As a developer, sometimes you hammer away on some useless solo side project for a few weeks. Maybe a small game, a web interface for your home-built storage server, or an app to turn your living room lights on an off.

I often see these posts and graphs here about motivation, about a desire to conceive perfection. You want to create a self-hosted Spotify clone "but better", or you set out to make the best todo app for iOS ever written.

These rants and memes often highlight how you start with this incredible drive, how your code is perfectly clean when you begin. Then it all oscillates between states of panic and surprise, sweat, tears and euphoria, an end in a disillusioned stare at the tangled mess you created, to gather dust forever in some private repository.

Writing a physics engine from scratch was harder than you expected. You needed a lot of ugly code to get your admin panel working in Safari. Some other shiny idea came along, and you decided to bite, even though you feel a burning guilt about the ever growing pile of unfinished failures.

All I want to say is:

No time was lost.

This is how senior developers are born. You strengthen your brain, the calluses on your mind provide you with perseverance to solve problems. Even if (no, *especially* if) you gave up on your project.

Eventually, giving up is good, it's a sign of wisdom an flexibility to focus on the broader domain again.

One of the things I love about failures is how varied they tend to be, how they force you to start seeing overarching patterns.

You don't notice the things you take back from your failures, they slip back sticking to you, undetected.

You get intuitions for strengths and weaknesses in patterns. Whenever you're matching two sparse ordered indexed lists, there's this corner of your brain lighting up on how to do it efficiently. You realize it's not the ORMs which suck, it's the fundamental object-relational impedance mismatch existing in all languages which causes problems, and you feel your fingers tingling whenever you encounter its effects in the future, ready to dive in ever so slightly deeper.

You notice you can suddenly solve completely abstract data problems using the pathfinding logic from your failed game. You realize you can use vector calculations from your physics engine to compare similarities in psychological behavior. You never understood trigonometry in high school, but while building a a deficient robotic Arduino abomination it suddenly started making sense.

You're building intuitions, continuously. These intuitions are grooves which become deeper each time you encounter fundamental patterns. The more variation in environments and topics you expose yourself to, the more permanent these associations become.

Failure is inconsequential, failure even deserves respect, failure builds intuition about patterns. Every single epiphany about similarity in patterns is an incredible victory.

Please, for the love of code...

Start and fail as many projects as you can.

Management : "How long you think it would take?"

Me : "now this is a rough estimate, but I think building the back-end and database alone could take 6-months minimum"

Management : "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS"

me : "its a big proj..."

Management : "I thought it will be something like 10 days, already told the client it can be done"

me : "but we are not ready"

Management : "how are we not ready? we already have the virtual 3D shop, and we can use this ready-to-deploy eCommerce service as our data base "
... "you need to figure this out, this is not acceptable" he continued

* 2 Days Later -talking to my direct boss *
Boss : "since you don't know how to do it..."

me : "what ? I didn't say I can't do it, all I said it will take six months"

Boss : "yeah yeah, anyway there is this studio, a professional polish studio, we called them and they can do it, we will sign a contract with them, this will let you focus on the front-end. good?"

me : "well alright then"

Boss : "please write a doc, explaining everything needed from the backend"
-to me that was the end of it, took a long time to tell me they made the deal-

* 5 Months later *
- "Abdu, can you come here for a minute..."
- "yes boss?"
- "the document we asked you to do for the Polish studio, did you specify that we needed an integration with the API we are using for eCommerce?"

scared to death I answered : "why of course I did!"
I ran to my PC to check it out because I didn't know, I forgot because no one even comment on my doc. I check it out, and it was clearly explained... I got relaxed...

turns out they didn't even do what we asked them for. took them 5 months, and with no communication whatsoever. all their work was useless to us. complete dump waste.

----------------
never mentioned this until a year later... in a heat of moment when they were asking me to make an impossible task with no men and no time... I reminded them of this story... management didn't like it. but it was the truth. they didnt push this crazily this time

Client: I love the site and will sign your contract today. I'll even give you a bonus since you got it done early. Can you put it up there this evening?

Me: I'm so glad that you liked it. I'll bring a condom with me all filled out and ready to go so we can push it up there.

Me: Contract. Damned phone

Client: please leave the condom at home

What's your worst autocorrect with a client?

Was lead developer at a small startup, I was hiring and had a budget to add 3 new people to my team to develop a new product for the company.

Some context first and then the rant!

Candidate 1 - Amazing, a dev I worked with before who was under utilized at the previous company. Still a junior, but, she was a quick learner and eager to expand her knowledge, never an issue.

Candidate 2 - Kickass dev with back end skills and extras, he was always eager to work a bit more than what was expected. I use to send him home early to annoy him. haha!

Candidate 3 - Lets call him P.

In the interview he answers every question perfectly, he asks all the right questions and suggests some things I havent even thought of. CTO goes ahead and says we should skip the technical test and just hire the guy, his smart and knows what his talking about, I agree and we hire him. (We where a bit desperate at this stage as well.)

He comes in a week early to pick up his work laptop to get setup before he starts the next week, awesome! This guy is going to be an asset to the company, cant wait to have him join the team - The CTO at this stage is getting ready to leave the company and I will be taking over the division and need someone to take over lead position, he seems like the guys to do it.

The guys starts the next week, he comes in and the laptop we gave him is now a local server for testing and he will be working off his own laptop, no issue, we are small so needed a testing stack, but wasnt really needed since we had procedures in place for this already.

Here is where everything goes wrong!!! First day goes great... Next day he gets in early 6:30am (Nice! NO!), he absolutely smells, no stinks, of weed, not a light smell, the entire fucking office smells of weed! (I have no problem with weed, just dont make it my problem to deal with). I get called by boss and told to sort this out people are complaining! I drive to office and have a meeting with him, he says its all good he understands. (This was Friday).

Monday comes around - Get a call from Boss at 7:30am. Whole office smells like weed, please talk to P again, this cannot happen again. I drive to office again, and he again says it wont happen again, he has some issues with back pain and the weed helps.

Tuesday - Same fucking thing! And now he doesnt want to sign for the laptop("server") that was given to him, and has moved to code in the boardroom, WHERE OUR FUCKING CLIENTS WILL BE VIEWING A DEMO THAT DAY OF THE PRODUCT!! Now that whole room smells like weed, FML!

Wednesday - We send P a formal letter that he is under probation, P calls me to have a meeting. In the meeting he blames me for not understanding "new age" medicine, I ask for his doctors prescription and ask why he didnt tell me this in the interview so I could make arrangements, we dont care if you are stoned, just do good work and be considerate to your co-workers. P cant provide these and keeps ranting, I suggest he takes pain killers, he has none of it only "new age" medicine for him.

Thursday - I ask him to rather "work" from home till we can get this sorted, he comes in for code reviews for 2 weeks. I can clearly see he has no idea how the system works but is trying, I thought I will dive deeper and look at all of his code. Its a mess, nothing makes sense and 50% of it is hard coded (We are building a decentralized API for huge data sets so this makes no sense).

Friday - In code review I confront him about this, he has excuses for everything, I start asking him harder questions about the project and to explain what we are building - he goes quiet and quits on the spot with a shitty apology.

From what I could make out he was really smart when it came to theory but interpreting the theory to actual practice wasnt possible for him, probably would have been easier if he wasnt high all the time.

I hate interview code tests, but learned a valuable lesson that day! Always test for some code knowledge as well even if you hate doing it, ask the right questions and be careful who you hire! You can only bullshit for so long in coding before someone figures out that you are a fraud.

[Thursday afternoon on a call...]

Client: Before we get started, can you create a sitescape outlining all of the pages and sections of the new website?

Me: Sure! I'll go through the website and shoot you a full layout in xls format as soon as possible, that way you can easily make notes on what you want added, modified or removed.

[Two hours later...]

Client: Hey, did you build that sitescape yet?

Me: Actually, I've been on back-to-back calls with other clients.

Client: So when are you going to get it done?

Me: Well, I have to go through the current website in it's entirety, which I'm guessing is about 1,000 pages. I have to determine which pages work fine on their own, which need to be combined for better presentation and which should be removed due to redundancy. That's something that is tedious and takes some time to complete. That, in combination with having an existing work queue that I need to fit you within and being at the end of the work week, we're looking at Tuesday morning to have it ready.

Client: "Existing work queue"? This is ridiculous. We're paying you good money to make our project your only priority. If we wanted to wait days for work, we would have saved money and paid for a cheaper service. You're already gouging us as it is! If we don't get the sitescape by end of day Friday, we're going with another company.

Me: I would tell you that I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm not. I'm not going to feed you a line to make you happy. I'm also not going to work on my days off just to rush something out to you. You hired us because you wanted things done right, not quickly. Your current website is the result of not focusing on quality, but by how fast you can deliver it. We don't work that way. We only build quality products.

