Dear people who complain about spending a whole night to find a tiny syntax error; Every time I read one of your rants, I feel like a part of me dies.

As a developer, your job is to create elegant optimized rivers of data, to puzzle with interesting algorithmic problems, to craft beautiful mappings from user input to computer storage and back.

You should strive to write code like a Michelangelo, not like a house painter.

You're arguing about indentation or getting annoyed by a project with braces on the same line as the method name. You're struggling with semicolons, misplaced braces or wrongly spelled keywords.

You're bitching about the medium of your paint, about the hardness of the marble -- when you should be lamenting the absence of your muse or the struggle to capture the essence of elegance in your work.

In other words:

Fix your fucking mindset, and fix your fucking tools. Don't fucking rant about your tabs and spaces. Stop fucking screaming how your bloated swiss-army-knife text editor is soooo much better than a purpose-built IDE, if it fails to draw something red and obnoxious around your fuck ups.

Thanks.

//long rant but worth it ;)

In our class, we had some writing in Word.

I was the smart PC guy in the class which everybody asked for info. Even the teacher sometimes asked me.

There was a girl in class which I didn't really like, because she had a snoopy attitude and thought she is a queen.

In MC Word you can hide the toolbar with the little arrow on the top right below the close button.

Somehow the girl hid the toolbar and didn't know to let it reappear again. After half a hour the teacher got to the next lesson.

She held her hand up and reported to the teacher that here PC has problems. After 10 minutes try & error from the teacher he even didn't get it.

Now the teacher started the rant and shout at her: "How did you even manage to do this? Did you upload a virus? I bet it is a virus! Do you know how much it costs to repair this pc? It's sure over 1000 $."

The rant continued for 15 minutes. After that I felt a bit guilty and even I didn't like that girl, but nobody deserves such a harsh treatment.

Without saying anything I went to the computer, clicked the little arrow and the problem was solved. The teacher didn't say anything to this topic. Just said we can go early.

Sometimes dump people make a elephant out of a fly, just because they don’t know it better…

Well the girl still stayed a cunt till the end of my scholarship.

Parents with computer problems

They hate to see it.

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.

Client: I want all cookies blocked on my computer.

Me: Are you sure? Some things won't work if i do that. Like using online banking.

Client: I don't use it, so it's fine.

*Two weeks pass. I have to come back and see three bankcards laying on the table*

Client: I'm not able to use online banking anymore. Can you fix it?

Come on! You pay me to give advice and help out with problems. The least you could do is listen.

My grandma comes to me with all her computer problems, but this time she came to tell me a story instead.

She said she was about to call me for help, and then thought about what I would do. "Google it."
And guys, she did. She googled it. And she got an answer.

I taught her to fish, guys :) I did it.
One down, 6,999,999,998 to go...

Girlfriend: "My computer is so slow!"

Me: "Have you tried turning it off and then on again?"

Girlfriend: "That's not funny, I actually need help."

Me: "Okay babe, I know you think I'm being an ass right now or tying to be funny, but honest to god half of what pays rent here and buys you so many flowers is me telling people to turn something of and then on again. Just try it."

Girlfriend: *Restarts computer*... "You were right..."

I'm tired of working for small companies.

I'm always either the sole developer, or the only dev for a specific stack, and therefore don't have anyone to ask for help. If I can't figure something out, it just doesn't get done.

It also means I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off, do code reviews with, or even friggin' have someone who understands what I do.

It sucks.

It would be nice to have someone I could actually ask for help! As it stands, I tear my hair out in frustration until I'm desperate enough to beg for help on discord or SO. whereupon, of course, I get ignored, as per usu. asdjfklasdjf

It really sucks.

It also means that I'm often surrounded entirely by sales people and managers... you know, those super-talkative people? who basically get paid just to talk? and are absolutely computer illiterate? Yeah. Think someone who says "I need my deliverables by end-of-week," "customer success representative," "turnkey solution," etc. completely seriously. (ew).

They're the people who constantly wonder why I can't push `n` features in `n/4` days, and ofc can't understand anything I say in response because of the aforementioned illiteracy. They're also the people who, almost every week, ask how long `y` is going to take, and then yell "But I need it by Friday! I just sold 50 clients on it!" (And they do this, of course, without ever asking for timelines)

It really fucking sucks.

Though I suppose larger companies would still have these problems.

but at least I could ask for help once in awhile. that would be nice.

Fixing family / friends technical problems, episode 2.

Problem: "I lost my iPhone, I know there's a thing that lets you find it. Can you help?"

Debugging:

Me: sure, it's called "find my iPhone"

Friend: ah yes that's it. How do I use it?

Me: I'll show you, just login here and ... oh you didn't set it up?

Friend: Probably not, I don't know much about this computer stuff.

Me: ... when you setup your phone for the first time, it's a full screen thing that says "do you want us to locate your phone if it's lost. Yes / No". It's hardly writing an encryption algorithm now is it?

Friend: no it's not, but still I just didn't know. I probably clicked no for everything.

Me: ... says here you clicked yes for iCould ... and yes for photo sync ... so you read the one about your pictures but not about lost or stolen property ... nice.

Friend: ... so you can't find it then.

Me: No, natural selection took it away from you.

Friend: oh **** off.

So i've been a dev manager for a little while now. Thought i'd take some time to disambiguate some job titles to let everyone know what they might be in for when joining / moving around a big org.

Title: Senior Software Engineer

Background:
- Technical
- Clever
- Typically has years experience building what management are trying to build

Responsibilities:
- Building new features
- Writing code
- Code review
- Offering advice to product manag......OH NO YOU DON'T CODE MONKEY, BACK TO WORK!

Title: Dev Manager

Background:
- Technical
- Former/current programmer
- knows his/her way around a codebase.

Responsibilities:
- Recruiting / interviewing new staff
- Keeping the team focused and delivering tasks
- Architecture decisions
- Lying about complexity of architecture decisions to ensure team gets the actual time they need
- Lying about feature estimations to ensure team gets to work on critical technical improvements that were cancelled / de-prioritised
- Explaining to hire-ups why we can't "Just do it quicker"
- Explaining to senior engineers why the product manager declined their meeting request

Title: Product / Product Manager

Background:
- Nothing relevant to the industry or product line what so ever
- Found the correct building on the day of the interview
- Has once opened an Excel spreadsheet and successfully saved it to a desktop

Responsibilities:
- Making every key decision about every feature available in the app
- Learning to ignore that inner voice we like to call "Common sense"
- Making sure to not accidentally take some advice from technical staff
- Raising the blood pressure of everyone below them / working with them

Title: Program Lead / Product Owner

Background:
- Capable of speech
- Aware of what a computer is (optional)

Responsibilities:
- Sitting down
- Talking
- Clicking random buttons on Jira
- Making bullet point lists

Title: Director of Software Engineering

Background:
- Allegedly attended college/university to study computer science
- Similar to a technical product manager (technical optional)

Responsibilities:
- Reports directly to VP
- Fixes problems by creating a different problem somewhere else as a distraction
- Claiming to understand and green light technical decisions, while having already agreed with product that it will never happen

I was 15 years old and the first year of high school. Everything was new to me and I was such a newbie. At that time I had 2-3 year of programming behind me at an institution where they taught competitive programming. And I knew something about computers. Not much but more than most of my school mates. At that time I wanted to become "super cool hacker".

So we had this very very thought teacher for history which was also our form master. She really knows how to explained everything about history and in an interesting way. But while she was teaching we also had to write down notes from her powerpoints that were on a projector. And occasionally she would wait for us to copy everything and then move on with her lecture. But sometimes she didn't. This was frustrating as hell. The whole class would complain about this because you couldn't take notes down normal, you had to do it at double speed.

But she got one weak spot. She was not very good with computers. Our school computers were locked in some kinda closet so that students didn't have physical access to a computer and were also password protected. So I came up with the plan to plant wireless mouse in her computer so that I could control her mouse. At that time it seemed like SUPER HACKER MASTER PLAN.

So I got an opportunity one time when she left the classroom and let closet where the computer was open. I quickly sneaked the USB of the wireless mouse in the computer and then go back to the seat.

So THE FUN began.

Firstly I would only go back in powerpoint so that all my schoolmates could write down notes including me. And it was hilarious to watch when she didn't know what is happening. So then I would move her mouse when she tried to close some window. I would just move it slightly so she wouldn't notice that somebody else is controlling mouse. And by missing X button just by slight she would click other things and other things would pop up and now she had to close this thing so it became a nightmare for her. And she would become angry at the mouse and start complaining how the computer doesn't work and that mouse doesn't obey her.

One time when she didn't pay attention to her computer and projector I went to paint program and drew a heart and wrote we love you (In Slovenian Imamo vas radi -> See the picture below) and one of my school mates has the picture of it. We were all giggling and she didn't know what is was for. And I managed to close everything before she even noticed.

So it got to the point where she couldn't hand it more so she called our school IT guy so that he would check her computer (2 or 3 weeks passed before she called IT guy). And he didn't find anything. He was really crappy IT guy in general. So one week passed by and I still had messed with her mouse. So she got a replacement computer. Who would guessed all the problems went away (because I didn't have another mouse like that). I guess when our IT guy took the computer to his room and really thoroughly check it he found my USB.

