Sister called me on my way to work (she never calls me, we communicate through a family signal) to ask if I wanted to come over for dinner in the weekend because a new guy she knows will be there and also my parents.

Me: hmm idk I've got a lot to do in the weekend....
Sis: he saw my laptop by the way, he was highly impressed that its dual booted and asked how on earth I know about Linux! Then I told him about you and what you do and now he really wants to meet you!
Me: what time would I have to be there?

I hate how that stuff can make me change my mind just like this 😅

*code doesn't work*

-Run three times, just to be sure
-Its NOT the code, must be the project. Full rebuild.
-Run a few more times after rebuild didn't fix it.
-Google the issue.
-Stackoverflow must be wrong. The code is JUST like their solution.
-Run a few more times, but with your lucky underpants
-Reboot. Must be an operating system thing.
-Tea break. Give the issue time and it will fix itself.
-Run a few more times. Still unfixed
-Contact customer support.
-Walmart said they can't help.
-Consider writing your own language without this OBVIOUS flaw
-Kickstarter for c++++
-Raise $50,000
-Start a family
-Contact customer support again
-Run a few more times
-Now banned from Walmart
-Oh shit, missing a semicolon

Every single time I visit my family during holidays they expect one to fix their computer/smartphone/printer/whateverFuckingShittyIOT-Device... Just printed them postcards this time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also: Hello devRant! Just been reading here for a week and every single day was full of gold - Thanks :)

3 years ago, when I was 12, I told my family that I started programming and that it was my passion. My mum wasn't interested too much about it, but my dad was, and he encouraged me. He told me that he wanted me to become a great programmer.
He died about one year ago, and I stopped coding because I felt bad; every time I opened my IDE I couldn't type anything.
Idk why, some weeks ago I reinstalled devRant, and, idk why (again), I instantly felt good. Maybe because I understood a lot of people had my same passion.
Two days ago, I finally wrote new lines of code.
❤ you guys.

The beginning of my freelancing time. I was so naive. Didn't even used contracts...

This one client wanted a website with 2 specific features until a certain time. It should look nice, but only the features functionality was defined. All seemed reasonable at first.

I delivered 2 weeks before the deadline. The client was furious, as it didn't look like they imagined. They wrote me 8 lengthy emails with very fractioned feedback. It was becoming unreasonable.

But hey, I'm a newbie in this business. I have to make myself a name, I thought.
Oh was I naive....

This whole project went on for 2 more months. The client was unhappy with every change and 2-5 emails a day with new demands were coming in. I was changing things they wanted done 2 days ago, because they changed their mind.

Then they started to get personal. They were insulting me and even my family. My self-confidence dropped to an all-time low.

In the end I just sent them all the code for free and went to therapy.

BTW: this was also my most important experience, as things went up hill from then on. As Yoda once said: The greatest teacher, failure is.

tl;dr don't, just don't.

A curious little me (12-14 years) just stated using the family shared computer.
And he thought: It's so slow! Maybe I can make it faster, my parents would be happy!

So he looked at this little switch on the back and he switched it from 230 to 115.

Not knowing what he did, he turned the PC on... for the last time.

Smoke, a nasty smell and a loud bang were the last memories left behind.

The parents were not happy.

- Think first, write later;
- Do not rush into purchasing servers. You might not need them for another 10 months;
- It takes away a lot of family time to do side projects;
- NOT playing any games saves tremendous amounts of time. Also applies to watching TV;
- If you get stuck - get some sleep. Morning brings you better ideas;
- Write proper abstractions or you'll end up refactoring everything way more often that you'd like;
- Side projects need a loo-ooooot of your will and determination

Today is my last day at this job.

Can't tell you how happy I am to be leaving this place in about 7 hours.

Starting my new job in January, so I get 4 weeks of nice vacation/ family time.

Today I realized that I hit a total burnout. Last 3 years were extremely stressful for me (4 jobs in 3 different countries, exhausting and toxic relationship, bad habits). Last 7 months are the worst. I became lonely isolated and miserable. I learned to rely purely on stress, determination and validation to get through my days. Was supressing my emotions for a long time just to focus on making the money. Its time to break the cycle.

Im done with this. Next week Im quitting my fulltime job. Saved enough money for starting capital of my own dev services company. Built three projects that generate stable income to cover my living costs. Now finally I can take a long break to recover from this burnout and to heal myself. That poor persons mentality that I had from my poor family has been shattered. I achieved what I wanted in terms of having the money and gathered enough experience necessary to survive anywhere.

I managed to get through all this shit on my own with barely any support. People around me were draining me more than actually helping me. But I managed to do it and now its time to focus on myself, to heal and restore love for living. Im safe now.

Overheard some family members talking about me during a vacation about 3 years ago...

aunt: why is he that way?

cousin: he spent too much time on the computer while he was younger.

aunt: that's bad.

yeah.. now I make more than both of you and don't give a shit about you anymore, thanks 👍

I am done with people, I just want one single room, with good internet, dual monitor setup... And I can spend my whole life like that... Being social, fuck that shit... I have devRant for that... and rest, I just want to code, listen to music, drink coffee and sleep like hell...

Why is it that I can understand some other dev's code faster that understanding someone's feelings. Why is it that I am good with principles of Programming Languages, but not the basic Principles of Humanity... Yes, I agree I don't have feelings, but is it wrong not to have feelings, I am a dev, I am supposed to be good with Codes, not humans... I want to be in my small space of close people. (My family), and that's it... I am no good with others. I hate Facebook, but love devRant, I spend more time on StackOverflow than that on WhatsApp. Why is it so... Why

When you've got 4 personal projects to finish, 2 computers to build, 1 full-time job to wrap up, an online course to complete, Uni starts in two weeks and your family decided it's the perfect time to go on vacation.

It's 2:30 am and this is my life.

When you start smiling at rants all the time and your family and friends think you got a new girlfriend

How I feel at Christmas time when visiting family and everybody swarms me to set up/fix their new gadgets 😁

So I'm a UX Designer and my husband is a Mobile Engineer so obviously he makes more. I swear my field doesn't get enough credit it deserves (considering we're the ones figuring how the user will use the app/site/whatever device). My mother in-law decided my work isn't as important as his and that I stand below him. Gee thanks for the biggest insult, even when I had to go to grad school for 2 years, worked full-time at the same time so that we could help his family with some stuff considering we're the only couple who is capable of it. :/

The time my sister dropped the external HDD with every single picture of our family between 2000-2009.
I was 16 at the time, and it made me paranoid like I am today.

Three offsites backups, and three local ones currently and always trying to do expand.

1. Do you know why my computer is so slow?
2. What cellphone do you recommend me to buy? (They always end up buying the cheapest)
3. What do you do at work? (Answer: "I create applications". Anything more complex than that is not going to be understood or they will loose interest)
4. Something is wrong with the: [TV, Cellphone, microwave, etc.]. Could you please take a look? (Believe or not, if something works with electricoty, my family thinks I can fix it).
5. Is it true that if I send this WhatsApp message to all my contacts I will have more options?
6. I need to build an application that (pretty much The Matrix), how much time do you need and how much would cost? Don't you dare to give me wrong numbers. (We have to see the future)
7. (Continuing the previous point, a non-technical client) I don't think that would take so much time/money. (Every time)
8. I want to use the latest Front-End frameworks. I want to see all those beautiful animations in my page and that it runs smoothly... I also need that it runs in IE 5.
9. So, you have been working in the back end? If you don't have a screen to show to the client is like you didn't do anything in this sprint.
10. Why haven't you built and million dollar application? Everybody is doing that right now....

Yep, those are only a few downsides of our profession if we count family, friends and even co-workers. But I can't imagine myself doing anything else.

My family: Can you repair the printer ?

Me: No ...

My family: can't send my emails, fix it !

Me: No ...

My family: why this people can share my photos on Facebook ? Stop it now !

Me: Then stop sharing all your god damn life each time you eat, fart or go to the bathroom !!!! For fucks sake !

Also me: why have I started computer science ?

Merry Christmas everyone 🙂

This year I didn't prepare anything for it, and family won't be visited this year. I think it's better this way. My mother didn't piss on me when I was on fire - back when I was homeless and begged her to be allowed back in her home, she told me to deal with it on my own. She's been homeless herself and knows how terrible it is. I dealt with it. I hate my mother because of that, and visiting her was always an act, a formality.

Not anymore. Half a year ago I cut ties with her.. and honestly, it's for the best. I don't want to get hurt anymore by visiting the house that should've been a refuge but wasn't when I needed it most. And I got rid of it, in favor of my own stuff. And a family of my own, a community of fellow developers with whom I feel a far stronger bond than a family could ever be. You are my new family, my dearest friends. And unlike those blood bonds that make up a family unconditionally, you can bet your ass that you've very much deserved my respect.

Merry Christmas.. unlike with my biological family, I've found refuge in devRant and its community every time I needed it most. Seriously, I can't thank you enough for that. I love you all.. thank you for being my precious family! ♥️

Initial steps of learning any new programming language :

*heck yeah I created a calculator. Guess I'll show my family that I actually can code! *

-hey mom, dad look I made a simple calculator using python B)
- uhm... That's great son but dont we already have one of those?
- yeah but like... this is completely different it uses a different programming language than what you and I have been using all this time.
- ah I see. Good for you then

*muttering to each other*
-are you sure he's got the aptitude to be a cse?
-at this point we can just hope.

Me:*stares blindly in my dark room contemplating why I'm alive*

// family tech support

Dad: *Opens Microsoft Word*
Dad: *Writes stuff*
Dad: *Saves the file as "Doc1.docx" (every time)*
Dad: Son, where did I save my file? I can't find it.

My family. Mom was the first person to be proud of the things I was interested in. Then my girlfriend pushed me to finish school(she is my wife and the mother of my child now) but mostly my daughters.

I want them to grow up knowing what their dad does.

I am pretty motivated most of the time though, even for shit that i do not like.

Also...money.....i really fucking like money.

Well, I made a choice in life.

I'm going to stay and work in America after I graduate. In spite of all the shit talking I've done about its work ethics, benefits, politics, and culture.

This place is still home.

After trying out a trip to Europe for a few weeks I can't handle the idea of being 4,500 miles away from family and what few friends I have. I figured out what was true the whole time: I wanted to run away from my past. Breakups, a failed marriage proposal, a dead end job that I put up with only because I need to graduate. I've been angry and depressed over these things, but running away won't fix it.

I need to face reality and own up to it. I'll get a job as a developer in the states through hell or high-water.

:-)
I think that "family guy" is telling me That is time to close netflix and read something......

I officially cut ties with all my family.

Shitty, cringy, egoist people to ever exist.

They treat me like shit. Just use me as their slave all the time and when anything goes wrong, blame me for everything.

I consider you all my family now. Though we are virtual friends but you guys are better than real family.

"Don't be too cooped up with work. Your work will always be there, unending. But your free time with family, friends or just for yourself - that's limited."

Who shares this struggle?

I have a 9-5 development job and I also have a personal web application I am building and plan to bring to production.

There are simply not enough hours in the day. I struggle to find enough time to work on my personal project while still performing well at the 9-5 and spending some time with my family so I'm not absent.

