[Client]
We've noticed we gave you the wrong product prices for our new online shop.

[Dev]
Yeah, just login to the backend and fix them.

[Client]
But we don't want to use your fancy backend, we'll be using anyway soon - we want EXCEL!
Could you send us an EXCEL, so we can fix that?
How much will this cost?

[Dev]
Sure... here you are.
Not that much, takes about an hour.

[Client]
Great, you'll hear from us in a few days.

(a few months later...)

[Client]
We've finally managed to update the EXCEL. And btw, we've also added a bunch of columns with product pictures and new properties, highlighted products to delete red, inserted some comments with manual instructions and basically destroyed the entire data structure of this table.

Before I forget... also make sure to get this finished today, we have to go live ASAP. Our marketing campaign is already live.

[Dev]
Well, I'm sorry to say this, but this is not possible.
I'm currently working on another project and it will take me hours to clean up the data you sent me, before even starting to build an import tool for the new data you provided. Better stop the campaign and I'll do my best to get this done by the end of the week. Also it may be a bit costly.

(angry client calls immediately...)

(dev transfers to manager...)

(client transfers to client's boss...)

[Manager]
Ok Dev, I think I was able to explain it to them. However, it would be great if you spend day and night to get this thing out ASAP.

[Dev]
No problem...
I'll just do it by hand to get this out immediately.

(few days later; nearly done, exhausted)

[Client]
Hey Dev, here's another EXCEL.
We've just noticed there were a bunch of errors in the previous one. Please use this instead...

Best: the tool that works for the job.
Worst: the tool that doesn’t.

Example: Ruby is great for scripts and web dev, but simply doesn’t work for graphics engines.

Example: SQL is great for fetching data (etc.), but it is absolutely terrible for business logic.

Example: XSLT is great for lowering your faith and your will to live, but it is absolutely awful for literally every other purpose.

Spent most of the day debugging issues with a new release. Logging tool was saying we were getting HTTP 400’s and 500’s from the backend. Couldn’t figure it out.

Eventually found the backend sometimes sends down successful responses but with statusCode 500 for no reason what so ever. Got so annoyed ... but said the 400’s must be us so can’t blame them for everything.

Turns out backend also sometimes does the opposite. Sends down errors with HTTP 200’s. A junior app Dev was apparently so annoyed that backend wouldn’t fix it, that he wrote code to parse the response, if it contained an error, re-wrote the statusCode to 400 and then passed the response up to the next layer. He never documented it before he left.

Saving the best part for last. Backend says their code is fine, it must be one of the other layers (load balancers, proxies etc) managed by one of the other teams in the company ... we didn’t contact any of these teams, no no no, that would require effort. No we’ve just blamed them privately and that’s that.

#successfulRelease

Ok story of my most most recent job search (not sure devRant could handle the load if I was to go through them all)

First a little backstory on why I needed to search for a new job:

Joined a small startup in the blockchain space. They were funded through grants from a non-profit setup by the folks who invented the blockchain and raised funds (they gave those funds out to companies willing to build the various pieces of the network and tools).

We were one of a handful of companies working on the early stages of the network. We built numerous "first"s on the network and spent the majority of our time finding bugs and issues and asking others to fix them so it would become possible, for us to do what we signed up for. We ended up having to build multiple server side applications as middleware to plug massive gaps. All going great, had a lot of success, were told face to face by the foundation not to worry about securing more funds at least for the near term as we were "critical to the success of the network".

1 month later a bug was discovered in our major product, was nasty and we had to take it offline. Nobody lost any funds.

1-2 months later again, the inventor of the blockchain (His majesty, Lord dickhead of cuntinstein) decided to join the foundation as he wasn't happy with the orgs progress and where the network now stood. Immediately says "see that small startup over there ... yeah I hate them. Blackball them from getting anymore money. Use them as an example to others that we are not afraid to cut funds if you fuck up"

Our CEO was informed. He asked for meetings with numerous people, including His royal highness, lord cockbag of never-wrong. The others told our CEO that they didn't agree with the decision, but their hands were tied and they were deeply sorry. Our CEO's pleas with The ghost of Christmas cuntyness, just fell on deaf ears.

