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*me coding in Atom in world history class*
*Teacher walks over*
Teacher: Are you on task?
Me: I'm taking notes.
Teacher: It doesn't look like it.
Me: I set a dark theme for Microsoft Word.
*Teacher walks away*13 -
*In a team meeting*
Me: *happily jotting down notes in markdown*
Other guy: "Dude what are you doing? Pay attention."
Me: "Umm... I'm taking notes?"
Other guy: "But why does your MS Word have black background?"
Me (a bit lost): "Umm... That's not Word. That's my text editor."
Other guy: "Alright... But how do you convert your notes into Word then?"
Me: "... I don't."
Other guy: *stares at me*
Me: * stare back*
It was a nice conversation.16 -
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 lunch26 -
I’m kind of pissy, so let’s get into this.
My apologies though: it’s kind of scattered.
Family support?
For @Root? Fucking never.
Maybe if I wanted to be a business major my mother might have cared. Maybe the other one (whom I call Dick because fuck him, and because it’s accurate) would have cared if I suddenly wanted to become a mechanic. But in both cases, I really doubt it. I’d probably just have been berated for not being perfect, or better at their respective fields than they were at 3x my age.
Anyway.
Support being a dev?
Not even a little.
I had hand-me-down computers that were outmoded when they originally bought them: cutting-edge discount resale tech like Win95, 33/66mhz, 404mb hd. It wouldn’t even play an MP3 without stuttering.
(The only time I had a decent one is when I built one for myself while in high school. They couldn’t believe I spent so much money on what they saw as a silly toy.)
Using a computer for anything other than email or “real world” work was bad in their eyes. Whenever I was on the computer, they accused me of playing games, and constantly yelled at me for wasting my time, for rotting in my room, etc. We moved so often I never had any friends, and they were simply awful to be around, so what was my alternative? I also got into trouble for reading too much (seriously), and with computers I could at least make things.
If they got mad at me for any (real or imagined) reason (which happened almost every other day) they would steal my things, throw them out, or get mad and destroy them. Desk, books, decorations, posters, jewelry, perfume, containers, my chair, etc. Sometimes they would just steal my power cables or network cables. If they left the house, they would sometimes unplug the internet altogether, and claim they didn’t know why it was down. (Stealing/unplugging cables continued until I was 16.) If they found my game CDs, those would disappear, too. They would go through my room, my backpack and its notes/binders/folders/assignments, my closet, my drawers, my journals (of course my journals), and my computer, too. And if they found anything at all they didn’t like, they would confront me about it, and often would bring it up for months telling me how wrong/bad I was. Related: I got all A’s and a B one year in high school, and didn’t hear the end of it for the entire summer vacation.
It got to the point that I invented my own language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet just so I could have just a little bit of privacy. (I’m still fluent in it.) I would only store everything important from my computer on my only Zip disk so that I could take it to school with me every day and keep it out of their hands. I was terrified of losing all of my work, and carrying a Zip disk around in my backpack (with no backups) was safer than leaving it at home.
I continued to experiment and learn whatever I could about computers and programming, and also started taking CS classes when I reached high school. Amusingly, I didn’t even like computers despite all of this — they were simply an escape.
Around the same time (freshman in high school) I was a decent enough dev to actually write useful software, and made a little bit of money doing that. I also made some for my parents, both for personal use and for their businesses. They never trusted it, and continually trashtalked it. They would only begrudgingly use the business software because the alternatives were many thousands of dollars. And, despite never ever having a problem with any of it, they insisted I accompany them every time, and these were often at 3am. Instead of being thankful, they would be sarcastically amazed when nothing went wrong for the nth time. Two of the larger projects I made for them were: an inventory management system that interfaced with hand scanners (VB), and another inventory management system for government facility audits (Access). Several websites, too. I actually got paid for the Access application thanks to a contract!
To put this into perspective, I was selected to work on a government software project about a year later, while still in high school. That didn’t impress them, either.
They continued to see computers as a useless waste of time, and kept telling me that I would be unemployable, and end up alone.
When they learned I was dating someone long-distance, and that it was a she, they simply took my computer and didn’t let me use it again for six months. Really freaking hard to do senior projects without a computer. They begrudgingly allowed me to use theirs for schoolwork, but it had a fraction of the specs — and some projects required Flash, which the computer could barely run.
Between the constant insults, yelling, abuse (not mentioned here), total lack of privacy, and the theft, destruction, etc. I still managed to teach myself about computers and programming.
In short, I am a dev despite my parents’ best efforts to the contrary.30 -
Hey, Root? How do you test your slow query ticket, again? I didn't bother reading the giant green "Testing notes:" box on the ticket. Yeah, could you explain it while I don't bother to listen and talk over you? Thanks.
And later:
Hey Root. I'm the DBA. Could you explain exactly what you're doing in this ticket, because i can't understand it. What are these new columns? Where is the new query? What are you doing? And why? Oh, the ticket? Yeah, I didn't bother to read it. There was too much text filled with things like implementation details, query optimization findings, overall benchmarking results, the purpose of the new columns, and i just couldn't care enough to read any of that. Yeah, I also don't know how to find the query it's running now. Yep, have complete access to the console and DB and query log. Still can't figure it out.
