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Search - "smart desktop"
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Currently on an internship, PHP mostly, little bit of Python and the usual web stuff, and I just had the BEST FUCKING DAY EVER.
Wake up and find out I'm out of coffee, oh boy here we go.
Bus leaves 10 minutes late, great gonna miss my train.
Trains just don't wanna ride today, back in a bus I go, what's normally a 10 minute train travel is now a 90 minute bus ride.
Arrive at internship, coffee machine is broke, non problem, I'll just lose it slowly.
NOW HERE COMES THE FUCKING GOOD PART!!
Alright, so I'm working on a CMS that can be used just about on any device you want, mobile or desktop, it's huge, billion's of rows of scientific data. Very specific requirements and low error margins. Now, yesterday I was really enjoying myself here until today, Project manager walks in, comes to my desk and hands me a Samsung Gear S3, an Apple watch and some cheap knockoff. He tells me that before the Friday deploy, THE ENTIRE CMS SHOULD WORK ON THOSE WATCHES!
I mean, don't get me wrong, I like a challenge but it's just not right, I mean, I'm still not sure what the right way to handle tables on phones is, but smart watches, just no. Besides that, I've never worked with any Apple devices, let alone WatchOs, nor have I worked with Android Wear.
Also, Project Manager is a total dickhead, he's the kinda guy that prefers a light theme, doesn't clean up his code, writes 0 documentation for an API, 1 space = tab, pure horror.
So after almost flipping my desk, I just called my school coach to announce I'm leaving this internship. After a brief explanation he decides to come over, and guess what, according to the Project Manager I wasn't supposed to do that, I was supposed to test if it would be possible.
FUCKING ASSFUCKFACE9 -
Most ignorant ask from a PM or client?
So, so many. How do I chose?
- Wanting to 'speed up' a web site that we did not own, in Sweden (they used a service I wrote). His 'benchmark' was counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi" while the home page rendered on his home PC and < 1MB DSL connection (he lives in a rural area).
- Wanted to change the sort order of a column of report so it 'sometimes' sorted on 'ABC' (alpha) or '123' (numeric) and sometimes, a mix of both. His justification was if he could put the data in the order he wanted in Excel, the computer should be smart enough to do the same thing.
- Wanted a Windows desktop application to run on an android.
- Wanted to write the interface to a new phone system that wasn't going to be installed for months. Even though we had access to the SDK, he didn't understand the SDK required access to the hardware. For several weeks he would send emails containing tutorials on interfacing with COM libraries (as if that was my problem).
- Wanted to write a new customer support application in XML. I told him I would have the application written tomorrow if he could tell me what XML stands for.4 -
For fucks sake, just because you don't know anything besides JS, you don't have to constantly complain how it's "so fucked up"!
Yeah there's a lot of frameworks. So what? Python has 50+ wsgi frameworks just for server-side apps, Linux has literary hundreds of desktop environments, C++ has over 30 actively-developed UI frameworks, and let's not even get started on CMSs or game engines. And each language comes with its own dependency management or two, NPM discourages static linking & bundling dependencies until the very end, while some others only recommend dynamically linking widely-available dependencies & always bundling the remaining ones.
Software development is constantly evolving, and for most time there's no right or wrong approach. And when one approach is chosen over another, there's a reason for that. Imagine you just found a perfect library for your use case, but some idiot decided to only offer minified code with bundled jQuery? Or a different idiot made it impossible to have multiple versions of a dependency on your system without resorting to one of various third-party hacks?
Every language has a ton of various frameworks & libraries that ultimately do the same thing, every language has a bunch of design choices you probably don't understand at first, and every language was made with a purpose and the fact that you're using it proves it achieved that.
Last but not least, all devs had to learn about quirks in various languages, and they're fucking tired when someone who barely knows a language tries to act smart going "ahaha how the fuck 0.1 + 0.2 isn't 0.3".10 -
Someone mentioned Holy C in another thread and I automatically knew they were referencing the language, based on C, and developed by Terry A Davis from Temple OS and Schizophrenic fame.
I legit felt sad for the man, he was obviously a very talented and smart programmer. You removed all the racial slurs, crazy dialogues and biblical stuff that was caused by his mental illness and you were left with a very brilliant and dedicated programmer.