CEO broke the news to us, he had 3 weeks of funds left to pay salaries. He'd pay us to keep things going and do whatever we could to reduce server costs, so we could leave everything up long enough for our users to migrate elsewhere. We reduced costs a lot by turning off non essential features, he gave us our last pay check and some great referrals. That was that and we very emotionally closed up shop.

When news got out, we then had to defend ourselves publicly, because the loch ness moron, decided to twist things in his favour. So yeah, AMAZING experience!

So an unemployed and broken man, I did the unthinkable ... I set my linkedin to "open to work". Fuck me every moronic recruiter in a 10,000 mile radius came after me. Didn't matter if I was qualified, didn't matter if I had no experience in that language or type of system, didn't matter if my bio explicitly said "I don't work with X, Y or Z" ... that only made them want me more.

I think I got somewhere around 20 - 30 messages per week, 1 - 2 being actually relevant to what I do. Applied to dozens of jobs myself, only contacted back by 1, who badly fucked up the job description and I wasn't a fit at all.

Got an email from company ABC, who worked on the same blockchain we got kicked off of. They were looking for people with my skills and the skills of one other dev in the preious company. They heard what happened and our CEO gave us a glowing recommendation. They largely offered us the job, but both of us said that we weren't interested in working anywhere near, that kick needing prick, again. We wanted to go elsewhere.

Went back to searching, finding nothing. The other dev got a contract job elsewhere. The guy from ABC message me again to say look, we understand your issues, you got fucked around. We can do out best to promise you'll never have to speak to, the abominable jizz stain, again. We'll also offer you a much bigger role, and a decent salary bump on top of that.

Told them i'd think about it. We ended up having a few more calls where they showed me designs of all the things they wanted to do, and plans on how they would raise money if the same thing was to ever happen to them. Eventually I gave in and signed up.

So far it was absolutely the right call. Haven't had to speak to the scrotum at all. The company is run entirely by engineers. Theres no 14 meetings per week to discuss "where we are" which just involves reading our planning tool tickets, out loud. I'm currently being left alone 99% of the week to get work done. and i'm largely in-charge of everything mobile. It was a fucking hellhole of a trip, but I came out the other side better off

I'm sure there is a thought provoking, meaningful quote I could be writing now about how "things always work out" or that crap. But remembering it all just leaves me with the desire to find him and shove a cactus where the sun don't shine

.... happy job hunting everyone!

Man I really need to get this off my chest. So here goes.
I just finished 1 year in corporate after college. When I joined, the team I got was brilliant, more than what I thought I would get. About 6 months in, the project manager and lead dev left the company. Two replacements took their place, and life's been hell ever since.

The new PM decided it was his responsibility to be our spokesperson and started talking to our overseas manager (call her GM) on our behalf, even in the meetings where we were present, putting words in our mouth so that he's excellent and we get a bad rep.

1 month in, GM came to visit our location for a week. She was initially very friendly towards all of us. About halfway through the week, I realized that she had basically antagonized the entire old team members. Our responsibilities got redistributed and the work I was set to do was assigned to the new dev (call her NR).

Since then, I noticed GM started giving me the most difficult tasks and then criticizing my work extra hard, and the work NR was doing was praised no matter what. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but lately the truth hit me hard. I found out a fault in NR's code and both PM and GM started saying that because I found it, it was my responsibility to fix it. I went through the buggy code for hours and fixed it. (NR didn't know how it worked, because she had it written by the lead dev and told everyone she wrote it).

I found out lately that NR and PM got the most hike, because they apparently "learnt" new tech (both of them got their work done by others and hogged the credit).They are the first in line to go onsite because they've been doing 'management work'. They'd complained to GM during her visit that we were not friendly towards them. And from that point on if anything went wrong, it would be my fault, because my component found it out (I should mention that my component mostly deals with the backend logic, so its pretty adept at finding code leaks).

