!dev

There’s this person at $work who never uses punctuation of any kind. She has mental issues and insists on neutral pronouns (and strongly advertises these) so I’ll use the indefinite to pretend to be respectful. It has multiple thoughts while typing a message and just keeps typing through all of them without stopping. It pauses not to collect its thoughts, to edit for clarity or to fix mistakes, to separate anything (including disjoint topics), to summarize, etc. (Though calling these “thoughts” is a huge stretch, given its lack of propensity for that particular subject.) It’s as if it has zero distinction between writing and speaking, and simply lets the mental diarrhea flow while their fingers do their best to keep pace. Reading these trainwrecks of thought — and gleaning any useful information from them — is always difficult and a little bit painful.

It is also in charge of IT security, which is more than a bit worrying. (But I hate the company with a passion, so it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it otherwise would.)

Deleted over 1'500 lines of code over the last 2 days and replaced it with 80 lines of readable, simple, generic code.

And I'm feeelin' gooood 🎶

Red flags in your first week of your software engineering job 🚩

You do the first few days not speaking to anyone.
You can't get into the building and no one turns up until mid day.
The receptionist thinks you're too well dressed to work in this building, thinks you're a spy and calls security on you.
You are eating alone during lunch time in the cafeteria
You have bring your own material for making coffee for yourself

When you try to read the onboarding docs and there aren't any.
You have to write the onboarding docs.

You don't have team mates.
When you ask another team how things are going and they just laugh and cry.😂😭

There's no computer for you, and not even an "it's delayed" excuse. They weren't expecting you.
Your are given a TI PC, because "that's all we have", even though there's no software for it, and it's not quite IBM compatible.
You don't have local admin rights on your computer.💀
You have to buy a laptop yourself to be able to do your job.

It's the end of the week and you still don't have your environment set up and running.
You look at the codebase and there are no automated tests.
You have to request access every time you need to install something through a company tool that looks like it was made in 2001.

Various tasks can only be performed by one single person and they are either out sick or on vacation.
You have to keep track of your time in 6 minute increments, assigned to projects you don't know, by project numbers everyone has memorised (and therefore aren't written down).
You have to fill in timesheets and it takes you 30 minutes each day to fill them in because the system is so clunky.🤮

Your first email is a phishing test from the IT department in another country and timezone, but it has useful information in it, like how to login to the VPN.
Your second email is not a phishing test, but has similar information as the first one. (You ignore it.)
Your name is spelled wrong in every system, in a different way. 2 departments decide that it's too much trouble, and they never fix the spelling as long as you work there. One of them fixes it after you leave, and annoys you for a month because you haven't filled out the customer survey.

Writing a new tool, and it's looking pretty slick so far.

This is much better than meetings upon meetings. Maybe I should ask for a demotion so I can be writing code more often?

Right. I'm trying to put together a bot to replace @b2plane. I think this has potential.

The spam filter fails to block obvious phishing attempts.

It does however block invoices from the people who set up the spam filter for us.

This is the universe working in perfect harmony.

Ah.. the beauty of clean code.

I wrote a very cleanly written program two years ago. Proper variable names, not too many, right naming, right design pattern,.. Now I come back to it and I am able to instantly figure out the code again. It only took me half a minute.

The importance of clean code... that's something the industry needs to understand more. Well, then there's the money issue. lol

got a new laptop today. corporate, so hey, there's your Win11.
i still recall how i could not believe what crap they released when i saw Vista for the first time. the tranisiton from 7 to 10 wasn't pleasant but ok.
but the switch from 10 to 11? WTF. half a setting is gone and i can only be lucky it's 2 years past release so some stuff that was missing is re-implemented back. some stuff can be fixed with 3rd party tools but hey - it can also be loaded with malware so no-go in work environment.

can't wait for what pile of horseshit is the 12 going to be with their "Ai bUilT iNTo OpERaTIng sYSem"

Challenge: rank the following in your favourite order:

A: Stargate shows
B: Battlestar Galactica (and Caprica)
C: StarTrek
D: Westworld
E: Star wars
F: Doctor Who
G: Black mirror
H: X files
I: Matrix films
J: Babylon 5
K: Altered Carbon
L: The Arrival

And any other sci-fi shows/films I've missed

How to impress PM:
1. Prepare a critical bug, that makes the frontend crash
2. Prepare a hotfix, that fixes the bug
3. Deploy bug on Friday afternoon
4. Wait until PM starts panicking
5. Deploy hotfix after 5 min
6. Get praise from PM

I can’t find flaws in his logic

Customer demands some complicated shit be done within a few hours to align with their schedule.
Me: this is not aligned with reality.
Customer: ...

if the stars align, i will have a dobie sometime early 2024. i want to only go through ethical breeders, so the wait has been long, but it’s worth it. i’ve never had a dog before and i’m SO excited !!!

pic is of momma and one of her puppers from a previous litter, but we will be keeping the ears floppy :)

I had high ideals when I started working here. The entire code base was practically devoid of comments. Its been 5 years and it is still practically devoid of comments. I have become like them...

brew being active-aggressive

C# isn't simply garbage collected.

C# is garbage. Hot garbage that needs to be collected.

Bold and brash? More like belongs in the trash!

In other news I'm now making $20+ an hour ($16 after taxes) turning bolts for a living. Fucking bolts.

More money than I ever made in my life before.
I don't know if this should be a happy statement or a sad one.

The minimum wage in 1963 worked out to 23 dollars an hour, so hey, I can't be doing too bad.

Me every day if i had a job

Visual Basic.

“Does VBA for Excel count? Because if it does then VBA for Excel has reached the ”nuclear resistant cockroach” level in finance.

