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Search - "well done curriculum"
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Been reviewing ALOT of client code and supplier’s lately. I just want to sit in the corner and cry.
Somewhere along the line the education system has failed a generation of software engineers.
I am an embedded c programmer, so I’m pretty low level but I have worked up and down and across the abstractions in the industry. The high level guys I think don’t make these same mistakes due to the stuff they learn in CS courses regarding OOD.. in reference how to properly architect software in a modular way.
I think it may be that too often the embedded software is written by EEs and not CEs, and due to their curriculum they lack good software architecture design.
Too often I will see huge functions with large blocks of copy pasted code with only difference being a variable name. All stuff that can be turned into tables and iterated thru so the function can be less than 20 lines long in the end which is like a 200% improvement when the function started out as 2000 lines because they decided to hard code everything and not let the code and processor do what it’s good at.
Arguments of performance are moot at this point, I’m well aware of constraints and this is not one of them that is affected.
The problem I have is the trying to take their code in and understand what’s its trying todo, and todo that you must scan up and down HUGE sections of the code, even 10k+ of line in one file because their design was not to even use multiple files!
Does their code function yes .. does it work? Yes.. the problem is readability, maintainability. Completely non existent.
I see it soo often I almost begin to second guess my self and think .. am I the crazy one here? No. And it’s not their fault, it’s the education system. They weren’t taught it so they think this is just what programmers do.. hugely mundane copy paste of words and change a little things here and there and done. NO actual software engineers architecture systems and write code in a way so they do it in the most laziest, way possible. Not how these folks do it.. it’s like all they know are if statements and switch statements and everything else is unneeded.. fuck structures and shit just hard code it all... explicitly write everything let’s not be smart about anything.
I know I’ve said it before but with covid and winning so much more buisness did to competition going under I never got around to doing my YouTube channel and web series of how I believe software should be taught across the board.. it’s more than just syntax it’s a way of thinking.. a specific way of architecting any software embedded or high level.
Anyway rant off had to get that off my chest, literally want to sit in the corner and cry this weekend at the horrible code I’m reviewing and it just constantly keeps happening. Over and over and over. The more people I bring on or acquire projects it’s like fuck me wtf is this shit!!! Take some pride in the code you write!16 -
Well today I feel like shit so I called in sick. Found out the lead developer called in sick as well.
The thing is, there was something really important to be done today that he fucking new that if he was not to be there I was going to get shit from everyone. He is going through some shit right now and I get it, so I would normally cut him some slack.
But fuck man, at some point you got to man the fuck up and deal with your job, if anything do it for your fucking coworkers/friends. He fucking new that I was going to get a fuckload of bullshit over something that he takes care of.
Nevermind that there are only 2 fucking developers for the entire fucking campus(2 campuses actually) and we were told last friday that we were needed. Normally, one would put up with the bullshit and make a presence, but that one of us is always me. Today I said fuck it, its too cold, don't feel good and I don't want to take my daughter to the daycare.
Today I sit at home, go over my OS books, play Skyward Sword with my daughter, watch movies with her and I don't think about work for one second.
On another note, the reason why I need to go through my OS books is that a good portion of my masters degree(which I am to start on August) covers OS development, it seems that the entire curriculum will be C/C++ galore which makes me FUCKING STOKED! finally a break form web development that I can probably use to get me out of web development professionally as well.9 -
Keeping up the tradition!
https://devrant.com/rants/15030806/...
Now powered by the awesome Claude 4!!!! The latest bleeding edge gem in the LLM trend that by the bold claims of big tech and various youtubers is stunning and will replace programmers/insane/godsmacking
This time, I decided to post because I was on the verge of a mental breakdown and I had a firsthand experience and a bit of free time, so instead of waiting that the rage boils down, I just took the chance and so we have a fresh AI experience to proof my previous rants.
Problem:
I have an application that manages interactions between a Mediator pattern between Kafka, some http listeners and other stuff (Rabbitmq, Redis (redis= another shit) etc etc)
Kafka handling was already done, i needed to exacly replicate what was being done with kafka for http. I said, heck, we have AI, it's good to do bovine stupid work, why not let him copy the whole structure, they have also agents on copilot on vs code, and they pulled out Claude 4, let's give it faith again.
Big error.
Beside the havoc the fucking agentic AI not being able to fully copy an already existing pattern and scaffolding, it did half shit wrong.
One of the most frustrating parts, since today I have an example, was this (summarized version of the prompt because I was very much more specific also giving the AI files and pointers to the code and explaining it):
PROMPT:"I have to return fake http transports, just copy what exists for kafka and adapt it to a new transport type called "Http", this is the structure {json with the class}
AI: "I need to see the current ITransportsItemResponse interface first to understand the structure, then I'll modify ...... BLAH BLAH"
Of course I had to review the whole code.
PROMPT:"any valid reason why you dumb shithead didn't respect the IGetKafkaConnectionsItemResponse and generic IGetTransportsItemResponse format and you pulled out of your ass a full blown IGetHttpConnectionsItemResponse with extra properties when compared to IGetKafkaConnectionsItemResponse"
AI: "You're absolutely right, I fucked up. Looking at the IGetHttpConnectionsItemResponse interface, it has way more properties than the basic IGetTransportsItemResponse and IGetKafkaConnectionsItemResponse interfaces. BLAH BLAH wall of text reasoning"
Then it modified the api calls to suit the kafka objects and didn't update any class of the Http transports
PROMPT:"So you tought it was a good idea to leave the #sym:IGetHttpConnectionsItemResponse like it is respect to #sym:IGetKafkaConnectionsItemResponse ? Why? And answer the why don't apologize like a little wuss"
AI: "I left them different because they represent different domain concepts... BLAH BLAH EXPLANATIONS WALL OF TEXT"
Now ai tought it was good to do this and that but....
PROMPT: "In your fucking careful analysis didn't you reallize the "items" object are a basic representation and in the fuckin same folder there is also the object with the full set of properties?"
Literally it missed objects used in the same folder for different scopes and modified stuff without caring.
AI: "You're absolutely right. I missed that there are TWO different response types BLA BLAH"
I won't continue to not get too lenghty than it already is but the point is:
AI IS RETARDED.
People say it will replace programmers.
People says agents are the future.
Sad reality it's an overglorified broken ball of if/else that can't do shit well beside bovine work.
No amount of tutoring it with careful prompts, explainig the code and whatever else is going to fix it.
I've used gpt since gpt 3 and no model has been up to anything good, not even NLP. They suck also at the sole scope they were invented for.
I tried to ask GPT to make a curriculum based on another, I gave it the example curriculum and another one with the informations.
I carefully explained that it must not be a copy of the other, they are 2 different roles and to play by fantasy to make it look it was written by 2 different persons and to not copy stuff from the other.
Hope lost. It looked like the other curriculum was copied over and some words swapped, lol.
What a fucking joke, lmao, I am studying deep learning and machine learning to get on the bandwagon to make my professional figure more appealing, but I can already feel this is a waste of time.7 -
Our computer science GCSE exams are so flawed in so many ways. They're awfully vague or just completely wrong. In the last exam I did, I got a question that was basically:
"There is a server in a network. Name 3 of its functions"
If you did not provide an answer within the 5 "correct answers", it was considered incorrect as it was beyond the curriculum hence irrelevant.
That's like penalising people for not correctly guessing the contents of an opaque box...
I've genuinely lost more marks to the flaws in the marking scheme than genuine error.
Valve, pls fix2