TIL the term "Kangaroo Code" was also a popular sort-of synonym for "Spaghetti Code".

It more referred to languages that heavily used "goto"s (because it would be "code with a lot of jumps")

Late one night I realize that Visual Studio has an update available.

> Might as well. Maybe they finally implemented that auto bug-fixer.

I download the update and it warns me that I must restart my computer. Fair enough, I was just about to shut down my computer anyways.

I turn off my computer for the night.

Boot up the next day, try to open Visual Studio.

It says to me: "No, I mean, you gotta RESTART. Not just re-start, or whatever shit you just did."

Ok. Restarted the machine.

Incredibly drunk last night.

Decided to take the CD/DVD drive out of my old PC (now a server) and put it into my new gaming PC.

Required a partial rebuild because:
1) GPU was too close to PSU to plug in a new SATA power line
2) CPU cooling lines were directly in the way of the space for the DVD/CD bay
3) Had to route the new power cables of course

Incredibly, even though I couldn't stand, I was able to perfectly execute the maintenance on both machines and I'm even using the new PC to write this rant now.

I must be a God.

I just found a game (have not played it yet) that I think everyone here will cream over.

It's an insanely detailed hardware/ low level/ make-your-own-computer game.

I watched the trailer and it sets you up by teaching you logic gates and basic circuitry.

Then, it eventually teaches you how to build your own computer using these gates.

Then, you start creating your own assembly language using the computer you made.

Then, you use your computer to solve problems like sending a robot through a maze or just building snake on a display.

Absolutely check it out, it's on sale for $13 USD. I just bought it. Turing Complete on Steam.

Went on Twitter to learn about the Facebook oopsies.

Found a mom who is non-stop on Twitter complaining about her sons (aged 16 and 20) being subject to Social Media™

Landed somehow on POTUS comparing total presidential spending. Of course you've spent less, your term is barely a quarter of the way through, you goon.

Closed internet.

Looks like we did, in fact, hear more

TIL that you can use underscores as a decorative numeric separator in ES 2021 like

const FOURTY_FIVE_MILLION = 45_000_000;

I learned this from some shitty advertisement on a Minecraft economy server where I thought the little shit was just trying to be techy.

Luckily I wasn't actually rude to him because then I would have looked like an ass.

I suppose birds are the new cats as for relatable and silly animals

Hi, I'm using WPF... I'd like to set the background col-

The solution:

I have a nightmare project that I will probably be ranting about quite a lot in the coming weeks, but I don't want SEO to pick up the specifics on the off chance my peers Google the issues we're facing and my profile comes up.

Let me set up the scene by describing the predicament, and then I'll get to the most outrageous thing I've heard while working at this job. It gives you a CLEAR idea of why we're in this situation in the first place.

Anyways, the nightmare project only runs in IE with compatibility mode set to version 6. So it only runs in IE 6 at the latest.

And it is massive. I'm talking real, real enormous.

The most recent roadblock I ran into while Chrome-ifying it is the extensive use of a browser API that was removed 8 years ago.

It involves synchronous data input and I know for a relatively certain fact there's no way to fix it without combing through every single reference to this API and converting the ones that need sync data (not all of them do) to callbacks. How big of an issue is that?

Well, just one of that 15-ish modules has over 900 references to it. Even just creating a spreadsheet of "commented out / doesn't need a fix / needs fix" for each reference in 1/15th of this project would take days of manual labor.

Here's the rant.

So after discussing this issue in the meeting (we ended on "they don't believe me that we can't just replace it with jQuery") I brought up the next issue. One of our 3rd party libraries is so old it doesn't work anymore and we can't modify that code (it's compiled).

They said that even if it was backwards compatible (no fucking way. This version is like, at least 10 years old, I guarantee it) they can't simply replace it because we don't have a subscription to this product anymore (suggesting we find an alternative).

And I fucking kid you not, this is what happened next.

They then began discussing how this is why you shouldn't use 3rd party code. Because it becomes obsolete and you can't even fix it yourself because it's not yours to edit.

Yes. They said this DIRECTLY after we discussed our 900+ references to a browser API >>REMOVED<< 8 years ago. Yes, they said this about a 3rd party library that receives regular support but is totally FUCKED because we NEVER updated it after adding it and we never even renewed the LICENSE.

What the FUCK

I know they aren't traditionally "badass" animals, but they're literally named after one of the seven deadly sins, so these motherfuckers are at least a 9/10 on the badass scale in my book.