And later:
Hey Root. We pulled your urgent fix ticket from the release. You know, the one that SysOps and Data and even execs have been demanding? The one you finished three months ago? Yep, the problem is still taking down production every week or so, but we just can't verify that your fix is good enough. Even though the changes are pretty minimal, you've said it's 8x faster, and provided benchmark findings, we just ... don't know how to get the query it's running out of the code. or how check the query logs to find it. So. we just don't know if it's good enough.
Also, we goofed up when deploying and the testing database is gone, so now we can't test it since there are no records. Nevermind that you provided snippets to remedy exactly scenario in the ticket description you wrote three months ago.
And later:
Hey Root: Why did you take so long on this ticket? It has sat for so long now that someone else filed a ticket for it, with investigation findings. You know it's bringing down production, and it's kind of urgent. Maybe you should have prioritized it more, or written up better notes. You really need to communicate better. This is why we can't trust you to get things out.
*twitchy smile*21 -
My asshole coworkers talking about how programmers without a degree are worth shit and cannot achieve anything in industry besides working from startup to startup.
Well, surprise, I'm sitting right next to them, in the same big company and I don't have ANY higher education at all.
Just because I prefer more hands-on experience than theory stuff doesn't make me worse developer than those bastards. I just learn more from working on something, than from sitting in classroom and taking notes.
Fortunately people at HR and boss also valued my previous experience when they hired me, but now having to work with those guys every day is killing me.13 -
Following a conversation with a fellow devRanter this came to my mind ago, happened a year or two ago I think.
Was searching for an online note taking app which also provided open source end to end encryption.
After searching for a while I found something that looked alright (do not remember the URL/site too badly). They used pretty good open source JS crypto libraries so it seemed very good!
Then I noticed that the site itself did NOT ran SSL (putting the https:// in front of the site name resulted in site not found or something similar).
Went to the Q/A section because that's really weird.
Saw the answer to that question:
"Since the notes are end to end encrypted client side anyways, we don't see the point in adding SSL. It's secure enough this way".
😵
I emailed them right away explaing that any party inbetween their server(s) and the browser could do anything with the request (includingt the cryptographic JS code) so they should start going onto SSL very very fast.
Too badly I never received a reply.
People, if you ever work with client side crypto, ALWAYS use SSL. Also with valid certs!
The NSA for example has this thing known as the 'Quantum Insert' attack which they can deploy worldwide which basically is an attack where they detect requests being made to servers and reply quickly with their own version of that code which is very probably backdoored.
This attack cannot be performed if you use SSL! (of course only if they don't have your private keys but lets assume that for now)
Luckily Fox-IT (formerly Dutch cyber security company) wrote a Snort (Intrustion Detection System) module for detecting this attack.
Anyways, Always use SSL if you do anything at all with crypto/sensitive data! Actually, always use it but at the very LEAST really do it when you process the mentioned above!31 -
Just thought I'd share my current project: Taking an old ISA sound card I got off eBay and wiring it up to an Arduino to control its OPL3 synth from a MIDI keyboard. I have it mostly working now.
No intention to play audio samples, so I've not bothered with any of the DMA stuff - just MIDI (MPU-401 UART) and OPL3.
It has involved learning the pinout of the ISA bus connectors, figuring out which ones are actually used for this card, ignoring the standards a little (hello, amplifier chip that is wired up to the +12V line but which still happily works at +5V...)
Most of the wires going to it are for each bit of the 16-bit address and 8-bit data. Using a couple of shift registers for the address, and a universal shift register for the data. Wrote some fairly primitive ISA bus read/write code, but it was really slow. Eventually found out about SPI and re-wrote the code to use that and it became very fast. Had trouble with some timings, fixed those.
The card is an ISA Plug and Play card, meaning before I could use it I had to tell it what resources to use. Linux driver code and some reverse-engineering of the official Windows/DOS drivers got me past this stage.
Wired up IRQ 5 to an Arduino interrupt to deal with incoming MIDI data, with a routine that buffers it. Ran into trouble with the interrupt happening during I/O and needing to do some I/O inside the handler and had to set a flag to decide whether to disable/re-enable interrupts during I/O.
It looks like total chaos, but the various wires going across the breadboard are mainly to make it easier to deal with the 16-bit address and 8-bit data lines. The LEDs were initially used to check what addresses/data were being sent, but now only one of them is connected and indicates when the interrupt handler is executing.
There's still a lot to do after that though - MIDI and OPL3 are two completely different things so I had to write some code to manage the different "channels" of the OPL3 chip. I have it playing multiple notes at the same time but need to make it able to control the various settings over MIDI. Eventually I might add some physical controls to it and get a PCB made.
The fun part is, I only vaguely know what I'm doing with the electronics side of this. I didn't know what a "shift register" was before this project, nor anything about the workings of the ISA bus. I knew a bit about MIDI (both the protocol and generally how the MPU-401 UART works) along with the operation of a sound card from a driver/software perspective, but everything else is pretty new to me.
As a useful little extra, I made some "fake" components that I can build the software against on a PC, to run some tests before uploading it to the Arduino (mostly just prints out the addresses it is going to try and write to).
46 -
I was straight out of uni so I didn't mind recruiters getting in touch, I just wanted a job.
The whole conversation was just generally awkward, it was just as if he hated his job, being there, and me. He had a wordpress project lined up which I was extremely ambivalent about, but I didn't want to rule anything out. We talked about my experiences with VueJS, React, material styling, how I had done a project which is live in production more or less solo fullstack, and some of my side projects.
