Yesterday: Senior dev messages out a screenshot of someone using an extension method I wrote (he didn’t know I wrote it)..

SeniorDev: “OMG…that has to be the stupidest thing I ever saw.”
Me: “Stupid? Why?”
SeniorDev: “Why are they having to check the value from the database to see if it’s DBNull and if it is, return null. The database value is already null. So stupid.”
Me: “DBNull is not null, it has a value. When you call the .ToString, it returns an empty string.”
SeniorDev: ”No it doesn’t, it returns null.”
<oh no he didn’t….the smack down begins>
Me: “Really? Are you sure?”
SeniorDev: “Yes! And if the developer bothered to write any unit tests, he would have known.”
Me: “Unit tests? Why do you assume there aren’t any unit tests? Did you look?”
<at this moment, couple other devs take off their head phones and turn around>
SeniorDev:”Well…uh…I just assumed there aren’t because this is an obvious use case. If there was a test, it would have failed.”
Me: “Well, let’s take a look..”
<open up the test project…navigate to the specific use case>
Me: “Yep, there it is. DBNull.Value.ToString does not return a Null value.”
SeniorDev: “Huh? Must be a new feature of C#. Anyway, if the developers wrote their code correctly, they wouldn’t have to use those extension methods. It’s a mess.”
<trying really hard not drop the F-Bomb or two>
Me: “Couple of years ago the DBAs changed the data access standard so any nullable values would always default to null. So no empty strings, zeros, negative values to indicate a non-value. Downside was now the developers couldn’t assume the value returned the expected data type. What they ended up writing was a lot of code to check the value if it was DBNull. Lots of variations of ‘if …’ , ternary operators, some creative lamda expressions, which led to unexpected behavior in the user interface. Developers blamed the DBAs, DBAs blamed the developers. Remember, Tom and DBA-Sam almost got into a fist fight over it.”
SeniorDev: “Oh…yea…but that’s a management problem, not a programming problem.”
Me: “Probably, but since the developers starting using the extension methods, bug tickets related to mis-matched data has nearly disappeared. When was the last time you saw DBA-Sam complain about the developers?”
SeniorDev: “I guess not for a while, but it’s still no excuse.”
Me: “Excuse? Excuse for what?”
<couple of awkward seconds of silence>
SeniorDev: “Hey, did you guys see the video of the guy punching the kangaroo? It’s hilarious…here, check this out.. ”

Pin shoulders the mat…1 2 3….I win.

When you thought you oversimplified the user interface but it's still too confusing for the user...

User interface: 5/10
User experience: 10/10

Oh, man, I just realized I haven't ranted one of my best stories on here!

So, here goes!

A few years back the company I work for was contacted by an older client regarding a new project.

The guy was now pitching to build the website for the Parliament of another country (not gonna name it, NDAs and stuff), and was planning on outsourcing the development, as he had no team and he was only aiming on taking care of the client service/project management side of the project.

Out of principle (and also to preserve our mental integrity), we have purposely avoided working with government bodies of any kind, in any country, but he was a friend of our CEO and pleaded until we singed on board.

Now, the project itself was way bigger than we expected, as the wanted more of an internal CRM, centralized document archive, event management, internal planning, multiple interfaced, role based access restricted monster of an administration interface, complete with regular user website, also packed with all kind of features, dashboards and so on.

Long story short, a lot bigger than what we were expecting based on the initial brief.

The development period was hell. New features were coming in on a weekly basis. Already implemented functionality was constantly being changed or redefined. No requests we ever made about clarifications and/or materials or information were ever answered on time.

They also somehow bullied the guy that brought us the project into also including the data migration from the old website into the new one we were building and we somehow ended up having to extract meaningful, formatted, sanitized content parsing static HTML files and connecting them to download-able files (almost every page in the old website had files available to download) we needed to also include in a sane way.

Now, don't think the files were simple URL paths we can trace to a folder/file path, oh no!!! The links were some form of hash combination that had to be exploded and tested against some king of database relationship tables that only had hashed indexes relating to other tables, that also only had hashed indexes relating to some other tables that kept a database of the website pages HTML file naming. So what we had to do is identify the files based on a combination of hashed indexes and re-hashed HTML file names that in the end would give us a filename for a real file that we had to then search for inside a list of over 20 folders not related to one another.

So we did this. Created a script that processed the hell out of over 10000 HTML files, database entries and files and re-indexed and re-named all this shit into a meaningful database of sane data and well organized files.

So, with this we were nearing the finish line for the project, which by now exceeded the estimated time by over to times.

We test everything, retest it all again for good measure, pack everything up for deployment, simulate on a staging environment, give the final client access to the staging version, get them to accept that all requirements are met, finish writing the documentation for the codebase, write detailed deployment procedure, include some automation and testing tools also for good measure, recommend production setup, hardware specs, software versions, server side optimization like caching, load balancing and all that we could think would ever be useful, all with more documentation and instructions.

As the project was built on PHP/MySQL (as requested), we recommended a Linux environment for production. Oh, I forgot to tell you that over the development period they kept asking us to also include steps for Windows procedures along with our regular documentation. Was a bit strange, but we added it in there just so we can finish and close the damn project.

So, we send them all the above and go get drunk as fuck in celebration of getting rid of them once and for all...

Next day: hung over, I get to the office, open my laptop and see on new email. I only had the one new mail, so I open it to see what it's about.

Lo and behold! The fuckers over in the other country that called themselves "IT guys", and were the ones making all the changes and additions to our requirements, were not capable enough to follow step by step instructions in order to deploy the project on their servers!!!

[Continues in the comments]

A wild Darwin Award nominee appears.

Background: Admins report that a legacy nightly update process isn't working. Ticket actually states problem is obviously in "the codes."

Scene: Meeting with about 20 people to triage the issue (blamestorming)

"Senior" Admin: "update process not working, the file is not present"
Moi: "which file?"
SAdmin: "file that is in ticket, EPN-1003"
Moi: "..." *grumbles, plans murder, opens ticket*
...
Moi: "The config dotfile is missing?"
SAdmin: "Yes, file no there. Can you fix?"
Moi: "Engineers don't have access to the production system. Please share your screen"
SAdmin: "ok"
*time passes, screen appears*
Moi: "ls the configuration dir"
SAdmin: *fails in bash* > ls

*computer prints*
> ls
_.legacyjobrc

Moi: *sees issues, blood pressure rises* "Please run list all long"
SAdmin: *fails in bash, again* > ls ?
Moi: *shakes* "ls -la"
SAdmin: *shonorable mention* > ls -la

*computer prints*
> ls -la
total 1300
drwxrwxrwx- 18 SAdmin {Today} -- _.legacyjobrc

Moi: "Why did you rename the config file?"
SAdmin: "Nothing changed"
Moi: "... are you sure?"
SAdmin: "No, changed nothing."
Moi: "Is the job running as your account for some reason?"
SAdmin: "No, job is root"
Moi: *shares screenshot of previous ls* This suggests your account was likely used to rename the dotfile, did you share your account with anyone?
SAdmin: "No, I rename file because could not see"
Moi: *heavy seething* so, just to make sure I understand, you renamed a dotfile because you couldn't see it in the terminal with ls?
SAdmin: "No, I rename file because it was not visible, now is visible"
Moi: "and then you filed a ticket because the application stopped working after you renamed the configuration file? You didn't think there might be a correlation between those two things?"
SAdmin: "yes, it no work"
Interjecting Director: "How did no one catch this? Why were there no checks, and why is there no user interface to configure this application? When I was writing applications I cared about quality"
Moi: *heavy seething*
IDjit: "Well? Anyone? How are we going to fix this"
Moi: "The administrative team will need to rename the file back to its original name"
IDjit: "can't the engineering team do this?!"
Moi: "We could, but it's corporate policy that we have no access to those environments"
IDjit: "Ok, what caused this issue in the first place? How did it get this way?!"

TFW you think you've hit the bottom of idiocy barrel, and the director says, "hold my mango lassi."

In a user-interface design meeting over a regulatory compliance implementation:
User: “We’ll need to input a city.”
Dev: “Should we validate that city against the state, zip code, and country?”
User: “You are going to make me enter all that data? Ugh…then make it a drop-down. I select the city and the state, zip code auto-fill. I don’t want to make a mistake typing any of that data in.”
Me: “I don’t think a drop-down of every city in the US is feasible.”
Manage: “Why? There cannot be that many. Drop-down is fine. What about the button? We have a few icons to choose from…”
Me: “Uh..yea…there are thousands of cities in the US. Way too much data to for anyone to realistically scroll through”
Dev: “They won’t have to scroll, I’ll filter the list when they start typing.”
Me: “That’s not really the issue and if they are typing the city anyway, just let them type it in.”
User: “What if I mistype Ch1cago? We could inadvertently be out of compliance. The system should never open the company up for federal lawsuits”
Me: “If we’re hiring individuals responsible for legal compliance who can’t spell Chicago, we should be sued by the federal government. We should validate the data the best we can, but it is ultimately your department’s responsibility for data accuracy.”
Manager: “Now now…it’s all our responsibility. What is wrong with a few thousand item drop-down?”
Me: “Um, memory, network bandwidth, database storage, who maintains this list of cities? A lot of time and resources could be saved by simply paying attention.”
Manager: “Memory? Well, memory is cheap. If the workstation needs more memory, we’ll add more”
Dev: “Creating a drop-down is easy and selecting thousands of rows from the database should be fast enough. If the selection is slow, I’ll put it in a thread.”
DBA: “Table won’t be that big and won’t take up much disk space. We’ll need to setup stored procedures, and data import jobs from somewhere to maintain the data. New cities, name changes, ect. ”
Manager: “And if the network starts becoming too slow, we’ll have the Networking dept. open up the valves.”
Me: “Am I the only one seeing all the moving parts we’re introducing just to keep someone from misspelling ‘Chicago’? I’ll admit I’m wrong or maybe I’m not looking at the problem correctly. The point of redesigning the compliance system is to make it simpler, not more complex.”
Manager: “I’m missing the point to why we’re still talking about this. Decision has been made. Drop-down of all cities in the US. Moving on to the button’s icon ..”
Me: “Where is the list of cities going to come from?”
<few seconds of silence>
Dev: “Post office I guess.”
Me: “You guess?…OK…Who is going to manage this list of cities? The manager responsible for regulations?”
User: “Thousands of cities? Oh no …no one is our area has time for that. The system should do it”
Me: “OK, the system. That falls on the DBA. Are you going to be responsible for keeping the data accurate? What is going to audit the cities to make sure the names are properly named and associated with the correct state?”
DBA: “Uh..I don’t know…um…I can set up a job to run every night”
Me: “A job to do what? Validate the data against what?”
Manager: “Do you have a point? No one said it would be easy and all of those details can be answered later.”
Me: “Almost done, and this should be easy. How many cities do we currently have to maintain compliance?”
User: “Maybe 4 or 5. Not many. Regulations are mostly on a state level.”
Me: “When was the last time we created a new city compliance?”
User: “Maybe, 8 years ago. It was before I started.”
Me: “So we’re creating all this complexity for data that, realistically, probably won’t ever change?”
User: “Oh crap, you’re right. What the hell was I thinking…Scratch the drop-down idea. I doubt we’re have a new city regulation anytime soon and how hard is it to type in a city?”
Manager: “OK, are we done wasting everyone’s time on this? No drop-down of cities...next …Let’s get back to the button’s icon …”

Simplicity 1, complexity 0.

Please stop recommending arch. For real. Stop!

Let's back up. I'm an arch user. Have been for years. I love arch! Like hardcore! But for real, cut it out.

Either they didn't ask and you're being obnoxious or they probably asked "what's a good distro to learn?" Or "Ubuntu holds my hand too much, I want something more consoley" either way, arch is not the answer. Arch is a distro for us stuck up types who like spending all day fixing dependency errors, changing our WM every other week, debating the merits of X vs wayland, and acting better than everyone else.

But here's the thing: I found arch because I wanted something that I could compulsively configure and get really in the weeds. I think most arch users feel that way to some degree. You kinda have to if you want to not be miserable. But many Linux users aren't like that. And that's fine! Let them use mint, or Debian. So they never change their DE. Cinnamon is a great interface! Gnome 2 is totally fine! There's literally nothing wrong with being content with sane defaults and not manually installing every package, and having scheduled releases from a stable source.

Do you tell 7th graders "if you really want to get better at algebra, you should try calculus. You really gain a deep knowledge of math!" No! They will get there when they are good and ready! Or not. It's not a beginner distro. In fact (controversial opinion ahead) it's pretty shitty at being a distro. I have used arch for years! But I don't recommend it to anyone. Because if you want to configure a box for literally 100s of hours (it's never really over is it?), Then you aren't asking anyone about distro recommendations. You've tried them all. You've heard of arch. You been to /r/unixporn.

