A Java Development vacancy I came across today:

Requirements:

Must:

° Appropriate Education
° Work Experience with Java/Javascript knowledge, at least 2 years, good understanding of OOP, patterns
° Experience with Spring, NoSQL(MongoDB)

Preferably:

° Experience with Tomcat/Jboss/Glassfish
° JDBC, JSF, JSP, JSTL, Angular, ExtJS
° HTML5, CSS3, XML, Jquery, Bootstrap, Primefaces
° Hibernate
° Git/SVN

Objective:

° Implementation of specific requirements
° Cooperation with business analytics and clarification of reuirements
° Participation in the development of application architecture and technology selection

Who are they hiring?

An engineer was working on a windows server. Needed to partition something so typed 'part' in the windows search thingy (windows 10).

Few results found:
Participation laws
Part time working
Partial (something)

Engineer: Jesus fucking Christ I just want the FUCKING partitioner, windows what the actual fuck.

[ Introduction ]
In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.

[ The story ]
A year ago I had a problem with X software.
I opened a ticket on its repository but a week goes by and no one responds. I need it to work! So I opened a pull request and it got merged in a day or two after a quick review.

Seeing that the tickets were many and the maintainers were few, I decided to stay and help.

Today, I am in the top #10 contributors.
I have made 20 commits and edited 4k lines of code. (Honestly, it's not that much, at work I do way more than that, anyway...)

This repository is an alternative to another popular closed-source software and it's massively used by well-known companies
(tech-giants).

[ Stats ]
User base: 20.000 (all of them are devs)
Total contributors: 200 (1%)
Contributors with more than 1 commit: 60 (0.3%)

[ Consideration ]
I would never have believed a year ago that participation could be so low despite the number of dev-users being so high.

The software does not require great technical expertise and if you are using it for work then you already have the skill-set you need to contribute.

Now listen, I know that not everyone wants to contribute. I know right and I respect it ... but really:

The 0.3% ?! Only 60 devs on 20k are active contributors?! Only 200 (1%) devs have ever made a single commit and then they left.

Holy sh**

Now I am starting to understand the frustration of senior developers and their issues with management.

For the first two years of my career, I was a dev and a team lead, and all worked fine. In some situations, I did get frustrated and thought that was horrible.

But damn! Today I am having a 1 hour session at lunch time (said mandatory participation) with an "Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner" on "Minimum Variable Bureaucracy".

I'm halfway down, and halfway dead. Just send me an email and I'm happy.

TL;DR: Printers suck. MS-Word sucks.

Yesterday I wanted to print a few participation certificates for my blender project students.

*Turns on printer, runs downstairs, gets paper, runs upstairs, puts paper in*

So I tried to print in word. Nothing happened. Printer was online. I checked queue: Nothing.

*a couple of tries later*

Okay, fuck it! I export it as a pdf and open it in edge (8 times. 8 documents. Edge is a neat pdf-viewer, fight me). I press print on one. It works. I print the others and check: They look shit. The images look like 25% resolution and 50% jpg compression. I check word.

It by default exports in low quality. Yea, thanks for asking me. I export pdfs again and check "high quality". Open them, print. Done.

These were like 30 wasted minutes and print color. And paper.

Btw they look fucking neat. I can't show them right now but gradient text headline, project name is a rendered and edited 3D object :D

There's a special place in my naughty list reserved for those competitions that promise "free swag" as a participation prize...

...then give you a $10 voucher to spend in their store to buy a shirt, before telling you you'll need to pay $50 in international shipping 😡

!rant

FUCKING FINALLY

I GOT THE APPLE DEVELOPER CERTIFICATE

PUBLIC TESTFLIGHT PARTICIPATION SOON

THIS IS SLAMMIN

Twice a year, my work throws a party to celebrate our successes. Think of this as a post-Christmas and post-tax season party. Usually it’s a simple affair – they hire out a room in a bar, we have a theme to dress up to (last year for tax it was green, the colour of money), and it’s a social gathering. No pressure to participate, theme was broad enough that everyone could participate, and everyone came along for as long as they wanted.

This year, they’ve decided to make our post-tax party at a karaoke bar. I am usually a fan of karaoke…with my friends, after a drink or five, on my own terms. But singing in front of work colleagues?

To make things worse, they’ve created a committee to hyper-organise the games and teams. I know the usual AAM stance on organised/forced fun, and I attempted to get on the committee in an effort to steer them towards voluntary participation, but I was told the committee was full.

The party is next week and I’m already feeling panicky. We have been allocated into teams. We’ve been assured that these weren’t random, but were purposefully chosen to ensure a mix of outgoing and introverted people. Lovely. On top of being forced to participate, I have to sing with team members I normally wouldn’t spend time with. I’d be happy to do karaoke in front of my colleagues if it was a relaxed, opt-in thing where anyone who wanted to just jumped up there, but the forced, organised activity with judging and prizing is just making me dread it.

