Stop calling non-engineers engineers.

Writing a quality codebase is difficult when the people in team lead roles are the people who don't give a **** and enjoy writing quick and dirty code, rendering the codebase into a perpetual disaster that constantly needs new devs to blow out fires.

I have this impression that non-devs have this idea that you can ask for a developer to learn and implement a new technology with the same ease as ordering a Happy Meal.

Oh, you want me to learn a completely new technology, write very high quality, bug-minimal code, test it, document it, in a matter of hours?! Maybe senior devs can do this, but for me, it's like asking me to build software for NASA and guaranteeing it will work wonderfully without being given the time to thoroughly test it, design it or even think about it. Wooh, just code this as fast as possible and to industry standards quality!

Anyway... just another frustration.

The default name for a developer's programming language should be called BrainFuck (as we know, it exists) because as a developer I often have lots of frustration and I would like to write the following program where asterisks represent cursewords:

******* ****, **** you, **** this ****,
stupid logic, spaghetti ****,
team politics ********,
**** **** ***** ****

In fact, using non-cursewords makes it too nice already.

All hail, king of the losers!
Ah, being rushed!
Don't point that thing at me!
Yes. No. Yes. I mean so. Commandament?
Start the game already!
It is good to be the king.
Hahaha..ha...ha!
Gold, please.
Wood, please.
Food, please.
Stone, please.

When someone interrupts me during concentrated work:

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!"

I don't like Agile so much. Things are always rushed and you rarely ever have 30 minutes to discuss something in depth, not even in the retrospective meeting. Team mates too busy to discuss concerns. Sigh.

head hurts, teeth hurt, eyes tired.

List<DevSymptom>

Oracle sucks. Try to do something quickly. 1000 restrictions.

What dev life feels like:
https://youtube.com/shorts/...

The industry should stop demanding too short time frames to learn new skills.

Sometimes it takes a full year of near-fulltime study to be strongly competent in it and it definitely doesn't take just a week.

In Software Development, if you have a problem to solve, you break it down into smaller, easier-to-solve problems.

Does this always hold true? I imagine there are situations where you can't do this. I would need to see different perspectives.

!rant O'Reilly has awesome content. EOF

A typical situation in some badly-configured projects...:

1) Having to restart an entire webserver every time you make any change to the code. Hot reload? Unheard of. lol. Then there's also no time to research things because it's push push push.

2) Other ugliness: frameworks so proprietary and locked that you can't hook into anything, so you have to debug using println() everywhere.

I don't suffer from 2) but sadly still from 1).

We live in a world where things are better than this. Come on.

Consulting is fucking burnout. 'Be better, faster, smarter'. Oh yeah? And a life, how about that?

I thought stepping into the Computer Science industry would be to create beautiful software with my passionate talents. All I've seen is: fix and maintain broken (badly designed)(legacy) shit. Yes, that's more of a backup role.

A good role is where you at least get to create a project from scratch that you own yourself.

Urgh.

Guess the app of this musical tone:

"tud-du, tu, tud-du, tudum-tum,.. tud-du, tu, tud-du, tu, tu, tododom, tom :)"

It's funny how beginner programmers think you can step into the industry and coast by on using established algorithms, thinking they will never need expert knowledge themselves.

A few years into the industry and I have realized that when it comes to highly customized requirements and you need to write and test complex algorithms yourself, that's when you better have your expert knowledge backing you up because aside from A.I. assistance, nothing is going to help you.

Oh, how complex it can get. I've had to think about rethinking entire architectures that gave me weeks of real headache, algorithms that required the deepest fine-tuning, tree traversion, generics, interfaces, extension methods, factory, singleton, decorator, facade, etc.

In short, you better know your way around the language you are programming in. You also need to know your algorithms and optimizations because when things are black box to you, that's not a good feeling.. especially not when people are relying on your expertise. The real world is complex and thus we model its complex models.

I really dislike it when non-devs ask devs: "I don't understand. What could be so hard about coding?".

Grumble. FredFlintStoneGrumble.

At times my frustration with debugging is so much my verbal expressions might as well be uuid strings.