By rushing your project, not only do we alienate our current clients, affecting our reputation, but we build product of less than the highest quality. That will upset you because it isn't perfect, and it reflects poorly on us to use it in our portfolio.

If you want to hire someone to pump out this project to your unrealistic deadlines, be our guest. But you paid a 50% non-refundable deposit, so not only will you lose money, but your end product will suffer.

I'm going to let you sleep on this. If you decide tomorrow that another direction is the way to go, we wish you luck. But please understand that if we conclude our business, we will no longer make ourselves available for your needs.

Please find the attached contracts you have signed, acknowledging the non-refundable deposit, as well as the project timeline and scope, of which a "sitescape" was never originally mentioned or blocked out for time.

I hope that tomorrow we can move forward in a more professional manner.

[Next morning...]

Client: My apologies for yesterday. We're just very anxious to get this started.

-----

Don't let clients push you around. Make them sign a contract and enforce it whenever necessary.

Mac: Hello welcome please sign in

Dev: Fair enough

Mac: Oh you haven’t signed in in awhile please get get verification from other device

Dev: kk

Mac: Oh you don’t have a dev account, please sign in on this website

Dev: Hm.

Mac: In order to sign up for a dev account you need to download this app

Dev: ???

Mac: Are you sure you want to open this app you just downloaded?

Dev: Sigh.

Mac: In order to sign up for a dev account on this app you need to sign into it

Dev: For the love of god

Mac: Ok now you can build with Xcode.

Xcode: No you can’t. You have to sign in

Dev: fuck sakes.

Mac: Are you sure you want Xcode to access files on your computer?

Dev: …Yup

Xcode: Signing in isn’t enough you have to select the fact you are signed in a dropdown nested 3 menus deep.

Dev: God damn.

Xcode: Build failed please sign in to phone as well.

Phone: New sign in detected, please verify with alternative device.

Dev: Jesus.

Xcode: Build success! Pushing to iPhone.

Dev: Finally.

Xcode: Unknown error occurred. Please go to support.apple.com for help. :)

Dev: …

*signs up for Skillshare*
> Sorry, your password is longer than our database's glory hole can handle.
> Please shorten your password cumload to only 64 characters at most, otherwise our database will be unhappy.

Motherf-...

Well, I've got a separate email address from my domain and a unique password for them. So shortening it and risking getting that account stolen by plaintext shit won't really matter, especially since I'm not adding payment details or anything.

*continues through the sign-up process for premium courses, with "no attachments, cancel anytime"*
> You need to provide a credit card to continue with our "free" premium trial.

Yeah fuck you too. I don't even have a credit card. It's quite uncommon in Europe, you know? We don't have magstripe shit that can go below 0 on ya.. well the former we still do but only for compatibility reasons. We mainly use chip technology (which leverages asymmetric cryptography, awesome!) that usually can't go much below 0 here nowadays. Debit cards, not credit cards.

Well, guess it's time to delete that account as well. So much for acquiring fucking knowledge from "experts". Guess I'll have to stick to reading wikis and doing my ducking-fu to select reliable sources, test them and acquire skills of my own. That's how I've done it for years, and that's how it's been working pretty fucking well for me. Unlike this deceptive security clusterfuck!

I'm trying to sign up for insurance benefits at work.

Step 1: Trying to find the website link -- it's non-existent. I don't know where I found it, but I saved it in keepassxc so I wouldn't have to search again. Time wasted: 30 minutes.

Step 2: Trying to log in. Ostensibly, this uses my work account. It does not. Time wasted: 10 minutes.

Step 3: Creating an account. Username and Password requirements are stupid, and the page doesn't show all of them. The username must be /[A-Za-z0-9]{8,60}/. The maximum password length is VARCHAR(20), and must include upper/lower case, number, special symbol, etc. and cannot include "password", repeated charcters, your username, etc. There is also a (required!) hint with /[A-Za-z0-9 ]{8,60}/ validation. Want to type a sentence? better not use any punctuation!

I find it hilarious that both my username and password hint can be three times longer than my actual password -- and can contain the password. Such brilliant security.

My typical username is less than 8 characters. All of my typical password formats are >25 characters. Trying to figure out memorable credentials and figuring out the hidden complexity/validation requirements for all of these and the hint... Time wasted: 30 minutes.

Step 4: Post-login. The website, post-login, does not work in firefox. I assumed it was one of my many ad/tracker/header/etc. blockers, and systematically disabled every one of them. After enabling ad and tracker networks, more and more of the site loaded, but it always failed. After disabling bloody everything, the site still refused to work. Why? It was fetching deeply-nested markup, plus styling and javascript, encoded in xml, via api. And that xml wasn't valid xml (missing root element). The failure wasn't due to blocking a vitally-important ad or tracker (as apparently they're all vital and the site chain-loads them off one another before loading content), it's due to shoddy development and lack of testing. Matches the rest of the site perfectly. Anyway, I eventually managed to get the site to load in Safari, of all browsers, on a different computer. Time wasted: 40 minutes.

Step 5: Contact info. After getting the site to work, I clicked the [Enroll] button. "Please allow about 10 minutes to enroll," it says. I'm up to an hour and 50 minutes by now. The first thing it asks for is contact info, such as email, phone, address, etc. It gives me a warning next to phone, saying I'm not set up for notifications yet. I think that's great. I select "change" next to the email, and try to give it my work email. There are two "preferred" radio buttons, one next to "Work email," one next to "Personal email" -- but there is only one textbox. Fine, I select the "Work" preferred button, sign up for a faux-personal tutanota email for work, and type it in. The site complains that I selected "Work" but only entered a personal email. Seriously serious. Out of curiosity, I select the "change" next to the phone number, and see that it gives me four options (home, work, cell, personal?), but only one set of inputs -- next to personal. Yep. That's amazing. Time spent: 10 minutes.

Step 6: Ranting. I started going through the benefits, realized it would take an hour+ to add dependents, research the various options, pick which benefits I want, etc. I'm already up to two hours by now, so instead I decided to stop and rant about how ridiculous this entire thing is. While typing this up, the site (unsurprisingly) automatically logged me out. Fine, I'll just log in again... and get an error saying my credentials are invalid. Okay... I very carefully type them in again. error: invalid credentials. sajfkasdjf.

Step 7 is going to be: Try to figure out how to log in again. Ugh.

"Please allow about 10 minutes" it said. Where's that facepalm emoji?

But like, seriously. How does someone even build a website THIS bad?

"So you need access to the test server?"
Me:"Yes"
"Please fill these 800000000 forms,sign here,get your blood sample,your ID ,your right kidney,letter of approval from your boss,...."

Fuuuuuuuck!!!! I just want to change only 3 lines of code!!!!!!

Alright, the blog seems to be running again and its not breaking yet which is a good sign :P.

Although nothing has changed on the front end yet, the backend has been partly rewritten to be more efficient and of course, post sorting based on posting date!

I'm aware of most of the front end issues so no need to tell me all of them again, I'll look at that tomorrow as I need sleep right now :(

If you'd find any bugs/security issues, please, don't exploit them but report them instead! I take security very seriously and will try to patch any security bug as soon as I can :)

Can we make the devRant gang sign into a thing? Can it be a secret way of recognizing other devranters, say, at conferences? Please?

\||/_

I have seen it. They say it doesn't exist; just a story we tell our children so that their innocence does not lead them down into a nightmarish adulthood from which there is no salvation. But the evil lives. So vile that were you to look inside its soul, all you would find is a terrible desperation for suffering. To cause it. To revel in it. To bathe in the tears of those it considers less than human and feed off the emotional detritus.

It was 2009. The financial crisis. I was one of the lucky, having found refuge in a large company right before the jobs dried up. General IT: system administration, documentation, project management, telephony, software training, second level help desk. No software development, but with a two-year-old at home and Ph.D.s lining up outside the local Olive Garden whenever a help wanted sign was posted, I grabbed the health insurance and entered into darkness.

The Thing did not need to hunt it's prey. A manager title with 21 reports brought it new opportunities for fresh meat by the hour. But I was special. I resisted. I needed to know my place.

My first mistake was incomprehension. I did not understand the Thing's lust to be right at all costs. I was reviewing some documentation it had brought forth from its bowels. I mentioned that two spaces were being used between sentences. That proportional type made that unnecessary. It insisted, I was wrong. It insisted that Microsoft itself, the purveyor of all good technical writing, required two spaces. I opened the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications that it demanded its staff use and showed it that the spec was one space. It was livid. I was a problem.

From that point on my work life became exponentially more wretched. I was given three Outlook calendars to maintain: one with my schedule, one with the team's schedule and one with the Thing's schedule. Every time I had an appointment, I was to triple schedule it. If I was going to be away from my desk for more than 15 minutes triple schedule. Triple schedule my lunch, vacations, phone conferences.