And there will be awards, which means there will be judging. I’ve alreasdy spoken up once after hearing a committee member excitedly tell a friend “there will even be an award for worst singer!” I straight up told her that there was no way they could have that as an award after forcing people to participate. I told I was being a party pooper and that it was all in good fun.

The official teams and rules were sent out yesterday and I noticed the award is actually for “best strangling of cat sound-a-like.” Which is infinitely worse.

How do I get through this party without ruffling any feathers, but also not putting myself and my singing abilities up for scrutiny in front of everyone I work with? Short of throwing a tantrum or sitting at the party in a corner and sulking, I’m not sure how to handle this diplomatically. The only people who aren’t going are those who have leave planned. They’ve even scheduled it so that it is running from 3 pm-6.30 pm (so, as my boss explained, those with childcare can still come for a few hours and not have to get a babysitter).

"The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision. " - Chuck Klosterman

While it's totally not without its valid use cases, I fucking hate pair programming.

Well, let me elaborate. I hate *remote* pair programming. It completely disrupts my flow and wastes so much time with additional water cooler nonsense, and pedantic argument for the sake of participation. Not to mention "oh hey let me see how you did this... Oh, you know what, I think it would be better to do it this way...". Ok, great, we weren't even discussing that, but sure, let's completely detail this session to refactor something that could have come up at a good transition point, like I dunno, say a code review?

Like I said, there are very good reasons to pair program, but I would much prefer rubber ducking wherever possible.

Hackathon morning 2 of 3. Did not sleep. Also didn’t accomplish much. Researching counts as participation, right? *eyes crossing*

Why do my fellow computer science majors feel the need to express how intelligent and informed they are to the professor in the middle of class? Why must they be so oblivious to how cringey it is to so blatantly enjoy hearing themselves talk? Participation is one thing, self assertion is another.

Rant time. Oh boi.

So, a bit of context: I am a university student in Greece and I have a desktop PC with elementary OS on it. When the unis closed down because of Coronavirus, I moved back to my parents', without my PC, only a usb stick with elementary OS installed on it. That was before the lockdown. My parents have a desktop PC and my old laptop, both with Windows rn. I'm only able to work using Linux, so I've been just popping that elementary OS USB stick whenever I needed to work.

All cool and good. Until the usb got full. It was a 16GB one after all. No biggie, I bought a new 64GB one from a well known Greek tech shop along with a webcam my mother needed. It was a LEXAR one.

They fucking took a week to transfer it. As if the closest shop to me was in fucking Germany. For context, the drawing tablet I bought from China the other day only did 2 weeks to come. During this time I could barely use Linux because my USB stick had only some 600MB free.

Ok, wtv I said to myself. I am a patient person after all. I received the USB stick, along with the webcam, in good condition, in their packaging. Alright. I dd'ed everything from the 16GB stick to the 64GB one and then I extend the partition. Everything works flawlessly. And it's faster too.

Next day, I boot up from it again. It boots up good. Nice, time to do some work. I open my editor. And it fucking freezes. The editor is not some VSCode or Atom or any of that heavy shit, it's just elementary OS Code. A very lightweight Gtk3 app. Strangely though, the rest of my OS (the dock autohide, eg.) Seems totally responsive. I try to open another app. No luck. Not even switching TTYs work. Good shit. I force shutdown my PC. I try to boot again from that piece of shit. And guess what! NO BOOT BITCH. Like, fuck you. I boot from my previous 16GB one. Linux won't recognize it. No /dev/sdc like I used to have. Ok, lsusb. Nope, nothing. I disconnect it and reconnect it, and lsusb. An empty entry appears.I run it a couple of times, and the it disappears again. I switch to TTY 2. I get read errors and usb error -71.

And I want to fucking explode

I call back to support for the warranty coverage. I wait for a good 10 minutes and a nice lady picks up. I tell her the issue. She says that the support team will call me for the issue this day it the next day.

I hang up.

It feels like some fucking prank. YOU MOTHERFUCKING TOOK SO LONG TO DELIVER MY SHIT. Not to mention that the shitty courier service they are working with wouldn't deliver the goods to my home because it's slightly out of town. AND NOW YOU ARE DELAYING MY WARRANTY RETURN? HOW THE FLYING FUCK DID YOU BECOME A WELL KNOWN TECH SHOP WITH SUCH SHITTY SERVICE?

IF YOUR BRAINS WERE DYNAMITE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO BLOW YOUR NOSES.

YOUR THE SERVICE EQUIVALENT OF A PARTICIPATION AWARD.