Agh I wish I could pause time for productivity 😂

2AM and a birthday party of my BELOVED mother that I have to attend tomorrow in the middle of bumfuck. And I'm not sleeping, oh no.. because "family obligations" require me to get her a present on 2 days notice. I'm making her something very simple, some LED's displaying her new age, powered by a lithium cell and some charge-boost-protection controller. So I need to make a mesh to place the LED's to make those characters.

Measuring the size of the project box, cut it out.. started drawing the numbers on it. Not satisfied and ain't nobody got time for that. Guess I'll just print something out. Drew a little image with some text on my tablet, sent it to the printer. Black apparently doesn't want to print anymore even though it's still fucking full.

HP YOU CERTIFIED MOTHERFUCKERS!!! How fucking difficult can it be to make a printer and make it into something that doesn't shit on me every fucking time I want to use it?! Why do I have to deal with your shit, on top of my mother's?! WHY?!!!!

Fuck me. Happy birthday to my mother, and silently I wish that it's her last one. The bitch wouldn't - no she didn't - piss on me even when I was on fire!! Where were you "dear family member" when I was homeless, huh?! WHERE WERE YOU, WHEN I STOOD ON TOP OF A BRIDGE, READY TO END MY LIFE AND BEGGED TO YOU TO ALLOW ME TO STAY IN YOUR HOME FOR THE NIGHT?! Mother my fucking ass. A blood bond that I wish I never had! And that I have to work for now, because you fucking bitch can't even possibly think as far into the future as to invite your peers for a birthday party.. I dunno, maybe a week in advance, like a sensible human being would? At least she's improving, my little sister's and brother's birthdays she just invited me for the day before. And I also had to get a present ready for, in the middle of the fucking night. Fucking hell!!!

Some words of wisdom passed on by our Scrum.

1. I am responsible for setting boundaries. Work time, sleep time, family time, me time. If I don't set them properly, things WILL get unbalanced very quickly. (And I would add, burnout will follow closely).

2. Being productive isn't about doing more and more in less time. It's about doing only the most important things well, and either saying no to the other things, or finding another way to get them done. (Prioritize!)

3. I can't win (let alone run) a marathon by thinking of it as a 26 mile long sprint, or a week as a five day sprint. (Eat a digital elephant a byte at a time).

4. Loved ones are good judges of when things are in and out of balance.

5. Taking time off is essential. Vacations, yes, but also nights and weekends. (Or you WILL burn out and hate what you do).

Comments in () are mine.

Surprise surprise, that unrealistic deadline you set even when the engineering team told you that it wasn't going to work has backfired! Maybe you wouldn't be so stressed if you learnt to listen? It's a pretty basic skill, or at least I thought so.
Oh and when you say "we have two options, stay late or work weekends" you have a critical bug in your conditional. Your missing option 3, go the fuck home. Time to enjoy my weekend with friends and family.

Rest in Peace my friend he was my room mates for 2 years in univ and he decides to drop out to take care of his father parkinsons. He is not as lucky as his parents, He was gone missing for 16 hours after the tsunamis struck in Donggala, Sulawesi. and just found dead apparently because drowning and head blunt trauma. reports from her family, the last time they seen their son is before he gone to find his father's medicine (it's not easy since the hospital and drug store are not effective because the big earthquake). A big condolescence for his family. for all the victim in Sulawesi stay safe ! and we hope you all the best!

!dev

Me: walks into a coffee shop and orders a latte

Barista-1: can you cover for me tomorrow.

Barista-2: I am busy with family. Do you have plans?

B-1: no.

B-2: are you sick?

B-1: yeah! My throat hurts soooo much and I can hardly breath!

B-2: ahhhhh. That’s too sad.

B-1: commences to make my latte while breaking heavily into it.

Me: Walks the fuck away.

Fuck. That. Shit.

The $6 it costs for that latte isn’t worth missing a week of paying work with the flu!

I got no time for that type of shit. Stay the fuck home for fuck sakes.

I'm one of those people who have literally no value of education and skills between family members, yes as soon they hear I'm doing bachelors in computers they all come too me with *Can you please fix my phone*

But today a letter came it was from devRant and it had stickers for me, my uncle received the letter and you can't imagine how surprised he was and asked me who sent me letter from NY, I explained him that we are an awesome community and this letter is just a way to motivate us. It's the first time something come for me and even tho it's just some stickers but meant alot to me.

Thankyou devRant and the community for making me feel this awesome 😊

Everyday single day I have to give time for family, personal work and office. Prioritized in that order.

End result : low quality family time, pending personal projects. Office work - well that one is OK I guess cos the time is dedicated.

Solution : made a deal with wife - one day on weekend dedicated for family (she can plan anything she wants) and I will not do any work. Other day dedicated for my personal work/time (no family plans).
Divide weekdays similarly. On family days I checkout at sharp 4pm from office and come home straight spend the rest of the day with family alone. On the other days I stay either at office or go somewhere to work or hangout with dev buddies.
*Wife agrees*

End result: Quality family time. No interruption when coding (a dev would understand the importance of this). More productive work.

Story, !rant.

This memory came up as I was commenting on another rant, and thought it was worthy of a better retelling.

So about a year or two ago, I had just gotten a Software Defined Radio, and was tinkering with it and looking around for cool stuff I could do with it. After stalking planes for a while (caught a 747 over my area 😎) I saw this program that decoded satellite images of earth, coming from the NOAA satellites. I thought this was amazing.

So I waited until one was over my area and let the software do its magic. The image was not great, since I had this set up on the first floor and there was a lot of material between me and the satellite.

So I came to the brilliant conclusion that I'd leave the program on automatic more (it will start sampling when the satellite is near) on my terrace, which should yield better results, right?

Perhaps. Who knows. Anyways, couple hours pass and we are running late to a family dinner. So we book it. Family dinner was great, good food and all, and was having fun, so never thought about my poor laptop, sitting alone in the night.

But then, when I was walking home in the rain... It hit me. I started running. I couldn't believe what I had done. Fast forward five minutes, and I'm out of breath, but home. I run upstairs, and see the laptop just sitting there, lid open, no lights on, and of course soaked right through.

I couldn't believe it. My only piece of tech at the time, and my only avenue for programming, gone. And I was 15, so I wasn't getting another one any time soon. Took it inside and drained the water out of it, and just left it there lying on its side.

Next day it worked just fine 🤣 the battery on my laptop only lasted max one hour, so by sheer luck it had lost power before the rain came. That is the one time I have to thank that battery for being such utter trash.

The last 5 months have been tough.... My boss ( who was a close friend) quit and I become interim department head... Trying to run a team who didn't seem happy I'd taken the reigns.

At the same time my wife's ongoing battle with her anxiety had gotten worse and she really needed my help with everything possible at home..

In March I was confirmed as the HoD but I was still doing 3 to 4 days a week on client delivery, trying to support all presales activities, manage a team of 10 people, travel for work and support my family....😩

It really got to me and I was close to breaking... The worry of not replying to an email ASAP no matter what time of day would eat me up, working late every night... It got too much and I was running on fumes with my weekends just me completely wiped out and useless to the family. 😓

.....But.....

I had a escape last weekend to a 🍻 beer 🍻 festival with friends that I was considering not going too and just losing the money but the wife made me go...

And it broke me even more... So much that its somehow put the pieces back in the right order in my brain and snapped me out of my major rut!

Somehow, sitting with friends, making stupid jokes, drinking way too much and blocking out all the work crap gave my brain the hard reset it needed. 🤟

This week I've come back a different person ( wife's words) work is a breeze, exciting and encouraging.... 👊

I can't get enough of playing silly games with my kids all night

And couldn't feel any more positive about things if I tried.... Set that spark back for my wife too! 😏💏

So.... After that long rant 👀

Tl;Dr - work and life got too much... Close to giving up... Too much beer with good company gave me a hard reset and I feel like a new person.... 👍

Plus the team is now loving the new direction and strategy too 👔

Who says drinking is bad for you? 😂🍻

The joys of being the sole developer and sysadmin of a service with hundreds of thousands of users.

Just spent a couple hours with my family. In that time half the infrastructure died and the service became unstable.

Best of all is that I seem to be the only one getting this so called "java.net.UnknownHostException: System error" exception.

I hate this work from home shit with your family around. "You're always in front of the computer, go workout, go socialize, its family time"

What part of "work from home" you don't understand. SMH!

Depression update two.
Thanks for amazing support guys!
I have made decision to have a digital detox. Today I did have another bout of depression accompanied with a mild case of confused state of mind and suicidal thoughts. I have found the triggers(Social media and too much time spent on the internet.) I have lost a lot of weight too. From 68KG -> 46 KG in span of weeks. So I hope I will catch you soon after I recover from it.

Fuck depression. If anyone is having bouts of depression please contact your health-care provider or friends/family.

Love you all. ❤️🙏☺️

Hell is accidentally clicking on, instead of copying, an email URL and having to wait forty years for some email program you didn't even know existed to rise from its slumber like some Lovecraftian ancient god, meanwhile the fans on your laptop are preparing for takeoff and you stare dead-eyed as the rainbow spirals, spirals, spirals. you wait and suffer this cosmic karma. days pass. “just a few more seconds” you slur. your laptop freezes and the concept of time is no longer comprehensible. your family and friends forget your name and you fade from existence.

Was explaining a technical concept at a "family" dinner. Suddenly stepmother wanted my help for something technical.

Stepmother: Say Awlex, could you help me install some software I recently bought?

Me: (Not this shit again) I even don't know what software you're talking about. How is the software called, what does it do?
Sm: it's calles digital... *long pause*
Me: (I don't like where this is going)
Sm: software... *another long pause*
Me: (fuck me harder than that lightly clothed woman outside)
Sm: something... *long pause*
Me: (alright brain, which way out of here doesn't involves me creating a bullet hole in either one of us?)
Sm: And you can use it to sell something...
Me: (tf do you event sell?!)
Sm: but not like ebay
Me: (what is it then? A platform for selling services? I don't even know what kind of software you'd have to install, given that most of these platforms are be web applications, whcih makes sense for selling stuff on the internet)
Sm: Anyway, could you help me install it? It would take me hours to get into it.
Me: (You think just installing would solve it? As soon as I install it, you probably expect me to be your walking manual as well, don't you?) Look, I'm gonna be honest with you, since I started working I don't have nearly as much free time as I used to have (Not everybody works when they feel like it, you know that?) I get home at around almost 7pm (most of the time) and don't really wanna work afterwards. Most of the time there's a support service from the people who made this software and they would be glad to help you. (Sorry support team, for pushing this bundle of incompetence onto you, but I guess she didn't even listen to my advice).

After that she didn't back down and still wanted my help. Then my grandmother derailed the conversation and got me out of this. When I thanked her later she yold me that she saw I saw uncomfortable and wanted to help. I love my grandmother.

So I am not going to be your "family" tech support. You b(r)ought this onto yourself. Are more than twice my age and still can't use your brain to solve problems like these on your own and you can even less reason abiut your motives and desires when asking for help. I am sick of you and shutty opinions about people, just because I work as a software engineer doesn't mean I'm exist solely for satisfying your unreasonable desires.

