Confessions of a Programmer

#1
If a client is an unbearable asshole during the initial communication, I look for every excuse to pad on the hours for the estimate to get paid more. If a client goes above and beyond in their douchbaggery, I tack on an additional $40/hour.

#2
Sometimes I will present an elaborate solution to a client, but really I'm just reading off the features of a plugin or library I'm going to download or buy after the call. Not because I can't build it myself, but because I'd rather spend more time on other/my own projects.

#3
Clients assume because I know one language, I know them all. Rather than turning down the work, I take a crash course to work in that language, or outsource the work and clean it up afterwards, whichever is more practical at the time.

#4
I use cPanel on a dedicated to manage our client websites. I'm not paid enough to bother with setting up everything manually.

#5
Certain projects I build have a 3-day backdoor built into it. If the client doesn't pay upon completion, a unique hash triggered as a GET variable deletes a core file in my work, rendering the work useless. If it wasn't triggered by the 4th day, the file allowing me to trigger this backdoor is removed. This is only used for clients where the project must be launched on their servers, or if there has been a previous issue collecting payment.

#6
I slip in the initial contract that all preceeding phone calls will be monitored and recorded, and that they acknowledge the recordings are admissable in court. This has saved me from losing money twice now.

#7
I have never used an IDE. (I know, I know, it's really inefficient and dumb, but I'm just more comfortable with Sublime. Plus I often find myself mobile and without my computer, so I have to program from my phone.)

#8
Each day resembles a betting spectacle of which work will be late, which will be rushed out and which will never see the light of day.

#9
I have used "sick" and "family emergency" as an excuse to just sleep in far more than I can count.

#10
When a client from hell crosses over the line in their conduct (such as getting very nasty and personal, or sending threats), I anonymously report them to the BBB and on RipOffReport.

I have just concluded a post-mortem on one of my servers.
Cause of death: out of memory due to a tiny memory leak in a VPN service triggered by 66 different IPs brute-forcing the creds at the same time. Mostly from China, of course.

Dear bot writers: you made me put aside my spaghetti and write iptables rules. I hate iptables. And I love spaghetti. You should be ashamed of yourself! Did momma not teach you basic OpSec? Don't crash the target and never, ever, interrupt the sysadmin during dinner!

TL;DR: Fuck you Apple.

10:30 PM, parent needs iPhone update to update Messenger. How hard can this be?
Need to update iPhone from 9.x to latest, which is so outdated it still required iTunes. Fk.

Boot iTunes on Windows 10 pc that is at least 10 years old.
Completely unresponsive
Crash in task manager
Launch and is completely unresponsive. (Also starts playing unrequested music.. Oh joy..)
Fuck this, go to apple.com to download iTunes exe
Gives me some Microsoft store link. Fuck that shit, just give me the executable
Google “iTunes download”. click around on shitty Apple website. Success.
Control panel. Uninstall iTunes. (Takes forever, but it works)
Restart required (of fucking course).
2 eternities later. Run iTunes exe. Restart required. Fk.
Only 1 eternity later. Run iTunes, connect iPhone.
Actually detects the device. (holy shit, a miracle)
Starts syncing an empty library to the phone. Ya, fuck that.
Google. Disable option. Connect phone. Find option to update.
Update started. Going nowhere fast. Time for a walk at 1:00 AM punching the air.
Come back. Generic error message: Update failed (-1). Phone is stuck installing update. (O shit)
1x hard reset
2x hard reset
Google. Find Apple forum with exact question. Absolutely useless replies. (I expected no less)
Google recovery mode. Get into recovery mode.
Receive message: “You can update, but if it fails, you will have to reset to factory settings”. Fuck it, here we go.
Update runs (faster this time). Fails again. Same bullshit error message. (Goddammit, fuck. This might actually be bad.)
Disconnect phone.
… It boots latest iOS version. (holy shit, there is a god)
Immediately kill iTunes. Fuck that shit.
Parents share Apple account
Sign in, 2FA required.
Fat finger the code.
Restart “welcome” process.
Will not send code. What. The. Fuck.
Requests access code on other parent’s iPhone.
No code present. What???
Try restarting welcome process again. No dice. (Of course)
Set code on other parent’s iPhone.
Get message “Code is easy to guess”. Ya. IDGAF
Use code on newly updated iPhone. Some success.
Requires reset of password.
Password cannot be the same as old password (Goddammit)
Change password.
Welcome process done.
Sign in again on same phone after welcome process done in settings. (Nice.)
Sign in again on other phone with updated password
Update Messenger.
Update hangs. Needs more space.
Delete shit.
Update frozen in App Store (Really??)
Restart iPhone.
Update Messenger.
Update complete past 2. Well that was easy.

Apple, fuck you.
Some call Android unintuitive, but I look at the settings app on iPhone and realize you aren’t any better.
This company hasn’t been innovative since 2007. Over 1000 USD for a phone? Are you fucking kidding me?
Updating an iPhone from iOS 9.x is probably uncommon anymore. But this is a fucking joke. Fix your shit.
Shit like this is why I’ll never again own an Apple product. I have HAD IT with the joke of a business.

Thanks for reading.

(Senior level engineering course and our professor used to work for NASA. This can lead to some fun anecdotes during class.)

Professor: “Because the ends have such a small surface area, you can neglect them in your calculations.”

Student: "What would NASA do?"

Professor: *without missing a beat* “They'd probably use the wrong units and crash into Mars."

Hello everyone, this is my first time here so hi! I want to tell you all a story about my current situation.

At 18 while in the military I was able to get my first computer, it was a small hp pavilion laptop with windows 7. The system would crash constantly, even though I would only use it for googling stuff and using fb to talk to people. 5 months after I got it and continuously hated it decided to find out why and who could I blame (other than myself) for the system making me do the ctrl alt del dance all the time....

Found out that there are people called computer programmers that made software. Decided to give it a go since I had some free time most days. Started out with c++ because it was being recommended in some websites. Had many "oh deeeeer lord" moments. After not getting much traction I decided to move to Java which seemed like an easier step than C++. Had fun, but after some verbosity I decided to move into more dynamic lands. Tried JS and since at the time there was no Node and I was not very into the idea of building websites I decided to move into Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl and had a really great time using and learning all of them. I decided to get good in theoretical aspects of computer programming and since I had a knack for math I decided to get started with basic computer science concepts.

I absolutely frigging loved it. And not only that, but learning new things became an obsession, the kind that would make me go to bed at 02:40 am just to wake up at 04:00 or 06:00 because the military is like that. I really wanted to absorb as much as I could since I wanted to go to college for it and wanted to be prepared since I did not wanted to be a complete newb. Took Harvard CS50, Standford Programming 101 with Java, Rice's Python course and MIT's Python programming class. I had so much fun I don't regret it one bit.
By the time I got to college I had already made the jump to Linux and was an adept Arch user, Its not that it was superior or anything, but it really forced me to learn about Linux and working around a terminal and the internals of the system to get what I want. Now a days I settle for Fedora or Debian based systems since they are easier and time is money.

