I think the weekly rants just exist because @dfox & @trogus got banned from stackoverflow and they still have questions.

When it comes to learning cutting edge tech... Go build already!

I found Rust intimidating.

I read the first few pages of the official book, got bored, gave up.

Few months later, decided to write a "simple" tool for generating pleasing Jetbrains IDE color schemes using Rust. I half-finished it by continuously looking up stuff, then got stuck at some ungoogleable compiler error.

Few months later I needed to build a microservice for work, and against better judgement gave Rust a try in the weekend. Ended up building an unrelated library instead, uploaded my first package to crates.io.

Got some people screaming at me that my Rust code sucked. Screamed back at them. After lots of screaming, I got some helpful PRs.

Eventually ended up building many services for work in Rust after all. With those services performing well under high load and having very few bugs, coworkers got interested. Started hiring Rust engineers, and educating interested PHP/JS devs.

Now I professionally write Rust code almost full-time.

Moral of the story:

Fuck books, use them for reference. Fuck Udemy (etc), unless you just want to 2x through it while pooping.

Learning is something you do by building a project, failing, building something else, falling again, building some more, sharing what you've made, fighting about what you've built with some entitled toxic nerds, abandoning half your projects and starting twelve new ones.

Reading code is better than reading documentation.

Listening to users of your library/product teaches you more than listening to keynote speakers at conferences.

Don't worry about failures, you don't need to deliver a working product for it to be a valuable experience.

Oh, and trying to teach OTHERS is an excellent method to discover gaps in your knowledge.

Just get your fucking hands dirty!

Wanted to make a website with some of my friends about whatever kid thing we were into at the time. None of our parents cared, it was the 90s and nobody took the internet seriously.

Copied and pasted bits of html into notepad and FTPed them to some free webhost over dialup. The website lasted three weeks -- my friends got bored, I got hooked.

A few years later I found myself wondering why some websites used ".php" instead of ".html". I discovered this shiny new thing called PHP 4. Built a website for some video game I was into using it. Spent the next two years teaching myself everything there was to know.

Took programming in high school. Chose CS over mechanical engineering because I liked the university better. Got an internship which turned into a job which turned into a career.

So this happened last week.

Last week I went as a volunteer to give an introduction class basic programming to some guys and gals who are going to attend computer science soon next year.

The class lasted one week and we had done some basic algorithms and programming in Python.
Besides that we also did some very basic websites (html, css and javascript).

Obviously all those people were very enthusiastic.
Some were a little bit too enthusiastic...

There were these 2 guys who were best friends. They already knew everything apparently. Even though they just finished high school they had been programming for over 10 years, had already made countless of websites, applications, 'hacked Windows', RATs and some amazing games.

So there were some people there who never had programmed before. I started giving the lecture and warned people who already knew some basics of programming the first day might be a quite boring but I could not simply skip it obviously.

Those 2 dickheads acted like the biggest childs ever, started screaming in class, making sure everyone knew they were bored, and were constantly complaining to me that they know what print, for, while and strings were. I stayed calm and tried to explain them again I simply couldn't skip parts of the lecture for them.

Every hour and every day it started getting worse and worse with them. Not only but the whole class were furiously mad at them. Some other students even started screaming at them. They screamed back insulting everyone they even didn't what php was and stupid stuff like that.

At some point they interrupted me AGAIN and asked me how long I programmed. I told him little them over 5 years or something. They started laughing at me. Those 2 dickheads looked at me like they were so much better than me because they programmed over 10 years.

At some point, almost the last day, I had enough of their bullshit, interruption, screaming, insulting other students who asked questions, ... I said you know what, you give the lecture!

They refused because they felt too good for all these other 'noobs' (the other students). They would never become good and blah blah more bullshit.

I said alright, we're doing websites, you've made some websites, show me your most impressive website.

He was happy and felt honered.

He sent me the whole folder and I showed his website on code on the big screen in the room.

