The way 90% of the population wears their face masks really explains a lot about their approach to using software, apps & websites as well.

I feel like giving up.

I am not a developer for the salary, or just to solve analytical puzzles. Those are motivators, but my main drive is to make the world more comfortable and enjoyable, better optimized, build ethical services which bring happiness into people's lives. I want to improve society, even if it's just a tiny bit.

But if users invest absolutely zero percent of their limited brain capacity into understanding a product that already has a super-clean design and responds with helpful validation messages...

...why the fuck bother.

I used to think of the gap between technology and tech-incompetent people as an optimization problem.

As something which could be fixed by spending a fortune on UX research. Write tests, hire QA employees, decrease tech debt, create a bold but unified & simple design.

But the technologically incompetent just get more entitled with every small thing you simplify.

It's never fucking fool-proof enough.

Why can't I upload a 220MB PDF as profile picture? Why doesn't the app install on my 9 year old Android Froyo phone? Why can't I sign up if my phone number contains a  U+FFFC? Why does this page load so slowly from my rural concrete bunker in East Ukraine? WHY DO I HAVE PNEUMONIA, HOW DID I GET INFECTED EVEN THOUGH I WAS WEARING A MOUTH MASK ON MY FOREHEAD?

This is why I ran away from Frontend, to Backend, to DBA.

If I could remove myself further from the end user, I would.

At least I still have a full glass of tawny port and a huge database which needs to be normalized & migrated.

Fuck humans, I'm going to hug a server.

"Coding is solving puzzles".

I think everyone has heard that platitude. But it's not exactly right.

So I grew up in a very poor environment, a moldy building full of jobless addicts.

And in my town there was this shop where super poor parents could take their kids to borrow free toys and stuff.

So as a kid I remember being frustrated by these second hand jigsaw puzzles, because there were always a few pieces which had been teared up or chewed on, or were even completely missing.

That is what development is.

You pull in this seemingly awesome composer package, and that one super useful method is declared private, so you need to fork the whole thing.

Your coworker has built this great microservice in python, but instead of returning 404 not found, it returns 200 with json key/value saying "error": "not found".

There's a shitload of nicely designed templates for the company website, but half of them have container divs inside the components, the other half expect to be wrapped in container divs when included.

You're solving puzzles, but your peers are all brainless jigsaw-piece-chewers. They tried to mend a problem, but half way through got distracted, hungry and angry, started drooling over the task and used a hammer to fit in the remaining stuff.

I’m making a puzzle game! Cool!

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

A year ago I would have said:

"Because I love solving logic puzzles, there's no greater joy than finding a very simple, elegant translation of a user's requirements into code"

Then 2020 came. I'm SO FUCKING FED UP with coworkers and managers who miss all the required competence to organize and communicate about projects as they are fundamentally incompatible with the concept of working from home.

I'm quite sure I'm the last one to give up at my work.

The company chat has completely died down. I've tried setting up meetings, but even my bosses show up irregularly, confused about why I'm calling them in the middle of their Netflix marathon.

So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. My answer is now:

"I'm a developer because I get nearly 6 figures, for going through my Steam Library while completely shitfaced at 11AM. When I sober up in the afternoon, I work on some hobby projects. I get to spend 500/m on ordering sandwiches"

I recently joined the dark side - an agile consulting company (why and how is a long story). The first client I was assigned to was an international bank. The client wanted a web portal, that was at its core, just a massive web form for their users to perform data entry.

My company pitched and won the project even though they didn't have a single developer on their bench. The entire project team (including myself) was fast tracked through interviews and hired very rapidly so that they could staff the project (a fact I found out months later).

Although I had ~8 years of systems programming experience, my entire web development experience amounted to 12 weeks (a part time web dev course) just before I got hired.

I introduce to you, my team ...

Scrum Master. 12 years experience on paper.
Rote memorised the agile manifesto and scrum textbooks. He constantly went “We should do X instead of (practical thing) Y, because X is the agile way.” Easily pressured by the client to include ridiculous (real time chat in a form filling webpage), and sometimes near impossible features (undo at the keystroke level). He would just nag at the devs until someone mumbled ‘yes' just so that he would stfu and go away.

UX Designer. 3 years experience on paper ... as business analyst.
Zero professional experience in UX. Can’t use design tools like AI / photoshop. All he has is 10 weeks of UX bootcamp and a massive chip on his shoulder. The client wanted a web form, he designed a monstrosity that included several custom components that just HAD to be put in, because UX. When we asked for clarification the reply was a usually condescending “you guys don’t understand UX, just do <insert unhandled edge case>, this is intended."

Developer - PHD in his first job.
Invents programming puzzles to solve where there are none. The user story asked for a upload file button. He implemented a queue system that made use of custom metadata to detect file extensions, file size, and other attributes, so that he could determine which file to synchronously upload first.

