Opinion: companies desperately need CBD engineers.

For a minute, forget about AI agents, GenAI, Observability, CI/CD, OO, Functional, Quantum Computing, OR, SAP, DevOps, AI Ops, ML Ops, Prompt Engineering, Data Viz, Blockchain, and even Scripting and Compiled languages.

Think about how companies approach problems nowadays.
Some executive sees something on a conference, panics and hires a dozen highly paid individuals with some soothing credentials. Those individuals whisper some magic words, the executive makes some grand speeches about how his company is totally one of the cool kids, and the poor actual employees get sucked into another useless fad.
Then costs get too high, street creed (NASDAQ Symbol: FOMO) falls 35% or more, and layoffs come for everyone involved.

Imagine if it all could be avoided with the appropriate mix of CBD and THC. The CBD engineer makes some magic potion, the executive gets mellowed out and employees get to actually work on profit-generating activities.
Seriously, give some chemical pacifier to executives and call it something dumb like "mindfulness performance enhancer" so they can feel like big boys.
I wouldn't mind working while a suit eats 2kg of cheetos and wonders if the stars are winking at his crotch, so long as the suit stays on his fucking lane and let me do what I do best.

But that ain't ever gonna work, suits gonna suit. They will want to mess stuff up just so they can pretend their parents love them.
Thus, here we are. When actual devs have to speak nonsense and pretend that AI is real. Just so they can pocket some of that FOMO cash before the ship sinks and drags down honest working people.
We need an UBI just so that everyone in a company can jump ship as soon as a suit starts blabbering about the next big fad. I'm betting it will be VR/AR again.

There is never a valid reason for any UI component to respond to touch or click events until it has been visible for at least 500ms.

Damn these AI models...

Learning embedded C/C++ on some TI chips. Need an httpclient for some specific tasks. The docs for the library are almost non-existent. No examples. I search and find examples from 7 years ago (none official). Wild.

There was another library I was using, but apparently it has internal issues and is not being updated anymore. I am using the "supported" library apparently.

Writing network code for desktop: easy peasy. Writing it for embedded: wtf is this shit?

You can be jealous, it's fine.

Free Wario

I can't believe we went from

"Use AI for coding! It's the best companion to have!"

to now

"AI is making you dumber and lazier. Ditch all the tools and learn from scratch."

Linus is savage guys!
Apparently, he doesn't approve of GNU style coding
Source: kernel.org

!rant Writing code in a barebones text editor so that I am forced to think more about my code and debug deeper. Hah! No more fancy IDE's while learning (for now)!

Unofficial slogans for programming languages:

Javascript - JustShitting out frameworks every week.

Python - Shit programmers become slightly less shit and call themselves "data scientists" here.

C# - We know we are better than you, and even though we don't need to say it, we will say it anyway.

Pascal - The only recognized version of Pascal is from one single vendor.

Haskell - Stay is school if you want to use this professionally.

Swift - (honestly don't know what to say here, Lensflare can fill in on this one.) Maybe this: The first rule of Swift club is we don't talk about Apple club.

Java/Kotlin - We are in everything, including your mom's vibrator.

C - The rest of the programming world doesn't exist. Especially in embedded. Happily using K & R compilers for 3 decades.

C++ - We will pretend to care about the rest of the programming world, but like C, we will do whatever the fuck we want. or, Being held back by the ABI for at least a decade.

Rust - I feel bad for you for using other programming languages.

These are probably highly inaccurate, mostly just wanted to talk about Java being in your mom's sex toy.

Kiki’s workplace

This codebase had 50+ main() functions and 80+ Material App. 5 of them are nested MaterialApp

Redundant widgets, security leaks, and print Sensitive information from the server to console without using (kDebugMode), therefore in prod, the data are leaked.

I refactored until I screamed.

So I left a gift inside.

@retoor we get it, every member here (but you) has shit code! lol

Crocheted a hand puppet. Just because.

Sudden urge to design my own programming language. Specifically built for concurrency. I really like the async/promise style stuff but I always think it's a pain to put together. Why not make the "putting it together" bit the languages job.

You are protected by societal norms and social conventions for as long as you abide by them. Be nice, bitches!

