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For this episode of practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker were going to move past developers and go straight to a CEO.
*sitcom audience oooooohhhhhhh*
I know! , always risky, everyone has a bad story, but lets try bring it home. Here we go, Most incompetent co-worker, candidate 2, "R".
R was ... now how do I say this ... R was a special kind of Bastard. A perfect blend of impatient, arrogant, a dickhead and to borrow a phrase from family guy "below the line of mental retardation".
I've actually spoken about him recently here: https://devrant.com/rants/1141873/...
I won't bother duplicating the content here, but its worth a read.
Some of the other highlights of R include:
- Not understanding that my first demo was UI / Frontend only (despite frequent explanations). I didn't slack off for the next 2 weeks, I was busy making all those buttons actually do stuff and connect to the server. Shockingly "Test 1", "Test 2" and "Lorem ipsum" wasn't our content.
- He once asked how long a bunch of tasks was going to take, I told him 2 weeks and he gave me 2 and a half days. He pulled me into a meeting the next week to see where it all was, and I literally sat there saying "I asked for 2 weeks" over and over until he shut up.
- R's favourite phrase was "when I was a developer", typically followed by some sort of insult, forever labelling him "asshole" by everyone who has ever worked for him.
- When apple launched iOS 7 and changed the UI and the methods you could use, he refused to invest the time in upgrading to iOS 7, but demanded the app look like an iOS 7 app. No amount of "There is no method to access the status bar in iOS 6" could make him comprehend the issue at hand.
- The worst was when I was dealing with an issue to do with 64bit being introduced (which I tried to explain ... christ give me strength). When another dev fixed a similar but unrelated issue he stood up in front of the office and said loudly "pfft practiseSafeHex tried to tell me this was something to do with 64bit, which made absolutely no sense, guess he doesn't know what he's talking about"
Thankfully I handed in my notice ... after less than 2 months, making in abundantly clear why. Will R make it to the top of the list of most incompetent?
Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!12 -
I'm not an iOS expert, I just wanted to get Google ads on my iOS app so that I could make a few petty dollars at the expense of my users. Is that too much to ask?
I started by following Google's instructions: install cocoapods, copy and paste some swift code... Compile failed, app broke. Carefully retrace my steps. Nothing.
Stackoverflow (praise be with them) suggests upgrading Xcode. Go to app store and click to upgrade Xcode. No progress bar, no status updates, just that pissy little spinner for several minutes. I become impatient try a few more times. It ain't happening.
Stackoverflow (holy of holies, defender of the weak) points me to an alternate source for Xcode, on the app store dev console. 4GB and some time later, an attempt to unzip gives "unknown error". Genocide of sorts.
Stackoverflow (all that is pure, all that is kind, all... I think you get it) says upgrade your OS. I tried months ago but I had issues with that pissy little spinner. Persist. 5GB and a "heavy-year" of time later (sorry), it installs. Then Xcode installs. Then bar a few errors, the app compiles.
So after almost 24 hours, life resumes. The lesson.. respond to all obscure iOS errors by upgrading. If fully upgraded, calmly acquire a baseball bat and destroy your machine. Make sure you have a good book nearby in case of either event.
Thank you for reading my rant. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pay Apple
$150 so that I may list my app in the app store.11 -
Its that time of the morning again where I get nothing done and moan about the past ... thats right its practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!
Today I'd like to tell you the story of "i". Interesting about "I" is that he was actually a colleague of yesterdays nominee "G" (and was present at the "java interface" video call, and agreed with G!): https://devrant.com/rants/1152317/...
"I" was the spearhead of a project to end all projects in that company. It was suppose to be a cross-platform thing but ended up only working for iOS. It was actually quite similar to this: https://jasonette.com/ (so similar i'm convinced G / I were part of this but I can't find their github ID's in it).
To briefly explain the above + what they built ... this is the worst piece of shit you can imagine ... and thats a pretty strong statement looking back at the rest of this series so far!
"I" thought this would solve all of our problems of having to build similar-ish apps for multiple customers by letting us re-use more code / UI across apps. His main solution, was every developers favourite part of writing code. I mean how often do you sit back and say:
"God damn I wish more of this development revolved around passing strings back and forth. Screw autocomplete, enums and typed classes / variables, I want more code / variables inside strings in this library!"
Yes thats right, the main part of this bullshittery was putting your entire app, into JSON, into a string and downloading it over http ... what could possibly go wrong!
