I recently met a young fella (14yo) playing League of Legends. He asked:
- What do you do for a living?
- I'm a programmer, do you know anything about programming?
- I don't, actually.

Apparently he was playing from a LAN Gaming center 'cause he didn't have a computer at home (his computer had broken and these Lan centers are pretty affordable).
I figured I could explain to him what was it and what super powers you could get from it. Turns out I recommended a JS course in codecademy and now he goes to the LAN center every day to study programming (he got really into it!).
Now he always pings me with questions about JS and apparently he's learning a ton! He had almost no English skills too (we're Brazilian), and because most of the material in the internet is in English he found himself some free English courses and he's now taking them!

Knowledge is free on the internet and I guess he's just realized that.

Not exactly a rant guys, just figured it was a nice story to tell :)
#TeachAKidHowToCode

There's this guy where I work who's one of the senior linux engineers. To me, he's like a linux god. He knows how to solve the most difficult problems and somehow copes with all the stress/workload. Next to that, he's only one year older than me!

Whenever I'm at work, I consider myself a junior, which I actually am. I also, as said earlier, see this senior guy as a fucking linux god and consider myself to be an absolute newbie around him but he is the most kind/friendly guy ever.

But then, today, something happened which made me feel like a god in front of him, a very, very weird feeling.

For him, doing his stuff is the most normal thing in the world while for me, it's still a learning process.

For me, programming is the most normal thing in the wold, while for him, it's still something he just knows the very basics of.

He asked me if I knew something about javascript/jquery. Said yes as I often program/script in javascript.

Explained me what he wanted to get done, it was a very simple thing for me but after hours of online searching, his lack of javascript knowledge still got him nowhere.

Told him I'd give him a working script in 30 minutes. Emailed it to him in 10.

He seemed/reacted the way I always do when he solves something I have no clue how to solve.

It was really weird to witness *him* being amazed of something that *I* made/did.

Today was a good day where I saw that one person's limitations can be anothers' most easy thing, even if that another person sees that one person as a god.

29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.

For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.

I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.

I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.

Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.

Friend sees me learning React js.

Friend: "Why are you always studying? Your exams are over and you already have a job."

Me: "Because I don't know it and it looks interesting?"

Friend: "What a waste of time..."

I try to upskill myself and friend gives me shit.

He's the type of guy that would watch a 5min YouTube video on a topic and suddenly become an expert in it.

I believe that a day without new knowledge is a waste of a day.

Dont know if that's normal or I'm just weird. But I still stand by it.

!rant

Programming is a huge blessing i believe we all should be thankful to. For me, it literally turned my life around.

11 months ago i was fighting a losing battle with depression, and contemplated suicide constantly. I would use a self remedy of smoking weed and sleeping all day long. I was depressed because i felt my life had no real value. I was doing nothing, and its kind of an infinite loop.

You don't do anything, so you feel bad, so you don't do anything, and so on.

That was until i finally took the step that changed my life. I searched and wanted to learn something. I always liked web pages so i thought id get into web development.

Did some research, found out that the fastest way to go was to learn ruby on rails. I followed a tutorial i found online, and literally pushed myself through it. There were times when there where things i didnt understand, and when it was really bad, but i pushed myself through it and i finished the tutorial.

Just finishing the tutorial and learning something new helped me alot. I had already quit smoking and was feeling way better, but after a while i started feeling bad again since i wasnt doing anything after i had finished learning, so i started working on a personal project, creating it from scratch, and just working on it day and night. I worked 14 hours a day, never really leaving my room ( this was during summer vacation ) for a month.

There were many things i didnt understand, but i never gave up and always searched for the solution and read about it until i understood it better. Looking back, there were things i knew could have been done in a better way, but as a first project, im proud of myself, not because it rocks, but because i did not give up.

In the process of starting a new life, i was really lonely. I cut all ties with everyone i knew, since they were all toxic, all i had in my life was ruby on rails and my web application. I wanted to launch it but couldn't due to personal reasons.

Not being able to launch and see something live, something that you worked so hard on, that you put so much effort into, that was devastating to me. I felt as if all my efforts had gone to waste.

And here is what i love most about programming, NOTHING EVER GOES TO WASTE. All that effort you spent on something ? All these all nighters you pulled ? All that frustration from that bug ? It will pay off later. It always does somehow. You get more knowledge and become a better programmer, and sometimes it even gives way to new opportunities and chances you never even expected.

I included my web application in my resume and it helped land me a job as a junior developer in a really nice company. A job that i wouldn't even have dreamed of several months earlier.

Programming and creating something new and learning something new everyday, creating something that people use, that someone else will benefit from and be grateful for, i think we should never take that for granted !

Tl;dr : learning how to code and web development saved my life

Always postponed learning vim. For my new job I need to know how to work with vim.

Finally a reason not to postpone anymore!

Things I wish I could tell my 18 year old self.

1) Accept you will make mistakes.
2) Truly learn the language you are using.
3) Write idiomatic code for the language you are using.
4) Be upfront about not knowing something.
5) Don't let not knowing something stop you from learning it.
6) None of us knew X until we learned it.
7) Understand your strengths and weaknesses as a developer, play to them.
8) Be willing to try new things.
9) X language isn't ALWAYS the best choice, X paradigm isn't ALWAYS the best choice. Choose wisely.
10) You won't know everything, but you might know more than others.
11) Your ideas and ego don't matter more than ensuring the product works.
12) "Perfection is the enemy of the good [enough]" - Voltaire
13) "Perfection is not achieved when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to remove." - Einstein.
14) Conflicts happen, deal with it.
15) Develop a toolset and really learn them.
16) Try new tools, they may prove better than what you were using.
17) Don't manage your own memory unless you absolutely have to, you are probably not smarter than the collective intelligence of the team that built the various garbage collection methods.
18) People can be dicks, especially online.
19) If you are new and people are being dicks to you, did you skip past the irc message about etiquette? If you did, you're the dick in this situation.
20) It can be tough, but it is fun, so have fun!

Apple has a real problem.

Their hardware has always been overpriced, but at least before it had defenders pointing out that it was at least capable and well made.

I know, I used to be one of them.

Past tense.

They have jumped the shark.

They now make pretentious hipster crap that is massively overpriced and doesn't have the basic features (like hardware ports) to enable you to do your job.

I mean, who needs an ESC key? What is wrong with learning to type CTRL-[ instead? Muscle memory? What's that?

They have gone from "It just works" to "It just doesn't work" in no time at all.

And it is Developers who are most pissed off. A tiny demographic who won't be visible on the financial bottom line until their newly absent software suddenly makes itself known two, three years down the line.

By which time it is too late to do anything.

But hey! Look how thin (and thermally throttled) my new laptop is!

Although I love developing I always thought that there was something missing.
I learned Java but didn't really like it. I had spent quite some time with web development and enjoyed it but I felt like developing with JavaScript was too high level and I felt the same for Python.

So I started learning the most awesome programming language: C

I just love that I have so much control over everything and that the language is so compact and gives you just the right amount of tools you need.

I also love physics and electronics a lot and it feels awesome to first build something and then program it.

I am looking forward to design a PCB (printed circuit board) and write code for an AVR microcontroller like the Atmega328 (most arduinos use this one).

Picture of the project I am working on.

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)

I started my first job with no degree and no real experience. It was a sink or swim kind of place. Six months in, I was working on a bunch of projects independently, then they hired a new junior developer, and told me it was my job to mentor him.

a lot of the time I knew what to do to get the job done, but I didn't know why. He always asked why... Learning something is one thing, teaching it is another. This guy was the best co-worker I've ever had because he pushed me to be much better while we learned together.

My wife knows what I do, we talk alot and she is interested (she is learning to be a webdev actually).
My kids, likes to watch the black screen with text, I always show them "sl" ;)

My other family, they dont care

Always be humble and always keep learning. No matter how good you get, there is always some better.

I was fired from a job where the boss had it in for me. He was a really experienced dev, but he was also very arrogant. He hated me questioning him. I didn't have the evidence nor the "political" clout to back up my criticisms.

It was humbling.

I realised two things:

keeping your mouth shut is often the best approach.

And

my own arrogance was keeping me from getting better, from learning new things. Not just for the company, but for myself.

I want to write better code, make better design decisions, utilise design patterns, actually think about what I'm doing, and be able to justify why I'm doing it.

I want to be able to choose the best tools for the job, not the best tools for me.

I want to be a person that is open to criticisms and I want to be someone who is always ready to learn new things.

So I have this best friend who is almost 10 years younger than me. (I'm turning 40 this month). He's a full stack web dev, nodejs-god, react-maniac, you name it. He fucking LIVES to code the most amazing shit I have seen to date.

