So they develop this app. That uses our front end component library. That queries a GraphQL layer developed as NPM package. That uses a data service abstraction NPM package. That uses another NPM package mapper library. That queries an old REST API returning XML.

It takes days to make a newly added XML node in the bottom-most layer available in the app, requiring changes to 4 repositories and 3 NPM releases.
Refactoring is dead, because 1 change will affect all layers. And the worst part is: theres only 1 app using these packages, so no case for re-use. Overzealous separation of concerns I guess?

"How cryptic do you like your JIRA story descriptions?"

Product owner: YES

What a consultant's gotta do for his timesheet when homeworking:

1. Fill in Excel, send to self by mail (corporate bitlocker protected PC on proxy that doesnt allow local printer connections)
2. Go upstairs to secondary Windows PC (no Excel on main Linux laptop) and open mail
3. Send to printer, wait 10 minutes (old printer needs to 'warm up')
4. Sign timesheet and go back upstairs
5. Scan signed version, send mail to self.
6. Open personal mail on corporate laptop, send to manager. (can't send directly from personal mail)
7. Wait to get back signed timesheet from manager
8. Finally, send to own admin dept.

2 story points completed, time for a break.

Say what you will but React JS development is utterly exhausting. Every React project is a totally new stack and there is no consensus in the ecosystem.That is how I feel after having worked on 5 big SPA React JS projects over the course of 5 years.

The structure of these projects was all but similar: most used HOC's, some render props, functions-as-a-child, hooks or rather component lifecycles, some used container-components, some Redux, others sprinkled business logic & state all over, and yet others use a mix of server-side rendering and "hydration"...

I dangerouslySetInnerHTML on LazyExoticComponents, and dared not useEffect on the DO_NOT_TOUCH_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED root property. Hooks embrace functions, but without sacrificing the practical spirit of React, you see.

I didn't make this up. It's verbatim from the code and the docs.
This is not web development, this is at best a tedious fantasy multiplayer game or at worst, a costly joke.

TIL Github renders markdown YAML frontmatter as nested markdown tables! Awesome as lightweight structured data documentation tool

Me: "do you know about .exe files?"
Girlfriend: "yeah, like '.exe stopped working'"

*Windows exe immediately associated with bugs by common user*

The pandemic aside, even the type of absurd news messages in the Plague Inc mobile game have become reality.

- "President berates reporters for asking 'tough questions' "
- "Corona beer stocks dive as result of coincidentally unfortunate brand name"
- "Man intentionally transmits illness by spitting on police officer."

Except COVID-19, Airport security is also scanning preflight requests and incoming traffic for CORS with its dated test kit (found this unused gem in an old PHP codebase):

The place I currently work at doesn't allow homeworking for consultants. RIP

Having to do 10's of ElasticSearch v2 -> 6 client requests migration manual deploys of a 10-year old PHP/ Javascript codebase where the gulp build's plugins no longer work, the package dependencies have been .gitignore'd (who does that!), and dev cowboys have frequently bypassed version control by making changes directly in production.

Also, no one knows anything about it because the only dev who was supposed to maintain this app left 3 months ago due to unbearable management.

This "binaryextensions" NPM package is a fraud (not to be confused with "binary-extensions"!): https://npmjs.com/package/...; it contains a single JSON array of purportedly "all binary extensions", reaches 700k downloads a week, yet only lists 13 binary extensions (https://github.com/bevry/...).

This is a huge danger to security, especially if it's being used in production environments for input checking. For comparison, here is a much more robust version of a repo with the same goal (https://github.com/sindresorhus/...)

So I work for an IT consulting firm (web development) and was hired by a customer 7 months ago for coaching Git, implementation of VueJS on the front-end and fostering teamwork with devs who'd been in their solo comfort zone for the last 15 years.
I asked for confirmation multiple times on whether they were sure they wanted to go through with a bigger investment in front-end. Confirm they did, multiple times.

After half the team's initial enthusiasm faded (after 1 month), the 'senior' of them who's worked there for 18 years on a single -in the end, failed- project got a burn-out after half a week of showing up (without doing actual work) from the stress, and started whining about it with management that has no technical clue whatsoever. This and other petty office politics lead to the dumbest organizational and technical decisions I've seen in my short 5-year career (splitting a Laravel app that uses the same database in two, replacing docker container deployment with manual ssh'ing and symlinking, duplicating all the models, controllers, splitting a team in two, decreasing productivity, replacing project management dashboards with ad-hoc mail instructions and direct requests).

