Am I in a toxic work environment or not?

1. I suggested implementing some code guidelines for our team so we can all work the same way. Lead architect sends me a DM telling me to stop talking about it until after projectX is done because it might stress out other devs. Friday he talks about how important it is to use standardised tools and ways of doing things.
2. Spent a week working on a bug fix and they said solution is good, but then invalidated all of my work by DM-ing me saying it's unusable because i worked on wrong branch and he quickly fixed it over the weekend and I should just copy his (inefficient) code.
3. I ask him a basic question of what version the backend software is using and he doesn't even respond. I ask another team member who quickly helps me check. it would have taken 1 fucking integer to answer that question. i wanted to learn the backend stack, but not so much anymore.
4. Lead doesn't respond to project management software ticket mentions.
5. Lead randomly makes hotfixes to the QA server without prior notice so the backend randomly goes down at times during work hours and then my local copy of the front end stops working for no reason at all when I am trying to focus on bug fixes
6. UX/UI designer's screen designs look completely different than the actual app, so I spent weeks implementing a feature looking like his nice designs, then having to change it again, taking another week.
7. Generally poor comms
8. Leadership mentioned jobs are safe, then 2 months later retrenched a bunch of people.
9. People getting sick all of the time.
10. Nobody gives a shit about technical debt

Yeah turns out writing a shell is a whole lot more work than I thought

Fuck man, why can't I just find a cool project that is actually doable in a normal lifetime

What‘s the purpose of separating your code into "independent" modules if each module contains everything anyways?

Finally got paid (apparently they sent my money to the wrong account lmao).

So I bought:

- A Guitar Rig Kontrol 3. It's an old hardware designed for some specific soft, but it contains a soundcard, 8 foot switches, one expression pedals (continuus), 2 other expression pedals input, 2 audio input, 2 audio output. So I'll be able to plug my guitar and control FX from there. All of this for 50 euros at the pawn shop

Being a programmer helped me tremendously for electronic music because I can write actual drivers for old hardware.

- I also found an old bike on the street. Brakes and transmission, seat and tyres are fucked, but the frame and wheels seems healthy enough. I can get a decent bike for the price of parts and labour.

Well, happy treason day to all the yanks

There is nothing easier than running an insurance company in the US of A. When a big request comes in from a client in distress that got into a terrible accident that is definitely covered by their (very expensive) plan, you just go to the data bank like Equifax and see if they're still rich enough to win a lawsuit against you should you refuse to pay.

For those of you who don't know what a data bank is: data banks are companies that buy/scrape/suck in every last bit of data they can about every person in the country, and then resell it through their fancy UI with all the convenient features and metrics.

So, Umbrella Insurance Co. goes to Equifax and asks whether Joe Schmoe's accident is severe and life-ruining enough that they won't be able to sue us. Exuifax says: let's see... Joe's Revolut©™ account has the grand total of $80.12, with $7,382.25 recently spent on medical bills. Joe's WhatsApp©™ (a Meta©™ company) classifies their recent messages as "desperate". Joe's iPhone©™ Screen Time©™ is increased, and Joe is doomscrolling a lot, especially on The Washington Post©™ (a Jeff Bezos company). All signs show that if you don't pay them, they won't be able to out-sue you. That would be $0.12, thanks!

As a person who is no one in particular that may or may not have been a US of A's supreme court judge once said, "sometimes it's not about justice, but about making the sucker spend all their money".

How is MSSQL so popular? "Oh yeah, sometimes you have to use dynamic SQL because the compiler doesn't correctly detect the impact of DDL commands and rejects working code" god fucking what? Why does the compiler infer the future structure of tables after a DDL command if it can't do so reliably? In my world, if it becomes public knowledge that a compiler incorrectly infers something, the maintainer scrambles to remove the inference instead.

I also find it surreal that I have to disengage versioning on a table in order to be able to modify the version history. Like surely, there should be a mechanism to temporarily skip the hooks other than ALTERing the table into a regular unversioned database table and then ALTERing it back, rebuilding the versioning infrastructure from scratch. SQL is awful and MSSQL is doubly awful.

accidentally deleting hours of tedious front end work by accident while trying to get rid of the error generated garbage by the build system when you are trying to commit just the relevant things while iterating

javascript is a dogshit language

typescript makes a valiant attempt to make it better but it's contrived on top of a rocky foundation so it can't quite get there unfortunately

yes i am trash at programming and appreciate strongly typed languages for any heavy duty work, in most cases those languages designed for it from the ground up, don't feel as frustrating to deal with

I just had a post-shower thought… If you went even just one year into the past and openly told your boss that you used an AI tool to write user stories, documentation, or code, you would've been scolded for skirting your responsibilities or "cheating." Some companies even had strict policies against using AI, and some still do.