So he told her what was the problem she was so pissed off really I didn't see her pissed off so much in all my 4 years in high school. She demanded the apology from whom did it. And at that moment my mind went through all possible scenarios... And the most likely one was that I was going to be expelled... And I didn't have the balls to say that I did it and I was too afraid... Thanks to God nobody from my school mates didn't tell that it was me.

While she waited that somebody would come forward there was one moment when our looks met and at that moment both of us knew that I was the one that did it.

Next day the whole class wrote the apology letter and she accepted it. But for the rest of 4 years whenever was there a problem with the computer I had to fixed it and she didn't trust anybody not even our IT guy at school. It was our unwritten contract that I would repair her computer to pay off my sin that I did. And she once even trusted me with her personal laptop.

So to end this story I have really high respect for her because she is a great teacher and great persons that guide me through my teen years. And we stayed in contact.

Sister: "Can you fix my computer?"

Me: "What's wrong?"

S: *explains the issue

Me: *types that into Google and shows her the search results

S: *gives me the look

M: "This is seriously what I do to fix a lot of my problems 🧚"

Oh the joy of helping elders with their computers..

...

Client: My computer is broken.

*Me expecting some kind of hardware issue*

Me: In what way is it broken? Are you able to start the computer?

Client: Yes. I can read Windows and then there's a login. It works fine but then It's broken.

*me standing next to client while client struggles to type password*

...

*5 minutes and a coffee brake later*

/* the client is finally able to figure out the password.. What a suprise! A note in the drawers containing all passwords.. */

Me: I'm sorry but I can't see any problems so far. You are supposed to be welcomed by your desktop *points at screen*. In what way is it broken?

Client: It's not the same as before. *now the client points at the screen*. Here. There used to be a picture here. It took me to <site>. Now It's not there. Something has changed.

*realizing that the client has lost his shortcut and wants a new one*

Oh the joy of helping elders with their computers.

Revived my grandmas computer with Linux and she is happily using it without problems.

Today it was a good day.

An intern I was supposed to lead (as an intern) and work with. Which sounded kinda crazy to me, but also fun so I rolled with it. But when I met her I quickly found out she didn't even have a coding editor installed and when I advised one she was "scared of virusses". She had Microsoft Edge in her toolbar, and some picture of a cat as a background. We were given some project by our boss, and a freelance programmer helped us set it up on Trello. Great, lets start! Oke maybe first some R&D, she had to reaeach how to use the Twilio API. After catching her on WhatsApp a few times I realised this wasnt gonna go anywere. After a few weeks of coding and posting a initial project to git I asked her if she could show me the code of the API she made so far..

She told me she was using the quickstart guide (the last 3 FUCKING weeks) which contained some test project with specific use cases.

The one that I did 3 weeks ago that same fucking morning.

AND SHE WAS STILL NOT DONE...

A few days later I asked her about the progress (strangly, I wasn't allowed ti give her another task bcs the freelanc already did) and guess what... She got fking pissed at me

Her: "I will come to you when im done, ok?"
Me: "I just want to see how it is going so far and if you are running into any problems!"
Her: "I dont want to show you right now"

She then goes to my fucking boss to tell him I am bothering her.

And omg... Please dear god please kill me now...

Instead of him saying the she probably didn't do shit. He says to me that the girl thinks im looking down on her and she needs a stress free environment to work in. She will show me when its done. ITS A FUCKING QUICKSTART GUIDE YOU DUMB BITCH.

He then procceeded to whine to me about the email template (another project I do at the same time) which didn't look perfect in all of his clients.

Dont they understand that I am not a frontend developer? Can you stop please? I know nothing about email templates, I told you this!!!

Really... the whole fucking internship the only thing the girl did was ask people if they want more tea. Then she starts cleaning the windows, talk to people for an hour, or clean everyone's dask.

all this while I already made 50% of the fucking product and she just finished the quickstart tutorial 😭. Truly 2 months wasted, and the worse thing is I didn't get any apprication. They constantly blamed me and whined at me. Sometimes for being 3 minutes late, the other for smoking too much, or because I drink to much coffee, or that I dont eat healthy. They even forced me to play Ping Pong. While im just trying to do my job. One of the worst things they got mad at me for if when my laptop got hacked bcs it was infected with some virus. He had remote access and bought 5 iPhones 6's with my paypal while I was on break. I had to go home and quickly reset all my passwords and make sure the iPhones wouldnt get delivered. strange this was, this laptop I only used at the company. So it must have been software I had to download there. Probably phpstorm (torrent). Bcs nobody would give me a license. And the freelancer said I * have to *.

the monday after I still had to reinstall windows so I called them and said I would be late. when I came they were so disrepectfull and didn't understand anything. It went a little like this:

Boss: why u late?
Me: had to reinstall my laptop, sorry.
Boss: why didnt you do this in your own time?
Me: well, I didn't have any time.
Boss: cant you do this in the weekend or something? Because now we have to pay you several hours bcs you downloaded something at home.

Me: I am only using this laptop for work so thats not possible.

Boss: how can that even be possible? You are not doing anything at home with your laptop? Is that why you never do anything at home?

Me: uhm, I have desktop computer you know. Its much faster. And I also need to rest sometimes. Areeb (freelancer) told me to torrent the software. He gave me the link. 2 days later this happends

Boss: Ahh okeee I see.. Well dont let it happen again.

After that nobody at the compamy trusted me with anything computer related. Yes it was my own fault I downloaded a virus but it can happen to anyone. After that I never used Windows again btw, also no more auto login apps.

"Hey nephew, why doesn't the FB app work. It shows blank white boxes?"
- It can't connect or something? (I stopped using the FB app since 2013.)

"What is this safe mode that appeared on my phone?!"
- I don't know. I don't hack my smartphone that much. Well, I actually do have a customised ROM. But stop! I'm pecking my keyboard most of the time.

"Which of my files should I delete?"
- Am I supposed to know?

"Where did my Microsoft Word Doc1.docx go?"
- It lets you choose the location before you hit save.

"What is 1MB?"
- Search these concepts on Google. (some of us did not have access to the Internet when we learned to do basic computer operations as curious kids.)

"What should I search?"
- ...

"My computer doesn't work.. My phone has a virus. Do you think this PC they are selling me has a good spec? Is this Video Card and RAM good?"
- I'm a programmer. I write code. I think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently. I analyse concepts such as abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. No, I will not fix your PC.

Apparently, because I know how computer works and how to program

I also had to know how to:
- become rich
- hack into banks
- solve all world problems
- make a better windows/facebook/apple/google
- repair a burned down PC

Sometimes I think they are scared that I'm able to zap them with a lightning strike as if would be a motherfucking wizard.

Still love my family though ;)

->Be me
-> Learns computer science
-> Be like above average in class
->"Let's take this to the next level"
->Joins hacker rank
->does the beginners problems.
->hmm that was easy af
->Checks the "easy" problems
->Go to a corner & cry. ;__;

I hold two degrees in computer science/engineering and to this day, whenever I have to help my dad with any computer related stuff, he *always* says:

"Good thing we let you study this stuff!"

Yeah, right dad. Fixing your windows problems is exactly what I learned in university 😒

My PM: I don't like when you get up and help out other colleagues with their problems on their computer. You're not at their service.
Me: okay, I'll refrain from doing so.

The next day, I arrive 5 minutes before 8, I get myself a coffee, talk with a few colleagues, and:
PM: Hey, can you please come and help me review this email?
Me: ** fuck it, I still have 2 minutes ** Yeah I'm coming
PM: Now please.
Me: ...

Also my PM, 5 minutes later: Hey I don't manage to print my document, can you help me?
Me: ...

10 minutes later, I get a call:
PM: did you call XY about ZX?
Me: Yep, sent you a mail about it 2 minutes ago
PM: Really? I don't see it
Me: I sent it.
PM: Can you send it again?
Me: ...

Later that day:
PM: Hey, what are you up to?
Me: Well, I'm working on our improved websi-
PM: Can you please create a new campaign on Mailchimp? We're all under water here and a bit of cooperation from you would be great
Me: ** huh? ** erm, ok?
PM: Do it now
Me: Yeah yeah, don't worry. ** click ** here, done. Now, where was I...

----- PM on holidays

Other colleague from another department: Hey Phlisg! I have a small problem on our platform, can you help me?
Me: ** writes a script to help her out **
Her: awesome, thank you!!
Her own PM, 5 minutes later: Hey! Thank you very much for your help, it helps us out a real lot, very much appreciated :)

I lost my smile at work since the beginning of the year, but that little help I gave my colleague just gave my smile back to me :D

How people see me:

Father: computer nerd (he's a coder too)
Mother: website maker and computer nerd
Brother#1: some computer wizard
Brother#2: noob web coder (he codes as well, but systems programming) - thanks bro!
Colleagues: The ALIEN™
Girlfriend: 404 not found
Friends: The NERD™
Dog: some hooman spending lots of time behind those lighty rectangles

Fyi, I am passionate about computers in all domains and always helped debugging people

My solution to not being overwhelmed with futile demands? Talking to them in complicated words, so they will only ask questions about true problems and not garbage :D

This rant means YOU if you are one of those people that "fix" their family's computers.

