Two weeks is just enough time for the person who asked for the thing to forget when they asked for the estimate.

Our help desk person set up our software in a virtual machine on some cloud provider and you know how they give you a drive labeled temporary with a text file in warning you how the files will get deleted? Well for some reason they put the database files on that drive.

Luckily the server was for a small internal project and restarted a few days in so the users didn't loose too much work.

Near my office is a lake. To help get through the day I try to get away from my desk and walk around the lake for about 10 mins. Also tea.

My biggest personal challenge as a dev is getting help. Sometimes I feel so deserted.

Now and then I have to do things that are not my expertise and I feel out of my depth. I think if I had an expert come in for a day they would be able to save me weeks of slow progress. There are dev things like updating frameworks, etc which I am fine to struggle through or read the docs, etc but things like setting up servers, enabling single sign on, database administration, integration with other systems. These are not really software development tasks but they need to be done. It seems every time I try to get help it is so much effort then the help I get turns out not to be helpful.

In my current role I have no budget or company credit card, etc. To make any sort of purchase I need to get my manager to write a business case to get approved by his manager signed in triplicate, buried in soft peat, etc. Even if I went through this process there are so many companies out there who want to get paid to do nothing and say they are experts in all things. It is almost impossible to know if we would get competent help or if I end up just wasting time explaining issues to people in phone meetings who are no help.

I found someone added a webapp I made to their site in an iframe.

The 'dark' box at the bottom of the screenshot is my webapp.

I don't really mind them iframing it. I hate adverts but I don't mind that much that they have adverts on their site.

I am very annoyed however that they have a huge overlay appearing on top telling people to turn off their ad-blocker. Also they use alert() to tell people to share their site on social media!

Being told to turn off my ad-block and having to close alert popup boxes are two of my most hated things.

So now I made a little update to my site so their visitors will see a nice little song playing.

Most successful project? - well its hard to define success?

Get paid a wage in my day-job to work on other peoples software that I know are still being used but it doesn't matter since I got paid - success!

Made a web-app for a gaming community that gets about 150 users each day. Well I don't get paid but I do use the app myself and I learned while making it - more successful?

Forked some gaming community web app that did not support the latest game updates. Updated it and hosted on github pages. It gets about 1k users per day. Quite popular but since someone else wrote most of the code I feel it shouldn't count?

Maybe one day I will make something that people use and it also makes money for me somehow.. but I hate advertising and I rarely pay for apps/software so I'm not sure if its possible?

In grade four my teacher had a vic 20 and he let one student per week borrow it to take home. It didn't have any software but the book that came with it had some instructions on how to write some small basic programs.

At my work where I work as a software developer / programmer they have these mandatory monthly safety meetings. This week was about the dangers of using your phone while walking. It was quite surreal I feel like it must have been a joke but everyone seemed to take it seriously.

Do you ever have a problem that you just don't know how to resolve, you are way out of your depth and it seems like there really is no solution. There is nobody you can ask for help. You want to just give up. Then finally you have an answer. You fix the issue and it feels like you are superman and you can do anything. I remember that feeling before but this time I think maybe I should start looking for another job.

Visual studio code has this feature where it will automatically add typescript import statements. It doesn't work properly for me on this angular project.
eg. I get this:
import { Output } from '@angular/core/src/metadata/directives';
instead of this:
import { Output } from '@angular/core';

After a few weeks of being annoyed at this I tried to search to see if there was a fix. Surely others must use vscode+angular? Anyway I found this issue and it is set to fixed in typescript 2.5:
https://github.com/Microsoft/...

So I check and I am using typescript 2.4. I read that angular has issues if you use an unsupported version of typescript but I cant find anywhere that actually says the versions that are supported. I try npm install typescript@latest anyway and sure enough angular-cli spits out some error. The error says to run npm install typescript@'>=2.1.0 <2.6.0'

That command doesnt work! maybe something about those quotes in windows command prompt but I manage to run it with double quotes npm install "typescript@>=2.1.0 <2.6.0" and now I have typescript 2.5.

I try out the auto import but it still doesn't work.

Came into work this week after the holidays and was an email from azure saying unless we redeploy our virtual machines before next week they will do it at midnight utc - which happens to be mid-day here.

No problem I just email our client and schedule a time Friday afternoon where the servers will be unavailable and I'll do it then.

Today (Thursday) azure email and say they are going to just reboot our servers now. I check and the application is not working. Clients start phoning in saying they cant access the system..

I thought today was a good day to look at how I will deal with database migrations for this node.js/sql-server application. I read up docs for a few migration frameworks but the ones I found seem to make things too complex.

