31st December 2016, I had signed up for devRant.

It's my cake day today. Feels so good to be part of this community, have learned so much, made some of the greatest friends here.

2021 was a mind fuck. Taxing and draining. Very little growth and even less learnings.

I realised that I am in a toxic environment.

Lately, no philosophy, therapy, supplements, activity, work, etc. has been helping me to get back to my original self.

I used to spiral down with a lot of negative self talk and playing the victim card.

Just day before yesterday, I decided to listen to some affirmations on the Tube and that actually helped me bounce back.

I started socialising and stepping out to attend gigs and just be outdoors as much as I could.

My surroundings changed and so did my thought process.

Hence, I made a decision to continue affirmations and slowly change my surroundings, even if that demand domestic relocation.

Things are starting to look positive after a long, loooooong, time.

I also need more sun exposure for my vitamin D3 deficiency and steady dose of serotonin.

I feel lot clear in head and heart. My goals are clearer and I am ready to start working hard and be my original past self again.

I love you all and I really wish you all achive all your wishes and dreams, be happier and healthier in 2022 with ton of success and money.

Ok, so I need some clarity from you good folk, please.

My lead developer is also my main mentor, as I am still very much a junior. He carved out most of his career in PHP, but due to his curious/hands-on personality, he has become proficient with Golang, Docker, Javascript, HTML/CSS.

We have had a number of chats about what I am best focusing on, both personally and related to work, and he makes quite a compelling case for the "learn as many things as possible; this is what makes you truly valuable" school of thought. Trouble is, this is in direct contrast to what I was taught by my previously esteemed mentor, Gordon Zhu from watchandcode.com. "Watch and Code is about the core skills that all great developers possess. These skills are incredibly important but sound boring and forgettable. They’re things like reading code, consistency and style, debugging, refactoring, and test-driven development. If I could distill Watch and Code to one skill, it would be the ability to take any codebase and rip it apart. And the most important component of that ability is being able to read code."

As you can see, Gordon always emphasised language neutrality, mastering the fundamentals, and going deep rather than wide. He has a ruthlessly high barrier of entry for learning new skills, which is basically "learn something when you have no other option but to learn it".

His approach served me well for my deep dive into Javascript, my first language. It is still the one I know the best and enjoy using the most, despite having written programs in PHP, Ruby, Golang and C# since then. I have picked up quite a lot about different build pipelines, development environments and general web development as a result of exposure to these other things, so it isn't a waste of time.

But I am starting to go a bit mad. I focus almost exclusively on quite data intensive UI development with Vue.js in my day job, although there is an expectation I will help with porting an app to .NET Core 3 in a few months. .NET is rather huge from what I have seen so far, and I am seriously craving a sense of focus. My intuition says I am happiest on the front end, and that focusing on becoming a skilled Javascript engineer is where I will get the biggest returns in mastery, pay and also LIFE BALANCE/WELLBEING...

Any thoughts, people? I would be interested to hear peoples experiences regarding depth vs breadth when it comes to the real world.

Worst thing you've seen another dev do? So many things. Here is another...

A developer purposely forged international shipping documents by 'hard-coding' data to get around international shipping restrictions (ex. we can't sell 'Widgets' to Germany...so under the category he would replace the value with 'light bulb'). He was 'under pressure' to make keep the money rolling in no matter what.

We were eventually 'caught', fined over $300,000 (which was better than the $10,000 per offense and we had thousands of offenses).

For this major frack-up, 'Rob' was promoted to manager of the International department, got to travel (including his wife) to several European countries, and eventually obtained a company-paid MBA degree.

'Rob' liked to joke about how he would sometimes have to pinch himself how lucky he was by working for such stupid people (yes, he used the word 'stupid') and how gullible government investigators were.
"All I had to do was say 'its a bug in Windows' or some other kind of nonsense and they believed me."

'Rob' quit 3 months after receiving his MBA degree (again, 100% company paid) and the international department closed due to some potential illegal activity.

