Manager: Hey, this is Junior. he will work with you from now on.
Me: Oh cool, we could use some help.
(moments later...)
Junior: Hey i got this error. Im new with this engine. sorry.
Me: It cool, then you should read the documentation first. its all there. including your error.
Junior: whats documentation?
Me: ...

For all the cunts ever existed! what do they teach to programmers in college these days?!

I have my best moments but the first time I felt badass about computers was when I was at kindergarten.

There was one computer with one cool game with skateboard. I wanted to play but the other kids didn’t let me.

I thought that if it look like I fix the computer they will let me. I took me month or little more but I made shutdown bat(I didn’t really understood fully) and I added it to the game shortcut from usb.

One of the other kids started the game and the computer turned itself off. Hi tried a few times and then I offered to fix it, I created new shortcut replacing the “hacked” one and the game ran.

From that moment the computer and the game were always free for me.

Paranoid Developers - It's a long one
Backstory: I was a freelance web developer when I managed to land a place on a cyber security program with who I consider to be the world leaders in the field (details deliberately withheld; who's paranoid now?). Other than the basic security practices of web dev, my experience with Cyber was limited to the OU introduction course, so I was wholly unprepared for the level of, occasionally hysterical, paranoia that my fellow cohort seemed to perpetually live in. The following is a collection of stories from several of these people, because if I only wrote about one they would accuse me of providing too much data allowing an attacker to aggregate and steal their identity. They do use devrant so if you're reading this, know that I love you and that something is wrong with you.

That time when...

He wrote a social media network with end-to-end encryption before it was cool.

He wrote custom 64kb encryption for his academic HDD.

He removed the 3 HDD from his desktop and stored them in a safe, whenever he left the house.

He set up a pfsense virtualbox with a firewall policy to block the port the student monitoring software used (effectively rendering it useless and definitely in breach of the IT policy).

He used only hashes of passwords as passwords (which isn't actually good).

He kept a drill on the desk ready to destroy his HDD at a moments notice.

He started developing a device to drill through his HDD when he pushed a button. May or may not have finished it.

He set up a new email account for each individual online service.

He hosted a website from his own home server so he didn't have to host the files elsewhere (which is just awful for home network security).

He unplugged the home router and began scanning his devices and manually searching through the process list when his music stopped playing on the laptop several times (turns out he had a wobbly spacebar and the shaking washing machine provided enough jittering for a button press).

He brought his own privacy screen to work (remember, this is a security place, with like background checks and all sorts).

He gave his C programming coursework (a simple messaging program) 2048 bit encryption, which was not required.

He wrote a custom encryption for his other C programming coursework as well as writing out the enigma encryption because there was no library, again not required.

He bought a burner phone to visit the capital city.

He bought a burner phone whenever he left his hometown come to think of it.

He bought a smartphone online, wiped it and installed new firmware (it was Chinese; I'm not saying anything about the Chinese, you're the one thinking it).

He bought a smartphone and installed Kali Linux NetHunter so he could test WiFi networks he connected to before using them on his personal device.

(You might be noticing it's all he's. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't).

He ate a sim card.

He brought a balaclava to pentesting training (it was pretty meme).

He printed out his source code as a manual read-only method.

He made a rule on his academic email to block incoming mail from the academic body (to be fair this is a good spam policy).

He withdraws money from a different cashpoint everytime to avoid patterns in his behaviour (the irony).

He reported someone for hacking the centre's network when they built their own website for practice using XAMMP.

I'm going to stop there. I could tell you so many more stories about these guys, some about them being paranoid and some about the stupid antics Cyber Security and Information Assurance students get up to. Well done for making it this far. Hope you enjoyed it.

Hey guys,

this rant will be long again. I'm sorry for any grammar errors or something like that, english isn't my native language. Furthermore I'm actually very sad and not in a good mood.

Why? What happened? Some of you may already know - I'm doing my apprenticeship / education in a smal company.
There I'm learning a lot, I'm developing awesome features directly for the clients, experience of which other in my age (I'm only 19 years old) can only dream.
Working in such a small company is very exhausting, but I love my job, I love programming. I turned my hobby into a profession and I'm very proud of it.
But then there are moments like the last time, when I had to present something for a client - the first presentation was good, the last was a disaster, nothing worked - but I learned from it.

