Today we have an exciting devRant announcement! As many observant members of the community have problably noticed, since launch we've been using the domain name devrant.io since the .com was already taken. Today, we're happy to announce, we now own devrant.com and it is now the official devRant URL!

How did this happen you ask? The devrant.com domain was already owned by a developer named Wiard when we launched devRant. It took a while to track him down, but when we did, turned out he saw the good we were doing and wanted to help the devRant community by generously offering us the .com domain for a very reasonable exchange (considering that we are a self-funded bootstrapped startup!).

Since Wiard recently started writing a blog on devrant.com, he had to find a new home for it. His new blog is https://sysrant.com and I encourage everyone to check it out! Great topical/educational dev/sys-admin related articles? Check. Someone who cares about the devRant community and allowed us to leave the firey hell that is .io? Check. So check it out!!

Some technical info:

This change is immediate and all devrant.io non-api requests will now redirect to devrant.com. We might have missed a few things (purposely or accidentely) so we're going to be going through and converting anything that's left. If you use the devRant API, your implementation should not break since API requests are meant to be excluded for now, but I highly recommend switching any API URLs to https://devrant.com so you can avoid issues in the future if we decide to stop redirecting devrant.io API requests. Also one note, there was an issue for about a minute after we turned on the redirected where some API requests to devrant.io might have 301 redirected to devrant.com. If an app you were using broke, try clearing whatever cache the 301 redirect might be stored in and the issue should go away.

Feel free to post any questions you might have here (and please let me know about any issues you might discover!), and once again, huge thanks to Wiard!

Hey everyone,

First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!

Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):

- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)

Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).

We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:

- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.

- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.

- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.

- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.

- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.

There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.

We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.

2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!

Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim

I'm happy the announce the official devRant bug/feature suggestion tracker, now on GitHub!

It just went live, and you can find it here: https://github.com/devRant/devRant

Going forward, please use that issue tracker for all bug reports and feature suggestions. We decided to move bugs/features reports to GitHub because we've had a lot of people tell us they'd prefer that method since it makes tracking issues easier, and we also think it will improve searchability and maintainability of current bugs and feature suggestions.

Since we're starting from scratch with it, if there's a bug/feature that you're interested in submitting, and it's not already there, then please go ahead and add it! Even if it's been suggested before in a rant, we want to get them in the GitHub issue tracker, so please add it there too.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, and we hope this new method makes it easier to see what bugs we're working on fixing and makes it easier to see and discuss possible new features!

Yes, yes, you have waited long for it.

Thanks to the contribution of @Etnath , now devBanner has a custom width feature!

You can select width between 128px ~ 2048px, and the height will automatically be calculated based on the selected width.

You can create your own banner now, by clicking this link : https://devbanner.center

Happy creating!

~devBanner Team

Somebody asked on how to get started on Full Stack web application development.

This is how I got started.

Client side Web Application Development:
---------------------------------------------------------------

• Start with basic HTML, CSS and JS, JSON. For quick learning, see W3Schools for these topic or YouTube it.

• Get a local web server. "200 OK!" webserver chrome extension is a good start. (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...)

• Learn Chrome Dev Tools to debug the pages. YouTube it.

• Get a good IDE. I am very happy with VSCode. You can use it for very serious WebApps.

• Start learning JavaScript language in depth, but just related to Web Browser related topic or you would get sucked in server side too early.

• Install node.js. Learn NPM package manager. Learn basic node commands.

• Learn complexity of JS file referencing, JS modules in browser. Just learn, don't use it yet, to understand the benefits of code bundlers.

• Learn Webpack code bundler.

• Learn how to make you simple site much faster and using in Mobile using "Progressive Web Apps".

• Now learn to make modular UIs. I love React. Focus on getting the UI code modulear. Create Single Page sites. (You are not there yet to create a Web App) “Create-React-App” started kit is a good starting point.

• Learn to create multi-page site using React-router.

• Learn application state management using Redux.

• Learn to create application decision engine using Redux-Saga.

Practice and master each stage.

Along above, learn git / GitHub (to learn from others code), find good web resources like Medium / Smashing magazine, good YouTube channels etc. I subscribed to some popular Udemy courses too.

Server side Web development:
------------------------------------------
:) First learn client side Web Application development. Server side learning is another story.

Last week, my entire team was out including my manager.

