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Hey everyone,
First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!
Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):
- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)
Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).
We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:
- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.
- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.
- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.
- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.
- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.
There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.
We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.
2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.
Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!
Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim
48 -
When the PM knows their shit and rejects the clients request for Wordpress and says the site is not a freakin blog.8
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PM emailed me a document from a customer to distribute it to the right people.
Me (in my head): WTF? You are the PM, that's your fucking job.
But I opened the document and read it. Some blah about requirements we discussed with the customer earlier. And the request to sign it as agreement on the requirements. The customer even put the names of the people at the end, he suspected to be the right ones.
So I send an email back to PM that this is project stuff, not my business. Case closed for me.
Half an our later PM enters my office, telling me he thought I was the right guy for this topic and he didn't know who else could be interested in it.
So I told him that this document is about defining project requirements and that he could have sent it to the people that are mentioned at the end of the document.
Turned out he didn't even opened the document. F...A... Wasted my time instead of doing his job.
Guess next time I'll be reading his documents at as good as he does. -
Our PM is on vacation. And our CTO/CEO takes control of the PM role.
So today he decided it was time to just start a customer change request. Regardless of the customer not having approved the actual solution and estimate.
He just said that he did not want to waste any more time talking to the customer. Now they are gonna get what ever he thinks they want.
I predict this to backfire in a fabulous way. What could possible go wrong🤔4 -
[ Coworker walks up to my desk at 4:15 PM ]
Coworker: "Hey man. We had to make a few changes to the codebase because one of our unit tests were failing. Can you take a look at a pull request for me?"
Me: "Yeah sure, how many files?"
C: "About 600"
Me: [ thinking it might just be a ton of libraries or gradle shit] "...ooookaayyyy... that's a lot but doable... how many lines?"
C: “128,000 lines"
Me: "Fuck you"11 -
Frequently used answers :)
UI developer - I think API is not working
Backend developer - Front end is not sending the request correctly
Tester - Testing! Testing!
UI/UX - As per android/ios standards...
QA - Let me check one more time
PM - Let us have another meeting and get on the same page
Dev-Ops - It's very complicated you know
CTO - We're working on a next-gen solution
Founder - Let us build something that no one has built, something similar to what google...facebook...
Cridits: My EX-CPO5 -
I think I want to quit my first applicantion developer job 6 months in because of just how bad the code and deployment and.. Just everything, is.
I'm a C#/.net developer. Currently I'm working on some asp.net and sql stuff for this company.
We have no code standards. Our project manager is somewhere between useless and determinental. Our clients are unreasonable (its the government, so im a bit stifled on what I can say.) and expect absurd things from us. We have 0 automated tests and before I arrived all our infrastructure wasn't correct to our documentation... And we barely had any documentation to begin with.
The code is another horror story. It's out sourced C# asp.net, js and SQL code.. And to very bad programmers in India, no offense to the good ones, I know you exist. Its all spagheti. And half of it isn't spelled correctly.
We have a single, massive constant class that probably has over 2000 constants, I don't care to count. Our SQL projects are a mess with tons of quick fix scripts to run pre and post publishing. Our folder structure makes no sense (We have root/js and root/js1 to make you cringe.) our javascript is majoritly on the asp.net pages themselves inline, so we don't even have minification most of the time.
It's... God awful. The result of a billion and one quick fixes that nobody documented. The configuration alone has to have the same value put multiple times. And now our senior developer is getting the outsourced department to work on moving every SINGLE NORMAL STRING INTO THE DATABASE. That's right. Rather then putting them into some local resource file or anything sane, our website will now be drawing every single standard string from the database. Our SENIOR DEVELOPER thinks this is a good idea. I don't need to go into detail about how slow this is. Want to do it on boot? Fine. But they do it every time the page loads. It's absurd.
Our sql database design is an absolute atrocity. You have to join several tables together just to get anything done. Half of our SP's are failing all the time because nobody really understands the design. Its gloriously awful its like.. The epitome of failed database designs.
But rather then taking a step back and dealing with all the issues, we keep adding new features and other ones get left in the dust. Hell, we don't even have complete browser support yet. There were things on the website that were still running SILVERLIGHT. In 2019. I don't even know how to feel about it.
I brought up our insane technical debt to our PM who told me that we don't have time to worry about things like technical debt. They also wouldn't spend the time to teach me anything, saying they would rather outsource everything then take the time to teach me. So i did. I learned a huge chunk of it myself.
But calling this a developer job was a sick, twisted joke. All our lives revolve around bugnet. Our work is our BN's. So every issue the client emails about becomes BN's. I haven't developed anything. All I've done is clean up others mess.
Except for the one time they did have me develop something. And I did it right and took my time. And then they told me it took too long, forced me to release before it was ready, even though I had never worked on what I was doing before. And it worked. I did it.
