Confessions of a Programmer

#1
If a client is an unbearable asshole during the initial communication, I look for every excuse to pad on the hours for the estimate to get paid more. If a client goes above and beyond in their douchbaggery, I tack on an additional $40/hour.

#2
Sometimes I will present an elaborate solution to a client, but really I'm just reading off the features of a plugin or library I'm going to download or buy after the call. Not because I can't build it myself, but because I'd rather spend more time on other/my own projects.

#3
Clients assume because I know one language, I know them all. Rather than turning down the work, I take a crash course to work in that language, or outsource the work and clean it up afterwards, whichever is more practical at the time.

#4
I use cPanel on a dedicated to manage our client websites. I'm not paid enough to bother with setting up everything manually.

#5
Certain projects I build have a 3-day backdoor built into it. If the client doesn't pay upon completion, a unique hash triggered as a GET variable deletes a core file in my work, rendering the work useless. If it wasn't triggered by the 4th day, the file allowing me to trigger this backdoor is removed. This is only used for clients where the project must be launched on their servers, or if there has been a previous issue collecting payment.

#6
I slip in the initial contract that all preceeding phone calls will be monitored and recorded, and that they acknowledge the recordings are admissable in court. This has saved me from losing money twice now.

#7
I have never used an IDE. (I know, I know, it's really inefficient and dumb, but I'm just more comfortable with Sublime. Plus I often find myself mobile and without my computer, so I have to program from my phone.)

#8
Each day resembles a betting spectacle of which work will be late, which will be rushed out and which will never see the light of day.

#9
I have used "sick" and "family emergency" as an excuse to just sleep in far more than I can count.

#10
When a client from hell crosses over the line in their conduct (such as getting very nasty and personal, or sending threats), I anonymously report them to the BBB and on RipOffReport.

I never understood Snapchat.
- Its a text messaging app with all the useful features removed
- Its a camera app that deletes all the photos you take with it
- Its a news app that only shows you clickbait

Well, here's the OS rant I promised. Also apologies for no blog posts the past few weeks, working on one but I want to have all the information correct and time isn't my best friend right now :/

Anyways, let's talk about operating systems. They serve a purpose which is the goal which the user has.
So, as everyone says (or, loads of people), every system is good for a purpose and you can't call the mainstream systems shit because they all have their use.

Last part is true (that they all have their use) but defining a good system is up to an individual. So, a system which I'd be able to call good, had at least the following 'features':
- it gives the user freedom. If someone just wants to use it for emailing and webbrowsing, fair enough. If someone wants to produce music on it, fair enough. If someone wants to rebuild the entire system to suit their needs, fair enough. If someone wants to check the source code to see what's actually running on their hardware, fair enough. It should be up to the user to decide what they want to/can do and not up to the maker of that system.
- it tries it's best to keep the security/privacy of its users protected. Meaning, by default, no calling home, no integrating users within mass surveillance programs and no unnecessary data collection.
- Open. Especially in an age of mass surveillance, it's very important that one has the option to check the underlying code for vulnerabilities/backdoors. Can everyone do that, nope. But that doesn't mean that the option shouldn't be there because it's also about transparency so you don't HAVE to trust a software vendor on their blue eyes.
- stability. A system should be stable enough for home users to use. For people who like to tweak around? Also, but tweaking *can* lead to instability and crashes, that's not the systems' responsibility.

Especially the security and privacy AND open parts are why I wouldn't ever voluntarily (if my job would depend on it, sure, I kinda need money to stay alive so I'll take that) use windows or macos. Sure, apple seems to care about user privacy way more than other vendors but as long as nobody can verify that through source code, no offense, I won't believe a thing they say about that because no one can technically verify it anyways.

Some people have told me that Linux is hard to use for new/(highly) a-technical people but looking at my own family and friends who adapted fast as hell and don't want to go back to windows now (and mac, for that matter), I highly doubt that. Sure, they'll have to learn something new. But that was also the case when they started to use any other system for the first time. Possibly try a different distro if one doesn't fit?

Problems - sometimes hard to solve on Linux, no doubt about that. But, at least its open. Meaning that someone can dive in as deep as possible/necessary to solve the problem. That's something which is very difficult with closed systems.

