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Search - "non-dev rants"
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I think I've shown in my past rants and comments that I'm pretty experienced. Looking back though, I was really fucking stupid. Since I haven't posted a rant yet on the weekly topics, I figure I would share this humbling little gem.
Way back in the ancient era known as 2009, I was working my first desk job as a "web designer". Apparently the owner of this company didn't know the difference between "designer", which I'm not, and "developer", which I am, nor the responsibilities of each role.
It was a shitty job paying $12/hour. It was such a nightmare to work at. I guess the silver lining is that this company now no longer exists as it was because of my mistake, but it was definitely a learning experience I hold in high regard even today. Okay, enough filler...
I was told to wipe the Dev server in order to start fresh and set up an entirely new distro of Linux. I was to swap out the drives with whatever was available from the non-production machines, set up the RAID 5 array and route it through the router and firewall, as we needed to bring this Dev server online to allow clients to monitor the work. I had no idea what any of this meant, but I was expected to learn it that day because the next day I would be commencing with the task.
Astonishingly, I managed to set up the server and everything worked great! I got a pat on the back and the boss offered me a 4 day weekend with pay to get some R&R. I decided to take the time to go camping. I let him know I would be out of town and possibly unreachable because of cell service, to which he said no problem.
Tuesday afternoon I walked into work and noticed two of the field techs messing with the Dev server I built. One was holding a drive while the other was holding a clipboard. I was immediately called into the boss's office.
He told me the drives on the production server failed during the weekend, resulting in the loss of the data. He then asked me where I got the drives from for the Dev server upgrade. I told him that they came from one of the inactive systems on the shelf. What he told me next through the deafening screams rendered me speechless.
I had gutted the drives from our backup server that was just set up the week prior. Every Friday at midnight, it would turn on through a remote power switch on a schedule, then the system would boot and proceed to copy over the production server's files into an archive for that night and shutdown when it completed. Well, that last Friday night/Saturday morning, the machine kicked on, but guess what didn't happen? The files weren't copied. Not only were they not copied, but the existing files that got backed up previously we're gone. Why? Because I wiped those drives when I put them into the Dev server.
I would up quitting because the conversation was very hostile and I couldn't deal with it. The next week, I was served with a suit for damages to this company. Long story short, the employer was found in the wrong from emails I saved of him giving me the task and not once stating that machine was excluded in the inactive machines I could salvage drives from. The company sued me because they were being sued by a client, whose entire company presence was hosted by us and we lost the data. In total just shy of 1TB of data was lost, all because of my mistake. The company filed for bankruptcy as a result of the lawsuit against them and someone bought the company name and location, putting my boss and its employees out of a job.
If there's one lesson I have learned that I take with the utmost respect to even this day, it's this: Know your infrastructure front to back before you change it, especially when it comes to data.8 -
You can't imagine how many lines of pure and utter horseshit, seemingly written in PHP, I had to dig through this whole weekend. (relating to my 2 previous rants)
How is it even possible to write code this unbelievably ugly?
Examples:
- includes within loops
- included files use variables from parent files
- start- and endtags separated to different files
- SQL queries generated by string concatenation, no safety measures at all (injection)
- repeating DB calls within loops
- multiple directories with the same code (~40 files), only different by ~8 lines, copied
- a mixture of <?php echo ... ?> and <?= ... ?>
- a LOT of array accesses and other stuff prefixed with "@" (suppress error messages)
- passwords in cleartext
- random non-RESTful page changes with a mixture of POST and GET
- GET parameters not URL-encoded
- ...
My boss told me it took this guy weeks and weeks of coding to write this tool (he's an "experienced dev", of course WITHOUT Git).
Guess what?
It took me only 20 hours and about 700 lines of code.
I must confess, since this task, I don't hate PHP anymore, I just simply hate this dev to death.
Addendum: It's Monday, 5:30am. Good night. 😉12 -
I see software engineering mostly devolving to be simpler syntax, more widespread and reach more range of people, including non-tech ones.
That’s now obviously leading to more crappy javascript code, more abandoned frameworks, libraries, more shitty software and more dev rants.5 -
Following on from: https://devrant.com/rants/1345037/...
I sent a polite but very frank email to the manager telling him I don't agree and think its extremely unfair to overlook the breath and scale of work we have done in the past few months. Instead to criticise us for this.
He didn't reply, or really speak to us for a week. Then suddenly one day the developers were all in a meeting room and he butted in to talk.