I was visiting my family over the holidays and while I managed to stay away from fixing their computers for the most time, I offered to help my grandfather to update the Garmin navigation device he wanted to gift my father. (They do not use smartphones for navigation, and my father doesn't want "these modern shitty phones".)

When booting up my grandfather's laptop, I realized something odd: Linux Mint boot screen. Wut?

And immediately I said: "It could be impossible to update your navigation device on this laptop."

As true enough, the Garmin Express update software requires either a Windows PC or a Mac; and even though I vaguely hoped it might be possible to upgrade through Linux, I just could not be bothered to find out that day.

What I wondered though is why did my grandfather of all people ran Linux!?

Don't get me wrong, I use Linux myself on my work machine and I never want to work with something else when coding; yet my grandfather is an end user of the show-me-where-and-what-and-how-often-to-click-kind.

What could he gain by it?

As it turns out, the computer nerd's friend of my uncle managed his PC. And my uncle and he decided unanimously my grandfather should better run Linux. Is it something my grandfather needs? No. BUT IT'S RIGHT! Suck it up! (My father's laptop therefore also runs Linux Mint. So he can't upgrade his new device either.)

This is the ugly kind of entitled nerd-dom I truly detest.

When discussing things further, my grandfather told me that he had problems ever since with his printer. Under Windows, he knew how to print on the special photo paper. Under Linux, all he can barely manage is to print on normal papers. Shame, printing photos was the only thing he liked doing on that device. What did my uncle's friend tell him?

"Get a decent printer!"

Fuck that guy.

It's fine if Linux works for you, but before you install it on a PC of a relative, you better make sure it fits their needs! If you have that odd member that only wants to write letters, read emails, use facebook, and wants to play that browser game, feel free to introduce them to Linux.

Yet if they have any special wish, don't stand in their way.

If they want to do something that requires a certain OS, don't just decide for them that their desire is wrong, but help them achieve their goal. If you can't align that with your ideology, then get the fuck out of my way and stop "helping".

For some people, a computer is a device to achieve a certain goal, a work. They only get hindered by your ill-advised attempts at virtue signalling.

Rich CEO's are so out of touch with reality.

We outsourced part of our software development to a third world country. During hiring process I had pushed for us to hire the more expensive, more experienced devs in a second-world country, but nooo we must save up those bucks. The pay is so low you wouldn't be able to afford rent in *city where CEO lives*.

As @GiddyNaya has ranted about, third world countries face impossibly slow internet and frequent blackouts. I also ranted about it in my last post. The "last straw" for the CEO was when our dev's computer started malfunctioning.

boss: When is that computer from?

dev: 2017

boss: 2017?! That's a dinosaur! Of course you're having battery problems!

me, trying to come up with an affordable solution for our dev: Well, you can have the battery switched.

boss: But 2017 is too old! Your computer should be *at most* 5 years old. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your work-related tools working. (last sentence is ad verbatim)

The boss, of course, recommended a Mac. Mind you, the closest Apple store to our dev is 500km away! And a month of their salary will not come close to paying a Macbook.

Providing them with the equipment? No! We're already paying them a "competitive" salary!

Like seriously, how out of touch with reality can you be? Does greed blind you that much?

(The dev seems to have fixed the computer problems on his own tho)

That struggle man! When you know you did it right, but it outputs completely different thing...

It were around 1997~1998, I was on middle school. It was a technical course, so we had programing languages classes, IT etc.

The IT guy of our computer lab had been replaced and the new one had blocked completely the access on the computers. We had to make everything on floppy disks, because he didn't trusted us to use the local hard disk. Our class asked him to remove some of the restrictions, but he just ignored us. Nobody liked that guy. Not us, not the teachers, not the trainees at the lab.

Someday a friend and me arrived a little bit early at the school. We gone to the lab and another friend that was a trainee on the lab (that is registered here, on DevRant) allowed us to come inside. We had already memorized all the commands. We crawled in the dark lab to the server. Put a ms dos 5.3 boot disk with a program to open ntfs partitions and without turn on the computer monitor, we booted the server.

At that time, Windows stored all passwords in an encrypted file. We knew the exact path and copied the file into the floppy disk.

To avoid any problems with the floppy disk, we asked the director of the school to get out just to get a homework we theorically forgot at our friends house that was on the same block at school. We were not lying at all. He really lived there and he had the best computer of us.

The decrypt program stayed running for one week until it finds the password we did want: the root.

We came back to the lab at the class. Logged in with the root account. We just created another account with a generic name but the same privileges as root. First, we looked for any hidden backup at network and deleted. Second, we were lucky: all the computers of the school were on the same network. If you were the admin, you could connect anywhere. So we connected to a "finance" computer that was really the finances and we could get lists of all the students with debits, who had any discount etc. We copied it to us case we were discovered and had to use anything to bargain.

Now the fun part: we removed the privileges of all accounts that were higher than the trainee accounts. They had no access to hard disks anymore. They had just the students privileges now.

After that, we changed the root password. Neither we knew it. And last, but not least, we changed the students login, giving them trainee privileges.

We just deleted our account with root powers, logged in as student and pretended everything was normal.

End of class, we went home. Next day, the lab was closed. The entire school (that was school, mid school and college at the same place) was frozen. Classes were normal, but nothing more worked. Library, finances, labs, nothing. They had no access anymore.

We celebrated it as it were new years eve. One of our teachers came to us saying congratulations, as he knew it had been us. We answered with a "I don't know what are you talking about". He laughed and gone to his class.

We really have fun remembering this "adventure". :)

PS: the admin formatted all the servers to fix the mess. They had plenty of servers.

There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation and off-by-1 errors

Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.

I think this is so far one of the most priceless WTF moments I encountered at my current work:

A coworker of mine came up to me explaining the problem he had with russian characters in the filename. He explained in detail that everything works ok (the other part of the code he was fixing) if he changes the name of the file to test1.xlsx for example which doesn't use russian characters. OK great.

Then he goes on to show me how he fixed the other stuff and of course everything blows up. The file he used for demonstration was of course the original file our cusotomer provided, he just deleted the obvious russian chars and left the rest.

МТС != MTC

I cracked up: but you still have russian chars in the name.
The guy: no way, I deleted them all.
Me: but what about that МТС in the name?! Guy: what about it?
Me: did you actually typed that in or you left it there?! Those are russian chars that are fucking things up for you.
Guy: no way, it's MTC.
Me: checked the logs, you have ??? In the filename instead of МТС..don't you find that at least a little bit suspicious?!
Guy: but it looks the same. How does it (the computer) know it is in russian?!? //Why doesn't it understand?!

O.o I still can't believe it.. Is it just me & my high standards, or should it be normal for coders to know things such as character encoding & stuff?!?

I almost died of laughter, he and some other guy had problems finding customers in the software due to not being able to type the russian chars << happened more then once before, even after I told them about a quick hack on how to use google translate onboard keyboard & other stuff to make proper chars so they can get a match..

I think when they bury me, I'll still be facepalming and laughing over this incident. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

As a full-stack dev who has been looking for a full-time role for over half a year now... How the fuck can it be so difficult to land a job as a dev? I'm a passionate, capable, and proven dev; it shouldn't be this hard.

And why the hell are coding/whiteboard interviews the de-facto standard for deciding if somebody is worthy of a role? Whiteboard interviews are as inadequate and unencompassing a means of determining the quality of a candidate as asking a dentist how well they know the organ structure of the human body.

I've applied to an endless number of positions, so far-reaching and desperate as to even apply to international positions and designer roles instead of developer roles (I've been a graphic designer for over 13+ years). Even with this, most don't get back to you, and the few who do most often just notify you of your rejection. On the rare occasion I land an interview, my chances get fucked up by the absurd questions they ask, as if the things they are asking about are at all an appropriate, all-encompassing measure of what I know.

Aren't employers aware that competent devs are able to learn new things and technical nuances nearly instantaneously given documentation or an internet connection? Obviously, I keep learning and getting better after every interview, though it barely helps, when each interviewer asks an entirely new, arbitrary set of questions or problems....

Honestly, fuck the current state of the system for coding job interviews. I'm just about ready to give up. Why the hell did I put myself through 5 years of NYU for a Computer Engineering degree and nearly $100K in student loan debt, if it doesn't help me land a job?