I, on the other hand, am that old, little overweight PHP coder webdev with a shitload of experience in that field (17th year now), also with linux webserver administration and all the JavaScript knowledge I need in m job.

Sitting next to him and doing some fun coding sessions always makes me feel like I am that "slow, fat kid in class"... while he is the coding master.

Sitting at work (marketing agency) where I started as the new webdev 10 months ago, I still feel like the coding guru because even the web 'developers' don't know jack shit yet (coz they never had to).

It's fine, they are learning and want to learn.

All I wanna say that even though one might be seen as a senior dev by some, he might sometimes feel like a junior dev when he's around others.

First step to learning Django. Wish me luck!

Trying new stuff always excites me and anxious at the same time.

My teacher at school who taught me programming. We were taught Java.

You see, Java is not a beginner's language, most say. But the way she taught it, the examples, the analogy, the explanation; she made it so easy.

She made us execute our first Hello World program (using BlueJ) and proudly said, "you're all programmers now!", that was when fascination took me over. I remember​ that moment till today.

Also, unlike regular exams, the programming exams required extreme competency. Marks were split up for algorithm and syntax. There were also questions like find the error in this algorithm for this output. She would always surprise us at the exams!

I had several glorious moments in class by being the first to answer most of her questions. At 13, it was kind of a big deal for me.
(Okay, who am I kidding, it still is :-P)

*sigh*

It was mostly just self learning from there. I switched schools and then there was college. Attending classes in college was like going to the gym with fat trainers. Utterly useless :-/ It just made me appreciate her even more.

The Absolutely True Story of a Real Programmer Who Never Learned C.

I have a young friend named Sam who is quite a programming prodigy. Sam does know C! I need to make this clear: he’s not the titular programmer.
But a couple years ago Sam told me a story about a different programmer who never learned C, and I liked it so much that right on the spot I asked his permission to repeat it. (I could never just steal such a tale.)
Sam wasn’t always a programmer—actually he started in his later teens, in part because he was more of a jock, and in part because he was related to programmers and wanted to do his own thing. But, like all great programmers, once he was bitten by the bug he immersed himself completely in it.
One day Sam happened to be talking programming with his uncle, who was also a programmer but from way, way back.
“Hey,” said Sam, “I’m learning this language called C. You must know a lot of languages, did you ever study C?”
“No,” said the uncle, to Sam’s surprise. “I am one of the very few programmers who never had to learn C.”
“Because I wrote it.”
Oh, Sam’s last name is Ritchie.
What I love about this story is the idea of Dennis waiting Sam’s entire life to deliver this zinger. Just imagine sitting on a line that good, watching your nephew grow up and waiting, waiting until the one day he finally starts learning to code. Did he work on the line in his head at night? Like, “Hmm, how should I word it so I can deliver the punch line perfectly? Should I say ‘I never took a class on C?’ Nah, too awkward…”
The great thing about geniuses is how much effort they put into everything.

Courtesy : Wil Shiply.

Being a developer is it still possible to be a gamer?

I feel like with all the new technologies coming in, I am always occupied with learning something and I don't get the time to game at all.

I am coming to a realisation that everything together is not possible anymore :(

if i learned one thing from my internship it's "Just do it".

I always wanted to master parallax but didn't dare to. My boss then forced me into learning it. I made my own parallax script that day.

It’s actually pretty neat. I constantly suffer from impostor syndrome, so I always have keep learning to keep up the facade.

It's reading time!

How my keyboard evolves:

0. Like any normal man, I started with a cheap standard Qwerty keyboard. As I began learning programming, I wanted something more elegant, so...

1. I've been using layout Dvorak (and then Programmer Dvorak) for like 5 years+ now. Anyone has intention to type on my machine soon gives up or even is blocked by me from the very start. It always takes a couple of minutes to explain to them what's going on here. They think I'm weird. I feel untouchable :)

2. My first mechkey was a 104-key Filco. Time flew by and I wanted my thing to be more compact so I went for a 66% and a TKL.

3. Recently I find out that though my keyboard is not a full-sized, there're yet some keys I've never touched (the bottom right modifiers, scroll lock, etc), so I look for a leaner one: HHKB and its alike but with slight remappings. Now I'm satisfied with the tiny, corners-trimmed keyboard but others look at it and ask how it is even possible to scroll the web page using the thing.

Prob 1: my boss can never type on my keyboard. Sometimes he still grumbles when he cannot correct my fouls right on my machine.

Prob 2: my keyboards at home and at work are not the same and some keymapping cannot applied to one of the two. That's async.

I'm not even that old and I've had it with young cocksure, full of them self language/environment evangelists.

- "C# is always better than Java, don't bother learning it"

- "Lol python is all you need"

- "Omg windows/linux/mac sucks use this instead"

The list goes on really, at some point you have got to realize that while specialization is great, you have to learn a little bit of everything. It broadens you horizon a lot.

Yea, C# does some nifty stuff, but Java does too, learn both. Yea I'm sure Linux is better for hosting docker containers, but your clients are on mac or windows, learn to at least navigate and operate all three etc. Embrace knowledge from all the different tech camps it can only do you good and you will be so much more flexible and employable than your close minded peers :)

Hell even PHP has a lot to teach us (Even more than just to be a bad example, har har)

I know a guy who writes everything in Haskell.

He started learning it because his parents got him into a math school (and math schools in Russia use either Python or Haskell), he liked it, but later he dropped out. Today, apart from Haskell, he only really knows HTML and CSS, and maybe some JavaScript.

He writes backend AND frontend in Haskell and uses some kind of JRPC stuff to manage all that. He told me that his life is a pure heaven. He IS RELEVANT (!!!!!!), his apps always run without bugs (because in Haskell you can mathematically prove that there are no bugs), they are performant, faster than C (because you can't write a complex enough app in C that will be as efficient as compiled Haskell, because it's you vs compiler). He doesn't have any problems in life whatsoever. He never got burned out, he never got anxiety or depression. He doesn't act pretentiously and stuff, he's just a normal person who rarely even mentions that he can program.

Science says it can't be done! You can't only know Haskell and be a relevant software engineer! You know what, he didn't _know_ it was impossible. He's like that grandpa from a meme, he got Alzheimers, but because of it he forgot that he had Alzheimers, and now remembers everything.

The fun thing is that he looks like a typical gopnik, with adidas suits and stuff.

What a gem of a person.

!rant

Let's take a moment to appreciate interested and enthousiastic non-developers who really want to learn a programming language.

I am studying Medical IT at my college and most of my classmates aren't coming from an IT background.
We're currently working with Java, PHP, JavaScript and some require Node for their semester projects.

Some of my classmates approach me when they're stuck while coding and I try to teach them as much as possible so they understand what they are doing wrong and how to fix it.
I also show them how they can optimise their code step by step and they love it!

As a classmate told me yesterday:
"It's always so much fun working with you. I come up with a small problem, but I end up learning so much more about programming when solving a problem with you. I appreciate that."

It's a mindset I've learned when I was doing my developer apprenticeship back in the day. One of my colleagues told me: "if they want your help because they need a quick fix, tell them to kiss your ass. If you know they've already tried everything they could and ask you specifically because they want to understand what they are doing wrong, they are future developers with great potential, so go teach them."

May the force be with you, my enthousiastic little non-devs ❤️

You know what? Fuck it. Git CLI. Hot take.

Question is "least favorite". Not "worst". Not "least important".

Git is great, essential, fantastic, whatever. But I hate interacting with the CLI. I can never remember the stupid fucking commands, I always mess shit up if I need to do something outside of my normal workflow, and honestly, usually the correct way of doing shit looks fucked.

So fuck git CLI and its learning curve

S = Some person I know
Me = Me

S: Hey, I heard you also do [software/web development].. I was hoping to get some advice from you about some advanced level HTML and CSS for my classes.
//or that if I could teach him something

Me: What do you study?

S: Oh, I teach.

Me: 😯 Really? What do you teach?

S: Oh, just some basic HTML and CSS with Notepad to about 50-60 students.

Me: (;﹏;) That's great.

/*this is a shortened version of a very long conversation*/

They teach some basic HTML and CSS like <table> and <marquee> and stuff. They also teach C++ and Tally ERP.

Also, he and some other person made their small intuitions' website but they don't know how to put it online. They made it in, as far as I understand, simple HTML and CSS USING NOTEPAD (Don't know if they used JS or something else). That's.. really courageous or something... ? I don't know, I couldn't have a look at it because they have it on their local computer and don't know what Git is.

