I'm a lawyer, like a year ago I was home alone (wife and kid went on the trip) and from boringness, I decided that I should learn to program (was thinking about that earlier because of some ideas for apps I had - I was fucking naive then :P).

So I start googling best way to do it and I decided to start CS50 course on edx. And that was a real blast for. Best learning experience ever happened in my life.

Anyway, I was going through CS50 curriculum (at the start I thought I will quit it after few weeks) and every day was like so exciting. This whole programming thing seems like the best thing happens to me in many years. There were so many interesting things to learn, I felt like I discovered whole new word.

So after few months while I was finishing CS50, one day I decided, fuck it, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life (I'm 35+ btw ;)). I chose frontend path as it seems easier for a person without technical education. If everything goes as planned I will start looking for a job at beginning of next year. So where I the rant you could ask?

Well, you should guest what my family thinks about it. My wife was like at first: I'm proud you learning something new, now she hates it, making fights about me always sitting in front of computer (which is not true as I learn most in work in my spare time - I can do it as I work on my own), she even told my parents that I cheat her because she started family with a lawyer, not a programmer (supposed to be joke, but really not fun for me) . WTF - where is the fucking support ? ehhh. My parents on the other side still don't believe I will do it (after more than a year of my learning) and they still think I will quit the idea in the end....

So thats it my rant about what my familly thinks about me become programmer.

(sry for my English)

===rant

So I have been freelancing as web developer for 5 years. I was also playing basketball professionally so I was only working part-time, building websites here and there, small android apps to learn the job and I was also reading a lot to challenge my brain.

When I stopped playing basketball about a year ago, I thought I would really enjoy coding full time so I pursued a job.

With no formal education and just a basketball background on paper, in the collapsed Greek economy, as you may assume chances of landing a job are minimal.

After about 40 resumes sent I only got an internship. It was a 4 month, part-time, no pay deal, and then the company would decide if they would like to hire me later.

The company had 4 employees and they are one of the largest software distribution businesses in my area. They resell SaaS bought from a third company, bundled with installation support, initial configuration, hardware support, whatever a client may need.

I was the only one with any ability to code whatsoever. The other people were working mostly on customer support with the occasional hardware repair.

After the 4 month period they owner (small company, owner was also manager and other roles) told me that they are very happy with my work and would like to keep me part-time with minimum pay.

Just to give you and idea if the amounts of money involved, in Greece, after taxes, my salary was 240euros per month. And the average cost of surviving (rent, cheapest food possible, no expenses on anything but super basics) is about 600euros.

I told him I needed more to live and he told me ok, we will reevaluate a few months later, at the end of May 2017.

I just accepted it without having many options. The company after all was charging clients 30euros per hour for my projects so I kept thinking that if I worked a lot and delivered consistently I would get a full time job and decent money.

And I delivered. In the following months I made a Magento extension, some WordPress themes, a C# application to extract data from the client's ERP and import it to a third application, a click to call application to use Asterisk to originate calls from the client's ERP, a web application to manage a restaurant's menu and many more small projects. Whatever they asked, I delivered.

On time, version controlled, heavily documented solutions (my C# ones are not exactly masterpieces but it was my first time with the language and windows).

So when May ended I was pretty excited to hear they wanted to keep me full time. I worked hard for it, I was serious, professional, I tried a lot to learn things so I can deliver, and the company recognized that. YAY.

So the time comes to talk money. The offer was 480euros per month. Double my part-time pay, minimum wage. I asked for about 700. Manager said it's hard but I will see what I can do. So we agreed to keep the deal for June while they are working on a better offer.

During the first half of June I finished my last project, put all my work on a nice folder with a nice readme on every project's directory, with their version control and everything.

The offer never improved, so I said no deal, and as of today, I am jobless.

I am stressed as fuck and excited as fuck at the same time.

I will do my best to survive in the shitstorm that is called Greece.

Bring it on.

Been reviewing ALOT of client code and supplier’s lately. I just want to sit in the corner and cry.

Somewhere along the line the education system has failed a generation of software engineers.

I am an embedded c programmer, so I’m pretty low level but I have worked up and down and across the abstractions in the industry. The high level guys I think don’t make these same mistakes due to the stuff they learn in CS courses regarding OOD.. in reference how to properly architect software in a modular way.

I think it may be that too often the embedded software is written by EEs and not CEs, and due to their curriculum they lack good software architecture design.