Then I said: "Everyone, pay close attention to this!"

That dickhead smiled and felt good

Me: "This is how NOT to make a website"

I started explaining to everyone all things that were complete shit and all things that were straight up sins.

That one friend of the dickhead stayed quiet. The other dickhead became as red as a tomato. At some points you even saw tears in his eyes. At some point he insulted me I was a scriptie and simply left.

The class started clapping.

One of the weirdest but also best moments of my life

Moral: Don't act like a complete bigheaded dickhead, don't feel better than everyone and show some respect

Thank you for reading

Have a nice day!

<rant>
<p>
<?php
while (1) {
echo “Im Bored”;
}
?>
</p>
</rant>

Here comes the story how I became a DevRanter.
When I was young, I built an expensive gamer-machnine, so I had to crack games. I Got used to computers, so I startet an apprenticeship in IT. I finished with good grades. I left everything and everyone behind and moved in a city, found a parttime job as a PHP developer and started studying CS. After 5 years doing work as developer, studying CS, creeping around as soldier, I finally finished and graduated. After a few months working fulltime (same job), as my life began to settle down and I got bored.
A flatmate (also CS) laughed his ass off about something, then he introduced me to DevRant. It became part of my life to read DevRant, to overcome boredom. But there are not enough new Rants.. I'm f'cked. OK, I resigned my Job, and my flat and signed up for the BS in natural scinces at university in an even bigger city. I will again leave everything behind to begin a new life. Now I'm planing to freelance to pay the bills and challenge me again. Wish me luck :)

So I am beginning this new life with writing this story, how i became a dev. I klick Post, and bang! "please verify your email before ranting.. blah" I got no mail, no span, nothing. Resend.. wait.. nothing. I WAS BORED AGAIN!! FUCK YOU MAIL-SERVER, WHY CAN'T YOU SEND AN EMAIL WITHIN SECONDS OR MINUTES, WE ARE IN 21ST CENTURY AND THE INTERNET CONSISTS MAINLY OF OPTIC FIBER CABLES!!
And this is, dear DevRant community, how i become a Ranter, just then when I wanted to Post my first story.

I recently accepted my first "real" Dev position. This has been a huge hurdle for me.

So my degree is in graphic design and it's pretty much what I spent the first 2-3 years after university doing. In fact, when I started at the place I am now (I am still working my notice) I was hired as a creative artworker.

I had always had a website I put together with some basic frontend skills, but always assumed the backend stuff was "beyond me". But, given the option here, I asked to be sent on a PHP course. Holy shit I took to it like a duck to water. Over the next few months I got my feet wet building a new website for the company, building out a little intranet, all that good stuff. I went from procedural spaghetti monstrosities to nice, OOP, documented code. It was beautiful. And no one here really have a fuck.

About 6 months ago, I started trying to leave. This was hard. I actually had several interviews for design positions, but always got turned down for some variation of "you're very technical and we think you'd get bored here" and thank god really, because they're right. I could never get a look in for Dev jobs though, because on paper I had no experience, hell my job title was still "Digital Designer" despite over a year of developing here.

But it finally happened. Through someone I used to know I got my foot in the door for a developer position. In the interview they even told me if it was a junior position they'd hire me on the spot - but sadly it wasn't. I had a good time though, a good laugh, and had a lot of fun finally, for the first time in my life, "working" and talking with other developers.

Over the next couple of weeks the agent kept telling me I had done really well and they were just dragging their feet getting things sorted, but I gave up hope a little. So imagine my surprise when I found out they turned the role into a junior one for me!

And so now, I get to go to a job where my job title includes the word "Developer". To some of you that might not mean much, but to me it's a fucking medal I wish I could mount on a plaque on my wall.

Keeping myself from getting bored af at work. I am a backend engineer doing mostly frontend. And right now it ain't even the interesting stuff. I am merely passing photoshop files to static displays.