I showed him some better alternatives and ways that they could use (editors, version control, db, etc.) to improve their curriculum and answered his questions, and I told him that I'll try to help in any way I can if they ever need me.

This also made me realize how much I've learned and grown since I first started learning C in school. Still, I've got so much more that I need and want to learn.
//Always keep learning
😊

PS. What would you've told him if you had been in my place?

“Don’t learn multiple languages at the same time”

Ignored that. Suddently I understood why he said that. Mixed both languages. In holiday rechecked it and it was ok.

Sometimes mistakes can lead to good things. After relearning I understood it much better.

“Don’t learn things by head” was another one. Because that’s useless. If you want to learn a language, try to understand it.
I fully agree with that. I started that way too learning what x did what y did, ... But after a few I found out this was inutile. Since then, I only have problems with Git

Another one. At release of Swift, my code was written in Obj-C. But I would like to adopt Swift. This was in my first year of iOS development, if I can even call it development. I used these things called “Converters”. But 3/4 was wrong and caused bugs. But the Issues in swift could handle that for me. After some time one told me “Stop doing that. Try to write it yourself.”

One of the last ones: “Try to contribute to open source software, instead of creating your own version of it. You won’t reinvent the wheel right? This could also be usefull for other users.”

Next: “If something doesn’t work the first time, don’t give up. Create Backups” As I did that multiple times and simply deleted the source files. By once I had a problem no iOS project worked. Didn’t found why. I was about to delete my Mac. Because of Apple’s WWDR certificate. Since then I started Git. Git is a new way of living.

Reaching the end: “We are developers. Not designers. We can’t do both. If a client asks for another design because they don’t like the current one tell them to hire one” - Remebers me one of my previous rants about the PDF “design”

Last one: “Clients suck. They will always complain. They need a new function. They don’t need that... And after that they wont bill ya for that. Because they think it’s no work.”

Sorry, forgot this one: “Always add backdoors. Many times clients wont pay and resell it or reuse it. With backdoors you can prohibit that.”

I think these are all things I loved they said to me. Probably forgot some.

I really wish I had started using version control sooner. 76 contributions on my GitHub this year, 52 of them are from this month 🙈

I just finish "rebuilding" a page that I have built last year. My Js file (jQuery) went from 1200+ lines to 600..

I rewrite everything, the functionality is the same but the code is mush more cleaner.
Soo bad and redundant code.

Although comments where very helpful.

Feels good.

Well, it wasn't fun, but I switched jobs this month. And sadly, it was mostly because my old company started building custom applications for our larger customers. Now, normally that wouldn't be too bad (other than the fact that it distracts us form working on our main product...) but... it was decided that we would use the back end of our user-generated forms module as the data storage layer. Someone outside of my department thought it would be a great idea, and my boss kinda just rolled over without a fight because he always just figures he can "make it work" if he works hard enough...

You shoulda seen the database and SQL code...

Because of that decision, everything took at least 3x as long to write and there was always the looming possibility that the user could change the schema on a whim and break the app.

I think the reasoning behind it was to try and keep the customers tied to the aging flagship product (with a pricy subscription model), but IMO, it was not with it. Our efforts could've had much greater impact somewhere else. Nobody seemed to care what I thought about it though...

I had to start over as a front-end dev, but I'm trying to look on the bright side and seeing it as an opportunity to sharpen my skills in that area. I'm already learning a lot. And although it's a little scary at times, it's also so refreshing to work at a place where I know I'm not the smartest guy in the room.

To the future!

Do you believe that anyone can do anything? (See: 13th Doctor)

Can anyone become a programmer? Or is it not for everybody?

My cousin has started "learning" C programming at college. I was actually surprised when he first told me that he wanted to study programming and get an IT degree. He would give an impression of a spoiled non-tech son of a non-tech manager to you. (He plays games on his Xbox One and Nintendo Switch and uses his MacBook Air to watch anime).He was never good at studying or learning. I immediately thought that it was totally not for him and he should give it a second thought, but he said that he was absolutely sure about it. It's been a few weeks now and he's finding it all really difficult.

I think one should like learning constantly and should like solving problems to make it all an enjoyable learning experience.

Self-study is also really important, especially if you have garbage professors (like he says he has).

I always try to help him. I told him to focus on self-study, recommended good books (he even bought one for C), recommended good online resources. But he's a procrastinator leveled over 9000. So, you'd understand, he's not doing any of that right now. I even told him that if he didn't self-study, he might regret it one day, but he just can't bring himself to self-study, he says. I'm gonna continue helping him in any way I can, but I guess you can't really help someone who doesn't want to help themselves.

Thanks for reading. :)

My first work was a paid internship.
My first couple weeks on the job I was supposed to be working on the same machine with another dev to get the gist of the process and everything. Kind of pair programming mixed with mentorship. Sounds cool?
Yeah... Problem is my fellow dev was more interested in spending around 80% of her time chatting around with her boyfriend and friends on Microsoft Chat.
Anyway, I soon got bored of having to look to the other side all the time, and went to our boss and asked for some other stuff to do "because I'm better learning by doing than by example".
Almost 20 years later, I'm still in touch with this dev... But she soon left the job and pursued a career as a translator and interpreter. She was always more interested in talking than programming 😃

Today is sprint demo day. As usual I'm only half paying attention since being a Platform Engineer, my work is always technically being "demoed" (shit's running ain't it? There you go, enjoy the EC2 instances.)

One team presents a new thing they built. I'm still half paying attention, half playing Rocket League on another monitor.

Then someone says

"We're storing in prod-db-3"

They have my curiosity.

"Storing x amount of data at y rate"

They now have my attention. I speak up "Do you have a plan to drop data after a certain period of time?"

They don't. I reply "Okay, then your new feature only has about 2 months to live before you exhaust the disk on prod-db-3 and we need to add more storage"

I am asked if we can add more storage preemptively.

"Sure, I say." I then direct my attention to the VP "{VP} I'll make the change request to approve the spend for additional volume on prod-db-3"

VP immediately balks and asks why this wasn't considered before. I calmly reply "I'm not sure. This is the first time I'm learning of this new feature even coming to life. Had anyone consulted with the Platform team we'd have made sure the storage availability was there."

VP asks product guy what happened.

"We didn't think we'd need platform resources for this so we never reached out for anything".

I calmly mute myself, turn my camera back off and go back to Rocket League as the VP goes off about planning and collaboration.

"CT we'll reach out to you next week about getting this all done"

*unmute, camera stays off* "Sounds good" *clears ball*

Started showing my brother some deep learning tutorials and I have him reading a book.

I really need for him to realize how smart he is. He was never academically inclined. I always told my mother that it had to do with the same dislike of school that I always had and how a couple of really shitty teachers could run one's motivation to the ground.

I always found him brilliant. Had a good standing with common sense amd logical thinking. He was interested in math for a while(same as me) but school made him hate it. He managed to pass all the state exams needed to graduate from H.S and was able to succesfully pass the military ASVAB with a very good grade.

But after H.S he went down the drain with what he wanted to do.

I love my brother and really want him to find out just how smart I think he is and this would probably be one of my biggest experiments with him. Maybe, just maybe if I get him to realize that he can understand these advanced concepts without a teacher his(fear?) Of school might go away enough for him to give it a second go. Fuck man I don't even need for him to go and get a B.S in comp sci, an associate degree would be just fine. It can be on anything, I just want him to do something.

Sometimes I feel as if this was my fault. At one point he told me that he feels shadowed by my grades. And my family was always proud of what I did in H.S and at uni. I feel(sometimes) that I should have paid more attention to him as he was going to school, help out a little more and encourage him more.

He feels as if he is meant for a dead end miserable working life, and I really can't bear the idea of him wasting himself away to something like that.

I really hope this shit works man...i really need for this to work, he doesn't even need to like it, just realize that it is possible.

Another real-world argument for why I always say git is worth learning properly.

Had to track a really weird bug down today. Had no idea where it came from, how long it'd been in the code and hadn't the foggiest what was causing it. Realistically it could have been introduced any time in the last year or two, and that's tens of thousands of commits in this repo.

Git to the rescue. Knocked up a quick script to test the case in question, fed it into "git bisect run", and 30 seconds later git found the exact (small) commit that caused the issue.

It's a brilliant part of git, yet it seems like almost no-one I know uses it. Some use "git bisect", but using "git bisect run" and passing a script to it seems to be alien to most - yet it's probably my most used tool when it comes to tracking down bugs like these.

(Warning: kinda long && somewhat of a political rant)

Every time I tell someone I work with AI, the first thing to come out of their mouth is "oh but AI is going to take over the world!"

No.