Too often I will see huge functions with large blocks of copy pasted code with only difference being a variable name. All stuff that can be turned into tables and iterated thru so the function can be less than 20 lines long in the end which is like a 200% improvement when the function started out as 2000 lines because they decided to hard code everything and not let the code and processor do what it’s good at.

Arguments of performance are moot at this point, I’m well aware of constraints and this is not one of them that is affected.

The problem I have is the trying to take their code in and understand what’s its trying todo, and todo that you must scan up and down HUGE sections of the code, even 10k+ of line in one file because their design was not to even use multiple files!

Does their code function yes .. does it work? Yes.. the problem is readability, maintainability. Completely non existent.

I see it soo often I almost begin to second guess my self and think .. am I the crazy one here? No. And it’s not their fault, it’s the education system. They weren’t taught it so they think this is just what programmers do.. hugely mundane copy paste of words and change a little things here and there and done. NO actual software engineers architecture systems and write code in a way so they do it in the most laziest, way possible. Not how these folks do it.. it’s like all they know are if statements and switch statements and everything else is unneeded.. fuck structures and shit just hard code it all... explicitly write everything let’s not be smart about anything.

I know I’ve said it before but with covid and winning so much more buisness did to competition going under I never got around to doing my YouTube channel and web series of how I believe software should be taught across the board.. it’s more than just syntax it’s a way of thinking.. a specific way of architecting any software embedded or high level.

Anyway rant off had to get that off my chest, literally want to sit in the corner and cry this weekend at the horrible code I’m reviewing and it just constantly keeps happening. Over and over and over. The more people I bring on or acquire projects it’s like fuck me wtf is this shit!!! Take some pride in the code you write!

College can be one of the worst investments for an IT career ever.

I've been in university for the past 3 years and my views on higher education have radically changed from positive to mostly cynical.

This is an extremely polarizing topic, some say "your college is shite", "#notall", "you complain too much", and to all of you I am glad you are happy with your expensive toilet paper and feel like your dick just grew an inch longer, what I'll be talking about is my personal experience and you may make of it what you wish. I'm not addressing the best ivy-league Unis those are a whole other topic, I'll talk about average Unis for average Joes like me.

Higher education has been the golden ticket for countless generations, you know it, your parents believe in it and your grandparents lived it. But things are not like they used to be, higher education is a failing business model that will soon burst, it used to be simple, good grades + good college + nice title = happy life.

Sounds good? Well fuck you because the career paths that still work like that are limited, like less than 4.

The above is specially true in IT where shit moves so fast and furious if you get distracted for just a second you get Paul Walkered out of the Valley; companies don't want you to serve your best anymore, they want grunt work for the most part and grunts with inferiority complex to manage those grunts and ship the rest to India (or Mexico) at best startups hire the best problem solvers they can get because they need quality rather than quantity.

Does Uni prepare you for that? Well...no, the industry changes so much they can't even follow up on what it requires and ends up creating lousy study programs then tells you to invest $200k+ in "your future" for you to sweat your ass off on unproductive tasks to then get out and be struck by jobs that ask for knowledge you hadn't even heard off.

Remember those nights you wasted drawing ER diagrams while that other shmuck followed tutorials on react? Well he's your boss now, but don't worry you will wear your tired eyes, caffeine saturated breath and overweight with pride while holding your empty title, don't get me wrong I've indulged in some rough play too but I have noticed that 3 months giving a project my heart and soul teaches me more than 6 months of painstakingly pleasing professors with big egos.

And the soon to be graduates, my God...you have the ones that are there for the lulz, the nerds that beat their ass off to sustain a scholarship they'll have to pay back with interests and the ones that just hope for the best. The last two of the list are the ones I really feel bad for, the nerds will beat themselves over and over to comply with teacher demands not noticing they are about to graduate still versioning on .zip and drive, the latter feel something's wrong but they have no chances if there isn't a teacher to mentor them.

And what pisses me off even more is the typical answers to these issues "you NEED the title" and "you need to be self taught". First of all bitch how many times have we heard, seen and experienced the rejection for being overqualified? The market is saturated with titles, so much so they have become meaningless, IT companies now hire on an experience, economical and likeability basis. Worse, you tell me I need to be self taught, fucker I've been self taught for years why would I travel 10km a day for you to give me 0 new insights, slacking in my face or do what my dog does when I program (stare at me) and that's just on the days you decide to attend!

But not everything is bad, college does give you three things: networking, some good teachers and expensive dead tree remnants, is it worth the price tag, not really, not if you don't need it.