Developer - Bootlicker. 5 years experience on paper.
He tried to ingratiate himself with the management from day 1. He also writes code I would fire interns and fail students for. His very first PR corrupted the database. The most recent one didn’t even compile.

Developer - Millennial fratboy with a business degree. 8 years experience on paper.
His entire knowledge of programming amounted to a single data structures class he took on Coursera. Claims that’s all he needs. His PRs was a single 4000+ line files, of which 3500+ failed the linter, had numerous bugs / console warnings / compile warnings, and implemented 60% of functionality requested in the user story. Also forget about getting his attention whenever one of the pretty secretaries walked by. He would leap out of his seat and waltz off to flirt.

Developer - Brooding loner. 6 years experience on paper.
His code works. It runs, in exponential time. Simply ignores you when you attempt to ask.

Developer - Agile fullstack developer extraordinaire. 8 years experience on paper.
Insists on doing the absolute minimum required in the user story, because more would be a waste. Does not believe in thinking ahead for edge conditions because it isn’t in the story. Every single PR is a hack around existing code. Sometimes he hacks a hack that was initially hacked by him. No one understands the components he maintains.

Developer - Team lead. 10 years of programming experience on paper.
Writes spaghetti code with if/else blocks nested 6 levels deep. When asked "how does this work ?”, the answer “I don’t know the details, but hey it works!”. Assigned as the team lead as he had the most experience on paper. Tries organise technical discussions during which he speaks absolute gibberish that either make no sense, or are complete misunderstandings of how our system actually works.

The last 2 guys are actually highly regarded by my company and are several pay grades above me. The rest were hired because my company was desperate to staff the project.

There are a 3 more guys I didn’t mention. The 4 of us literally carried the project. The codebase is ugly as hell because the others merge in each others crap. We have no unit tests, and It’s near impossible to start because of the quality of the code. But this junk works, and was deployed to production. Today is it actually hailed as a success story.

All these 3 guys have quit. 2 of them quit without a job. 1 found a new and better gig.

I’m still here because I need the money. There’s a tsunami of trash code waiting to fail in production, and I’m the only one left holding the fort.

Why am I surrounded by morons?
Why are these retards paid more than me?
Why are they so proud when all they produce is trash?
How on earth are they still hired?

And yeah, FML.

I promised myself to be extra productive today. After an hour of working, I took a small break to read a bit about Elon Musk...

...and somehow I ended up reading about the history of jigsaw puzzles on Wikipedia. Ffs.

One of my favourite, encryption puzzles is this:

ITuyVT93oUZtLKWyVT5iqPO3nTS0VUEbMKxtp2IyoD==

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

Best part:

I basically get payed to solve puzzles!

Once went for an interview for a senior web developer role. The first interview was a coding test ( not a problem, been coding for years and know I can do it). The company boasted that it supported pair programming.

I was sat at in an open plan office In front of a machine and given a question sheet of 10 code questions/puzzles and asked to solve them. Then out of nowhere 5 other senior devs appeared and stood behind me and proceeded to comment /question every single line I typed (so no pressure then).

I did questions 1-5 (fairly easy tbh) but all the devs behind me critiquing every single line started to drive me crazy so I asked if it was normal for them to interview this way and was told 'yes' and that after a year of trying to find someone they had been unsuccessful.

I told them that I wanted to leave the interview at that point; I don't mind my code being critiqued just prefer it when I've at least finished the line. Forcing you into a pair programming scenario in the interview really didn't feel right.

To this day (2years later) I still see ads for that very same job

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.

This was a fun thing that just happened:

I was sent a timed questionnaire by a potential employer for a software engineer job. I'm like okay, I will do it on Monday (today) because that is when I will have a free minute.

Well I sit down to do the thing and I had had a few beers, because the Ballmer Peak is real to me when I have to answer bullshit programming quizzes.

Well F me right in the A, it is a 38 question true or false logic quiz. And I am no longer a college kid trying to get into grad school so I have no patience for that crap, and apparently less with a little beer in me. Long story short, there was no comment section for me to rant in so I decided to go on YouTube and watch cat videos instead.

Some of these have been mentioned already but here they are, these things make me be a bit better at programming (at least I think so)

• sleep, I love sleep and I think a good night's sleep can do wonders

• music, music theory which is a language in itself and playing an instrument which teaches hand-eye-coordination and also creates patterns in your head, but certainly teaches us that you need to practice a lot to achieve your goals, that it's hard for beginners but gets a bit easier with time

• solving puzzles and riddles, I've been a huge fan of puzzles from an early age, it is something that teaches us solving problems and creating strategies

• other types of games that are helpful are games where you have to find things in a picture or in an environment, this has trained me a bit on finding nasty bugs in my code or at least syntax errors

• googling: sometimes you find out something that is not really related to your problem, but you remember it nevertheless and later on it can help you with something else

• maths, yes, you read correctly, I'm not a big fan of maths either, but what you learn in maths is that there are certain procedures you're often repeating and that you're always building on your knowledge and expanding it, sometimes solving mathematical problems is fun too ;)

• getting fresh air - self explanatory

• listening to other people's life stories, this helps me generally in life, to know that I'm not the only one struggling with something and so on

And I probably could go on with a lot more things, but I think that's enough for now

!rant

Anybody here heard of Project Euler? It's a series of maths/programming puzzles, and I think it's great fun trying to solve them. 😁

This one is more...puzzling than anything else.

