Dear people who complain about spending a whole night to find a tiny syntax error; Every time I read one of your rants, I feel like a part of me dies.

As a developer, your job is to create elegant optimized rivers of data, to puzzle with interesting algorithmic problems, to craft beautiful mappings from user input to computer storage and back.

You should strive to write code like a Michelangelo, not like a house painter.

You're arguing about indentation or getting annoyed by a project with braces on the same line as the method name. You're struggling with semicolons, misplaced braces or wrongly spelled keywords.

You're bitching about the medium of your paint, about the hardness of the marble -- when you should be lamenting the absence of your muse or the struggle to capture the essence of elegance in your work.

In other words:

Fix your fucking mindset, and fix your fucking tools. Don't fucking rant about your tabs and spaces. Stop fucking screaming how your bloated swiss-army-knife text editor is soooo much better than a purpose-built IDE, if it fails to draw something red and obnoxious around your fuck ups.

Thanks.

You are good in programming and data structures.

But we won't select you because you couldn't solve the puzzle. 😑

I’m making a puzzle game! Cool!

Concept - done
Mechanics - done
Art - done
Ui - done
Puzzles - uhhh... this is harder than expected.

Definitely gonna try this on a co-worker one day.

Any rubik’s cube fan?
I ordered a rubik’s cube to help me when I faced a bug since I don’t know how to use the rubber duck

A fanfic based on devRant-chan. The character was created by @caramelCase and a drawing by @ichijou.

This is freestyle. I'll think of an image of a scene and go with the flow. I won't remove my fingers from the keyboard and I won't edit or change anything. That's how I come up with my best ideas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:

B/N = Boss' name (I was too lazy to think of one.)

Anything in between astericks is in italics.
Ex.) *this is in italics.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was an early January morning when devRant-chan was situated in her desk, typing away on her laptop. She was working on a Python script for her barbaric client when she could've been out with friends. Oddly enough, her Sunday was surged with tranquility.

Normally, Sunday is when her irksome boss barks orders at her on the phone.

"This is wrong!"

"What is this?"

"Change it!"

devRant-chan resented her boss but loved her job. After all, "you can't force yourself to like everyone," was something her elder brother would tell her.

She released a slight chuckle, the one she would only display at the thought of her brother.

Her musings were interrupted when a concerning thought crawled into her mind like an undesirable intruder.

Why hasn't her boss called to complain yet? It's not that she enjoyed his complaining, which she didn't. She simply found it odd, since he's done this every Sunday morning, since she was a junior developer.

Unless he found someone else to complain to? In that case, good riddance!

But still, it wasn't a euphoric feeling to be replaced. She was already accustomed to his Sunday morning calls that it feels almost lonely not to receive them.

She should call him... Just in case some situation—or—problem—has emerged.

She dialed his number, waiting patiently for a reply.

"Hello," said her boss.

"Ah, hello," said devRant-chan. "I called, wondering—"

"You've reached the voicemail of B/N, please leave a message after the beep."

"Damn..." mumbled devRant-chan with a sharp exhale. "I always fall for that."

Why didn't her boss answer the phone? It was odd of him, considering he's always answered her calls.

She was about to dial her coworker when she received an email, which stimulated her attention. The subject of the email read:

*Important. Please read.*

She opened the email. It was her boss. The email read:

*Hello.*

*In case you aren't aware, I had quit my job, due to the stress. I've left the manager in charge. Starting tomorrow, he will be your new boss.*

*-B/N*

Before she could rejoice in excitement, she detected a strange change of voice, emitting from the email. Did her boss really write this?

That's when she spotted something. The word "tomorrow."

Her boss didn't write this.

He would never use words such as "tomorrow," or "today." He would use time instead. If this was her boss, he would say "in 24 hours."

She checked the IP of the email. Oddly enough, it was her boss' IP.

Still, the pieces didn't fit the puzzle. Her boss didn't complain, answer her call, or use his style of speaking in the email.

Something happened to him and she knows it. Whatever it is, has something to do with the manager, and she was determined to figure it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was just a quick random fanfic, and I'm not sure if I'll continue it. As I said, I didn't plan anything, since it's freestyle. I might or might not continue it, so I'll think it over.

One of my favourite, encryption puzzles is this:

ITuyVT93oUZtLKWyVT5iqPO3nTS0VUEbMKxtp2IyoD==

Answer is plain text string in english. Good luck, post solution in the comments!

I installed one of those alarm apps that doesn't stop until you solve some puzzle or simple equation..

I ended up by uninstalling it when the first time the alarm started..

The problem is, I don't remember how I did it.. just I woke up a little late and the app not found..

I guess I was really tired !

!rant
My work does this contest where they email everyone a puzzle where you have to guess a safety slogan. They give you maybe 1-2 letters in each word and there are about 5 or 6 words. So I found a list of every word in the English language online, I imported it into a database and I ran a few queries to return all possible words for each, depending on the length of the word, and where the letter hints are placed. I haven't missed one puzzle so far. :D

p.s. I told my girlfriend and she said, "I am dating a nerd".

What an absolute fucking disaster of a day. Strap in, folks; it's time for a bumpy ride!

I got a whole hour of work done today. The first hour of my morning because I went to work a bit early. Then people started complaining about Jenkins jobs failing on that one Jenkins server our team has been wanting to decom for two years but management won't let us force people to move to new servers. It's a single server with over four thousand projects, some of which run massive data processing jobs that last DAYS. The server was originally set up by people who have since quit, of course, and left it behind for my team to adopt with zero documentation.

Anyway, the 500GB disk is 100% full. The memory (all 64GB of it) is fully consumed by stuck jobs. We can't track down large old files to delete because du chokes on the workspace folder with thousands of subfolders with no Ram to spare. We decide to basically take a hacksaw to it, deleting the workspace for every job not currently in progress. This of course fucked up some really poorly-designed pipelines that relied on workspaces persisting between jobs, so we had to deal with complaints about that as well.

So we get the Jenkins server up and running again just in time for AWS to have a major incident affecting EC2 instance provisioning in our primary region. People keep bugging me to fix it, I keep telling them that it's Amazon's problem to solve, they wait a few minutes and ask me to fix it again. Emails flying back and forth until that was done.

Lunch time already. But the fun isn't over yet!

I get back to my desk to find out that new hires or people who got new Mac laptops recently can't even install our toolchain, because management has started handing out M1 Macs without telling us and all our tools are compiled solely for x86_64. That took some troubleshooting to even figure out what the problem was because the only error people got from homebrew was that the formula was empty when it clearly wasn't.

After figuring out that problem (but not fully solving it yet), one team starts complaining to us about a Github problem because we manage the github org. Except it's not a github problem and I already knew this because they are a Problem Team that uses some technical authoring software with Git integration but they only have even the barest understanding of what Git actually does. Turns out it's a Git problem. An update for Git was pushed out recently that patches a big bad vulnerability and the way it was patched causes problems because they're using Git wrong (multiple users accessing the same local repo on a samba share). It's a huge vulnerability so my entire conversation with them went sort of like:

"Please don't."
"We have to."
"Fine, here's a workaround, this will allow arbitrary code execution by anyone with physical or virtual access to this computer that you have sitting in an unlocked office somewhere."
"How do I run a Git command I don't use Git."