He nods knowingly through it all while taking notes, before asking if I had heard of javascript or if I'd be willing to look at it until next time.
That's when you just get struck with this sense of "what can I do to leave this room as soon as possible without making a scene".2 -
Other PM: We must fix the database performance issues now.
Me: We can't. We're still only halfway on the dependency chain to tackle this and honestly, even if the dependency chain would be fulfilled, I'd leave at least 2 weeks monitoring the production after the changes were rolled out before we further poke around.
Other PM: This is taking far too long. And whaddya mean by dependency chain? Why was I not informed about this?
Me: *sigh* like in every meeting in the last weeks: the dependency chain are the current open blockers before we can proceed with the database changes. We've talked about this _at length_... Especially why these blockers exist.
Other PM: No, we need to start now. I've _examined_ at the blockers or "dependency chain" as you call it.
(Examined.... He opened on his currently streaming laptop, which was connected to the active beamer, the mentioned ticket with a detailed blocker ... And quickly scrolled. Yeeah. Warmonger...).
Me: I'm very tired of discussing this. But since you are already presenting us the ticket, read out the referenced meeting notes... We explained it in great detail.
Other PM: Why? This is just a waste of time!!!!!!!
--
Yes. This happened. Other PM was my nemesis.
In this meeting were 2 PMs (Him, Me)… I think 5 - 7 devs... And we were sitting in this meeting since 2 hours at least. Everyone was angry...
After this "manifesto of intelligence"… I simply left the room, followed by a few devs.
And yes. Other PM did this on a regular basis....5 -
The company wants me to attend a meeting while expecting to finish coding. So i just code in a meeting pretending i was taking down notes.5
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Had an interview with a potential customer last week, and he started questioning my technical capability in the middle of the discussion on the basis that I’m taking notes with pen and paper...
Yes, I can type. At 90+ WPM, I can darn near produce a transcript of everything we say. But I won’t remember any of it afterward, because it passes straight from the ears to the hands without any processing.
“You see, that’s what we have something called ’search’ for...”
...Yeah. Except that doesn’t help with picking out the most important points from a wall of text, organizing it in a way that allows visualizing relationships between concepts, and other non-linear things that are hard to do on the fly in a word processor.
“Well, how about we get you a tablet with a pen and you can just write on that, then?”
How about no.
Ended up turning him down because of other concerns that were raised that were, suffice to say, about as ornerous as you might expect from that exchange.7 -
What do u have open when coding?
Me (PHP/NodeJS web development on a Mac):
CODING & TESTING
- MAMP PRO
- PhpStrom
- Navicat (for localhost MySql DB)
- Chrome
- Terminal
COMMUNICATION
- Slack
- Mail
- Messenger (for Google Chat)
- WhatApp Web
- Calendar
NOTE TAKING
- Evernote
- TextWrangler (for quick notes)
36 -
Taking a class on C and machine-level code for school and I have my final tomorrow. After the entire semester, people are still posting questions to piazza asking how strings work and other students are giving wrong answers. Not to mention all of the correct answers are posted in our lecture notes and countless places online. Seriously people, why are you a CompSci major if you can't even figure out how you declare a string after 10 weeks of coding?3
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I am 30.
Just now I see that if I rewrite documentation of things I learn online with my own words (aka taking fucking notes) I learn with 5x quality.
For some reason I didn't do this most of my 20s.
what the fuck am I doing with my life?17 -
Knowing the Linux command line saved my bacon!
I was on a plane, unable to connect to wifi, and needed to take a note... while not having any note taking applications or text editing applications on my phone. but what I DID have was a terminal application.
So, I made a file in my documents folder and echoed my notes into the file! A bit longer and more complicated than it needed to be, but it worked when I needed it to!12 -
What I don't understand is why it is so hard for some seniors to just let me jot my notes down, I get it you're busy but if you just let me write down certain key words, I will never ask you this question again, I am nervous cause I had to bug you for help so my mind is not taking anything in, its freaking out cause you're making it so clear I am a bother! So I'm gonna go back to my desk without notes and no idea of what you just tried to tell me.... It was never a problem for my first senior, and he even became my mentor! In a question of 6 months he could go on holiday cause I could handle all his responsibilities until he came back with my trusty note book in hand... So why are you telling me to stop making notes!! It works for me so leave me be!! - sits at desk, pondering why I exist - 😖16
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Honestly remote work allowed me to stay productive but to make it more better:
* I usually isolate myself from the rest of the family so I can focus on work
* Taking breaks between sessions so I don't over-exert myself.
*Calming music (I don't know how calming Symphonic Metal is but it is to me)
Other than that, these are just my ways to keep myself efficient, aside from the additional setup my home setup needs which are a new external keyboard and a additional monitor (I use a laptop)
Additional notes: If you get burnt out too easily, try not extending your sessions for a entire day, you'd risk being devoid of motivation easily8 -
• Plan out everything by taking notes on the rough functionality of the project and how it could be done in a preferably simple way
• Writing code, but documentating it while doing so
• Also trying to write clean code so it can be more easily built upon
• Also keeping everything simple. If I'm using nasty, unreadable one-liners because of efficiency advantages, I'm putting a comment there for what could alternatively be used + explaining it
• Abandon it because side projects never get done1 -
Before the lockdown, we regularly had our client's testers in our office to evaluate the prototypes of potential features.