I am tempted to just roll my own by storing a db version in a table, numbering .sql scripts in a folder and running all the higher numbered scripts when the application starts.

Anyone know is there any gold standard for this sort of thing or anything to watch out for?

Here is a little story about why I do not like to have to purchase developer tools and libraries..

Long story short it has taken at least 10 people more than 3 months to purchase two licenses of this component library which we still do not yet have licenses for.

It all starts with this guy who works here and has the job title 'solution architect'. He saw an ad on a website about some html component library. Then he asks me and the other developer here to look at it. He is super excited saying things like if we save only x days of time the cost is nothing in comparison to developer time..

The other developer and I both spend a few days reading the docs and trying some sample code. It offers some things we can use but I suggest not bothering with it.

Despite my suggestion he goes to the technical manager and they write up a business case. After about a month our receptionist cc me on an email chain from the it commercial manager who is asking for the licensing information so they can add the component creator as a vendor in the purchasing system. I send them a link to the component website which lists all that.

Jump forward two more months to last week and I got a spam email from the component company saying they have some new version out. I am wondering what has happened so I ask our receptionist she says it is with accounts payable and waiting payment - but it is marked urgent and she will find out.

Today I am cc in an email saying they have paid for it two weeks ago. So where is the license info? Nobody knows.

Last job and current job I got mostly the same way. Current job was done slightly more effectively.

Here is what I did both times:
* Each day I checked all the job sites for developer jobs in the locations I was willing to travel to. I made bookmarks to various search pages so I could quickly see the results.
* I regularly searched for websites of any IT companies or large corporations that had offices in those locations. I bookmarked these and would check each day to see if they had job openings on their websites.
* Every job I applied for I made a folder with the date and job description.
* Inside the job folders I made a notes.txt file with the wording of the job and links to the ad. I googled the company and added notes like peoples names, etc. to these notes files.
* For every job I made minor alterations my resume to make sure it aligned with the job ad and copied it to the job folder
* I created another text document called cover_letter.txt which had a written letter describing all my experience that matched with the job ad
* Where possible I would call and speak with someone to get more detail about the job and updated the letter and resume accordingly
* Finally I would email or post the letter and resume

Using this method I was able to apply to several jobs every day and I was able to reuse and improve on the letters as the weeks went by. Also since I applied for a lot of jobs when someone replied I had the job ad available to look at.

For both last and current jobs I moved countries. The difference was between last and current was the previous time I moved first then started looking and for my current job I started looking before I moved. For the current job employers seemed to welcome my situation and I had several job interviews lined up for after my arrival. I felt it put me in a better light since I was essentially unavailable until my arrival date compared to before when I was unemployed and looking and getting desperate.

The job I have now I was interviewed while overseas on skype and then in-person the day after landing in the country. They quickly told me I would be hired. It seemed good so I canceled the other interviews. Sorry no exciting circumstances.

I think maybe I am doing something wrong.

I have this node.js application I am building with typescript and I wrote tests in mocha. Now I need to make some changes which break quite a few tests.

When I run mocha on the command line the errors whizz past. When I worked in java and .net (with junit and nunit) you could just click a test in the ide to run it. So you could 'fix' one test at a time. Also you could just double click on a fail and it would jump you to the code for that test or the exception that failed.

I found this extension for visual studio code that adds a sidebar to visual studio code. It looked good but now I spent the last hour trying to get it to run typescript tests - looks like it doesn't support the compilers argument.

Surely other developers must do this sort of stuff. I am not using an obscure technology stack right? Do you write automated tests for your codebase? What tools do you use? Should I switch ide? switch testing frameworks?

Saw this quote in a local newspaper. The guy is against buying laptops for school kids which I also am against but he makes the wrong argument. 25 years ago my school had computer rooms where we learnt how to code and although I don't use that language now it is still the same concepts as any modern language.

Someone asked me once to put a timer in an installer to slow it down because apparently it would make the software seem to be more important if it took longer to install.

Ever since being asked this I now wonder does why it takes so long to install some software.. Do developers actually do this?

Reporting is not fun..

Scenario 1:
* A user says they need to export certain data from our system..
* Developer W makes report called "Foo detail report"

Scenario 2:
* A user says they need this report to also show some extra fields
* Developer X makes a new report called "Foo detail report (extra fields)"

Scenario 3:
* A user says they need this report to be run with a different search criteria
* Developer Y makes a new report called "Foo detail report (extra fields) by bar"

Scenario 4:
* A user says they need this report show data grouped in a different way
* Developer Z makes a new report called "Foo detail report (extra fields) by bar- new grouping"

The above scenarios happened over and over for several years in no particular order...

