dispatch
· Advanced object-oriented programming and knowledge of design patterns
· Ability to write clean, well-documented, object-oriented code
· Ability to work independently
· Experience with Agile Driven Development
· Up to date with the latest mobile technology and development trends
· Passion for software development- embracing every challenge with a drive to solve it
· Engaging communication skills

My response:

I am terribly sorry but I am completely not interested in working for anyone who might think that this is a job description for an Android engineer.

1. Android was released in September 2008 so finding anyone with 10 years experience now would have to be a Google engineer.
2. UIKit, CoreData, CoreFoundation are all iOS frameworks
3. Grand Central Dispatch is an iOS mechanism for multithreading and is not in Android
4. There are JSON parsing frameworks, no one does that by hand anymore

Please delete me from your emailing list.

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 204 No Content
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 413 Payload Too Large
Me: 102 Processing
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 444 Connection Closed Without Response
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 444 Connection Closed Without Response
Me: 429 Too Many Requests

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Me: 101 Switching Protocols
Me: 408 Request Timeout
GF: 102 Processing

Me: GET /sleep
Sleep: 404 Not Found
Me: 406 Not Acceptable

(Morning)
Me: 501 Not Implemented

Owner of company I freelance for: I need you to find out what CMS [website] is running in.

[Checking...]

Me: It's running in Drupal

Owner: Prove to me that it's running in Drupal, because she's saying you're wrong.

Me: Who the hell is "she"?

Owner: The boss over at [PR Company we do work for]

Me: Is she a developer?

Owner: No, of course not. She barely knows how to run a computer.

Me: Then tell I said it's running in Drupal, and if she wants proof, tell her I'm the developer she has begged to fix two other failing projects and I have delivered both times ahead of schedule.

Owner: If you don't show me proof, I'll fire you. I don't need attitude from my employees.

Me: A.) I'm not your employee, you are my client. I don't clock in for you and you don't withhold taxes from my pay. B.) If that's how you want to be, tell her to use terminal and cURL the website for the response header, as well as cross-reference folder structure for CSS/JS file inclusion to show it's running in Drupal.

Owner: What the fuck is terminal?

Me: If you don't know what terminal is, neither will she, meaning you have no business telling me how to do my job. Stick with assigning me tasks and let me use my expertise to get them done. Micromanaging need not apply here, mmm'kay pumpkin?

Owner: You sure are grouchy today.

Me: Yep...

Mac: Suddenly turns off
Me: Fuck my code..F***
Mac: No response at all
Me: reset SMC etc etc
Mac: I am dead (no battery detection, dies after 10 min on power adaptor)
Me: Skips a heart beat..(Git, oh yea git)

**Takes Mac to store, After diagnosis**

Apple Freaking Genius (AG): Your Mac has a mother board problem it needs to be replaced.
Me: Hmm what is the problem exactly??
AG: Issues in logic board and some other components.
Me: How much?
AG: Out of warranty so $$$ (60% of original amount)
Me: (wtf?) Really
AG: It's entire motherboard replacement .. bla bla

**Bring it home > open > everything seems ok on multimeter as per circuit diagram > finally finds a voltage drop that is not consistent > minute short circuit > remove > check further > nothing else > reassemble > hit power button > starts fine > freaking battery detected > works fine**

0 $ repair

Fixes two more devices @ 0 $ in friend circle

Builds a raspberry pi backup laptop with 3d printed body..Ubuntu.. you know can't live without a computer

#ThugLife #Engineer

Got my hands on an interesting API.
Look around on the site.
No documentation. Like, nothing. Not even examples.
Tried calling it.
Response code: 200 OK
Body: Unknown Error.

Well, fuck you too.

*came in this morning to see this conversation in slack from the remote teams*

Dev: Hey guys, I'm trying to push to the develop branch, telling me its locked. Is there a new process?

Lead dev: Yes I locked it because the repo is now dead, the last release that went out is the last for this year and ever for this app. Were merging this app with another, starting from the last release's code. We'll all have to swap over to the new repo soon.

Dev: ... eh ok I didn't put anything in the last release branch as it wasn't urgent. Normally our process is anything in /develop goes out in the new year. I've been merging to /develop for the last few weeks ... is that code now gone?
*14 question mark emoji reactions*

Lead dev: Yes
*27 angry emoji reactions*

Engineering manager: WHAT? when was this decided? When was it communicated?

Lead dev: oh I assumed my product counterpart had been spreading the messages around, have they not?

Several teams: no, nope, first i'm hearing of it.

Lead dev: Ok, i'll ask them what happened. Be aware then that most of the stuff thats going into develop now, most likely won't be allowed in until March. They want to prioritise releasing this new merged app and don't want anything to impact it.

Dev: So wait, i'm working on stuff now. What do I do? Where do I base the branch? Where do I merge?

<no response>

*My team comes into the office*

Dev: eeehhh ... what does this mean for our past 4 weeks of work? and all the stuff needed to go out in January?

Me: not.a.fucking.clue

Me: We should change the http response code to anything but 200 OK in the error response case of our API.
Other dev: No, it's fine.
Me: Why?
Other dev: The client successfully receives an error message.
Me: ┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻

"there's a problem with your API"
Me: "why?"
"I get no data"
Me: "what response code are you getting?"
"405 - Method not allowed. But only on the /version endpoint"
Me: "Soo... What request are you sending?"
"POST"

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SEND A POST REQUEST TO AN ENDPOINT THAT **GETS** THE VERSION OF MY API???!!!!

Me: "Read the documentation. It's there for a reason"

Dear nerds from all over the world,
We get it. 404 pics are funny.

But did you know there other status codes too?
Like...
204 - No Response
301 - Moved
302 - Found
400 - Bad request
401 - Unauthorized
402 - Payment Required
403 - Forbidden
501 - Not Implemented
502 - Service Temporarily Overloaded

I'm sure you'll also find funny situations with these.
Thanks. We're the best!

Recently I've been upgrading ubuntu. It took almost midnight.

Suddenly my area witnessed low voltage.

That woke up my dad.

(Now the funny part)

He looked at my laptop. Ordered me to stop whatever is running on it.

Naturally, I asked why!

No response.

Next morning, I came to know my dad thought those gibberish commands running on terminal caused that voltage to drop.

I laughed like hell...
(Me infornt of dad - hackerman)

(Not that funny tho)
Fin.

People in my office sing me praises for what I can do with Linux even though I joke with them that “I have no idea how to do that - but give me half an hour and an internet connection and I’ll figure something out for you.” I even once specifically said in response to my boss commenting on my skills, “You do realize that I just like…google stuff when you ask me to do something with Linux that I don’t know how to do, right?”

But his praise didn’t change at all. There was no “Wait, that’s all it is?”

Instead, he said “Yes, but the fact that you think to do that - and that you know exactly how to phrase your searches and how to sift through the results to get the right answer, and you then integrate what you’ve learned and use it going forward - is still so much more than any of the rest of us can do. To you, it’s “just googling stuff,” but it’s still a unique and valuable skill you bring, so don’t shrug off the compliments so cavalierly, okay?“

And this was coming from an executive with an MBA. Don’t undervalue your googling skills, kids. It’s not lying if you know you can figure it out.

When you were growing up to be a developer and your mom brags about what a genius you were and has literally no idea what she was bragging about...

#IJustInstalledLinuxMomChill...

Funny story my step dad was bragging about me hacking Google to a group of his guys a few months ago (mind you I'm 21, he's a roofing contractor) and he calls me over and is like "yo, Jimmy. Tell them how you hacked google. (Obviously I never "hacked google", whatever that means) and this guy he's talking to say:

"Oh shit. You can do that shazz".

For my own amusement I replied:
"Yeah I hacked google last week. I HTML'd into their json databases to pull out an ASP in order to bash attack on their .Net services using only CSS"

Of course the man's only response at this point was to ask me how much it would cost me to build him a site...

Electronics store clerk: "Can I help you?"

Me: "Good afternoon sir. I'm a developer and lifelong PC gamer. I received a second hand PS4, and might buy a next gen console at the end of the year. People tell me that in front of this soft wide desk chair people call a "couch", you need some sort of large computer monitor to enjoy console gaming"

Clerk: "Yeah, we sell TVs. What TV do you have now?"

Me: "I don't own a TV. I just want a huge 4K computer display with a good response time, excellent refresh rate, and great contrast"

Clerk: "OK so this is an entry level 55" smart TV. It's 120hz, QLED, has full array local dimming. It's great for gaming. It's €1000. We also have this LG OLED smart TV for €1200, which is a step up in terms of contrast and response time..."

Me: "Wait... Smart TV? No, I don't want a TV with an operating system. I want a computer display."

Clerk: "There aren't a lot of big computer displays. We have this ASUS ROG 55" computer monitor. It's also 120hz. Very similar response time, but the brightness and contrast aren't as great, it's edge-lit"

Me, trying really hard to make out the contrast differences under ugly fluorescent lights of the store: "So it's a worse big couch display, without smart OS. How much is it?"

Clerk: "€3500"

Me: "So what you're saying is that while the displays are similar or even better, the operating system on all these TVs is so incredibly bad, you have to give €2500 discount for people to even buy it?"

Today.

Last night someone detonated an improvised nail bomb at a concert venue in downtown Manchester. 22 dead and 59 injured (many life threatening).

I'm working from home as my home is listed as a safe haven.

I'm not sure how much, if any, work I'll get done.

If you're in Manchester and need anything let me know.

It's all very much process:

Check everyone I know is ok
List house as safe space
Buy food
Keep passing information around to those who need it

No real time to think about it, just stay in the "response" mode.

Fuck Microsoft.

No, not in any relation to windows this time.

Dear Microsoft, why on earth did you put us on your spam blacklist? There haven't been any spam attacks from our side, our servers have nearly the highest 'reputation' that email servers can get, we comply to all security standards and yet you're blacklisting us.

If for some reason you think something is wrong at our side anyways, we've tried to contact you and we either get ignored or get a very late response saying that we'll get delisted again within a day/week or whatsoever.

Microsoft, please go fuck yourself.

Client(On Call): I emailed some query a day before. I got a response too. But, i am not able to find answer of my specific query.

Me: Let me check that for you. Yes, it is there. See the mail carefully.

Client: No. It's not there.

Me: Can you read the whole mail for me?

Client: Sure. *Started Reading* Oh yes. Yes. it is here. *Hangs up the Phone.*

Me: Sigh.

Write a small js function using setInterval to fire a request every second ... then copy paste the code 450 times (literally, not an exaggeration) into a massive file to create a load test script.

This load test script also had no means to gather metrics or test response times or anything useful. It was literally a “did the server crash” test.

Dev: Ok issue fixed, you just need to log out and back in again on your end to receive the fix

User: It’s still not working

Dev: Did you log out and in again?

User: No why would I want to do that?

Dev: It’ll reset your locally saved login information which is causing the issue

User: I thought you said the issue was fixed?

Dev: On our end yes, we just need you to reset your end in order to receive the fixed version

User: Look I have been dealing with this issue for 6 months. Fixing bugs are your responsibility. I have too much to do, you have to get this fixed. *click*.

Dev: Yeah you submitted the bug ticket yesterday night though

Email from users manager later that day: <User> is saying you are refusing to fix this bug. This is unacceptable. Fix it or else I will escalate this. Also there are other bugs we noticed today too, fixing them is absolutely critical!

Dev: …

Dev: What other bugs did you notice?

*no response for 2 weeks and then:

User: Hey you can close this ticket, the issue seems to have resolved itself.

Dev: ….muppet.

A programmer finds a frog and picks it up. To his astonishment, the frog speaks.
- "Kiss me and I'll turn into a princess."
The programmer puts it in his pocket and moves on. The ignored frog speaks again.
- "Kiss me and I'll turn into a princess. I'll even kiss you and let you hold my hand for a day."
Once again ignored, the frog ups the stakes.
- "Alright, turn me into a princess and I'll be your girlfriend for a week. You can even show me to your friends."
No response.
- "Seriously, guy, I'm hot. I'll have sex with you, I'll tell all your friends we did it and you were awesome, you can use me as a trophy to brag."
This prompted a response out of the programmer:
"Look, I'm a programmer, I don't have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog, that's kinda cool."

I have coronavirus. Went to ER because I couldn't breathe Sunday night. Thought I was fucked. I decide to try to work a couple hours today because I'm getting restless. I'm an associate and have been on a project about a month. No prior software job.

Anyway. They ask me to clone a repo and run some tests. Cool, I can do that. They give me another example to look at to make sure I'm running the test right. Except the test files aren't attached to the email nor is the path to them provided.

I ping the other associate developer on Skype and ask for the test files and get a passive aggressive response that they're in the email. No, they're not you fuck stick, hence why I'm fucking asking you, and given that I almost fucking died a couple days ago, you should be fucking grateful I even logged on. Motherfucker.

Ok I feel better now.

Product sending an email: Can I confirm feature A is all set for its release on April 30th?

Me: ... what? no that feature is going out with Feature B, that was pushed back to June because of the server issue.

Product: No, the release plan document says April 30th for this.

Me: ... theres 6 copies of this doc now. Someone is after deleting my comments saying "releasing with Feature B". Oh look heres a link to another doc that says this. See Feb14th "Will go out with Feature B". This is because they are touching the same code, we can't separate them now without re-writing it.

*Me to myself*: Ha product are going to hate this, their shitty processes have finally caught up with them.

*next day*

Other manager: So heres my plan for the app release x, y, z.

*Me to myself*: ... his plan? this is my app, I mange this. What the hell is this?