They then told me it likely wouldn't even be used anyway. I wasn't very happy at all.
I then discovered quickly the horrors of wanting to make changes on production. In order to make changes to it, we have to... Get this
Write a huge document explaining why. Not to our management. To the customer. The customer wants us to 'request' to fix our application.
I feel like I am literally against a wall. A huge massive wall. I can't get constent from my PM to fix the shitty code they have as a result of outsourcing. I can't make changes without the customer asking why I would work on something that doesn't add something new for them. And I can't ask for any sort of help, and half of the people I have to ask help from don't even speak english very well so it makes it double hard to understand anything.
But what can I do? If I leave my job it leaves a lasting stain on my record that I am unsure if I can shake off.
... Well, thats my tl;dr rant. Im a junior, so maybe idk what the hell im talking about.16 -
PM approves all UI and project gets assigned to me. He then makes tons of UI changes that will affect the workflow of the approved UI. To this point, code was clean and well documented. I request a few days to re arrange the code to reflect the new workflow. PM says: I need a minimal product. I don't need it clean. I want speed to ship and start marketing. That's where I stopped caring.. To the next dev, I am terribly sorry..2
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Episode 2 of this rant: https://devrant.io/rants/851636/...
PM went to meet with the provider and came back, so I had a talk with the PM and it went like this:
Me: so how did the meeting go? Hope they corporate with you
PM: *in a sarcastic voice* Bro, you need be a good dev, they told me only a good dev can implement Master Card API calls, and its all in the docs. That's all they told me, so you should know how the meeting went
Me: *there is no wifi in jail, there is no wifi in jail, there is no wifi in jail, there is no wifi in jail* Fine bro, I'll go back to school and come back after 12 years.
Seriously when I send the provider the request and the body and all they tell me is: You have an error, Id must be unique but they fail to point out the exact error or at least send me a valid ID to test, how does this make me the bad dev and him the genius that can run Apple, Google, MS all together at once!
What is even worse, when I called the provider he told me: Man transaction ID must always be unique, how could you not know this, how is Mastercard supposed to differentiate between transactions!!
But hey, no one told me transaction id must be unique, primary keys are never unique, like DUH!10 -
Let me tell you the story of how a feature request no one asked for got put in an early grave:
PM walks into weekly meeting with a single use case that one user called in about, despite never having this issue during the past year and a half that our app has been in production. PM's boss (genuinely one of the best people i have ever worked with) happens to sit in this particular meeting for no reason other than he felt like he should once in a while.
PM brings up use case and wants to devote 3 weeks' development time and another 3 weeks to test RIGHT NOW while other projects are already in motion. PM's boss speaks up with this: "Listen if this guy is really this upset, we can just tell him to build his own service. All the other end users have no problems with this, so it's not worth spending the resources on, i don't think."
And that is how i went from "this is bullshit" to "i love you" in the span of 20 minutes.2 -
Long but hilarious:
I was deeply concerned about how we have a single, non-paginated call to a backend service, returning hundreds of entries, which has to be enriched with constant data fetched from our db for each entry. FOR EACH ENTRY. AND FOR EACH REQUEST.
I voiced my concerns to my PM, who called me a "rage prophet" for it.
As expected, the call took 20-something seconds to complete.
Ten minutes before the CEO comes over to have a look, another dev changes his loosely-related service, and the entire super-heavy, sprawling abyss of enrichment pipeline returns in sub-second timing!!!
CEO: guys, this is too fast. You have to slow it down a bit. It doesn't seem reliable that we're able to get all this data immediately.
PM: you see, rage prophet, it all worked out in the end
Me: #$@%$&!!!!!2 -
Looks like the idiot changed their mind quite too early... This time ama do "1 != 1" cause I don't know what might come next. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
8 -
Client: Each invoice should be it's entity. It should only report it's own open amount. Any other open amounts remain on the other invoices.
Me: No problem. ::Sets invoices to only report own open amount::
PM: Hey, the invoices in UAT are not displaying the sum of all open bills.
Me: I know. The client wants each invoice to only report the open amount on that specific invoice.
PM: That can't be right, change it back before we give the client access to the UAT environment.
Me: No problem. ::reverts invoice changes::
Client: We are failing the invoices. The invoices should not be giving total open amounts for the account. Each invoice should only report the open amount for that invoice. We told the development about this...
PM: I see. I'll make sure he understands your request.
Me: ... ::reverts the revert::
PM: Hey, the invoices in UAT aren't giving a total of the open-
Me: OMFG. I just want this task closed!
Client: After the invoice work is done, we need to talk about past due amounts and how they are reported to customers.