Whenever it held a meeting, I and a colleague would be taken off mission critical IT projects to set tables with name tents and to serve as greeters as attendees arrived.

I was called into its crypt to be told never to say anything in a meeting unless I told the Thing beforehand what I was going to say. Naive, I mentioned that I often don't know what I will say as it is often in reply to someone else. Of course the response was that I should not say anything.

I would get emails 10-20 times a day asking about a single project. I would regularly complete work that was needed to be completed ASAP, only to have the Thing rake me over the coals for not completing it a week later. And upon resending the emails proving I notified it of the work being competed, disparaged at length a second time for not sending repeated notifications of the competed work.

I would have to sit in two-hour meetings to watch it type. Literally watch it try to create cogent thoughts. In silence.

I received horrendous annual reviews. At one, it created a development plan that stated a colleague would begin giving me lessons on the proper ways to socially interact with personnel. I pointed out to HR that this violated privacy concerns and would make the business liable in many areas, not least of which would be placing a help desk person in the role of defining proper business practice. HR made the Thing remove this from my review. She started planning to remove me.

I had given a short technical training to a group of personnel months earlier. Called into its tomb I was informed that feedback surveys on my talk were disturbing. One person stated that they did not think I was funny. Another wrote that I made an offensive statement. That person did not say what the offensive statement was. Just that I had said something he or she didn't like.

The Thing interviewed the training attendees. Gathered facts. Held three inquest-like meetings where multiple directors peppered me with questions trying to get me to confess to my offensiveness. In the end the request to fire me was brought to the man who ran the business at the time. The statement on high: "Humor is a subjective thing. Please tell This to be sensitive to that."

The Thing had failed, but would no doubt redouble its efforts. I had to find a new job. I sent hundreds of resumes. Talked to dozens of recruiters. But there were no jobs. And I had a family. And the wolf was at the door.

So I didn't say a word to the creature. For six months. Silence. At one group meeting it shrieked at me "what are you smirking at? If you've got something to say then say it!" I just shrugged. For my salvation was revealed. The Thing could not stand to be ignored. And at the end of my penance I was transferred to another group: Software Development.

I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.

User: Bobby, please update this quality controlled document because I screwed it up.

Me: No there is a process for a reason, multiple people need to sign off on this. Also, we talked about this exact issue a year ago that you did not fix.

User: But its a minor change, several hyperlinks in the Word document need adjusted.

Me: Ok, you do it and submit it through the process again.

User: Can you make the changes to the document? It will take me forever and I'm very busy. I know you can do it much quicker than I can.

Me: I really don't want to edit this document myself. It doesn't apply to my job at all and I cannot verify any of the changes would be correct.

User: Oh it's fine. Make the changes and I'll look over it.

...

I hate my job sometimes.

Long rant ahead.. so feel free to refill your cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂

It's completely useless. At least in the school I went to, the teachers were worse than useless. It's a bit of an old story that I've told quite a few times already, but I had a dispute with said teachers at some point after which I wasn't able nor willing to fully do the classes anymore.

So, just to set the stage.. le me, die-hard Linux user, and reasonably initiated in networking and security already, to the point that I really only needed half an ear to follow along with the classes, while most of the time I was just working on my own servers to pass the time instead. I noticed that the Moodle website that the school was using to do a big chunk of the course material with, wasn't TLS-secured. So whenever the class begins and everyone logs in to the Moodle website..? Yeah.. it wouldn't be hard for anyone in that class to steal everyone else's credentials, including the teacher's (as they were using the same network).

So I brought it up a few times in the first year, teacher was like "yeah yeah we'll do it at some point". Shortly before summer break I took the security teacher aside after class and mentioned it another time - please please take the opportunity to do it during summer break.

Coming back in September.. nothing happened. Maybe I needed to bring in more evidence that this is a serious issue, so I asked the security teacher: can I make a proper PoC using my machines in my home network to steal the credentials of my own Moodle account and mail a screencast to you as a private disclosure? She said "yeah sure, that's fine".
Pro tip: make the people involved sign a written contract for this!!! It'll cover your ass when they decide to be dicks.. which spoiler alert, these teachers decided they wanted to be.

So I made the PoC, mailed it to them, yada yada yada... Soon after, next class, and I noticed that my VPN server was blocked. Now I used my personal VPN server at the time mostly to access a file server at home to securely fetch documents I needed in class, without having to carry an external hard drive with me all the time. However it was also used for gateway redirection (i.e. the main purpose of commercial VPN's, le new IP for "le onenumity"). I mean for example, if some douche in that class would've decided to ARP poison the network and steal credentials, my VPN connection would've prevented that.. it was a decent workaround. But now it's for some reason causing Moodle to throw some type of 403.

Asked the teacher for routers and switches I had a class from at the time.. why is my VPN server blocked? He replied with the statement that "yeah we blocked it because you can bypass the firewall with that and watch porn in class".
Alright, fair enough. I can indeed bypass the firewall with that. But watch porn.. in class? I mean I'm a bit of an exhibitionist too, but in a fucking class!? And why right after that PoC, while I've been using that VPN connection for over a year?

Not too long after that, I prematurely left that class out of sheer frustration (I remember browsing devRant with the intent to write about it while the teacher was watching 😂), and left while looking that teacher dead in the eyes.. and never have I been that cold to someone while calling them a fucking idiot.

Shortly after I've also received an email from them in which they stated that they wanted compensation for "the disruption of good service". They actually thought that I had hacked into their servers. Security teachers, ostensibly technical people, if I may add. Never seen anyone more incompetent than those 3 motherfuckers that plotted against me to save their own asses for making such a shitty infrastructure. Regarding that mail, I not so friendly replied to them that they could settle it in court if they wanted to.. but that I already knew who would win that case. Haven't heard of them since.

So yeah. That's why I regard those expensive shitty pieces of paper as such. The only thing they prove is that someone somewhere with some unknown degree of competence confirms that you know something. I think there's far too many unknowns in there.

Nowadays I'm putting my bets on a certification from the Linux Professional Institute - a renowned and well-regarded certification body in sysadmin. Last February at FOSDEM I did half of the LPIC-1 certification exam, next year I'll do the other half. With the amount of reputation the LPI has behind it, I believe that's a far better route to go with than some random school somewhere.

Not a rant about anything in particular. Just a summary of some feelings stored in the hateful part of my heart.

Developing for Android: Add this third-party library to your Gradle build. Use (this) built-in Android class to make the thing work.

*Clicks link

Deprecated since API version SUCKMYDICK-7. Use (this) instead

*Clicks link

Deprecated since API version LICKMYBALLS-32. Use...

Developing for Windows: Please use (this) API call. It was literally already available before Bill Gates was born. Carbon dating has placed this item to older than the universe itself and it is likely the entry point for the big bang. It is also still the best way to accomplish (task).

Developing for Linux: "Hmm, I wonder how to use this"

> > > Some shitty mailing list in small blue monospace font tells you to reference a man page that is three versions behind but the only version available.

What? Those three sentences didn't explain it enough? Well, maybe you aren't cut out for this type of thing.

JavaScript: you know how it is.

SQL: You expect a decent-quality answer from stack overflow but you always get an outdated and hacky response and it's using syntax from Microsoft SQL. You need MySQL.

C#: A surprising number of Microsoft forum results ranking high on Google. You click on one in hopes that it will be of any sort of quality. You quickly close the tab and wonder why you ever even had hope.

Literally any REST API: Is it "query" or "q"? "UserID" or "user_id"? Oh, fuck, where's the docs again?

You thought you escaped JavaScript, but it was a trick!: Some bullshit library you downloaded to make your other library work redefined one of the global variables in the project you inherited. Now you get 347 "<x> is not a function" errors in your console. Good luck, asshole.

FontAwesome/ Material fonts/ Any icon font pack: You search "Close" for a close button icon. No results. You search "Simplified railroad crossing sign without the railroad". You get a close icon.

I think that's all of my pent up rage. Each of them were too small for an individual rant so I had to do this essay.

