Client "Can you change your API? If a POST return 201 ours system crashes reading it"
Me "Your system WHAT?????"

98% complete...
99%complete...
....
....
....
....
error downloading the file.

Years ago, I joined a company making games for handheld consoles.

Because a game's audio needs to be tested, too, I connected earphones to the console so that:
0. I wouldn't bother others w/ the sounds coming out of the console.
/* !Everyone wants to hear that crap. */
1. I could hear the sounds better.

PM: * Enters the room. *
Me: * Focused on testing the game. *
PM: * Walks up to me from the side, starts talking. *
Me: * Focused on testing the game. *
PM: * After approx. 30 seconds of complete lack of response from me, kind of irritated, knocks on my desk to get my attention. *
Me: * Take out the earphones. *
Oh, hi, how can I help you?
PM: Haven't you heard a word I said?
Me: Well, no. I am testing the game, including the audio.
PM: You need to pay attention to what's going on around you.
Me: Testing audio is one of my responsibilities. I am using earphones because of the reasons [0-1].
PM: Even still, you just need to pay attention to what's going on around you.
PM: * Finally explains the reason for him bothering me, then goes back to his lair. *

Moral of the story: Fuck being good at what you do && knowing your responsibilities.
When PM wants something from you, you better give him the attention he wants.

/* The expectation being I grow an extra pair of eyes && ears, so that I see the guy coming && am prepared to listen to him whenever he wants something _while_ doing the best job I possibly can. */

A story from around 2005:

Customer laying out specifications: “We expect this software to need to last 25 years or so, and it will need to keep historical file processing data by dates for at least that long, assume storage is no issue.”

Devs at the time: “look best I can do is support that start with 200 or 201, anything else is really too much to ask. Also understanding how to work with dates at all and not just string manipulation is waaaaayyy hard yo.”

Fuck you lazy motherfuckers. This is why people thought Y2K would be a problem.

How do u recover from bad reputation at work? Like, false accusations and wrong perceptions about you which you have no control over? Should you guard your reputation or should you just stop caring what other people think?

Some two years ago I purchased a license for AV solution on Amazon UK which is my default place for shopping.

When attempting to activate the license, I kept getting this annoying error somewhere along the lines of:
'License from another region.'

I contact the support, they did their magic && the license got applied.

Fast forward some two years - the license is about to expire.

The software is actually good, so I make the choice to renew it.

Thing is, I keep getting redirected to the local site w/o an option of choosing the English language.

I edit the site's address to reach an English version of the site.
On UK's site I am unable to choose my country of residence so I can't complete the purchase form.
I try a few other things && finally reach the Global site where I am able to input the correct data for the purchase, but all attempts to finish the payment fail.

Fine... I'll purchase from the local site.

I purchased the license, activated it w/o problems, but when attempting to download the installer it keeps downloading the localized version which doesn't allow me to change the language.

I contact Support.

S: 'The license you've purchased can be used solely w/ localized version of the software. If you want to use the English version, you'll have to get a refund && purchase from our Global site here [link w/o redirection].'

_Fuck_ this trend of automatic redirection to localized sites && forced localized software.

One shouldn't have to go through all these hoops to get the software in the language of their choice, instead of having the localized version shoved down their throat.

I've been in a new city for a while, now.

When it comes to getting to know a new city, I like to pick a remote destination of interest within a walking distance /* Which usually is a supermarket, or an electronics store. */ && just pay attention to surroundings on my way there.

Using Google Maps myself, since it works quite well in my area.

Today /* Technically yesterday, since currently it's past midnight, but the event took place a few hours ago, but whatever. */ I have found this interesting landmark.

To all female devRanters out there, have a happy Women's Day.

Sincerely, from UTC+01:00.

Public REST (-inspired) API. Should I skip numeric IDs because it's easy for consumers to snoop around?

Example:

POST api/foo
201 Created api/foo/69

Uh, I'll get 68 just because I can. Hopefully it returns Unauthorized, unless we some kind of bug.

Is it just security by obscurity if I use, like, guids or something instead of sequental IDs?

I need to stop treating an OO language as if it were a procedural language.

I have the tendency to turn my code into GOTO spaghetti even though I'm semi-aware that objects exist and that they are distinct.
I still have to get used to this paradigm.

My Java professor always swore by the Plato paradigm, i.e.:
""Platonism" and its theory of Forms (or theory of Ideas) denies the reality of the material world, considering it only an image or copy of the real world.
According to this theory of Forms there are at least two worlds: the apparent world of concrete objects, grasped by the senses, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of Forms or abstract objects, grasped by pure reason (λογική). which ground what is apparent." (wikipedia)

Thinking in objects, abstractions and metaphysics is not something I haven't done before (I've practiced it during Sociology and Ethics with the whole Pascal Leibniz, Newton and DesCartes approach) but it's certainly not easy.

