Details
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AboutI am running my own small business, working as a long-term developer and maintainer on special projects for my regular customers. Involves databases, JSON, REST API's, special custom research and development on nonlinear measurement algorithms.
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SkillsProgramming: C/C++, Delphi, C# Special skills: Reverse Engineering
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LocationNeustrelitz, Germany
Joined devRant on 12/5/2020
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I managed to accidentally clear everybody's usernames and email addresses from an SQL table once. I only recovered it because a few seconds before, I'd opened a tab with all the user data displayed as an HTML table. I quickly copied it into Excel, then a text editor (saving multiple times!), then managed to write a set of queries to paste it all back in place. If I'd refreshed the tab it would have all gone!2
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Last year we were given an app to patch that was completely in Arabic (including the documentation). We had a tight deadline to get the app fixed so we paid for a big company to translate the Word document we'd be given.
After 2 weeks we were given the translated documentation only to find it was select recipes from an Egyptian cooking book.1 -
Reset 65 passwords today already, a new personal best for one day! No idea why the reset password button is so hard for clients to use, aghh!3
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"Can our app work from 8am to 9pm, Monday to Friday?"
"Yes but it's an app, it can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
"Oh... Is it possible to make it work only from 8am to 9pm Monday to Friday? They're our opening times and we want everything consistent!"
Slippery slope, a very slippery slope...7 -
First thing this morning I heard my boss had taken some PSDs to a client today. I thought it was a bit weird because he doesn't have a laptop. Midday I got a call to say all my PSDs were corrupted:
"I'm with the client now. We're very unhappy, we can't get your files to open."
"Oh, right. They should be fine. What version of Photoshop are you using?"
"The latest."
"Okay, what's the error?"
"There isn't one."
"Okay, so it's freezing?"
"No, we can't see the files at all."
"Which laptop are you using?"
"The Nexus."
"The what?"
"That tablet thing."
So after about 20 minutes we figured out he's copied the PSDs and a shortcut to Photoshop on to a USB stick. Then plugged the USB into a USB to micro USB cable and stuck that in an Android Nexus. Expecting to open Photoshop.exe and the PSDs.
I don't mind people being confused with technology but when it's your own boss, who doesn't even bother to let you know anything, then phones up and tells you off you just want to strangle him.16 -
Last night I had a dream about a bug and I woke up with a solution. When I got to the office and tried it out it worked...I have heard about this happening before but this is the first time I have experienced it!11
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A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.
It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.
Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).
So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...
So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.
We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!401 -
"You gave us bad code! We ran it and now production is DOWN! Join this bridgeline now and help us fix this!"
So, as the author of the code in question, I join the bridge... And what happens next, I will simply never forget.
First, a little backstory... Another team within our company needed some vendor client software installed and maintained across the enterprise. Multiple OSes (Linux, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, etc.), so packaging and consistent update methods were a a challenge. I wrote an entire set of utilities to install, update and generally maintain the software; intending all the time that this other team would eventually own the process and code. With this in mind, I wrote extensive documentation, and conducted a formal turnover / training season with the other team.
So, fast forward to when the other team now owns my code, has been trained on how to use it, including (perhaps most importantly) how to send out updates when the vendor released upgrades to the agent software.
Now, this other team had the responsibility of releasing their first update since I gave them the process. Very simple upgrade process, already fully automated. What could have gone so horribly wrong? Did something the vendor supplied break their client?
I asked for the log files from the upgrade process. They sent them, and they looked... wrong. Very, very wrong.
Did you run the code I gave you to do this update?
"Yes, your code is broken - fix it! Production is down! Rabble, rabble, rabble!"
So, I go into our code management tool and review the _actual_ script they ran. Sure enough, it is my code... But something is very wrong.
More than 2/3rds of my code... has been commented out. The code is "there"... but has been commented out so it is not being executed. WT-actual-F?!
I question this on the bridge line. Silence. I insist someone explain what is going on. Is this a joke? Is this some kind of work version of candid camera?
Finally someone breaks the silence and explains.
And this, my friends, is the part I will never forget.
"We wanted to look through your code before we ran the update. When we looked at it, there was some stuff we didn't understand, so we commented that stuff out."
You... you didn't... understand... my some of the code... so you... you didn't ask me about it... you didn't try to actually figure out what it did... you... commented it OUT?!
"Right, we figured it was better to only run the parts we understood... But now we ran it and everything is broken and you need to fix your code."
I cannot repeat the things I said next, even here on devRant. Let's just say that call did not go well.
So, lesson learned? If you don't know what some code does? Just comment that shit out. Then blame the original author when it doesn't work.
You just cannot make this kind of stuff up.105 -
Interviewer: Welcome, Mr X. Thanks for dropping by. We like to keep our interviews informal. And even though I have all the power here, and you are nothing but a cretin, let’s pretend we are going to have fun here.
