This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...

I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.

I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:

Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.

Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!

Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.

But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.

Client: I said I wanted that text to be white. We talked about this. You have to do what I tell you.

Me: the text is white. The color code is #ffffff.

Client: well make it more white!

*Sigh*

* Finds out about devRant *
* Gets all super excited about expressing dev feelings *
* Spends 30 mins thinking what to post *

I guess, just like Twitter I'll be a viewer.

One company i applied for never wanted to give me the job because they where building a prototype and they wanted someone familiar with their stack to get things up in a short time span.

*Fast forward 7 months*

The company i work currently with has been developing prototypes for startups to help validate their ideas and guess what, the bunch above came to our company unknowing that i work here and i have been put on the project as a lead.

Lol man, you cant write this stuff

"We are looking for a developer with 10 years of GDPR experience."

Who the fuck hires wix developers ?

Do you need someone to drag and drop for you?

A non-techie just asked me this, "when your computer overheats, why does it freeze?"

Today at work, still laugh thinking back to it!

We were on lunch break but the linux support engineers who are on the phones as well have to pick up calls anyways (very small team).

*engineer walks to the table, sits down: Ahhh rest, finally!*
*tringggggggggg*
*engineer pulls a face like 'oh for fucks sake' and walks back to his desk*
*puts headphones on and clicks the answer button just as it disappears*
"really!?! Alright lets finally eat now"
*sits for literally one second*
*tringgggggggggg*
*Engineer seems quite pissed off now. walks to his desk again, puts on headset, clicks the answer button JUST as the call stops again*
"Mother of god, fucking really?"
*stays as his desk for a minute or so, walks back, stays hovering above his chair for a little and finally sits down again*
"Finall......"
*TRINGGGGGGGGGGGG*
"MOTHERFUCKER. THESE GUYS TIME IT OR SOMETHING!?!?"
*walks back to his desk very frustrated this time*
*puts on headphones very quickly and presses the answer button*
*answer works but the call is literally dropped the second he starts it (it was a real client)*

"OH FOR FUCKS FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING SAKE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

*walks back to table again and sits down. Takes sandwich and....*

*TRINGGGGGGGGGG MOTHERFUCKER*

"FUCKING COCKSUKING MOTHERFUCKING PIECES OF WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK EVER"

*gives a deadly look to another engineer: "I am NOT going to take it this time! En-fucking-joy."*

We laughed so hard xD

Uncle: "It must be noisy, programming. I've seen a datacenter on TV, and those computers are loud" — "It is noisy, but that's more my coworkers fault"

Sales guy at the office: "So you see patterns in the code, you can read this cryptic mess?" — "Uh this is PHP, Its not the syntax that makes it hard to read, it's the dimwit who wrote it"

Father-in-law: "Could you reprogram my laptop, I got a virus trying to download por... nature documentaries" — "I'm not that kind of doctor"

Mother-in-law: "How will you sustain a family, you just play video games all day" — "I make your monthly teachers salary in four days"

Girlfriend: "I learned some Lua today because I needed a world of warcraft extension for..." — "I love you too"

Worst dev I've interviewed?

"Archie" ran his own consulting business for almost 20 years. Prior to his interview, Archie sent HR (to send to us) his company's website, where he had samples of code for us to review (which was not bad, this guy did know his stuff).
What I found odd was Archie was the lone wolf at his company, but everything I found about him (the about page, his bio, etc), Archie was referred to as 'Mr. Archie Brown'.
Ex. 'Mr. Archie Brown began his humble career and 'Mr. Archie Brown is active in his church and volunteers his time in many charities ...'
Odd to refer to yourself in the third person on your own site, but OK, I like putting hot sauce on my mac & cheese (no judgement here).

Then the interview..standard stuff, then..
Me: "Given your experience, this is an entry level developer position. Do you feel the work would be challenging enough for you?"
Archie: "Yes, Mr. Archie Brown would have no problem starting at bottom. You see ..."

Almost any time he would reference himself, instead of 'me' or 'I', he would say 'Mr. Archie Brown'. As the interview continued, the ego and self-importance grew and grew.
My interview partner wanted to be done by using the escape clause, "PaperTrail, I'm good, do you have any questions?"

Yes, yes I do. I was having too much fun listening to this guy ramble on about himself. I made the interview go the full hour with the majority of time 'Archie' telling us how great he is.

The icing on the cake was my partner caught his gold cuff-links and tie-pin where his initials and how he kept raising his hands and playing with his tie to show us (which I totally missed, then was like "oh yea, that was weird")

After the interview, talking with HR:
HR-Jake: "How did it go?"
John: "Terrible. One of the worst. We would have been done in 10 minutes if PaperTrail didn't keep asking questions."
Me: "Are you kidding!? I had the best time ever. I wish I could have stayed longer."
HR-Jake: "Really? This guy was so full of himself I wasn't sure to even schedule with you guys. With his experience, I thought it deserved at least a round with you two. You think we should give him a chance?"
Me: "Hell no. Never in a million years, no. I never in my whole life met anyone with such a big ego. I mean, he kept referring to himself in the third person. Who does that?"
HR-Jake: "Whew!...yea, he did that in the phone interview too. It was a red flag for us as well."

Couple of weeks later I ran into HR-Jake in the break room.
HR-Jake: "Remember Mr. Archie Brown?"
Me: "To my dying day, I will never forget Mr. Archie Brown."
HR-Jake: "I called him later that day to tell him the good news and he accused me of being a racist. If we didn't give him the job, he was getting a lawyer and sue us for discrimination."
Me: "What the frack!"
HR-Jake: "Yep, and guess what? Got a letter from his lawyer today. I don't think a case will come in front of a judge, but if you have any notes from the interview, I'll need them."
Me: "What are we going to do?"
HR-Jake: "Play the waiting game between lawyers. We're pretty sure he'll run out of money before we do."

After about 6 months, and a theft conviction (that story made the local paper), Mr. Archie Brooks dropped his case (or his lawyers did).

This made me laugh

When you're preparing for a hard disk format:

suddenly while you introduce yourself to everyone..

So, I needed a package installed on one of our Unix servers. The package manager--which is obsolete garbage--was failing with a message which can only be described as a variant of "Go fuck yourself". A quick Google search didn't help.

3 espressos and an eternity later, I have descended into a manic state. My hair has turned grey and I have started lactating. As a last-ditch effort, I try a new search query on Google, and the first link takes me to a forum with a thread discussing a similar issue. The last post in the thread has a solution which works for me. After fixing the issue, everything in the world feels right and I decide to thank the generous poster, who is like an angel to me at this point.

Guess what? The poster is none other than me. 8 months back, I had created a user account on the forum just to post the solution to a similar issue I had on another server.

Phone conversation between me and a client:

CLIENT: "I see it weird..."
ME: "Which browser are you using?"
CLIENT: "The one you tech guys don't like"
ME: "Internet Explorer, isn't it?"
CLIENT: "Yeah, I'll switch to Firefox then."

manager: we need to design an admin system for a veterinary centre

dev: ok, this is it, remember your training

class Dog extends Animal {}

Boss: I saw your last commit, great work!
Dev: But... You told me to delete all the features I added...
Boss: Yes, fantastic improvements!

you know shit just got serious when a developer takes off his watch

Not a rant....

I received an email today from a client that reads "I'm so anxious to pay you. This is the best money I've spent on my website."

🤘🤘🤘

I got 99 problems but encoding ain’t one