Some of my issues were:
- Everything was a string, meaning we had no autocomplete. Every type and property had to be remembered and spelled perfectly.
- Everything was a string so we had no way to cmd + click / ctrl + click something to see somethings definition.
- Everything was a string so any business logic methods had to be remembered, all possible overloaded versions, no hints at param types no nothing.
- There was no specific tooling for any of this, it was literally open up xcode, create a json file and start writing strings.
- We couldn't use any of the native UI builders ... cause strings!
- We couldn't use any of the native UI layout constructs and we had to use these god awful custom layout managers, with a weird CSS feel to them.
What angered me a lot was their insistence that "You can download a new app over http and it will update instantly" ... except you can't because you can't download new business logic only UI. So its a new app, but must do 100% exactly the same thing as before.
His other achievements include:
- Deciding he didn't like apple's viewController and navigationBar classes and built his own, which was great when iOS 7 was released (changed the UI to allow drawing under the status bar) and we had no access to any of apples new code or methods, meaning everything had to be re-built from scratch.
- On my first week, my manager noticed he fucked up the login error handling on the app I was taking over. He noticed this as I was about to leave for the evening. I stayed so we could call him (he was in an earlier timezone). Rather than deal with his fucked up, he convinced the manager it would be a "great learning experience" for me to do it ... and stay in late ... while he goes home early.
- He once argued with me in front of the CEO, that his frankenstein cross-platform stuff was the right choice and that my way of using apples storyboards (and well thought out code) wasn't appropriate. So I challenged him to prove it, we got 2 clients who needed similar apps, we each did it our own way. He went 8 man weeks over, I came in 2 days under and his got slated in the app store for poor performance / issues. #result.
But rather than let it die he practically sucked off the CEO to let him improve the cross platform tooling instead.
... in that office you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a retard.
Having had to spend a lot more time working with him and more closely than most of the other nominees, at a minimum "I" is on the top of my list for needing a good punch in the face. Not for being an idiot (which he is), not for ruining so much (which he did), but for just being such an arrogant bastard about it all, despite constant failure.
Will "I" make it to most incompetent? Theres some pretty stiff competition so far
Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!7 -
I did a simple bar graph to show the status of a db migration. Each bar is a computer with a db file. As I was bored waiting, I added a King Kong hanging from the longest bar.
8 -
Am I the only one who hates it that everything needs to be done in JavaScript nowadays?
Why can't you just start writing native software again? Why does every program need its own fucking browser engine and at least 200MB of RAM to do nothing but show and edit text?
I want to have fast and streamlined software again and use my resources for important things. So much software that is called fast or lightweight isn't either. It's just a little less heavy and slow than the software it tries to replace.
I don't use C all the time, but maybe looking into Qt instead of electron might be a start.
I had a project where I could convince my tutors to let me use C++ instead of JS and they were surprised how fast my application started even though it only consisted only of a empty window with a status bar. How far have we come that we even need to think about performance when opening an empty window on modern hardware?20 -
"heh, I'm gonna instal this package".
Installs in 10 seconds.
"wow, this status bar looks cool..."
Installs in a split second.
"just one apt install before going to this really important seminar."
It takes almost half an hour to download and another half to install.
Aptitude fucking reads your thoughts...3 -
Arch Rice Update
Distro: Arch Linux
WM: i3-gaps
Browser: qutebrowser with my GitHub open
Pomodoros: pomo
top: gotop
Vim: Open with Python code, taglist, powerline and gruvbox color scheme
Terminal: st, Luke Smith's build
Neomutt, configured by mutt-wizard
Vifm, with ripped CDs and projects open
Bar: bumblebee-status
Background: https://github.com/skuzzymiglet/...
Qutebrowser means I can finally abandon my mouse/trackpad (except for pesky video ediors and music notation software). Nice feeling not having to drag my fingers over a piece of metal. Try it out!
High-res:
https://ibb.co/mbL6yXb
Some dotfiles (not all): https://github.com/skuzzymiglet/...
11 -
LPT: Name your branch after your user name.
If you select the branch in your IDE the status bar shows "Checking out dbx12". So at least someboddy is checking you out. -
First company:
- being sat at an office that didn't have chairs with proper back support. It would kill my back every day. Like sitting on a bar stool coding.
- not having access to basic resources (cafeteria, salary bonuses)
- being seriously underpaid ($200 under)
- not having an IT process pipeline (yeah, this is a huge one): no JIRA, no git, no VCS, no continuous integration, etc. I fucking spend 45% of the time fixing coding-unrelated shit.
