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Boss: I need you to start on this new project, how long will it take?
Me: well, hard to say with no specs whatsoever...
Boss: just your best guess
Me: 4 to 6 month I guess?
Boss: so 3 months it is. When can you start?
Me: no specs, sir...and I said 4 to 6
Boss: the specs are almost ready, I know you can simplify it
Me: ...
Boss: just start with the basic infrastructure already
(4 months later)
Boss: here you are the specs, they might change a little in behaviour and design, but all the main stuff is here
(Hands me a A3 with a total of 21 pictures in InDesign)
Me: o....Kay. what happens when I click here?
Boss: oh, we should still talk about the app workflow, I'll get you updated
(2 weeks and 16 total rewrites of the "specs" later)
Boss: you told me it was a 2 months job, why aren't you finished yet? We must deploy in 3 weeks!
Me: ...34 -
Manager: Why aren’t you working?
Dev: I am, I’m just not typing because I’m thinking an issue out.
Manager: Well what is taking so long? You haven’t written any code for like 15 minutes, you’ve just been doodling on your notepad.
Dev: I’m not “doodling”. I’m taking notes and trying to visualize the issue. It’s a complicated issue with application stat—
Manager: Well just simplify it then
Dev: ?
Manager: Instead of making it a complicated issue just simplify it and then it won’t take you so long. You’re likely overthinking it, I never spend more than 30 seconds thinking about any issue before coming up with a solution. That’s what makes me so effective at my job is my ability to be lean like that.
Dev: …this issue is a bit harder than deciding what to have for lunch25 -
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.
21 -
So i heard that docker is now a thing and decided to put my servers into containers as well (see image)...but somehow I still don't understand how is this supposed to simplify deployment, vertical scaling and so on...? :D
6 -
Today pycharm recommended me to simplify "if x > min and x > max"
Result: "if min < x < max"
Thank you for enlightening me, JetBrains6 -
I interviewed a guy with quite a few years of experience, university studies from a first world country, very long CV with stuff that he did, most of it relevant to the job, and 5-6 certifications, 2 of which relevant to the job, which would qualify him as an expert (as he himself declared in the CV), of a higher qualification than mine, but less experience.
Welp, if we're gonna hire someone with a higher salary, from whom I am to learn, I better come up with an interesting, but simple to understand problem, relevant to the position, that I would solve in 30 minutes, and give him 2h (surprise factor, unpreparedness, nervousness should be considered).
40 minutes in and I understand that there is lots of doing, lots of code, but the guy has no idea what he's doing.
I simplify the problem, remove the complicated bit. Turning it into a "business case description" of an entry level problem.
...
Same shit. In 20 minutes, zero progress. At this point the solution should be exactly 4 short lines of code. He gives me 50 that produce a completely wrong result, and he has no idea why.
I simplify further. I explicitly express the problem as the entry-level problem that it is - to count the number of interactions on the website in a specific day. That's it.
10 minutes more pass. I don't know why I'm wasting my time. Maybe I just want to be polite. Maybe I want to eliminate all doubt that it's not something else.
Nope.
He couldn't even react to my explanation of why he got the wrong result, and that all he had to do is move some stuff around.
Certifications, experts, universities.
What the fuck people? Can't we be simpler, and instead be knowledgeable? The time it took him to write that list of certifications, he could've learned how to solve this problem from any introductory course.9 -
Okay, story time.
Back during 2016, I decided to do a little experiment to test the viability of multithreading in a JavaScript server stack, and I'm not talking about the Node.js way of queuing I/O on background threads, or about WebWorkers that box and convert your arguments to JSON and back during a simple call across two JS contexts.
I'm talking about JavaScript code running concurrently on all cores. I'm talking about replacing the god-awful single-threaded event loop of ECMAScript – the biggest bottleneck in software history – with an honest-to-god, lock-free thread-pool scheduler that executes JS code in parallel, on all cores.
I'm talking about concurrent access to shared mutable state – a big, rightfully-hated mess when done badly – in JavaScript.
This rant is about the many mistakes I made at the time, specifically the biggest – but not the first – of which: publishing some preliminary results very early on.
Every time I showed my work to a JavaScript developer, I'd get negative feedback. Like, unjustified hatred and immediate denial, or outright rejection of the entire concept. Some were even adamantly trying to discourage me from this project.
So I posted a sarcastic question to the Software Engineering Stack Exchange, which was originally worded differently to reflect my frustration, but was later edited by mods to be more serious.
You can see the responses for yourself here: https://goo.gl/poHKpK
Most of the serious answers were along the lines of "multithreading is hard". The top voted response started with this statement: "1) Multithreading is extremely hard, and unfortunately the way you've presented this idea so far implies you're severely underestimating how hard it is."
While I'll admit that my presentation was initially lacking, I later made an entire page to explain the synchronisation mechanism in place, and you can read more about it here, if you're interested:
http://nexusjs.com/architecture/
But what really shocked me was that I had never understood the mindset that all the naysayers adopted until I read that response.
Because the bottom-line of that entire response is an argument: an argument against change.
The average JavaScript developer doesn't want a multithreaded server platform for JavaScript because it means a change of the status quo.
And this is exactly why I started this project. I wanted a highly performant JavaScript platform for servers that's more suitable for real-time applications like transcoding, video streaming, and machine learning.
Nexus does not and will not hold your hand. It will not repeat Node's mistakes and give you nice ways to shoot yourself in the foot later, like `process.on('uncaughtException', ...)` for a catch-all global error handling solution.
