Linux sucks.

Now now, chill. I'm using it as my main OS for a few years now. I know what I'm talking and this title is a bit click-baity, but this just has to go out there:

1. It's usable as a Windows replacement just fine - FALSE. XFCE4 is years old and buggy as hell especially on multi-monitor set-up, Gnome3 gets stuck more often than my Windows 98 machine used to, KDE is like a rich kid on meth. Plug in Bluetooth headphones? Well no, sorry, you have to research that online, since you'll probably need to install some packages for it to work. Did I say "work"? Well no, because after more research you realize that Debian on Gnome3 on gdm3 launches pulseaudio on its own, so you have 2 instances of pulseaudio, and one of them is stealing your headphones sometimes and you either have no sound or shitty sound. How do I know that you ask? The same way I know everything else - every time you try to do something new on any Linux, it involves a ton of research. Exciting research, don't get me wrong, but at this point it looks more like a toy than a reliable desktop computer operating system.

2. And why am I using pulseaudio? Why not alsa? years ago people were discussing on forums that pulseaudio is old and dead, yet here we are with new LTS release of Ubuntu still shining with Pulseaudio. How about several different service management systems being deprecated by new ones, each having different configurations and calling methods? Apparently systemd is old and lame now. It's a mix of 10 year old software that works badly, with a 5 year old replacement that works worse, somehow trying to live under the same roof. Does it work? Ask my headphones who sound like a fucking dial-up modem.

3. Let's talk about displays, shall we? xorg is old and deprecated, right? We got Wayland that's mostly stable. Don't know what that is? That's just basic knowledge for Linux. And when you try to install network-manager, it also tries to install Mir toolkits. Because why the fuck not install 3 display managers when you want a network manager, of which one is old and dying, one is young and stupid, and another is an infant that died of cancer?

4. Want to integrate with Google Drive? Yeah, there's a tool that mounts the drive as a local directory. Yeah only for Ubuntu. Want it on Debian? You need to compile it. Oh wait, it's on Ocaml, because fuck mainstream languages, we're hipsters. How do you compile Ocaml? Well you need to have Ocaml on your system, dummy. How do you do that? Well you need to compile Ocaml. Ok, how do I do that? Well, git clone, download and install some dependencies, configure, make... oh sorry, you're using libssl1.0.2g when you need libssl1.0.1f, nope, sorry, won't work. Want to install libssl1.0.1f? Why? You already have the "g", stupid! Want to remove libssl1.0.2g? Bye-bye literally everything that you have on your PC. But at least you got the "f". Does it work now? Well no, because you need libssl1.0.2g for another dependency to work.
And all I ever wanted was to get a fucking document from google drive (not nudes, I promise).

5. Want to watch a movie? Let me tear that screen in half and make the bottom half late by a couple of frames, because who needs vertical sync, right? Oh you do? Well install the native drivers maybe. Oh you have? Welcome to eternal Boot to Recovery mode, motherfucka!

---------------------------------

Yeah, most of the times things work just fine. But the reason I know what those things are and how they work is not curiosity. The reason that I know the inner workings of Linux much better than the inner workings of Windows, is because in those few years that I've been using it full time, it has caused me 10 times more headache than I have ever experienced with other systems. And it's not the usual annoyances like "OMG it rebooted when I didn't ask it to", but more like "Oh, it won't work and I need 2 days to find out why" kind of stuff, because even if you experience the same thing again, it's always caused by some new shit and the old solution won't work any more.

I still love it, and will continue to use it. I don't know why really. Maybe because I'm not afraid of fucking it up any more? Maybe because I can do what I want in it and recovering will be easier than on Windows?
It's a toy for me, after all these years. And I also use it for professional reasons.

But whenever someone presents it as a better alternative to Windows, I just want to puke.

I’m a senior dev at a small company that does some consulting. This past October, some really heavy personal situation came up and my job suffered for it. I raised the flag and was very open with my boss about it and both him and my team of 3 understood and were pretty cool with me taking on a smaller load of work while I moved on with some stuff in my life. For a week.

    Right after that, I got sent to a client. “One month only, we just want some presence there since it’s such a big client” alright, I guess I can do that. “You’ll be in charge of a team of a few people and help them technically.” Sounds good, I like leading!

    So I get here. Let’s talk technical first: from being in a small but interesting project using Xamarin, I’m now looking at Visual Basic code, using Visual Studio 2010. Windows fucking Forms.

    The project was made by a single dev for this huge company. She did what she could but as the requirements grew this thing became a behemoth of spaghetti code and User Controls. The other two guys working on the project have been here for a few months and they have very basic experience at the job anyways. The woman that worked on the project for 5 years is now leaving because she can’t take it anymore.

    And that’s not the worse of it. It took from October to December for me to get a machine. I literally spent two months reading on my cellphone and just going over my shitty personal situation for 8 hours a day. I complained to everyone I could and nothing really worked.

    Then I got a PC! But wait… no domain user. Queue an extra month in which I could see the Windows 7 (yep) log in screen and nothing else. Then, finally! A domain user! I can log in! Just wait 2 extra weeks for us to give your user access to the subversion rep and you’re good to go!

    While all of this went on, I didn’t get an access card until a week ago. Every day I had to walk to the reception desk, show my ID and request they call my boss so he could grant me access. 5 months of this, both at the start of the day and after lunch. There was one day in particular, between two holidays, in which no one that could grant me access was at the office. I literally stood there until 11am in which I called my company and told them I was going home.

    Now I’ve been actually working for a while, mostly fixing stuff that works like crap and trying to implement functions that should have been finished but aren’t even started. Did I mention this App is in production and being used by the people here? Because it is. Imagine if you will the amount of problems that an application that’s connecting to the production DB can create when it doesn’t even validate if the field should receive numeric values only. Did I mention the DB itself is also a complete mess? Because it is. There’s an “INDEXES” tables in which, I shit you not, the IDs of every other table is stored. There are no Identity fields anywhere, and instead every insert has to go to this INDEXES table, check the last ID of the table we’re working on, then create a new registry in order to give you your new ID. It’s insane.

   

    And, to boot, the new order from above is: We want to split this app in two. You guys will stick with the maintenance of half of it, some other dudes with the other. Still both targeting the same DB and using the same starting point, but each only working on the module that we want them to work in. PostmodernJerk, it’s your job now to prepare the app so that this can work. How? We dunno. Why? Fuck if we care. Kill you? You don’t deserve the swift release of death.

    Also I’m starting to get a bit tired of comments that go  ‘THIS DOESN’T WORK and ‘I DON’T KNOW WHY WE DO THIS BUT IT HELPS and my personal favorite  ‘??????????????????????

My mentor/guider at my last internship.

He was great at guiding, only 1-2 years older than me, brought criticism in a constructive way (only had a very tiny thing once in half a year though) and although they were forced to use windows in a few production environments, when it came to handling very sensitive data and they asked me for an opinion before him and I answered that closed source software wasn't a good idea and they'd all go against me, this guy quit his nice-guy mode and went straight to dead-serious backing me up.
I remember a specific occurrence:
Programmers in room (under him technically): so linuxxx, why not just use windows servers for this data storage?
Me: because it's closed source, you know why I'd say that that's bad for handling sensitive data
Programmers: oh come on not that again...
Me: no but really look at it from my si.....
Programmers: no stop it. You're only an intern, don't act like you know a lot about thi....
Mentor: no you shut the fuck up. We. Are. Not. Using. Proprietary. Bullshit. For. Storing. Sensitive. Data.
Linuxxx seems to know a lot more about security and privacy than you guys so you fucking listen to what he has to say.
Windows is out of the fucking question here, am I clear?

Yeah that felt awesome.

Also that time when a mysql db in prod went bad and they didn't really know what to do. Didn't have much experience but knew how to run a repair.
He called me in and asked me to have a look.
Me: *fixed it in a few minutes* so how many visitors does this thing get, few hundred a day?
Him: few million.
Me: 😵 I'm only an intern! Why did you let me access this?!
Him: because you're the one with the most Linux knowledge here and I trust you to fix it or give a shout when you simply can't.

Lastly he asked me to help out with iptables rules. I wasn't of much help but it was fun to sit there debugging iptables shit with two seniors 😊

He always gave good feedback, knew my qualities and put them to good use and kept my motivation high.

Awesome guy!

When I was in the army I wasn't officially a dev. But one commander needed someone to develop a bunch of stuff and couldn't get a dev officially, so I ended up as his "assistant", which was an awesome job with about 60% time spent on software development.

Except I wasn't an official developer, so I wasn't afforded many of the privileges developers get, like a slightly more powerful machine, a copy of Visual Studio, or an internet connection. In this environment you couldn't even download files and transfer the to your computer without a long process, and I couldn't get development tools past that process anyway.

So I was stuck with whatever dev tools I had pre-installed with Windows. Thankfully, I had the brand new Windows XP, so I had the .Net framework installed, which comes with the command line compiler csc. I got to work with notepad and csc; my first order of business: write an editor that could open multiple files, and press F5 to compile and run my project.

Being a noob at the time, with almost no actual experience, and nobody supervising my work, I had a few brilliant ideas. For example, I one day realized I could map properties of an object to a field in a database table, and thus wrote a rudimentary OR/M. My database, I didn't mention, was Access, because that didn't need installation. I connected to it properly via ADO.NET, at least.

The most surprising thing though, in retrospect, is the stuff I wrote actually worked.

And here comes the last part of my story so far.
After deploying the domain, configuring PCs, configuring the server, configuring the switch, installing software, checking that the correct settings have been applied, configuring MS Outlook (don't ask) and giving each and every user a d e t a i l e d tutorial on using the PC like a modern human and not as a Homo Erectus, I had to lock my door, put down my phone and disconnect the ship's announcement system's speaker in my room. The reasons?
- No one could use USB storage media, or any storage media. As per security policy I emailed and told them about.
- No one could use the ship's computers to connect to the internet. Again, as per policy.
- No one had any games on their Windows 10 Pro machines. As per policy.
- Everyone had to use a 10-character password, valid for 3 months, with certain restrictions. As per policy.
For reasons mentioned above, I had to (almost) blackmail the CO to draft an order enforcing those policies in writing (I know it's standard procedure for you, but for the military where I am it was a truly alien experience). Also, because I never trusted the users to actually backup their data locally, I had UrBackup clone their entire home folder, and a scheduled task execute a script storing them to the old online drive. Soon it became apparent why: (for every sysadmin this is routine, but this was my first experience)
- People kept deleting their files, whining to me to restore them
- People kept getting locked out because they kept entering their password WRONG for FIVE times IN a ROW because THEY had FORGOTTEN the CAPS lock KEY on. Had to enter three or four times during weekend for that.
- People kept whining about the no-USB policy, despite offering e-mail and shared folders.
The final straw was the updates. The CO insisted that I set the updates to manual because some PCs must not restart on their own. The problem is, some users barely ever checked. One particular user, when I asked him to check and do the updates, claimed he did that yesterday. Meanwhile, on the WSUS console: PC inactive for over 90 days.
I blocked the ship's phone when I got reassigned.
Phiew, finally I got all those off my chest! Thanks, guys. All of the rants so far remind me of one quote from Dave Barry:

Around 2009 or earlier, I began the long grueling process of creating my own batch AI (yes batch as in Windows Batch , kill me for not knowing there were better languages around). Looking back at it, it is THE messiest thing I've ever created. Mostly because of how many unnecessary files were created to make the entire thing work. However, I’m still proud of it to this day because of the dedication I had put into creating the entire thing.

I would create diagrams on the mirrors in my room; of course I would be scolded for this. But I was mad with thought working through the entire thing.

I would scribble and type whenever I had the chance, trying to create the functions that would allow the thing to talk back to me. Finally, when it opened its eyes and spoke its first words I quickly started creating the functions that would allow it to learn new inputs. Over time and with some elbow grease I was able to polish it up to my liking.

The entire program branched off some of my more earlier programs in batch, they mostly ranged from the medial to the crazy; i.e. turning my computer on and off at certain times of the day, and multithreaded migration of files to new disks

It's not as sophisticated as other AI that were being built at the time, but at the age of 16 and with no experience in real programming at all, I'd say it was my first stepping stone towards more sophisticated programs, and ultimately, my decision in Computer Programming at all.

!rant

New job (first CS job).

Day 1: Install Ubuntu
Day 2: Dev said "it was so cute when he asked if he could uninstall windows." Also, first pair programming with engineer of 12 years. First commit (he did all the work, I just tried keeping up."
Day 3: "Here, try this bug " nearly get there. Have to leave early. Team event (Group VR experience, was wicked fun with drinks afterwards. Turns out boss man is a total bad ass. Swam with sharks and giant Wales)
Day 4: Fix bug. Notice odd behaviour. Fix that too. (All on my own). Code review: "This, that but works and is good." Get asked if I want to go to customer to do A, B and C. Tell Boss I only know B. He said "Tell me what you need for A and C."

I'm so God damn happy.

!rant

I was in a hostel in my high school days.. I was studying commerce back then. Hostel days were the first time I ever used Wi-Fi. But it sucked big time. I'm barely got 5-10Kbps. It was mainly due to overcrowding and download accelerators.

So, I decided to do something about it. After doing some research, I discovered NetCut. And it did help me for my purposes to some extent. But it wasn't enough. I soon discovered that my floor shared the bandwidth with another floor in the hostel, and the only way I could get the 1Mbps was to go to that floor and use NetCut. That was riskier and I was lazy enough to convince myself look for a better solution rather than go to that floor every time I wanted to download something.

My hostel used Netgear's routers back then. I decided to find some way to get into those. I tried the default "admin" and "password", but my hostel's network admin knew better than that. I didn't give up. After searching all night (literally) about how to get into that router, I stumbled upon a blog that gave a brief info about "telnetenable" utility which could be used to access the router from command line. At that time, I knew nothing about telnet or command line. In the beginning I just couldn't get it to work. Then I figured I had to enable telnet from Windows settings. I did that and got a step further. I was now able to get into the router's shell by using default superuser login. But I didn’t know how to get the web access credentials from there. After googling some and a bit of trial and error, I got comfortable using cd, ls and cat commands. I hoped that some file in the router would have the web access credentials stored in cleartext. I spent the next hour just using cat to read every file. Luckily, I stumbled upon NVRAM which is used to store all config details of router. I went through all the output from cat (it was a lot of output) and discovered http_user and http_passwd. I tried that in the web interface and when it worked, my happiness knew no bounds. I literally ran across the floor screaming and shouting.

I knew nothing about hiding my tracks and soon my hostel’s admin found out I was tampering with the router's settings. But I was more than happy to share my discovery with him.

This experience planted a seed inside me and I went on to become the admin next year and eventually switch careers.

So that’s the story of how I met bash.
Thanks for reading!

Before anyone starts going batshit crazy, this is NOT a windows hate post. Just a funny experience imo.

So I was tasked with installing ProxMox on a dedicated server at my last internship. The windows admin was my guider (he could also do debian). (he was a really nice/chill guy)

So we were discussing what VM's we wanted and the boss (really cool dude by the way) said he wanted a VPS for storing some company stuff as well. Fair enough, what would we use? I suggested debian and centos. Then we started discussing what we'd do if the systems would fuck up etc (at installation or whatever).
So I didn't wanna look like a Linux Nazi so I suggested windows. Then the happy/positive guider/windows admin suddenly became dead serious (I was actually like 'woah' for a second) and said this:
No. We're not going to fucking use windows for this. For general servers etc sometimes, fair enough but we're talking about sensitive company data here. I don't want that data to be stored on a proprietary/closed source system, hell what if there's some kinda fucking backdoor build in, who can fucking verify that? We're using Linux, end of discussion.

😓

I was pretty flabbergasted as he's a nice guy and actually really likes windows!

Linux it became.

Stop it with the Linux shilling already.

I'm 27 years old and I love Linux and git and vim just as much as the next guy (yeah fuck you emacs!). I have discovered this place as a room for discussion, advise, humor and rants of course, and I had my good share of giggles.

But lately it seems that every other Post is "look at me I installed Linux" or "hurr durr he doesn't use git" or "windows omfg kill it with fire". And to some degree, those rants have a good point and are absolutely right. However, most of them are not.

This is why you're part of the problem. Constantly shaming and ridiculing any technology that's not hip in nerd culture, regardless of the circumstances. This makes you look just as bad as the peoples you look down upon for writing their code in notepad++ on windows xp with McAfee installed. Even worse, from a professional point of view, it absolutely voids your credibility.

How am I to take you seriously and presume a fair amount of experience and out of the box thinking if all you do is repeat catchphrases and ride the fucking hype train. And yes, I know there are a lot of minors or peoples who are just getting started in the industry. But I have seen enough self-righteous hateful spews from peoples who claim not to be.

Anyway, this is getting long and I think I have made my point. Maybe I am just too old to be joking around that shit all the time anymore. But from what I have seen, I wouldn't hire the biggest part of you. Not because you are bad at what you're doing, but because what you say makes you look absolutely unprofessional.

But then again, this is devrant and I love you all. Have a great week everyone!

TL;DR: don't fuck with your IT guy.

One of the guys in our office treats his laptop like shit, has dropped it a number of times and had managed to break the screen. There was a nice crack diagonally corner to corner across the screen with a nice black splotch around it making a good chunk of his screen unusable. Servicing the laptop would be too expensive and would mean being without the machine for several weeks forced to use a Mac.

I offered to replace the screen for him since I have experience doing laptop repairs. Once the screen arrived I kept the laptop for the evening and spent an hour replacing the screen. I left a note telling him he owed me $60 for my time.

He sees the note, laughs and says "I'll buy you lunch."

Not only does this guy only keep his word when offering to buy lunch about 10% of the time, when he does actually do it he charges it on the company card so it isn't really him paying for it. So I spent my lunch break writing up a little Python app which randomly fucks with his mouse and keyboard.

I sent him a message that I needed to run some tests on his new screen tonight so I'll be able to install it and set it to run on boot.

The app does things like:
Jiggle the mouse
Minimize all windows to show the desktop
Double click
Right click

Can't decide if I want to add in reboots as well.

I figure I'll leave it going until I get $60 worth of entertainment out of it.

I really, honestly, am getting annoyed when someone tells me that "Linux is user-friendly". Some people seem to think that because they themselves can install Linux, that anyone can, and because I still use Windows I'm some sort of a noob.

So let me tell you why I don't use Linux: because it never actually "just works". I have tried, at the very least two dozen times, to install one distro or another on a machine that I owned. Never, not even once, not even *close*, has it installed and worked without failing on some part of my hardware.

My last experience was with Ubuntu 17.04, supposed to have great hardware and software support. I have a popular Dell Alienware machine with extremely common hardware (please don't hate me, I had a great deal through work with an interest-free loan to buy it!), and I thought for just one moment that maybe Ubuntu had reached the point where it just, y'know, fucking worked when installing it... but no. Not a chance.

It started with my monitors. My secondary monitor that worked fine on Windows and never once failed to display anything, simply didn't work. It wasn't detected, it didn't turn on, it just failed. After hours of toiling with bash commands and fucking around in x conf files, I finally figured out that for some reason, it didn't like my two IDENTICAL monitors on IDENTICAL cables on the SAME video card. I fixed it by using a DVI to HDMI adapter....

Then was my sound card. It appeared to be detected and working, but it was playing at like 0.01% volume. The system volume was fine, the speaker volume was fine, everything appeared great except I literally had no fucking sound. I tried everything from using the front output to checking if it was going to my display through HDMI to "switching the audio sublayer from alsa to whatever the hell other thing exists" but nothing worked. I gave up.

My mouse? Hell. It's a Corsair Gaming mouse, nothing fancy, it only has a couple extra buttons - none of those worked, not even the goddamn scrollwheel. I didn't expect the *lights* to work, but the "back" and "Forward" buttons? COME ON. After an hour, I just gave up.

My media keyboard that's like 15 years old and is of IBM brand obviously wasn't recognized. Didn't even bother with that one.

Of my 3 different network adapters (2 connectors, one wifi), only one physical card was detected. Bluetooth didn't work. At this point I was so tired of finding things that didn't work that I tried something else.

My work VPN... holy shit have you ever tried configuring a corporate VPN on Linux? Goddamn. On windows it's "next next next finish then enter your username/password" and on Linux it's "get this specific format TLS certificate from your IT with a private key and put it in this network conf and then run this whatever command to...." yeah no.

And don't get me started on even attempting to play GAMES on this fucking OS. I mean, even installing the graphic drivers? Never in my life have I had to *exit the GUI layer of an OS* to install a graphic driver. That would be like dropping down to MS-DOS on Windows to install Nvidia drivers. Holy shit what the fuck guys. And don't get me started on WINE, I ain't touching this "not an emulator emulator" with a 10-foot pole.