Stop offending me and my profession and get yourself some common sense.
Protip #0: Give me one fucking reason to help you, because you're not family enough and your personality really doesn't bring forth any emotion but annoyance

I. HATE. HUMANS!
A family of four lurking side by side on an already extremely small sidewalk? Stop reproducing or I will start kicking your fucking kids in front of the next truck.
Ignoring the traffic laws as a biker and almost crashing into me because you just didn't care for the traffic light? Fuck you! Next time I see you I will stick a steel rod in between your spokes so you fly into the next cars window.
Randomly and spontaneously stoping on the sidewalk while I am at my top walking speed? Next time I will just run you over. With a bulldozer. And than again in reverse. I just don't get people, I guess.

Pseudo-rant:

I'm worn out from working a full-time job, working on my app, and having a family.

My app has potential, I launched it in July (iOS only so far) and am already well over 1000 active users. It's first week in the app store, it was in the top 100 for it's category.

It has some bugs that I'm working out, and some features that are in high demand.

I'm currently completely refactoring the API because I let it become spaghetti as I went from concept to v1.

That refactor means a rewrite of the website, and a major refactor of the iOS app, which is all fine and dandy.

On to the question: I am an engineer/architect, not a business major. I know I could really use help, and I know the perfect people to try to bring on, but also know I have nothing real to offer them other than a stake in the company.

As a developer, does a stake in a promising, but unproven company have enough prospect to sacrifice your time for?

Am I just being impatient, and should I continue nibbling at it myself until I get there, even if it takes a long time?

How do you determine the stake to give up, when you know that you COULD do it all yourself and keep all the monies?

I should have taken some business classes.

Today is the first time my pc fully crashed. I keep always everything updated and never had a problem. I didn't know what went wrong. After I opened my pc up I found out that a mouse family was living in my pc. Maybe I should clean the hardware more

It happened me a few years ago. I live in the Netherlands, but I am Hungarian. My new "friends" asked me to fix their laptop. I did it for free. It turns out, it was a huge mistake. In the next half a year I've solved several issues to them and to their family members (I don't get it, how they can ruin a well working hardware and software that fast, but it is another story). It takes a lot from my free time at the end. Then I had enough and ask some money to fix the next laptop. The price wasn't high, a bit more than a half of the repair shop's price. They tried to press me to do it for free, cos "you are our friend and you are hungarian too, we have to help each other out". I said no. It is too much. I've never seen them again...

The entire reason I became a developer was so that I could one day build something that I can say has/had a handful of users, that I could build something that helped save someone's life, that helped someone in their time of need.

That reason was fulfilled when I built my only successful and proudest project during a cold night in 2011. I was 16 at the time, and here in South India, there was a major cyclone affecting a portion of our country (Chennai/Tamil Nadu). A lot of my family were in affected areas, and I didn't know what I could do being so far away (around 400kms/250mi away, in Bangalore).

I stayed up all night to build what was then known as ChennaiRains.org. It was a simple website, a directory and a safe house for everyone's information. Whoever needed help, whoever was ready to give help, whoever was volunteering their travel, their time. I didn't think it would help much. I just wanted to make a small difference.

Next morning, after the hangover of the all-nighter I pulled faded away, I see that the website went viral after a few shares on Twitter. The community was so supportive of my little project to help my family and friends. It caught a peak traffic of a million users overnight, no ads, no money made from this, I just earned the experience of a lifetime. It eventually helped a lot of people in need, connected a lot of volunteers and victims.

It has been the epitome of my life. It's the reason I still develop applications to-date, even if they are simple. Somewhere out there, someone needs it, and I want to be able to help to them :)

For some people thanksgiving is for spending time with family. For me it is helping grandma with all of her technical issues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's start the story with just a bit of a background: I'm coming from a rather poor family so I always saw my parents working 24/7 to, you know, have a decent future. When I first got into the IT industry, I went full workaholic and worked overtime every day, taking other responsibilities etc. Got promoted fast, jumped through 3 companies, and all is good.

Present day company:
- I'm working 12 hour days
- Managing smaller teams and interns
- Starting new projects incognito and giving them to the execs (for the good of the company ofc)
- Doing lots of stuff outside my responsibilities

COVID hits, I get very sick 2 month ago... I get laid off??? I'm literally 5 employees in one, and, "the fact that I got sick means that I left home and wasn't working"???

This also comes at a time when every family member was also laid off so I had the only stable job.

Not even sure if I even have the will to work hard for someone else anymore, this is fucked up.

Today's office.

Unfortunately it isnt everyday, but iy's nice from time to time to work outdoors while visiting family.

My father was very supportive. Every time I was studying he'd take the dog for a walk, do the dishes and whatnot so I could study quietly and uninterrupted.

The rest of my family was supportive as well but not on that level. They always told me how awesome it is and do what I love.

1. Success in supporting my wife for her personal goals

2. Quality time with my family, especially with my daughter

3. Maintain my current brain abilities

programming fact.....
long time ago ,
the people who sacrificed their love,family,sleep,food,laughter and other joys of life were called
"saints"

now they are called "programmers"

I forged a katana once, under the supervision of a swordsmith. Nothing super special like damascus patterning or anything, but the cutting edge was pretty sharp.

Ugh sorry, lame word jokes.

In terms of software...

Microsoft Office Ribbon (cutting edge at the time, lol). Only as a maintenance drone on a bunch of manual search-and-replace work and merge conflict resolving.

Ariane 6 family of rockets (Welding X-rays and other DICOM quality assurance).

Software for continuous flow chemistry, developing microfluidic PCBs to perform Elisa immunology assays during the Mexican flu outbreak. Idea was to eliminate the need for microplates, expensive robots, microwell washers, etc — just have blood plasma, enzymecoated nanoparticles, antigen, conjugated detection reagents and substrates flowing programmatically through a PCB with a spectrophotometer built in.

I found some rum!

Specifically kahlua.
Kahlua, milk, Tito’s. Mmm. And so strong.

I tried adding creme de cacao, but I wasn’t strong enough to open the bottle. 🙁

Anyway, we played a family game that amounts to throwing a ball or other toy into a bucket from increasing distances / more difficult areas of the room. With my drunken coordination it was a great time. 😁

No work today.
Just packing and fun.
☺️

My one goal is to build something that lets me stay at home with my lil girl all day. Have been thinking about my own company for a while, there are 2 software companies in town with very weak tech stacks. I know I am better and can do better. So my goal is to build my own company and hire enough people to take care of it while I spend more time with my daughter. I get sad when I have to drop her off at the daycare while me and the wife have to go to work. All I want to do is be with my family.

My biggest goal as a developer is to build a few services which provide enough passive income that I can spend more time with my family.

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

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

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

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

Dear Boss

Would you.
Fucking.
PLEASE.
Stop.
Moving.
The Standup.
Time.

You've fucked around with the meeting time eight times since the end of Jan. Figure your schedule out, pick a time for our daily shit, and stick to it dude. PLEASE.

I'm a family man and you're making my mornings absolute hell to plan for.

Signed,

me.

!rant

Snow may be around
There may be no sound
Except for the quiet hum
Of a devs system

While you want to stay up and code
Don't forget to decorate your abode
For it's that time of year to put up the tree
And surround yourself with family

Some time ago I posted a picture of a Mario Kart. Now the family is complete! Friday night racing around the office is cool af

Sadly no bowsette

This run up to Christmas is the shit. Everything is suddenly urgent. No time to do a proper job. If that isn't bad enough, you are also tasked with thinking up some ideas for family Christmas presents, as if i give a flying fuck. I dont mind the break for the holidays but i fucking hate Christmas but have to put a brave face on and celebrate (what exactly am i celebrating). And no scrooge comments please.

Frack! I just found out I have to video record a friend's wedding. Why? Apparently because I'm a developer I suddenly know all things electronic and interacting with humans must be something I enjoy. I do not. Darn my wife and her persuasive sexual superpowers.
Me: "But...but...they are your friends, not mine."
Wife: "If you do this, someone else might have a good wedding night"
Me: *sigh* "What time do I need to be there?"

The family doesn't have much money and can't afford a professional videographer, so I understand (been there), but I'm probably going to have to smile, be nice and..ugh...socialize.

Our internet was broken for the last couple of days.
I had almost forgotten how it was to spend time with the family...

I am so glad our internet is working again...

So yesterday I went to the postal service to claim my package(stress ball). While I'm waiting for the package the employee there asked me:

EMPLOYEE: There's so many stress balls here why buy one overseas.
ME: It's a dev swag I got free.
E: Oh I see. *looked at me suspiciously*

a moment later...

E: Hey, why stress ball? Did someone on your family got stroke?
M: No, it's for me. *smiled*

The after I got the package, the man looks like he wants me to open the package in front of him. Which I didn't do because I'm late for my work.

Maybe it's a first time here that someone sent a stress ball from US. Goodness. Hahahaha

ps. the man looks at me like I did something illegal which is a bit awkward. Hahahaha

I need to share this with someone:

I've been using this app for months, maybe an year, without contributing cuz I didn't have anything really valueable to say.

Generaly, my girlfriend and family work at the beach in summer and they need my help but than again I can find the perfect career starting intern which will be worth perspectively at that time.

Why the fuck is my family doing this to me. They obviously need help but I am delaying my career for two years now because of that but after all, family is my treasure and it's more valueable than a career, there will always be internships but what stops me from spending a decade more and still be making the same mistake, but if I don't go I might break up with my gf and mess family things even more I don't want that, what would you do ?

Random.

When you haven't seen your family for a very long time (coz you're overseas) and they ask for recent pictures of you (I don't like taking pictures)...so now I gotta take pics and selfies for them folks 🙄🙅🙍

Being a programmer for a while now it always irritates me to try to explain what I'm working on to friends and family. I forget what I knew before I developed. I'm always like "I made the strings in the database- oh I mean the words...well they're actually more like strings of letters- well anyway I made a code to sanitize the user input- I mean make it so it is secure before uhhh saving." I spend so much time watering what I'm saying down I forget what I'm talking about

It's not even funny. It'd be funny if one single person in my family or friend group understood what I meant to some degree.

I look after servers, softwares,vendors and write code too. I am also learning datascience in spare time. Suddenly I found that I am giving no time to family and friends.

If you CC: me on an email I won't read it because I'm clearly not the intended recipient and I'm not going to do your work for you in trying to work out why I should give a fuck.

If you wish me to actually *give* said fuck then send me my own fucking email explaining why I should give a rat's anus about your shitty little problems.

And, if you try to use "but I copied you on the email" as an excuse for your incompetence in a meeting, I will eviscerate you on the spot. You will be looking at your small intestine while I ask your assembled co-workers if they have any other business.

CC: basically means you have no respect for my time. So, if you do it, I'm coming for you...and your family...and your friends...and all the people you know on Linked-In...

That moment when...

You’re supposed to be doing work.
You have a deadline.
It’s your sister’s baby shower and you promised to help.
Sis comes over every day to hang with family.

I’ve still not managed to get any work done today, video games and hanging and baking have had my time 🤣

I was up from 12-1 making jelly shots from scratch because my mum wanted blue ones and couldn’t find any blue jelly 😂

They’re bubblegum and for my first attempt I think they look pretty sick.