While Hurd (kernel meant to replace Linux) will fucking never see the light of day after years in the making, Terry was able to generate: his own compiler for his own programming language, kernel, drivers, desktop environment, filesystem TODO by himself. I mean, fuck me dude, he even included games of his own design into the damned thing, using very advanced concepts that were present in flight simulators or doom like fps.
It just bothers me so much, the dude would have probably done amazing non-religious things if it were not for his illness.
If you like reading about this sort of thing, check him out, there are a couple of youtube videos by him. Don't be put off by the shit that he spews in some videos, remember, he was saying shit like that out of a very real mental illness.
Oh, and fuck Hurd5 -
Microsoft Teams can burn.
Their latest feature ? Well, turns out that when I get notifications on mobile that I do not get on desktop BECAUSE I AM FUCKING INTERACTING WITH THE CHAT OR CHANNEL THAT SENDS ME MOBILE NOTIFICATION, the notifications do not clear themselves. Oh, no, that would be too smart.
So EACH FUCKING EVENING I sit and browse all the fucking notifications to see if there is anything noteworthy I need to act on, or if it is a dead notification from earlier today.
Dear Lord, Microsoft are fucking experts at TAKE A WORKING FEATURE AND BRAKE IT.14 -
This is a proposal for an entirely free and open source rant like site/app.
devrant today has a couple of problems that I hate:
* Posts in the wrong categories (usually by new users)
* Low effort posts in the "recent" feed
* Good posts in the "algo" feed that are too old
* Longtime bugs
* No official code format in comments, ffs.
* Unimplemented features (like inability to search posts in android, or inability to mute posts in web desktop)
* Lack of admin involvement with the community
but it also has some aspects that I like a lot:
* Admins aren't trigger happy to suspend/ban you
* The avatars are awesome and help to associate users to faces
* The ++ system is good enough
* The community isn't too big so you know pretty much everyone
* There's a lot of variety in the roles and techonologies used by users
* Experienced ranters are usually smart
* Super simple UI
* The comments have only one level (as opposed to reddit comment trees)
This project should try to reimplement the good things while fixing the bad things.
I wrote two posts about a possible manifesto, and an implementation proposal and plan.
https://rantcourse.ddns.net/t/...
https://rantcourse.ddns.net/t/...
I think the ideas outlined there are very aligned to concerns of privacy and freedom users here vouch for.
This project is not meant to **purposefully** replace/kill/make users abandon devrant. People can continue using devrant as much as they want.
I'm hosting a discourse site on a 5$ linode machine to discuss these things. I don't know if it's better than just github.
If you feel that you would like to just use github issues, let me know. I'll create a github org tomorrow, and probably setup gitter for more dynamic discussion.21 -
can we all take a moment to appreciate the developers of flutter. they're smart, and they took the time to make flutter the *right* way.
they used an easy to learn language that's ideal for mobile development, which means hot reload/restart is possible (because dart supports aot and jit compilation)
the way it's designed is beautiful. everything is a widget, and it's easy to customize them via named parameters.
the community is great. it's not large, but it's supportive, with two active subreddits. yesterday i asked a question on r/flutterdev, and a member of the flutter team at google answered the question with a comprehensive answer.
flutter is very consistent across platforms. if it works on android or ios, you can bet it'll work on the other just as well, with the exception of platform-specific code.
it is VERY performant. unless you write a major bottleneck, 60fps is easy to achieve.
animations are EASY. define a tween and animation controller and then write a callback function. not to mention it's straightforward, and complex/combined animations are easy, too.
you can get almost direct access to the canvas, should you need it, with custompainter.
oh my god, this is revolutionary in the programming world. development is quicker than it is with native android alone, and for people who have no access to a mac, like me, i can develop for ios and compile via code magic. if you haven't checked it out and you develop for mobile, check it out.
oh yeah, did i mention it's not just mobile. hummingbird - flutter compiled to web - is already in experimental public betas, and will likely be released by the end of the year. there's also experimental desktop support, which is amazing, and much better than electron. not to mention flutter is the future, as it will be the primary way to make apps on fuchsia os.13 -
!rant
What's your dream GSDR/GWDR setup?
(Get shit/work done room)
Spacious desk, three 21" monitors. MacBook Pro laptop and windows/ubuntu desktop.
