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AboutSenior dev who has seen it all..
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SkillsWhatever I am paid to know.
Joined devRant on 12/2/2019
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Been thinking about game design for a while now. I have been thinking about how the game can affect the player emotionally. I pay attention to off comments people make in game forums. I didn't fully realize the impact of some NPCs until someone pointed it out.
For instance, in Skryim a character would say something like "Your parents should be very proud of you. I am too." People have expressed how profoundly this impacted them. So I put this in my notes of "things to include" in any given game. I also saw a meme where there are people where their only positive interaction with the world could be a video game. I don't know what kind of dark existence that would be so it makes it hard for me to relate. Which is probably why I didn't understand the impact of such a statement. I realized that regardless of the medium, you will have an impact on someone.
I have also been thinking about how people get older they become more of a casual player. But as a casual myself I want to a more detailed system of interaction with the game. Despite the shitty graphics (all text map), the "Mines of Moria" is one of my all time favorite games. It is based upon the Rogue I think. I remember being able to do almost anything that made logical sense with anything. For instance, you could dip arrows in any potion. The affect was not always significant, but you could to that. I want to recreate that in my games. I am going to start with shitty graphics and build a system of interaction that is more detailed than any RPG I have played. Maybe a lot of players will gloss over this, but for those that want that it will be there. I think the biggest issue is often the types of exploits this would allow. So I guess I will have to get good at simulating the player interactions to test things out. I am always a bit frustrated with games that have mages, but all their spells are wrote. I feel like skill trees for all types of play should be expansive and exclusionary. That way a new play through doesn't end up with the same god character every time.
I have been watching One Piece. I now want piracy and ships in my game. Including ship battles with a working crew. It seems like this could make an RPG a lot of fun. Who doesn't want mages casting fireballs at opposing ships?9 -
I'll monitor our helpdesk ticket system from time-to-time and HR will send their employee termination request so the accounts are deactivated. I notice an odd name I hadn't seen in a long while (names have been changed)
<thought bubble> "Ketsup? Hmmm...wonder if they're related to ol' Brad Ketsup?"
Brad was a bully who would shove me in the bathroom when I would pee so I would tip over and hit the urinal. He was part of pack of older bullies who enjoyed torturing people in the stalls by throwing wet paper towels over the wall or one time in my case, busted the door open (Brad: "Look everybody! PaperTrail is pooping! Look at his little pee-pee...ha ha ha..") Incidentally, the school didn't fix the door, they removed all the doors so the problem wouldn't happen again, but I digress.
I look at the individual's pic, and it was like going back in time. There he was, the near perfect round face, pinned back ears...not Brad, but I'd bet my paycheck at Vegas it was his son. All the vent up frustrations started to bubble up...then...sadness.
Brad moved away in high school and unless the good Lord moved mountains in Brad's life, this poor kid likely lived the same abusive life as Brad. Brad's dad was a drunk and known to be abusive. Statistically speaking, no reason to believe the the apple wouldn't fall far from the tree.
Makes me wonder what happened to all those guys from back then. I know two of em' ended up in prison, but I wonder what I would say if I came across any of them in the wild?
I'm sure most of you had perfect lives growing up and no feelings of mass carnage when you think of the bullies in your early life.5 -
Am I the only one ?
15+ years in c# / .net dev and I still google "c# string compare ignore case" each time. Its just fucking faster than to remember exact syntax of the "StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase"9 -
I am currently working as a consultant and I like it. It also makes upset/happy/schadenfroh (not entirely sure how I feel about it) when we tell the client what work needs to be done in which order and why just so they can throw it all overboard and we do it the way they want it and it bites them in the ass a few month down the line.
They hire us for the external professional experience that we bring, so listen to us. We did this before, we know what works, and we know way your way does not work.7 -
I keep getting interest for my freelance services and then people totally ghost me. This time I got all the way to “Send me your contract to sign and we’ll get started.” Several followup emails later and no response. I wish there were a way to know this outcome before I ever waste time on the back and forth.5
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I feel like these two sentences go together somehow:
rubber duck
what the fuck
This is probably how a programmer poem would start.8 -
I’m pissed.