So that dealt with, I start taking a look at our toolchain, trying to figure out if I can easily just cross-compile it to arm64 for the M1 macbooks or if it will be a more involved fix. And I find all kinds of horrendous shit left behind by the people who wrote the tools that, naturally, they left for us to adopt when they quit over a year ago. I'm talking entire functions in a tool used by hundreds of people that were put in as a joke, poorly documented functions I am still trying to puzzle out, and exactly zero comments in the code and abbreviated function names like "gars", "snh", and "jgajawwawstai".

While I'm looking into that, the person from our team who is responsible for incident communication finally gets the AWS EC2 provisioning issue reported to IT Operations, who sent out an alert to affected users that should have gone out hours earlier.

Meanwhile, according to the health dashboard in AWS, the issue had already been resolved three hours before the communication went out and the ticket remains open at this moment, as far as I know.

Monday you fucking bastard! Woke up twice more exausted than i was when i was going to the bed!

So I've decided if I am invited to a school career day the what I'll do is this.

1. Start by handing out one of those logic puzzles that are like Sally lives 2 houses down from Bill, Bill is 3 houses away from Maggie where does Jerry live type of thing. Then I'll tell the kids they have 10 minutes to figure it out.

2. After about three minutes I'll tell them that they also need to figure out where Jerry lives and not give them enough information to figure that out.

3. 5 minutes in I'll start asking them why it is taking so long, and it shouldn't be that hard. I'll also ask about where Phil lives who was never mentioned before.

4. At 7 minutes I'll look for anyone who might be figuring it out and tell them there is a much more important high priority problem I need them to solve and give them a new puzzle and tell them I expect them both to be done on time.

5. At nine minutes I'll start yelling at them that they must not be that good and why they haven't finished yet if any of them complain I'll tell them they are just dumb.

6. At ten minutes I'll ask them to turn it in and then immediately throw it in the trash and tell them that wasn't what they were supposed to be doing, and tell them they did it wrong.

I figure that is a pretty good representation of what working in software engineering is like.

!dev !sex I promise this is a good read

I once read the whole bible.

Not in one sitting, ofc. I read it in a period of a year, just 3-4 chapters a day.

Is it something to boast about?
I'm not sure.

I mean, I guess being able to read through it despite not being exactly entertainment material (except some fun parts) kinda is. So I might feel a tad bit proud about that.

But I'm actually more happy that I did instead.

The reason I'm more happy than proud is because I took awareness of the religion I was in.

I became christian when I was an early teen. I grew up in an agnostic family. My dad was kinda hippie and my mom was into leftist ideas.

So me becoming a christian was a bit orthogonal to their philosophies.

I started assisting a church because I was very alone and misunderstood, and found some people there that seemed to get me, and viceversa.

But as time went on and I got more exposed to christian doctrine, my level of commitment grew.

I wanted to save people from going to hell. It sounds funny, maybe egotistical, but it's true.

3, 4 years of being in the church go by. I collaborate in the church, I make some very personal friendships, I was very deep in church by that point.

I then decide that I should take it to the next level and read the bible. So I did. And unknowingly, it started this feeling in me that I didn't liked being a christian at all.

I'm not gonna deny there are some christian values that are still compatible with today's modern society, such as being a good samaritan, working hard, being honest.

But there were too many verses in both old and new testament that I found morally repugnant,

The ones that made me feel the worst about christianity, though, were the ones that condemned homosexuality with death.

Since my dad was a hippie, he used to be in artsy things, like theater or music, and through that he had some gay friends

And for real, I think they were the nicest and most cheerful people I'd met as a kid. So I could not be part of that anymore.

Let me clarify that I didn't stop being a christian immediately after finishing the bible, but it did start a spark "of "what tf do I even believe in...?"

That spark turned into flame when I started the university, a place where people think for a living.

It's no wonder my mind started completing the puzzle, and slowly I started liking church and christianity less and less.

Until one sunday I didn't want to go, and I didn't, and from then on, I pretty much severed ties with that church and christianity.

Which is crazy considering I went every sunday without interruption for 6 years, and several saturdays too.

Anyhow, that's my story of me getting in n out of christianity. Like in the previous post, it sure how to end this, so go fuck a rock or something.

Last piece of the puzzle just arrived.

me when I complain that Win10 update is so fucking slow and someone suggests that I do a puzzle to exercise my brain while I wait

Saw this on facebook programing group.

Someone ask how to start being programmer.

Then someone replied, get a 5000 pieces of puzzle, and then finish it until it complete.

Trying to understand how I coded a hangman game (my first program ever, in C) is actually a puzzle far more complex and interesting than the game itself

Lately in school...
A teacher of mine tried to put an HDMI Cable into an USB-A Port. How can you screw up something like this? It's as simple as a geometric puzzle like the one in the picture. Apology for my grammar mistakes.

NO! I WILL NOT USE FACEBOOK, THEY SELL MY DATA!

...but i will continue using all 316 preinstalled Google apps on my phone, Instagram, Snapchat and other apps that keep my data safe... safelly stored somewhere, without my knowledge...

Crack the Code!

Solved a complex puzzle on a website for a local ecommerce business, mind you in 16 and not really looking for a job but an unpaid internship would look beautiful on a resume or university application.

They wanted to see some of my code and give me a tour and none of them despite them being PHP developers for Magento could wrap their heads around laravel or how the routing worked. They also didn't understand and raw PHP whatsoever. I lost all faith and walked out of their office when they asked why I was using prepared statements and how they worked. That was after finding out that they don't understand cloud scalability whatsoever or common security practices.

First time rant here, and I'm just gonna let fucking loose because this seems to be a good place for it.

My uni can't teach programming for shit. It's the reason people sign up for the course. They want to know how to program. I'm self-taught and unhappy in college as it is.

I joined CS because I thought they'd assimilate work in the real world, which is experience I need. I realized early on that programming is like art, and I love the rush I get of something finally working right.

That said, they sucked the fun out of it. It's too structured. Everyone trying to get the same goddamn result. In the real world, we'd be working on a larger project that involved planning, design, communication, teamwork, and the ability to complete each of our own pieces of the puzzle and subsequently put them together in a project that works for the end user.

I'm paying to be a fucking sheep, people. Why do employers give a shit about a degree instead of talent? Welp, fuck society for this. You can tell me I can drop it and still get a good job, it'll just be harder. That's the fucking problem. I can't get a job if these incompetent fucking bastards will throw out my resumé the moment they see "self-taught."

If we could hire based on GitHub contributions, I think many of us here would be relatively better off. Programmers program, not socialize. We do socialize, but in our own little groups. We team up as needed. The moment the jackass in HR realizes that, the better off we'll be.

Sorry, just the way I'm seeing shit right now. I'm going through some OCD-induced depression and this might be a result of that, but I'm passed the point of giving a fuck.

I've got a puzzle! How well do you know the weird GNU coreutils error messages?

$ rm foo/
rm: cannot remove 'foo/': Is a directory

$ rm -r foo/
rm: cannot remove 'foo/': Not a directory

What am I?

Not really a rant.

When you start learning a new prog paradigm focused on a particular branch of math and then see it being used to solve a sudoku puzzle in 3 lines of code. Well, that shit changes you and makes you wonder how much shit in the field we don't focus in for being too concerned with everythingPython and everythingNode

Brain is mush but I am loving this shit.

I thought our owner is only a billionaire, but now...

"Added support of the 150 years date-range for the specific crypto symbols"

...now i'm sure he's also immortal...

hello hi

Anyone?

The worst part of being a dev

My social dilemma

In a fast paced world where the average human spends at least 6 hours a day with technology, deriving basic entertainment, pleasures and engaging in various activities.