My broken family is not one of resources and even tho I had an 80% scholarship at the second best uni of my country I decided I didn't need the 10+ year debt for not sleeping 4 years, I decided to go to the 3rd in the list which is state funded; as for that decision it worked out as I'm paying most of everything now and through my BS I've noticed all of the above, I've visited 4 universities in my country and 4 abroad and even tho they have better everything abroad it still doesn't justify some of the prices.

If you don't feel like I do and you are happy, I'm happy for you. My rant is about my personal experience which is kind of in the context of IT higher education in the last ~8 years.

Just letting some steam off and not regretting most of my decisions.

Making a Package Manager from Scratch is hard.

Making a Scratch-like education coding software in XAML is hard.

Setting up a server with zero knowledge is hard.

Creating a new file extension for my project and making it work is hard.

But, as a student,

studying and coding is the hardest thing.

Same 24 hours for everyone, and I should code as well as study.

Time.

The most precious thing in Earth.

==========================================

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Hey guys,

this rant will be long again. I'm sorry for any grammar errors or something like that, english isn't my native language. Furthermore I'm actually very sad and not in a good mood.

Why? What happened? Some of you may already know - I'm doing my apprenticeship / education in a smal company.
There I'm learning a lot, I'm developing awesome features directly for the clients, experience of which other in my age (I'm only 19 years old) can only dream.
Working in such a small company is very exhausting, but I love my job, I love programming. I turned my hobby into a profession and I'm very proud of it.
But then there are moments like the last time, when I had to present something for a client - the first presentation was good, the last was a disaster, nothing worked - but I learned from it.

But this time everything is worse than bad - I mean really, really worse than bad.

I've worked the whole week on a cool new feature - I've done everything that it works yesterday, that everything gets done before the deadline of yesterday.

To achieve this I've coded thursday till 10pm ! At home! Friday I tested the whole day everything to ensure that everything is working properly. I fixed several bugs and then at the end of the day everything seems to be working. Even my boss said that it looks good and he thinks that the rollout to all clients will become good and without any issues.

But unfortunately deceived.

Yesterday evening I wrote a long mail to my boss - with a "manual". He was very proud and said that he is confident that everything will work fine. He trusts me completly.

Then, this morning I received a mail from him - nothing works anymore - all clients have issues, everything stays blank - because I've forgotten to ensure that the new feature (a plugin) and its functionality is supported by the device (needs a installation).
First - I was very shoked - but in the same moment I thought - one moment - you've written an if statement, if the plugin is installed - so why the fuck should it broken everything?!
I looked instant to the code via git. This has to be a very bad joke from my boss I thought. But then I saw the fucking bug - I've written:
if(plugin) { // do shit }
but it has to be if(typeof plugin !== 'undefined')

I fucked up everything - due to this fucking mistake. This little piece of shit I've forgotten on one single line fucked up everything. I'm sorry for this mode of expression but I thought - no this can not be true - it must be a bad bad nightmare.
I've tested this so long, every scenario, everything. Worked till the night so it gets finished. No one, no one from my classmates would ever think of working so long. But I did it, because I love my job. I've implemented a check to ensure that the plugin is installed - but implemented it wrong - exactly this line which caused all the errors should prevent exactly this - what an irony of fate.

I've instantly called my boss and apologized for this mistake. The mistake can't be undone. My boss now has to go to all clients to fix it. This will be very expensive...

Oh my goodnes, I just cried.
I'm only working about half a year in this company - they trust me so much - but I'm not perfect - I make mistakes - like everyone else. This time my boss didn't looked over my code, didn't review it, because he trusted me completly - now this happens. I think this destroyed the trust :( I'm so sad.
He only said that we will talk on monday, how we can prevent such things in the feature..
Oh guys, I don't know - I've fucked up everything, we were so overhelmed that everything would work :(
Now I'm the looser who fucked up - because not testing enough - even when I tested it for days, even at home - worked at home - till the night - for free, for nothing - voluntary.

This is the thanks for that.
Thousand good things - but one mistake and you're the little asshole. You - a 19 year old guy, which works since 6 months in a company. A boss which trusts you and don't look over your code. One line which should prevent crashing, crashed everything.

I'm sorry that this rant is so long, I just need to talk to you guys because I'm so sad. Again. This has happend to frequently lately.

//An okay long rant..