The best example in this case for me (don't remember how I did it by the way) was when I mounted a network drive at boot on windows and Linux (two systems using the same webDav drive). I changed the authentication and both systems weren't in for booting anymore. Hours of searching how to unfuck this on windows - I ended up reinstalling it because I just couldn't find a solution.
On linux, i found some article quite quickly telling to remove the entry for the webdav thingy from fstab. Booted into a root recovery shell, chrooted to the harddrive, removed the entry in fstab and rebooted. BAM. Everything worked again.

So yeah, that's my view on this, I guess ;P

Apparently, part of being a software engineer means knowing how to read minds and do other people's jobs.

While implementing a user story for marketing, we found some associated features that, according to the database, have not been used for years. We tell them this. We do the courtesy of asking, "Hey, is there anything on the site that is utilizing these features? We'd like to clean up the DB."

"We don't know."

Engineering suggests, "Ok, lets turn the feature off, then, and see if anyone complains. It's been years according to the DB."

Marketing gets angry and hostile and says, "That's not the way to do things!"

I don't vocalize, "Well, not knowing how to do your own damned job is not the way to do things."
-
Marketing asks us to integrate a third party feature to the site. We ask, "Ok, what page do you want it on, and what information do you want to collect, and what should it look like?"

"I don't know. You're engineering. You tell us."

We implement it as best we can.

Marketing says, "HEY! This isn't done right! It's missing this and this and this!"

"Did you ask us to implement that? According to the user story, it passes acceptance criteria."

Marketing says, "I thought you would just know that! I didn't know it was a separate thing. Just put it on all the pages, then. You guys really should know the site better."

Engineering gets angry and hostile
-
Marketing says, "We need this removed from the site."

Engineering replies, "We have a GUI for that. Just go to this URL and you can do it yourself."

Marketing replies, "Well, if that's a really complicated thing, can you just run a script against the DB?"

Engineering says, "If we've built a UI for you, we really shouldn't be executing SQL scripts directly against the DB."

Marketing gets angry and hostile.
-
Engineering tries asking nicely.

"Marketing, if you want us to add new stuff to the site, or change stuff, please tell us what it is and where it should go and what the customer experience should be like."

Marketing replies, "We don't know the site that well. We are leaning on you to tell us."

I do not vocalize, all while trying to keep my eyes from bulging out of my head, my face red with rage, "YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF SELLING SHIT ON A WEBSITE THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. YOU ARE ASKING FOR CHANGES TO SOMETHING YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?"

Engineering is angry and hostile.

preface: swearing.
because anger.

So. I'm trying to use Material Design with Material UI. The components and UI look *great*.

It's from google, though, which really pisses me off. but I like what I can do with the UI.

HOWEVER.
I really want a grid system for responsiveness. because obviously. besides, i really hate doing all the responsive shit myself. it sucks and i hate it.

Material Design does not include a grid system. okay, it includes a grid component, but it's not for site layout. it's for making a grid of images. or something.

What it does include is a lot of very lengthy documentation on what you should do, complete with fancy graphics saying "THIS IS HOW YOU MUST DO IT OR YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG" -- but they don't actually support it! you must do it all yourself.

Why oh why would they tell you how you must do things if they don't provide the tools to make it possible? fucking google.

You might decide it's a grand idea to interject at this moment and say: "there are plenty of tools out there that allow you to do this!" And sure, you'd be right. however -- and i think this might just barely might be worth mentioning -- THEY REALLY FUCKING SUCK. Hey, let's look at some of the classes! So clear and semantic! This one was nice and simple: "xs4" -- but wtf does that mean? okay, it apparently means 4 columns as they'd appear on an extra-small layout. How does that work on a large layout? Who knows. Now, how about "c12"? okay, maybe 12 columns? but how does that display on a phone with a layout small enough to only have 4 columns? i don't know! they don't know! nobody knows!

oh oh oh oh. and my particular favorite: "mdc-layout-grid__cell mdc-layout-grid__cell--align-bottom" WHAT. THE. FUCK. I'm not writing a goddamn novel! and that one claims to be from google itself. either they've gone insane or someone's totally lying. either way, fuck them.

SO. TERRIBLENESS ASIDE.

Instead of using Material Design v0.fuckoff that lacks any semblance of a grid layout, I figure I'll try v1.0 alpha that actually has one supported natively. It's new and supports everything I need. There's no way this can't be a good idea.