No, an uncaught exception will be dealt with like any other self-respecting language: by not ignoring the problem and pretending it doesn't exist. If you write bad code, your program will crash, and you can't rectify a bug in your code by ignoring its presence entirely and using duct tape to scrape something together.
Back on the topic of multithreading, though. Multithreading is known to be hard, that's true. But how do you deal with a difficult solution? You simplify it and break it down, not just disregard it completely; because multithreading has its great advantages, too.
Like, how about we talk performance?
How about distributed algorithms that don't waste 40% of their computing power on agent communication and pointless overhead (like the serialisation/deserialisation of messages across the execution boundary for every single call)?
How about vertical scaling without forking the entire address space (and thus multiplying your application's memory consumption by the number of cores you wish to use)?
How about utilising logical CPUs to the fullest extent, and allowing them to execute JavaScript? Something that isn't even possible with the current model implemented by Node?
Some will say that the performance gains aren't worth the risk. That the possibility of race conditions and deadlocks aren't worth it.
That's the point of cooperative multithreading. It is a way to smartly work around these issues.
If you use promises, they will execute in parallel, to the best of the scheduler's abilities, and if you chain them then they will run consecutively as planned according to their dependency graph.
If your code doesn't access global variables or shared closure variables, or your promises only deal with their provided inputs without side-effects, then no contention will *ever* occur.
If you only read and never modify globals, no contention will ever occur.
Are you seeing the same trend I'm seeing?
Good JavaScript programming practices miraculously coincide with the best practices of thread-safety.
When someone says we shouldn't use multithreading because it's hard, do you know what I like to say to that?
"To multithread, you need a pair."18 -
Generally I don't discuss work with family as they just smile and nod.
I start by saying I'm a front end web developer, then simplify to I code websites, then I have to simplify again to say I make the bit you look at.
So now I just say I'm in IT.1 -
In an interview, when you throw a simple piece of code to a candidate...
Candidate: ...
ME: (maybe I'm too hard on them)
Candidate: ...
ME: (ok, I definitively have to simplify this little pattern example)
Candidate: ...
ME: ...explaining the short piece of code and give'm the answer
Candidate: haaaaa that's what I was thinking but I used that long time ago...
ME: (Yeah... nice try)2 -
Tl;Dr - It started as an escape, carried on as fun, then as a way to be lazy, and finally as a way of life. Coding has defined and shaped my entire life from the age of nine.
When I was nine I was playing a game on my ZX spectrum and accidentally knocked the keyboard as I reached over to adjust my TV. Incredibly parts of it actually made a little sense to me and got my curiosity. I spent hours reading through that code, afraid to turn the Spectrum off in case I couldn't get back to it. Weeks later I got hold of a book of example code to copy out to do various things like making patterns on the screen. I was amazed by it. You told it what to do, and it did it! (don't you miss the days when coding worked like that?) I was bitten by the coding bug (excuse the pun) and I'd got it bad! I spent many late nights on that thing, escaping from a difficult home life. People (especially adults) were confusing, and in my experience unpredictable. When you did things wrong they shouted at you and threatened to take you away, or ignored you completely. Code never did that. If you did something wrong, it quietly let you know and often told you exactly what was wrong. It wasn't because of shifting expectations or a change of mood or anything like that. It was just clean logic, simple cause and effect.
I get my first computer a year later: an IBM XT that had been discarded by a company and was fitted with a key on the side to turn it on. With the impressive noise it made it really was like starting an engine. Whole most kids would have played with the games, I spent my time playing with batch scripts and writing very simple text adventures. And discovering what "format c:" does. With some abuse and threatened violence I managed to get windows running on it. Windows 2.1 I think it was.
At 12 I got a Gateway 75 running Windows 95. Over the next few years I do covered many amazing games: ROTT, Doom, Hexen, and so on. Aside from the games themselves, I was fascinated by the way computers could be linked together to play together (this was still early days for the Web and computers networked in a home was very unusual). I also got into making levels for Doom, Heretic, and years later Duke Nukem 3D (pretty sure it was heretic; all I remember is the nightmare of trying to write levels entirely by code!). I enjoyed re-scripting some of the weapons and monsters to behave differently. About this time I also got into HTML (I still call this coding, but not programming), C, and java. I had trouble with C as none of the examples and tutorial code seemed to run properly under a Windows environment. Similar for my very short stint with assembly. At some point I got a TI-83 programmable calculator and started rewriting my old batch script games on it, including one "Gangster Lord" game that had the same mechanics as a lot of the Facebook games that appeared later (do things, earn money, spend money to buy stuff to do more things). Worried about upcoming exams, I also made a number of maths helper apps, including a quadratic equation solver that gave the steps, and a fake calculator reset to smuggle them into my exams. When the day came I panicked and did a proper reset for fear of being caught.
At 18 I was convinced I was going to be a professional coder as I started a degree in Computer Science. Three months later I dropped out after a bunch of lectures teaching what input and output devices were and realising we were only going to be taught Java and no C++. I started a job on the call centre of a big company, but was frustrated with many of the boring and repetitive tasks we had to do. So I put my previous knowledge to use, and quickly learned VBA to automate tasks. It wasn't long before I ended up promoted to Business Analyst where I worked on a great team building small systems in Office, SAS, and a few other tools.