Mr X: Sure, man, whatever.
I: Let’s start with the technical stuff, shall we? Do you know what a linked list is?
X: (Tells what it is).
I: Great. Can you tell me where linked lists are used?
X:: Sure. In interview questions.
I: What?
X: The only time linked lists come up is in interview questions.
I:: That’s not true. They have lots of real world applications. Like, like…. (fumbles)
X:: Like to implement memory allocation in operating systems. But you don’t sell operating systems, do you?
I:: Well… moving on. Do you know what the Big O notation is?
X: Sure. It’s another thing used only in interviews.
I: What?! Not true at all. What if you want to sort a billion records a minute, like Google has to?
X: But you are not Google, are you? You are hiring me to work with 5 year old PHP code, and most of the tasks will be hacking HTML/CSS. Why don’t you ask me something I will actually be doing?
I: (Getting a bit frustrated) Fine. How would you do FooBar in version X of PHP?
X: I would, er, Google that.
I: And how do you call library ABC in PHP?
X: Google?
I: (shocked) OMG. You mean you don’t remember all the 97 million PHP functions, and have to actually Google stuff? What if the Internet goes down?
X: Does it? We’re in the 1st world, aren’t we?
I: Tut, tut. Kids these days. Anyway,looking at your resume, we need at least 7 years of ReactJS. You don’t have that.
X: That’s great, because React came out last year.
I: Excuses, excuses. Let’s ask some lateral thinking questions. How would you go about finding how many piano tuners there are in San Francisco?
X: 37.
I: What?!
X: 37. I googled before coming here. Also Googled other puzzle questions. You can fit 7,895,345 balls in a Boeing 747. Manholes covers are round because that is the shape that won’t fall in. You ask the guard what the other guard would say. You then take the fox across the bridge first, and eat the chicken. As for how to move Mount Fuji, you tell it a sad story.
I: Ooooooooookkkkkaaaayyyyyyy. Right, tell me a bit about yourself.
X: Everything is there in the resume.
I: I mean other than that. What sort of a person are you? What are your hobbies?
X: Japanese culture.
I: Interesting. What specifically?
X: Hentai.
I: What’s hentai?
X: It’s an televised art form.
I: Ok. Now, can you give me an example of a time when you were really challenged?
X: Well, just the other day, a few pennies from my pocket fell behind the sofa. Took me an hour to take them out. Boy was it challenging.
I: I meant technical challenge.
X: I once spent 10 hours installing Windows 10 on a Mac.
I: Why did you do that?
X: I had nothing better to do.
I: Why did you decide to apply to us?
X: The voices in my head told me.
I: What?
X: You advertised a job, so I applied.
I: And why do you want to change your job?
X: Money, baby!
I: (shocked)
X: I mean, I am looking for more lateral changes in a fast moving cloud connected social media agile web 2.0 company.
I: Great. That’s the answer we were looking for. What do you feel about constant overtime?
X: I don’t know. What do you feel about overtime pay?
I: What is your biggest weakness?
X: Kryptonite. Also, ice cream.
I: What are your salary expectations?
X: A million dollars a year, three months paid vacation on the beach, stock options, the lot. Failing that, whatever you have.
I: Great. Any questions for me?
X: No.
I: No? You are supposed to ask me a question, to impress me with your knowledge. I’ll ask you one. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
X: Doing your job, minus the stupid questions.
I: Get out. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
All Credit to:
http://pythonforengineers.com/the-p...89 -
I’m a senior dev at a small company that does some consulting. This past October, some really heavy personal situation came up and my job suffered for it. I raised the flag and was very open with my boss about it and both him and my team of 3 understood and were pretty cool with me taking on a smaller load of work while I moved on with some stuff in my life. For a week.
Right after that, I got sent to a client. “One month only, we just want some presence there since it’s such a big client” alright, I guess I can do that. “You’ll be in charge of a team of a few people and help them technically.” Sounds good, I like leading!
So I get here. Let’s talk technical first: from being in a small but interesting project using Xamarin, I’m now looking at Visual Basic code, using Visual Studio 2010. Windows fucking Forms.
The project was made by a single dev for this huge company. She did what she could but as the requirements grew this thing became a behemoth of spaghetti code and User Controls. The other two guys working on the project have been here for a few months and they have very basic experience at the job anyways. The woman that worked on the project for 5 years is now leaving because she can’t take it anymore.
And that’s not the worse of it. It took from October to December for me to get a machine. I literally spent two months reading on my cellphone and just going over my shitty personal situation for 8 hours a day. I complained to everyone I could and nothing really worked.
Then I got a PC! But wait… no domain user. Queue an extra month in which I could see the Windows 7 (yep) log in screen and nothing else. Then, finally! A domain user! I can log in! Just wait 2 extra weeks for us to give your user access to the subversion rep and you’re good to go!