Stop acting better than everyone else and stop telling people it's better than <other distro here>. It's not. It's different. Very different. And it's not for everyone.

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it doesn’t work.

Idea for devRant for April 1st:
User opens devRant. Greeted with the message: "devRant has changed the UI to make it more suitable for developers. From now on, the complete devRant interface is going to be command line. Read the man pages to get started."
User greeted with:
$devRantUser >

Interviewer: So are you familiar with our company and what we do?

Dev: I looked at your website, looks like you build tools for managing restaurants.

Interviewer: No. That’s not even close.

Dev: ?

Interviewer: What we do is create an ecosystem of integrated data centres all orchestrated for immediate stakeholder utilization.

Dev: But the product itself…. it’s a user interface for tracking inventory. Of like…. burgers…. and bottles of wine.

Interviewer: It’s not a product! It’s a data……habitat!!

Dev: …

Dev: So does that make your users animals?

Interviewer: 😡. Unfortunately it looks like you do not see our vision and would not be a good fit for this role.

Dev: Agreed.

Customer: "Why doesn't the user interface have a night mode?"
Me: It wasn't in the requirements, it also doesn't have bouncing pink elephants, do you want me to add those in as well?

Larry Tesler, a computer scientist who created the terms "cut," "copy," and "paste," has passed away at the age of 74 (17 Feb 2020).

In 1973, Tesler took a job at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where he worked until 1980. Xerox PARC is famously known for developing the mouse-driven graphical user interface and during his time at the lab Tesler worked with Tim Mott to create a word processor called Gypsy that is best known for coining the terms "cut," "copy," and "paste".

In addition to "cut," "copy," and "paste" terminologies, Tesler was also an advocate for an approach to UI design known as modeless computing. It ensures that user actions remain consistent throughout an operating system's various functions and apps. When they've opened a word processor, for instance, users now just automatically assume that hitting any of the alphanumeric keys on their keyboard will result in that character showing up on-screen at the cursor's insertion point. But there was a time when word processors could be switched between multiple modes where typing on the keyboard would either add characters to a document or alternately allow functional commands to be entered.

Well.. I'm a front end developer and this quote is my favourite.

"A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good. "

GUI user: "How can you work from such a basic text interface like that terminal?"
Me: "How can you work with all those stupid buttons that more often than not can't do jack shit?"

Being a Powerline user, I do think that design matters a lot. But so does usability (I don't want my programs to take half a minute to load their bloated UI's) and the ability to use every feature that this or that piece of software has in its command line arguments but not necessarily as a GUI option.

Oh my word, shut up everyone about the ESC key. In interface design do you keep something around that 1% of your user base uses, or do you make something better? It's not even gone. It's on the touch bar for fricks sake.

And while we're talking about it, stop calling Apple so innovative. Innovation at Apple died with Steve Jobs. "We developed this awesome new iPad Pro!" it's just a bigger iPad with the same stupid limitations of all iPads. If you want a real portable work tablet, go buy a Surface. "We added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro!" some manufacturers of Windows laptops have had that thing for years!

😰

# Need review about user interface.
// Its a social media application.
// Following screenshot is the Feed page.
// Inspired by Vero.

"A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good. " - Martin LeBlanc

The state of operating systems in 2024.

Windows - has a user interface that changes with every update so Microsoft can push ads even though it costs $200

Mac - an unusable interface designed solely for consuming media anchored to hardware that costs 4x what it should

Linux - absolute freedom to do everything you want so long as you don't want to play games, connect to Wifi, or listen to audio

I'm just going to go be a beet farmer in the 1600s

Legacy code.

Honestly though, this is some of the better legacy code I've worked with at this company. It's a nifty alert system wherein you can trigger sending messages to subscribers of that alert via whatever means (phone/email) they've entered.

I'll save you the technical analysis of its internals, but suffice to say it's actually pretty nice, with good separation of concerns, internal logic hidden away, dead-simple public interface, etc. documentation is kinda crap, but it exists (!), so that's a nice change.

but.

For some unknown and bloody bizarre reason, the thing breaks when a user wants both sms AND email notifications. Either by themselves work totally fine, but both together? nonono. Email alerts give ArgumentErrors, so something internal isn't correct, and SMS alerts complain about uninitialized Twilio::Error constants.

but.
they both work fine otherwise?

also, the two notification preferences aren't stored on the same object anywhere. if a user wants both, the user creates two AlertContact objects with different info, and when performed, the Alert basically iterates over these and does its thing for each, so there is no knowledge shared between them. totally should work the same regardless.

idfgi.

ALSO.
AND THIS PART REALLY PISSES ME OFF.

WHEN THERE'S AN ERROR, THIS THING DOESN'T LOG IT. IT STRINGIFIES THE ERROR OBJECT (basically just extracting the message) AND INSERTS THAT INTO THE DATABASE INSTEAD. WHAT THE CRAP.

So, I don't get a stack trace, line number, or anything. just the basic error message. instead of my alert text. because of course that makes sense and totally helps debugging.

aklsjfak;sldfj.
legacy code.

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.

I love how Microsoft updated the user interface for editing the PATH variable in windows. Now it is possible to see all entries in a table, before there was just one textfield with many entries seperated by semicolons (I know the update is already some month old now, but still happy)

My own text mmorpg and it's selfmade Chat system! <3

Yeah it's barebones and has some flaws, but its the first project I set an worked through with a very pleasing result ^^

It's a CLI-Style interface with a command and chat mode, multiple rooms, user descriptions etc.

Some day I want to improve it even further, bring much more functionality in the mix, but first I would have to reinforce the base/core of the program ^^

I bought an internet radio from pioneer...
Unfortunately, the remote control has a small delay. So I thought, maybe there's an app to control the radio. But after downloading the app could not connect. During a network scan several services appeared. You are able to update the firmware via an unprotected web interface which makes me sad. But that's not the best thing yet. You can also connect to the device via the telnet port. Guess which user you are...

"The aim is to develop highly robust data streams so we have the flexibility to build and evolve the user interface without having to change code in the API"

Oh, is that all you need?

Sad story:
User : Hey , this interface seems quite nice
Me : Yeah, well I’m still working on it ; I still haven’t managed to workaround the data limit of the views so for the time limit I’ve set it to a couple of days

Few moments later

User : Why does it give me that it can’t connect to the data?
Me : what did you do ?
User : I tried viewing the last year of entries and compare it with this one

Few comas later

100476 errors generated
False cert authorization
Port closed
Server down
DDOS on its way

"There are people who care about the user interface (UI); I can’t do UI to save my life. I mean if I was stranded on an island and the only way to get off that island was to make a pretty UI, I’d die there." -- Linus Torvalds

That is my life in summary, I can't do UI. I love doing backend projects, even when I use bootstrap, I come up with the ugliest looking UI ever. I think developers should be comfortable with whatever they enjoy doing and not forced to do things they are not very good at. (Hello PMs) *side eye*

I have a serious bone to pick with internal software that is made "to work" but neglects a user-friendly UI. Damn tired of 1990s looking software that was developed in the 2010s. Internal employees deserve a great looking and intuitive user interface.

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, its not that good.

A joke is like a user interface: no matter how idiot-proof, somebody will always not get it.

Just did my first JobIntentService on Android. Hoo, boy.

The problem: I need to send a network request.

The issue: Android.

Of course, you can't do network on the main thread. That's silly in any application. Android really does try to punish you, though. The Android lifecycle can really fuck you over here. Imagine a long-running network operation, like 15 seconds. Plenty of time for the user to do something silly, like rotate the screen.

If you opened up a good old new Thread from Java, you'd get a crash because of a screen rotation. Same thing with Android's AsyncTask, which is the top answer on StackOverflow. AsyncTask is made for things that will take no longer than a few seconds (less than 5!). Network, especially cell network, can take longer.

So the solution? Create a JobIntentService class. It's a service, it will run in the background. You need to register it in your Android Manifest and ask for a new permission (wake lock). You need to implement another class for the receiver, and then you need to go to your activity and implement the receiver interface you just wrote.

Just. For. A. Network. Request!

And as far as I'm aware, this isn't even that bad considering the rest of Android's bullshit.

What a headache!

Am I wrong. Creating a nice User interface is a never ending story...

If you're making a game, dont start by thinking about your inventory system. Start by thinking about what you want your player to be able to DO, the cost of those things, and the constraints.

For example, ages of empires didnt have you worrying about unit equipment at all. every villager could do almost any job. while survival games, especially survival horror, like the recent RE remake, severly restrict inventory and stack sizes to make resource managenent more important.

Games like Fallout had list based inventories because lists are cheap, and it allowed a tighter interaction loop. players would loot. go into inventory. close container, onto the next container, keeping the player in the exploration loop longer. neoscav did the opposite *for effect* harkening back to diablo, but taken to the nth degree: *everything*, actions, combat, exploration, character design, all based on an inventory-style grid.
while games like rimworld and dwarf fortress have your inventory represented by zones where items are physically *stored* in stacks on the ground, extending the concept of base management to resource management through physical layout and build optimization.

its important to think about what kind of actions you want players to be able to do, and the kinds of challenges and constraints you want on them at each point of the game and each mechanic they engage in.

other examples, though terrible, include fortnite, where the limitations of competitive play had inventory limited to a resource system and a hotbar. while earlier battle royale and sandboxs games like rust and battleground induced tension by combining loot mechanics and grid inventories with the constant danger of competing players, allowing them to have richer inventory systems at the risk of frusterating players who frequently died while managing their inventory. meanwhile in overwatch, notice how the HUD changes to best represent the abilities of each character.

all in all it is better to stop thinking of inventory systems as a means to an end, and instead as the end representation of desired mechanics, or artificially selected representations for particular effects.

this applies likewise to ui and ux in general. because the design of interface is fundementally about the design of *interactions*, and what you want to enable a user or customer to *do* will ultimately drive those interactions.

A User Interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it then its not that good :).

A coworker of mine was asked to make a utility C# app to help with our internal testing. The idea was that the app would collect data and display the results.

He decided that it was very important that the app have a command line interface. He's spent far more time building the app from scratch for the command line than he would have if he'd used C#'s built-in GUI utilities.

Today was our demo day and he shows an internal command-line app in 2017 built in C#. I asked about the GUI and he said that the command line functionality was more important. I suggested that it was maybe less user-friendly and he proceeded to explain to me how "non-technical" people might prefer a GUI, but clearly any serious developer would just want a command line app.

I feel like, in one fell swoop, he trivialized my suggestion, didn't address any of the data visualization needs, and suggested I wasn't a "real developer". Am I right to feel a little outraged by this?

Must nearly every recently-made piece of software be terrible?

Firefox runs terribly slowly on a four-core 1.6GHz processor when given eight (8) gigabytes of RAM. Discord's user interface is awfully slow and uses unnecessary animations. Google's stuff is just falling apart; a toaster notification regarding MRO stock was recently pushed such that some markup elements of this notification were visible in the notification, the download links which are generated by Google Drive have sometimes returned error 404, and Google's software is overall sluggish and somewhat unstable. Today, an Android phone failed to update the Google Drive application... and failed to return a meaningful error message. Comprehensive manuals appear to be increasingly often not provided. Microsoft began to digest Windows after Windows XP was released.

Laziness is not virtuous.

For all computer programs, a computer program should be written such that this computer program performs well on reasonably terrible hardware... and kept simple. The UNIX philosophy is woefully underappreciated.

I was just writing a long rant about how my rant style changed, and how I could fix anything that annoys me in a heartbeat by just putting my mind to implementing a change. Then YouTube once again paused the synth mix that was playing on my laptop in the background, with that stupid "Video paused. Continue watching?" pop-up. I even installed an add-on for it in Firefox to make it automatically click that away. I guess that YouTube did yet another bullshit update to break that, for "totally legitimate user interface improvements" or whatever. Youtube-dl faces similar challenges all the time, and it's definitely not alone in that either. I also had issues with that on Facebook when I wanted to develop on top of that, where the UI changes every other day and the API even changes every other week. And as far as backwards compatibility goes, our way or the highway!

So I did the whole "replace and move on" type of thing. I use youtube-dl often now to get my content off YouTube into a media player that doesn't fuck me over for stupid reasons like "ad fraud" (I use an ad blocker you twats, what ads am I gonna fraud against), or "battery savings" (the damn laptop is plugged in and fully topped up for fucks sake, and you do this crap even on desktop computers). Gee I wonder why creators are moving on to Floatplane and Nebula nowadays, and why people like yours truly use "highly illegal" youtube-dl. Oh and thank you for putting me in Saudi Arabia again. Pinnacle of data mining, machine learning and other such wank could not do GeoIP. for a server that used to be in a datacenter in Italy for years, and recently has been moved to another hosting provider in Germany. It's about as unchanging and static, and as easy to geolocate as you can possibly get. But hey, kill off another Google+ when?