I had previously ranted about being assigned to a very messy project. I spent 3-4 months alone adding features and CLEANING things up.
Recently, there had been talks about a new major development phase on this project. But things lingered and the day before I’m to go on vacation, I get the news that this new phase starts in 2 days. Since I’m going to be on break they’re putting other guys on the project who don’t know anything about it.
Fast forward two weeks later.
I’m back from vacation.
I find out one of the guys has strong opinions about doing things certains ways… but unfortunately they are "ways" of unnecessary complexity, abstraction and verbosity.
After just a couple of weeks I’m already lost in the complexity of his code, which supports features of VERY LOW complexity. Fuck, has he ever heard of KISS? Has anybody heard of it where I work?
Now I have to spend my mental energy trying to make sense of this pile of crap rather than actually spending it getting things done.1 -
I discovered a function in our database that converts integers to ordinals by concatenating the number and a suffix:
- ends in 1: add “st”
- ends in 2: add “nd”
- ends in 3: add “rd”
- else: add “th”
Simple! Except I guess nobody considered the 11st, 12nd, and 13rd iteration of this function…9 -
Anyone here working as a consultant/contractor or running their own firm? How did you get into it? Where do you find clients?4
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anyone else watch Stranger Things and notice they were showing HTML on the screen when it’s the 1970’s?16
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What if I told you : you can use whatever the fuck OS you want, whatever the fuck stack you want ?
And IF you take a job in a certain stack, don't like it ? Quit your job !
Stop beeing whining bitches. Don't like current job ? Find a new one.
You think your app is revolutionary ? TRY and push it (And fail)
You think that at 16 you know better than people who are 30+yo ? prove it by actions.
It's easy. You have full control of what you can do.
Stop bitching, start coding.
windows, linux, mac, MS-DOS. Noone cares what you use. As long as you do the job.20 -
Dev submitting PR: “Testing instructions: Self explanatory”
Dev reviewing PR: You need to be a bit more verbose than that.
Dev submitting PR: “Testing instruction: Feature should work as expected”
Dev reviewing PR: *sigh*… Feature doesn’t work as expected
Dev submitting PR: WHAT IS NOT WORKING AS EXPECTED??? I NEED MORE DETAIL THAN THAT!!
Dev reviewing PR: …….So do I you muppet5 -
Official declaration: I am a fucking moron.
Last year, I acted stupid (as suual) and didn't invest enough money into some tax saving instruments.
I also picked the wrong taxation method and ended up paying more than double taxes.
Thankfully my country has an option where you can claim a refund by filing a return form.
And so I go ahead and I hire a finance guy who can help me do my taxes.
We sit at the table and do the math. It turns out my savings mindset prevented me from not investing enough and now it is difficult to claim the tax as refund.
I legit had no issues in investing more. Rather I was looking for ways to do so but I didn't. If I had done it, I'd would be paying zero taxes as my earnings would fall below a certain threshold.
Only trick is to evade by unethical means. Should I be the Jeff Bezos of my country and save my hard earned money from going to corrupt politicians?
Either way, I am a moron. Fucking hate my stupid decision.17 -
Minimum wage employers and restaurants asking "and why should we hire you?".
You have 40 vacancies in your area for just your company alone.
You're paying $13.25 an hour when only a year ago you were paying $9.75.
Why should we hire you?
F*ck you, pay me, that's why.
You're not f*cking NASA
You're a God damn chain restaurant with a 40% turnover rate, who's employees probably shoot up in the bathroom on the rare occasion they even get a break.
I looked at the guy with all the annoyance I could muster, stared him down for a good five seconds and said. "You pay a few dollars over minimum. You're job is not important enough to even ask that question. Have a nice day." And got up and left.
Dude followed me and stuttered " hold up. I was just..."
But I was already out the door.
You were just what mark? Asking a dumbfuck question as if you had any leverage at all?
Your competitor *across the street* is offering 50 cents *more* per hour, and has guaranteed breaks.
What, did you forget 2008 and how you treated millions of people as disposable? The little part where you and most american industries demanded passion, without pay raises? Promotions without benefits? The jobs that if you worked hard, rather than a promotion or a pay raise, your reward was more work and less hours to finish?