What broke my patience is the fact that lately I worked my ass off to deliver some of the best code I'd written, but my GM said in front of the entire team that at this point "I'm just wasting money". She's been making a bad example out of me for some time, but this one took the cake. I had just delivered a promising result in a task in 1 week that couldn't be done by my PM in 4 weeks, and guess what? "It's not good enough". No thank you, no appreciation, nothing. Finally, I decided I'd had enough of it and started just doing tasks as I could. I'd do what they ask, but won't go above and beyond my way to make it perfect.

My PM realized this and then started pushing me harder. Two days back, I sent a mail to the team with GM in cc exposing a flaw in the code he had written, and no one bothered to reply (the issue was critical). When I asked him about it, he said "How can you expect me to reply so soon when it's already been told that when anything happens we should first resolve within the team and then add GM in the loop?" I realized it was indeed discussed, but the issue was extremely urgent, so I had asked everyone involved, and it portrayed him in a bad light. I could've fixed it, but I didn't because on the off chance if it broke something, they'd start telling me that I broke the tool, how its my fault and how its a critical issue I have to fix ASAP, etc. etc., you get the idea.

Can anyone give me some advice of how to deal with this kind of situation? I would have left but with this pandemic going on, market being scarce and the fact that I'm only experienced by 1 year, I don't think I qualify for a job switch just now.

The amount of much political correctness in the dev community just pisses me off sometimes.

I've watched "Use the right tool / language for the job" has become *THE* excuse for shitty tools and languages. 

Case in point -- JavaScript. If you want to make a website that interacts with the end user, the right tool is JavaScript. But that's because IT'S THE ONLY TOOL. Does that make it a *good* tool?

HELL NO.

/midranttimeout

Brendan Eich, I forgive you. You had 10 days and a corporation on your case.

That's not saying JavaScript doesn't have some good things in it. It does. But "Javascript the good parts" is a fucking thin book.

Sure, some amazing things have been written in JavaScript. Great communities have coalesced around this cancer.

BUT THATS IN SPITE OF JAVASCRIPT, NOT BECAUSE OF IT. AS A LANGAUGE IT'S STILL A STEAMING PILE OF DOGSHIT.

A master can draw great art with a shitty piece of charcoal. That doesn't make charcoal THE BEST DRAWING TOOL EVARRR. It's just a testament to the master's craft.

If you started your programming journey with JavaScript, do expand your horizons.

Break free from Stockholm's syndrome.

Discard your cognitive dissonance.

See JavaScript for what it is -- a shitty language everyone was forced to use. 

PS: Don't even get me started on Java ...

First rant: but I'm so triggered and everyone needs a break from all the EU and PC rants.

It's time to defend JavaScript. That's right, the best frikin language in the universe.

Features:
incredible async code (await/async)
universal support on almost everything connected to the internet
runs on almost all platforms including natively
dynamically interpreted but also internally compiled (like Perl)
gave birth to JSON (you're welcome ppl who remember that the X in AJAX stood for XML)

All these people ranting about JS don't understand that JS isn't frikin magic. It does what it needs to do well.

If you're using it for compute-heavy machine learning, or to maintain a 100k LOC project without Typescript, then why'd you shoot yourself in the foot?

As a proud JS developer I gotta scroll through all these posts gushing over the other languages. Why does nobody rant about using Python for bitcoin mining or Erlang to create a media player?

Cuz if you use the wrong tool for the right job, it's of course gonna blow up in your face.

For example, there was a post claiming JS developers were "scared" of multithreading and only stick in their comfort zone. Like WTF when NodeJS came out everything was multithreaded. It took some brave developers to step out of the comfort zone to embrace the event loop.