And then, you start reading online for all these problems and it's a mix of "here are 9038245 steps to fix your problem in the terminal" and "fucking noob go back to Windows if you can't deal with it" posts.

It's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING, I spent a whole day trying to get a BASIC system up and running, where it takes a half-hour AT MOST with any version of Windows. I'm just... done.

I will give Ubuntu one redeeming quality, however. On the Live USB, you can use the `dd` command to mirror a whole drive in a few minutes. And when you're doing fucking around with this piece of shit OS that refuses to do simple things like "playing audio", `dd` will restore Windows right back to where it was as if Ubuntu never existed in the first place.

Thanks, `dd`. I wish you were on Windows. Your OS is the LEAST user friendly thing I've ever had to deal with.

Recruiter: hi, I have an iOS Developer role. Would you be interested?

Me: sure, send me on the spec.

Recruiter: ok great so for this Full stack app developer role we are looking for someone with:

- 5+ years embedded C/C++ experience
- 5+ years of working with Windows and Linux
- Native Android development
- As well as Native iOS experience

Interested?

Me: ......... ok buddy, you and me are going to have a little chat about what “iOS Developer” means

Manager: You use linux? Why?? I’ve only ever used windows and it’s the best of all the computers in my experience. It contains everything anyone needs: email, meetings and the internet.

To those that think they can't make it.
To those that are put down by those that don't understand you.
And to those that have never had a dream come true.

Not a rant, but the story of how I got into programming

I've always been into tech/electronics. I remember being told once that when I was 3, I used to take plug sockets to pieces. When I was 7, I built a computer with my dad.
There isn't a thing in my room that hasn't been dismantled and put back together again. Except for the things that weren't put back together again ;)

When I was 15, I got a phone for Christmas. It was a pretty crappy phone, the LG P350 (optimus ME). But I loved it all the same.
However I knew it could do a lot more. It ran a bloated, slow version of Android 2.2.
So I went searching, how can I make it faster, how to make it do more. And I found a huge community around Android ROMs. Obviously the first thing I did was flashed this ROM. Sure, there were bugs, but I was instantly in love with it. My phone was freed.

From there I went on to exploring what else can be done.
I wanted to learn how to script, so over the weekend I wrote a 1000 line batch (Windows cmd) script that would root the phone and flash a recovery environment onto it. Pretty basic. Lots of switch statements, but I was proud of it. I'd achieved something. It wasn't new to the world, but it was my first experience at programming.

But it wasn't enough, I needed more.
So I set out to actually building the roms. I installed Linux. I wanted to learn how to utilise Linux better, so I rewrote my script in bash.
By this time, I'd joined a team for developing on similar spec'd phones. Without the funds to by new devices, we began working on more radical projects.
Between us, we ported newer kernels to our devices. We rebased much of the chipset drivers onto newer equivalents to add new features.

And then..

Well, it was exam season. I was suffering from personal issues (which I will not detail), and that, with the work on Android, I ended up failing the exams.
I still passed, but not to the level I expected.

So I gave up on school, and went head first into a new kind of development. "continue doing what you love. You'll make it" is what I told myself.

I found python by contributing to an IRC bot. I learnt it by reading the codebase. Anything I didn't understand, I researched. Anything I wanted to do, google was there to help me through it.

Then it was exam season again. Even though I'd given up on school, I was still going. It was easier to stay in than do anything about it.
A few weeks before the exams, I had a panic attack. I was behind on coursework, and I knew I would do poorly on exams.
So I dropped out.
I was disappointed, my family was disappointed.
So I did the only thing I felt I could do. I set out to get a job as a developer.

At this stage, I'd not done anything special. So I started aiming bigger. Contributing to projects maintained by Sony and Google, learning from them. Building my own projects to assist with my old Android friends.
I managed to land a contract, however due to the stresses at home, I had to drop it after a month.
Everything was going well, I felt ready to get a full time job as a developer, after 2 years of experience in the community.

Then I had to wake up.
Unfortunately, my advisors (I was a job seeker at the time) didn't understand the potential of learning to be a developer. With them, it's "university for a skilled job".
They see the word "computer" on a CV, they instantly say "tech support".
I played ball, I did what I could for them. But they'd always put me down, saying I wasn't good enough, that I'd never get a job.
I hated them. I'd row with them every other day.

By God, I would prove them wrong.

And then I found them. Or, to be more precise, they found me. A startup in London got in contact with me. They seemed like decent people. I spoke with their developers, and they knew their stuff, these were people that I can learn from.
I travelled 4 hours to go for an interview, then 4 hours back.
When I got the email saying they'd move me to London, I was over the moon.
I did exactly what everyone was telling me I couldn't do.

1.5 years later, I'm still working with them. We all respect each other, and we all learn from each other.

I'm ever grateful to them for taking a shot with me. I had no professional experience, and I was by no means the most skilled individual they interviewed.

Many people have a dream. I won't lie, I once dreamed of working at Google. But after the journey I've been through, I wouldn't have where I am now any other way. Though, in time, I wish to share this dream with another.
I hope that all of you reach your dreams too.

Sorry for the long post. The details are brief, but there are only 5k characters ;)

One step through the door my wife whips around, a look so disgusted she barely seems human. "What's that smell?" she cries. "It's you! You smell like...like bad code!"

Indeed, I am covered with the scent of the forbidden love child of a man who read half a chapter on if-then statements and then pushed out into the world, earthworm-like, a mangled misshapened gelatinous mass that my employer gave the title of line-of-business application purely out of pity.

For more days than I'd like to count I have been porting a ColdFusion 5 application to .NET. Initially written in 2000 and last touched in 2006, it has a data architecture comparable to Dresden after the second world war. It features a table solely comprised of seven columns of IDs so that joins can be made between other tables lacking a common key. Columns that should be contained within a single table spread out among multiple tables. Single columns containing data that should be multiple columns (with handy flags to separate the subsets). A view with 14 joins that playfully displays unintended results. And so much more spread out over almost 200 stored procedures, views, triggers, and tables on the SQL server, and dozens of additional ADO-like SQL statements within the ColdFusion itself. Fortunately, the application overcomes these issues by having absolutely no data validation while allowing nulls pretty much everywhere.

When I am done this will be a very nice ASP.NET MVC app with at least 150 less stored procs, views, and tables. Auto-generated duplicate entries will be a thing of the past. Pop-up windows that inexplicably refresh the underlying screen to display a different part of the program than the one the user wants will be eliminated. And a UI based on the colors of a Rubik's Cube with usability that Mr. Rubik would find challenging will disappear with only the trauma of using it left behind.

Sadly, this is not my worse legacy code experience. Just the most recent. Just the most recent stench added to a lifetime of bathing in code rot.

I hate windows. Today I opened nvidia geforce experience and in the list of my games at the end there was a new game: "Minecraft: windows 10 edition", WTF???, I never installed it! Like always a google search saved me: After last updates windows will install suggested apps WITHOUT your permission. And to disable this you must edit a key in regedit. Not even a switch in system settings! Microsoft wtf are you doing?

Worst WTF dev experience? The login process from hell to a well-fortified dev environment at a client's site.
I assume a noob admin found a list of security tips and just went like "all of the above!".

You boot a Linux VM, necessary to connect to their VPN. Why necessary? Because 1) their VPN is so restrictive it has no internet access 2) the VPN connection prevents *your local PC* from accessing the internet as well. Coworkers have been seen bringing in their private laptops just to be able to google stuff.
So you connect via Cisco AnyConnect proprietary bullshit. A standard VPN client won't work. Their system sends you a one-time key via SMS as your password.

Once on their VPN, you start a remote desktop session to their internal "hopping server", which is a Windows server. After logging in with your Windows user credentials, you start a Windows Remote Desktop session *on that hopping server* to *another* Windows server, where you login with yet another set of Windows user credentials. For all these logins you have 30 seconds, otherwise back to step 1.
On that server you open a browser to access their JIRA, GitLab, etc or SSH into the actual dev machines - which AGAIN need yet another set of credentials.

So in total: VM -> VPN + RDP inside VM -> RDP #2 -> Browser/SSH/... -> Final system to work on
Input lag of one to multiple seconds. It was fucking unusable.

Now, the servers were very disconnect-happy to prevent anything "fishy" going on. Sitting at my desk at my company, connected to my company's wifi, was apparently fishy enough to kick me out every 5 to 20 minutes. And that meant starting from step 1 inside the VM again. So, never forget to plugin your network cable.

There's a special place in hell for this admin. And if there isn't, I'll PERSONALLY make the devil create one. Even now that I'm not even working on this any more.

Hello everyone, this is my first time here so hi! I want to tell you all a story about my current situation.

At 18 while in the military I was able to get my first computer, it was a small hp pavilion laptop with windows 7. The system would crash constantly, even though I would only use it for googling stuff and using fb to talk to people. 5 months after I got it and continuously hated it decided to find out why and who could I blame (other than myself) for the system making me do the ctrl alt del dance all the time....

Found out that there are people called computer programmers that made software. Decided to give it a go since I had some free time most days. Started out with c++ because it was being recommended in some websites. Had many "oh deeeeer lord" moments. After not getting much traction I decided to move to Java which seemed like an easier step than C++. Had fun, but after some verbosity I decided to move into more dynamic lands. Tried JS and since at the time there was no Node and I was not very into the idea of building websites I decided to move into Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl and had a really great time using and learning all of them. I decided to get good in theoretical aspects of computer programming and since I had a knack for math I decided to get started with basic computer science concepts.

I absolutely frigging loved it. And not only that, but learning new things became an obsession, the kind that would make me go to bed at 02:40 am just to wake up at 04:00 or 06:00 because the military is like that. I really wanted to absorb as much as I could since I wanted to go to college for it and wanted to be prepared since I did not wanted to be a complete newb. Took Harvard CS50, Standford Programming 101 with Java, Rice's Python course and MIT's Python programming class. I had so much fun I don't regret it one bit.
By the time I got to college I had already made the jump to Linux and was an adept Arch user, Its not that it was superior or anything, but it really forced me to learn about Linux and working around a terminal and the internals of the system to get what I want. Now a days I settle for Fedora or Debian based systems since they are easier and time is money.

Uni was a breeze, math was fun and the programming classes seemed like glorified "Hello World" courses. I had fun, but not that much fun, most of my time was spent getting better at actual coding. I am no genius, nor my grades were super amazing(I did graduate with honors though) but I had fun, which never really happened in school before that.

While in school I took my first programming gig! It was in ASP.NET MVC, we were using C#, I got the job through a customer that I met at work, I was working in retail during the time and absolutely hated it. I remember being so excited with the gig, I got to meet other developers! Where I am from there aren't that many and most of them are very specialized, so they only get concerned with certain aspects of coding (e.g VBA developers.....) and that is until I met the lead dev. He was by far one of the biggest assholes I had ever met in my life. Absolutely nothing that I would do or say made hem not be a dick. My code was steady, but I would find bugs of incomplete stuff that he would do, whenever I would fix it he would belittle me and constantly remind me of my position as a "junior dev" in the company saying things as "if you have an issue with my code or standards tell me, but do not touch the code" which was funny considering that I would not be able to advance without those fixes. I quit not even 3 months latter because I could not stand the dick, neither 2 of the other developers since the immediately resigned after they got their own courage.

A year latter I was able to find myself another gig. I was hesitant for a moment since it was another remote position in which I had already had a crappy experience. Boy this one was bad. To be fair, this was on me since I had to get good with Lumen after only having some exposure to Laravel. Which I did mentioned repeatedly even though he did offer to train me in order to help him. Same thing, after a couple of weeks of being told how much I did not know I decided to get out.

That is 2 strikes.

So I waited a little while and took a position inside another company that was using vanilla PHP to build their services. Their system was solid though, the lead engineer remains a friend and I did learn a lot from him. I got contracted because they were looking for a Java developer. The salary was good. But when I got there they mentioned that they wanted a developer in Java...to build Android. At the time I was using Java with Spring so I though "well how hard can this be! I already use Android so the love for the system is there, lets do this!" And it was an intense, fun and really amazing experience.

-- To be continued.

Project Cortana: Day 1

I have seen a lot of people switching to Linux or other services to get away from all the data collections. It makes a lot of sense as no one would want their data to be sold without their consent.

But I am going to do something different. My aim is to integrate with Microsoft apps as much as possible and review the experience. So here is what I have done so far:

* Use Cortana in desktop and mobile (Android)
* Use Microsoft launcher in mobile
* Outlook as primary email provider (I was already using them as my default provider)
* Use Microsoft To-Do and calendar to keep track of things
* Use OneDrive to store all my files (I am moving them from Google Drive)
* Use the default Mail app on the Windows 10
* Use Onenote (I was using Evernote before)
* Use Edge on desktop and Mobile
* Use Skype instead of Hangouts

It's day one but I think I have already found it quite useful. For example:

* Adding reminder is much easier. I get them on both desktop and mobile which is nice.
* Mail app has been really useful. Especially the focused inbox really helps to get rid of the clutters. Also, I can immediately add a mail to the calendar (like Inbox by Google) which is really helpful.
* One of the features of edge that I have found really useful is that you can send web pages from mobile to desktop in one tap. That is extremely useful.

So far I am loving it.

Also, I tried to make sure that I am not sharing my data with third-party apps as I have turned off "relevant ads" feature.

*clicks download on VS for Mac*
Would you like to take a survey about your experience?

Sure Microsoft, I just downloaded the product, and have not even installed it, would you like me to judge it based on Windows 10?

Around 2009 or earlier, I began the long grueling process of creating my own batch AI (yes batch as in Windows Batch , kill me for not knowing there were better languages around). Looking back at it, it is THE messiest thing I've ever created. Mostly because of how many unnecessary files were created to make the entire thing work. However, I’m still proud of it to this day because of the dedication I had put into creating the entire thing.

I would create diagrams on the mirrors in my room; of course I would be scolded for this. But I really couldn't stop thinking about my program and working through the entire thing.

I would scribble and type whenever I had the chance, trying to create the functions that would allow the thing to talk back to me. Finally, when it opened its eyes and spoke its first words I quickly started creating the functions that would allow it to learn new inputs. Over time and with some elbow grease I was able to polish it up to my liking.

The entire program branched off some of my more earlier programs in batch, they mostly ranged from the medial to the crazy; i.e. turning my computer on and off at certain times of the day, and multithreaded migration of files to new disks

It's not as sophisticated as other AI progrmas that were being made at the time, but at the age of 16 and with no experience in real programming at all, I'd say it was my first stepping stone towards more sophisticated programs, and ultimately, my decision to enter into Computer Science at all.

Not just another Windows rant:

*Disclaimer* : I'm a full time Linux user for dev work having switched from Windows a couple of years ago. Only open Windows for Photoshop (or games) or when I fuck up my Linux install (Arch user) because I get too adventurous (don't we all)

I have hated Windows 10 from day 1 for being a rebel. Automatic updates and generally so many bugs (specially the 100% disk usage on boot for idk how long) really sucked.

It's got ads now and it's generally much slower than probably a Windows 8 install..

The pathetic memory management and the overall slower interface really ticks me off. I'm trying to work and get access to web services and all I get is hangups.

Chrome is my go-to browser for everything and the experience is sub par. We all know it gobbles up RAM but even more on Windows.

My Linux install on the same computer flies with a heavy project open in Android Studio, 25+ tabs in Chrome and a 1080p video playing in the background.

Up until the creators update, UI bugs were a common sight. Things would just stop working if you clicked them multiple times.

But you know what I'm tired of more?

The ignorant pricks who bash it for being Windows. This OS isn't bad. Sure it's not Linux or MacOS but it stands strong.

You are just bashing it because it's not developer friendly and it's not. It never advertises itself like that.

It's a full fledged OS for everyone. It's not dev friendly but you can make it as much as possible but you're lazy.

People do use Windows to code. If you don't know that, you're ignorant. They also make a living by using Windows all day. How bout tha?

But it tries to make you feel comfortable with the recent bash integration and the plethora of tools that Microsoft builds.

IIS may not be Apache or Nginx but it gets the job done.

Azure uses Windows and it's one of best web services out there. It's freaking amazing with dead simple docs to get up and running with a web app in 10 minutes.

I saw many rants against VS but you know it's one of the best IDEs out there and it runs the best on Windows (for me, at least).

I'm pissed at you - you blind hater you.

Research and appreciate the things good qualities in something instead of trying to be the cool but ignorant dev who codes with Linux/Mac but doesn't know shit about the advantages they offer.

The Windows 11 keynote was such a load of bullshit. All the emo yadda yadda. You know, when I work on Windows, what I feel is irritation, anger, and despise for the amateur shitshow that Microsoft delivers.

In particular, but not limited to the fucking update reboots where Windows sits there uselessly and shells fucking prawns in its own ass!

Oh we now have semi-transparent shit. That's progress! It's so great! Only that it's not because already Windows Vista had Aero Glass, and Windows 8 removed it.

But we we have fucking rounded corners now! Crazy shit, some intern at Microsoft discovered border-radius, or did they dig out some fucking Windows XP copy? That also had rounded corners way before Apple even invented them!

To top it off, Microsoft even failed to deliver the livestream seamlessly and recommended watching it at Twitter. Yeah, that's the fucking "Windows experience" as we know it, you clowns!

My favourite BS quote from Nadella himself: "the web itself was born and grew up on Windows." That guy is so full of shit that an unmaintained latrine in rural India would be envious!

Microsoft is bring Edge browser to Android and iOs.

Wtf?

"one of the most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 pcs is we want our browser experience to move to our phones"

I think you'll also find another common request is for you to actually finish the damn thing and make it usable.

As much as I love opensource I hate really hate some of its actvie community members (read this as "freetards" <-- see urbandictonary). As a .Net + web devloper with minimal C experience (I just started learning it) and literally no Python experience its not really easy to contribute for me to many (most) opensource software for linux. I am using some <unnamed software> and I found a <critical bug>, it was easy to reproduce and I wrote for list of possible solutions, found it in a code and linked and basically wrote a docummentation longer than any other I ever wrote for every single project I did ever, combined. This <software> was critical for my server and since owner of github repo and few other people there were really active, I hoped that this bug with pretty good documentation will be solved fast, I went to my bed with a heroic feeling of an open source community contributor that helped saving world. I was horribly wrong. Tomorrow, I got 3 passively agressive responses from owner and other 2 freetards that summed up said <other1>:"oh thats nice, fix i yourself and commit it", <other2>:"have a sex with yourself" in a nice way, and <owner>: "fix my softwate and create mrege request". After replying that I have no experience my Python skills are not on a level requied for such an action, he messaged me on twitter I have linked to my GitHub profile saying even less nicely that I am a "retarded c*nt" and that I should learn Python and fix it myself. This makes me stay with my Windows based Server for some time now, fuck this. I googled his github nickname and guess what. Our main freetard is admin on an <unnamed linux forum> and mebmber of many other "computer help" with literally half of his posts just slightly toxic posts about how everyone should use linux and how supreme it is ober anything other, the other hals was crying why linux has only 1% of market share. Oh boi I am not sure why but ITS MAYBE BECAUSE OF FREETARDS LIKE YOU.
And the funnies thing is, hes not only freetard, he is just fullstack retard. One of his posts is "helping" to some <noob windows user> installing Linux. tl:dr for this las part: Freetard basically wiped all data of that <noob>.

PS: Bless everyone who do not respond "oh nice, now you can do it yourself"

Never EVER buy a Mac as your primary PC if you're a developer.

Back in 2014 I bought an iMac because I already had an iPhone, and being able to code on xCode and also have a Windows partition seemed perfect. It wasn't.

Soon enough, I started encountering issues. My storage was randomly filling up, my computer started getting slow despite me having a small number of start apps and still a lot of storage available, it was all a mess.

So - I installed Windows 10 using Bootcamp to use it as my main OS. All was great until I wanted a new partition of Windows so I can test some things out without damaging my stuff. I try multiple methods, none of which work because my disk is not in the right partition format, and I don't want to change it because I'd have to format the whole thing.

Whatever - I give up, and try going back to my normal partition, disappointed. Guess fucking what?! My Windows Boot was damaged! Yes, I shit you not!

So - not only was this absolute piece of shit not able to add just one more fucking partition with an OS on it, but it BROKE my main partition, and now I'm trying to recover it.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: Never EVER get a Mac as your primary computer, unless you only work on Mac/iPhone apps.

For paying 1300$, I was expecting a seamless experience with little to no issues - yet all I got is a computer that's fucking broken from it's very core.

Fuck you, Apple.

Tl;Dr - It started as an escape, carried on as fun, then as a way to be lazy, and finally as a way of life. Coding has defined and shaped my entire life from the age of nine.