Like seriously, yes I'm taking your Foobar challenges and you may very well be the company I end up working for. But if anything it feels like there's a shitton of stuff to fix. And the challenges themselves still using Python 2.7 honestly feels like the seldom seen tip of the iceberg.

I think that two criterias are important:

- don't block my productivity
- author should have his userbase in mind

1) Some simple anti examples:

- Windows popping up a big fat blue screen screaming for updates. Like... Go suck some donkey balls you stupid shit that's totally irritating you arsehole.
- Graphical tools having no UI concept. E.g. Adobes PDF reader - which was minimalized in it's UI and it became just unbearable pain. When the concept is to castrate the user in it's abilities and call the concept intuitive, it's not a concept it's shit. Other examples are e.g. GEdit - which was severely massacred in Gnome 3 if I remember correctly (never touched Gnome ever again. I was really put off because their concept just alienated me)
- Having an UI concept but no consistency. Eg. looking at a lot of large web apps, especially Atlassian software.
Too many times I had e.g. a simple HTML form. In menu 1 you could use enter. In menu 2 Enter does not work. in another menu Enter works, but it doesn't submit the form it instead submits the whole page... Which can end in clusterfuck.
Yaaayyyy.
- Keyboard usage not possible at all.
It becomes a sad majority.... Pressing tab, not switching between form fields. Looking for keyboard shortcuts, not finding any. Yes, it's a graphical interface. But the charm of 16 bit interfaces (YES. I'm praising DOS interfaces) was that once you memorized the necessary keyboard strokes... You were faster than lightning. Ever seen e.g. a good pharmacist, receptionist or warehouse clerk... most of the software is completely based on short keyboard strokes, eg. for a receptionist at a doctor for the ICD code / pharmaceutical search et cetera.
- don't poop rainbows. I mean it.
I love colors. When they make sense. but when I use some software, e.g. netdata, I think an epilepsy warning would be fair. Too. Many. Neon. Colors. -.-

2) It should be obvious... But it's become a burden.

E.g. when asked for a release as there were some fixes... Don't point to the install from master script. Maybe you like it rolling release style - but don't enforce it please. It's hard to use SHA256 hash as a version number and shortening the hash might be a bad idea.

Don't start experiments. If it works - don't throw everything over board without good reasons. E.g. my previous example of GEdit: Turning a valuable text editor into a minimalistic unusable piece of crap and calling it a genius idea for the sake of simplicity... Nope. You murdered a successful product.
Gnome 3 felt like a complete experiment and judging from the last years of changes in the news it was an rather unsuccessful one... As they gave up quite a few of their ideas.

When doing design stuff or other big changes make it a community event or at least put a poll up on the github page. Even If it's an small user base, listen to them instead of just randomly fucking them over.
--
One of my favorite projects is a texteditor called Kate from KDE.

It has a ton of features, could even be seen as a small IDE. The reason I love it because one of the original authors still cares for his creation and ... It never failed me. I use Kate since over 20 years now I think... Oo

Another example is the git cli. It's simple and yet powerful. git add -i is e.g. a thing I really really really love. (memorize the keyboard shortcuts and you'll chunk up large commits faster than flash.

Curl. Yes. The (http) download tool. It's author still cares. It's another tool I use since 20 years. And it has given me a deep insight of how HTTP worked, new protocols and again. It never failed me. It is such a fucking versatile thing. TLS debugging / performance measurements / what the frigging fuck is going on here. Take curl. Find it out.

My worst enemies....

Git based clients. I just hate them. Mostly because they fill the niche of explaining things (good) but completely nuke the learning of git (very bad). You can do any git action without understanding what you do and even worse... They encourage bad workflows.
I've seen great devs completely fucking up git and crying because they had really no fucking clue what git actually does. The UI lead them on the worst and darkest path imaginable. :(

Atlassian products. On the one hand... They're not total shit. But the mass of bugs and the complete lack of interest of Atlassian towards their customers and the cloud movement.... Ouch. Just ouch.

I had to deal with a lot of completely borked up instances and could trace it back to a bug tracking entry / atlassian, 2 - 3 years old with the comment: vote for this, we'll work on a Bugfix. Go fuck yourself you pisswads.

Microsoft Office / Windows. Oh boy.
I could fill entire days of monologues.
It's bad, hmkay?

XEN.
This is not bad.
This is more like kill it before it lays eggs.
The deeper I got into XEN, the more I wanted to lay in a bathtub full of acid to scrub of the feelings of shame... How could anyone call this good?!?????

Oh boy, this is gonna be good:

TL;DR: Digital bailiffs are vulnerable as fuck

So, apparently some debt has come back haunting me, it's a somewhat hefty clai and for the average employee this means a lot, it means a lot to me as well but currently things are looking better so i can pay it jsut like that. However, and this is where it's gonna get good:

The Bailiff sent their first contact by mail, on my company address instead of my personal one (its's important since the debt is on a personal record, not company's) but okay, whatever. So they send me a copy of their court appeal, claiming that "according to our data, you are debtor of this debt". with a URL to their portal with a USERNAME and a PASSWORD in cleartext to the message.
Okay, i thought we were passed sending creds in plaintext to people and use tokenized URL's for initiating a login (siilar to email verification links) but okay! Let's pretend we're a dumbfuck average joe sweating already from the bailiff claims and sweating already by attempting to use the computer for something useful instead of just social media junk, vidya and porn.

So i click on the link (of course with noscript and network graph enabled and general security precautions) and UHOH, already a first red flag: The link redirects to a plain http site with NOT username and password: But other fields called OGM and dossiernumer AND it requires you to fill in your age???
Filling in the received username and password obviously does not work and when inspecting the page... oh boy!

This is a clusterfuck of javascript files that do horrible things, i'm no expert in frontend but nothing from the homebrewn stuff i inspect seems to be proper coding... Okay... Anyways, we keep pretending we're dumbasses and let's move on.

I ask for the seemingly "new" credentials and i receive new credentials again, no tokenized URL. okay.

Now Once i log in i get a horrible looking screen still made in the 90's or early 2000's which just contains: the claimaint, a pie chart in big red for amount unpaid, a box which allows you to write an - i suspect unsanitized - text block input field and... NO DATA! The bailiff STILL cannot show what the documents are as evidence for the claim!

Now we stop being the pretending dumbassery and inspect what's going on: A 'customer portal' that does not redirect to a secure webpage, credentials in plaintext and not even working, and the portal seems to have various calls to various domains i hardly seem to think they can be associated with bailiff operations, but more marketing and such... The portal does not show any of the - required by law - data supporting the claim, and it contains nothing in the user interface showing as such.
The portal is being developed by some company claiming to be "specialized in bailiff software" and oh boy oh boy..they're fucked because...

The GDPR requirements.. .they comply to none of them. And there is no way to request support nor to file a complaint nor to request access to the actual data. No DPO, no dedicated email addresses, nothing.

But this is really the ham: The amount on their portal as claimed debt is completely different from the one they came for today, for the sae benefactor! In Belgium, this is considered illegal and is reason enough to completely make the claim void. the siple reason is that it's unjust for the debtor to assess which amount he has to pay, and obviously bailiffs want to make the people pay the highest amount.

So, i sent the bailiff a business proposal to hire me as an expert to tackle these issues and even sent him a commercial bonus of a reduction of my consultancy fees with the amount of the bailiff claim! Not being sneery or angry, but a polite constructive proposal (which will be entirely to my benefit)

So, basically what i want to say is, when life gives you lemons, use your brain and start making lemonade, and with the rest create fertilizer and whatnot and sent it to the lemonthrower, and make him drink it and tell to you it was "yummy yummy i got my own lemons in my tummy"

So, instead of ranting and being angry and such... i simply sent an email to the bailiff, pointing out various issues (the ones

Amazone user interface is too old

I'm following an elective on User Centered Design, and he just showed a screenshot of a Command Line Interface and called it "linux"

This fucking illiterate asshole...

Fuck Homestead.

For the fortune of you not to know, Homestead is a sad attempt at a Wix-like build your own website platform.

However, Homestead is the most unusable piece of shit platform that humans have ever had the misery of interacting with

Lets start off with the login page. The login page is small, unresponsive and half the time just deletes your input whenever you press submit.

It's important to note that unless you're running MacOS or Windows, Homestead will send to an error page on which there's a link to contact support, but pressing that link requires MacOS or Windows.

Fine, I'll fiddle around with my user-agent, and we'll be in soon enough. But now we come to the joy that is the website editor itself.

The website editor is clunky, hard to use, and has enough menus and submenus and sidebars to make the Jira UI shake with fear. Each interface option label is either ridiculously ambiguous or just straight up wrong. The built-in HTML editor doesn't support HTML5, in the name of "browser compatibility".

CSS? Pah! Who needs it! Our psuedo-90s skeuomorphic ugly-as-shit prebuilt styles will work just fine. Responsive design? Bullshit! Nobody uses a smartphone to browse the web, so why do we need to handle it?

Uploading a file? Good fucking luck buddy. There's a complicated dance among the minefield of pop-ups that ask you to confirm some shit or modify some shit and you gotta click the right option each time or else the file won't upload.

Wanna use https like 86% of the entire web and all modern websites? That's a premium feature. Fork over an extra $10 a month

Ok ok, I made it through all that. Dig through the thousands of menus to find the 'publish changes' button, and sigh with relief.

Open up a private browser tab to check my work, and nope. The site looks like shit, even by Homestead's standards. That's because Homestead claims to be a WYSIWYG editor, but it's a damn lie. The site looks like shit, so it's time do dive back into the hellhole that is this damn site editor.

And rinse and repeat. Deal with the shitty editor, publish, and pray it doesn't look like garbage. Be too scared to test on other devices because this flaming pile of dog shit pretending to be a website is bad enough on my device.

Two more months, then I'm done with this client. Someone get me a drink

Carmack: "Hi, I am Carmack, your AI artist today. I create high definition 3D interactive world by listening to your verbal request or brain-computer interface."

User: "Hey Carmack, create me an ideal cyberpunk world."

Carmack: "World created. Here are the main resources used to synthesize your defintion of 'Cyberpunk'. Done. Is that what you want?"

User: "Hey Carmack, can you make it less similar to Coruscant, but more vintage, and more like Blade runner more like Africa, mixing super Mario galaxy. Also add a mansion similar to this link and the hot girl in this link. Make her ideal. Make the world ten times bigger than GTA V"

Carmack: "Alright, bro. The definition of "ideal" has been data driven by the norm on internet.
Done. Is this what you want?"

user: "Yes, test it in VR"

Carmack: "Enjoy."

That f**king moment when you have integrated an Awesome feature in your app in less than an hour and then spent a whole day trying to properly resize a vector drawable so UI looks nice.... because user just care about interface!!!

A friend has a small business and asked me if I could make him a small program. So why not, experience for me and I can help a friend out. (This started in ~mid 2016)

Started out as a WPF desktop application with many weird bugs and slow interface, into crashing the database on AWS (could not connect, could not get a backup). It was just hell and I kind of gave up on fixing it.

I always talked to him and said "yeah, I will do something better soon", but I was procrastinating and kept pushing it away from me. Then one day I said "f*ck it - lets go" and started coding on 2.0:

- WebApp with a complete new architecture (which I learned in the past few months)
- User authentication (JWT)
- ASP.NET Core Backend for web api
- Angular 4 Frontend w/ bootstrap
- Coded in like a week with 3-5 hours each day

Deployed around 6 months ago and he never had a complain. When I visited him I asked "how is your application doing?" - "great. it just works!".

My once most hated project turned into the most successful project in just a few months.

Whelp. I started making a very simple website with a single-page design, which I intended to use for managing my own personal knowledge on a particular subject matter, with some basic categorization features and a simple rich text editor for entering data. Partly as an exercise in web development, and partly due to not being happy with existing options out there. All was going well...

...and then feature creep happened. Now I have implemented support for multiple users with different access levels; user profiles; encrypted login system (and encrypted cookies that contain no sensitive data lol) and session handling according to (perceived) best practices; secure password recovery; user-management interface for admins; public, private and group-based sections with multiple categories and posts in each category that can be sorted by sort order value or drag and drop; custom user-created groups where they can give other users access to their sections; notifications; context menus for everything; post & user flagging system, moderation queue and support system; post revisions with comparison between different revisions; support for mobile devices and touch/swipe gestures to open/close menus or navigate between posts; easily extendible css themes with two different dark themes and one ugly as heck light theme; lazy loading of images in posts that won't load until you actually open them; auto-saving of posts in case of browser crash or accidental navigation away from page; plus various other small stuff like syntax highlighting for code, internal post linking, favouriting of posts, free-text filter, no-javascript mode, invitation system, secure (yeah right) image uploading, post-locking...

On my TODO-list: Comment and/or upvote system, spoiler tag, GDPR compliance (if I ever launch it haha), data-limits, a simple user action log for admins/moderators, overall improved security measures, refactor various controllers, clean up the code...