Some of them would just be left on their own with the software and tell is their experience afterwards. The Application is tested on our machines while the Testers are taking notes on their devices.
So one of the testers suddenly told us she had a "non application-related, general technical problem".
Well it turned out that she selected some text in the application running on our machine, then right-clicking and copied it and then unplugged her USB-Mouse, plugged it in on her Laptop and wondered, why she couldn't paste the text.
Since then, my respect for our UX department grew enormously since we very rarely get complaints.4 -
Project manager, who i've complained in the past is neglecting critical things that he doesn't want to do, decided today to cancel our weekly planning meeting, to have the below conversation with me 1:1. Its very long, but anyone who has the will to get through it ... please tell me it's not just me. I'm so bewildered and angry.
Side note: His solution to the planning meeting not taking place ... to just not have one and asked everyone to figure it out themselves offline, with no guidance on priorities.
Conversation:
PM: I need to talk to you about some of phrasing you use during collaboration. It's coming across slightly offensive, or angry or something like that.
Me: ok, can you give me an example?
PM: The ticket I opened yesterday, where you closed it with a comment something along the lines of "as discussed several times before, this is an issue with library X, can't be fixed until Y ...".
"As discussed several times" comes across aggressive.
Me: Ok, fair enough, I get quite frustrated when we are under a crunch, working long hours, and I have to keep debugging or responding to the same tickets over and over. I mean, like we do need to solve this problem, I don't think its fair that we just keep ignoring this.
PM: See this is the problem, you never told me.
Me: ... told you what?
PM: That this is a known issue and not to test it.
Me: ..... i'm sorry ..... I did, that was the comment, this is the 4th ticket i've closed about it.
PM: Right but when you sent me this app, you never said "don't test this".
Me: But I told you that, the last 3 times that it won't be in until feature X, which you know is next month.
PM: No, you need to tell me on each internal release what not to test.
Me: But we release multiple times per week internally. Do you really need me to write a big list of "still broken, still broken, still broken, still broken"?
PM: Yes, how else will I know?
Me: This is documented, the last QA contractor we had work for us, wrote a lot of this down. Its in other tickets that are still open, or notes on test cases etc. You were tagged in all of these too. Can you not read those? and not test them unless I say I've fixed them?
PM: No, i'm only filling for QA until we hire a full time. Thats QA's job to read those and maintain those documents.
Me: So you want me to document for you every single release, whats already documented in a different place?
PM: ok we'll come back to this. Speaking of hiring QA. You left a comment on the excel spreadsheet questioning my decision, publicly, thats not ok.
Me: When I asked why my top pick was rejected?
PM: Yes. Its great that you are involved in this, but I have to work closely with this person and I said no, is that not enough?
Me: Well you asked me to participate, reviewing resumes's and interviewing people. And I also have to work extremely close with this person.
PM: Are you doubting my ability to interview or filter people?
Me: ..... well a little bit yeah. You asked me to interview your top pick after you interviewed her and thought she was great. She was very under qualified. And the second resume you picked was missing 50% of the requirements we asked for ... given those two didn't go well, I do think its fair to ask why my top pick was rejected? ... even just to know the reason?
PM: Could you not have asked publicly? face to face?
Me: you tagged me on a google sheet, asking me to review a resume, and rather than tag you back on 2 rows below ... you want me to wait 4 days to ask you at our next face to face? (which you just cancelled for this meeting)
PM: That would have been more appropriate
Me: ..... i'm sorry, i don't want to be rude but thats ridiculous and very nit pick-y. You asked my opinion on one row, I asked yours on another. To say theres anything wrong with that is ridiculous
PM: Well we are going to call another team meeting and discuss all this face to face then, because this isn't working. We need to jump to this other call now, lets leave it here.5 -
Had a scheduled call to interview a dev contractor. He told us any typing noise we hear is just him taking notes. Ok. After several questions the long awkward pauses, typing and furious mouse wheels make it evident he's a liar and looking up answers.
Still managed to tank the interview and wasted our time.
I sure hope that wasn't one of you guys.3 -
I finally heard a retarded question on a job interview. I thought they were just jokes.. I was wrong!
What kind of a question is "how would your friends describe you?"..
They'd say I'm fucking awesome, did you expect a different answer?
Or when I gave them a referral, my previous boss, and they asked me what would he say about me.. well fuck me sideways, I have no idea.
And one of the last ones, "tell us your three top qualities that would make us hire you". What kind of information does such a question even give them? Are they testing me how well I can lie? Because I can't, and others that can lie will give a better answer, regardless of the reality.
And they were even taking notes after these questions.
Other than that, nice company. I really want to start working there soon.5 -
I know there are different ways of learning programming, but I see students actually taking notes from a programming books and highlighting important bits with a Pilot marker. (and they're not reading fundamental stuff)
Just fucking code something.2 -
Am I weird for not liking Whiskey?
It just kinda tastes... bad. Everybody is taking about notes of vanilla, undertones of strawberry, BITCH where. It tastes like weird with alcohol. And the alcohol part isn't really the problem. I'd much rather drink straight up vodka. Yes it tastes like drain cleaner but at least it doesn't have this weird ass taste to it. I actually quite like vodka. I just don't get whiskey18 -
If taking notes is an art, then I am definitely not an artist.
