Having LAN party tomorrow at the company. So I tried to install windows via bootcamp on my mac and it failed, leaving me with undeletable APFS container (partition) of 40GB.

Ended up wiping out whole ssd drive and reinstalling fresh os x. Normally I would be angry as fuck, but not this time. Planned this for a while already but was too lazy to do that earlier.

Oh, and finally started using encrypted filesystem.

Need advice.

So, like probably for 3 years already, I had this open source project idea for cli tool that would increase development productivity. Since then I partially implemented it 2 times already.

First time was in elixir, but I abandoned it, because it haven’t fit my requirements.

Second time, i tried golang, I felt in love with language, but I missed some stable dependencies that I didn’t want to implement myself, so I abandoned it before I started.

Third time, I chose python, it had everything I needed, and I am already halfway finished the implementation. But I lost all motivation, so I haven’t done anything for the last 2 months, and reason for that is that I don’t really enjoy writing python code and also I wasn’t sure how to structure everything.

Now I am originally php developer, and I kind of convinced myself that php is not a good language to implement cli tool and yet I feel that I would like to start over again in php. I know the language inside out, I know how to structure everything and so I can be way more productive in it.

Also, one more reason I didn’t pick up php was distribution, when I am finished, I would like everyone to use this tool, even outside php and I believe it’s not easy with php. Consumers would need to install php, perhaps composer too and knowing php reputation that could be drawback.

Anyway, I feel depressed about this project and I am not sure how I should approach this issue which exists only in my mind, I would like to hear what you have to say.

Finished my first week at the new company. Fucking love it.

Monday.
Manager: we made a 3 week program for you, so you can get used to everything, adjust your pace, and when you feel ready, you can start getting real tasks.

*program literally contains plenty of 1hour meetings (had like 10 this week) with different people, also assignments that are intended to train me, but they have no value to the project (like think an imaginary field and add it to current application)*, except for last one which is to fix a real bug in their most legacy application.

Wednesday.
Me *to team lead*: do I really need to do those imaginary assignments, can I just fix that bug already?

Thursday.
Me: *fixes the bug* I am done!
Manager: congratulations on your first finished task!
Everyone else in the office: *starts clapping*

Friday.
*everyone treats me with respect*
*I get my second and third tasks*
*at the end of the day I go to the company’s own bar to get some free beer*

1. Gaming, though I focus mostly on mainstream games and my all time favorite is deus ex series (second - TES).

2. Anime. Dragon ball was a huge part of my childhood, and today it’s still my favorite show next to one punch man.

3. Manga. I picked it up quite recently and it’s awesome, but it’s also expensive so I learned to enjoy it only while traveling. I am still reading my first one and it’s Tokyo Ghoul.

4. Embedded electronics. Again, I picked it up quite recently and really enjoying it, still working on my first project that I did with raspberry pi (iot led strip), also posted a story(rant) a while ago.

5. MTB cycling. While it’s not really that geeky, it’s my most favorite hobby I picked up last year June and since rode 1200km on mostly flats and also had my first 100km trip. This year I am planning to focus more on trails and expect learning more technical riding.

So, I ranted before a lot about changing my job, also that I found quite decent workplace that I will start working at next week (https://devrant.com/rants/1929213/...).

Today was my last day at my old job. At the end of the day, my boss and a few colleagues, we opened some beers. We all agreed that at summer we all will meet again to run 10 kilometers in annual running event. Also, boss offered an opportunity to go back to my home country and open there a business unit that I would be all responsible for. Well, that sound awesome, and that may be a good opportunity for the future, that I may use one day, just not today.

Anyway, I get back home, see the flowers on the ground and my name on it. Ok, going to my room thinking who in the world could send flowers to me and I see a note hanging:

“Dear, gintko, Welcome to [New Company], we look forward to working with you.

Greetings, your new colleagues”.

So yeah, can’t actually believe that in the world there exists real companies that actually care about their employees, to the level that they sends flowers to their home. And I am going to be part of it! Now I am even more excited to start working there.

At the moment I live in flat with other 5 people, I also have internet contract, so everyone pays me for wifi connection. Now there was this guy from Poland who moved in recently, and I think he asked someone from the flat for wifi credentials and told me that he has his own internet already so he won’t pay me.