Will have to find out whether they set in the morning 🙈

I just realized that devrant is the *only* community I can resort to lol. I can't rant to any of my coworkers about work. can't rant to any of my colleagues in college because they are fucking idiots. I tried to help them improve time and time again but they just blatantly refuse and I just gave up and said fuck you guys. can't rant to my family or friends cause they can't understand shit about code.don't know if any other platform that has a community that's as amazing as this one. so I would've been practically alone if it wasn't for devrant. thank you guys for enduring my bullshit over the past year. and thank you for the developers for creating this awesome community. I don't really know what I'm talking about but I guess I had to rant a little. if you've read this far. Thank you.

guess this turned into a rant of it's own. lol. will write the actual rant in another post. XD

As we're all going about our various Easter, Passover, et al., family celebrations, I have the perfect solution to help train your families to stop asking you for help with mundane computer stuff:
Every time someone asks you to do/fix something, give them a full talk about what is going on in their computer around that system.
Don't forget you can talk about lots of things too:
- concurrency
- TCP IP / socket networking
- multi-threaded programs vs. single threads
- RISC vs. CISC processors
- Why linux is better than Windows or Mac
- algorithms
- logarithmic runtime
- teach them how to convert between hex, binary, and base ten
Really pour it on too. Soon they'll either figure out that you are a highly-skilled individual who is not their personal geek squad, or they'll be too afraid of a big lecture to ask for help.
Works with my in-laws like a charm.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I passed this day alone, in another country, away from family, friends and without anyone to hang out with.
On top of that my gf (she lives in my country) posted a video dancing with her ex.

So, enjoy your time with your family and friends, even they're not perfect they love you and care about you.
I m kinda sad right now, but I will fight this. I m gonna be alone and when the year change so i believe its time to strengthen my character.

Happy holidays boys n girls. 🙂

You have 2 years to live. You have a spouse and kid. Google offers half your salary to your spouse for 10 years and survivor’s benefits for your kid until they’re 23 (correct if I’m wrong) if you die while being employed by them.

Would you spend those 2 years practicing algorithms and your CS knowledge to get into Google? Or spend the precious little time you have left with your family?

I have been playing skyrim on my switch. The reason is simple, family watches movies or whatever, and I get to sit comfortably in my little screen shooting mofockas with my bow(i made an archer build)

Its my first time playing the game after all these years and I love it, far better than I expected. The story is great and the side quests are fun instead of boring, it does not take much to learn how to craft, enchant etc and I dig the simplicity.

But it has got to be one of the buggiest glitchiest majorly famous game I had ever played. Literally, and I have it for both the ps4 and the switch and it still is so fucking buggy its unbelievable.

My old job was great. I was writing automation software for one of the world's biggest storage deployments, and there was always a new challenge. But over time, I was asked to lend a hand with the tedious task of corresponding with procurement vendors and on-site technicians. At first it was one site, then it was two, and then it was an entire region of the US, spread across two time zones I'm not in.

I hated that work, and I found that I didn't have time anymore for software development, because of the time commitment the logistics work was. I was never hired to do logistics work, I was never trained, never qualified, and as I said, I hated it. I agreed to it to temporarily help out a weakness due to a shortage in staffing. But it never got taken off my plate, except for a short stint toward the end, just before I was placed on a PIP, because surprise surprise-- I'm bad at logistics.

About halfway through the PIP, I told my boss I wasn't doing it anymore. I said he could either put me back on software development or let me go, if ticket-monkeying and phone calls is the direction the wind is blowing for our team. I told him I had no intention of resigning, as you are not eligible for unemployment or severance if you resign, so their choice was to let me go. I'm told by people who are still there that everybody on the team is a ticket-jockey button-pusher now. Bleh.

My wife and I sold our old condo in Kansas City earlier in the summer, so we had about a year's worth of cushion, which was why I was willing to be let go. I was profoundly unhappy in my work, and it was bleeding through to my relationship with my wife and kids. So I took advantage of the time between jobs by spending more time with my family and just generally becoming a happier person again.

Meanwhile, I was in no desperate hurry to find a new job, so I got on linkedin, and had no more than two irons in the fire at a time. After just over two months I got an offer for a better job than before, which I accepted. There wasn't anything remarkable about that process though-- it's just something I've gone through recently.

Finals over. Get to enjoy family time.
Gets email from Amazon. We wanna move on with the hiring process. Please complete these online tests. By 12/26.

Good bye family so I can cram haha

Started off a developer 6 months back. I seem to have lost control of my life. I wake up at 8, be at work at 9am, get back home by 7 or 8pm, dinner, learn, work on my platform, sleep at 12am or 1am and the cycle continues.

I have no time for taking care of myself, no working out, no grooming, no family time, no time with friends, nothing naada! It scares me that I don't have that balance.

I always feel like I'm not good enough and I'm curious by nature, because of these, I sit my ass down and work / learn like crazy because I want to be good but I fear for my health, I'm 22, so I can live for now like this but this lifestyle will ruin my future, I've started getting back problems and shit, that was the wake up call!

How do you guys do it? work - life balance? I believe this information is vital for everyone starting out as a developer.

!rant I’ve been with the same company for 6 years, but the past few years things have been continually declining. Nothing has been awful, I just feel like there is very little room for promotion, or even worse, knowledge gains (we do a lot of win forms, c# mvc, vb6, sql stored procs). I’ve been so desperate to learn “new stuff” that I’ve been picking up contract work where I can find it (for nights and weekend projects). I’m excited to say that the company I’ve been doing most of my contract work with has offered me a full time remote position! It’s a 30% increase in pay, all new tech (mostly React Native, ReactJS, GraphQL, Nodejs, python, and integration with existing .Net applications)!

Feel honored DevRant, I’m telling all of you before I even share the news with my family (with the exception of my wife)!

Well, this’ll get me a downrant and probably a pile of abusive and hateful comments, but I chose WordPress as my dev specialty. It’s in that sweet spot between my own uselessness as a full stack and front-end coder and my clients’ inability to comprehend how to click an “Update plugin” button. So they pay me to do that, plus the occasional “design”, and are seemingly happy to do so.

I think I won something. Not sure what. But my stress levels in my career are consistently at an all-time low. I have lots of flexible time in my day to do work, go outside, get exercise, work on hobbies, network with other people, and be with family. I guess being a WordPress “expert” isn’t all that bad.

Yeah. Kinda late to the WK 227 party.

Thing is: I've read a lot of rants and honestly, some of the rants were ... touchy.

Like that weird emotional thingy you don't like but that just kind of happens cause I'm human too.... And have that shitty emotional feature integrated, which feels most of the time like a heisenbug.

Me and my parents. Specifically mom. Are like ... Matter and antimatter.

You don't want them in a room. Bad things happen TM. My mom is responsible for ... Let's say severe psychological trauma starting with age 4 to age 17.

In 17 I moved out and lived on "my own" (truth: on heavy support, cause I wasn't what you'd called "psychologically stable" at that time).

I fucked up university and - as shared before - thanks to an math teacher who made my life an even more living hell and my parents, I'd started in IT mostly out of "resisting" certain assertations being made over my life.

The support I got from my family can be put together in one sentence:
"I survived, I tolerated - but will never forgive".

Thing is: Be it IT support or anything else. If your gut feeling tells you that family / coworkers / friends are not good for you.

Stay the fuck away from them till you've sorted yourself out.

I can tolerate my parents nowadays. Took > 10 years and a lot of hardships to "achieve" that.

It's not peachy. It's not loving. It's tolerance. (Yeah. That bit is muey importante to me).

The thing is: I cannot deny the fact that my parents tried to support me by money. That's what they still do _nowadays_ even though my income is like 60 % of the income my father and mother has combined... It's a bothersome detail.

There's a certain thing in this rant that I would like "to pass on": Emotional support matters.

When you let someone feel like an empty shell, you cannot fix it with money.

It will - severely - destroy the person.

TLDR: We all have rough edges, can be hard to deal with and be a pain in the arse, but all of us need emotional support sometimes. That's what matters the most. ;)

Driving to a family friend after work to check his wifi connection issues.

Turns out that she didn't knew about the hardware switch to turn it on and off again... 😏

I'm single but in two toxic relationships at the same time: my job and my family.

I installed WhatsApp after 7.5 years.

My family forced me to do so because they make all the plans there and I am left out.

I am strictly using it for family and specifically for cousins while ignoring everyone else.

While the group is inactive except for when we all meet (which is once or twice a year).

I am also on Instagram which is 99% of the time deactivated and the only reason I have it is when I did my backpack, I met some real awesome people and the only way to stay in touch with them was via Instagram. Too bad that I did not have it then.

Yes, you can hate me for doing this. But I need to get this off my chest here. I am integrated with Meta ecosystem, but I am making sure I tread carefully and take all measures to protect myself from any kind of damage.

Took a side job for 1/4 of the price it should cost for a friend.

Kind of pissed off because it should be $4,000 for the hours I’m spending (80 hours) and losing valuable time with my friends and family

Dear boss, client :

We, the developers, have family. Respect our time by knowing what you want us to build beforehand.

#justathought

There are 6 stages of an man's live that he wish for

1. Child phase and school phase : don't know what it was, can't remember mine

2. Teenage phase : study, exploring new areas, competition, body building, getting into relationships , breakups, dreaming, etc

3. Ambitious phase : getting graduate, changing jobs , lust for money, tensions, parties, ambitions, cars ,new houses , marriage, honeymoons and kids

4. Family settled phase : permanent job, nice salary, long family trips , fun time with kids, paid holidays, hardworking phase

5. No tensions settled phase : children getting graduate, marrying, trying to settle themselves, you and your wife having enough money or pension to live peacefully, you are playing golf with friends, doing excersize nd charity regularly, etc

6. Permanently settled phase : lie peacefully in your death bed and wait for eyes to close in sleep forever

..
..
..
..
..
What life gives : "fuck that shit... let's mix some of these stages, replace some of them with opposite/ negative stages and skip some of them"

my family is fucking weird. and by weird I mean we have nothing in common, like people make make milk baby jokes and I am like "that totally makes sense!".

anyway my self proclaimed luddite sister and her annoyingly hipster husband recently purchased 300 acres of land in the middle of fucking nowhere with an old farm house on it. my family is always bugging my wife and I to come out and visit on the weekends. so last weekend I relented and we went out. apparently their idea of a good time is wandering through the woods ( I guess a trip to microcenter was to much to ask?). fast forward and I am now covered. COVERED in chigger bites. it is so bad that I have had to shave my legs then cover them in allow & lidocaine and wrap them up in gauze. FUCK THIS SHIT🤕😤🤕

Most Incompetent co-worker. It was me during my first job. Not humble bragging or some shit. I was straight out fucking incompetent during my first job.
Hear me out.
I graduated my diploma course specialising in networks(from computer to cellular/telecom networks) but I did a few programming courses and my internship was at a lab - did iOT stuffs with raspi and arduinos. I am a A+ student so was giving priority to choose a better internship place. Fun time. So I fell in love with programming. As soon as i graduated I applied for a Java job. Got a job at a domain name reseller/hosting company using java EE. Remember my programming = very basic/OOP concepts/basic SQL knowledge. That's it.
I am that little childish fucker who thought he knew everything and I kept interrupting my coworkers with stupid questions.
Same time, I was under the darkest moments of my life with some family drama/tension headaches.
2 months into the job, one coworker really got pissed off with my interruptions and bluntly told me "*my name,you are stupid aren't you"
The manager was a really nice guy. I will forever thanks him for his advices. He knew I was struggling with family shits and gave me another 3 months probation period to redeem myself. But I gave up. That was back in 2015.
It was a great place I fucked it up. But I learnt precious life lessons. I was young,stupid and didn't know how to handle stress.
I thanks myself for not quitting programming after that experience.