It gets more difficult when trying to take notes while watching a video.
How the fuck to go about it? I have yet to strike a balance between “listening to learn” and “listening to take notes”.
Both are very different things and can’t be done at the same time. What happens then is that I end up watching a video twice, or end up without any notes.7 -
Not really trying to, but probably should try to fix this bad, bad habit…
I keep wanting to fix and improve everything - and I keep taking notes, writing action plans et fucking cetera to the point the amount of work that should be done and I want to do is driving me insane. And they should all get done now!
In short, I should really either learn to focus on just one thing at a time for a meaningful period - or just cease to give a fuck. Either could work.2 -
Sometimes we woulg get a request which involves adding something or changing something to a rather large and poorly made codebase which me and my lead have not had the time to change.
This b how shit goes:
* the lead gets a call after an email was sent with apparently only 5 secs of response time( inpatient fucks)
* lead calls me in next to his station to listen to the call
* i b listening and shit, not even taking notes and shit, looking all secret weapon and shit.
Texas as fuck.
* lead puts shit on hold and looks at me
Lead: "Allright. You know the codebase as well as I do, what you think?"
Me: pffft gimme 30 mins and Ill whip out yo solution
Lead: we positive on the estimate?
Me: as positive as the Texas Rangers sucking ass but we still love em, fuck the Astros
Lead: there is only room for one team
Me: only one
**fist bump
* goes back to the call:
Lead: yeah its gonna take 2 days at most.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we do finish them in 30 mins. The trick is in doing it extra fast so we have enough time to fuck around or do some other shit and to make it seem like we do some hard shit. After maybe 6 hours we tell them that we managed to fix it before time.
Texas....as....fuck
Btw me and the lead tall about whatever while we code the stuff, most of the time I do it since my boy has heavy eye problems and I want him to relax. He has been training me a lot in regards to knowing the codebase, before I got here it was only him for two fucking campuses and the man did an outstanding job. My boy got my ass and I got his.
Teamwork, the southern gentleman's way.
Texas.
P.d while coding it he said the one of the file sizes was too big to handle, i said "das what she said" and our female manager said "i heard that".......i could have sworn that she gave me a lil wink. Well damn.8 -
Taking notes or explaining mathematical,/physical concepts by writing I'm C++ syntax.
It's pretty good because all my other chemical engineering classmates stopped asking for my notes.2 -
1. Keep my job
2. Keep my side job
3. Revive blogging at least 1 post a month
4. Keep focus on what’s important and what are priorities
5. Finish my notes / diary application cause my text files / html pages are now taking up to much space and using cat/grep to search trough them is painful ( it can also help with point 3 )
6. Maybe just maybe start writing prototype of table top rpg game scenario, I have a concept in my mind for a long time but it’s also connected to point 5 and 7 and 8
7. Spend twice more time to practice drawing than in this year
8. Read / listen to more than 1 book a month
I think that’s it from dev stuff1 -
I found the best text editor for basic code fixing
For a couple of days, I was looking for a simple terminal-based text editor for taking simple code notes or basic code fixing kinds of stuff.
As an aspiring developer, I really like the concept of coding without touching the mouse.
So I downloaded the king of CLI text editors, Vim.
Now, guess what happened.
Yeah, you're right. I stuck inside vim and couldn't even quit from there.
Then, I started watching a bunch of tutorials and started reading vim's documentation.
But then I realized, I have to learn a lot of things only to operate vim and it's a pretty lengthy process.
At that time, I really needed a very simple text editor for doing basic stuff.
But, vim is not simple... you know :)
So, I had to come back to 'nano' & I was not happy enough to write codes by using 'nano'.
Suddenly, I discovered another really cool text editor called 'micro'.
It's really awesome.
It's not as advanced as vim but definitely a lot better than nano.
Micro is an open-source command-line text editor created by Zachary Yedidia.
Some basic key points of Micro:
1. It's really easy to operate.
2. It has different colours and highlights.
3. It supports syntaxes for over 70+ programming languages.
4. It has mouse support.
5. Plugins & colour schemes.
The best thing for me is colour schemes & screen split support.
Check out my full article on DEV - @souviktests.
20 -
Computer science 312 is a drag. We code in Assembly, which is cool, but the instructor actually gets his notes from tutorialspoint.com. I stopped taking notes.1
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!rant
Buy some colored pens. The more colors the better.
I did it out of curiosity. Ended up being a life saver when taking notes and planning work on paper. It probably cut my work in half. I spend more time writing stuff on paper and planning stuff, but when I do write 10 lines of code, they turn out to be pure gems fitting perfectly in the entire structure. I write them with tons of confidence, knowing that I had thought of everything and I didn't forget anything, because everything is right there, in color, on the diagrams that I drew.2 -
I subscribe to many copywriting newsletters. Here's an article that shows how it's like on "the other side", marketers struggle, too.
How Kevin's Massive Mistake
Completely Changed His Life
Kevin H. made a huge mistake.
The biggest, he would say, if he could tell you himself.
And he knew it immediately.
It was, he said, "instant regret."
Within milliseconds, he was asking himself "What have I done..."
Kevin, see, had just jumped the rail of the single most popular suicide spot in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.
On average, the site gets another distraught jumper every two weeks. Kevin was one of them.
It wasn't like he hadn't tried to quiet the voices in his head. Therapy, drugs, hospitalization.