When I was nine I was playing a game on my ZX spectrum and accidentally knocked the keyboard as I reached over to adjust my TV. Incredibly parts of it actually made a little sense to me and got my curiosity. I spent hours reading through that code, afraid to turn the Spectrum off in case I couldn't get back to it. Weeks later I got hold of a book of example code to copy out to do various things like making patterns on the screen. I was amazed by it. You told it what to do, and it did it! (don't you miss the days when coding worked like that?) I was bitten by the coding bug (excuse the pun) and I'd got it bad! I spent many late nights on that thing, escaping from a difficult home life. People (especially adults) were confusing, and in my experience unpredictable. When you did things wrong they shouted at you and threatened to take you away, or ignored you completely. Code never did that. If you did something wrong, it quietly let you know and often told you exactly what was wrong. It wasn't because of shifting expectations or a change of mood or anything like that. It was just clean logic, simple cause and effect.

I get my first computer a year later: an IBM XT that had been discarded by a company and was fitted with a key on the side to turn it on. With the impressive noise it made it really was like starting an engine. Whole most kids would have played with the games, I spent my time playing with batch scripts and writing very simple text adventures. And discovering what "format c:" does. With some abuse and threatened violence I managed to get windows running on it. Windows 2.1 I think it was.

At 12 I got a Gateway 75 running Windows 95. Over the next few years I do covered many amazing games: ROTT, Doom, Hexen, and so on. Aside from the games themselves, I was fascinated by the way computers could be linked together to play together (this was still early days for the Web and computers networked in a home was very unusual). I also got into making levels for Doom, Heretic, and years later Duke Nukem 3D (pretty sure it was heretic; all I remember is the nightmare of trying to write levels entirely by code!). I enjoyed re-scripting some of the weapons and monsters to behave differently. About this time I also got into HTML (I still call this coding, but not programming), C, and java. I had trouble with C as none of the examples and tutorial code seemed to run properly under a Windows environment. Similar for my very short stint with assembly. At some point I got a TI-83 programmable calculator and started rewriting my old batch script games on it, including one "Gangster Lord" game that had the same mechanics as a lot of the Facebook games that appeared later (do things, earn money, spend money to buy stuff to do more things). Worried about upcoming exams, I also made a number of maths helper apps, including a quadratic equation solver that gave the steps, and a fake calculator reset to smuggle them into my exams. When the day came I panicked and did a proper reset for fear of being caught.

At 18 I was convinced I was going to be a professional coder as I started a degree in Computer Science. Three months later I dropped out after a bunch of lectures teaching what input and output devices were and realising we were only going to be taught Java and no C++. I started a job on the call centre of a big company, but was frustrated with many of the boring and repetitive tasks we had to do. So I put my previous knowledge to use, and quickly learned VBA to automate tasks. It wasn't long before I ended up promoted to Business Analyst where I worked on a great team building small systems in Office, SAS, and a few other tools.

I decided to retrain in psychology, so left the job I was in and started another degree. During my work and placements my skills came in use a number of times to simplify and automate tasks. I finished my degree, then took a job as a teaching assistant while I worked out what I wanted to do next and how to pay for it. Three years later I've ended up IT technican at the school, responsible for the website, teaching a number of Computing lessons each week, and unofficial co-coordinator for Computing as a subject. I also run a team of ten year old Digital Leaders who I am training in online safety and as technical experts; I am hoping to inspire them to a future in coding. In September I'll be starting teacher training with a view to becoming a Computing specialist teacher. Oh, and I'm currently doing a course in Android Development in my free time.

And this all started with an accidental knock on the keyboard of a ZX Spectrum.

Do you guys know about the Windows 10 operating system?

I highly recommend it.

It is so easy to get done whatever you want in just a few clicks or.. several.

It has a great web browser called Internet Explorer that comes pre-installed with it. If you love animations, it will even sometimes show you that beautiful loading animation for as long as it wants. If you have a habit of wasting time on the Internet, it will intelligently slow things down and become unresponsive to help you get rid of that bad habit. It's just that great.

It has a lot of great features pre-enabled for you like sending data to Microsoft to improve your experience on a personal level. The operating system cares so much about you, unlike other operating systems that represent a flightless bird.

It's so smart, it even keeps you from doing stupid things like customizing the operating system. It makes sure that you live in the given box and don't break anything. So caring, right?!

At random times, it shows you a blue screen and a sad face to remind you that life can be sad at times but you gotta keep going. It is profound.

It comes with great useless software that you absolutely don't even need! How great is that!

I use Windows 10 and I recommend that you do too.

Have a good day..

To all my linux peeps... and don't get on me about which OS and better and all that crap!

Anyway, until I decide on a new laptop, I am using my dad's old machine running Windows 10. I also have an old desktop with a first-gen core i3, 8gb ram, 500gb HDD. What I'd like to do is run linux on the desktop and remote into it from my laptop. Is there a good way to RDP in to linux from Windows and preserve the full experience (like RDP from Windows to Windows)?

In the Ruhr area (Germany) we have some very old, very strange words with strange meanings. One of those words is ‚Prutscher‘.
A Prutscher refers to a person who does things but never gets a good result, due to lack of knowledge or simple carelessness. Most of the time, Prutschers are people who are interested in certain subjects and often work in the related jobs, but who lack the motivation to properly train themselves, learn what there is to learn and to always keep up with their technologies .
Here are a few examples I've stumbled upon so far in my career:

- Developers in their 60's who read a book about PHP 25 years ago and decided to become a software developer. Since then haven't read anything about it. Who then now build huge spaghetti monoliths for large companies, in which they prefix every function, every variable and constant with their initials and, of course, use Hungarian notation.

- People who read half a fucking tutorial about <insert any fancy js framework here> and start blogging/tweeting about it

- Senior web developers who need to be told what the fuck CORS is and who can't even recognize CORS related errors in their browser console.

- People who have done nothing else for 18 years than building websites for companies on Wordpress 1.x and writing few lines of PHP and Javascript from time to time. Those who are now applying as a frontend dev due to the difficult economic situation and are surprised that they are not accepted due to a lack of experience.

- Developers who are the only ones working on Windows in the team and ask their Linux colleagues for help when Windows starts bitchin.

- People who have been coding for 30 years, have worked with ~42 languages ​​and don't know the difference between compiled and interpreted languages ​​in the job interview.

- Chief developers at a large newsletter-publisher who think it's a good idea to build your own CMS (due to a lack of good existing ones, of course).

- Developers who have been writing PHP applications for multinational corporations for 25 years and cannot explain how PHP is executed. They don't even know what the fucking OPcache is, let alone fpm. FML

- People who call themselves professional developers but never ever heard of DRY, KISS, boy-scout rule, 12-Factor App, SOLID, Clean Code, Design Patterns, ...

- Senior developers wondering why the bash script won't run on their fucking Windows machine.

- Developers who consider Typescript to be a hindrance and see no value in it.

- Developers using ftp for deployments in 2022

- Senior Javascript Developer applying for a job and for whom Integer is a primitive data type in JS.

- Developers who prefer to code without frameworks and libraries because they are only an unnecessary burden/overhead and you can quickly code everything up yourself.

- Developers who think configuring their server(s) manually is a good idea.

You fucking Prutscher. What you have already cost me in terms of work and nerves. I can't even put it into words how deeply I despise you. I have more respect for the chewing gum that has been stuck in my damn trash can for the past 3 years than I do for you guys. You are the disgrace of our profession. I will haunt you in your dreams and prefix every fucking synapse of your brain with MY initials.

As a well-known german band once sang in a very fitting song: I wouldn't even piss on you if you were on fire.

If you recognized yourself in one of the examples here: FUCK YOU!

For the love of god, I spent 2,5 hours debugging why Minecraft from the windows store doesn't work...

The game just shows a red message telling you it didn't work.

I checked the logs, nothing just warnings

I re-installed the game, nothing, same error

Updated java and all parts of the store, nothing....

Obviously I had to install Something called the "xbox identity Provider"... You know... On a PC... For a distinctly PC game to work... Installed by the store... And the provider is also on the store... But it doesn't auto-install with the game

Ever since you migrated to the Microsoft Auth the login experience is awful (I ranted about that already)

How about you do the bare fucking Minimum of an User experience and Install the fucking dependencies when I re-installed something your fucking store??!!!

The fucking bare minimum that every package manager ever created fucking has as a basic requirement?! Are you kidding me?

Rename your fucking services so they make sense and please don't waste everyone's time by having both shitty logs and no dep management for your own apps... Fucks sake

One of the things I really hate on Windows (and Microsoft software in general) is that the keyboard shortcuts are localized therefore are different from 90% of the apps that I use on a daily basis.

Two examples of this (EN-US vs PT-PT):
- "Save" is "Gravar" while "Underline" is "Sublinhar". This means that whenever I press Ctrl + S to save a doc in MS Word I underline a word instead of saving the bloody document.
- "All" is "Tudo" so when I want to select all the itens on a folder in the File Explorer I have to press Ctrl + T, the same shortcut I press in pretty much every single tabbed app to open a new tab.

This is terrible for the user experience because different languages provide different keyboard shortcuts to the user which goes against the concept of the usefulness of a keyboard shortcut: perform an action from anywhere without having to know its menu or menu description.

!dev

The school I went to didn't have PCs when I first joined (had some RISC OS machines instead). They got Windows 95 PCs eventually and networked them. I had no experience with networking before this, but had a PC at home. We all had mapped drives to resources on the server. The PCs were pretty locked down - no "Run" command etc.

Anyway, one day the head of IT came in to one of the lessons and asked me "how I did it".

What had I done? Well, clearly he had seen something I'd taught one of my friends. I wrote it down for him.

1. Right-click the desktop
2. New shortcut
3. \\nameofserver
4. OK

Such hax, being able to see the file shares on the server.

Shortly after this, all computer areas had signs saying "no shortcuts allowed"...

I honestly don’t know how my coworker has been a software engineer for 10+ years, doesn’t know and or understand a single Linux command, only works from windows... also doesn’t understand the concept of proper version control ... thinks zip folders is completely sufficient... AND doesn’t understand why someone would need to refactor something... says it works... I’m like you have a 2000 line function... yes it works, but it’s not testable nor reusable... he says he’s tested it (at his desk) ... and so what if it’s not reuseable... he’ll copy and paste and rewrite something for another project. “That’s what we are paid todo” .... HORSESHIT!!!

I don’t understand how the system hasn’t weeded people out like this.... and he blindly doesn’t want to take criticism, or learn.. saying his Years of experience proves he knows what he’s doing... bullshit

I’m just happy management is on my side.

Recent experience (#2)
- a cousin wanted to reinstall Windows on his laptop
- gave it to a tech shop
- they couldn't, said hard disk faulty
- I took the laptop hoping that it's just a partition table issue
- I tried changing partition table from MBR to GPT, but failed
- removed his hard disk from his laptop and plugged into mine
- tried and failed
- so I thought I would give it a chance with Ubuntu
- tried and ... 👍
- reinstalled his hard disk in his laptop
- works like a charm
- want to see what complaints he comes up with
- he is not a tech guy
- let's see how he manages to use it for his daily tasks

I have worked with a handful of very green devs in the last 10 years. A common theme has emerged.

They don't heed any of my advice.

An exercise to the reader:

If you have a Windows machine, but need to work in a Linux environment, what would be your first instinct how to proceed?

In this exercise, you are as green as it gets. You have very little professional development experience, let alone server admin experience. And your lead dev has suggested setting up a VM.

1. Set up a Linux VM
2. Use a live CD or set up a dual boot system
3. Pay for a cloud server and set it up from scratch

I have no idea how this person intends to get any work done on a remote, terminal only, Linux server. That is if I can even get their environment into a sane configuration.

There is this group called LUKI e. V. that advertises using linux at church instead of windows. First of all, I think it is a horrible idea because the people working at the church, based on my personal experience, can barely operate windows. Windows is just the better and easier to use option for people who don't know much about computers.
Also, and this is where it gets hilarious, their main argument for switching to linux is that it is a "fair" software (as in fair trade). How? I don't think Microsoft devs are underpaid child slaves. And even if so, how would you change that with a software alternative that doesn't cost anything?

Worst dev experience was when I was asked to "take a look at" a propriatery Windows app built by a now non-existent team at the company.

The code base resembled the quality of legacy code where about every hour I felt like I needed to vomit. But that wasn't even the worst part for me.

This was the first time I had to develop on Windows and was sent a separate dedicated laptop for this. Now I started to have a bad feeling about this because as far as I had known every single dev at the company used company Macs for development (including me for other projects). It turned out the Windows laptop was indeed configured for a non-dev team :)

Having liased with IT admins for a day I finally got my environment set up and hit install on the dependencies and in 10 minutes it got to less than 10%. The laptop was pretty powerful so I couldn't belive wtf was going on, fans were ramping. Checked task manager and the company Anti-Malware was hogging the whole CPU.

I was so mad that I managed to get the IT admins to completely disable it and then it was only the pain of working with shitty code on Windows which would have been more than enough from the start. Thankfully it only lasted a week.

! exactly dev

I'd ditched Windows and spent a while exploring the Linux ecosystem for content creation. And I have to say, it was not a nice experience.

As much as I respect the Linux mantra of "free as in freedom" and "you need to roll up your sleeves and figure out stuff on your own", it just isn't good enough for non-dev work. Sorry guys, but I need software that gets out of my way and at least does what it's supposed to do. I can't stand a horrible UI or delays and random crashes, which is exactly what happens with most things under Linux.

To replace my Windows workflow I used the following:
1. Windows -> elementaryOS (because Debian/Ubuntu repositories seem to have the best software support, and elementaryOS is the least horrible looking thing that supports that) and then Arch, because, well, Arch.
2. Blender + Maya -> Blender + Maya on Linux.
3. Reaper + FL Studio -> Ardour + LMMS.
4. Photoshop -> GIMP + Krita + Inkscape.
5. ZBrush -> nothing :(

As you can see, my use cases are pretty much all over the spectrum.

Firstly, installing and configuring stuff. A pleasure on Windows, an absolute pain on Linux. Everything just worked on Windows, I had to wrestle with library versions and patches and unstable audio layers (Linux audio just sucks, except for JACK) on Linux.

Out of these, Blender and Maya were the best experience. But even then, both would suffer from random crashes that just didn't happen on Windows.
Ardour is actually really nice when it works. Its use of JACK for routing makes it really really flexible, but it just isn't stable enough to depend on. LMMS is utter crap. I'm sorry, but I just hate the UI. Can't stand it.
GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape can't beat Photoshop, even when you consider them together. Adobe software workflow is just so much better and more intuitive.
Blender 3D sculpting is not bad, but it's nowhere as good as ZBrush.

Also, if you're a C++ dev like me, nothing beats Visual Studio 2017. Nothing. That IDE just blows everything else out of the water. Even VSCode. And it's not slow at all, it handled a fairly large project (PBRTv3) just fine on my Windows development VM. Yes, a VM.

So...I ditched Linux and went back to Windows, but I keep Linux as a VM for when I actually want to mess with Blender or Ardour. Or some dev stuff which Windows sucks at (which is becoming less frequent because of WSL).

Out of all the above, the only one I'd consider ready for production use would be Blender. Developers of open source software, please learn from Blender. Kickass UI and user friendly operation is extremely important, you can't make a random window with GTK buttons and text boxes and arcane config files and expect people to use it for serious work.

Also, Windows beats Linux hands down as an everyday OS. It's always been rock solid, if you take care of it properly (and that goes for any OS). Updates hardly take any time because I run it on a SSD. As for all the advertising and marketing bullshit, you can block a large amount of stuff. And for what can't be blocked, well, I just have to live with it, because the alternative is compromising on my creative output, which is too much for me.

I still run Linux on my server, though. And on my embedded devices (Pi, BeagleBone, etc.). It absolutely rocks there.

I realize that Linux software is not going to improve unless we do something about it, so I'll be contributing fixes and code (the joys of being a C++ dev, yay). Still, I feel that the platform and software as a whole is just not mature enough.

I’ve been trying to use Debian without a graphical UI, at least for the most part. I use X window to run firefox since I feel that is the best way to browse. But simply using the terminal for almost everything feels so refreshing somehow.

I start to find these gems such as a music player for the terminal that works really well, my HOME area feels so clutter free and I feel like I finally can finely control and tune my system to a much larger extent. I’m coming from an extensively cluttered windows system so just seeing a few things makes me feel like I can finally focus.

For me it feels like I’ll have an easier time managing my projects by setting up github in a good way in HOME. I’ve been putting more time into my vimrc to make it better for my different workflows and general productivity (and for the sake of minimalism trying to keep it mostly to hand written stuff). I’ve also been looking into Lutris to be able to fire up games or use wine for other necessary tools that I might need during cowork with others.

Generally I believe that if this test works out I’ll truly consider to make this my main OS. The clutterlessness keeps me much more distraction free. The terminal environment make me read about and learn of new ways to do things. And most of the tools I use can either be used from command line, multiple ones with a multiplexer and in the case I truly need to use GUI or want to play a game I can just fire it up on demand.

*happy*

Do you guys have any distraction free OS or setups that you want to share? Anyone with a similar experience of revelation?

[...] great! Nice to hear from you that you've got experience using C#! Our shipping company will also need a mobile interface for our IBM AS400 relic older-than-the-pyramids server, can you do that?

Me (a little displeased about the idea of working on a pre-existing legacy server): yes sure, I'm working on a Android project right now, so I'm learning a lot about it lately, I think it's totally feasible

Them: oh, but we are using a windows mobile device

Me (wondering why they are still using Windows phone): I can look it up and let you know btw

> Windows Mobile /= Windows Phone
> Deprecated since 2010

I'm fucked.

Unpopular Opinion: When Satya came to Microsoft leadership, Microsoft was a whole lot better company

Forget Windows and shit, Azure was the only open Microsoft on Ballmer days, then Satya, who were part of Azure decided to give the entire MSFT the Azure experience. Look where we are now

not saying Microsoft is no longer bad, its just more tolerable as a company now. Nice to see it backtracking and bracing stuff unlike its first leaderships

!rant
What is the reason a lot of you guys(not all of you) hate windows so much. I never had any single slow down or virus infection for ages, Windows Update always updates at the scheduled time etc.

I used Linux before, and I personally think that the experience is just about the same once you find alternatives to the windows software. But it also has flaws, dependency hell for instance.

Buuuut, I believe each OS has its ups and downs. So while one OS have trouble with something, the other might also have a problem. Some OS's are better than others and that no OS is perfect, and I wish I could see less criticism on OS's on devRant, cause it's getting kind of repetitive and stupid. Thank you.

Dual Boot Linux & Windows.

I hardly ever see anyone do it right. And there is just two tricks that make a completely new experience out of it. I am not sharing it with you to be nice, I am sharing because I am curious if you're already doing it.

1. Install on a second hard drive, not a different partition. Learn which button to hold on the boot screen to select the boot drive. You can still chain-load via Grub, but the major advantage, updates of neither OS will fuck up your boot loader. You can update it abso-fucking-lutely risk free. Second advantage, advice 2. becomes trivially easy.

2. Set up a virtual machine. Select as its hard drive the raw disk volume where you have installed your Windows. You can do this with VirtualBox, but QEMU with virtual machine manager make is far easier to set this up in. You can now start Windows under Linux as a virtual machine. You can always start a small application, but the big deal is installing. Start a Steam download, have it installed and ready without switching over. Running windows updates. And when you then have time to play the game, just reboot and you have it already installed.

I feel like many are not aware that you can start a virtual machine of a real hard drive. It's one of those things that improve usability of it enormously. It's something where many will just not think about it because they keep dual booting and virtual machines in two different categories in their brains, but immediately will think it is obvious as soon as they hear about it.

So, who already did this? Raise your hands!

When the hero turns into villain.

Windows memory management is one of the worst architectural designs in tech industry to ever exist.

One mistake on my part is I did not opt for SSD four years ago when my purchased my current laptop.

The entire experience is irritating.

It is time... to rant about macs!

No, seriously - I had such a different experience about which not many talk in real life or pretend that it never happens....

Model: 2015 mid MBP 15" with second to highest specs (don't have dedicated gpu).

Rattling fucking toy.... Yea, it rattles! If you shake/move ir sit in trait/bus - it non-stop rattles as a fucking toy. Worst part? It's confirmed issue by apple and it manifacturing issue that they are not keen on fixing!!!! WTF? We have 4 macs in our office - all of them fucking rattles... God help me how annoying that is. (Lose LCD control panel that unsticks from glue. Replacing it solves the issue for 1 month if you carry it anywhere).