It was only somewhat recently that it started being able to recognize what was in a picture from over 3 million images, and that too it's not that great at. Honestly people always say "AI is just if-else" ironically, but it isn't really that far from the truth, we just multiply an input by weights and check the output.

It isn't some magical sauce, it's not being born and then exploring a problem, it's just glorified-probability prediction. Even in "unsupervised" learning, the domain set is provided; in "reinforcement learning" which has gotten super popular lately we just have the computer decide which policy is optimal and apply that to an environment. It's a glorified decision tree (and technically tree models like XGBoost outperform neural networks and deep learning on a large number of problems) and it isn't going to "decide" to take over the planet.

Honestly all of this is just born out of Elon Musk fans who take his word as truth and have been led to believe that AI is going to take over the world. There are a billion reasons why it can't! And to top it off this takes away a lot of public attention from VERY concerning ethical issues with AI.

Am I the only one who saw Google Duplex being unveiled and immediately thought "fraud"? Forget phone scammers, if you trained duplex on the mannerisms of, for example, a famous politician's voice, you could impersonate them in an audio clip (or even video clip with deepfakes). Or for example the widespread use of object detection and facial recognition in surveillance systems deployed by DoD. Or the use of AI combined with location tracking and browsing analytics for targeted marketing.

The list of ethics breaches are endless, and I find it super suspicious that those profiting the most off of unethical AI are all too eager to shift public concern to some science fiction Terminator style takeover that, if ever possible, would be a long way out and is not any sort of a priority issue right now.

TLDR: programming helped with my math weakness

I've always been bad at math. I always failed my math quizzes, and to be honest the only thing that I remember from that time was that I hated it, I didn't want anything to do with it, to hell with functions and formulas and all of that garbage.

Fast forward a couple of years. I just started my masters degree in machine learning and I'm sort of inclined to applications of deep learning in signal processing. Currently I'm writing a fourier transform in raw python and I've never had more fun. I feel like programming has helped me a lot with math, being able to see how each component behaves when you write a function helps a lot! Being able to plot things helps a lot! Not having to imagine mathematical functions as esoteric mystical wonders but being able to split them up into small components and seeing what you're doing wrong HELPS. A. LOT.

Just felt like sharing. I feel like programming has made me a generally smarter person, in regards to how I approach problems and think about stuff.

My family is pretty clueless about what I do, but they are genuinely curious. My mom especially. She always asks questions about stuff I'm learning and tries her best to understand.

I might do a little course in programming for anyone in my family who wants to learn. Helps a lot in how people solve problems, and would help reinforce my knowledge.

Question is, do I teach them a low level language like C, or something that's a bit easier to understand, like Python?

It's not always true that degree holders hate self-taught developers. Sometimes, it's the other way around. When somebody mentions he gained a cs degree, he sometimes gets hate, too, hearing "degrees are useless! yadayada..." like it's a sin to have one. We should never stop learning whether we have a degree or not, and we should stop this hate and divided culture.

If you're planning to be a new entrepreneur (like me) here's a few things to keep in mind:

1) it'll keep getting harder but it's all worth it. Do not quit mid way no matter how hard it gets.

2) stop asking everyone for advice, they'll either be assholes or you'll end up getting confused by too much contradicting advice.

3) regardless of point 2, people will still advise you on everything (ikr). Listen to them, and if you don't agree with it... Do not bother to correct them, never helps... Just ignore it

4) if some one is an asshole to you or someone shoots your idea down, don't get discouraged. Reflect on it and if it's irrelevant, forget it all. Do not try to be an asshole back, always take the higher road.

P.S I'm also still learning... Hope you all very best for your endeavours :)

One of my theoretical CS teachers always complains and makes it sound like everything around him is an annoyance to his existence
- being late or in a bad mood? His pregnant wife is very tiring (good ol' haha women are hormonal much?)
- having to create and correct exercises for us (students) is a nuisance because it's so much work and we're not supposed to be spoon-fed (which makes the whole learning experience very demotivating)
- every explanation start is continued by at least 3 changes in the explanation itself, which makes everything super-confusing
- all his helpers are incompetent and not rising up to his expectations

Someone needs some self-reflection

Everyday, I am amazed at developers like those here on devRant. I look up at you in awe and admiration, always thinking about how awesome your life probably is, even though you rant about it sometimes. I want to be like many of you in the future.
Thank you for improving our lives with whatever​ you are doing. I feel like this doesn't get said enough.

Meanwhile, University sucks (failed exams), but I am expected to graduate with good grades. Sigh. I also feel like I'm not learning enough of those things that I need to become a good dev and rather overly complicated math which I'll never need in my later life.

I keep improving as a developer by:
Listening to podcasts
Reading books
Reading others code
And searching so😃
Learning learning. .always learning

Im so frustrated with myself . I've always been afraid of being stupid . Perhaps it was because i was always called the "less intelligent" sibling by my parents . Well i did self-learn java , c++ and android (when i was 15) and made some apps and i did get acknowledged finally but i may have not acknowledged myself . I got into college a couple years ago and i can tell you right out that its like an island filled with stupidity. The teachers , the students. The other day i caught my teacher learning how a transistor works. This is unacceptable for someone who is teaching us advanced op-amps and other circuits . Well , I did get into this college cause it was less tedious and i thought college doesn't matter cause i can self-learn . All i needed was free time . Well college totally destroyed that too and provided no facilities in the process as well . So yeah should i blame my college for my inability to do things the past couple years. I mean i don't think i've learnt a single thing all this while. This is where my frustration begins cause i dont want to blame the college , it's not going to help me and i'll probably end up in a 9 to 5 call center job at this rate . Im also very heavily frustrated with myself , it's like everything i've done so far has been a path of least effort. I have tried a few things which were all just fads like machine learning and crypto and even trading . They felt good and thats what scares me , maybe i don't have the passion and am just looking for a quick buck . This is clearly reflected in the ideas i've been having as well . Well i've never had access to proper funds but now im just trying to justify this layman emotion . I just want to learn and be passionate about learning , researching and i just want enough funds for that . But im afraid , maybe its just that i want to feel superior than my circle . I mean i still don't know why i tried learning rust and wasted even more time setting up fedora and everything around it while i already had a working debian setup and a programming language i'm kind of versed with . i wouldn't say well cause im a self learner and i feel guilty for that . I definitely know i just learnt the surface of the language . Deep down i'm just another stupid fad obsessed guy who feels better by choosing a more complex language that my colleagues look upto . Is this what i am , if so im scared and i don't know what to do . People say that you are what you are and you cant change that . If i cant change this then i dont deserve this wasteful stupid life . I don't know what i should do and it makes me cry . Maybe acknowledging this would've helped but it hasn't , I've felt better playing fortnite rather than learning some basic electronics. Im another one of those aren't I ?

I once worked at a small dev shop with a team of about 5. I was the lead but I was also the only backend developer. Since it was such a small company I also managed the Datacenter... which we had in our building. It was messy, but impressive. Although I seemed to be always stressed and felt like my job was always on the line... I do miss how excited I got when I learned something new. I was then able to talk to my boss about how excited I was to learn it and I can't wait to learn something new. I'm sad because I don't get that excited anymore. Now, I'm not really learning anything new, I'm just posting my skills as a developer. It really bums me out. I only wish that I had a degree in computer science so I can become a teacher and see my students get as excited as I was.

Many thanks to DevRant, finally i'm learning english "in the real world"

I'm always been incapable of learning language, but in return I know a lot of programming languages.
Can i choose a prog lang has my mothertongue?

This isn’t gonna be a random because I do eventually get to a Tech and YouTube related topic.

YouTube is actually killing itself with all of the dumbass rules they’re implementing. Trying to child proof or limit educational content is genuinely a shit policy. The reason so many gaming channels are switching to twitch because it doesn’t try to censor you.

But now I don’t know if you’ve heard but YouTube updated their guidelines and they’re no longer allowing content that teaches people about Hacking essentially (and I hate putting it like that but I can’t remember the exact words they used Hacking just summarizes it) which is fucking ridiculous like what the fuck else, are they gonna stop allowing lock picking videos?

YouTube has always been an amazing FREE resource for people learning Programming, Cyber Security, IT related fields, and even shit like lock picking, cooking, car stuff, and all that stuff. Even sometimes when the tutorials aren’t as detailed or helpful to me they might be exactly what someone else needed. And Cyber Security can be a difficult topic to learn for free. It’s not impossible far from it, but YouTube being there was always great. And to think that a lot of those could be taken down and all of the Security based channels could either lose all revenue or just be terminated is terrifying for everyone but more so them.

