I'm going to talk about ancient history. When I was getting started with computers, my dad got me a Radio Shack Tandy computer (yes, the ones you had to use a TV as a monitor). The damn thing was broken from the start, I'm not from the US, so returning it and getting a new one wasn't easy.

He managed to find some place to get it fixed, got me started with Basic, and here I am.

My dad bought me a book on QBASIC when I was around 7 or 8 years old, and within a month I decided I was going to be a game programmer when I grew up. That's not where I ended up, but that's how the journey started. My parents were both pretty supportive of that decision.

My wife doesn’t brew me a coffee. So that I will get some sleep 🤪

#bestSupport

I propably mentioned it in an earlier rant but my father was a programmer, my grandfather was a programmer, and thus my son shall be too.

Parents: You want anything for your birthday?

Me: yeah, can I have a newer PC

Parents: Cool

Me: Also, can I spend a majority of my time alone messing with it?

Parents: Sure

My parents were really laid back and basically let me do what I wanted

I had good support.

I got access to a computer at 10 when my mother brought home the ones they used for education to avoid them being stolen

That was a couple of sinclair ZX80

I the got to go to 5 different programming courses over the next 4 years before being able to get a summer job at 14 to by my own spectravideo 128.

At 1) I started teaching through mother job and at 18 I wrote my first commercial program for my father.

I am now 50 and still in the business:)

My mom (a single mother who had to feed 4 kids) feed me, let me stay in her house (at least until I was 21) and let me use the motorcycle.
Instead of running away and giving up her children to child institution (because that's probably what I will do being a selfish person that I am)
If that's not support, I don't know what that is anymore.
It might not be much but at least it gave me the time to grew up and be independent to pursue my dream of working in IT.

Her strength and toughness facing the hard life is also the main inspiration for me to keep going, to prove that I can do whatever I want if I put enough effort on it.

My family supported me all the way. Not per definition by buying me stuff but they always 'pushed' me to do what I love doing and I am now doing that!

But, I'm a huge privacy/cybersecurity freak and my family mostly migrated to Signal and stuff like that so that's awesome :)

My mom died when I was 7, after which my dad bought me a Commodore 64 so I had something to lose myself in during the mourning process.

I learned everything about that system, from my first GOTO statement to sprite buffers, to soldering my own EPROM cartridges. My dad didn't deal with the loss so well, and became a missing person 5 years later when I was 12.

I got into foster care with a bunch of strict religious cultists who wouldn't allow electronics in the house.

So I ran away at 14, sub-rented a closet in a student apartment using my orphan benefits and bought a secondhand IBM computer. I spent about 16 hours a day learning about BSD and Linux, C, C++, Fortran, ADA, Haskell, Livescript and even more awful things like Visual Basic, ASP, Windows NT, and Active Directory.

I faked my ID (back then it was just a laminated sheet of paper), and got a job at 15-pretending-to-be-17 at one of the first ISPs in my country. I wrote the firmware and admin panel for their router, full of shitty CGI-bin ASP code and vulnerabilities.

That somehow got me into a job at Microsoft, building the MS Office language pack for my country, and as an official "conflict resolver" for their shitty version control system. Yes, they had fulltime people employed just to resolve VCS conflicts.

After that I worked at Arianespace (X-ray NDT, visualizing/tagging dicom scans, image recognition of faulty propellant tank welds), and after that I switched to biotech, first phytogenetics, then immunology, then pharmacokynetics.

In between I have grown & synthesized and sold large quantities of recreational drugs, taken care of some big felines, got a pilot license, taught IT at an elementary school, renovated a house, and procreated.

A lot of it was to prove myself to the world -- prove that a nearly-broke-orphan-high-school-dropout could succeed at life.

But hey, now I work for a "startup", so I guess I failed after all.

My parents (mom and grandma) helped me buy my first PC. I had some money saved from mowing lawns and they supplemented the rest. Mom, a library director, got a bunch of DOS and Assembler and BASIC books and encouraged me to teach myself.

That turned into computer camps and helping with tech at the library and school. That turned into a computer science and aerospace scholarship to college where I learned C and Unix.

That turned into a degree in business information systems and a career in web development.

19 more years to go and I can retire.