Kill me. Every once in a while I do maintenance on Java and PHP apps, but still...bored.....more Rails or Django please

Today I'm beginning my third year of Bachelor in embedded computing. And just as last year, I'm bored as fck. "Learning" the same stuff over and over, and wasting my time when I could be at work as a PHP developer ... FML

It was funny. But when I told the head of my dptmnt that I was getting bored at work they kinda freaked out. I really love my workplace. The people are nice everywhere and this is something I am not used to.
I started working when I was 13 at one of my dad's business. It was a lot of manual labor and every day my hands would be bruised because of all the cleaning and shit I had to do. Then he moved me to another one of his businesses and it was worse but I continued doing it for only 1 year. By 16 I had moved to simpler things, I was a waiter and even tho I hated it I was making enough money to go out on dates and buy whatever a 16 year old wanted. I continued being a waiter until I was 17(changed to two other places) and before I turned 18 I joined the U.S Army. That broke my body in ways that I would normally not believe a 18 year old capable of. It was around the time that I discovered programming but even after I left the military(at 22 I believe) I never worked on a programming job. Back at home I worked in retail. And believe you me....it is far more pleasant to be constantly getting blown up and broken than dealing with the most retarded people imaginable(this is what made me hate Mexican people even tho I am Mexican myself)

Fast forward at 23 and I landed my first programming jobs. As stated in other initial rant it was surrounded by assholes. Assholes everywhere that would cower at the idea of speaking to me face to face due to the possibility of being left as physically broken as I am.

But at 27 now I found myself in a happy place. With nice people, good coworkers, an amazing manager that also serves as eye candy and good benefits. But the job is boring, boring beyond belief and this is due to the fact that they have a self taught and academically trained computer scientist doing the most menial things on a daily basis. The shit that I do would be more becoming of a designer, which has a different set of mental skills that would probably engage them more. But I really don't want to work on the web unless I am doing something that actually takes some challenge, even tho I maintain Java and PHP web services, the shit is so boring that anyone would be able to finish the proceadures in hours on a day leaving one with nothing engaging to do. Sometimes I let shit get close to the deadline just to feel some sort of pressure that would keep me awake.

I just wanted to vent on how ceremoniously BORED i really am.

I want more shit to do. Can't really have much patience for the freelance shit since it doesn't make sense to hire me in exchange of having some indian dude doing it for a quarter of the price.

First real dev project was a calculator for a browser game, that calculates the optimal number/combination of buildings to build. I got bored constantly doing it manually, so I made this program as a fun and useful challenge. It involved basic math, and I did it in VB.

Second one was a stats tracking page for my team in another browser game, that let us easily share and keep track of stuff. It allowed us to minmax our actions and reduced the downtime between actions of different players. HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, MySQL.

Third one was a userscript for the same game that added QoL features and made the game easier to play. JS

Fourth was for the first game, also a QoL feature userscript, that added colors/names, number limit validation to inputs, and optimization calculators built in the interface. It also fixed and improved various UI things. Also had a cheating feature where I could see the line of sight of enemies in the fog of war (lol the dev kept the data on the page even if you couldnt see the enemies on the map), but I didnt use it, it was just fun to code it. JS

From there on, I just continued learning and doing more and more complex shit, and learning new languages.

!rant

Guys, Im curious, what you would say about situation if you are in need of some quite simple tool and you write it but becouse you need it today, not tommorow, you just dont give a heck about all the fancy stuff and (lets say for php) you start to write all in 2-3 files like you was back beginner?

Or you just nope out of situation?
Do you refactor that when you bored just becouse this cant be on my disk, noone can see this abomination?
Or you delete after usage (only to relaize 5 minutes latter you need it back :P )

Im curious your opinion.

PS.
nope, if you came to bitch about any of opinions even opinion "well, i wouldnt give a fuck and just not do it", go away and get lost.

E: typo

My first software.. Okay. So first time I ever attempted was with my father, i was around 8 or so, i remember very little from it, but in nutshell, i somehow ended up at his job having day off school or something, no idea.

