Getting thru tough dev days...

One `System.out.println` at a time

Most incompetent co-worker: 6 month ago me 😤

I'm getting more and more fed up with my fellow colleagues who encounter errors in the execution of their code and come to me like bumbling idiots..." I don't know ow what's wrong ... It's not working"

DID YOU READ THE FUCKING ERROR MESSAGE? I GUARAN-DAMN-TEE IT TELLS YOU EXACTLY WHAT'S WRONG! YOU KNOW WHAT...EVEN IF ITS NOT 100% CLEAR GOOGLE IT. BET YOU FIND THE ANSWER

To add insult to idiocracy...I recently over heard grumblings of being displeased at current level - fuck off you lazy ass child - if you can't read an error and Google for the damned solution in today's era search engines and developer assistance, you don't deserve to call yourself a "Senior Developer"

People like to act like there's some great secret to becoming a competent developer...I'm posit over half is simple reading comprehension

Hands down a decent clipboard manager.

The one that got me hooked was Flycut on OSX. I can get by without a lot of things for a while but this is the first install when I get a new setup

Almost certainly counter to popular opinion...
Multiple monitors

System.out.println(str1 + ...)

It's simple really...

Can we collectively as an industry just calm down a little and stop lying to ourselves in a misguided attempt to inflate our sense of purpose...

I just stumbled upon a job listing for a WordPress developer position that described it as "helping solve the big problems of the day". Seriously?! Let's stop and get real you're probably just building themes. Maybe a plugin or two. So just relax and accept you're just another web developer building yet another 💩site you're not solving "the big problems"...

... Then again it IS WordPress...

we practice agile

It should be simple

Casually perusing some online job postings and happened upon this gem. This is at best gloriously naive...

my favorite is to keep a cache of "gimmes"
the idea is to just keep a collection of tasks that need done bit are super easy and really low priority. the theory is the same as doing a mundane task - you simply mindlessly code through the some tasks allowing you to think through things in a new way and hopefully clearing up your block...
...plus you're still mildly productive

favorite item of the moment is the printout tracking my progress through the new taco shop's menu

TLDR: Detect site visitors browser and conditionally load a Citrix frame rather than rendering the site

The request came about 3 days after launching a new project to production. For several months before that moment we had reviewed and confirmed the supported browser matrix. As you might guess plans tend to go up in smoke as we approach and pass launch. Now that we're live after all, it would be the tine to lose our damn minds rather than bask in the warmth of a successful launch for 5 minutes.

Anyway as for the actual request, after those first few days the client PM realized a FEW people were actually using IE8 and was now panicking that it was unsupported. On my way out of the building that day he asked if we could detect the browser and rather than render the site load a frame to a Citrix session that would be running the latest IE...

worst mistake was probably introducing an infinite loop in the category tree for e-commerce site...

in the vein of true agile and considering MVPs and what not we had not yet automated everything. the client would send category updates as a spreadsheet and i had a script to generate the sql and jam it into the site. having run the script several times in the past I thought I'd just throw the update into production and call it a weekend...

it wasn't long before I started fielding calls that the site was unstable. no page would load and the server kept crashing under trivial load. well an entire frantic weekend later I discovered the category load hit an edge case I hadn't considered and I had introduced an infinite loop in the navigation of the site.

i'd like to say I learned my lesson and never just threw changes into production again, but what can I say - I like living on the edge. I did however learn that loop detection can be a valuable thibg

I've been been in consulting doing systems implementations for about a decade. I just started a new e-commerce project with perhaps the most agreeable client I've ever encountered - in fact they're extremely eager to make my job easier. Just today one of the stakeholders, completely seriously, uttered the phrase "maybe we don't need to care about IE".

After ten years living thru every client cliche imaginable over and over again I now find I don't know how to trust. Their acceptance of best practices and my recommendations is almost unnerving...

lately my IT mantra in the vein of "have you tried turning it off and back on again" has become "did you check the logs for error output"😡

NOTE to all developers of any level: if you want help do your due diligence! Check the logs, try to step debug and at the very least please at least pretend to perform a cursory search

Since becoming an "Architect", I've come to learn "Architect" simply means siphoning your will by eliminating all opportunities to actually write code ...

public class Architect {

static final boolean inMeeting = true;
private int will;

public static void main(String args[]){

Architect me = new Architect();
if(me.inMeeting){
while(meeting.active){
me.reactToEvents();
}
}else{
me.writeCode();
}

}

public void reactToEvents(){
if(new Random().nextInt() % 3 == 0)
will -= this.hit(this.face, this.palm, Force.CONSIDERABLE);
else
will -= this.hit(Office.desk, this.head, Force.MODERATE);
}

public int hit(Object object, Object with, Force force){
object.useForce(force);
object.moveTo(with);
return new Random().nextInt();
}
}