Constant fucking crashing/updates.... Every morning I wake up and don't have an app that requires confirmation for restart - it's restarted. YAY, turning on all apps once again.... Why you may ask? Well, because if you tinker with software in any way - it fails to update it and hell breaks lose. It's been a long time since High-Sierra came around and the issue is still there (not running Mojave as it conflicts with soft I have... Woo!). Tried few times - updates fail. Resolution? Reinstall OS!

OS conflicts with applications - damn... People told me it works out of the box.... Yeah, as long as you don't upgrade the OS - then it breaks. Why? Well, because.

Piece of shit power supply. With 4 of our office power supplies - 2 of them failed twice withing warranty and once afterwards... Really? Not to mention that all 4 are starting to shear the sleeve or already did (mine is just wrapped with white electrical tape to give it a support... lol).

Bluetooth - who the hell needs that in mac, right? Well, people do. To start with - it conflicts with 2.4GHz wireless network - you might have one of those and not both at the same time. Next thing is using a device that needs constant connection (mouse, headphones, keyboard - non apple branded) - shit... They can't stay connected for more than an hour without any issues... Constant battle to re-connect it, to re-pair the device and all due to smart apple bluetooth settings. Hell, my mouse (logitech MX master) was even printing random symbols in some applications if moved. All of the issues went away after using a bluetooth dongle... WOO!!!!

Xcode... Ahh, you may never prepare your mac if you don't download 17GB of fucking xCode libraries that enables some tools to be installed/runned as you can NOT get them in any other way and you have to install full xCode software in order to get them... YAY! 17GB wasted on my 256GB SSD that I can't upgrade. GREAT!

OsX applications - ah, don't get offended but if you are using them and you are fine with them - you are probably a monkey that loves being told what to do. You can't customise any actions, you can't configure it the way you like - either you accept their default workflow or go kill yourself. Yep... Had issues with calendar, mail, iMessages, safari... None of them fit my needs :)

Resolution scaling... Fucking hell, the display is 2880 x 1800 but all you let me to use is 1440x900 without scaling? Am I blind to you? Scaling the resolution means that you are fucked if some applications don't support scaling very well. Looking at you Jetbrains - your IDES suck at scaling and slows down the pc to a potato....

Now the pros - keyboard is way better than the new ones, trackpad is GREAT - no need for mouse (using it on external 4k displays only), the battery life is great - getting around 6h of continues development time, 8 if using sublime instead of phpStorm and well, that's about it...

To clarify:
I've bought this device due to the fact that at that time mac and windows pc's with similiar specs costed the same while windows pc sucked with their quality of the device and trackpad... Now the situation is better and when time comes for a next upgrade - it's going to be one of these:
Razer Blade 15, Dell XPS 15, Lenovo Carbon X1 series.
And of course - LINUX. I've had enough issues with windows, and had enough of retardness of apple ecosystem, so switching it is a must for me.

Disclaimer: I might be an unhappy customer, a bit picky but I'd like my device to be setted up as I like and continue to have that until I don't like, not until the company decides to break it. Not to mention that paying almost a yearly salary in my country for one device - I'd expect it to be at least reliable and work without issues....

Rant over.

ps. You can disagree with me, this is my personal experience with MBP over the last 3 years :)

At work, my closest relation is with the DBA. Dude is a genius when it comes to proper database management as well as having a very high level of understanding concerning server administration, how he got that good at that I have no clue, he just says that he likes to fuck around with servers, Linux in particular although he also knows a lot about Windows servers.

Thing is, the dude used to work as a dev way back when VB pre VB.NET was all the rage and has been generating different small tools for his team of analysts(I used to be a part of his team) to use with only him maintaining them. He mentioned how he did not like how Microsoft just said fk u to VB6 developers, but that he was happy as long as he could use VB. He relearned how to do most of the GUI stuff he was used to do with VB6 into VB.NEt and all was good with the world. I have seen his code, proper OOP practices and architectural decisions, etc etc. Nothing to complain about his code, seems easy enough to extend, properly documented as well.

Then he got with me in order to figure out how to breach the gap between building GUI applications into web form, so that we could just host those apps in one of our servers and his users go from there, boy was he not prepared to see the amount of fuckery that we do in the web development world. Last time my dude touched web development there was still Classic ASP with JScript and VBScript(we actually had the same employer at one point in the past in which I had to deal with said technology, not bad, but definitely not something I recommend for the current state of web development) and decided that the closest thing to what he was used was either PHP(which he did not enjoy, no problem with that really, he just didn't click with the language) and WebForms using VB.NET, which he also did not like on account of them basically being on support mode since Microsoft is really pushing for people to adopt dotnet core.

After came ASP.NET with MVC, now, he did like it, but still had that lil bug in his head that told him that sticking to core was probably a better idea since he was just starting, why not start with the newest and greatest? Then in hit(both of us actually) that to this day Microsoft still not has command line templates for building web applications in .net core using VB.NET. I thought it was weird, so I decided to look into. Turns out, that without using Razor, you can actually build Web APIs with VB.NET just fine if you just convert a C# template into VB.NET, the process was...err....tricky, and not something we would want to do for other projects, with that in we decided to look into Microsoft's reasons to not have VB.NET. We discovered how Microsoft is not keeping the same language features between both languages, having crown C# as the language of choice for everything Microsoft, to this point, it seems that Microsoft was much more focused in developing features for the excellent F# way more than it ever had for VB.NET at this point and that it was not a major strategy for them to adapt most of the .net core functionality inside of VB, we found articles when the very same Microsoft team stated of how they will be slowly adding the required support for VB and that on version 5 we would definitely have proper support for VB.NET ALTHOUGH they will not be adding any new development into the language.

Past experience with Microsoft seems to point at them getting more and more ready to completely drop the language, it does not matter how many people use it, they would still kill it :P I personally would rather keep it, or open source the language's features so that people can keep adding support to it(if they can of course) because of its historical significance rather than them just completely dropping the language. I prefer using C#, and most of my .net core applications use C#, its very similar to Java on a lot of things(although very much different in others) and I am fine with it being the main language. I just think that it sucks to leave such a large developer pool in the shadows with their preferred tool of choice and force them to use something else just like that.

My boy is currently looking at how I developed a sample api with validation, user management, mediatR and a custom project structure as well as a client side application using React and typescript swappable with another one built using Angular(i wanted to test the differences to see which one I prefer, React with Typescript is beautiful, would not want to use it without it) and he is hating every minute of it on account of how complex frontend development has become :V

Just wanted to vent a little about a non bothersome situation.

Worst and only experience is the reason I moved away from programming...
25 years ago I was hired to copy a phone book list to a access database.
Access back then would create lots of garbage, so I would add 3 to 5 entries before access crashed (shitty p133 laptop with 32mb ram running windows 98.
So I made a visual basic program to add data and work around the problem.
I offered said program to the guy really cheap and would still make it better.
Did also a admin module since he had hired dozens of people and I knew he would have problems peasing the databases together.
And... Dude cancels the deal.
I get a job, 2 weeks later he calls me... Ohhh I don't know how to get all the databases together...
Me: I'm working now, the program I did solved said problem. I trew the code away. Deal with it.

How do you guys/girls explain to potential new customers that you can perfectly work in a structured business environment and follow the rules, but also that you're assertive enough to oppose desicions being made based on bias, misunderstanding, fanboyism, or grave stupidity.

I just got informed from a freelance position that they would have hired me if it were not for my 'rebellious nature towards customers'

I don't oppose customers, i oppose stupidity unfounded.
Example from experience
> me working in a helodesk support position, all windows computer.
> new mgr comes into office, is a douche and complete mac fanboy
> wants all computers that are FINALLY working decent for some time in the entire department replaced with mac's... Back at 2010.
> whole team, even disliking microsoft themselves, are telling mgr that's a bad, dangerously dumb idea, expensive too, different OS, different software mgmt making, back then integration microsoft and apple was beyond diarhea... Several other issues the senior devs and admins pointed out

>mgr: 'but aple is soh much better, like a billion times better, hurrduurrrrr'
His decision passed somehow to the board..
> All stations from our customers get changed...we don't get a single machine to try out problems because overspending
> we are most of the time unable to help out customers because we still have pc's...
> mgr asks team why performance drops after 1 month
> we compared performance graph with his starting date of mgr, see clear drop after mgr's plan implemented...
> board stilll stands by mgr, gets praise for 'bold changes in the company', but appears to be some associate's son
> two main seniors leave after 15 years of employment, in three months, 80% of staff leaves.
> we canr fix the problems, we are not dev's , we get shit from all sides, i was still a junior in the industry so i worked as a slave inside that job.
> eventually get fired due to 'bad performance'
> mgr loses entire team... 'Hey why don't we outsource this dept to south africa, it's a lot cheaper! '

now that company is an it hellhouse where everyone get clinically depressed from sitting atbtheir station...
This is what i wish to oppose!

How to make that clear!

!rant
Medium long story about POP!_OS

TL;DR : A true K.I.S.S. OS. Very well designed UI. In general suitable for everyone. Any distro-hoppers MUST try out. If your current OS is already heavily customized to your needs, DON'T bother with POP. (Read till the end if you are on toilet, nothing to lose)

Backstory : I am never a fanboy of anything although I am loyal to the tools I use daily. So OS is also something I picked and use to meet my needs except when I was a student. My first linux experience was about a decade ago with ubuntu. Have tried almost all kinds of light-weight and minimal distros after that (lubuntu, arch, mint, puppylinux, fedora, centos and others I forgot) during my student years.

I like all things minimal. ("Keep It Simple Stupid" is my email signature.) When I started working, Windows became the sole OS I use since it met my needs better than others. Except that one time when I tried Elementary. Although I found it a good OS, it didn't get installed as a dual-boot. I don't find Elementary minimal. It is one of well designed OSs but I still think it can be improved. (Plus I had this weird feeling that it is similar to Mac OS)

At the start of this year, Widows alone was not enough for my needs. Decided to look for a minimal linux distro. My old i7 ASUS has 8GB RAM and roughly 250GB free storage. So I am not that worried about hardware requirements. My main struggle is downloading stuffs. (Few of you guys must know by now the speed of my internet LOL.) Well, even if I had a good speed, I will still look for minimal distro as first priority. So I went with minimal ubuntu image and xubuntu environment. Although I do not like the UI design, it is acceptable. Through out the years, I have configured it to suit my needs and currently pretty happy with it.

Thoughts on POP!_OS : To me, it is literally like meeting a young girl who is perfect for my life. She has the perfect body, beautiful face, amazing appearance and good manners. And she is young, of course there is a lack of experience issue. But it can be taught and she has a very high chance to become a wonderful lady if she continues like this. Only crap is I already have someone and in a committed relationship. So I could not go any further than introduction. I do save her contact and will keep in touch with her online. You know? Things change. Things always change somehow.

!rant

Last week I finished what I thought to be unpaid work experience working in IT (more like programming), at the end of it I had a meeting with the boss who offered me paid work next summer and also gifted me a £150 amazon voucher for the work I did.

I sold my XBOX (ew the unproductivity) and use the voucher to buy a Mac Mini. Going from Windows, Mac OS X is significantly better, I prefer bash to power-sh*t.

TLDR; I worked for 5 weeks and got a Mac

Dev of 15 years here. All my career historically started and evolved/revolved around Microsoft in one way or the other, so was my exposure to only DOS and the Windows as a child and growing up.

Like already discussed in multiple rants here, I was one of those naturally Windows -favoring ppl through all my life. That is not to say I didn't try Linux here and there, for hosting of personal projects, as one usually does. But it never quite stuck with me as a personal daily driver, mainly because all I ever needed for personal use was a browser, discord, and Steam/GOG/Epic Games store for gaming (work-wise I always had and still have company provided laptops which are OF COURSE Windows powered)

Anyway, maybe you can see where I'm going with this... I recently gave Nobara Linux a go (Glorious Eggroll's Fedora flavor, with some custom kernel patches) and I have to say, not thinking of going back to Windows at all.

Just a few thoughts on comparing two sets of experiences with Win vs Nobara
- Win definitely feels more sluggish
- Nobara's default desktop env was Gnome 42 with some extensions pre-enabled. I dove right into hacking/customizing it to my tastes and it looked glorious. Never would have achieved this customization with Win
- I was using RDP to remote into my work laptop from my personal desktop setup with Windows and I still successfully do so with Remmina now in Linux
- A week ago I dove deeper and installed Awesome window manager as a UI and mh boy does this feel intimidating at first. But then the allure of having nice window managing experience was too strong, and 15 years of coding do help with just seeing a new language and kinda feeling at home instantly (Lua language for AwesomeWM customization/themes). Fast forward a week and now I'm sitting happily with 3 monitor setup, one of them vertical, all properly auto aligned with arandr on startup, variety+wal for wallpaper auto circling and applying a theme out of main wallpaper colors every so often (+wrote a script to put those main colors into my RGB peripherals via OpenRGB)
- Gaming. I still game, Steam Deck from steam gave me all the confidence to set up Linux gaming that I needed. I think I am now properly versed in all things Wine/Proton/Lutris/Bottles/Heroic Games Launcher, you name it. Recently finished Cyberpunk 2077.

ANYWAY, thank you for coming to my Linux appreciation TED talk. It's amazing.

So yesterday ended with me becoming a first responder in front of my house. Talk about a crazy day.

Guy sped up down my very short dead-end road and flipped a school van down the embankment. Thankfully there were no kids in the van and the driver was okay.

I've never had to run into the scene of an accident before, and what the brain does in a time of crisis like that is absolutely amazing.

Feeling everything but the immediate need drain away. It was like time was slowed. I took in all the information of the scene and somehow worked fast while also double-checking every action I did.

I remember hesitating for a moment, worried about what I'd see. School students on the back. Would I see injured or dead children? Body parts? I remember saying "Fuck it" and running down the embankment and that was about it.

So serious props to any of you who read this that also volunteer as EMT or fire/rescue. I've long considered doing that myself and I may very well step up now that I've had first-hand experience.

And now for the requisite joke: Usually I only have to help out when Windows crashes. :)

Not a rant. But about Windows 10, because some asked "why are there only rants about it?"

The day before yesterday: When switching off my PC, I noticed the shutdown options were "Update and restart" and "Update and shutdown". I chose the latter and went to bed.
Yesterday: I switched on my PC, Windows takes some extra seconds at "Installing updates, 99% done" and... I'm on my desktop. All is well. As unspectacular as it can get.

For me, that is every update experience since Windows 7, ever.

tl;dr - install ‘Pop!_os’ and try it out if you haven’t yet, it’s pretty damn good!

Heavy Micro$haft user here, have tried using ubuntu a bunch of times in the past and fucking regretted it every time. Ran into issues with stupid shit like the apt cache growing exponentially until the drive was full, or something like the the system python getting borked.

To be fair, I’m 120% certain my dumb-assery is what caused the problems. I’m definitely not trying to blame the OS. But my experience was shitty, even if it was at my own hands lol.

Started playing around with Pop!_os from the system76 team. And I’m seriously in freakin’ love with this OS. It’s clean, is performant, feels way less buggy or just feels more stable somehow. I know it’s based on ubuntu, but I’ve had a great time thus far using it. I’ve got ansible, docker, aws toolkit, aws cli, sam-cli, vscode, dynamodb-local, serverless, npm, brew, and working on steam now.

Everything has been a breeze and again the system feels really fast and snappy. It feels a lot like mac on the smoothness scale, but snappy like a windows box with beefy hardware specs.

I’m still just in the testing phase on a VM, but I’m seriously thinking about blowing away my windows install for Pop!_os.

(I’ll try arch someday when I’m up for some hardcore masochism)

Soo my dad has a food printer he uses to print edible images on cakes our customers order. The food printer needs to run at least once a week (regularly) to kinda guarantee not to get fucked up with its ink, as that can damage the printer when it's dry. My dad though doesn't have regular orders...
The printer has a standard function to test all colors.
My dad asked me how this task could be managed regularly, as I'm the IT guy 🙄. His idea was to log all the dates on paper.

Now I'm trying to automate this task via Windows so we don't have to care about papers to manually log when the next test must run. On Windows the printer settings can be accessed to run this color check.

... I've got a feeling this will be another one of those tasks that I will overengineer over the top😅. I've already done my research with automated batch jobs (never done batch before) but the normally proposed code for a "Düsentestmuster", so the color check, prints a different overview I was not expecting, which doesn't fit the purpose.
Now I'm here and, as I currently see no way of simplifying it, I have to kinda simulate a person that opens these settings and runs this check. With Python, pyautogui and Tesseract OCR, to prevent the program from clicking anything wrong. Although I'm sure there should be an easier way for this, I haven't found it, so I guess I have to proceed on this path and take the experience I gain as a bonus...

New phone after 5+ years and it's fucking awesome.

Successfully avoid American and Chinese stuff by going with a Korean brand.

And I fucking love Android. The kind of feature advancement that has happened in past so many years is outstanding.

The amount of customisation options available for the users are beyond one can utilise to fullest.

And my favourite feature is dynamic lock screen pictures every-single-time I unlock. I fucking love it. Makes me cheer up with joy. Very similar to Bing Wallpapers for Windows, but more dynamic.

Lately, I have been hearing from Apple users, that iPhone lacking a ton of basic features, apps not supporting functionalities, and we all know the overall advancement in Apple ecosystem.

While this post was more about sharing my experience with my new phonw than iPhone comparison but let's face it, the reason Apple went bonkers with the first iPhone launch was the app capabilities which led to a larger developer community building apps for iPhone while Android wasn't even born yet.

This is where Google is trying to capture the market now. More devs > more apps > more users > more devs and repeat.

So now Microsoft is suddenly deciding devices that "weren't" compatible are now perfectly compatible with Windows 11, and they're rolling this out in bunches at a time.

I still get "This device can not support Windows 11" but my coworkers are starting to see "Upgrade NOW!" and it's honestly gotten a bit sour seeing as I may be next. They're bypassing those who're editing the registry to stop this, too.

If I have to start diving into the deep ends of Windows and find out what IP Windows gets it's updates just to slap it into my HOSTS file, we're already in the apocalypse.

This upgrade is not bad for common people, but upon seeing that the Start menu GUI and taskbar got butchered horribly (I place my taskbar on top of the screen, Windows 11 doesn't allow for that) I myself absolutely want as much distance between me and that shit as possible.

In college, I've been hearing my fellow classmates having issues with Windows 11 left and right, including with how hard it is to get another browser to even work, to the Windows Store not even downloading Microsoft's own apps, to endless update loops, to the infamous "Update of Death"

Keep in mind, they got computers with better specs than mine, and they're having a worse experience. A lot of them just got refunds to the very last issue I just mentioned, all within August, day of purchase to day of return.

Microsoft, I am begging you for mercy, I'm so close to just getting up, finding out where you are, and blocking you from my network at all network and device levels.

Oh god! Why did I change to Ubuntu!!! This machine is running hotter and slower!!! Battery drains faster than ever!

There's no going back to windows 10... looking back, I love windows 10 despite its faults :')

Did anyone else experience the same? First thing I'm doing in the morning is install arch linux

installing linux for the first time since i have been a windows user for like forever. just a bit more exploring and experience and maybe ill switch to linux completely.

So recently I installed Windows 7 on my thiccpad to get Hyperdimension Neptunia to run (yes 50GB wasted just to run a game)... And boy did I love the experience.

ThinkPads are business hardware, remember that. And it's been booting Debian rock solid since.. pretty much forever. There are no hardware issues here. Just saying.

With that out of the way I flashed Windows 7 Ultimate on a USB stick and attempted to boot it... Oh yay, first hurdle to overcome. It can't boot in UEFI mode. Move on Debian, you too shall boot in BIOS mode now! But okay, whatever right. So I set it to BIOS mode and shuffled Debian's partitions around a bit to be left with 3 partitions where Windows could stick in one more.

Installed, it asks for activation. Now my ThinkPad comes with a Windows 7 Pro license key, so fuck it let's just use that and Windows will be able to disable the features that are only available for Ultimate users, right? How convenient would that be, to have one ISO for all the half a dozen editions that each Windows release has? And have the system just disable (or since we're in the installer anyway, not install them in the first place) features depending on what key you used? Haha no, this is Microsoft! Developers developers developers DEVELOPERS!!! Oh and Zune, if anyone remembers that clusterfuck. Crackhead Microsoft.

But okay whatever, no activation then and I'll just fetch Windows Loader from my webserver afterwards to keygen my way through. Too bad you didn't accept that key Microsoft! Wouldn't that have been nice.

So finally booted into the installed system now, and behold finally we find something nice! Apparently Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate offer a native NFS driver. That's awesome! That way I don't have to adjust my file server at all. Just some fuckery with registry keys to get the UID and GID correct, but I'll forgive it for that. It's not exactly "native" to Windows after all. The fact that it even has a built-in driver for it is something I found pretty neat already.