Now I could just change credentials, but I wonder, maybe I could have some fun. Shall I nuke his wifi connected devices? Maybe spread some virus? Any suggestions?

Last 2 days left to work at current company and I fucking hate it, never in my life I felt so unmotivated.

Nice job, Comoser, it took you just 5 minutes to remove that crappy mpdf package.

What can be worse than Monday?
Monday, in the new office, with broken heating while it’s -8 Celcius (33.8F) outside, and not enough power to run 2 home heaters of 1k watts.

Vertical centering.

It was all before flex and grid, and other modern features.

To achieve that, you needed to create tons of nested elements, that simulates table behavior and... Shit it hurts me to even remember that non-sense.

!dev

So, it’s 4 years since Lithuania returned mandatory military service, and today they posted new lists with last names, birthday and some kind of military id. By they way all this data is publicly accessible, with over 30k names (wonder does it comply with gdpr?). But it’s not about it.

Anyway, as you can guess (as I am ranting) I was called to serve again, 3rd time in a row (as I managed to avoid it first two times). But again, it’s not about me either.

What I want to actually rant about is the selection process. They actually call it “lottery” (well, because you can win your way into becoming a puppet of government). So they have this computer algorithm that “100% randomly” generates this list with names of people between ages 18 and 27, that quoting “can not be altered afterwards” (like anyone is going to believe that bullshit...), but well, whatever, corruption is nothing new in this country.

So, everyone who’s on the list must come to assigned location with all required documents. Apparently, it’s impossible to provide those documents remotely. Also, the only way to avoid it is to study. So basically, everyone who has a job, business, maybe living abroad, also maybe having a family already must quit everything and go to serve for 9 months, like what the fuck?

I mean, I understand if you are required to go to serve right after school (like in Israel for example, even if it’s for 3 years), then it would just feel like extended school, but taking people out of their own lives? That is some kind of bullshit...

Ok, I am fucking finally pissed off...

My current company, I worked for last 1.5 years, for project management they use slack.

Every Monday we have meeting, and we go over every project and talk what must be done. Every project has it’s own channel with some stupid random code name which is impossible to remember because there is hundreds of other projects with similar name.

If there is something todo for dev he just gets mentioned in in channel.

No to-do’s, so basically u have no idea what u need to do, there’s no way to follow progress. Well, of course u can go over each channel and check if u need to do sth, but it takes fucking time. Also because of that u need keep your boss informed all the time about the progress. In others words it’s messy.

To make it worse, there’s usually a few different channels for the same project (1 for devs, 1 for designers, and others for something else like ux or videos).

I brought up this concern to boss many times, and every dev agreed. So for like a month we tried to use flow app, but still everyone used slack + designers told that they don’t like it. So after trial they said we are going to keep using slack. What the fuck?

Now I don’t actually mind their decision, but there one thing that I can’t stand about current method - slack is free, so all history and files gets deleted as time goes. I can’t even count how much times I needed to re-do some work just because slack deleted some files I had put there for later. Or lost some important information about project, that we needed to discuss over and over every month...

3 fucking more weeks left in this stupid company then I quit.

A few weeks ago I ranted about stupid recruiter while looking for a job in the Netherlands - https://devrant.com/rants/1898997/...

I got 3 offers. First two they were kind of shitty small non-startup companies with single dev team, they also offered shitty money and almost no bonuses. So I used them as a leverage in other interviews and also last one:

- ...so I already have two offers on table, so please give me feedback asap...

Anyway, the last company was completely different. After first interview I knew that I want to work there and I will accept whatever they will offer me.

Let me tell you about it first:
- it’s mid size company (~100 people) with 6 dev teams.
- they have fixed budget for developers training
- they have their own restaurant and everyday they serve lunch for employees
- they have their own bar with free drinks

but you know those are nice to have but they are incomparable with the last one:
- they encourage their developers to work on their side-projects for a specific amount of time (paid) a week and not only that, they must showcase what they have done at the end of the year. Just how fucking amazing is that?

Anyway, I got an offer from this company and I accepted it immediately. Also they offered 250eur bigger salary than I asked during interview.