Please be gentle, first rant. :)

Can you please provide me with literature recommendations:
1. Books about software architeccture, design patterns and best practices in general.
2. "Relaxation" books related to developer's life experiences, something like "The Phoenix Project" (https://amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-...). I really enjoyed that. :)

I am aware that this is not best use of rants, but I would really like to hear this community recommendations. Thanks in advance. :)

Getting real tired of having to reteach the basics of relational databases to the same 2 people. You were brought in as the expert in databases and SQL Server, I shouldn’t have to teach you about effing primary keys, secondary keys, many-to-many relationships, and how to join the damn tables in a basic query. Your 5 years of experience are obviously a waste if all you did was select * from bullshit. This is the 2nd week and 22nd you’ve asked the same damn questions. Get your crap together and study your ass off if you don’t know. Google the error messages if you don’t remember how to solve it before coming to me with the same question a 23rd and 24th time. I’m not going to get any work done if all you do is ninja up behind me with your laptop in tow and just spout off the question that could be done over IM or a quick duckduckgo/google search. Headphones in = do not disturb ya rude mother duckers 🦆.

Who thinks they could improve these every single time they use them?

I recently accepted my first "real" Dev position. This has been a huge hurdle for me.

So my degree is in graphic design and it's pretty much what I spent the first 2-3 years after university doing. In fact, when I started at the place I am now (I am still working my notice) I was hired as a creative artworker.

I had always had a website I put together with some basic frontend skills, but always assumed the backend stuff was "beyond me". But, given the option here, I asked to be sent on a PHP course. Holy shit I took to it like a duck to water. Over the next few months I got my feet wet building a new website for the company, building out a little intranet, all that good stuff. I went from procedural spaghetti monstrosities to nice, OOP, documented code. It was beautiful. And no one here really have a fuck.

About 6 months ago, I started trying to leave. This was hard. I actually had several interviews for design positions, but always got turned down for some variation of "you're very technical and we think you'd get bored here" and thank god really, because they're right. I could never get a look in for Dev jobs though, because on paper I had no experience, hell my job title was still "Digital Designer" despite over a year of developing here.

But it finally happened. Through someone I used to know I got my foot in the door for a developer position. In the interview they even told me if it was a junior position they'd hire me on the spot - but sadly it wasn't. I had a good time though, a good laugh, and had a lot of fun finally, for the first time in my life, "working" and talking with other developers.

Over the next couple of weeks the agent kept telling me I had done really well and they were just dragging their feet getting things sorted, but I gave up hope a little. So imagine my surprise when I found out they turned the role into a junior one for me!

And so now, I get to go to a job where my job title includes the word "Developer". To some of you that might not mean much, but to me it's a fucking medal I wish I could mount on a plaque on my wall.

During teacher office hours a few years back: if you have questions on your homework, maybe it's too hard and you should switch majors to something easier, many girls do, so there's no shame in it.

I had asked for verification that my standard deviation logic was correct before spending the time coding it and then figuring out what was wrong.

Ps- he's no longer employed by the school for other sexist reasons.

So from hearing all those horrible recruiter stories on here, I am still kinda anxious to contact them/apply to jobs but fuck it, gotta find something.

So this morning, I was browsing jobs and saw one that seemed interesting. Applied through the app and didn't give it a second thought (they usually contact me after a week or so).

Then, 5 minutes later I suddenly got called by a number I don't know so picked up and:

Me: Hello, this is linuxxx (not gonna use my real name :P).
R: Hello, I am {r.name}, from {r.company}. I saw you are interested in {job.name}!
Me: Holy fuck (yeah i about literally said that), I did NOT expect to get a call within 5 minutes! *suddenly realizes I have to act professional, fuck me*.
R: That's alright haha! So may I ask you a few questions?
Me: *okay so that went better than expected* Yeah sure!:

- He asked me about many things but specifically about how I got into Linux and how my interest etc for it started AND where I learned it. He was very surprised to hear that I've learned everything myself :).

So, instead of getting an ass on the line, we talked, laughed and talked job oppertunities for half an hour :D.

I am not that afraid of recruiters anymore.

Hello guys. So after I posted the rant about me blocking Google and Facebook through my hosts file, some people commented with the idea of creating a gitlab page with more privacy tips etc.

Well, that is turning into a project (actual website) that I initially started alone but @ewpratten joined the 'team' as frontender!

He'll be doing the front end and I'll be doing the backend :).

I think this will be my first ever (active) collab so I'm pretty excited =D.

My first performance review as a graduate:
Boss: "we can't give you the rating you deserve because HR"
Me: "ok whatever, what can I do to get the rating I'm suppose to get?"
B: *lists job description of a senior developer* ... "Interview candidates, mentor juniors, start a project and make me profit"
Me: (if I can do that as a graduate, what am I doing here?)