Fast-forward a few hours and it's time to Re Boot.. drivers from Lenovo that required reboots and whatnot. Fire the system back up, and low and behold the network drive doesn't mount anymore. I've read that this is apparently due to Windows (not always but often) mounting the network drive before the network comes up. Absolutely brilliant! Move out shitstaind, have you seen this beauty of an init Mr. Poet?

But fuck it we can mount that manually after every single boot.. you know, convenient like that. C O P E.

With it now manually mounted, let's watch a movie! I've recently seen Pyro's review on The Platform and I absolutely loved it. The movie itself is quite good too. Open the directory on my file server and.. oh. Windows.. you just put db.thumb on it and db.thumb:encryptable. I shit you not, with the colon and everything. I thought that file names couldn't contain colons Windows! I thought that was illegal in NTFS. Why you doing this in NFS mate? And "encryptable", am I already infected with ransomware??? If it wasn't for the fact that that could also be disabled with something as easy as a registry key, I would've thought I contracted ransomware!

Oh and sound to go with that video, let's pair up some Bluetooth headphones with that Bluetooth driver I installed earlier! Except.. haha nope. Apparently you don't get that either.

Right so let's just navigate the system in its Aero glory... Gonna need to flick the mouse for that. Except it's excruciatingly slow, even the fastest speed is slower than what I'm used to on Linux.. and it's jerky as hell (Linux doesn't have any of that at higher speed). But hey it can compensate for that! Except that slows down the mouse even more. And occasionally the mouse driver gets fucked up too. Wanna scroll on Telegram messages in a chat where you're admin? Well fuck you mate, let me select all these messages for you and auto scroll at supersonic speeds! And God forbid that you press delete with that admin access of yours. Oh maybe I'll do it for you, helpful OS I am!

And the most saddening part of it all? I'd argue that Windows 7 is the best operating system that Microsoft ever released. Yeah. That's the best they could come up with. But at least it plays le games!

So we had this legacy Objective-C codebase for a mobile app that was actually pretty good: I'd inherited the codebase and spent the past several years gradually improving it and I was actually quite proud of the work I put into it. So of course management decides to scrap it (with NO consultation from the engineers) and outsource a complete rewrite of the app in C# for Windows Universal.

Let me tell you. That code was without a doubt and without exaggeration the *worst* code I've seen in my close to 30 years of experience as a developer. I mean they broke every rule in the book, I'm talking rookie mistakes. Copypasta everywhere, no consistent separation of concerns, and yet way too many layers. Unnecessary layers. Layers for the sake of layers. There was en entire abstraction layer complete with a replicated version of every single data class *just* to map properties in pascal case to the same property in camel case. Adding a new field to a payload in the API amounted to hours of work and about eight different files that needed to be modified. It was a complete nightmare. This was supposed to be a thin client, yet it had a complete client-side Sqlite database with its own custom schema (oh and of course a layer for that!) completely unrelated to the serverside schema, just for kicks. The project was broken up into about eight or nine different subprojects, each having their own specific dependencies on various of the other subprojects in such a tightly-knit way that it made gradual refactoring almost impossible. This architecture was so impressively bad, it was actually self-preserving!

Suffice it to say it was a complete nightmare, and was one of the main reasons I ended up leaving that company. So just sayin', legacy code isn't always bad. :)

I've always liked Windows more than MacOS, but known deep in my heart that MacOS is more polished. More shiny, attractive, makes more sense, is easier to use, etc. Windows was never that far behind (however, they were probably furthest behind in Vista and 8), but they were always behind.

Looking at the new MacOS, I genuinely think that Microsoft offers a better experience now. While Android and iOS are still firmly battling, Windows just beats the living shit out of MacOS.

Windows is an OS built for either touch or mouse. If you use touch controls, the OS automatically adapts to it (larger context menus if you press and hold, smaller ones if you right click). You can enter tablet mode. The start menu has a good interface for both touch and mouse.

MacOS is an operating system designed for touch input on a device which famously has none.

It has fallen victim to a very common design error: too much fucking spacing. Every little thing, even items in a list, has a ton of pixels between them, and they all have rounded corners. Again, this is common for touch displays where you don't wanna fat finger stuff. But they don't offer a touch screen Mac and have expressed no interest in ever doing so.

Now they're going ARM on custom silicon. This is a good move in the long run, but it's going to be a rough couple of years. Apple admits two. You can probably reliably double that.

Is Apple killing the Mac on purpose or by accident?

Started new job almost two moths ago..

For almost 3 years I was developing custom themes, plugins, and widget for WordPress using PHP, jQuery/AJAX, and MySQL.

The new company that hired me brought me on as a backend developer to help rebuild their custom PHP Framework, and other web based software/products as their moving toward Google Cloud Platform.

When I started, MVC and OOP was new to me... took a couple weeks to get the hang of things, and understand their system.

Just when I was getting comfortable, I had a task assigned to me that was all NodeJS...

Had a 30 check-in the week I started the Node task, and was feeling pretty beat down because it was all new to me and I wasn’t making a lot of progress, and still not comfortable with Promises yet, and some other ES6 features but finding my way around slowly but surely.

Manager reassured me that I wasn’t going to be fired and it wasn’t unique to myself. Very encouraging to hear, but I’m my own worst critic so it’s frustrating not being able to make progress like I would with PHP projects.

Fast forward to this week, I started to review another task for a feed and found it’s all Ruby! Another language I have no familiarity with... and started to question if I’ll every get the hang of all these languages and be a solid team member...

Not only do I have to get a grasp on NodeJS and Ruby now, but then I’ll also have to get familiar with GCP and whatever else comes along with it...

Oh and I’m using Linux now instead of Windows/ OSX... so there’s that too.. plus the other command line tools the company built, and uses..

I was comfortable developing in PHP and know I needed to take a step and accept this job to move my career forward but it seems like I’m always behind the 8 ball...

Some days I wonder if it was worth staying a Wordpress developer and just focused on learning ReactJS and stay more Front-end than Backend..

I enjoy working with talented people but I don’t like being the low man on the totem pole knowing I don’t have the experience yet.

Does it feel like this for all devs?!?!

For a moment I thought work laptop died because the screen suddenly went pitch black but it was just Windows deciding it was a good time to update graphics drivers. It crashed the emulator I was running btw.

Went through changing Apple ID email. I have 💻,📱and⌚️.

Felt like that horror movie moment when protagonist tries to be stealthy but makes a noise and a huge mob of zombies turn heads all at once. For what I love apple, the simplicity, in the email changing process there is none of that.

They forced me to enter my 60 arbitrary obscure characters password on Apple Watch screen.

On the other hand I felt nostalgic. When I was using Linux this all was my day to day experience no matter the distro, and I got a Linux Foundation certificate, I contributed to Elementary. Can’t imagine the experience of a user who just switched to Linux.

Windows? I don’t want to think about that, let alone talking. You only need to know that I successfully configured a SoE setup AND active directory in ad-hoc unstable network of literally rusty old computers. And I still switched to Linux back then.

So following a previous rant, I’ve decided to make the jump and move full time to a Linux setup on my PC, with a windows VM (I do much more Ruby and php at home than Windows stuff, so makes sense to use Linux as everyday os.

The question that I need help with is which distro to go with.

I have experience with Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Debian, but I’m not adverse to trying something new, I’m even toying with the idea of Arch (but with a few test runs on a vm first)

So client wants an android app that implements some legacy Epson printer SDK, works on a chinese Windows device with an android Emulator on it, connects to local Webservice that had to be configurated and ran (local Network) , sends and tracks data, if Server down then handle it on the Client and reconnect as soon as Server up, running own TCP Server on Android device that listens for specific http requests, which make the android connect to an Epson printer to start printing. The stuff that is being printed? A png file that has to be converted to a Bitmap, a QR Code that has to be generated by the bugged base64 encrypted stuff coming via http in (webserver-> Android TCP server)
Dont forget the Software Design (MVP), documentation, research etc.. Im about to finish the app , its my 5th day on this Project, the 6th day was planned to be full testing. Client Calls me and ask me how far I am, I reply, he says ok. 30 minutes later he tells me he wont pay me next time that much because this work should take 3 days, or even 2. "A senior Android developer could do this in 2 days"... When i sent him my notices he called me a liar, his webdev has alot of experience and told him it should take 2-3 days...ffs

I often read articles describing developer epiphanies, where they realized, that it was not Eclipse at fault for a bad coding experience, but rather their lack of knowledge and lack of IDE optimization.

No. Just NO.

Eclipse is just horrendous garbage, nothing else. Here are some examples, where you can optimize Eclipse and your workflow all you like and still Eclipse demonstrates how bad of an IDE it is:

- There is a compilation error in the codebase. Eclipse knows this, as it marks the error. Yet in the Problems tab there is absolutely nothing. Not even after clean. Sometimes it logs errors in the problems tab, sometimes t doesn't. Why? Only the lord knows.

- Apart from the fact that navigating multiple Eclipse windows is plain laughable - why is it that to this day eclipse cannot properly manage windows on multi-desktop setups, e.g. via workspace settings? Example: Use 3 monitors, maximize Eclipse windows of one Eclipse instance on all three. Minimize. Then maximize. The windows are no longer maximized, but spread somehow over the monitors. After reboot it is even more laughable. Windows will be just randomly scrabled and stacked on top of each other. But the fact alone that you cannot navigate individual windows of one instance.. is this 2003?

- When you use a window with e.g. class code on a second monitor and your primary Eclipse window is on the first monitor, then some shortcuts won't trigger. E.g. attempting to select, then run a specific configuration via ALT+R, N, select via arrows, ALT+R won't work. Eclipse cannot deal with ALT+R, as it won't be able to focus the window, where the context menus are. One may think, this has to do with Eclipse requiring specific perspectives for specific shortcuts, as shortcuts are associated with perspectives - but no. Because the perspective for both windows is the same, namely Java. It is just that even though Shortcuts in Eclipse are perspective-bound, but they are also context-sensitive, meaning they require specific IDE inputs to work, regarldless of their perspective settings. Is that not provided, then the shortcut will do absolutely nothing and Eclipse won't tell you why.

- The fact alone that shortcut-workarounds are required to terminate launches, even though there is a button mapping this very functionality. Yes this is the only aspect in this list, where optimizing and adjusting the IDE solves the problem, because I can bind a shortcut for launch selection and then can reliably select ant trigger CTRL+F2. Despite that, how I need to first customize shortcuts and bind one that was not specified prior, just to achieve this most basic functionality - teminating a launch - is beyond me.

Eclipse is just overengineered and horrendous garbage. One could think it is being developed by people using Windows XP and a single 1024x768 desktop, as there is NO WAY these issues don't become apparent when regularily working with the IDE.

Really? You want me to install you an old windows release because "you don't understand the new one"?
What don't you understand? Fucking square buttons? Basic color palletes? Big fat icons with a description below?
What do you miss in a ten years old shitty OS? The need of three antiviruses? The satanic settings layout? Lack of any drivers?
You have a family, you're making them too experience all the security breaches, all the compatibility problems with thing are a "must have" today, and all the slow performance.
Fuck you. Please, please, please, go fuck yourself with your trashy laptop's burnt battery. Pretty please. I already hated you, but now it's out of the charts.
PS: Actually, fuck myself with your crappy laptop's batteries, because my girlfriend told me to help you, and I can't say no, so see you in two weeks, when porn ads are invading your desktop and you're ready to blame me.

So today it finally happened.

Npm modules broke my system and / or endangered the security of my system.

Installed a global cli utility
That utility depends on package A
That depends on package B

That fucking install a bin called sudo

Yeah.. You heard it right a bin called sudo.

This bin goes in the global module folder that is piped in your path variable.

Now everytime you type sudo you are running somebody else code instead of your system utility.

I am shivering and at loss of swear words.

Opened an issue on the cli that started this matrioska game of horror.

Who the fuck tought that a bin called sudo would be a good fucking idea?

Oh and yes is even an harmless package that try to provide the sudo experience for windows (I went in to check the code of course..)

And I frigging need that cli for work

For now I aliased the sudo in my bashrc still i feel vulnerable and naked now.

Windows makes me genuinely angry. Why is it that when I boot my computer, I am expected to wait 10+ minutes for windows to launch 5 startup applications, most of which are already patches for things that should be there to begin with, before I can even begin to use explorer to open GeForce experience because for some reason, windows said "Graphics drivers?! Who needs those?!" And threw them out the window! And then I get notifications about apps needing permissions to things, BUT IT WONT TELL ME WHICH ONE! I clicked the update driver notification 5 minutes ago and the installer literally just now opened up. This is a computer with a r3 processor and gtx970! It may not be the best, but it is by no means underpowered! Why must Halo online not have a Linux version? :(

I'm really not sure. When I was 7-8 years old, I liked to view source in IE, then I somehow managed to use Javascript in the browser. First only some dumb opening of windows. And I liked Batch, so I made some files for copying, backup and stuff.

Then I got to PHP during the years from some online tutorial about making dynamic websites. My website was more static than stone, but yeah, I did page loading with PHP! Awful experience anyway, because I had to install Xampp, get it work and other stuff. 11 years old or so. (and I used Xampp only as a fileserver between laptop and desktop later, because.. PHP4... just no.)

As 12 years old or so I experienced my first World of Warcraft (vanilla) on a custom server in an internet cafe and I thought it's a singleplayer game. When I found out that no, I googled how to make my own server (hated multiplayer back then and loved good games with huge storylines). Failed miserably with ManGOS, got something to work with ArcEMU. There I learned some C++ basic stuff, which I hoped would helped me to fix some bugs. When I opened the code I was like: "Suuure." and left it like that. I learned what a MySQL database is, broke it like four times when I forgot WHERE and still rather played with websites i.e. html, css, js and optionally php when I wanted to repair a webpage for the server. With a friend we managed to get the server work via Hamachi, was fun, the server died too soon. Then I got ManGOS to work, but there wasn't really any interest to make a server anymore, just singleplayer for the lore. (big warcraft fan, don't kick me :D )

I think it was when I was 13y.o. I went to Delphi/Pascal course, which I liked a lot from the beginning, even managed to use my code on old Knoppix via Lazarus(Pascal). At this age I really liked thoae Flash games which were still common to see everywhere. So I downloaded .swfs, opened and tried to understand it. Managed to pull some stuff from it and rewrite in Pascal. Nope, never again that crap.

About the same time I got to Flash files I discovered Java. It was kind of popular back then, so I thought let's give it a try. I liked Flash more. Seriously. I've never seen so much repetitiveness and stupid styling of a code. I had either IDE for compiling C++ or Pascal or notepad! You think I wanted my code kicked all over the place in multiple folders and files? No.

So back to Pascal. I made some apps for my old hobby, was quite satisfied with the result (quiz like app), but it still wasn't the thing. And I really thought I'd like to study CS.

I started to love PHP because of phpBB forums I worked on as 15 y.o. I guess. At the same time I think there was an optional subject at school, again with Pascal. I hated the subject, teacher spoke some kind of gibberish I didn't really understand back then at all and now I find it only as a really stupid explanation of loops and strings.

So I started to hate Pascal subject, but not really the lang itself. Still I wanted something simpler and more portable. Then I got to Python as hm, 17y.o. I think and at the same time to C++ with DevC++. That was time when I was still deciding which lang to choose as my main one (still playing with website, database and js).

Then I decided that learning language from some teacher in a class seriously pisses me off and I don't want to experience it again. I choose Python, but still made some little scripts in C++, which is funny, because Python was considered only as a scripting lang back then.

I haven't really find a cross-platform framework for C++, which would: a) be easy to install b) not require VisualStudio PayForMe 20xy c) have nice license if I managed to make something nice and distribute it. I found Unity3D though, so I played with Blender for models, Audacity for music and C# for code. Only beautiful memories with Unity. I still haven't thought I'm a programmer back then.

For Python however I found Kivy and I was playing with it on a phone for about a year. Still I haven't really know what to do back then, so I thought... I like math, numbers, coding, but I want to avoid studying physics. Economics here I go!

Now I'm in my third year at Uni, should be writing thesis, study hard and what I do? Code like never before, contribute, work on a 3D tutorial and play with Blender. Still I don't really think about myself as a programmer, rather hobby-coder.

So, to answer the question: how did I learn to program? Bashing to shit until it behaved like I desired i.e. try-fail learning. I wouldn't choose a different path.

I was at university, and I didn't really feel like I was understanding C++ or C#, I'd gotten to my final year through two repeated years, skipping the work experience​, practicing as often as I could (even if it wasn't making sense).

In my final year after needing to install windows for the sixth time in a month (sometimes my machine, sometimes friends machines) I got sick of having to install the same utilities over and over again.

So I decided to write a tool to download and install them, also keeping them up to date, I did it in python, teaching myself as I went and it became my final year project! I should have scored 85% but I was marked down for going over the word count.

Apparently I work better on my own and when I've got a problem I need to solve!

I seriously don't fucking understand those people who like programming iDevices.

I mean, in my personal experience you have:
- iPhone not connecting to a WiFi (while working on a network project)
- Mac, while using multiple desktops on 2 monitors: I have the 3rd desktop active on the 2nd monitor, search for terminal to open it and it opens in the 1st desktop of the first monitor
- while making an app (ionic or unity), is about 5 to 15 times slower compared to the same android apps (same exact code, but gotta go throught XCode, y'know?)
- takes YEARS to download XCode, but is necessary to even just build for lastest iPhones updated
- takes years to upload to AppStore and when it's done it just tells you "oh bitch, you know what? you forgot that fucking icon for tablets, how about you rebuild it all? and NO, you have to change the build number or I won't accept it"
- App quality was so pedantic on the first publish but then always fucks it up at the second upload, like "hey we checked it the first time, now we can just 100% trust it works and doesn't use anything scammy"
- code+compiled app for iOS is like 1GB while android vode+build is like 100MB WTF do you even put in those 900MB? random trash? WHY?
- I'm not even gonna get into the forums or the amount of money you have to pay for both product and services
- MacOS works ALMOST like Linux, but takes all the worst from both windows and linux to give you the worst performance with the best graphics, but it looks cool, so doesn't matter

A good world would be a world where Apple goes bankrupt after Steve Jobs died

Using devrant on windows phone. Windows phones are so so so nice. Why microsoft did you stop windows phones. They are the best OS and greatest experience. Bring back windows phone please.

Is dual booting between linux (specifically pop os) and windows 10 possible these days or do we have still the grub ignores windows and/or windows ignores linux problems?

Please spare me with comments about windows, I'm sorry that you use a Home edition which has limited settings or you're too bigoted to accept other concepts than linux'.

I'd like to have 3 partitions: around 40 gigs for pop os, 120 gigs ntfs Windows and the rest as ntfs for data. Any articles or experience made in the last months is appreciated.

Upgrading windows 10 to 1703 Creators Update is a biblical experience: "It will take some time (2 hours) and the PC will be rebooted a lot of times".

My office Mac has ruined the development experience for my personal Windows.

Mac is just so freaking good.

I knew this might be an issue, but really Linux just sucks balls. It may not be Linux's fault, but the user experience could be a fuck ton better.

Spent 1.5 hours trying to get mint installed on second drive. It works fine if you don't want to do anything with it.

As you can probably surmise I died on getting the gpu driver installed. Just starts to a black screen. No amount of juggling is helping. It just refuses to show the screen with an nvidia driver installed. What is worse is that settings that might help are not set. Like nomodeset in grub. If you know some drivers fuck up the grub interface then add nomodeset and not leave it up to the user to "figure this shit out". Because users are tired of figuring this shit out.

Really really fucking disappointed. I thought to myself: lets install steam and see how it does. The reality: fucking stuck for 1.5 hours on trying to boot into x with graphics acceleration and failing.

Many of you hate on windows, but one thing it has going for it. It doesn't do fucked up shit like this. It has failsafes that try and account for this.

Fuck you linux. You need to fucking grow up and stop relying on users to fix every damn thing in the command line. Go back to server where you belong.

I know I will get the "I told you so" messages, but guess what? The computer I got doesn't come preinstalled with windows. You have to pay to get it. At this point windows is the only fucking viable solution to make my shit work.

Nvidia, go die in a fire bitch. Fix your fucking Linux support you worthless shit heads.

This has been a rant brought to you by "the pain of others". I hope you enjoyed the experience.

PS, I love you all. Even the "I told you so" bitches.

Just like JS frameworks, everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel with an OS, now more than ever. Some give it a better tread, but things are hardly ever adopted by the end-user, unless proven to be a leader.

This is where Windows and macOS excel.

I have a love/hate relationship with Ubuntu, and use CentOS 7 for my servers (so I can get genuine, hands-on Debian/RHEL experience) but honestly, it ends there for me - which, again, is close to lightyears away from what the average person would use outside of our industry's cliche.