For a web app, things like PHP and Node should only be doing light transforms between the database information and HTML anyways. You get one thread to handle the server because you're keeping other threads open to interface with databases and the filesystem. The Nexus.js dev ranting on all us JS devs and doesn't realize that nobody's actual web server is CPU bound because of writing HTML bodies, thats why we only use 1 thread. We use other worker threads to do the heavy lifting (yes there is a C++ bridge look it up)

Anyways TL;DR plz respect JS developers we're people too. ES7 is magic and please don't shit on ES3 or we'll start shitting on the Python 2-3 conversion (need to maintain an outdated binary just cuz people leave out ()'s in their print statements)

Or at least agree that VB.NET is an abomination and insult to the beauty that is TI-84 BASIC

We were 6 devs on a big project that needed to be completed in 3 months. Probably my first project as a full-stack dev and the work was very demanding.

The senior of my team was a very sharp and energetic, but also a very "in your face" kinda guy. Like, he was cool, but sometimes a little too much to handle for some people.

Anyway, this guy "Senior dev" worked faster (naturally) and harder than the rest of us and was always willing to help if somebody had problems with a framework, tool or other technology. Also, there was this other guy also a good dev (second best I would say) that just hated the first guy's guts for being "rude and obnoxious" as he put it.

One day, the PM and the senior had an argument about a major change that the PM had agreed to (just to save face with the client) that will force the team to come to work on the weekend. In the end he saved us the trouble of going throught that and the PM had to tell the client that the change wouldn't be made. From then on it went downhill for "Sr. dev" in the company. Until one day he was told that his contract was not gonna be renewed.

Short after, he showed some of us a screen cap. somebody sent him of an email from the "hateful" dev to the PM in which he wrote he had heard that the senior guy was leaving and he couldn't be happier because he was "damaging, problematic and a stressful part of his job". That was such a dick move, we thought he should get back at the guy.

So he sent a fake email to the PM using the "hateful" guy's email ID, that read:

"Dear PM. I'm sorry I said those things about 'Senior dev', I guess I'm just mad that he's a better professional than me and mad that I was born with no genitalia".

After the senior dev left I worked on one more project with the "hateful" dev and he was let go mid project for "not being proactive and making little effort on completing the project".

I’m tired of all these profane “frontend developers” who do nothing but get cheap internet points by shitting on web technologies.

Bitch, NPM is just a package manager. That’s what it is. Anyone who ever used a package manager already knows how to use NPM.

Here on devrant, there at your workplace, people hear nothing but bitching when you open your mouth. You always need a “solid task description” and “best practices”. You always need somebody else to do your job for you. Frontend is the area where you have to constantly switch between heavy, performance-oriented coding, UX and graphic design while remaining in a dynamic environment that is called “web”, no wonder why you can’t do that. Instead of bitching, you could just present your own solution you designed with just a little bit of product-oriented thinking. But noooo, you fucking bother designers whenever you’re not sure about “how many pixels is that padding”.

You can only be barely productive (and only with a frozen spec) but can never take the lead just once.

In the 80s your kind of approaches were doubted, by the 90s they were dead. In 2020s they’re straight up laughable.

And don’t get me started on CSS. You have to be an absolute buffoon of a developer to not know how to use a DECLARATIVE tool that don’t even require real structural thinking.

No wonder why you praise php. You throw shit all over the place and tell everybody that you’re a “sociopath” and you don’t need that “stupid frontend” and “stupid users”. But you know what? Any real backend or embedded dev would’ve laughed at your face.

Because backend developers are respected.

You’re not.

I'm not sure *why*, but I increasingly see the following pattern:

Challenge a primarily OO / imperative dev by saying OO or imperative styles aren't always a good fit, and that a stateless functional approach can offer advantages, and you often get something akin to:

"Yeah, it's new to me so I'm still working my way around it, but I get that. Makes a lot of sense."

Challenge a functional dev by saying the functional style isn't always best, and in some cases functional isn't a good fit, and you tend to get:

"YOU IMBECILE! YOU ARE SIMPLY CONSTRAINED BY YOUR YEARS OF MINDLESSLY FOLLOWING THE OO HERD! FUNCTIONAL IS ALWAYS SUPERIOR!! ALWAYS, I TELL YOU!!"

