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Words of wisdom (WOW) !!

Golden words of wisdom

Wrote my friend Sam a letter when I was still working in support. I think it still holds up today.

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Dear Sam,

I understand that you will join us in our overseas office. Congratulations on landing that job. It’s good steady work. I’ve been doing it for the last ten years.

Your still young so maybe I can give you some little wisdom that will help you in your working years to come.

Let me begin by shedding some light on phone calls.

I try. I really do try Sam. But it is getting so hard for me to hold back the rage that builds up during certain phone calls. Especially the ‘Sorry, I just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’ ones.

Those are the times that I have no access to what they see. I’ve no team-viewer, can not take over that screen in any other way. And why-oh-why can I not take over that terminal session dear Sam? It’s because the caller can not double-click an icon or find a terminal session number.

And what is the reason for this? Because they ‘just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’. This is a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. Beware of these callers Sam.

There is nothing so nerve-wrecking then finding yourself at the mercy of people describing Internet Explorer (do not even get me started) as ‘the big ‘E’, if they use Chrome for their webmail then they most likely will say ‘Mail’ if they mean Chrome. There is no logic Sam. That is just the way these people work.

They will suck all enjoyment out of your work. They will make you want to hunt them down in dark office hallways and show them your tears Sam. Because cry you will.

Sure, I understand that not everyone can be tech savvy. Why, if everyone would be, where would that leave us? No. I love the technologically challenged. They put the fiber in my internet. They make me LOL for real. After the initial anger subsides anyway.

But just below that well-willing folk, on the other side of that border… there they dwell: Management.

Nice cars, suits and iphones Sam. First thing a new manager will require is a brand spanking new business-card. It will hold his/her new title. Then an iphone or overpriced android model will follow suit.

Then they will barge into your office, holding it like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

Any manager will automatically assume that you will drop anything you are doing at the present moment to acknowledge the presence of greatness. Failing to do so will result in awkward yet fulfilling situations. I recommend that you do not take your hands of the keyboard and give only the slightest of nods after 5 minutes of complete silence and glaring.

Well… you feel the glare. You do not glare yourself. You do not break eye-contact with the monitor. It does not even matter if you are typing for real or not. I once clicked away happily for 5 minutes. I just typed ‘he is still there’ over and over again. Do not break down Sam. This moment will decide your relationship with this individual.

After the nod there will be a flood of words aimed in your general direction. You can disregard anything that is said. It boils down to ‘can not operate device’.

You then take the device from this person and put it next to you on your desk. You’ll ask the name of this simpleton, write it down on a sticky-note, slap that on the phone. Then you’ll write a random date in the not so near future on another sticky and hand that to the bewildered person in front of you.

It will usually utter some incoherent words about ‘needing, time or but’ (I find that ‘but’is a word they like. They tend to use it three or four times consecutive before you usher them through the door).

Now you’ve won Sam. Well… not really. But it will feel good, I can guarantee that.

This must do for now. A new suit is glaring at me for the last five minutes.

Felt good to do something productive with this time.

Take care,

Baltasar

P.s. I just noticed that there is some foam around his mouth. So if you encounter this, don’t worry: it seems to be perfectly normal.

WRITE IN C ('LET IT BE')
When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
"Write in C."
As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
"Write in C."
Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO's dead and buried,
Write in C.
I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.
If you've just spent nearly 30 hours,
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.
Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
BASIC's not the answer.
Write in C.
Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it.
Write in C.

The trick is to meditate instead of masturbate

Some words of wisdom passed on by our Scrum.

1. I am responsible for setting boundaries. Work time, sleep time, family time, me time. If I don't set them properly, things WILL get unbalanced very quickly. (And I would add, burnout will follow closely).

2. Being productive isn't about doing more and more in less time. It's about doing only the most important things well, and either saying no to the other things, or finding another way to get them done. (Prioritize!)

3. I can't win (let alone run) a marathon by thinking of it as a 26 mile long sprint, or a week as a five day sprint. (Eat a digital elephant a byte at a time).

4. Loved ones are good judges of when things are in and out of balance.

5. Taking time off is essential. Vacations, yes, but also nights and weekends. (Or you WILL burn out and hate what you do).

Comments in () are mine.

Got my first offer for a developer position and I start in a month. A lot of hard work has finally paid off and I can't wait to start. Any words of advice or wisdom?