It STILL uses a single-page design, and the amount of feature requests (and bugs) added to my Trello board increases exponentially with every passing week. No other living person has seen the website yet, and at the pace I'm going, humanity will have gone through at least one major extinction event before I consider it "done" enough to show anyone.

help

So true ... B(

"Clients care about the user interface, not the code."

Devs: "Our app has an intuitive user interface..."

Users:

I bring you all another gem from my computer science course, this time from my OOP class.

The first assignment we made for this class was a simple CLI shop, where you would have basically three main classes:

- A Product class that you extend to create different types of products.
- A Cart class that manages a list of products (basically an ArrayList<Product>) and has some useful methods
- A CLI class to display a simple interface to the user and call methods on a Cart.

Basic OOP stuff, so far so good.

Then for our second assignment the teacher asked us to make Cart a generic class, where you would say Cart<Bagel> and you would only be able to put bagels in it. This makes absolutely no fucking sense, this is not a good use case for generic types since

1) you would never limit your customer's cart to one type of product at compile time.
2) in Cart, you have to cast the generic type to Product to extract any information from the product, like when getting product prices to calculate the total price, so might as well use a fucking ArrayList<Product>

I'm just saying what he's asking us to do has (to our fictional shop's business logic) absolutely no advantage over subtyping.

Also, why the fuck teach generic constraints when you can just tell your students "just cast T to Product", right?

Like fucking hell, couldn't you spend like 10min to come up with a decent assignment that actually teaches generic types the right way? ffs

And just so no one can say "but wut simple assignment would you give to teach students generic types?", here's a simple and much, much better alternative: implementing your own ArrayList. Done. Can't get much better than that, it's a legit use case and teaches you the basics.

Sorry man, you're a great person, you really are, but you suck as a teacher.

Smartphone camera applications need to show this notification whenever a user records a video vertically.
Otherwise, many smartphone users will never learn to drop the vertical filming habit and to film horizontally.
This is a major benefit of dedicated cameras and camcorders: their user interface is aligned for being held horizontally, so people do so habitually. This is not the case with mobile phones.

Press Close to close... Cancel to keep user interface open... Huh!?

Starting to feel like shit about my new job. Every task my boss gives me I return with a "sorry it can't be done" for one reason or another. At first it was because user interface testing is a nightmare, then it was because the API postman tests he wanted is for endpoints we haven't exposed so it can't be done and the automated login on postman and retrieval of cookie information can't be done through postman because it requires rendering the site in a browser. I feel worthless to the company but I also feel he keeps making up tasks for me without checking if they're actually useful to us or even possible first, rather than let me touch any of the real code.. I don't know if I should just quit tbh.

When I was in 11th class, my school got a new setup for the school PCs. Instead of just resetting them every time they are shut down (to a state in which it contained a virus, great) and having shared files on a network drive (where everyone could delete anything), they used iServ. Apparently many schools started using that around that time, I heard many bad things about it, not only from my school.
Since school is sh*t and I had nothing better to do in computer class (they never taught us anything new anyway), I experimented with it. My main target was the storage limit. Logins on the school PCs were made with domain accounts, which also logged you in with the iServ account, then the user folder was synchronised with the iServ server. The storage limit there was given as 200MB or something of that order. To have some dummy files, I downloaded every program from portableapps.com, that was an easy way to get a lot of data without much manual effort. Then I copied that folder, which was located on the desktop, and pasted it onto the desktop. Then I took all of that and duplicated it again. And again and again and again... I watched the amount increate, 170MB, 180, 190, 200, I got a mail saying that my storage is full, 210, 220, 230, ... It just kept filling up with absolutely zero consequences.
At some point I started using the web interface to copy the files, which had even more interesting side effects: Apparently, while the server was copying huge amounts of files to itself, nobody in the entire iServ system could log in, neither on the web interface, nor on the PCs. But I didn't notice that at first, I thought just my account was busy and of course I didn't expect it to be this badly programmed that a single copy operation could lock the entire system. I was told later, but at that point the headmaster had already called in someone from the actual police, because they thought I had hacked into whatever. He basically said "don't do again pls" and left again. In the meantime, a teacher had told me to delete the files until a certain date, but he locked my account way earlier so that I couldn't even do it.
Btw, I now own a Minecraft account of which I can never change the security questions or reset the password, because the mail address doesn't exist anymore and I have no more contact to the person who gave it to me. I got that account as a price because I made the best program in a project week about Java, which greatly showed how much the computer classes helped the students learn programming: Of the ~20 students, only one other person actually had a program at the end of the challenge and it was something like hello world. I had translated a TI Basic program for approximating fractions from decimal numbers to Java.
The big irony about sending the police to me as the 1337_h4x0r: A classmate actually tried to hack into the server. He even managed to make it send a mail from someone else's account, as far as I know. And he found a way to put a file into any account, which he shortly considered to use to put a shutdown command into autostart. But of course, I must be the great hacker.

I love software. Seriously, I love it. /s

Transmission is given a bad torrent (which, given that it's a torrent service, you'd expect it handles quite robustly) and completely fucks up. Like, really badly. It doesn't respond to RPC anymore, systemd has to resort to sending it a SIGKILL to get it off the process tree, and the web interface.. yeah. Nothing.

It doesn't log by default, so fine I'll add that to the systemd unit and restart it with debugging options enabled.

# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl daemon-reexec

Turns out that /var/log/transmission.log can't be written to by my Transmission user. Well shit. Change that to /home/condor/transmission.log.

# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl daemon-reexec
# systemctl restart transmission-daemon

*blood starts to reach its boiling point*

Still logs in the wrong fucking location. Systemd, I told you to log over there. I did everything I could to make you steaming pile of shit reload that fucking config. What's the fucking problem!?

*about 15 minutes of fighting systemd*
Finally! It spits out a log in the right location! Thank you Transmission and systemd for finally doing your fucking jobs. So a bad torrent it is, hmm...

*removes torrent from .config/transmission/torrents*
Transmission: *still fucking shits itself on that ostensibly removed torrent*

That's it. BEGONE!!!

Oh and don't get me started on the fact that apparently a service needs some 400MB of memory. Channeling your inner Chrome Transmission?

I download YouTube videos just to watch them on a clean user interface without distracting advertisements and suggested videos.

"When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex." - Randall Munroe

We really take for granted just how much ergonomics goes into the average user interface that has matured.

Like knowing that when I doubleclick a keyword, I don't want the comma as well to be selected.

Or that when I use a command in the terminal and I press tab I want a list of a specific element type.

Everything has gotten so much better since the 90s !

What a great idea to put this button in this corner, Atlassian!

Avoid ACPICA if at all possible. It's one garbage tier cluster fuck of bad design, horrible documentation and downright misleading and wrong code

It's meant to consist of an ASL compiler, disassembler, debugger, dumper, various user space utitilies and a kernel resident OSPM implementation *if* you can figure out what belongs to what. Even just compiling this pile of trash is a mystery in itself. Think you need the source files in source/common? EEEEH, wrong. Well, at least partially since most of them seem to be for the user space stuff..? Other ones *are* needed on the other hand. At least the disassembler and/or debugger and/or dumper components seem to reference them. Not that I could figure out how to compile those anyways. The real path to your goal seems to be to ignore a seemingly arbitrary subset of source and header files until your linker stops complaining

There's also a bunch of configuration defines, some of which *you* define, some defined *for* you, based on again others. Of course most of them do stupid shit. Enabling the debugger automatically enables debug logging. Enabling the disassembler force enables debug allocation tracking... What?

The code itself isn't of much help either. Looking in "os_specific/service_layers" you find what looks to be reference implementations of acpica functions in certain os' like windows and unix. Of course I had a look because AcpiOsReadMemory is supposed to read physical memory and I don't know how I would even implement that. But hey, osunixxf.c (xf for interface... of course) should tell me. I'll let you see for yourself in the attached image. Apparently it does fuck all and just returns AE_OK. No error, no logging, no nothing. Just ok. As you can imagine, AcpiOsWriteMemory doesn't do much more either.
...okay so maybe physical memory accesses aren't actually used and these functions are some sort of relic from past times? Nope! They are absolutely necessary for doing low level device interaction. WTF. So finally I went to the linux source and checked how *they* implemented them, and just as I thought, these functions are anything but no-ops...
...So for what fucking reason do these stupid interface implementations even exist but to purposefully mislead you?? They aren't used for fucking anything! As far as I know Windows doesn't even *use* ACPICA and Linux have their own fork with working implementations... They just sit there, just to tell you how to NOT do it

So that's some of my thoughts about ACPICA. Note that I haven't even used it as a library yet, I just got it to compile and link and it already fucked with me this much.
There's also so much more I didn't mention like that you *have* to modify the acpica source in order to get your own platform header working (else #error) eventhough the docs explicitely instruct you not too but you get the point

Don't use ACPICA if you don't have to. Save your sanity for something that's worth it

I have been awake for 19 hours designing and integrating a client web project user interface. It took me 7 plus minutes to type this rant....
Front end ie easy

So about two months ago in my consulting firm I was asked to replace a colleague on a project (node and Angular). The project is only a few months old but it’s already a total clusterfuck. DB is very poorly designed. It’s supposed to be a relational database but there’s not a trace of a foreign key or any key for that matter and I’ve seen joins like tableA.name = tableB.description (seriously, that’s your relation??). The code is a mess with entire blocks of code copied from another project and many parts of the code aren’t even used. He didn’t even bother renaming variables so they would make sense in the context they were shamelessly thrown into. The code is at best poorly typed if not typed at all.

During our dailies I sometimes express my frustration with my other colleagues as I very politely allude to my predecessor’s code as being hard to work with. (They are all “good friends" with him). I always get the same response from my colleagues: "yeah but you’ve gotta understand Billybob was under a lot of pressure. The user stories were not well defined. He didn’t have time to do a proper job". That type of response just makes me boil inside.

Because you think I have time to deal with this shit? You don’t think I’m working with the same client and his user stories that are barely intelligible? How long does it take to write type definitions for parameters going into a function? That’s right, 30 seconds at most? Maybe a minute if it’s a more elaborate object? How much time do you think you’ll save yourself with a properly typed function or better yet an interface? Hard to tell but certainly A LOT MORE than those 30 seconds you lost (no, the 30 seconds you INVESTED) in writing that interface!!!

FUCK people with their excuses! Never tell me you don’t have time to do a proper job! You’ve wasted HOURS of my time just because you were too fucking lazy to type your functions, too lazy to put just a little more thought into designing your tables, too lazy to rename a variable so that it’s name actually makes sense where it’s being used. It’s not because you were short on time. You’re just lazy!
FUCK!!!!!!

ZNC shenanigans yesterday...

So, yesterday in the midst a massive heat wave I went ahead, booze in hand, to install myself an IRC bouncer called ZNC. All goes well, it gets its own little container, VPN connection, own user, yada yada yada.. a nice configuration system-wise.

But then comes ZNC. Installed it a few times actually, and failed a fair few times too. Apparently Chrome and Firefox block port 6697 for ZNC's web interface outright. Firefox allows you to override it manually, Chrome flat out refuses to do anything with it. Thank you for this amazing level of protection Google. I didn't notice a thing. Thank you so much for treating me like a goddamn user. You know Google, it felt a lot like those plastic nightmares in electronics, ultrasonic welding, gluing shit in (oh that reminds me of the Nexus 6P, but let's not go there).. Google, you are amazing. Best billion dollar company I've ever seen. Anyway.

So I installed ZNC, moved the client to bouncer connection to port 8080 eventually, and it somewhat worked. Though apparently ZNC in its infinite wisdom does both web interface and IRC itself on the same port. How they do it, no idea. But somehow they do.

And now comes the good part.. configuration of this complete and utter piece of shit, ZNC. So I added my Freenode username, password, yada yada yada.. turns out that ZNC in its infinite wisdom puts the password on the stdout. Reminded me a lot about my ISP sending me my password via postal mail. You know, it's one thing that your application knows the plaintext password, but it's something else entirely to openly share that you do. If anything it tells them that something is seriously wrong but fuck! You don't put passwords on the goddamn stdout!

But it doesn't end there. The default configuration it did for Freenode was a server password. Now, you can usually use 3 ways to authenticate, each with their advantages and disadvantages. These are server password, SASL and NickServ. SASL is widely regarded to be the best option and if it's supported by the IRC server, that's what everyone should use. Server password and NickServ are pretty much fallback.

So, plaintext password, default server password instead of SASL, what else.. oh, yeah. ZNC would be a server, right. Something that runs pretty much forever, 24/7. So you'd probably expect there to be a systemd unit for it... Except, nope, there isn't. The ZNC project recommends that you launch it from the crontab. Let that sink in for a moment.. the fucking crontab. For initializing services. My whole life as a sysadmin was a lie. Cron is now an init system.