Here we are the developers that have to engage with technology for longer hours for a living , having to keep up with deadlines, immersing our minds in complicated algorithms and then the endless possibilities of entertainment from the machine in so few human hours a day , you wonder how you’d get off, and to top it up, I personally work from home.

And then the dilemma of overcoming different suggestions from various parties in taking a break off, a break off to what you later ask yourself, thus creating the shadow of doubt, splitting the fragile programmer’s mind , trying to solve this imaginary puzzle, “this bug of the mind”.

Then the challenge often arises in creating a balance, telling yourself, just catching up with people with this same technology takes a whole day, or then again quitting my Job, but from my little experience of life, nobody likes a poor visitor, this is actually worse than a “bug” and as I bask in this quagmire, “a little voice in my head keeps singing keep doing what you love doing”.

Like an infinite loop of crazy, spiralling back to these machines, trying the find and fix the balance of normalcy. Always remembered the cool years of college tho, with so much people around and then again that was college.

An then the thought arises, maybe something else might be worth doing, but after so much time spent in building your skills and the enormous joy of programming even typing without looking at the keyboard is a real pleasure, and yeah sure the days are short with the reality of a constant need to survive, remain sane, compete and make the best of life in such short time.

Then how do we know if we have fallen off the so-called “social track”, when we have only lived so little to really comprehend the most parts of life? with such constant stream of unanswered question, you’d realise you shouldn’t have burdened the mind creating such questions in the first place

But then again maybe it gets better, one of the above, the disturbed mind or the situation as whole and yes I try oh I try, I place calls, do some visiting, no relationship tho but with a good perspective in mind.

In this race of life, you sometimes ask yourself would you rather be in a different position, or maybe already put exactly where we belong. For this illusionary fight with self is a fight with reality as a whole and true bliss comes from actually letting go as time and people pass you by.

And my greatest achievement to date aside family and my work is getting into the 1000 club on devRant.

Basically all those graphical applications for developing apps and programs.
Take fucking Thunkable for example.
Or the unholy abomination that is scratch.

Contradictory to the education system, I believe that it absolutely does not prepare students for programming.

Like "ummm puzzle goes there uuhh that goes there ajdjsudheirnrifksmci"

Help me solving this logical puzzle. I'm dumb as fuck.

You need to find the logical link to get the missing number.

Dynamically typed languages suck. God I hate them

It's like one big clunky free for all. I don't understand how people can work in Python or even JavaScript and tell me that they're good languages with a straight face

Not having proper autocomplete or documentation (a somewhat seperate issue of Python) is a kick in the stomach for productivity.
I've seen people advocate for using EXTERNAL DOCUMENTATION VIEWERS. WHAT

I hate not being able to enforce types so I can reason about little parts of my program. I hate not having an IDE that can actually help me. I hate having to see stupid grep'ed code snippets instead of nicely formatted javadocs. I hate having to double and triple check everything when trying to code. I hate handling effectively opaque values where I don't know anything about the type without looking it up. And I especially hate not knowing what types function parameters need to be.

Dynamic typing doesn't remove types. That, although completely unfeasible, I could respect.
Oh no, the types are still there. Just not for you

It's like solving a jigsaw puzzle with a blindfold on

I started out learning Python. And before you "tsk, kids these days", it was before Python became the go to starter language for a lot of universities. No, I started learning around age 12.

My dad (a programmer himself), bought "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner" and we went through it together. He started out holding my hand as I went through the exercises, but pretty quick I was getting through them mostly on my own.

It was really fun, and I'm absolutely going to do the same if/when I have children of my own. The books exercises were all games, which made it really fun. Instead of "hello world", the first program printed "game over". I was super proud of the hangman game I eventually wrote.

It gave me a leg up when I started taking actual classes, and really instilled a love of coding and puzzle solving in me that propelled me through two degrees.

Today, I found this gem here in the codebase I've taken over:

#define BYTE unsigned char

FFS, use typedef, it's there for a reason. Solving the puzzle in the first comment.

Nobody solved this super complicated cryptography puzzle last time. I guess I have created an unsolvable mystery of epic proportions. Anyway, if you wanna give it a try, go ahead:

b417021dc01b409ad0c21b430a508624

Answer is a sentence in plain english. Space is used, but no punctuation. Post answer to comments. Good luck :D

!rant, TL;DR at the bottom

Holy fuck, Yesterday, I got absolutely schooled by a literal newbie.
And I mean, NEWBIE newbie, the dude just started a Computer Science degree, and has been learning Java only for a MONTH. He has 0 prior experience with code or anything of the like, and he's somewhat of an Ars(Israel's version of a Gopnik).
So I was helping him with some stuff he didn't understand, and lo and behold his code was probably the most aesthetically pleasing and organized code I have seen in my 8 years of programming(I know 8 is not much, but It's at least above beginner level). The dude's a perfectionist, so I was like, "Okay, very impressive, but makes sense for perfectionism"(I straight up told him: "Damn, I've seen people with years of programming experience who can't learn to write this well, and you do this by default? I envy whoever's going to work with you"), and then I saw the way he writes checks(as in, methods that return a boolean) and I think I came.
The code was:
[First method in the picture]

And I know, it doesn't look as ✨ WOW✨ as I make it sound, but in my personal opinion this both looks much better and is much more readable than what I normally write:
[Second method in the picture]

and whenever there are longer or more complicated checks it makes it look like a simple puzzle that just fits in all the pieces nicely, for example in a rectangle class we had to write an 'isIn' method, this is how I wrote it:
[Third method in the picture]

His way of writing the same thing was:
[Fourth method in the picture]

Which I think is soooooo much better and readable and organized,
It's enough just looking at the short return statement to immediately understand everything that's going on.
"Oh, so it just checks if the SW(South West, i.e. Bottom Left) corner is above and to the right, and if the NE(North East, i.e. Top Right) corner is bellow and to the left"

Point of the story? Some people are just fucking awesome. And sometimes the youngest/most inexperienced people can teach you new tricks.
And to all of you dinosaurs here with like, 20+ years of experience, y'all can still learn even from us stupid ones. If 8 years can get schooled by a 1 month, 20 years can get schooled by a 1 year.
Listen to everyone everybody, never know where you might learn something new.

TL;DR: Got schooled by a local "Gopnik" who only started learning programming a month ago with 0 prior experience with his insane level of organization and readability.

0. Never ending puzzle game
1. Very useful skill to have
2. Keeps girls outside my perimiter

Sometimes I really enjoy hunting bugs in a code. It's like a puzzle game. Am I the only one with this?

That feel when my solution runs way faster than world average

PS: the puzzle is SAWAYAMA WONDERDISC

I solved this riddle/puzzle. Now my inner completionist split into two and both are arguing what is worse: taking the solved puzzle apart or leaving the 15 remaining possibilities unsolved...

*rips of his face* 💀

Most people I talk to in the industry hate the "puzzle-y" nature of interviews (e.g. coding on a whiteboard, now get it to run in linear time, oh wait there's a trick you don't know but could totally look up if given the chance) and acknowledge that it does a poor job determining the value of the prospective hire.

Why then is there no sign of this changing? I realize it's a hard problem to solve but in theory the entire company is at stake when it comes to hiring good/bad devs. You'd think somebody would have come up with a better way.

A puzzle, just for fun.

Two friends, (a)lice and (b)ob are communicating through a channel encrypted with random numbers XOR'd together, like so:

keyA = randint(1024, 1024**2)
keyB = randint(1024, 1024**2)

msg = randint(1024, 1024**2)

You, an interloper, have watched all these communications, siphoning the packets as they went.