Why red herring is important between discussions.

My daughter: Papa! See this is my name and this is the name of my Sir.

I: No my little princess!! This is our surname.

My daughter: oh ok!! Who is that?

I: Ummm... (No answer) Wow!! You're wearing a beautiful dress today...

My most personal rant to date...

The company I work for operates in an industry that might experience the next Kodak moment. The industry is really feeling the knife against it's throat at the moment. The company I work for is a dinosaur, so to say. And almost everyone within fight to continue staying as a dinosaur.

I am the sole dev of said company, and I am so alone. Not just literally, but also in thought and action.

I've been flagging the possibilities and dangers of the digitizing aspect we're experiencing for the last six or eight years (yep, I've been around for quite some time), but I feel that I'm not heard. I am that grumpy, sour manifestation of everything digital that they hate so much. At least that's what it feels like.

I am so fed up with this situation. But my options are limited. There aren't many dev jobs around, and those who've tried to hire me offered a salary reduction of about $12K, which is quite a lot. I've been offered jobs in other parts of the country, but I have family matters to tend to, so I can't move at the moment. I've looked for companies offering a job where I'm not required to work from the office, but in my country these seem to be far apart. I could go freelance, but I am too scared to do so. A stable income is neccessary to put food on the table for my family.

Sigh,

Almost all my family think I'm free tech support.

My dad knows what I do and he's proud because I finished uni (he didn't), he sometimes asks for help (he repairs electronic stuff) and I try as hard as possible to be useful (it's fun!). He knows that (most of the time) I'm working when I'm in my laptop, so he doesn't bother me, he kindly asks if he needs help with something.

My brother's studying the same I did, he's doing fine. I think better than me when I started.

My sister knows that I can repair her phone/laptop but she asks me to do it whenever I have free time and how she can avoid to "damage" it again.

My friends think I'm awesome, but I'm in constant stress (thanks imposter syndrome!).

My dog, he just barks and smiles whenever I'm around and he thinks I'm awesome, so I have that going on for me, which is nice.

🐶

No rant here but just wanted to remind the ladies and gentlemen to take that break and spend time with your family or friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, and pets. If someone s been meaning to do it and got bogged down by work, I hope this serves as a reminder.

long rant;

How did I got into CS?

When I first got my laptop, I put on a password and forgot it. Nobody knew those things at that time around me (most of them, still don't) so I had to pay ₹350 (~$5) for formatting (OS reinstallation).
After a week, I again forgot the password and had no guts to ask more money from my family, because of the fear of getting scolded.

So, I took out the manuals that had shipped with the laptop, read them all. Found nothing.
But, on a very small page, a single line was written, "Insert the disc. Press F12 after pressing the power button".
I intuitively tried it and it worked (I had the OS DVD and no internet).

And I spent the next year experimenting with the windows OS (Vista).
Then tried all the other OSs.

Those were some times..2008..I guess.
Learnt OS without the internet. Nowadays people can't do it even with it.

What's your story?

Playing guitar and bass is one of my biggest, also weight lifting and videogames. I have not had much time to read books recently, but I do try and keep up with the novels that interest me from time to time.
The rest of my time is spent with my family. I also like going to my friend's ranch to fish and shoot at things. I love ranching, because, well... Texas.

so, I quit my corporate 9-5 job in 2020. and decided to move out of the field completely.
Moved to a small, tier 3 city, joined my family manufacturing business, cut off my circle, and completely shut my laptop....

...for 4 months.

then started developing solutions for my business, inventory management, invoicing, accounting, and other small apps.

and finally, after 3 years, in 2023, decided to move back to IT. but not as an employee this time, but as an enterpreneur.

developed a social media app, called Dialogbaaz.

probably coding is a disease that doesnt seem to go away. lets see where it finally takes me!

My biggest dev career dream is to have a useful SaaS with a solid user base and then reduce work to 40-50% and use the rest of the time for hobby projects and a family.

I FINALLY GOT CHROME BACK!!! A few weeks ago, my computer, for no reason, said I couldn't use chrome due to Microsoft Family features, despite me not having a Microsoft Family setup. I have been using edge for weeks. Pray for my sanity.

The solution, was to create a new Microsoft account and run chrome as that. But, it does bring up the interesting topic of how much Microsoft sucks. They do this all the time, they look at something that doesn't need meddling with, like my right to use my property and my apllications, and release some garbage they didn't test without thinking of the implications. Did anyone ever as Microsoft for a way to manage your family forcefully? No. Because, if you cared enough, I'm sure you could just download a stupid family app, rather than let Microsoft take hostage of your computers.

One thing really interesting to me was that Firefox nor chrome worked, but edge could launch just fine. A little suspicious, don't ya think, Microsoft?

Big-time Microsoft fan who claims they've been using licensed versions of Windows since Windows 3.0. Still has all old versions of Windows on different machines / hard-disks. They use only Microsoft Surface devices. They still use Nokia Lumia (with Windows Phone 10). They were working with an organization that used Office365 for enterprise email and collaboration. They used Microsoft Teams for team collaboration when the rest of the organization was comfortable with Atlassian tools like jira, confluence and bitbucket.

One fine day, news spreads that the organization is moving into GSuite for enterprise email and collaboration. They are devastated. They quit citing personal and family reasons, but we knew the real reason.

Just don't open it...

Will definitely not pretend to be productive 24/7. But the below help me reach a satisfactory 8/5 most day's.
- Exercise in the morning
- Eat breakfast
- Listen to good music
- Make sure to have fun moments throughout the workday (++ for initiating)
- Catch air, have a walk, take a break
- Minimize interactions with toxic people
- Be open in sharing knowledge, thoughts, work , good people will repay you
- Get in the kitchen, cook nice healthy meals
- Set concrete and reachable targets
- Remain eager to learn
- Celebrate successes
- Spent time with friends and family
- Catch enough sleep

And above all, DON'T open devRant!!!

Relax, they said. Eat some turkey, spend time with family.
What do I do? Work on a personal project.

ft. my grandma's house

If I hear one more time from any manager at my company that we’re a “family” I’m gonna vomit

My social life consists of spending much of my free time with my girlfriend, seeing my close family on weekends and meeting with a few friends from time to time.

It's enough for me and since there's not much of it, it isn't hard to "balance". Whatever that means.

Seriously tho, "social/work life balance" is subjective. It depends on what you need to feel good and happy. What works for some will not work for others. Don't try to push others into being social when they don't want to. Don't give me that "you need to go out more" crap. I don't. I'm fine just like this. I prefer to stay home and see a movie with my girlfriend.

That "people need to be social" mindset made me feel bad about myself for too long because I'm just not like that and people keep pushing that idea into my head. I'll go out with you when I feel like it, don't push it. Stop asking me every fucking weekend ffs.

My biggest dev regret was that I've followed other people's dream.
I lost precious time into trying being the "good kid" for my family and support them in their time of need.
Now I'm considered old for a starter and getting a dev job becomes harder with each passing day.

When someone in my family start a wedding ceremony and I being invited to help, but I don't have any other skill other than googling javascript. So in that time I just realize I don't like being human because I'am uselless, better be born as mic stand.

It's been three weeks now that „SPRING“ is over and Nerdism won over our interior decorations. Neither wife nor friends and family noticed. But I do. Every morning. This time I made an impact to our decoration. This single time

When I moved away from my family for my studies, I found myself alone for the first time in AGES. It caused bad things to my brain but since, I really enjoy loneliness, peace, and not having anyone to disturb you.

When I check Facebook (from where I'll remove my account soon), all I see is people craving for likes, feng shui bullshit and useless stuff from people I don't speak to since I left my family.

There are these times where I wish I could get off the grid without having to say goodbye, move to Canada, and reset everything, delete all my accounts from everywhere, build a shelter and stay there.

Man, I miss loneliness

about 2 weeks ago my mom's friend's family visit our house. one moment they introduce their brilliant son going to take Computer Science Major, and they didn't understand why, and apparently they are some kind of ignorant family. So my role here are to advertise and promote the world of CS (since i know their son are good at programming). one moment i am diving to deep into my own speech, i am like :

"I believe you guys using facebook, and Whatsapp all the time **give a smirk and sarcastic look* (which they actually did), that is our work there. and maybe you (my mom's friend) love to play candy crush with my mom, yes that is also our work, and we got a lot of money from you buying the candy to unlock the hard level (the microtransaction thing) MUAHAHAHAHA !" ---

and yes i am laughing like a monster in a film. and suddenly that becoming the most awkward thing i ever had.

and i don't know should i feel bad or not introducing CS like that.

I thought living alone without my family will help me to be more productive but no! When I got out of the office and start walking towards my home, I feel like there is no one waiting for me. What am I doing? When I reach, I feel empty, all alone, by myself. Maybe, it's time to marry someone, maybe a girlfriend? But I don't have any courage to start a conversation with a woman. I just expect someone will talk to me out of interest. But none! Is marrying someone the only solution? having a family is the ultimate peace? IDK

Seriously these assholes just gave me shit over half a day and made me use vacation time for a client holiday recently when I work so many hours that family and sleep are a fading fucking reminder of a different life....

Seriously....fuck you

Seeing so many posts of unsupportive family members makes me sad. :(

I was supported a lot by my family, got provided with all the books I wish for... In a time when there was no Stackoverflow or good tutorials.

I read most books during high school and got beat up for it... But look at me now! :D

My brother is so dense. He Spent the entire day wondering why his headphone port wasn't working on his phone, started bitching to me listing off reasons why he thinks the jack is broken.
I sit him down, ask if he tried turning it on and off again.
For fucks sake he didn't, litterally fixed the problem; the most default solution in the book and he didn't even try it. My god why can't people figure this stuff out.

Officially I have been assigned as the close and extended family "tech guy". Wasting my time solving issues that should be first nature in this century.

Don't know if I am experienced enough to give any advices but still:
1. Whenever doing freelance work, always take some advance payments, even its for your friends.
2. Use git even if you think it doesn't apply to you. I started really late.
3. Contribute to open source. You grow when the community grows.
4. Be humble even if you are the best there is!
5. Whenever you feel you are tired of this shit, remember why you started. Don't give up!

Most importantly, take time for yourself, family and friends. It won't be lines of code that you remember on your death bed!

Yesterday I almost ended my programming Carrier

Long story - I am enrolled in EC course which I cannot face for a single moment. Web development is something that had always excited me, and i wanted to make a room for myself here since childhood.

I cannot study what doesn't interest me. But that does not mean I hate learning. I have strong interest in learning things. Hence, I skipped two end-sem exam in the last semester. And utilized thar time to work on my project. I've been working on it since last 6 months. I learned more things in last one year than what I did in last 3 years at college.