Time to die, those voices still said.
And yet, in the minutes his bus dropped him off at the bridge, he hesitated and paced with tears in his eyes.
"I told myself if just one person comes up to me and asks if I'm okay... if one person asks if they can help... I won't do it. I'll stop and tell them my whole story..."
But nobody did, so he jumped.
It was in those next milliseconds, he would later say, he knew it was the biggest mistake of his life.
He didn't want to die.
But now, he was sure, it was too late.
From its highest point, it's a 245-foot plummet into the icy bay waters below.
Out of the 1,700 people that have jumped from the bridge since it first opened in 1937, only 25 have survived.
Kevin, against all odds, would be one of them.
He slammed into the water like hitting concrete. Three of his vertebrae instantly shattered.
When he surfaced, he couldn't hold his own head above water. But, incredibly, a sea lion kept pushing him up.
The Coast Guard soon arrived and pulled him out.
From there, he began a long recovery that required intense surgery, physical therapy, and psychiatric care.
While still under treatment, a priest urged him to give a talk to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders.
Afterward, they sent him a pile of letters, both encouraging and full of their own pained thoughts.
He also met a woman.
Today, Kevin lives in Atlanta and he's been happily married for the last 12 years.
And he tours the country, sharing his story.
So why re-tell it here?
Obviously -- I hope -- you don't get lots of copywriters looking to snuff it after a flopped headline test.
Just the same...
We've talked a lot in this space about the things one needs to get by in this biz.
My friend and colleague Joe, over at the publishing powerhouse Agora Financial, likes to list requirements.
You need intense curiosity...
You need a killer work ethic...
And you must, MUST have... resilience.
Meaning, you must have or find the capacity to bounce back from failure and flops, even huge ones.
Now, again, Kevin's story is an extreme and in this context -- I hope -- a hyperbolic example of somebody giving up. In the worst way possible.
It is also, though, a metaphor.
See, I get a lot of notes from some of you guys... and at conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people...
And I often get the sense, from some folks, that they're feeling a little more overwhelmed than they let on.
Some are just starting out, and they've got a lot on the line. For some, it's everything. And some are desperate to make it work.
Because they have to, because their pride or livelihoods or a family business is at stake, because it's a dream.
And yet, they're overwhelmed by all the tips and secrets... or by piles of confusing research or ideas...
For others, even had some success, but they're burned out, feel antiquated, or feel like "imposters" that know less than they let on, in an industry that's evolving.
To all those folks... and to you... I can only say, I've been there. And frankly, go back there now and again.
Flops happen, failures happen. And you can and will -- even years and decades into doing this -- make the wrong choices, pick the wrong projects, or botch the right ones.
The legendary Gene Schwartz put it this way, according to a quote spotted recently in fellow writer Ben Settle's e-letter...
" A very good copywriter is going to fail. If the guy doesn't fail, he's no good. He's got to fail. It hurts. But it's the only way to get the home runs the next time."
Once more, nobody -- I hope -- is taking the trials of this profession hard enough to make Kevin's choice.
And believe me, I don't mean to make light of the latter. I just want to make sure we hit this anvil with a big hammer. To drive home the point that, whatever your struggle, be it with this biz or something bigger, that you don't want to give up. Press on.
As Churchill put it, "Success, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
Or even more succinctly when he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."
Because it's worth it.
.
John Forde -
South Africa Release notes version v3.0.2
In 1994 SA underwent one of the biggest system upgrades since 1948. In this new rolling release since the system update called apartheid the system has been annexing resources, locking it down, making it closed source, closing it off community updates and from global updates and minimizing services across the board. On 27 April 1994, the new democratic system update was released with a new system monitor, release resources and balancing efficiency in the system. Though there were remnants of the old code in the system, it was being rewritten by a new generation of users, open source resources were established, giving users the right to choose among themselves how to grow the system , and how to better the experience for all.
In 1999 a new system monitor was created by the users, it wasnt as popular as the ground breaking Madiba release but it was a choice by the community to move forward and grow. The system was stable for a few years, new users were able to develop more on the system, making it more lucrative monetary wise. There were still remnants of the apartheid code but the new generation of developers worked with it making it there own, though they had not yet had admin rights to help change the system, they created a developer culture of their own. A new system resources balancer was introduced called BBEE, that allowed previous disadvantage users more admin rights to other system resources, helping the user base to grow. Though the balancer was biased, and flawed it has helped the system overall to grow and move forward. It has major holes in security and may flood some aspects of the system with more outdated software patches, users have kept it in its system releases until the resource balancer moved the system into a more stable position.
The next interim system monitor release was unexpected, a quiet release that most users did not contribute towards. The system monitor after that nearly brought the system down to a halt, as it was stealing resources from users, using resources for its own gain, and hasn't released any of it back to the system.
The latest user release has been stable. It has brought more interest from users from other countries, it had more monetary advantages than all other releases before. Though it still has flaws, it has tried to balance the system thus far.
Bug report as of 16 Feb 2018
*User experience has been unbalanced since the 1994 release, still leaving some users at a disadvantage.
*The three tier user base that the 1948 release established, creating three main user groups, created a hierarchy of users that are still in effect today, thought the 1994 release tried to balance it out, the user based reversed in its hierarchy, leaving the middle group of users where they were.