A lot of people and schools rely on YouTube for education and to learn from. It’s not like YouTube is the only resource and I understand they don’t want to be liable for teaching people that use these skills for malicious purposes but script kiddies and malicious people can easily get the same knowledge. Or pay someone to give them what they want. But that’s unfair to the people that don’t use the information maliciously.

It’s the same for the channels of different topics can’t even swear and it’s ridiculous there’s so many better options than just banning it. Like FUCK kids nowadays hear swearing from their older siblings, parents, friends, and TV it’s inevitable whether someone swears or not and YouTube is not our parents, they aren’t CBS, so stop child proofing the fucking site and let us learn. Fuck.

TLDR YouTube is banning educational hacking videos and are being retarded with rules in general

So I can see everything thinks CS should be taught differently this week.

Based on all of the ways we could change it, something no one seems to be mentioning much is security.

Everyone has many ways of learning logical processors and understanding how they work with programming, but for every line of code taught, read or otherwise learnt you should also learn, be taught how to make it less vulnerable (as nothing is invulnerable on the internet)

Every language has its exploits and pitfalls and ways of overflowing but how you handle these issues or prevent them occurring should be more important than syntaxually correct code. The tools today are 100000x better then when I started with notepad.exe, CMD and Netscape.

Also CS shouldn’t be focused on tools and languages as such, seeing as new versions and ideals come out quicker then CS courses change, but should be more focused on the means of coming to logical decisions and always questioning why or how something is the way it is, and how to improve it.

Tl;dr
Just my two cents.

Why am I such an average ?

It's just a sad realisation. Nobody cares but I wanna send this out there, just to write thoughts.. I am 18 in 3rd year of high school (grammar school so nothing IT related, basically waste of time) and in IT I'm all self taught but I feel like I could be better if I just didn't [something]..

I feel like I wanna learn so many things but when I look at you, it seems like a common problem in the IT sphere so hey, average guy joining the club.

I also feel dumb when programming. I didn't manage to learn C++ in it's entirety because to really accomplish something, you've got so many ways to do it and finding the best one requires deep understanding of the tools you've got at your disposal with the language and I feel like I'm not capable of this(self learn, in school/Uni that's different story).. But many (most) of you are. I've tried many coding challenges and when I got it working, I just saw how someone did it in one line just by layering functions that I've never heard of..

Also, we've got kinda specific national competition here in many fields including IT for high schools.. And the winners always do sometimes like "AI driven Life simulation" or "Self flying drone made from ATMega from scratch with 3D simulation in C# to it" or "Game engine" or whatever shit and it's always from grammar schools and never IT related schools.. They are like me. Maybe someone helped them, I don't know, but they are just so far away from me while I'm here struggling to get the basic level of math for any kind of machine learning..

Yeah I've written Neural Network from scratch in C but meh, honestly it's pretty basic stuff .. I'd rather understand derivatives which we're going to learn next year and I'm too lazy to learn it from khan academy because I always learn something else.. Like processing (actually codetrain started teaching tensorflow so that might be the light for me...) Or VHDL (guys you can create your own chip / CPU from scratch and it's not even hard and OMFG it's so fucking cool , full adder done yay) or RPi or commodore 64 assembly or game development with Godot and just meh..

I mean, this sounds exactly like not knowing what to do and doing nothing in the end. That was me like 6-12 months ago. Now I'm managing to pick 2-3 things and focus them and actually feel the progress.

But I lost track of the original point.. I didn't do anything special, every time I'm programming something, everyone does it better and I feel dumb. I will probably never do anything special, everyone around says "He's still learning he's genius" but they have no idea.

I mean, have you seen one of the newest videos on Google's YouTube channel (I openly hate them, but I will keep that away for now), something like "Sarah story" ? It's about girl that apparently didn't care about IT but self learned tensorflow on high school. I think it may be bullshit (like ALL of their videos ) but it's probably just fancied, not complete lie.

And again, here I am. I now C but I'm incapable of learning to program good which most of you did and are now doing for living. I'm incapable to do anything cool, just understanding what everybody else did and replicating it. I'm incapable of being clever.

Sorry, just misusing devrant to vent a bit

I regret that I didn't start learning to code before I went to university and that I never had Computer Science/Programming classes before in school (which is not really my fault but I always wished for this)

I am sick and tired of big companies trying to shove their technologies down developer's throat in the name of developer advocacy. Last week I attended one of the IBM workshops which was supposed to be about ML and AI techniques but ended being solely about IBM Cloud (Bluemix), click here, click there, purchase it. I am not against developer advocacy and them trying to advertise their product but they should always keep in mind that developers won't get interested if they aren't learning any transferable core skills.

I was checking a course on Udacity about building scalable java apps. It turned out to be about Google Cloud Platform, auto scaling and nothing much. How deceiving is that?

So our teacher just has us sign up for a learning site called Gizmos with a ton of students information. A lot of students forgot their password as always and some didn't register with an email so I expected the teacher to reset them..

Then the teacher had students come up to the front of the f****** class and SHOWED THEM THEIR PASSWORD IN PLAIN TEXT. WHAT THE HELL

TL;DR, I do node.js now.

__________________

There's much I was working on the past weeks. First of all some of you may know I don't work in IT and therefore always am learning how to make things easier in my workspace with tech. And my boss once told me how annoyed he is converting stuff to PDF for easier sending via mail.

Then I started to build PDF converter with
PHP and the Laravel framework. My first steps into it succeeded and I could even deploy my Pdf-wizard website, but everything feels like a hustle and making this application bigger don't really seems like a enjoyable task for me.

I tried the same stuff with Node.js then. It was damn good. It was simple, because there are plenty of packages wich do this tasks on NPM. Afterwards I spent some time on doing research and ended up learning Express Framework.

This brought new inspiration to me and I wanted to share this with you guys.

!dev

My toxic father. Seriously man. It's my 4th day of learning to drive with an instructor. He sits besides and never knew how to drive. I think I am driving good wrt to being very new in it. He thinks just because I slow myself down on the road and cannot take a turn properly, let me say it again, on the 4th day of driving a manual car, he thinks I can never drive. What a fucking douchebag. What a fucking coward, impatient human says that. I am in rage because now I'm like 27, but in my childhood he was at his worst behaviour. That's why I was always scared of doing complex things, I stick with easy because I will make no mistakes. He has fucking no right in being proud of me. He's so fucking bad, I hate him. But more than hating him I want to find a way not to give a fuck about his fucking small discouraging shameful opinions. Fucker cannot do anything by himself. He's the most messed up fucking person I have ever seen. And oh god I fucking resent this guy.
I should start calling him a fucking retard that way I can devalue him as a person. I could never thought that I will think about a person like this but this retard left me no choice.
The thing is even a person is a retard I will try to understand them so give me a good word that just devalues a person instantly.

Don't start crying when you feel programming is not for you. Learning new is always hard. Just "behave" like a Rhino.

Well, I was Always into Computers and Games and stuff and at some point, I started wondering: "why does Computer Go brrr when I Hit this Button?".

It was WinAPI C++ and I was amazed by the tons of work the programmers must have put into all this.

13 year old me was Like: "I can make a Game, cant be too hard."

It was hard.
Turns out I grabbed a Unity Version and tried Things, followed a tutorial and Made a funny jet Fighter Game (which I sadly lost).

Then an article got me into checking out Linux based systems and pentesting.
*Promptly Burns persistent Kali Live to USB Stick"
"Wow zhis koohl".
Had Lots of fun with Metasploit.

Years pass and I wrap my head around Javascript, Node, HTML and CSS, I tried making a Website, worked Out to some extent.

More years pass, we annoy our teacher so long until he opens up an arduino course at school.
He does.

We built weather stations with an ESP32 and C++ via Arduino Software, literally build 3 quadrocopter drones with remote Control and RGB lighting.
Then, Cherry on the top of everything, we win the drone flying Contest everyone gets some nice stuff.

A couple weeks later my class teacher requests me and two of my friends to come along on one of their annual teacher meetings where there are a bunch of teachers from other schools and where they discuss new technology and stuff.

We are allowed to present 3D printing, some of our past programming and some of the tech we've built.

Teachers were amazed, I had huge amounts of fun answering their questions and explaining stuff to them.

Finally done with Realschulabschluss (Middle-grade-graduation) and High school Starts.
It's great, we finally have actual CS lessons, we lesen Java now.
It's fuckton of fun and I ace all of it.
Probably the best grades I ever had in any class.

Then, in my free time, I started writing some simple programs, firstvI extended our crappy Greenfoot Marsrover Project and gave it procedural Landscape Generation (sort of), added a Power system, reactors, Iron and uranium or, refineries, all kinds of cool stuff.