Online tutorial pet peeves
————————————

My top 10 points of unsolicited ranting/advice to those making video tutorials:

1. Avoid lots of pauses, saying “umm” too much, or other unnecessary redundancy in speech (listen to yourself in a recording)

2. If I can’t understand you at 1.5 - 2x playback speed and you don’t already speak relatively quickly and clearly, I’m probably not going to watch for long (mumbling, inconsistent microphone volume, and background noise/music are frequent culprits)

3. It’s ok to make mistakes in a tutorial, so long as you also fix them in the tutorial (e.g., the code that is missing a semicolon that all of a sudden has one after it compiles correctly — but no mention of fixing it or the compiler error that would have been received the first time). With that said, it’s fine to fix mistakes pertinent to the topic being taught, but don’t make me watch you troubleshoot your non-relevant computer issues or problems created by your specific preferences (e.g., IDE functionality not working as expected when no specific IDE was prescribed for the tutorial)

4. Don’t make me wait on your slow computer to do something in silence—either teach me something while it’s working or edit the video to remove the lull

5. You knew you were recording your screen. Close your email, chat, and other applications that create notifications before recording. Or at least please don’t check them and respond while recording and not edit it out of the video

6. Stay on topic. I’m watching your video to learn about something specific. A little personality is good, but excessive tangents are often a waste of my time

7. [Specific to YouTube] Don’t block my view of important content with annotations (and ads, if within your control)

8. If you aren’t uploading quality HD recordings, enlarge your font! Don’t make me have to guess what character you typed

9. Have a game plan (i.e., objectives) before hitting the record button

10. Remember that it’s easier to rant and complain than to do something constructive. Thank you for spending your time making tutorial videos. It’s better for you to make videos and commit all my pet peeves listed above than to not make videos at all—don’t let one guy’s rant stop you from sharing your knowledge and experience (but if it helps you, you’re welcome—and you just might gain a new viewer!)

TL;DR Setup computer for new guy @ office, he got mad about software he was missing that we weren't told he needed, so he complained to the director above our department and got us in trouble.

I work for a small company, in which the I.S. Department is 8 people (Manager Included). We do everything from setting up computers and fixing printer problems to writing custom software for in-house use. Kind of a "Renaissance Department" if you will.

So a few weeks ago we were asked to set up a computer for a brand new user, meaning he would need email setup, a domain account, etc. We were also given a (very) small list of programs he would need to do his job. No problemo, took me 30 minutes, and he was good to go.

Last week I met the guy because he was training at the general office and his training computer lacked a few tools. Since I was called to remedy that situation, I introduced myself, told him if he ever had any problems to let me know and I would get him fixed up.

Now today, 5/5/2017, 15 seconds after walking into the door of the department, I am pulled aside by my boss and asked if I setup up the new guys desktop, to which I proudly replied yes. Come to find out the (very) small list of tools we were told he needed was incomplete, so he was missing stuff (how the fuck were we supposed to know that). So what does the new fuck do? HE COMPLAINS TO A DIRECTOR ABOVE OUR DEPARTMENT SAYING THE IT GUYS DIDN'T SETUP HIS COMPUTER PROPERLY! Like holy shit dude, why not send me a fucking email like you did before telling me you needed stuff? I would have GLADLY fucking helped. Now I hope your computer catches on fire. Or you get fired. I'll take either one.

By teaching students how to learn computer science first. Spending more focus on analysing problems, and creating solutions than spending time on language syntax which they can probably watch in videos at home.

Computer Science is a mysterious world of three kinds of devs, irrespective of what background/profile/language they had/worked in.

The ones at the top, who keep doing crazy shit in big companies or open-source and keep adding material to the unstoppable code flowing. These constitute 5% of the dev community.

The ones at the bottom are the newbies who try to become masters/ninjas of programming by following the shit on the internet but don't understand logic or how things work. This is like 75% of dev community on the web. If you don't agree to that percentage, you don't know the number of students and non-CS people trying to code. I can see hundreds of classmates/colleagues with no understanding of basic Javascript concepts but introducing themselves as a software developer and ruler of the Web.

The remaining 15% in the middle are the "experienced" fellows who keep building shit to get to the top 5%. They work on enterprise/commercial software until the next upgrade and while the wallets keep getting fatter, they don't actually contribute to the community.
This is the part where I want people to understand the power of a dev.

What sets apart programmers/devs from other engineers:
while everyone else is busy solving the current issues/requirements of the world, we devs are the ones who 'build'.
With a right motive, a developer can solve in-numerous problems of the society, be it education, poverty or unemployment.

An experiment by Lee to put data on the web created a world of unforeseeable opportunities.
Hope to see more of Musks and less of Zuckerbergs in the future.

Yesterday my my mother had problems with Office365 and called a servicedesk. They said her computer was slow and that an SD could improve the speed. My mother said that there already was an SSD in there to which he replied yes but that is for RAM, to make opening things faster you need an SD like in your phone...

Where is the world going?

I just found a game (have not played it yet) that I think everyone here will cream over.

It's an insanely detailed hardware/ low level/ make-your-own-computer game.

I watched the trailer and it sets you up by teaching you logic gates and basic circuitry.

Then, it eventually teaches you how to build your own computer using these gates.

Then, you start creating your own assembly language using the computer you made.

Then, you use your computer to solve problems like sending a robot through a maze or just building snake on a display.

Absolutely check it out, it's on sale for $13 USD. I just bought it. Turing Complete on Steam.

What an absolute fucking disaster of a day. Strap in, folks; it's time for a bumpy ride!

I got a whole hour of work done today. The first hour of my morning because I went to work a bit early. Then people started complaining about Jenkins jobs failing on that one Jenkins server our team has been wanting to decom for two years but management won't let us force people to move to new servers. It's a single server with over four thousand projects, some of which run massive data processing jobs that last DAYS. The server was originally set up by people who have since quit, of course, and left it behind for my team to adopt with zero documentation.

Anyway, the 500GB disk is 100% full. The memory (all 64GB of it) is fully consumed by stuck jobs. We can't track down large old files to delete because du chokes on the workspace folder with thousands of subfolders with no Ram to spare. We decide to basically take a hacksaw to it, deleting the workspace for every job not currently in progress. This of course fucked up some really poorly-designed pipelines that relied on workspaces persisting between jobs, so we had to deal with complaints about that as well.

So we get the Jenkins server up and running again just in time for AWS to have a major incident affecting EC2 instance provisioning in our primary region. People keep bugging me to fix it, I keep telling them that it's Amazon's problem to solve, they wait a few minutes and ask me to fix it again. Emails flying back and forth until that was done.

Lunch time already. But the fun isn't over yet!

I get back to my desk to find out that new hires or people who got new Mac laptops recently can't even install our toolchain, because management has started handing out M1 Macs without telling us and all our tools are compiled solely for x86_64. That took some troubleshooting to even figure out what the problem was because the only error people got from homebrew was that the formula was empty when it clearly wasn't.

After figuring out that problem (but not fully solving it yet), one team starts complaining to us about a Github problem because we manage the github org. Except it's not a github problem and I already knew this because they are a Problem Team that uses some technical authoring software with Git integration but they only have even the barest understanding of what Git actually does. Turns out it's a Git problem. An update for Git was pushed out recently that patches a big bad vulnerability and the way it was patched causes problems because they're using Git wrong (multiple users accessing the same local repo on a samba share). It's a huge vulnerability so my entire conversation with them went sort of like:

"Please don't."
"We have to."
"Fine, here's a workaround, this will allow arbitrary code execution by anyone with physical or virtual access to this computer that you have sitting in an unlocked office somewhere."
"How do I run a Git command I don't use Git."

So that dealt with, I start taking a look at our toolchain, trying to figure out if I can easily just cross-compile it to arm64 for the M1 macbooks or if it will be a more involved fix. And I find all kinds of horrendous shit left behind by the people who wrote the tools that, naturally, they left for us to adopt when they quit over a year ago. I'm talking entire functions in a tool used by hundreds of people that were put in as a joke, poorly documented functions I am still trying to puzzle out, and exactly zero comments in the code and abbreviated function names like "gars", "snh", and "jgajawwawstai".

While I'm looking into that, the person from our team who is responsible for incident communication finally gets the AWS EC2 provisioning issue reported to IT Operations, who sent out an alert to affected users that should have gone out hours earlier.

Meanwhile, according to the health dashboard in AWS, the issue had already been resolved three hours before the communication went out and the ticket remains open at this moment, as far as I know.

Here's a genuine rant for you. Probably the only one I've ever made and ever will..

It's a bit depressing and covers a few topics so just read it, it's important.

*deep inhale*
So, with the help of my friend and my Nana, I was getting VR set up. (Oh, what joy.)

Now, I love everything about VR. But the thing is, I've had this damned headset since may (Dell MMR) and I haven't been able to use it. The reason for that is, something always came up that I needed to buy and this became a huge deal.

But let's start from the beginning.. I'm curentally fighting depression. I have been for months. My only income is what my Nana gives me ($150/mo) and what my friend ocasinally gives me.

Anyways, the first issue was that I couldn't afford the headset. This was find, as my friend would get it for me, and I would pay them back the following month. But, then, once I got the headset that's when the real problems started. First it was that I needed bluetooth, so I bought an adapter. Then I realized my entire CPU was incompatable, so I had to get a new tower and I went ahead and got a new GPU as well. I also got a charging kit for my headset (This ended up making me owe my Nana money). Then after all of that was settled, I learned that the evauation software lied, and my computer doesn't have USB 3, so I need that too but low and behold; both of my graphics cards cover my second pcie slot. So my options are to either try and rig up something, or to buy a cpu and psu for my third AMD PC which I had forgotten about during this whole ordeal..

This was soposed to help me with my depression and stress. Now I don't even want to get out of bed.