Fortunately that's about all I recall to be wrong with this thing. But there's a few things that I really want to tell any greenhorn developers out there... Always look at best practices. Never take shortcuts. The right way is going to be the best way 99% of the time. That way you don't have to go back and fix it. Do your app modularly so that a fix can be done quickly and easily. Store passwords securely and if you can't, let the user know and offer alternatives. Don't put it on the stdout. Always assume that your users will go with default options when in doubt. I love tweaking but defaults should always be sane ones.

One more thing that's mostly a jab. The ZNC software is hosted on a .in domain, which would.. quite honestly.. explain a lot. Is India becoming the next Chinese manufacturers for software? Except that in India the internet access is not restricted despite their civilization perhaps not being fully ready for it yet. India, develop and develop properly. It will take a while but you'll get there. But please don't put atrocities like this into the world. Lastly, I know it's hard and I've been there with my own distribution project too. Accept feedback. It's rough, but it is valuable. Listen to the people that criticize your project.

This utilization shit is stupid! Seriously man what the hell! Yes yes it's an important number yes yes I don't even care. You want me to increase my utilization and at the same time be wary of the budget, which are unrealistically tight to begin with. It's freaking impossible! Who comes up with this shit?

You know what? Half of this shit ain't even my fault! A project was set for 200 hours and a guy wasted half of that trying to figure out just HOW TO CONNECT TO THE API! Like the guy only wrote 30 lines in 100 HOURS! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME! THEN YOU PASS OVER THE PROJECT TO ME AND SAY YOU HAVE ONLY 100 HOURS LEFT TO CONNECT TO THE API, GET THE DATA (WHICH BTW DOESNT EVEN EXIST), PARSE IT, AND THEN CREATE GRAPHS AND A FULLY FUNCTIONAL SOFTWARE, WITH A USER INTERFACE THAT SHOULD RUN AS AN EXECUTABLE!!!! ME? ALONE?

MAN FUCK YOU!

Hey girl are you a graphical user interface because GU and I should get together sometime

"I believe that a good user interface is carefully targeted towards its audience, with the right mixture of simplicity, elegance and innovation." - Robert Peloschek

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.

can we just all take a second to appreciate unsplash's user interface

Man I fucking love debugging Windows applications... OpenVPN dun shit the bed because the management interface is locked (on the Windows client I presume?) - so poke that error message into the Gargler along with "openvpn windows"... First result, OpenVPN forums. Excellent. ... Some dickhead in the forums: "this is the wrong forum, this is for Access-Server users, and you the user MUST have terminated the process".

Come fucking on! If only I could replace this fucking device with a proper OS already (and no I can't). Windows itself being a clusterfuck is one thing but the goddamn support around it. Atrocious!

I am missing GitHub former User interface 😭😢.

I just noticed: improvised jazz lyrics are to music what lorem ipsum is to user interface design.

UX-wise, it should be absolutely forbidden to alter anything that is being overlapped by the cursor.

One example is the (mostly) terrible search in Windows 10. I have a tendency to use the keywords "fire" for either Firefox or Firefox Developer Edition. Sometimes, Windows will give me Developer Edition as the top result, which is fine. But as I I'm about to click the icon, Windows will find the other Firefox and place it as the top result.

This is known as terrible UX. The user interface is working against the end-user.

Fast Q:

What client with user interface for MySql are you guys using ?

My org (of which i'm basically CTO) has this administrative tool that a team uses to combat spam and scams, which is quite the problem for us.. the tool was written like 9 years ago, by my predecessor, very quick & dirty and unaesthetic and without input from those who would use it as far as interface or UX... it got modded a little a few years later by a kind of amateur coder who was at the time on the spam control team, and now there's this new maybe slightly less amateur coder guy on the team who has written this amateur tool that scrapes data off our site and massages it and stores it on his own server and then provides a better interface, or so they say.... this is all because for a couple of years people didnt want to "bother me" with a request to improve our internal tool, they thought I was "too busy" doing other things... so instead this outsider has built this stupid thing that lives on his own personal server and so now we have these problems to do with performance, security, privacy for user info, etc etc... someone please shoot me....

How do you get over the bad times? I keep having to work with shitty legacy systems that were written in perl and flash in the 90s, but my boss keeps telling me "No" on redoing some of the bigger stuff even though it is really needed. I mean, that is your goal here, right? Rebuilding this POS? FFS you still stored passwords in plain text twoo weeks ago! But no, you's rather dig around in Perl than upset some random user because his fucking interface looks different.

But then I also have to work with another system that I could redo in Cake/Laravel in two weeks (it's literally getting and writing data to one table, so two views and user auth), and the previous dev just... made a huge mess. I mean, why would you need to post data asynchronously when it's this one stupid form ? Just do a regular form submit? And the system is really not suitable for extending, because everything is in the database, EVERYTHING! Like, html form inputs? So to add a simple input to the template I have to create a new input type in the types table and then add that to the form structure table? Only to have the input checked by fucking regex? REGEX! Why? Seriously, this is not some high end CMS that needs this level of code reusability No. This is a simple fucking form.

And I can't get it to work. No documentation of course. No comments, either. All of this makes me feel like I'm just the shittiest dev ever. I feel dumb, and useless. Haven't turned on my private PC in weeks because I see no reason to work on any of my own stuff.

I used to have a job, working with Magento and Wordpress. And yeah, it was horrible, it was chaos, but it was fun and I was great at it. I bent that motherfucking system to fit my needs. People respected my opinion, they were convinced I could program this and that, and I proved them right. Did I make mistakes? Hell yeah. Did I give up? Fuck no!

But now, I just feel like I can't even write a simple fucking form any more. I'm just so close to giving up on development as a whole, even though I love it so much.

Shadow DOMs – the WORST invention in web standard history.

As a user script and user style developer, the shadow DOM has been a massive headache. Shitow DOMs block custom CSS, blocks parts of the page from being saved, and blocks user scripts and browser extensions. Shitow DOMs are an utter nightmare, especially closed ones.

And now, Google Gerrit's entire user interface is shadowdoomed. The only way to save pages locally is to scrape the JSON from the developer tools, but that is not possible on mobile.

TIL

TUI means Text-based User Interface
I always thought it meant Terminal User Interface

Malwares are nasty applications, that can spy on you, use your computer as an attacker or encrypt your files and hold them on ransom.

The reason that malware exists, is because how the file system works. On Windows, everything can access everything. Of course, there are security measures, like needing administrator permissions to edit/delete a file, but they are exploitable.

If the malware is not using an exploit, nothing is there to stop a user from unknowingly clicking the yes button, when an application requests admin rights.

If we want to stop viruses, in the first place, we need to create a new file-sharing system.

Imagine, that every app has a partition, and only that app can access it.

Currently, when you download a Word document, you would go ahead, start up Word, go into the Downloads folder and open the file.

In the new file-sharing system, you would need to click "Send file to Word" in your browser, and the browser would create a copy of the file in a transfer-partition. Then, it would signal to Word, saying "Hey! Here's a file that I sent to you, copy it to your partition please!". After that, Word just copies the file to its own partition, signals "Ok! I'm done!", and then the browser deletes the file from the shared partition.

A little change in the interface, but a huge change in security.

The permission system would be a better UAC. The best way I can describe it is when you install an app on Android. It shows what permission the app wants, and you could choose to install it, or not to.

Replace "install" with "grant" and that's what I imagined.

Of course, there would be blacklisted permissions, that only kernel-level processes have access to, like accessing all of the partitions, modifying applications, etc.

What do you think?

My first job as a '"dev"' (I really need some kind of super quotation mark for this).
I was young and too stupid too know how stupid I really was, I jobbed at a small recruiting firm and one day my boss complained about her database system and that she needed to hire a student to remake it. Suffering from the problem to be too incompetent to even recognise I'm incompetent I obviously offered my services as a python wizard I mean I could write a program that saves fibonacci numbers to a csv file, how much more could there possibly be? Fast forward two months and I proudly presented a GUI written in VB (it had an wysiwyg GUI editor) that was loosely frankensteined onto a bunch of together copy pasted python scripts running on a Windows Server. No web interface just accessible via vnc. It was slow, sluggish and soo ugly but it worked and did exactly what she wanted it to do. Sure the database was a bunch of csv files but non the less, to say it in pm, it resolved the user story. I quit shortly after because of her tendency to not pay the last bill after something was done (and tbh i deserved it) but she never removed my account from the server. So I copied my "magnus opus" from there... Let's just say whenever I look back at it I feel ashamed and yet it serves as a reminder to never be content with how good you are.

I've got a user who keeps asking for weekly updates on a project I'm on and my pm is supposed to interface with them and give them the status. But my pm comes back to me like "so everything is good right?"

When we just talked last week about how it's not and I still have work stoppages. I have status updates written in our ticket tracker for him and he has tons of emails explaining the issue but he always forgets what the status is anyway!

Jesus, having to keep reminding someone of something when the information is right out there for them to grab quickly and easily is bloody annoying. He just neglects this one project! I'd cut out the middleman but I need him because I don't know enough about business rules to make decisions or ignore concerns that crop up in my planning!

our team are responsible to build backend restful API for other team to look up data in DB.
the consumer team just sit beside us.
the interface definition came from our pm in a different time zone. btw he did not have any programming background.
and he insisted that just build what he said and ignore the noise from the consumer team. because each interface change should be considered as new features and need him to prioritize and create user story and he will review the schema with the pm from consumer team and so called architecture who did not coding real shit for years.
we ended up with building shit code not useable by our real consumer.
yes he do manage to keep our team busy building worthless shit and accomplishmented lots of jira items to show we have value to change a useless shit into very hard to use shit

One responsibility of our team is general code QA for the entire dev department, DevMgr walks in our area yesterday…
DevMgr: “Has anyone reviewed the new WPF threaded model execution code?”
- everyone on the team responds “no”
DevMgr: “Can we get a review on that code ASAP? If it works as well as the developer said, it’s going to solve the lock up problems users are experiencing and automatic logging of errors.”
DevA: “Well, no amount of code is going to stop users from performing bad searches locking up the user-interface. That code is just a band-aid around the real problem. If the developers would write unit tests first …”
- rant about 5 minutes on unit testing that had nothing to do with why the DevMgr was here
DevB: “Yea, the code probably isn’t written to handle threads correctly. All the threading they’ve done so far is –bleep-”
DevMgr: “Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. Get me the results of the code review and if they don’t have unit tests, delete it from source control and let the developer know it’s not up to our standards.”
OMFG!! You have not even seen the code!
OK, DevA ..what the –bleep- does unit testing have anything to do with the user interface! You know the DevMgr is too dim to understand the separation of concerns. Shut your pompous ‘know-it-all’ mouth.
DevB…what the –bleep- have ever done in WPF? You manage the source control and haven’t written any C# in two years and never, ever written code for any significant project. Take that “handle threads correctly” and shove it up your –bleep-. Pompous –bleep-hole. Go back and watch youtube and read your twitter while the grown-ups get the work done.

> "A flat design UI reduces cognitive load!"

Oh really, Google? If that is your aim, then how come you increase cognitive load by making pull-to-refresh mandatory on your mobile web browser, which constantly has to be avoided by the user?

Dashlane is the worst password manager to use. I was trying to set up categories and since it does not have a simple selection box change feature I had to grab almost 100 at a time to change. Unfortunately after changing them I realized I had a duplicate and I clicked on that one to delete it. The system was still selecting all 100 (it uses a slightly gray color to show what is selected rather than a clear check box type feature) and it deleted all 100 passwords. It never asked me a question or gave me an undo feature. The interface is very difficult to handle.

Further, to set up a second user and grant them access to a large number of passwords (in this case my wife I wanted to give her access to 128 passwords), you must click them one at a time and then when you set it up they cannot get their own master password. Very cumbersome.

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.

"A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good. " - Martin LeBlanc

"The goal is not to make your user interface as realistic as possible. The goal is to add those details which help users identify what an element is, and how to interact with it, and to add no more than those details. " - Lukas Mathis

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it then it is not that good.

Junior Software Developer Job( $37k-$42k USD)

-1 year experience
- J2EE, Javascript, HTML, XML, SQL
- object oriented design and implementation
- management of relational and non-relational such as Oracle, PostGreSQL and Cassandra
- Lifecycle and Agile methods
- Familiarity with the Eclipse development environment and with tools such as Hibernate, JMS, ,TomCat/Gemini/Jetty, OSGi.
• UNIX skills, including Bash or other scripting language
• Experience installing and configuring software packages
• ActiveMQ troubleshooting/knowledge
• Experience in scientific data processing and analytical science in general
• Automated testing tools and procedures, including JUnit testing, Selenium, etc.
• Experience in interfacing with scientific instrumentation, potentially over IP networks
• Familiarity with modern web development, user interface and other ever-evolving front-end
technologies, such as React, TypeScript, Material, Jest, etc.

I am betting they don't get many people applying.