We had a consultant come in, a young guy recently out of school. He completed his basic onboarding stuff, got along okay with everyone, etc., but was quiet and kept to himself.

At the end of his first week, we were heading out the door on Friday afternoon, and someone offhandedly said to him “see you next week” or something benign like that. He responded with “yeah we’ll see,” which was...odd.

And then he completely disappeared – we never saw him again.

Okay, so he just decided the job wasn’t for him and quit, right? What’s so strange about that?

Well, for one, the company technically owed him a paycheck for the week, but they couldn’t reach him despite multiple attempts. They eventually left a message and said if you want to get paid, come in and pick up your check. He never did.

But not only that, he *abandoned his car* at the office! On the Friday that he left, he apparently got a ride or a taxi home, and then he just never came back in to get his car. The company eventually had to tow it.

I just would love to know the backstory here. Why would someone go through the trouble to apply for a job, interview, accept the position, work for a week – and then quit without getting paid and leave their car behind??

I swear to god I am this close to writing myself a Sudoku solver for those damn Mass Effect Andromeda Puzzles

i genuinely like programming. it's like solving logical puzzles for me, challenges on a smaller or bigger scale, and this is fun.
i always feel this when working on something on my own, i.e. a full stack project where i take care of everything.

but i'm so sick and tired of corporate software development.
i'm tired of scrum, all these scrum meetings, it feels like they are sucking my life energy away. if at least i had the feeling that i work in a team where everybody contributes, the team work is nice and also project management is aligned.
i'm tired of having too many different tasks in too many different areas or projects and never having the feeling to be able to really concentrate on one thing, to be able to do a job well enough so that i'm content with it.
i'm tired of this feeling that what i'm working on is not meaningful. the feeling that my team is not part of a bigger story where everyone contributes their part and where there is a sense of productive collaboration between teams. the feeling that mismanagement will result in a lot of money being burned, because of work being thrown away or becoming irrelevant, or because of miscommunication, making promises that can impossibly be delivered on.
this feeling that i cannot really improve or fix the ship we are sailing with, but rather being handed a bucket and being told to constantly remove the leaking water and put it back in the ocean, but always at multiple sites of the ship all at once.
i'm tired of being the only female dev and altogether feeling so different from the rest of the team, feeling that i do not belong there.

even though i need to make a living, i just can't imagine anymore to spend so much of my lifetime for something that makes me feel so bad...

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...

Do all companies ask candidates to solve some crazy puzzles before interviewing them? These puzzles have nothing to do with the job!

The hardest part about writing an app is getting anyone to find it :( on that note, please help? <3
If you have little ones I promise they'll enjoy it! it might even get you an hour or two of quiet coding time.
Tap the top bar on the main menu that says 'My First Puzzles' ten times to get prompted for a secret code (3hfazJUD) to unlock all packs free :)

I AM TIRED

warning: this rant is going to be full of negativity , CAPS, and cursing.

People always think and they always write that programming is an analytical profession. IF YOU CANNOT THINK IN AN ANALYTICAL WAY THIS JOB IS NOT FOR YOU! But the reality could not be farther from the truth.

A LOT of people in this field whether they're technical people or otherwise, just lack any kind of reasoning or "ANALYTICAL" thinking skills. If anything, a lot of of them are delusional and/or they just care about looking COOL. "Because programming is like getting paid to solve puzzles" *insert stupid retarded laugh here*.

A lot of devs out there just read a book or two and read a Medium article by another wannabe, now think they're hot shit. They know what they're doing. They're the gods of "clean" and "modular" design and all companies should be in AWE of their skills paralleled only by those of deities!

Everyone out there and their Neanderthal ancestor from start-up founders to developers think they're the next Google/Amazon/Facebook/*insert fancy shitty tech company*.

Founder? THEY WANT TO MOVE FAST AND GET TO MARKET FAST WITH STUPID DEADLINES! even if it's not necessary. Why? BECAUSE YOU INFERIOR DEVELOPER HAVE NOT READ THE STUPID HOT PILE OF GARBAGE I READ ONLINE BY THE POEPLE I BLINDLY COPY! "IF YOU'RE NOT EMBARRASSED BY THE FIRST VERSION OF YOU APP, YOU DID SOMETHING WRONG" - someone at Amazon.