I decided to retrain in psychology, so left the job I was in and started another degree. During my work and placements my skills came in use a number of times to simplify and automate tasks. I finished my degree, then took a job as a teaching assistant while I worked out what I wanted to do next and how to pay for it. Three years later I've ended up IT technican at the school, responsible for the website, teaching a number of Computing lessons each week, and unofficial co-coordinator for Computing as a subject. I also run a team of ten year old Digital Leaders who I am training in online safety and as technical experts; I am hoping to inspire them to a future in coding. In September I'll be starting teacher training with a view to becoming a Computing specialist teacher. Oh, and I'm currently doing a course in Android Development in my free time.
And this all started with an accidental knock on the keyboard of a ZX Spectrum.6 -
Programming is not about learning many languages, it's about making a way to simplify a task. With increasing it's productivity and minimizing task duration.2
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Biggest challenge I overcame as dev? One of many.
Avoiding a life sentence when the 'powers that be' targeted one of my libraries for the root cause of system performance issues and I didn't correct that accusation with a flame thrower.
What the accusation? What I named the library. Yep. The *name* was causing every single problem in the system.
Panorama (very, very expensive APM system at the time) identified my library in it's analysis, the calls to/from SQLServer was the bottleneck
We had one of Panorama's engineers on-site and he asked what (not the actual name) MyLibrary was and (I'll preface I did not know or involved in any of the so-called 'research') a crack team of developers+managers researched the system thoroughly and found MyLibrary was used in just about every project. I wrote the .Net 1.1 MyLibrary as a mini-ORM to simplify the execution of database code (stored procs, etc) and gracefully handle+log database exceptions (auto-logged details such as the target db, stored procedure name, parameter values, etc, everything you'd need to troubleshoot database errors). This was before Dapper and the other fancy tools used by kids these days.
By the time the news got to me, there was a team cobbled together who's only focus was to remove any/every trace of MyLibrary from the code base. Using Waterfall, they calculated it would take at least a year to remove+replace MyLibrary with the equivalent ADO.Net plumbing.
In a department wide meeting:
DeptMgr: "This day forward, no one is to use MyLibrary to access the database! It's slow, unprofessionally named, and the root cause of all the database issues."
Me: "What about MyLibrary is slow? It's excecuting standard the ADO.Net code. Only extra bit of code is the exception handling to capture the details when the exception is logged."
DeptMgr: "We've spent the last 6 weeks with the Panorama engineer and he's identified MyLibrary as the cause. Company has spent over $100,000 on this software and we have to make fact based decisions. Look at this slide ... "
<DeptMgr shows a histogram of the stacktrace, showing MyLibrary as the slowest>
Me: "You do realize that the execution time is the database call itself, not the code. In that example, the invoice call, it's the stored procedure that taking 5 seconds, not MyLibrary."
<at this point, DeptMgr is getting red-face mad>
AreaMgr: "Yes...yes...but if we stopped using MyLibrary, removing the unnecessary layers, will make the code run faster."
<typical headknodd-ers knod their heads in agreement>
Dev01: "The loading of MyLibrary takes CPU cycles away from code that supports our customers. Every CPU cycle counts."
<headknod-ding continues>
Me: "I'm really confused. Maybe I'm looking at the data wrong. On the slide where you highlighted all the bottlenecks, the histogram shows the latency is the database, I mean...it's right there, in red. Am I looking at it wrong?"
<this was meeting with 20+ other devs, mgrs, a VP, the Panorama engineer>
DeptMgr: "Yes you are! I know MyLibrary is your baby. You need to check your ego at the door and face the facts. Your MyLibrary is a failed experiment and needs to be exterminated from this system!"
Fast forward 9 months, maybe 50% of the projects updated, come across the documentation left from the Panorama. Even after the removal of MyLibrary, there was zero increases in performance. The engineer recommended DBAs start optimizing their indexes and other N+1 problems discovered. I decide to ask the developer who lead the re-write.
Me: "I see that removing MyLibrary did nothing to improve performance."
Dev: "Yes, DeptMgr was pissed. He was ready to throw the Panorama engineer out a window when he said the problems were in the database all along. Didn't you say that?"
Me: "Um, so is this re-write project dead?"
Dev: "No. Removing MyLibrary introduced all kinds of bugs. All the boilerplate ADO.Net code caused a lot of unhandled exceptions, then we had to go back and write exception handling code."
Me: "What a failure. What dipshit would think writing more code leads to less bugs?"
Dev: "I know, I know. We're so far behind schedule. We had to come up with something. I ended up writing a library to make replacing MyLibrary easier. I called it KnightRider. Like the TV show. Everyone is excited to speed up their code with KnightRider. Same method names, same exception handling. All we have to do is replace MyLibrary with KnightRider and we're done."
Me: "Won't the bottlenecks then point to KnightRider?"
Dev: "Meh, not my problem. Panorama meets primarily with the DBAs and the networking team now. I doubt we ever use Panorama to look at our C# code."
Needless to say, I was (still) pissed that they had used MyLibrary as dirty word and a scapegoat for months when they *knew* where the problems were. Pissed enough for a flamethrower? Maybe.5 -
New developers(5-6 years experience) these days are so pathetic. They dont have any sense of code review. All they want is to put their opinion out without giving any thought.
I had a PR for review today which contains mock specification to match a regular expression and return the corresponding response
The regular expression I put was
104000(02|06|20|48)
Now, this guy comes and puts a comment that we could "simplify" as 104000\d{2}
I replied, the ending digits are not contiguous. The specific pair of digits have to match for these mocks.