*System instability has been at an all time low, allowing users to disable each others accounts, effectively
killing" them off
*Though the infrastructure of the system has been upgraded to global standards ( in some aspects ) expansions are still at an all time low
*Rogue groups of users have been taking most of the infrastructure from established users
*Security services have been heightened among user groups though admins were still able to do as they pleased without being reprimanded
*Female users have been kicked off the system at an alarming rate, the security services have only kicked in recently, but the system admins and system monitor has not done anything about it yet
Bug fixes for a future release:
*Recreating the overall sysadmin team. Removing some admins and bringing others in
*Opening the system more globally to stabilize it more
*Removing and revamping the BBEE system, replacing it with more user documentation, equalizing the user base
*Giving more resources to users that were at a disadvantage during the first release
*Giving the middle group of users more support, documentation and advantages in the system, after removing the security protocols from the user base
*Giving new users who grew up with the post 1994 release more opportunities to help grow the system on a level playing field.
*Establishing the Madiba release principles more efficiently in the current system1 -
None...
My work desk is ordered chaos. It's an unspectacular white desk.
To the left paper for taking notices... And a collection of notes highly unordered.
In the top left corner of the desk the router.
Middle (front to back): Color sorted post it's with my backlog and all the stuff that I need to keep track off.
Keyboard, Monitor
Right (front to back): mailboxthingy, post it block, utensilo (made of bamboo)
That's the working desk. Like the "shining knight in armor"....
Next to the working desk is the play desk, a large kitchen table with a 5mm thick black rubber (keep your dirty thoughts for yourself ;)) as insulation and scratch prevention.
There is usually utter chaos.
Banana PI R2, test router, old hardware, hardware storage cabinet, screw and other small part cabinet....
And to the right is a large chest of drawers where I cram everything in that doesn't belong anywhere.
I'm pretty boring I guess.
Except you are kinky for old hardware and lots of weird stuff noone uses nowadays...
Then you're in heaven I guess.1 -
Last month, I learnt Docker via the 1 hour crash course of the YouTube video.
Now, I don't remember all the content of that video which made me think that I should start making notes.
I understand the basic fundamentals of the Contanarization and a couple of commands.
But I still feel like I'm lacking the whole picture of the docker.
I wonder what other devs do to learn new tech and also about note taking habit for revisions.6 -
Today I'll visit a university and get a little taste of what they're teaching. The sad part is that the interesting courses are all at the same time.
What on earth is "Computerlinguistik" (computational linguistics)?
And I'm not sure where to go other times as well because literally NONE of these 7 parallel courses are of any interest for me. I'll probably go in Germanistik and Linguistik (german and english) since the IT stuff and financial explanations when studying are all at the same time. Who organized that shit...
Other than that, I hope I'll not get lost on the campus and have enough energy on my phone to distracted me of boring co- I mean taking notes, obviously
Also 3h on the bus. Yay.7 -
!rant
I tend to do a lot of sketching and note taking and like to use pen on paper. But sick of tearing out notes and accumulating bits if paper that contain notes here and there. I was thinking of going digital with this specific task (for cheap) i don't own an ipad so was thinking of getting a Fire HD 8" and a Boxwave EverTouch stylus. Im all Apple so don't know android, would this hardware do the trick and what would be a decent note taking and organising app for it? Appreciate any advice comments. Other uses for it are irrelevant.5 -
I really don't like our morning daily standups. They're kind of annoying, feels like kindergarten and I sometimes have to repeat myself because someone's too slow at taking notes from our talking.
Wondering if asynchronous standups would work better.7 -
oh my goodness if I dhsfjhsjfhj
i can barely type right now im so frusterated
I've told my manager multiple times that I don't feel comfortable with the task hes trying to give me because it feels way too large (its designing/programming/testing/documenting an entire prototype cloud file sync application and server backend service on my own, replacing one we have had for several years) and he still just ignores me and persists that I should be thankful for the opportunity and challenge.
It pisses me off so much when people say dumb shit like, 'its a great opportunity to learn' at work. No it isn't. Your boss is going to be on your fucking case for taking too long or not delivering enough, and thats exactly what happened. He got upset and said he was expecting more things to have been written down by now, like design notes. I was just fuming. Design notes? I'm not even a freaking designer, I've never designed any type of big software ever, what the fuck do you want from me.
On top of that, I don't know where the hell he expects me to get time for this. I'm apparently also devops so I get yoinked off of anything im doing if some stupid thing breaks in some other environment about something I really don't even care about. Any other random ass task just gets dumped on me too. I'm supposed to be a 'junior developer', and get paid as such (i've wanted to go to the intermediate level but get told the title doesn't actually matter and no pay raise for you) but I get the responsibilties of a whole fucking team dumped on me and its just
do I just quit now? I'm just, for fuck sakes man4 -
When planning how to design some piece of software, specifically when it's object orientated, what "tools" do you use for taking notes?
I mostly prefer a white board or the ol' reliable (pen and paper)10 -
While preparing for a PM workshop, I spent more than an hour looking for a good sketboard, mindmapping or notes taking tool. Well I am not regretting.
I have found Joplin. It's amazing. Really appreciate and impressed that there are Developers making such awesome apps. 😍🤩😍2 -
Not a rant
What do you all use for taking notes? Preferably something that handles code well and is cloud based (or can be dumped into it)6 -
In our class we have one subject where we take notes on one shared Google docs document. To be honest, this may be the worst "teamwork" that I every had to deal with.