My brother came to know I failed two exams in the last sem, yesterday. There were clouds flying over home for hours. What my family thinks is, I should get my degree. Whether I learn anything or not, but I should I get it. I must do graduation and what ever stuff I am working on can be done later. They don't understand the value of time and how fast things are changing.

I even got a client, who is willing to pay large amount for my platform. What my family thinks, is I am running for money, which is merely true.

What world we are living in. Parents and families don't want their children to get educated or well equipped with knowledge and values but want a printed degree in hand, which they think is enough to get a job.
The colony where I live, more than 80% graduates, that graduated in last 5 years with good numbers are unemployed.

Well, its nearly impossible to describe what i do/study to my family and relatives. most of them think i just fix computers. Just imagine what would they think when i try to explain them that im learning ML and AI.

here, a Huge part of our economy is depends on IT Industry. But the elder generation thinks computers are a waste of time and they are useless other than for fun.

TL;DR My parents should have known that I was made for computers
Note: I am pretty young. Most of you were probably at least as old as I am now when it happened.
My parents told me about the first time I used a PC. They left me and my older siblings home alone with a movie on and returned later than they wanted to. We were still watching the movie, and when they asked how that was possible we told them that I restarted the DVD twice. I had never touched a computer before.

The first thing I actually remember is me playing Age of Empires II on a PC our family got for free somewhere. Although AoE3 was already out by that time, it ran slow af, but it was the most fun I had in my life up to that point. I was and still am pretty bad in both AoE3 and AoE2, but that was the first step into my preference for RTS games.

Girlfriend, family, relatives, non-coder friends keeps ranting why I don't follow a social convention of attending usual meetings or gatherings and advising I should rather get some time away from a monitor screen.

*Like that's going to happen, getting away from screen, ever, hahahahahhha*

I usually come on here to bitch and whine but this time I want to sing the praises of WebStorm / The intellij family of software.

Never change. continue to be amazing and absolute chock full of customisable features. Thank you.

Sometimes I feel like I am surrounded by idiots. My family are too stupid and lazy to have jobs or do anything involving a skill. They are too dumb to do anything properly so most of the house is fucked.

My co-workers are supposed to be Web devs but cba to learn the frameworks or languages we work on. Some of them have over 5 years experience and don't understand basics like backend verification vs front end.. Or even what json is. Needless to say everything I'm told to do is retarded such as implement roles and permissions where there are no roles, but ot allowed to add roles.

Anyone else surrounded by idiots 90% of the time? How do you not get worn down?

my day went to shit immediately... long night, got to sleep at 4AM, poked awake at 8AM, "hey wake up we gotta go to a town 200 miles away, dress like you're rich, we gotta go find a place to live for my new job" ugh, fine, got another 30 minutes or so of sleep in the car. We get there, the guy shows us a place that I physically can't fully stand up in and is like 600-some square feet for $750/month. Fuck that. We get halfway back home, "hey i forgot, we just finished renovating a new unit, come look!" goddammit gotta go BACK to the city... get there, it's a 2-floor 1200 square foot place for $675, a hell of a lot better. We leave to go see relatives in town, get a call, "hey hurry home your grandfather's hallucinating" we get there before an ambulance (we traveled 120 miles in less time than an ambulance took to drive 50 miles...) and my grandfather's hauled (by us, as the ambulance refuses to take him to the right hospital, they want to take him OUT OF STATE in an ambulance and he's not actively dying) to the VA in the city we were just in... he's immediately screened and his dementia has progressed to the point he needs to be in a nursing home in 12 hours somehow. I have no idea either. Anyways, we're about 3/4 of the way back home and it's now 2:40AM. My dad's been driving for 18 hours pretty much straight. I'm still awake, he's wired (the worst possible state to be in while driving) and family drama has happened as family members are already trying to take the land my grandpa lived on AND HE'S LITERALLY ONLY BEEN GONE FOR 6 HOURS.

so how was your day?

However pathetic it may sound, I haven't. I've made good acquaitances, yes. But friends...

Last I had friends was in my first uni years. Long, long ago. After that - they went on their path and I - on mine. Work, family, personal projects and sometimes moto rides - that's my life now. Not really much time for friends. Not really much time to make any. Not enough time in a day to think/worry about it, not to mention reconsider my priorities/choices.

After working two 85 hour weeks and staying until 6 in the morning before customer demo, the project manager decides to invite the team for dinner and drinks after work, as if my family doesn't miss having me home for dinner, and I haven't spent enough time with my colleagues!!

As an introvert, this is a big challenge. A few years ago, I buried my social life to be focused on my work. But after some years, I realized this was doing more harm than good to me.
Since then I try to dedicate more time to friends, social events, and family. It's not easy to keep in touch, invite to a coffee, joining a class/activity and meet new people. Everyone's life is so busy today. But it's worth.
I always feel so much better after have a good conversation, sharing experiences and ideas.

As much fun it is to code and create new features for users. Take a break from the computer and spend time with real people.

A few years ago I would stay at work to get tasks done. While everyone in the office would go home I would stay and finish some task. After doing that for a few months my wife started to yell at me.

It made me realize that no matter how important a new feature, a bug or optimizing code is family and the relationships you have are more important.

We all hate being tech support for our family and friends, but motherfuck this is insane; my sister asks me for support and then doesn't listen to me. E.g. I tell her that the Microsoft login page is fucked up so she'll need to login again and she doesn't try again, but pesters me until I login for her... Every goddamn time...

Grandad showing me a commodore 64 that he had gotten for my uncles. shit was legit, had a bunch of games and cool shit in it. He also showed me BASIC (not programming or anything, but that it was a thing in it and the booklet explaining how to do games and stuff)

Mind you, the commodore was way beyond my years, I am a 91 baby, but he had it and kept it working and in good shape, the booklet was pristine (none of my uncles wanted to fk with that, neither did my dad).

He only showed me the machine because my mother had more vision that a lot of my family members at the time, asking him to let me use the computers that he had because she was sure (just as he) that computers were the future and a good educational tool for me.

Mom played a big ass role in me getting my comp sci degree, she was the one that celebrated it the most with my wife (wife pushed me through that degree to be honest) and my gdad is dead now, but he would have thought it would be cool to have another engineer in the family (he was an industrial engineer)

Long time ago, people who sacrificed their sleep, family, food, laught and other joys of life were called saints now, they are called programmers.

Ok people. I got a contract last year with a company, and I was their support for one year, which ended back in February. They still email me for all their problems. I don't know why. They emailed me today, for Christ's sake, on the Saturday of Easter, to tell me that their 3rd party software can't send them emails because the mailserver has that IP on greylist asking me to look into it and find a solution. AS IF I CARE! I'm with my family, taking a break for two days damn it. Panic attack came, my heartbeat rate problem kicked in and now I can't calm down. I'm trying to get into the "I don't give a fuck" mood but I can't, I'm too responsible for that, in the worst dramatic way (the world is gonna end etc).

Piece of advice:
Be very clear next time you come to terms with another company, be precise and don't let them have it their way.

I will be there at the same time I don't have a car so I can get a ride to the airport on Friday and I will be there at the same time I don't have a car so I can get a ride to the airport on Friday and I will be there at the same time I don't have a car so I can get my car out the time to do it again and I look forward to hearing from you in awhile I have a few questions about the other I have a few questions about the same as the other day I will have a talk at you and I hope to see everyone again and again I apologise I didn't get a response to your advertisement for a while but it is a little chilly here is a copy to the store to buy the car is in a good way to start a little more time with the family for a while but it is a little chilly here is a copy to the time of the year for the first time in a long time and I don't want it for a couple days so I'm just trying for you guys I just want a ride with us to get a few things done and I will be there at the end if this works out well for you and your family a very happy and excited about this weekend so I'm just going to go to the store and get back with me and my family is going to be a little late today but I'm still in my car and I will be there at like midnight so much and have to be at work at the moment but I'll try again later in life I have been trying to get a hold of the guy that I have a meeting with you to discuss the details of the job and I have been working in my room so I can get a ride to the airport on Sunday so we are all on my own and I will be there at noon so I'll just be me my money back and I will get it done this weekend but I will be there at the same time and where would we have been in the hospital for a week or two to see you soon and have a great day today love it and it will not work for me to come in and get a new phone or in person and I am not sure how long it would have taken it off and on again and again I apologise I didn't know you were going to be a little late to the game and it will not work on it this morning I was wondering if you had a choice but I don't know if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at any rate is higher up for it and the other is a good time to come in for an appointment with the surgeon on my phone and I don't want to be a good friend to come in at all and the other is a good time to call and talk about what we can do to help you feel better I can come by to pick up the kids from school today so I'm not going anywhere for the next few days and I have a few more days before we get into my car to go out for lunch at home and I will be there at the same time as you can imagine how hard is it to late to get a new car is a lot more done with the interview and the kids will have a good day at school today so I'm not going anywhere for the next two days so we are all on my way home from the gym and then I will be able to make it today because I'm a very nice person who can do it for you if you want to come by and see you soon and have to go back in the office tomorrow morning at work today but I'm going back and I will be there at the same time and where would we have been trying all of us and the rest are you still interested I can send you a picture of the front and back of the house and the kids are going well with the family for a while but it is a little chilly here is a picture of the front and back of the house is in my prayers as a friend but it will have a great weekend and I will be there at the end if this works out well and that your mom and dad are going to be a bit of an emergency at least you have a good day at school today so I'm going to be in the office tomorrow and will be back to the hotel now I'm in bed with a friend and then I will be able to make it to the meeting tonight but I will be there at the same time I was in a hurry and come to the office and I will send the other side and a little about me and you will see that you sent it out and get a good deal and you have the address of where I can get a ride to work on it this week but will have a good day at school today so I'm not going anywhere for the next two days so we are going to be in the office tomorrow and I have been working in the morning and I will get it done this weekend but will be back in the office on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday are going well for you and your wife is not the case then you have the address of your day goes on and I have been working in the morning and I will be there at the same time I am in need and I'll see what the status is on the way to the airport and then we will have a great day at school today so I'm trying to get a hold of the guy who was the guy who was the guy who is going well and I am going to be out by then but if I can find a way to get the car out the door to go to the store and I have to be in a relationship with a friend and then I will be able to make it to the meeting and will get the info for the guy who was the guys are doing the meeting at the church

!Rant
Awesomeness ensues!!!!!

I finally quit my day job at the place I was working to finally go full time with my business, TerraNimbus. I was able to secure a small loan to cover business and personal expenses until I can drum up enough business to keep things a float.

I’m super fucking stoked because I’ve been wanting to branch out and do this for about 4 years now and finally feel like I have the right pieces in play to make it work. I’m as nervous as hell but so fucking excited too!

I just needed to share this here cause the DevRant community is world class and you guys/gals are fucking killing it everyday being AWESOME!!! And you all feel like extended family members to me all going through the motions in each of your lives and keeping ‘in touch’ through devRant on a daily basis. So I wanted to share my story with everyone here.

My family keeps telling me the same old story over and over again about me when I was 3 years old, holding a Gameboy in my hands, cheering each time Mario died (due to the failure theme I'd guess, didn't have any other sadistic tendencies though). Over the years my gaming ambitions became a little more purposeful. ;)

However it's not surprising that I started thinking about how games are developed and how I can start my own.

