Perhaps as a tip for the junior devs out there, here's what I learned about programming skills on the job:

You know those heavy classes back in college that taught you all about Data Structures? Some devs may argue that you just need to know how to code and you don't need to know fancy Data Structures or Big o notation theory, but in the real world we use them all the time, especially for important projects.

All those principles about Sets, (Linked) lists, map, filter, reduce, union, intersection, symmetric difference, Big O Notation... They matter and are used to solve problems. I used to think I could just coast by without being versed in them.. Soon, mathematics and Big o notation came back to bite me.

Three example projects I worked in where this mattered:
- Massive data collection and processing in legacy Java (clients want their data fast, so better think about the performance implications of CRUD into Collections)
- ReactJS (oh yes, maps and filters are used a lot...)
- Massive data collection in C# where data manipulation results are crucial (union, intersection, symmetric difference,...)
Overall: speed and quality mattered (better know your Big o notation or use a cheat sheet, though I prefer the first)
Yes, the approach can be optimized here, but often we're tied to client constraints, with some room if we're lucky.

I'm glad I learned this lesson. I would rather have skills in my head and in memory than having to look up things and try to understand them all the time.

pwned!

I write python that's faster than most people's c++. My c++ smokes everyone. Current project runtime has gone from 90 minutes to 90 seconds. Fuck yeah. I'm really not paid enough...

SSL was a good idea terribly implemented. Relying only on big tech for valid certificates was the single most idiotic thing the web baboons could come up with.

Sure, you could always hack comodo (again) to issue yourself some LAN certs but come on. You either expose your server or pay half a kidney for a somewhat secure thing! Give me a break....

When people say that Gen Z is fucked, I used to scoff at them thinking it's not that bad as they make it out to be.

But I've witnessed it first hand now, it's real. Totally real. I only spoke about my salaries in my resume video and people are actually thanking me for telling the truth.

They're soooo used to getting told lies to, that someone even speaking a little bit truth is mind blowing to them. It breaks my heart, honestly.

Survived my second layoff at this company in less than 2 years. Feeling bitter sweet.

When I joined there was about 50 people here and now there is a little more than 15.

I think the way this company has done the layoffs have been humiliating to the people getting laid off. The “higher ups” will request that everybody be in the office for a company-wide meeting around noon. Then at around 11am that day, they will individual take people into conference rooms and lay them off. By the time the company-wide meeting starts, they’ve laid off all the people they needed.

Why lay people off infront of the whole rest of the company? I don’t see any reason

I sent a recruiter my CV as a PDF file. They replied that they need it as a Word document. They must be joking, right? I always use my website's reader view to generate an updated CV by saving it as a PDF which contains text and images in accessible format. So it can't be hard to convert to Word?

I just installed Microsoft Edge on Linux, because I heard that Edge can save websites as Word documents. It can't. At least not on Linux, using the print or the save as dialog.

I don't even know what to tag this rant. Those people must be making fun of me. What are they supposed to do with a fucking Microsoft Word document? Make sure that the layout gets broken and the content truncated when forwarding it internally?

Look, I get that this isn't exactly about coder stuff, but I need advice from folks who've got some education under their belt and aren't just spouting off opinions like randoms on the internet. So, here's the deal: today, I walked in on my eldest daughter hanging out with her friend. Now, when they saw me, they sorta shuffled away from each other like they'd been up to something—maybe cuddling or kissing, I don't know. Thing is, they're both girls, both 16. Is this normal friend behavior? I'm freaking out here—I don't want my daughter going down that whole 'lesbian' route. I don't know much about friendships all I have is my wife and I used to have a couple dev buddies before I got fired...

One of my favorite old jokes:
If you wish to know who rules you, seek those whom you're not allowed to criticize… We should rise up against children with leukemia!

My bandwidth is ordinarily a few hundred kbps, but whenever I torrent it can reach up to 2 mbps, while all other traffic from me and my housemates is stuck in the single digit kbps range.

What does BitTorrent do so fucking well, and how can other protocols replicate this success? Would the total available bandwidth be different if every protocol did whatever enables BitTorrent to summon bandwidth from thin air?

hi guys,
I've been in an interview a while ago for an IT position in a government agency, my CV had Vmware stuff, the guy asked, if we had a couple of VMs then we wanted to install few apps however we weren't sure if the apps would break ours VMs what should we do?
I answered the first thing we do is to create a snapshot for that VM so we can revert to it in case something is broken.