I mean geez guys, calm down and learn it's just another tool in the toolbox. I get that popular paradigms emerge and have their die-hard supporters, but I didn't even see this kind of thing when OO became the "new thing everyone needs to use for everything" in the 90's.

So... Heard back from a recruiter today. Lovely lass.

I’d passed over a submission for her tech demo.

The brief was basically just to create a small simple module that calculates shit, nae effort.

But, when the recruiter had me on the phone she said “I know it’s a silly small module but try and run it up like you would a production ready app”.

The job spec and recruiter were keen on me demonstrating TDD, not specific on js version, final runtime, etc. The job was a senior spec at a higher salary range. So it warranted some effort, and demonstrating more than a simple module.

“Okay, cool, nae bother, let’s crack on.”

The feedback in the response from the dev today:
“He’s over-engineered tests, build...”

SUCK MY LEFT TESTICLE YOU FUCKWIT.

Talk to your recruiters, not me.

The feedback included a phrase I never hope to hear from a developer I work with:
“Tests are good but...” 😞

It was a standard 98% test suite from an RGR cycle, no more or less than I’d expect in prod.

The rest of the feedback was misguided or plain wrong. It was useful to see because I know now when they say they have “high standards” they mean: we listen to the dude who put the factory pattern in a JS brief.

Oh shit also: “someone’s done chmod 777” was in there as a sarcastic comment in the feedback. It was his fucking unarchive tool 😞

My response was brief and polite: “cheers for the consideration, all the best, James”

It’s honestly not worth warning them. Or, asking why they’d criticise something they’d asked me to do.

If you want a shitty js module, ask for a shitty js module and no more.

The best stress reliever tool is dev rant for me. Is that same for you ?

My biggest problem with Visual Studio Code is that every fucking piece of shit dev thinks it's their duty to introduce it to me. STOP. Just stop this shit, alright? Wanna use vscode? Fine, just don't tell me it's the best tool and I MUST use it instead of the tools I'm used to. I'm tired of this bullshit.
Every new project, every new team. Starting from js/java/.net monke and ending with PMs, I must hear this bullshit about god blessed IDE that I must use, because "why you need intellij/webstorm/rider? just install vscode and some plugins. we all use it in our project and it's ok".
FUCK YOU! Refactoring is not just renaming variables and extracting blocks of code into functions. If you want terminal integrated into your text editor with highlighting and LSP support, so be it. I want an IDE with rich refactoring tools, code analysis and good completion, database viewing/modeling support, good build tools support, good UI for git and git-diff, good test and code coverage support. I don't want your semi-IDE, bloated with hundreds of bugged third-party plugins, which I must spend a week on to configure and merry with each other before using.
JUST STOP this crap and let people use the tools they are proficient/comfortable/productive with.

I am amazed that nobody mentioned Cloud9. I have been using it for 3 years and it is the best Cloud IDE ever.

"What is going on... this should work?!
Is my maths wrong?
My maths is wrong...
Oh no!
It's a model view projection matrix?!
I'm shit if I'm failing at this, it's 3D dev 101!
I got a first class degree... I don't deserve any of this or this job!!"

<2 seconds later>

uniforms.viewMatrix.set(camera.matrixWorldInverse.elements);
uniforms.viewMatrix.set(camera.projectionMatrix.elements);

"You set the same uniform twice you tool, due to copy and paste..."

Imposter syndrome in my early days put myself into a roller coaster of emotions. I always compared myself to others to the detriment of myself.
Thankfully overcame that working with some great guys.

But yeah, coding has impacted life for the best though. The challenge, creativity and constant learning is beautiful.

A bit late.. and not much about how to learn to code..but more of a figuring out if the kid has a right mind set to do so..

If the kid is not the type to question everything, not resourceful, not a logical/critical thinker, gives up easily and especially if not interested in how things work then being a dev is most probably not for them.. they can still persue coding, but it will end badly..

From my experience, people who have a better education than me, but lack those skills turned out to be a crappy dev.. not interested in the best tool to complete the tasks, just making 'something', adding more shit to the already shitty stack.. and being happy with that.. which of course is not the best way to do things around here..or in life!!