LONELINESS IS REAL
I am a freshman in a university ( about to complete my first year ) with a girl to boy ratio of around 1:10. During my first semester I was spending a lot of time with friends, chatting up with people and making connections. Due to this my productivity as a dev, if I am even capable of being called that decreased ( I was not a developer before joining , but I had an aim of being one , esp at least the best in my batch ) after 1st year. In retrospect I did nothing productive till 3 months out of 4 in my first sem and the guilt hit me hard . During the last month I had to catch up with my much neglected studies and all I had done was a little bit of html and css, and barely scratched the surface of js( please don't judge me for this :) , I had to start somewhere < although I learned a little bit of C++ > ). BUT I WAS A HAPPY CUNT, and had no sign of lonelines. Now during this sem , I had made progress ( learn js with es6 syntax and still learning, did c++ and extended my knowledge ) . Currently I am working on my Vue full stack app ( along with express and some websocket library , TBD ) < yeh I learnt some backend too > , and increasing my knowledge of dsa using clrs. Although my productivity has increased manifolds but I know feel the need of closure. I am kinda happy with the fact that I know a lot of people around here ( thanks to my extroverted 1st semester ) but sometimes it hits me hard at night when I don't have a monitor to drown my eyes and thoughts in. I have increased my academic performance too but I need someone to share and express my feelings with. I could have made a girlfriend earlier but now most of them are taken and I have lost touch. But believe me, all I want is a companion to spend these lonely days and night ( not talking about as a friend ). Staying away from home isnt easy you know...m :(

KUDOS TO DEVRANT FOR DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE LIKE ME CAN FEEL SAFE IN OUR NATURAL HABITAT. I COULDN'T HAVE EXPRESSED MY FEELINGS ANYWHERE ELSE EXCEPT IN A PERSONAL BLOG ( where no one would have read it )

PS1: I apologise if I sounded arrogant about any of my skill, I didn't mean that way. I ain't even that good, just kinda proud of myself a little for achieving something I couldn't have thought.

PS2: Any type of suggestions and help is much appreciated ( considering I am a college student who went into some serious development 4 months ago , I am pretty impressionable ;) )

PS3: Please don't confuse this with depression. I am HAPPY BUT LONELY

PS4: Is there a way so that I can change my username?

deadmau5 exclusive on tidal streaming.

Fuck, okay.

*Sign up*

>> enters email, password
>> redirect to different signup page
>> enters email, password
>> redirect to original signup page
>> ????
>> enters email, password
>> redirect to second signup page again
>> ????????????
>> try to login
>> enters email, password
>> nope

>> listen to preview of album
>> please enable flash
>> okay, fuck you, deadmau5.

Back in the day, I joined a little agency in Cape Town, small team small office with big projects, projects they weren’t really supposed to take on but hey when the owner of a tech business is not a tech person they do weird things.
A month had passed and it was all good, then came a project from Europe, Poland to be specific. The manager introduced me to the project, it was a big brand - a segment of Lego, built on Umbraco (they should change the name to slowbraco or uhmmm..braco somewhere there) the manager was like so this one is gonna be quite a challenge and I remember you said you are keen on that, I was like hell yeah bring it on (genuinely I got excited) now the challenge was not even about complexity of the problem or code or algorithms etc you get my point… the challenge was that the fucking site was in polish - face palm 1 - so I am like okay code is code, its just content, and I already speak/familiar with 13 human languages so I can’t fail here ill get around it somehow. So I spin up IIS, do the things and boom dev environment is ready for some kick ass McCoding. I start to run through the project to dig into the previous dev’s soul. I could not relate, I could not understand. I could not read, I could not, I could not. - face palm 2 - This dude straight up coded this project in polish variable names in polish, class names in polish, comments in freaking polish. Look, I have no beef with the initial guy, its his language so why not right? sure. But not hey this is my life and now I should learn polish, so screw it, new tab - google translate, new notes, I create a dictionary of variables and class etc 
3 days go by and I am fucking polish bro. Come at me. I get to read the previous devs soul through his comments, what a cool dude, his code wasn’t shit either - huge relief. So I rock on and make the required changes and further functionality. 

The project manager is like really, you did it? I am like yeah dude, there it is. Then I realise I wasn’t the first on this, this dude done tried others and it didn’t go down well, they refused. - face palm 3 -

Anyway, now I am a rock star in the office, and to project managers this win means okay throw him in the deep - they move me to huge project that is already late of course and apparently since I am able to use google translate, I can now defeat time, let the travelling begin. - face palm 4 - I start on the project and they love me on it as they can see major progress however poland was knocking on the door again, they need a whole chunk of work done. I can’t leave the bigger project, so it was decided that the new guy on Monday will start his polish lessons - he has no idea, probably excited to start a new job, meanwhile a shit storm is being prepared for him.

Monday comes, hello x - meet the team, team meets x

Manager - please join our meeting.

I join the meeting, the manager tells me to assist the new dev to get set up.

Me: Sure, did you tell him about he site?

Manager: Yes, I told him you knocked it out the park and now we just need to keep going

Me: in my head (hmm… that’s not what I was asking but cool I guess he will see soon enough -internal face palm 5 - )

New dev is setup, he looks at the project, I am ask him if he is good after like an hour he is like yeah all good. But his face is pink so I figured, no brother man is not okay. But I let him be and give him space.

Lunch time comes, he heads out for lunch. 

1hr 15mins later, project manager is like, is the new dude still at lunch.

We are all like yeah probably. 

2hrs pass 

3hrs pass

Now we are like okay maybe something happened to him, hit by a car? Emergency? Something… 

So I am legit worried now, I ask the manager to maybe give him a ring. 

Manager tries to call. NOTHING, no response. nada.

Next day, 8am, 9am, 10am no sign of the dude. 

I go to the manager, ask him what’s up. 

Manager: he is okay. However he said he is not coming back. 


I just tried to sign up to Instagram. I made a big mistake.

First up with Facebook related stuff is data. Data, data and more data. Initially when you sign up (with a new account, not login with Facebook) you're asked your real name, email address and phone number. And finally the username you'd like to have on the service. I gave them a phone number that I actually own, that is in my iPhone, my daily driver right now (and yes I have 3 Androids which all run custom ROMs, hold your keyboards). The email address is a usual for me, instagram at my domain. I am a postmaster after all, and my mail server is a catch-all one. For a setup like that, this is perfectly reasonable. And here it's no different, devrant at my domain. On Facebook even, I use fb at my domain. I'm sure you're starting to see a pattern here. And on Facebook the username, real name and email domain are actually the same.

So I signed up, with - as far as I'm aware - perfectly valid data. I submitted the data and was told that someone at Instagram will review the data within 24 hours. That's already pretty dystopian to me. It is now how you block bots. It is not how Facebook does it either, at least since last time I checked. But whatever. You'd imagine that regardless of the result, they'd let you know. Cool, you're in, or sorry, you're rejected and here's why. Nope.

Fast-forward to today when I recalled that I wanted to sign up to Instagram to see my girlfriend's pictures. So I opened Chromium again that I already use only for the rancid Facebook shit.. and it was rejected. Apparently the mere act of signing up is a Terms of Service violation. I have read them. I do not know which section I have violated with the heinous act of signing up. But I do have a hunch.

Many times now have I been told by ignorant organizations that I would be "stealing" their intellectual property, or business assets or whatever, just because I sent them an email from their name on my domain. It is fucking retarded. That is MY domain, not yours. Learn how email works before you go educate a postmaster. Always funny to tell them how that works. But I think that in this case, that is what happened.

So I appealed it, using a random link to something on Instagram's help section from a third-party blog. You know it's good when the third-party random blog is better. But I found the form and filled it in. Same shit all over again for info, prefilling be damned I guess. Minor convenience though, whatever.

I get sent an email in German, because apparently browsing through a VPS in Germany acting as a VPN means you're German. Whatever... After translating it, I found that it asks me to upload a picture of myself, holding a paper in my hands, on which I would have a confirmation code, my username, and my email address.. all hand-written. It must not be too dark, it must be clear, it must be in JPEG.. look, I just wanted to fucking sign up.

I sent them an email back asking them to fix all of this. While I was writing it and this rant, I thought to myself that they can shove that piece of paper up their ass. In fact I would gladly do it for them.

Long story short, do not use Instagram. And one final thing I have gripes with every time. You are not being told all the data you'll have to present from the get-go. You're not being told the process. Initially I thought it'd just be email, phone, username, and real name. Once signed up (instantly, not within 24 hours!) I would start setting up my account and adding a profile picture. The right way to ask for a picture of me! And just do it at my own pace, as I please.

And for God's sake, tackle abuse when it actually happens. You'll find out who's a bot and who isn't by their usage patterns soon enough. Do not do any of this at sign-up. Or hell, use a CAPTCHA or whatever, I don't fucking care. There's so many millions of ways to skin this cat.

Facebook and especially Instagram. Both of them are fucking retarded.

To all the web developers out there that use email validation, stop using a check for common domain names! If I try to sign up with my email address (something@coded-websites.be) it won't work! So stop doing that and use a RegEx please! Who has had this problem too?

At a restaurant in Augustow there was a sign: "please wait for the waiter"

it confused me. If I'm waiting for the waiter, then what/who's the waiter: the one who's being waited for or the one waiting?

If I'm waiting for the waiter, do I become the waiter?