Well you delusional brainless piece of stupidity, YOU ARE NOT AMAZON. THE FIRST VERSION THAT THIS AMAZON FOUNDER IS EMBARRASSED ABOUT IS WHAT YOU JERK OFF TO AT NIGHT! IT IS WHAT YOU DREAM ABOUT HAVING!

And oh let's not forget the tech stacks that make absolutely no fucking sense and are just a pile of glue and abstraction levels on top of abstraction levels that are being used everywhere. Why? BECAUSE GOOGLE DOES IT THAT WAY DUH!! And when Google (or any other fancy shit company) changes it, the old shitty tech stack that by some miracle you got to work and everyone is writing in, is now all of a sudden OBSOLETE! IT IS OLD. NO ONE IS WRITING SHIT IN THAT ANYMORE!

And oh my god do I get a PTSD every time I hear a stupid fucker saying shit like "clean architecture" "clean shit" "best practice". Because I have yet to see someone whose sentences HAVE TO HAVE one of these words in them, that actually writes anything decent. They say this shit because of some garbage article they read online and in reality when you look at their code it is hot heap of horseshit after eating something rancid. NOTHING IS CLEAN ABOUT IT. NOTHING IS DONE RIGHT. AND OH GOD IF THAT PERSON WAS YOUR TECH MANAGER AND YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO THEM RUNNING THEIR SHITHOLE ABOUT HOW YOUR SIMPLE CODE IS "NOT CLEAN". And when you think that there might be a valid reason to why they're doing things that way, you get an answer of someone in an interview who's been asked about something they don't know, but they're trying to BS their way to sounding smart and knowledgable. 0 logic 0 reason 0 brain.

Let me give you a couple of examples from my unfortunate encounters in the land of the delusional.

I was working at this start up which is fairly successful and there was this guy responsible for developing the front-end of their website using ReactJS and they're using Redux (WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS TO ELIMINATE PASSING ATTRIBUTES FOR THE PURPOSE OF PASSING THEM DOWN THE COMPONENT HIERARCHY AGIAN). This guy kept ranting about their quality and their shit every single time we had a conversation about the code while I was getting to know everything. Also keep in mind he was the one who decided to use Redux. Low and behold there was this component which has THIRTY MOTHERFUCKING SEVEN PROPERTIES WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS BE PASSED DOWN AGAIN LIKE 3 TO 4 TIMES!.

This stupid shit kept telling me to write code in a "functional" style. AND ALL HE KNOWS ABOUT FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING IS USING MAP, FILTER, REDUCE! And says shit like "WE DONT NEED UNIT TESTS BECAUSE FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING HAS NO ERRORS!" Later on I found that he read a book about functional programming in JS and now he fucking thinks he knows what functional programming is! Oh I forgot to mention that the body of his "maps" is like 70 fucking lines of code!

Another fin-tech company I worked at had a quote from Machiavelli's The Prince on EACH FUCKING DESK:

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

MOTHERFUCKER! NEW ORDER OF THINGS? THERE 10 OTHER COMPANIES DOING THE SAME SHIT ALREADY!

And the one that got on my nerves as a space lover. Is a quote from Kennedy's speech about going to the moon in the 60s "We choose to go to the moon and do the hard things ..."

YOU FUCKING DELUSIONAL CUNT! YOU THINK BUILDING YOUR SHITTY COPY PASTED START UP IS COMPARABLE TO GOING TO THE MOON IN THE 60S?

I am just tired of all those fuckers.

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

I post riddles and puzzles outside my office door to keep people distracted before bothering me. they must answer all right before disturbing me.

Some people write unreadable horse shit pretending to be code it even puzzles the computer.

I enjoy solving problems, figuring out puzzles and learning new things.

Help, I don't know if I want to code as a job for the rest of my life.
I feel that I miss physical activity in my job. Its just sitting and programming.
I like programming, it's an infinite series of puzzles, and I like puzzles. But more physical would be nice.

Maybe I should find a 2nd job that is more physical and balance the two.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

The "Hot Network Questions" in the right side of every StackOverflow page.

Physics, Electronics, World building, Programming puzzles and code golf, Aviation, Skeptics...

I like what I do for a living.

I build software, mostly from scratch or early stage products. Those are different industries, different companies, different technologies, frameworks and languages. Systems that impact economy in a different way.

When I develop software I am picking different parts of same project and try to understand how companies earn money and what are advantages of their software. What are required regulations and requirements to sell the stuff.
How the money flows from client and what they’re changing for. I especially try to understand stuff from business perspective.
When I pay my debts and luckily be still alive but unemployed and with minimum income from stocks / properties rental I will have plenty of time to duplicate many of those businesses.

I picked programming cause it’s touching all parts of economy basically without any skill requirements and certifications. It’s young impactful industry that is luckily not yet regulated. You just need laptop, like to solve puzzles and have plenty of free time and you can create everything. Never forget about it.