PM: Sure thing. It is logical to give a total of a past due amount to the customer...
Me: ::Starts updating resume:: -
PM: "Please try to prioritize this request that we made last Friday at 5pm over all your other high priority stuff we know you're busy and we should have requested this 3 months ago... but now we need to deliver next week and well we need it"
5 minutes later "When can you deliver that?"
Another 5 minutes later "Sorry can you give me that delivery date? We REALLY need it"
Well maybe if you leave me in peace and I can concentrate on my job rather than answering silly requests I can make up an idea of how much time I need to deliver... but of course I'm just a code monkey, I press some randome keys and the magic happens. -
Episode 3 of this rant: https://devrant.io/rants/871827/...
Me: So I'm going an API call to Mastercard but they don't give us back CreditCard token to save.
Provider: Ya man you need to curl a request in your code to get the token...blahblahblah.... man you need to know these things they are not an easy things to be done, just paste curl code on MasterCard website into your code and it will work
Me: *ignores his shit talk and proceed to test*
*5 minutes later*
MasterCard Server: error.cause=INVALID_REQUEST&error.explanation=Invalid+credentials.&result=ERROR
Me: *calls provider and tell him*
Provider: Oh sorry, we need to enable this feature for your account.
devRant people please, give me one reason why I should not leave this field, and maybe also leave this life knowing there are this type of people alive.
Thank you :)2 -
Client writes a bug report: This and that doesn't work.
Me: This functionality never was implemented. Please open a feature request.
Client: But this is a bug. Without this feature, the service won't work as we expect.
Me: But this wasn't in the requirements for release. So you have to contact the PM for a feature request.
Client: THIS IS A BUG! FIX IT!
Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF! THIS IS A NEW FEATURE AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!
Unfortunately, I never sent the mail. But I kept it in the drafts. Maybe someday...1 -
Had this PM who would call me while intoxicated mid afternoon. He would come up with these random ideas, and request them be implemented into the web app we were building for him. One time he called me saying "I have an idea for a page, but so far just the page's title. I'll call you back and tell you what to put on it."5
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A few years ago we had a pm/senior developer join us and he became my superior. His portfolio was all Microsoft Dev examples and his only answer to any request was yes two weeks.
After a couple of months I had to leave the company because I was working 14 hour days to keep on top the work the muppet was piling up2 -
Literally the first rant I made when I joined devRant was about this very piece of advice.
Me: "The build in testing is broken, this is how we fix it"
PM: "They haven't noticed yet, work on the feature request"
https://devrant.io/rants/225727/...2 -
So what's up with bosses and employees that sporadically ask you to respond fast (like in the hour) to any request even though it is not an emergency? I feel like 50% of the people I work with are constantly in fireman mode, but never stop to think why they work like this.
When it comes to implementing helpful processes or improving shitty processes, I always get the "we don't have time, we are overbooked for this quarter." We never have time to improve and it fucking sucks.
Also, stop bothering me at 9-10 PM or during the weekends you bunch of no-lives. Maybe work smarter and less often?
It honestly makes me less motivated to work and depresses me a bit. I'm starting to hate my job.2 -
A while a go, we got a Feature Request by our client, which was a bit of a stretch. and by a bit of a stretch i mean horrible shit which is totally unusable, a technical nightmare to implement with almost no accessable data.
well, the pm gave me the Ticket. when I First read it, I wanted to puke.
since the pm wasnt in a good mood, i just wrote a large comment on where to implement that Feature to be a much less pain in the ass.
many discussions with the pm and the Client later, i Had to implement it the way, they wanted. so i started.
after one and a half week, i was almost ready, just a few hours left and the nightmare would be over
what i didnt know is that the Client came over to discuss a few things with my Boss
suddenly my Boss walks in and asked, how much im ready
then He told me THE message
i should should Revert everything ive done the last 1 1/2 weeks and implement the Feature the way, i told was better
worst friday ever -
TLDR: Detect site visitors browser and conditionally load a Citrix frame rather than rendering the site
The request came about 3 days after launching a new project to production. For several months before that moment we had reviewed and confirmed the supported browser matrix. As you might guess plans tend to go up in smoke as we approach and pass launch. Now that we're live after all, it would be the tine to lose our damn minds rather than bask in the warmth of a successful launch for 5 minutes.
Anyway as for the actual request, after those first few days the client PM realized a FEW people were actually using IE8 and was now panicking that it was unsupported. On my way out of the building that day he asked if we could detect the browser and rather than render the site load a frame to a Citrix session that would be running the latest IE... -
For 2 weeks I was scheduled to work on a project. After tirelessly asking the useless PM for a list of tasks I should work on I gave up and worked on another project.