After teaching myself more Java, I start making some actual projects such as "Ranchu's bag of useful and not so useful stuff", namely my OnyxLib library on my GitHub.

More time passes, more Projects are finished, I get addicted to coding, literally.
My days were literally Eat, Code, sleep, repeat.

After breaking that unhealthy cycle I fixed it with Long Breaks and Others activities in between.

In conclusion I Always wanted to know what goes on beneath the beautiful front end of the computer, found out, and it was the most amazing thing ever.
I always had constant fun while coding (except for when you don't have fun) and really enjoyed it at most times.
I Just really love it.

About a year back now I noticed that I was really quite good at what I was doing and I wanted to continue learning and using my programming.
That's when I knew that shit was made for me.

...fuck that's a long read.

Do some cool shit that I’ve always wanted to do.

- learn more about machine learning and computer vision
- learn C / C++ / rust
- learn embedded systems / programming
- learn more EE centered stuff

As for programming: (will do a cyber one later)

Don't *ALWAYS* only study/learn programming solely for learning it as this can be demotivating at times, find a cool project to do and learn while developing that!

This is how I learned programming in a fun way :)

Sometimes you get too used to everything, that you forget to be humble and curious, to explore and learn new things all the time. I miss the time when I say:oh this shit is cool, I am gonna try it out.

Glad someone knocked this back into me.

IF YOU UPDATE AN ADM PLATTFORM FOR FUCKS SAKE DON'T DO THE FOLLOWING THINGS:

1. ONLY DOCUMENTATE IT IN A POWERPOINT

2. WRITE DOWN IPs AND PORTS ONLY ON A WHITE-BORD

3. MOVE TOOLS TO OTHER SUBNETS OR DOMAINS WITHOUT PROPERLY KNOWING THE WAYS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THEM

4. USE YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS AS RESET OPTION FOR LICENCE-MANAGEMENT ACCESS IF NO ONE KNOWS THE PW

5. LEAVE THE COMPANY THE DAY AFTER THE UPGRADE IS DONE

Because the guy who has to take care of the upcoming problems is not going to like you!

BUT having to deal with all of this at once would not be a problem if your, so called team (30 People who work with those applications e.g. as test-engineers) would actually work together instead of having that "not my daily business, I am going to drink coffee" attitude.

Apparently I am the only one who has enough balls to see, admit, and report a problem to our leadership.
This always leads to Me fixing the issue...
....that's alright I am learning a lot...
...BUT IF A TEAM-MATE, WHO HAS THE SAME DEGREE AS I AM GOING TO GET, LEAVES EARY BECAUSE: "HE DOES NOT KNOW WHATS WRONG", IT TRIGGERS ME!!!

- The apprenticeship guy

PS Needless to say hundreds of clients have access to those systems and I worked through a shittload of official tool docs just to get to know the tools first...

when can i say " learning is finish and i know anything to make an APP"
every time i open a door i see another closed door. always there is a closed door

A big shout out to all the polyglot developers out there who understand that languages and frameworks are just tools with trade offs.

May we always evaluate thoroughly and choose the best tool for the job at hand.

Cheers 🍻

Bonus Round:

What tools are you currently wielding while reading this rant?

So I always start learning JS frameworks and end up getting confused by their syntax among other things. Do you guys know of any good websites to learn vanilla JS? My problem is that I probably don't know enough of vanilla and end up getting flustered.

The more I learn about programming the more terrified I become about having huge knowledge gaps and learning something wrong by possibly making wrong assumptions about how certain things work or by falling on bad tutorials. I'm constantly hyped about coding, and at the same time I always feel I will never be able to say confidently "I know how to code".
How the hell do you make sure you are learning programming correctly as a self taught? Or do i just have to accept that no matter how and what I code there will always be a better way to do it, resulting in me constantly feeling as a low-skilled coder?

TL;DR Pluralsight should be ashamed for taking 299 USD a year and writing some very low-quality quizzes.

I've always heard that Pluralsight is a great platform having some high quality courses, so I chose it as a benefit, as our company was giving us some budget for learning purposes. I've paid (or rather the company did it in the end) 299 USD for this year, which, I guess is not much for US standards, but it is a lot for Eastern European standards.

I didn't actually get to the point of watching any of the courses, but I started to use a feature called "Stack up", which is a long series of questions in a specific theme, like Java, Kotlin, C++, etc., accessible once a day. I must say, I'm amazed by the fact, that people pay quite a great amount of money and they get something so poorly made with a lot of errors and stupid questions.

Take the question from the included image for example. Not only that the 2 possible answers are repeated (and thus I failed to select the correct one from 2 equal answers), but the supposedly correct answer is also missing some type specifications. No Java compiler will compile it this way as far as I know. There would be at least 3 ways to fix it.

Then there is today's gem (should be included as first comment) as well, where the answer is wrong in both Chrome 96, Firefox 95 and Node v10. Heck, THIS IS one of the reasons why you should never use `var` in your JavaScript code, but always `let` and `const`!

So the courses on Pluralsight might be good, but I would be ashamed, if I were to release something like this. People might actually try to solidify their knowledge by solving these quizzes but instead of learning something useful, they will be left with some bullshit. I just don't get how could they release a feature with so much incorrect information and I am kind of disappointed, even if I didn't try the courses yet.

I am tired of my idiot ‘friends’ asking me if I can hack Facebook Instagram etc. because some other idiot made them mad. Like fuck no. 1 it’s unethical as hell 2 it’s illegal I don’t want to go to jail. 3 I’m learning cyber security NOT hack stuff because someone hurt your useless feelings.

Ohhh and they always get pissed off when I explain everything wrong with their idiotic request

Not quite a rant... more of a question.

So, I'm almost 40 years old. I have a lot of work experience in varying fields, much of it in low-level management.

Truth is I've ALWAYS wanted to be a programmer.

I recently got into a somewhat competitive training program
where I'm learning to write Java, and will subsequently learn Android development. It's fairly in-depth, so it will take 10 moths to complete. My ultimate goal it's to work as a mobile dev at a great company, making products people love. Ambitious, I know.

My question is: Am I a fool for attempting to get into this field at this age? I'm starting to panic a little. I'm not sure if I'm wasting my time, or if 40 is too old to be the "newbie".

Thoughts?

These are the things that finally finally helped me stick to learning programming.

Hello world! This is my first story on devrant and I would like to share how I finally overcame the barriers that had always prevent me from learning programming in a more serious and structured way.

I know my way around linux, had some experience with BASIC many years ago and have more than basic notions of cryptography... however I never got myself to learn programming in such a way that I could write an app or interact with an API. Until now.

I have advanced more than ever before and I believe it might be thanks to these aspects:

1. C#
I have always had struggles with languages that were too compact or used many exotic or cryptic expressions. However I have found C# to be much more readable and easier to understand.

2. Visual Studio
My previous attempts at learning programming were without an IDE. Little did I know what I was missing!

For example when I tried learning python on Debian, I almost went crazy executing programs and trying to find the compile errors in a standard text editor.

Intellisense has been live changing as it allows me to detect errors almost immediately and also to experiment. I'm not afraid to try things out as I know the IDE will point out any errors.

3. .NET library and huge amounts of documentation
It was really really nice to find out how many well documented classes I had available to make my learning process much easier, not having to worry about the little details and instead being able to focus on my program's logic.

4. Strong typing
Call me weird, but I believe that restricting implicit conversions has helped learn more about objects, their types and how they relate to each other.

I guess I should be called a C# fanboy at this point, but I owe it to that language to be where I'm now, writing my first apps.

I also know very very little about other languages and would love to hear if you know about languages that provide a similar experience.

Also, what has helped you when you first started out?

Thanks!!

Decided to spend my weekend on a little side project that I thought I could finish quickly.

Not only does my code not work, but what I wrote is so horrible that I'm honestly ashamed. Its like the despicable porn that you sometimes end up watching and the horror of realizing what the hell you just watched after you finish - I thought my code was good, but really, it was trash.

Before I started writing I though to myself, "I'll finish this project and then I'll upload it to my Github to expand my repository", but now I cringe at the thought of someone else reviewing this pile of shit I call my code.

It's 2 am here in Israel. I know I should go to sleep, but I'll just stare at the ceiling, feeling unproductive because everything I did today is literally worthless.

How the fuck do I justify this shit to myself? Calling this a "learning experience" feels like a fucking joke.

Honestly, I don't know why I chose Python to do OOP when Kotlin would have served me much better.

But, there's always tomorrow, isn't there?