He first of all said he wanted to let things settle before talking to us, which gave me high hopes as I expected him to then say something like we miss understood, or he didn't realise etc.
... but no ... the next words out of his mouth were "I'm not apologising for anything, and I don't want to be told to piss off in an email".
A) Piss off = completely untrue and a massive exaggeration.
B) Go fuck yourself with a cactus.
C) See point B.
In that meeting we discussed the massive amount of meetings and work we have to do which was described as "just the job".
We were told we all have to be in until 5pm, but that we also don't. We need to be in the office more, but its fine if we can't be. And we need to cut down on WFH, but its ok to WFH ... so yeah everything is crystal clear.
I haven't written any code in 3 - 4 weeks. I'm now dealing with GDPR shit, and our internal processes to handle it (despite having no legal background). Have to fill out 140+ question surveys about each of our projects, which are the most vaguest things i've ever seen.
"Are you processing large scale data" - The fuck is large scale, oh wait heres a definition. "Large scale is determine by volume or percentage of population size" - How in the name of christ is that a definition? Fucking lawyers and their bullshit.
The next round of applications for research funding is coming around soon and were being told to work on proposals (which are huge and a lot of effort). While being told we need to define and improve on our KPI's for the year. While trying to find time to ... you know ... do ... work?
I'm just so fucking bored and pissed off with this place. I have to do the work of 6 people, nothing is ever good enough, devs have to do very non-dev tasks with little to no support. Bosses are just annoyed about everything, everyones in a bad mood and everything sucks.
A friend put me forward for another senior role in another company. Thought this would be my saving grace. They have a strict interview process with white-boarding (which I hate) and will likely ask about algorithms etc which I suck at. I'm so burnt out from this place I just can't find the motivation to go study up or prepare properly.
I just wanna write code, why is there so much bullshit in life11 -
I just can't understand what will lead an so called Software Company, that provides for my local government by the way, to use an cloud sever (AWS ec2 instance) like it were an bare metal machine.
They have it working, non-stop, for over 4 years or so. Just one instance. Running MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, PHP and an f* Tomcat server with no less than 10 HUGE apps deployed. I just can't believe this instance is still up.
By the way, they don't do backups, most of the data is on the ephemeral storage, they use just one private key for every dev, no CI, no testing. Deployment are nightmares using scp to upload the .war...
But still, they are running several several apps for things like registering citizen complaints that comes in by hot lines. The system is incredibly slow as they use just hibernate without query optimizations to lookup and search things (n+1 query problems).
They didn't even bother to get a proper domain. They use an IP address and expose the port for tomcat directly. No reverse proxy here! (No ssl too)
I've been out of this company for two years now, it was my first work as a developer, but they needed help for an app that I worked on during my time there. I was really surprised to see that everything still the same. Even the old private key that they emailed me (?!?!?!?!) back then still worked. All the passwords still the same too.
I have some good rants from the time I was there, and about the general level of the developers in my region. But I'll leave them for later!
Is it just me or this whole shit is crazy af?3 -
Client: We want an application such that our users can view the 3D rendering of the building we are constructing for them
PM: That's quite easy, we'll get it done
Client: Oh, and the output should be a PDF document, such that they can view the 3D rendering on a PDF reader on the go
PM: That's not a problem, it'll be done
--Right back at the office--
PM: Hey guys, this is our new project....(rants on)
Lead Dev: (in a world of indescribable world) You mean you agreed to that? That's impossible
PM: Just get it done
I wish non coding PM's asked their devs before agreeing to some alien like features4 -
There are so many awesome dev jokes and puns here, i want to share them all with my friends. But i know none of them would understand whats so hilarious about them :(4
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My rants have been too long lately. Have some distilled ire instead.
Fuck computer gremlins.
Fuck non-deterministic BS.
Fuck shit working the third fucking time I try it with no changes in between.
Fuck MojoJojoing
Fuck ExecJS laoding only half the time
Fuck RubyMine for fucking up seven times a fucking day.
And fuck this dev environment!
I just want to fucking work!
adfjlkasdly15 -
!rant but story
https://devin.xyz (v.0.0.1)
My quick and semi-ugly solution to save amazing rants and comments forever and more organized.