Then this guy replied, then we could simplify as 104(0{4}(2|6)l0{3}(20|48)).
I said, I cannot understand how that is simplification. Why do we need such a complex regex to match something very straight forward.
And the guy replied, we should be writing proper regexes, otherwise we could just specify everything explicitly.
I was like WTF man. You try deciphering this next week without taking at least a minute to know which values are matched.
Anyhow, another senior person approved my PR, and I merged it.10 -
TL;DR: At a house party, on my Phone, via shitty German mobile network using the GitLab website's plain text editor. Thanks to CI/CD my changes to the code were easily tested and deployed to the server.
It was for a college project and someone had a bug in his 600+ lines function that was nested like hell. At least 7 levels deep. Told him before I went to that party it's probably a redefined counter variable but he wouldn't have it as he was sure it was an error with the business logic. Told him to simplify the code then but he wouldn't do that either because "the code/logic is too complex to be simplified"... Yeah... what a dipshit...
Nonetheless I went to the party and He kept debugging. At some point he called me and asked me to help him the following day. Knowing that the code had to be fixed anyways I agreed.
I also knew I wouldn't be much of a help the next day due to side effects of the party, so I tried looking at this shitshow of a function on my phone. Oh did I mention it was PHP, yet? Yeah... About 30 minutes and a beer later I found the bug and of course it was a redefined counter variable... My respect for him as a dev was already crumbling but it died completely during that evening2 -
The lower the level language, the more concerned I am with performance for some reason...irrational I know.
Programming in C: oh no I have this extra if statement which may have to copy the 16 byte struct.
Programming in Python: oh hey I can simplify the logic if I write a class to dynamically build this regex, compile it, and search through a 1MB text file.5 -
Tfw you *have* to tell the client it's *technically* possible, but at the cost of work and complexity... and they come back with "let's simplify the whole thing then" *.*1
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Everyone and their dog is making a game, so why can't I?
1. open world (check)
2. taking inspiration from metro and fallout (check)
3. on a map roughly the size of the u.s. (check)
So I thought what I'd do is pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. While also pretending to be a programmer. Sometimes you make believe
so hard that it comes true apparently.
For the main map I thought I'd automate laying down the base map before hand tweaking it. It's been a bit of a slog. Roughly 1 pixel per mile. (okay, 1973 by 1067). The u.s. is 3.1 million miles, this would work out to 2.1 million miles instead. Eh.
Wrote the script to filter out all the ocean pixels, based on the elevation map, and output the difference. Still had to edit around the shoreline but it sped things up a lot. Just attached the elevation map, because the actual one is an ugly cluster of death magenta to represent the ocean.
Consequence of filtering is, the shoreline is messy and not entirely representative of the u.s.
The preprocessing step also added a lot of in-land 'lakes' that don't exist in some areas, like death valley. Already expected that.
But the plus side is I now have map layers for both elevation and ecology biomes. Aligning them close enough so that the heightmap wasn't displaced, and didn't cut off the shoreline in the ecology layer (at export), was a royal pain, and as super finicky. But thankfully thats done.
Next step is to go through the ecology map, copy each key color, and write down the biome id, courtesy of the 2017 ecoregions project.
From there, I write down the primary landscape features (water, plants, trees, terrain roughness, etc), anything easy to convey.
Main thing I'm interested in is tree types, because those, as tiles, convey a lot more information about the hex terrain than anything else.
Once the biomes are marked, and the tree types are written, the next step is to assign a tile to each tree type, and each density level of mountains (flat, hills, mountains, snowcapped peaks, etc).
The reference ids, colors, and numbers on the map will simplify the process.
After that, I'll write an exporter with python, and dump to csv or another format.
Next steps are laying out the instances in the level editor, that'll act as the tiles in question.
Theres a few naive approaches:
Spawn all the relevant instances at startup, and load the corresponding tiles.
Or setup chunks of instances, enough to cover the camera, and a buffer surrounding the camera. As the camera moves, reconfigure the instances to match the streamed in tile data.
Instances here make sense, because if theres any simulation going on (and I'd like there to be), they can detect in event code, when they are in the invisible buffer around the camera but not yet visible, and be activated by the camera, or deactive themselves after leaving the camera and buffer's area.
The alternative is to let a global controller stream the data in, as a series of tile IDs, corresponding to the various tile sprites, and code global interaction like tile picking into a single event, which seems unwieldy and not at all manageable. I can see it turning into a giant switch case already.
So instances it is.
Actually, if I do 16^2 pixel chunks, it only works out to 124x68 chunks in all. A few thousand, mostly inactive chunks is pretty trivial, and simplifies spawning and serializing/deserializing.
All of this doesn't account for
* putting lakes back in that aren't present
* lots of islands and parts of shores that would typically have bays and parts that jut out, need reworked.
* great lakes need refinement and corrections
* elevation key map too blocky. Need a higher resolution one while reducing color count
This can be solved by introducing some noise into the elevations, varying say, within one standard div.
* mountains will still require refinement to individual state geography. Thats for later on
* shoreline is too smooth, and needs to be less straight-line and less blocky. less corners.
* rivers need added, not just large ones but smaller ones too
* available tree assets need to be matched, as best and fully as possible, to types of trees represented in biome data, so that even if I don't have an exact match, I can still place *something* thats native or looks close enough to what you would expect in a given biome.
Ponderosa pines vs white pines for example.
This also doesn't account for 1. major and minor roads, 2. artificial and natural attractions, 3. other major features people in any given state are familiar with. 4. named places, 5. infrastructure, 6. cities and buildings and towns.