The problem is, while it's out and basically usable, none of the React component libraries fucking work with it. Redux-Form doesn't work with it either because it doesn't understand nested compound controls, and hacking it to work at least triples the boilerplate. So, instead, I have to use some other person's "hey, it's shitty but it works for me" alpha version of someone else's project that works as a wrapper on top of Redux-Form that makes all of this work. yeah, you totally followed that. Kind of like a second-cousin-twice-removed sort of project adding in the necessary features and support all the way down. and ofc it doesn't quite work. because why would things ever be easy?

like seriously, come on.
What i'm trying to do isn't even that bloody hard.

Do I really have to use bootstrap instead?
fuck that.

then again, fuck this significantly more.

UGH.

One of my top 10 worst meetings, was for an interview for a job I really wanted. The guy started off the technical interview by asking me about language features that had been replaced since before I started learning the language. Told him when I started learning and his reply was:

"Yeah I see that on your CV, but come on, you MUST know this stuff".

eh no asshole, because its been removed for 4 years, you MUST know its not relevant

10 years in dev and can't seem to keep up with all these languages. I learn one forget the other. Mix up syntax. Features removed or added.
Still use cheat sheets which I update as the languages change.
Just me or everyone else?

Adobe will end-of-life Flash by 2020, and all big Browsers are joining this by disabling Flash features slowly

Let's make a petition to end-of-life Electron, it is basically Flash for Desktops and it is A RESOURCE-HUNGRY LAZINESS-PROMOTING PIECE OF SHIT THAT SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BE REMOVED FROM THIS VERY PLAnet.. what do you think about that particular idea?

#StopElectron2017smhOkayAtLeastBy2020Please

Me: I deprecate a react component, because it's bloated and no longer makes sense, and I let everyone on the team know that we're working to get rid of that component

Other Dev: Hmm, if I copy this component for every time that it is used, rename all of my copy's and delete the original, I got rid of the deprecated component...

Me: After hearing that deprecated component was removed... "Good job other Dev"

Me: A couple of weeks later after dev leaves company and I start adding some new features to the app "WTF"

What is the point of disabling the fullscreen button on a youtube video embed?

And funnily enough, I seem to find this on a lot of sites for software, that have a demo video embedded the page or some shit, like a screen recording in this tiny little frame where I can't read anything because it's in this 400 pixel wide box, that I can't fullscreen. I don't understand it at all! What purpose does it serve? You're actually encouraging me to leave your stupid site to view the damn video on youtube.com so I can actually read the text in your stupid ass video.

Why does youtube even give you the option to remove the fullscreen button in your embeds in the first place? They even recently removed some of the "modest branding" features, like hiding the title, or removing the recommended videos at the end, but they thought that this feature was valuable enough to keep?

This may seem irrational to complain about, but I'm confused and befuddled more than anything else? If I'm embedding a video on a website, the last thought I have in my mind is "Oh, I really don't want people to see my video fullscreen. Better make sure I disable that!"

This happened 3 years ago in my previous company. It was a small start up company and we worked on PHP stack. One of the its ex-founders had written Windows Mobile App which now had to be upgraded with new features. So we hired this new dot net guy. I always thought dot net guys were ELITE coders and was excited to see how they work.
While I played Xbox and had fun, our dot net guy stuck to his workstation furiously working. My boss who was casually strolling out of his office for a stretch saw dot net guy working hard and suggested we all developers should take him as an example.
20 days went by and each day the dot net guy did the same. He came, he silently worked on his workstation, he left in the evening. In those 20 days my boss asked twice to the dot net guy if he has finished features he was assigned but he said he did not. After a month when he said the same negative answer and had nothing to show for the work he has done he was fired.
I was so curious to see what code that ELITE coder had written for a month but could not deliver a feature(Maybe some error he could not fix?). So I open the code repo on which he worked and I see 30 commits from that guy to it. He had made a single commit each day(Fair enough he wants to commit everday before leaving). It was time to check his commit diffs to see his ELITE code. What do I find? In every fucking commit he either added a blank line to the DocBlock or removed the same. Nothing less nothing more! So much for the hyped not-so-ELITE dot net guy...

