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AboutSoftware Engineer
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Skillsc, c++, java, filesystems, Linux.
Joined devRant on 7/9/2016
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1. Have some issue with my code which spits out cryptic compiler error.
2. Ask on stack overflow, Reddit, etc for a solution.
3. Get scolded at for "not reading the documentation" and "asking questions which could be answered by just Googling". Still no clue what I'm doing wrong, or what the solution would be.
4. Find someone else's vaguely related problem.
5. Post my problematic code as the answer, with arrogant comment about OP being a retard for not figuring that out for themselves.
6. A dozen angry toxic nerds flock in to tell me how retarded and wrong I am, correcting me... solving my original problem.
7. Evil plan succeeded, my code compiles, and as a bonus I made the internet a worse place in the process.
I think if you tell a bunch of autistic neckbeards that "all coronaviruses are fundamentally incurable", you'd have a vaccine within a week.17 -
Dear mobile apps devs,
No one's gonna hate you if you do not provide a multilingual support. Just, please, stop using Google Translate and force the app's language to the phone system's. It's just dumb
Sincerely,
A non native english speaker11 -
!dev
Bought a house. 😊rant listen to simon and it has an office! simon says the desert sucks it’ll be mine and it’ll be clean yeah yeah bought a mortgage whatever47 -
I guess I can do one of these a day or so. I've collected some novelties over the years.
First up is a Curta mechanical calculator. Before electronic calculators became a thing, these were the best portable calculators in the world. Notably, they were the calculator of choice in rally car sports.
They work by a series of helical gears that act as registers. A series of internal gears and value assignment switches apply an adjustable number of incrementations to those gears, multiplying gears and the tracking gears, once per "grind." The result is output as a number on top of the device. The "clear register" function is lifting the top ring, which releases the reverse lockout on the gears and a clockwise turn on the ring then resets them to their zero state.
They were designed by Curtz Herzstark, partly before WWII and partly while he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. He had filed a patent for it in 1938, shortly before his family's manufacturey became a weapons factory. During his imprisonment, in addition to nearly starving to death, he completed his plans for manufacturing of his calculator.
It had fun names like the, "pepper grinder," and "math grenade."16 -
Things I learned this month.
1. Do not reference your solution as a hack. As in "I can make a hack to get around that" management actually views the solution as bad. But present the same solution with "I have this idea to get around that" then they love it and think you're great.
2. Management has no idea the difference between ML and if/else statements. If you can mimick ML with if/else then do it. Takes a lot less time and resources.
3. Don't enter a video meeting in just your skivvies, management views this as bad and HR will release a bunch of work-from-home policies in retaliation.
4. When explaining things to management don't try to explain the technical stuff. Is a waste of time and breath. All they really want to know is when you will be done. They don't care the difficulty level of the code involved.
I'm sure next month I'll learn more things.10 -
Dev slump.
For me dev slump is usually feeling overwhelmed and that leads to being unmotivated.
My solution usually involves, go slow, way slower than usual. "Make function... that takes a thing. well that worked..." rather than try to think of everything at once.
Also get some easy tasks broken out and do those (even unrelated). That tends to get me going, feeling productive, then I start to approach the harder stuff that was maybe more demoralizing.1 -
This is how I feel most of my client proposal start:
* It's simple, I'd like to re-invent <the wheel>.
* All I want to do is use <rocketship engine> on <old typewriter>.
* I'm too cheap to hire a full-time < DBA, DevOps engineer, development team>. Can I pay you pennies?
* I'm poor and broke, can you do this for free?
* I'd like to <commit illegal act> and be <legal compliant standard>.
* I heard it was possible to <fly 30 people to the moon> using <Ford Model-T>. Please do this for us.
* I <sold my house>, but now <I'm locked out by the new owners>. Please help.11 -
Wanna mess with users? Take
“OK” and “Cancel”.
You know what looks visually the same but means the opposite?
“NO” and “Confirm”.
Deploy that little ui update overnight and watch the world burn.22 -
Client: "Do you think we could finish specs in week 33, see a demo in week 35, and aim for the product to be finished in week 39?"
I jump on the conference room table, rip the shirt off my sweaty chest, and yell:
"WEEKS OF WHAT? 31 WEEKS SINCE YOU BECAME A CLIENT, 35 WEEKS FROM NOW, 39 WEEKS INTO THE PREGNANCY? BLOODY FUCKING HELL MAN, DO YOU HAVE TO TALK LIKE A RETARD?"