While all of this went on, I didn’t get an access card until a week ago. Every day I had to walk to the reception desk, show my ID and request they call my boss so he could grant me access. 5 months of this, both at the start of the day and after lunch. There was one day in particular, between two holidays, in which no one that could grant me access was at the office. I literally stood there until 11am in which I called my company and told them I was going home.
Now I’ve been actually working for a while, mostly fixing stuff that works like crap and trying to implement functions that should have been finished but aren’t even started. Did I mention this App is in production and being used by the people here? Because it is. Imagine if you will the amount of problems that an application that’s connecting to the production DB can create when it doesn’t even validate if the field should receive numeric values only. Did I mention the DB itself is also a complete mess? Because it is. There’s an “INDEXES” tables in which, I shit you not, the IDs of every other table is stored. There are no Identity fields anywhere, and instead every insert has to go to this INDEXES table, check the last ID of the table we’re working on, then create a new registry in order to give you your new ID. It’s insane.
And, to boot, the new order from above is: We want to split this app in two. You guys will stick with the maintenance of half of it, some other dudes with the other. Still both targeting the same DB and using the same starting point, but each only working on the module that we want them to work in. PostmodernJerk, it’s your job now to prepare the app so that this can work. How? We dunno. Why? Fuck if we care. Kill you? You don’t deserve the swift release of death.
Also I’m starting to get a bit tired of comments that go ‘THIS DOESN’T WORK and ‘I DON’T KNOW WHY WE DO THIS BUT IT HELPS and my personal favorite ‘??????????????????????14 -
Casually debugging some cuda code today. Something's not working so I add a breakpoint in the suspicious kernel. For some reason I set the display GPU as the active device from my code *GENIUS* ( I have two GPUs installed, one for compute, one for the monitors).
Starts cuda debugging... Control flow reached the kernel and eventually the breakpoint. Suddenly the whole system freezes. Mouse doesn't move, keyboard seems dead. I realize I have unsaved code on the open text editor😲 *panic*. Keyboard shortcut to stop debugging doesn't work *panic^2*. My colleague says I have to hard reset the machine *panic^3*. I don't remember the last time I saved *panic^4*.
I take a deep breath. I reset. *sidenote: WINDOWS DECIDED TO FUCKING UPDATE ON REBOOT* Once I login, 50% of my code was lost. I didn't save 😢
Fuck you Nvidia 😢7 -
Do not continue reading if you value your life.
Visual fucking studio 2015 installation. MOTHERFUCKER !!!
OK new project will only work on VS2015. Need to download it. OK, go to MS website. Project works with community edition. Fucking great. Download the installer. Run the installer. MOTHERFUCKER DON'T OPEN THE FUCKING BROWSER TO THANK ME, YOU FUCKING FUCK. Ok...Wait to download the packages. One fucking eternity later download completes. FUCKING GREAT. Proceed to package installation. After two fucking hours installation progress bar stays the same. Google "vs 2015 installation stuck windows 7". MOTHERFUCKING BACKGROUND PROCESS IS FUCKING STUCK AND INSTALLATION DOES NOT CONTINUE. FUCK YOU. I'VE LOST TWO HOURS. OK, stop the process. Installation gets cancelled. Run the installer again. STOP THANKING ME YOU PIECE OF SHIT :@ OK, check again all downloaded packages. All good. Continue with installation. Installation completes. MOTHERFUCKER WHY YOU WANT TO RESTART THE WHOLE SYSTEM ? FUCK YOUR WINDOWS UPDATES. Ok, restart and be done with it. SSD to the rescue. Try to set up the project.
MOTHERFUCKER I DIDN'T INSTALL THE C++ PACKAGES. WTF WERE YOU DOING ALL THAT TIME? OK, run installer again and install C++ packages. I SWEAR TO GOD MICROSOFT, IF YOU THANK ME ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME, YOU'RE GETTING HATE MAIL.
Ok, installation completes. It's coding time. NO BITCH. VS2015 silently crashes after splash screen. :@@@ Google wtf is wrong again, turns out the C++ packages fuck shit up. Ok, pass some arguments to devenv.exe to reset. Restart VS. Ok, seems to be working now. Make a test project. Fucking awesome. Close VS and get the project files from perforce.
OK, files downloaded. Open VS again....
VS: "You're my bitch, you won't code today. Run from console and pass some shitty reset parameters"
YOU FUCKING FUCK. GO FUCK YOURSELF UP YOUR FUCKING ARSE. Ok, pass the parameters from console. Run again. Same "you're my bitch message" :@ OK, run with administrator rights, opens like charm. Run without admin rights again, "you're my bitch message". :@@@@@
Restart system, VS2015 finally opens project normally. Build project, 6934 errors.... :@ I'M DONE ! IM GOING BACK TO LINUX PROJECT. FUCK YOU ALL.18