Soo.. if the kid shows all that and most importantly shows interest in learning to code.. throw him the java ultimate edition book and see what happens.. joke!

There are plenty of apps thath can get you started (tried mimo, but being devs yourself it's probably not so hard to check some out and weed out the bad ones) that explain simple logic and syntax.. there is w3schools that explains basics quite well and lets you tinker online with js and python..
so maybe show them these and see what happens.. If it will pick their interest, they will soon start to ask the right questions.. and you can go from there..

If the kids are not the 'evil spawns' of already dev parents or don't have crazy dev aunties and uncles, then they will have to work things out themselves or ask friends... or seek help online (the resourceful part comes here).. so google or any flavour of search engines is their friend..

Just hope they don't venture to stack overflow too soon or they will want to kill themselves /* a little joke, but also a bit true.. */

Anyhow, if the kid is exhibiting 'dev traits' it is not even a question how to introduce it to the coding.. they will find a way.. if not, do not force them to learn coding "because it's in and makes you a lot of moneyz"..
As with other things in life, do not force kids to do anything that you think will be best for them.. Point them in direction, show them how it might be fun and usefull, a little nudge in the right direction.. but do not force.. ever!!!

And also another thing to consider.. most of the documentation and code is written in english.. If they are not proficient, they will have a hard time learning, checking docs, finding answers.. so make sure they learn english first!!
Not just for coding, knowing english will help them in life in general. So maaaaybe force them to learn this a bit..

One day my husband came to me and asked me how he can learn.. and if it's too late for him to learn coding.. that he found some app and if I can take a look and tell him what I think, if it is an ok app to learn..
I was both flattered and stumped at the same time..
Explained to him that in my view, he is a bit old to start now, at least to be competitive on the market and to do this for a living, but if it interests him for som personal projects, why not.. you're never too old to start learning and finding a new hobby..

Anyhow, I've pointed out to him that he will have to better his english in order to be able to find the answers to questions and potential problems.. and that I'm happy to help where and when I can, but most of the job will be on him.

So yeah, showed him some tutorials, explained things a bit.. he soon lost interest after a week and was mindblown how I can do this every day..

And I think this is really how you should introduce coding to kids.. show them some easy tutorials, explain simple logic to them.. see how they react.. if they pick it up easily, show them something more advanced.. if they lose interest, let them be.

To sum up:
- check first if they really want to learn this or this is something they're forced to do (if latter everything you say is a waste of everybodys time)
- english is important
- asking questions (& questioning the code) is mandatory so don't be afraid to ask for help
- admitting not knowing something is the first step to learning
- learn to 'google' & weed out the crap
- documentation is your friend
- comments & docs sometimes lie, so use the force (go check the source)
- once you learn the basics its just a matter of language flavour..adjust some logic here, some sintax there..
- if you're stuck with a problem, try to see it from a different angle
- debugging is part of coder life, learn to 'love' it

Im fucking fed up with overbloated "all in one" ORMs.

For shit I cant find simple ORM that would literally just do fucking CRUD for me.

Thats all I require for some small project, yet still for few tables I have 2 choices:
a) do it without ORM and write models with raw SQL (which I usually end up doing, as its just more fault tolerant and works better)
b) install overloaded ORM that I wont use even 1% of features

Guys, why the fuck nobody created anything small, tiny and yet usefull? I know my SQL sucks and that is reason I want to use ORM in the first place. But when Im just forced?

Best what I found in terms of ease of use, and beeing not too heavy was RedBeanPHP.

A freaking ORM that will create database on the fly. It's awesome, sure. It's usefull, sure.

BUT STILL ALL I NEED IN SMALL PROJECT IS 1% OF THAT FUNCTIONALITY.

Does literally every single ORM dev want to feel their dick when they list out features list?

There should be allways proper tool for proper job. Its like using symfony for creating onepage website with contact form. WTF.

My work product: Or why I learned to get twitchy around Java...