I cannot remember having seen a more unethical and pushy user interface than the one of viagogo.

I'm a frustrated to close the entire tab within the first 10 seconds. It's a sad story on on how it tries to instill a sense of urgency to BOOK NOW!

100 people are looking RIGHT NOW at the YOUR offer! Stop thinking, act fast! BUY IT, YOU FOOL OR IT IS GONE!

Here, see all those other options are already sold out m( Oh look, that option over there? Just sold out in this very instant you lazy ass.

I have seen something similar on booking.com and airbnb, yet this egregious implementation truly gets my blood boiling and sets a new low.

I'll take my business elsewhere.

If you develop a web shop, treat your customers as actual adults. Let them breathe. Let them make an informed decision.

If you need to rush them, your business model is broken.

If my employer would ask me to develop something like that, I'd escalate hard. If that wouldn't suffice, I'd reject implementing that anti-feature and would look for a new job out of principle.

good commit message:
"make improvements to the user interface."
bad commit message:
"made improvements to the user interface"
no, you didn't. it's not deployed yet. your merely SUGGESTING improvements at this point. that's like walking into an interview telling the secretary you already got the job. flushing before you wipe. eating the pizza when it's still frozen. you are way too assumptive about this commit you've just made actually making it to production.
unless you are already on production? well, in that case, your commit message was incorrect. let me amend it for you:
"HOT FIX ALL TEH BUGS!!!11111!!11"

The gnome-screenshot tool has a white flashing effect. Every single pixel of the screen is at the brightest colour for the fraction of a second.

Did the developers of gnome-screenshot really think users want a camera flash in their face whenever they hit the "print screen" button?

That flashing effect hurts users' eyes, especially if a white flash appears on a dark-theme user interface.

Formerly, gnome-screenshot had a short black-out, which was tolerable. Thankfully, mate-screenshot has no shutter effect at all. These flashing effects are not helpful in the slightest, just purely annoying.

"When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex." - Randall Munroe

I'm making an interface where I have a few columns, much like Trello. In each column there are cards. I want the user to be able to drag these cards an place them in any column, in any order they want. The problem is that at the same time they should be able to sort each column on date or whatever. Do you guys have any ideas on how to deal with the clash between custom sorting and auto sorting? Like what happens when you're in date sorting, and you change the order of the cards?

The implementation/programming is no problem. I just need help to figure out the interaction logic behind it.

Thanks... :)

Hey there poweramp user, do you like the simple interface that you've been using for the past few years?

Do you like your high-res lockscreen album art?

FUCK YOU. We are changing all of that with our newest beta update and we're not even gonna have an option to use the old interface.

Also enjoy this nice zoomed in 100x100 album art in your lockscreen

(I actually like the new design but it god damn bothers me that the album art res is so shit)

Without a doubt it has to be the internal company search engine/file finding tool @thewamz and I wrote.

The company has a wide UNC network with files scattered all over the place and they need a way to keep track of where the files get moved to (they can and do get moved). The original tool was written in Java/Tomcat and didn't use any frameworks or utilities beyond custom written ones, no orms, and the SQL was just raw strings. The program didn't take into account that files might be moved or deleted so it never removed anything from the database, it just kept adding files and never removing them.

It however never stores files itself, just links to files elsewhere on the UNC network.

It took six months to get it into what might be a stable beta or release candidate state. The user interface is good, very simple and intuitive, the whole thing was rewritten in python/django, there were issues with utf 8 (and mysql not fully supporting utf 8 in its own utf 8 mode), we added a regex search mode (which was sorely lacking), the search used to take up to fifteen minutes however we sped it up to less than a minute (worst case when a user simply puts "^$" as the regex search). It has a multi threaded design which does some checks to ensure it doesn't spawn too many threads and get stuck in constant Gil switching. Still some bugs to fix, like moving the processing of results returned by the server in a web worker so that the content widget doesn't lock up processing millions of search results and moving the back end to use asynchronous python might gain a performance boost. But on the whole I think the system is ready to replace the older system that all the users are frustrated with and constantly complain about.

However the annoying bit is... How to actually get the new system online, while I am responsible for the development of tools and their maintenance, I am not responsible for their initial deployment and that means I have no idea when (or even if) my new tool will even ever be released :/

Please don't use shake animations to signify errors, dear user interface designers.

The shake animation is a bad idea introduced to the UX (user experience) world by Apple in 2013 with iOS 7 and Mac OS, and is popularly used by FilePond in response to a failed upload. At some point, this animation was added to the Cinnamon desktop environment login screen in response to a wrong password.

The shake animation is not helpful at all. If anything, it is irritating and provocative.

The red "incorrect password" or "failed upload" text clarifies it well enough. There is no need for a shake animation to rub it into the user's face.

Got an idea to build a gameboy emulator with a user friendly interface but instead of use it to load ripped ROM's, I want to encourage the good old days of homebrew by building an online 'store' for apps and games but really hate the fact that it wont take off and wont bring back homebrew :-(

EDIT: I have the emulator already would just need the shell and learn how to build an online store

Has to fix a bug in our old products web interface, how did I ever put up with it. In some places it has 7 nested iframes. It is also some of the worst code I have ever seen, no user input is sanitised plus there is no structure to the code, try looking for a CDs element without going into chrome dev tools is impossible as there are 52 separate CSS files

I've ranted about this before, but here we go again:

Go Plugins.

I was racking my brains trying to figure out how one could possibly implement plugins easily in Go.

I had a look at using RPC, which requires far to much boilerplate to be realistic. I looked at using Lua, but there doesn't seem to be a straight forward way of using it. I was even about to go with using WASM (yes, WASM). But then I came across Yaegi ("Yet another elegant Go interpreter", you heard right: "interpreter"), Yaegi is also very easy to use.

There are a few issues (including some I haven't solved yet), including flexibility (multiple types of plugins), module support, etc. Fortunately, Traefik just released their plugin system which is based on Yaegi (same company), and I got to learn a few tricks from them.

Here's how module loading works: The developer vendors their dependencies and pushes them to a repo. The user downloads the repo as a zip and saves it to the plugins folder. I hash the zip, unzip it to a cache, and set the the GOPATH for the interpreter to be that extracted folder. I then load the module (which is defined by a config file in the folder), and save it for later. This is the relatively easy part.

The hard part is allowing for different types of plugins. It looks easy, but Go has a strict typing system, makes things complicated. I'm in the process of solving this problem, and so far it should go like this: Check that the plugin fits an arbitrary interface, and if it does, we're good the go. I will just have to apply the returned plugin to that interface. I don't like this method for a few reasons, but hopefully with generics it will become a bit more clean.

Imagine if socket.io's website is ugly. Having a beautiful image helps a lot, too. When I hear socket.io, I would immediately think of that clean and aesthetically pleasing site.

I was trying to make a circular buffer in C++. I was also trying to expose iterators for using the buffer with STL algorithms. I kept trying to think about how to add the functions needed to manipulate the existing internal iterators to not exceed the bounds of the buffer. Then I realized I was "too close" to the problem. There was no way I could properly control the internal iterators of the storage vector I was using. Not without giving too much power to the user of my library. So I abstracted the iterators up one level. Hid all the details of the internal iterator and made a new iterator.

The solution of abstracting the iterator was not the epiphany. The epiphany was if you are struggling with how to solve a particular problem. You keep running into problems with how to represent something, there is too much power available at a particular representation, or the object you are trying to make work just don't fit. This is when you should consider abstracting a level up. Take a higher look at the problem and simplify the interface.

Abstraction could be a number of things. Divide and conquer, hiding details, specializing an object, etc. Whatever tool is needed to make the problem more consumable to your brain.

Have idea, lay ground work, get user interface designed, find out someone already had the idea and did that, repeat.

some call
- yo bro do you have some time ?
- quick cause I'm taking a dump
- I think I have been hacked, got black screen kernel panick, linux freeze seldomly I have to reboot, no internet connexion
- save your stuff and reinstall linux
- I don't have enough stockage to backup
- Then buy one and save, probably either OS is fcked up or you have some hdd problems

Time that it will take: ~30min to reinstall whole shit
Peace duration: ~2years

Later on the same day
aunt
- I can't log into windows
- Did you change the password ?
- Yes but it does not work anymore
* looking at shit
* logs successfully. Reason: interface changed after automatic update.
* wait.
* wait some more so fucking windows fucking starts
* Desktop is ugly as fck.
* Some stupid settings messed up (like high contrast set, black theme or so)

aunt (the same)
- I can't log into my (other) laptop either
* logs
* wait more more more

Guess what: automatic updaaaates. Freezes 100%cpu

* Being a very experienced user: wait before reboot because this suckass os will probably fail to boot otherwise
* Blackscreen with a percentage: Installing updates...
* reboots
* Blackscreen with a percentage: Installing updates continuing...
* finally boot (feels like a miracle windows succeeds lol)
* still slow
aunt now sleeps
* look at running process and install programs
* sees shits like camera recognition (vendor installed), candycrush
* occasionnaly get adds

time lost: 2h
peace duration: ~3month

FFS I am a dev, not a fucking trash lover
It is already pain to fix someone os, but windows is the cream of cream

It brings no ease of use for novice user
It is so insanely slow
It has stupid settings set up by default!!!!!!!! Who FFS wants candycrush and ads
The maj are so fcking hazardous. It is 2022 pretty much the same as 15y back then. Updates take fucking eternity. And needs reboot. and are not even finished!!!

I swear I am gonna stretch my ass and install linux and any fckin other toolsuite needed so they can use Micro$$ word, which is the only fucking usecase they need windows for in the first case anyway
I SO wish this OS would die

I mean, even more than safari

It's been awhile, for the heads up I'm that good dude applied a job as MIS few months ago, knows a little bit python and the manager finds out, he told me I gotta make a Warehouse Management Software for the company in C# PLUS MIS regular work(server management, user trouble-shooting and stuff).

after I finish my Warehouse Management Software about a week ago, my manager told me which I quote:

"wpf is not enough! we gonna bring it to multi platform like a web interface can be use on employee's phone as barcode reader and do things can be done as wpf can.

aaaaand we need RFID integration for the whole system working with Identity Server on Azure.

AAAAAAND we need it online before Feb 2020."

I guess after C#,
I'm learning typescript and angular now.

oh by the way my position is MIS with MIS salary.
Does this means after all these shits. I can apply as RD my next job right?

Dear xcode,
you fckn bitch did it again. I really wanted to do some iOS development, I swear. But you are like an abusive relationship, I have this weird habit of coming back to you even though I am getting fucked in the ass in parallel.
I love Swift but I despise you xcode. Randomly fucking up my workflow, and then it is clean build folder, reset package cache, restart xcode. Again and again and again you fuck things up out of nowhere. And from time to time, you just have to install the newest version of xcode because its so fucked up its easier to download this MASSIVE asshole than to even try to fix anything if you know its just xcode again.
Yeah, fuck extensions and formatting. Just fuck humanly tolerable build time. Fuck you xcode.
I am not an experienced dev with iOS nor am I a common Mac user but this is just wrong. I feel violated and the joy of development sucked out of my soul while I try to navigate through the overloaded interface.
I am not even going into details about iOS development, its just that xcode is the gatekeeper to get me the fuck out of this miserable place that is native iOS development.
Arrivederci, suckers.

A friend who's working as a contractor for a huge client decided to rewrite their interface cause it's old and not user friendly with new tech. Fast forward the client said it's not what they asked for, he should'nt have done that and they'll not be using it. He replied: "I've done it for myself to be up to date. I found a new company here's my resignation".

Spotify for beginners: Do not jump back to the previous song, do not skip more than six songs per hour, switch to private at every start, do not take a look at the songs in your current playlist, get ready being spammed with premium "offers" (unlock user experience for cash) and enjoy the shitty user experience. But hey, atleast the user interface is beautiful.

Spotify is like "Insta-Babes". "Beautiful" but trash.

Spotted today... 😅

Random recruiter from LinkedIn sends an “opportunity” in a well stablished German company in Madrid ..

.. has three entries in requirements for jquery, associated with, and I quote “OOP, Object Programming, and other frameworks” ..

Goes on to require knowledge of “css, scss and saas”, along with “Don HTML” ..

And requests “experience with the principles of agile user interface methodologies” ..

And Angular 1 ..

How would you respond to this one!?

I actually did, corrected the mistakes, told what other mistakes were at the differences between libraries and frameworks, .. and that I don’t like Angular and I’m not interested in learning the old one at all ..

I think the USER INTERFACE is vital for the success of any software/app

So for that reason , designer need to be highly respected😂🚶🚶🚶

I love to design and implement stuffs

I always rant about Ubuntu but today I'm gonna be fair, I had a 30 seconds look at the new Windows 11 user interface: is a so fucked up guresome mess, with its center-aligned taskbar, rounded windows corners and recent docs section taking up half of the center-aligned start menu, that it makes me want to puke before the entrance of the closest Microsoft's company building. And you now what? Such building is actually not farther than 20 minutes from where I live, so I probably will.