Getting your wisdom teeth out is no joke.

I feel like I ate a half a bowl of Captain Crunch.

I am here, once again, to remind you of a simple fact.

Ostream did not delete himself.

I want to buy a 4TB external drive, with the sole motivation to "preserve" as many games as I possibly can. I know it's not enough, but I want to save my fav games before they're completely gone from the internet.

I could do that, but then what if the Operating Systems go to shit? What if Windows rolls out an update, where you can't run .exe files anymore? Everything has to be installed and run from the Microsoft Store? What if an "online-only" version of Windows gets released and all previous versions get removed?

I know duh, get the Windows 10 cracked iso file as well. But it just depresses me, looking at the hoops I have to jump if all I want to do is enjoy older games.

Asbestos-reinforced 3D printing filament

is it just me, or is reading LLM-generated text really annoying?

It feels like I'm reading the same thing over and over again, in different contexts about different things.

I think I'm now a tabs person, it's the only character where the width can be easily adjusted for different devs without changing the underlying file's data

We "engineered a prompt" (in other words, crapped a very poorly written paragraph using only short sentences) that gathers many arguments pro and against the usage of AI to code our production data pipelines.
Most of the "pro" arguments are variations of "we'll get fired if we don't use this crap in something".

Prompted with the whole argument, even Gemini thinks we should not use AI to write our code. Nowadays, we use Gemini mostly to justify why we shouldn't use Gemini.

Seriously. We made the whole setup so that any PO who demands AI has to convince the AI it is a good idea. I'll admit, the AI is doing a good job to deter people who want to use it. It hasn't cracked even once. Not that it matters, anyway. POs just ignore what the AI says and organically write orders telling us to use it anyway.

Initially I didn’t like mold in my apartment, but since then it grew on me.

Stack Overflow has really gone to shit. I had a bad experience with a recent Qt6/Python question, or really two questions both of which were closed and deleted!

I was just going to ignore it, but some recent talk on the Fediverse made me write up a full post about it:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/...

my plan for perfect state:
- powered by nuclear energy
- metric system, 24-hour clock
- state-owned and built midrisers for public housing with regulated prices, privately owned and built luxury housing
- free healthcare, free generic drugs, option to pay for name-brand drugs. option to choose the gender of your urologist/gynecologist
- free public education, free kindergartens
- free centralized heating, Russia-style
- same-sex marriages are legal. legal documents for polyamorous partners, though not the same one as what you get when you get married. they grant some rights and don't grant other rights
- gender-neutral bathrooms in all state-owned buildings. privately owned places have the choice to make non-gender-neutral, separate bathrooms. bathrooms for wheelchair users are mandatory
- weed is legal, psychedelics are legal. you can grow, but there are limits
- possessing any drug in small (relative to the drug) quantities is not a criminal offense
- free HRT & voice coaching for trans people. But puberty blockers are illegal. gender-affirming surgery for children is criminal offense. let kids wait till they're able to consent
- Swiss-style gun laws
- no official religion, but the capital city has state-owned churches of all major religions. religious leaders are elected
- pragmatism, statistics, no ideological & demagogic bullshit
- extensive tram, metro & rail network
- bike and pedestrian-first roads
- multiple "city centers", all walkable
- scientology and other cults are banned
- no free parking on publicly owned land, option to pay for a parking lot for your car. All paid lots are equipped with fast charging for EVs
- no petrol cars in cities. no car restrictions in the countryside
- Barcelona-style superblocks
- all office workers have the right to work remotely and visit offices only if they want to
- free abortions
- mandatory vaccines for children, free vaccines for everyone
- free, state-owned bike "rental" network
- airbnb and other short-term rentals can't occupy more than 10% of the city center, companies that own airbnb places can't be incorporated overseas, they should be present locally
- Japenese-style "obsessed with fairness"-style local elections
- free shelters for the homeless, dedicated shelter network for domestic violence survivors of all genders
- refined sugar content in all food products (except for 100% refined sugar) is regulated and limited
- all vegan food items that are designed to replace meat-based items can't cost more than their meat counterparts
- four day, six hours per day work week. for people working in shifts, eight hours per shift max (you'll need three shifts to fill 24 hours)
- mandatory vacations, paid for by the company
- six months worth of salary if you're laid off, two months worth of salary if you quit on your own with two weeks notice
- autobahns with no speed limit
- no noise after 21:00
- ban underground and overhead crossings. people shouldn't climb to just cross the road
- Swiss privacy laws
- well-funded, well-equipped police force. all bodycam footage is public. turning bodycam off is grounds for termination. small task-force within police to fight corruption
- every citizen gets a free domain name of their choosing
- bike theft = car theft
- graffiti is not a criminal offense, but city cleanliness laws are Singapore-style (though not as harsh)
- all phones have user-replaceable batteries
- PRISM-type shit is illegal. all electronic devices sold here should be stripped of backdoors & surveillance
- completely ban hostile architecture
- government secret service should exist, but the number of people there should be limited
- ban exotic pets
- real, long sentences for pedos (pedos in the us are basically free, they barely get any time)