But this time everything is worse than bad - I mean really, really worse than bad.

I've worked the whole week on a cool new feature - I've done everything that it works yesterday, that everything gets done before the deadline of yesterday.

To achieve this I've coded thursday till 10pm ! At home! Friday I tested the whole day everything to ensure that everything is working properly. I fixed several bugs and then at the end of the day everything seems to be working. Even my boss said that it looks good and he thinks that the rollout to all clients will become good and without any issues.

But unfortunately deceived.

Yesterday evening I wrote a long mail to my boss - with a "manual". He was very proud and said that he is confident that everything will work fine. He trusts me completly.

Then, this morning I received a mail from him - nothing works anymore - all clients have issues, everything stays blank - because I've forgotten to ensure that the new feature (a plugin) and its functionality is supported by the device (needs a installation).
First - I was very shoked - but in the same moment I thought - one moment - you've written an if statement, if the plugin is installed - so why the fuck should it broken everything?!
I looked instant to the code via git. This has to be a very bad joke from my boss I thought. But then I saw the fucking bug - I've written:
if(plugin) { // do shit }
but it has to be if(typeof plugin !== 'undefined')

I fucked up everything - due to this fucking mistake. This little piece of shit I've forgotten on one single line fucked up everything. I'm sorry for this mode of expression but I thought - no this can not be true - it must be a bad bad nightmare.
I've tested this so long, every scenario, everything. Worked till the night so it gets finished. No one, no one from my classmates would ever think of working so long. But I did it, because I love my job. I've implemented a check to ensure that the plugin is installed - but implemented it wrong - exactly this line which caused all the errors should prevent exactly this - what an irony of fate.

I've instantly called my boss and apologized for this mistake. The mistake can't be undone. My boss now has to go to all clients to fix it. This will be very expensive...

Oh my goodnes, I just cried.
I'm only working about half a year in this company - they trust me so much - but I'm not perfect - I make mistakes - like everyone else. This time my boss didn't looked over my code, didn't review it, because he trusted me completly - now this happens. I think this destroyed the trust :( I'm so sad.
He only said that we will talk on monday, how we can prevent such things in the feature..
Oh guys, I don't know - I've fucked up everything, we were so overhelmed that everything would work :(
Now I'm the looser who fucked up - because not testing enough - even when I tested it for days, even at home - worked at home - till the night - for free, for nothing - voluntary.

This is the thanks for that.
Thousand good things - but one mistake and you're the little asshole. You - a 19 year old guy, which works since 6 months in a company. A boss which trusts you and don't look over your code. One line which should prevent crashing, crashed everything.

I'm sorry that this rant is so long, I just need to talk to you guys because I'm so sad. Again. This has happend to frequently lately.

Im getting a bit tired of programming.

I have been struggling for years regarding programming. I did have some moments of perceived success, but most of the time it has been depressing.

I’m not sure if I dislike programming. But there are some aspects of it that make me feel not as passionate about it.

First of, programs are invisible. No one sees your program or you (assuming we’re talking about a non artistic dev job).

People can’t see lines of code executing, but even if they did it would be gibberish to them.

Users can only become aware of bad software and that kind of breaks my heart a bit.

You could write fast, stable, secure, easy to read, easy to update software. People won’t notice. Hell, even your boss/coworkers might not notice.

In fact, sometimes you try to do the good thing, you try to become a better dev, you try to write tests first, you try to i18n, and what do you get? “Uhh, that’s taking too much time and I don’t see the benefit”.

I know some people will say that people noticing bad service happens on every job.

But programming is the ultimate isolation job. No client has ever told me “hey that code you wrote was pretty good”. They can’t even read code.

I don’t know the users, the users don’t know me, and the users can only judge my program by the result, they can only judge the visual interface.

Let’s say you write a cool project at github. The code is great. Guess what, every language’s ecosystem out there is saturated. Everything is already written. GitHub is saturated. Your best project ends up being a just for yourself enjoyment.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy code for yourself. That’s how I bet most prolific coders start. I’ve been doing that for many years now. But at some point you want to be part of something with humans.

Imagine I’m stranded on an island with nothing no humans, just food, water and a computer. Would I write code just for myself, just for fun? I think I would off myself 3 months in.