Also I'm pretty sure I cut off part of florida.
Woops, sorry everglades.
Guess I'll just make it a death-zone from nuclear fallout.
Take that gators!
5 -
I fucking give up. Typescript is not meant for complex projects. It's meant for simple projects that are big. There's no way forwards, no matter how much I try to simplify my types I simply can not get the typescript server to stop lagging out the moment I do anything complex. It can't fucking do it, it just can't. And that sucks really, really hard.
I'm so tired of finding the ceiling on everything. I had a bad smell for typescript when it came out... and I never should have expected any more than this.14 -
-Learn Python
-Use Python to create a game on a GameShell...
-Get a 3D Printer (Its on its way(HYPE))
-Learn how to use Fusion 360 (Kill me pls its so hard)
-Learn how to use Simplify 3D
-Use 3D Printer to print Ducks and stressballs...1 -
Well, I wanna specialize in low-level software as I get older. Everyone is telling me to go out and learn a processor architecture. I'm willing to be patient, so I do what people recommend to me and I download the Intel x86_64 manual. I was excited... UNTIL I REALIZED THE MANUAL WAS 4474 PAGES LONG! Like, how am I supposed to jump into assembly, machine language, and low-level programing with a beginner's task like that? I cannot find ANY resources online to simplify the transition, and college sure ain't gonna teach me anytime soon.10
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Boss needs certain stats pulled from database once a year for board meeting. This time I delegate it to a junior dba/sysadmin. He looks at my 3-year-old docs that I hastily jotted down and pasted and included my rambling notes with results from way back then. Mostly they were just to jog my own memory, not to be a really neat, clean instruction guide. He does the queries correctly, but in ticket for boss he pastes also all my notes from the docs. boss gets confused, "what is this other number, I don't get it?!" We have to have a meeting of the 3 of us and waste an hour or so just to figure out what went wrong, finally I realize what junior guy accidentally did. Moral of story: to avoid baffling the nontechs, always simplify, simplify, simplify. Alternate moral of story: before delegating a task that seems old hat to you, always review your notes/docs and make sure they're ready for someone else to use them.1
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OMG... this client is killing me...
So they are writing a Java / SpringBoot app for whatever. For some reason they decided to write it in the overcomplicated way, i.e. using a custom Spring's BeanPostProcessor that changes the eventual type of some beans, causing some weird ass issues, causing the app to fail to boot up if built on some systems and start up just fine if built on others (https://stackoverflow.com/questions...).
I've advised the client (devs) to simplify the architecture and avoid using type-mutating BPPs (bcz.. you know.. noone does that..).
Instead, the client created a task for me to "remove the build logic creating JAR packages" and another "Create a shell script manually assembling the CLASSPATH list and launching the application"
omg... what the hell is going on? Am I on camera? This can't be real... in 202-fucking-4 in a greenfield project!!!
wtf...1 -
Here’s my step-by-step guide for the idiot:
1) take <cutting-egde tech> (Tech)
2) read documentation for Tech
3) figure out what you want to do with Tech
4) if you are being ambitious, simplify the idea appropriately
5) Go do the thing with the Tech
6 When you fail at something, RTFM
7) Rinse and repeat2 -
Language barriers are so frustrating. x.x
Trying to talk to a fellow ranter, and english isn't his native language. It's fine, I'm managing though.
Have you guys ever just sat and thought about how interesting language is? As I sit here and type, the very words i write were hand crafted to simplify communication. Spoken language itself was developed over of thousands of years. It really makes you think.3 -
"Can't you just…" are the favorite words of my company's president. He uses them like a magic wand. When faced with a complex problem that will take thousands of development man hours, he utters the words, "Can't you just…" He believes that if he can over-simplify the problem, and summarize the necessary work into a sentence or two, it should only take a week or two to complete.
Of course, I then explain that what seems simple to him is actually very complex once you peel back the layers of the problem. I then explain the specifics until his eyes glaze over, and he cries uncle.
A couple weeks later, he has forgotten everything I said, and the Monday meeting begins with, "About that project. Can't you just…"2 -
Team lead: guys, we need to brainstorm on feature X. We can have this service do blah blah..., have a cache at blah blah...
Me: I think it's too complicated. We can simplify the design by doing blah blah... and measure the performance as we go, let's not do premature optimization.
Team lead: no, we definitely need this. We'll pitch this to the CTO later
*Later when we meet the CTO*
Team lead: Hi Mr CTO, about feature X, we're gonna do this blah blah... what do you think?
CTO: *basically repeats what I said*
Team lead: Thank you for the insights, really helpful. We will do as you suggest.
WHAT THE FUCK?3 -
Client email: so you know that custom thing I wanted on my website that you made and I refused to pay for? Could you just send me the code, I'm gonna write my own.
*Staring at screen in disbelief and laughing*
Even if you were an awesome client, and you had paid, I still wouldn't just "give you my code" so you can write your own. You hired me to do it because you CAN'T not because you didn't want to, not because you're lazy, but because you are not mentally capable of making your own.
Me: I'm sorry, but I'm not sure you would even know where to start with this, what was wrong with the one built?
Client: I wanna put the code in my Salesforce so it can run the API request and automatically make a lead for me.
My code takes fields from a form, runs the data over to the API, gets the response, allows for user confirmation that the information is correct, and then sends all the relevant data to Salesforce as a lead.