With all that said, I might be getting on SSI soon (I'm sure some of you are familar with that, and no I don't want to talk about it) and when that happens I might just leave behind tech (well, my PC and games) and all the stress and pain it's caused me over my life so this was all for nothing.

Honestly.. I'm just done with everything. To all the new faces around here; Hello! How are ya? To everyone else; You know me. I've been around for a while, though I'm not popular because I lurked and commented with Alice. You all probably noticed that I left a while back, and it was because I was trying to get out of tech. My reason for tech was that I was searching for something. I was always looking for the next game to sate me, or fill this gap in my life. I became a programmer because it gave me control were I lacked it otherwise. I made friends online because my anxiety prevented me from doing so in the real world.

But to what end? What have I acomplished? My twenty second birthday is next month. I've no job, I move from family member to famly member because I'm so fixated on becoming someone else to make something of myself.

I have my own ideals, but it seems that I push them aside to try (and fail to) impress others.

It's time for change. Of course, I can't do anything without money, so I'll have to wait for my SSI which I will get news on in August.

I hope this message came through how I meant it to. There is so much I want to say, but I've no words to say them. And btw, the VR thing is just one of manny issue that i've delt with (but certanly the most expensive)

Alice, Zennoe (Alexis, whom is not on devrant); I'm not giving up tech entirely. don't expect to suddenly not hear from me. I'm mostly just giving up my computer and games. More casually so for now, and them more seriously once I get on SSI. I'll still message you every/other day like I have been. <3

I was called over by a colleague. She needed help because her computer kept telling her that she did not have permission to run certain programs or access certain files.

She logged in to Windows in front of me. The first thing that I noticed that the username was her office email address. I asked her about it.

Me: Why is your username your email address?
Her: It was this way when I got it.
Me: That is impossible. I made every Windows installation here and I always use the same username which is [companyname] as it is our policy.
Her: I'm telling you, this is the way it was when I got it.
Me: Are completely sure?
Her: Well.... someone else must have renamed it.
Me: So someone fired up your laptop, used your password to log in and changed the username to your email?
Her: I don't understand it either. Is it possible that it happened accidentally, on its own?
Me: ...

Then I explained to her that changing the username on Windows 10 may result in problems with file permissions.

I am not mad because she didn't know about this. I am mad because of her idiotic lies.

Microsoft be like :
"Oh, you're moving away from your computer for a while with all this stuff open? It would a shame if some were to.. UPDATE it!"

It asks with a pop up, and if you don't answer it, it thinks "Oh, you're not telling me if I should update now or not, but I think you probably want me to update. UPDATE!"

For me, if I keep ignoring the update, it starts to create problems for me out of nowhere. It starts to lag and then the task manager starts to lag. EVERYTHING IS NOT RESPONDING.
When I finally update it, it acts like there were no issues at all. Everything is fine..

Even with Xbox, if it wants to update, it doesn't let you go online until you do. If it loses connection mid-update for some reason, it begins the update again from the friggin START. All that time updating gone to waste. Recently, I'm having a lot of issues with it. It doesn't let me sign in a lot of times. "We couldn't sign you in" for some reason. It JUST CAN'T. If you have a slow internet connection, you can't play any game at all. I contacted Microsoft Support about that issue and they concluded that it was all because of the slow internet connection and there were no issues on their end and they told me to GIT GOOD (Not exactly those words). If it does sign you in, it kicks you out mid-game for some reason with the evil pop up saying "Bye User_Name". The game says that YOU signed out (Dumb game, doesn't understand Microsoft shenanigans) and returns you to the main menu. If your game didn't save, well, GOOD luck to you!
Everything takes forever to load, if it decides it's not gonna load, it gives me a really helpful error saying "Something went wrong".
Maybe it's just me, it just hates me particularly. It makes me think that Microsoft intentionally acts like a douche just to get attention..

(In the end I think, maybe, this all is not a big deal if you surrender and accept Microsoft as your overlord)

I tried a few ways to stop Windows from updating automatically, but nothing worked (Maybe, I should try again).

Maybe I should dual boot Linux, but that brings a whole new set of things that I'd have to deal with, doesn't it?

Sigh

This fucking idiot at work needs to use the pre release version of the iOS app for a training programme, and I swear I have tried my best to best to help him get the app on his phone.

I use Fabric and I chose because of how easy it is to install on a persons phone, but this is the situation so far. Also he lives a couple cities away so I can't do it myself.

I had to waste time waiting for him to call me, beforehand I sent the email, maybe 5 minutes before his call and told him that he needs to find the email, he says oh okay alright well I'll contact you if I have any problems.

I waited a day and sent a follow-up email on what the subject, from email, and even what the email looks like with screenshots.

No response for 3 weeks, and I bring it up in a meeting that I need to help him again.

So it's a literal fucking repeat of the first step, wait for his call, this time close to the end of my work day and he's 30 minutes late for his own fucking schedule, I thought whatever so I say the exact same thing BUT expecting him to get it out of the way while I'm on the phone...

Waited two days and sent him an email today and since I forgot to mention it, I've told him that this is to REGISTER to get the app. Guess what his reply was.

Sorry I can't get it on my phone!

He can't get what a fucking email to open on his phone and follow instructions a small bipedal animal could figure out?

It's literally follow the fucking icon moving they have gifs showing exactly what to click...

So tomorrow I have to somehow not blow up and get this app on his phone, honestly I understand some people can have issues with technical things but I got a guy at work that has trouble with his computer all the time to follow my same instructions without me needing to say more than I'll send an email all you need to do is follow the instructions, he actually enjoyed going through it.

...I swear this guy is just not even bothering, and I made sure I sent it to the right email, also second call he told me he found the email..

When I started university, I was getting out of some really awful situations-- emotionally abusive parents, a boyfriend who was blackmailing me, a truly bizarre rape, etc. My life had been a little rough, and I was dealing with some PTSD.

My first computer science course was great. The professor was clear, patient, everything a sensitive student needed. I was able to concentrate on the curriculum without any problems.

The second 'intermediate' course, though? Not so much. The professor shouted his lectures during the entire class period in a relatively small classroom. Occasionally, he would clasp his hands and move around pretty unpredictably (like jumping out at the class), which spooked me a few times. He also always seemed like he was just hovering on the edge of madness, like he was just barely keeping it together, but he never broke.

I sat in the front row and was absolutely terrified during his lectures because it seemed like he was mad at me. I was half expecting him to start attacking me at any moment. Because, you know, PTSD.

I was also only getting a comp sci minor, so the other students looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be there, which also made me feel pretty uncomfortable, but such is life.

After most classes with him, I would need to take about an hour or two afterwards to calm down, stop shaking, and recompose myself. I looked forward to test days because he wouldn't yell. It was rough.

Later on, I learned that he used to be a gym teacher, which explains the jumping and yelling. Also, his wife, daughter, and dog all died within six months of each other the year prior, which might explain why he always seemed so on edge.

Bipolar disorder means that you can code for 14 hours straight, sleep for 4 hours and feel refreshed ready for another round. You can make art and you can express your thoughts in creative, kinda alien ways.

But here are tradeoffs that make bipolar disorder a disease:
- everyone around you is an enemy
- they’re all acting together to harm you
- nobody understands you
- they all make fun of you
- if I say what I mean, nobody will understand me. I’ll scare them
- I’m extremely aggressive towards everything: people, things, situations, problems. Computer lags so I scream, smash it, throw it out of the window and buy a new overpriced one
- constant uncertainty about whether am I acting right or not

At school we have a little maker-space and there are a group of students who come in all the time just to play video games on the computers. Not only are they not doing anything productive, they’re loud and clutter the space with people watching the play.

Today I wiped the computer and installed arch linux (with a desktop environment but not set to automatically go to the desktop environment. I hope this will solve our problems.

This guy I know applied for a senior position at a company I used to do freelance for. He walked in while I was spending the day there to work on our project.

We used to work in the same company and I knew that this guy doesn't know shit. He's the type that would foam in the mouth while bullshitting his way through any sort of discussion.

Anyway, they had him set up on a computer a few tables from me to complete some coding exercises--real simple stuff just to see how he would approach some common problems.

There was no time limit set but the tests shouldn't have taken him more than an hour.

He sat there for SIX HOURS.

At this point, I went out for a smoke, came back 5 minutes later, and found that he wasn't there anymore.

Apparently, he just stood up and said, "Nope, can't do it" and then left the building without a word to anybody else.

We never heard of him again.

Oh, and the tests? Not a single line of code written XD

So my previous alma mater's IT servers are really hacked easily. They run mostly in Microsoft Windows Server and Active Directory and only the gateway runs in Linux. When I checked the stationed IT's computer he was having problems which I think was another intrusion.

I asked the guy if I can get root access on the Gateway server. He was hesitant at first but I told him I worked with a local Linux server before. He jested, sent me to the server room with his supervision. He gave me the credentials and told me "10 minutes".

What I did?

I just installed fail2ban, iptables, and basically blocked those IP ranges used by the attacker. The attack quickly subsided.

Later we found out it was a local attack and the attacker was brute forcing the SSH port. We triaged it to one kid in the lobby who was doing the brute forcing connected in the lobby WiFi. Turns out he was a script kiddie and has no knowledge I was tracking his attacks via fail2ban logs.