Uni was a breeze, math was fun and the programming classes seemed like glorified "Hello World" courses. I had fun, but not that much fun, most of my time was spent getting better at actual coding. I am no genius, nor my grades were super amazing(I did graduate with honors though) but I had fun, which never really happened in school before that.

While in school I took my first programming gig! It was in ASP.NET MVC, we were using C#, I got the job through a customer that I met at work, I was working in retail during the time and absolutely hated it. I remember being so excited with the gig, I got to meet other developers! Where I am from there aren't that many and most of them are very specialized, so they only get concerned with certain aspects of coding (e.g VBA developers.....) and that is until I met the lead dev. He was by far one of the biggest assholes I had ever met in my life. Absolutely nothing that I would do or say made hem not be a dick. My code was steady, but I would find bugs of incomplete stuff that he would do, whenever I would fix it he would belittle me and constantly remind me of my position as a "junior dev" in the company saying things as "if you have an issue with my code or standards tell me, but do not touch the code" which was funny considering that I would not be able to advance without those fixes. I quit not even 3 months latter because I could not stand the dick, neither 2 of the other developers since the immediately resigned after they got their own courage.

A year latter I was able to find myself another gig. I was hesitant for a moment since it was another remote position in which I had already had a crappy experience. Boy this one was bad. To be fair, this was on me since I had to get good with Lumen after only having some exposure to Laravel. Which I did mentioned repeatedly even though he did offer to train me in order to help him. Same thing, after a couple of weeks of being told how much I did not know I decided to get out.

That is 2 strikes.

So I waited a little while and took a position inside another company that was using vanilla PHP to build their services. Their system was solid though, the lead engineer remains a friend and I did learn a lot from him. I got contracted because they were looking for a Java developer. The salary was good. But when I got there they mentioned that they wanted a developer in Java...to build Android. At the time I was using Java with Spring so I though "well how hard can this be! I already use Android so the love for the system is there, lets do this!" And it was an intense, fun and really amazing experience.

-- To be continued.

Yesterday (or the day before that depending on your timezone and day-night schedule - this Friday) my OnePlus 6T arrived. After only 2 days of time between placing the order and actually getting the phone, quite impressive!

The DHL guy asked me upon receipt - is it the OnePlus 6T? - Yes it is!! - "An amazing device it is!", he said. And honestly.. he couldn't be more right.

I might be a bit biased on this because after all I did just spend €630 on this phone. But it feels so snappy, high quality, the 8GB of RAM is just.. it blows my mind. But I'm sure that the other reviews did this sort of jazz already.

The things that set this phone apart for me though were the following.

When I get a new phone or tablet, usually the first thing I do is rooting it. This one was no different, about an hour after receipt it was successfully rooted and loaded with Magisk. Currently I'm still in the phase of "getting to know the phone", wherein fuckups are usual. This time again being no different - I removed some apps and apparently did something to it that the search engines - both Google and DuckDuckGo - didn't quite like, as both of them would crash upon application launch. Me in full panic mode of course, desperately trying to find the stock ROM (which doesn't seem to be present in its usual form) or a new set of GApps (which didn't resolve the issue). OnePlus does seem to offer its OTA updates in zip archives though. So I downloaded its latest update (same as what was on the device) and applied it.

That's when the nerdgasm happened.

The "update" was simply a matter of going into the settings, tapping this and that and applying the update. No recovery, no unrooting, no nothing. The update just went like that despite the phone being rooted and just having had TWRP flashed to it. I always wanted this sort of thing, which even the Nexus couldn't offer - having the cake and eating it too. Being able to root the device and muck around with it while still being able to update the device timely without too many hurdles. This fucking thing does it!!!

That is to say, after my initial nerdgasm I did find that it bulldozed over my su binary (effectively unrooting the thing), custom emoji I've set (iOS 12 because fuck Google's most recent emoji set) and some other things. But those are easy to install back, much more so than it would've been to download a whole Android release and dirty flash it, as it was on the Nexus.

Other than that, battery life, dash charging (edit: on that topic, it does remain cool like a cucumber despite getting 15-20W of power jammed into it, quite impressive!), snappiness, the usual jazz.. eh, as I said earlier that's the usual reviewer stuff. But this feature of being able to upgrade the phone while it's modified, that's something which seems to be severely underrated by those.

Oh and during kernel builds, I couldn't quite get the source to work - probably due to my lack of experience with builds of Android kernels - but I did find that this phone actually exposes its kernel config through /proc/config.gz as it should. None of my MediaTek devices do this, so that's something that I found really appealing. Always nice to see when a manufacturer exposes this information to give you a stock sort of config that you can be rest assured will work configuration-wise. And it allows you to see what the stock kernel is actually built with, which again is really nice. I quite like this! It really encourages further development.

After working in a different field (marketing) for over 10 years and a 6 month crash course I got a programming job at a kickass development company! Yeah!

[ATTENTION if you're an apple fan this rant could hurt your religion]
- I used a mc for about 12 hours, only to fix the ios version of an app in Xamarin, it was a nightmare:
- I took the only free mac available, it's the latest macbook pro with the "amazing" touch bar, mac os wash freshly reinstalled
- I switch it on, set it up and after few minutes the screen become black, I thought went in standby (the "amazing" touch bar still was working), I try to switch it on but nothing, I asked for help to mac users in office and they choose a genius solution: forced switch off and on
- Finally after took all the adapters I can start to work
- I notice that's not possible to snap 2 or more windows (without 3rd party apps)
- It's not possible to automatically enlarge the Window almost full screen without cover the bottom and top bar, there is only full screen option but it's not the best
- Inverted scroll by default, on mouse doesn't make sense (on trackpad and touch screen yes)
- Multimonitor sucks...and it doesn't recognize 2 monitors connected in chain
- It's not possible disable standby if you're on battery and you close the lid
- Too often I had to see that annoying rainbow progress also for stupid actions
- Like Windows it's not possible to install 2 software at same time
- Like Windows after some updates is required to reboot
- Finally I switched back to my lovely Dell XPS 15 with Windows 10, but I had to go back on the mac for one more fix, so I search again for the adaptor, I reconnect everything and mouse and keyboard doesn't work, after few minutes the mac reboot by himself and appear a crash report dialog...of course I send them a nice feedback
- At the end of the day, as the mac asked more than once, I install the updates... after about an hour, when we try to switch it on again, it doesn't... so once again forced switch off and on

if you want to use it for nice picture on Facebook or Instagram "just woks" ... but for serious work I'm so grateful to choose a Dell XPS 15 with Windows 10