When alice sends a message to bob's mailbox, she does it like so:

mailBoxB = keyA^msg

Bob's mailbox receives the mail automatically, and applies his own key, sending it back to alice's mailbox:

mailBoxA = keyB^mailBoxB

Next, Alice's mailbox notices the message, and automatically removes her key and sends it back to bob's mailbox. All of this, the first message, the second, and the third, happens in milliseconds, the back and forth.

mailBoxB2 = mailBoxA^keyA

Finally, bob's mailbox removes his key, and deposits the now unencrypted message in his box, for him to read in the morning:

mailBoxBFinal = mailBoxB2^keyB

As as a spy, you know the first packet sent to bob, had a value of 589505.

The packet bob sent back to alice, after applying his key, has a value of 326166

The message sent *back* to bob after alice removed *her* key, had a value of:
576941

What are the values of keyA, keyB, and what is the value of the msg?

It is said that the number of programmers doubles every five years with fresh CS, CE, and EE grads. Assuming that's true, then at any one time over half the developer community are novices in the early stages of their career.

My entire life's been spent in software and I've been in it now for about 15 years and I've seen a lot of people make alot of things and I've seen a lot of people fail at alot of things. My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers, the people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker doer in one person. It's very easy to take credit for the thinking the doing is more concrete. It's very easy for somebody say "oh, I thought of this three years ago" but usually when you dig a little deeper you find that the people that really did it. Were also the people that really worked through the hard intellectual problems.

Many people falsely believe that a great idea constitutes 90% of the work. However, there is a significant amount of craftsmanship required to bridge the gap between a great idea and a great product. As you evolve that great idea it changes and grows it never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it and you also find there's tremendous amount of trade-offs that you have to make.

There are certain things you can't make electrons do, certain things you can't make plastic or glass, certain things you can't make factories or robots do. and as you get into all these things, Designing a product involves juggling 5,000 different concepts, fitting them together like puzzle pieces, and exploring new ways to combine them. Every day brings new challenges and opportunities to push the boundaries of what's possible, and it's this ongoing process that is the key to successful product development. That process is the "magic"

Sometimes it's uncomfortable for me to code anything because all I do is based on other stuff that is based on other stuff and so on.

Am I truly a creator when all I do is putting the puzzle pieces together so it looks unique?

I actually never honestly go beyond "modding".. Why do I always have to rely on other stuff working? And other stuff continuing to work for the following decade?

I thought it's only the case for software/web/etc but apparently most hardware projects are stuffing bought things together.
Music is stuffing chord combinations and melodies together.

It all goes on like that.

I'd say a program in production is a puzzle without the sky and forest

Your front end may look gorgeous, but I see a bug that scares me. Can you find it?

A few people on here enjoyed solving my previous puzzle, so I made a new one!

Solve:
DLSS KVUL, FVB'CL ZVSCLK AOPZ WBGGSL.

Hint:
Rome was build on [...] hills and had [...] kings. [...] played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

Good luck! Post your answer in the comments.

Guys, I think I am addicted and I have problems... I tried to write a simple SudokuSolver program in C# (one file) but I ended up writing an ExtensionMethods class, a Puzzle class, a Solver class, an IO class, a Program class...

That's why I hate working on big side-projects for too long

Fix this:

AAABBABBBAABBAB BAABB AABABABBBABAAABAABBAAABAABAABB BAABBAABBBAAAAABAABB BBAAAABBBABABAA BAAABAABAA AAAAABABBAAABAABAABAABBBAABBAAAABAA

----------------------
Good luck! Post your answer in the comments.

I am a Samsung fan but Samsung just really sucks at UI. I mean seriously. What the fuck is this? I was driving and talking over Bluetooth, tried to change my volume and Samsung is like "Solve this puzzle first"

Removing junk from my PC.
Thankfully, I have a puzzle to solve!

arrays start at one

I just wasted 2 hours together with a colleague to trace a bug, through several modules, functions, data, etc to find out it was usage of the wrong information in the wrong place. The data used was never intended to be used this way.

I HATE SUCH SOFTWARE ARCHAELOGY.
Carefully uncovering layer over layer, getting one detail after another, from which you don't know if it's really necessary to trace the bug, until you lose the sight of the whole picture. Then when you're confused to the maximum, try to figure out what's important and what not and reassemble the puzzle until you can see where the road is heading.

At least we found the cause of the bug, so it wasn't useless. Now we have to waste more time to develop a solution (...preparing for next rant 🙇)

Anyone played Human Resource Machine yet? It's fun to solve and optimize these algorithm puzzles after a hard work day.
Does anyone know other games like this?

Interviewer said that passing technical interview means that 90% of the time I will get the offer.
In the final interview with management, I can't answer some questions because I didn't study. Isn't final interview should just about getting to know each other like hobby, interest, talking about company products?
They gave me some puzzle to solve :(

After that, they wait another 1 week just to tell me I don't pass. Why the fuck they wait 1 week just to tell me that? They should just tell me 1 day after!

I still have other job openings right now, but the job searching has been very depressing.
I will give it like 1 more month. But if I can't get any leads, I will just give it up. Maybe tech is not the right job for me.
I will just go back to my old job in non-tech. It's not exactly my dream job, but at least they don't treat me like shit like this.

An anti-rant: I just made some code and out of nowhere it suddenly had an awesome feature that I didn't even program. No, not a euphemism for "bug", an actual feature.

Here's the story: A few months ago I made a shortcut for "System.out.println(…)" called "print(…)". Then I developed it further to also print arrays as "[1,2,3]", lists as "{1,2,3}", work with nested arrays and lists and accept multiple arguments.
Today I wanted to expand the list printing feature, which previously only worked for ArrayLists, to all types of List. That caused a few problems, but eventually I got it to work. Then I also wanted to expand it to all instances of Collection. As a first step, I replaced the two references to "List" with "Collection" and magically, no error message. So I tested it with this code:

HashMap<Integer, String> map = new HashMap<>();
map.put(1, "1");
map.put(2, "");
map.put(3, "a");
print(map);

And magic happened! The output was:

{1=1, 2=, 3=a}

That's awesome! I didn't even think yet about how I wanted to display key-value pairs, but Java already gave me the perfect solution. Now the next puzzle is where the space after the comma comes from, because I didn't program that in either.

I feel a bit like a character in "The subtle knife", who writes a barebones program to communicate with sentient elementary particles (believe me, it makes sense in context) and suddenly there's text alignment on the left and right, without that character having programmed any alignment.

For the people who can't sleep. It looks easy, but there's smth in it what makes it hard. Sooner or later you'll fail. Not even generated with my advanced sudoku generator. This one is generated by my sudoku js widget what does a bare minimal of complexity in its generated puzzles. Let me know if you're able to solve it

Whaaaat? Now i can't even say in public that i would like one slave robot in the future because it would sound too nasty or pollitically incorrect?

Don't know about you but... python sounds more nasty to me...

UI development is like...
Solving a jigsaw puzzle...
In pitch dark...

People seem to like cryptographic puzzles. Well, try this one for size:

b417021dc01b409ad0c21b430a508624

Answer is a sentence in plain english. Space is used, but no punctuation. Post answer to comments. Good luck :D

This code smells, its like a puzzle that only will get more complicated the more you try to solve it.

- me after plowing my keyboard for a week writing subpar ad hoc code

I've been staring at the same section of code for about two hours now. I want to solve this puzzle and design it properly. I'm desperately trying to resist the urge to hack it. Not sure I can hold out much longer...

