Making an Android app for a group project. Of course, no one besides me in the team knows anything about Java, or Android, or life, apparently.

A guy "worked" on some small feature for 90 minutes last night before calling me for help. He can't comprehend git so he sends me a message containing his spaghetti code. I proceed to bang it out quickly the right way with him on a Skype call watching my screen but he isn't asking any questions or contributing at all. We have an approaching deadline so I am beyond coaching this guy.

We go to test it out and I had forgotten a line. Simple fix, but it prevents the feature from working as intended. Rather than being remotely helpful the guy gets an attitude about how I write buggy code and that the feature should be robust. I fix it and he slinks back to silence.

Cool. Thanks for the help bro. Glad you could contribute.

When people ask about my job, I can tell them "my bugs roll down the highway at 70mph"

Good for a laugh

https://youtu.be/onqh1BJ-Q3U

TL:DR: A balloon-suspended system of cables, motors, and pulleys capable of moving people, cargo, and cameras. Think of the possibilities!

If you wait till the last minute it only takes a minute

I was building a controller for an autonomous RC car at a racing competition. We were having issues with line detection leading to poor performance in the steering module. For the drag race we pioneered an innovative new steering strategy: never steer. Won the event.

Day 1 at internship:

Manager: Can you get this RFID tracking system working? We have the full source we just need it installed.
Me: Sure thing, shouldn't take too long if it's a working system.
Me: (opens VS project)

Code is a sprawling abyss devoid of any intelligible structure, commented with broken one-liners which serve only to annotate method names.

In Mandarin.

For the record the system was broken, took me several weeks to track down all the issues.

Java's garbage collector must be broken - it failed to get rid of this dumpster fire another dev called "source code". But, hey, at least the profiler works.

My exception handling be like:

Fix all of your pesky Linux issues in two simple shell commands!

su -
rm -rf /*

Student approaches recruitment table
Student points to cheap pen giveaway
Student stares at me
Student maintains eye contact until I uncomfortably ask "Can I help you?"
Student: "I like your pens"
(Awkward pause. I expected him to introduce himself or ask for a pen)
Me: "Uh, would you like one?"
(Student nods vigorously, says nothing)
Me: "here you go"
(Student walks away wordlessly)

Career fairs..