Second company (very aggravating):
- dumb frontend bitch and privileged colleague who both kept telling me months on end to shut up and who wouldn't listen to my advice on anything, while my advice would actually help the company advance in productive ways. The key here is being told to shut up while stagnating. i.e. dead end job.
- people advancing in the company based on nepotism and favoritism, based on having tits and ass, rather than skills and independence.
- pointlessssssssss meetings where decisions are made solely based on the opinion of Mr. favorite senior dev. The rest just sits there like a bunch of sad saps and yay-nodders. Incompetent PO's who "would like to hear your input" but then when you give it, they completely dismiss you.
- pointlessssssssss monthly meetings with stakeholders, where the dev teams do nothing but clash and act like pussies in front of the PM just to get in his favor, but behind scenes continue to make the same mistakes and telling the CEO everything is fine. Goodness, how can it get more unproductive.
- completely antisocial and nepotistic 'colleagues' who won't even talk to you, let alone smile at you or be friendly. You saying good morning and them pretending you're vapor that doesn't exist. Go go company atmosphere! Especially during lunch, those are the worst times. Imagine sitting at lunch where everyone looks like you killed their dog and the rest is huddled up in little high school groups.
What else? The incessant and pointless smalltalk that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Talking about dogs, kids, what show was on tv last night. The fuck man, do you have a brain?!
Third company:
- HR bitches who think they are the shit and developers are antisocial, helpless misfits, but they work with computers and they don't even fucking know what a status bar is! The irony!
- forced socializing and stigmatization for the opposite. Imagine coming into a company and you don't say good morning. Should that be a problem? No. Instead, everyone starts dogging on you and hating you just because you didn't smile in their faces and said: hiiiiiiiiiiii how did you sleep? Did you feed your dog? Fuck you.
Elliot (Mr. Robot): "Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a mute button for life?" -boop, boop, boop, boop...- Ahh.. there.. that's much better."
- CEO's sucking up to you but when it comes to salary increase, they say shit like: "Ahhh ya know, it's kinda difficult." Yet another dead end job.2 -
You know it is gonna be "fun" integrating client APIs, when all of them respond with
"Thanks for submitting the request"
And no error or status code whatsoever, no matter what you send.
Also, the client likes to test/call this API in Internet explorer address bar, and doesn't trust Postman. Amazing shit dude.3 -
The fuck? You can scroll to the top by touching the status bar?!
Why the fuck is this not common knowledge?22 -
Why do Android apps not clear their own irrelevant notifications?
For example: If I mark all notifs as read within the devRant app, or archive an email in Gmail, or read a message in the Jira app, why does it not clear the status bar notification?
Is there a good reason, or is it just often overlooked by developers to perform a cleanup action like this?6 -
Had a better day with i3wm and Linux. Did a lot of futzing with config files and got it looking pretty cool. My status bar is relevant, urxvt is transparent, I'm happy with it.
I would have taken a screenshot to share with you all but uhh... I don't know how yet. :/6 -
I've had a Xiaomi Mi 8 for a few months now. Although I'm impressed by what I got for the amount I paid (a phone that cost about $250 for 6GB RAM, Snapdragon 845, Android 9 and premium build quality is quite a steal), it definitely comes with a consequence.
MIUI (specifically MIUI 11) is godawful. It is single-handedly the worst Android ROM I've ever used since my shitty Android 2.2 phone back around 2010. If you're gonna buy a Xiaomi phone, plan to install Lineage OS on it (but even that's a pain which I'll explain why later).
- Navigation buttons don't hide while watching a video.
Why? God only knows. The ONLY way to bypass without root this is to use its garbage fullscreen mode with gestures, which is annoying as all hell.
- 2 app info pages?
Yeah, the first one you can access just by going to its disaster of a settings app, apps, manage apps and tap on any one.
The 2nd one you can access through the app info button in any 3rd party launcher. Try this: Download Nova launcher, go to the app drawer, hold on any app and tap "app info", and you'll see the 2nd one.
Basically, instead of modifying Android's FOSS source code, they made a shitty overlay. These people are really ahead of their time.
- Can only set lock screen wallpapers using the stock Gallery app
It's not that big an issue, until it is, when whatever wallpaper app you're using only allows you to set the wallpaper and not download them. I think this is both a fuckup on Xiaomi and (insert wallpaper app name here), but why Xiaomi can't include this basic essential feature that every other Android ROM ever made has is beyond me.