Out of curiosity I did a git log --author --no-merges with the senior's name on the 2 projects he was supposed to help on, and that turned up... ZERO commits. Now the dept. hired 3 new developers with no prior experience, and it's sad to see the seniors teach them "copy paste" as the developer's main reflex.

Through these 7 months I had to endure increasingly vicious sneers from the IT architect -in name only- who gets offended and hysterical at every person who dares offer suggestions. Her not-so-implicit insinuation is that it's all my fault because I implemented Vue front-end (as they requested), she has been doing this for months, every meeting at least once (and she makes sure other attendees notice). Extra background: She's already had 2 official complaints for verbal abuse in the past, and she just stressed another good developer into smoking again.

Now I present her my timesheet for January, she abuses her power by refusing to sign it unless I remove a day of work.
Earlier this week I asked her politely to please stop her unjust guilt-tripping to which she shouted "You'll just have to cope with that!", and I walked out of the room calmly (in order to avoid losing my nerves). She does this purely as a statement, and I know she does it out of bad faith (she doesn't actually care, as she doesn't manage the budgets). She knows she wields more power over me than the internal devs (I am consultant, so negative reviews for me could delay further salary raises).

I just don't know how to handle this person: I can't get a word in with her, or she starts shouting, and it's impossible to change her (completely inaccurate technological) perception.

Spaces vs tabs has kind of become a non-argument for web tech and the former has won (at least in every place I've worked or observed in open source projects).

Although I don't really care (just stick to one for the same codebase) I don't get why spaces won. Given the argument is mostly about how we like to read code individually, and tab width can be configured per editor while space cannot, why did spaces win?

Does anyone actually talk to his or her rubber duck at work?
I tend to use colleagues as rubber ducks. Aren't non-dev colleagues weirded out when they see you talk to an actual rubber duck?

When SJW's take PCness too far xD. Read the full post at:
https://facebook.com/john.briggs.77...

So a web developer is driving home from work when his girlfriend phones him. She says her sister can't log into Windows anymore even though she didn't change her password!

What happened?

Every last 2 hours of the workday my colleague who has plenty of sleep, his headphones on and a very comfortable life, yawns and sighs really loudly and it pisses me off.

It's as if his lack of interest transpires in his breathing.

Holy fuck Microsoft I love what you are doing to Github. Where's the catch?

Gaslighting not what it sounds like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Last week I finally deleted my Twitter account. DevRant has succeeded where Twitter deeply failed me: in providing good laughs, a friendly community, a less popularity-biased algo, and interesting content. I kept it for promotion just in case I'd ever get around to publishing a blog regularly, but even if I eventually do, I no longer give a **** about Twitter.

Today I came up with a politically inappropriate wordplay:

Crimea river

Need opinions: When your knowledgeable colleague backend-developer chooses 1,2,4,8,16 as enum values instead of 1,2,3,4,5 (for roles associated with permissions, which may be cumulatable) in order to be able to do bitwise operations, is it a sound decision for this scenario? Is it a best practice, just as good, or pedantic?

I want to master bitwise but have a hard time grasping such operations as quickly as logical ones.

Does anyone have dual boot Linux/ Windows and also have problems with the slow-ass periodic updates Windows shoves down your throat, needs to do multiple restarts for, but gets stuck at the grub bootloader?

It's really annoying the next time you need your PC quickly you're forced to standby for 2 hours.

When how bitwise operators work suddenly seemed logical, until the next time it didn't.

I answered this question on Stackoverflow (Javascript) and I tried very hard not to lose my cool in the comments below: https://stackoverflow.com/questions..... How can you not see this?

A couple years ago my now ex-colleagues pranked the lead dev for being nitpicky about the importance of the story post-it wall in the agile process.
His desk was like this the next morning.
Needless to say, he was pissed and we had a good laugh :D

Pleasure to do dev work with you again after a 2-year break, dear Windows. You are still the capricious little prick you used to be

Doing dev work in Belgium in an office without air conditioning and a
room temperature of 38°C (100F).. just impossible to focus.. in the car I almost burnt my fingers using the steering wheel and gear stick. Some of you guys have had similar experiences (temp? Location?), for me it's a first..

1. Purpose: Being at the forefront of discovering how and helping to automate business processes in all domains and learn about "how things work"
2. Relative autonomy
3. Mastery (of languages, concepts, methods)

TIL the CSS attr function copies the attribute's input to the pseudo-element's content, awesome! (thank you medium.com devs)