Cloud corporations try to make people think differently but it’s just that simple.

I was struggling to make advancements in my task because I was so oriented by the "more code means more work done"... I wasn't producing at all. Now that I grabbed a notebook and a pen and started to think things through, things are finally rolling. Sometimes it's 90% thinking and 10% coding. In addition to that, I can't even write spagetti code after getting a solid concept written in pen. I just hate that I spend so much time thinking until something good comes up. But hey now it's rollinnnnnn.

Top reasons to be a dev? How about solving puzzles every day and getting paid well for it?

Hello DevRant community! It’s been a while, almost 5 years to be exact. The last time I posted here, I was a newbie, grappling with the challenges of a new job in a completely new country. Oh, how time flies!

Fast forward to today, and it’s been quite the journey. The codebase that once seemed like an indecipherable maze is now my playground. The bugs that used to keep me up at night are now my morning coffee puzzles. And the team, oh the team! We’ve moved from awkward nods to inside jokes and shared victories.

But let’s talk about the real hero here - the coffee machine. The unsung hero that has fueled late-night coding sessions and early morning stand-ups. It’s seen more heated debates than the PR comments section. If only it could talk, it would probably write its own rant about the indecisiveness of developers choosing between cappuccino and latte.

And then there are the unforgettable ‘learning opportunities’ - moments like accidentally shutting down the production server or dropping the customer database. Yes, they were panic-inducing crises of apocalyptic proportions at that time, but in hindsight, they were valuable lessons. Lessons about the importance of thorough testing, proper version control, reliable backup systems, and most importantly, owning up to our mistakes.

So here’s to the victories and failures, the bugs and fixes, the refactorings and 'wontfix’s. Here’s to the incredible journey of growth and learning. And most importantly, here’s to this amazing community that’s always been there with advice, sympathy, humor, and support.

Can’t wait to see what the next 5 years bring! 🥂

Playing various coding games and puzzles on codefight, coding game and playcode

Several years ago I joined the company I currently work for, as a software support person, with the intention of eventually moving toward the development team.

After a few years doing that, I gradually realised that working in the development team for our products didn't seem that appealing after all, so I went for a more technical support role (essentially debugging all the really complicated problems and reporting the bugs to the devs) which I find fascinating - trying to solve these puzzles is an interesting challenge. It can take days, sometimes weeks to get to the bottom of something really inexplicably weird.

As part of this I get to do some internal dev work on the teams projects (nothing that gets used directly by external users though) and have learned loads of things from my boss over the years (even before I joined this team).

It has its frustrating moments of course but I am definitely glad I didn't follow my original intentions of just being a developer on our main products.

Sometimes what you think you want isn't actually what's ideal for you :)

Today I experimented a bit with Dockerfile's.
Was quite surprised how far you could go with a spicy salsa of ARG, ENV, SHELL and multi stage builds.

But... For fucks sake....the debugging is like poking a light year long rod into a black hole, trying to fish something out of the event horizon....

In the end I got a nice setup for Java build's, version injectable with ENV/ARG, non root user and version specific behaviour.

As the debugging is non existing...

I filled up more than once my SSD....

It was an annoying brain damaged repetitive cycle of changing Dockerfile, pruning all images if docker build stopped because of missing free space, waiting for all stages to complete, start new.

And caching is a fragile thing that puzzles me .........

Guess more fishing tomorrow.

*Gives a happy deep throat to the beer bottle in hope of death*

Man wk89 awesome... bringing back a lot of memories. The one thing really stands out to me though is the software.

I see a lot of rants about people shocked that turboC is still in use or other DOS programs are still in production. A lot can of bad be said here but I think often it's a case of we truly don't build things like we did in the good old days.

What those devs accomplished with such limited resources is phenomenal and the fact that we still haven't managed to replicate the feel and usability of it says a lot, not to mention just how fucking stable most of it was.

My favourite games are all DOS based, my most favourite of all time Sherlock is 103kb in size. When I started coding games I made a clone of it and to this day I am still trying to figure out what sorcery is in the algorithm that generates/solves puzzles that makes it so fast and memory efficient. I must have tried 100+ ways and can't even come close. NB! If you know you can hint but don't tell me. Solving this is a matter of personal pride.

Where those games really stand out is when you get into the graphics processing - the solutions they came up with to render sprites, maps and trick your eyes into seeing detail with only 4-16 colours is nothing short of genius. Also take a second to consider that taking a screen shot of the game is larger than the entire game itself and let that sink in...

I think the dramatic increase in storage, processing power and ram over the last decade is making us shit developers - all of us. Just take one look at chrome, skype or anything else mainline really and it's easy to see we no longer give a rats ass about memory anywhere except our monthly AWS/GCE bill.

We don't have to be creative or even mindful about anything but the most significant memory leaks in order to get our software to run now days. We also don't have constraints to distribute it, fast deliver-ability is rewarded over quality software. It's only expected to stay in production 3-4 years anyway.