This project is gonna drive me insane. I'm moving a custom-scripted WordPress ecommerce site to WooCommerce. The basis of the source site was WooCommerce but with the advantages stripped away and with a LOT of hard coded stuff added to it to make it seem like a unique, custom ecommerce engine.

Now I have to strip all that away and standardize it back into the WooCommerce way so it's all easier to maintain.

It's like I've been handed a jigsaw puzzle of a bunch of clowns and now I need to take it apart and put it together again but make it look like George Washington instead.

Localhost cloud in port 404 (C4)
Rogue like puzzle game (CF)
Piano tiles like runner game (CD)
Emotional Simulator (C7)
Pastebin client (PFW)

Updates in comments as i remember.

I'm not able to solve puzzle questions. I am trying to get a grip on them. :( I have system design interviews next week and I'm doing this.

Teach data structures by showing how they're used in real life situations. Don't make us do some nonsense puzzle shit. For example, a friend of mine is learning stacks/queues right now and his assignment is to build a simple HTML parsing algorithm to determine whether an HTML file is valid. This shows the student a practical use of the data structure and reinforces that this shit actually does get used in real life.

Hi!

Im planning to switch for a remote company. I have 2 years of internship and 1 year of full time experience.

I also have some GitHub repos where I played around with JS frameworks and I will soon release the beta version of a puzzle game I made with React Naive in my freetime.

Im also planning on creating a simple website for myself on GitHub pages.

Would this be enough for a mid-level fully remote frontend developer position?

Thanks for the answers in advance!

I hate extremist to the point where I became an extremist of hating the extremist.

If life is as simple as 1 and 0, we won't even be fucking evolved and alive till this far.

Every story has different perspectives. Different motives. Is it Kingslayer the one to blame? Is it the Queen's fault? Or was it Little Finger?

We look at one piece of the puzzle and we talk and talk and talk. Well not only do we like to talk our own thoughts out loud, we like to persuade others to join our thoughts. Just like what I'm doing now.

Does this all sound simple as 1 and 0?

When Windows cares about you more than your parents 😂

FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, WHATSAPP AND MESSENGER ARE DOWN! WEB IS ON FIRE!

Progress on my sudoku application goes well. Damn, what is javascript fantastic. While the code of the previous version that I posted here was alright I did decide that i want to split code and html elements after all. I have now a puzzle class doing all resolving / validating and when a field is selected or changed, it emits an event where the html elements are listening to. It also keeps all states. So, that's the model. puzzle.get(0,1).value = 4 triggers an update event. It also tracks selection of users because users selecting fields is part of the game. I can render full featured widgets with a one liner. Dark mode and light mode are supported and size is completely configurable by changing font-size and optional padding. So far, painless. BUT: i did encounter some stuff that works under a CSS class, but not if I do element.style.* =. Made me crazy because I didn't expect that.

Look, a nice puzzle. Solve it and win great prizes!

1. _________ (7 letters) - A C++ output stream class commonly used to send output to the console.
2. _________ (3 letters) - A past tense verb, often used in logging or indicating a completed task.
3. _________ (3 letters) - A negation commonly used in boolean logic or programming conditions.
4. _________ (6 letters) - A command or function that removes an object, file, or memory allocation in programming.
5. _________ (7 letters) - In object-oriented programming, a term referring to an instance acting upon itself.

Currently making a perfect sudoku webapp / plugin using native JS and html templates where I'm very enthousiast about.

It allows to select multiple cells and then put in a number and all selected have that number. It keeps state of every change, you can do unlimited redo's. Right click or double click someehere removes selection. Not built yet, but it will have a box where you can paste sudoku's you've found on the internet. I just parse 81 times [1-9] with regex. So all formats are supported including noisy ones as long the noise is not numbers. Making your own puzzle is very easy. Art is to make hard ones. I'm generating extra hard puzzles using C threading. For reference: there are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 sudoku puzzles possible and from that I try to resolve the hard ones using simple human logging with brute forcing as fallback until it can use logic again. 30 million attempts to solve per secon. I should at some more logic. I don't do xwing or ywing, bs imho. You have to be a superhuman to spot xwing / ywing possibilities. I think i can imagine a better logic myself. We'll see.

And yes, that's a real screenshot. Puzzle is validated and it found issues. Marked with red font. Green is current selection by user

Oooh look at those tileable Puzzle-Like Memory Cell !!!

pic: 64 bit Memory Cell Matrix

I am my teams goto guy for anything and everything. For any problem they face technically.

They think I am some kind of genius. But in reality I just Google. :/ I don't know most of the things they ask!

The saving grace is that, whenever I try to solve anything, the pieces of the puzzle quickly fall into their places in my head.

Now the impostor syndrome is kicking in hard!

K guys... Don't expect to hear much from me for a few days...
Not like jase. It's just....
I upgraded my CNC last night with "real" steppers (only need one more for Z)
I just got my 3D printer and have a puzzle to mount...
First pieces I'll do (after tests and learning curve) are pieces for my third CNC lol

Curiosity killed the cat.. or was it Opportunity?! 🤔

You get to learn new stuff daily.

Not one assignment is the same, and if it's similar, you can hijack the old code, improve it & turn in the better version of it.. or don't improve..totally how you feel that day..if you're not a crappy developer no improvement should still also be ok..

I love mostly adjustable schedule, so there's no biggie of I have a day or two of coders block & can't produce much of value..I can switch tasks & do some simple ones on those days..or just refactor.. all's good..

I love solving puzzles, every bug is a new puzzle I can play with..

So basically, I love being a dev, because it's like being back in school, but only with the subjects you like!

WHY!
Email was invented a gazillion years ago and it's still a shiit experience to setup on linux. Just give me ONE complete package!!
nooo i need to get postfix, dovecot, spamassassain mailscanner, antivirus, opendmarc, opendkim, dovecot-managesieve dovecot-sieve, roundcube, database, webserver and then i still have to configure everything and setup certs, spf, dnssec, dkimkeys on the domains, domains, mailboxes, deny weak certs etc.

I know the whole do one thing and do that one thing well but how about you just be a mailserver and do that ONE thing well without me needing to putting all of the puzzle pieces together myself! I don't want to waste time setting all this shit up. and don't even get me started on symantec and live.com and their blocking!

Can You Solve Elon Musk and Microsoft’s Favorite Interview Puzzle?

FRINALLY

Programmers wise thoughts:

Programming is solving a puzzle. Whether you have to piece something new together or change a wrong piece

I‘m curious what you guys think about puzzle games with timers.

I personally hate it to be pressured by the timer. And I hate it when the puzzle resets and I need to start from scratch because I ran out of time.
I prefer to take my time and think about the next move rather than rapid fire my moves by intuition and hoping to get lucky.

Yet so many puzzle games have timers. Is this just lazy design? Do you like timers? What do you think about this?

Finishing this 3d shooter and puzzle game

Yet another puzzle edition #3!

In order to solve:
Cwbqpl ystbsu, nbkmqsb gthpox!

You need to solve:
JDX: FNNCKTBJ

Good luck! Post your answer in the comments.

Year 2019 almost ends and we still can't attach multiple photos here!

oh i still have this installed

A puzzle for you guys(not my invention, so contains bugs):
If a 5-hour candle and a 6-hour candle were lit at the same time, how much time would have to pass before one candle is five times longer than the other?

