Cool, so it looks like updating my nVidia drivers somehow killed LUKS on my machine? or whatever happens immediately after decrypting the volume group; honestly can’t tell.

To the uninitiated, this means my machine no longer boots. Like, at all.

Looks like I’m spending tomorrow reverting. 😕

Update on my Facebook and Booking.com interviews. I had them back to back today.

Even before I start, I accept and admit that I am a hypocrite. I hate Amazon yet order stuff from there. I hate Microsoft yet use their products. I hate Facebook yet went ahead to interview with them.

I fucking hate myself for compromising my ethics, values, and integrity. I had promised myself that even if I work for any major shit company, I'd never go with Facebook. Here I am after many years. Not an excuse, but I am doing it because I see it as an entry point into the UK. That's all.

Community's hate towards me is justified and I'd accept the discrimination from this community because this place is my digital home and you all are my family. Infact first thing I told mom was, dR boys are gonna disown me when they get to know about this.

Anyway, coming to the update part.

I had applied leave at work from last Friday. 4 days of leave earned me 10 days off (including weekends and 2 days of Diwali company holiday).

Last Thursday I got to know that Facebook has scheduled their interview today (Friday). I spent insane amount of time preparing. Approximately 8 hours everyday including weekend. I added nearly 40+ hours preparing for it in last 7 days, because I had to get in. Failure isn't an option now.

I sacrifice my family time, preparing for the interview.

I sacrifice Diwali break, sitting in front of the screen and studying.

I sacrifice my only vacation of 2021, doing mock interviews as late as 11.30 PM.

I sacrifice my free time and enjoyment, stressing over what could happen.

I was prepared like perfect for screening stage.

Interview 1: this guy comes and ask 'what is the best compliment you have got as a PM?' and 'Why do you want to quit the current company?'

He wasn't supposed to ask those as per Facebook's policy and interview stage.

Then he gave me a shit problem to solve and rejected my approach and wanted it his was. I tried to follow him and made sure I was able to convince with the reasoning but he kept pushing me back. He kept putting me down. Did not listen to me or what I had to convey or what was expected as an answer. He had certain output in his mind and wanted me to come up with it as an answer.

For the uninitiated: Facebook gives ton of preparation material and tells upfront the kind of questions they'll ask they just focus on few things. Moreover, in Product interviews, there isn't right or wrong answer.

Anyway, this guy started making funny expressions which put my morale down and I stood my ground with losing my cool. I managed to get all my answers right and the key points the look into a candidate. It went decent. Yet the interviewers attitude was something I did not like.

Interview 2: the lady was really kind and warm. Very accommodating and easy person to deal with. It went amazingly well.

I have two observations I want to share with you all.

1. I hate what Facebook does. Lizardberg is awful human being. But I absolutely liked HOW they are doing things, at least from an interview stand point. They even had mock sessions by their PMs and upfront told how to prepare and how to answer.

2. While it seems to be a 5 star experience, I found them to function mechanically. No small talk, no human connection (ironic to their mission), no conversational flow of the interview (again something that they kept saying a zillion times in all their material). They came, formally introduced themselves, and had a checklist kind of attitude, and left.

I now await for the feedback.

In the next hour, I had Booking.com first round.

Amazing people. Warm friendly experience. Treated me as a human. Heard me. Made me feel part of the conversation rather than someone just being judged.

It went 1000x better than Facebook.

I await the feedback from them as well.

I don't know what's gonna happen but one thing for sure, the kind of expectations Facebook set for their interviews, was nowhere close to the reality. It was awful.

180° was for Booking.com

Guess the saying stands true, expectations always lead to disappointment.

Finally I feel de-stressed and my Diwali vacation starts AFTER Diwali ended. Or rather just a regular weekend.

2021 has been terribly awful year for me. Hope this shitty year ends soon.

The whole javascript / java thing (which i suppose is an easy mistake to make to the uninitiated ).

The bright side is, it functions as a good litmus test.

Nope, too young.

Though some smaller kids than me DID come and ask for advice on how to start learning and I told them that they have an entire internet to learn from, there are guides online, and everything that stands between them and success is their DESIRE to learn computer science. And if they really do want to learn CS - really stick to it along the years and try to get as much head start as they possibly can.

I learned in my limited experience in software development (for the uninitiated, I am 16, started coding at 12), that you must want to learn it DEEP DOWN, because if solving problems is not your cup of tea and you don’t like thinking big, then GTFO lol.

The uninitiated may think that Windows Server 2000 is great, unknowing that it refers to the year.

So we do not have an amazing internet speed. Can you imagine the dread we feel in the office when a new xcode version needs to be used to have apps be accepted by apple again. For those uninitiated: update all ios devices. Update unity to work eith newest xcode. Update to newest xcode, update mac to newest osx to actually be able to update xcode. It takes FOREVER. If this meets you at 8am, you are not building today. You are done.

It's pouring cats and dogs in Mumbai since a week. For the uninitiated, these are regular monsoon rains for the costal city.

And some motherfucker stole my umbrella from the office.

Thankfully when I left, rains had halted and I was able to commute home without getting wet.

Tomorrow when the fucker gets it back, I am gonna make them stand in rain for an hour.