Client, unfazed: "Weeks since the start of the year, sir"
Me, swinging my pants above my head like a lasso:
"WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF SNOWFLAKE ARE YOU, YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO COUNT THE WEEKS SINCE THE START OF THE YEAR? WHAT ABOUT JUST USING DAY OF THE MONTH YOU OBNOXIOUS DIMWIT?"
Client: "We always use weeks at our company to plan things"
Me, winding the legs of my pants around the neck of the client:
"I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE USE WEEKNUMBERS, JAKE. I. FUCKING. HATE. IT."
Client, still pretending everything is fine: "If you want I could send you a screenshot of my outlook calendar?"
Me, sitting in underpants on the client's back, sweaty legs wrapped around his waist, trying to pull out his gel-infested manager-hair while strangling him with my pants:
"TIME OF DEATH, UNIX TIMESTAMP 1595240810, ISO 8601 DATE 2020-07-20T10:26:50+00:00. ANOTHER PROJECT SUCCESSFULLY WRAPPED UP"
(parts of this story may have been dramatized to reflect my underlying emotions)31 -
Got two interviews today. Wish me luck. I'm nervous, but I think the candidates are probably more nervous.8
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Working for an indian code sweatshop. The job you've got by bribing the University headmaster to give you a degree without ever attending class. Your uncle who worked at the sweatshop as a manager already gave you the job by bribing his boss.
After a half a year on the bench you've beeing sent off for a contract for the USA. You moved to Seattle where you've "coded" the software for the Boeing 737 Max Airplane. Your code downed 2 airplanes. You're responsible for the death of 350+ people. You're alone and the US is foreign to you and you're missing your mothers indian food. And you wish you could soothe your pain with some freshly pressed sugar cane drink and a jalebi from your favorite food joint back home.8 -
- Ran `brew install maven`
- Left my terminal to have some fun because of the slow network (fuck my ISP btw)
- Came back after ~15 mins to look at the terminal cause' installation should've finished.
- Checked terminal.
- Realised I ran `brew isntall maven` instead.
FML3 -
OS as weeddealers:
Windows has standard weed. Nothing special, but reliable.
Linux got a great selection, but you always gotta haggle with him for hours until something works out.
Mac sells oregano.10 -
You haven't actually *begun* to learn anything until you've shouted FUCK THIS SHIT (or some variation) out loud at least once.
The anger is what makes it stick in your memory.10 -
So... This company was in trouble. They hire me to help fix things and build this nice new stack to get rid of their old legacy monster application.
I'm there for three weeks when one of their top investors storms in. Apparently they are turning less profit than they told me during my interview. (Yeah, it is one of the things I always ask, even thought I don't always get an answer).
So this investor/shareholder guy starts on this motivation speech which is basically a veiled threat that "we" need to do better.
Obviously he doesn't know anyone in the room other than the boss. And it was apparent, at least to me, he also has 0% knowledge of anything related to software development. The boss doesn't look to happy about having to let this happen.
Then the guy turns to me. He points his finger at me and demands to know how failing so badly makes me feel...
So I answered truthfully... "I've only been here for three weeks, so I don't think I've been failing too much, yet. Now, how long did you say you've been throwing money at this failure without getting the return you wanted?" Emphasizing the "you" by pointing right back at him.
That doesn't shut the guy up, but he does bring his "motivational" speech to a rapid close.
He doesn't bother saying goodbye when he stormed out again, not even to the boss, who looks a lot happier at this point.
Apparently the guy pulled this stunt every couple of months (or weeks, if he was bored enough). After this encounter, he apparently had enough of trying to "motivate" us developers. We I didn't see him again in the 2 years I worked with the company after that.
I got a pay raise the month after. Apparently that was totally unrelated to this incident... 😙🎵12 -
Suck dicks Microsoft... Get choked.
All I wanted to do was to uninstall this piece of crapware.
And now you're telling me i need to UPDATE the installer in order to uninstall.
What the fuck, what obscure substances have you been smoking lately? imbicile numbskull maniacs.19 -
Some motivation for the developers who had a series of existential crises trying to decipher a convoluted codebase with zero documentation.8
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Developer: Can you upgrade my machine to Windows 10? I need it for SQL server 2019.
IT Guy: Sure.
Some time later...
IT Guy: Good news, Windows 10 is loaded. Bad news, I need to update TPM to enable Bitlocker but the firewall is blocking me from downloading the update. I will need to download it from home tonight.
Developer: But you're the IT administrator...
IT Guy: Yes...
Developer: ...8