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Debugging vb code written by someone else, on a lagging remote desktop connection
I guess this is the peak of legacy code8 -
Most of things I'm about to say are experienced by almost 99% of developers in Africa including my country so I'm going to make it a more general rant.
As an African developer, life is both exciting and frustrating at the same time. Some of the challenges that make life difficult for developers in Africa include:
1). Slow Internet Speed: The internet in Africa can be extremely slow and unreliable, making it frustrating to work on projects that require large file downloads. This is a serious challenge for freelance developers who work from home.
2). Unstable Electricity: Frequent power outages due to inadequate infrastructure, insufficient investment in energy production and distribution, and political instability makes it difficult for developers in Africa to work consistently. Most times I get frustrated because you can experience black out at anytime of the day which could last for hours to days automatically rendering you useless if you have no power backup generator at home.
3). Low Pay: While the opportunities for software developers in Africa are quite high, the salary is often disappointing. Many talented programmers end up seeking better opportunities overseas. In fact I quit my full-time job because of this reason.
4). Lack of Support for Tech Start-ups: There are few venture capital firms in Africa willing to invest in new ideas, which makes it difficult for tech start-ups to get off the ground. It's just sad, you can have an idea and just die with it.
So in summary, it's not a walk in the park to be a developer in Africa, but despite all of that I am glad to be a part of the African journey, having the opportunity to had work at a tech agency firm on various projects ranging from healthcare to finance, I find it rewarding to know that my work has contributed to a better future for my continent. 🤞6 -
devRant is awesome, but Disney also manages to light-up my day.
This is how Wall-E became a beloved member of our team, and helped me put a smile on my face throughout a very frustrating project.
It all started in a company, not so far far away from here, where management decided to open up development to a wider audience in the organization. Instead of continuing the good-old ping-pong between Business and IT...
'not meeting my expectations' - 'not stated in project requirements'
'stuff's not working - 'business is constantly misusing'
'why are they so difficult' - 'why don't they know what they really want'
'Ping, pong, plok... (business loses point) ping, pong'
... the company aimed to increase collaboration between the 2 worlds, and make development more agile.
The close collaboration on development projects is a journey of falling and getting back up again. Which can be energy draining, but to be honest there is also a lot of positive exposure to our team now.
The relevant part for this story is that de incentive of business teams throughout these projects was mainly to deliver 'something' that 'worked'. Where our team was also very keen on delivering functionality that is stable, scalable, properly documented etc. etc.
We managed to get the fundamentals in place, but because the whole idea was to be more agile or less strict throughout the process, we could not safeguard all best-practices were adhered to during each phase of a project. The ratio Business/IT was simply out of balance to control everything, and the whole idea was to go for a shorter development lifecycle.
One thing for sure, we went a lot faster from design through development to deployment, high-fives followed and everybody was happy (for some time).
Well almost everybody, because we knew our responsibility would not end after the collection of credits at deployment, but that an ongoing cycle of maintenance would follow. As expected, after the celebrations also complaints, new requirements and support requests on bug fixes were incoming.
Not too enthusiastic about constantly patching these projects, I proposed to halt new development and to initiate a proper cleaning of all these projects. With the image in mind of a small enthusiastic fellow, dedicated to clean a garbage-strewn wasteland for humanity, I deemed "Wall-E" a very suited project name. With Wall-E on board, focus for the next period was on completely restructuring these projects to make sure all could be properly maintained for the future.
I knew I was in for some support, so I fetched some cool wall papers to kick-start each day with a fresh set of Wall-E's on my monitors. Subsequently I created a Project Wall-E status report, included Wall-E in team-meetings and before I knew it Wall-E was the most frequently mentioned member of the team. I could not stop to chuckle when mails started to fly on whether "Wall-E completed project A" or if we could discuss "Wall-E's status next report-out". I am really happy we put in the effort with the whole team to properly deploy all functionality. Not only the project became a success, also the idea of associating frustrating activities with a beloved digital buddy landed well in our company. A colleagues already kickstarted 'project Doraemon', which is triggering a lot of fun content. Hope it may give you some inspiration, or at least motivate you to watch Wall-E!
PS: I have been enjoying the posts, valuable learnings and fun experiences for some time now. Decided to also share a bit from my side, here goes my first rant!
3 -
(Note: I got a bit carried away while writing this, so the end result is a lot longer than I expected. Apologies for the long post!)