Those guys were the true "rockstars" and "ninja" developers and if you can't acknowledge that you can take ya React app and shovit.

arrays start at one

When you walk in a job interview & see a white board...

Credits:commentsense888 but pretty sure (s)he copied it too

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?

When I worked out I could get paid good money to sit on the PC all day and solve puzzles

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...

Using the company's desktop computers to solve cryptographic puzzles (like mining) on the company's computers while the boss and someone from the IT were asking to have a look on the machine after one guy already snatched my keyboard.

Very scary moment indeed but surprisingly it turned out: the real reason why they came was because a techadmin recently removed a shared system account but some faulty clients kept flooding the servers with outdated login credentials which also triggered mass SMS on the mobile devices.

Luckily I could somehow take an opportunity to remotely call the script which pulled the emergency brake which I prepared to shut down everything. Close call.

Nowadays I think it itsn't worth to take the risk just to do something that could also be done with the own home computer even it takes five times longer.

There are days where I just want to develop a plot of land in some forest/mountain rich area into a little farm, maybe with some silly animals like emus and alpacas.

Development is not always as stress free as I'd like it to be.

If I'd had to pick a way to spend my days and money was no issue, I'd probably only contribute to open source, and invest more time into a few projects of my own.

No boss, no sales department, no deadlines, zero pressure. Just solving the puzzles my brain wants to lock on to that day.

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

When Windows cares about you more than your parents 😂

!Rant:
Why did you guys decide to become a developer?

I became a developer after finding out that I loved wrecking my brains on complicated puzzles to keep me from getting depressed. After a while I figured out that I'm the person that needs to be challenged to actually be able to enjoy something and start to overthink the little things.

Here are the things I wreck my brains over on a weekly basis.
- programming
- research on complicated subjects
- magic the gathering

Started a new job as a dev. First days revealed no local admin rights, no right to use Linux locally and a very limited set of Software. Negotiated compromise to get a remote VM with Linux and a user who is part of sudo. VM turned out to be isolated by proxy, so I can not install anything new. At least Docker is pre-installed and I hoped it could work out. But guess what no access to dockerhub and I can not pull any images. Admin told me to copy manually the images with scp.

I'd never thought that there could be any companies out there who treats devs like that. What puzzles me most, there're lot of devs staying with that company for years, even decades already and they're good guys, please don't get me wrong.

Did you encounter anything like that? Could you make any difference there, where you met anything like it.

I reached the point after 3 weeks where I do not think I can make any difference and when it'll take ages to move people and company policy.
I do not want to give up, but I fear it is pointless to fight for change there. I am out of options and about to leave asap. Can you recommend me anything else?

Thanks in advance and for your time :)
Felt good to write it down.

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

Ive been thinking for a few now that if like to begin a social program to get old people to play computer games.

They are often bored as fuck， cant move much and have no mental challenges.

I mean what else than video games could save the day?

Old homes with puzzles and missing pieces. Dementia neighbours. Ots a no brainer!

Would anyone be interested in me setting up a series of puzzles for the people here on devRant? Kind of in a Cicada 3301 fashion, but without any of the mystery around it. Just a series of puzzles that you would all unite to try and break. I'd be happy to make that, but I'd also like to have a preview of how many people would be interested in it.

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

Co-worker asked for a call and then when I replied "you can call when ready :) " the reply back is an all caps "IN A MIN"

I'm not the one asking for the call and I'm also not rushing you to have one.

To me all caps means shouting and it puzzles me because while typing it the other person can see it and previous that they aren't using all caps. Why continue using all caps if you aren't angry? 🤷

How do you interpret all caps in a work chat conversation?

oh i still have this installed

I picked what I’m good at so solving puzzles after that it’s simple.

10 years experience rule or 10’000 hours of writing code.

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!

Scott Meyers.
He's just amazing. The way he thinks, he teaches, is absolutely wonderful. He's inspired me on many occasions.

Herb Sutter.
Absolute beast of a programmer. His guru of the week series is a simple but effective way to communicate concepts and techniques in a language.

There are a lot more - Scott Hanselman, Martin Fowler, Andrew Koenig, Andrei Alexandrescu, Barabara Moo and many more.
They remind me of why I chose programming. It wasn't for money or fame, just to solve puzzles in cool ways. It's the way you can take a simple concept and apply it to great effect that brings me joy and these people do it relentlessly.

I think it'd be cool if we put together ctf events, so people could learn bash, PowerShell, etc., by solving puzzles. It'd be a nice collaboration, and people can learn at the same time.

FRINALLY

You know what's worse than having to come up with a new password every time you create an account? Forgetting your password every time you try to log in!

I swear, it's like my brain has a selective memory when it comes to passwords. I can remember every lyric to a song from 10 years ago, but I can't remember the password I created yesterday.