Yeah, just wanted to share it and now I can’t wait to start working there.

One month ago I started rewriting some old spaghetti application (not even legacy because it’s not that old) from scratch.

Must admit that I kind of regret that decision. I just could take my time to learn that damn yii2 (that I really don’t like) and refactor all shit there, optimize queries and I would have been finished it by now already.

I am rewriting it in symfony, have everything designed quite well it just time consuming to implement, need to finish it till February and I am drained as fuck.

Even worse part is that I will be switching job soon, and my current company are looking for new developer to change me and of course they interviewing only juniors, who will have no one to guide them and ensure that code they write is good. So it seems quite pointless rewriting it, because after leaving someone will fuckup that codebase anyway.

But yeah, I guess that’s something you only learn in practice, so reminder for my future self (and tip for others): don’t rewrite it - refactor it instead and don’t allow your feelings interfere with your critical decisions.

Recently I am interested a lot into neuroscience or more specifically brain computer interfaces (BCI) and thinking about making some nice mind controllable project.

Anyway, I actually feel like an asshole, because a lot of scientists work hard to make a life easier for disabled people, and then here I am getting all excited about technology to make life easier for myself.

Still, drone controlled just by brain activity sounds so fucking amazing!

My first contractor company 3 years ago, I was only junior with 3 other senior devs. I was assigned a project implemented by other company. So I am reading code and it’s total mess and then I find comment in controller that says “// some magic here, don’t touch it”, turns out that piece of code was added by our lead developer.

What the fuck firefox?

- homepage and new windows: blank page
- new tabs: blank page
- default and the only enabled search engine: duckduckgo

So why the fuck, when I go to homepage I get redirected to fucking google?

Having a call with recruiter (Netherlands) in English:

* he’s late 10mins
- ...
- Now I will ask you some questions, please answer shortly as possible, so it will be easier for me
- Okay
...
- what salary would you like to get in your new job?
- I am thinking about 3000eur
- you mean before taxes?
- no, I mean netto, I want to get that amount already after taxes.
- wow! That’s quite a lot
- well, average in the Netherlands
- definitely no. Where have you learnt that?
- just google
- I don’t believe you, for your age, with that experience for mid-level full- stack php developer - that can’t be true, especially if you don’t speak dutch...
...
- describe yourself in 3 words
- ...confident
- oh, I can see that you’re confident, because of how much salary you want
...
- so you are looking for a new job?
- *in my mind: no motherfucker, I am just having this conversation for no fucking reason...* yes
- ...
- so company I am working with, they working with very complex systems and there’s no much developers that fit their requirements - literally reads everything from job posting - you need to know php, symfony, laravel, have a good agile understanding, be able to work with complex systems...
...

Just to make it clear: I am 22, have 4 years exp, and working with php, javascript, symfony, laravel, reactjs... 36k/y seems ok to me. So either I am wrong and should leave Netherlands, because I can get same amount in my home country and also pay less for rent or this motherfucker is just super dumb.

Fuck that piece of shit typescript!!!

Ever since I picked it up I have more problems with it, than it actually solves...

1. So you want to use that 3rd party library? No problem, just use typescript special import syntax.
- yeah, I do, it doesn’t work that way, but works with es6 import even if you fucking show me that damn error.

2. Want to use map? No problem, we have an interface for it and you treat it as an object.
- oh yeah? And how about fucking more user friendly approach: {key: value}? Why the fuck do I need to create a fucking instance and then use a fucking set method for each value?

3. Want to access value from native dom element? Sorry, but you need to define type yourself.
- fuck you

So, one of npm packages event-stream (from flatmap-stream dep) has been found having a malware that steals bitcoins.

Source: https://dev.to/ben/...

My colleagues scanned their projects and found they are actually using those dependencies. I advice you to do the same, because let’s be honest, you guys don’t even know what you have inside your node_modules.

So, like a month ago boss told our team that they want to start new branch in company for working with sitecore and hire new developer for it. We agreed with condition that we won’t need to do anything. During today’s meeting they told that everyone in company will need to become certified in sitecore in order for company become certified.