*reads email thread*

*Me to myself*: ... oh so product really didn't like my reply, took me off the thread, sent a response to all the other managers asking for alternatives, CC'ing upper management. The same upper management I had a private conversation with yesterday about how shit our product team are.

*cracks knuckles*

I'm going to enjoy writing this reply.

A real interaction I just had...

Team Member: "Can you handle this ticket for a bug fix?"

Me: "Whats the problem?"

TM: "We aren't exactly sure..."

Me: "Ok, so can you show it to me?"

TM: "We can't get it to happen again, and when it does the machine freezes and we can't debug it..."

Me: "So, if I find a fix then how do we test to make sure it worked?"

TM: "I'm not sure..."

Then today,

Product Manager: "How's that bug fix going?"

Me: "Well, let's see. The problem still hasn't been defined. I have never been able to recreate the issue. I have a hacky fix in a PR..."

PM: "Great, so we can deploy today?!?"

Me: "No, because we have no way to reproduce or test this issue at all..."

PM: "Do you think your fix will work?"

Me: "Honestly, no. If you're asking for my opinion then you can have it. IMO this is NOT a bug fix but a change to how the system operates altogether. This system was built by someone who didn't know what they are doing. We have done our best with it but it is a house of cards. And now the solution is to replace a card at the bottom layer. It is likely that no matter what fix we do (even when we can fucking test it) that it will topple the house of cards..."

PM: ~Looking at me in disbelief~

Me: "If you ask me for my honest professional opinion then you will get it. Keep that in the future if that honest response was outside what you expected."

PM: "I will do that, thanks for your assessment"

Where do we go from here? God only knows.

Praise Joe Pesci

Victory!

Today I finally closed a 'Nessy' bug (A scary bug you can't reproduce typically only sighted by one person). Below is my response...

"There were no errors in the error logs because writing to the error log was causing the error."

RANT Incoming
Not necessarily dev related but I need to get this off my chest.

So a bit of a backstory. I had to stay late from school the other day and ended up having to take an Uber home. The ride was fine lady was nice. Everything seems to be going well and there were no signs of any payment failure.

Then yesterday, I had to stay late again. I never said that I had an outstanding balance on my account. Apparently Uber was having problems charging my Android pay account.
So I ended up being stuck at school for like 3 hours. Great!😑

So I emailed Uber when I got home. And this is when I started pulling my hair out. I don't know how many replies I had, but each time I had to tell them that I was not using a prepaid card.

This was one of my replies:
"I'm sorry, are you real? If you are, here is a quick summary of the issue. I am using ANDROID PAY with my CHASE DEBIT CARD. Not, NOT, NOT a prepaid card. I happen to know that CHASE DEBIT CARD(which is the card I use, in case you have already forgotten) works with uber because MY FATHER USES THE EXACT SAME TYPE OF CARD with uber. He uses a CHASE DEBIT CARD(again I use that same type of card as well). So by using LOGIC I am able to deduce that a CHASE DEBIT CARD is in fact compatible. AGAIN THIS IS NOT A PREPAID CARD!!! If the card is incompatible, WHY DOES THE APP ALLOW BE TO ADD IT?!?! Also in response to your last email... Because I am using Android pay, do you really think that an ANDROID would be able to use APPLE pay? Also Google wallet is DISCONTINUED! Finally, PayPal DOES NOT CONNECT TO UBER. Returns a "Server Error." So please stop wasting my time with generic help solutions. Believe me, I have already googled my issue, and nothing comes up. That is why I contacted Uber. I want my driver to be paid, and, uber had made it SO painful with unhelpful "Solutions" to problems that don't even APPLY TO MY ISSUE. No not even mention PREPAID cards in your reply or I will consider you a robot built by monkeys banging their heads on a keyboard. Uber HAS my VALID payment information, USE IT! If there is a phone number I can call, please, enlighten me"

And the response was:
"Thanks for reaching out with this.

Happy to help with this issue you are having.

After reviewing your I can see that the only payment method associated with your account is an ANDROID PAY card and it is also a prepaid card. Some cards and methods are not compatible with our billing processes and can't be used with Uber. This includes prepaid cards."

So I concluded that they are monkeys.

Then Uber banned me from logging into my account because I didn't pay.
So now it is impossible for me to pay because I can't do anything with my account.

Now they want my SSN and a bunch of other shit that I won't give them.

I told them that they were being illogical, and I got the exact same response about the prepaid bullshit.

So I sent them this photo as a goodbye.

I get my driver's licence next weekend, so I won't need Uber anymore. YAY!

Also mind grammatical errors, I talked it in and am to lazy to proofread

So, as some people here probably know, I don't use any of the mainstream, mass surveillance integrated social media and messaging services. Since I'm located in the Netherlands especially whatsapp is nearly a life requirement but Facebook and such come close as well and I don't use anything related to Facebook, Google, Apple and any of the other companies related to mass surveillance programs which often puts me in awkward positions.

Every time someone wants to stay in touch and the fact that I don't use whatsapp comes up again, it usually turns into an explaining session with much disbelief from the other party but more and more often, I'm getting rather tired of that.

Recently, I had one of those moments and instead of saying 'sorry, I don't use whatsapp', i went for 'sorry, I'm old school, i only do texting and calling!'.

No discussion, just got a "ah, fair enough!"

😮

I started doing this more and more and I get the same response every time!

I find it quite astonishing how bringing something another way can get one a completely different response, especially in this context.

I wanted to go on a cruise with my programmer boyfriend.

His response?

"I can't be away from work that long."

Not because he'll get into trouble or anything. Oh no. He just loves writing code *that* much. 🙄

Spent most of the day debugging issues with a new release. Logging tool was saying we were getting HTTP 400’s and 500’s from the backend. Couldn’t figure it out.

Eventually found the backend sometimes sends down successful responses but with statusCode 500 for no reason what so ever. Got so annoyed ... but said the 400’s must be us so can’t blame them for everything.

Turns out backend also sometimes does the opposite. Sends down errors with HTTP 200’s. A junior app Dev was apparently so annoyed that backend wouldn’t fix it, that he wrote code to parse the response, if it contained an error, re-wrote the statusCode to 400 and then passed the response up to the next layer. He never documented it before he left.

Saving the best part for last. Backend says their code is fine, it must be one of the other layers (load balancers, proxies etc) managed by one of the other teams in the company ... we didn’t contact any of these teams, no no no, that would require effort. No we’ve just blamed them privately and that’s that.

#successfulRelease

I was having dinner yesterday and I suddenly get a message from someone from another team.

Them: Hi
Me: Hi

(No response for 20 mins)

Them: I'm having some problem with your service. Its not working when I do <task>
Me: Okay, let me look into that.
Them: Also, <task2> is not working
Them: And <task3> has problems
Them: Could you also look into <task4>?
Me: (visibly sweating) Let's discuss this in detail in the morning.

[Next day, morning]
*convinced that the service has a major bug*
Me: Yeah, show me what is causing the problem.

They show me what they tried. Turns out they made an invalid call and got an error, AS THEY SHOULD, and reported that as a bug. And all the other tasks were because the first call didn't work.

:|

I need a vacation.
I’m horribly depressed and burned out, every day for months has been a little harder than the last, and really doing anything at all is a monumental challenge, work or otherwise. Let alone working on the fucking screwdriver.

I told my boss last night and requested time off.

His response?
> Oh no, but the new screwdriver! We were all really really hoping to get it out by the end of the month!

I’m a crumpled wreck and all you care about is the fucking screwdriver that PRACTICALLY NOBODY WILL FUCKING USE? Seriously dude, go to hell.

Root: Fleshes out missing data in some factories. Tests affected code and finds the change breaks some specs (but shouldn’t).

Root: Reaches out to spec author.

Root: Messages thundercunt (the ticket’s code reviewer) on slack about the specs and the reaching out. No response.

Root: Works on another ticket while blocked.

Root: Logs off.

Root: Talks with spec author chick in the morning. Decide to pair on specs later.

TC: Still no slack response.

Root: Gives update in standup. Mentions factories and broken specs. Mentions pairing with spec chick.

TC: Still no slack response.

Root: Pulled off tickets in favor of prod issue. Gets ignored by everyone else diagnosing prod issue. Investigates prod issue by herself. Discovers prod issue isn’t from bad code, but bad requirements — code works as requested. Communicates this with details. Gets ignored by people still diagnosing prod issue. Tries again. Gets ignored. Gives up. Works on non-blocked tickets instead.

TC: Still no slack response.

Hours later:

TC: Comments on PR telling me I broke specs (how did I not notice?), that I need to reach out to spec chick and work with her, and that I can’t resolve the ticket until it’s fixed and passes code review.

TC: Still no slack response. (21 hours later at this point)

TC: Logs off. Still no response (25 hours at this point)

———

Ignoring the prod issue for the moment…

I broke specs. No shit.
I need to talk with spec chick. No shit.
I can’t resolve the ticket. No shit!

Bitch, I told you all of this 21 fucking hours prior, and again 3 hours prior during standup. But no, I clearly “don’t communicate” and obviously have no bloody clue what I’m doing, either, so I need everything spelled out for me.

And no, I didn’t resolve the fucking ticket. Why the fuck would I if it still has pending changes? Do you even check? Ugh!

And what the fuck with that prod issue? I’m literally giving you the answer. fucking listen! Stupid cunts.

Why is it all of the women I work with are useless or freaking awful people? Don’t get me wrong, many of the men are, too, but I swear it’s every single one of the women. (Am I awful, too?)

Just. Ugh.
I can’t wait to leave this sewer of a company.

Oddly still a good day, though. Probably because I talked to recruiters and sent out my resume again.

We've got a team of around 20 developers and the most junior of them all is a interesting specimen.

The kind of person who thinks they a 'expert' in anything and everything and is constantly trying to school our senior developers who have 20+ years experience behind them.

The sort of person that spends 15 seconds googling something he has never heard of before, but now that he has skimmed 1 page on Google would classify himself as a 'expert' in said topic.

He comes into my office yesterday and proclaims that it has been decided by himself that he no longer wants to be a developer anymore and wants to do Ops/Infrastructure, then starts rambling on about how he is a Kubernetes expert.

I asked what experience he had with Kubernetes and his response was "I watched a webinar they did last night" to which I asked if he had ever actually used anything to do with Kubernetes in his life.

"No, but I'll watch a few YouTube videos and will then be more than qualified" he says

Followed by him telling me that we'll be moving all of our current Docker Swarm clusters into Kubernetes.

This was news to me (I'm head of infrastructure and operations)

I needed a good giggle, so I asked why we would get rid of our exisiting Docker infrastructure that's got a 100% uptime over the past 2 years and has worked without failure. It's truely been a dream.

He says "Because it's shiny and cool and better"

The nest afternoon he comes to me and says "When I move everything into Kubernetes I am going to convert everything into micro services"

He says that he watched a YouTube video the night before on microservices and has decided that it's what we need to use for a particular project.

(It's a simple php website that gets 100 hits per day)

Hopefully his boss will notice that he is producing no output soon. Don't want to tell the manager that the guy he hired delivers no work and lives in a fantasy land.

"your not touching the infrastructure. Ever"

They asked me if I could recommend any video streaming frameworks. I said no, but I could google around a little. I found one, sent it to them with a note that I hadn't used it but it seemed solid.

One afternoon, right before hometime, a month later and the day before go-live, I come in, to emails with _all_ the managers on it, demanding that I assist immediately. They'd finally tried testing it, and they had found an issue. No details.

I email back, asking for the actual issue they'd found - no response. I phone - that developer has now gone on leave for week, there's a new dev who'll help me. I email him, asking for "precise technical details" of what had gone wrong.

He replies, "when you try use it, it literally causes the apocalypse." and goes silent. I check the skies, no visible apocalypse yet.

Based on some keywords they'd mentioned, I google and find a known issue as well as a patch for their version. I email it over to them.

The response? "If I'd known he was just going to Google it, I would have tried that myself."

I did but still no response

So far this month I applied for 15+ game development related jobs, and spent ages carefully crafting customized cover letters and resumes for each particular job. Didn't get as much as a "thank you for your application".

Then, for the one random job application I applied to on LinkedIn using my most generic resume, and no cover letter, I get a near instant response and an invitation to coordinate day/time for an interview in person. Wtf.

Anyway, hope I get the job, because I'm running out of food.

Dev: “Ughh..look at this –bleep- code! When I execute the service call, it returns null, but the service received a database error.”
Me: “Yea, that service was written during a time when the mentality was ‘Why return a service error if the client can’t do anything about it?’”
Dev: “I would say that’s a misunderstanding of that philosophy.”
Me: “I would say it’s a perfectly executed example of a deeply flawed philosophy.”
Dev: “No, the service should just return something that tells the client the operation failed.”
Me: “They did. It was supposed to return a valid result, and the developer indicated a null response means the operation failed. How you deal with the null response is up to you.”
Dev: “That is stupid. How am I supposed to know a null response means the operation failed?”
Me: “OK, how did you know the operation failed?”
Dev: “I had to look at the service error logs.”
Me: “Bingo.”
Dev: “This whole service is just a –bleep-ing mess. There are so many things that can go wrong and the only thing the service returns is null when the service raises an exception.”
Me: “OK, what should the service return?”
Dev: ”I don’t know. Error 500 would be nice.”
Me: “Would you know what to do with error 500?”
Dev: ”Yea, I would look at the error log”
Me: “Just like you did when the service returned null?”
<couple of seconds of silence>
Dev: “I don’t know, it’s a –bleep-ing mess.”
Me: “You’re in the code, change it.”
Dev: “Ooohhh no, not me. The whole thing will have to be re-written. It should have been done correctly the first time. If we had time to do code reviews, I would have caught this –bleep- before the service was deployed.”
Me: “Um, you did.”
<a shocked look from Dev>
Dev: “What…no, I’ve never seen this code.”
Me: “I sat next to Chuck when you were telling him he needed to change the service to return null if an exception was raised. I remember you telling him specifically to pop-up an error dialog ‘Service request failed’ to the user when the service returned null.”
Dev: “I don’t remember any of that.”
Me: “Well, Chuck did. He even put it in the check-in comments. See…”
<check in comments stated Dev’s code review and dictated the service return null on exceptions>
Dev: “Hmm…I guess I did. –bleep- are you a –bleep-ing elephant? You –bleep-ing remember everything.”