Words of wisdom

So I went to the store earlier today and an autistic young lad gave me one of the best pieces of advice anyone has EVER given me.

“Don’t let the haters stare into your eyes 👀”.

It took me a few hours for it to sink in and I now understood what he meant.

I feel better, enlightened, much more in control since I heard that young lad tell me those wise words of wisdom.

Words of wisdom from Jack Ma

When I find my self in times of trouble, mother google comes to me, speaking words of wisdom "Restart PC"

Started learning C just for fun.
Any words of wisdom, recommendations or threats?

My Boss Abuses me, should I leave my job?

I overheard this tidbit on a bus recently. Okay I'm lying. But in the great spans of
time I've spent reading "dear annie" type articles, many involving how often my meth head step dads beat me while growing up, or in turn how often *I* beat me (oh yeah)..I've come across this in one form another, this, and other dumbfuck questions from the stuttering meek and halfhearted.

They say there are no dumb questions. Well, like that guy who smoked too much weed and
asked "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" (fap fap fap), there are in fact dumb questions.The world is overflowing with them, like a clogged shitter full of tacobell and glitter covered brown gutter wisdom. And it smells like roses, if roses smelled like shit.

Questions like "How do I make sure my cats don't feel lonely once I have my first child?"

I don't know, they're fucking cats. Did you even google this before asking?

Or

"How to make spaghetti?"

Really, is this question written by a bot?

"What is the best javascript framework in year x?"

All of them and none of them. Welcome to hell.

"Whats your favorite color?"

My answer: I'm not five years old any more. And obviously you are. Why are you on this site instead of eating crayons at daycare?

Yes indeed, this and many more dumbfuck questions await you and can be found on the preeminent quora, amongst other sites.
A place, which censored an eminently reasonable answer of mine (I was totally not being a shithead btw).
I responded in kind by removing a whole mess of long form answers of mine.

What I have learned from the experience is this: Humanity is greatly comprised of many people who, having no brains to speak of, wander aimlessly like beasts of the field, glass eyed and slack jawed, in search of a savior. But their savior came a long time ago, once, and many times before. An engineer, or programmer, or perhaps in another reincarnation a guy parting a sea of koolaid after the local ruler swindled his peeps out of another payment for moving some heavy ass stone blocks, but I digress.

And in response to peoples worries, anxieties, everyday problems and concerns, every one of these would be wiseman, every one of these saviors, leaders, and great men spoke these magic words which resonate now down through the ages like the voice of reason and providence:

"Read the FUCKING manual."

"And don't bother me again asshole." (well this last bit is all me, but I'm sure others said it too.)

It’s strategy week. And I have flown to A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FUCKING COUNTRY.

In their wisdom, it has been decided that I, master of all knowledge (not!) will outline a roadmap for potential tech to come and where our pain-points are. They don’t have the slightest. CORP only now talks about AI and NOTHING sane is even closely is being addressed.

Fucking retards.

It is all for show.

It’s just a game for them.

Fucking holistic people.

Fuck leadership in IT with no actual knowledge of the pain of database upgrades. Fuck em!

It’s all pretending and using big words. I been in meetings where people actually use the words AI, autonomous and digital twin. In the same fucking sentence. Fucking imbecils! Do they even know how fucking impossible that is in a company like this where we struggle every-single-day with a tech debt that is actually incomprehensible. Yesterday I found code from 1978 in use, with no knowledgeable maintainers. Which is very cool but will be difficult, to say the least, to migrate. At the core of one of the deepest core processes at a specific site (we kind of make things). 1978. Thousands of lines of code.

We are NOT in a position at all to say things like this. Autonomous. We are NOT ready. We are NOT staffed and we will not be since we have NO money to hire the necessary workforce of 100 people it would take to actually do something useful. Even if we could hire them the time it would take to actually hold on to them would be too short. Since people are LEAVING THIS COMPANY SINCE IT/TECH IS NOT CONSIDERED TO BE IMPORTANT to the company.

Fuckers. I can take out half the factory in one minute.

Autonomous? AI? It is such a shitshow. And really, really depressing.

I wonder if they know. What would happen. If key persons was to decide to leave.

The care that has been put in place for this factory (HUGE FACTORY!!! HUGE!!!!!!!) system support is just really… well, crazy actually.

I just started but I'm already tired.