To all the masochists who spent hours debugging misspellings:

1. Learn your tools
2. Learn good practice

Every IDE should point out when you're not using a variable you've initiated or using an uninitiated variable as well as at least highlight, if not simply list, every occurrence of the variable under your cursor and let you find all references or even display the number of references next to a variable at all times, and finally, every IDE should autocomplete for you so when it doesn't you know you've messed up. Good IDE makes all the easy mistakes hard and all of the hard tasks easy. Including running tests. If you don't know how to configure your IDE to do all these things take time and learn it. If you still can't figure it out, replace your IDE maybe...?

Also use the debugger. Preferably one that nicely integrates with your IDE. If you don't, check point 1.

Also write tests and *run them*.

Also if your misspellings tend to consist of a missing `s` at the end of a plural noun just call it `entityCollection` instead of `entities`. And read up on more good programming practices and naming conventions.

!RANT

Oh, the SORROW that is JEST! 😡

Endless days have been swallowed by the abyss in my quest to configure Jest with TypeScript and ECMAScript modules instead of CommonJS. Triumph seemed within my grasp until - BAM! - suddenly the tool forgets what "import" or "export" means. And the kicker? On the CI, it still runs like nothing’s amiss!

Allow me to elucidate for the uninitiated: Jest is supposed to be a testing safeguard, a protective barrier insulating devs from the errors of their peers, ensuring a smooth, uninterrupted coding experience.

But OH, how the tables have turned when the very shield becomes the sword, stabbing me with countless, infuriating errors birthed from Jest’s own design decisions!

The audacity to reinvent the whole module loading process just to facilitate module mocking is mind-boggling! Imagine constructing an entirely new ecosystem just to allow people to pretend modules are something they're not. This is not just overkill; it's a preposterous reinvention of a wheel that insists on being a pentagon!

Sure, if devs want to globally expose their variables, entwining everything in a static context, so be it. BUT, why should we, who walk the righteous path of dependency injection, be subjugated to this configured chaos?!

My blood boils as the jestering Jest thrusts upon me a fragile, perpetually breaking system, punishing ME for its determination to support whole module mocking! A technique, mind you, that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, because, you know, DEPENDENCY INJECTION!

Where are the alternatives, you ask? Drowned in the abyss, it seems! Why can’t we embrace snapshots and all the delectable integrations WITHOUT being dragged through this module-mocking mire? Can’t module mocking just be a friendly sidekick, an OPTIONAL add-on, rather than the cruel dictator forcing its agenda upon our code?

Punish those clinging to their static contexts, their global variables – NOT those of us advocating for cleaner, more stable practices!

It’s high time we decouple the goodness of Jest from its built-in bad practices. Must we continue to dance with the devil to delight in the depth of Jest’s capabilities?

WHY, Jest, WHY?! 😭

Having to write a 3 page proposal to request "additional time" so you can write unit tests before and during development, explaining why it isn't a waste of time. 😩

#Suphle Rant 2: Michael's obduration

For the uninitiated, Suphle is a PHP framework I built. This is the 2nd installment in my rants on here about it.

Some backstory: A friend and I go back ~5 years. Let's call him Michael. He was CTO of the company we worked at. After his emigration, they seem to have taught him some new stack and he needed somewhere to practise it on. That stack was Spring Boot and Angular. He and his pals convinced product owner at our workplace to rebuild the project (after 2+ years of active development) from scratch using these new techs. One thing led to the other, and I left the place after some months.

Fast forward a year later, dude hits me up to broach an incoming gig he wants us to collab on. Asks where I'm at now, and I reply I took the time off to build Suphle. Told him it's done already and it contains features from Spring, Rust, Nest and Rails; basically, I fixed everything they claimed makes PHP nonviable for enterprise software, added features from those frameworks that would attract a neutral party. Dude didn't even give me audience. I only asked him to look at the repo's readme to see what it does. That's faster than reading the tests (since the docs are still in progress). He stopped responding.

He's only the second person who has contacted me for a gig since I left. Both former colleagues. Both think lowly of PHP, ended up losing my best shot at earning a nickel while away from employed labour. It definitely feels like shooting myself in the foot.

I should take up his offer, get some extra money to stay afloat until Suphle's release. But he's adamant I use Spring. Even though Laravel is the ghetto, I would grudgingly return to it than spend another part of my life fighting to get the most basic functionality up and running without a migraine in Spring. This is a framework without an official documentation. You either have to rely on baeldung or mushroom blogs. Then I have to put up with mongodb (or nosql, in short).

I want to build a project I'm confident and proud about delivering, one certified by automated tests for it, something with an architecture I've studied extensively before arriving at. Somewhere to apply all the research that was brainstormed before this iteration of Suphle was built.
I want autonomy, not to argue over things I'm sure about. He denied me this when we worked together. I may not mind swallowing them for the money, but a return to amateur mode in Spring is something I hope I never get to experience soon

So, I'm wondering: if his reaction reflects the general impression PHP has among developers globally, it means I've built a castle on a sinking ship. If someone who can vouch for me as a professional would prefer not to have anything to do with PHP despite my reassurance it'll be difficult to convince others within and beyond that there could be a more equipped alternative to their staple tool. Reminds me of the time the orchestra played to their deaths while the titanic sank