So i work at this small robotics start-up company I Copenhagen.
The first dumb part is that it only uses interns as staff, because then they don't need to pay people. (I am working part time, for free. Just to get experience (I am only 20 btw))

So.. I often get into an argument with my boss, since she is a designer with a "passion" for robotics (she has no clue how to do anything related to the work) But I often try to explain to her some current limitations in the staff, and what is possible for us to do, but she will never listen. She really wants us to design our own microcontroller board PCB, and she want it at the size of a coin. However when I tell her that none of the, non paid works has the experience or education to design such a thing, she never wants to acknowledge it, and it really pisses me off.
And her dad, who is the top boss, only care for esthetics when he is making a work environment, which is dumb when we just need to develop stuff...

Sorry if the rant was too long but had to get it out..

As a developer, I constantly feel like I'm lagging behind.

Long rant incoming.

Whenever I join a new company or team, I always feel like I'm the worst developer there. No matter how much studying I do, it never seems to be enough.

Feeling inadequate is nothing new for me, I've been struggling with a severe inferiority complex for most of my life. But starting a career as a developer launched that shit into overdrive.

About 10 years ago, I started my college education as a developer. At first things were fine, I felt equal to my peers. It lasted about a day or two, until I saw a guy working on a website in notepad. Nothing too special of course, but back then as a guy whose scripting experience did not go much farther than modifying some .ini files, it blew my mind. It went downhill from there.

What followed were several stressful, yet strangely enjoyable, years in college where I constantly felt like I was lagging behind, even though my grades were acceptable. On top of college stress, I had a number of setbacks, including the fallout of divorcing parents, childhood pets, family and friends dying, little to no money coming in and my mother being in a coma for a few weeks. She's fine now, thankfully.

Through hard work, a bit of luck, and a girlfriend who helped me to study, I managed to graduate college in 2012 and found a starter job as an Asp.Net developer.
My knowledge on the topic was limited, but it was a good learning experience, I had a good mentor and some great colleagues. To teach myself, I launched a programming tutorial channel. All in all, life was good. I had a steady income, a relationship that was already going for a few years, some good friends and I was learning a lot.

Then, 3 months in, I got diagnosed with cancer.

This ruined pretty much everything I had built up so far. I spend the next 6 months in a hospital, going through very rough chemo.

When I got back to working again, my previous Asp.Net position had been (understandably) given to another colleague. While I was grateful to the company that I could come back after such a long absence, the only position available was that of a junior database manager. Not something I studied for and not something I wanted to do each day neither.

Because I was grateful for the company's support, I kept working there for another 12 - 18 months. It didn't go well. The number of times I was able to do C# jobs can be counted on both hands, while new hires got the assignments, I regularly begged my PM for.

On top of that, the stress and anxiety that going through cancer brings comes AFTER the treatment. During the treatment, the only important things were surviving and spending my potentially last days as best as I could. Those months working was spent mostly living in fear and having to come to terms with the fact that my own body tried to kill me. It caused me severe anger issues which in time cost me my relationship and some friendships.

Keeping up to date was hard in these times. I was not honing my developer skills and studying was not something I'd regularly do. 'Why spend all this time working if tomorrow the cancer might come back?'

After much soul-searching, I quit that job and pursued a career in consultancy. At first things went well. There was not a lot to do so I could do a lot of self-study. A month went by like that. Then another. Then about 4 months into the new job, still no work was there to be done. My motivation quickly dwindled.

To recuperate the costs, the company had me do shit jobs which had little to nothing to do with coding like creating labels or writing blogs. Zero coding experience required. Although I was getting a lot of self-study done, my amount of field experience remained pretty much zip.

My prayers asking for work must have been heard because suddenly the sales department started finding clients for me. Unfortunately, as salespeople do, they looked only at my theoretical years of experience, most of which were spent in a hospital or not doing .Net related tasks.
Ka-ching. Here's a developer with four years of experience. Have fun.

Those jobs never went well. My lack of experience was always an issue, no matter how many times I told the salespeople not to exaggerate my experience. In the end, I ended up resigning there too.

After all the issues a consultancy job brings, I went out to find a job I actually wanted to do. I found a .Net job in an area little traffic. I even warned them during my intake that my experience was limited, and I did my very best every day that I worked here.

It didn't help. I still feel like the worst developer on the team, even superseded by someone who took photography in college. Now on Monday, they want me to come in earlier for a talk.

Should I just quit being a developer? I really want to make this work, but it seems like every turn I take, every choice I make, stuff just won't improve. Any suggestions on how I can get out of this psychological hell?

!Rant
Had the best day at work today.
This summer I got to do a little work at the company my dad works. (typically cleaning and updating some machines. Stuff that the others don't have time for. Pretty boring)

Suddenly I get asked
"Have you ever developed for windows?"
I have only worked with Linux or Mac/ios (python and swift) so I told him I hadn't , but I could try.