The guy just gave me blank eyes and i felt like if he disagree then he gave me another question

Am i wrong?

many established digital artists i follow recommend using traditional mediums (ie. pencil, pen, etc) every now and then to improve. it's another way to strengthen your foundations, like drawing boxes or a page of parallel lines.

is there an equivalent in coding? something you return to whenever you feel like you're stagnating or veering into "bad practices" territory?

the only thing i can think of is this video i am strongly encouraged to watch every year:
a talk about event loops by philip roberts.
https://youtu.be/8aGhZQkoFbQ/...

I've built multiple profitable SaaS apps in my career, from scratch, by myself...

...but it's sure damn important to know wether fucking Cindy or Bob or neither can fit into a parking lot after muddling through stupid obtrusive rules that don't mean anything

"its to understand how you think"

yep, clearly don't know how to do that, that's why i'm taking this labrat, i mean, cognitive test

🐀🤡🐀🤡🐀🤡🐀🤡🐀🤡🐀🤡

Anyone who says 'Docker is easy" should burn in hell.

Sure, It took me 5 minutes to run my project in docker container

Took another 25 to run multipl;e comntainers via compose

Now, 3 hours later, can't run compose from multiple Visual Studio solutions. Says "Pull failed"

No doc. No examples. No nothing.

I'll try for another hour or so, if not, fuck that docker shit. I'll go to Service fabric.

Favourite thing you worked on recently?
——
I’m working on server monitoring system. I found that I need to pay for most server monitor services, and ones that are free/open source didn’t sound like they fit my use case (b/c the server i need to monitor is shared,) so I basically said “f*<k it I’ll do it myself.” I find it fun to work on something that I feel the need to make.

Hey Root, we have a high priority ticket for you! It's adding some columns to a report. Should be simple. Details are in the ticket.

First: reports are some of the most boring, drool-inducing drudgery i have ever worked on.

Second: Specs for these reports are a nightmare since everything is ... very indirectly tested, and the specs are everywhere but where you'd expect them to be, so it's a lot of spelunking and trial/error. It's also slow as beans.

Anyway. The ticket's details are in ... not the worst engrish i've ever seen, but it's bad enough that i have no idea what they're asking despite (thus far) five attempts at deciphering it. There's also a numbered list of "fields" to add, so you'd think it would be straightforward. It is not. Half the list is crossed out, and half of the remaining items are feature requests (in yet more engrish), not columns to add. Also, one of the actual fields is impossible as the data it's asking for is not recorded anywhere.

yeah...

I cringe every time I see this person's name as the reporter because it's always the same. and honestly, there are more of these engrish people every month, and believe me: it isn't just a language barrier...

I closed my work laptop yesterday around noon and dumped water on it. I was just so fed up.

Some spilled off onto my desk, though, so i gently moved (read: threw) the offending piece of plastic frustration onto the floor and carefully dried my desk.

On my way to the trash can, i stepped on the laptop. I stepped on it again on the way back, and later, on my way out the door.

I came in to get something half an hour later, and stepped on it again. It remained a stepping stone for the rest of the day, and accrued considerable foot traffic.

I spent the day drinking peach whiskey and playing with my children instead of working on reports. It was a good day.

Don't worry: my laptop still worked this morning, though I declined to.

Remember my rant about angry birds guilt tripping kids into asking money?

https://devrant.com/rants/6765917/...

Well, Fluffy is slowly dying! Now it looks distressed and begging for food.

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, are scumbags.

When you progress to a certain level, they offer you a cool new thing — to hatch an egg. You click “hatch”, and then you have to wait 24 hours. This builds excitement — after all, it looks like an amazing new mode, and you can't wait to see what it is.

The reality is, you hatch this beautiful little creature. From here on, you have to FEED it regularly, or it will die. They drew it the cutest way possible. How should a child resist feeding this cutie? When I hatched it, I didn't know what this new mechanic was, and I assume new players don't know either.

You feed it apples. You can find apples on certain levels, but they are scarce. The further you go, the more apples are required to keep him alive. Play the game actively to keep up with it and get apples! Or, you could just… I don't know… BUY them.

“Mom, I need $11.99 to feed Fluffy, otherwise it will die!”

A straight-up scumbag fucking mechanic in a game targeted to impressionable children that will have a hard time seeing this tiny beautiful creature die of starvation. Let's guilt-trip kids into asking money from their parents!

AI is the future, and it's a future I want to be part of.

This week was very stressful, beside my usual depression and personal issues, I've received a lot of difficult tasks at work, to do in a very short amount of time.
Things I never did, tecnologies I've never used, and for a potential client that is critical for the company at this period in time, and if we won't be able to satisfy their requests we could go bankrupt really soon.
A lot of responsibility, almost no time and a person not competent enough to do it (me), especially on a hurry.

I couldn't sleep in these days, I couldn't think peacefully, concentrate to find the best solutions. I had really bad thoughts.

I couldn't find any useful solution online, on stackoverflow, forums, etc. and I spent hours searching them.