Maybe I should do develop a more social talent...

Not a rant but an awesome moment. I am in the kitchen enjoying my morning rant reading session and I hear my 13 year old listening to jazz in his room. I listen to 80s hair bands and he listens to jazz. Cool.

Top gripes about getting older as I'm about to turn 40:

5. Actually starting to have moments at home after work where I'm contemplating saying 'Hey babe, wanna bang?' but before I can get the words out my body pipes in with 'Dude, cool your jets, we're wiped out today; check back tomorrow.' Women say they like older guys because <insert character trait here> but I'm now convinced it's just because they know there's less work involved. =/

4. Friends with young children. I hardly ever see them anymore, and when I do, all they talk about are their kids and their shitty relationship with their co-parent. The circle continues to get smaller...

3. Having to go get glasses in order to renew my driver's license. How do we not have a heads-up display in every vehicle by now that shows the street numbers of buildings as I'm perpendicular to them as well as the names of upcoming cross streets? That way I'd fix the problem the way I do for everything else: notch up the font scaling on my display a point or two. Elon, you're slipping...

2. Realizing that the "American Dream" isn't worth the paper it was printed on. (Anyone else remember paying 97¢ for a gallon of gas or $2 for a pack of Marlboros?) Concurrent realization: It's not easy to find work in another country without moving there first, even if you speak the language. Any devs in Portugal that read this, ligue-me.

1. Being too busy to just chat with new people I meet except on rare occasion. Mostly referring to work time here, when it seems I'm always needing to find the shortest route to the objectif du jour. If I could tell my teenage self just one piece of advice, it'd probably be "start your career in Europe, not the USA" but I really want it to be "treasure the time you spend on IRC talking about anything and everything with people that always have time for you and vice versa, because it's going to be over before you know it."

Vape bloggers be telling people that it's impossible to quit vaping salt nicotine but I quit successfully. Here's how it went:
1. I took my addiction to the point when I vaped three cartridges a day (that's a lot). I remembered that feeling and recalled that dizziness and urge to vomit instead of "pleasure" when I wanted to vape again
2. It's hard to quit on your own. Instead of nicorette and other shit that doesn't work (because it's also nicotine), I took Cytisine. It removed that URGE and the only thing left to tackle was a psychological addiction
3. Vaping and smoking in my head was tied to a cool moments that I experienced, like smoking with the boys after a hackaton, etc. I analyzed them and realized that they're cool not because of the fact of smoking, they are cool per se. So smoking was not necessary

In my last days of cytisine therapy I not only forgot that I vaped, I sometimes forgot to take cytisine. That means the therapy was successful. My average running distance already improved from 1.5 to 3 km.

There is a research that quitting consuming nicotine can help cure depression. I'll check on that

The team leader call us for a serious meeting, and he wants it to be productive,

Leader: "we shall not procrastinate anymore. We don't have time left. We should not just talk random bullshit like we did the last few times. Aight?"

We all agree to be productive.

We also set a few main subjects and decision to be discussed. Then, we all get into the meeting room seriously. In a meeting, we try the idea of the upcoming project. But we suddenly went off topic. Then, My friend talk about L4D2. Then we start playing. And, I say, why not try some GTA5? I proudly reboot my expensive laptop from Ubuntu to Windows and playing GTA. Then, we start spotify and talk about song.

We laid in the sofa and talk sexually. My friend introduce me his favorite AV and we compare our manhood's size.

It was 4am already. One by one the attendee fall asleep.

It is lIke... the survival gamr of sleepiness? xD

Only my best boy friend and I were left awake, talking about ourselves, watching the beautiful midnight city.

Then, 2 of us ourselves start to talk about project idea. It is something cool and crazy to think about, like a friend making app. The 3 hours of brainstorming is gay and romantic.

"Okay, so we have the outline. let's sleep, baby" So we sleep till the noon. We wake up. Some left. Some were still sleeping. The birds twitter in the bequtiful skyline.
I did not forget to upload my idea to discord after going home in the morning. End of the meeting. Barely any goal was met in the meeting.

Those days, we make attempt of productive meeting again and again but end up procrastinating everyday. We had meeting in a small bedroom and it was our meeting room. We played different songs, tasted different wines.