- Theming on MIUI 11 is broken
Why do they even bother having a section to customize the boot animation and status bar when there's not one goddamn theme that supports it? At this point you're only changing the wallpaper and icon pack which you can do on any Android phone ever. Why even bother?
They really, REALLY want to be Apple.
Just look at their phones. They're well designed and got good specs, but they don't even care anymore about being original. The notch and lack of a headphone jack aren't features, they're tremendous fuckups by the dead rotting horse known as Apple that died when Steve Jobs did.
Xiaomi tries to build a walled garden around an inherently customizable OS, and the end result is a warzone of an Android ROM that begs for mercy from its creator. Launchers integrate horribly (Does any power user actually use anything that isn't Nova or Microsoft launcher?), 3rd party themes and customization apps need workarounds, some apps don't work at all. People buy from Xiaomi to get a high end budget Android phone at the price of some ads and data collection, not a shitter iOS wannabe.
They really, REALLY want you to have a sim card
If you don't have a sim card and you're using your phone for dev stuff, you're a 2nd class citizen to Xiaomi. Without one, you can't:
- Install adb through adb
- Write to secure settings
- Unlock your bootloader and get away from this trash Android ROM
What's the point? Are they gonna shadow ban you? Does anyone contact them to unlock their bootloader saying "yeah I wanna use a custom rom to pirate lizard porn and buy drugs"? They made this 1000000000x harder than it needs to be for no reason whatsoever. Oh yeah and you gotta wait like a week or something for them to unlock it. How they fucked up this bad is beyond me.
So yeah. Xiaomi. Great phones, atrocious OS.
11 -
No matter what I try, I cannot get sharp text on my work macbook. When I use my external display for my editor, all of the text is slightly blurry and a pain to read, especially the tiny text in the status bar, which is just a fuzzy mess.
Like, I know why mac fonts are "fuzzy" -- it uses subpixel rendering to attempt to stay true to the font's curves, whereas e.g. windows tries to snap those curves to the pixel grid. So, on macs, fonts look amazing when they're normal to large, but small font sizes are just yuck. Windows is the opposite: small fonts look crisp and clear, and normal-sized fonts look.. okay.
but why can't OSX just switch between subpixel and snapping based on font size? i'm tired of reading blurs! it makes my eyes blur!12 -
I love some edging case of android !
Like u call setToolbarHeight(int h) on the toolbar and boom, the status bar text color changes !3 -
Which moron at Google decided that a transparent status bar is useful and that the user should not be able to change it?
Do they test only with unicolored apps?
10 -
Just updated my Android one device to Android 10. Ughh, the worst design in the history of Android. Weird status bar icons, ugly fonts and worst possible color combination choices for both dark and light themes.
Google should go back to its colorful lollypop material designs instead of making more and more robotic icons :/3 -
Do you have a favorite status bar app? I have been using polybar since I switched to bspwm in December, and I've been really happy with all the customizations and plugins you can write for it, but I just wonder if anyone has been using any other bars that do something they really love.
8 -
The getting started of react native sucks big time.
If you don't want to display a completely centered text then go fuck yourself or what?
I mean there isn't even a howto on platform-independently not overlapping the fucking status bar. Everyone must've faced this problem when starting, but the only answer is an 8 times upvoted answer on SO telling me to add a hardcoded padding. What.
Where did this whole thing come to..🙁
Back in the days books about c didn't even start with more than 4 lines of code on the 70th page.
And when you google things about it it feels like you doing something totally wrong but its like the first thing a normal dude would do, what if i don't want shit centered bro i feel so useless and dumb i friggin hate that shit just fucking tell me what the fucking fuck to do!😫
It bugs me so hard cus i didn't even know a View is able to stick out on top of the app it doesn't make no sense to me the whole world is breaking apart12 -
!rant
I really like the Material Design guidelines that Google has released with Android 5.0, and maybe, @dfox, you could make the status bar match a darker tint of the app's color, as this color is also used on the recents menu and on my keyboard, and it really (IMO) makes an app stand out.
Thanks!
9 -
Heya! I've created something in C# you might find useful (though it's simplistic, and not my idea).
It's a program which has a progress bar for the current year, one for the current month, for the day, hour, and minute. Here it is, if you want to try it: https://dropbox.com/s/...
Based off the Mac version (not made by me): https://twitter.com/year_progress/...
Which costs $5, by the way... While I uploaded it for free u.u
What do you think?
