Another dev on my team just got a new machine. Before he came in today I made two separate USB installers and left him these notes.

Yesterday: Senior dev messages out a screenshot of someone using an extension method I wrote (he didn’t know I wrote it)..

SeniorDev: “OMG…that has to be the stupidest thing I ever saw.”
Me: “Stupid? Why?”
SeniorDev: “Why are they having to check the value from the database to see if it’s DBNull and if it is, return null. The database value is already null. So stupid.”
Me: “DBNull is not null, it has a value. When you call the .ToString, it returns an empty string.”
SeniorDev: ”No it doesn’t, it returns null.”
<oh no he didn’t….the smack down begins>
Me: “Really? Are you sure?”
SeniorDev: “Yes! And if the developer bothered to write any unit tests, he would have known.”
Me: “Unit tests? Why do you assume there aren’t any unit tests? Did you look?”
<at this moment, couple other devs take off their head phones and turn around>
SeniorDev:”Well…uh…I just assumed there aren’t because this is an obvious use case. If there was a test, it would have failed.”
Me: “Well, let’s take a look..”
<open up the test project…navigate to the specific use case>
Me: “Yep, there it is. DBNull.Value.ToString does not return a Null value.”
SeniorDev: “Huh? Must be a new feature of C#. Anyway, if the developers wrote their code correctly, they wouldn’t have to use those extension methods. It’s a mess.”
<trying really hard not drop the F-Bomb or two>
Me: “Couple of years ago the DBAs changed the data access standard so any nullable values would always default to null. So no empty strings, zeros, negative values to indicate a non-value. Downside was now the developers couldn’t assume the value returned the expected data type. What they ended up writing was a lot of code to check the value if it was DBNull. Lots of variations of ‘if …’ , ternary operators, some creative lamda expressions, which led to unexpected behavior in the user interface. Developers blamed the DBAs, DBAs blamed the developers. Remember, Tom and DBA-Sam almost got into a fist fight over it.”
SeniorDev: “Oh…yea…but that’s a management problem, not a programming problem.”
Me: “Probably, but since the developers starting using the extension methods, bug tickets related to mis-matched data has nearly disappeared. When was the last time you saw DBA-Sam complain about the developers?”
SeniorDev: “I guess not for a while, but it’s still no excuse.”
Me: “Excuse? Excuse for what?”
<couple of awkward seconds of silence>
SeniorDev: “Hey, did you guys see the video of the guy punching the kangaroo? It’s hilarious…here, check this out.. ”

Pin shoulders the mat…1 2 3….I win.

Dev: Microsoft is shit

VS Code: (ಥ⌣ಥ)

Dev: Oh not you dear! You're not like the other guys

VS Code: (｡◕‿◕｡)

Me, whenever I attempt to use eyeliner...

(real talk, this is why I don't bother trying to use eyeliner)

Been asked if we can make a few "minor tweaks" to a Visual Basic 6.0 application last worked on in 2013.

I haven't coded in Visual Basic in approximately 20 years, the project can't be opened in Visual Studio 2012 or above and the code I've seen is a dumpster fire.

Please send help.

As a developer, sometimes you hammer away on some useless solo side project for a few weeks. Maybe a small game, a web interface for your home-built storage server, or an app to turn your living room lights on an off.

I often see these posts and graphs here about motivation, about a desire to conceive perfection. You want to create a self-hosted Spotify clone "but better", or you set out to make the best todo app for iOS ever written.

These rants and memes often highlight how you start with this incredible drive, how your code is perfectly clean when you begin. Then it all oscillates between states of panic and surprise, sweat, tears and euphoria, an end in a disillusioned stare at the tangled mess you created, to gather dust forever in some private repository.

Writing a physics engine from scratch was harder than you expected. You needed a lot of ugly code to get your admin panel working in Safari. Some other shiny idea came along, and you decided to bite, even though you feel a burning guilt about the ever growing pile of unfinished failures.

All I want to say is:

No time was lost.