Fast forward 2 weeks and now that the PM wants me to fill in a form they are more than capable of completing (API request) I am getting endless 'kind reminder' emails. How can someone be such a cunt!
Venting my frustration about this incompetent idiot here is likely stopping me saying something I would otherwise be fired for. -
We often give access to a product owner from the customer on our Jira to keep up a good communication and everyone stays up to date as everything is on the board and not hidden in emails or paper notes on the desk of the guy that is on vacation.
So far, so good
Our customers really like this as they can comment on tickets and they are integrated in the workflow because they can push into the backlog and can review finished tasks.
It is just getting better for everyone so where is the rant?
One project is just a dump of shitty mixed content tickets. But how? They look really neat. There are tickets like "fixes from meeting 20th of may" which are initially well structured with approximately 4 subtle changes to the UI and some explanation and screenshots.
PM says: Good ticket. There you go ticket, into the customer review loop of doom.
20 comments and 13 status changes later. Point 43 from comment 17 is referenced in comment 20 to keep on hold as a third party needs to give feedback, point 7 is still not solved correctly as dev 2 was not aware that it was already discussed and changed in the ticket "Call from 25th of may" where in addition the resolution of points 5-12 were requested with an additional excel file to import.
By now we have the 8th of august and literally 17 of these kind of tickets.
I guess we need to improve the workflow and request a new product owner. But this far I just table flip everytime I get one of these tickets assigned.2 -
!rant
Feature request:
Hey!
I think it would be awesome to have a PM system, where you can send personal messages to each other.
I understand that you'd need to integrate blocking and other privacy features, but hey what do you think?3 -
Context: large project moves to touch friendly UI, request and initial specs late last year, specs initial mockups early this year, designer promises final design before end of Q1.
Two sprints into development no fucking design, meeting today about it, designer has no fucking clue about what we actually agreed to last time. Promises again to have it for next time.
What the actual fuck? How difficult it is to least read up the fucking notes and do your fucking job that you are being paid for? Had a half fucking year!
After meeting...
Me: why do we even keep him around?
Pm: he is really overbooked...
Me: my balls are overbooked, don't promise if you can't deliver! (Leaves meeting room)
Fairly confident that this is the last project with this guy...
Am I the only one who just hates working with designers?2 -
Question: I completed a feature on separate branch. Since I'm not allowed to merge things on the master branch (only pm is allowed to) I open a pull request.
However, PM has decided that he will only accept PRs which can be automatically rebased & merged.
So now i opened my PR and PM says that GitHub complains that the branches cannot be automatically merged.
So I rebase the branch - push and tell him to try again. But the same issue - GitHub won't merge the PR. So I try again - rebase the feature branch onto master which runs me through the same rebase steps as on the last try. I successfully complete this one too and push. But still - GitHub won't swallow the PR.
Anybody an idea what could've went wrong here?6 -
PM comes into my office: "Hey, if <client> asks about his edits, just tell him they're scheduled for this week."
me: "I thought they were scheduled for this week, I thought that you were currently in a meeting to get final specs so you could tell me what needed changed."
PM: "Yeah, he wants to take the plugin from 5 steps down to 3, we told him it wouldn't be a problem and we would have it done this week."
me: "Ok, there are limitations as far as what I can cut out of the process, his tag line when he started as a client was '5 easy steps' and I built something that did what he wanted in 5 steps. Changing things this late in the game is not simple, I'm talking a minimum 6 hours of work."
PM: "Well I tried to make sure that what he wanted was possible but I didn't have a developer in the meeting. It shouldn't change anything that much."
He ended up scheduling a meeting with me and the designer to go over the edits Thursday afternoon. So I will have the new specifications which I said would be a minimum 6 hours of work and I will be given ~10 hours in which to do it. I sure hope nothing unexpected pops up while I'm working on this.
I'm also the only developer this week (and technically speaking I'm junior) since our senior dev wrecked his car over the weekend and isn't planning on being in all week. I'm the only computer literate person in the office of 50 or so, which means that if there is any kind of tech issue I'm ripped away from my desk for 'emergency help'. I have two other sites to get ready for client approval meetings by Friday afternoon and if the clients approve I will be launching their sites that afternoon as well.
The sign on my door currently says "Error 500: unable to handle your request" I need something to throw at these people.4 -
Development Process:
PM writes out functionality required and works with designer for drawing up designs.
Hands off to Dev.
Dev reads through all docs and sends the PM all the strings, he's just written down in the documentation, that he needs to request for internationalisation. -
Be interrupted by request for help. Needed help is much more interesting than my main project because 1) need for it is so clear 2) and it's skunkworks without stifling PM oversight. If result of helping is deemed good enough it becomes my main project and old project gets another lead dev or is on hold until I get back to it. Usually this cycle repeats around 1,5 years.
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