Fast forward to today: if you tell your boss you used an AI tool, you're praised for efficiency and streamlining your workflow.

Just an interesting dichotomy between the two mindsets, and such a quick switchover.too. Even the stuffiest "non-tech" companies are openly encouraging the use of AI in your day-to-day nowadays, whether it be for writing code building presentations. As long as the work is good, they pat you on the back.

As somebody who likes automating stuff, I love to see it. But as a future slave to our future robot overlords, there still needs to be a place for us flesh bags.

I'm developing a board game and it’s so much fun to come up with structures and logic to implement the rules of the game and make it in a way that is clever and doesn’t require a lot of repetition and explicit definitions which would increase the probability to introduce bugs and make future changes tedious.

This is what I love about programming. The pure joy of thinking about those problems and solving them.
I'd never want to delegate this task to an AI even if I'd be convinced that it would do a good job.

welcome back, folks

Plot twist: @dfox disabled comments to let us catch a break from @jestdotty’s ramblings under every single post.

During a safety meeting on Monday we talked about different potential emergency hazards in our area. One person mentioned Yellowstone National Park caldera. It is supposed to be one of the largest super volcanoes on Earth. I joked that it will be blowing up "next week". Everyone got a good laugh.

Then today a random person I share a chat with on a forum online said something. They said the mountain lions have been fleeing the park for a while. They said the bears are now fleeing the park.

I told Ed this. He laughed and said: "You shouldn't have said that." I said: "No shit..."

Sprint planning, we spot a risk for one of the stories: An old client wants a new feature that relies on a third-party component that has not been included in our integration tests for the last 2 years.

The risk: It's probably not compatible with the new version of our system, if that's true, we'll need to make changes to our system before starting to work on the new feature, and setup integration testing.

Management: - Are you sure it's not compatible anymore?
Me: - No, we would need to bring both systems up and test if they work, there's no automation for that right now.
Mangement: - If you have not checked it's not a risk.
Me: (o_O) ? Whatever, I've warned you.

2 Days later: Our system does not work with this third-party system anymore, we can't finish the feature this sprint.

Management: (☉_☉)

my intern listens to the most AI generated songs ever. might fire her soon.

Here’s why I pirate music:
1. 90% of my playlist is made by dead people. I’ll never pay for anything whose creator is dead.
2. 9% of the music I listen to is very obscure — it’s not on streaming services. There is no way to contact creators, let alone pay them.
3. The remaining 1% I bought directly from creators on Bandcamp or elsewhere.

Also, when I used Apple Music, at all times many of the songs in my library were unavailable in my region. Songs pop in and out of this state based on some ongoing, never ending legal BS perpetrated by those who had no hand in creating the music itself. Miss me with that shit. I want my entire library available to me at all times.

Data is like a dildo.

No matter how thoroughly the person who gave it to you says they cleaned it, you're still going to want to clean it yourself.

I haven't coded in so long I'm actually starting to miss it

util: YOU CANT PASS VERSION IN THAT FORMAT IT MUST BE A VERSION OBJECT FROM THE VERSION MODULE IN THE VERSION CINEMATIC UNIVERSE BLAHBLAHB LAHBLAH BLAHBLAH (...) CANT COMPILE THOUGH EVERYTHING ELSE IS CORRECT.

me: fuck you, it's just a string. i'll pass it however the fuck i want, using whichever format i feel like, and your standards will suck my dick day and night.

util: NOOOOO!!! I WAS PROGRAMMED TO THROW AND DIE AND BURN ON THIS VERY SPECIFIC AND INFINITELY STUPID CONDITION THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO!!

me: well you're a build tool so i guess i could just replace you with inhouse, right? i mean https://github.com/Liebranca/... im just the kinda guy to do it.

util: WHAT?!! NO PLEASE I DIDN'T MEAN T- **FUCKING DIES**

me: get uninstalled bitch.