I think this is a good spot for a recursion bug to occur, resulting in waiter leaks.

ALMOST HALF AN HOUR SPENT TRYING TO LOG INTO MY FUCKING RASPBERRY PI OVER SSH.

you know what the problem is?

I’m not gonna tell you because I want you to feel the agony too.

> be me
> want to set up a nextcloud instance on pi to play with
> boot up
> ssh pi
*enter password*
*password incorrect*
^tries like 60 more times with different things
> pulls HDMI out of PC
> connect to pi direct
*please login*
*enter password*
Hackerman_voice_im_in.mp3
Wtf.xml
> check the logs
>try login from phone
Fuckyou.jpg
>Tries resetting password
Fuckyou-final.jpg
>tried logging into other pi
Fuckyou-final2.jpg
>*wtf’s harder*
Andthenithitme.png
>type @ sign
Pi: “
> OHHHHHHH

Most confusing sign-up form checkbox I've ever read:

"If you would like us to no longer continue to stop not sending you special deal and offers every week, please indicate you are inclined to yes by not checking the box."

source: online course

Hi! 😀 Great to meet you!!! I hope you are having a fabulous day 🐝. My name is John Doe 👔 at the TechyHelp 🤲 company. I know I might not look like much 🤪, but I will do my very best to make sure 🫵 YOU get my best service 👨‍🔧 to your hearts content 😌. I am sorry that this problem has been causing you pain 😥 it must be so awful dealing with this 😖 I can’t even imagine 🫣. I feel for you deeply 😮‍💨. It is my duty 🫡 and I will make sure to give you exactly what you are asking for and more. I am aching 😩 to satisfy you so you don’t feel anymore pain. I want to give you 🫴 so much pleasure today 🤤 to make sure you never have to think 🤔 about this problem ever again 🥰.

Upon applying some of my sleuthing 🕵️‍♂️ skills to use, I found that to restart your computer, press and hold Alt + F4

Let me know if this solves your problem!

I really hope I entertained you today 🥺. It is my pleasure ✨ to give you the most satisfaction possible, and I love that u came to me first 🤓. I know sometimes these problems can get built up 🥴 and really explode 🎊 💦 when you least expect it. So I hope I relieved some of that pressure today ☺️.

If you enjoyed my performance today, we would love to hear your feedback! 📝 Please sign up at the form below so that we can call you 📱 and hear about your experience 🌝. You can also take the 69 question survey on how well I serviced you today 😏.

Have a blessed day!
Stay safe!
Hope your life is amazing!
Happy pride month!
Peace, love, unity, respect!
Hugs and kisses!
Thanks a million!

- John

Byron (reckful) has committed suicide. He was one of the first big streamers on Twitch and a game developer.

He was suffering from depression and has been for quite some time. He always appears happy around friends. He did "joke" about committing suicide on his last stream. Watching the clip makes it obvious that there was some truth to the "joke".

Also, remember that you never know what someone online is suffering from or how that person may interpret a joke. Be careful and think about how your message is received.

Please seek help if you have suicidal thoughts or even signs of depression. It's not a sign of weakness. We all need help sometimes.

why people around me act like dump. i have recently worked with this site, which is written in php.

customer: (yelling) my website is hacked, fix it immediately
me : ok sir, we will restore your site immediately

after finishing talk with customer. i have checked website, there is no sign of website being hacked. i have checked server logs and website for security breach, there is no sign.

me: your website is not hacked, sir. can you please tell me where you have seen hacked page.
customer: look at those pages

after seen that page i facepalmed myself. it's a bug, person who created that page just splitted string without using any multibyte function, so page is showing with corrupted characters. i fixed it and problem solved. i have told about that bug, to the person who created that page.

me: hey you have used this function which is not able to handle multibyte characters, you should use multibyte character functions for that one.
person: every characters are the same. we shouldn't need to handle that way.

he is actually a senior developer. who don't even know the difference between unicode and ascii characters.

*Me studying at the library*

*dead silence*

*A guy sits across the table with his laptop*

*starts typing*
KLICK KLACK KLICK KLACK KLICK KLACK KLACK KLICKITY KLACK

Inner Me: :-| *wth*
You couldn't type any more louder tha..

KLICK KLACK KLICK KLACK KLICK KLACK KLACK KLACK KLICKITY KLACK KLACK KLACK...

Maybe the big "Silence Please" sign doesn't count keyboard noises

His laptop had one of those soft touch keyboards, that no one would hear anything if you type on them.
I guess he was trying to be a pretentious hax0r or something lol

He left soon enough, so, that was fortunate.. 😅

My company email:

- It's time for the monthly password change!
<writes the usual passwod>
- The password must be over 50 characters long!
<adds more letters>
- The password must have numbers!
<adds some numbers, though it's getting irritating>
- The password must have special characters!
<wtf?? Adds a pound character>
- The password must have at least 20 different special characters!
<da fuq???>
- The password must be at least 50 characters, only special characters and invisible tab/LF/CR characters and it must be changed daily!
<head explodes>
- Thank you! Now please sign in with your new password for 200 times per day.
<closes the laptop and starts using Remington type writer>

Usually these remainders start popping up during the 1st vacation day. When you return to the office, the account is already locked.

And then you wonder why people have the passwords written on a post-it or as a plain txt file in SkyDrive.

Apple: this AppleID has been locked for security reasons.
User: Sign Out
Apple: Enter the Apple ID password to turn off Find My iPhone.
User: Turn Off
Apple: You must enter both your Apple ID and password.
User: OK

Apple, please stop bugging me, all I need is to test my websites on Safari occasionally because some customers prefer to use iPhone. Just don't bother me with your Apple ID crap

I'm ashamed - but after knowing devRant for over 2 years, it is the first day i ever visit it NOT in the android app.

Nice website. Really cool.
but.
I
SEARCHED
5 MINUTES
FOR THE
FUCKING "+"-SIGN TO TELL YOU HOW COOL THE WEBSITE IS!!!!!!!!11!!
Please. Make it like 5times bigger.

You know, I am astonished at the number of people here that use(d) Facebook. It's even more amazing that these same people are actually surprised that all this shit happened with their data.

I don't have a Facebook account, or Instagram, or Twitter, etc. When this stuff first started coming out, people kept telling me to sign up for accounts.

I refused, telling them that I didn't want to give my private information to a third party that I didn't even know. And not only that, but they can use the private information about you in any way they wish and also sell it to third parties.

I was of course told to take off my tinfoil hat... and it's only now that people are realizing that they are giving away potentially private information to people they don't know?

If I came to your door and asked you everyday to send everything you did that day to me so that I could file it away and use it as I please, you would probably tell me to get the hell off your property.

It just blows me away that if you put that same offer in the format of a website, suddenly people are begging to give you their data.

It's fucking lunacy... 😞

"We'll reach you out soon"

This is a sign you got rejected without hurting you.

"How do you see yourself few years from now?"
Is a sign that your employer would end your contract or you get to be terminated if you say that you will not be in their company.

"What's your expected salary?"
If you went overboard, they won't accept you. You either lower it or never give a fixed salary.

God why did no one tell me about these sooner. I'm facing mind-reading interviewer/recruiter/hr just to please them.

Mail from Microsoft: sign in to see payment details.
User clicks on the link (once).

Microsoft:

Sign in to continue to Microsoft

Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now. Please try again later.

The Microsoft account login server has detected too many repeated authentication attempts. Please wait a moment and try again.

I was just going to sign up for a new ISP when they asked for my email. But they managed to screw up the email form validation by only allowing domains with the tld comprising of two or three characters! My email address ends with “.blog” so had to use my university email 😠
Please follow the RFC

I am not the only one that has ranted about this but it needs to be repeated: FUCK QUORA

Can't they just please go out of business already? Services that force you to sign up to read stuff are making me want to torture the company's decision makers slowly to death anyways. Also fuck reddit for promoting their absolute garbage app that adds ZERO value to the reddit experience other than bugs and really shitty loading times.

(Part 2/2?)

THE RAT-RACE ARC:

I get a mail 2 months into this fiasco telling me to register on their website and take up another test. I was already over with my emergency and was working my full-time default. (Fortunately I found another internship during this time which was one of the best initiatives I've worked with).

It asks me to register as a new user, take up the test and "share" my results. Not pushing it on insta/fb but legitimately share my test results link to my friends manually like a referral code. The more shares the more marks I'll get in the test. Why the test you ask. Of course to sign you up for the same Whatsapp trickery bullshit.

Luckily these nutcases didn't know they could be bypassed. I simply opened the link in incognito and logged in with my own account and that counted as a point. So I automated that shit.