I've been away, lurking at the shadows (aka too lazy to actually log in) but a post from a new member intrigued me; this is dedicated to @devAstated . It is erratic, and VERY boring.
When I resigned from the Navy, I got a flood of questions from EVERY direction, from the lower rank personnel and the higher ups (for some reason, the higher-ups were very interested on what the resignation procedure was...). A very common question was, of course, why I resigned. This requires a bit of explaining (I'll be quick, I promise):
In my country, being in the Navy (or any public sector) means you have a VERY stable job position; you can't be fired unless you do a colossal fuck-up. Reduced to non-existent productivity? No problem. This was one of the reasons for my resignation, actually.
However, this is also used as a deterrent to keep you in, this fear of lack of stability and certainty. And this is the reason why so many asked me why I left, and what was I going to do, how was I going to be sure about my job security.
I have a simple system. It can be abused, but if you are careful, it may do you and your sanity good.
It all begins with your worth, as an employee (I assume you want to go this way, for now). Your worth is determined by the supply of your produced work, versus the demand for it. I work as a network and security engineer. While network engineers are somewhat more common, security engineers are kind of a rarity, and the "network AND security engineer" thing combined those two paths. This makes the supply of my work (network and security work from the same employee) quite limited, but the demand, to my surprise, is actually high.
Of course, this is not something easy to achieve, to be in the superior bargaining position - usually it requires great effort and many, many sleepless nights. Anyway....
Finding a field that has more demand than there is supply is just one part of the equation. You must also keep up with everything (especially with the tech industry, that changes with every second). The same rules apply when deciding on how to develop your skills: develop skills that are in short supply, but high demand. Usually, such skills tend to be very difficult to learn and master, hence the short supply.
You probably got asleep by now.... WAKE UP THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Now, to job security: if you produce, say, 1000$ of work, then know this:
YOU WILL BE PAID LESS THAN THAT. That is how the company makes profit. However, to maximize YOUR profit, and to have a measure of job security, you have to make sure that the value of your produced work is high. This is done by:
- Producing more work by working harder (hard method)
- Producing more work by working smarter (smart method)
- Making your work more valuable by acquiring high demand - low supply skills (economics method)
The hard method is the simplest, but also the most precarious - I'd advise the other two. Now, if you manage to produce, say, 3000$ worth of work, you can demand for 2000$ (numbers are random).
And here is the thing: any serious company wants employees that produce much more than they cost. The company will strive to pay them with as low a salary as it can get away with - after all, a company seeks to maximize its profit. However, if you have high demand - low supply skills, which means that you are more expensive to be replaced than you are to be paid, then guess what? You have unlocked god mode: the company needs you more than you need the company. Don't get me wrong: this is not an excuse to be unprofessional or unreasonable. However, you can look your boss in the eye. Believe me, most people out there can't.
Even if your company fails, an employee with valuable skills that brings profit tends to be snatched very quickly. If a company fires profitable employees, unless it hires more profitable employees to replace them, it has entered the spiral of death and will go bankrupt with mathematical certainty. Also, said fired employees tend to be absorbed quickly; after all, they bring profit, and companies are all about making the most profit.
It was a long post, and somewhat incoherent - the coffee buzz is almost gone, and the coffee crash is almost upon me. I'd like to hear the insight of the veterans; I estimate that it will be beneficial for the people that start out in this industry.

Fuck Apple and its review system

So, this started in december. We wanted to publsih an app, after years of development.

Submit to review, and passes on the first try. Well, what do you know. We are on manual release option, so we can release together with the android counterpart. Well yes, but someone notices that the app name is not what was aggreed (App Name instead of AppName). Okay, should be easy, submit the same app, just the name changed. If it passed once, it will pass again, right? HAH

Rejected, because the description, why we use the device’s camera is too general. Well... its the purpose of the app... but whatever, i read the guidelines, okay, its actually documented with exapmles. BUT THEN WHY THE FUCK COULDNT YOU SAY THAT ON THE FIRST UPLOAD?

Whatever, fix it, new version, accepted, ready to release just in time.

It doesindeed roll out,but of course, we notice that the app has a giant issue, but only on specific phones. None of our test phones had this problem, but those who have, essentially cannot use our program. Nasty as it is, the fix is really easy, done in 5 minutes. Upload it asap, literally nothing changed from user point of view, except now it doesnt crash on said devices. Meanwhile 1 star reviews are arriving from these users - of course with all the right. Apple should allow this patch quickly, right? HAH

THE REAL BULLSHIT COMES NOW

With only config files changed, the same binary uploaded we get rejected? What now? Lets read it. “Metadata rejected, no need to upload new binary”.... oh fine only the store page is wrong? Easy. Read the message, what went wrong. “Referencing third party content is nit permitted on the app store” meaning that no android test device should be shown. Fine, your rules. They even send a picutre of the offending element. BUT ITS NOT EVEN ON THE STORE. THATS A SCREENSHOT OF THE APP. HOW IS THAT METADATA? I ask about this, and i get a reply, from either a bot, or a person who cant speak or read english, and only pasted a sample answer, repeating the previous message. WTF. Fine, i guess you are dumb, but since they stop replying to our queries, do the only sensible thing, re-record the offending tutorial video that actually contained an android device. This is about 2 weeks, after the first try to apply a simple patch to a broken app. And still, how did it pass the review 2 times?

Whatever, reupload again, play the waiting game for a week, when the promised average wait time is 2 days, they hit us with a message, that they want to know what patent we use in our apps core functionality. WTF WHY NOW? It didnt bother you for a month, let it release ti production and now you delay a simple patch for this? We send them what they know. Aaaaand they reply: sorry we need more time to review your app. FUUUUUUCKKK YOUUU. You are reviewing a PATCH with close to zero functional change!!! Then, this shit goes on, every week we ask about an ETA, always asking for patience... at the end it took another 3 weeks... so december 15 to jan 21 in total...

FOR. A. SINGLE. FUCKING. PATCH

Bottom line is what is infurating, apple cares that there is an android device in the tutorial video, but they dont care that a significant percentage of our users simply cannot use the app.

Im done

So, I found this :

Dear Tech Support:
Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, HuntingAndFishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6. I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please help!

Thanks ...Troubled User
-------
REPLY:

Dear Troubled User:
This is a very common problem. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed not to allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 installed and work on improving the configuration. I suggest installing the background application YesDear 99.0 to alleviate software augmentation.

The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to do this before the system will return to normal anyway.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as CleanAndSweep 3.0, CookIt 1.5 and DoBills 4.2. However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program NagNag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0, but beware because sometimes these applications can be expensive.

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install SecretaryWithShortSkirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system. 

WARNING!!! Attempting to install NewGirlFriend 8.8 along with Wife 1.0 will crash the system.

(see Wife 1.0 manual, Apologize, High Maintenance & Secretary with Short Skirt)

Fuck (some of) you backend developers who think regurgitating JSON makes for a good API.

"It's all in JSON. iOS can read JSON, right?"
A well-trained simian can read JSON, still doesn't mean it can do something with it. Your shitty API could be spitting out fucking ancient Egyptian for all I care, just make it be the same ancient Egyptian everywhere!