Moral of lesson: make sure your IT secures everything in place.

I had this one teacher that sucked some serioud dick. She refused to teach us what she was supposed to... Java.

Her teaching habits include: talking about her life problems for the whole class until the last 5 minutes to actually teach us knowledge that usually ended up being useless, refusing to answer questions and demanding that we use Google instead, and worst of all... the way she checked our programs to see if they would work. The absolute FIRST thing that she would do when she sat down at our computer, was open up our code, to see if it looked EXACTLY like her fucking code. She wouldn't even check if it worked first...

Honestly, teacher's like this completely piss me off and the students of this class learned more from the students with pre-knowledge than they did from studying the notes that the teacher gave in the last five minutes of class.

So, I'm studying computer engineering in school, so a lot of people have decided I'm the tech one in the group and come to me with all there computer problems.

I'm constantly explaining basic things about their computers, how to exit vim, why using git is a lot easier then having 100 versions of files, how to change directories from the terminal. Simple things like that and while I normally don't mind, all these people are also in computer engineering and should really know all this stuff too.

The stranges computer error I have seen.

When modems still was the way you communicated I worked with support.

We where the general distributor for TDC's PCCard modems.

One day we got a computer with modem with intermittent problems (worst kind).

After much trial and error we found that stroking the computer lightly in the top right corner made the modem work perfectly :)

Cause will be reviled later :p

TLDR: There’s truth in the motto “fake it till you make it”

Once upon a time in January 2018 I began work as a part time sysadmin intern for a small financial firm in the rural US. This company is family owned, and the family doesn’t understand or invest in the technology their business is built on. I’m hired on because of my minor background in Cisco networking and Mac repair/administration.

I was the only staff member with vendor certifications and any background in networking / systems administration / computer hardware. There is an overtaxed web developer doing sysadmin/desktop support work and hating it.

I quickly take that part of his job and become the “if it has electricity it’s his job to fix it” guy. I troubleshoot Exchange server and Active Directory problems, configure cloudhosted web servers and DNS records, change lightbulbs and reboot printers in the office.

After realizing that I’m not an intern but actually just a cheap sysadmin I began looking for work that pays appropriately and is full time. I also change my email signature to say “Company Name: Network Administrator”

A few weeks later the “HR” department (we have 30 employees, it’s more like “The accountant who checks hiring paperwork”) sends out an email saying that certain ‘key’ departments have no coverage at inappropriate times. I don’t connect the dots.

Two days later I receive a testy email from one of the owners telling me that she is unhappy with my lack of time spent in the office. That as the Network Administrator I have responsibilities, and I need to be available for her and others 8-5 when problems need troubleshooting. Her son is my “boss” who is rarely in the office and has almost no technical acumen. He neglected to inform her that I’m a part time employee.

I arrange a meeting in which I propose that I be hired on full time as the Network Administrator to alleviate their problems. They agree but wildly underpay me. I continue searching for work but now my resume says Network Administrator.

Two weeks ago I accepted a job offer for double my current salary at a local software development firm as a junior automation engineer. They said they hired me on with so little experience specifically because of my networking background, which their ops dept is weak in. I highlighted my 6 months experience as Network Administrator during my interviews.

My take away: Perception matters more than reality. If you start acting like something, people will treat you like that.

(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.

Do you know when you think "Oh that doesn't look too hard. I bet I can do it in no time"?
That is how I felt when I saw the DIY 3D printer kit Anet A8. It's only 150€ on gearbest so that is pretty cheap.
The reviews said it takes about 3 - 4 hours to build and I though "Ok I am a computer specialist and engineer so 3h sounds reasonable".
When I bought it from gearbest the first problems started: 5 days after the estimated shipping date the packet was still not on its way. After I fucked the support up, it finally arrived 3 weeks after the estimated date.
When I took the first look, everything seemed to be fine except for some small scratches but for that price that is not a problem.
So I started to build the printer at about 14:00 and even if some random sites in the manual were in Chinese I felt confident to get it done in a view hours.
And then it started to get really fucked. The first problem was that 2 screws were unusable and I had to use my own screws instead. The next problem was that the manual was just in the wrong fucking order at some points and I had to reverse multiple steps to get it right.
But the most fucked up thing: There should have been 2 threaded rods with a length of 345mm but the rods had a length of 310mm which was nowhere listed in the parts list. So I had to go buy some aluminium rods to fill the gap temporary so that I can at least go on with the build before getting a replacement. And I could go on and on and with the problems but the point is, it is now 19:30 which is about 5.5 hours after I started and I am still not fucking done with this.

So what have I learned?
Cheap Chinese hardware is good, but only as long as you don't have to assemble that shit yourself.

*Turns on computer*

Hmmm, must be getting that time to do a full format... Wait, my HDD is being a bit weird...

*Runs disk optimise*

- No problems detected, disk %67 fragmented

Ah huh... That would explain a lot, but how the fuck did this happen so quickly 0.o

I feel that I should mention my reason for having joined devRant.

Although I often write computer programs, I do not consider myself to be a computer programmer, for the problems which I solve often do not pertain to the method which I use to solve a problem with a computer program. Rather, I am an intelligence analyst, and this has been my title for approximately sixteen (16) years.

I joined devRant not only because I wished to better the computer programs which I write, although this could be better accomplished by again reading the specifications for the programming languages which I use, but also because I wished to join an on-line community of which the members are interesting and competent. As I read threads, I observe that both of these requirements have been matched, with the emphasis being placed on the latter requirement.

I thank the majority of you for maintaining an on-line community which is not (total) crap. Ha.

math be like:

"Addition (often signified by the plus symbol "+") is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic; the others are subtraction, multiplication and division. The addition of two whole numbers is the total amount of those values combined. For example, in the adjacent picture, there is a combination of three apples and two apples together, making a total of five apples. This observation is equivalent to the mathematical expression "3 + 2 = 5" i.e., "3 add 2 is equal to 5".

Besides counting items, addition can also be defined on other types of numbers, such as integers, real numbers and complex numbers. This is part of arithmetic, a branch of mathematics. In algebra, another area of mathematics, addition can be performed on abstract objects such as vectors and matrices.

Addition has several important properties. It is commutative, meaning that order does not matter, and it is associative, meaning that when one adds more than two numbers, the order in which addition is performed does not matter (see Summation). Repeated addition of 1 is the same as counting; addition of 0 does not change a number. Addition also obeys predictable rules concerning related operations such as subtraction and multiplication.

Performing addition is one of the simplest numerical tasks. Addition of very small numbers is accessible to toddlers; the most basic task, 1 + 1, can be performed by infants as young as five months and even some members of other animal species. In primary education, students are taught to add numbers in the decimal system, starting with single digits and progressively tackling more difficult problems. Mechanical aids range from the ancient abacus to the modern computer, where research on the most efficient implementations of addition continues to this day."

And you think like .. easy, but then you turn the page:

I've seen a job vacancy that asks for the following characteristics in a developer:

- extraverted, do'er (as opposed to thinker), out-of-the-box, curious, sees solutions and not problems, structural thinking vs. theoretical thinking, loves change, acts immediately, makes choices under stress, critically questions themselves if things go wrong

What the [censored] kind of programmer is that? Sounds more like a wannabe brogrammer type.

A typical, real programmer is introverted (for he is introspective, detail-minded and is therefore good at inspecting problems and finding solutions for them).

Seeing problems is not a bad thing, it's in fact necessary to be able to identify issues and not act like your typical manager who only wants to rush to solutions. He thinks deeply and theoretically before he takes action. Theory is the foundation of identifying a problem.

What programmer is stress-resistant? It's not normal for the human brain to be able to deal with stress; this is why switch-tasking is so hard.

Question yourself if things go wrong? Perhaps, but this sounds more like trying to shove the blame around.

Since we live in a rigid computer world with rigidly-defined protocols (say, HTTP), it is often useful to think in a conventional way. Out-of-the-box? Sure, if you're being innovative, or sure, as a tangential characteristic.

In my professional opinion, this vacancy reeks of bad corporate culture.. and the biggest alarm bell I find is: "There is free beer!" Err.. yeah. Anyway.

Anyone else having connection problems after the recent Windows 10 update? We've been slammed at work with them. If you do, here's an easy fix:
0. Go to Command Prompt (Run as Administrator)
1. First command:
netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
(One of them will probably fail, that's fine.)
2. Second command:
netsh winsock reset
3. Restart the computer.

Does any1 had experienced this........ Once u have fixed ur mum's Computer and all its future problems is coz of u 😐😐😐😐😐😐😐

I’ve been programming for 20 years now. My friends and family never really understood what I did back in the days. And they still don’t.
All they saw was a kid who was good with computers. Your friendly neighborhood tech guy who would take a look at your computer for free.
I’m sure most of you have been in the same situation.

When people ask me what I do for a living. I’d just say “something with computers”. Because most of the time they will ask me to look at their computers and I’d reply with “oh that’s not what I do”.

When I was younger, I’d try to explain what I actually do for a living. To really tell people the problems we as a programmer solves on a daily basis or the things we create. That’s really hard to explain to “common” people.