Surprise surprise. The same fucking "Hello everyone" message into my mail. To my surprise I was relatively lucky to get ghosted after my attempt. This story is quite depressing in general cases. You're supposed to do this assignment shit for 2 months and then they ask for 2000 INR for a training period, past which you are paid between 1000/- and 7000/-. Though I didn't get the chance but I'm willing to bet you get 1000/- per month in a 2-MONTH INTERNSHIP. WTF.

You also have the other option of ranking first in their 3 consecutive competition that they hold. The theme is again to create chunks of their actual outsourced work.

WHY NOW:

The reason why this rant sparked is because I recently received an email with my results of the aptitude exam that I first took before the Whatsapp fiasco. I imagine they just pushed out a new update to their test thingy and forgot to set it's limit.

THE CORRECTION ARC:

I pushed this message to Internshala. They were kind enough to remove them from their website. I also shot down their Angel and Indeed listings. I sent a strongly worded email counting their con-artist operations and how I've alerted authorities (obviously a bluff but I was enjoying it). They most probably are not affected by this though. They might still be continuing their operations on their website.

I'm sharing the story here with the moral of:

Don't do jackshit if they're not compensating you for it

Always check for reviews before you start working at a place.

Be cautious of bulk messages (and the infamous HEY GUYS!! opening)

Don't do anything outside your work specification at least while doing an assignment.

You're free to question and inquire respectfully about the proceedings.

If you're good at your job you'll get good working place. No need to crush yourself with an oppressive job due to external restrictions.

And if you manage a company, please don't take advantage of helplessness.

There's no good ending to this tale as I have not received a follow-up. Though I want to see scumbags of their calibre shot down without remorse.

Good bye and thank you for listening.

How to make me not want to
ever contribute to you:

'Please read and sign this CLA'

( Also telling me that shit only whenI try
opening a PR, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU )

Can we please make a Over Engineered Section....

This happened a couple of weeks ago...
Hey platform engineer team, we need a environment spun up, it's a static site, THATS IT!

PE Team response.. okay give us a 2 weeks we need to write some terraform, update some terraform module, need you to sign your life away as the aws account owner, then use this internal application to spin up a static site, then customize the yml file to use nuxt, then we will need you to use this other internal tool to push to prod...

ME: ITS a static site... all I need is a s3 bucket, cloudfront, and circleci

I had to do a double take... Needless to say I can't sign in for shit, fucknows what mental finger dance I did on the shift key when signing up to these guys...

Also: forgotten password is "please type your email, if there's an account associated to this email address we'll fucking email it with password reset instructions"...

Fucking arsehole fucks, I just wanna pay my fucking energy bill.

Update: for those of you who know cougar woman/ my self proclaimed "work mom" in my previous posts (bitch who keeps stealing my lunch), yesterday she really tipped me over the edge. So I'm fucking hauling ass on my sprint work because I had to take over another team member's tasks (because he "doesn't have time" for it being prod support but all I see him doing is shitposting at his desk) and someone from another team asked the cougar a question about something. she comes up to me all demanding like "HEY you, you got the worksapce open?"
I was like um... no I don't. I'm working on the other application.
and then she's like "Look at my laptop and show him". Okay bitch let me just drop everything I'm doing to help a random person. The fact that she commanded me instead of just asking me pissed me off. Not even a single sign of "please". I'm tired of her truly. She is a snake. Even to her friend on our team. Every time he's out she's like "hey where is _____? huh why isn't he here??? hmmm" in an instigating way to remind everyone that he might've taken off for no reason. When I was too sick to volunteer at an event she organized in the morning on Saturday, she asked me the following Monday, "oh did you drink too much? lmao. a spiteful, grudge holding bitch for sure

I have a project idea:
Web app that will automatically generate random like-a-facebook project ideas that will handle the buisness side and automatically post that offer on multiple forums, linkedin and send email with it. All using AI, Nural Networks, Big Data and VR.

Seriously, once fucking more some african or indian guy messages me to work for his awesome "its like a facebook but different" idea where he needs "just backend, frontend and mobile apps" and that he will just "handle the rest" and that "have no money now but after I sign a NDA he will give me some shares", I am gonna find him and shit on his head. Monday did not even ended yet and I already read 9 "offers" like this on my mail and facebook, only one guy white, rest indians or africans.

Why are then people suprised that we consider black and indian devs as a fucking joke 90% of the time. I have a indian dev friend and he could not find a dev job for 2 months, because everyone would rather work with less skilled asian / white guy than indian / black guy. This is not about racism, but about those retards that are acting like idiots. Hope I did not offend anyone (unless you do shit like this, then, please just smash your keyboard over your head).

Words like AI and neural networks are used just to lure the investors to our gofundme campain and steal their money after 2 years of silence.

So I work for an IT consulting firm (web development) and was hired by a customer 7 months ago for coaching Git, implementation of VueJS on the front-end and fostering teamwork with devs who'd been in their solo comfort zone for the last 15 years.
I asked for confirmation multiple times on whether they were sure they wanted to go through with a bigger investment in front-end. Confirm they did, multiple times.

After half the team's initial enthusiasm faded (after 1 month), the 'senior' of them who's worked there for 18 years on a single -in the end, failed- project got a burn-out after half a week of showing up (without doing actual work) from the stress, and started whining about it with management that has no technical clue whatsoever. This and other petty office politics lead to the dumbest organizational and technical decisions I've seen in my short 5-year career (splitting a Laravel app that uses the same database in two, replacing docker container deployment with manual ssh'ing and symlinking, duplicating all the models, controllers, splitting a team in two, decreasing productivity, replacing project management dashboards with ad-hoc mail instructions and direct requests).

Out of curiosity I did a git log --author --no-merges with the senior's name on the 2 projects he was supposed to help on, and that turned up... ZERO commits. Now the dept. hired 3 new developers with no prior experience, and it's sad to see the seniors teach them "copy paste" as the developer's main reflex.

Through these 7 months I had to endure increasingly vicious sneers from the IT architect -in name only- who gets offended and hysterical at every person who dares offer suggestions. Her not-so-implicit insinuation is that it's all my fault because I implemented Vue front-end (as they requested), she has been doing this for months, every meeting at least once (and she makes sure other attendees notice). Extra background: She's already had 2 official complaints for verbal abuse in the past, and she just stressed another good developer into smoking again.

Now I present her my timesheet for January, she abuses her power by refusing to sign it unless I remove a day of work.
Earlier this week I asked her politely to please stop her unjust guilt-tripping to which she shouted "You'll just have to cope with that!", and I walked out of the room calmly (in order to avoid losing my nerves). She does this purely as a statement, and I know she does it out of bad faith (she doesn't actually care, as she doesn't manage the budgets). She knows she wields more power over me than the internal devs (I am consultant, so negative reviews for me could delay further salary raises).

I just don't know how to handle this person: I can't get a word in with her, or she starts shouting, and it's impossible to change her (completely inaccurate technological) perception.

Windows 10 Action Center yesterday alerted me to set a PIN for my laptop.

Turned on PC this morning and typed in my regular password then realized it wanted the PIN.

Thinking how this feature came to be....

1. Windows wants you to link your login to your Microsoft/Hotmail Account and it makes it a pain in the ass to set a seperate one (Windows 8)
2. 2018 arrived an logins are a pain, everything is autologin or PIN/code based (aka short 'unsecure' passwords)
3. MS backtracks and realizes email logins are too long so they make a partial fix which basically reverts back to the pre-Win8 days of a seperate system login.. except now its called a new feature!

I realized now under enter a PIN the reason for the checkbox that says: Allow symbols and letters. It's a nice way of saying: please type in your old password again.

**Also rant #2: cuz i dont feel like waiting 1hr**
I felt great yesterday when my boss told me apparantly I have like an Expert designation at the company.

Feel like crap today cuz some user is complaining about some report:
- they asked us to create months ago
- now complaining its all wrong but never gave any formal requirements and actually did sign off on it during testing
- FIXED ASAP

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!! STOP MAKING IT SOUND LIKE IT'S MY FAULT U CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO PROVIDE CLEAR REQUIREMENTS AND THEN TAKING FOREVER TO COME BACK WITH UR PROBLEMS AND NOW NEED IT FIXED ASAP BY USING A NEW DATA SOURCE THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK IS SINCE U USED A RANDOM ABBREVIATION LIKE I CAN MIND READ.

IF I COULD MINDREAD, ID BE WORKING ON A PLAN TO GET UR ASS FIRED.....

Happy friday and long weekend... Got 3 days to relax before i need to deal with this shit again...

Rant #1
I’ve got a new client wanting me to take over their website, okay... I’ll take care of you.

What’s the hold up?
1. Anon, Get ahold of this person, they’ve got the info you’ll need.
2. We will get together sometime to go over paperwork.
3. We are waiting on the board to sign off on a contract switch.
4. I’m needing this changed immediately on the site or we will be fined, but I understand you don’t have the information to make that change - can you get ahold of X to get the information?
5. *gets ahold of X* - still waiting on Y to approve contract release and change.