Me: But that's exactly what mine does, just does it from your website where users will be entering the info, and once they've confirmed it you get a Salesforce lead.
Client: well some of my leads come from other places and I want to simplify everything.
Me: no, not possible, sorry.
If you didn't have 25 different websites for one company then all your leads would come from the same place and it would be simple.2 -
Teachers. We put so much effort in learning, I think it's only fair that you know what you teach. You are supposed to simplify our learning process not make it worse. We don't need a lecture hour to read your ppts.1
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Anaconda. Quite fitting a name to something that fucks up python environments so thoroughly. Ironic too, given that it was meant to simplify. Anaconda doesn't give a shit about the python that came with the distro. And all packages installed with pip are only visible to anacondas python. Not a single note of caution during installation. Or a best practices guide for the newbie. Just chaos. Utter chaos. The price of being a noob had been paid.8
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I have read people talk about how “Laravel makes PHP fun”. I don't get it. I really hate frameworks. Yeah they may simplify tasks. But the way I see it, you now have a damn framework that you're never going to bother to understand. You most likely won't read the underlying code, you'll rely on others to release security updates.
Hey yeah it has its benefits, like peer reviewed, and matured code.
But I guess it's just not for me.
SAME GOES FOR WORDPRESS. It does freaking make your life easy, and it's easy money, but I guess it would just annoy me to not be bothered with the underlying code.
Anyway, Imma head on to make my own framework....9 -
Working for a large client converting paper forms to the web. Stated goals, simplify data entry for clients, improve data quality, reduce resourcing in backend human processing.
We met to review prototype and discuss workflow questions. Crazy deadlines, with the usual changing scope creep.
We start to point out the need for data validation, to shorten # of questions based on answers.
Business says no. All forms should be submittable regardless of what user enters, don’t put validations in because all that warning messaging confuses them and takes up more time.
Web form should behave like the paper copy....
Welcome to 1975!!! This is why 2018 won’t be like 2018...1 -
If not understanding code, read the documentation or debug the code. When trying to modify...
1. Follow proper indentation.
2. Don't make spelling mistakes and follow naming convention.
3. Don't try to write all the code in one line (based on line length set)
4. Simplify if else statements if possible.
5. If value of method call need to be used once, don't store it in a variable. Directly use where ever it is needed.
6. If there is duplicated code, put it in separate method and re-use it if possible.1 -
Figure I can simplify the code if I have the compiler handle *some* of the register allocation.
Eh? What do you mean "NP-hard"? Dafuq's an ENN-PEE?
**frantically reads wiki**
I can proudly say that I understood absolutely nothing; CS stands for cocksucker or rather abysmal failure at the most basic forms of communication, I don't just sit here all day expecting you to flawlessly prove my point with every swallow of breath you draw, yet here we are.
Perhaps one factor involved in producing the generalized cluelessness of my colleagues, I mean their "imposter s*ndrome", has a bit to do with how fucking thick you've formulated this glorified bollocks you call theory. Were not for your incompetence, arcane crackheads like me would simply __not__ be capable of rising to the top of this field entirely via determination and a big salami, therefore I owe you both a debt of gratitude as well as every last word and sign of total disrespect.
As interesting as the study of computational complexity can be, if done correctly that is, you idiots are stuck in a mathematician's abstract mindset in a field entirely devoted to application of ideas rather than *just* the ideas themselves.
To answer my own question, it means there's no known efficient solution. That's it. The part about nondeterministic polynomial convolution of an irreductible rectosigmoid junction can apparently be skipped altogether. Anyway, I solved the problem with the computational equivalent of pizza sticks while you were out in the field mentally jacking off to λ.
Lecture is over, now go clean up the ethereal masturbatory residue if you will, I have mystical el Khwarizmi type-shit to solve via further clubbing of abstraction through liverwurst bologna of immense proportions. ^D3 -
I dealt with boring parts of my job by automating them and utilizing the free time in work to make an improvements. At the end of a day I feel happier if I manage to simplify something and it still works flawlessly.1
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My professor just asked the students "so what is a queue?"
Some dude answered "First in last out"
Profesor says "Nope, a queue is a list" (as in a linked list)
Also he said no very bitchy which pissed me off... I mean a queue can be an array, a list is just one implementation?
Hate it when they blatantly simplify something (and outright butcher it) to make explaining it easier4 -
For those who don't know this fantastic programming chrestomathy: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/...
Simply search your programmatic problemand get solutions (plenty of languages). Enjoy! -
(Response from a Github new issue: )
"Yeah so you declared this element here while it should have been done there. Also, you can simplify the CSS part by just doing the following: <code>
...Then how about updating your goddamn documentation from which I copied the code you're correcting, heh? -
TLDR: Need for easy to use VR headsets for mobile phones...
Complete story:
There are so many interesting places to explore in this world but sadly the current pandemic situation has brought travel plans to a complete halt. Today I tried watching virtual tours of various cities on YouTube and it felt a bit relaxing.
I was planning to use VR to enhance the experience but it's quite a lot of trouble adjusting my phone in VR headset, controlling playback from my hands when the phone is in the headset.
I wish someone, somewhere would find a way to simplify this problem... Like making mobile-based VR headsets bit easier to use and control while keeping it at affordable to use and allow addition of mobile phones of any sizes...