I maintain a Java based test system, that tests a raster image processor. The client is a Java swing project that contains CORBA bindings to the internal API of the raster image processor. It also has custom written UI elements and duplicated functionality that became available in later versions of Java, but because some of the third party tools we use don't work with later versions of Java for some reason, it's not possible to upgrade Java to gain things as simple as recursive directory deletion, yes the version of Java we have to use does not support something as simple as that and custom code had to be written to support it.

Because of the requirement to build the API bindings along with the client the whole application must be built with the raster image processor build chain, which is a heavily customised jam build system. So an ant task calls out to execute a jam task and jam does about 90% of the heavy lifting.

In addition to the Java code there's code for interpreting PostScript files, as these can be used to alter the behaviour of the raster image processor during testing.

As if that weren't enough, there's a beanshell interface to allow users to script the test system, but none of the users know Java well enough to feel confident writing interpreted Java scripts (and that's too close to JavaScript for my comfort). I once tried swapping this out for the Rhino JavaScript interpreter and got all the verbal support in the world but no developer time to design an API that'd work for all the departments.

The server isn't much better though. It's a tomcat based application that was written by someone who had never built a tomcat application before, or any web application for that matter and uses raw SQL strings instead of an orm, it doesn't use MVC in any way, and insane amount of functionality is dumped into the jsp files.

It too interacts with a raster image processor to create difference masks of the output, running PostScript as needed. It spawns off multiple threads and can spend days processing hundreds of gigabytes of image output (depending on the size of the tests).

We're stuck on Tomcat seven because we can't upgrade beyond Java 6, which brings a whole manner of security issues, but that eager little Java updated will break the tool chain if it gets its way.

Between these two components we have the Java RMI server (sometimes) working to help generate image data on the client side before all images are pulled across a UNC network path onto the server that processes test jobs (in PDF format), by reading into the xref table of said PDF, finding the embedded image data (for our server consumed test files are just flate encoded TIFF files wrapped around just enough PDF to make them valid) and uses a tool to create a difference mask of two images.

This tool is very error prone, it can't difference images of different sizes, colour spaces, orientations or pixel depths, but it's the best we have.

The tool is installed in both the client and server if the client can generate images it'll query from the server which ones it needs to and if it can't the server will use the tool itself.

Our shells have custom profiles for linking to a whole manner of third party tools and libraries, including a link to visual studio 2005 (more indirectly related build dependencies), the whole profile has to ensure that absolutely no operating system pollution gets into the shell, most of our apps are installed in our home directories and we have to ensure our paths are correct for every single application we add.

And... Fucking and!

Most of the tools are stored as source bundles in a version control system... Not got or mercurial, not perforce or svn, not even CVS... They use a custom built version control system that is built on top of RCS, it keeps a central database of locked files (using soft and hard locks along with write protecting the files in the file system) to ensure users can't get merge conflicts by preventing other users from writing to the files at all.

Branching is heavy weight and can take the best part of a day to create a new branch and populate the history.

Gathering the tools alone to build the Dev environment to build my project takes the best part of a week.

What should be a joy come hardware refresh year becomes a curse ("Well fuck, now I loose a week spending it setting up the Dev environment on ANOTHER machine").

Needless to say, I enjoy NOT working with Java. A lot of this isn't Javas fault, but there's a lot of things that Java (specifically the Java 6 version we're stuck on) does not make easy.

This is why I prefer to build my web apps in python or node, hell, I'd even take Lua... Just... Compiling web pages into executable Java classes, why? I mean I understand the implementation of how this happens, but why did my predecessor have to choose this? Why?