You assholes thought we forgot about that? How you shipped millions of jobs overseas, blamed it on "automation" (chinese and indian slave labor), and then pointed the finger at millions of impoverished people as "lazy" in places like Detroit and Pittsburgh and told them "you just got to work harder and smarter!" Or "just get a small loan and create the next google!" from the comfort of your yachts? I'm looking at you bane corp.
No, now the shoes on the other foot motherf*ckers. Hows it feel needing all *us* commoners? "Why should we hire you?"
No, why should *I* WORK FOR YOU?
Cuz I saw THREE dirty tables coming in. A line of people that could be being served. A line that could have been optimized with the proper table count and some simple changes. A menu that doesnt even incentivize your biggest sellers and a dozen other things your store is doing wrong.
Think mark, think!
This is one of those braindead questions employers paying sub $18 an hour ask, because they suffered so much brain drain from years of payola profits from too-big-to-fail wallstreet bailouts, that they forgot they are not king midas, unless they are the king midas of shit, because increasingly everything corporate America touches turns into shit.
And while were on the subject, stopping bringing in outside management to stores. It destroys team cohesion, staff morale, pisses off people *on site* who *actually know* the team, the stores daily activities and processes, and who are better fit for that role. You bring in disinterested outside management, and it's one of the biggest red flags I've ever seen: these smarmy selfcongratulating f*cks who know nothing about the particular store, have no connection to the staff, go on firing sprees or alienation-sprees to hire in friends, fuck up the schedules because again they know nothing about the employees, and then move on after a few years to greener pastures, leaving a barren radioactive wasteland of chain smokers and burnt out staff in their wake.
Dear corporate America, your free ride on the public's good will is over. It's over.
Now you're in the bitch seat. Come sit at my desk and explain to me, EXPLAIN TO ME, why I should sweat and labor to save your shitty company hemorrhaging money like a bleeding crack-addicted hobo dying with a sucking chest wound from a chicago skidrow friday-night drive-by?
You dont deserve it. Your management and company culture is worse than incompetent. It's full of smiley guys expounding about their passion for customer service while giving each other sloppy BJs in broom closets, a veritable cornucopia of cult-like corporate dick suckers *and* dickheads, proclaiming, no...PROFESSING (hence "professional") their undying allegiance and dedication to their corporate family with the intensity of cujo, foaming at the mouth, or Mitt Romney preparing for a photoshoot, plastic smiles and feigned laughs.
Dont forget to wipe your chin, asshole. It's not Ronald McDonald your blowing, but it's definitely not Gordon f*cking Ramsey either.
Would you like fries with that?88 -
Looking through some code from a new project at my old job.
It seems they are sending off some audio files from interviews into an online transcriptions-service, and putting the result unsanitized into a string-concatenated INSERT-statement into the db.
I look forward to the demo, I’m going to yell “single quote Drop table users semicolon dash dash” -
I once worked until 8am to get a demo ready for a client of the client. I knew the client was a bit thick, so I made some comprehensive video demos and sent them over to him, to save him trying to demo it himself. I wake up at 11am with him screaming down the phone at me:
“It doesn’t work, none of it works!”
“What do you mean?”
“I go to login and I can’t enter anything.”
“I haven’t sent you anything to log into...wait, are you trying to log into a video? Tell me you’re not trying to log into a video of a login page.”
“Uh...oh hang on, it just worked. Ok no pr-“
“No wait, what do you mean it worked?”
“I logged in fine.”
“It’s a video. You can’t log into a video.”
“Uh...alright, bye mate, thanks!”
The moral of the story is: never assume any level of intelligence on the part of a client, even if they exhibit signs of it at first. If they are paying you they will forget how to tie their own shoelaces.10 -
Don't get stuck maintaining legacy stuff.
If you move to new, preferably greenfield dev every so often then you'll naturally keep with the times (at least if you're working in a vaguely decent team.) If you stick in one place too long and get stuck maintaining legacy crap, then that will be your focus, and that will be where your knowledge sticks.3