Just a random app recommendation.
If anyone of you haven't tried NewPipe yet, you should. Open source app for YouTube. All Google nonsense was removed and many awesome features were added (as seen below).
You can also play music with your screen turned off :)

Created 'GET STARTED' section in our application in English. It will guide new user to Highlight some App features.

End User started Posting screenshot of it in our feedbacks service : What this is?

Implemented 'GET STARTED' in local languages.

End user started posting screenshot of Language Drop Down, what this is?

Implemented 'GET STARTED' on Location based Language.

End User : I am here in Banglore seeing it in Different Language, my other Partners in Hyderabad are seeing it in different language. What this is?

Removed 'GET STARTED'.

End User : It was a nice feature. Why you removed it? What this is?

May be i over reacted but i am not bringing it back.

I despise it when software developers remove features because "too few people use them".

Is this what those shady telemetry features are for? So they can pick which useful features to get rid of because some computer rookies whined that it is "feature creep" rather than just ignoring it?

Now I have to fear losing useful (or at least occasionally convenient) features each time I upgrade, such as Firefox ditching RSS, FTP, and the ability to view individual cookies. The third can be done with an extension, but compatibility for it might be broken at some point, so we have to wait for someone to come up with a replacement.
Also, the performance analysis tool in the developer tools has been moved to an online service ("Firefox profiler"). I hope I don't need to explain the problems with that.

But perhaps the biggest plunge in functionality in web browser history was Opera version 15. That was when they ditched their native "Presto" browsing engine for Chromium/Blink, and in the process removed many features including the integrated session manager and page element counter.

The same applies to products such as smartphones. In the early 2010s, it was a given that a new smartphone should cover all the capabilities of its predecessors in its series, so users can upgrade without worrying a second that anything will be missing. But that blissful image was completely destroyed with the Galaxy S6. (There have been some minor feature removals before that, such as the radio and the three-level video recording bitrate adjustment on the S4, but that's nothing compared to what was removed with the S6.).

Whenever I update software to a new version or upgrade my smartphone, I would like it to become MORE capable, not LESS (and to hell with that "less is more" nonsense).

For about 1.5 years on and off, we've been developing a system to rate tickets/requests sent to our team. We wrote it in Angular, and it turned into this feature-rich gorgeous application with custom-built graphical statistic tracking, in-app social networking capabilities, robust user profiles, etc.

Eventually, we no longer had time to work on it along with all the other applications we're developing. So we passed ownership of the app over to a couple of other developers on our team. You'd think that they'd just work off what we already built and keep the robust environment we created for them. But nope, instead of keeping everything we already built, they scrapped it all and started from scratch using React instead of Angular, and removed all of those robust features and turned the app into a shell of its former self. No more statistic tracking, no more social networking capabilities, no more fancy user profiles. Just a single page with a number representing how many "Good" tickets you've sent to us, and how many "Bad" tickets you've sent.

1.5 years and hundreds of hours worth of work, all gone and replaced with the most rudimentary basic React app ever.

I have been keeping this inside for long time and I need to rant it somewhere and hear your opinion.

So I'm working as a Team Lead Developer at a small company remotely based in Netherlands, I've been working there for about 8 years now and I am the only developer left, so the company basically consists of me and the owner of the company which is also the project manager.

As my role title says I am responsible for many things, I maintain multiple environments:
- Maintain Web Version of the App
- Maintain A Cordova app for Android, iOS and Windows
- Working with pure JavaScript (ES5..) and CSS
- Development and maintenance of Cordova Plugins for the project in Java/Swift
- Trying to keep things stable while trying very hard to transit ancient code to new standards
- Testing, Testing, Testing
- Keeping App Stable without a single Testing Unit (sadly yes..)
- Just pure JavaScript no framework apart from JQuery and Bootstrap for which I strongly insist to be removed and its being slowly done.

On the backend side I maintain:
- A Symfony project
- MySQL
- RabbitMQ
- AWS
- FCM
- Stripe/In-App Purchases
- Other things I can't disclose

I can't disclose the nature of the app but the app is quite rich in features and complex its limited to certain regions only but so far we have around 100K monthly users on all platforms, it involves too much work especially because I am the only developer there so when I am implementing some feature on one side I also have to think about the other side so I need to constantly switch between different languages and environments when working, not to mention I have to maintain a very old code and the Project Owner doesn't want to transit to some more modern technologies as that would be expensive.