<what I wanted to say>
No, I don’t remember everything, but I remember all the drive-by <bleep>-ed up coding philosophies you tried to push to the interns and we’re now having all kinds of problems I spend waaaaay too much time fixing.
<what I said, and lied a little bit>
Me: “No, I was helping Nancy last week troubleshoot the client application last week with the pop-up error. Since the service returned a null, she didn’t know where to begin to look for the actual error.”
Dev: “Oh.”

Sometime in mid 2013 or 2014 as a junior dev I woke up to a call from my company's CEO. He informed me that the legacy system they use for order processing is down nationwide that nobody can add new orders until it's fixed and that I needed to fix it. I had been working there 6 months and was hired along with a senior dev to begin developing a web app to replace this legacy system. The senior dev had left the company two weeks earlier for a better offer so it was put on me to figure it out. I was very frank with the CEO and told him I didn't know if I could fix it and suggested he try to call the company they hired to create it. I didn't even know where the source code was let alone what the design paradigm was or whether or not there was any documentation. He said he would try figuring out who created it and give them a call and asked "As a developer you shouldn't you be able to fix this?" I just told him it wasn't that simple and left it at that.

I get to work and the CEO has discovered that the company who created the software no longer exists and I tell him he may need to find a company to consult on this if I can find the source code and if I can't find the code he might be screwed.
I found the source code in a random IT shared folder there is no source control, no documentation, no unit tests, no test environment, and it looks like nobody had touched it since 2005 or about 8 years.

Despite being completely unfamiliar with the code and the design paradigm I was able to figure out that they were validating customer addresses against an old Google geocoding API that was shutdown the day before and the lack of response was killing the application. I fixed the issue and warned the CEO before deployment that I wasn't able to test but he said to go ahead and thankfully all went well.

One month ago. By email.

Boss: so, this client A has a problem with one of our devices and he believes that it's a bug in the software.

Me: all right then, what happens?

Boss: well, he says that the parameter P in the option menu does not changes the device's behaviour as it is supposed to. I'll forward you his mail. You will find attached an excell file with the results of his test performed with and without the parameter active.

Me: < read mail, read excell file > well, boss, his tests are performed in completely different conditions, how could he expect to infer a meaningful results from this?

Boss: damn, you are right. Send him a test plan and follow up.

Me: < send detailed test plan >

No answer in a week. Then...

Client: hi, there, I made this tests, I attached the excell with the results, can you check the software now?

Me: < read another bullshit filled excell file with none of the suggested test performed >
You know what? Just download the procedures you are using from the device and send them by mail, specifying the software version you are using so we can perform some tests here in the lab and get yo a solution asap.

No response. For a MONTH.

Super Boss: client A still has his problem, how could possibly be that it takes more than A FUCKING MONTH to solve his issue??

Me:...

“No we don’t use the time zone info you send on each request. We get all the drivers for the store ID, choose one of them randomly and take their time zone. We have been assuming it will always be the same for all drivers for each store.”

This is my new favorite response to a Jira ticket in this company.

I may have to print it out and hang it on my desk

Dutch DevRant meeting was awesome!

Since quite some people couldn't do it today i also suggested to do a second day, tomorrow.

Just haven't gotten any response yet at all, so anyone in for that? If yes, sounds awesome, if no, no hurt feelings :)

I hate people... I hate stupid people even more...

A person asked on slack about where download a Programming Language server called Railo. The official site is no longer up because the software was forked and acquired by a new company.

I suggested just to download that fork since it's more stable. They said no, they needed to mimic their production environment. Makes sense, so I left it alone since I couldn't help further.

Another person on slack asked which version of Railo they need. The OPs response was, "Oh whatever version you have."

My response was... "WTF... the latest version of Railo is 4.3 and the fork is 4.5... the only difference is the new name and a couple of security fixes. If you want to mimic production then you need the exact copy.. otherwise, the fork will be your best bet."

Nope.. I need Railo... any version. They say again.

> Gained the skills to atleast land an internship
> Hyped asf
> Start applying for jobs
> Hyped asf
> Days go by without a response
> Hype starts dying
> Gets a REAL email delivered to my inbox asking to come in for an interview
> Hype levels regenerated
> Interview goes great and both founder and senior dev are fine with hiring me
> Founder needs to talk with co-founder first before giving the go and said he will get back to me in a day or two.
> The hype is too real
> 5 days go by without a reponse
> Hype levels: all time low
> Decide to follow up, founder said he left for a conference before the co-founder came back to talk about it and said he will get with her and let me know in a few days.
> The hypening is back
> A week goes by with no response
> I'm dead inside rn.

"Hi xxx, please stop asking me the same question. I've answered it 4 times already via email, slack and in person on our zoom calls, over the past 2 weeks. I do not own the ticket and have no idea of the status or the dates. Ask the owner."

- slack response I was forced to write this morning to the guy my company put in charge of the entire product (mobile, multiple backends, frontend etc.).

Swagger does not send request body for GET calls.! WHAT THE FUCK..! And the argument supporting is get calls should not have any request payloads and rather should have response payloads since its a "get" call. Are you serious?? What if there are parameters to be passed which cannot be accomodated in the params or the header. Even though people are kind of literally abusing on their issues page still they adamantly refuse to add support for this.

Swagger you had high standards in my book. You just fell so deep down there is no coming back.

Never begin a freelance project without a down-payment -.- 240+ hours in, an eager sounding client, no response for weeks now! What a waste.

Client: I want you to build me a website.
Then makes an order on freelancing website.

Me: Okay, Sir. Can you send me your specifications, please?

No reply.

2 days later

Me: Hello, sir....are you still interested?

A week later
Me: Sir.

Me: Sir.....

No reply

2 Weeks later
Me: Sir......

No reply

Client: Oh, sorry.(Then gives some lame excuse) Okay I will send you the specifications.

Me: It's Okay. Waiting for it.

A week later
Me: Sir, you forgot to send me your specifications.

No response.

#Life of a freelancer.....No stability or security or decent clients.

Managers on Slack at 08:30: Hey frontendJunior, can you accept that meeting for 09:00?

frontendJunior: * No response *

Managers: * Clueless why nobody would see a ping literally 30 minutes before a meeting *

Fullstackclown, watching it all unfold: lol 🤡

be me
first year at the college
C course in computer lab
teacher says "we will connect to school servers via ssh and compile with gcc"
do as said
suddenly a nice idea "can i use sudo?"
try something starts with sudo
server response: "with great power comes with great responsibility. do you want to continue? "
omg its happening, press enter
"you have no permission" sad face

I coded for a whole day (uninterrupted, literally woke up, grabbed my laptop and headphones and started) and suddenly, let wild parent shows up.
"Aren't you going to go out? You need to see some friends"
My response: As stated before, I have no friends, now leave
**Leaves**
**Comes back 2 hours later**
"Hey can you help me with my computer?"
Me: you didn't state the issue, what computer, what os, what you have done to fix it, have you even tried rebooting?
"Don't talk like that to me! Now come and help me!"
Me: nope, hint, answer the questions about your issue
"You rude piece of..."
**Starts screaming bla bla bla**

Wow, it has happened before that I treat people wanting help like me trying to debug, but I usually correct myself. I took it way to fucking far this time...

Summary: Burnout, and everything's broken.

I don't feel like doing a damn thing today. I look at the code and cringe. I look at Slack and think "ugh. i can't." Mental capitals are even too much work.

(I've started reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" to try and combat burnout. I'll write a rant/story about it here if I find it helpful. but all I want to do today is drink tea and read.)

But onto the story:

Heroku is deprecating support for and will automatically upgrade any old verisons of Postgres running on its platform after August something (like five days from now).

I performed the upgrade to PG10 on Sunday (and late into the night), provisioning a new follower, blah blah blah.

However, the version of Rails we're using (4.2.x) doesn't support PG10 sequences, so I manually added in support via a monkeypatch. I did this on our QA servers first, obviously, and everything worked as expected. After half a day of no issues, I did the same on production, and again: everything worked as expected.

But today? I keep hearing about new things that are broken. One specific type of alert doesn't work for one specific person (wat). Can't send [redacted] at all. Can't update merchants! Yet there are magically no errors logged.

That last one (well, two) are just great; let me explain: when there's an error concerning merchants, the error gets caught, isn't logged or recorded anywhere so it just disappears, and the rescue block triggers a json response instead and happily exits. This is for an internal admin tool, so returning a user-friendly error is kinda stupid anyway, but masking what actually happened? fuck that dev with an obelisk made from spikes and solidified pain. That json response is also lovely: it's a 200 OK returning {status: 1, data: "[generic message containing incorrect IT jargon]"}. Doesn't even say "error" anywhere. Bloody everything about this pattern is absolutely wrong. Even the friggin' text.

Fucking hell. I want to pipe the entire codebase into shred and walk out the door.

But I digress. So many things are broken, my motivation is wanning to a sliver, and I have a conference call today where I'll undoubtedly be asked why everything is on smoking and/or on fire, and my huge and overly productive week last week will ofc mean nothing by contrast.

Ugh.

`shred ~/dev/work -zfu -n 32 &; ./brew tea --hot && wine ~/takeabreak.exe`

I hate it when I try and have a discussion with another dev and the conversation devolves into something akin to:

Me: I'm doing a thing in y language! How do I do z using y language?

Dev: WHY ARE YOU USING Y LANGUAGE?! Y LANGUAGE SUCKS AND IF YOU USE IT YOU'RE STUPID. ALL REAL DEVS USE X LANGUAGE.

I just wanted to know how to do something. Maybe I don't want to do it in another language. Maybe I have to use this language for work/study. Maybe I've just been given legacy spaghetti code and can't change the system easily.

Why do people feel the need to do this? And if they want to flame a language why can't they do it constructively?

Dev: If you are trying to do a thing in y language, why don't you try using x language? It offers an easier way for you to complete the task that you want, and it has other amazing features too!

Then you could actually respond with the appropriate response which would be thanks but no thanks because of this reason or thanks i'll check it out.

No need to be so elitist all the time.

Riverbed...the software cost USD $120,000+ and their support was horrible.

Tickets would go unanswered.

Their documentation was pretty good but there were parts that were wrong and they would not fix it.

They would usually close an issue because it was opened by someone else 5 years prior and hadn't been fixed.

The several years I used it their releases consisted of no tangible code enhancements.

Several times we provided very simple reproducable issues and there response was basicly "just don't do that".

Fucking cloud providers always trying to steal your shit and spy on your things, fucking prying eyes. That's why i've decided to go back hosting my own private cloud from home. Running on some very energy efficient shit: dual core intel atom cpu (so slow that it can't fucking run windows normally), 16gb of ram, because why the fuck not? and 1tb 2.5"hdd, along with unlimited data - 100/100 Mbit/s internet connection with a server response time less than 95ms just to backup my shitty Iphone selfies and cat pics, host some very important files and regularly back up my contacts. This shit runs CentOS, Nginx, https, bitch! This platform is more trustworthy than your shitty dropbox or whatever other shit they offer you. I can choose whether i back-up my shit from local network or over internetz, Costing me no more than 25€ annually(just to keep the machine on 24/7/365).

I got through the first stage for a summer internship at Amazon. They send me a link to a technical test with a 7 day deadline to complete.

The link brings me to a 404 page. Fuck.

I contact customer support, reach out to Amazon directly, don't get any response whatsoever. The week has passed and the link is still dead and I s received no word from them.

FML. And fuck Amazon for teasing me like this and for having such shitty technical support.

Got my first response from a company i applied to a few days ago--it was a no without much explanation as to why, but at least they actually responded.

Not specifically dev related other than being hired as a dev, more a corporate thing.

I have medical issues that mean I can be a bit variable in my starting time. Company was aware and floated flexible hours as a possible solution, but never said it *was* a solution, and just left it there really breezy.

Nailed this down with my line manager a couple weeks later after HR lost their shit, apologised and thought nothing of it.

Few days later I read a blog post about IP clauses in contracts that reminded me I intended to ask, as mine didn’t have one.

Asked HR, no response for like an hour, then “we’ll get back to you on that”

Following week, pulled into a sudden meeting. “Sorry for short notice of meeting, but we’re terminating your employment effective immediately for ‘lack of commitment’”.

Utter. Bullshit.

The day before, the company literally had a company day where they banged on about their values and how they wanted to support their employees and foster an environment for good health and good mental health.

No disciplinary proceedings. My line manager found out 5 minutes before I did.

I emailed a few colleagues afterwards and apologised, and they were stunned it had gone down the way it did.

I was so blindsided and angry in the meeting, especially after I believed I’d found a company that was actually different and cared.

And I did my work, I stayed late quite often, even produced a couple internal devops tools in my time there.

The kicker is that it was within the probation period, so I have literally no recourse for any action against them.

What’s the most bullshit corporate clusterfuck you’ve been through devRant?

Recently, one of our passwords was accidently published on a public page for a few minutes before it was noticed and removed. Unfortunately, this password opens nearly every locked account so it's a pretty big deal.