However, just like JS frameworks, there's a reason that each one exists; to fill a gap the others don't. This is where it gets a bit personal to me, and reflects a habitual mistake made by the human race, in general.

If we simply worked together towards setting true standards based on non-competitive collaboration - we'd be happier, positive, and much more productive.

At work everybody uses Windows 10. We recently switched from Vagrant to Docker. It's bad enough I have to use Windows, it's even worse to use Docker for Windows. If God forbid, you're ever in this situation and have to choose, pick Vagrant. It's way better than whatever Docker is doing... So upon installing version 2.2.0.0 of Docker for Windows I found myself in the situation where my volumes would randomly unmount themselves and I was going crazy as to why my assets were not loading. I tried 'docker-compose restart' or 'down' and 'up -d', I went into Portainer to check and manually start containers and at some point it works again but it doesn't last long before it breaks. I checked my yml config and asked my colleagues to take a look. They also experience different problems but not like mine. There is nothing wrong with the configuration. I went to check their github page and I saw there were a lot of issues opened on the same subject, I also opened one. Its over a week and I found no solution to this problem. I tried installing an older version but it still didn't work. Also I think it might've bricked my computer as today when I turned on my PC I got greeted by a BSOD right at system start up... I tried startup repair, boot into safe mode, system restore, reset PC, nothing works anymore it just doesn't boots into windows... I had to use a live USB with Linux Mint to grab my work files. I was thinking that my SSD might have reached its EoL as it is kinda old but I didn't find any corrupt files, everything is still there. I can't help but point my finger at Docker since I did nothing with this machine except tinkering with Docker and trying to make it work as it should... When we used Vagrant it also had its problems but none were of this magnitude... And I can't really go back to Vagrant unless my team also does so...

I got travel advertisments on my Windows 10 lock screen. I didn't remember how to get rid of them, so I had to search for it again. I was lead to this piece of fine irony on my screen.

Staring at it felt like staring at the concept of art while it's staring back. This experience left me emotional.

Thank you Microsoft and Windows Central. Thank you art, life, and love. Thank you ads.

Drupal makes me want to go back to the moment that life first crawled out of the ocean, and shoot that first land-dwelling organism in the head – just to make sure that the animal kingdom never evolves to the point where a crime as ghastly as Drupal can occur.

Drupal somehow manages to be both unforgivingly, bureaucratically rigid, and an anarchic, spaghetti-coded mess – at the same time. Other frameworks are toolboxes. Drupal is a series of windows at the IRS or MVA – and it *will* take you days to figure out which series of forms you have to submit, with which boxes checked, in order to accomplish your goal.

The documentation is complete and utter trash.

It models content in a way that makes all sorts of assumptions about your use case. And those assumptions don't have anything to do with *how websites are actually designed and built*. In 20 years of building websites, I've never *once* wanted to use anything resembling the bizarre data model that Drupal *forces* you to use. Nor have I ever thought "gee, I wish my platform forced me to stop writing code every 20 seconds, so I can use an atrociously designed point-and-click interface".

I ask the community how to accomplish [insert extremely fucking basic task here], and they say: "well, you just install these 17 modules, glue them together with a bunch of configuration that couples your database to your code, and then shrug at the hideously broken HTML/CSS that comes out, because we give exactly zero shits about UX! isn't it great how Drupal makes things so easy?" Like, no – literally *every other framework on the planet* allows you to accomplish the same thing with just a few lines of code.

Most of the community seems to have little or no experience with other frameworks – so they seem solipsistically unaware that these are even problems. If your platform has been stabbing you in the arm for as long as you've been building websites, then you're just gonna assume that being stabbed in the arm is part of developing websites, you know? They seem oblivious to the fact that things are *so much easier* when your platform just lets you build whatever abstractions you need, instead of forcing its own weird-ass, undocumented assumptions on you.

Uruururrrrrrrggghgh. I can't understand how anyone defends this piece of garbage. If you're a Drupal developer reading this – please, for the love of God, try learning another framework. Once you've spent a couple of weeks learning saner ways of doing things, you'll never look back. I cannot comprehend how Drupal is still a thing.

More rants coming up.

1st

Working with a guy who I am not sure has the necessary experience to begin with.

The person who hired him told me to teach the guy for him to catch up to our project and its pace. He has some experience with Java. Which our project is being developed in java in a linux dev environment in a full stack way. So we handle front to infrastructure.

First day working with him and I saw this guy is trouble.

1st - doesn’t know effing git commands. Who doesn’t know git nowadays. Ok i can forgive him for that. But damn this guy’s learning curve is so slow. After s month of joining, he still has to look up the commands in his photo cheatsheet.
2nd - doesn’t know linux basic cli commands like cd, ls, rm. not an ounce of knowledge. He told me he is used to developing in Windows. Now this. I can’t forgive him for not knowing this shit. cd (change dir) even exists in windows command line. He even has guts to say to everyone he wants to try working in our servers. The HORROR!
3rd - not sure if knowing junit and matchers of hamcrest, if you are working with Java is a must. But this guy doesn’t understand Matchers of Junit. How the fuck did he ensure effing quality in his prev work.

All in all, seems like this guy doesn’t understand the basics of current development tools.

TL;DR: Microsoft updates break drivers, make unbootable. Hours wasted. Such rage.

Lol. I come home, try booting my windows desktop. Need desperately to play some videogames. Power is on. Monitor lights up. Bios splash. Windows startup spinner.

Suddenly, windows startup spinner gone, monitor shuts off. Wait 5 minutes, no change. Force power off and reboot, same behavior.

Google says it's probably a bad video driver. I don't remember installing any in the last month, but heck I don't use this computer for shit outside of games, so may as well do a full OS reinstall and hope the problem drivers are gone.

Reboot and force power off halfway through boot to let windows know something's wrong next boot. Literally no other way to get to alternate boot methods.

Run the reset. First time, percent-counter starts. I leave the room at 30% to go get a sandwich. Come back and it says it's "undoing changes". Something went wrong and I have no way of knowing what.

Oh well, I'll just try again and see what the problem was. NOPE! Completes windows reinstall without a hitch on the second attempt.

Okay, now let's get my stuff back on here. First things first, Microsoft updates for my processor, graphics card, "security". Halfway through the updates, monitor shuts off and I'm back to square one. IT WAS THE MICROSOFT DRIVER, NOT THE ONE FROM NVIDIA GEFORCE EXPERIENCE!!!!

Fucking Microsoft. To all ye who rail against Linux as a gaming platform because of its unstable drivers, observe here the stupidity of Microsoft and weep.

Windows 10 - You unreliable fucking piece of shit excuse for an OS!

The fucking thing smells urgency, I tell ya. And it fails when you need it the most! The worst part is, you can't even open the start menu without letting a whole bunch of background tasks and network fetches from eating your CPU cycles and system memory. I don't need your fucking suggestions for your lame ass apps. I don't want to give you feedback about the "Microsoft experience" (which I'm reconsidering), I don't want to be prompted every 5 seconds to reboot my PC for system updates to take effect. Stop fucking with my productivity!

FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!!!!!!!

Oh, my worst dev experience.

First of all everyone know it, people who ask you to repair there computer 🤦‍♂️
Or people who say: "Hey Windows Media player is not working now. Fix it"

But the best moment and worst too is a moment where I present my new website and a friend start to refresh the site with F5 on his browser. I ask him why he do it and he answere "Yeah, you will be rich when I do it"

I don't get it. Why rich? So I ask him and he answere that websites are paid by web request an "clicks" "views" counter.

That was the stupidest thing I ever hear. Okay when I would show ads than maybe it's "true" but without them🤦‍♂️

But that's not the end after I explained him that it's not so he fucked me up that I would be very stupid because I don't register on a service which pay you for it. I explained him that the only service could be an ad service but no he don't understand it and try to discuss with me that a service like this exist. I ask for a link to the service and he could not answer.

For me it was the worst experience because for me it was the most stupidest thing ever and he try to discuss with me and really we discuss 1 hour about it🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

You constantly see these professional profiles with labels such as 'Expert'/10 years experience/senior/CTO/CIO/Consultant.

Isn't it funny when you go and work with these people in the field, they appear to be frauds? How can these people legitimately have these titles and know less than a snotty freshman year student? Their knowledge is so poor, a 14-year old with basic Windows and Javascript knowledge could outmatch them. If only this weren't true.

I think it's very unfair because they attract employers and they even get hired, while some of us with veteran knowledge in several fields don't get considered for a job.

May I add that it's always the funny guys who get a job. Apparently being a relatable frat bro at an interview is more important than having priceless expert knowledge.

TLDR: I need advice on reasonable salary expectations for sysadmin work in the rural United States.

I need some community advice. I’m the sysadmin at a small (35 employee) credit card processing company. I began as an intern and have now become their full time sysadmin/networking specialist. Since I was hired in January I have:

-migrated their 2007 Exchange server to Office 365

-Upgraded their ailing Windows server 2003 based architecture to 2012R2

-Licensed their unlicensed VMware ESXi servers (which they had already paid for license keys for!!!) and then upgraded them to 6.5 while preventing downtime on hosted VMs using tricky transfers and deployments (without vMotion!)

-Deployed a vCenter server to manage said ESXi servers easier

-Fixed a three month gap in their backups by implementing Veeam, and verifying its functionality

-Migrated a ‘no downtime’ fileserver to a new hypervisor host, implemented a ‘hot standby’ server as a backup kept up to date by the minute with DFS replication.

-Replaced failing hard drives in a RAID array underlying their one ‘business critical’ fileserver, which had no backups for 3 months at that time

-Reorganized Active Directory and Group Policy deployment from a nightmare spiderweb of OUs and duplicate policies

-Documented the entire old network and now the new one as I’ve been upgrading this

-Audited the developers AWS instances and removed redundant machines, optimized load balancing on front end Nginx servers, joined developer run Fedora workstations to the AD domain and implemented centralized syslog monitoring on them.

-Performed network scans and rewrote firewall exceptions to tighten security

There’s more, but you get the idea. I’ve now been tasked with taking point on an upcoming PCI audit which will be my first.

I’m being paid $16/hr US, with marginal health benefits. This is roughly $32,000 a year, before taxes.

I have two years previous work experience managing a third party Apple repair facility (SimplyMac) and every Apple certification for warranty repair and software troubleshooting. I have a two year degree in general sciences, with about 4 years of college credit (Two years of a physics education and two years of computer science after I switched focus) I’m actively pursuing a CCNA and MCSA server 2016 with exams paid for and scheduled.

I’m going into a salary negotiation in two months. What is a reasonable salary to request, from your perspective, for someone in my position?

Thanks in advance!

!rant

I have about a week of holidays left before my classes start and I'm thinking about creating a notepad with password protection and cloud sync so it can be accesed on other devices.

So this is how it will work.
Probably the same interface as windows notepad so no one notices. It can be used to write a personal diary or anything that you don't want other people to know. It will ask for a 4 digit code when you open it(at first you'll see some text, you'll just enter you pin after that text and without pressing enter if you pin is write you'll see the text changes to your previously saved text and if your pin is wrong no error will be displayed itll work as a normal text editor for intruders and probably this wrong pin will be sent to you on you emil with other info). Now even if yoy minimize the window you'll have enter the pin again or even your windows gets out of focus. So you can have it open all the with out worrying.

I'll be using C# for this which I have no experience with. But I'll get it so no problem here.

Provide your feedback on this with some suggestions.

*Sorry I didn't post it on calebs section because I don't have $10.

I don't use an antivirus and I probably never will.

I'll share two experiences from two different people to provide you people some base.

Firstly, this friend of mine wants to learn Android. He doesn't even have chrome installed. So I'm like let's get you a decent browser. I open the website to Firefox and I'm ready to install it.

He stops me.
He says don't install anything this isn't my laptop it's my father's and it'll get a virus.
*Facepalm*
I assure you it won't get a virus. You already have a fucking premium anti whatever the fuck suite installed so why are you worried?

Viruses are intelligent they can get anywhere. The argument was proving a waste of time besides I realized I had the files on my computer and just needed to transfer them via a thumb drive or something.

I bring over my thumb drive. Mr.viral fuck here is so shocked I thought his balls fell off. No! He doesn't want a thumb drive either, apparently they carry and generate viruses.

At this point I gave up to retain my health in the long run.

You know what I ain't going to share the other experience cause it's even more messed up.

Seriously what's with the paranoia ? I never have used an antivirus ever on my Windows installation and have never gotten infected by one either. How the fuck do people get infected by them ? I'm seriously missing something here.

My experience with Fedora:

1. Copy to thumb drive
2. Find out the thumb drive wasn't good enough
3.copied to another thumb drive
4.Successfully booted
5.start installation
6.Shit forgot to partition my NTFS drives
7.Back to Windows to do it
8.back to install again
9.Start installation, setup partitioning
10. Didnt notice that my EFI partition wasn't detected
11.Fedora tries to install its bootloader in God knows what place
12.bootloader install fail
13.reboot comp
14. Missing operating system
15. Spend my whole fucking night repairing the boot partition and the problem was a fuckin missing BOOT flag
16. No grub
17.spent another decade trying to fix it
18. Give up and get some sleep

Probably Fedora will have to wait for another day, tiring experience

Today, I have installed/uninstalled a combination of [windows 7, arch linux, dual-boot] a total of 9 times...

I wouldn't be surprised if my 120G SSD fails next week

It all started when I had to whip up a GUI-wrapped youtube-dl based program for a windows machine.

Thinking a handy GUI python library will get it done in no time, I started right away with the Kivy quick-start page in front of me.

Everything seemed to be going fine, until I decided it would be "wise" to first check if I can run Kivy on said windows machine.

Here I spent what felt like a day (5 hours) trying to install core pip modules for kivy.. only before realizing my innocent cygwin64 setup was the reason everything was failing, and that sys.platform was NOT set to "win32" (a requirement later discovered when unpacking .whl files)

"Okay.. you know what? Fuck........ This."
In a haze of frustration, I decided it was my fault for ever deciding to do Python on windows, and that "none of this would've happened if I were installing pip modules on a Linux terminal"...

I then had the "brilliant" idea of "Why don't I just use Linux, and make windows a virtual machine within, for testing."

And so I spent the next hour getting everything set up correctly for me get back to programming.... And so I did.

But uh... you're doing GUI stuff, right? -> Yeah...

And you uh.. Kivy uses OpenGL on windows, doesn't it? -> Yeah..?

OpenGL... 2.

-> Fuck.

That's when I realized my "brilliant" idea, was actually a really bad prank. Turns out.. I needed a native windows environment with up-to-date non-virtual graphics drivers that supported at least OpenGL2 for Kivy GUI programs!

Something I already had from square 1.

And at this point, it hurts to even sigh knowing I wasted hours just... making... poor decisions, my very first one being cygwin64 as a substitution for windows cmd.

But persistent as any programmer should be in order to succeed, I dragged my sorry ass back to the computer to reinstall windows on the actual hardware... again.

While the windows installer was busy jacking off all over my precious gigabytes (why does it need that much spaaace for a base install??? fuck.). I had "yet another brilliant idea" YABI™

Why not just do a dual-boot? That way, you have the best of both worlds, you do python stuff in Linux, and when it's time to build and test on the target OS, you have a native windows environment!

This synthetic harmony sounded amazing to the desperate, exhausted, shell of a man that I had become after such a back-breaking experience with cygwin

Now that my windows platter with a side of linux was all set-up and ready-to-go, I once again booted up windows to test if Kivy even worked.

And... It did!

And just as I began raising my victory flags, I suddenly realized there was one more thing I had to do, something trivial, should take me "no time" to do, being in a native windows environment and all.................... -.- (sigh)

I had to make sure it compiles to a traditional exe...

Not a biggy, right? Just find one of those py2exe—sounding modules or something, and surprisingly enough, there was indeed a py2exe—sounding module, conveniently named... py2exe.

Not a second thought given, I thought surely this was a good enough way of doing it, just gonna look up the py2exe guide and...

-> 3 hours later + 1 extra coffee

What do you meeeeean "module not found"? Do I need to install more dependencies? Why doesn't it say so in the DAMN guide? Wait I don't? Why are you showing me that error message then????

-------------------------------

No. I'm not doing this.
I shut off my computer and took a long... long.. break.

Only to return sometime the next day and end up making no progress, beating my SSD with more OS installs (sometimes with no obvious reason to do so).

Wondering whether I should give up Kivy itself as it didn't seem compatible with py2exe.. I discovered pyInstaller, which seemed to be the way Kivy wants exe's to be made on windows..

Awesome! I should've looked up how Kivy developers make exe's instead of jumping straight into py2exe land, (I guess "py2exe" just sounded more effective to me then)

More hours pass, and you'd think I'd have eliminated all of my build environment problems by now... but oh, how wrong you'd be...

pyInstaller was failing, and half the solutions I found online were to download some windows update KB32946..whatever...

The other half telling me to downgrade from Python 3.8.1 to Python 3.8.0000.009 (exaggeration! But you get the point)

At the end of all that mess, I decided it wasn't worth some of my lifespan, and that maybe.. just maybe.. it would've been better to create WINDOWS GUI with the mother fuc*ing WINDOWS API.

Alright, step 1: Get Visual Studio..
Step 2: kys
Step 3: kys again.

Looking forward to trying out ChromeOS for a while.

I like the idea of a minimal OS. Frankly while Windows, macOS and Linux are all incredible bits of engineering, they all suck ass and are maddeningly frustrating.

Usually I'm on a computer to complete a task and just want the OS to quietly do its job and leave me out of its myriad personal crises. I don't want to see or hear from that fucker.

If experience tells me anything it's that I'll be swearing at the Chromebook within the week.

But, the fact I'm trying shows I haven't lost hope.

Just got a lovely update on Windows 10. It pops up on login and informs me of this great new browser called edge. Then it fucking takes over the screen and gives me one fucking option: "Get Started". I cannot escape, I cannot close the app, I cannot right click the app icon on the toolbar and close this POS. My only option is to fucking ctrl-alt-del and kill this piece of garbage. You also cannot uninstall this shit either. I even found a thread where the MS guy was trying to help them uninstall, but the end result is that you cannot on newer Windows 10. So I have this POS thing that keeps updating flash and other shit periodically that is nothing but a security hole. Now I never want to ever run this garbage.

The irony is this. I have read a lot of good things about Edge. I was considering it as an alternative to Chrome for specific use cases. Now I absolutely no longer want to run this fucktard pos software. This one experience has now tarnished any gains MS has in the browser arena. It is just more overbearing malware being pushed by assholes. Tech these days is defined by assholes. Apple is assholes, Google is bigger assholes, and MS is still the classic assholes.

Microsoft LET ME FUCKING JUST WORK! Is this not the pro version or what?

Fuck you edge and your pos os.

Now I feel better!

Edit: That was a rendition of the evil caption Kirk from episode 27.

No I don't want your updates every single day, Windows 10. Maybe I don't want to be so edgy with your updates. May be I like it XP style when updates didn't used to bug me with every single boot up and power down. It has become even worse. Who thought defering updates to the next boot up was a good option? It fucking interferes with the flow of work. They were like -
"You know what, let's update till 35% and then fucking update the remaining 65% at next boot"
"But users will be frustated"
"We'll show the update screen with clean font and a nice background. It will calm them down"
"Okay, so let users choose when to download the updates"
"That's not a fucking option, mate"
And if you are going to force updates down our throats please fucking mention what is being changed as a short description instead of showing a 'KBxxxxxxx' update number! If not that, at least hyperlink the thing to your update docs page! OR Mention a version buff if not it! I HATE seeing 'Update for Windows 10 Version xxxx for x64-based Systems' EVERY. SINGLE. TIME I see an update ready to be downloaded.
And no I don't play Candy Crush, or other games that are pre-installed as soon as I re-install fresh Windows or go on Xbox App. I hate to do this ritual of turning off auto download from Windows Store every time. So please don't pre-configure anything for me. Keep it fucking raw. That's why Linux distros win.
I'm just saying, Service Packs were a great thing with a need of little improvements. You guys ruined the whole experience, Microsoft.