*me and my manager, during my appraisal meeting

me: *talks about work done in previous project, and the current one under him

manager: but your JIRA throughput is very less.

me: the tickets which I pick are more research oriented and almost always take more time than the other config- fix type ones, and due to me being shifted from another team, there has been an increasing learning curve, I realize that, but...

manager: look at Jack, his throughput has been consistently high.

*me, after realizing my appraisal has obviously gotten affected and this discussion will lead nowhere

me: I would like to have a chat with HR before I sign the form with the percentage increment you are offering.

*me, with hr the next day
hr: your manager tells me that your throughput has been less than satisfactory.

me: *goes on to explain about the type of tickets I have been working on, along with other enhancements done to make people's lives easier

hr: but the throughput...

me: where the f**k do I sign?

I always thought callback functions are some mysterious things that high end devs understand. After learning it I feel to stupid now. 😭

Parents had asked me to assemble some furniture, fix the pc and so some other "brain" work

Furniture
Me: *Stops to check something in the manual*
Parents: Are you stuck? Maybe try assembling the door upside down
Me: No, it is the right way
Parents: *Ramble, ramble*
Me: Just let me work, shut the hell up

PC
Me: *Checks cables, checks logs, ect*
Parents: Maybe it is the problem with (insert random tech word there)?
Me: No.
Parents: W h y?
Me: Let me finish, it isnt that, (tech word) isnt even correlated to that
Parents: But, but, you never talk to me... (ramble ramble)
Me: Get the hell outta the room
*Argumemt breaks out*
30min later

Me: *Finnaly manages to fix it after the heated argument*
Me: I finished, everything works
Parents: Great, but you are mean
Me: I managed to finish the work in 15 min, you dont even have enough strengh to call for a specialist, (but knowing me i wouldnt allow it anyway because a lot of them make a poor job), so in order to make it properly and to relieve you from learning how to fucking google i want you to stay out of this so i can just finish my job. Your interruptions waste time and i dont need your help at all. Everytime you tried to fix stuff you always managed to fuck shit up when you tried to do anything.
Parents: (ramble)
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP, LEAVE MY ROOM
Parents:
Me:
Parents: *Leave the room*

1h later i get 25$ for the job perfectly done

Sometime i wish they were tech independent, so i can save my sanity and time but money is nice.

If anybody tries to argue that i should respect them:
I tried talking to them nicely countless times through years, but they always force themself to a project and they always fuck shit up because of it. I tried telling them about my problems and they tried helping me but after it didnt work they retured to the old: "it is the pc fault" and similar. Even if they couldnt help me i juat wanted them to understand my situation, but no that didnt happened.

First i fix my life then i will fix the relationship

But but greeeeeg, relationships should be cared for always!
Eat shit. There is time for family and there is time for me especialy when my life can suddenly colapse due to my problems.

!Rant

I hope that my daughter takes an interest in STEM stuff. I’m going to introduce it early on for her. (She’s only 9 months old right now) but I’m admittedly nervous that she won’t have a hyper curious nature as she grows up. I was always super curious about learning about how things work, even though my parents never gave two thoughts about it. I don’t think that being curious and wanting to explore the inter-workings of stuff is learned so I’m just hoping she is a curious little-shit like I was as a kid hahaha.

Rant about myself. When in a group situation where there is a very dominant coworker either related to skill or status with management. I always start out contributing ideas but after realizing my ideas are dumb or just dismissed I stop trying and just fade into the background and do what I am told. I also become detached from the project and start putting my energy into learning or side projects. I feel like such a wimp and pushover. I get told I don't have passion.

Development world is always changing and evolving... It changes before you know it...

So, having the ability to quickly adapt and learn is a must for any Developer... And, this is the one thing that I am sure that everyone knows about or heard about..

But, my advice is quite simple:

"Don't rush into participating in a race, just because everyone else is doing so.

The trick is not to move quickly.. But, to move one step at a time, at the pace in which you are at your most comfortable...

It might seem counterintuitive and a contradiction to what I have said earlier.. But, I hope that by the end of this rant, you will be able to understand my perspective..

This advice is especially useful for people still finding and searching for their place in our world..

Charles Darwin, very wisely understood the philosophy behind 'Survival of the Fittest'..

By 'fittest', he didn't refer to the ones considered to be the strongest or having the most intelligence, but the ones that had mastered the ability to adapt to changing circumstances..

Adaptability is important, but not at the cost of understanding and learning about the fundamental pillars on which this world stands..

Don't rush because when you run, your visions starts to become more narrow.. In your pursuit to reach your goal, you lose the ability to look at the macro details surrounding your goal..

Learning new technology is important, but that doesn't mean that you don't learn about various approaches or how to design a more logical or efficient solution...

Refactoring the code, developing good Testing procedures, learning to interact with your fellow developers are as crucial as learning about the changing trends...

Even, in this ever-changing world, understand that some things will always remain the same, like the adrenaline that course through your veins when you finally solve a long-standing problem...

Curiosity, Discovery and Exploration are the key pillars and hence, when we rush in, we might stop exploring and lose curiosity to discover new and exciting ways to reach our goal..

Or, we might also end up losing the drive that grips us and motivates to continue moving forward inspite of the challenges standing between us and our destination..

And, believe me, once you lose this quality, you might still succeed but the contentment and the satisfaction that you feel will be lost..

And, then, you will remain a developer only through your designation... And, that in my personal opinion, the worst punishment.

After working on 7 projects last year with 7 different groups and learning to "flow like water", I don't feel the urge to rant anymore. There are always going to be all kinds of weird scenes, cheap clients, incompetent coworkers, people that pretend to know something when they actually know shit. All of those are just tests life is presenting you to make you learn to be peaceful and tolerant.

The world is broken, accept it, and allow yourself to be an ordinary human being, you'll be free and happier. Stuff like the law of attraction does exist. Just learn to be happy and grateful for what you get and you'll get a ton more reasons to be happy and grateful

The reason I stick around at my current job is thanks to a mentor who has helped me reach greater potential.

He's our senior architect.

It began with him simply bouncing ideas off me. I was a rubber duck basically. After a while I began to understand these ideas. All sorts of design patterns, cache invalidation problems and solutions, and so much more.

It was almost as if through osmosis that I began to research things and learn more and more about topics I had only barely seen in high-level articles and papers.

Once I began to contribute to the discussion, he helped foster that. I went from being a rubber duck to a protege.

My pay here isn't what it should be. The problems we're faced with are stressful and often times wear me out. I stay because I'm self-taught and I yearn for learning as I always have.

This isn't just my job, but my passion. I love what I do, and I get up happy to come here every day knowing I'll learn something new while doing what I love.

When I was around 13 I started programming html and designing websites on and off over the years. Later during my first year of college I picked up C++ and loved it. I always had this idea that web design was very elementary programming until recently.

I recently got forced into learning C# and ASP.NET Core MVC by my internship. Holy shit was I wrong. Web design is so insanely complex and interesting!

C#, ASP.NET Core MVC, HTML, CSS, JS, Entity Framework Core, and the list goes on.....all to create a single website/web application.

I apologize for my ignorance to the website development community.

I’m so excited to learn all of this! =D

We need to normalize not being a passionate CS guru. You can be good at your job and not have passion for it. You don't have to dedicate your life to your career in every facet.

I don't expect plumbers to sit around their house all day during their free time hooking up water lines. Why is it expected that I'm always reading some dev book or learning some new framework or reading some tech blog?

I do other shit, and that's fine. My job earns me a paycheck and I'll improve on the clock, and when I walk out at the end of the day I leave that shit there.

At most I might converse with you informally about tech but I'm not going to spend my little free time going to meetups and pretending like I care more than I do. If you do that's great, but I'm not you and that's fuckin fine too.

This is just a bunch of things I needed to get out that I’ve been holding in for a while now.

Recently I’ve found myself In this state where I feel so depressed, lazy, and just pressured to program in general. I feel like it comes from me dismissing my abilities a lot of the time and I get demotivated to do stuff but at the same time when I do sit down and code I get distracted so easily, I can get work done but I just feel like I’m everywhere.

I want to apply for positions but I’m in this duality where I both feel like I can or can’t do it, I feel like wherever I apply to will not be accepting to people that don’t have a big degree or a ton of work experience and that I’ll get fucked on it. I’m fucking anxious that if I do get a job they will be like “hey fucking do X” and I will have no fucking clue how to even do X, and I’ve had people tell me that they know for a fact I can do it but I still fucking can’t believe it because I just completely doubt myself because I have failed at things like learning certain frameworks or failing to make the things I want and having to turn to simpler projects first because I’m too overwhelmed by the scale and I didn’t do any thinking about it before hand.