Listen, I have my faults too on running my own business but at least I know what I can and can’t do when either accepting or turning away a client. I’d be happy to work on your website, but you’ve got to get approval from those on your team before you make a change, that’s not on me. It’s cool that you need whatever changed on your site before the end of the week, but I can’t help you until I’m officially signed on. Please don’t request content change when I don’t have access to the content to change it.

Go get approval by your team first before you call me about making changes to your site, we haven’t even exchanged any information or paperwork yet.

Rant #2
If you call me again knowing that I’m on a two month leave from work, I’ll slit your throat and fuck the wound. It’s 1:40. There are other techs, you’ve got the on-call list in front of you. I’m flattered you went through the trouble of finding my PERSONAL NUMBER, but I have rants to write damn it.

I wanna make a c+friends language and it'd be dev friendly and will throw lots of errors on compile to show love. Also it'll compile slower with each newline so you can always say "it's compiling" there will be classes but people instead and then instead of new I'll have create. As for loops let's go with a friendly do while loop and dontdo while as normal while or dowith i while to have a friendly for loop. Instead of ifs let's say decide() and instead of else let's have or. Instead of functions I'll have well you need no functions you'll have jumps and tests before jumps just like assembly has. Oh and everything will be a pointer because then it runs nicer. To create a variable you can't use = because that's the equal sign in decide you need to use "var int myint is 69" because why not. Then to print to the console "console.outputstream.out(myint)" instead of threads I'll have please like "please work" where work is a jump target. I hope you'll enjoy this language ^^

If languages had slogans...

1) Java -- Buy one get two for free on your delicious NPEs.

2) C -- I burn way too much calories talking, let's do some sign language. Now see over there... 👉

3) Python -- Missing semi-colon? Old method. Just add an extra space and watch the world burn.

4) C++ -- My ancestors made a lot of mistakes, let's fix it with more mistakes.

5) Go -- Meh. I can't believe Google can be this lazy with names.

6) Dart -- I'm the new famous.

7) PHP -- To hide your secrets. Call us on 0700 error_reporting(0)

8) JavaScript -- Asynchronous my ass!

9) Lua -- Beginners love us because arrays start at 1

10) Kotlin -- You heard right. Java is stupid!

11) Swift -- Ahhh... I'm tasty, I'm gonna die, someone please give me some memory.

12) COBOL -- I give jobs to the unemployed.

13) Rust -- I'm good at garbage collection, hence my name.

14) C# -- I am cross-platform because I see sharp.

15) VB -- 🙄

16) F# -- 😴

So I downloaded this game (to be fair, it is a preview version for a kickstarter project) and I had to crate an account with my mail address in order to sign in. Fair enough, I fill in this form and it says "invalid mail adress". It came to my attention that the form automatically put a space behind the mail adress so I had removed it. After I put back the space everything worked, but now I can't sign in because I didn't get the confirmation email (I assume because they sent it to [my email]+[space] instead of just my email). Currently chatting with the support guy, seems like a nice guy and I can't blame them because my mistakes are often even dumber, but before you post a preview version of your product online as a first impression, check if it even works. Please. Especially if the reason for posting it online is asking people for money.

Okay I'm guessing everyone here has experienced something like this but...

I dev for Company A and we have various other companies and clients utilize our service. Now, a client from Company B comes to us and says that they are having problems signing in. Apparently the page just tells them "Can't sign in".

"That's odd," I think to myself, "because our failed sign-in messages aren't that terse and usually tell you why."

I look on the system, client is registered under Company B and has verified their email address. All good there. My guess? Trying to sign in to the wrong site (we have a jobs site too) because that sometimes comes up first on the googs.

We get an email from client just now: "Hi, still can't sign in. Please see screenshot below."

I shit you not, she was trying to sign in to her own company's website that clearly had "Company B" written above the sign in box.

Frak Yahoo!
Son of a duck!
Why don't you just let me delete my account?!
>Sign In
>Please change your password
*changes password*
>Sign In
>We sent a code to your recovery email
*Signs in with the code
>Oops, can't load your emails temporarily
(And the first and only email it loads is "Find your right life partner!")
*On a quest to find the hidden treasure of the Delete Account link*
?
>Read this before you delete your account
>Continue to terminate your account
*Delete*
>Oops, can't delete your account for some reason, try again later
*Nothing else works on the page*
*One link works - Cancel*
>Sign In to Delete your account
>>Repeat
Trucking motherduck!

Why is deleting accounts such a hard thing to do?

Please sign this NDA

“httpOnly cookies prevent XSS attacks”… wow.
As if not being able to get your cookies is going to stop me from doing bad things.

When I'm in via XSS, it's over. I'm changing the page content to your sign-in form with “please sign in again” notice, but it sends email/password straight to me. What percentage of users is going to enter their data? What do you think? With password managers prefilling data, and the annoyance being one “enter” hit away, I think a lot of users will fall for that. No one, including you, will be able to tell the difference without devTools.
You can rotate the session token, but good luck rotating the user's password.

Oh, did I tell you I could register a service worker using XSS that will be running in background FOREVER?

But don't listen to me. Don't think. Just use httpOnly and hope for the best. After all, your favorite dev youtuber said they could protect you from XSS.

Let me rant! I don’t usually do this but this is just frustrating and draining. Please tell me if im wrong. We have authentication that needs to be refactored. I was assigned on this issue. Im a junior btw. I also attached an image of my proposals. The issue of the old way of our signup process is that when validation fails they will keep on accepting the TaC (terms and conditions) and on our create method we have the validation and creating the user. Basically if User.create(user_params) create else throw invalid end. (Imma take a photo later and show it you)which needs to be refactored. So I created a proposal 1. On my first proposal I could create a middleware to check if the body is correct or valid if its valid show the TaCs and if they accept thats the moment the user is created. There is also additional delete user because DoE told me that we dont need middlewares we have before and after hooks! (I wanted to puke here clearly he doesn’t understand the request and response cycle and separation of concerns) anyway, so if middleware is not accepted then i have to delete the user if they dont accept the TaCs. Proposal 2. If they dont want me to touch the create method i could just show the TaCs and if they dont accept then redirect if they do then show form and do the sign process.

This whats weird (weird because he has a lot of experience and has master or phd) he proposes to create a method called validate (this method is in the same controller as the create, i think hes thinking about hooks) call it first and if it fails then response with error and dont save user, heres the a weird part again he wants me to manually check on each entity. Like User.find_by_email(bs@g.com) something like that and on my mind wtf. Isnt it the same as User.create(user_params) because this will return false if paras are invalid?? (I might be wrong here)

This is not the first time though He proposes solutions that are complex, inefficient, unmaintainable. And i think he doesnt understand ruby on rails or webdev in particular. This the first time i complained or I never complained because im thinking im just a junior and he hs more experience and has a higher degree. This is mot the case here though. I guess not all person who has a higher degree are right. To all self thought and bachelors im telling you not all people who went to prestige university and has a higher degree are correct and right all the time. Anyway ill continue later and do what he says. Let me know if im wrong please. Thanks

Im getting stalked so much by recruiters right now! Im ignoring a call every 10 minutes and writing back on mail/linkedin ever 15. Fuck offff! Please!

Im collecting all names, mails and numbers and maybe i’ll just fucking mass mail them all haha. And after that sign them up for freaking midgetporn muahahaha

Have you ever watched Idiocracy? Please do. Especially the smart ones in this platform. I'm afraid it might just be the most accurate forecast of the future of humankind. I've been mentioning this movie for years.

Politics, genZ, etc. - the trend is already there.

I don't have a TV. Mostly bcz I have better things to do with my time than watch ads and tv shows.
In youtube there are people who do reviews of various things. A few days ago my wife came across one that reviews episodes of a tv show that, apparently, is shown on one of the most popular Lithuanian TV channels. It's called Undress. The idea is that 2 people, a man and a woman, meet in a studio in front of a camera, do some small talk and then undress each other. Then they go to a bed in the studio and do various tasks: provokative questions, touching, kissing, etc., occasional slips of nudity

Usually girls are strippers, porn actresses, whores, etc. Guys are salesmen, bus drivers, finance workers, etc.

It's awkward and sad to watch it. But whats even more sad is that it's broadcasted on a TV and people find it entertaining to watch. Even morevsad is that there are people who willingly sign up as participants, knowing the whole nation will be watching and they seem to enjoy it.

W.T.F... Idiocracy

Microsoft, please stop the incomprehensible work vs. school account stuff and if you want to mail me a login code, then please actually do send an email. What's wrong with Microsoft Teams and office always giving its users headaches already when trying to log in?