Is this a rant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
rant*!rant*!!rant!!!!*!rant*!!rant*

October's begun and I haven't even started on my game. Fuck.

My SO's birthday is in December and I wanted to make a small game for her using elements from Limbo and the like because I can't draw anymore and because the graphics automatically become easier to make by myself that way. It's a 2d puzzle solving narration driven platformer where the player finds their way across the levels to his other half (simple and cute, maybe even cheesy).

But see, the thing is, I took on too much work again and I can 'barely' juggle them let alone work on the game and it's going to be December before I'll even know it. And I made sure to plan a really simple game with no extra flowers and shit to make sure I'd finish it on time but I won't be able to at this rate and it just makes me sad, like fuck, should've thought this through before. :/ But now here I am, ranting away while taking the dump of my life on the toilet taking out my frustration in quite the literal sense while verbally slapping my shit on devRant.

Feels bad man.

Do you have ever tried to recover a very valuable shredded stack of paper (4 sheets)? They are shredded into A LOT OF PIECES and not stripes as I hoped for!!

After 5 hours work I have found 15 pieces which fit together! I am so pissed about myself and my incompetence when it comes to data cleaning 😡😠🤬

!rant

I find IT to be an amazing field. There are so many parts to it that take tremendous dedication to fully understand, yet, each part works together.

Teams of people dedicated their entire life to software development, which would be impossible if teams of people did not dedicated their entire life to the development of operating systems. That would be impossible if teams of people did not dedicated their entire life to integrating hardware and software. That again would be impossible if teams of people did not dedicated their entire life to electrical engineering.

I know I missed tons of subfields that link everything together, but just the massive amount of dedication and teamwork to make something as simple as a console application work properly is amazing. I wish I could understand it all and I hope everything will always be as easily accessible my entire life as it is now.

Guys, please share how many i interviews you had before scoring the first job?

I am currently a BSc in Software Engineering London and already hate the interview process due to all the aptitude and puzzle tests :D

Heck yeah!

That awesome feeling when you figure out a coding logic to get the intended result.

I've been stuck on this issue past few days. But always had an instinct I could figure it out the way I want and since it was always in the back of my mind, things started making more sense like finding pieces of a puzzle.

Finally it all came together.

In my early programming days when i had just started learning, I challenged myself to write a sudoku puzzle solver. Wrote a really naive backtracking solution, but i was really excited to have finished it.

How it hurts when @iamdevloper on Twitter constantly wants to make funny joke but no one laughs...

I never take breaks at work unless it’s lunchtime - this of course has led to some health problems, so now I try taking more breaks.

But when I’m having a tough time at work I try to notify my colleagues and I usually take breaks more often. Some of which include going for a walk outside, catching some fresh air.

And when commuting home I drink some beer on the train and play sudoku or a binary puzzle while listening to podcasts, or I just take out my Switch and play.

Cmon connect the dots

An interviewer recently asked me "how many 'valid' combinations can you do with N parenthesis, either closing or opening?"

It sounds easy enough, yet I didn't manage to find the solution, apparently I was close enough using dynamic programming. Can you solve it ? :)

What ya'll working on this week?
Im working on a html5 puzzle game for a local gamejam 😛

So... My brother got his computer when I was 6 years old... It was a 286 with the new 64mb HD and the screen had 16 gray scale color...
Latter it was given to me when my brother got his 486dx2 and I did a course in ms-dos and batch scripting.
That's it, lots of sfigher, puzzle bubble, Dina blast, wolfeinstein 3D...

Wanna hear a joke?
The google play front page!

Its essetially just a giant ad page. And pretty much consists only of puzzle games and games parents let their children install only for them to shut up.

My first computer was an old Pentium 2 running windows 98 with no internet and just a CD Rom and Floppy Drive. Got it for my 7th Birthday I think and immediately wanted to make it do my biding.

Didn't work out. Had no clue what the words on screen meant and batch scripts looked like sorcery to me.
Hell even the options menu in German was a cryptic puzzle to me.

Got a little better in the meantime.

Thinking back, it’s pretty terrible how long it took to create my first real development project.

When I was the ages of 13-18 I built websites on and off but I would never consider them good enough. I would literally design a bunch of images and then, using just HTML, put all the images together like a puzzle using exact pixel locations. Might be fine and dandy now but back then it would look great on my monitor but on others it would be an absolute mess.

Anyways, after that I got in college and started learning C++ and did assignments but I don’t count those as my own either. Not until I was 29 (my current age) did I finally develop a program assigned by my internship. Prior to that I always just re-learned C++ over and over again off and on because I had no clue where to go after that.

Apologies for the long intro. So the first development project that I feel is legit at my internship I had to use my companies API to track the amount of time it took for them to encrypt a packet and then decrypt it as well as grabbing the packet and seeing how long the hash was, the letters used in which position and so on. Essentially grab a whole bunch of statistics from their software and then output it to an excel document. It had a menu, and I had to make it work on Windows, Ubuntu, Raspbian, and some other systems on different devices.

I was actually really proud of what I ended up with and they use it to test their new versions and compare and so forth.

Honestly guys, I don't like to go to meetups and I'll tell you why:

You just sit there listening to a badly explained piece of the puzzle by some guys who care more about networking credit than the technology itself.
I know there are meetups with real enthusiasts but even then, I find the level of depth very unsatisfactory because they barely scratch the surface on the topic.
You end up leaving the event having wasted your time and your evening, while you could have been out doing something much more fun.

Here's what I do: I look up the meeting details and I see what they're going to talk about. Then, I look up information about that and I study it on my own.

Advantages:

* I get a lot more information than a mere one or two vague words about the topic combined with some silly demo that doesn't really teach anyone anything at all

* I get to digest the information at my processing speed

* I don't have to deal with the stress of trying to make small talk with people I don't know

I'm sure someone has felt like this at one point or another, especially in corporate.

There's this depressing and slightly awkward moment when you're a professional software engineer, Google puts up a KIDS in code doodle/coding challenge and you can't work out how to solve the last puzzle in optimal moves...

Fuck.

80.08.135

My IP address.

A shitty platform that, although open source, there is no clearly documented way of setting a development environment for it. This pile of crap states clearly that it does NOT support RTL languages. One of the core business requirements is Arabic support. What to do? Look for other platforms? WRONG!

Base the fucking business on it and ask ME to see why the SQL database is not encoding the Arabic characters correctly and to look into the logs that back-end puked. My expertise is mobile development anyways damnit. Sure the backend code is Java code (Java jokers and haters, not the appropriate place) and I know it but there is no fucking way to test that motherfucker or to build it! No fucking testing server can be made! Only instructions to get a Docker image pulled and set up.

FML.

"This company is a fucking م."

I cannot believe I am so frustrated that I am ending this rant with a fun puzzle.

Hints to help you decipher the quoted sentence:

Hint 1: That Arabic letter is the perfect letter.
Hint 2: You don't need to be an Arab to understand what it means.

Find the Wifi password !!!

That sore laugh when you see same post you saw yesterday... But laugh not because its funny but to keep from crying...

Can (a ==1 && a==2 && a==3) Ever Evaluate to 'true'? Possible or Impossible ?

In year 2000, I was 10, Tunisian government had made it possible for middle class families to get cheap computers and pay later. So my dad brought one home.
I played with it then I got more interested in what was inside.
Think of it as a 10 years old with no prior experience playing puzzle with computer parts.
It can't end well.
But the thrill I felt while doing it definitely had something to do with my career.
Hint: I don't do hardware :v

Getting a CodinGame puzzle's description without scraping the page.