Next thing I am making a system check program in c# (had to learn it on the fly) and I get paid to do it! I GOT FUCKING PAID TO PROGRAM! I don't have any education or whatsoever (only 17years old) but I got paid to do what I love😍😍😍

I am so excited to go to work tomorrow!

Not really a rant but more of a fact kinda thing. Noticed a post earlier about someone ranting about why they code figured I'd do the same...

I code not because I wanted to for say but because my after my uncle's death I needed something that I could feel in complete control of. Coding gave me that ability to control the computer however I want and tell it to do whatever however. At the same time it taught me so much more about myself and the people around me in the process. Today I don't code because I need to control something m today I do it because I can't live with out. It forces me to think critically of everything and everyone. It forces me to learn something new everyday and every night. It requires me to solve complex problems with limited solutions. It allows me to create solutions when everything else has failed and it gives me a drive to complete things. It's the reason I live technology and it's the reason I have the job I do. It's the reason my boss loves my work and it's the reason other people on my team envy me. Code transformed my life into what it is today. And it will forever be my greatest peice of education.

I honestly don't understand people who genuinely believe formal schooling will cover all the basics they need to know to do a real-life job, and still get barely passing grades on all relevant subjects.

I genuinely don't understand people who copy GitHub projects to pass classes, and graduate from a university with goddamn StackOverflow instead of a brain.

Whom I understand even less are people who don't do anything major-related on their spare time.

I mean, change your fucking major, do what you actually like, do things that actually light your nuts with passion.

Please don't waste my time pretending you are in it not just because it's potentially well-paid and "cool".

Please don't waste my time being my coworker.

Yes, I'm looking at you, trendy wanker with a CS degree and no personal projects.

P.S. Junior here. Yes, I'm full of hatred for all the "real programmers" in the industry out there. I hoped for a better experience.

P.S.S. I mean absolutely no offense to people using either GitHub or StackOverflow outside of the aforementioned context.

New boss just gave me access to pluralsight, and i'm loving it! Can't wait to get going this fall. 😀

My first rant. Woohoo!

Honestly I do the whole shebang ussualy depending on what the needs are from network to servers to coding because for some reason nobody has any technical experience where I work.
I just started app development for a gamedev startup and I am in sheer awe of the amount of transpiling/compiling etc that needs to be done for an multiplatform app for iOS and android with js(x)/typescript, html, css.

I remember when I could just write some spaghetti code to make it working by following a couple of tutorials. Then refractoring and testing it for a couple of hours and be done with it. push it into production.

Now I am lost having to learn OOP, functional programming, reactjs, react native, express, webpack, mongodb, babel, and the list goes on and on...
Why not just make a new backend that does all of that in another language which supports all of that.

I have no formal education in programming/coding and the last time I learned JS it was just some if else, switches and simple dom manipulation.

I just want to get to coding a freakin' game but I have to learn JSX for the front and typescript on the backend.

I am this close to going back to ye ol' lamp stack and quitting this job. 😥

I think I may be someone's wk101soon given how things are going for me.

So I get shipped over to the new offices to do some work. Initially, I was supposed to be updating SQL stored procedures.

That I can handle, well my task is now to build the skeleton project for a web API in core 2.0 using domain driven design and onion architecture which the rest of the team will use.

Okay, I don't have any experience in any of that at all. And god bless the team lead explaining some stuff to me. But it's going to take more than a 20-minute chat here and there for this stuff to sink in.

And being told just to build it how you think it should be isn't great advice when I'm trying to figure out how the systems work.

Every other API project I look at is structured completely different from one another so looking for patterns has failed.

I'm fucking stressed out every bit of information I'm getting on whats potentially happening with my job im getting second hand from people. Because I can't access my emails while off-site something I'm repeatedly flagging.

Every job advert is painstakingly making it clear how out of date my skill set is (or lack of). Evidently, I've been way too lax, and this has been a kick in the bollocks I'm not likely to forget.

If we're being evaluated on performance to see who they'll keep, then I've failed at the first hurdle.

Life lesson for those in education, don't be this knob head here and get comfortable when you land a job. Just knowing about the tech that's commonly used in your field does jack all study it.

Not a structured/meaningful rant and shits probably not as bad as I see it. I've only chewed through one fingernail after all.

Hi All !!!