The last raise I had was 3 years ago, and so far he hasn't invested in anything to improve my development process, as an example we have an iOS version of the app in Cordova which of course involves building , testing, working on both frontend and native side and etc., and I am working in a somewhat slow virtual machine of Monterey with just 16 GB of RAM which consumed days of my free time just to get it working and when I'm running it I need to close other apps, keep in mind I am working there for about 8 years.

The last time I needed to reconfigure my work computer and setup the virtual machine it costed me 4 days of small unpaid holiday I had taken for Christmas, just because he doesn't have the enough money to provide me with a decent MacBook laptop. I do get that its not a large company, but still I am the only developer there its not like he needs to keep paying 10 Developers.

Also:
- I don't get paid vacation
- I don't have paid holiday
- I don't have paid sick days
- My Monthly salary is 2000 euro GROSS (before taxes) which hourly translates to 12 Euro per hour
- I have to pay taxes by myself
- Working remotely has its own expenses: food, heating, electricity, internet and etc.
- There are few other technical stuff I am responsible of which I can't disclose in this post.

I don't know if I'm overacting and asking a lot, but summarizing everything the only expense he has regarding me is the 2000 euro he sends me on which of course he doesn't need to pay taxes as I'm doing that in my country.

Apart from that just in case I spend my free time in keeping myself updated with other tech which I would say I fairly experienced with like: Flutter/Dart, ES6, NodeJS, Express, GraphQL, MongoDB, WebSockets, ReactJS, React Native just to name few, some I know better than the other and still I feel like I don't get what I deserve.

What do you think, do I ask a lot or should I start searching for other job?

Wouldn't call it a software bug but related:

Was developing an order system to expand in the UK. We have been developing it for the last 2 years and always had a one nasty bug in the system... Whatever we do, it still appears... Tried debugging to find the source, tried covering with tests - nothing helped it was still there. We even rewrote the whole system 3 times and it still was there!

One day, we have been given a stupid request from our manager - take a black background and make it even more blacker... That was it and I went to the CEO with letter where I stated that we should remove the manager... As I'm the Senior there, he did ask me why and eventually removed the manager...

Oh my guys, I've never felt so good after removing a bug! Since then - our application went live, we had our first customers and we were happily rolling new updates. And the best part - there was no BUG! Everything we did just had undocumented features or missing links but we haven't really had a single bug that was not caught by our automated tests!

---

Moral of the story:
Not only software can have bugs. People also can be "bugs" while bugging you about every single details they think is not working correctly.

There it fucking is again...

The legendary spyware "Antimalware Service Executable".

I changed the entry in the regedit. Tried to delete it with every possible tool. Tried to "chmod" it in the Windows way to be able to delete it as an admin. Doesn't work.

I swear in the name of bloody satan. This shit is doomed. It cannot be removed even if your shit begins to burn.

Microsoft, fucking remove it.
It is not a fucking feature!

Your windows updates fucking suck, your compatibility telemetry whatever the fuck you call these retarded ass "features" anymore fucking suck, your windows defender sucks.

Is there anything that doesn't suck in the features that you produce? I don't fucking think so. Fucking die for fucks sake.

Apple is overpriced, but at least they do their job well. Not like you, you fucking scumbags!

JESUS!

So we have this really annoying bug in our system that customers keep complaining about. I've explained in detail, multiple times, why the part they think is a bug is not a bug and the workaround they keep asking me to apply doesn't make sense, won't fix the issue, and won't even stick (the system will notice that the record they want me to delete has been removed and it will repopulate itself, by design).

I've told them what we need to do as an actual workaround (change a field on the record) and what we need to do to properly fix the bug (change the default value on the record and give proper controls to change this value through the UI). We've had this conversation at least three times now over a period of several months. There is a user story in the backlog to apply the actual fix, but it just keeps getting deprioritized because these people don't care about bug fixes, only new features, new projects, new new new, shiny shiny new.

Today another developer received yet another report of this bug, and offered the suggested workaround of deleting the record. The nontechnical manager pings everyone to let them know that the correct workaround is to delete the record and to thank the other developer for his amazing detective work. I ping the developer in a private channel to let him know why this workaround doesn't work, and he brushes it off, saying that it's not an issue in this case because nobody will ever try to access the record (which is what would trigger it being regenerated).