I spent hours playing with different endpoints and changing values in postman, all to no avail. The most promising endpoint also returned user progress, which requires authentication, which requires a dummy account, which is against their ToS (it is allowed to reverse engineer the API though).

Turns out you just had to submit “null” for your user ID and it would remove the progress field.

Why is this tagged bad design?

["puzzle-id-string", user-id-as-int]

For almost anything, you POST json arrays...

Send help.

Oh man, I have so many ideas and "projects" that I've spent a day at most on. There's the "build a PC in a NES"-project, the "Hearthstone collector's site"-project, the "online crossword puzzle"-project (my dad loves puzzles but goes through books like he reads them and most online are paid) but the one I'm currently most excited about is setting up a gaming community in my region with some friends :)

Thoughts on which ones I should drop or pick up again?

The moment when I wrote a puzzle solver in C.
Not the most exciting thing to write but it felt great at the time.
Before writing every line of code without thinking some steps forward I decided to write it as pseudo code in notepad.
The very moment it was converted to C it just worked, writing it was beyond pleasure, just pure bliss.

A question to game devs : which design/architecture patterns do you use ?

Everytime I try to take a look at game development, I feel like there is a lack of guidelines, mostly about architecture.

It's something strange to me as a web dev, as we use much of these patterns on a daily basis. Of course I think about the near omnipresence of MVC and its variants, but not just that. Most of frameworks we do use are essentially focused on architecture, and we litterally have access to unlimited tutorials and resources about how to structure code depending on projects types ans needs.

Let's say I want to code a 2D RPG. This has been done millions of time across the world now. So I assume there should be guidelines and patterns about how to structure your code basis and how to achieve practical use-cases (like the best way to manage hero experience for example, or how to code a turn-based battle system). However I feel these are much harder to find and identify than the equivalent guidelines in the web dev world.

And the old-school RPG case is just an example. I feel the same about puzzle games or 3D games... Sure there are some frameworks and tools but they seems to focus more on physics engine and graphic features than code architecture. There are many tutorials too, but they are actually reinforcing my feeling : like if every game developer (at least every game company) has his on guidelines and methods and doesn't share much.

So... Am I wrong ? Hope to.

What are the tools and patterns you can reuse on many projects ? Where can I find proper game architectures guidelines that reached consensus ?

Anyone here tried the game Human Resource Machine? Pretty cool game since it's puzzle solving and kinda similar to programming (the logic of it)

On strong painkillers, read a rant, want to +1 it, but can't. Puzzle for a moment before realising it's your own damn rant!

1. I love the challenge of a good puzzle. There's always something new to solve that I didn't know before, and it rarely requires external knowledge like a crossword...

2. At least in my current life situation, no one I interact with has any idea what I'm doing, so if I feel like working on a solution to side project at work, it wouldn't look any different. It also keeps people from trying to learn about what I'm doing. They leave me alone which is exactly what I want.

3. As my professor once said (and totally stole from someone else), "the people who are the most talented and innovative with their code are probably the laziest in reality". I feel like this is pretty true, at least for me. Sometimes I see a simple repetitive task that I don't feel like doing, and I have the power to create a program to do it for me. Ultimate laziness with a fantastic result.

"The Perils and Triumphs of Debugging: A Developer's Odyssey"

You know you're in for an adventurous coding session when you decide to dive headfirst into debugging. It's like setting sail on the tumultuous seas of code, not quite sure if you'll end up on the shores of success or stranded on the island of endless errors.

As a developer, I often find myself in this perilous predicament, armed with my trusty text editor and a cup of coffee, ready to conquer the bugs lurking in the shadows. The first line of code looks innocent enough, but little did I know that it was the calm before the storm.

The journey begins with that one cryptic error message that might as well be written in an ancient, forgotten language. It's a puzzle, a riddle, and a test of patience all rolled into one. You read it, re-read it, and then call over your colleague, hoping they possess the magical incantation to decipher it. Alas, they're just as clueless.

With each debugging attempt, you explore uncharted territories of your codebase, and every line feels like a step into the abyss. You question your life choices and wonder why you didn't become a chef instead. But then, as you unravel one issue, two more pop up like hydra heads. The sense of despair is palpable.

But, my fellow developers, there's a silver lining in this chaotic journey. The moment when you finally squash that bug is an unparalleled triumph. It's the victory music after a challenging boss fight, the "Eureka!" moment that echoes through the office, and the affirmation that, yes, you can tame this unruly beast we call code.

So, the next time you find yourself knee-deep in debugging hell, remember that you're not alone. We've all been there, and we've all emerged stronger, wiser, and maybe just a little crazier. Debugging is our odyssey, and every error is a dragon to be slain. Embrace the chaos, and may your code be ever bug-free!

writing bunch of lines of code in C just to make a program that says "I love you" but the answer you get from her is:

printf("i have a boyfriend")

So technical interview time but whenever I look at algorithm, data structure questions now I feel demotivated... it sort of feels like boring pointless work.

But if i remove the context of preparing for an interview and say I have as much time as i need, it feels like a logical puzzle, challenge, something interesting I could use to kill some time, learn something new...

It feels like there's a divide like how I can go on and on about my personal projects but if you ask about work projects, I give you the boilerplate or have to really think about what to say...

And so now I'm feeling fucked for the phone screens and algo interviews that I'm supposed to be having soon... and let's just say one of them may be with a really really big tech company...

When your friend posts dumb stupid off topic answer on StackOverflow

I need advice:

I'm a developer, I have lots of experience with Java and Python (More on Java than Python). But I'm not a game-dev.

I've been thinking about dedicate serious time to develop a game, like a long term plan, using my free time.

Top down adventure / puzzle game; you know typical go here, get key there, put three gems here, unlock that and so on.

I have two options: Go with Java as I can move easily with it OR use an engine like Godot even though I've never used it before.

So game-devs, any advice on what should be the best approach here?

My vague naive extreme understanding of interview questions are on a spectrum from situation a to situation b.

But what should the industry be doing? Is the industry just going wrong blindly copying big N companies hiring process without the same rationale? (e.g. they need computer scientists able to deal with problems specific to them at their size and that often means creating new tech, unreal problem solving abilities and cuh-rayzee knowledge)

a) stupid fucking theoretical shit that some people argue you won't ever need to be doing in practice for most companies, while giving you no ability to google, leetcode hard problems kind of stuff

b) practical work similar to what you'd be doing on the job, small bugs, tasks, pair programming on site with your potential future coworkers

Lots of people hate option a because it's puzzle/problem solving that isn't always closely related to what's on the job. Whiteboarding is arguably very much a separate skill. (Arguably unless it's like a big N company where you want computer scientists to deal with specific problems that aren't seen elsewhere, and you're making new tech to deal with your specific problems.)

We could go to the extreme of Option b, but it tends to trigger people into shitfits of "NO, HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME DO REAL WORK, BUT NOT PAY ME FOR IT AT THE INTERVIEW STAGE"

That's before we get into how to execute option b whether or not it's being given as a take home assignment (which is a huge pain in the ass and time sink, among other issues) vs a few hours at the potential workplace working with some of the future potential coworkers and soaking in the work environment (you have to figure out how to take the time off then)

Is it really just poor execution overall for the wrong use cases for the majority of the industry? What should the industry be doing in which cases.

Then this is all before HR screening with shit like where they might ask for more years of swift experience than its existed.