Apparently he was bored, so he decided yo show me... Basic. Yep, thats right. Frking basic. Anyway, he shown me some really basic stuff in basic, and pushed the envelope really hard, just trying to force into me more and more in these 8hrs. I started with filling screen with "o" characters. Most of times he was telling me what to write with elaborate explanation why. At the end of the day, we finished with simple maze game where player was "o" and maze walls was #. Without any goal, or anything.

Next day i was at point 0, understood nothing from it except how to handle keystrokes (and belive me, that for me was huge mindblow, and even bigger mindblow that it actually made prefect sense).

I dont remember much, but later i started with father-assisted c++ and some pascal. I immidietly loved c++ but dropped learning it for (NullPointer) reason.

Thats not really project imho, so now time for my actual first project.

It was about time when ARK survival evolved was a fresh thing, i was playing it a lot. Server admin became buddy. We all complained about max level cap, but to change it in config you needed to input whole new xp curve.

At that time i had great familiarity with google and computers, some thought i was some kind of PC god (seriously I heard someone saying so about me lol) just becouse I could ressurect most cases of broken windows. And I had next to zero programming expirience. It was about to change. I made first c++ actual program, that was making xp curve for you. It took me just bearly 2 days and was series of cin, cout, one file open, some maths in loop, and done. Maths was very bad. But i pushed it into steam forums, and one guy responded how.bad my math was, so we colabed on making 2 iteration. Took around week. Than half a year passed and we wanted go big. Go gui. I had no freaking idea how making gui looks like. Community liked my cli tool, we had quite a lot of downloads, why not go GUI. And thats when I discovered QT framework. And we had few features in mind... It took us half a year to make it. From 60 lines of code i jumped into 1k lines of code. We pushed it and immidietly started working on 4th version with much greater customizability etc.

Than i finished 18 and found a job. Job in php. I got it becouse I made this project.

Now project is abandon. This project also gave me a lesson that donations will not feed you.

Edit: and before you think about my father that he was nice person to show me code, trust me, i dont know bigger dick than him.

Time for a new laptop, bored with current. Taking community suggestions. May donate current laptop to some poor dev soul in need; has been a trustworthy machine.

I do some of a lot on any given day: c#, PHP, node and typically run vs 2017, phpstorm, datagrip, sql management, webstorm, plus slack, office, etc.

I have terrible browser tab management skills and prefer electron apps over web apps. Am a vm junkie, constantly spinning up linux distros to see something.

Do light gaming when the mood strikes, Spotify or Netflix always on.

Suggest away.

I'm on vacation.
A friend asked me if I could work on a freelance web project. I was getting bored of summer vacations so I said yes.
It was a website for online lottery and it was already developed by some freelancers.
Owner wanted more freelancers to revamp design and administration panel.

I looked at the site and knew that I had seen the worst design and code of my life.

Frontend was made of two colors only, black and yellow. Out of both, black was more prominent. Moreover it had nothing related to Js as if it was developed as a challenge to be accomplished without java script.

Admin panel and backend was much worse than that. No security practices and deprecated essential libraries.

The nightmare is about to end as I have inducted a much better design from themeforest for frontend.
Backend is in my homebrew php framework.
(Good luck future freelancers 😆)
I'm positive that next edits will be features additions only and no one will blame my code.

Laravel is like a spin-off of your favourite TV show, except with unnecessary new characters and a confusing story line. And you can't just put the DVD in and play! Oh no! You need loads of 3rd party stuff, special DVD player and TV just to watch it.

The only reason you watch it, is because its new and people are talking about it. You watch it and think you like it, because it's new and perhaps you're a little bored of the old TV show. But deep inside, you know in your heart the original show was better.

Why can't we all use PHP like we use too? And have the simple file structures we had? index.php was the index page and your folder structure was how YOU wanted it.

I miss those days.