Management was informed of this mistake and told that we should change the passwords as well as implement a few other protocols to make sure this doesn't happen again including things like unique passwords, more secure passwords, using a password manager, etc.

Their response? It wasn't online long, probably no one saw it. There will be no changes in how we handle ours or our clients' secure passwords.

How can you defend your ugly unstructured mess of a PR, when every spit-droplet infused spray of words from your mouth is full of syntax errors?

How can you call yourself a developer without being aware of basic logic? I ain't got no tolerance for double negations, not not true is just true, you doltish twat.

WHEN YOU TALK THERE IS A CLOUD OF RED SQUIGGLY LINES IN THE AIR FLOATING AROUND YOUR HEAD.

I mean what the fuck is up with eggcetera? Why are you just swapping out letters? What has the little ligature t in & ever done to you? Do I have to fucking replace & with 🥚 so your word diarrhea makes sense again?

NO. JUST PLEASE... STOP TALKING. YOU'RE RAPING LANGUAGE, AND IT WAS ALREADY BEATEN DEAD.

Unlike me, you have a degree in computer science... but how, how the fuck did you pass? How did neither your tongue nor code get stuck in a linter?

AND YOUR RESPONSE IS STILL: "YOU DON'T NEED TO LEARN WHEN YOU'RE FINISHED WITH SCHOOL" ... "WHAT DOES IT MATTER, IT WORKS, RIGHT?"

NO, IT'S NOT RIGHT.

You're lucky I love refactoring.

I'll start with a medical grade steel scalpel and a long sharp hook. Maybe I can clean up this brain a little. See if the tests turn green if I cut some of this gray matter away... plenty of unreachable statements, so many unnecessary loops...

Might have to start from scratch.

I resigned yesterday to focus on my business full time. After 5 years and 1 previous failed attempt to leave the company, its finally done.

My boss threw his toys out of the pram and was borderline abusive about the whole thing. "it's like a kick in the balls" "you've clearly been planning this (said in an accusatory tone)" "you've said you were leaving before which is why you have 3 months notice now (to which my response was, and that is why I am giving you 3 months notice?!)"

Along with many other comments and general angry tone.

Honestly, I couldn't sleep the night before as I was so nervous. We're a small company and to some degree, a kind of family so I didn't want to break that. The more he spoke though, the easier it got. It simply cemented by decision to leave. They made no attempt to keep me. Showed no support. No gratitude for my 5 years of service. Nothing.

Well, you will be down your only dev in 3 months so good luck, I suspect you'll need it more than I will.

when you type faster than computer response:
------------------------
Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS server tty1

server login: sysadmin
adminPassword:

Login incorrect
server login: sysadmin
Password:

sysadmin@server:~$ _
------------------------
"FUCKING SHIT !"
*sees if there are anyone in the back*
*saw no one*
"fiuuh... what a relief"

sysadmin@server:~$ clear

Email I received:

"Hi xxxxx!

I just received your voicemail and let you know that I would be sending a email:

Here is a link to introduce myself. Please let me know If I can swing in next Monday or Wednesday to shake your hand and meet!"

My response:

"Hello, zzzzzz.

You did not receive a voicemail from me because I have no idea who you or your company is.

If you meant to email someone else, this is a courtesy email letting you know you have the wrong person, and I hope you have a nice day.

If, rather, this is an attention-seeking sales tactic, this is email is a snarky response, letting you know I don't do business with companies that pull that kind of crap.

Regards,
xxxxx, CIO
zzzzzzzzz"

So Friday afternoon is always deployment time at my company. No sure why, but it always fucks us.

Anyways, last Friday, we had this lovely deployment that was missing a key piece. On Wednesday I had tested it, sent out an email(with screenshots) saying "yo, whoever wrote this, this feature is all fucked up." Management said they would handle it.

The response email. 1(out of 20) defects I sent in were not a defect but my error. No further response, so I assume the rest were being looked into.

In a call with bossman, my manager states that the feature is fixed, so I go to check it quickly before the deployment(on Friday).

THERE IS NO FUCKING CODE CHECK-IN. THE DEV BASTARD JUST SAID THAT MY USECASE WAS WRONG, SO MY ENTIRE EMAIL WAS INVALID.

I am currently working on Saturday, as the other guy refuses to see the problem! It is blatant, and I got 3 other people to reproduce to prove I am not crazy!

On top of that, the code makes me want to vomit! I write bad code. This is like a 3rd grader who doesn't know code copy-pasted from stack overflow! There is literally if(A) then B else if(!A) then B! And a for loop which does some shit, and the line after it closes has a second for loop that iterates over the same unaltered set! Why?! On top of that, the second for loop loops until "i" is equal to length-1, then does something! Why loop???

The smartest part of him ran down his Mama's leg when it saw the DNA dad was contributing!

Don't know who is the culprit, and if you happen to see this, I am pissed. I am working on Saturday because you can't check your code or you lied on your resume to get this job, as you are not qualified! Fuck you!

Our internship and placement tests start from 30th and this is message we got from our coordinators.
😤
(We do have WiFi on campus and in labs ,idk why they aren't letting us use that!!)

They are asking use to use the DONGLES ! who the hell has those, these days !
Uni's response to this : if you can't get your own internet source,then don't give the test. (Translation : we don't give a single flying fuck)

Got my self a Jiofi ,I hope it would work fine.

BUT !!!!!!!!
Often our phones catch no network in the labs ! And if they do,the internet speed is slow.

The tests will go GREAT ! 🙃

People like this guy commentating are the main reason why evolution is still just a theory.

Let's take for example someone having a problem with their car not starting up.

Already seeing this guy's response would be:
"Personally I hate cars. Seems like its always they're broken. Have you just tried using your legs and run 40 kilometers to work every day?"

No I didn't you fucker, and you know why? Because it's not convenient. The same way how it's not convenient for me or any sane developer to drop to a command line and run custom query (which can be automated) every time I want to quickly check some values in development.

And no, the OP didn't ask for setup of this on production, the conversation kept on in comments below and this guy was still defending his productive idea.

So I'm back from vacation! It's my first day back, and I'm feeling refreshed and chipper, and motivated to get a bunch of things done quickly so I can slack off a bit later. It's a great plan.

First up: I need to finish up tiny thing from my previous ticket -- I had overlooked it in the description before. (I couldn't test this feature [push notifications] locally so I left it to QA to test while I was gone.)

It amounted to changing how we pull a due date out of the DB; some merchants use X, a couple use Y. Instead of hardcoding them, it would use a setting that admins can update on the fly.

Several methods deep, the current due date gets pulled indirectly from another class, so it's non-trivial to update; I start working through it.

But wait, if we're displaying a due date that differs from the date we're actually using internally, that's legit bad. So I investigate if I need to update the internals, too.

After awhile, I start to make lunch. I ask my boss if it's display-only (best case) and... no response. More investigating.

I start to make a late lunch. A wild sickness appears! Rush to bathroom; lose two turns.

I come back and get distracted by more investigating. I start to make an early dinner... and end up making dinner for my monster instead.

Boss responds, tells me it's just for display (yay!) and that we should use <macro resource feature> instead.

I talk to Mr. Product about which macros I should add; he doesn't respond.

I go back to making lunch-turn-dinner for myself; monster comes back and he's still hungry (as he never asks for more), so I make him dinner.

I check Slack again; Mr. Product still hasn't responded. I go back to making dinner.

Most of the way through cooking, I get a notification! Product says he's talking it through with my boss, who will update me on it. Okay fine. I finish making dinner and go eat.

No response from boss; I start looking through my next ticket.

No response from boss. I ping him and ask for an update, and he says "What are you talking about?" Apparently product never talked to bossmang =/ I ask him about the resources, and he says there's no need to create any more as the one I need already exists! Yay!

So my feature went from a large, complex refactor all the way down to a -1+2 diff. That's freaking amazing, and it only took the entire day!

I run the related specs, which take forever, then commit and push.

Push rejected; pull first! Fair, I have been gone for two weeks. I pull, and git complains about my .gitignore and some local changes. fine, whatever. Except I forgot I had my .gitignore ignored (skipped worktree). Finally figure that out, clean up my tree, and merge.

Time to run the specs again! Gems are out of date. Okay, I go run `bundle install` and ... Ruby is no longer installed? Turns out one of the changes was an upgrade to Ruby 2.5.8.

Alright, I run `rvm use ruby-2.5.8` and.... rvm: command not found. What. I inspect the errors from before and... ah! Someone's brain fell out and they installed rbenv instead of the expected rvm on my mac. Fine, time to figure it out. `rbenv which ruby`; error. `rbenv install --list`; skyscraper-long list that contains bloody everything EXCEPT 2.5.8! Literally 2.5 through 2.5.7 and then 2.6.0-dev. asjdfklasdjf

Then I remember before I left people on Slack made a big deal about upgrading Ruby, so I go looking. Dummy me forgot about the search feature for a painful ten minutes. :( Search found the upgrade instructions right away, ofc. I follow them, and... each step takes freaking forever. Meanwhile my children are having a yelling duet in the immediate background, punctuated with screams and banging toys on furniture.

Eventually (seriously like twenty-five minutes later) I make it through the list. I cd into my project directory and... I get an error message and I'm not in the project directory? what. Oh, it's a zsh thing. k, I work around that, and try to run my specs. Fail.

I need to update my gems; k. `bundle install` and... twenty minutes later... all done.

I go to run my specs and... RubyMine reports I'm using 2.5.4 instead of 2.5.8? That can't be right. `ruby --version` reports 2.5.8; `rbenv version` reports 2.5.8? Fuck it, I've fought with this long enough. Restarting fixes everything, right? So I restart. when my mac comes back to life, I try again; same issue. After fighting for another ten minutes, I find a version toggle in RubyMine's settings, and update it to 2.5.8. It indexes for five minutes. ugh.

Also! After the restart, this company-installed surveillance "security" runs and lags my computer to hell. Highest spec MacBook Pro and it takes 2-5 seconds just to switch between desktops!

I run specs again. Hey look! Missing dependency: no execjs. I can't run the specs.

Fuck. This. I'll just push and let the CI run specs for me.

I just don't care anymore. It's now 8pm and I've spent the past 11 hours on a -1+2 diff!

What a great first day back! Everything is just the way I left it.

what is worse on stackoverflow:

1. getting downvoted to oblivion

2. having your question view'd multiple times with no response

?

A personal memo to all developers on devRant:

* Assume every external line of code, (including every service you consume) is an unreliable crock of flaming shit. These services can and will fail in the most glorious ways. Write your code to be resilient, and ASSUME FAILURE of dependencies. Even if it's your own team writing the other service.

Heard in a meeting today: "Your team's service outage is going to cause my service to corrupt the database!"

Response I wanted to give: "No, you asshat, my service outage is a normal part of living with microservices. Your app should have been smart enough to recognize the failure."

Urgent email, there's a problem. Fix the problem instantly and email back. No fucking response.

Poorly written docs.

I've been fighting with the Epson T88VI printer webconfig api for five hours now.

The official TM-T88VI WebConfig API User's Manual tells me how to configure their printer via the API... but it does so without complete examples. Most of it is there, but the actual format of the API call is missing.

It's basically: call `API_URL` with GET to get the printer's config data (works). Call it with PUT to set the data! ... except no matter what I try, I get either a 401:Unauthorized (despite correct credentials), 403:Forbidden (again...), or an "Invalid Parameter" response.

I have no idea how to do this.

I've tried literally every combination of params, nesting, json formatting, etc. I can think of. Nothing bloody works!

All it would have taken to save me so many hours of trouble is a single complete example. Ten minutes' effort on their part. tops.

asjdf;ahgwjklfjasdg;kh.

Saturday. It's already an evening. Kid is asleep. Wife is doing her thing in another room. I'm on my own, I now have time do do whatever I want! So a personal project time it is!

Open up a lappy, wake up my Mint. Switch to a workspace with IntelliJ ide. There's some message popped up on a screen. With a red cross. Read the message -- your licence has expired.

Shit.

Open up chrome, go to jetbrains website, log in, purchase an all-in licence page, filling in the form, last check before confirm... Wait, that ain't right. That's my college email I no longer have access to! Phew, it's a good thing I checked before submitting!

Go to account settings, update my email address, go back to licence purchase form, fill it all in, last check, and...

Wait..
Email hasn't changed. What if they send something valuable to my mailbox upon lic purchase? I can't risk, it's 200€ after all...

Oh come on! Open a support ticket. But it's Saturday so I don't think I'll get a response until Monday :(

and there goes ruined a perfect evening for some coding :(

shit...

Our team was having a problem with very slow response times from a 3rd party web service they were contacting to get some device stats. No issues on the other end, but it had already been weeks. They ask me to take a look at it.

I take a few days, do a couple of benchmarks and tests and I isolate the section of code responsible. Turns out, the method they were calling would timeout if the device was offline. We ask the vendor, and they confirm this. They tell us to call methodX to check if it was up.

After having done that, lookup now only took seconds. They were annoyed that it wasn't documented but was just glad it was fixed.

!dev

And again...

Our ISP doesn’t say it blocks any port on our Business Fixed IP. Currently I’m trying to access port 25 for SMTP. Guess what? Indeed port blocked. Called them “The port is open”, I visit a port checked, the same thing “Port Closed”

Always the fucking same thing. Every fcking time. These are just criminals. Lastly I removed their router, that they mentions was the only working router in our house and our signal from the other router, not provided by them was much better. They blocked the hotspots because we removed the router then. Guess what? On their site is an option Enable Hotspot on your home router (this enables your access to hotspots). Just pressed it. Haaa they can’t acces my router to set that up and it works.