Well, it doesn’t seem like anyone is happy with it. Especially me, I got angry and told them I am not going to do it and that’s not what I am hired for. Well, they say that they pay me money and I will need to do it anyway... of course it’s in working hours, so they have a point.

Also, I mentioned in my previous rants, that I was having some job interviews with other companies and also I let my employers know about it. They were okay with first one, when I told about the second interview, they got angry on me, that I haven’t asked for a raise or discussed conditions... But thing is they haven’t even tried negotiate/counter offer.

After those interviews, I thought I am going to stay in this company a few months more and then I will start looking for a job. But after today, I am not that sure.

Of course, it’s nothing for me to get certification, but it’s just the fact that they didn’t ask us, they decided on their own and now want to force us to get it.

What do you think?

So I work at small digital agency where I am the only backend dev (besides 3 front end devs), usually working on small scale projects (in 1,5years finished 8 projects). While I enjoy the job and time by time get to learn new stuff, I feel like I am overqualified and would like to work with some big data and high traffic where I would really could challenge myself. Now I just over engineer (architecture design, performance, security, test) projects and take 2 months, where it could be finished in 1.

So over last 2 weeks I had two job interviews which I failed (I am not sure about second, but it feels like it). It’s either because I am socially awkward or don’t know algorithms well enough.

Anyway, I am planning to extend contract with my current company for 6 more months, and over that period during free time focus on improving my skills.

In fact, I have an idea to create simple multiplayer game implementing my own server in go, basically type of project where high scalability matters, and could practice a lot of new concepts like concurrency.

If I can’t get into position of such environment, then I just going to create it myself. And if I get lucky I even could earn some money from it.

Just had technical job interview. Almost felt asleep...

The interviewer brought white board and took light blue pen that barely works, couldn’t see a shit what he was writing. Also, he couldn’t properly ask questions, so I had to ask to repeat several times. Got so tired from this shit...

Wait, what the...?

So, mid frontend developer is valued more than mid fullstack dev. But there’s also possibility that mid frontend dev could earn more than senior fullstack dev...

We should create privacy focussed and ads free internet protocol/network. It could be paid, and money would go to website owners (something like TV channels works?).

Of course, there’s a lot of gotchas, but for starters just an idea.

What do you think?

Client: I get 500 error, can you check?
Me: *investigating* php “reset” function on fail returns false instead of intuitive null.

And then there are devs asking what’s wrong with php...

Job posting on linkedin:
“The stack is react native, java/objective-c, golang and php. A True functional approach with adaptability...”.

Problem is that none of those are functional 🤦‍♂️

It was a long day... But I am going to sleep with a smile on my face :)

I was late with changes I needed to deploy yesterday, but because of the bug in vuejs app, it took me almost whole day just to fix it. But it’s ok I managed to finish it.

Also I got finally all parts delivered for my little electronics side project. So once I got home, I started working on it. Idea was to connect rgb led strip to raspberry pi.

I wired everything, turned on the power and only five led work, so for like 3 hours I was trying to figure out what was the issue. I rewired everything over and over, until I noticed arrows on the led strip. Turns out, I soldered wires on the wrong side (output), what a dumb mistake... So I moved wires to the other side, ran python sample program and voilà.

That was my first electronics project ever, I never soldered or done something similar and I must say I am really satisfied and not just of the result, but also how it actually helped me to clean my mind from all that work bullshit. I am definitely going to do more projects in the future.

But for now I am going to setup AI and make this led strip voice controllable.

Anyone here does use dartjs for basics as an alternative to javascript?

I hate js so much, that I am planning to give dartjs a try and in case I will like it, I would like to rewrite UI widgets in it (dropdowns, datepickers, modals, accordions, dropzones and other casual shit) to ease up my life in frontend and avoid using huge frameworks for that (like jquery or reactjs).

It also makes sense to adopt it for my current company, as we do a lot of mobile app dev with react native.

Anyway, it would be nice to hear experiences from other devs first.

airBaltic: hey, mister hacker, so these are characters our users can use for their password, we made everything to ensure the best hacking experience for you.

What’s the other fucking reason for doing it? Are they storing passwords in plain text, so it’s some weird kind of escaping technique?

Forbidding characters in passwords means only single thing for me, I can’t trust company’s competence of keeping my personal data.