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After 1,5 months of customer support as a Linux support engineer, I can honestly say:
Fuck wordpress.26 -
I'm at my seat during the regular morning routine of checking emails, planning the things I need to complete/study when my phone rings.
HR: Good Morning, can you come over to the conference room please ?
Me: Sure
I enter the conference room and on the other side of the table, I see a group of 3 HR Managers (not a very nice feeling), especially when it was 10 months into my first job as a Trainee Software Developer.
HR: The company hasn't been performing as expected. For this reason, we've been told to cut down our staff. We're sorry but we have to let you go. You've been doing a great job all along. Thank you.
Me: ---- (seriously ?!)
The security-in-chief 'escorts' me out of the premises and I hand over the badge. I'm not allowed to return to my desk.
This happened about 16 years ago. But it stuck with me throughout my programming career.
A couple of Lessons Learnt which may help some of the developers today :
- You're not as important as you think, no matter what you do and how well you do it.
- Working hard is one thing, working smart is another. You'll understand the difference when your appraisals comes around each year.
- Focus on your work but always keep an eye on your company's health.
- Be patient with your Manager; if you're having a rough time, its likely he/she is suffering more.
- Programming solo is great fun. However it takes other skills that are not so interesting, to earn a living.
- You may think the Clients sounds stupid, talks silly and demands the stars; ever wonder what they think about you.
- When faced with a tough problem, try to 'fix' the Client first, then look for a solution.
- If you hate making code changes, don't curse the Client or your Manager - we coders collectively created a world of infinite possibilities. No point blaming them.
- Sharing your ideas matter.
- Software Development is a really long chain of ever-growing links that you may grok rather late in your career. But its still worth all the effort if you enjoy it.
I like to think of programming as a pursuit that combines mathematical precision and artistic randomness to create some pretty amazing stuff.
Thanks for reading.14 -
Boss: "it's not the same font"
Me: "yes, it is"
Boss: "don't argue with me. It's a different font"
Me: "ok it's a different font" (it's not)
Boss: "change it please"
15 minutes later and I've done nothing at all to it. Boss comes back.
Boss: "see? I knew it was a different font. This looks perfect now. Why were you lying to me before? I don't like you arguing with me"11 -
When people tell me their problems I immediately start coming up with solutions when really they just want sympathy.15
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When you stare into git, git stares back.
It's fucking infinite.
Me 2 years ago:
"uh was it git fetch or git pull?"
Me 1 year ago:
"Look, I printed these 5 git commands on a laptop sticker, this is all I need for my workflow! branch, pull, commit, merge, push! Git is easy!"
Me now:
"Hold my beer, I'll just do git format-patch -k --stdout HEAD..feature -- script.js | git am -3 -k to steal that file from your branch, then git rebase master && git rebase -i HEAD~$(git rev-list --count master..HEAD) to clean up the commit messages, and a git branch --merged | grep -v "\*" | xargs -n 1 git branch -d to clean up the branches, oh lets see how many words you've added with git diff --word-diff=porcelain | grep -e '^+[^+]' | wc -w, hmm maybe I should alias some of this stuff..."
Do you have any git tricks/favorites which you use so often that you've aliased them?50 -
Finally did it. Quit my job.
The full story:
Just came back from vacation to find out that pretty much all the work I put at place has been either destroyed by "temporary fixes" or wiped clean in favour of buggy older versions. The reason, and this is a direct quote "Ari left the code riddled with bugs prior to leaving".
Oh no. Oh no I did not you fucker.
Some background:
My boss wrote a piece of major software with another coder (over the course of month and a balf). This software was very fragile as its intention was to demo specific features we want to adopt for a version 2 of it.
I was then handed over this software (which was vanilajs with angular) and was told to "clean it up" introduce a typing system, introduce a build system, add webpack for better module and dependency management, learn cordova (because its essential and I had no idea of how it works). As well as fix the billion of issues with data storage in the software. Add a webgui and setup multiple databses for data exports from the app. Ensure that transmission of the data is clean and valid.