In our second home, we have another ISP, Proximus, first they did difficult to come and install everything. Because in the appartment the previous owners didn’t pay the bills. After a week or so someone came to install it. Because they cut the cables couldn’t do it myself. Ok it worked for some time. After 3-4 months by once I can’t access the camera there, strange. My uncle went there and there was no internet. Neither TV. But we never received any invoice. Because they didn’t send them. We contacted them, no response. My father sends them an email, with politic people in copy and by once they called to say they will turn it back and scrap the invoices that were not send. They said no technician needed to come, as it’s second home. Guess what, next day a message came “We will arrive in less than an hour”
My uncle went. They did nothing, only restart the modem.
There still was no internet after two days after they came. We called back, response was: “There wasn’t anyone.” Yeah right, we have proof of a technicial that passed (Local Video). By once the internet worked.
Now 4 months later, still didn’t receive any invoice, neither via post or email.

Fuck those criminals, called ISPs

Did I ever say I love my PM? He's fucking awesome.

In the summer I got an internship at this company and the PM had plans to turn me into a permanent employee, junior position I assume. I told him I'd need a month after school started to see how things went with school and the job at the same time. In the end I decided I couldn't work full-time because I don't have time for it. Also, I want to explore a bit the CS field and see if there's anything else I like (quantum computing and low level programming are at the top of my list), so I decided I won't be renewing my contract as an intern either.

Last week I went into a call with my PM to tell him about all of this and I did not expect the response I got. He actually thinks I'm doing right and supported me in my decision to learn other things. I didn't expect this kind of response at all and it made me feel much, much better (I was pretty nervous to tell him). He also told me that if I want to work on something else in order to learn I just have to ask (I currently do web dev).

But that's not all. He gives us, developers, space to work and doesn't micromanage us. He has technical understanding, doesn't force deadlines on us and understands that sometimes things take longer than expected. He is just great and I'm kind of sad I'll be leaving this job because he's awesome and (from what I read here on devrant) that seems to be pretty rare.

Anyways, that's it, no anger or anything today, I just wanted to say I like my PM very much.

Got an email in response to an internship application asking "if you can just complete a coding challenge within next 24 hours thanks". They also wanted to me to setup a phone interview today or tomorrow. As if they expected everyone to drop everything with no explanation.

Told them I'm busy but can get started on Sunday, and was told they have assessment centres next week so it can't wait. No real apology.

I didn't set the date for the assessment centre, this is your fuckup. You have to at least feign respect when you ask for a day of my time with less than a week's notice. Been through too many bad interviews to waste my time on a company that doesn't have its shit together and/or doesn't respect interns.

Idk, maybe I overreacted. Thoughts?

I applied for a developer position and got the email response about candidates available that were a better fit. No big deal.

Three days later, contacted by a recruiter for an exciting opportunity in my field (aren't they all?) Said, "What the hell?" and played along.

Made it past a screening phone call and a screening Skype session. Made a date to interview in person.

It's the same goddamned position, only now a recruiter gets to feed off my offer (if I get one).

So we have an API that my team is supposed send messages to in a fire and forget kind of style.

We are dependent on it. If it fails there is some annoying manual labor involved to clean that mess up. (If it even can be cleaned up, as sometimes it is also time-sensitive.)

Yet once in a while, that endpoint just crashes by letting the request vanish. No response, no error, nothing, it is just gone.

Digging through the log files of that API nothing pops up. Yet then I realize the size of the log files. About ~30GB on good old plain text log files.

It turns out that that API has taken the LOG EVERYTHING approach so much too heart that it logs to the point of its own death.

Is circular logging such a bleeding edge technology? It's not like there are external solutions for it like loggly or kibana. But oh, one might have to pay for them. Just dump it to the disk :/

This is again a combination of developers thinking "I don't need to care about space! It's cheap!" and managers thinking "100 GB should be enough for that server cluster. Let's restrict its HDD to 100GB, save some money!"

And then, here I stand trying to keep my sanity :/

Took me 6+ full days.

The feature does not work. Repro is unknown, so only prod is experiencing the issue.. Which rules out the debugger option. Sometimes there's an entry seen in logs: "java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException". Nothing more - just that. No stack, no class, no nothing. Is it my code that's buggy? Is it some config? Integration? Unexpected response...? A bug in a lib? Is dimm faulty ir maybe server's shared libs are off?

Turns out I used a closing parentheses instead a closing curly bracket in an error message that's supposed to be interpolated...

String message = "{some-business-rule-related-error-message-key)";

took me 6+ full days... But I found it. Took the rest of that Friday off to walk in a park and enjoy my life :)

Ok, so our team is responsible for writing an app that consumes an API written by the client's team (I refuse to call it a "REST" API, despite their claims). On one of the clarification meetings we are discussing an endpoint that accepts a (logically) unique field multiple times, even though an entity is already registered in the system with that unique identifier. Our proposal would be that this API of theirs should not happily accept duplicates as many times as there are bits on a 4TB hard drive, rather it should signal an error.

The response we got is this: Due to the Separation of Concerns principle they thought that it should be our app's responsibility to not send a request if an entity with said field is already in the system. Thus there's no need for the backend to validate this.

I didn't hear the next part, because I had to collect my headphones from the other side of the room where they were flung in rage.

To anyone asking for tips and tricks to start programming or become good at it, here is your ultimate golden advice: learn how to google and stop asking stupid questions like this before doing a quick research.

Reasons why:

1. You will most likely to learn better if you do your own research before asking for help. Even if you can't solve problem, you will be better and better at googling over time.
2. It is instant source of information. No need to wait for response (except response from server of course).
3. It takes only YOUR time.
4. Much more possible solutions/answers to your problems/questions.
5. Your quality of life will be improved over time. Not only your dev life but your daily life too.

"200 Internal Server Error"

Yep, I did that. Because the lousy crapheads I work with were too lazy to handle any other HTTP status so anything else breaks the whole thing. And it's a pain to roll out another release of their part of the backend so "this isn't a priority". Also, they don't feel the need to check the JSON body of the response for the "status":"ok"/"fail" because what could ever go wrong, right? I effectively have no way of conveying to them that there was an error on this end of the API so they show success toast on the frontend irrespective of what really happened.

Boss: we have to fix this bug.
Me: It is not a bug ..the server takes more time to send the response which cause the timeout issue . we may need to change the implementation to increase the performance to send the response quickly. It will take some time
Boss: okay can we fix this by today
Me: ya if we increase timeout to 20 seconds the issue is fixed
Boss: No we want the server to send the response quickly and we need the fix now

I worked for the weekend to fix it finally......Guess what ....the change dint go live since the scenario was not valid and will never likely to happen in production

Nooooooooo! My wife told one of her friends that I'm a DBA. The response. "Oh. That's good to know. I've been having this problem with my cell phone." No! Why? Aughhh!

So at the moment I'm developing a RESTful API for an internal project at work and I'm starting to learn and understand about HTTP status codes.

So I started incorporating proper response HTTP status etc, but my co-workers don't understand what any of it means. They think that just sending a JSON response is enough with any messages should be enough. I think this mindset stems from people who just do simple AJAX calls in JavaScript just to get or store data.

It's these kind of developers that I find are lazy or have no motivation to improve themselves, which is disappointing.

Send over the entire directory for a WordPress site we completely overhauled with new plugins, custom theme, redid content with visual composer, etc. I tell him to backup his site and then put everything I give you as fresh. He tells me he can't just wipe out his entire site that's unacceptable. I ask him what's the problem? he rambles on and says a lot of words that don't really mean anything then says security. so I call him out on it, what security issues do you have? well we have users and permissions setup he says. I explain That I copied his users table over when we did the redesign, so it's the exact same stuff. so I say again, why can't we just replace everything? well that's just not acceptable he says. I ask him again, what EXACTLY is your problem with replacing the site since I already addressed your security concern. he couldn't answer me so now we have another conference call tomorrow morning with more people from their team. I'll let you know how it goes.

tldr; clients are idiots, call them out for the dumb shit they say and have no response.

Our company is restructuring and our CTO offered me the lead architect role. I'm currently the dev manager for about 40 guys and girls. I was delighted.

So, because I believe people make shit up in the absence of information, I called my seniors in to explain the possible restructure. To my surprise (and shock), they dropped the following pearl on me...

If they had to report to anyone else, they're going to leave the company.

I tried to convince them that one of them can apply for my role, also no.

Don't get me wrong, I love my team and do feel flattered about their response. But I also feel a bit trapped/confused now. I've spent the last 6 years building and protecting the team from 5 guys. And frankly, I'm tired and just get back to focusing on coding.

Any sage advice?

I'm adding content to a schools moodle for an online CS course I am creating. The dev thought it would be a good idea to have 250+ page requests so I get to wait for 10seconds everytime I click the next button.
Still no response to my email asking him to uglify and concat.
At least I'm getting paid by the hour.

Boss: we will build mobile app with web app.
Me: absolutely yes.
Boss: you will do the mobile app (iOS)
Me: absolutely , yes I'm iOS developer.
Boss: you will do the android app too, we can't hired an android developer.
Me: absolutely, yes.(but I need to learn it first).
Boss: you will do the web app , it's difficult to find good web developer)
Me: absolutely,yes . I'm Ruby on Rails developer.
After a while........
Me: do I have a bonus ,sir.
Boss: ...............
(there is no response).
Me: ....................

Job posting: "we require 1.5 years of experience in iOS development"

Also job posting: *doesn't mention a requirement for a degree*

Me: "Cool, this looks exactly like a job for me, I'll send them my résumé!

Recruiter returns to me a day after with this:

"You said you have no work experience, we said in the posting that you need to have 1.5 years of work experience"

THE JOB POSTING DOES NOT MENTION THIS ANYWHERE, THEY ONLY MENTION EXPERIENCE IN IOS DEVELOPMENT

WHY MAKE IT SO AMBIGUOUS AND THEN CHANGE YOUR STANCE

When I finally get a fucking response from a recruiter after sending my résumé to dozens upon dozens of companies, it's a bullshit response.

FUCK YOU.

Note: I am aware of the massive amount of AltRant crashes, I am sorry for making it worse. I need to work on 2 more major final tests that I must pass, but I think I will start fixing some of the crashes today.

Wanna hear a story? The consultancy firm I work for has been hired to work on a WPF project for a big Fashion Industry giant.

We are talking of their most important project yet, the ones the "buyers" use to order them their products globally, for each of the retail stores this Fashion giant has around the world. Do you want to know what I found? Wel, come my sweet summer child.

DB: not even a single foreign key. Impossibile to understand without any priopr working experience on the application. Six "quantity" tables to keep aligned with values that will dictate the quantities to be sent to production (we are talking SKUs here: shoes, bags..)

BE: autogenerated controllers using T4 templates. Inputs directly serialized in headers. Async logging (i.e. await Logger.Error(ex)). Entities returned as response to the front end, no DTOs whatsoever.

WPF: riddled with code behind and third party components (dev express) and Business Logic that should belong to the Business Layer. No real api client, just a highly customized "Rest Helper". No error reporting or dealing with exceptions. Multiple endpoints call to get data that would be combined into one single model which happens to be the one needed by the UI. No save function: a timer checks the components for changes and autosaves them every x seconds. Saving for the most critical part occurring when switching cells or rows, often resulting in race conditions at DB level.

What do you think of this piece of shit?

!rant

“Are you drinking my soda?”
“Statute of limitations!”
“Did you know in some countries there’s a statute of limitations on murder?”
“And?”
“And that means sometimes it can run out.”
“And?”
“And that means you can’t be tried for the crime.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“What? No. Why?”
*gestures at soda* “You literally told me that after I took your soda.”
“Oh! Shit. You mentioned statute of limitations, _that_ was the connection, it wasn’t a response to you stealing my soda.”
“You looked me right in the eye and told me that some countries have a statute of limitations on murder.”
“I looked you in the eye because we were having a conversation!”

So I've started learning Rust and I must say it feels great! But some parts of the language, like enums, are quite different than what I'm used to.
As a proof of concept I've reimplemented a small API (an Azure Function App) in Rust with Actix Web and it's FAST AS FUCK BOIII.
The response is served about 5x as quckly and the memory footprint shrinked from some 90 MB to around 5 MB.
In my small scale usecase it's not a huge difference, but I think it can be massive at large scales...
What is your experience with Rust (at scale)?

I wish I could quickly reimplement the whole fucking CMS Of Doom™ in Rust... but no time and resources :(

So... Heard back from a recruiter today. Lovely lass.

I’d passed over a submission for her tech demo.

The brief was basically just to create a small simple module that calculates shit, nae effort.

But, when the recruiter had me on the phone she said “I know it’s a silly small module but try and run it up like you would a production ready app”.

The job spec and recruiter were keen on me demonstrating TDD, not specific on js version, final runtime, etc. The job was a senior spec at a higher salary range. So it warranted some effort, and demonstrating more than a simple module.

“Okay, cool, nae bother, let’s crack on.”

The feedback in the response from the dev today:
“He’s over-engineered tests, build...”

SUCK MY LEFT TESTICLE YOU FUCKWIT.

Talk to your recruiters, not me.

The feedback included a phrase I never hope to hear from a developer I work with:
“Tests are good but...” 😞

It was a standard 98% test suite from an RGR cycle, no more or less than I’d expect in prod.

The rest of the feedback was misguided or plain wrong. It was useful to see because I know now when they say they have “high standards” they mean: we listen to the dude who put the factory pattern in a JS brief.

Oh shit also: “someone’s done chmod 777” was in there as a sarcastic comment in the feedback. It was his fucking unarchive tool 😞

My response was brief and polite: “cheers for the consideration, all the best, James”

It’s honestly not worth warning them. Or, asking why they’d criticise something they’d asked me to do.