So whenever someone asks me what I do for a living? It’s always something with computers ;)

One of the more memorable computer problems I solved were when I added some lego blocks to solve a recurring windows bluescreen
A friend had a Pentium 3 (slot 1) that kept throwing him several bluescrens per day so I decided to help
I open up the computer and saw that the processor were not properly securred in it's place and the plastic pieces that should have holding it in place were gone, so I improvised pressing in some lego pieces that I found somewhere to secure that the processor didn't move if someone were walking close to the computer and after that he didn't have any more bluescreens than the rest of us

The second time I dropped out of college. I wasn't sure why at the time, but I just couldn't manage to keep myself motivated and interested. Later on I was diagnosed with ADD and all my school problems made sense, but at the time, I thought that since I'd tried and failed twice to get a computer science degree, I wasn't qualified to be a developer.

And now I have a degree and a dev job and I know what's actually wrong with my brain and how to deal with it.

Oh hey remember when you fixed my computer 9 months ago? It's acting slow again, can you come over to fix it while I judge you for problems that were caused by me.

Why the f*** was the computer industry not able to contract to common line endings? The trouble started many years ago when I was coding scripts on my Windows machine and they were not every time able to run on a Linux machine. Well I then somehow learned on the hard tour that this is due to wrong line endings. Thought that might be the last time I've seen such problems in my career...

And 10 years later I was going to migrate from CVS and SVN to git, and BAM: the f****** line endings appears to be causing much more problems than in all the ten years before. Why? I ask why is this still necessary in 2017 that a dev has to think about the line endings anymore?? This is so 1991!!!

Short story for the one interessed in the image: when we change idea we change the whole idea. And it is likely to happen very often. Sometimes twice a day, every day, for a week.
Long stort:
I am hopeless:
I am an IT university student, i know how to program and how to search for a fucking manual, but i am dealing with eletronics and PCB...

I have to make the firmware for a board (atmel things) and it have to talk via spi with some other devices (it is slave of one, and master for all the others(i will use two spi channels)), this should be easy...
I am have no senior to ask to, all i have is google and i found problems in every thing i try to do, every - fucking - single - one!!!! I know that the solution is always of the "you have to plug it in" type, but
NEITHER GOOGLE IS BEING OF HELP!
Let me explain this morning pain:
i can't add libraries in atmel studio, something wrong with the asf wizard, i have only found a tutorial that says what buttons press to solve my problem... I DO NOT HAVE THIS BUTTONS!!!
And the library i wanted to add is the one to make the board talk with the computer on his COM port... (And have some debug message...)
And the wizard gives problem because i created the project using an online atmel tool...
YES, i tried to create a project with asf and then add the files given by the online tool.... THEY DO NOT COMPILE, I SHOULD HAVE TO MESS WITH A 400 LINES LONG MAKEFILE, that is anything but human readable...
I haven't even look for anything spi related this morning
I am even forced to use windows, because every question in the forums, or every noobbish tutorial is based on it...

And then i find the tutorial with the perfect title, holy shit this is the thing i truly need!!!!! It says how to open a file. And then stops. WHAT ABOUT THE THING YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT IN THE TITLE??????

This project is the upgrade of a glue-pump based on an atmega328 (arduino uno processor), that is currently being produced and sold by our "company" .... .... That is composed by me and the boss.
He is a very nice and and smart person, he tries to give me ideas for the solution, if i cannot find out how to do something we can even change a lot of specifics of the project (the image shows our idea-change) and every board has some weeks of mornings like the one described above (i work only in the morning).
I am learning a very lot of things...
But the fact that every thins i try fails is destroying me, what would you do in my place?

Ps. Lot lf love for the ones who made it until the end <3

Voting feels like shit.

Seriously. Why? Because I have to vote for parties and representatives that might have one interest in common with me but go against my points of view almost all of the time. "We'll introduce a freedom of information act and legalize weed for better drug policy and youth protection!" -- WOW Great I'll vote for yo .. " ...and we'll also come to your home kill your dog, rape your family and shit in your back yard." -- oh f*** WHY? why do I have to live in a system were I am constantly forced to trade shit for even worse shit? Why can't I vote for policies or at least some kind of 'single' - issue representative?

I know that solving this problem is not easy and I do not claim to have the magical solution. "Not voting is even worse" sure but I am getting so fucking tired of it. It doesn't feel like progression and it sure as hell does not feel like it matters because in the end of the day you are just voting for the party that's at least going to use lube when raping you. I hate these ad hominem politics where we don't discuss the ideas but the people who represent them. I honestly don't give a fuck about who you are, if you're gay, married, or are left-wing, right-wing, conservative or liberal, in the end its about finding a good solution for everyone and not about the people implementing it. I don't care about politicians private lifes or worldviews (in terms of ideals, morals, religion etc.) , I care about finding the solutions to problems and having a wide array of opinions in order to discuss ideas and to find a valid and good way to go forward. "you can't agree with that person at all, because he's evil", yeah you know what? I don't care. It's about the ideas, arguments, discussions and solutions, not about the people who discuss them.

"I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike."

Only touching the topic slightly:

In my school time we had a windows domain where everyone would login to on every computer. You also had a small private storage accessible as network share that would be mapped to a drive letter so everyone could find it. The whole folder containing the private subfolders of everyone was shared so you could see all names but they were only accessible to the owner.

At some point, though, I tried opening them again but this time I could see the contents. That was quite unexpected so I tried reading some generic file which also worked without problems. Even the write command went through successfully. Beginning to grasp the severity of the misconfiguration I verified with other userfolders and even borrowed the account of someone else.

Skipping the "report a problem" form, which would have been read at at least in the next couple hours but I figured this was too serious, I went straight to the admin and told him what I found. You can't believe how quickly he ran off to the admin room to have a look/fix the permissions.

Hi! 😀 Great to meet you!!! I hope you are having a fabulous day 🐝. My name is John Doe 👔 at the TechyHelp 🤲 company. I know I might not look like much 🤪, but I will do my very best to make sure 🫵 YOU get my best service 👨‍🔧 to your hearts content 😌. I am sorry that this problem has been causing you pain 😥 it must be so awful dealing with this 😖 I can’t even imagine 🫣. I feel for you deeply 😮‍💨. It is my duty 🫡 and I will make sure to give you exactly what you are asking for and more. I am aching 😩 to satisfy you so you don’t feel anymore pain. I want to give you 🫴 so much pleasure today 🤤 to make sure you never have to think 🤔 about this problem ever again 🥰.

Upon applying some of my sleuthing 🕵️‍♂️ skills to use, I found that to restart your computer, press and hold Alt + F4

Let me know if this solves your problem!

I really hope I entertained you today 🥺. It is my pleasure ✨ to give you the most satisfaction possible, and I love that u came to me first 🤓. I know sometimes these problems can get built up 🥴 and really explode 🎊 💦 when you least expect it. So I hope I relieved some of that pressure today ☺️.

If you enjoyed my performance today, we would love to hear your feedback! 📝 Please sign up at the form below so that we can call you 📱 and hear about your experience 🌝. You can also take the 69 question survey on how well I serviced you today 😏.

Have a blessed day!
Stay safe!
Hope your life is amazing!
Happy pride month!
Peace, love, unity, respect!
Hugs and kisses!
Thanks a million!

- John

Slowly getting better with RegEx problems! Warning, lots of non-computer linguistic geekiness ahead.

Been working on some functions recently to replicate the furigana (Chinese character annotation) functions available over at JP.SE in PHP for a project.

Managed to get the basic cases down fairly quick:

[Chinese character][reading] => <ruby><rb>Chinese Character</rb><rt>Reading</rt></ruby>

However I realized this evening that there are patterns where this repeats twice for one word, such as the following:

[Chinese Character][helper Japanese character(s)][Chinese Character][possibly optional word ending][reading for the whole thing]

Managed to get it working for both cases initially, but then I found out that adding a Japanese character to either of my test strings (see graphic) would cause the annotations to fall grossly out of sync. The next two hours disappeared pretty fast before discovering that the issue was that I was removing the wrong string length from the annotation string, and just happened to luck out with a test case where it worked the first time.

Probably going to do a code review of it with the intern next time he's in. One of the things I've been stressing to him lately is that however easy a task may be for a human, there are all kinds of extra things that need to be tracked in order for a computer to be able to follow your logic.

TL;DR; windows XP + bat scripts + fascination about being able to make things yourself.

I was born and raised in a village. And the thing about living in a village is that you are free :) Among all the other freedoms you are also free to build your own solutions to various domestic problems, i.e. to build stuff. This is one of the things that fascinates me about living outside the city.

When I finally was old enough (and had the means to, i.e. a computer) to understand that programming is something that allows you to build your own solutions to computer problems, it got to me.

With win 3.1 I was still too fresh and too young. With win 95 I was more interested in playing with neighbours outdoors. With win 98 I was a bit too busy at school. But with win XP the time had come. I started writing automation solutions for windows administration using .bat scripts (.vbs was and still is somewhat repelling to me). I no longer needed to browse Russian forums and torrent sites to find a solution to a problem I had! That was amazing!!! [esp. when my Russian was very weak].