Don't create one endpoint that spits out the URL for the next endpoint (completely different domain, completely different path structure). Are you fucking kidding me?

As if that wasn't enough, endpoints receive data structured in one way, but return results in another!! "It's all JSON", but it's still dong.

How do I abstract that, you piece of shit? Now I have to write ever so slightly different code in multiple places instead of writing it only once.

How the fuck do I even model that in a database?

Have a crash course on implementing APIs on the client side and only come back when you're done.

Morons.

New country, new company, new team, new projects.
I'm supposed to be the TL of a team working on a React project.

A guy in his late 40s celebrates himself as "the senior", he basically just finished watching a youtube thing, React 101 crash course or similar. The other two juniors who did only Wordpress so far venerate him like a god.

The code, of course, is one on the finest pieces of crap I ever had the pleasure to deal with in my life: naturally a bunch of JQuery plugins for everything, no tests, no state management, side effects everywhere, shared state and globals like hell, everything written in ES3/ES5 style, no types, no docs, build and deploy totally manual, deep props drilling at every level... and not to mention the console.log() shipped in prod.

First day, already headache.
Full rewrite start tomorrow.
Hiring real devs as well.

Just did my first JobIntentService on Android. Hoo, boy.

The problem: I need to send a network request.

The issue: Android.

Of course, you can't do network on the main thread. That's silly in any application. Android really does try to punish you, though. The Android lifecycle can really fuck you over here. Imagine a long-running network operation, like 15 seconds. Plenty of time for the user to do something silly, like rotate the screen.

If you opened up a good old new Thread from Java, you'd get a crash because of a screen rotation. Same thing with Android's AsyncTask, which is the top answer on StackOverflow. AsyncTask is made for things that will take no longer than a few seconds (less than 5!). Network, especially cell network, can take longer.

So the solution? Create a JobIntentService class. It's a service, it will run in the background. You need to register it in your Android Manifest and ask for a new permission (wake lock). You need to implement another class for the receiver, and then you need to go to your activity and implement the receiver interface you just wrote.

Just. For. A. Network. Request!

And as far as I'm aware, this isn't even that bad considering the rest of Android's bullshit.

What a headache!

A rant about pretentious people:

So last week I walk into college and I find that a new "Machine Learning Crash Course" is being offered by a senior. Now I'm a beginner in this domain, and know the just basic concepts and math behind it. Naturally, I was super curious about this and decided to talk the student who was supposed to teach the course.

I asked him where he learned from, and mentioned that I'm an interested beginner. He just replied, "YouTube".
Okaaaaayyy?
Now I'm suspicious of this guy, so I asked him if he's worked on any related projects I could look into, to which he replies, "Not yet, but I'm working on some".

Now I'm SUPER suspicious. A guy that's got no experience with the subject, yet is teaching others about it?

Get this, at this point he rudely asks me if I have anything else to say. So I asked him a super simple question: "Do you know what gradient descent is?". He replies "Uhh, no, but I've heard about it".
I lost it.

HOW DID THIS GUY MANAGE TO CONVINCE THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT AND SEVERAL OTHER PROFESSORS TO TEACH A MACHINE LEARNING CRASH COURSE?

People like him need to go away.

/rant

Just another big rant story full of WTFs and completely true.

The company I work for atm is like the landlord for a big german city. We build houses and flats and rent them to normal people, just that we want to be very cheap and most nearly all our tenants are jobless.
So the company hired a lot of software-dev-companies to manage everything.

The company I want to talk about is "ABI...", a 40-man big software company. ABI sold us different software, e.g. a datawarehouse for our ERP System they "invented" for 300K or the software we talk about today: a document management system. It has workflows, a 100 year-save archive system, a history feature etc.
The software itself, called ELO (you can google it if you want) is a component based software in which every company that is a "partner" can develop things into, like ABI did for our company.

Since 2013 we pay ABI 150€ / hour (most of the time it feels like 300€ / hour, because if you want something done from a dev from ABI you first have to talk to the project manager of him and of course pay him too). They did thousand of hours in all that years for my company.

In 2017 they started to talk about a module in ELO called Invoice-Module. With that you can manage all your paper invoices digital, like scan that piece of paper, then OCR it, then fill formular data, add data and at the end you can send it to the ERP system automatically and we can pay the invoice automatically. "Digitization" is the key word.

After 1.5 years of project planning and a 3 month test phase, we talked to them and decided to go live at 01.01.2019. We are talking about already ~ 200 hours planning and work just from ABI for this (do the math. No. Please dont...).

I joined my actual company in October 2018 and I should "just overview" the project a bit, I mean, hey, they planned it since 1.5 years - how bad can it be, right?

In the first week of 2019 we found 25 bugs and users reporting around 50 feature requests, around 30 of them of such high need that they can't do their daily work with the invoices like they did before without ELO.
In the first three weeks of 2019 we where around 70 bugs deep, 20 of them fixed, with nearly 70 feature requests, 5 done. Around 10 bugs where so high, that the complete system would not work any more if they dont get fixed.

Want examples?
- Delete a Invoice (right click -> delete, no super deep hiding menu), and the server crashed until someone restarts it.
- missing dropdown of tax rate, everything was 19% (in germany 99,9% of all invoices are 19%, 7% or 0%).

But the biggest thing was, that the complete webservice send to ERP wasn't even finished in the code.
So that means we had around 600 invoices to pay with nearly 300.000€ of cash in the first 3 weeks and we couldn't even pay 1 cent - as a urban company!

Shortly after receiving and starting to discussing this high prio request with ABI the project manager of my assigned dev told me he will be gone the next day. He is getting married. And honeymoon. 1 Week. So: Wish him luck, when will his replacement here?

Deep breath.
Deep breath.

There was no replacement. They just had 1 developer. As a 40-people-software-house they had exactly one developer which knows ELO, which they sold to A LOT of companies.

He came back, 1 week gone, we asked for a meeting, they told us "oh, he is now in other ELO projects planned, we can offer you time from him in 4 weeks earliest".

To cut a long story short (it's to late for that, right?) we fought around 3 month with ABI to even rescue this project in any thinkable way. The solution mid February was, that I (software dev) would visit crash courses in ELO to be the second developer ABI didnt had, even without working for ABI....

Now its may and we decided to cut strings with ABI in ELO and switch to a new company who knows ELO. There where around 10 meetings on CEO-level to make this a "good" cut and not a bad cut, because we can't afford to scare them (think about the 300K tool they sold us...).

01.06.2019 we should start with the new company. 2 days before I found out, by accident, that there was a password on the project file on the server for one of the ELO services. I called my boss and my CEO. No one knows anything about it. I found out, that ABI sneaked into this folder, while working on another thing a week ago, and set this password to lock us out. OF OUR OWN FCKING FILE.
Without this password we are not able to fix any bug, develop any feature or even change an image within ELO, regardless, that we paid thausend of hours for that.