So when I was around 14 I went to the local library and borrowed the first game development book striking my eye.. unfortunately it was about Delphi. But hey, I was young and naive.

Surprisingly, I didn't surrender back then.. but to be honest, I do not recall one line of Delphi. :D

As many of you are, I am too a 24/7 IT support for the whole family.

One time I was going back to uni for the week on a bus when my mom calls that her facebook is acting wierd. You guessed it, it was a virus. Then after 10 minutes of struggling I asked my sister to take the phone because she would understand the technial terms more easily and I didn't have mobile net or wifi at the time to use teamviewer. After 10 more minutes the virus was gone and I explained what happened and what not to do next time.
Later that day her friends got the same virus and my mother proudly told them that she already gotten rid of it and helped them remove it too.

Can you make me just a simple site? Only a few pages..... It won't take you long, we're family too so how about I pay 10% of the real cost??

Weeks of personal free time lost, and a fully fledged eCommerce site 28 pages deep with CMS controlled everything later....

Remote work (for the software industry, at least) is PERFECT and I still haven't heard a single argument against it that could not be derived into one of the following explanations:
- the complainer is/has a terrible manager
- the complainer has a shitty house
- the complainer has a shitty family
- the complainer is a shitty person
Naturally I mean only real-adult healthy people who work in the software industry.

I will now list the complaints I have heard more often. All fit neatly in the categories above:
- "my family interrupts me a lot, require lots of attention and/or creates an environment I cannot work in" - in this case it is very irresponsible of the complainer to try and escape to an office. If the adults you live with cannot get by without you, how going to an office will help them? If you can't teach your children to behave, who will?

- "my house is noisy and/or uncomfortable" - move out! if you can go to the office, you can look for another place to live.

- "I need in person conversations to understand people / zoom meetings are a waste of time" - why? do you need the smell of other people to properly organize your thoughts? Yes, meetings are extra-shitty during the pandemic. But pandemics come and go and your terrible time management skills won't simply improve themselves. Learn to lead better meetings instead of blaming the medium.

- "I miss face-to-face interactions at work" - Those do not miss you. If you want to have personal conversations, do it *out of working hours* with consenting adults. If you want to have personal touch in work contexts, it is called "sexual harassment" and is a crime.

- "my employees / colleagues are not as effective without me breathing at their necks" - you are a terrible manager and leader if you can't inspire people in words only. Maybe even video.

My main point is, there is no argument against WFH. When people try to argue against it, they often actually mean "I don't like the pandemic". No shit. Life will be better after people stop dieing for breathing close to their friends and family. In the mean time, learn to organize your life instead of running away from it every day.

Have you ever been to love theatre? How many times? Have you ever seen a movie? How many?
Why so many more movies than live theatre? You think you would have liked the movies, and their price, more if it was live theatre? Would you have seen as many?
WFH is not perfect for everybody in the planet. But it sure is for the software industry.

I didn't WANT to do it, but he left me no choice. He was about to tell everyone the secret that I'd kept for such a long time. I couldn't allow him to do that.

I'm still debating whether it was me who pulled the trigger, I never wanted to, but I did, it changed me.

Now I've been living with his wife, his children, in his house, with his parents and family. I've been to countless reunions and everybody seems to enjoy having me around, claiming that I've 'changed' and become a better person.

My old self seems to have faded away into nothingness, I don't know if I should be happy with that. But I do know one thing,

If such a situation were to come up one more, I'd do it again.

actually, I'm reposting to this week's rant (Family support you got becoming a dev?) because I remembered some stuff. and also because reading other people's rants reminded me of stuff. The fam and I have changed dynamics, but there is a ten-ish year span that we kinda got along, and I constantly forget about it. (because what good does nostalgia do?)

So, about the fam support.
Parents were both devs. Engineers, to be specific. So yeah, I was around the material all the time. but I was not specifically interested and they didn't push it. (They were busy with other dramas in fam and society) I was more of a bookworm. an imaginative kid, who liked to spend time either reading a fantasy book, swim, play basketball or hang out with her friends. The whole programming thing came way more natural to me than one could imagine. Me getting into uni for it was pure luck because I didn't have the grades for the other thing I wanted. (which, thank fuck, I'm doing way better now) So yeah, the support was not really required. Except for food-clothing-shelter combo.

I did want to become an astrophysicist as a child tho, which they didn't really support. Bummer.

I really hate this disgrace of a burnout.
Seriously.

Who can live with this thing crippling your energy?
This guy that comes to a ride but you only realize after 3 hours driving.

You came this time? When I fucking need to do hundreds of things on my life and for my clients?

Now I gonna spent my fucking MONEY and my fucking TIME to make this sucker less present.
Because doctors aren't cheap, nor changing my diet.

At least I can handle my clients. And tell them that some personal things came up.

But family?
They don't give a shit.
Specially when you are a guy that they love to tell you to work a 'regular' 9 to 5 but love even more your salary. Because you don't work a regular 9 to 5 job!

And I think that's more messed up.
Don't having a fucking support is frustrating.

my covid is still not recovered. Today marks the two weeks. I got fever the first day and then fever was gone but body pain and weakness was there. In 2 days, body pain was gone too. Now I couldn't only eat well. So tried light food but after sometime it was harder to eat properly.
Now I'm having the same diet I used to have before covid, but I'm still not feeling well. I feel pain in my shoulders. My heart races almost all the time and that gives restlessness to my days and it's very hard to focus because of that. Family issues, work, excitement of switching companies, even small bit of sound makes me more restless. If someone has the same symptoms when did they last?

Random thoughts that I need to put somewhere. that I’ve been holding in and have to get out.

I feel like I’m more welcomed and wanted here than in real life. My friends don’t really think about me when making plans anymore, no one really thinks of me in general.

In school I was the awkward kid that was nice to everyone and I’m not taking the whole graduation well. I miss high-school and my vocational school, I miss my friends and I’ve just felt like things ended too soon and I just kinda feel alone

I wish I could just sit down and program and not procrastinate the only time I seem to be able to get stuff done is when I force myself. I feel like I’m such a shitty developer for not fighting it better. I need to be better.

I’ve not had a good few weeks. Since I’m taken a semester off from college no one in my family besides me is able to stay with a family member that’s in the hospital. I volunteered because I care for them deeply and want to help them. but it takes a huge toll on me since I have to be the one that listens to the doctors tells the rest of my family what’s happening. While Im kinda freaking out because I’m scared and nervous and NOT READY and I’ve had to stay a week there and I’ve been having to stay on and off and I haven’t really told anyone how I really am feeling about it all because I don’t like to be vulnerable in front of people and it’s been really hard and taking a toll and not helping the procrastination.

I just wrote my final and last exam. First graduate in my family. No more semester. Am so excited. At least I can concentrate on coding now full time time

The course videos were done in November 2022.

It's May 2024 and i'm still shuffling paperwork to get the damn thing published.

"Course authorship is down on our platform! Why is it taking so long for our authors to publish!? Whats going on here?!"

Maybe because nearly all of the authors you have full time jobs and a family like me and don't have time for an infinite revolving door of new tools and frameworks!!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHGHGHGHGHTHTHTHTHHHHH

Never again.

When you hash time entries by year and you are freaking out to make sure your server doesn’t crash due to differing time zones while your family is celebrating New Year’s...

Finally got an offer from a multinational org i could previously only dream of. Ugh i really deserve it plus i didn’t fuck myself over by not negotiating this time. Got an extra 10k on stock options which was wild. Bye bye leetcode, hello Netflix and weed for the next month until i resume in August.
Such a relief knowing my family will not starve and die (joke but i am my family’s support so i was a quite worried last month when the interviews just seemed endless).

So after a pretty packed day of family time, DIY, play dates and parenting, I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of game dev... now to get up in 6 hours to go to work.

That awkward moment when you tell your family that you're participating in a hackintosh.

Their response: Why would you do any such thing? Hacking other people is not a good thing son.

Me: It's time to leave earth

Has anyone else built any websites or apps for friends or family for free? Is it just me, or is free work always the least appreciated? The demands are also unrealistic. Meanwhile my full-time employers charges over $6000 for a week of work for the client which on some weeks is things like adjusting some styles and changing some config, and they are appreciative every time.

A Bible app for Android called Tour the Bible. It uses the Google maps API to put a pin in each location as you read so you can follow along and virtually "tour" the Bible.

I had a basic version built but then I switched to Kotlin then I pretty much completely rewrote it to use an api for the Bible content instead of plain .txt files. I still try to work on it in my spare time but with a family, full time job, full time school and part time freelancing I don't get much spare time.

I am mostly sleep deprived.. loves to spend time on laptop more than with my family. Prefers coding over cooking. Would love to have partner who relates to this field, so he can be partner in my craziness. Coding has alot impact on my life. Infact it is my life and passion ❤

I made that request a month ago or so, not long after i started to use devrant more often than any other app, and i can say only that i am glad that i pressed "install" that time when i found it in the GoogleStore.

Thank you all for making this community more like a family than a refuge!

Truth is i feel a little bad now for doing that but i might be able to repay the founders and all mambers of this community somehow, someday. And i am looking forward to do it 😁

Cheers!

I was about 8. A family member was like a secretary, but not exactly. There are was a term used, but I can't remember. It's not really that important.

Anyways, I was like 8. Their job consisted of backing data up on.... Floppy disks. The software they used to back this data up just used a console and you had to input commands. Well this was amazing to me at the time. So they taught me the order of the commands and let me do it. Was the most fascinating thing to me. And it definitely planted the seed of interest in computers.

Some other early experiences also involve me hanging around the IT guy that worked with my relative. He taught me a little bit, such as some keyboard short cuts.

!rant, throw everything away

When you spend 9 hour at work, 2 hours in that fucking exploded bus, tries to spend time with friends and family, spend enough time with that one special person, try to sleep descently and manage to work on your personal projects during that two hours in the bus, and that each day, each week, the whole year.
You need a lot of motivation!
But when today I loose two months of work because of a hardware problem and that (because I don't have internet in the bus) I didn't backup on GitHub , I just have lost all motivation and will!
I just can't anymore!
FML

Rant

I almost did not write any code for the entire week. But I talked to a few people…LIKE A BILLION OF THEM!!!

My calender has completely gone crazy Bonanza big time in like a few weeks and org now want me FUCKING FLY TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY to explain some rudimentary stuff for a bunch of folks. And I’m like… what about using a telephone and computer instead, I got a life you know!? People are fucking calling in from India, US and Pakistan every day but I need to go to a neighbouring country for this shit!? Turns out manager there is fucking crazy and HATES video calls and I’m like… yeah now I am REALLY not fucking going there!!!

Family will suffer, I will suffer, planet will fucking DIE.

Stupid crazy bosses…

At first, my family was like "Don't waste your time on the computer, in college, you will learn how to code". I didn't listen, I started learning C#, but somehow I ended up learning C++ lol. Then I started with C, assembly, and SystemVerilog.
After they saw how good I was at it. They started supporting me. I don't blame them for not supporting me at first, they were ignorant about the topic, so they were blindly making assumptions.