This is how senior developers are born. You strengthen your brain, the calluses on your mind provide you with perseverance to solve problems. Even if (no, *especially* if) you gave up on your project.

Eventually, giving up is good, it's a sign of wisdom an flexibility to focus on the broader domain again.

One of the things I love about failures is how varied they tend to be, how they force you to start seeing overarching patterns.

You don't notice the things you take back from your failures, they slip back sticking to you, undetected.

You get intuitions for strengths and weaknesses in patterns. Whenever you're matching two sparse ordered indexed lists, there's this corner of your brain lighting up on how to do it efficiently. You realize it's not the ORMs which suck, it's the fundamental object-relational impedance mismatch existing in all languages which causes problems, and you feel your fingers tingling whenever you encounter its effects in the future, ready to dive in ever so slightly deeper.

You notice you can suddenly solve completely abstract data problems using the pathfinding logic from your failed game. You realize you can use vector calculations from your physics engine to compare similarities in psychological behavior. You never understood trigonometry in high school, but while building a a deficient robotic Arduino abomination it suddenly started making sense.

You're building intuitions, continuously. These intuitions are grooves which become deeper each time you encounter fundamental patterns. The more variation in environments and topics you expose yourself to, the more permanent these associations become.

Failure is inconsequential, failure even deserves respect, failure builds intuition about patterns. Every single epiphany about similarity in patterns is an incredible victory.

Please, for the love of code...

Start and fail as many projects as you can.

Ran into a girl who I had a crush on in high school at a bar last week. Hanged out for a bit, but then I had to run catch the last train home.

Today I get a message from her that reads: "Hey, it was nice to meet you last week. Can I call you some time, there's something I want to tell you. 😉"

I think to myself -- sweet and say that I have no meetings today, call me whenever you can.

A couple of minutes later she calls me, and the first thing she says: "I have this app idea..."

fuck, shouldn't have hyped myself up.

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 204 No Content
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 413 Payload Too Large
Me: 102 Processing
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 444 Connection Closed Without Response
Me: 200 OK

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Baby: 444 Connection Closed Without Response
Me: 429 Too Many Requests

Me: GET /sleep
Baby: 307 Temporary Redirect
Me: 101 Switching Protocols
Me: 408 Request Timeout
GF: 102 Processing

Me: GET /sleep
Sleep: 404 Not Found
Me: 406 Not Acceptable

(Morning)
Me: 501 Not Implemented

In a month: I get married, I give a big project in college, I finish it (Master's thesis), I give a medium-sized project in a company and I play at a concert. I feel like I was mixed up in a big spaghetti pot xd

We had a little "discussion" about same-sex marriage in school today and holy fuck our teacher is very homophobic. I'm still shocked!

First we were normally talking about how it's good that homosexual couples help the kids in orphanages and stuff and after a while, when I was talking to my friend, being distracted, I suddenly noticed that my teacher was telling us a story. I didn't hear exactly what she said but it contained the keywords "next table, gay couple, and leaving". I was like "wait what". Then I payed attention to what she was saying over there. "It's not natural" - okay uhm wow wtf.
Of course my classmates enjoyed the ranting about homosexual people. I know that most of them are very homophobic too. But my teacher?! She was always very lefty when we where talking about politics. But that?

I don't get it. "It's not natural" - fucking hell your fucking expensive iPhone is not natural as well and you are using it everyday. Intolerance is taught. Homosexuality isn't. It's a thing that has been on earth for thousands of years. In the ancient Greece people had sex with everybody. It was normal (It still is). Even in the world of animals there's homosexuality.
So fuck off with your "It's not natural". Even having THE OPINION that homosexuality is unnatural, is more unnatural than homosexuality itself.

On top of that, my "a bit friend", said that parents of gay children are unlucky and how they could put them in a strip club to show them what they are missing. (No joke he said that)

Fucking hell. Homosexuality isn't an illness or something.

Gooosh... Mind your own fucking business... Leave these people alone.

(Sorry for this more political topic... I just needed to rant a bit...)

"Did you enjoy using our product?"

- I did until you showed this pop-up