When we asked ABI about this, his CEO told us, it is "their property" and they will not remove it.
When I asked my CEO about it, they told me to do nothing, we can't scare them, we need them for the 300K tool.

No punt.
No finish.

Just the project file with a password still there today

Worst code I ever had to touch: a React application, createClass era, before redux was a thing, that had everything in one fucking component.

Every fucking thing.

This was a simple video chat application, but still. The component's code included:

- Views (contact list and video call screen) and logic to switch between them;
- All application state;
- API calls;
- Websocket message handling;
- WebRTC logic (getUserMedia and p2p streaming).

This app was built by one person in one month for a demo. That person left the company after the demo and I had to maintain that mess without zero React knowledge (I was doing angular at that time). On his last day he gave me a crash course and an overview of how the app worked.

Around that time I attended a few meetups and a conference with talks about React. That, my curiosity and ability to learn by refactoring helped me a lot when I had to add new features and fix bugs in that app.

So, first: I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to code and love to think I know everything.

We had a group project at university and me being laid back but unknown to the other people, the "rest" of them was together with me in a group. We got to know each other and actually we were a pretty cool group. I guess "the rest" in a computer science course means you get the cool guys.^^

1/6 of us did ever code in C# and 2/6 even knows what an engine is and how unity works. I was in both sixths, got group leader somehow (if you'd know me from school. Omg. I was that one guy not knowing what went on, saying my two sentences at the presentation and took the B-.:D), so what to do to have a nice 2 weeks with them?
We did a crash course, I taught them some basics and everything.

The point is, i was hella nervous and i really get anxious if something is expected from me.

Long story short, I talked a whole week for 5-7 hours straight without real pauses and eating wayyy less a man should. Dude I was literally dead on my way home on friday evening. I felt like I would fall over any fucken second, i was all shakey, dizzy as hell, weird vision, everything. It felt like I was about to die on the spot.

I got home though, ate like 1/2 kilograms of pasta and felt myself coming back to life.:D

What to learn from this:
Keep the fuck calm, do pauses, drink and eat enough and don't rush all in for a fucken week without real rest..^^
It fucks you up and doesn't do anything good for your productivity.

We got an A btw, so in the end, all went good.(:

New employee started this week, doesn't know anything about bash because she's a Windows user :/ She'll receive a crash course today by me (she has bash installed on Windows 10 because we require it for some of our tools).

Several years ago, I heard from a friend who was doing assignments for students on the side. Quite a hustle. His story began when he wanted to figure out why can't these students be able to draw their own database tables, relationships, UML, etc. That's what school has to be teaching them and then he was told that they were learning through MS Access. He goes and tell me that even though this is a lame way of teaching database design, its definitely easier to explain through hands-on and less typing mistakes, as according to the lecturer he met. Making the explanation more visually appealing and helpful for understanding.

OK I get it, but somehow that taught them the wrong way of database design from the beginning. I'd prefer getting them to start writing SQL commands from day 1 and play em at some DB VM. Keep em as real as it gets.

Now I have my own students asking for help in their assignment and also asked for tutoring lessons in web development. So I gave them the crash course in HTML, CSS and Javascript. I've asked them if they've used anything of what I taught them in school. They go and tell me that they've been taught web development through Wordpress. Oh WTF!? I havn't talked to their lecturer yet but it better be a really good explanation to teach these youngsters in a flawed and bloated PHP CMS framework for "web development".

We code hard in these cubicles

My style’s nerd-chic, I’m a programmin’ freak

We code hard in these cubicles

Only two hours to your deadline?

Don’t sweat my technique.

Sippin’ morning coffee with that JAVA swirl.

Born to code; my first words were “Hello World”

Since 95, been JAVA codin’ stayin’ proud

Started on floppy disks, now we take it to the cloud.

On my desktop, JAVA’s what’s bobbin’ and weavin’

We got another winning app before I get to OddEven.

Blazin’ code like a forest fire, climbin’ a tree

Setting standards like I Triple E….
Boot it on up, I use the force like Luke,

Got so much love for my homeboy Duke.

GNU Public Licensed, it’s open source,

Stop by my desk when you need a crash course

Written once and my script runs anywhere,

Straight thuggin’, mean muggin’ in my Aeron chair.

All the best lines of code, you know I wrote ‘em

I’ll run you out of town on your dial-up modem.

Cause…
We code hard in these cubicles

Me and my crew code hyphy hardcore

We code hard in these cubicles

It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve seen the 404.

Inheriting a project can make me go beeee-serk

Ain’t got four hours to transfer their Framework.

The cleaners killed the lights, Man, that ain’t nice,

Gonna knock this program out, just like Kimbo Slice

I program all night, just like a champ,

Look alive under this IKEA lamp.

I code HARDER in the midnight hour,

E7 on the vending machine fuels my power.

Ps3 to Smartphones, our code use never ends,

JAVA’s there when I beat you in “Words with Friends”.

My developing skills are so fresh please discuss,

You better step your game up on that C++.

We know better than to use Dot N-E-T,

Even Dan Brown can’t code as hard as me.

You know JAVA’s gettin’ bigger, that’s a promise not a threat,

Let me code it on your brain

We code hard in these cubicles,

it’s the core component…of what we implement.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Straight to your JAVA Runtime Environment.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Keep the syntax light and the algorithm tight.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Gotta use JAVA if it’s gonna run right.

We code hard in these cubicles

JAVA keeps adapting, you know it’s built to last.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Robust and secure, so our swag’s on blast

CODE HARD

I figured out why FS2020 crashed all the time.

One day when I was just casually playing FS2020, I bluescreened with a watchdog violation. For some reason this corrupted a DLL which was part of my graphics driver which is not required for the output to come out of course. The DLL is “atidxx64.dll”.

Somehow, this went unnoticed.

After digging into the extremely well-hidden crash log I found out that it accuses this DLL file, dug up on it and I saw that it is made by AMD.

Reinstalled the drivers and now it works fine.

FUCK MY LIFE I REDOWNLOADED THIS 95GB SIMULATOR 4 TIMES BEFORE DIVING INTO THIS

Yesterday, my team had a react crash-course workshop.
It was like "you have to import a couple of libs, use 'em in different react elements you pull up and Tadaaaa! Magic is happening and your app works".
This workshop was the pinnacle of "intense".

I understood 60% of the stuff.
My team-mates about 15%.

So react is the front-end technology of choice after our architectural-team. The other teams have to use this the technology for their UIs.
This will be a lot of fun ^^

I've started at school, but thinking about it since I were a child (10/11 YO) thanks to Crash Bandicoot!!
Damn, I've loved that game! And since then, I've dreamed about becoming a"videogame programmer", then I've found out that developing it's funny too, so for the moment I develop every time I can, one day I'll do my course to become a gameDev :D

Is there something you find genuinely cool and would recommend ? Some webpage, program, OS, library or anything ?