A customer sent me a "FindTime" link, something like Calendso / Calendly, but "powered" by Microsoft Office. Seems that their power is off again, like ever so often. Microsoft: "can't access your account: You can't sign in here with a personal account. Use your work or school account instead."

Okay, go to bing, and search your error message. Try to use bing page to log in to my account: Microsoft: "We emailed a code." (No you didn't. At least I never received anything. And, yes, I did check my spam folder!) Microsoft: "Other ways to sign in: use Microsoft Authenticator".

me: "dear customer, please feel free to pick any time and date that matches your preference, as the FindTime link has been impossible to use".

How can Microsoft make me feel so dumb again, after more than 20 years as a developer? Have they ever heard about usability?

Need a serious help as I can't find a solution to this. My Google search (homepage + results) changes the language to a regional one on every refresh. I want it back to English, I even changed search language setting and the account language for all apps to english. When it hinted, "some apps don't have the same language" in a toast message, I updated that too.

Now I don't understand what is causing this. Here's what I tried. I reinstalled chrome. Removed all my extensions. Used the chrome malicious software detection. Used a different browser- Edge.

I see this is a problem with my Google account as this only happens after I sign in. The language automatically changes to a random regional language, but the search language settings still show English selected.

I checked all the apps authorized with my account but there's nothing suspicious there.
I added "?hl=en" to the url as a temporary fix but that doesn't really help much if I'm on another device. I also found some video suggesting to add "/ncr" to the url. It somehow fixed this for like 10 secs. and then I refreshed to see- back to the same problem.

I tried looking for similar issues and even asked a question on google forums but no luck. Somehow after an hour of repeating the same process of switching the language in settings, it seemed like it got fixed. Until now, where I logged into another device and the issue is back.

Any help? Please? Thanks. :)

Ok, @jestdotty , today, i give up on china.

I've been messaging with a rep who is taking the time to keep editing a contract... Im pretty sure she was genuinely trying...

As typing this we finally got to a 'correct enough' contract... so I could click the damn pay button.

Over the past 7 hrs.. at 3 back and forth exchabges and modifications at each issue:
1. Used previous PI from the dude i gave up on... so had a qty at 12 when only 11 exist a colour wrong for a crate of items, and listed the dude i refused to sign a contract under listed as the rep.

2. Now the item subtotals were off... just a few pennies or so... assumed she left the usd prices but calculated with ¥... didn't want alibaba to reject in a day so i checked if it was noted anywhere... Oh boy was it... VERY clearly, all caps, bold in the body of the total row... that the total was, exactly, 11680 (spelled out ofc) RMB aka ¥ chinese yen. I told her this, she sends me a cropped shot of the $ numeric total field... so i sent her the giant all caps bolded line, the one thatd typically be considered final say in most international courts... no clue where that value came from, it had zero relation to any actual values... and i was as curious as when chatGPT creates totally new, unique, lyrics for satirical german songs... i really tried.

3. Wrong incoterms (trade terms... abbreviated to a few letters... had it that I'd be physically going to the tbd port to accept/clear customs... no)

4. Technically it was accurate (well a few strange subtotals since she used ¥ half the time... told her it was fine as long as it had the company name on the label (gave 3 full examples to use whichever)
I get the contract ...shipping...
"To: Sara"
Then the right address (seriously wtf)

5. I point this out and carefully explain in mostly just examples and "the us government doesn't like anything being sent to just a first name, there's no legal way to sign for acceptance"

6. She gets stressed enough to tell me she doesn't have time to keep editing (since this horrid pile of poor formatting was just thrown at her a day ago... i dont point out the ridiculous irony)

7. Imo, the highlight of my night/morning... in her stress she promises me it'll ship right... sooo many issues there...
Even if it was delivered/allowed a signature for "sara" for 7ish large boxes just off a sea freight from china to a residence in the middle of a corn field (which tbh would be hysterical)...the IRS would have a valid reason to audit me... theyve done it w/o valid reasons several times, since I was 18 doing international trade and a contractual employee of a large gambling company, quarterly reporting, and ofc declaring more than my taxes in donating melted glass and crane game prizes...yea, they hate me and always do all that work to find the same thing... i underdeclare charity by 10%.

The entire concept of getting USA mail, even when pristine and you know logistics agents in every major company and port or distribution center, to properly deliver anything... ROFLOL ... and im already on some 'open and check everything' list with customs for a hysterical misconception they made years ago... cant/shouldn't get into detail publicly... but it was caused because 2 packages from different cities in China were both going to my address/through customs at the same time... package 1, 75 of those cheap af ball-pit hollow plastic balls for a 2yr old's bday(very delayed) package 2. 75 rechargeable batteries (the kind in power banks) 9600mah.

8. Told her to change "sara" to company name... glad it's registered to this address still.

It took me under 5min to type this... had to get the WTF out.

Dear AliBaba, please give an option to allow buyers to create the supply side contract for review, not just req modification... please?

Thinking very VERY seriously about pushing the button on this.

iMac 10-core Xeon W, 64GB DDR4, Radeon Pro Vega 64X, 2TB SSD

$6,727 plus tax $403.62 and then another hundred for shipping before fucking December in 'rona.

Could sign up for Apple Pay and do $600 payments for 12 months 0 APR... shouldn't be too bad of a problem provided the world holds together that long... And if it doesn't, then this is my last computer... and I guess it'd be nice to go into the afterworld with a freshly upgraded rig.

IDK, Please talk some sense into me about how stupid this would be.

Also to factor in... I need to buy a new machine one way or another SOON. Or else I need to wipe my main and be out of commission for at least 3-4 days which could cost me a few grand on its own... and then also still buy a lesser mac for my daughter.

Why an iMac and not a cheese grater similarly priced? If I get the iMac I can give my current iMac to my daughter for school. My old 2015 iMac isn't holding up to my use anymore, but should be fine for a few more years for a high schooler to work on. If I get a cheese grader fine, but factor in at least another $300 for a minimum 27" 2K monitor.

Any reason to even think of a refurb trash can design? Are they too old now?

General thoughts on why this entire rant is retarded? Like. I too dislike Apple, but I need them. It's love/hate. But god if I do this I'm buckling in for the next 5 years... tax write off would be nice I guess.

Can't really back down the specs any because I dual boot windows and do some gaming. Need 2TB so I can give Windows and Mac a TB each (and I still have 8TB external).

Don't really want to go lower than the Vega 64X because even that benchmarks poorly against many cheaper cards... for gaming (but does do better for some other tasks)...

Ugh... talk me into or out of buying another god awful expensive mac.

Why does my Android camera app mirror my selfies, and why again, as I already turned this off some time ago. Only noticed when there was a sign in the background. Annoying misfeature, wtf (yes, please tell me why this is a great feature for you, this might actually make me happier)

Hey hackers,

Let's talk about the problem statement first!
In software engineering, engineers often procrastinate when it comes to writing comments for documentation purposes. As they delay properly documenting their codebase, they are even more likely to procrastinate on updating their previously written comments when they make changes to their functions or code. This can lead to chaotic and buggy code, and if not addressed, it completely obsolete or even counter intuitive the purpose of comments in the code.

Solution!
A tool that automatically detects changes in a function or code and compares them with the current comment description. If there is a discrepancy between the code and the comment, the tool either automatically updates the comment or allows the user to manually select the code and its associated comment to directly make changes using LLM's.

So, my question is: Is this idea worth working on? Is it a real problem, or am I just overthinking it? If anyone has a better idea, please share it in the comments. Also, if someone is working on this problem already or planning to work on this in future, we can collaborate. This will be an open-source project.

Sign out, Peace!

github: priyanshu-kun/project-kento

Just please make the rule, if you don't have a cookie, don't show the pop up asking you to register for shit. If I haven't been to your site before, I DON'T WANT TO SIGN UP TO ANYTHING BADGER TURD!! Are there people that actually do that? If so, they deserve a whole evening talking to a project manager about their next great idea. Or, being flayed with a potato peeler. Which ever is worse.

Im trying to do onboarding to work for this client.

The job app doesnt say accounting or accountant on it.

They congratulate me and pleasantries and eventually say i have to accept nearly 4k check for “training materials”.

So i accept the check, they then say i have to buy installation and equipment including 2 safes (??) and other accounting training.

I say i did not sign up to be an accountant and i want other jobs instead.

They say i should wire the money back to their wire accounts.

So i do. Im offered two other jobs from this client and another check for even more in the mail.

They say i need to cash this check to begin training for these jobs.

I ask for a list if training materials and procedures for these jobs, and they still say cash the check even after i verify to them that i do not need / already have these materials.

Please give me insights on this because im extremely confused and frustrated with these people and i want my paycheck.