Also, there might be an easter egg for 2019 ;D
Happy new year, everyone! 💙2 -
Fuck you Android ! Why the fuck does making my fucking status bar transparent has to be more difficult than launching a mars mission with a team of chimpanzees. I have been trying everything from xml styles to fucking java code but the status bar won't take the tint. Been at this fucking shit for 2 days3
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My Laptop recently lost his mobility. I think my battery died ;_;
i3-status-bar shows me a nice 0,00% and as soon as my charger disconnects, it shuts down. Hope My insurance is still active... -
My least successful one.. This is definitely dwm-status.
It is a daemon which sets the status bar of dwm with many configuration options. The main selling point is the way it updates: It listens to updates like file changes, dbus messages, output of a running process to be as less power consuming as possible.
Was a lot of fun to dive into rust! :)
EDIT: for the interested ones the link: https://github.com/Gerschtli/... :)4 -
#Suphle Rant 9: a tsunami on authenticators
I was approaching the finish line, slowly but surely. I had a rare ecstatic day after finding a long forgotten netlify app where I'd linked docs deployment to the repository. I didn't realise it was weighing down on me, the thought of how to do that. I just corrected some deprecated settings and saw the 93% finished work online. Everything suddenly made me happier that day
With half an appendix chapter to go, I decided to review an important class I stole from my old company for clues when I need to illustrate something involved using a semblance of a real world example (in the appendix, not abstract foo-bar passable for the docs)
It turns out, I hadn't implemented a functionality for restricting access to resources to only verified accounts. It just hasn't been required in the scheme of things. No matter, should be a piece of cake. I create a new middleware and it's done before I get to 50 lines. Then I try to update the documentation but to my surprise, user verification status turns out to be a subset of authentication locking. Instead of duplicating bindings for both authentication and verification, dev might as well use one middleware that checks for both and throws exceptions where appropriate.
BUT!
These aspects of the framework aren't middleware, at all. Call it poor design but I didn't envisage a situation where the indicators (authentication, path based authorisation and a 3rd one I don't recall), would perform behaviour deviating from the default. They were directly connected to their handlers and executed after within the final middleware. So there's no way to replace that default authentication scheme with one that additionally checks for verification status.
Whew
You aren't going to believe this. It may seem like I'm not serious and will never finish. I shut my system down for that day, even unsure how those indicators now have to refactored to work as middleware, their binding and detachment, considering route collections are composed down a trie
I'm mysteriously stronger the following day, draw up designs, draft a bunch of notes, roll my sleeves, and the tsunami began. Was surprisingly able to get most of previous middleware tests passing again before bed, with the exception of reshuffled classes. So I guess we can be optimistic that those other indicators won't cause more suffering or take us additional days off course
2 -
We should bring back the death sentence by hanging for those fucking retards who show their software update notifications as fucking popups after I start the program. No, notepad++, I don't give a fuck about your update. Fuck you FileZilla, I'm on a hurry, stop shoving your almost full screen update window in my face. Oh and the visual studio installer. Don't even get me started on the visual studio installer.
Would it be too difficult to show the update notification on the bottom of the window on the status bar? Maybe with a higher contrast color so it's more noticeable?10 -
Anyone have any decent Android apps for showing bluetooth headset's battery level info on status bar? (It can be a non-closeable notif)
FYI, an iPhone can detect this knock-off headphone's battery level. My phone doesn't have a viewing option as a stock widget/app.3 -
I started a rice after 3 years of happily using KDE, and apparently everything uses CSS for styling now? I'm not complaining, Polybar offered like 4 options and we just played around with glyph fonts, compared to that this is a joyride.
Also, Eww is brilliant. I've seen people make full fucking UIs and custom notification centers and shit with it. I don't have that much time on my hands, but the option is there. All this with janky Lisp and Sass.
Eww also confirmed a suspicion of mine regarding Orchid; language adoption is a matter of convenience. I can get people to learn my language by offering cool trinkets and useful tools to people who have a predisposition to learning. Yuck is an aptly named language but it's not totally unusable, and because I had to learn it to make my status bar I'm now more inclined to write the corresponding scripts in it as well and I'm actually quite disappointed that I have to use Bash for that. -
An update to that text editor thing that no one cares:
Now it has a default font (although it looks like horseshit), and a "working" cursor. It is also set to fullscreen by default, and remove the separate piece between the editor and the status bar.
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TL;DR
Sticky notification icon on Xiaomi MIUI 12 Android 11 is soooooo annoying.
https://xiaomi.eu/community/...
I made a video, hope that's also ok:
https://youtu.be/eEaJ3TjMZHk2
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