I am going to rant about this being the exam week, it being hot as hell, and us having had a messed up semester study-wise... And I still managed to do good-ish in subjects somehow... Good as in, relatively good. I am no 4.0 GPA person by any means and could never be one if I studied only (if that's even realistic at all). Recently I applied to a job at Andersen Lab for a Trainee position. Got turned down because I lack experience. A TRAINEE POSITION. I could retake the interview but I feel weird with how I got rated a whole level lower than my IELTS score and two levels lower than my score at Epam (which is the more recent one!) and the questions were mostly so easy I could answer while half asleep. Just yeah. Also, while I understand the whole knowledge required thing... I don't get the need for THREE whole interviews only to then proceed to turn me down. I am continuously applying and still seeing no results. If I'm "lucky", I guess, I will get training from a bank. And then get employed there... Mentally doing very bad right now, just barely wanting to MOVE. Which is basically me being this close to giving up. Today's exam is in Linux Security and I swear, this was such a waste of a good sounding subject... Imagine, I could have learnt how to set up a server at home and all that but instead we did... The more basic stuff in Linux. And for the whole semester outside of two or three cases I was the only one in attendance. Anyways, I have been feeling like I just can't program anymore and stuff... Even though we did a Python subject this semester. And in that subject I just felt like we were going way too quickly considering a lot of the students there come from non-IT or close to that background...

I may need to put effort into learning 3D Environmental art, I have this feeling I would like doing that as a job in game dev. Oh, and I also wanna design this house that I have in mind for me. It's shaped like an Amanita Muscaria and instead of the white dots it has windows that are round, as well as a spiral staircase connecting the lower and upper floors. Need to figure out how to model that in something like AutoCAD (I have a bit of experience with it and that's why I'd like to try there... But I may have to learn other programs to do it for free), but it will take me a long time to execute since I am not the most organised in how I learn...

Anyways, I will only sporadically be there, so I may not see things here. I am somewhat busy with exams and then this NGO I recently became a founding member of (and I have to say, I kinda don't wanna be there, but there are things that have to be done). Also filling the documents for a Canadian visitor's visa to go finally see the family over there and all that. But the latter will probably not happen until next year...

Finally, I am wishing you all a sound mental health and happiness. I hope you do well in whatever you are doing at the moment or are planning to. Until next time!

I am in-fucking-love with myself and packages contributed to OSS communities!

TL;DR: inotify is great and I am lazy bitch so I wrote a script to kinda do my work

I took some time to write a script that takes a folder with images (Screenshots) and move them somewhere else with the last modify time as their new name (something like "Screenshot_DATE_TIME.png) because my current screenshot software for Windows (Lightshot) only saves their screenshots like this: Screenshot_<Incrementing Number>.
Once in a while I'd like to move those images away to "clean up" that folder, but I always have to create a new folder like "OLD" but that already exists so it becomes "OLD_1" which.. also existed up to "OLD_3" and I finally grew sick of it!

2ish hours later my Perl script now automatically gets triggered by inotify once a new file (Screenshot for that matter) is written or moved to the Screenshot folder and auto-fucking-matically moves it to the "new" folder with the new filename so I don't have the issue of having "OLD_1" .. "OLD_INFINITY" anymore.

Little things / scripts like these really make me feel good about what myself and my coding skills (I know, this is a somewhat trivial task but still a great experience)

I get amazed almost every work day by how buggy the File Explorer is in Windows 11.

Actually, it's the whole Microsoft experience, that never worked for me. Most products are not at all intuitive (e.g. Google Sheet UX > Microsoft Excel UX), some other products shouldn't even be released (e.g. I've tried Loop, which is supposed to be a Notion clone, but it's more like a cheap demo).

I really need to start insisting about Linux, so my employer allows me an installation (or at least they could provide a Mac, if Linux doesn't cut it)

Future01

Click, click, click, click.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe,.
Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

I’m tired of living on popularity driven planet among animals, where number of clicks on likes, subscriptions and links are worth more than iq, education and experience.

Let’s face it - AI is showing us traffic driven recommendations that sucks. If you’re hooked up to social network and can’t disconnect from it you’re half way to matrix. You probably also disagree with me cause you’re serotonin junkie. You can’t stop like you can’t stop eating for a day. Bubble have you in your hands and whatever you do you probably won’t wake up. To be honest most of us won’t. It’s already to late.

I’m waiting for meta so they can put you in virtual world where you can have what you want and at the same time own nothing. They will put you in some small empty space and give you something to eat how many times you want so you can feel safe and click, tap, swipe, scroll more so they can own this planet.

You will be living only to deliver corporate metadata and you will be happy, cause they will make you happy with giving you emotions that you want to feel at exact moment.
If you get out, you won’t be able to interact cause you won’t know how to behave, you will become wild animal.

By going out you will break the law, cause outside world will be long gone. To move to bar or visit family you will travel with autonomous vehicle that have screens instead of windows.

Eventually you stop going to bar cause it’s unhealthy, you stop going outside cause there’s deadly virus and you can die.

They will take you last thing later with birth control so you can have baby whenever you want and with who you want as long as both parties agree by signing baby nft contract, you don’t have to take care of your baby and be pregnant cause it will be robotized, you will see your baby in meta. You will think you feel it using robot hands.
You will never meet your baby in person.
That’s how matrix will start. We’re half way.

OK guys the time has come for my home PC to finally become 100% pure Linux (No dual booting).

But I will need to keep a backup of my windows installation (Just so i don't have to download everything over in case i return to the demon that is windows).

What is a good image capturing program?
Was going to use ghost because of past experience but just want to hear some alternatives!

LINUX. I'm sure everyone heard this term. But I still don't know why do people want to give up their life and try this piece of crap. I know many of you might be offended, but, to hell with that. When I heard about the Linux, and everyone was praising it about it, I thought that I should give it a try. So, I installed Ubuntu (obviously, because I was a beginner) and the installation failed. I thought that I've made some mistake. Tried again, FAILED. So, I waited for next version. After downloading and trying to installing it, Voila. I installed it. Then comes the part when I actually started using it, for as simple as watching a video. I didn't play. It gave an error of some codec was missing. I installed the codec and then I payed the video successfully. Then, I want to install the Oracle Java Development Kit, and literally it was a pain to install. It took me half an hour to install and configure it. Then after using it for a couple of days, I found that my WiFi was acting weird. I booted up my Windows just to check it and it worked perfectly on windows. Then why the heck was it not working on Ubuntu. Don't know. On searching about it, I found that my WiFi adapter's driver was having some issues. Then after using it for more days, something very weird happens, the Ubuntu booted but with terminal only. No GUI, No Unity, nothing. I against searched for it, found some commands, ran it and it started normally. So, the point that I'm trying to make is that even for simple and basic tasks, I always have to search about it every time to get it working. I mean if their are so many steps to be taken for every simple task then why people keep on recommending it. With the Linux installed, I was very much distracted from my primary work. Instead of doing my work I was searching for installing JDK. I mean wtf. In Mac or Windows its as simple as downloading the file, installing it and you're done. But in Linux I don't know. And the whole Linux community thinks that Windows sucks. I mean on windows I was more relaxed and more focused on my work. Whenever we search for the Linux, many people say that Android is a Linux. I get it, but in Android, many developers have worked very hard to make it as what it is nowadays. But what about Ubuntu, Fedora or any other distribution. I haven't seen any distribution which makes me feel that I wanna use it again. None of them. So, Linux is not a great OS according to my experience

Windows 10 is just a bad joke at this point. First it doesn't show any text in the menus, now it fucks up all the drivers. I really need to scrap it and install literally ANY other os in order to improove my experience but I keep telling myself that it doesn't really make sense until I have a new harddrive and I keep wondering if the Evo850 is worth it. Fuck the saturday night struggle.

After having tried my hand at setting up Linux on my personal PC, something has dawned on me.

I don't think Linux should be used as a desktop experience. I absolutely love the idea and concept of Linux, and of course use it for servers and the like, but with the current state of most distros, I don't think it's a suitable replacement for Windows/MacOS.

Any good arguments against this?

Back in 2013, My CEO hired a new Manager for the R&D department, who supposedly had over 15 years of extensive experience with Windows and Windows server.

On his first day he suddenly turns toward my colleague, who is sitting right next to me and asks "Do you have a setup for Sticky Notes?", we were using "Windows 7".

The entire room turns toward him as he said that and started laughing quietly.

When I hear the word "service" I think of something that just runs in background and you can do stuff with it. I have no idea how to create one, I almost had to make one on Android and use it properly, now I'm back to Windows and Java and we have something working as a service, I have no idea how it was created and how it does work, I just know how to start, restart and stop it. If you asked me how it works and how to communicate with it - XD no idea lol but let me google that. I have almost 4 years of professional software development experience.

And at this point I'm too afraid to ask ;____;

I have desktop pc that I use for gaming on windows from time to time but most of time it stays turned off.

My gaming experience is usually:
1. turn it on
2. wait for windows update
3. turn it off

Doing same quest over and over, how I’m supposed to get to the next level ?

I don’t have so much time for gaming.

Windows - what the fuck! I cannot understand why people WANT to use this - its' buggy, unstable and the user-experience leaves me with the same feeling as when i step on a dog turd barefoot.

I know Linux has been a hard road for many, even a few years back I would do an update and my day would be lost to fixing it. But it's literally made by people in their spare time! Ultra-corp Microsoft fuck it up all the time, with thousands of full time employees!

Gah. Come back steve jobs - I need a hug. (please wear your turtleneck)

Not sure if any of you guys are Windows Insiders (I know the audience here is Linux fanboys and plus, there's not much reason to be an insider in 2021, really), but I am. I'm on build 21286 and for whatever reason... they have decided to SLOW down the animation for opening a new window. I'm too lazy to record it, but the animation is just like it was before: your window scales from like 80% size to 100% size... but it takes legit about half a second now when before I would say it was closer to maybe a tenth of a second.

Strange choice... and I do not think it improves the experience...

Have a Dell desktop that was running Windows 11. Someone tried to revert to Windows 10. Now it will not even post. Anybody experience something this drastic?

I suspect it tried to do some kind of misguided firmware update in the process.

[linux distro stuff]
Hey guys!
Im considerig switching to linux because:

My macbook does not support mojave and the new ones are expensive af.

Windows 10 is bloated and not a great user experience(removing stuff from the control panel and adding it to the very stripped down settings app, privacy etc..).

I love open source software

However i did not used linux for a long time, back then i used ubuntu and SUSE.

My considerations:
Debian - because .deb on them haters
OpenSUSE - because i used it in the past and it seemed very stable and fast
Arch - i heard from a lot of sources that it’s “da best”

My use case is game development and 3D modeling. I use gimp, blender vscode and unity (the game engine) at work i sometimes use autodesk stuff (motionbuilder, 3ds max) because of fbx.
For audio stuff i use audacity

So overall i’m looking for a distro that is fast, lightweight, i can develop on it (mostly 3D stuff) and occasionally play some games

Anyone has experience with the mentioned distros? What distro would you use for this?

There are so many viruses out there that claim to be automatic windows driver updaters that I'm beginning to wonder if legit ones exist at all! Anyone have any experience with the real deal?

So, I decided over the weekend that I would move my entire dev environment to Linux. No Windows on the laptop and only as a backup boot system for my home PC. I wanted to wean myself off of Linux as only being a VM and move to the full blown desktop.

I can only describe my experience to that of having your first kid: lot's of crying and joy at the same time.

Things I've learned:
1. The install is amazingly painless. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work straight out of the box no configuring needed.
2. OH MY GOD THE CUSTOMIZATION. Rocking Arc Dark theme on Gnome3 = EVERYTHING IS
ALWAYS DARK MICROSOFT WHY IS THIS NOT A THING.
3. Getting Java servlets to work has been hell. I gave up trying to get them to work in eclipse and moved over to IntelliJ. More trial and error before I can figure out why tomcat won't fucking work in eclipse but it's fine in IntelliJ.
4. The UI and overall work flow has been improved after getting past the learning curve. Gnome3 is way better from when I tried it out 4 years ago.
5. Vim has a steep learning curve but I am starting to understand the net benefits of it. It'll probably be a solid month before I get good with it.
6. Loosing Microsoft Office has been a little bit of a challenge but their suite is online so....meh. I do miss Visual Studio though, and am still looking for an adequate replacement for C++ and C# development.

Overall it's been a challenge but I think it's been a net gain. Now if only I could get the whole sys-admin team to use it. ;)

The first Computer experience i can think of is when i was ~4 years old i used to draw things on paint I could print them as well, i think the computer was running windows 98 or 2000.
A few years later i remember my uncle showed me a irc server for pirated software, the client was a CLI so it looked all hacky but i had no idea what was irc,i thought it was just a search engine like google but for piracy stuff.

so I started a side project a while ago.
the only thing it could do was to create some files with desired names and extensions. so this was basically a pretty simple editor.

I left this project with no future plans for a month or so until I started working on it again this week. I added comments to the editor, a console user interface.

the ui isn't futuristic. the program runs in the console. it just lists all the files and folders where the program is currently located in. in the beginning it could take user input and that input was the location where the files created in the editor would be saved. then I thought: it would be more interesting if I created a folder in which I saved the files from the editor. so I did this thing.

then I thought, again: hey, this console is pretty boring and stuff. why should I add some special commands? and so I did.
now you can create an empty folder, before you created a folder and saved at the same time the files created in the editor. now you can open another folder in which you can do the same stuff as before. you can get the current location of the folder you are currently in, so you don't get lost in your fancy computer. you can delete a folder completely, set color, reset color.

but one thing that I lost almost ONE FREAKING HOUR ON IT TO MAKE THE USER EXPERIENCE BETTER was the following: when creating a folder, either empty or with the files from the editor, the program automatically opens the folder, not in the console(hey, I didn't thought of that) but in the file explorer from the os. now it only works for windows and windows explorer because I used system(const char*). I know it's not portable or efficient but I just wanted things to work, I will optimise it later.

the thing that made me lose that one hour debugging was figuring out how to open that file.

ok, so I used windows api with GetCurrentDirectory, I knew how to use system, I knew how to form the path that would match up with the folder, I almost knew how to open the folder with system().

the problem was that I had the path complete, but if the folder had white spaces system() wouldn't recognise the freaking command!

so the string with the path would also contain the command used in system() and I would just .c_str() the string so it could work. as an example my wrong way to make the path was this:

"start C:\\path"

can you figure out what is the problem?
you don't?
it's just so trivial.
how cannot you figure it out?
of course you NEED to put "explorer" between the start command and the actual path!
pffft, you idiot! so easy to figure it out.

so yeah, the right way to open a folder is like this:

"start explorer C:\\path to heLL!!"

p.s.: I still don't understand why putting explorer works and without it doesn't. without explorer it just just says that path with the first word before the white space doesn't exist.

1. Windows is unreliable and crappy.(I have had a lot of bad experience with windows.)

2. Mac is good but doesn't have a lot of things to tinker with.(Used mac, it runs on specific hardware only, for rich people who don't know how to use computers or for chad programmers )

3. Linux is the best. (The real programmer shit that has it all.)

What do you think?

I got my new(to me) MacBook Pro last week, provided by work. I've got all my setup and config done, for the most part, and I've noticed something.

Performance is shit. Has anyone else noticed this about the 2017 and later models? The 2015 model I had before was much, much smoother. Just zooming windows, a previously butter-smooth experience, is noticeably choppy. I/O performance is garbage too. I have a small iotest script that just writes a string a couple hundred times to disk, deletes it, and repeats this activity 100,000 times. On my Linux machine at home with six year old hardware, this takes about three seconds. On my new system76 laptop it takes just over a second. On the 2017 MacBook Pro, it takes about forty seconds.

The 2017 and 2018 models are a direct downgrade in performance. Why isn't anyone talking about this?

I legit never understood the hate for VB.NET in the land of Microsoft development. To be entirely fair, I only used it it that one class at uni. But other than that I had never used it in the real world. The closest thing I had done with BASIC was VBScript, and even tho I was ok with it(even liked it) I damn well know that it is not something that I would use to build web apps with anymore.

But I am inclined to give VB.NET a chance only because I remember being able to make sense of my peers code in school. Just by reading it, sure it might be verbose as all fucking hell, but we were using VS(notice that i said VS not VS Code) and we had all the bells and whistles of autocomplete and intellisense.

Currently tho, I somewhat wanted to try a more modular approach to my fucking around with web apps, we are considering Rails and Django for a project at work. But since we already have windows servers we thought about the possibility of using .net core. We all like C# as a language and I did work with ASP.NET MVC before so we are considering that as well. That and our sys admin had tons of experience setting that as an environment. When developers are not too sure it is good to rely on the admin's expertise.

This happened 2 years ago. With 1 year c++ application development experience in a big firm, the new company hired me as "intern". That moment I was like ok ok whatever then the nightmare began. They forced me to code on windows xp with visual studio200x with an old ass c++ (much older than my previous work, there's no string data type) and it has to work on IE. I told my supervisor that this code is obsolete and I need a new windows, IDE, and newer c++ to work on. He said he will get it done. 1 month passed I still sat my ass on the same chair with an old ass pc in front of me. Best thing I could do was designing a new web ui yet they still force me to work on their unfinished obsoleted codes. Well u know what? I quit 😒

Guys i have a macbook from my company but i used windows all the time. i cant setup the macbook as I need. No karabiner etc. Managed by the company. In Private i still use windows.
Switching back and forth between them is fucking up my dev experience. So i am looking at ways to change my windows keymapping instead. Any suggestions? Hardware and software appreciated. Maybe a keyboard which u guys have good exp with? Or a setup? Cant be the only one here .

WHITEPAPERS.

Not exactly a programming problem, but one of my many task (as i am apparently a multi headed hydra) is it to find Software for tasks. I made the experience, as more marketing experts are on it, and as more SEO is poured in as more information about a topic degrade.

Two examples:
i wanted to find out if there is anything that speaks AGAINST "the cloud" as a concept for Data Procesessing and Storage. (Beside that the company internet connection is crap). There are tons of documents that in a semi "scientific" way show that having a data centre with a constant staff of experts is superios to everything. And it goes on, every company has a different version of basically the same document, and they all subtley show that THIS company is the best.

Example 2:
ERP Software, the most infested pool of filth i have entered yet, be it just a tiny CRM System or a full blown SAP clone, they all have those "Whitepapers" that first look somewhat scientific or informative. Like "the top8 common pitfalls when introducing an ERP system". 7 of them read logically and were what i expected, the 8th was "dont get your IT involved".
Yeah sure, IT doesnt understand economical processes, fair enough, but not getting it involved at all sounds like selfdefense. A further look showed me that this particular vendor has a web-based solution but doesnt provide any further informations (srsly, the website is starved of actual hard informations). The screenshots let the software look a bit oldschool but what really threw red flags for me was the sentence "we are ready for Win10, we did significant adjustment to perform excellent with Windows 10"
So, either they have some system interwoven stuff (so why bother with Webbase then?) or its just another marketing bullshit sentence.

Either way, i found it to be really hard to get ANY reliable information about this particular topic which adds to the overall world experience of missinformations and the all-being "fakenews". But for many things one can usually filter through a lot of different informations that can be pieced together, with this..its all outright propaganda camouflaged as "useful information", some even try to let it look scientific. In the end its all biased..

ultimativly, this rant is about all the people that write those missleading whitepapers, fill the world with biased informations and make the whole planet a worse place.

Like age 8?
As a kid I really liked flash games and animations and wanted to get into it. I couldn't do flash, it looked too complicated but I found a little software by the name od KoolMoves that was just a simpler flash animation tool.

I did a bunch of shitty stick figure animations in it (hello to everyone from stick figure death theatre) but eventually I realized that I can make it do things (interactive menus, choose your story kinda things, move the player around, shoot...!)

I fell in love with AS1 and later AS2.0 and made bunch of demos and proof of concepts for systems and games. Most are lost to time and datarot by now)

Age 12
Eventually I found out I can make the entire Windows machine do what I want using first Batch files and later Visual Basic script (made a skype bot!) At this point I was also really into graphics and logo/web design

Age 15 - 20 or so
Then it was pretty natural to move to actual Visual Basic, then C# and finally I to C++. And I had the C family in my heart forever. I managed to get a but into 3D graphics too and got a part-time in archviz

Even by this point I never believed I could be a programmer as a profession. I thought of it just as something I love, but have no chance getting into compared to some of the names out there. I half expected to be either doing graphics (cause I found it simple at the time) or some shitty random job in an office.

20+
Finally I decided to go to uni and study software development, see if I can touch the future I always dreamed of! And... Well... I found out more than 80% of the people there never touch a language up until now and most people are just as retarded as I thought..

For a while I also worked as a game designer (still not being comfortable calling myself a programmer, so I chose a non programming position) but I ended up going into the code and improving and fixing game designer tools (it was unity and C#)

After seeing actual programmers at work in a company, and talking to a bunch of them I realized I already have everything I need to do this seriously and with that experience out of the way I breezed through uni, learned to love Linux and landed a proper job :)

I kinda hope my experience with long lasting self doubt will be useful for someone

Yo, so does anyone here have any experience about using Windows or mac printer drivers on GNU+Linux? So far my strategy has been to try to extract a ppd file from the Windows/mac drivers. It's an epilog fusion laser printer/engraver

This shit is long story of my computer experience over my lifetime.