What it is and it will be:
- archive of rants and comments from devrant that I found very good
- the original ranters will be informed when their rants are archived
- the original ranters and/or the management team of devRant has the right to request the archive content's total deletion
- every single thing on there will be accessible by anyone anytime anywhere (as log as server is healthy)
- open-source
What it may become:
- anyone can register and save their archive
- dev content archive from other sources
- dev articles blog
What it will never have/be:
- any form of payment
- ads
- tracking (I don't even wanna know how many users are viewing)
- non dev related content
- devRant
I'm willing to create user accounts for anyone interested in very near future. So please buzz me here if you want one.
So far it's a website of Laravel + Voyager + bulma with very minimal custom codes (I had to write below 100 lines of code in total). It is on Vultr server.
I'm gonna maintain and update as much as I can on my spare time. Hence I don't consider this as a collab. However, the code is on gitlab private repo. I'll make the repo public soon as well. Any contribution is gladly welcome. 😄11 -
Here is what I see in industry right now.
Don't go on math but get the gist.
1. 9 of 10 developers are Web developers
2. 9 in 10 developers want to be data scientist
3. 9 out of above actually give up and start doing Web development
4. 9 in 10 developers think CS education is not necessary.
5. 9 in 10 developers want to work for Google Facebook and Microsoft.
6. 9 in 10 developer don't make it to above companies.
7. 9 in 10 developers think design and test are important but never do it.
8. 9 out of 10 developers don't want to code after 5 years and just want to exit industry to non technical roles.
9. 9 out of 10 developers don't get rants and dev memes posted here.
What's your take on this7 -
!Dev
Sitting in a bus on 19 hour ride with my class to England a few things to rant about came to my mind:
Why the fuck do you have to blast shitty german rap music out of your fucking JBL boxes and why do you have to turn up the volume so much that I can still hear it although I am wearing headphones, listening to music and sitting 5 fucking rows in front of you.
Also why the fuck do clocks in buses never display the right time? How hard can it be to make the clock display the right fucking time?
Another thing: why does this bus which is especially made for long rides not have a fucking trash can?! Seriously wtf?
Rants aside I am really looking forward to staying in England for a week although I won't have a computer for the next week :(
Another thing: why the fuck is the coffee you get at pull-ins so fucking disgusting ?
Like srsly, it is made by a machine and still tastes like thrown-up.
And why the fuck does everyone look weirdly at you when you buy a can of red bull but everything is fine when someone my age drinks 3+ liters of beer and then throws up? What the fuck? People look at me weirdly when I tell them that I don't drink any alcohol, heck I am actually not even allowed to do so because I am 15 and not 16 (beer is allowed in Germany if you are 16+ but nobody really cares about that). Heck where I am from they even encourage you to drink beer? What the fuck??!!
Anyway looking forward to England and also sorry about the long non-dev related rant. Just had to rant about some people and society.
P.S. do you know any (preferably free) Android apps / games where you have to code or just solve problems with logic?14 -
Urgent!
When down voting needs to be add a non dev related and add to the setting a option to hide all rants voted non dev related.
Basacly like repost but it says non dev related5 -
Hi ppl of devRant! I’m not really a dev but I love reading your rants :) I decided to post my first rant because I think I could use some advice from you.
Background: I’m a student just finished my first year at uni. Earlier I applied for a developer intern just for fun and somehow magically got in. However, I'm a statistics major (not even CS!) and only know basic java stuff. I guess they hired me because I speak ok english and a little french? I live in a non-English speaking country but the company has a lot of foreign customers.
The problem is, the longer I stay, the more I feel that they only hired me out of charity *sobs* There isn’t much for me to do, and most of the time I couldn’t understand what my co-workers are doing so I can’t really help them either. Plus, they don’t seem to need my language skill as much, so I kinda feel useless here.
It’s my 5th (maybe already 6th?) week here and the only thing I did was fixing an itty bitty bug that literally needed only one additional line of code. Yes it took me a while to set up the environment, learn js from scratch since they use js for this project, and locate the issue but I’m pretty sure it’d probably take someone who’s familiar with the project, like, 3 mins? And now that I’ve fixed it and the merge request was passed, I’m out of work to do again. I talked to the lead and he pretty much just said “read more of the code”. Guess I can do that. I’ve spent like 4 days going through the code but is this really promising?
I want to spend time on learning actual stuff rather than yet another resume ornament. So what should I do? Should I ask for more help/more work to do, or keep learning on my own (I’m quite interested in algorithms, maybe I could make use of my time to study that?), or even leave?
Sorry for the long rant. I know ass-kicking devs probably hate useless, underqualified ppl at work in real life but believe me it really hurts to be one and I hate myself enough already so I’d appreciate any thoughts/advice :/10