Woah this is my first Post after 3 years not opening this website.
i don't know why.
but maybe between 2017-2020 my live got better so i don't think will have any Rant again.ahahaha *kidding

but today i see email, that i got sticker from devRant, woah i think i will go to devRant again.

wow devRant more cool than before , i don't think this website still open. i just want to check it. i forgot my password too. but luckily still got an access to my email.

So i want to tell a story about this weekly Rant,
Family Support? what the he** is it.
my family only look for money.
at my first job finding, i always pushed for find work in Factory/Oil/Goverment that will give a BIG money.
my first reaction to this i tell i won't do that. but overtime i think i will not talk about it again.
i just want to get Dev Job anywhere.
i don't know if this is the meaning of passion or something like that.
but from the first time , i try hard to get job only is software development.
and hey Maybe my Pray Listened by Almighty God.

so i got my first job as Fullstack developer that luckily accept me as self taught software developer. i don't have any formal education.
actually i only learn software dev from Lynda.com(not promotion) .
i learn algorithm, pseudocode . then i got passed the test of psudocode.

Then because the money is good in there. my parent just accept my first job. not complaining again till now..
maybe this is what they called ikigai??

i love software development so much....

but still i always have a Rant every day about it.
someday you like it, someday you hate it.
someday yo miss it, someday you regret it.

maybe that what is called Love.Damn...

!rant
TL;DR: New(-ish) dev looking for advice to improve workflow and new languages. Hopefully worth a read though :)

Newbie developer here, I took a web applications development class this year since I could take that at another campus rather than do general education courses at my home school, and I have learned and earned a CIW Certification for HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, though I know the certificates do squat if I can't apply myself to them, and I have learned PHP and MySQL.

I want to learn more, technically-applicable languages.

My setup is barebones (to a Linux diehard's eyes), with a gaming laptop that I do a lot of workstation stuff on, an RPi 3 B that I do some Linux-y stuff on, and a less-powerful Development Laptop (that I call a devtop) that I occasionally do work away from home on.

I'm sure most will cringe and weep at my workflow, as I use Windows 10 on both systems and the standard NOOBS software on the pi, and I use Brackets as my text editor, as well as the XAMPP AMP stack for testing.

My biggest questions are what could I do to improve my workflow, and what languages should I learn/apply myself to for real-world application (such as Node.js for live-updating server-side applications or C# for Windows applications)?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, any feedback is helpful! I'm just a high school student with a lot of enthusiasm for development!

!rant

After 2 hours of the worst exam I had in years I'm finally done with my education and I can join the workforce. Finally some money and even more responsibility. And actual fucking work.

!rant
For a project we have to formulate political viewpoints and laws about digitalisation. It's not for a computerscience class, but for a additional class on politics. We have to formulate laws or guidlines/goals for the politicians to work towards in regards to "digitalisation" for the society/country we would like to live in.

For example stuff like "there should be net neutrality to guarantee free information and equal oportunities for all" and such stuff or "programing should be taught in school to prepare people for the economy of tomorrow" so it isn't limited to anything.

If you where a kind of king/ruler/what ever, what policy (in regard to "digitalisation") would you define and why? (Note: they doesn't have to be realistic for now. They shouldn't end in a dystopian future, but in a "better" future for all of humanity.)

What I thought of so far would be:
- Government use and promote Opensource and practice Opendata
- strong rights to privacy, you can request your data and demand it being deleted
- basic programing/IT education in school
- "reschool" program for people currently in the workforce that want to learn new things
- develope a policy on AI
- promote that Computer Science isn't just for boys but for every one
- less working hours per week due to automatisation/splitting the work among the whole population/basic income

*yes I'm lazy, thanks for doing part of my project ;)

!rant but a question...

I know that with the vast examples/tutorials online this may not be necessary, but I wanted to ask the community if you guys/gals would recommend going back to school to get a formal CS education or if it would be a waste of time, money, and resources compared to just using web based sources? I've tried the college thing 3 times when I was younger but couldn't concentrate and lacked the discipline to focus and finish classes. But I'm a bit older now and wanted to know if you would recommend going back to school or if time would be better spent performing self-study and learning from home?

I'm still extremely new to coding and programming and only have basic knowledge of actual coding and a lot of the theoretical stuff in programming is completely foreign to me. Like for example, how to optimize code. I know that refactoring code to have a smaller more efficient footprint is always desirable, when it doesn't interfere with readability, but I'm unaware of where/how to modify code to run efficiently. Of course that may be wayyy to advanced for my use cases anyway 😂.