And don't even get me started on password manager software. You would think that having all of your passwords stored in one place would make things easier, but nope. I've forgotten my password for my password manager so many times that I'm starting to think I need a password manager for my password manager.

But seriously, why do we even need passwords in the first place? Why isn’t there an easier one stone kills all solution to all these password authentication nonsense?

I could remember when it was all letters, then forced to use letters + numbers…

then later forced to include symbols…

and then forced to make it lengthier…

and then solve puzzles after getting it right…

and after all the stress now we are forced to find nemo from a set of images.

I thought the misery would end there but nope. Now some platform forces 2FA like dude seriously?

For God’s sake we built self driving cars already! Why can’t one just exist without a password? Why do we always end up in a password cycle?

And please don’t say shit about oauth because if your password master (i.e: google) fucks you in the ass then all your oauth accounts are gone for good!

I'm currently having an existential crisis about the meaning of passwords in our modern society. Shit is crazy when I ponder about it I get worried.

People who speak in puzzles during code reviews - fuck you! Just say what you want to say without being philosophical about it. Want me to change the name of a function? Let me know, instead of ranting on about some other shit. I should not have to ask you twice for every god damn comment what you mean, you prick. It’s just annoying and a waste of time.

cables. lots of cables. also, an ethernet switch.

But the toys I have (and other ppl keep burrowing) is a dalek, tardis minuatures - about 6cm Height (2.1"), and lvl 5/6 hanayama metal puzzles.

Why are there so many mobile apps trying to teach children coding through obscure logic puzzles? Is it really that difficult to open a text editor and the docs side by side and learn.

Worst: Shitty puzzles which have nothing to do with logic, progressive solution, etc. You either know them or you don't.

I had a relative that used to come to our house to study because her home was kinda far and also because we had a computer .
She was studying computer science at the time and I was only 13-14 years old. One day she came with 3 CDs of red hat. I asked her about it and she told me it's something like windows. My reaction was wow it must be something huge because I knew at the windows XP was only the size of one CD .
My relation with computers was only to play games and some music that's why I couldn't hold myself not to install it. I fucked my computer endless times, It was like playing puzzles let's try this option and then switch to another... It took me like 4 days to install and I was really impressed with it you know seeing the terminal and stuff. Weeks later I switched back to Windows because I couldn't install my games and play mp3 files (require to install some libraries and I had no internet).
Fast forward 8 years later and I was studying linux system for CS degree and guess what? I was the major in class because I knew about many stuff like partition systems (ext2, swap..) and how to install linux on a computer...
This was my feeling 😎 at class.

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

My dev goal for the new year will be teaching others, and I could use some help!

For quite some time I have been thinking about setting up some kind of community project in my area teaching people who are having a hard time finding a job in their field how to program, specifically web development, in order to advance their job prospects. There is a lot of demand here in Holland and as we all know it doesn't take much more than dedication, disambiguation skills and an almost fanatical fondness for solving puzzles to lead a very happy life as a developer. I'm hoping 2019 will be the year.

What complete courses can you recommend to teach someone how to code, that are fun/inspiring enough to keep someone motivated (and able to go to school and/or make a living in the meantime) until they can use their built up skills and portfolio to get a first job (perhaps 1-2 years)?

I plan on tutoring once or twice a week for a few hours and being available for chat the rest of the week when not working. I have enough experience (and curiosity) to help with any assignment but I do not have that much spare time, which is why I need this resource to be as good as possible, and to need as little extra explanation as possible.

My benchmark is the excellent freecodecamp, but I'm wondering if anything else is available. Bonus points for anything in Dutch, or anything that stands out by explaining things in the clearest way possible, and with great assignments of course.

Also I'd be very interested in any stories about similar (not-for-profit) initiatives, especially from a learner's point of view.

Thanks!

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

1. Solving puzzles
2. Creating things
3. Endless learning

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?

Everyone seems to be obsessed with wordle at the moment so it got me wondering.

How many programmers here enjoy or are good at puzzles?

Personally I don’t enjoy puzzles too much nor am I great at them.

Do you need to be good at one to be good at the other?

6 weeks of doing nothing except dealing with nightmares from the past in my mind I think I left all that crap behind and I am ready to jump back.
I don’t feel much anger and disappointment anymore, even some excitement for new crap to come by on my desk.
I started to write some code and practice puzzles for getting some decent job or project (again)

Puzzles are usually not a problem but I fail with HR.
When they’re asking me stupid questions I answer with stupid answers to piss them off.

But now time to get some money so I’d try to be gentle.

Suggestions for cool/fascinating math problems that are hard to solve, but if done correctly can be performed very efficient? Wanna build some puzzles and need some ideas :)

1. Makes account on CodeWars to see what the fuss is about, have a bit of fun on a quiet weekend etc.
2. Does a few 7kyu challenges, feels neat.
3. 4hrs later is 10 commits into a 1kyu level challenge called PuzzleFighter.