If you want a shitty js module, ask for a shitty js module and no more.

Junior engineer asking managers on Slack about prioritisation..

Junior eng: Hey managers, I have these tasks A & B lined up and some other type of work... Is it ok if I finish A by Weds and B by the end of week or should it be done sooner? Also, is the order fine or should I prio B first?

*silence for hours*

Random dev feeling bad for junior getting no response chips in: Hey, you are doing great, that order makes sense to me and let me know if you need any guidance or have questions!

Junior dev: Thaanks and will do!

*another hour goes by*

Manager: Hi team. I have asked other engineer X to do task B tomorrow.

what the fuck. at least answer the fucking question and say it needs to be done sooner. felt bad for poor junior here. :/

I applied for a frontend dev position.
The HR sent me a mail with details for MERN developer position (Full-stack) and asked me do an assignment with frontend and backend 🤔
I requested to clarify if I'm supposed to do only frontend as that's the position I applied for.
No response on that. They got back and requested me to schedule an interview.
I have worked with NodeJS before but I primarily work on the frontend, still I went along with it anyway.
I aced the first two rounds, but for the final round they emphasized on the backend and then it went downhill. At the end they said I was really good on the frontend but for that position they needed someone particularly with expertise on the backend. 🤷‍♂️
Well, I didn't intend to work Full-stack anyway.
They wanted me do everything and also lead the team and mentor juniors and take ownership of multiple projects.
I mean, why would I want to work the job of two people (or more) and not get paid that much 🤨

First Rant here.

So I was working on some integration test issues when I found this by accident made by a professional level SW engineer:

@Test
public void testMethod() throws ApiException {
Response res = null;
try {
res = serviceToTest.callMethod();
} catch(Exception e) {
assertNull(res);
}
}

Was wondering why tests were being green after some code changes I've made cuz tests could have not been green afterwards.

Together with a senior (I'm also professional only) I've tried to explain him for a good 1-2hrs why this code is useless and he still did it. Good thing there are no errors in the real implementation from him after fixing the tests as it's code freeze here and we are having go live in a few days 🙃

Also luckily he isn't working on our code anymore and has only been doing so for a few weeks.

Wasted a day with it and gonna check all of his code now before I run in the next surprise.

Spent weeks cleaning up legacy code, because my phone was ringing non-stop about errors and crashes, got it done. The CEO has been on vacation for like a month and a half, so I had to make executive judgements, and has just now returned. I got called down to the CEO's office so that I could get bitched at for marginally changing the appearance and behavior of a part of the site. I explain that it was necessary, and the response I got was "it was working fine for five years". All I could say to that was "no it fucking wasn't, are we working at the same company?" When I go to take another job, I might just put all of the old code back in place to remind them of how much "better" things ran before I worked here. Massive headache now, physical and proverbial.

I find many of the peculiarities about our kind (developer) to be amusing.

Here is one I have seen too many times to count...

You ask a group of developer something like...

“We have a project built using X, Y and Z. We are looking at integrating the “example framework” to solve a specific problem. Do you have any experience with “example framework” or would you suggest another framework?”

Inevitably you get the same useless response of “Why are you using X, Y, and Z. It’s so <insert generic complaint here>!” Followed with no actual attempt to answer the question asked...

Listen, I know some of us a socially awkward (I can be) and I know we like to debate and argue.

But, if someone asks you a specific technical question about an existing product, either...

1. Answer the question with your experience
2. Declare that you do not have experience with it
3. Shut your fucking childish mouth

No one cares about how you feel about the size of the underlying technology in existing products! What do you expect?

“OMG, we didn’t realize X technology as 100mb large! Hold on while we go and reengineer our entire product base because of this fucking revelation you just told us!”

You may want to hear your own voice but the rest of us would prefer it if you would shut your mouth if you have nothing useful to add.

(Reads as: we would prefer is you fucked right off!)

Aaaaaaaargh!! Fing ashole!!
I got a major blocker reported, tried to connect to client, two of the user accounts were locked out because some genious used the last months password too many times.. FUUUU!! This happens almost every month!! FU! I go to the support dpt to check WTH is with those user accounts and got told the VPN is fucked up anyway so I will not be able to connect in any casr (disconnecting, bad transfer rate, it has a flue or prebirth cramps...whatever...). Ok, I ask if anyone notified our network admins and theirs.. And in response one guy mumbles something... I asked really really pissed off (due to the seriousnrs of the situation, we have max 8h to fix blockers and must check what is going on in minutes) if he is talking to me and answering my question or just talking to himself. He then a little bit more audiably said: we all are unable to work, you are not the only one with this problem & if you have a solutio... I already stormed out. Yes, everyone has problems connecting, no not everyone has a fucking blocker assigned to them!! Mayor malfunction on our system is not the same as archiving old processing data!!!

Simple yes or no question: did anyone notify our network admins & client's network admins?! And client's management that we have technical problems and cannot check the blocker situation immediately?! And I get a mumbling incompetents guy response... OmFG yes, I have a solution for you!! Go and jump of of the terrace!!

So for context, I'm doing an Apprenticeship in IT and naturally I've been put on help desk.

I've recently been given a phone on my desk since I'm trusted enough and know enough about our software that there's no risk to me accepting calls.

I get the standard ones, a number from a different country, poorly pronouncing a co-workers name, asking if they can speak to them. I give my normal response, "I'll just check if they're in a meeting and I'll get back to you" (which they somehow always are) and ask if they would like to leave a message. They obviously don't since they're usually scams.

Since Tuesday I've started getting calls from "BT Technical Support". I don't use BT. My company doesn't use BT. So, it's clearly a scam.

Yesterday, the same guy calls me up, Thomas he says his name is. I go along with it for a while, agreeing that I've noticed our network has been slow until the point where he asks me to begin to install TeamViewer. I realise what he's going to do so I ask him what the problem with our network is.

I hear him start to respond but he stops. He's got no clue what to say, so I say to him, "Thomas mate. I think our biggest problem with our BT network is that we don't have BT."

He puts the phone down.

So I ask you for help, lovely people of devRant.

I have a Windows 10 VM ready to go. I have a couple notepad files labelled as "Passwords" and "Bank Details". What else can I throw on there to make this guy think he's hit the jackpot without really causing too much damage?

Any ideas would be appreciated. <3

in Russian the word “шляпа” (fedora) means not only the specific hat but also something that makes no sense, something ridiculous or something of low quality.

So when someone sends you some spaghetti code on a review, you can just say “That’s fedora” and I love it. You can also WEAR a fedora and point to it as a response to someone saying something that makes no sense.

Senior group project in college.

When you decide to meet up and one member doesn't show up at first meeting.

So I sent an email about the research I did on the feasibility of the project and how to implement a core requirement. 2 days later & no response yet..

Why do I think I'm gonna be the one the pull off the application by myself & then have to put name of people who have no idea how I got it to work..

#include <rant>
Using angry standard;

Int main()
{
cout << "So my mom recently started "exploring the web". I'm sure you already know where this is going; she ended up signing up for a free trail of some diet pills with her credit card on some sketchy website. The website never sent any product but attempted to charge her card over $300 multiple times. My mom's bank noticed and froze the account. She has now opened an investigation with the banks fraud department and is awaiting response. I took the liberty of running a whois look up and found the companies website is held by GoDaddy and is hiding behind Domains by Proxy (GoDaddy's sysadmin hider). I'm angry that she's in this situation but I have no idea of how to uncover the real company behind the diet pills site." << endl;

Return 0;
}

Walked past one of my employees as he was talking on the phone. He says something along the lines of "oh no that was totally my fault" to which I just blurt out "haha dumbass"

And he just goes O.o and then to the phone "oh, yes, no sorry, yes that was my manager" to where someone just roars out laughing on the other line.

Him: "apparently the director of X department found it hilarious that your standard automatic response was that out of nowhere"

Before I get called an asshole or whatever, my dudes regularly leave notes on my office with messages such as "die", "eat shit" etc. Its good fun lads, don't lose yer heads over it.

TL:DR
Why do so shitty "API"s exist that are even harder to write than proper ones? D:

Trying to hack my venilation at home.
This API is so horrible D:
The API is only based on POST requests no matter if you want to write values or get values and the response only contains XML with cryptic values like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<PARAMETER>
<LANG>de</LANG>
<ID>v01306</ID>
<VA>00011100000000000000000010000001</VA>
<ID>v00024</ID>
<VA>0</VA>
<ID>v00033</ID>
<VA>2</VA>
<ID>v00037</ID>
<VA>0</VA>

Also there are multiple API routes like
POST /data/werte1.xml
POST /data/werte2.xml
POST /data/werte3.xml
POST /data/werte4.xml
And actually the real API route is only given in the request body and not in the path.

Why is this so shitty? D:<

Btw in terms of security this is also top notch. It just globally saves if one computer sends the login password.
I mean why even ask for a password then? D:
That made me end up with a cronjob to send a login request so I don't have to login on any device.

PS:
You see, great piece of German engineering.

I have come across the most frustrating error i have ever dealt with.
Im trying to parse an XML doc and I keep getting UnauthorizedAccessException when trying to load the doc. I have full permissions to the directory and file, its not read only, i cant see anything immediately wrong as to why i wouldnt be able to access the file.
I searched around for hours yesterday trying a bunch of different solutions that helped other people, none of them working for me.
I post my issue on StackOverflow yesterday with some details, hoping for some help or a "youre an idiot, Its because of this" type of comment but NO.
No answers.
This is the first time Ive really needed help with something, and the first time i havent gotten any response to a post.
Do i keep trying to fix this before the deadline on Sunday? Do i say fuck it and rewrite the xml in C# to meet my needs? Is there another option that i dont even know about yet?
I need a dev duck of some sort :/

My message to all devs.
If your boss emails you during the festive season, you owe no one a response. It can wait. Again, it can wait. Happy festive season nerds.

List of shit my superior said and wrote in the project:

1. Prefer to write "pure" SQL statement rather than ORM to handle basic CRUD ops.

2. Mixing frontend and backend data transformation.

3. Dump validation, data transformation, DB update in one fucking single function.

4. Calculate the datetime manually instead of using library like momentjs or Carbon.

5. No version control until I requested it. Even with vcs, I still have to fucking FTP into the staging and upload file one by one because they don't use SSH (wtf you tell me you don't know basic unix command?)

6. Don't care about efficiency, just loop through thousands of record for every columns in the table. An O(n) ops becomes O(n * m)

7. 6MB for loading a fucking webpage are you kidding me?

Now you telling me you want to make it into AJAX so it'll response faster? #kthxbye

I am hating hating hating my junior developer job. Most of my work is updating PDF's on all type of internal intranets. So my days are spent working jira ticket after jira ticket.

Internal customer submits ticket to update 3 PDF's on internal intranet for sales team. They are named so badly I can't match them unless I review all 30 links on this page. Most links with report numbers but here's is not also no notes to where in the page.

I do JIRA comment --no respose even though I tag her.

I politely email her asking her to rename the PDF's with the same file names I am replacing.

She asked it I wanted her to rename them 'other'

What??? So I asked her where she sits so I can show how to easily find the file names in the URL.

Responds with the same files renamed with more description but still not the same.

Respond again giving better instructions on how to find it and second request to where she sits.

1 day later no response!

When I get into today I am closing her ticket!

Fuck these middle aged Midwest dumb bitches!

{ “dow”: “10000001,10000002” }

Me: So what does this mean in the JSON response and why isn’t it a JSON collection?
Dynamics guys: that represents the days of the week. Because that is how it comes out of Microsoft Dynamics.

I’m thinking that they are either bad rest API programmers MS is bad at JSON. I can’t see the code so I don’t know which. No fixes because budget.

Arguing with a co worker.... he is writing a serial data plotter, and wants me to send the data as text. I’m like ugh no I’m not wasting bandwidth for text data, you are getting it as binary, as my embedded system has a lot of other stuff todo than send debug info, so the quicker I get the data to you the better... plus his program is running on a pc there is no issue regarding resources handling binary data.

He tells me I’m am wrong, and is trying to defend his stance, then all the electrical engineers and other software engineers all stand up and said why in the hell would it be faster to send text than binary? He has no response.

Regus sent me to collections.

Jist: if you ever think about renting an office from Regus, for the love of your bank account and your credit, just don't. Go into the kitchen and pan-fry your face instead. it'll be better.

Moral: get it in writing. What is "it"? Fucking everything.

------

I needed someplace quiet away from my children to work, so I rented an office from Regus. They said they had a minimum 6-month contract, which is fine, but at the time I was pretty sure I would be moving within three to five. They said they understood and offered the quivalent of a month-to-month plan: I could cancel my contract whenever I wanted, given a few weeks' notice, and that would be that. It wasn't in writing, but both the accounts person and the regional manager were there offering it to me, and they seemed cool. Awesome! I agreed, signed the contract, and paid a hefty damage deposit.

Long story short, I ended up hating the office, and chose to bear the distractions at home instead. Seeing how much I disliked it, the accounts person I talked to originally called me and offered to cancel my contract. I agreed, and she walked me through the steps to cancel it and request my deposit back. Done. I aske her if that was it; no more payments, no more contract. "No more," she said. "You're done." I liked the sound of that. Done and done.

The next day, I check my bank account; no deposit.
Two weeks later, still no deposit.
A month later, still no deposit.

They did say it could take up to three fucking months or something, so whatever. I waited.

Another month later, and instead of my refunded deposit, I get an overdue invoice notice? Seriously?