For some years I have worked in the industry, not a lot, I know right but I really wonder how do you deal with all "not code-related" bullshit.

IT should be a dynamic field but somehow it is stuck inside the business logic which is all about the money and that does not take care of the real matter which is "code engineering".

- Most of the projects I have seen are an utter mess.
- No real structure
- Code is literally thrown somewhere to make stuff works and fix bugs
- Features which should require X amount of time are planned and shipped earlier ignoring best practices.
- The customer changes idea every week
- Nobody wants to pay for a reasonable architecture but prefer to keep financing un-maintainable projects that only God knows where they have been made (presumably in Hell)
- Juniors devs with no real senior following them committing unreasonable stuff
- Seniors devs thinking they are but they aren't.
- Company that keeps delivering projects even if they have not the required amount of people to make it in time.

Seems like nobody wants to stop and take time to think and make the right decisions. I see people running around me like crazy ants.

But, above all, what really kills me deep inside is HR. You are looking for "dynamic" "talented" "cool" devs but you are not willing to pay them enough.

Should I talk about LinkedIn?

Oh, God... Even the worsts companies sound like they are into Fortune 500. I feel so much hypocrisy here.

I have worked for big and small IT companies.
In the end, is all about "inside politics", everything which is getting financed is not because of usefulness but because of "relationship".

I started coding when I was really young.
After ten and more years, I finally take the job of my dreams but everything is shuttering under my feet.

If you have some words of wisdom, I'm here to hear you.

PS.
I'm not a native English speaker, I apologize for any mistake.

Ok. I got it. I need a portfolio. That will speak for you. I’m working on it. I’m building great stuff. In the meantime. How the heck do I get a job as a junior web developer with no experience. I only have a coding bootcamp and a 4 month internship. All companies want people with experience. You won’t even have an interview without experience. So what’s the strategy then? Looking out for some words of wisdom from fellow devs.

I think I finally, really, comprehend why secret societies have historically been created... I mean the potentially logical ones. This train of thought is logically terrifying.

I want a logic check.

I've been jokingly mentioning some of my totally true, practically useless in most scenarios, skills/specific fields of knowledge/ability under a moniker of 'extremely useful, assuming apocalyptic event' for years. Things like advanced knowledge of Coefficients of glass expansion, Fortran, various things that have caused friends to refer to me as MacGyver after the reboot came out.

In recent years, I've personally encountered several varieties of the ones defined by helplessness, self-victimisation, some version of a real disability... that theyve expounded into a personified personal nemesis-- to flashily battle yet never overcome, etc... the vast majority perplexing me as to why that's a valid form of life to them... it's not that they never consider some other way; the ball is just quickly dropped and never picked back up.

College?(not that I'm a big fan) they wish they could but so expensive... aide? The form was hard/confusing/past-due...

Lookup/learn something more indepth than a tiktok? *some self-deprecating bs*

Yet it's "I always wanted to do/be/learn X"

Shows like 'How It's Made' fascinate, but don't inspire enough for a 5min google query.

In the dev world its a clear, inverted pyramid-- one of the first posts I saw when I rejoined here was ostream's rant on Apple sucking because after they stop support/updates you "can't" load a different OS... ofc you can. But several comments down... no mention of that... i think it was @LensFlare who was the only one in ~15 respondents to point out the core logical fallacy.

Basic shit is totally forgotten... try asking some random adults what plastic is made from... or pay attention to how many people declare they have a gluten "allergy".

I get people frequently telling me that things im pointing out as differences don't matter because "it's just semantics"... semantics is literally the epitome of "significance", with roots in 'meaning' and 'truth'

Back to the main issue... We are in a world where DIY is typically something you pay more to do as a catered experience than actually learning anything, people destroy their own arguments hopes of validity unwittingly often by stating the arguement, get 'offended' or 'triggered' by factual statements, propagate misinformation and bastardise words until MW needs money enough to print a new version, likely adding the misuse as an actual definition and basic knowledge and the thought to actually learn is vetoed by the existence of google translate, the wisdom of tiktok and the pure brillance of troubleshooting every random linux issue you have from not knowing basic CLI and thinking linux makes you cool, with chmod 777 because so many other dumbasses on forums keep propagating misinformation. Ask them what 777 means, most have no clue... as they didnt consider googling that one before putting it in a terminal several times.
The number of humans that actually know the basic shit that the infrastructure of the world is built on keeps decreasing... and we aren't even keeping a running tally.