You work your ass off up the corporate ladder, except no one cares. You're overqualified and you have a large skillset, a high determination and work ethic, yet again no one cares. You have years of experience and on various projects, for various companies.

Your colleague doesn't lift a finger half the day, takes naps, barely has the basics down and gets promoted to systems architect immediately.

What, the, f.

I'm sure this is a familiar situation.

Typical interview response from employers nowadays on a candidate's tech skills:

"We don't have the budget to teach someone how to work with the technology. We expect from you that you are already an expert and you need no guidance. We have neither time nor money for slowdowns. We are under pressure to deliver"

Back in the days "I'm willing to learn" used to be of value, but things have changed.

You know what would be nice? Coding and exploring for personal fun instead of for work! Even outside of work it's become about work now, because the market is so toxicly exigent!

Can't wait to do my own side projects.

Is there such a thing as natural talent for specific categories of developers?

I've seen this occur a few times. I have more affinity for front-end development or separately, for UX, so I naturally see wireframes, I naturally know what looks good or not to a user, and I can relate to a user.

I've seen multiple backend devs who share the same complaint that they don't have a knack for front-end and that they hate front-end. They can create beautiful architectures and solve complex problems, but they tell me: "Don't ask me to tell you what looks like a good layout or not because I have no idea".

The same thing happens to me when it comes to back-end (even though I'm a Fullstack developer): Don't try to give me extremely complex problems because I will likely get very stuck, but ask me if a design would look good, ask me to design a website UX wise and I will do well without a great deal of effort.

I wonder why I have a hard time with back-end and others vice versa. Maybe we're trained more in certain areas or our brains function differently.

And so.. I wonder if more people see this happen in their workplace and if this observation holds true.

Perhaps as a tip for the junior devs out there, here's what I learned about programming skills on the job:

You know those heavy classes back in college that taught you all about Data Structures? Some devs may argue that you just need to know how to code and you don't need to know fancy Data Structures or Big o notation theory, but in the real world we use them all the time, especially for important projects.

All those principles about Sets, (Linked) lists, map, filter, reduce, union, intersection, symmetric difference, Big O Notation... They matter and are used to solve problems. I used to think I could just coast by without being versed in them.. Soon, mathematics and Big o notation came back to bite me.

Three example projects I worked in where this mattered:
- Massive data collection and processing in legacy Java (clients want their data fast, so better think about the performance implications of CRUD into Collections)
- ReactJS (oh yes, maps and filters are used a lot...)
- Massive data collection in C# where data manipulation results are crucial (union, intersection, symmetric difference,...)
Overall: speed and quality mattered (better know your Big o notation or use a cheat sheet, though I prefer the first)
Yes, the approach can be optimized here, but often we're tied to client constraints, with some room if we're lucky.

I'm glad I learned this lesson. I would rather have skills in my head and in memory than having to look up things and try to understand them all the time.

Writing down some general frustration.

softwareDevelopmentIndustry.pace = true ? manager.rush(employee) : fictionalLand.takeItEasy();

Stack trace: most recent call last
StressException occurred at line 1: employee too stressed
.keepPushing()
.manager.push(employee)
.industry.demand()

Later on:
StressOverloadException:
nested exception is: PaceIndexOutOfBounds

We get our degree from a high-end higher education institution and with it we have proven that we studied Computer Science and a number of important programming languages in-depth.

Now why is it that when we get a job as a Software Developer, that people only seem to value you if you get industry certificates in those programming languages?

I understand a degree forms the basis with which to tackle modern-day software problems, but for your entire education to be practically invisible to stakeholders? That's what seems strange to me. We are valued by the number of certificates we have? Something doesn't add up. The only reason for this I can see is that the Business department hasn't had the thorough STEM education we had and thus thinks we are still novices who need to get 'trained'.

Developer annoyance number two: fixing or having to work with or around other people's crappy code with days-long headaches following.

I hate complex boolean logic.

(true||false) && true || false || (true && false) ... etc (continue for at least ten clauses four times as long)

I look at my code after a month's break. My first thought: what the **** am I reading..?