When I was young I got my first PC with windows it was not so bad. It required safe shut down of it’s fat32 partition. From time to time I needed to reinstall it cause of slow down but I got used to it I was only a gamer.

Time passes and I got more curious about computers and about this linux. Everything worked there but installation of anything was complete madness and none of windows programs worked well, and I wanted to play games and be productive so I sticked with windows.

I bought hp laptop once with nvidia card, it was overheating and got broken. So I bought toshiba and all I told to the seller was I want ATI card. Took me 5 minutes to do it and I was faster then my friend buying pack of cigarettes because I was earning money using computer.

Then I grown up running my small one person programming businesses and I wanted to run and compile every fucking program on this world. I wanted linux shell commands. I wanted package manager, and I wanted my os to be simple because I wasn’t earning money by using my os but by programming. So after getting my paycheck I bought mac. I can run windows and linux on vm if I need it. I try not to steal someones work so I didn’t want to run hackintosh. I am using this mac for some time.

Also I use playstation for gaming. Because I only want to run and play game I am not excited about graphics but gameplay. I think I am pragmatic person.

I can tell you something about my mac.
When I close lid it go sleep when I open it wakes up instantly. I never need to wonder if I want to hibernate or shut down or sleep and drain battery. It is fucking simple.
When I want to run or open something it doesn’t want me to wait but it gives me my intellij or terminal or another browser or whatever I search for. Yeah search is something that works.
Despite it got 8 gigs of ram I can run whatever number of programs I want at the same speed. The speed is not very fast sometimes but it’s constant fast.
I have a keychain so my passwords are in one place I can slow down shared internet speed, I can put my wifi in monitor mode and I don’t need to install some 3rd party software.
And now I updated my mac to high sierra, cause it’s free and I want to play with ios compilation. Before I did it I didn’t even backup whole work. I just used time machine and regular backups. And guess what, it still works at the same speed and all I did was click to run update and cook something to eat.
When I got bored I close the lid, when got idea open lid and code shit, not waiting for fucking wakeup or fucking updates.

I wanted to rant apple products I use but they work, they got fucking updates all along at the same time. And all of updates are optional.

I cannot tell that about all apple products but about products I use.

I think I just got old and started to praise my limited time on this world. Not being excited about new crap. When I buy something I choose wisely. I bought iPhone. I can buy latest iPhone x but I bought iPhone 7 cause it’s from fucking metal. And I know that metal is harder then glass, why the fucking apple forgot about it? I don’t know.
I know that I am clumsy and drop stuff. Dropped my phone at least 100 times and nothing.

I am not a apple fan boy I won’t buy mac with this glowing shit above keyboard that would got me blind at night.
I buy something when I know that it can save my time on this world. I try to buy things that make me productive and don’t break after a year.

So now piece of advise, stop wasting your time, buy and update wisely, wait a week or a month or a year when more people buy shit and buy what’s not broken. And if something’s broken rant this shit so next customer can be smarter.
Cheers

I've always been a strong critic of the mac operating system and apple in general for they're overpriced products. few months back my old laptop kicked the bucket and repairing it was not an option as i was sick of charging the laptop after every 3-4 hours and had to purchase a new laptop immediately. loooking at my options around 50k rs or 700$ all windows laptops available in indian markets sucked (except for lenovo 320s) so i made the shift to macbook air 2017.my daily work involves photoshop illustrator and a dash of premiere pro. I also work on nodeJS and python using the pycharm and atom IDEs. After using it for a month i feel in love with mac platform and macos. Its a wonderful experience. gone are the days of crashes and the windows updates (ugh). the boot of the laptop is like magic and softwares like wmware imovie and notes keynote are f**king awesome. Long hours of work have become fun rather than hell dealing with constant windows gimmicks and bad battery optimisation on linux.

An explanation why all developers (except for the ones who require high powered gpus) graphic designers should shift to macos rn.

Advantages of using mac

No forced updates update whenever now or a f'ing month later no probs.
better battery optimisation than linux
no more installing os again and again (ubuntu)
better vm than virtualbox (vmware)
terminal for running bash commands
no crahes
Xcode platform
trackpad is worlds better than the best windows trackpad

Disadvantages

some softwares not available for macos
storage is generally less on macbooks
UI is simple (less elaborated than windows)

Workarounds

get a vm and install linux(vmware fusion 8)
ps. u may not need it though
wine and wine bottler for using windows apps
get a microsd to sd adapter for macbook and expand storage

Today i chartered new realms for me.

I created a new hyper-v vm on the company windows servers and added a 5th instance to it, but instead of running another windows server i installed an ubuntu 18.04 (cause i am a bit familiar with debian from my raspberry pi)

we have two servers, one which runs the 4 vms and a replica. I first had the new vm on the main server but it occured me to move it instead to the unusued replica machine. That kinda worked..i did a planned failover but the main server isnt configured to be the replica..and even when activating that it didnt work. This is weird.

For the moment i ignored that and proceeded to install nginx, mariadb and php 7.2..basically the lemp stack. I managed to setup nginx and a static ip adress for the machine (which was different from how i remembered it to do (in 18.04 its not done with the network conf but a yaml file).

in the end i added two different virtual servers, one for actual use and one for dev stuff (with phpmyadmin running for instance), listening on port 80 and some random other port.

as a test i brought a mediawiki onto the Port 80 server and it worked.

on monday i have to figure out how to implement the wildcard certificate i have for our company domain (internal dns simply routes intranet.company.com to the local server vm)

i am mighty proud cause all my experience with linux was with a raspberry pi so far and i am fairly certain i did it right and without shortcuts this time. (unlike my raspberry experience)

just wanted to share

(i also sweated a lot of blood when editing the hyper v settings as i did not set up the server in the first place)

((i also installed xrdp and a mate desktop, but i am less proud of that, but sometimes seeing folders graphically helps me))

Curious to see if anyone else is in this situation: I somehow have become the “infrastructure upgrade guy”. I’m in this constant loop of retrofitting our applications to work with the latest Windows Version or Java Middleware. Or, I’m stuck porting apps from one middleware to another. I guess I got good at this, and now I’m stuck in this constant loop of being the “go to” for all system upgrades/ports, which seem to just be in this endless cycle. It gets me a lot of recognition, but the work is miserable. Anyone else experience something like this, and if so, how did you get out?

Worst dev disaster?

Welp, my now 6 year old Mac keeps sending signal to my monitors that in my experience regardless of OS generally says "my video card is gonna fuckin die soon".

I've re-installed the Windows partition like 3 times, but that responds to the video card problems so bad it pretty much just BSODs... but the Mac side soldiers on, just occasionally having weird visual glitches. Thats fine, I work on the Mac side.

And I don't really want to spend a shit ton on a new computer... but I do want a Mac, so I'm gonna spend a shit ton.

So now I have to decide if I can hold out for an M1 or if I should just shell like thousands for a Mac that will be out of date in like 4 months. After which for development purposes I'd still have to buy at least the M1 dev kit Mac Mini.

All of which hinges on this effing video card lasting another few months.

Because if it doesn't I'm going to have to use my kids 8GB fuckin HP laptop as my main dev machine while I get another Mac in the mail and that would fucking suck not to mention the like minimum two days sleep I'd lose just setting up the required local environments I'd need... not to mention I'd have to do all that in Windows... so I'd have to find Windows equivalents for all my dev tools. Or fuck it, maybe I could just install Putty and server cowboy everything... but it would still suck.

And, of course, I don't have time to do any of that because I have the normal like 2 tight deadlines on shit.

The next few months of my life, potentially my ability to earn a living, potentially my sanity...

Hangs on the health of a fucking six year old heavily abused video card.

I'm genuinely contemplating changing my career to an IT support role from my current web dev endeavors.

I have become rather disinterested for quite some time with web development, I've been working with React, Angular, the regular Wordpress stuff with the theme building/modifying, headless instances, plugin development and whatnot and all of these have become more of a chore than anything else.

I'm leaning towards an IT support role as I genuinely have more interest in a user support/infrastructure support role than a developer role, the question is, is it doable ?. I know my way around Windows and Linux Servers, know LDAP, Active Directory, BASH, Powershell, Networking, can do cabling and whatnot but I don't have the experience to show off those.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated

!rant

Decided to take a AI course bc i felt it was going to be a cool topic and because I have no experience with AI.

I find out on the first day of class that we are using a implementation of Scheme called Scheme Chez Petite.

Scheme is cool and I like using it. I feel like it makes me think in different ways u know.

However, I have a 2015 Macbook air. And a bunch of my classmates have similar Macbooks too.

Our Prof. told us that the only fucking way to run scheme Chez petite locally is through a fucking windows VM.

So now I have to download a fucking 10GB windows OS so I can fucking do my homework.

And, since i have a 2015 Macbook air, everytime I start the VM, my computer sounds like its gunna fucking explode and it absolutely destroys the battery life.

I feel like there is a better way to do this than through the VM. Or maybe not using Scheme Chez Petite and maybe something else? idk

The most I have worked on something is 14 hours. It was for a university project, that involved creating a "banking" app that was intended to demonstrate the use of an SQL database. I had a partner, and we had done nothing about the project until the previous day. We started working at 5 PM and the demonstration was at 12 PM (noon) in the next day. We used PostgreSQL for the database, and C# and Windows forms for the GUI. My partner took on the database creation and I took on the GUI. I had minimal experience with C# and had never worked with Windows forms or DB bridging in a program. On top of it, lack of sleep hits me really hard, so by midnight I was just like a zombie with near zero focus capacity. As a result, I ended up rewriting numerous components with identical logic and appearance and some different elements that could be parameterized, simply because organizing my thoughts to write proper code was out of the question in my condition. The writing, debugging, testing and packing of the project ended at 7 AM, the morning of demonstration. I slept for 3 hours and then met with my partner and headed to uni. I never left a project for the last moment again. We ended up taking a 9/10 grade.

I have a 3 freaking professional experience as a .NET developer and was freaking able to deliver successful projects. My experience is .NET freaking windows form. And for every freaking time that someone would call and interview me they do freaking ask if I have a freaking ASP.NET MVC experience and I don't freaking have! BUT I DO KNOW HOW TO BUILD USING THE FREAKING FRAMEWORK.

The freaking problem is my 3 years of experience is from winform, but i do freaking know how to use the framework.

How do I freaking get a job as a freaking MVC dev if no freaking employer wants to a hire a freaking C# dev with lead dev role but no freaking experience with ASPNET MVC!

Today I tried running Plasma Wayland again after a few months...well...I tried

What did I experience?
- Mouse cursor size jumping from small to big randomly
- Can't remember fucking window positioning between multiple workspaces, so when I reboot, all windows are in the last workspace
- Random freezes with external monitor plugged in
- Firefox scrolling is absolutely terrible, 5 fps at most, but only when external monitor is connected
- Mouse acceleration can't be completely turned off? Or the setting just didn't work? IDK
- Sometime I get the infamous window trail effect known from older Windows versions, but on mouse cursor

So I had this conversation yesterday while fixing yet another Windows laptop for someone else.

Other Guy = OG
Me = Me (Duh)

OG: So what are your plans after your apprenticeship?
Me: Uh, I'll probably start somewhere that's e-commerce related, kinda like my current company but somewhere else.
OG: Uh have you thought about being your own boss?
Me: Well yeah, but I wouldn't know how to attract customers and shit

-- This is the moment shit gets real
OG: OH BTW I heard that Germany is lacking AI developers, you should do that! It earns you shitloads of cash!
Me: Uhm.. well, that might be true b-
OG: There's no but dude, it's free money, you're smart.. I mean you can fix any computer, right? AI will be just as easy
Me: It's not like-
OG: Duh, don't make yourself look so bad I know you can do it!
Me: B..But I'm not interested in it at all
*silence for 5 seconds*
OG: Well.. I guess you do you then

After that we continued to have random chit-chat about his job and experience (He's a mechanic)

God I hate when people throw buzzwords around and try to convince other people to do what *they* want.
No, I don't want to develop a structure of 1000 ifs/elses, I'd rather keep doing what I'm doing, thanks!

Curious question to fellow Mint Mate user (if there is any).

Do you experience a long restarting phenomenon with your mint?

I have used this and that distros and windows in the past. I am fond of light and fast things; long time user of xubuntu and lubuntu. Mint saved my ass when I had some display driver issues with my xubuntu. So I have switched to and I have been using it for a while and noticed that sometimes the restarting process can take more than 90 second.

I was born in 94. But my first experience was with a old beige color PC running Windows XP playing pinball 3d with the vortex wall paper and 8 year old me spent time installing rocket dock on it and tried remaking pong.

Can I say Ubuntu installation has really gone messy lately(at least the last time when I installed back in 2009). Especially the part of disk partition and selection. You get only three options - Install alongside Windows(without additional customisation), Install on the whole disk, and then Custom.

Most times these days people will select Custom and configure the partitions. And then the crucial part is selection of Boot Loader. But it's not given much focus which is empirical because otherwise even if your installation is successful, without the correct Bootloader config, you will continue to boot into Windows and then debugging and fixing gets really tricky. Especially for somebody who wants to try it out.

And then you will be cursing yourself to have bought a laptop with Nvidia graphics card because the drivers are proprietary and sometimes they have you stuck in Blank Screens prior to login. Ubuntu is not at fault here, but then it makes the life of people trying out things so much more difficult that will force people to just give it up.

I had moved to CentOS(because of Gnome) back in 2015 after really squeezing everything out of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Intel Core 2 Quad. And today, I installed Ubuntu 20.04 after almost 11+ years and it was really not a good experience.

!rant
Anyone here has installed Ubuntu alongside Windows 10 with UEFI? Did you find any problems?

I have installed other distros on the past, but in computers with the old BIOS so it wasn't much problem.

But now I will be installing it on my laptop, which I use for work so I would like something reliable. Personally I prefer Arch, but on the desktop.

I know there are endless tutorials and videos on internet, but I would like to hear some people's hands on experience.

Thanks :)

iPhone alarm clock suddenly stopped playing sounds this week (again), fortunately my wake up time is not critical.

After every major osx upgrade I feel that I need to restart macbook more and more often cause system suddenly hangs.

Yesterday I spotted that after each restart there is information that if system hangs on login screen for a while I should restart computer again ( well thanks for advice that I don’t have to wait till I die ).

Cursor randomly disappears after I connected microsoft usb mouse ( microsoft mouse eating cursor from apple windows ).

Why I use microsoft mouse you ask ? That’s the best thing microsoft made, it’s literally indestructible. I dropped and kicked that mouse hundred times, still works perfectly fine.

I think also somehow osx forced minor bug fix upgrade once without my permission so they’re slowly going the forgotten microsoft path that is always forcing updates you don’t want to install in this particular moment.
Because their engineers know better when and why I want to update.

Looks like Apple engineering is slowly degrading or QA care less about older hardware users.

I am not used to buy new shit when old works just fine, those shiny little things are my work tools not something I show around to impress people how cool I am.

That’s all disappointing but still better then windows experience cause didn’t reinstalled osx from scratch since almost 5 years and it’s working at the same speed like it was new ( not impressed linux users here but from my previous experience with windows “registry” that means something and this hardware already paid for itself).

Hey Linux users!

I have successfully convinced a friend to change from MacOS to a Linux based system (because she needs new hardware).
Now I am asking myself which distribution would be most qualified for her. She is a relatively old lady and only knows Mac (no Windows or Linux knowledge), so it should be easier for her if the new system would look similar to the Mac environment she knows. (Using console is no problem.)
Another point is compatibility: She needs some (commercial) software (like GitKraken and design stuff), so it would be cool if the Linux versions of them would work on the distro (for one or two programmes Wine is needed).
After my own reasearch I came up with Elementary OS or Gmac.
Because I have no experience with Mac I want to ask you: Has anyone here some experiences with these two systems and/or with a change from Mac to Linux and could recommand a distribution or desktop environment?

Thank you!

Soo Guys,

I am thinking of a new Laptop for developing abroad. Also because my PC is to much power crunching.

I first thought of an MacBook. Thanks to my human intelligence I have thrown away this idea.

I may want to use an surface pro (not the beefiest one, just like i5, 8gb RAM and 265ssd) or an laptop with Linux flash.

Because I am used to develop in Windows environment I might choose the surface. I really love Linux but as I progress in my (jet many, but not enough) languages I might stay at windows.

I wouldn't choose any HP or Lenovo laptop any more, only bad experience.

What do you guys think? Any other opinions?

Edit: I want to use it for:

- WebDevelopment
- Java Application Development
- C#/C Development
- Server Development
- Game Development
- Network Adminstration
- Server Administration
- Some Random Stuff

I want to switch over to Linux again, Windows just annoys me a lot lately. Thing is, I don't know what distro I wanna use yet.
I want one that is:
0. Security focused, so encryption, VPN and so on. (I know software could do the job, but would be nice if it comes with the OS)
1. Not hard to configure, but I should be able to configure it more when I want to.
2. Not too ulgy looking.

I have a little bit of experience with Linux, but I'm not even close a professional.
Looking forward to your suggestions!

I just found out Microsoft scrapped Desktop Experience in the new Windows Server... Welp I guess there goes my plan for a shared Windows dev setup 🙄

So been doing a TFVC -> Git conversion the last 3 weeks. I'm finally seeing an end to this mind numbing frustrating mess, so I was thinking 'this is a good time to write down my experience in a rant'.

So first of all, I'm working on a project that's about 10 years old, and didn't have a serious refactoring in that time (still runs on .net 4).

The project structure is f*cked up and seriously complicated the git conversion. For example forms only used in the winform application were in a solution for a web app, and file referenced in the windows application. But due to the fact that these forms also needed references to some business logic in the winform app, I had to constantly jump from one project to the other, fixing references to get this shit in NuGet. Sadly this wasn't the only case, and the other 40 project I had to convert from TFVC to Git had equally f*cked up stuff.

Only thing positive to come of this, pretty much decided to leave and start as a freelancer. At least I'll get payed better for doing shit like this, and I know it'll be a temporary thing and can move on after it's done.

Pardon the rant; some of it can probably attributed to me, but please indulge me of you could.

I'm tasked with creating a report that pulls data from some sql tables in c#and presents it using javascript. My manager was nice enough to lend me his old sql query, so I run with that using sql connections. Now I find out AFTER I get my sql query string working and retrieving data properly that my manager wanted it done using linq and entity framework, so now I have to start over, a process made only more "fun" by the confusing and unintuitive column names of our sql tables.

Moral of the story: don't take the easy way out.

After I spend some time fixing that up, I have to print out the data using javascript and html, which my manager was kind enough to lend me. Cue me shutting off my brain and thinking that I should have the program open and display this stuff itself. Let me tell you that converting a console application to a Windows form application is not a fun experience, especially when entity framework makes classes named "application" and "form" from your database tables. After finally getting the WebBrowser form to work, I'm hit with a javascript error from the library my manager referenced (he is a programmer himself). I tell him about the error and he just tells me to write the html code to a .html on disk like he did, but never explicitly said he did until just now.

Fixed moral of the story: don't take the easy way out, unless you should.

I should clarify I was given the whole raw sql query and html with some embedded javascript and a reference to chart.js.

My week is up with Linux , im back on windows I tried about 10 variations 🙄

Best I could get was manjaro with KDE

It was pretty close to what I was looking for but I still have to install some of the programs I need using command line 🙄 how do they not have installers for them yet ... Crazy maybe they do.

I need a virtual machine which is fine I can still use my graphics so it's fast! Play games etc

But it crashed and died.

Not only that but every version of Linux.. it felt 🤔 shitty like the mouse was bolted tight to the screen and only heavy movement would do anything . Yes I have high mouse sensitivity (very high) but it feels sooooo rigid

Here's the thing I like what Linux is trying to do... It's just horrifically executed the learning curve to extreme and there is no central this is how you do it. With good reason yes but if you give someone to many choices they can't decide and give up and I think that's the only reason Linux isn't winning . It's to complicated.

Android is the only Linux OS I love manjaro did well .

But android is simple effective and does what it's meant to without any help

All other Linux os' are .. developerised as in only a developer really truly stand a chance to grasp it no normal folk out in the world.

People say Linux doesn't have long left to go... To me it seems like they are still miles off no closer then 5 years ago.

That was my experience at least ...

Are here Vim users using the dvorak layout?

I am thinking of learning (programmer) dvorak but I am way to comfortable with Vim. I think Vim itself would not even be my primary concern since one should not use HJKL anyway. But I also have these bindings for switching tmux panes, vim splits and windows in i3, etc .
I think Dvorak would be a great opportunity to finally learn touch typing but I fear that Vim is not compatible with it.

So what is your experience with these two? Does it work? Is it worth it?