Apparently they never cancelled my contract, don't remember offering me the month-to-month agreement, nor does the very chick I talked to remember telling me over the phone that everything was paid up and done. Apparently my contract wasn't even for six months like they originally promised, but indefinite? despite all of this? and despite the two of us fucking cancelling it? together?

But no, the legal agreement is binding and explicitly states that they are fucking assholes and due their pound of cash.

So fuck that and fuck them.
And in response, they sent me to collections.
Huge fucking surprise.

and now collections is calling me saying I owe $1900, which works out to a lot more than the couple months it's been since I cancelled that crap, AND.

AND IT'S LESS THAN THE FUCKING DEPOSIT REGUS NEVER RETURNED!

SO NOT ONLY DID THEY NEVER CANCEL MY CONTRACT, THEY CHANGED ITS TERMS (or lied up-front) AND DECIDED TO POCKET THE DEPOSIT INSTEAD OF APPLY IT TO MY FUCKING IMAGINARY BALANCE!

FUCK YOU SHADY MOTHERFUCKERS!

I'm a Salesforce administrator. This user asked for a report. No big deal right? Wrong! The report they want isn't possible unless I created a new report type and modify relationships. When told this their response is " unfortunately I have to have this report by EOB"
........ Lol that's nice, here's the closest thing I can give you right now. Deal with it until I have a minute to just casually flip the whole system on it's head for your one off report

How ethical it is to send 1gb email with big picture with word “NO” in response to spam email that wants my agreement ?

We receive an email from Splunk when errors go above a certain threshold, and a particular service has been especially problematic this week (throwing hundreds of exceptions). Email response from the team mgr responsible for the service.

"We are working to address these errors. We don’t currently have a way to prevent a user who’s account is locked from logging into the service and performing work."

The exception? NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

The code? (paraphrasing)

var user = GetUser(request.Login);
if (user.CanPerformWork) ...

<facepalm>

I'm doing my best not to reply .."Really? No way? You do realize we can read code, right?"

So fucking tired of priority shifting. How the hell is anyone supposed to get shit done with 500 fucking meetings and between each one you're told do something different?

This is critical you must do it now! No this!

My response, fuck you I'm going home my head hurts let me know what you'd like me to code and when you've decided add a day for annoying me.

Nothing more depressing than a response like "No, no, no, we can't remove this old code. It doesn't matter that there's 0 references as of 3 years ago"

In my case, the most unrealistic deadline was when I was put on a project for 30 person days in 2008. The project had been running for about 6 months at that point.

I spoke to the project manager about my tasks and she told me to finish the fat client. So I immersed myself in the sources. And I was horrified to realize that not only was it not even a POC, but the performance was lousy to say the least. It took about 70 (sic!) seconds to start the program, read in about 20 records from a database and display them as a hierarchical structure.

I asked the PM when I was supposed to have finished my work, and her response was, "Yesterday."
"Very funny," I replied.
"No, really," she said, "the deadline was yesterday."

It took me an afternoon to speed up the fat client startup to 6 seconds. And then it took us another two weeks or so to identify the processes in discussions with the technical project manager. Because that didn't exist yet either.

About 1.5 years after the deadline, the software system - consisting of the fat client, mainframe modules and purchased software - was stable enough to be rolled out.

Shit, again a long rant...

It all started 9 months ago.
We had a meeting with our group staff (5 people). Back the we discussed, if we should only work online or still send files around with mail.

Sure I suggested to run everything on a root server, would be the best performance/cost choice.

The president and the accounted refused, they said it's still working, why change. Payment will only be trough banktransfer and everybody keeps files local.

Back then I told them, that they will have sooner or later a problem. Files will be missing and bills not payd.

Last week we had a new meeting:
- Some of the group missed files.
- Some bills were unpaid

So now I have time until march to find and finish a groupware/collaboration tool.

I need to run member administration and payment online, this should be finished in October 2018. It should also do accounting.
Im really planing to use WooCommerce for this, I'm really crazy, I know! But I dont have time for that shit!

I work fulltime beside this and almost have no time to code something like that.

Well this week I demanded a memberlist, so I can plan a CRM database.

I received a word file as memberlist.
I asked them if this is a joke, right?!
They said no, thats the list. All the Data was mixed and some user details missing.

I HAD 3 HOURS TO GET IT DOWN IN EXCEL. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS??? I REALLY WANNA PUNCH YOU ALL IN YOUR FACE!

When I sended it, I didn't receive a response or thanks.

The joke, I'm doing this stuff for free. I volontered, to make something big...

Im really going to shit Lego Bricks next...

Customer: We wanna add this thing to that feature. It has to go live with the next deployment (1 1/2 weeks to go)
Me estimating developmenttime, and informing the Management
management: this will take approx. 12h to implement, but we need these informations: [long list of not answered questions]

1 week later (1/2 week left till deployment
customer: okay, lets do it
management: we dont have much time left, what about the questions i sent you?

1 Day no response, 1 1/2 days left until deployment

customer: here you have a few answers. couldnt get the others. ill Send them tomorrow

damn... wtf? guys! i need this shit to Stay in time! cant wait another day! hell no!

me to dba: do you have any recommendations of sql or query improvements? dba: no, just let us know once you're done.

after sending them explain plans, new queries and asking for reviews with no response from them, i applied the changes in dev.

after applying changes.

dba: you should involve us in any development. we need to collaborate.

me: please check your emails over the past 3 weeks.

wtactualfuck.

I've been using the Square REST API and I spent one hour thinking there was something wrong in my code until I f** found that THEY were not following OAuth 2 guidelines, which made their workflow incompatible with the OAuth lib I was using, so I had to mark an exception for Square's OAuth from the rest of my OAuths. Specifically, RFC 6749 Section 4.2.2 and 5.1.

However, after reading OAuth 2 guidelines, I became angry at THEM instead. The parameter `expires_in` should be the "lifetime in seconds" after the response. This will always be innevitably inaccurate, since we are not taking into account the latency of the response. This is, however, not a huge problem, since the shortest token lifetimes are of an hour (like f** Microsoft Active Directory, who my cron jobs have to check every ten minutes for new access tokens). Many workflows (like Microsoft, Square, and Python's oauthlib) have opted to add the `expires_at` parameter to be more precise, which marks the time in UTC. However, there's no convention about this. oauthlib and Microsoft send the time in Unix seconds, but Square does this in ISO 8601. At this point, ISO 8601 is less ambigious. Sending a raw integer seems ambiguous. For example, JavaScript interprets integer time as Unix _milliseconds_, but Python's time library interprets it as _seconds_. It's just a matter of convention, a convention that is not there yet.

Hope this all gets solved in OAuth 2.1 pleeeaasseee

Client just asked why no progress has been made this week and refuses to accept it is a result of them not answering my emails or providing content. I made a DevRant while I wait for a response!
I guess it wasn't as URGENT as the subject line suggested...

A while ago I stumbled upon this cheap vps provider called dedistation (lowest was $15/year), so I end up buying a one year subscription and transferred all of my personal sites to it. Fast forward six month later, uptime robot notified me that my vps is down. No problem, I'll just submit a ticket. Few days go by and I yet to receive a response. Not a problem, I'll just try and login via the serial interface and get my shit, no luck there either.
Seems like these motherfuckers just packed up and went offline without a shit given.
No response, no notification untill today! How more twat a company could be?
Lessons learned the hard way
- always backup regularly
- check and transfer nameserver or no emails for days.
- you get what u pay for (haven't learned this fully yet. Went again with a cheap legit-ish provider (arubacloud)

Here's some of my favorite quotes from "The Mythical Man-Month":

"The bearing of a child takes nine months no matter how many women are assigned".

"The management question ... is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers."

"I once knew a boss who invariably picked up the phone to give orders before the end of the first paragraph in a status report. That response is guaranteed to squelch full disclosure."

Trying to work with an API that has no response object (it just returns empty arrays if something breaks) and it's JSON is not key-value.. just a bunch of dynamic nested values. just wow.

Colleagues cannot seem to grasp that allowing a user to manually update a field via an Api, that only business process should update is a bad idea.

The entire team of around 10 'software developers' cannot grasp that just because the frontend website won't set it doesn't mean its secure. I have tried many times now...

Just an example honestly... Our project follows a concrete repository pattern using no interfaces or inheritance, returning anaemic domain models (they are just poco) that then get mapped into 'view models' (its an api). The domain models exist to map to 'view models' and have no methods on them. This is in response to my comments over the last 2 years about returning database models as domain transfer objects and blindly trusting all Posts of those models being a bad idea due to virtual fields in Ef.

Every comment on a pull request triggers hours of conversation about why we should make a change vs its already done so just leave it. Even if its a 5 minute change.

After 2 years the entire team still can't grasp restful design, or what the point is.

Just a tiny selection of constant incompetence that over the years has slowly warn me down to not really caring.

I can't really understand anymore if this is normal.

I turn into a 2 yrs old whenever I'm editing a 3D model.
From the perspective that I want to throw everything in sight and my response to everything is "No!". 🙄

An update on my rant about that interview I had.
They emailed saying they're sorry I didn't pass etc.

My literal response was: wow. Shocker. No shit I didn't pass 😂

Yesterday
Me : Hey, I'd like to do a pull request, but there's something that might not help, you think you can help me solving it before I finish that task ?

Worker : *no response at all*

Today
Worker, by mail : Hey could you do a pull request ?

Me : ... 凸(⊙▂⊙✖ ) thanks for answering my question, edgy bitch

Overengineering. Finding the right point between overdesign and no design at all. That's where fancy languages and unusual patterns being hit by real world problems, and you need to deal with all that utter mess you created being architecture astronaut. Isn't that funny how you realize that another fancy tool is fundamentally incompatible with the task you need to solve, and you realize it after a month of writing workarounds and hacks.

But on the other hand, duct tape slacking becomes a mess even quicker.

Not being able to promote projects. You may code the shit out of side project and still get zero response, absolutely no impact. That's why your side projects often becomes abandoned.

Oversleeping. You thought tomorrow was productive day, but you wake up oversleeped, your head aches, your mind is not clear and you be like "fuck that, I'm staying in bed watching memes all day". But there's job that has to be done, and that bothers you.

Writing tests. Oh, words can't describe how much I hate writing tests, any kind of. I tried testing so many times in high school, at university, even at production, but it seems like my mind is just doesn't accept it. I know that testing is fundamentally important, but my mind collapses every time I try to write a single fucking test, resulting in terrible headache. I don't know why it's like that, but it is, and I better repl the shit out of pure function than write fucking tests.

There is an nerdy socially retarded IT head. He asked me to look into a project after the programmers left the company. Basically he gave me a list of modification with one particular screenshot of Calendar( seems like a JQuery plugin) and asked me to develop it.. I asked him to give me the link from where he got the Calendar... No fucking response in Skype.
So after a month he asked me to show the project, I showed him with the Calendar similar to picture and no functionality. He said it was CRAP. I asked him to give me proper documentation as what he expects and what he wants.
BUT FUCK NO. HE SAYS, "ARE YOU A JUNIOR CODER? DO IT WITHIN A WEEK OR WE ARE DONE. "
And I am here keeping myself in control not to punch him. he lives nearby my house wondering if he lives alone 😂

Job Application Rant #1

So, today I found a great job posting on Linkedin. I was excited and created a unique cover letter and my resume and applied. The job was in another country and I need EU work visa for the job.

The contact for the post was also founder of the company. I asked him, via Linkedin, that if they would sponsor the visa for me if everything went good.

He replied to me that " yes we do sponsor visas, but you have only 3 years of programming experience..."(three dots included). I was like wtf, did I miss important part of post about experience minimum limit or something. I would not like to be spam-applier, guy who applies without reading requirements etc.

I checked requirements again there is no minimum experience limit. Anyways, I thanked him for swift response but damn bruh, do not put unlockable requirements to job posts, so someone's dream would not be crushed.

> Opened PR on May 2nd
> No response
> Bumped them on August 3rd
> Closed without response 🎉
> Questioned them, no response yet..

- Phone screen with HR - went well
*set up interview with CEO*
- Interview with CEO - went well
*set up tech interview with a dev*
- Tech Interview - interviewer doesn't show up
I sent followup email, asking if we needed rescheduling - no response

I don't understand why I was ghosted like that, at least they could've sent a message to reject me or something? Seemed like a waste of time.

SO MAD. Hands are shaking after dealing with this awful API for too long. I just sent this to a contact at JP Morgan Chase.

-------------------
Hello [X],
1. I'm having absolutely no luck logging in to this account to check the Order Abstraction service settings. I was able to log in once earlier this morning, but ever since I've received this frustratingly vague "We are currently unable to complete your request" error message (attached). I even switched IP's via a VPN, and was able to get as far as entering the below Identification Code until I got the same message. Has this account been blocked? Password incorrect? What's the issue?

2. I've been researching the Order Abstraction API for hours as well, attempting to defuddle this gem of an API call response:

error=1&message=Authentication+failure....processing+stopped

NOWHERE in the documentation (last updated 14 months ago) is there any reference to this^^ error or any sort of standardized error-handling description whatsoever - unless you count the detailed error codes outlined for the Hosted Payment responses, which this Order Abstraction service completely ignores. Finally, the HTTP response status code from the Abstraction API is "200 OK", signaling that everything is fine and dandy, which is incorrect. The error message indicates there should be a 400-level status code response, such as 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden or at least 400 Bad Request.

Frankly, I am extremely frustrated and tired of working with poorly documented, poorly designed and poorly maintained developer services which fail to follow basic methodology standardized decades ago. Error messages should be clear and descriptive, including HTTP status codes and a parseable response - preferably JSON or XML.
-----

This whole piece of garbage is junk. If you're big enough to own a bank, you're big enough to provide useful error messages to the developers kind enough to attempt to work with you.