Then there was my cool Programming 201 professor who said: "Don't worry man, just read those great UML, Program Design and GOF books and it will all become easy, like a story. It'll all make sense.
I mean, I've graduated, I've passed my Software Engineering I, II and III (hard as hell) but since I haven't focused on those theories and practices anymore, I've lost my touch.

It's definitely not easy for a novice programmer to transition between paradigms..

There was this one time when a coworker needed to update the Xcode.

IIRC because his Mac mini was low on storage space, the update failed && the Xcode became corrupted.

He found that out when he tried to open the Xcode, at which time he was presented w/ an error akin to:
'Xcode was found to be corrupted && was moved to the Recycle Bin'.

C: 'Good, it belongs there!'.

Legacy Of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered has been released.

It contains a lot of bonus material, including a few areas that have been scrapped before release.

Exploration of one of those areas may end up _crashing_ the game...

...Imagine that...

The kind of testers I'm dealing w/ right now:

Until fairly recently, they thought it was a good idea to keep retesting stale && untouched bug reports to see whether an issue is still present, then leave a comment.

Imagine being assigned as a watcher to a report, but keep seeing comments made by testers akin to:

- version 1: issue is still present.
- version 2: issue is still present.
- version 3: issue is still present.
- version 4: issue is still present.

Which was true for some 90-95% of the cases.

How retarded does a person have to be to think that this is a good idea?

I say it's a great way to piss somebody off.

Reminds me of movies w/ scenes where there is this annoying brat in the back seat of a car asking 'Are we there, yet?' over && over again.

Once a report is up, just be fucking patient && wait until someone replies!

201, an intro programming course using Python2. Prof was funny. She was a Redditor and slipped the casual troll face or derp face or other rage comic character in her lecture slides.

Tester has found an issue: controller input stops working when performing certain steps.

Creates a report and provides an attachment.

The attachment depicts some menu where, at first, the cursor moves around various options, then simply stops moving.

The problem:

Since this is a simple in-game recording, there is neither an overlay of the controller w/ a visual representation of the input actually being provided but not working, nor there is a camera recording available where I can see the tester pressing buttons on a controller.

For all I know, the tester put down the controller / stopped pressing buttons.

...I've also seen reports of animations not working... w/ fucking screenshots attached.

How the fuck can you see something not being animated in a fucking static picture?

Roughly one year ago we'd been setting up our network to have our IP whitelisted.

The process took way more than it should've. Here's why:

* Back story: *
Coworker had been talking to IT because he wanted his PC && a devkit to have static IPs.

IT did that && set up the network so that in the future they wouldn't have to be bothered about it.
They set aside a pool of IPs 10.0.2.50-10.0.2.100.

/* You _know_ where this is going, right? */

Coworker: We have our static IPs. This is our range: 10.0.2.50-10.0.2.100. Could you pass it over to $company_name so that we have our IPs whitelisted?
Boss: Finally! Yes, will do.
* Passes the info over. *
* Week passes. *
C: Do we have our IPs whitelisted?
B: Got the info that they should be.
C: Damn, it doesn't work!
* B starts blaming $company_name 's support. *
* Another week passes. *
C: Any word on the whitelisted IPs?
B: They tell me it's set up. Can you try now?
C: Nope, still doesn't work.
* B starts bitching about IT how they're incompetent. How they were supposed to be pros && all that. *

/* I got wind of the whole situation. */

Me: Hold on. Those aren't the IP we need to pass to the $company_name.

* Provide the _correct_ Internet-facing IP. *
* Gets whitelisted within 1-2 days. *

These are the people I'm dealing w/ right now. They'll bitch about everyone being incompetent, but when it turns out _they_ have been at fault I hear no responsibility being taken.

/* I'm also reminded of this adage: Garbage In, Garbage Out. So true. */

Some time ago I had a brief period of time when I had no tasks.

In order to stay productive, while having a lot of free time on my hands, I had decided to create a documentation of a feature in our game that has slightly different implementations depending on the platform on which the game is running.

Once I was done w/ the documentation, I shared it w/ the lead.

His feedback was along the lines of:
'It's OK, but the color palette that you used could've been better.'

/* What I used was basic colors: feature is available = green; !available = gray; partial availability = yellow, etc. Simple, easily readable. */

So instead of 'Thanks for documenting this.' I hear 'You have poor design skills - you should've used company's theme'.

/* I'm guessing since the company's logo uses some fancy colors, in lead's mind, those colors should've been used in documentation. */

Well, duh - I'm !a graphics artist / designer, so no shit.
There will definitely be no graphical fireworks in my documentation.

I fucking love working w/ people who have their priorities straight - '_fuck_ usefulness && correctness of data; It must be pretty too!'.