Current Day:
* Some users have certain reports they use and rely on but we don't know which ones
* Nobody really knows what all of the reports do or what is the difference between them without looking at the sql
* If we want to change data structures we have many reports to update
* I have a request from a user to add an extra column to one of the reports

I used to worked for an IT consultancy in the UK and they would get trainers in to do courses a few times a year. There was this course on UML and people told me how great it was but I was very reluctant. My degree had covered UML and syntax for drawing diagrams to me is the most pointless and boring waste of time ever.

Turned out diagrams were just a tool and the real focus was on design. Anyway the teacher for the course was Kevlin Henny. He really is a fantastic speaker. I learnt so much about object oriented design from the course. These days I keep an eye our for any recordings of his talks.

Here is one of his talks if you are interested:
https://youtube.com/watch/...

Our software outputs some xml and a client has another company loading this xml into some data warehouse and doing reporting on it. The other company are saying we are outputting duplicate records in the data.

I look and see something like this:
<foo name="test">
<bar value="2" />
<bar value="3" />
</foo>

They say there are two foo records with the name test..
We ask them to send the xml file they are looking at. They send an xlsx (Excel!) file which looks like this:

name value
test 2
test 3

We try asking them how they get xlsx from the xml but they just come back to our client asking to find what we changed because it was working before. Well we didn't change anything. This foo has two bar inside it which is valid data and valid xml. If you cant read xml just say so and we can output another format!

Side project I wish I started would be an online game. If I just got something playable implemented I am sure I would play it myself then enhance it to be great.

I don't expect I can make a living out of it but ever since I was in school I wanted to be a game developer.

1. Search on google for an answer
2. Find someone asking the same question on some forum
3. See the question has an answer
4. The answer is "Please search yourself before asking. Thread locked."

This happens too often..

I get some error when deleting an azure service so I put a support ticket asking for help. Just as I am about to close my computer for the day I receive an email saying:

"Product team will disable the account xxxxx from backend".

The xxxxx is our subscription number. The subscription that hosts not only that service but also production servers and databases, storage accounts containing backups, etc.

I replied to the email so hopefully disaster is avoided otherwise tomorrow wont be a happy day.

Last week someone from a clients IT mailed me saying some user needed setting up in the software we develop. There was a flurry of emails from the person, the persons boss, their IT, etc. I sent instructions to the IT person explaining how to create users. Next day another flurry of emails asking if I created the user or not. Seems like they cant follow instructions so I went in and created the user for them then didn't think anything more of it.

Then last night I binged watched many episodes of this TV series 12 monkeys which is all about time traveling. Anyway in this morning I get into the office and there are all these emails from this same person, from last week, also emails from their boss and their IT people again all asking how this same person can be set up as a user. I had to quietly just ask one of the other developers "what day is it?" just in case..

I don't know how erp systems can be so expensive and yet so bad. Integrating our software with sap is turning out to be painful.

I just found out at my company it is policy to perform random drug and alcohol testing of all employees. I guess this makes some sense for other parts of the business where people use heavy machinery, etc. but they also test office workers.

I don't take drugs and I never drink during the day but I don't want to be tested. I am a professional person and I am trusted with development of our software and valuable internal and client databases so why cant they trust me with this? There are many developers who produce poor quality work even without any drugs, etc. Surely the quality of my work is enough.

Apparently here in Australia if I am asked to take a piss test and refuse they have the right to sack me. If they ask me I think I might resign.

Worst experience with a manager was with this project manager at my first job.

One day the other developers and I were staying back a little late to try to make some progress. The manager offered to go out to get food for us. It must have been two hours later when we realized he was not back. We were ready to go home and starting to get hungry. We called him and he said he got caught up but was on his way back and would be there soon. It was more than an hour later when he arrived with the food. I quit that job shortly after.

My ideal job has me working on developing quality software with smart people in an environment where there is not much bureaucracy. I get input into the future of the application. There is no expectation for me to work extended hours and I can be flexible and come in late and work late if I feel like it. Also the job should be near where I live so that I don't have to travel.

There is one last thing. The employer should be doing well and have no excuse and plenty of budget for salary increases hardware upgrades, growing the development team, etc.

This is essentially the job I have now except that last thing.

!rant

Not a rant

Ms access, or rather the systems developed using this tech.

Unfortunately I worked with it a lot in the past fixing applications made by non-developers. Usually someone who went on a ms office training course then when they leave the company the database breaks and no one has a clue how to fix it.