I mean hey. There are SO MANY reaaaally cool things I didn't know until last few months.. Things I'd be so grateful for if I knew them earlier. I'll list some of them and I just know you have few of yours too. Feel free to educate the rest!

Processing - Program so fun to code in + CodingTrain(YTB channel)
Microcorruption.com - so freaking awesome if you wanna learn hacking / assembly (not x86 necessarily)
LiveOverflow - cool hacking channel
Radare - cool cmd Linux disassembler
vim-adventures.com - LEARN VIM (not just how to quit it) LITERALLY by playing a game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
slashdot - stay updated , like really
"BEST-WEBSITES-A-PROGRAMMER-SHOULD-VISIT" - GUYS THIS! Sorry for caps but search this on GitHub and you will fucking die of happiness of how freaking useful links there are and no bullshit to dig through , just pure awesomeness. REALLY
HandBrake - Top media converter without bullshit and bloat stuff in it
Calibre - Best eBook management software capable of literally everything ebooks related. Kindle is a bloated joke compared to this
QubesOS - You know you can have every OS running at once - you have a Linux but are playing win games. Yup. It's there. Free
Computerphile - You all know it, it's just for completeness
Khan Academy - Same
VulnHub - download vulnerable VMs and hack them, or learn by reading writeup on how to do it!
Valgrind - MUST HAVE for C/C++ programmers
Computer Science crash course videos

That's all I can think of from top of my head but hey, there's more to it so definitely add your 2 cents!

Last thing, if nothing, just check the websites on GitHub, that's lifechanger

Looking forward to see some cool links & recommendations!

To me this is one of the most interesting topics. I always dream about creating the perfect programming class (not aimed at absolute beginners though, in the end there should be some usable software artifact), because I had to teach myself at least half of the skills I need everyday.

The goal of the class, which has at least to be a semester long, is to be able to create industry-ready software projects with a distributed architecture (i.e. client-server).

The important thing is to have a central theme over the whole class. Which means you should go through the software lifecycle at least once.

Let's say the class consists of 10 Units à ~3 hours (with breaks ofc) and takes place once a week, because that is the absolute minimum time to enable the students to do their homework.

1. Project setup, explanation of the whole toolchain. Init repositories, create SSH keys for github/bitbucket, git crash course (provide a cheat sheet).
Create a hello world web app with $framework. Run the web server, let the students poke around with it. Let them push their projects to their repositories.
The remainder of the lesson is for Q&A, technical problems and so on.

Homework: Read the docs of $framework. Do some commits, just alter the HTML & CSS a bit, give them your personal touch.
For the homework, provide a $chat channel/forum/mailing list or whatever for questions where not only the the teacher should help, but also the students help each other.

2. Setup of CI/Build automation. This is one of the hardest parts for the teacher/uni because the university must provide the necessary hardware for it, which costs money. But the students faces when they see that a push to master automatically triggers a build and deploys it to the right place where they can reach it from the web is priceless.
This is one recurring point over the whole course, as there will be more software artifacts beside the web app, which need to be added to the build process. I do not want to go deeper here, whether you use Jenkins, or Travis or whatev and Ansible or Puppet or whatev for automation. You probably have some docker container set up for this, because this is a very tedious task for initial setup, probably way out of proportion. But in the end there needs to be a running web service for every student which they can reach over a personal URL. Depending on the students interest on the topic it may be also better to setup this already before the first class starts and only introduce them to all the concepts in a theory block and do some more coding in the second half.

Homework: Use $framework to extend your web app. Make it a bit more user interactive with buttons, forms or the like. As we still have no backend here, you can output to alert or something.

3. Create a minimal backend with $backendFramework. Only to have something which speaks with the frontend so you can create API calls going back and forth. Also create a DB, relational or not. Discuss DB schema/model and answer student questions.

Homework: Create a form which gets transformed into JSON and sent to the backend, backend stores the user information in the DB and should also provide a query to view the entry.

4. Introduce mobile apps. As it would probably too much to introduce them both to iOS and Android, something like React Native (or whatever the most popular platform-agnostic framework is then) may come in handy. Do the same as with the minimal web app and add the build artifacts to CI. Also talk about getting software to the app/play store (a common question) and signing apps.

Homework: Use the view API call from the backend to show the data on the mobile. Play around with the mobile project to display it in a nice way.

5. Introduction to refactoring (yes, really), if we are really talking about JS here, mention things like typescript, flow, elm, reason and everything with types which compiles to JS. Types make it so much easier to refactor growing codebases and imho everybody should use it.
Flowtype would make it probably easier to get gradually introduced in the already existing codebase (and it plays nice with react native) but I want to be abstract here, so that is just a suggestion (and 100% typed languages such as ELM or Reason have so much nicer errors).
Also discuss other helpful tools like linters, formatters.

Homework: Introduce types to all your API calls and some important functions.

6. Introduction to (unit) tests. Similar as above.
Homework: Write a unit test for your form.

(TBC)

Requests to a soap server were failing randomly. In order to contact the API provider, I tried to provide an curl example with the same payload and the error response. Yet when sending the payload over curl, the request worked just fine. When my application was building the request, it failed.

What. The. Fuck.

I checked and double-checked the request body and headers. They were identical.

Of course, no error response was returned by the API provider and, of course, they could not tell me how what error I caused in my request.

So I created a basic dummy server, installed wireshark and compared the payload when sending a request from my application and from curl to my dummy server.

It turns out: curl, if called in a certain way, automagically strips out newlines. The soap client kept them.

So that that shitty soap server crashed due to newlines in the message body!

Stripping out the newlines was rather easy.

Shame on you, your house, and entire family for letting it crash due to them!

So my team got this new clueless "Delivery manager" who doesn't know ANYTHING ABOUT AGILE!
Her favourite timepass ? To eat development team's time asking stupid questions just to make her presence felt. And she does that by visiting each developer personally. MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY !
Why can't you leave the team and let them do some actual work??😑

She would join our scrum meetings to ask questions like "what are story points again?", "How do we calculate team velocity?"
Dear miss Clueless: It's not cool to be dumb! It's cool to take up an online agile crash course if you insist to contribute.

The other day, she suggested a QA guy to "test properly" with a smirk!
I mean seriously ? Was that actually necessary to tell them? This team was working just perfect without you. How about you look before you leap?
I try being nice to her but at times it's just too much to take.

Well it's nothing I wrote myself but I don't know why it exists.

I currently work on a reasonably big LaTeX (markup/typesetting) project.
For what ever reason someone had the glorious idea to build a Compiler in Java to compile the LaTeX sources to PDF, so far so good.
The problem is that
1. Most people working on that project either use an editor with its own compiling functionality or
2. use the shell script in the same fucking directory

Of course the Compiler is also slower than both of the above and tends to crash.

Well at least it's not my time which went into there.