WHY DO I DO THIS

When your friend posts dumb stupid off topic answer on StackOverflow

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")

Having a hard time deciphering if I just happen to encounter a lot of really smart people in my day to day life or if I'm just a mediocre developer. It'd be cool if I was really "passionate" about CS, but in all honesty it's just to pay the bills. I don't hate it, I like feeling like I know stuff and being techy, but it's not my dream to sit crouched infront of a screen and do logic puzzles all day either. I do envy people that turned their passions into profit. I wasn't comfortable taking the risk with that though, so now I feel like I'm just kinda stuck in between a mediocre developer and a person who eats / sleeps / breathes CS knowledge. It's not the worst place to be but it is a little disappointing sometimes. I just hope I start making enough money soon to really afford the things in life I am passionate about.

0. I love to solve puzzles. It makes me feel smart. While the act of coding isn't itself problem-solving, programming as a whole generally is.

1. Computers are easier to understand than people. A computer will always do what you tell it to do, it just may not be what you INTENDED it to do.

2. I enjoy having a skill that most people find intimidating. It lends mystique to my otherwise boring-sounding life.

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!

Lately I've sort of feel like I've personally plateaued... Outside of work, which is still not very challenging, I don't have any personal problems I want to solve. It sorts feels like for everything I want there's either an app I can download or already built (or at least 90% of it and just needs some adjustments or repurposing).

The strange part is it's getting replaced by solving/looking at algorithm problems.

Originally I was going to do mobile + React but I just don't feel motivated anymore... Even if I did build it I doubt I'd use it and I don't have any mobiles apps I want either...

Maybe I'm just really bored at work so now the equation makes sense...

Bored + would like better job == algorithm puzzles

Though I still need to figure out what to do with my reading list and prime videos... They've sorta been backgrounded... And maybe even devrant as well...

Oh yes haven't watched my big TV for over a month....

ES6 is like a new different language ... Although it seems cool, but I always find ES6 converts the readable code into puzzles you need to solve!

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.

1) love solving puzzles. It’s like a neural network of all the problem solving I’ve ever done manifesting itself in a product/tool someone can actually use to solve Their problems.
2) pays more than I think I’m worth.
3) people immediately think I’m smarter than I am, I got low self esteem but I really feel if you can work hard enough, you can even the playing field with those that are naturally better at coding. I love feeling smart when really I was just persistent with solving a problem and worked hard at finding a solution

Has anyone maybe a link to HTTP security topics in general?

I find often breadcrumbs, like in several different attack possibilities, but nothing comprehensive.

Mostly regarding HTTP 1.1 / HTTP 2 (h2c) and proxying.

I'm currently unclogging an whole ecosystem of proxies, endpoints, edge nodes and so on...

My knowledge is limited and it's frustrating to Google cause seemingly I get always just pieces of the puzzles but not a collection -.-

(Looking for specific information, e.g. regarding attacks like H2C Smuggling, HPACK attacks, stuff regarding Cookies / Headers / Encoding... But please not spread over several dozen pages where it becomes frustrating to read the same shit over and over again without learning something new :( )

Apparently my superpower is writing exponential time algorithms to solve puzzles and games. If you need someone to write a recursive DFS to solve your shitty word search, hit me up.

Burr puzzles, I love the way they challenge me, they also improve focus and helps with attention to detail. Great tool for ADHD.

1.) I enjoy puzzles
2.) It's an art form that that involves not only creativity but logic
3.) Breaking things is fun

Was solving algo problems for the last few hours again. It's for technical interview prep but what I realized was...

If I just see them as puzzles rather than a pointless barrier to me getting a better job... they actually become fun...

That and maybe I'm bored at work, need something intellectually challenging/requires thinking, and out of ideas for personal projects I want to build.

Did anyone work in Samsung Bixby envrionment here?

How to create a jigsaw puzzle in react?

Contemplating ideas for a game that will involve some exploration and puzzles (aimed at teaching some low-level computer stuff like binary etc.) Replayed an old 2D game in an emulator, looked at some old adventure games, decided a 2D platformer might work for what I'm aiming for.

So I start making some pixel art, simple things like 32x32 tiles for bricks, some bigge ones for doors etc. And I discuss some ideas with my girlfriend for what kind of scenarios would fit into this game world.

Anyway, she normally draws and paints, but seemed interested in trying pixel art so I gave her a link to Piskel and a rough idea of some decorative items I'd want to put around the map. Within a few hours she created a flower pot with flowers, a coffee machine, a light with lightshade, a small pile of books, and a couple of other things - all shaded and detailed beyond any of my attempts, including lighting going from left to right (which I wanted but didn't specify).

I mean, I could've expected this but pixel art is quite a different beast to drawing or painting as you have to do more with less.

Now I just need to make my game engine. So far I have an SDL program with a flowerpot that you can move around xD