You wouldn't believe what sort of processes in very big banks/financial institutions are built using 10-year-old VBA macros. In fact, VBA consulting for finance is a very juicy cottage industry at least in Europe to this very day.”

https://retool.com/visual-basic

team downloading a library to solve in 12 hours problems I could code myself out in 15 minutes, complication as a service at its best.

Commit as you go. Work on one thing at a time. Be detailed in your commit messages.

Finding and reverting that one small change that breaks everything is so much harder to do when you change lots of files and the commit message is "update".

Fixing a broken clock...

Dev: What is higher priority, ticket A or ticket B?
PO: No.

Speaks for itself...

🚀 Stay Active with @ttshivhula/stay-online!

Tired of auto screen locks or your system assuming you're idle? Look no further:

• Simulate Mouse Movement (either linear or circular)
• Simulate Keyboard Activity
• Set Random Activity Intervals
• Pick your mode: mouse, keyboard, or both!

💡 Quick Start:
Install with: `npm install -g @ttshivhula/stay-online`

🤝 Contribute & Collaborate:
Have improvements or ideas? We'd love your input! Dive in and contribute. Visit our GitHub repo: `https://github.com/ttshivhula/...`

Let's redefine 'active' together! Spread the word and keep your system awake.🚀🖥️🔒🚫

Ok so the ex boyfriend (let's call him Joe) of a friend of mine is a dumbass

He wanted to hack her phone, or whatever, so hired someone on telegram to do it. He asked her phone number and 200€.

After actually giving him the money this guy sent a ransom asking for 2k to not turn Joe in.

Joe learned a lesson.

Our company opened a job offer for a new teammember in our team.
Same skills and expertise as mine, but the minimum salary offered is more than I earn.
I decided to just apply for basically my own job and in a matter of 10 minutes I got a message by HR, asking why I applied and that this is basically a position in my team. After I explained the reasons, I got a message from my boss 5 minutes later, who wants to talk to me live tommorow about that.

Gotta say, fastest response and invitation I ever got on an application.

6 months ago:

Boss: We have this idea to improve our onboarding to avoid drop off in the new app. See this section here? Were going to take that out of the onboarding and just let them pass straight through to the app. Then when they get into the app, there will be a banner telling them they should go to settings and set this up. That way they can ignore it for a while and get into the app sooner

Me: Get into the app sooner to do what?

Boss: Explore it

Me: Explore an empty app with no content, as they are a brand new user with nothing setup? While theres a big banner on the screen saying "You have insecure settings" ... basically forcing them to do it straight away anyway?

Boss: Yeah, we can give them some recommendations or something while they click around. It will be good. This is months away anyway, we'll talk again

Yesterday:

Boss: So this weird unexpected thing happened. We showed some beta users our plans to remove this section from onboarding and they felt weird about it. They said they didn't like the idea of the banner telling them they haven't set it up correctly

Me: Thats not weird, I said the same thing 6 months ago

Boss: ......... oh, really?

Me: Yep. Its not an improvement to get them through onboarding quicker, just to tell them they have to now go do it somewhere else

Boss: ... right. Ok maybe we'll build it anyway and see how they feel with it in there hands?

Me: nope

Boss: ... what do you mean?

Me: We are behind, you've asked me 3 times in the last week if we are going to be able to get everything in on time ... and now you want me to build something that everyone, apart from you, says they don't like. So realistically, i'm going to build it, and then remove it next week ... and we'll have a discussion about what has to be dropped because of this

Boss: ........ right .... ok .... hhhmmm

Me: *sits with resting bitch face*

Boss: ... maybe we can hide the banner until later. Not show it to them until they've done something in the app?

Me: ... maybe we can not do any of this?

Boss: right but then the onboarding will ...

Me: *talks louder* ... yes will be the way our users want it to be

Boss: ... hhmm i'm not sure

Me: Ok heres what we'll do, so long as it doesn't delay me getting the designs I need, feel free to have the designer mock up what it would look like using that figma on device preview thing. If users say they like it, i'll build it

Boss: ... right but it won't be real on device app so ...

Me: Its that or we cut feature X

Boss: ... well we need that

Me: ok glad we agree, let me know what feedback the designer gets

Boss: ... ok

Everyone's on annual leave. Except me.

Productivity is up 500%.

Weird.

Designer: Need to file a bug, I'm not getting an option to login with FaceID

Me: Oh weird bug. Is it setup on the phone you are testing with?

Designer: yes, use it in all other apps

Me: Did you get an error during onboarding on the FaceID screen?

Designer: nope no error

Me: ..... hhhmm, can you show me your settings?

Me: ... eh, says you have FaceID disabled for this app ... did you click "No" to FaceID during onboarding?

Designer: Yes, to test edge cases

Me: ................ ok ........ if you setup the app and told it to not allow FaceID to login ......... you won't get the ability to use FaceID to login .......... like .... by design .... on purpose ...... cause .... you told it to do that

Designer: No no, it needs to have a setting on the login screen to allow me to turn that back on incase I forget my passcode

Me: the fuck it does. Yeah we can't have anything on the login page that says, without authorization, change my settings

*Deep breath*

Me: Remember we had this conversation previously, where you didn't want the user to create a passcode during onboarding as it was too much friction, and wanted to do FaceID only. With your backup plan being to allow the user to create a NEW passcode on the login screen if FaceID failed .... remember that discussion we had about security? ... and how its important? ... and that we like having any? Ok so its the same reason as that, just with a different setting this time

Designer: ... hhmm i'm not sure I like this

Me: ... tough luck then, not happening

Me: oh and btw, remember we had that other talk about reproduction steps for bugs? Like when the app crashed and you told me it was because its in light mode, and nothing else at all? So disabling FaceID, is very relevant info to the problem of "I can't login with FaceID", please tell me these things first

I call this piece "the codebase claims another"