If someone could actually do this...I think we might have the next groundbreaking startup in the next few years...😄
P.S. Google cardboard VR does not fit this criterion...4 -
So I've spent some time learning a little about the halting problem, and it's quite fascinating. I tried to simplify it down to these few functions. What do you guys think? Obviously, psuedo-code, so don't get too caught up on the syntax 😆
The Halting Problem:
public String doesItHalt(Callable function){
...
if (...){
return "Yes"
} else {
return "No"
}
}
public int someFunctionFooThatHalts(){
...
}
public int someFunctionFooThatDoesNotHalt(){
...
}
public String inverseAnswer(value){
if (value == "Yes"){
return "No"
}
if (value == "No"){
return "Yes"
}
}
public String inverseHalts(Callable function){
return inverseAnswer(doesItHalt(function))
}
————————————————————————————
$ doesItHalt(someFunctionFooThatHalts)
Yes
$ doesItHalt(someFunctionFooThatDoesNotHalt)
No
$ inverseHalts(someFunctionFooThatHalts)
No
$ inverseHalts(someFunctionFooThatDoesNotHalt)
Yes
$ doesItHalt(inverseHalts(doesItHalt))
???2 -
Using lambda expression to simplify otherwise large function calls in Python makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.1
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Wrote a method a while ago to simplify a task.
Today I found some old code from a previous dev which was almost identical.
I'm either on the right path or were both on the wrong path. 😂 -
Sometimes I just have a crazy idea for an amazing feature I could add to a side project.
Then my brain goes into a fight with itself over this feature, one side saying "that's a lot of work, not worth it" and the other side "but then we could also do this and that and hey maybe we could even simplify other stuff a little bit" and in the process getting really fond of that feature. After some time, the idea is really optimized because the lazy side of my brain hates unnecessary work.
Anyway, I just came home, created a new branch and deleted a quarter of my code base which is now obsolete. -
When people "simplify" their code by refactoring a singular line of code into a completely separate function. The purpose of which is to prepend "https://"3
-
Big innovation:
In a manual I changed a paragraph from "add registry values X & Y" to "click the .reg file in network folder Y"
Received big thanks about thinking of reg-files.
uhm... We are an IT company? -
floating point numbers are workarounds for infinite problems people didn’t find solution yet
if you eat a cake there is no cake, same if you grab a piece of cake, there is no 3/4 cake left there is something else yet to simplify the meaning of the world so we can communicate cause we’re all dumb fucks who can’t remember more than 20000 words we named different things as same things but in less amount, floating point numbers were a biggest step towards modern world we even don’t remember it
we use infinity everyday yet we don’t know infinite, we only partially know concept of null
you say piece of cake but piece is not measurement - piece is infinite subjective amount of something
everything that is subjective is infinite, like you say a sentence it have infinite number of meanings, you publish a photo or draw a paining there are infinite number of interpretations
you can say there is no cake but isn’t it ? you just said cake so your mind want to materialize something you already know and since you know the cake word there is a cake cause it’s infinite once created
if you think really hard and try to get that feeling, the taste of your last delicious cake you can almost feel it on your tongue cause you’re connected to every cake taste you ate
someone created cake and once people know what cake is it’s infinite in that collection, but what if no one created cake or everyone that remember how cake looks like died, everything what’s cake made of extinct ? does it exist or is it null ? that’s determinism and entropy problem we don’t understand, we don’t understand past and future cause we don’t understand infinity and null, we just replaced it with time
there is no time and you can have a couple of minutes break are best explanations of how null and infinite works in a concept of time
so if you want to change the world, find another thing that explains infinity and null and you will push our civilization forward, you don’t need to know any physics or math, you just need to observe the world and spot patterns8 -
There's been a fad in the company where the managers ask for the opinions of other departments to "get different perspectives".
On one hand, we get feedback by non-experts, which is obviously bad because they're not in their field. "Feature X is kinda complicated. We could simplify it by doing A." and the manager goes "that's a brilliant idea! Let's do that!" and the devs go "we did consider that, but it has drawback N. And perhaps you wanna do B, but that has drawback M..."
And then they were asking for us programmers for inputs on their designs for logos, etc. Naturally, as programmers, we wanted quick access to many functionalities. But marketing wants a simpler and more intuitive design, even if it involves more clicks. This wasn't in my job description! I just wanna code! Thinking is your job! -
I need to create a very simple, 2 page website with a simple form on the first page which is processed and a results page shown. It will run on a shared hosting platform.
I've created a few of these over the years for the same client and will have more to do. They started as .NET WebForms (yes, that long ago!) and morphed into more client-side driven but not particularly flexible.
So, is there a front-end framework which will simplify my life and continue to generate accessible, cross-platform output, or would such a choice be overkill and I should keep spitting out reasonable HTML?2 -
I made a little automated Docker reverse proxy called Autocaddy to simplify developing unrelated little trinkets under subdomains of a domain name:
https://github.com/lbfalvy/...
It dispatches subdomains to the (container with the) matching network alias and terminates TLS.
it's a little rough around the edges but to my understanding it shouldn't be an inherent risk (unless you're running things that interfere with name resolution like VPN on the container host, but why would you do that if it's already a container host).4 -
Visualize the entire complexity of the content within the project so that you know what data users will need to access, and compartmentalize those in to separate modules that you can build on over time. Think about any limitations with accessing that data (does the user have that role, what if the data is accessed simulateously, how to handle the same user accessing from different devices etc).
Think about the devices being used - is it going to be a website, an app, both? How best then to access the data? Direct access to a database, or an API system?
Then think about the front-end design and how to simplify the view right down as much as you can. Again, break it down in to modules.