For who knows me here on devRant, probably knows also that I tend to work with old legacy code and dead languages as VB6 and VB.NET.
So integrate "new fancy stuff" isn't that easy and there are no documentation and examples to relay on.
I had fear to even try to understand the documentation (for other languages) and try to write code for it… I was panicking.

With no more ideas, I've decided to try to ask ChatGPT for help.

In maybe 3 or 5 seconds it was able to generate the solution, in VB.NET, with comments and all the explanation needed to understand it and integrate it correctly in my software.
With a few other requests it was able to change it to make it fit better my scenarios.

It's truely unbelivable how the tecnology advanced in the last years, how a computer on the other side is able to reply to my questions with answers that I couldn't find anywhere, because they probably never existed for my case, in VB.NET especially.

ChatGPT made my day, and allowed me to end this stressful moment and give me time to relax and focus on more important personal stuff this weekend.

God i fucking hate electron.js, why would you bundle an entire google chrome into your desktop app? WHY WOULD ANYONE BUILD ANYTHING ON THAT FRAMEWORK?

There is now a new subfield in web3 called DeSci which is decentralized science of studying memecoins and how to go from rags to riches just like one guy bought a shitcoin for $27 and now he cashed out $8m a few days ago

Web3 is absolute joker clown world dystopian shithole where only the rich get richer by taking the money from poor and middle class.

But if you think about it this is exactly how the whole web2 even works! The whole world works exactly like this and web3 has just helped us amplify the gruesome truth of reality

Why do people design web apis where the way you submit your authorization is via a custom header?

Especially when the authorization is literally a token?

Am I ingesting something special?

Data Disinformation: the Next Big Problem

Automatic code generation LLMs like ChatGPT are capable of producing SQL snippets. Regardless of quality, those are capable of retrieving data (from prepared datasets) based on user prompts.
That data may, however, be garbage. This will lead to garbage decisions by lowly literate stakeholders.
Like with network neutrality and pii/psi ownership, we must act now to avoid yet another calamity.

Imagine a scenario where a middle-manager level illiterate barks some prompts to the corporate AI and it writes and runs an SQL query in company databases.
The AI outputs some interactive charts that show that the average worker spends 92.4 minutes on lunch daily.
The middle manager gets furious and enacts an Orwellian policy of facial recognition punch clock in the office.
Two months and millions of dollars in contractors later, and the middle manager checks the same prompt again... and the average lunch time is now 107.2 minutes!
Finally the middle manager gets a literate person to check the data... and the piece of shit SQL behind the number is sourcing from the "off-site scheduled meetings" database.
Why? because the dataset that does have the data for lunch breaks is labeled "labour board compliance 3", and the LLM thought that the metadata for the wrong dataset better matched the user's prompt.

This, given the very real world scenario of mislabeled data and LLMs' inability to understand what they are saying or accessing, and the average manager's complete data illiteracy, we might have to wrangle some actions to prepare for this type of tomfoolery.

I don't think that access restriction will save our souls here, decision-flumberers usually have the authority to overrule RACI/ACL restrictions anyway.
Making "data analysis" an AI-GMO-Free zone is laughable, that is simply not how the tech market works. Auto tools are coming to make our jobs harder and less productive, tech people!
I thought about detecting new automation-enhanced data access and visualization, and enacting awareness policies. But it would be of poor help, after a shithead middle manager gets hooked on a surreal indicator value it is nigh impossible to yank them out of it.

Gotta get this snowball rolling, we must have some idea of future AI housetraining best practices if we are to avoid a complete social-media style meltdown of data-driven processes.
Someone cares to pitch in?

Question for all clickbate ad app devs: how many apps do you churn out a year and what is the maintenance like for them?

The world would be better if the TypeScript guys knew what they could create with less complexity in any other language. Of course, if they are interested in learning. There are SPA applications out there that have more lines than Doom 3.

What is GraphQL and why do i see it as a requirement in most jobs now

Had to go into an old outlook inbox to check something. The ad aside was bothering me so I went into the dev tools to remove the entire section.
The site crashed before I could do anything with the devtools.
I reloaded and tried two more times. Same results.

How is it doing that? Detecting the devtools are opened I mean. I hope this doesn't become standard practice.

Clench your butt tight hole and prepare:

Microsoft, Google, Amazon are the early owns, others going to follow. It's going to be painful year (Build back better).

https://blog.google/inside-google/...

This is just the start.....

On the one hand I really wish there was a good open-source self-hosted file sharing and collaboration service which made use of modern web technologies to provide most of its features inline as well and not just through APIs consumed by client applications.

On the other hand, I tried writing a WebDAV server once, and I fully empathize with the people who have to deal with this madness.