Foreigners' view of Greeks suddenly doesn't seem so unreasonable. Yes, we are fucking lazy asses. And we also hate that. We hate each other for that very reason. May this country not live any longer.

Please don't speak if you don't have anything of value to add. Professional world is not classroom where you get marks for class participation. There's this guy in my team who is supposed to be developer but acts like analyst/PM, talks shit, mostly repeats what other have already said. There's no single meeting where he hasn't spoken or added anything valuable. Hate him.

I literally was fucking around in Python thinking I was doing some good, learned basics, kept switching languages, read about two books that did teach me a lot of stuff, stopped jumping between languages, still reading books, still learning, internet, exercises, books... YouTube had like 8% of participation in my learning process (Which is still going)

Eye yam we Todd did.
Eye yam sofa king we Todd did.

Not 100% hackathon, but I was once in one of those weekend coding challenges - aka: have idea, implement MVP, present to a Juri and get a chance to win a prize.

So, to start things off, you had a few months to prepare the idea, gather a team (minimum of 2, maximum of 5 per team) and register.

I gathered a few friends from university, that was cool. We were 5, I had the idea already, they agreed. I started talking business with some partners/governmental stuff (no time to explain all, ask in comments if you want to know).

2 weeks pass by after registering, still 1+ month before the event, 2 of the team members let me know they want to focus on university, so they cannot spend a weekend on this competition. Well, ok, still 3 people, no worries.

Fast forward, 1 week before the competition, another one says he won't be in town, we're 2. Still enough, we meet the requirements, it's just for the fun anyways.

Day 1 of the competition, I'm there waiting for my other teammate. Call him countless times, doesn't pick up. Later tells me he's sick.

I tell the organization about it. They asked: You can continue, but it's fine if you give up now.
> Yo, dafuck you mean give up? I'll die before I give up. It's for the fun anyways, worst case scenario I spend a nice weekend doing what I like *shrug*

So there I am, all alone, doing a first MVP of the mobile app in Android (without any prior android experience, and don't ask me why I chose to do mobile app for that project, was stupid back then).

Lots of nice things there, overall a good weekend, networking, food, gadgets and stuff like that.

Juri day, put on pretty clothes to present my super idea alongside my super MVP of the ugliest mobile app I've seen.

Judge 1: likes the idea, ugly app.
Judge 2: likes the idea, ugly app, could improve and work on the concept, etc
Judge 3: Lots of business questions, to which I came prepared with already potential clients and partners, liked that part although seemed a little confident of it working or not.
Judge 4: "Yo, that's the most stupid thing I've heard, not even gonna ask questions, that's just stupid"
Judge 5: A teacher in my university, the one to actually tell me about this competition, kind of like that meme from "How to train your dragon" where he does the thumbs up thing. Obviously the app sucks, but understandable, no one in the competition has much experience, bla bla bla

---

Final decision: No prize, fuck the idea, got a participation amazon voucher of like, $10 usd. *shurg*

--

Fast forward a few months, my aunt who shared the idea with me and who i was working with before the competition, sends me a link for an article on FB messenger.
The company where that MF judge worked at build a system exactly like the one I presented, claiming it was a very innovative idea. Never heard of them again, it was a consultation company (Deloitte), so I assume they didn't sell it well and dropped it also.

Moral of the story: I guess there's no moral, just have fun.

I got my participation award for going to Vex Worlds.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

― George Carlin

I am in the higher percentile. That means 95% of you are dumber than me! ;-)

They say programmers sound like an owl.

Damn you devpost. That Alexa skill I submitted definitely *does* use APL, and *does* qualify for the participation prize.

(The fact I can now churn out Alexa skills eligible for most of these prizes in a few minutes is besides the point, gimme gimme please.)

today I will have the last of my high school finals.
I feel like after today I will be a free boy (for three months, at least). Like I have won the game, beaten the boss level.
After 7 years of resisting to comply to this system which tries so hard to shape every pupil into a compliant individual, it will be done.
My creativity and productivity (which lies in tech, which isn't really represented in any subject in my school), set free.
No more mandatory pseudo-interest in loads of literature and cultural history. The bits that are interesting would have come to me anyways through Reddit.

Victory is mine. YAY \o/
World, here I come!

P.S. yes, of course, there were also positive things. I'm actually thankful for that time I failed the year's end exam about literature which ended in me having to redo that year. It landed me with loads of free time, which got me into tech-tinkering, a now two-year employment as a programmer, and a juniar participation at the nearest Hackerspace. And a chance to pretty much build and operate a 3D-printer, for which the physics department mostly covered the cost. The school unknowingly gave me the opportunity to extend my own horizon outside of school, and it brought me so much nice things. :) But the mandatory interest in literature and cultural/religious history and the lack of technical subjects and the digital oppression still sucked.

P.P.S. oops that was only supposed to be a short P.S.