My last performance review at the same company:
B: "we can't give you the rating you deserve because HR"
M: "ok what can I do to improve?"
B: *lists everything I did before the first performance review that wasn't expected of me*
M: (LoL funny, I just wanted to hear your response because I know you'd forget about the first review. Another reason to validate my resignation)

When ur application needs extra feature after release..

!rant

After over 20 years as a Software Engineer, Architect, and Manager, I want to pass along some unsolicited advice to junior developers either because I grew through it, or I've had to deal with developers who behaved poorly:

1) Your ego will hurt you FAR more than your junior coding skills. Nobody expects you to be the best early in your career, so don't act like you are.

2) Working independently is a must. It's okay to ask questions, but ask sparingly. Remember, mid and senior level guys need to focus just as much as you do, so before interrupting them, exhaust your resources (Google, Stack Overflow, books, etc..)

3) Working code != good code. You are an author. Write your code so that it can be read. Accept criticism that may seem trivial such as renaming a variable or method. If someone is suggesting it, it's because they didn't know what it did without further investigation.

4) Ask for peer reviews and LISTEN to the critique. Even after 20+ years, I send my code to more junior developers and often get good corrections sent back. (remember the ego thing from tip #1?) Even if they have no critiques for me, sometimes they will see a technique I used and learn from that. Peer reviews are win-win-win.

5) When in doubt, do NOT BS your way out. Refer to someone who knows, or offer to get back to them. Often times, persons other than engineers will take what you said as gospel. If that later turns out to be wrong, a bunch of people will have to get involved to clean up the expectations.

6) Slow down in order to speed up. Always start a task by thinking about the very high level use cases, then slowly work through your logic to achieve that. Rushing to complete, even for senior engineers, usually means less-than-ideal code that somebody will have to maintain.

7) Write documentation, always! Even if your company doesn't take documentation seriously, other engineers will remember how well documented your code is, and they will appreciate you for it/think of you next time that sweet job opens up.

8) Good code is important, but good impressions are better. I have code that is the most embarrassing crap ever still in production to this day. People don't think of me as "that shitty developer who wrote that ugly ass code that one time a decade ago," They think of me as "that developer who was fun to work with and busted his ass." Because of that, I've never been unemployed for more than a day. It's critical to have a good network and good references.

9) Don't shy away from the unknown. It's easy to hope somebody else picks up that task that you don't understand, but you wont learn it if they do. The daunting, unknown tasks are the most rewarding to complete (and trust me, other devs will notice.)

10) Learning is up to you. I can't tell you the number of engineers I passed on hiring because their answer to what they know about PHP7 was: "Nothing. I haven't learned it yet because my current company is still using PHP5." This is YOUR craft. It's not up to your employer to keep you relevant in the job market, it's up to YOU. You don't always need to be a pro at the latest and greatest, but at least read the changelog. Stay abreast of current technology, security threats, etc...

These are just a few quick tips from my experience. Others may chime in with theirs, and some may dispute mine. I wish you all fruitful careers!

Recruiter: Tell me why are you passionate about what we do!
Dev: I enjoy not starving to death...

Just saw a recruitment post for a female speaker to join a female panel at a "women in tech" event. And it's by an organisation called "codelikeagirl". 😒

As a female developer, it gives me the upmost cringe to hear about any #women or #girlpower events. Do you really need to validate your ability and support because of your gender? Men don't go to #menInTech events, so why do you need to go #womenInTech events?

On the surface it seems all friendly and gender equality fluff. But if you segregate yourselves into an all exclusive group, isn't that the opposite of what your trying to "achieve"?

A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.

It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.

Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).

So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...

So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.

We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!

Paypal Rant #3

One day I'll go to Paypal HQ and...
... change all the toilet rolls to face the wrong way
... remap all the semicolons to be the Greek equivalent character
... change all the door signs so they say "pull" instead of "push" and vice versa
... modify all the stairs to have variable heights
... programmatically shuffle the elevator buttons and randomly assign the alarm key to any of the most visited floors
... pour cocoa onto all the keyboards and wipe them off cleanly
... attach clear duct tape over their mouse sensors and insert really weak batteries or mess with their cables

I'll wait a day or two until they experience a sudden shortage of developers, then bombard them with thousands of fake applications from seemingly amazing candidates, then write an AI bot to continue argumentation with HR.

I'll wait another week or so until the company dissolves and with them, all my issues in life.

No need to be overly vulgar this time because you all know the deal. I hate this fucking company. Please Paypal do us all a favor and go fuck yourself.