The beginning of my programming journey started with a book.
This was back in 7th grade. I had some basic exposure to BASIC (pun maybe intended?) from our school curriculum, but it was nothing too interesting as our teachers never really treated it as anything important. They would stress a lot on those Microsoft Office chapters (yes, we actually studied Microsoft Office as part of our computer science course at school) and mostly ignore the programming chapters because I dare say many of them struggled with it themselves. So although I had been exposed to *some* programming, it was mostly memorizing the syntax without actually understanding what was going on.
Then one day there was this book fair thing going on at this local Carrefour (for those of you who've no idea, it's a pretty famous hypermarket chain) in this mall, and for some reason my mother and I were in that mall on that day. Now the interesting thing is that this usually never happens -- I usually visit malls with my dad or my friends, this is the only instance I remember where I had actually visited one with just my mom. This turned out to be fortuitous. My father is the kind of person who's generally not amenable to any kind of extraneous shopping requests. My mother, on the other hand, was and remains pliable.
So I basically saw this book -- Sams' Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours -- being sold at half price. I vaguely remembered having read somewhere that JavaScript is a good introductory programming language (and it helped that this was the time when I was getting into a Google-craze -- I basically saw some photos of Google Zurich and went all HOLY SHIT THAT'S WHERE I NEED TO WORK WHEN I GROW UP (for those of you who haven't seen it, I recommend googling it. That office is the bomb) -- and I'd also read that you need programming skills to join Google). So I begged and begged my mum to buy that book, and thankfully she did.
Back home I returned with my new prize under my arm. Dad took one look at it and scoffed that I'll never actually use it. Pretty much entirely out of spite (to prove him wrong), I attacked the book with a zeal. I still remember how I felt when I wrote my very first JavaScript program (printing the current system date in an h1 tag) and marveling at the output. I guess that was when something struck -- the realization that this was probably what I wanted to do in life.
Fast forward to today, and I've never looked back and wondered what it would be like to have done something else.
PS: for all you beginners out there, JavaScript is a horrible language. Please start with something like Python. Also there are better resources than Sams' Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours available, that I just didn't know of back then. I'd recommend Eloquent JavaScript any day. -
!dev
I just woke up from a fun adrenaline packed film dream.
It started like an movie, leaning a bit into the funny side, but also a bit serious.
We were 3 guys going top speed on the highway, dodging traffic, trying to prevent a bomb from detonating on the other side of the city.
We were all famous actors, but the only one I remember was Jackie Chan. I remember thinking why would they cast Jackie Chan and give him so few lines.
I wished I remember more about this part. The only thing I remember is that when we get to the end of the island, we’re in the wrong place: we’re at a huge OBGYN center.
My sidekicks are bothering the desk women, eating all of the “waiting candy”. I feel bad and offer to pay those, which they pretend to not care about but then end up charging me down to the penny. Cunts.
The sidekicks leave and (without explanation because dreams) disappear of the story.
Defeated, I go outside and start walking.
And I don’t remember exactly what the fuck happened in between, but somehow I’m now in the house of a cartel druglord and he’s pissed and I need to run now.
So I do. I remembered that there was a very thick forest east to the house. So I go there.
And what follows is a very intense montage of me escaping.
At some point that forest ended, so I continue through some high weed, and then another forest, and so on. While I had to pass through parts with no vegetation, I had to avoid these as much as possible.
I saw dozens of types of trees and shrubs.
Then I started seeing families, kids, playing, relaxing on what seemed a Sunday afternoon.
The adventure was so fun, the landscape was so beautiful I felt happy and thought “this is how it feels to be alive”. And I actually felt happy in real life as well.
At some point the vegetation I encounter decreased, and I have to go through more urbanized areas, with more people.
“Uh oh” I think, “I hope no one snitches me”. But miraculously, no one does.
Throughout all the journey I had glimpses of the drug lord nearby presence.
His face on the distance, the sound of his car engine.
But now he was closer than ever. And I’m closer to this house which is the escape point (can’t really remember why).
So I reach for the handle and fade to white, and fade back again, it’s me, older, and I’m not in an escaping mood.
My wife is waiting, our car is outside (on the non drug lord side).
And guess what, we were waiting for our daughter, who comes with a smile and a child on her hands.
So apparently, my daughter married someone from the drug lord villa that almost murders me.
Reading this sounds like a bad script, but that’s what I dreamed today.1
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