A couple hours later, we get a report from support that one of the deleted records has been regenerated, and people are complaining about it.

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Here comes lots of random pieces of advice...

Ain't no shortcuts.

Be prepared, becoming a good programmer (there are lots of shitty programmers, not so many good ones) takes lots of pain, frustration, and failure. It's going to suck for awhile. There will be false starts. At some point you will question whether you are cut out for it or not. Embrace the struggle -- if you aren't failing, you aren't learning.

Remember that in 2021 being a programmer is just as much (maybe even moreso) about picking up new things on the fly as it is about your crystalized knowledge. I don't want someone who has all the core features of some language memorized, I want someone who can learn new things quickly. Everything is open book all the time. I have to look up pretty basic stuff all the time, it's just that it takes me like twelve seconds to look it up and digest it.

Build, build, build, build, build. At least while you are learning, you should always be working on a project. Don't worry about how big the project is, small is fine.

Remember that programming is a tool, not the end goal in and of itself. Nobody gives a shit how good a carpenter is at using some specialized saw, they care about what the carpenter can build with that specialized saw.

Plan your build. This is a VERY important part of the process that newer devs/programmers like to skip. You are always free to change the plan, but you should have a plan going on. Don't store your plan in your head. If you plan exists only in your head you are doing it wrong. Write that shit down! If you create a solid development process, the cognitive overhead for any project goes way down.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others, especially to the experts you are learning from. They are good because they have done the thing that you are struggling with at least a thousand times.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday. This will make it seem like you haven't learned anything and aren't on the move. Compare yourself to yourself last week, last month, last year.

Have experienced programmers review your code. Don't be afraid to ask, most of us really really enjoy this (if it makes you feel any better about the "inconvenience", it will take a mid-level waaaaay less time to review your code that it took for you to write it, and a senior dev even less time than that). You will hate it, it will suck having someone seem like they are just ripping your code apart, but it will make you so much better so much faster than just relying on your own internal knowledge.

When you start to be able to put the pieces together, stay humble. I've seen countless devs with a year of experience start to get a big head and talk like they know shit. Don't keep your mouth closed, but as a newer dev if you are talking noise instead of asking questions there is no way I will think you are ready to have the Jr./Associate/Whatever removed from your title.

Don't ever. Ever. Ever. Criticize someone else's preferred tools. Tooling is so far down the list of what makes a good programmer. This is another thing newer devs have a tendency to do, thinking that their tool chain is the only way to do it. Definitely recommend to people alternatives to check out. A senior dev using Notepad++, a terminal window, and a compiler from 1977 is probably better than you are with the newest shiniest IDE.

Don't be a dick about terminology/vocabulary. Different words mean different things to different people in different organizations. If what you call GNU/Linux somebody else just calls Linux, let it go man! You understand what they mean, and if you don't it's your job to figure out what they mean, not tell them the right way to say it.

One analogy I like to make is that becoming a programmer is a lot like becoming a chef. You don't become a chef by following recipes (i.e. just following tutorials and walk-throughs). You become a chef by learning about different ingredients, learning about different cooking techniques, learning about different styles of cuisine, and (this is the important part), learning how to put together ingredients, techniques, and cuisines in ways that no one has ever showed you about before.

The worst co worker I had is actually pretty recent. He joined a well integrated team on what was basically a legacy project. He sounded like a good developer and seemed to know his stuff but it took him ages to push out fixes/features. They were always massively over-engineered, poorly named, partially tested and what documentation he did write still managed to bitch about how poor the project was structured.

He spent most of his time bitching about the general shitty nature of the project (he wasn't wrong) and the lack of interest from other Devs.

He was so unpleasant in interpersonal communication that by the end no one would work with him.

In his last team meeting he basically said he was glad to be going and that we were all lazy, disinterested and shouldn't consider ourselves his peers. The equivalent of storming out of a party after setting the couch on fire and shitting in the sink.

We've since removed all his overcomplicated, not standard, unmaintainable code.

A long struggle to change a nazi enforced scrum methodology that cut our efficency, technical standard and dedication to the product by just working on fragmented features that were added and removed by the wim of the PM.

Job offer in hand as senior dev somewhere else, I stayed, got better eventually. My old boss kept complaining on me for years in performance reviews that I did not respect managements decisions.