Got No Man's Sky recently.

It's very good, quickly climbed up to my top 5 games of all time

New useless information unlocked

Well, I did it.

I spent 45 minutes writing my first hacky, shell-and-python automation script to save me 15 seconds every morning.

"Weak Warnings"???

What kinda liberal bullshit...

YOU CANNOT parse CSV by just splitting the string by commas.

YOU CANNOT generate CSV by just outputting the raw values separated by commas.

CSV is not the magical parseless data format. You need to read fields in quotations, and newlines inside of fields shouldn't prematurely end the row.

Do it fucking right holy shit.

Router firmware is literally always the shittiest php hackjob asscode you'll ever see

I understand that some websites had Flash bullshit because they wrote it 20 years ago and were just never fucked to re-write it.

But why, oh why, the FUCK did some companies decide to use Flash even after EOL was announced??

Examples: Xfinity (TV online streaming), Tidal (HD Music)... I always had to find some way to use their shit in 2019/2020 because Firefox did NOT want me to use Flash (understandable).

Were there an advantages that made these companies choose Flash, even faced with the fact that they would need to rewrite it in a few years AND users needed to go through hoops just to use their bullshit??

There must have been! Why else would they do it?

Fucking hate sites with great SEO but shitty user experience like Quora. Top of Google but requires a login or else it's locked down like some university cheat site.

Fuck your low quality answers hidden behind a useless blurry paywall. You're a glorified Q&A. Go fuck yourself

HOLY SHIT GOOGLE NOBODY LIKES THIS RETARDED FUCKING ART STYLE JUST STOP

Meta post about why it's kinda nicer to ask questions here rather than on forums like stack overflow

The main reason you might get better feedback here is because nobody is competing for question answering points. Generally you don't get rewarded much, even if you get a few updoots. And certainly nobody is going through the questions and trying to answer as many as possible to look like the smartest asshole on the forum.

People just kinda chime in if they know the answer, and generally you'll find someone that knows a lot about what they're talking about.

It's much less like people are answering quickly as possible to meet an answering quota and earn badges.

Time to make a deal with the devil

@theabbie since you love downloading the entire devRant db and writing little gimmicks, I have an idea for you.

Avatars are envcoded as URLs. Each part of an avatar is separated by an underscore. Shirt, pants, desk, whatever.

Make a bot or script or website or what-fucking-ever to query users with the same avatar as you. This would be:

- Same EXACT avatar (desk, pets, etc)
- Same body parts as you (face, skin color, hair, etc)
- Same body parts and clothing (everything that shows in the mini avatar next to comments, plus pants and shoes, I guess)

The doppelganger finder. Honestly I think it would be neat.

Would be even cooler if you could filter by active users (last post/comment within past 3 months)

Y'all ever learn something and just kinda smile about it?

I finally got a decent understanding of lower level concurrency control like mutexes and sephamores (I knew about atomicity before but never knew how it was implemented) and I just got this huge grin across my face.

Tried c++ and Qt today

Expected output: "Hello world"
Running normally: (garbage)
Running normally, but outputting the length of the string to qDebug: "Hello world"

W H A T

Two mid level positions open 1+ years ago. Me and my coworker hired on the same day.

Now, only one promotion opens up.

Business world is brutal.

Do you guys think that in terms of a design, we're in a refresh loop?

Like, I don't think the goal of a design is to be user friendly and optimal for all human eyes. There's a million ways sideways to achieve that.

I think the real thing most designers go for is to just make something look "new". And every few years that needs to be redone. Forever. In an infinite loop.

Fuck actual usability, thought-out layouts, contrast rules, what-the-fuck ever. 99% of the goal is to make it look "modern"

Found a rather annoying Windows 11 bug

explorer.exe, if the window is unfocused, the window buttons are correctly sized. But if you focus the window, the "maximize" button goes all retarded.

Having robot parents is hard. I got grounded for getting 100 on my test!

Well, apparently, I have windows 11 now.

I was in Windows Insider program, but I had selected the option to opt-out at next update (maybe 4 months ago).

Either that didn't work correctly or Windows 11 was technically the next update because last night I did a little update (it really only took like half an hour, which isn't unheard of for some Windows updates) and when I turned on the PC today, I have Windows 11 Pro

Okay!...

Windows notification

"(Your antivirus) and Windows Defender are both turned off! Click to change bullshit about your antivirus!"

> Clicks <

(Your antivirus): turned on.

Ah Windows, I do love how you can't even agree with yourself.