Just realized I don't have a good social life outside home/college. Most of the time I spend time with my laptop and phone.
And at this moment am too afraid to socialize because my friends and family been doubting at my mental stability after seeing me talking to my PC.
Its been ages since I have played any games outside or hang around with friends. Sometimes I do hate the way I am now and want to ditch all these screens once and go gipsy around the world. Fml!!

I am 2 months in this job and I already hate it.
I love programming and building stuff and also the business side of things, even some meetings are ok if done efficiently.
This time its the coworkers. Nobody goes with the management decision to migrate the app. People intentionally deny help or at best dont care. Nothing is going forward.
I am a Junior but I am not just a warm body in the room. Still they really try to make me feel like I have to kiss some boots because of it. I really fucking hate this „family“ they call themselves.

How do you do? And how do you deal with a place you hate?

Linux certainly is the best. It works even on my slow 4gb laptop.

One of my family member's laptop running vista went dead today. Checked system, seems like only workaround is using repair disks with iso. Used this chance to finally convince her on moving to ubuntu.
Well, considering there wasn't even any comparison needed for Vista x Linux, she might just need to suit herself using libreoffice instead of winoffice. Just afraid she(not familiar with computers) might be bothered about the sudo here and there-thats something that takes time to get used to for non-programmers.

Well, changing someone's OS really is a great accomplishment. Kudos for myself.

If you could choose between:
• Waiting for an original idea to do something innovative (and maybe never get it).
• Spending an enormous amount of time to recreate one of the first projects you've worked on (and loved) as a beginner, using new technologies and the knowledge gained over the years, knowing that it could be a good product but will probably not get the interest of public and will not sell well on the app stores.
• Working on a project that could work (or not) and become popular, but that doesn't really interest you.

What would you do?
Personal satisfaction or profit?

Of course I don't want to focus on profit, but I'm still a student and my free time is very short, and sometimes I work very hard (I tend to put social life, exams, health, etc. on the second place) on projects that nobody uses. My family and friends think I'm crazy, and sometimes me too.
It's something bad, isn't it?

Any night, 1:30am, bedtime: "Yes! I can't WAIT for tomorrow to begin! I'm gonna make SO much progress on that personal project that I just KNOW is gonna change the world and make me a billionaire! My time is now!"

Next day, 9am, first call of the day: "Ugh, waking up SUUUUUCKS! But, fine, just gotta get through the workday, then it's beast mode time!"

5pm: "Ugh, that day SUCKED... meeting after meeting, constant interruptions for the few minutes I got to hack code, SO many emails, and hey, good day, only five new things pushed down from corporate to bang my head against! Feelings pretty mentally exhausted, but it's all good, I fortunately love this programming stuff, so first dinner, then a little exercise, spend some time with the family, and then it's time to COOOODE!"

10pm: "Ok, house is FINALLY quiet (fucking dog), just a little noise from my daughter staying up way too late again... kinda spent, but this project still excites me, and I may not get as much done as I was hoping, but fine, I can still make some tangible progress and that's what matters. Maybe just one last quick check of email, Reddit, make sure there's no new Hot Ones or Honest Trailers I gotta watch, update IDEA plugins and see what's new, then it's work time! Nothing can stop me now!"

Any night, 1:30am, bedtime: "SHIT! I GOT FUCK ALL DONE AGAIN! GO DAAAAAAAMN IIIIIT!!!!"

I quit my freelance job to spend more time with my family, I feel great for doing it!

Family support (2 phases)

When I was younger my mom bought me a 486 from the cow spotted company.

I didn't do much development as being kinda isolated in computer land didn't really make that easy to understand / do, but I messed with everything else.

At that time (somewhere near the invention of the wheel) just exposure to computers really gave a huge leg up on getting into tech.

Moving on until MUCH later in life I was working in tech, often with developers, but not in development. That company was acquired by an overseas company, the head of the new company appeared on the white house lawn and Trump said this would be great for America jobs ... so of course they laid a huge number of people off just before the acquisition.

I was kinda done with that corner of the industry, no matter how good you are / who you work for it was an area that just sort of decays in in importance. I'd go visit the developers and they'd share their excess free lunches they got each day.

Then I'd go back to my corner of the offices and read an email about how the quarterly crappy ass pizza party (that maybe cost a couple hundred busks) was called off due to "cost cutting".

By this time I've got a family and kids, and I decide to take a chance at starting a new career and they were kind enough to go along with my "sleep, care for family, school, care for family, code, sleep" lifestyle for a number of months.

And it worked out.

today i learned that adding to innerhtml using a loop is so much slower than adding to a variable and writing it once.

sometimes i wonder if i were happier as a professional programmer. and then i experience this which means my family would be living under a bridge in no time.

My family absolutely did not support me. Throughout my life my parents wanted me to become an accountant (like my sibling) and encouraged me to pursue that. In 8th grade I initially broke the news that I wanted to get into software development and was told "computers won't be around for another 10 years (this was probably around 2010), don't go into something so stupid". For reference, we had 1 family computer up til 2008 which we had limited amounts of time with.

Every year after, up until the end of 12th grade I told them I planned on going into software dev, and they got angrier each time, before finally they stopped speaking to me for a short time over that summer after I told them I had been accepted into university for computer science.

Now, in my final year, they still think i'm throwing my life away. Their disapproval is what has been motivating me the most, to prove to myself that I can support myself and create good things.

!dev

I hate family meetings!
I'm youngest in the whole family, everyone have a job but I'm just student in first year on uni.

Almoust everyone treats me like a child and ask me questions about school. I hate it!

Plus my mom brought MY electric guitar (cheap ST imitazion from second hand) which I have only for a year, to aunt's husband, WITHOUT EVEN ASKING ME! OK, he played a guitar and he had a band but still, IT IS MY GUITAR YOU SHOULD ASK ME FIRST!!!

Also I don't have time for practicing, so I'm not very good at it, I was so embarrased when they want me to play somethig.

OH GOD WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?

P.S.:
Sorry for my english.

The time that we dedicate to the things and people that we love/like, when it's enough?

The question is generic and for good reason.
Yesterday, semi-seriously, my gf asked me when we'll have a baby, I answered, seriously, that it's gonna be when I'll feel ready to share the daily time with someone as demanding as another family member growing up.
Now, between job time, hobbies time and girlfriend (gonna marry soon) time the time is already tight and because I'm self sufficient about happiness and kind of a loner I don't share really much time with her most of the days, and from this realisation from her side she broke into crying.
From that experience I understood that there might be need some adjustment on my side.
But on another side I'm puzzled of how other families deal with this, because though my life I've seen couples/married-people that had not really much interactions with each other on a daily basis and seemed fine with living like that.

So knowing this context, what's your experience about this phenomenon through your life time?

The best way to debug a program is to boast about it to your family and friends...
It would throw an error in your face almost all the time...
*Feels like a slap on the face*

being the good guy that I am I was helping out a family member over the phone. Frozen computer was the verdict... Eventually it turned out the computer wasn't frozen at all, the batteries of the magic mouse had died... thanks for wasting my valuable time! I then told em I would only help if they used cables for everything, including wifi. It took 3 weeks for them to realise Wifi cables don't exist. revenge can be satisfying sometimes!

2007. I was four. We had a dell pc as the family computer. My dad and mom borh had laptops for themselves and their work. It ran windows xp I think and I used it to cartoonnetwork.com and play games on it. We still have the PC so that is cool. The first time I programmed though was 5 years later on my dad's laptop when he started teaching me c#.

Dads of DevRant: Will I ever be able to work on personal projects again? I have a half-complete project that was going really well, that I have immense enthusiasm and drive for, but I just can't get to it, kids/family takes up 100% of my time & it's honestly depressing me. I'm finally at a stage in my career/skills where I could complete this; the technicals and business are all within my grasp, but I've fucked myself by having a family, my life isn't mine any more, I gave it up. Not their fault. But will it ever get better? Maybe someone out there understands this pain; nobody around me does, I keep it inside.

how the fuck do you guys manage to get family time
it's fucking hard

So I work full time at a retail store, but only one person is on shift at a time here so I'm allowed to bring my laptop and code while I'm running the store. This is where I get most of my schoolwork done and make most of my project deadlines for web dev job.

My only social life really consists of me hanging out with my boyfriend. Often when I need to be working on some code or project he will sit next to me and play guitar/sing or will quietly read while I'm on my laptop.

Other than that I chat with some game friends through Discord throughout the day, and often visit/help family members in spare time off of work.

Not much of a social life when you're super busy

Is anybody using skype on android. Recently it got updated and is bloody useless, can't even share stuff over it anymore. While having a video call, rotating to landscape doesn't work most of the time. This is the only fucking app from MS I am still using, only because of my family.

Week80: Not my family or friend, but last time I used my notebook in a bus to school when I had to finish my homework (because as always, literally evrything is more interesting than programming class homework) random woman came to me, nocked on my shoulder and asked when I had terminal open when compiling "Sir do you know that this is not legal?" pointing at my screen. 😂

My familly thinks that I am a magican that can fix their printer and recover their desktop icons "because I did something wrong with it" after not touching their PC for months. I wonder who deleted those icons (*pointing finger at my father*)

My friends think that I am some magican nerd who can build websites for them all for every single stupid "teen business idea" they have and I can hack all their ex's FB. 😂😂

I remember when my sister borrowed the original Sims from one of her classmates. She would play and i would watch. One time she recreated our entire family as well as our home. Everything was fine and dandy until she tried cooking something. The kitchen burst into flames and burned the whole family alive so me, being 5 or so, literally cried for the rest of the day and never dared to play the game again. The end.

I've done it! No more secondary projects this time. Whole Christmas spent with family and casual stuff. Have you also succeed?

1. Use all my vacation days
2. Learn something that has nothing to do with computers (seriously I bore myself sometimes in conversation)
3. Drink more rum and learn about it at the same time
4. Make time for friends and family
5. No massive outages!

Mostly I want to step out of work and be more sociable

I have a question on the Signal app.

Two family members have an extensive chat history. One of them accidentally deleted the data. The backup function was not active. However, the other side still has all the data. Both are using Android smartphones.

How to transfer the data? Re-sending works only five messages at a time, which is not practical with some thousand messages.

Is it possible to export the data from one smartphone e.g. via USB to a PC, then import that via USB on the other?

FUCK

Anyone here who graduated in industrial sector engineering fields but managed to switch their careers towards IT/development? Considering that I do have related competences and solid foundations on 2/3 languages.

My job fucking sucks. The pay is good but I'm not doing shit since 2 weeks. Everyone works superslow because there is no shit to do and boredom kills us slowly. My family says that I just need to be assigned to a project and be patient. I don't want a super fast no free time environment, but if there are no challenges any single day what is even the point of getting up in the morning.

It's FUCKING depressing :(

Allright, so.. 3 (sort of 4) dev projects at work (7 roles in total), 2 (sort of 3) DEV projects at home, 2 guys approaching to me via messenger w/ DEV/Linux questions, family (with a baby), construction works in the apartment, taking care of the farmstead,...

Whenever you ask "what do you do", I'm not even sure where to start.

Whenever you call me with "Hello, I'm calling from company X, do you have some time to answer a few questions" I sort of want to hit someone really hard before answering "yes, sure".