Two years of badly led scrum regime left our product in a spagetti mess that is still trying to be untangled.
Til this day, if I hear someone mutter "scrum", I feel a strong need to run far far away.

About 3 years ago, we had 4 different WordPress sites for various clients.

My colleagues thought it'd be a genius idea to keep them all in one repo. Even more genius, for local development, a single installation which implements a switcher for the wp-config.php files so we can switch between sites. Not bad in theory.

Fast-forward to present day. 1 client left; another site got converted to using Laravel because they always asked us to update their content so no point using a CMS; whereas the remaining 2 sites use differing versions of WordPress on their live sites, no less than 18 months out of date, have no dev sites, different collection of plugins and themes and both modified to the deepest darkest depths of fucking hell that's barely recognisable as WordPress anymore and next to no documentation or comments around the changes.

The functions.php file of one of these themes is over 4000 lines long!!!

We're keen to upgrade our servers to use Ubuntu 16.04 which defaults to PHP7, so all the already deprecated WordPress functions will then fail to work completely as will have been removed.

Both of these clients have agreed that they wish to convert Laravel as well so there's not really much point in going through the clean up process of their WordPress sites. Just copy the database nuke it all and start a fresh with Laravel FFS!

They also wish to completely redesign and discuss what features to keep/add/remove. With no date for these redesign meetings in sight, we won't be converting to Laravel any time soon, nor upgrading our servers in the foreseeable future either!

This is all because of one dev in the office and his history of failing to keep on top of breaking changes!

Fuck you! Seriously, fuck you!!!

If I was your superior, then you'd have been fired long ago!

I'm trying to install the environment of one of the currently gaming consoles...

I'm stuck in no-man's land because part of it depends on removed features of .Net from 2006-2008 that are not included right now...

So fuck this. I'll try again on the next one if uses more updated tools...

Okay so kotlin is basically just scala with some of the features removed and nobody can change my mind.

Spent about 5 hours today writing unit tests before needing to immediately drop them to work on something else that I didn't realize was urgent because the single email talking about it was sent to a different inbox.

Then, 2 hours after not being able to figure it out, I also had to drop that to try and solve an even more urgent issue.

Everyone keeps asking me if something will work and it's outside of my scope of knowledge. I keep saying I don't know but they keep asking. I can not go 5 minutes without someone messaging me asking if X will work or if Y is done or how Z is set up.

I DON'T KNOW. Christ in heaven take a hint, I'm in over my head here. I've been nauseously overwhelmed for hours and I feel the anxiety creeping in. This shit isn't cool.

Work isn't normally like this but it's been inching closer. I worked hard and raised some eyebrows and now everything is dumped on my head. People ask me DAILY question I have no idea how to answer. They ask me about systems I've never interacted with. They ask me about configuration I've never seen. They ask me about capabilities so far removed from reality it's asinine to even estimate on.

I'm also the only developer in my role. There's other devs but I do all the work for my part of the project, including massive broad features.

Is this normal? I'm a mid level developer for what it's worth, and that's a relatively new development. I was a junior not a too long ago. If this is what's to be expected him gonna need some fuckin meds like NOW

Setup a VPS from Linode today (they hair started offering 2 GB for 10 USD), and was really pissed when I discovered that their “cloud enhanced” kernel had disabled SELinux and generally removed all sorts of useful features and security features from the default CentOS kernel.

Google is known for frequently removing features from its products and services. So much that they have been given the nickname "Gookill".

If only they removed the one feature that deserves to be removed.

Pull-to-refresh.

Not a horror. I'm rewriting services.

It started as a help request. I was asked to help with completing a service dealing with push notifications which was a research prototype. It was suggested to keep core part of it, but it was so awful that I just removed all files and wrote the service from scratch.

The second service had been developed for more than a year by a junior and then by our manager who wanted to complete it as fast as possible, without taking care of code quality. Then I was asked to take over the project and after some time I agreed with one condition: I'll have 1 month on takeover. But when I looked at the code, it became clear that it's much faster and better to rewrite everything except API and database than to takeover existing code.

The third service dealing with file exchange was working, but the junior who wrote it advised to rewrite it because it was a very simple service. So, I initiated rewriting, designed a new API and reviewed the final result.