I don’t know if I’m making sense at all, I always write out rants like this and I always just erase them because I fucking hate whining like this but I need to let it out before I go more crazy I’ve been holding so much in for a long time now and it’s not been good.

I just over all feel terrible, anxious, and unproductive and I want it to stop.

!rant

Hey all... I have a question...
So, I m really burnt out of coding (C++ guy here)... I have always been learning something but never built anything... I really wanna make some game or something but it jst takes soooo long... M really lacking motivation and m soooo through learning stuff for now...
Please suggest what do i do? (Cant change language... I find all others boring... No offense)

When people keep asking the same kind of questions over and over and you realize it's your fault for always helping them out so they don't learn how to debug on their own.

It's hard to do nothing but in a learning environment it's often the best.

Finally installed Linux(Mint) on my laptop.

I guess I'll need to install some essential things that I need to really make use of it. I'm just exploring right now and so far, I'm loving it.

Got really tired of the BSOD that Windows kept giving me.
I've tried a few solutions, but it seems like it has made its comfortable nest inside and shows its sad face whenever it feels like it and ruins my important work (not really, but it really pisses me off)
Can't get rid of Windows completely because I need it for various reasons.

I've used Linux(Red Hat) before and also my university computers have Red Hat installed.
I would've also installed it on my PC, but it doesn't work right now.

Thanks,guys!
(For making me want to use Linux)
I really have a lot to learn.

PS - I can barely see what I'm typing here. Is it just me or is it really just bright as shit? (On web, of course)

tldr; devRant is great

My favorite part of devRant is I ask an opinion on a technology and so many people give me alternatives or ideas to look into and learn about instead. This is why I enjoy this community I'm always learning about new things i probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. Or at least wouldn't have run into for a long while. Thank you all

# school suck
! coding

hello, hope im not bothering anyone with my adolescent problems, but im really angry towards school.

first of all,
the subjects get thaught much too slow.
like dafuq, why does our maths teacher need 6h to teach us what square roots are? Why does our history teacher need 10h to teach us about one single revolution???

and worst of all: why is everything accompagnied by long, repetitive, homework?

Also, why do they think that im bad just because i dont have the best grades??? im a GOOD average, without learning a TAD!!!

also, here i am, needing to learn maths for some it project.
when i ask any teacher, he doesnt explain it to me but says "you will learn that in class xy"

ok, then i guess i can teach it myself.
but when i take books into school to read em (remember, i already know the subjects), the teachers always take em from me.

also, im not allowed to talk to anyone. not even when idle.

so currently, i am trying not to get angry from this, tomorrow school starts again. after this year legally, i would be allowed to drop out.

could you please tell me what you would do? should i drop out? change school? change class? im open to reolly anything that possibly could help (my parents arent)

!rant, but some kind of story

I work as a lead dev on a gmod server of a pretty big german community. With the fun stuff, there come the duty‘s to help Jr. Devs or even help people get into Developing. The part, where you help junior devs is always fun, but what I find interesting is the part where you help people learn coding. It’s not easy work, but you learn more every “lesson”. I catch myself exploring and learning something new, even if I know the topic. For me it’s a new journey every time.
Not sure if there are many people who can relate but I just wanted to tell my side on it.

After exhaustive talking to my boss, who always expresses the same concerns, we always end up agreeing that we need to separate development across our coworkers competences ...
We are even gonna hire a full front-end developer this time (as we did with the last 3 hires)..

And what did he do you may ask...
Put our front ender in charge of:
- Build a api in python
- Build the front-end
- 2 months deadline

The front ender is smart and is constantly asking me stuff and learning a lot.

But wtf boss? I could do it in no time...
I literally spent this whole week doing nothing, waiting for some approvals...

He is making everyone unmotivated as fuck ...

I'm starting to wonder pretty fucking every time if he is genuinely retarded.

Once again I have loads.

My best teachers were...

The contractor that taught me C#, ASP MVC and SQL Server. Dude was a legend, so calm and collected. He wanted to learn JQuery and Bootstrap so at the same time as teaching, he was learning from me. Such an inspirational person, to know your subordinates still have something to teach you. He also taught me a lot about working methodically and improving my pragmatism.

The other, in school I studied computing A-Level. 100% scored at least one of the exams... basically I knew my stuff.

But, as a kid, I didn’t know how to formulate my answers, or even string together coherent answers for the exams. This dude noticed, first thing he did was said “well you’re better at this bit than me, practice but you’ll be fine” (manually working out two’s complement binary of a number).

Second thing he did was say “you know what man, you know what you’re on about but nobody else is ever going to know that”.

He helped me on the subjects I wasn’t perfect on, then he helped me on formulating my answers correctly.

He also put up with my shit attendance, being a teenager with a motorcycle who thinks he knows it all, has its downsides.

As a result, I aced the hell out of that course, legendary grades and he got himself a bit of a bonus for it to use on his holiday. Everyone’s a winner.

Liam, Jason, if you guys are out there I owe you both thanks for making me the person I am today.

The worst, I’ve had too many to name... but it comes down to this:
- identify your students strengths and weaknesses, focus on the weaknesses
- identify your own and know when to ask for help yourself
- be patient, learning hurts.

You can always tell a passionate teacher from one who’s there for the paycheck.

Need some advice -

I have over one month spare time before joining the company. I have always wanted to learn an instrument but I'm also 'thinking' of joining a gym but I don't have any fantasies for big biceps and I am a big time foodie.

I have read that learning new instruments would help you in critical and out of the box thinking which is a definite plus while programming. While joining a gym would be a good way to keep myself fit in this hectic world of programming.

I'm torn in choosing between these two options. Which one should I join as a developer? What would my fellow devs suggest? 🤔

i always go out of my way to help people learning to code. as a self-thought coder myself, i remember the struggles of starting out and not knowing the basic shit. but it seems that in todays environment, when there are a lot more resources, gamified platforms, tutorials, online courses, paid and free, their motivation to actually learn stuff, is non existing.

learn what the css property actually is before torrenting the fucking useless 40 hours video tutorial on how to use the shitty bootstrap.

I started learning Golang today and really like it.

The error handling is *excellent*. It always works the same way and is standardized, unlike the hell that NodeJS error handling is (.catch(), try).

Modules confused the fuck out of me. I eventually figured out how they worked, but Go really doesn't try to make it easy to have multiple source folders...

I'll probably be re-writing my Discord Bot in Golang soon. Being able to have just one binary output will make things infinitely easier. Compile-time variables are another feature that's nice and easy to implement.

The goal is only having to upload a single binary to deploy on production from my CI script that has all keys and stuff inside. Feels good to finally throw all that old bad JS code out and starting completely fresh.

Hello DevRant community! It’s been a while, almost 5 years to be exact. The last time I posted here, I was a newbie, grappling with the challenges of a new job in a completely new country. Oh, how time flies!

Fast forward to today, and it’s been quite the journey. The codebase that once seemed like an indecipherable maze is now my playground. The bugs that used to keep me up at night are now my morning coffee puzzles. And the team, oh the team! We’ve moved from awkward nods to inside jokes and shared victories.

But let’s talk about the real hero here - the coffee machine. The unsung hero that has fueled late-night coding sessions and early morning stand-ups. It’s seen more heated debates than the PR comments section. If only it could talk, it would probably write its own rant about the indecisiveness of developers choosing between cappuccino and latte.

And then there are the unforgettable ‘learning opportunities’ - moments like accidentally shutting down the production server or dropping the customer database. Yes, they were panic-inducing crises of apocalyptic proportions at that time, but in hindsight, they were valuable lessons. Lessons about the importance of thorough testing, proper version control, reliable backup systems, and most importantly, owning up to our mistakes.

So here’s to the victories and failures, the bugs and fixes, the refactorings and 'wontfix’s. Here’s to the incredible journey of growth and learning. And most importantly, here’s to this amazing community that’s always been there with advice, sympathy, humor, and support.

Can’t wait to see what the next 5 years bring! 🥂

Automation always fascinated me. Not only it looks and behaves like a life form, it also can perform billions of calculations without making a single mistake while I can’t even multiply double-digit numbers with my double-digit IQ.

If you pick the right components, you can make an immortal, perfect machine that can do its job for centuries, even millennia without a single mistake. There is nothing else on earth that can do this.

There is a robot surgeon and its hands never shake. It’s just flawless. If it fucks up, there is only you to blame, the flawed, pathetic operator.

And now it’s time to remember that it was just a 40s technology all along. And now it’s time to remember that now there is machine learning. A whole new perspective isn’t it. All the mistakes that machines make are sitting in front of the monitors.

No wonder I decided to be an engineer.