Interns have degree's in 'Computer Science'.
I do not, Just a microsoft crash course on C# and SQL.
They are 3 - 4 years older than i am, yet they don't know how to use CSS.
I wonder what they learnt in that 4 years?

One of my college professor just reached out to me on Whatsapp and he told me that my college is conducting a short crash course on "Machine Learning" for students. He asked me if I could visit and take a session along with others. He also sent me an ad banner which my collage had designed for this purpose.

Soon after the chat, I just opened up Instagram and saw my privacy going for a huge toss 🤪😡!!

I don’t know why/how, but some guy in my team put the node_modules folder on GitHub.

This person ran *npx create-react-app* and for whatever reason probably DELETED the .gitignore.

I had to fix it of course, and in the meanwhile I forgot to switch branches before changing everything, making git crash because switching branches with +4 million lines of code deleted was too much.

Why don't they let experienced front-end devs initialize projects? I don’t understand.

I signed up for a web developer job... I am now making programs in VB.NET

This was not what I was expecting, however I am completely fine with it.

Crash course learning is fun. Just know that the first hundred programs i write will be really unoptimised.

I have finally done a crash course on ChatGPT. And what I discovered was that, it is basically Google with straight forward answers. It is a handy tool to use and get familiar with.

Last month, I learnt Docker via the 1 hour crash course of the YouTube video.

Now, I don't remember all the content of that video which made me think that I should start making notes.

I understand the basic fundamentals of the Contanarization and a couple of commands.
But I still feel like I'm lacking the whole picture of the docker.

I wonder what other devs do to learn new tech and also about note taking habit for revisions.

So I applied to a Java internship, I'm an absolute newbie in coding, they invited me to an interview and we're gonna have an assessment exercise regarding Java and OOP in general, any one have a Java or OOP one weekend crash course? Thx!

So I wonder if anybody on here has ever come across the LG G3 flickering screen issue.

I bought a LG G3 about 2 years ago. Fantastic phone.. Until all the issues started appearing.
First of all, the glass started lifting off on the left side of the phone, exposing the backlight layer, because the phone somehow managed to bend (insert iphone joke) inside my pocket. I was okay with it since it was a minor visual thing and didn't affect anything.
About 6 months ago the phone started lagging like crazy, and it kept getting worse and worse. It's so bad right now that Twitter will rarely fullscreen images, apps crash all the time, and occasionally the phone freezes to the point where it won't even react to the lock button.
About 2 weeks ago I started getting messages that my sim card was removed, and the phone starts rebooting itself. This would sometimes happen 10 times a day.
I was already pissed at all of these issues and in a desperate need of a new phone, but on Sunday a brand new issue appeared!
The phone's display randomly shut off, then wouldn't want to turn on, and occasionally turn on just to fade out or flicker away.
I of course went to google to see if anybody else has this issue... And it turns out that youtube is full of videos about it. Apparently the overheating issue these phones have slowly ruins the solder on the chips, which in turn creates a poor connection and causes these issues. The only way to solve it seems to be to reflow the chip, but others that tested that only got it to work for around 2 weeks before the issues started reappearing. I haven't tested it myself yet, but after disassembling, fucking around with it, and putting it all back together 3 times I sort of got it to work to the point where I can use it for several minuted before the displays fails. While writing this rant the display only quit on me once at the very beginning.

What I'm wondering is, why is it that nobody at LG decided to address the heating issue by perhaps throttling the CPU more? And I heard the G3 isn't the only LG phone with these issues?
This crap made me lose all my trust in the company. I wanted to upgrade to a G6 or V30, but because of this crap I think my next phone might be a Xiaomi.

This rant is now so long that it's barely even a rant or on topic. I think I should end it here since I have nothing more to say other than the LG G3 is a beautiful but crap phone, oh, and the new iPhone 8 is a flop

You suffered a plane crash above the ocean, only you and one other passenger survived. You get washed up on a deserted island.

As you wake up, you realize they woke up before you. You look around and find them sitting on a huge pile of coconuts. While you were unconscious, they went around and collected every single coconut. There is no food on the island other than coconuts.

Of course, you can resort to fishing, but according to statistics 9 out of 10 startup fishermen die of hunger. Coconuts are your only realistic chance of survival.

You ask them "Can you give me some coconuts, please?".

They say "Sure, I can give you some coconuts, if you suck my dick."

Will you suck a coconut man's dick? ©

The main developer at the company just got a new gig and now I'm the sole dev. Everything in the production environment is legacy and in C#. Guess it's time to take a crash course...

As someone who has been developing a game (not even close to 20% done) and dealing with bug reports, I'm pissed off by this one report from a game I play, which I'll just shamelessly copy-paste it here for y'all to read and rant
"Title: [sic]lag never fixed
[sic]i dont wanna report lag doesnt mean there's no lag ,
the LAG is real, and is getting worse and worse everyday, vespa please fix the problem,
i used to think i could bear this lag, but i cant ,i just cant, after 5+ times game crashing everyday,my patient is losing . you say u are fixing it every maintenance,but what is this BXXX SXXX?all i could see it you are trying your best to grab money from my wallet(well u FXXXING successed),and the promise you made to fix the lag never ever ..........
sorry for my bad Chiglish, but./......"

I'm not a developer of the game, but this pisses me off. The guy wants fixes on the "lag"; which lag?? latency?? FPS?? random freezes??; while giving absolutely ZERO details on the "lag" AND accusing the company of stealing money without doing sh-t, which is not true as far as I can tell in-game. So, I instinctively waltzed in and ranted at how sh-t the report is in detail, and accused him of inhibiting the game's development because of his sh-t report, and he replied with this (I told him I'm a game dev in the reply I mentioned):
"[sic]as a person who made this game should know what lag is just like u know what fuk is as a human being,and i said game crash ,thats the best way i could explain as a normal player not like you an arrogant indie game dev!and if u cant understand what course the game crash,as a player like me how could i know, thats the reason im asking for help here,and i hope they dont have such indie game dev like you who doesnt know lag(game crash)"

M-th-rf-ck-r. For the first time, I see true ignorance. While writing this, I'm typing my next reply for the m-th-rf-ck-r that lacks common sense on reporting a bug. For f-ck sake if I found him I'll put a bullet through his head.

I crash and burn during coding interview questions. Every. Time.

I just do. It's terrible. It doesn't matter how much I tell myself to slow down and just think it through first before coding...I end up coding first after a short period of thinking about it. Don't get it right, freak out...and well I crash and burn.

It bums me out. The worst part is that I'm so distraught about it that I take a break, and sit down and solve it in like 10 minutes...of course it doesn't matter since it happens after the interview.

I just need to practice solving these things to get that mindset right.

Received a client who managed to crash a Wordpress site in a weird way, now every time I log in to admin to fix it, it logs me out after 3 seconds :|

Fixable, of course.
How does one in this situation (using default options) I'll never know.