I had to define the roadmap for Q4 and present it to everyone along with my skip level manager (Sr Director).

Now with 12 hour time difference, the call was scheduled at 04:30 AM India time.

Now since I am new, this was my first time (an opportunity to build trust), one off event, and some new learning experience, I decided to give it a shot because I am professional enough to fill in during critical times.

Everything went well.

I come back from vaccine break and this happened: https://devrant.com/rants/4595608/...

Now here is the interesting part. I had my 1:1 with my manager yesterday and she asked me the details of how things went the previous week yada yada..

Then she proceeds to tell me that Sr Director and herself are super impressed with me and by my work.

She was like, "we are thankful that we have you because after the lead left, you managed everything so well"

Then proceeds to asks me, "You had a conversation with lead that you'd be open to relocation. She mentioned me before she quit. Do you think that if you are with the team in US, you'd be able to perform better?"

I agree and tell her that in person socialising is a key tool that helps me a lot in my job.

Manager: "Cool. If you ever want to move to US or anywhere, just let me or Sr Director know and we'd be happy to do so. It's very easy and can be done quickly."

Me: "Do you mean visiting different offices or relocating full time?"

Manager: "Both."

For someone like me, coming from a third world nation who has seen nothing but hardship, this was one of the most rewarding career experience I have had. The decision lies with me. And she asked me that as soon COVID is over, I'll have to frequently visit different offices around the world.

This is my third international offer in 1.5 years that too in times of COVID. All by themselves and I wasn't even looking for them.

Holy fuck! Now I feel more confident and valued for my work.

Hard work is indeed paying off

Hey Guys :)

I'm new to devRant and I already read a lot of interesting stories and jokes and now I would like to post the first thing myself. :D

I would like to present you my new Android app "WhatsBirthday", which I made in order to solve a big problem of mine, friends (and probably the whole world xD). I have (as a Google User) all my contacts (with their birthdays) in the cloud and from there on my calendar. Sadly the Google calendar doesn't allow notifications for the contacts birthdays (I mean whyyy?!). And even if I take a look at my calendar, I always have to write these annoying birthday WhatsApp message to the people ... and these both were the problems I wanted to solve with my app.
So if you join the app, it will start a service (an Alarm / Alarmmanager for the professionals) which will take a look at the contacts every day at 6 am (can be set in the app). For each contact whose birthday is today, the application will send a push notification which if clicked will directly open the contacts WhatsApp chat and prepare a standard message with the name filled in, which could (in theory) directly send. For sure the app won't sends any messages by itself, but it gives you a template you can start working with.
And for sure, you can edit the template in the app & specify the messages for family and friends, which you can choose to use with the notification buttons.

So yeah, that's is and I hope I've aroused your interest ;) if you would like to download it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...

I would be super happy if you could give me some feedback, it's one of my first apps and I would definitely like to improve it! Tanks in previous! :D

And I would like to say sorry for my bad English skills, I'm a German student :O if the translations in the app are not good, please tell me! ;)

Continue of https://devrant.com/rants/2165509/...

So, its been a week since that incident and things were uneventful.

Yesterday, the "Boss" came looking for me...I was working on some legacy code they have.
He asked, "what are you doing ?"
Me, "I am working on the extraction part for module x"
He, "Show me your code!"
Me(😓), shows him.
Then he begins..."Have you even seen production grade code ? What is this naming sense ? (I was using upper and lower camel case for methods and variables)
I said, "sir, this is a naming convention used everywhere"
He, " Why are there so many useless lines in here?"
Me, "Sir, I have been testing with different lines and commenting them out, and mostly they are documentation"
He, "We have separate docs for all, no need to waste your time writing useless things into the code"
Me, 😨, "but how can anyone use my code if I don't comment or document it ?"
He, "We don;t work like that...(basically screaming)..."If you work here you follow the rules. I don't want to hear any excuses, work like you are asked to"
Me, 😡🤯, Okay...nice.
Got up and left.
Mailed him my resignation letter, CCed it to upper management, and right now preparing for an interview on next monday.

When a tech-lead says you should not comment your codes and do not document, you know where your team and the organisation is heading.
Sometimes I wonder how this person made himself a tech-lead and how did this company survived for 7 years!!
I don't know what his problem was with me, I met him for the first time in that office only(not sure if he saw the previous post, I don't care anymore).
Well, whatever, right now I am happy that I left that firm. I wish he get what he deserves.