• Simply copying the stuff from the blackboard:
• Missing context
• document consists of keywords and occasional sentences
• These fucking deep nested lists
• No quality control whatsoever
--> nobody fucking cares
• What, nobody made notes for this point?
• Any attempt to speak up result in me being scolded
• Be me, the only one not shopping on amazon instead of taking notes
• Wtf does this mean, where's the context
• one line of code without needed context code
No quality, no Motivation, no better alternatives, no fun. -
!rant
Tablet recommendations? I know this isn't really the place to ask but I trust you devs.
I'm just about to start back college and I'd like to have a light carry around for days I don't need my laptop. I love my 17" Dell, it's a beast and that's why I bought it but damn it's overkill for taking notes and running little things through a bash terminal. A tablet and keyboard seems like a nice idea.
Ideally, I wanna run Linux. But I'm not sure if there's a commercial tablet that facilitates OS changes easily out of the box.
No iPad. Not an apple fan, and it's just not what I'm after.
The MS surface seems pretty good, but I haven't looked too deeply into replacing the OS.
I just want a nice Linux tablet. I dunno.
Thanks!5 -
That feeling after you sat through a two hour client meeting taking notes and forgot to save... Now having to re live the meeting hoping to remember everything... Must be the turkey hangover...
-
I think I found a way to audit college courses without paying for them. Find someone that is taking the courses and get paid doing their homework (for cheap/free). Make sure they take good notes and provide access to all materials. Do their homework of course. If taken to the extreme you could have a CS/CE/Math background while possibly making money on the deal. Any time you want to take a course you advert that you will do the homework. You could even wrangle the victim to record the lectures so you can reference as needed.
At the end you won't have a degree, but will be able to do everything the degree demands.
Obviously there are issues with this, one being a moral issue.4 -
i am feeling angry and frustrated. not sure if it's a person ,or codebase or this bloody job. i have been into the company for 8 months and i feel like someone taking a lot of load while not getting enough team support to do it or any appreciation if i do it right.
i am not a senior by designation, but i do think my manager and my seniors have got their work easy when they see my work . like for eg, if on first release, they told me that i have to update unit tests and documentation, then on every subsequent release i did them by default and mentioning that with a small tick .
but they sure as hell don't make my work easy for me. their codebase is shitty and they don't give me KT, rather expect me to read everything on my own, understand on my own and then do everything on my own, then raise a pr , then merge that pr (once reviewed) , then create a release, then update the docs and finally publish the release and send the notification to the team
well fine, as a beginner dev, i think that's a good exercise, but if not in the coding step, their intervention would be needed in other steps like reviewing merging and releasing. but for those steps they again cause unnecessary delay. my senior is so shitty guy, he will just reply to any of my message after 2-3 hours
and his pr review process is also frustrating. he will keep me on call while reviewing each and every file of my pr and then suggest changes. that's good i guess, but why tf do you need to suggest something every fucking time? if i am doing such a shitty coding that you want me to redo some approach that i thought was correct , why don't you intervene beforehand? when i was messaging you for advice and when you ignored me for 3 hours? another eg : check my comment on root's rant https://devrant.com/rants/5845126/ (am talking about my tl there but he's also similar)
the tasks they give are also very frustrating. i am an android dev by profession, my previous company was a b2c edtech app that used kotlin, java11, a proper hierarchy and other latest Android advancements.
this company's main Android product is a java sdk that other android apps uses. the java code is verbose , repetitive and with a messed up architecture. for one api, the client is able to attach a listener to some service that is 4 layers down the hierarchy , while got other api, the client provides a listener which is kept as a weak reference while internal listeners come back with the values and update this weak reference . neither my team lead nor my seniors have been able to answer about logic for seperation among various files/classes/internal classes and unnecessary division of code makes me puke.
so by now you might have an idea of my situation: ugly codebase, unavailable/ignorant codeowners (my sr and TL) and tight deadlines.
but i haven't told you about the tasks, coz they get even more shittier
- in addition to adding features/ maintaining this horrible codebase , i would sometimes get task to fix queries by client . note that we have tons of customer representatives that would easily get those stupid queries resolced if they did their job correctly
- we also have hybrid and 3rd party sdks like react, flutter etc in total 7 hybrid sdks which uses this Android library as a dependency and have a wrapper written on its public facing apis in an equally horrible code style. that i have to maintain. i did not got much time/kt to learn these techs, but once my sr. half heartedly explained the code and now every thing about those awful sdls is my responsibility. thank god they don't give me the ios and web SDK too
- the worst is the shitty user side docs. I don't know what shit is going there, but we got like 4 people in the docs team and they are supposed to maintain the documentation of sdk, client side. however they have rasied 20 tickets about 20 pages for me to add more stuff there. like what are you guys supposed to do? we create the changelog, release notes , comments in pr , comments in codebase , test cases, test scenarios, fucking working sample apps and their code bases... then why tf are we supposed to do the documentation on an html based website too?? can't you just have a basic knowledge of running the sample, reading the docs and understand what is going around? do i need to be a master of english too in addition to being a frustrated coder?
just.... fml -
Work on my own side projects. Even just taking notes about what to do and what to avoid. When I think my own stuff avoids the conceptual flaws which cause low motivation at work, I feel fine again! Bosses never learn, but I sure do!
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