I'm trying to teach myself python as it seems like a great language for starting out and getting to understand the concepts of programing. Plus, it can be used directly in my line of work as well as side projects that I wanted to try my hand at.

Thank you in advance for your recommendations everyone!

TLDR: I didn't & still not sure if it is..

I love bug hunting & fixing & figuring out how stuff works, but many will argue this is not even real programming..

Long version how I ended up programming:
Back in highschool, I was deciding between english and mathematics & computer science.. I filled in the form for the latter. Got a change of hearts but I already gave the extra/backup empty form to schoolmate..

Figured it's for the better because it's a hell to get a job as an english teacher/prof anyways + I dislike comunications with people + documentation (if any) is in english etc..

At the end of first year, I didn't even apply for all the exams because you had to have both programming 1&2 to pass or even be eligible to take the year again.. I figured I'd fail them, so once I actually passed both (& actually not with bad grades), I was fucked.. had to retake the year, which means I lost time + still had to pay the rent etc.. decided to drop out and return home and do the IT engineer course instead to at least have some formal education to help me find a job. Finished that without problems, I 'specialised' in network administration.
I got a job straight out of school as a web developer.. the irony.. got some conflicts with the boss and was terminated (material for another rant).

Later I sought out admin jobs, but got declined because I was overqualified and had programming experince. FML, right?

Ended up sending out mandatory job applications for IT administration & programming to not lose the bonuses & got called up to a meeting in the company I work for since then.

No qualifications for .net & MS technologies, but they liked my CV so the ended up setting up the interview anyway. I didn't know half of the technologies and concepts by proper name, but they figured I understand enough of the content to give me a try. A few years later, I got the most fucked up project they have because of my love for new thigs and trying to understand everything. It's aaaalmost bearable now.. still needs a lot of work, but I'm happy where I am. Saddly, I'm still second guessing if I'm doing a proper job as a dev, but they seem to be very ok with my work. (:

!(dev|rant)
TL,DR : I am happy with my life

Order by * random;

I am a human being, living on Earth, in the European continent, in a non-splited family, my wife and my children are wonderful, I can eat all I want, I am healthy, I have enough free time to play with my children do gardening and train for a marathon,

I live in a lovely house,

I have a good education, a lot of video games on my PC (which I made from scratch), my wife starts to play video games and learn about computers,

My dev job is wonderful. My boss is happy with me, I can manage my time as I want, I don't work in an open space, I still learn about dev, frameworks, and stuff, I work with great co-workers,

... All the things listed were my dream when I was young. I feel very lucky to have this life, I am the happiest man in the world.

Be happy with your life. If you can read this post and reply, you are luckier than you think.

Today something pretty bad happened (as always at school)
and I'm gonna rant about it to
1) get your expertly opinion on it
2) relieve from it

SOOOOO
today I entered class to paretake in the writing of the much anticipated class test (kappa).

The teacher gives everybody a sheet with the exercises - let alone me.

I tell him to give me a sheet too.

"Put a book between you and xy"

so I do. I ask him again to give me the exam paper. No response.

Again, and he looks at me with a disrespectful look. I look back. And get thrown out of the room - not getting a chance to paretake in the writing of the test yet getting the worst grade one could possibly get in the modest german education system (=> 6)

Now I'm going to pursue any possible legal action against him (I dont care about him. After the lesson I wanted to talk with him; yet he declined my offer for reconsiliation, then he called my parents, even though he had time to think about what he did {any sane person would agree that what he did was wrong <yet my classmates dont agree>}. Also, he is that type of teacher who gives unusually unnessecary homework - which I personally see as punition, since I already know 97% of the stuff thought in [english] classes)

See why I am despising school so much?

It drains my last bit of energy until I am an empty shell with the sole goal to finish education asap in order to be able to fucking work.

BTW: I tried using my best english in this rant to demonstrate my abilities in order for you to be able to see that I honestly dont those "basic" english lessons.

First rant! I'm currently on my first actual dev job and I've been learning a ton, doing extra studying/side projects in my free time and office environment is decent with good colleagues!