Do average users rather tend to pay at the paywall of ransomware (like wannaCry) if the user interface offers a great experience?

Question: Anyone has any idea about localisation of applications ( Desktop, mobile )? Like how to convert the user interface text elements into local languages... etc..
Any other suggestion for localization events also welcome 😊

Ok, let's do the opposite (reference to a previous rant).
Should a frontend developer know about:
- Data structures and algorithms?
- User interface design patterns and usability?
- User experience heuristics?
- Accessibility?
- Design tools?
- How websites work on the browser after the frameworks have done their job?
- Data flow, and artifacts like user stories?

"As long as there are people, there will be user experience, and user interface designers." - Steve McGarry

Has ANYONE ever seen an example of a clean, usable LCARS-style user interface for anything practical or everyday use? It was always so cool to look at on ST:TNG but every time I see it put into practice, it falls apart. I don’t know why I want it so bad, but I do.

Who gives out an assignment with a weightage of 6 Marks in total that too for demonstrating GRAPHIC USER INTERFACE? My Cryptography Proff. that’s who.
Why are faculties such bullies considering themselves the kingpins?
😭

1) Simple, secure and powerful technology for website user interface design which will replace HTML, CSS and JS.

2) Simple and practical technology to be able to utilize HTML for all kinds of documents which will replace paper page based document formats like PDF and Word.

3) One technology for native mobile app development to rule them all. So that it's not necessary to use HTML and JS.

And now few questions for your belowed frontenders.

1. If you have complete freedom in making of a user interface, how do you settle on a single idea instead of constantly changing your code?

2. How do i make a interface that everybody will like? Are there any free recoruces avaliable on internet to educate me about it?

Incoming rant.

I have 4 years professional experience at a small shop working on a web application for property and liability insurance. The application is ASP.NET with C# as the code-behind. I have a BCS and will finish my MSIS fall 2017. I have no idea why I have the degrees. I know that when I enrolled, it seemed like they would be a nice addition to an otherwise empty resume. I was lucky enough to land my first and only development job during my sophomore year of my undergraduate program. Is this enough experience to land a new job?

I feel like I'm learning nothing at my current job. The specs that come in seem very vague to me. When asked for clarification, there is often push back, and I don't know whether that's because I don't have enough experience to parse what the client means in the two sentence spec I got or if it's because the client does not actually know what they want.

I hate my current job. My productivity is low because I spend more time trying to figure out what the client wants and analyzing an 8 year old system that has 0 documentation. I know some of you will just say, "Suck it up" at this point, but I really want another job. The only thing I like about this job is that it's 100% remote. It also pays $60k a year, so a replacement should be at least that salary.

Most postings I see require professional experience of 5 years or more, and knowledge of other frameworks. I can work on getting knowledge of the other frameworks, but will have no professional experience with them. I don't live in an area with a lot of software development jobs, and the ones I see are for non-IT organizations that want 1 person to run a distributed system from 10 or more locations. A hospital system out here wants to pay $30k a year for a guy to be both software developer for new tools as well as the helpdesk and IT support guy that's on-call for four locations in the county. I made more than that before I got into the development industry, for less work, and would rather leave than settle for something like that.

I've thought about moving to somewhere near San Francisco or San Jose, but I have my daughter to think about. I have joint custody of her, and would have to give that up in order to move out of the county.

I like programming and using it to solve problems. I like designing architectures and how all the components will interface. I like designing and normalizing databases. I like taking part in coding competitions for employers that are well-known (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitch, etc.), even though I often just place middle of the pack. When that happens, I feel like I'm an imposter in this industry.

I think I have the most fun just working on small projects for personal use. My latest is an assistant calculator for the game Transport Fever to figure out cargo throughputs per annum based on the in-game timing information. Past projects have also been small. Ones I could use in a portfolio are a sudoku solver desktop application, PC/Web game in Unity that is a 3D FPS remake of Duck Hunt that allows open world exploration but locks the camera's viewpoint for shooting events, and a building assistant for Rome II: Total War that maps out all the bonuses/perks of user-specified building combinations in provinces so users can record their long term building plans without using all their turns to see the final results.

I seem to be an unproductive, average developer who dabbles in projects here and there.

This is what I want from other Ranters. Just say something. I don't care if it is, "Suck it up and get better." It could be your tips for finding and securing a new position. It could even be empathy, if such a thing exists on the Internet. Whatever you want, just say something that will help get me thinking of what the next steps in my career should be.

Dear Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, devRant, and almost every social media site available:

Scrolling down on a phone is much less natural than scrolling sideways and having the scroll snap to the next unit of content.

Like every pictures/ gallery app. It's a lot easier to focus on one piece of content and it even shortens the duration of scroll required in many cases thanks to the snapping.

I’ve got a great idea for an app.

So, it’s like the apps that allow you to pay rent or pay power bills or you know... order things... manage things... all the user interface apps out there that we use... but the twist is... that we could make apps like those / that don’t fucking suck! What do you think? Just make things... that aren’t super shitty and useless and beyond frustrating.

Who’s in?

I bet it would even make you more money than doing a super fucked half-assed job.

When user interface elements unsolicitedly change their position, something unexpected might be clicked.

For example, the search engine list at the bottom of the Firefox suggestion box that appears when typing something into the URL bar ("This time, search with:"). When the number of suggestions changes, the height of the box changes, and since the search engine list is at the bottom, its position changes too. This could happen milliseconds before I wanted to click on one, which causes either searching for something I did not look for, or closing the URL bar.

It also causes an uncertainty whether the buttons will remain in place, causing delays until clicking.

The same happens on the image context menu for images on the Kiwi browser. It shows a preview thumbnail on top of the options in the context menu, but since the context menu opens before the thumbnail loads, the appearance of the thumbnail pushes the options down. If this happens few milliseconds before one is going to tap on something, it causes one to tap on the wrong place.

!rant

Frontend people, I need your opinion.

I will soon start building the next version of a rather large project's frontend but I am mostly a backend guy.

It is a custom made web application (PHP, Postgres) that handles all business aspects of a shipping company of about 50 people (trucks, truck free space in shipments for new packages, package tracking via gps on the truck, invoicing, reselling shipping services to other businesses, everything).

The existing frontend is using an ancient version (1.x) of the YUI framework and uses AJAX heavily to refresh the user interface. It's usable, but maintaining and extending it is getting really hard as the project grows larger and larger and more systems are integrated.

So the question is, given this use case, what JS framework do I use and what is a good resource to start learning it?

Gooood evening,

I'm working on a total remake of the user interface for my automation software, I wanna get some feedback.

Thanks in advance

An user interface is like a joke.
If you have to explain it, it’s not good.

"As long as there are people, there will be user experience, and user interface designers." - Steve McGarry

Have I said this before? The Google - everything and the Facebook - everything... is SO FUCKED. Seriously... why would anyone ever want to work somewhere with weekend-bootcamp- hackathon quality user interface? You have to be an "expert" in their exact interface of the month just to give them money.

I feel like being expected to handcode a user interface by supposed progressives is the most ass backwards idiotic tech decision with long and wide ranging consequences anyone ever farted out of the asshole god bored into their ugly faces!

Why the hell would I want to use web when I could use windows forms ?

Why is there no equivalent to the visual designer that's usuable ?

I mean I get it for more customized things

But why would I want to fuck with css when instead I could do about the same thing and store them in a settings file and point and click on a series of dropdowns and see the results as I create them ?

Why would I want to fuck around with an interface a resize destroys ?

Why would I want to mess with html tagging or tk or tcl containers when I could just drag an item into a window and update it's properties and add some fucking event handlers the stubs of which are automatically generated by a single DoubleClick??!!??

I hate it
It's slow
I want my fucking ui to be done quickly !

Am I just missing some vital tool that costs 5 grand ?

Spent a year making a revamped user interface? Add some grey, I miss Windows 3.1. Readability is just a "trendy" thing anyway.

What programming language should I use on a Raspberry Pi 3 to implement a Graphical User Interface for a kiosk where people can get insurance quotes by providing info and uploading documents? Much help will be appreciated.

If I kept track of all the hours wasted on issues due to overloads of functions called ToList() it would probably make up a sizable portion of the project budgets.

If I call ToList on a query object, it looks like I'm trying to serialize the query definition into some kind of array. That's what it *should* do with that name. Bonus if the object implements some generic enumerable interface, ToList makes it call your database, you can just toss the query into some json serializer that blocks while calling ToList for you, and people end up doing exactly this because the code turned out so much neater.

Because that's the thing. It's like people implement it because it's "neat" and the user shouldn't care about its internals. How many tears would be shed by just calling it ExecuteAsync?

"If a feature or product were legitimately easy the user would not be writing in to support about how stuck they are. Sure, some percentage of users will find questions to ask about any interface. But do you want to start the conversation by assuming the user falls into that percentage? You venture to learn much more if you assume the software is wrong, not the user." - Andrew Spittle

If modern computers have more memory but websites demand more memory, doesn't that defeat the benefit?

For example, let's assume YouTube's HTML-based user interface from 2014 needed 100 MB of RAM per tab. Now, computers might have 4 times the RAM on average, but YouTube's polymer JS-based user interface (UI) might need 400 MB per tab, a proportional increase. In fact, the browser needs to walk through a heavy 10 MB pile of JavaScript before being able to show anything on modern YouTube.

It seems like the higher demands nullify the performance benefit from the increased specifications of modern hardware. Computers get stronger but demands and workloads rise too, so performance isn't improved because some website operators feel the need to show off their "fancy" JavaScript.

"When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex." - Randall Munroe

I first try to figure out why I really want to build this and (if the project is intended that way) why someone would use it.

Then I strip the idea down to its bare minimums so I know what I should build for it to be of any value.

And then I start building until I no longer think it's worth working on the project.

For instance:

I am kind of surprised to see that in a world where cloud and apis become more and more leading, there isn't really a commonly accepted and flexible api management platform.

There are some cloud based platforms out there that can be configured using some interface but why is it like that? Surely you aren't going to deploy multiple versions of your core with different platforms right?

That's where my latest project comes in. I want to create an on-prem api management platform which you configure to work with your api during development. Then you can deploy it to any infrastructure alongside your core api.

This way you:

- are not bound to a specific cloud
- don't have to worry about security and firewalls
- get user management and rate limiting for free

I will probably create a collab for this once the platform is mature enough.

Downloaded Gitkraken in my ubuntu workspace... Like to work with GIT in a GUI interface...
Now trying how to run this GUI as a sudo user so that Gitkraken can edit files in my home directory :p

As a developer who loves to do back-end work, I pause and do some self-reflection every time I'm asked to make some user interface decisions. It's not as easy for me.

The User Interface Errors I experience on Debian, are so non senscial sometimes. I used to be a big Open Source guy over Windows, when I first started Linux. But after deep contemplation I think having monetary incentive is the main force for creating new technology in thos decade. As technology has advanced t seems like the open source community experiences 10 new errors for solving a problem. I think in the 90s atleast Linux seemed to make more gains, while this may be due to a smaller community or technology being more limited o dont know. I due think though technology abstractions seem to be more necessary these days, which saddens me.

Working on programming a user interface so a user can select a line in a graph. I have a rotated mouse area to match that of the line to be selected. This mouse area can detect when a mouse enters the area. This seems to be working well. But then I noticed it was lopsided. Entering the area from one direction was not showing entry as soon as from another direction. Then I realized that the black border of the mouse was not being used to trigger entry into the area. It is the white area of the mouse tip that triggers this. The black area is only to provide contrast so you can see the mouse.

So on a mouse, and in mouse point selection on Ubuntu, the black border of the mouse only servers to provide contrast to the controlling white area of the mouse.

🍿🍿🍿

Being able to understand and get along with almost any grafical user interface at once without reading manuals, due to knowing the intentions of the UX-designers.

Family and friends are stunned everytime, when they don't know how to do something on programs they don't know, while I often need just a few clicks to archieve it, even if I'm using the program for the first time

Hey guys!
Once again, I got a little stumped when writing one thingmajig in Python.

I am normally not a programmer (Work as sysadmin), so I don't really know all the fancy abstract ways things are done "properly", which is why I need to ask here:

I have a program, separated into parts. The "core" is a part that sets commandline argument structure (using the argparse library), loads master configuration file, sets up the main logging facility, and then proceeds to load "plugins" - python files with one or more classes that implement one specific abstract class that forces them to implement a common interface of init, run, cleanup functions.

The core then proceeds to initialize those classes, run the "run" function, and run the "cleanup" function.

If the plugin class throws a Warning, it is only logged and runtime continues. If it is anything else, the program logs it and stops.

Now, the issue is, sometimes, a user may want to continue even if a non-warning occurs.