And now I'm dealing with the fourth one. It was developed in my team but not under control. Now, when I "inherited" this complicated project, I decided to rewrite it because it should be simple, but it doesn't. It features reflection, layers inside layers, strange namespaces, strange solution structure. And that's after months of refactorings and improvements. So, wish me luck because I want to keep part of the infrastructure, but I don't know if it's possible.

Project manager, knows nothing/little about the project... Always sends new features to be added only to be removed 1hr later 😣😣, you have experienced nothing until you work under 1

Please support old web browser versions for all eternity.

I hate it when I open a site like SoundCloud one day and am greeted with a "we no longer support your browser" notice. Now I am forced to update my browser to a new version with removed features. On Android, Chrome sometimes crashes due to an apparent memory leak, so I have to go back to Samsung Internet, which does not work with some sites. Also, the Samsung clipboard manager (which can hold up to 20 items) is only available on Samsung Internet, not Chrome or Firefox.
I also have to update the browser on my live USB bootable stick because sites stop supporting it. Any browser starting in 2015 (ECMA script 6) should be supported until at least 2050 so that I never have to fear that a site one day spontaneously stops working on my browser.

I would like to browse the Internet forever without having to ever worry about pages to stop working one day. Browser vendors might also deprecate support for devices and operating systems. Old devices also have replaceable batteries and are easier to repair. I don't want be forced to buy new devices that are difficult and expensive to repair.

It's these individually tiny annoyances in products and software that together form a huge annoyance.

For example, it's 2022 and Chromium-based web browsers still interrupt an upload when hitting CTRL+S. This is why competition is important. If there was no Firefox, the only major web browsers would, without exception, have this annoyance, since they're all based on Chrmoium.

I remember Chromium for mobile formerly locking scrolling and zooming of the currently viewed page while the next page was loading. Thankfully, this annoyance was removed.

In 2016, the Samsung camera software was updated to show a "camera has been opened via quick launch" pop-up window when both front and rear sensors of the smartphone were covered while the camera was launched by pressing the home button twice, on the camera software Samsung bundled with their custom version of Android 6. What's more, if that pointless pop-up was closed by tapping the background instead of the tiny "OK" button or not responded to within five seconds, the camera software would exit itself. Needless to say, this defeats the purpose of a quick launch. It denies quick-launching while the phone is in the pocket, and the time necessary to get the phone out could cause moments to be missed.

Another bad camera behaviour Samsung introduced with the camera software bundled with their customized Android 6 was that if it was launched again shortly after exiting or switching to stand-by mode, it would also exit itself again within a few seconds. It could be that the camera app was initially designed around Android 5.0 in 2015 and then not properly adapted to Android 6.0, and some process management behaviour of Android 6.0 causes this behaviour. But whatever causes it, it is annoying and results in moments to not be captured.

Another such annoyance is that some home screen software for smartphones only allows access to its settings by holding a blank spot not occupied by a shortcut. However, if all home screen pages are full, one either needs to create a new page if allowed by the app, or temporarily remove a shortcut to be able to access the settings.

More examples are: Forced smartphone restart when replacing the SIM card, the minimum window size being far too large in some smartphones with multi-windowing functionality, accidental triggering of burst shot mode that can't be deactivated in the camera software, only showing the estimated number of remaining photos if less than 300 and thus a late warning, transition animations that are too slow, screenshots only being captured when holding a button combination for a second rather than immediately, the terminal emulator being inaccessible for the first three minutes after the smartphone has booted, and the sound from an online advertisement video causing pain from being much louder than the playing video.

Any of these annoyances might appear minor individually, but together, they form a major burden on everyday use. Therefore, developers should eliminate annoyances, no matter how minor they might seem.

The same also applies for missing features. The individual removal of a feature might not seem like a big of a deal, but removing dozens of small features accumulates to a significant lack of functionality, undermining the sense of being able to get work done with that product or software when that feature is unexpectedly needed. Examples for a products that pruned lots of functionality from its predecessor is the Samsung Galaxy S6, and newer laptops featuring very few USB ports. Web browsers have removed lots of features as well. Some features can be retrofitted with extensions, but they rely on a third-party developer maintaining compatibility. If many minor-seeming features are removed, users will repeatedly hit "sorry, this product/software can not do that anymore" moments.