That was the time when I built my first sort-of-malware - a bat script downloading and installing Radmin server, uploading computer's IP and admin credentials to my FTP.

I loved it!

However, I'd stumbled upon may obstacles when writing with batch. I googled a lot and most of the solutions I found were in bash (something related to Linux, which was a spooky mystery to me back then). Eventually, I got my courage together and installed ubuntu. Boy was I sorry... Nothing was working. I was unable to even boot the thing! Not to mention the GUI...

Years later I tried again with ubuntu [7.10 I think.. or 7.04] on my Pavilion. Took me a looooot of attempts but I got there. I could finally boot it. A couple of weeks later I managed to even start the GUI! I could finally learn bash and enjoy the spectacular Compiz effects (that cube was amazing).

I got into bash and Linux for the next several years. And then I thought to myself - wait, I'm writing scripts that automate other programs. Wouldn't it be cool I I could write my own programs that did exactly what I wanted and did not need automation? It definitely would! I could write a program that would make sound work (meaning no more ALSA/PA headaches!), make graphics work on my hardware, make my USB audio card to be set to primary once connected and all the other amazing things! No more automation -- just a single program or all of that!

little did the naive me knew :)

I started with python. I didn't like that syntax from the beginning :/ those indentations...

Then I tried java. Bucky (thenewboston), who likes tuna sandwiches, on my phone all the free time I had. I didn't learn anything :/ Even tried some java 101 e-book. Nothing helped until I decided to write some simple project (nothing fancy - just some calculations for a friend who was studying architecture).

I loved it! It sounds weird, but I found Swing amazing too. With that layout manager where you have to manually position all the components :)

and then things happened and I quit my med studies and switched to programming. Passed my school exams I was missing to enter the IT college and started inhaling every bit of info about IT I could get my hands on (incl outside the college ofc).

A few more stepping stones, a few more irrelevant jobs to pay my bills in the city, and I got to where I am now.

I watched nvidia gtc keynote today. Most of stuff was about how amazing their gpu is and how much processing power we need, oh really?

Self driving cars are most idiotic way to implement rail way system on top of complicated road traffic system from last century.

The real problem is and always was problem of last mile. We don’t do shit about it, just trying to reinvent same stuff by complicating things.

I started wondering if it would be cheaper to just put small electric golf cars on railroads next to highway with automatic parkings next to cities. We could then slowly replace highways with railroads and even stack rails on top of each other.

You just drive to parking with golf cart and it hops you to railroad with auto chargers. Traffic is predictable so you know exact hour when you hop out and can drive last mile to target destination. So fucking simple yet we need fucking computer and tons of scientists to solve problems we created by bringing idiotic movies ideas to life.

Well most of stuff we try to automate is done so shitty way that it’s in fact complicate.

Fortunately it’s not my problem.

Look, I get that it's really tricky to assess whether someone is or isn't skilled going solely by their profile.

That's alright.

What isn't center of the cosmic rectum alright with the fucking buttsauce infested state of interviews is that you give me the most far fetched and convoluted nonsense to solve and then put me on a fucking timer.

And since there isn't a human being on the other side, I can't even ask for clarification nor walk them through my reasoning. No, eat shit you cunt juice swallowing mother fucker, anal annhilation on your whole family with a black cock stretching from Zimbabwe to Singapore, we don't care about this "reasoning" you speak of. Fuck that shit! We just hang out here, handing out tricks in the back alley and smoking opium with vietnamese prostitutes, up your fucking ass with reason.

Let me tell you something mister, I'm gonna shove a LITERAL TON of putrid gorilla SHIT down your whore mouth then cum all over your face and tits, let's see how you like THAT.

Cherry on top: by the time I began figuring out where my initial approach was wrong, it was too late. Get that? L'esprit d'escalier, bitch. I began to understand the problem AFTER the timer was up. I could solve it now, except it wouldn't do me any fucking good.

The problem? Locate the topmost 2x2 block inside a matrix whose values fall within a particular range. It's easy! But if you don't explain it properly, I have to sit down re-reading the description and think about what the actual fuck is this cancerous liquid queef that just got forcefully injected into my eyes.

But since I can't spend too much time trying to comperfukenhend this two dollar handjob of a task, which I'd rather swap for teabagging a hairy ass herpes testicle sack, there's rushing in to try and make sense of this shit as I type.

So I'm about 10 minutes down or so already, 35 to go. I finally decipher that I should get the XY coords of each element within the specified range, then we'll walk an array of those coordinates and check for adjacency. Easy! Done, and done.

Another 10 minutes down, all checks in place. TEST. Wait, wat? Where's the output? WHERE. THE FUCK. IS. THE OUTPUT?! BITCH GIMME AN ANSWER. I COUT'D THE RETURN AND CAN SEE THE TERMINAL BUT ITS NOT SHOWING ME ANYTHINGGG?! UUUGHHH FUCKKFKFKFKFKFKFKFUFUFUFFKFK (...)

Alright, we have about 20 minutes left to finish this motorsaw colonoscopy, and I can't see what my code is outputting so I'm walking through the code myself trying to figure out if this will work. Oh, look at that I have to MANUALLY click this fucking misaligned text that says "clear" in order for any new output to register. Lovely, 10/10 web design, I will violate your armpits with an octopus soaked in rabid bear piss.

Mmmh, looks like I got this wrong. Figures. I'm building the array of coordinates sequentially, as a one dimentional list, which is very inconvenient for finding adjacent elements. No problem, let's try and fix that aaaaaand... SHIT IM ALMOST OUT OF TIME.

QUICK LYEB, QUICK!! REMEMBER WHAT FISCELLA TAUGHT YOU, IN BETWEEN MOLESTING YOUR SOUL WITH 16-BIT I/O CONSOLE PROBLEMS, LIKE THAT BITCH SNOWFALL THING YOU HAD TO SOLVE FOR A FRIEND USING TURBO C ON A FUCKING TOASTER IN COMPUTER LAB! RUN MOTHERFUCKER RUN!!!

I'm SWEATING. HEAVILY. I'm STEAMING, NON-EROTICALLY. Less than 10 minutes left. I'm trying to correct the code I have, but I start making MORE dumbfuck mistakes because I'm in a hurry!

5 minutes left. As I hit this point of no return, I realize exactly where my initial reasoning went wrong, and how I could fix it, but I can't because I don't have enough time. Sadface.

So I hastily put together skeleton of the correct implementation, and as the clock is nearly up, I write a comment explaining the bits I can't get to write. Page up, top of file, type "the editor was shit LMAO" and comment it out. SUBMIT.

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Also hi ;>

Me, programmer(not employed yet): you know what is crazy about coding test? I can easily do manually what test said, but teaching it to computer is surprisingly hard.

My brother, teacher(not graduated yet): I can easily solve middle school problems too, but teaching to kids is hard part. It seems like we do similar thing.

So, a few months back my mother had some issues with her windows 10 box not being able to do proper backups to a backup partition. At the same time I was pulling insane hours at work and writing on a eBook on commission for a guy, besides having small kids with on and off flu and shit.

Needless to say, I didn't have time to look at the backup issues. Well, even though my mom is one of those dogs you can't teach new tricks, she has always been resourceful enough to get help with things.

This time she picked up the phone and called Microsoft Support, got some guys to remote in and take a look. They messed around a bit and said they were done.

She phoned me up later that day to tell me how proud she was of herself for doing that. Of course, she skipped telling me the important bit about she actually calling them, rather describing it as "Microsoft was just on my computer and fixed it".

You can imagine my immediate reaction, cold sweat running down my back, adrenalin rushing in as I dug through the details of what had happened.

A few days later she calls me up again and tells me the problem is back, and we agree that even though the MS dudes was not able to fix it at first, she should try again, as she had a ticket to reference.

The next attempt by MS actually fried her partitions, and apparently they had f-ed up trying to delete and recreate the backup partition.

That's not the worst of it though. Since they fried her disk, her computer crashed and naturally the remoting won't work. In our country, they have no people on the ground to do hands on help, and they didn't have a partner near by. Her not having a win 10 usb stick, nor a spare computer to make one, she was in a surreal predicament.

She was also quite pissed, and pissed off mums are not to be messed with. She managed to get Microsoft to agree to cover the costs of a non-partner to visit her to fix the problems, and using her as the middle man, they made an agreement with the 3rd-party tech support company.

After the box was fixed though, some more issues arose... regarding billing. The 3rd-party tech support was unable to get in contact with the person at MS that was going to sign off on the bill, and again using my mom as the middle man, it was agreed that my mom, as the customer, was to be reimbursed for the bill to the 3rd-party.

Guess what... 3 months went by, with weekly follow-ups and nagging from my mom, and still no money...

At this time, I had time to help her, and after some digging and borderline stalking, we managed to get the phone numbers of some of the higher ups in my country, and she started calling them directly.

After talking to a couple who refused to help, she reached the Vice President of the country branch, and was finally able to talk to someone who gave a shit.

Still took over a month more to actually get the money, but now she had someone who actually gave her statuses, receipts and ETAs.

FUCK!