Lets say that I am creating a user, and the user already exists. Sometimes, the program user might want to continue with further plugin execution. And what I was told was to implement specific commandline switches that force continuation of runtime despite the plugin failing.

How should I implement it? The most obvious thing is to add a specific switch for every plugin, but that is exactly what I am trying to evade. I want to have the core as abstract as possible.

Other solution I thought of is to have a file of some sort that would list extra switches to implement, then it would be up to the class to implement if it uses the switch or not (I pretty much pass the entire Namespace received from parse_args() function), but this also feels kinda hackish.

I thought about having some sort of function that the plugin could call in the core to add a new argument, but at the point that plugins start loading, the argument parser is already compiled and cannot be changed further.

Any other ideas of how to re-implement the program are also welcome! I may not do it this times, but I'd at least learn something new again.

Symfony 4:

I created a firewall with a user provider and everything was great for a year and a half.
I needed a second firewall with a different user provider for my REST API.

Being stateless, the rest api firewall didn't need the refreshUser method so I didn't bother doing anything inside but returning user (without noticing how my original class was built or the official documentation which apparently says I need to throw an exception if this isn't the right user provider for the user in the session).

I was having a problem with my main firewall after that point because I assumed it would only use the relevant user provider, but even though my API firewall only applied to a specific host/pattern, the user provider for that firewall was still being used. If it had run the supports method first, it wouldn't have done that even with my initial mistake. Frankly, I don't know why there is a supports method if it's not being utilized for this purpose...I saw supports() is used for the rememberme functionality, but seems inconsistent not to use it everywhere.

Not only should Symfony be updated to check the supports() method, but I also think it should only loop through user providers for the current applicable firewalls. Since we define a user provider per firewall, I think that would be the natural way for it to work. Otherwise why even define a user provider on the firewall if it's just going to try to use them all anyway?

Furthermore, in the case of a stateless firewall, requiring the refreshUser method via the interface seems strange.

One of the reasons why I wanted to become a software developer is because I see so many products or services taking the easy way out, at the cost of killing customer expectations. For example, I was told about JobTrack.io, which is supposed to help manage job searching by keeping track of applications and their statuses. But almost as quickly as I was told, my mind goes into automatic promise defense mode. And rightfully so, because the service turned out to be almost as monotaneous as the job search itself! Not as seamless as I'd need it to be to get started right away.

Now, maybe there's a slight chance I don't know wtf I'm talking about here. But, what's stopping this product from using an email client that runs server side, to interface with the user's main inbox, to run sentiment analysis on emails for detecting job application submissions? Such functionality would obviously need permission from the end user, so there are no surprises that some 3rd party app is sorta kinda monitoring your emails. And of course measures should be taken to avoid detecting anything beyond the contextual lines of: "Thank you for applying to so and so", or "We've recieved your application! Next steps".

Present those detections to the user to confirm. And do the same thing for rejections and offers. Shouldn't be that hard especially when most sites these days allow you to sign in with Google, and that Google marks these particular emails as "Important"; which further filters the detection process, and partially does JobTrack's job for them.

Honestly, I think the app has promise, and hope this is just a case of starting off small.

A user interface is like a joke ,
if you’re have to explain it,
it’s not that good

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, its not that good.

i always get sucked into this "cute code" hell whenever i am working with a b2c codebase, and especially with kotlin code.

here's a scenario:

task : build a debounce logic for an input view where each user input is currently triggerring an api call.

my steps
1. read what debouncing is.
2. see if any code is available on the internet
=> found a code piece on the internet with some level of abstraction ( basically a simple final class that implements the input event callback and encapsulates the debounce logic)
3) copy it, run it , it wokrs

------

for any sane coder, these steps are hardly 10-30 mins and they can move on with life. but its your truly that made this task into a 6hour research only to come up at similar solution. my curiosity led me to stupid places

1) why this class is final? what if someone else wanna use it but with a different behaviour? lets try open(non final class) .

2) why even use a class? it extends an interface, lets try to wrap the logic in interface itself (kotlin supports interfaces that don't require implementation)

3) umm , the interface works but it looks ugly, with all its global overridden variables. what about we make it extension?

4) yeah the extension approach is also not very good, lets go back to open class.

5) but extend is super nice to look! lets keep the extension and open class too

6) can we optimise the implementation? why it uses an additional handler? what if we provided everything in constructor? how about builder pattern?

FUCK MY BRAIN! there are so much fucking options that i forgot that i spent 4 hours on this small thing

the simplest approach would have been tk just shove all the listeners and everything in activity and forget about it :/

senior devs on this platform, how do you stop yourself from adding every concept that you know into the smallest possible task?

Question directed to devs who know a bit about setting up middle sized architecture.

Prestory: Joined into development of a middle sized online game. Figured they created a monolith over the last 6 years up to a point where nothing works properly and nothing can be changed without wrecking the whole system. Figured a monolithic approach isn't such a great idea.

Current Situation: In a different, same scale online game development team, game itself working but team is struggling with architecture.
My job is to come up with an approach on how to set up masterserver/matchmaking/database etc. Reading through various articles about common principles (SOLID etc.), i figured that a microservice+event-/servicebus architecture may work for that kind of project.

The idea would be to have a global interface in which microservices can be hooked. So a client registers to a client handler on startup, then starts to queue for a game, the client handler throws an event on the bus to register the user to matchmaking. The matchmaker happens to listen to those events (Observer Pattern) and adds him to matchmaking, when a match is found it throws an event on the bus to connect the user to the server, etc. One can easily imagine a banhandler throwing in a veto to cancel such an action, metrics and logging is fairly simple to add (just another service listening to all events), additionally Continuous Delivery, FRP and such are also beneficial advantages and it is said to scale well.

The question is, would you do the same, is there maybe something i might be overlooking? Do you have better ideas?
Keep in mind that we are not too experienced and are bound to different languages (python, C++ and java mostly) and are a small (4 Devs) Team with different strengths.

Thank you for your feedback and criticism!

I like iOS human interface design much more than the Android's material design, though I am an Android user. It has some unimportant design components IMO. I feel that the default action bar title is too big. Also that floating action button is weird sometimes. It hides some important portion of the contents in poorly designed apps.

Trying to configure a smartphone which was already optimized for elderly users, with a more simplistic launcher, larger font size etc.

But the underlying Android 7 and its apps still keep showing up with their inconsistent UI and nagging messages and suggestions.

Is it even possible to configure any Android device to make it really simplistic and distraction free like, say, a classic NOKIA before the age of smartphones?

Culprit no. 1 Google and Android system. Suggestions about features keep recurring, even after stating that we are not interested in the feature.

Culprit no. 2 WhatsApp, unfortunately still the most popular messaging app in Germany, so this crappy bullshit software by Mark Fuckerberg's company has to be installed. Even to me as a tech savy developer, WhatsApp has a confusing user interface that tries to promote features like status (their versions of stories) without any option to hide / turn off.

How shall an 80 year old senior learn to use the app when they previously only used SMS and voice calls? I don't know.

Hello, any keystonejs users up there? I consider using it on small devices to build user interface. Any pros/cons I should consider?

Ready program written in C #.
The idea of the program is an inventory system, it is a form screen, and each screen has a design.
The required: Modification of the form and design of the form, for example, the background of the form is black (Dark) when trying to change it from the properties or code. No results.

Also, when adding an image in the background, it does not appear when running the program and the program's interface remains in black, knowing that it is a metroform user.

Is there a standard around checking the checksum of a bundled weapp to make sure it's the same as what the open source codebase would compile to?

I'm working on some opensource blockchain interface software and obviously blockchain passwords are pretty important, so we do all transaction signing client side and password storage client side, but there's no point doing that if the user can't verify that the password isn't being sent off to some server in secret, but the only way to ensure that is with open source software + a checksum check upon loading, because opensource software doesn't mean the deployed version is the exact opensource branch version.

Any ideas?

The Turing Test, a concept introduced by Alan Turing in 1950, has been a foundation concept for evaluating a machine's ability to exhibit human-like intelligence. But as we edge closer to the singularity—the point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence—a new, perhaps unsettling question comes to the fore: Are we humans ready for the Turing Test's inverse? Unlike Turing's original proposition where machines strive to become indistinguishable from humans, the Inverse Turing Test ponders whether the complex, multi-dimensional realities generated by AI can be rendered palatable or even comprehensible to human cognition. This discourse goes beyond mere philosophical debate; it directly impacts the future trajectory of human-machine symbiosis.

Artificial intelligence has been advancing at an exponential pace, far outstripping Moore's Law. From Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) that create life-like images to quantum computing that solve problems unfathomable to classical computers, the AI universe is a sprawling expanse of complexity. What's more compelling is that these machine-constructed worlds aren't confined to academic circles. They permeate every facet of our lives—be it medicine, finance, or even social dynamics. And so, an existential conundrum arises: Will there come a point where these AI-created outputs become so labyrinthine that they are beyond the cognitive reach of the average human?

The Human-AI Cognitive Disconnection

As we look closer into the interplay between humans and AI-created realities, the phenomenon of cognitive disconnection becomes increasingly salient, perhaps even a bit uncomfortable. This disconnection is not confined to esoteric, high-level computational processes; it's pervasive in our everyday life. Take, for instance, the experience of driving a car. Most people can operate a vehicle without understanding the intricacies of its internal combustion engine, transmission mechanics, or even its embedded software. Similarly, when boarding an airplane, passengers trust that they'll arrive at their destination safely, yet most have little to no understanding of aerodynamics, jet propulsion, or air traffic control systems. In both scenarios, individuals navigate a reality facilitated by complex systems they don't fully understand. Simply put, we just enjoy the ride.

However, this is emblematic of a larger issue—the uncritical trust we place in machines and algorithms, often without understanding the implications or mechanics. Imagine if, in the future, these systems become exponentially more complex, driven by AI algorithms that even experts struggle to comprehend. Where does that leave the average individual? In such a future, not only are we passengers in cars or planes, but we also become passengers in a reality steered by artificial intelligence—a reality we may neither fully grasp nor control. This raises serious questions about agency, autonomy, and oversight, especially as AI technologies continue to weave themselves into the fabric of our existence.

The Illusion of Reality

To adequately explore the intricate issue of human-AI cognitive disconnection, let's journey through the corridors of metaphysics and epistemology, where the concept of reality itself is under scrutiny. Humans have always been limited by their biological faculties—our senses can only perceive a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, our ears can hear only a fraction of the vibrations in the air, and our cognitive powers are constrained by the limitations of our neural architecture. In this context, what we term "reality" is in essence a constructed narrative, meticulously assembled by our senses and brain as a way to make sense of the world around us. Philosophers have argued that our perception of reality is akin to a "user interface," evolved to guide us through the complexities of the world, rather than to reveal its ultimate nature. But now, we find ourselves in a new (contrived) techno-reality.

Artificial intelligence brings forth the potential for a new layer of reality, one that is stitched together not by biological neurons but by algorithms and silicon chips. As AI starts to create complex simulations, predictive models, or even whole virtual worlds, one has to ask: Are these AI-constructed realities an extension of the "grand illusion" that we're already living in? Or do they represent a departure, an entirely new plane of existence that demands its own set of sensory and cognitive tools for comprehension? The metaphorical veil between humans and the universe has historically been made of biological fabric, so to speak.

I'm creating a webapp or I could say a common Markdown editor where user can write markdown and download it's created markdown in html form but I want also add a feature where non techie user can host their written markdown on github pages as a static html page through my app interface, is here any api that github provide us to do this or any other way to do this, please help?

Guys, I'm a python noobie. How would I go about making a graphical user interface with python? Sorry, I come from a Java background.

Mongodb CEO and the developer who build this shit for brains interface should be tarred and feathered. Almost 90minutes in and I cannot connect to anything other than error codes. What in the actual fuck is your job other than to make it difficult for a "free tier" user to connect?
"connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:27017"

Oh ok another 20 minutes of work and you give me a bland beige error code like "```TLS/SSL is disabled. If possible, enable TLS/SSL to avoid security vulnerabilities.```"... um ok how do I enable it for your site, your database or on my computer... oh wait you don't say shit do you?

So now I'm fully 81 minutes into this shit show and all I get for error codes are these really descriptive gems 'getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND cluster0.hudbd.mongodb 'dot' net` comes up if I choose `mongo` with "connection string scheme" above it or `bad auth : Authentication failed'

Ok so giving chatgpt small instructions seems to kind of work
The question is how to connect to it through your own interface? Chat is cutting off code

I don't think this will put programmers out of business

You have to know what you're doing to instruct it lol

Do you think they'll lose their whole user base making this a 1000.00 a year pay service?

I've been reading some stuff related to CoreAnimation and then I asked myself this question:
"Is UIKit = User-Interface Kit or User-Interaction Kit?"
Given that all the drawing and content representation is already done by the backing layer (CALayer). The only responsibility UIView adds to the underlying CALayer is the ability to handle user interaction.