BUT

1) I'm getting paid about half as much as someone on my level (education and experience considered) - partly my fault, but thought experience would outweight the shit pay, now I'm really starting to question this bullshit

2) I'm away from all my friends, and by the end of my contract, 90% of them would have graduated... Have no friends outside of work where I live, and any social life I had, died when I moved

3) My work project is fucking tedious and could be flipped upside down to be of actual use, but no, company can't change how they've done things for the past 1000 years. But who gives a flying fuck about junior's suggestions, I haven't got decades of experience to back my ideas, plain logic and industry feedback isn't enough

4) Programming 24/7 for months is doing no favours to my hobbies, as I'm either too tired to do anything, or I don't have the time

5) The piece of shit library that I HAVE to use (because alternative has no support, lacks basic documention, the usual...) is built so that any automation that my project is meant to provide, is next to impossible to achieve, so day-to-day I'm just spitting in the wind as I'm slowly falling behind schedule

Quitting isn't really an option, as I'd have to find a job with significantly higher pay, really quickly to benefit from leaving... which is next to impossible

So here I am, stuck between frustration with aspects of my life and being contempt with other half (the learning and programming as a career)...

Is this something that will stay with me throughout my career/life? Or is it simply a shitty-entry-level situation out of which I'll grow out of?

include ::rant
rant::newentry {'new-job-rant' :
ensure => latest,
location => goverment-employment-office-HQ,
job => DevOps,
content => {'
So, i've been at my new job for some time now, almost two weeks (hurray!) but boy oh boy, what a job it is!
I'm working at a goverment office charged with helping the unemployed to get a job or a new education course. I'm hored as re-enforcements for their DevOps team. I get my pay, easy transportation home<->office, coffe is adequate in quality and quantity, so no complaints there...

But the actual job is a FUCKING MENTAL CLUSTERFUCKS OF WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK MULTIPLIED BY TEN TO THE POWER OF GOOGOL!

A few items that make my blood boil to new temperature records defying medical science:

* devs refuse to use linting, say the builder will catch it when there is an error, never look at the builder error logs
* (puppet) modules have NO TESTS
* (puppet) modules get included in several git repo's as submodules, in turn they are part of a git repo, in turn they are replicated to several puppet masters, and they differentiate the environment by bash scripts... R10K or code manager? never heard of it.
* Me cleaning up code, commit, gets accepted, some douchebag checks out code, reverts it back to the point where linting tools generate 50+ lines of warnings, complains to ME his code doesnt work! (Seriously, bitch? Serously?) , explain to that person what linting does, that persons hears the bells ring on the other end of the galaxy, refuses to use it.
* Deployment day arrives (today) -> tasks are set up on an excel sheet (on google docs) , totally out of sync with what really must be done -> something breaks, spend 30 minutes finding out who is to blame, the whole deploy train stops, find out it's a syntax error, ... waiting for person to change that since that person can only access it...
...

the list goes on and on and on. And did you expect to ahve any docs or guidelines? NO , as if docs are something for the luxurious and leisurely people having "time" to write it...

I can use another coffee... hopefully i wake up from this nightmare at my 15th cup...
},
require => [Class['::coffee'], Class['::auxiliary_brain'], Class['::brain_unfuck_tools'],],
}

!rant

Question to the devs that hire.
Would you hire a developer with the qualifications:
- knows multiple programming languages (can be any but knows them well)
- has worked the past 6 years in the field however worked during his school life.
- started of career in web development and worked with high end clients, (big corps, businesses, celebs)
- does not have a CS or Engineering Degree (has a different degree that is remotely related)
- has failed his A Level exams (pre-college, high school board exams by Cambridge) (not that this matters)

Disclaimer: This is not about me. I was in an argument with my extended family about the importance of grade school education in work. My family consists of Teachers and School Administrators entirely. The above point all define me and I was successful enough to earn more than what my family does early on when joining college. I did however fail my alevels only to get a scholarship in a great University for my field.

!rant
So im finally done with education and can call my self an computer scientist.. but are you really ever done getting educated in this line of work?

I've come to my first real fork in my career. I currently work as a web developer for a medical software company. The pay is pretty abysmal but they're flexible and not super demanding. However, my formal education (take this with a grain of salt obviously) is in game development and I've been trying to build my portfolio and what not. I was offered a part-time internship, because I'm still in grad school, I haven't held a part time position since high school. But not only is the position a job I actually want, but the company is pretty great. I'd have to stay part time tell graduation (Next December). But they said they are already interested in transitioning me to full time once I graduate. Another note, I have to get some security clearance for the job, which is another reason they want me to start part time.

So I truly don't like web development and the company I'm at has been very up front that I'm going to stay at this pay rate for a while. But it's possible that they offer me a contract/part time position after I leave (mostly because I'm the one and only web developer and they're already on a hiring freeze). However, if they don't I'd have to scramble to find something else to pay bills for the next year.

Long rant. tl;Dr: should I stay or should I go?