This should not be called wisdom teeth, should be called stupid teeth
Mother fucker is growing perpendicular.

What fuck is wrong with you bro , grow upwards you dumb fuck!!

My dad got us a a home computer on ~1995 without video games. But he brought a software where we can program our own games. So, we learn programming.

My dad let me use how computer and have me a VB6 book when I was like 5.

I took it from there though it seems it tube in the family.

Dad's a Dev
I'm a Dev
My younger brother is also a Dev
My mom is QA, though used to be maintenance dev I think

Never worked for this guy, just saw it someone else's feed and thought it would be appropriate here. This is not leadership. This is bullying and stomping on people in a vulnerable situation which most likely has very little to do with their work ethic and more to do with company health. Yea, definitely elevate yourself and be that A+ person for you. Not for assholes like this. A good leader would empathize and provide resources for advancement and transformation to roles that are more aligned to the current environment.

My papa was financing my first university education. After 4 years in electrics&electronics engineering, I had 2.1 GPA and was not ready for life.

I reapplied for university exams and earned right to computer engineering dept. Papa supported my decision for whole new education after a brief talk and financed me for the second time.

Thanks father.

Thought Spotify had a bug for a moment.. Then i remembered how lame I am. -.-'

Sorry, your password is taken

FFS stop squashing commits. If “updated comments” is what the commit was it should show it in git blame. If “fixed null check” is what the commit was it should show it in git blame.

There is no reason to have “ticket-234 service revision” beside 1000 lines of code. How does anyone justify this loss of git info for the sake of “clean history”? Nobody looks at your history and says, “That is bloody clean git history I should write home about it.” People do however look at the code and say, “I wish I knew WTF they were trying to do on that line.”

Why pay $7/mo PER PROJECT for heroku that runs on aws when you can just pay $5/mo for Linode that has opt-out data sharing and you can install Caprover or Dokku there to have the experience similar to heroku and create as many projects as your hardware allows you, $5 for all?

Large mousepad with world map. Not a toy or art but I like looking at it

These days it's just me and Mr devDuck having an argument with Rick.

God help us all.

This thing I've assembled during a long online meeting

Well I like to keep my room clean so I don't really have anything on my desk, except WATER, I have like 5 big bottles of water so that I remember to drink, and always have enough

'Nobody told me that the database was part of the backend'

You know it's bad when Github finds it necessary to tell you your code is trash

How the fuck does these testers find these bugs
there are like
- go to this
- click on this
- type the first 57 digits of pi
- sacrifice your first born to the devil
-> there the table is misaligned by 13 pixels, fix that

Oldie but goodie

That's a unique skill

super fast "hello world".

Client: "Do you think we could finish specs in week 33, see a demo in week 35, and aim for the product to be finished in week 39?"

I jump on the conference room table, rip the shirt off my sweaty chest, and yell:

"WEEKS OF WHAT? 31 WEEKS SINCE YOU BECAME A CLIENT, 35 WEEKS FROM NOW, 39 WEEKS INTO THE PREGNANCY? BLOODY FUCKING HELL MAN, DO YOU HAVE TO TALK LIKE A RETARD?"

Client, unfazed: "Weeks since the start of the year, sir"

Me, swinging my pants above my head like a lasso:

"WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF SNOWFLAKE ARE YOU, YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO COUNT THE WEEKS SINCE THE START OF THE YEAR? WHAT ABOUT JUST USING DAY OF THE MONTH YOU OBNOXIOUS DIMWIT?"

Client: "We always use weeks at our company to plan things"

Me, winding the legs of my pants around the neck of the client:

"I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE USE WEEKNUMBERS, JAKE. I. FUCKING. HATE. IT."

Client, still pretending everything is fine: "If you want I could send you a screenshot of my outlook calendar?"

Me, sitting in underpants on the client's back, sweaty legs wrapped around his waist, trying to pull out his gel-infested manager-hair while strangling him with my pants:

"TIME OF DEATH, UNIX TIMESTAMP 1595240810, ISO 8601 DATE 2020-07-20T10:26:50+00:00. ANOTHER PROJECT SUCCESSFULLY WRAPPED UP"

(parts of this story may have been dramatized to reflect my underlying emotions)