My favorite xkcd quotes (order is not significant )
1. _*It's the world's tiniest open-source violin.*_
2. ...too honest. Scale it back.
3. I'd like to bestow upon you the first annual AWARD of EXCELLENCE in BEING VERY SMART. May you continue to grace our internet with your wisdom.
4. wait, what?
5. Yeah, uh ... I accidentally took the Fourier transform of my cat ...
6. Okay, we _suck_ at this.
7. You either need more medication or less. Not sure which.
8. I THINK EVERYONE INVOLVED HERE IS CUTE
9. World's Greatest Daughter
10. People who open bananas for the other end
11. Just for the sake of the argument, we should get a boat! You can invite the Devil, too, if you want.
12. This explain a lot.
13. My bag is 90% backup batteries.
14. Well- will you be my "it's complicated" on facebook?
15. Oh God. Gotta get out. The window.
16. Sweet! I finally got my subduction license!
17. I'll tell you later - you wouldn't appreciate the punchline over this 12kbps cell phone codec.
18. RON PAUL evolves into TRON PAUL
19. Just talk to them like a f***ing human being
20. In ordering #5, self-driving cars will happily drive you around, but if you tell them to drive to a car dealership, they just lock the doors and politely ask how long humans take to starve to death.
21. I eat my body weight in food every 31 days. That's slightly faster than the human average.
22. Nice try, Mike. Get out of the well.
23. Apollo retroreflectors
24. Can't see space vampires
25. My class on screenshots was a big hit, although for some reason I only ever sold one copy of the digital textbook.
26. WHAT.
27. Introducing The xkcd Phone 6, VIII, 10, X, 26, and 1876. We didn't start this nonconsecutive version number war, but we will not lose it.
28. My morality has evaporated over the harsh UV light.
29. Come on. Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve is the girl for me.
30. P.P.S. I can kill you with my brain.
31. Time to accelerate this giant machine up to terrifying speeds and steer it using my hands, which I am allowed to do because I took a 20-minute test in high school!
32. My normal approach is useless here
33. Wake up, sheeple!
34. Sir- strategic command has send us a lunch order.
35. Yeah, but first I'm gonna go comatose for a few hours, hallucinate vividly, and maybe suffer amnesia about the whole experience.
36. HOLY S***. Guys- people are complicated!
37. OH GOD- SPIDERS
38. Perhaps you need a crash course in taking hints. Here's your first lesson: We're not actually walking somewhere together; I'm trying to leave this conversation and you're following me.
39. How did the pole vaulters get up to our balcony?
40. Friggin' Python
41. I am the goddamn *Michael Jordan* of blurring the line between metaphor and reality. [tosses a basketball]

Still as a scholar who has had his intership I decided that I was finally confident enough in my ability to apply for a small part-time programming job. I had an internship at a cool exhausting place with tons of expertise and I've proven myselve over there. So now I wanted a job on the side. Nothing special, just something that would make a little money with programming instead of washing dishes at the restaurant.

So I started at this small internet based startup (2 or 3 progammers) as a backend-oriented programmer. The working hours were amazingly compatible with my school schedule.

The lead dev also sounded like a smart guy. He had worked as a backend guy for years and had code running on verry critical public infrastructure that if it were to fail we'd be evacuated from our homes.

As a first asignment I got an isolated task to make an importer for some kind of file format that needed integration. So I asked for access to the code. I didn't get it since they were going to re-do the entire backend based on the code I wrote. I just needed to parse the file in a usable object structure. So I found out that the file format was horrible and made a quite nice set of objects that were nice. At the end of the first week or so I asked if I could get access to the code again, so I could integrate it. Answer was no. The lead dev would do that. I could however get access to my private repository.

Next week a new intern was taken to build a multiplatform responsive app. Only downside was that all the stuff he had ever done was php based websites. It wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I figured that that was where internships were for. So I ended up helping him a lot and taught him some concepts of OOP and S.O.L.I.D. and the occasional 30 minute rants of IndexOutOfRangeException, ArgumentException and such.

So one day he asked me how to parse a json string and retrieve a specific field out of it.
I gave him something like the following to start with:
"
JObject json;
if(!JObject.TryParse(jsonString, out json))
{
//handle error
}
string value;
if(!json.tryget("foo", out value).../// code continues
"

but then the main dev stepped in and proposed the following since it wouldn't crash on an API change:
"
dynamic json = new JObject(jsonString);
string value = json.myJsonValue;
"

After me trying to explain to him that this was a bad choise for about 15 minutes because of all kinds of reasons I just gave up. I was verry mad that this young boy was forced to use bad programming pracises while he was clearly still learning. I know I shouldn't pick up certain practises. But that boy didn't.

Almost everytime the main dev was at the office I had such a mindboggling experience.

After that I got a new assignment.
I had to write another xml file format parser.
Of course I couldn't have any access to our current code because... it was unnecesary. We were going to use my code as a total replacement for the backend again.
And for some reason classes generated from XSD weren't clear enough so after carefull research I literally wrapped xsd generated code in equivalent classes.

At that moment, I realized I made some code that was totally useless since it wasn't compatible with any form of their API or any of the other backend code. (I haven't seen their API. I didn't have access to the source.) And since I could've just pushed them generated XSD's that would've produced thesame datastructure I felt like I was a cheat. I also didn't like that I wasn't allowed to install even the most basic tooling. (git client or, Ide refactoring plugins, spelling checker etc...)

Now I was also told that I couldn't discuss issues with the new guy anymore since it was a waste of my valuable time, and they were afraid that I taught him wrong concepts.

This was the time that my first paycheck came in so I quitted my job.
I haven't seen any of the features that I've worked on. :)

Hey guys, do you know where I can find a good ionic 3 crash course?

Going to a crash course Java event tonight. Not sure how enthusiastic I should be based on some of your rants 🤔

Today I've been summoned to work for the first time in weeks to help with the startup of a machine, and testing the HMI software that goes with it.

Me and a junior colleague go to the machine. We try to get everything ready for testing. Machine was left stuck in some intermediate state by someone else. I have no idea on how to control the machine's individual components. My colleague received a crash course a while ago, but was unable to reinitialize the damn thing, and the senior machine builder was too busy on another project.

In other words, me coming over had no purpose at all, and we accomplished nothing.

I really don't understand companies. On one end there's an endless bitching about how everything is too expensive, and on the flip-side you see 'em toss buckets of money through the window.

Oh well, as long as it goes from the window to my bank account, there's no problem for me I guess.

Question.
TL;DR: Best C# and .NET accreditation courses (UK)?

I've started a new job as a .NET Software Developer. Now I have never done C# before but they want to send me on some courses to learn.

First I have to recommend what courses though. Price isn't an issue but they want me to give them a variety of courses available. Ones that are crash courses and online learning courses. I want it to be accredited so I can come away with something to show on my CV/LinkedIn.

What C# and .NET courses would you guys recommend or what course providers would you recommend (in the UK).

Thank you in advance!