I had a pretty good year! I've gone from being a totally unknown passionate web dev to a respected full stack dev. This will be a bit lengthy rant...
Best:
- Got my first full time employment dev role at a company after being self-taught for 8+ years at the start of the year. Finally got someone to take the risk of hiring someone who's "untested" and only done small and odd jobs professionally. This kickstarted my career, super grateful for that!
- Started my own programming consulting company.
- Gained enough confidence to apply to other jobs, snatched a few consulting jobs, nailed the interviews even though I never practiced any leet code.
- Currently work as a 99% remote dev (only meet up in person during the initialization of some projects.) I never thought working remotely could actually work this well. I am able to stay productive and actually focus on the work instead of living up to the 9-5 standard. If I want to go for a walk to think I can do that, I can be as social and asocial as I want. I like to sleep in and work during the night with a cup of tea in the dark and it's not an issue! I really like the freedom and I feel like I've never been more productive.
- Ended up with very happy customers and now got a steady amount of jobs rolling in and contracts are being extended.
- I learned a lot, specialized in graph databases, no more db modelling hell. Loving it!
- Got a job where I can use my favorite tools and actually create something from scratch which includes a lot of different fields. I am really happy I can use all my skills and learn new things along the way, like data analysis, databricks, hadoop, data ingesting, centralised auth like promerium and centralised logging.
- I also learned how important softskills are, I've learned to understand my clients needs and how to both communicate both as a developer and an entrepeneur.
Worst:
- First job had a manager which just gave me the specifications solo project and didn't check in or meet me for 8 weeks with vague specifications. Turns out the manager was super biased on how to write code and wanted to micromanage every aspect while still being totally absent. They got mad that I had used AJAX for requests as that was a "waste of time".
- I learned the harsh reality of working as a contractor in the US from a foreign country. Worked on an "indefinite" contract, suddenly got a 2 day notification to sum up my work (not related to my performance) after being there for 7+ months.
- I really don't like the current industry standard when it comes to developing websites (I mostly work in node.js), I like working with static websites (with static website generators like what the Svelte.js driver) and use a REST API for dynamic content. When working on the backend there's a library for everything and I've wasted so many hours this year to fix bugs and create workarounds related to dependencies. You need to dive into a rabbit hole for every tool and do something which may work or break something later. I've had so many issues with CICD and deployment to the cloud. There's a library for everything but there's so many that it's impossible to learn about the edge cases of everything. Doesn't help that everything is abstracted away, which works 90% of the time but I use 15 times the time to debug things when a bug appears. I work against a black box which may or may not have an up to date documentation and it's so complex that it will require you to yell incantations from the F#$K
era and sacrifice a goat for it to work properly.
- Learned that a lot of companies call their complex services "microservices". Ah yes, the microservice with 20 endpoints which all do completely unrelated tasks?

best dev tool: human fingers
worst dev tool: human brain

There needs to be a new (MOOC) class for people like me.

Hi, I'm William. I can't get my head around designing systems. I've read GoF and a few breakdowns of it as well. I find some patterns obvious for my field of interest (game dev, woot!) while I'm reading through the stuff, but have a pretty hard time retaining much of it. I'm aware of the danger of over using patterns, so I don't worry that much about it. I'll look something up when I'm sure I need it.

Still, I'm tired of the tutorial blues. I can watch a few different people write entire games, usually not in the language of choice, but that only helps me so much.

How do I fight scope creep? In the meantime, how can I make things extensible? Scope does need to creep some, after all.

People joke about starting with (visual) BASIC ruining you forever. I don't believe in that crap, but is this just denial? Am I too dumb for this? Not that I'd ever seriously blame a language for that.

I've been a hobbyist for well over 10 years, please don't make me count exactly how long I've been unsuccessful.

I'm baffled by Löve. I think it's the coolest shit I've seen, maybe ever (unless we're counting IPFS).

I think what really prompted this rant, apart from the obvious degradation of my mental health, was my search for an entity component system for Löve/Lua. Hold your replies. I know there's a few of them, and I'm positive that they're fantastic. I'd roll my own, but that requires actual Lua specific knowledge that I just haven't dug all that deep into yet. I can't wrap my head around the ones that exist, even though I can tell their complexity is next to none really.

I have severe tool anxiety, I'm shocked that I've stuck with ZeroBrane Studio as long as I have. It feels good though.

Sorry to use this as "Devs Anonymous", but I think that's how this community helps (me) best.

I feel like I should stop now and just say: Advice? before this gets much deeper/less readable.