A nice big dry erase or smart board on the wall.
Hardwood/hard carpet floors.
One empty wall so that I may bounce a tennis ball against it while I contemplate.
Electric piano.
A tough padded bench for naps and laying down to change perspective.
Very good lighting.
Close proximity to a gym.
I guess I'll have to move out of my parents first though 😅3 -
I'm ashamed of it, but I want to share my tifu-story:
My colleague asked me if I could rename his windows user name because he married and changed his last name. I changed it in the Active Directory, but he got some problems when he wants to log on. On every startup his old name appears. Simpliest task. Let me google that.
Easy going, let me just change this registry entry. Reboot. Old behaviour. Okay, I changed some of the other entries. Reboot. Yeah, his new name appears. But wait a moment. Windows just nulled his entire user profile and deleted all the data. "oh, haha you have a backup, right?" - "no, I saved everything on the desktop, all my work is gone!"
But at the end, the boss was mad at HIM, because he doesn't used the file server or any backup system.
i am not a smart man5 -
Since there's a lot of hatred for certain programs here, what's your favourite program/software?
Can be a web app/desktop app/smart phone app etc.
Choose only one. No excuses!21 -
Just a quick rant on JavaScript,
So there’s a lot of people hating javascript, and while not a long time ago i was part of them, but I changed my opinion a little.
I think JavaScript is a great way to deal with website programming as it is quick and efficient, but I would not say to program directly on it, use a js-compilable language (CoffeScript, TypeScript, Kotlin(I think), etc.), but then you might say: “Well, no need for js then, compile it in byte code”. That would break the point of how I see web design/dev. The main intent behind webpages is to have an easy and fast way to send code to other computers to render them, that’s why it is interpreted: “Easy to send” and “*All* computers can handle it” with the proper browser. You need to be able to change the way the website is rendered and/or works sometimes, for diverse reasons like copy/pasting data, make it render properly or use plugins/add-ons to change that code to suit your needs.
I think js should be kept as a “readable byte-code”, so that means: {
Keep comments when compiling the js-compilable code,
Add standardized machine-readable comments that will indicate to smart code viewers how to show a particular thing (Like have a higher-end function compiled in js shown as a minimized code with explanations of the function)
Keep it nicely formated and don’t obfuscate (coz that’s annoying)
Etc.
}
So you bypass the quirks and all that pesky js stuff, while keeping it’s good sides.
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Part 2:
Web design for non-web:
Ok so things like node.js, electron, react-native and all that stuff; I won’t say they’re bad but...
Why we have this is because web designers wanted to make desktop apps and were like “Hey! Making web pages is easy! Let’s port it to desktop”, the problem is: Web technologies were made to work on a restricted canvas, aka a browser. It’s good on web for reasons mention earlier and more. But it’s not on desktop! You’re trying to push it outside of those boundaries. It’s difficult to make it break that canvas and go outside, make something that really works! For social media clients and that kind of stuff that you want to make a little more inclusive, yes! it’s a great idea (hello devrantron ;), but not if it’s an exact same copy of the website, just use the website. But for things that are supposed to really make use of YOUR computer; no!
I see those PWA (progressive webapps aka mobile app, but it’s an offline website”), I stand for the same positions, social media and those sort of things: yes, great idea! Games? 🤢.
I have way more to say but I have difficulties to remember them while reading, so feel free to comment your thoughts
Lol, “just a quick rant”1 -
Recent VM/Emulation Adventures:
The goal was to get TCP/IP and SSH running on whatever weird VM/emulated machine, and connect to the chatroom at chat.tcp.direct successfully.
Longhorn, somewhere late pre-reset: Crashes right after installer begins "Starting Windows", 0x7b from sum-match ISO. Fail.
TempleOS (well, Shrine, but y'know): Dear god. No. No, I am not writing SSH in HolyC myself *fuck that,* fail.
Slackware: oh ffs i gotta use fdisk to partition this damn thing? and it's not even the good fdisk? Oh, wait... it hangs. Fail.
WinME: shockingly, was *fairly* stable... until it hung up WASAPI and the hypervisor two frames into desktop rendering. Fail.
Mac OS 7: First-boot after install, immediate unknown trap. Just works, eh? Fail.