What else. This software had ZERO documentation. And I had to sit my boss for a solid 3hrs plus some occasional questions as I was developing to get a clear idea of whats going on.
Took a bit over 3 weeks. But I had the damn thing ported over. Cleaned up. And partially documented.
During this period, I was suppose to work with another 2 other coders "my team". But they were always pulled into other things by my Boss.
During this period, I kept asking for code reviews (as I was handling a very large code base on my own).
During this period, I was asking for help from my boss to make sure that the visual aspect of the software meets the requirements (there are LOTS of windows, screens, panels etc, which I just could not possibly get to checking on my own).
At the end of this period. I went on vacation (booked by my brothers for my bday <3 ).
I come back. My work is null. The Boss only looked at it on the friday night leading up to my return. And decided to go back to v1 and fix whatever he didnt like there.
So this guy calls me. Calls me on a friggin SUNDAY. I like just got off the plane. Was heading to dinner with my family.
He and another coder have basically nuked my work. And in an extremely hacky way tied some things together to sort of work. Moreever, the webguis that I setup for the database viewing. They were EDITED ON THE PRODUCTION SERVER without git tracking!!
So monday. I get bombarded with over 20 emails. Claiming that I left things in an usuable state with no documentation. As well as I get yelled at by my boss for introducing "unnecessary complicated shit".
For fuck sakes. I was the one to bring the word documentation into the vocabulary of this company. There are literally ZERO documentated projects here. While all of mine are at least partially documented (due to lack of time).
For fuck sakes, during my time here I have been basically begging to pull the coder who made the admin views for our software and clean up some of the views so that no one will ever have to touch any database directly.
To say this story is the only reason I am done is so not true.
I dedicated over a year to this company. During this time I saw aspects of this behaviour attacking other coders as well as me. But never to this level.
I am so friggin happy that I quit. Never gonna look back.14 -
It happened! It finally happened.
I got to use the XOR operator today, for the first time in my 10 years of development.
Now I feel complete. I am senior developer now!9 -
Customer support story time: (swearing in Dutch because it sounds more fun but it's general swearing so no translation needed I think (will translate the non obvious parts)
Me: good morning, how can I help you?
Client: hello, I have a question for you.
Me: go ahead!
Client: alright so.... one sec, let me turn off my music.
Client: hey Google
.
.
.
Client: hey Google
.
Client: Heeeey Gooooooogle
.
Client: HEY GOOGLE, GODVERREDOMME
.
Me: 😆
.
Client: REAGEER GODVERDOMME. "HEY GOOOOGLE"
.
.
Client: VIES VUIL TYFUS DING, LUISTEREN. HEEEEEY GOOOOOOGLE
.
.
Client: JA GODVERREROMME, LUISTER GEWOON, FUCKING KUT DING. *SHOUTS WITH ANGRY VOICE* "HEY GOOGLE HALLOOOO LUISTEEEEEREEEEEN" (oh for fucks sake, LISTEN fucking piece of shit)
Me: *desperately trying to keep it together*
Client: IK DOE HET ZELF WEL JEZUS GODDOMME *FOOTSTEPS, MUSIC STOPS* (Translation: I'll do it myself, fucking hell)
.
.
.
Client: finally, sorry for that 😅
Me: *still trying to control myself* no problem!15 -
Client: We want it to run on both, windows and Linux servers.
Me: Why would you want such a thing?
Client: The user should be able to connect to the server, independently from what system he or she is using.
Me: So... should we setup a Mac OS X server too?10 -
I was explaining to my mom how my company is in need of developers and how we'll need more of them in the future - to which she replied:
"oh... what are you going to do? You can't live without a job!"
- erm? What?
"Well - you're not smart like those guys. You'll probably get fired now."
- Wtf mom!? I'm a friggin lead dev and i've been a developer for like 10 years now!? 😳
*silence* "is that what you've been doing? I thought you just kept clicking on stuff"11