Working on an Android app for a client who has a dev team that is developing a web app in with ember js / rails. These folks are "in charge" of the endpoints our app needs to function. Now as a native developer, I'm not a hater of a web apps way of doing things but with this particular app their dev teams seems to think that all programming languages can parse json as dynamically as javascript...

Exhibit A:

- Sample Endpoint Documentation
* GetImportantInfo
* Params: $id // id of info to get details of
* Endpoint: get-info/$id
* Method: GET
* Entity Return {SampleInfoModel}

- Example API calls in desktop REST client
* get-info/1
- response
{
"a" : 0,
"b" : false,
"c" : null
}
* get-info/2
- response
{
"a" : [null, "random date stamp"],
"b" : 3.14,
"c" : {
"z" : false,
"y" : 0.5
}
}
* get-info/3
- response
{
"a" : "false" // yes as a string
"b" : "yellow"
"c" : 1.75
}

Look, I get that js and ruby have dynamic types and a string can become a float can become a Boolean can become a cat can become an anvil. But that mess is very difficult to parse and make sense of in a stack that relies on static types.

After writing a million switch statements with cases like "is Float" or "is String" from kotlin's Any type // alias for java.Object, I throw my hands in the air and tell my boss we need to get on the phone with these folks. He agrees and we schedules a day that their main developer can come to our shop to "show us the ropes".

So the day comes and this guy shows up with his mac book pro and skinny jeans. We begin showing him the different data types coming back and explain how its bad for performance and can lead to bugs in the future if the model structure changes between different call params. He matter of factually has an epiphany and exclaims "OHHHHHH! I got you covered dawg!" and begins click clacking on his laptop to make sense of it all. We decide not to disturb him any more so he can keep working.

3 hours goes by...

He burst out of our conference room shouting "I am the greatest coder in the world! There's no problem I can't solve! Test it now!"

Weary, we begin testing the endpoints in our REST clients....

His magic fix, every single response is a quoted string of json:

example:
- old response
{
"foo" : "bar"
}
- new "improved" response
"{ \"foo\" : \"bar\" }"

smh....

Boss: so we've got to call an app to verify data in this project. But I've got no more info and I'm on holiday next week. Please contact GuyA next week.
Me: ok I guess?
*writes email to GuyA*
GuyB: GuyA is on holiday please hold the line
*1 week later*
GuyA: we need more time it's not ready yet
*2 weeks later?
Me: so?
GuyA: yeah it's ready here's the wsdl etc your client already has the password
*1 week later*
Me: yeah so I got the data but the api says my auth isn't working
GuyB: yeah your user isn't activated on the test system. I'm gonna forward that and come back at you
*1 week later*
GuyA: so we're going live in about 2 weeks hows testing going?
Me: well I'm still waiting for the response and activation
*suddenly it works*
Me: yeah so auth is working but i can't find any data. Is there any special test data?
GuyA: oh no there is NO test data on the test system. You need to wait for GuyB but he us not here today...
Me: are you fking kidding Me?????

... no response since then and it's been days....

Okay today I wrote a very ugly api.. No f***king json mapper will handle that response in java. The values are dynamic... Good luck to anyone who will integrate into it... And good luck to anyone who will look at my code
Project manager please always give realistic deadlines

Me : Hey Azure, I have a problem with "this" blade in Azure portal. It's not working

Azure : Disable your adblock

Me : NO

Waiting next response

love helping users that can describe their problem and then we have the "other" side of users, the life sucking golems of collective stupidity.

You get "software does not work!" and asks for error message or description of what doesn't work and get same response "it does not work".

After a few rounds in the "what is wrong support circle" it ends with user has changed PC to one were the software is not installed...

"it does not work" no effing shit sherlock you want me to install some IQ with it?

Back from the dead with more vaguely-obscure technical bullshit

Working on a chatbot for my BS-CS. Almost done with college, so the assignment is to make a bot that recommends you a CS career. Cool.

I get through making a joint personality and skill-interest quiz that gives you number grades on different spectra. So far, so good. But this project has to be done entirely in pandorabots' online editor. So no scripting. Zero scripting. 100% markup language. That means to even do math, you need to copy a standard library off GitHub.

I mean, that's fine and all, but the syntax is just atrocious, because everything in AIML is input->response. If you ask the bot "what is 5+5?" you must have it go:

- recognize pattern WHAT IS * + *
-> redirect -> XADD * XS *
-> do math -> recurse result
-> 10

uncomfy. Plus, variables can only be accessed through <get> and <set> tags. But mangeable.

So here's where the story becomes a rant.

In the standard docs, there's all these math functions, and they work. There's also logic.

And then there's this fucker
XIF [ * ] XS [ * ]
Which has no documentation and just doesn't work. No idea what the brackets mean. Tried putting in TRUE, tried putting in true math statements (5 XEQ 5), tried putting in recursion tags to trick it, tried everything. It just ignores it.
There is not a single comment, stackOverflow post, or youtube video that even acknowledges the existence of this thing.

So unless I want to convert the entire logic of my program into nested SWITCH statements with the <condition> tag, I'm just fucked.

The icing on the cake is, I go to tech support on Pandorabots to ask for help with this. What do they have except a chatbot to cheerfully tell me that no humans are around to help me right now?

gonna have to build an entire fuckin turing machine in markup tags to calculate whether x = 3

(:

Send the dev a request for a design before they do a delicate process. They send back some mess done in MSPaint and a ton of select statements, with no context or explanation.

Send back an example of what they need to work through. Get back a response saying that the previous spec was just a draft, and once they complete development they’ll complete the design.

Why would I want a design once it was too late? What would be the point?

What idiot uses 0 for a success response!!! Integrating with a 3rd party I found a bug in our code that uses the default value for an int when the external server can't be reached.

As it happens 0 is the default integer in most languages so no surprise when our system accepted the 3rd party as a success when it blew up 😒

!rant
protip == true

TL_DR = "exec mail ceo jeff@amazon.com"

The laziness of devs, including myself, goes hand-in with the crazy deliveries (groceries, etc) that Amazon delivers without having to leave home.

But...Amazon isn't prefect, occasionally I have issues and usually support is great. But when support isn't what you expect and you're more frustrated than before, send an email response and include jeff@amazon.com

And no, I don't work there... I'm just happy my issue was resolved and I got a nice credit added to my account. (Mileage may vary)

So I got in contact with a recruiter who said they have a possible job for me. The catch is it's in c# (I am a python java dev) and that there is a assessment test for the language to test for competency. I told the recruiter that's fine but I would need a week to highlight the main differences between the two languages and at least do a couple of educational programs for my learning sake. All was fine and that was the plan.
The next day the recruiter notifies me that the test is being called off on account of the company being swarmed. So the recruiter then proposes another similar test (in c#) the recruiter will use to measure my skills and that the recruiter will send the test via email that same day. Later that day I check my email and don't see the test. So I message the recruiter and never get a response. Next day comes and I decide to give the recruiter a call; no response. I then wait until the next day and message him on linkedin that I still needed the test. Linkedin was showing he read the message, but of course didn't respond.
I told my brother about this and he said to send a message saying: "Hi [recruiters name] because of the lack of further feedback I decided to go with another opportunity. Best regards, Lane"
After I send it I get a message the next day from the recruiter saying: "Hey, sorry I haven't gotten back to you. We had to install a new phone system yesterday so it was a busy day."
"I'm going to send it to you today so that you can look at it over the weekend. "
I can't help but think the recruiter is full of shit, but I may be jumping to conclusion. I know they can have a busy schedule, but if you have time to look at a message on linkedin how long would it take to type a short message explaining what's going on? I would like to know any opinions or insights on this.

Recruiters are driving me crazy, you can't even damn write a proper message with my name on it, no you just send 10000 messages a day and hope to get a response.
"""
Hey {firstname}
I am currently looking for a Lead Data Scientist in MyCity to work with a unicorn tech company.
You need strong Machine Learning Experience, be happy to be client facing.
Highly competitive package on offer.
Regards
"""
{firstname} T_T

Client wants some CMS text to be automatically translated. So I checked and Google seems to have a solution for that. I thought to to be as simpel as doing a request and parsing the response. That's how API's work, right?

No. First I must create an account, that account must have a credit card, then I need to setup credentials, the default ones working with path variables, an API key... etc etc etc.

I feel so stupid for just not understanding their docs. I'm just a dude that installs a CMS and makes pretty CSS for it. I've worked with REST APIs before (Mollie, Carerix) but none of them ever demanded the level of knowledge and setup the Google Translate API demands.

Am I just a bad developer or is this shit just too complex for your average web developer?

So the other day my car broke down and since the shop wanted a lot of money I asked a friend of mine who knowns his way around cars for help.
Just when we finished repairing it I was like "whenever the Zombie apocalypse starts you'll be really useful, me instead won't be since no one might need computers anymore" . His response was epic:
"Nah, you will simply build a terminator with your computer skills and it will kill all Zombies!"
Now I am actually looming forward to the Zombie apocalypse!

TL;DR: us geeks will build terminators in case of zombies!

The last communication we had was me asking you if you would like a service for that, with no response? And now, ten days later, you’d like an update on when it will be available?

Well I raised a pull request on your side a week ago, your developers have just been ignoring it.

What? No, I don’t know when it will be merged and ready.

Over the summer I was recruited to be a supplement instructor for a data structures course. As a result of that I was asked (separately by the professor) to be a grader for the course. Because of pay limitations I've mostly been grading homework project assignments. In any case, it's a great job to get my foot into the department and get recognized.

Over the course of the semester I've had this one person, OSX, named after their operating system of choice, who has been giving me awkward submissions. On the first assignment they asked the professor for extra time for some reason or the other, and that's perfectly fine.

So I finally receive OSX's submission, and it's a .py file as per course of the course. So I pop up a terminal in the working directory and type "python OSX_hw1.py". Get some error spit out about the file not being the right encoding. I know that I can tell python to read it in a different encoding, so I open it up in a text editor. To my surprise it's totally not a text file, but rather a .zip file!

I've seen weirder things done before, so no big deal. I rename the file extension, and open it up to extract the files when I see that there's no python files. "Okay, what's goin on here OSX..." I think to myself.

Poking around in the files it appears to be some sort of meta-data. To what, I had no clue, but what I did find was picture files containing what appeared to be some auto-generated screenshots of incomplete code. Since I'm one to give people the benefit of doubt even when they've long exhausted other peoples', I thought that it must be some fluke, and emailed OSX along with the professor detailing my issue.

I got back a rather standard reply, one of which was so un-notable I could not remember it if my life depended on it. However, that also meant I didn't have to worry about that anymore. Which when you're juggling 50 bazillion things is quite a relief. Tragically, this relief was short lived with the introduction of assignment 2.

Assignment 2 comes around, and I get the same type of submission from OSX. At this time I also notice that all their submissions are *very* close to the due time of 11:59pm (which I don't care about as long as it's in before people start waking up the next morning). I email OSX and the professor again, and receive a similar response. I also get an email from OSX worried about points being deducted. I reply, "No issue. You know what's wrong. Go and submit the right file on $CentralGradingCenter. Just submit over your old assignment".

To my frustration OSX claimed to not know how to do this. I write up a quick response explaining the process, and email it. In response OSX then asks if I can show them if they comes to my supplemental lesson. I tell OSX that if they are the only person, sure, otherwise no because it would not be a fair use of time to the other students.

OSX ends up showing up before anyone else, so I guide them through the process. It's pretty easy, so I'm surprised that they were having issues. Another person then shows up, so I go through relevant material and ask them if they have any questions about recent material in class. That said, afterwards OSX was being somewhat awkward and pushy trying to shake my hand a lot to the point of making me uncomfortable and telling them that there's no reason to be so formal.

Despite that chat, I still did not see a resubmission of either of those two assignments, and assignment 3 began to show it's head. Obviously, this time, as one might expect after all those conversations, I get another broken submission in the same format. Finally pissed off, I document exactly how everything looks on my end, how the file fails to run, how it's actually a zip file, etc, all with screenshots. That then gets emailed to the professor and OSX.

In response, I get an email from OSX panicking asking me how to submit it right, etc, etc. However, they also removed the professor from the CC field. In response I state that I do not know how to use whatever editor they are using, and that they should refer to the documentation in order to get a proper runnable file. I also re-CC the professor, making sure OSX's email to me is included in my reply.

OSX then shows up for one of my lessons, and since no one had shown up yet, I reiterate through what I had sent in the email. OSX's response was astonished that they could ever screw up that bad, but also admits that they had yet to install python(!!!). Obviously, the next thing that comes from my mouth is asking OSX how they write their code. Their response was that they use a website that lets them run python code.

At this point I'm honestly baffled and explain that a lot of websites like those can have limitations which might make code run differently then it should (maybe it's a simple interpreter written on JavaScript, or maybe it is real python, but how are you supposed to do file I/O?) .

After that I finally get a submission for assignment 1!

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 -.-

No matter how many times, or whichever way I explain, he still doesn't get it. Are people so fucking blinkered they do not want to listen, or even read what you write. Back story, produced some web design visuals for a client, and fortunately he had the good sense to listen and employ a copywriter. She had the first draft done when i was putting together the styling, so i placed actual copy on the visuals. 2 weeks pass, still no answer. I send the same email to him, every 4 days and cc his PA for good measure. Finally, he says he wants to make some tweaks to the copy. I explain that any copy changes can be done via the CMS once the site is built, and can I proceed and build the site? He replies I need to make changes to the copy first. I explained again about the difference between the visual and the actual website, same response. You Fucking Infuriate me! Cunt!