The structure of the internet has the right idea... dns- 13 active master root servers, with multiple redundancies if they start dropping... hell ICANN is like a secret society but publicly known/obfuscated... the modern internet hasnt had a global meltdown... aside from the lack of censorship and global availability changing the social definition of a valid use of braincells to essentially propagating spam as if it's factual and educational.

So many 'devs' so few understanding what a driver is, much less how to write one... irl network techs that don't know what dhcp is or that their equiptment has logs... professionals in deducated fields like Autism research/coping... no clue why it was called "autism", obesity and malnutrition simultaneously existing in the same humans... it's like we need to prepare a subterranean life-supporting vault and stock it like Noah's ark... just including the basic knowledge of things that used to be common/obvious. I've literally had 2 different, early 20s, female, certified medical assistants taking my medical history legitimately ask if not having a uterus made it harder to get pregnant...i wish i was joking.

Any ideas better than a subterranean human vault system? It's not like we can simply store detailed explanations, guides, media... unless we find a way to make them into obfuscated tiktok videos apparently on nonsense or makeup tutorials.

This is more of an advice seeking rant. I've recently been promoted to Team Leader of my team but mostly because of circumstances. The previous team leader left for a start-up and I've been somehow the acting Scrum Master of the team for the past months (although our company sucks at Scrum generally speaking) and also having the most time in the company. However I'm still the youngest I'm my team so managing the actual team feels a bit weird and also I do not consider myself experienced enough to be a Technical lead but we don't have a different position for that.

Below actions happen in the course of 2-3 months.

With all the things above considered I find myself in a dire situation, a couple of months ago there were several Blocker bugs opened from the Clients side / production env related to one feature, however after spending about a month or so on trying to investigate the issues we've come to the conclusion that it needs to be refactorised as it's way too bad and it can't be solved (as a side note this issue has also been raised by a former dev who left the company). Although it was not part of the initial upcoming version release it was "forcefully" introduced in the plan and we took out of the scope other things but was still flagged as a potential risk. But wait..there's more, this feature was part of a Java microservice (the whole microservice basically) and our team is mostly made of JS, just one guy who actually works as a Java dev (I've only done one Java course during uni but never felt attracted to it). I've not been involved in the initial planning of this EPIC, my former TL was an the Java guy. Now during this the company decides that me and my TL were needed for a side project, so both of us got "pulled out" of the team and move there but we've also had to "manage" the team at the same time. In the end it's decided that since my TL will leave and I will take leadership of the team, I get "released" from the side project to manage the team. I'm left with about 3 weeks to slam dunk the feature.. but, I'm not a great leader for my team nor do I have the knowledge to help me teammate into fixing this Java MS, I do go about the normal schedule about asking him in the daily what is he working on and if he needs any help, but I don't really get into much details as I'm neither too much in sync with the feature nor with the technical part of Java. And here we are now in the last week, I've had several calls with PSO from the clients trying to push me into giving them a deadline on when will it be fixed that it's very important for the client to get this working in the next release and so on, however I do not hold an answer to that. I've been trying to explain to them that this was flagged as a risk and I can't guarantee them anything but that didn't seem to make them any happier. On the other side I feel like this team member has been slacking it a lot, his work this week would barely sum up a couple of hours from my point of view as I've asked him to push the branch he's been working on and checked his code changes. I'm a bit anxious to confront him however as I feel I haven't been on top of his situation either, not saying I was uninvolved but I definetly could have been a better manager for him and go into more details about his daily work and so on.

All in all there has been mistakes on all levels(maybe not on PSO as they can't really be held accountable for R&D inability to deliver stuff, but they should be a little more understandable at the very least) and it got us into a shitty situation which stresses me out and makes me feel like I've started my new position with a wrong step.

I'm just wondering if anyone has been in similar situations and has any tips or words of wisdom to share. Or how do you guys feel about the whole situation, am I just over stressing it? Did I get a good analysis, was there anything I could have done better? I'm open for any kind of feedback.

“A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines [including the human] to execute.” (The Structure and Interpretation of a Computer Programs, 1985)

“If you try to make something beautiful, it is often ugly. If you try to make something useful, it is often beautiful.” -Mr. OSCAR WILDE