And, finally one day, my friend say "I feel that it is much productive to work alone in a separate room. So we won't get distracted by each other."
Another friend: "yea..I know it is harsh... but yea... true... let's work alone"

I almost eant to cry. But we cannot indulge ourselves in the moments of dreamy romance.

We should start real work and don't be gay.

My very first time was when I first saw a Web page, I really wanted to know how they did it. Two weeks later I built an intranet at home and I thought I was so cool I was shitting out ice cubes.

The very first programme I ever wrote was a secret diary application(C#) for myself I thought it was really secure because I had my own file extension. Not one of my finer moments.

A long time ago you sent me an email with the subject 'I love you', I then got so excited that I forwarded the letter to all my contacts, and they forwarded it too.. I can't describe the words for the feelings I had back then for you. I felt into love with you, really. But there were always troubling moments for me.

For example when 'Code Red' showed up and found your backdoor. Man I was pissed at that time. I didn't know what to do next. But things settled, and we found each other again.

And then that other time when this girl named 'Melissa' was sending me some passwords to pr0n sites, I couldn't resist. She was really awesome, but you know, deep in my heart that was not what I wanted. I somehow managed to go back to you and say sorry. We even moved together in our first flat, and later in our own house. That was a really good time, I love to think back at those moments.

Then my friend 'Sasser' came over to us one night, do you remember how he claimed that big shelf in our living room, and overflooded it with his own stuff, so that we haven't a clue we are reading yet offshelve? Wow that was a disturbing experience.

But a really hard time has come when our dog 'Zeus' got kicked by this ugly trojan horse. I really don't want go into details how the mess looked like after we discovered him on our floor. Still, I am very sorry for him that he didn't survived it :(

Some months later this guy named 'Conficker' showed up one day. I shitted my pants when I discovered that he guessed my password on my computer and got access to all my private stuff on it. He even tried to find some network shares of us with our photos on it. God, I was happy that he didn't got access to the pics we stored there. Never thought that our homemade photos are not secure there.

We lived our lives together, we were happy until that day when you started the war. 'Stuxnet..'! you cried directly in my face, 'you are gonna blow up our centrifuges of our life', and yeah she was right. I was in a real bad mood that days back then. I even not tried to hide my anger. But really, I don't know why all this could happen. All I know is, that it started with that cool USB stick I found on the stairs of our house. After that I don't remember anything, as it is just erased from my memory.

The years were passing. And I say the truth here, we were not able to manage the mess of our relationship. But I still loved you when you opened me that you will leave. My 'Heartbleed' started immediately, you stabbed it where it causes the most pain, where I thought that my keys to your heart are secured. But no, you stabbed even harder.

Because not long after that you even encrypted our private photos on our NAS, and now I am really finished, no memory which can be refreshed with a look at our pictures, and you even want my money. I really 'WannaCry' now...

I honestly have come a long way. But I still have these moments when I just lose confidence In myself, and while grieving it can be worse/more frequent.

I’m being taught some networking programming from this person I befriended and it’s going wonderfully! But I don’t know how much I’m taking in. I don’t know if I’ll be able to completely understand while I’m using what I’m learning, but I guess part of the learning is by using and doing. But what if I need to change it up for a different purpose but I don’t know how?

What if I’m not programming enough? When working on this project/learning the stuff from my new teacher friend to actually make some of the stuff I usually work on that for 30 mins to an hour and a half maybe even 2. Relax, do some college, play games, then later I’ll try to work through a few exercises of my C# WinForms book.
And before you say it I’m not balancing too much on my head. I’ve learned GUI’s before with Python I’m just reflecting that to C# and it’s easy and I’m always in a separate headspace for networking. But it all just doesn’t feel like enough?

It also doesn’t help that i don’t feel like I’m doing anything special that I can boost my confidence with. Usually in a project I won’t feel like I’m doing anything until a cool or special feature is made and I know that’s bad I hate it but I can’t avoid it and I want to feel good even when nothing completely out of this world is made that day.

And I’ve definitely come a long way I’m proud of myself but I just hate getting these feels. And It happens a bit when I’m learning because I’m afraid I’m not learning and I’m gonna keep copy pasting the same code snippets for different projects and I don’t want that I want to be able to fucking edit and change it or make a completely new one of whatever it is but my design but I guess that takes experience with it first.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk