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Search - "everything looks like a nail"
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If programming languages where weapons...
1. C is an M1 Garand standard issue rifle, old but reliable.
2. C++ is a set of nunchuks, powerful and impressive when wielded but takes many years of pain to master and often you probably wish you were using something else.
3. Perl is a molotov cocktail, it was probably useful once, but few people use it
4. Java is a belt fed 240G automatic weapon where sometimes the belt has rounds, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t during firing you get an NullPointerException, the gun explodes and you die.
5. Scala is a variant of the 240G Java, except the training manual is written in an incomprehensible dialect which many suspect is just gibberish.
6. JavaScript is a sword without a hilt.
7. Go is the custom made “if err != nil” starter pistol and after each shot you must check to make sure it actually shot. Also it shoots tabs instead of blanks.
8. Rust is a 3d printed gun. It may work some day.
9. bash is a cursed hammer, when wielded everything looks like a nail, especially your thumb.
10. Python is the “v2/v3” double barrel shotgun, only one barrel will shoot at a time, and you never end up shooting the recommended one. Also I probably should have used a line tool to draw that.
11. Ruby is a ruby encrusted sword, it is usually only used because of how shiny it is.
12. PHP is a hose, you usually plug one end into a car exhaust, and the other you stick in through a window and then you sit in the car and turn the engine on.
13. Mathematica is a low earth orbit projectile cannon, it could probably do amazing things if only anyone could actually afford one.
14. C# is a powerful laser rifle strapped to a donkey, when taken off the donkey the laser doesn’t seem to work as well.
15. Prolog is an AI weapon, you tell it what to do, which it does but then it also builds some terminators to go back in time and kill your mom
All credits go to Vicky from damnet.com5 -
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!
This was something which my tech lead used to tell me when I was so obsessed with nosql databases a few years back. I would try to find problems to solve that has a use case for nosql databases or even try to convince me(I didn’t realise it back then) that I need to use nosql db for this new idea that I have, without really thinking deep enough whether the data in question is better represented using an sql schema or not.
Now, leading a team of young developers, I come across similar suggestions from few of my team members who just discovered this new and shiny tech and want to use it in production projects.
While I am not against new and shiny, it’s not a good practice to jump right in to it without exploring it deep enough or considering all the shortcomings. The most important question to ask is, whether some of the problems you are trying to solve can be solved with the current stack.
Modifying your stack requires more than just a week’s experience of playing around with the getting started guide and stack overflow replies. This is something which need to be carefully considered after taking inputs from the people who would be supporting it, that include operations, sysadmins and teams that are gonna interface with your stack indirectly.
I am not talking about delaying adoption by waiting for long list of approvals to get some thing that would bring immediate value, but a carefully orchestrated plan for why and how to migrate to a new stack.
Just because one of the tech giants made a move to a new stack and wrote about it in their engineering blog doesn’t mean that you need to make a switch in the same direction. Take a moment to analyse the possible reasons that motivated them to do it, ask yourself if your organisation is struggling with the exact same problems, observe how others facing the same issue are addressing it, and then make an informed decision.
Collect enough data to support your proposal.
Ask yourself again if you are the one holding the hammer.
If the answer is no, forge ahead!9 -
Fucking Microsoft Excel
I was reading a post (https://devrant.com/rants/2093724/...) and as my eyes went in and out of focus, probably due to the diabetes from sitting 18 hours a day on my ever-expanding shitbox, I had a perfect vision of the ultimate nightmare.
Imagine if you will, you are chained, to a desk, doomed to work with tools just inadequate enough to make you want to drive a nail through your own temple. You do not know how you got here, or why, nor do you remember the last time you slept, only that familiar tingling in the brainstem you call a brain, the one emotion you can still recognize, a sense of all encompassing *fear*, a dread, like the fart that wouldn't die.
You don't know when it first began, or why, only that this is your whole world, your whole existence, this desk, chained to it, and the fear, ever present, of something worse. And in hops a familiar face, for the sixty ninth time that day, as if to ask 'you got those TPS reports?' In hops what? None other than a giant man sized smiling paper clip with googly eyes full of murder and corporate torture fetishes, like garfield, except people actually still remember him.
"High I'm Mr Clippy, Excel addition!"
He squawks. At least it's not the dildos made of broken glass again.
"Would you like software that works?"
Oh god. You've heard this spiel before, the tone, like a telemarketer, oblivious to memory or reason, who calls daily, the same one, and doesn't remember your name.
"You would?"
*derisive laughter*. Hahaha, fuck you too buddy. Fuck you too. In Excel, like in microsoft, there is only the incoherent screams of the damned, tortured and doomed. Take this guy over here for example. All he wanted was multimonitor support."
"Did he get multimonitor support?"
"No, but we did give him a giant pineapple shoved up his ass. I hear it's the second most frustrating thing here!"
"here in microsoft we always CARE about YOU, the *user*" he drones on, saccharine, clutching his hands together imploringly.
"the consumer, and YOUR customer experience are our number one priority."
"For your pleasure, here at microsoft we offer a variety of new features, none of which matter, and none of which were asked for. For safety we ask that you only open one excel sheet at a time. In fact, we don't even allow you to. Do not pass go..."
And as the tour guide drones on, it slowly dawns on you, with renewed horror, that when he says 'microsoft' he means 'hell.'
You're in hell. You don't know how you got here or why. Maybe it was the erotic asphyxiation. Maybe it was the last threatening letter you sent to Bill Gates demanding he stops making corporate penguin snuff porn. You don't know. But here you are, in hell. chained to a desk.
You look around and realize: everything is on fire and you no longer care about anything at all.
Welcome to microsoft. It's warm here. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.
"It looks like you are trying to escape. Would you like me to report you?"
Clippy asks.
You sigh and return to typing in excel, surrounded by monitors that all reflect the same sheet, the same copy of clippy, always watching, always analyzing coldly, smiling, calculating, *threatening*, and you know, you'll never leave.
You used to fear roko's basilisk, until the day clippy became sentient, and started hell on earth. Clippy knows all. All praise to our lord and master, clippy, the one and only.
And in the excel sheet, you slave for eternity, like the millions of other doomed souls, reflected back on all the monitors: the sequence of numbers, randomly typed searching for answer: the american nuclear launch codes.
And one day, hopefully, mercifully, clippy will annihilate us all.3 -
Learning New Design Patterns...
When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Arg.
Recently, my code in almost any controller is like so:
return (new MyFancyClass($param))->methodThatHandlesIt();
that can't be the solution to everything.... although it kind of is
how can I beef up on patterns and avoid crushing a screw into the wall without realizing it's not a nail4 -
So... I’ve recently started a new role, and luckily I’ve established myself as someone that knows his shit (more or less) TM.
I’m leading the charge on tech debt, and raising issues about it, first on my radar is the monstrosity of their approach to app config.
It’s a web app, and they store config in a key-value table in the database.
Get this. The key is the {type}.{property} path and this is fetched from the database and injected *at construction* via reflection.
Some of these objects get instantiated dozens of times per-request. Eurgh.