Then decide on the technology you want to use, and what libraries would help simplify things.
These days I like to use JSON API's to access DB content because app and web technologies change quite often but the API will be accessible to whatever I use to build it.
For websites I love using Laravel, which simplifies the back-end tasks, and mdbootstrap which simplifies the front-end tasks and looks "appy". -
WSL seems really cool from what i've been toying with it. WSL2 seems like it'll be even better and the integration with docker(another thing i'm toying with) looks interesting. as far as i can find though it's only on windows insider for now, and I don't like having telemetry on my main machine.
So i spent a good chuck of my day just setting up Hyper-v, learning about nested virtualization (so docker will work), setting up a win10pro vm, and i'm now in the process of setting this up to be a virtualized dev machine (not gonna be a one use only system cause i spent way too long on this shit) and setting up docker and wsl
I don't know much about docker or WSL beyond just some random stuff i've learned to toy with to simplify some things i do. but maybe this will give me a cool way to actively learn more about them and maybe use them as more than just boredom toys3 -
seems to be my luck not to be financially dependable on web dev. when it comes to javascript it supports me with the opportunity to develop some pieces of software to substantially simplify my job bypassing all the it restrictions in our company. i understand i am in the perfect position not having to fulfill customers needs and to make compromises only to myself and that this does not count for professionals. but i like to take up cudgels for javascript seeing some of the rants here 😁
-
9 Ways to Improve Your Website in 2020
Online customers are very picky these days. Plenty of quality sites and services tend to spoil them. Without leaving their homes, they can carefully probe your company and only then decide whether to deal with you or not. The first thing customers will look at is your website, so everything should be ideal there.
Not everyone succeeds in doing things perfectly well from the first try. For websites, this fact is particularly true. Besides, it is never too late to improve something and make it even better.
In this article, you will find the best recommendations on how to get a great website and win the hearts of online visitors.
Take care of security
It is unacceptable if customers who are looking for information or a product on your site find themselves infected with malware. Take measures to protect your site and visitors from new viruses, data breaches, and spam.
Take care of the SSL certificate. It should be monitored and updated if necessary.
Be sure to install all security updates for your CMS. A lot of sites get hacked through vulnerable plugins. Try to reduce their number and update regularly too.
Ride it quick
Webpage loading speed is what the visitor will notice right from the start. The war for milliseconds just begins. Speeding up a site is not so difficult. The first thing you can do is apply the old proven image compression. If that is not enough, work on caching or simplify your JavaScript and CSS code. Using CDN is another good advice.
Choose a quality hosting provider
In many respects, both the security and the speed of the website depend on your hosting provider. Do not get lost selecting the hosting provider. Other users share their experience with different providers on numerous discussion boards.
Content is king
Content is everything for the site. Content is blood, heart, brain, and soul of the website and it should be useful, interesting and concise. Selling texts are good, but do not chase only the number of clicks. An interesting article or useful instruction will increase customer loyalty, even if such content does not call to action.
Communication
Broadcasting should not be one-way. Make a convenient feedback form where your visitors do not have to fill out a million fields before sending a message. Do not forget about the phone, and what is even better, add online chat with a chatbot and\or live support reps.
Refrain from unpleasant surprises
Please mind, self-starting videos, especially with sound may irritate a lot of visitors and increase the bounce rate. The same is true about popups and sliders.
Next, do not be afraid of white space. Often site owners are literally obsessed with the desire to fill all the free space on the page with menus, banners and other stuff. Experiments with colors and fonts are rarely justified. Successful designs are usually brilliantly simple: white background + black text.
Mobile first
With such a dynamic pace of life, it is important to always keep up with trends, and the future belongs to mobile devices. We have already passed that line and mobile devices generate more traffic than desktop computers. This tendency will only increase, so adapt the layout and mind the mobile first and progressive advancement concepts.
Site navigation
Your visitors should be your priority. Use human-oriented terms and concepts to build navigation instead of search engine oriented phrases.
Do not let your visitors get stuck on your site. Always provide access to other pages, but be sure to mention which particular page will be opened so that the visitor understands exactly where and why he goes.
Technical audit
The site can be compared to a house - you always need to monitor the performance of all systems, and there is always a need to fix or improve something. Therefore, a technical audit of any project should be carried out regularly. It is always better if you are the first to notice the problem, and not your visitors or search engines.
As part of the audit, an analysis is carried out on such items as:
● Checking robots.txt / sitemap.xml files
● Checking duplicates and technical pages
● Checking the use of canonical URLs
● Monitoring 404 error page and redirects
There are many tools that help you monitor your website performance and run regular audits.
Conclusion
I hope these tips will help your site become even better. If you have questions or want to share useful lifehacks, feel free to comment below.
Resources:
https://networkworld.com/article/...
https://webopedia.com/TERM/C/...
https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/...
https://macsecurity.net/view/...
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Seeing as I will be scorned for asking this on SO, and there's a ton of devs here that probably had this conundrum: how have you solved horizontal scrolling when working? I know shift + mw+/- works but what's the use having a mouse with macro functionality if not to simplify that? My current software supports lua scripting (but I don't know how to write it). I see some people requesting this while googling I but cannot find anyone that has a solution. The closest I get is a user requesting it from Logitech as they apparently have the same but for ctrl+mw in their products.10
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AoC 8b teaches the importance of looking at your data to simplify your solution by simply not supporting inputs that are difficult and don't appear in your sample.
Man, fuck is this noise.
In other news, I caught up to AoC.1
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