I have been an armchair neuroscientist in my interests. I am fascinated by the brain, how we believe it works, how it really works, and what different research has shown. I have found books written by real neuroscientists that talk about how the brain works and what the research they have shows about intelligence. I am also fascinated by the idea of rewiring your brain. I just found another neuroscience book that has research from some neuroscientists that have challenged the established belief that adult brains have little to no neuroplasticity. This is the ability for the brain to rewire itself to accomplish new tasks or repurpose different parts of the brain. I didn't know this was a limiting factor in the theory of neuroscience. The book also includes information about how Buddhists and neuroscientists are working together to unlock more knowledge about neuroplasticity. The traditional neursoscience belief is that the brain affects the mind solely. However Buddhists have long believed that the mind can affect the brain physically. I am just starting to read this book, but so far the experiments that have been performed seem fascinating. It also has not gotten to the part about the Buddhism influence on the research yet. So far I have just read about how scientists have shown that plasticity can be shown to occur with normal everyday tasks. I don't know where this will lead, but its really cool to read about.

Okay, great, so what?

The why was I looking for this is interesting. I have been looking for some time ideas on how to improve my thinking. I had the idea that I could help myself think better by training my brain with mental exercises. I want to create a program that runs on the computer or phone that one could use with visual and audible cues to play mental games. These games would be designed to make one better at solving puzzles, remember things better, and more. If these exercises could be made in such a way that they were fun to do then we could use our own addictions to improve ourselves. The research I had before frustrated me because they always said you couldn't make yourself smarter. Maybe you cannot increase your mental capacity (not sure if that is true if we can grow neurons, also mentioned in the book), but reorganizing what you have might be possible. Maybe if there is a finite capacity to the brain that reorganizing might cause you to drool. I don't know, but if I could create a puzzle game with the purpose of helping me visualize algorithms, I would find that useful. Also, helping me remember short strings of data would be helpful as well. It seems like I have trouble when it is more than 7 numbers (ten?). Which is also why phone numbers are that long. To make them easier to remember.

I just don't know where this will lead. It might be a wild goose chase. But I think I will learn something about my mind and myself in the process. It also sounds like a great deal of fun.

See if the final puzzle of the system works. If does, assemble the system.

Big thanks to anyone who helped solve the corridors of time puzzle. Team explorers is proud of you

Any easy solution to solve the rubix cube? I saw some videos on YouTube but dint find any convincing algo which is easy to remember..

Ever feel like you're in a labyrinth, but instead of a Minotaur, you're being chased by DLL dependency hell?
I've lost more sleep trying to untangle this spaghetti than I care to admit.

Let's make dependencies a breeze, not a brain-twisting puzzle. Seriously, my debugger cries every time it steps into that abyss.

Have fun with it and don't take it TOO seriously. Always look at a bug as a puzzle then you'll enjoy it more in the long run.

I don't get the point writing SHIT code for a project you're paid less than you expected! Shouldn't you use that oportunity and improve your knowledge, instead of complicating your and life of a person who will take care of that code later? The fuck! You work in a TEAM and not in a stupid shithole of your dumb ass!

Today/tonight I dreamed of next gen laptop SoC/chip from (Huawei? or HP) that very small and has 16 TB of memory, then they introduced that they can be joined together like a puzzle and each of them can act like different kind of device, for example: GPU, CPU, NPU and extend port availability (dunno how)
Felt like something revolutionary

I had my first trivia yesterday. I made so many dumb mistakes simply because I was nervous due to it being a test.
After it was over I implemented the solution that I fucked up in one of the puzzles.
Good start, I guess. I at least got 50% right, but I expect a rejection due to forgetting random facts, plus the failure to answer the embarrassingly easy puzzle that just required a stack and a reverse loop.

I need to desensitize myself.

ugh what have I done to myself?

Today I started this codingame thing someone mentioned on here, but because I'm stubborn I've played every puzzle or game in bash so far...
So yeah, I'm loosing to all the cool kids using C++ or python even on simple stuff and I'm always struggling with this weird syntax - like "$" or not ... whitespace? parenthesis?

I mean I do like some bash but these games are really not made for it

nothing interesting really I kinda like minimalism but I keep a rubik's cube, a wooden puzzle and a dice on my other desktop

Oh my got, where i have my puzzle shit to put this web together?

It's nice to finally figure out how to solve a complex puzzle in a coding project.

For me, this usually happens at a line in the grocery store or better yet at the lobby of the kindergarden while I'm picking up my kids.

What does a bitcoin mining puzzle have to do with verifying transactions/driving consensus across nodes?

The winner just gets to write? The next block but doesn't that mean he is like admin, he can make up all the transactions he wants?

How to create a jigsaw puzzle in react?

Did anyone work in Samsung Bixby envrionment here?

#Suphle Rant 6: Deptrac, phparkitect

This entry isn't necessarily a rant but a tale of victory. I'm no more as sad as I used to be. I don't work as hard as I used to, so lesser challenges to frustrate my life. On top of that, I'm not bitter about the pace of progress. I'm at a state of contentment regarding Suphle's release

An opportunity to gain publicity presented itself last month when cfp for a php event was announced last month. I submitted and reviewed a post introducing suphle to the community. In the post, I assured readers that I won't be changing anything soon ie the apis are cast in stone. Then php 7.4 officially "went out of circulation". It hit me that even though the code supports php 8 on paper, it's kind of a red herring that decorators don't use php 8 attributes. So I doubled down, suspending documentation.

The container won't support union and intersection types cuz I dislike the ambiguity. Enums can't be hydrated. So I refactored implementation and usages of decorators from interfaces to native attributes. Tried automating typing for all class properties but psalm is using docblocks instead of native typing. So I disabled it and am doing it by hand whenever something takes me to an unfixed class (difficulty: 1). But the good news is, we are php 8 compliant as anybody can ask for!

I decided to ride that wave and implement other things that have been bothering me:
1) 2 commands for automating project setup for collaborators and user facing developers (CHECK)
2) transferring some operations from runtime to compile/build TIME (CHECK)
3) re-attempt implementing container scopes

I tried automating Deptrac usage ie adding the newly created module to the list of regulated architectural layers but their config is in yaml, so I moved to phparkitect which uses php to set the rules. I still can't find a library for programmatically updating php filed/classes but this is more dynamic for me than yaml. I set out to implement their library, turns out the entire logic is dumped into the command class, so I can neither control it without the cli or automate tests to it. I take the command apart, connect it to suphle and run. Guess what, it detects class parents as violations to the rule. Wtflyingfuck?!

As if that's not bad enough, roadrunner (that old biatch!) server setup doesn't fail if an initialization script fails. If initialization script is moved to the application code itself, server setup crumbles and takes the your initialization stuff down with it. I ping the maintainer, rustacian (god bless his soul), who informs me point blank that what I'm trying to do is not possible. Fuck it. I have to write a wrapper command for sequentially starting the server (or not starting if initialization operations don't all succeed).

Legitimate case to reinvent the wheel. I restored my deleted decorators that did dependency sanitation for me at runtime. The remaining piece of the puzzle was a recursive film iterator to feed the decorators. I checked my file system reader for clues on how to implement one and boom! The one I'd written for two other features was compatible. All I had to do was refactor decorators into dependency rules, give them fancy interfaces for customising and filtering what classes each rule should actually evaluate. In a night's work (if you're discrediting how long writing the original sanitization decorators and directory iterator), I coupled the Deptrac/phparkitect library of my dreams. This is one of the those few times I feel like a supreme deity

Hope I can eat better and get some sleep. This meme is me after getting bounced by those three library rejections