Yea, it's kinda scary. I enabled Copilot in VS about a month ago and it is like its reading my mind.

I've been finding myself relying on Copilot more and more for the POCO type plumbing code.

Right now I am moving code from the depreciated Microsoft Teams Webhook to PowerAutomate/Workflow. I started to type some of the AdativeCard plumbing and *BAM!*, it somehow knew the exact fields and how I was going to use it.

I almost said out loud "Get behind me satan!"

- I wrote 'business logic' in an OnClick event

- I only wrote 4 tests for a 5 method interface

- 'Hardcoded' a database key value because I didn't want the hassle from the DBA for creating another FK relationship.

<fist pump>

Let's go!

@Lensflare > "Skype was good before bought and enshitified by MS."

And written in Delphi, which means/meant it was a single .exe (or maybe a minimal number supporting dlls) and "just worked" everywhere.

Skype, I will miss you.

Can seem that way. My C# lizard brain is just above the 'Hello World' project. I wrote a function that prints 'Hello World'

We had a need to update a db table at EOD, so my boss (brilliant dude) wrote a custom C# process executor (you create the class, with the code you want executed) that is instantiated from within a Docker container, that runs inside another container (TL;DR) on/in our container environment. He essentially wrote Azure Functions from scratch for this specific project, complete with thread mgmt/scheduling, and the works. Even wrote an extension so you could create+execute jobs from your local workstation if you needed to debug "the cloud".

When I asked "If all we needed to is update the ABC table, why not create a console app, write the update script, and run the app on a schedule?"

<puzzled look>

S: "I don't know, there wasn't any other way to do it"

And the whole "if we catch you using java, we're going to charge you $$$ for everything that plugs into a wall" money grabbing scheme Oracle has going on.

We're in litigation with Oracle because Oracle says they have network traffic logs that we downloaded java some years ago and because Oracle knows knows we have hundreds of PCs/servers/etc (TL;DR), they demand we pay a java license for everything that could have an internet connection. It's our burden to prove we're not using their paid version of java.

Does not matter we have proof that that the java download in question came from a third party install (I think it was OctopusDeploy) that had to download+update java order to *uninstall* the java runtime.

Network guy said "When we showed the Oracle rep the logs and java is no longer on that server, he said straight faced on zoom, 'That's not proof you didn't install java on other servers.'"

@retoor > "Who do cats without tail do fine while it's always claimed to be for balance"

A local taxidermist (we had a deer head mounted) had a side business of cutting off the tails of cats so you could have a tailless cat (a "bob cat").

Me: "OMG!, doesn't that hurt them!? Doesn't that screw up their balance?"

T: "I only do kittens, but yea, they squeal and whine for a while, but they eventually deal with it and cats don't need tails for balance."

At that moment I never wanted to slash the throat of another human being more in my life. I had my hand on my pocket knife thinking "Did I sharpen it? Yea, it's sharp. All it would take is a swipe, he won't see it coming. Swipe, step back, don't get blood on you...no jury would convict...dang, unless they are dog people and I'm screwed. Just pay the man and go home."

@lungdart > "Wtf are programmer socks?"

I think they are what some marketing department sold to tech companies that programmers like colorful/cartoonish socks. I don't know when the trend started, but every conference I've been to in the past 5 or so years, the vendor booth(s) hand out socks.

I use them as my 'outside' socks (what I wear when I work outside, exercise, etc), since they are typically very low quality and I don't care if they get tore up.

@Demolishun > "This is how bad these POS tech companies have gotten"

Facebook 'banned' my 18 year old daughter from Marketplace a couple of weeks ago because they couldn't verify her age. She's been on Facebook for a couple of years now, been buying and selling on Marketplace with no problems.

She sent the required video selfie and a picture of her driver's license. About three days later she gets a DM from Facebook saying they could not verify her age and she would not be allowed to access Marketplace. WTF!!?

I care 0% about FB, but everyday it's "Dad, I need to sell these cloths....can you fix Facebook?"

Facebook is a billion dollar *technical* company, they have zero technical support, no phone number, and no way to resolve *their* screw up.

@Demolishun > "Musk has been under fire"

I still laugh when the left attack Musk for essentially duping liberals/socialists into the "electric cars will reverse climate change" craze. They already mandated by law electric cars by an arbitrary date, tax rebates, etc before realizing it was all a scam. Not saying I wouldn't own an electric car, but it's a rich man's game I'm not qualified to play.

@Demolishun > "The fishy part is the MSM praising this great breakthrough"

I want to upvote this 100 times.

I don't remember the book, a Polish police officer during WWII was asked how could did they round up thousands and thousands of Jews and put them on the trains to concentration camps when the vast majority knew what was going on. He said, "It was easy, we lied to them."

Fast forward to today, has anything changed?

Good or bad, lies are how those in power get people to do things against their nature. The trick isn't necessarily believing or not believing, it's understanding motives and the 'why?'.

Trump lies to build up his ego. Biden (or his puppeteers, he's never been in power) lied to keep people in the dark to their real agenda to destroy and re-imagine America in a socialist+fascist utopia.

History has already shown what happens at the end of that story.

I don't remember the book, a Polish police officer during WWII was asked how could did they round up thousands and thousands of Jews and put them on the trains to concentration camps when the vast majority knew what was going on. He said, "It was easy, we lied to them."

Fast forward to today, has anything changed?

Good or bad, lies are how those in power get people to do things against their nature. The trick isn't necessarily believing or not believing, it's understanding motives and the 'why?'.