Amiga: After about 85 resets and 7 hours of constant fighting with WinUAE, I finally got TCP/IP working. (Required 10MB of total RAM and an FPU to connect.) Success!
Win98FE: just... PuTTY and done. Easy. (This was the warmup.) Success...
Other people's achievements so far:
- Minecraft using the new QEMU interface mod thing.
- Hacked smart fridge.
- iPhone, from custom initramfs.6 -
Everything is shit and I have to work drive thru till 11.15pm.
Everything appears to require js at one point or another (though kotlin requires groovy which, in the intellij IDE, the template it COMES with is fucking broken from the start)
c# could work (and microsoft shop jobs are plentiful) but fucking VS code is a headache and microsoft seems intent on locking everyone into VS and making everything they touch turn to shit, like the king midas of diarrhea (thanks MS, monodevelop is source only on windows). Also c# for android (xamarin) requires apache cordova to do anything, which means...TADA, FUCKING JAVASCRIPT and all the other shit it brings with it.
Java seems like an option, lots of jobs available, but I need netbeans for desktop (javafx) and Android Studio
separately in order to do anything. And Android Studio now uses, of all things...FUCKING GROOVY.
*cocks gunfinger and points in mouth*
why must every fucking thing be it's own DSL and make everything about the fucking ceremony of configuration over
fucking convention?
Haven't any of these fucking cocksuckers heard of MAKE? Or do they just masturbate over how intelligent and smart they are for having reinvented the god damn WHEEL?
I'll see you at the drive through. Will that be all for today?9 -
It's 2023 and smartphones can't even properly upload files in background.
When an upload is running in background while I watch YouTube or use other apps, the upload just stops at some point. The speed indicator in the top bar goes down to a few KB/s and I know immediately the upload has stopped well before it could have finished.
When re-opening the tab, I see a blank page and a loading bar. This means the tab has unloaded. Now I will have to re-select all those files again, which comes with its own troubles ( https://devrant.com/rants/9879401/... ).
Mobile browsers need to have a "protect this tab from unloading" option. Samsung already introduced a "keep open" option in the task switcher to protect individual apps from unloading in background. Why not do this on tab level?
Once the user locks their screen, this alone might interrupt the uploading process. On laptops and desktop computers, the upload keeps running in background.
Come on, this should be as easy as childs' play for billion-dollar corporations. Aren't smartphones "smart" enough to detect that a page is currently uploading files so its tab is not unloaded?
If smartphones can not accomplish this simple task that desktop computers and laptops can easily handle since the 2000s, it is a sad and embarrassing state.5 -
You can make your software as good as you want, if its core functionality has one major flaw that cripples its usefulness, users will switch to an alternative.
For example, an imaginary file manager that is otherwise the best in the world becomes far less useful if it imposes an arbitrary fifty-character limit for naming files and folders.
If you developed a file manager better than ES File Explorer was in the golden age of smartphones (before Google excercised their so-called "iron grip" on Android OS by crippling storage access, presumably for some unknown economic incentive such as selling cloud storage, and before ES File Explorer became adware), and if your file manager had all the useful functionality like range selection and tabbed browsing and navigation history, but it limits file names to 50 characters even though the file system supports far longer names, the user will have to rely on a different application for the sole purpose of giving files longer names, since renaming, as a file action, is one of the few core features of a file management software.
Why do I mention a 50-character limit? The pre-installed "My Files" app by Samsung actually did once have a fifty-character limit for renaming files and folders. When entering a longer name, it would show the message "up to 50 characters available". My thought: "Yeah, thank you for being so damn useful (sarcasm). I already use you reluctantly because Google locked out superior third-party file managers likely for some stupid economic incentives, and now you make managing files even more of a headache than it already is, by imposing this pointless limitation on file names' length."
Some one at Samsung's developer department had a brain fart some day that it would be a smart idea to impose an arbitrary limit on file name lengths. It isn't.
The user needs to move files to a directory accessible to a superior third-party file manager just to give it a name longer than fifty characters. Even file management on desktop computers two decades ago was better than this crap!
All of this because Google apparently wants us to pay them instead of SanDisk or some other memory card vendor. This again shows that one only truly owns a device if one has root access. Then these crippling restrictions that were made "for security reasons" (which, in case it isn't clear, is an obvious pretext) can be defeated for selected apps.2