overall, I think there should be more separation between city and countryside laws. no one needs a Ford F-150 in my imaginary city, but some farmers do need it in my countryside!

Today I almost had an engineering orgasm. I'm designing a Eurocard PCB for a Subrack. All components already came with a 3D model within the EDA software. I could therefor export the entire PCB to an STL and print it out for a fitment check. Also the Subrack Vendor has an online designer for the front. You guessed it! It can be exported to CAD and Printed. Man I LOVE the current state of electrical and mechanical engineering. This is such a fucking game changer! I really hope the electrical side checks out thou as prototype manufacturing is expensive! Like 4k can go down the drain for just 5 boards.

I can totally relate to this!

Systems engineer, +5 years of experience, mainly webdev but also 80% of every branch of IT there is, have worked with many technologies professionally, many more academically, fluent in 3 languages, low salary expectations... how come I can't land a new job?
I've done a bunch of stuff: Specialized CVs, used many platforms, personal connections, showed at different places, updated my socials / projects...
Man I suck at job hunting.

Before you hate on me, this is more of a reflection than a vent. I'm not mad at all. I know I've been doing a poor job and I'm stepping up my game soon. I didn't underestimate the IT job market, I just had other priorities in mind.

we don't really need data types. By default, everything should be string. When you do addition, when the string has nothing but digits, commas and periods, they should be parsed added as numbers. Else, they should be concatenated. If that string-number formatting doesn't match any conventional formatting of any locale, it's a string. Same number-inferring behavior should be implemented when comparing things. There should be no type casting because there is just one type, so every comparison is type-exact. "true" and "false" are special strings that won't throw an error during comparison. Comparing two strings using less, more, less than or equal and more than or equal always throw an error.
Dates are ISO strings. Every other thing is not a date.

We basically sieve the data starting with the strictest conditions down to more forgiving conditions, then down to no conditions at all where it will be interpreted as just string. ISO date requires a very specific formatting, so we should check that first. Then, let's check for a formatted number. Then, a boolean. If nothing clicked, it's a string.

Oh, and every string is automatically trimmed, so it can't start or end with any kind of space.

No classes, no procedures, no constants, no switch operator. Also, no methods, just a lot of helper functions.

Performance will be lacking compared to languages with static types, but performance is not a priority here — this is the language for code monkeys and their AI counterparts. It should only be used for making trivial client-server prototype apps that could've been replaced by Excel if only people knew how to use it, at passable quality, that work reasonably fast on modern hardware.

Those apps will be deprecated because the company went out of business/because the project was proven to not be financially viable in several months anyway.

UI should be rendered not using a webview, but using a lightweight cross-platform UI engine written in a proper language like C++. There should be no semantic tags — every UI element acts like a div would. Everything is measured in pixels and milliseconds. All colors are #rrggbbaa. All vector graphics are SVG, all raster graphics are AVIF. All sounds are Opus. All videos are AV1. All UIs are reactive, Vue style, e.g. you change a variable and the UI updates itself in the right way every time.

Add some junior devs paired with GPT-4.5 or any super-expensive LLM, sprinkle with some Extreme Go-Horse management style (https://hackernoon.com/you-might-be...), and boom, we recreated Zergs but in the tech space. Let's solve software by brute force.