Trump lies to build up his ego. Biden (or his puppeteers, he's never been in power) lied to keep people in the dark to their real agenda to destroy and re-imagine America in a socialist+fascist utopia.

History has already shown what happens at the end of that story.

@Demolishun > "I write c++ plugins for skyrim for fun."

Nerd. :)

I looked into mods for the 'Total War' games, it's a different world of thinking as compared to writing business apps.

"Let me try to draw a tree, looking at this sample...10,000 lines of code!? Nope."

@Demolishun > "exercise equipment"

Yea, I get that, I was curious what link between the game and the treadmill is doing.

My 2 second google search looks like a niche only for treadmills.

Wouldn't the game (or any software) have to send the specific commands to the exercise equipment? Ex. If you start running, the game would have to send 'Increase speed to 4' command.

Sad to say, unless the pron industry adopts and perfects the technology, I'll bet it'll die on the vine.

oy, I didn't do the math, my raise was only 1.5%. Still a decent raise at my level, but same as me, my boss assumed the 3% was standard. The new "standard" will be 1.5% with any market adjustments when the company sees fit to apply them.

The senior leaders just fired the president/CEO. Its fine, nothing to see, move along.

> "I so want this connected to Skyrim."

What would Skyrim do with bluetooth?

@retoor > "Three lines of python."

Fumbled around and got a C# example working. Pretty easy. Not three lines, I'm not a madman. With enough refactoring, might be worth posting.

@retoor > "I will see what I can do."

I found the java client repo (JavaRant). Pretty sure I can translate that to C#.

@retoor > "@kiki has written a solution in node that doesn't require dependencies (good job!) to download the rants."

Node? That seems like a big dependency. I'm looking for something simple.

https://devrantapi/rants/...

Not "Install Node, first install Linux, then learn all the obscure linux commands, configure the memory for this ...update the drive mounts for that...don't forget to update network drivers, and follow these 64 easy steps to get Node running..."

Great question (s).

Is there an easy way to download all of my rants?

@cafecortado > "You can say it's already encrypted, they won't notice the difference"

Base64 encode/decode. A bit ashamed I've used it to (lie?) convince users that data was 'secure'.

I haven't updated mine in over 10 years.

Back then, LinkedIn was the only 'social network' allowed at work. Facebook, etc were all blocked at the firewall. Any+all attempts to access blocked social networks were logged and reported to supervisors and managers. Luckily devRant wasn't flagged as a 'social network'. Whew!

Even then, LinkedIn traffic/posts were monitored and if you, for example, updated a job skill, managers questioned if you were updating your skills to be more attractive to other employers.

The catch 22 was they (upper-mgmt) wanted more LinkedIn activity to make us more 'attractive' for LinkedIn's searches, but didn't want to look too attractive for head hunters to make job offers to devs/DBAs (which did occur).

All that changed when the owner+CEO started getting requests from other CEOs asking why he wasn't on the socials. When 99% of the employees were on their phones anyway at these sites, it was dumb to take system resources to restrict it.

Hilarious, well done.

Add some sound-deadening material to get rid of the room echo and you got a podcast studio worth listening to.

@Demolishun > "we are using it at work"

Ditto. My simple lizard brain can't wrap around it.

We have a couple of what I would call 'WPF experts'. Ex. 'Brian' wrote a WPF data grid from scratch because of the bugs we ran into with DevExpress. His grid is good enough to rival "the big boys". Its almost magical to see him use WPF as a golden hammer.

> WPF isn't terrible

Let's agree to disagree. :)

I get what MS was trying to do with WPF, but not everything has to be 6 layers of MVVM "mud".

They shouldn't have used their own flavor of XML. The whole architecture reeks of know-it-alls who think devs love complexity.

Yep. Played X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter on a 386 with the turbo button. Those were the days.

Advice? You asked. Show some integrity and be a man.

Quit and walk out being the hardest working SOB in building. Who cares what they think. When you land the next job, you're going to walk a little taller, and others will say "Damn...gotta stay out Tounai's way...he's on a mission!"

"Quiet quitting" is for sissies! Now drop and give me 50 push-ups!!!

@Definition7 > "Respect! Lucky that those folk has gone away"

Or stupidity. My mental health struggled, but I knew if I quit, they'd win.

https://youtube.com/watch/...

@Definition7 > "You stay there for 10 years?!"

Coming up on my 27th anniversary.

Lots of ups and downs, that time frame was the lowest. Upside is all those folks have quit or been fired.

Started my CYA journey when users would say (verbally) "Change the button caption to XYZ". I change the caption. A month later "Why is the button caption XYZ? It is supposed to be ABC?" then I get lectured by a VP how I need to do a better job in listening to our users.

> "Your boss is NOT always your friend, don't trust them 100%"

And document *everything*, preferably off-site.

Emails, DMs, anything that could come back as "I never said that!?"

Cleaning up old CYA folders (10+ years old) and I found an email where the mgr was upset that I was taking off the week of Christmas saying he never approved that time off (which he has the authority to cancel).

I pulled the email I'd backed up from October where *he* approved the request (at that time requests were via email).

Not taking it lying down, he replied (in a new email) it was company policy that I re-request time off requests within 7 days of the time off (basically saying I violated policy and my vacation would be canceled)

I reply, cc-ing HR, (screen-shot the original convo), and a copy of the time off policy asking HR to clarify the new '7 day' policy I was not aware of.

I never got a reply from anyone.