Necessary context for this rant if you haven't read it already: https://devrant.com/rants/2117209

I've just found my LUKS encrypted flash drive back. It was never stolen.. it somehow got buried in the depths of my pockets. No idea how I didn't look into my jacket for the entire time since that incident happened... But I finally found it back. None of my keys were ever compromised. And there's several backups that were stored there that have now been recovered too. Time to dd this flash drive onto a more permanent storage medium again for archival. Either way, it did get me thinking about the security of this drive. And I'll implement them on the next iteration of it.

For now though.. happy ending. So relieved to see that data back...

Full quality screenshot: https://nixmagic.com/pics/...

The project I have been working on on/ off since Christmas is finally interesting enough to show off!

In short, it's a faux GUI system in the console, with a lot of advanced features that you would see in web browsers and other professional GUI systems.

Most of the core items are now implemented, and it's only time to make it functional in a usability sense.

Here's the tech demo; readme.md is a HUGE essay about everything that's going on. Plus some pretty damn good instructions on how to get it running:

https://github.com/AlgoRythm-Dylan/...

Happy to hear your thoughts!

I have a discord server where I'm writing the bot. I'm making games, utilities and other activities.

It's a very small server because I have not been actively recruiting players, but if you would like to join, here is the link. I would be happy to make some devRant commands and integrations.

https://discord.gg/sEnwGdjB

Right now, we have Blackjack, connect 4, crossword, and trivia. There's also a "stock market" where you buy shares of other players (rather than stocks).

It's early. There's some stuff to do but I'll admit, not a ton just yet. Maybe a few bugs, testing team is considerably small. But it is good fun and I am actively working on it. Maybe join and play while you're "working" from home :)

First Happy new year, now lets get put on the dancing shoes... (I have another one coming, but this one is fresh)

As a PHP developer (yeah I am and I like it, if you gonna hate on me... go fuck yourself) I expect to not be required to reinvent the wheel when I have to use something that is not too mainstream (in my case was producing JSON and XML HAL responses). Now there are 2 (fairly active and somewhat mature), one of which does not produce XML responses, so off I went with the other one, but for fucks sake it does not produce XML that is compliant with the (draft)RFC (https://tools.ietf.org/html/...)

So as I need that, I decided to write one myself, since extending the one that provided XML would've been a waste of time, since it is NOT documented and for some reason depends on about 4 packages (also developed by the same maintainer), why the whining you ask, eh? Well fuck this shit. It took me 2(+2 classes) to achieve everything (according to standard as far as I can tell) + went with using a "hydrator" as opposed to reflection (the lib used reflection and didn't care too much for the access modified on the property of the object being serialized) so got a pretty solid performance boost, cleaner and simple code (I wrote it for a few hours and it is ugly, but hey KISS and it works perfectly)...

So with the more ranty part of this rant... Why the fuck so many people don't write independant packages for the simple parts... I don't hate it when I need a package and end up downloading half of the codebase of symfony or whatever fancy framework the dev decided to use, wasn't it the point of having 'package managers' (composer, npm, etc.. you get the deal..) instead of promote our projects and not force others to use our favorite framework that is absolutely out of scope for their projects...

Fuck you, fuck me and fuck everybody... If this continues I will continue writing my own packages from scratch, because "you" asshole are too lazy to learn and apply SOLID and common sense; even if your life depends on it you cannot write a meaningful piece of code without "the fancy framework of the month" holding your hand and allowing you to continue being a dumbass that has enough brain cells to walk straight and remember that you have to go to the toilet and not shit all over the place....

FML.... Fuck this shit and that is the main reason my gears grind the most when I head "you should use *framework name* instead" or "don't reinvent the wheel", fuck that guy I refuse to work my ways around a framework in order to get things done, my boss aint happy for that shit you know, I don't get paid to deal with your crappy code or uninformed opinion..

Ever heard of this custom ROM called Unleash-OS ?
Well if you've not, you're doing really well in your life. If you're happy, you can scroll away right now.

And in case you want to test strength of your happiness.
Just see here :
https://github.com/Unleash-OS/...

If you still are happy, you're pretty damn happy person. If you're not well I'm sorry, it'll just take you 10 minutes to recover.

The reason why I ranted about this is that I want everyone to be sane and NEVER do some shit like this.

Peace !