Short contract job, helping a solo dev.
Me: what's these "200" everywhere?
Him: the max number of sensors we support. I know it should be a define, but it just became that way.
Me: <shrugs. Well, I'm only staying here a couple of weeks. Goes on working on my own branch>

A week later, manager says: "now we need to support 400 sensors!"

Solo dev: <searches and replaces all occurrences of 200 with 400. The program breaks>
Me: what happened?
Him: I only changed the max number of sensors!
Me: Mmm. <searches for 199 as well... Bingo. Creates a define, searches for 198 and 201 for good measure. Gives him no comment about my change>

*Reading a bug report's summary*
'Object x is displayed incorrectly when playing on PC in resolution 1024x768 or Android tablets w/ 4:3 Aspect Ratio'

*facepalms*

You, sir, are failing at basic math && basic logic, among other things.

1024x768 _has_ an Aspect Ratio of 4:3.
If only you had bothered checking, you would've know that the issue is purely related to the Aspect Ratio && !just that one resolution.

It's always the 'Poll Of The Day' on some other site that reminds me that there's an actual word for the fear of the Friday the 13th...

I think U and I should always be together like they are on the Qwerty keyboard. xD
But there's a distance of parallel lines between us.

Normalise giving nap during working hours . Please !!

So we used to build these awful "promotion" pages for a leading manufacturer in the area. Because the website was old as dirt, there was no CMS and everything was static html using Coldfusion for a few include files like for the nav and such.

Every year we would get a new project to tweak the promotion details a little, and change the year from 2011 to 2012, etc.

My predecessor put the digit "1" in an HTML file called year.html, then included it like:
"valid from January 1 though December 31, 201<cfinclude template="year.html">..."

Why? Just why? And if you're going to use include files, for Pete's sake at least use the proper .cfm file extension!

I've recently learned how committing of the Save Data to file works in my project.

The file is updated w/ _each change_ made to the settings.

Worse yet - the file is updated even when _no actual change_ is made due to the setting already being at its highest / lowest value possible.
/*
e.g. 5 is maximum sound volume.
- You try increasing the sound volume.
- Setting can't get any higher, so remains unchanged.
- *Update the Save Data*.
*/

What kind of abusive masochist would do that?

// Yes... there's always blame.

At previous company I had a side-task of helping out IT dept. w/ cataloguing of hardware for the testers.
The person previously tasked w/ this chose to use Google Docs, so I had no problems w/ expanding / updating the list.

Later on, a test lead of one of the projects had a bright idea of creating a copy of that list for their project.

After some time he approached me && started bitching about why I am !updating their copy of the list.

His reasoning?
- Because you're the 'list guy'.
- Because I'm asking you nicely to do it.

The exchange had been taking some time, but long story short: I stood my ground && basically told him to fuck off, given how it was _he_ && his team that decided to make a copy of the official list && I was definitely !going to accept the responsibility of additional work due to that choice.

Seriously. The fuck do these people think?

If he were to purchase e.g. an knockoff of an iPhone, the device broke down && he went to the Apple's repair center, they'd tell him to fuck off.

Which would be the right thing to do.

...fucking retards && their logic.

/* Also, it's always fun to watch people being ostensibly polite w/ their 'I'm asking you politely / nicely.' then demanding whatever it is they had been asking about, when they have absolutely no right asking for that thing, making _you_ look like an asshole. */

There was this one time when we've managed to upload a Debug build to Google Play Store.

On the same day we had to create a new build w/ fixes, have the testers perform smoke tests, then switch to some fairly quick overall tests.

If nothing were to come up during those tests, the build was supposed to be passed over to the submission manager for release.

Things weren't going that smoothly in the beginning, w/ the first two builds being broken in one way or another.

Finally, however, we managed to create a properly working build.

QA hadn't had that much time to test it, but no major problems were identified && given the deadline we had to submit it.

The next workday it turned out that the tester responsible for passing the approved build over to the submission manager gave him the Debug build.

The submission manager none the wiser uploaded that build for release.

Result?

The users who managed to update their game got their save data wiped... sort of.

It looked that way given the Debug build was communicating w/ a different server.

In the aftermath of that situation, we had to repair the damage && upload the correct build as quickly as possible.

Also, ever since then a huge text 'DEBUG' was added to the loading screens of Debug builds to make people very aware of which build they were looking at.

As for any repercussions for the tester responsible for the mess, or the submission manager - I have no idea.

They were both still working there, so at the very least none of them got fired because of this.

I was trying to learn Java and Python at the same time. Ended up being proficient at Jython.
Now I,m trynna find a compiler that understands my language. Can anyone help?

You know your e-Post Office really sucks when you receive only now scammers' emails that are _decades_ old.

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