Once upon a time in Devland, there were two best friends @Alice and @Michelle and they worked together at The DevCo company as developers.
After a tough day handling an @-ANGRY-CLIENT-, they thought that they had to go and @RantSomewhere and so they went to a café. At the café, they ranted about some stupid clients, and @theItalianGuy at the third floor of their office building who never picked up calls, and @thatJavaGuy from the second floor who, they thought, was @notarealDev, and the usual stuff about their work. Somewhere in between, @Alice thought it would be @funvengeance to @hack @theNSA; “@karma is coming to get them”, said @Michelle.
To do this, they knew they’d have to take help from none other than @Gandalf who lived in a nearby @cave. So, the next day, taking a leave from work, @Alice and @Michelle embarked on journey to meet @Gandalf. After about an hour’s drive, they reached @Gandalf’s @cave. @Michelle went ahead to knock on @Gandalf’s rusty cave door. Being a lazy @necromancer, he magically opened his door 2 minutes later. “Who is't dares to disturb me in mine own catch but a wink?” shouted a voice from the back; “We’re two developers from DevCo and we need your help in our mission to @hack @theNSA”, shouted @Michelle. After a few seconds, he replied, ”Hmm… N'rmally I wouldst sendeth thee to mine own cousin @Hagrid, but in thy case, I sayeth thee shouldst visiteth the detective who is't goeth by the nameth @S-Holmes”. @Alice replied back, “Thank you, Sir @Gandalf, we’ll get help from this @S-Holmes, I’ve heard that he’s an @exceptionalGuy”; “Mine own pleasure, Farewell!” said @Gandalf, and the door closed shut.
So, @Alice and @Michelle went back to their car, and that time @Alice raised a question, “How are we gonna find this @S-Holmes? We don’t have a phone number or anything so we could contact this guy.”
“We should call @thatJavaGuy from work, I’ve heard he is a man of resources, he must know how to contact @S-Holmes”, said @Michelle.
And it was true, after a call with @thatJavaGuy, they were able to obtain @S-Holmes’s phone number.
“Howdy, this is @S-Holmes, what can I diddily ding dong do you for?”
“Hi, I’m @Alice, I’m from DevCo and I was hoping that I could get your help in our mission.”
“What kind of mission?”, asked @S-Holmes.
“We want to @hack @theNSA.”, replied @Alice.
“Okay… I think I might be able to hel-diddly-elp you! There’s an old and abandoned laberino noodly-near @stacked Street. It was made in @1989 and since then, it houses a magical computeroo that can hel-diddly-elp you in your mission. So, you just have to connect the computeroo to the Internet and you can diddily ding dong do your programmeroo thing and then you'll have access to the the noodly-nsa diddily ding dong database!”, answered @S-Holmes.
S-Holmes continued, “But I shall warn you, there's a riddly-rumorino that the laberino was abandoned because of an @electric-ghost that lurks there, but I bel-diddly-elieve it is just a computeroo program that was diddily ding dong designed to try to @stop hackers from accessing the top secret stuff!".
“Okay, thanks for your help! I bet we can handle whatever this @electric-ghost thing is, so… Goodbye!”, replied @Alice.
“Goodbye!”, said @S-Holmes and that ended their conversation.
Luckily, the @stacked Street was just a couple of miles away from them, so they reached the lab quickly.
As they got close to the lab they saw something that really surprised them…
--------
To be continued in part two...
(Do you want a part two? :/)

My first ever story is a little special because it is kind of dev related at it has "cameos" by various devranters, as you might have noticed.
How many did you count?
More in Part Two.

Thank you for reading and please, any feedback is welcome. Did you like it?
I haven't really revised it once, it is straight out of the keyboard.
Should I drop the "@" ?
But then it would impossible to spot some of the devRanters .
Let me know.

PS
What should be the title?
1)Alice in DevLand?
2)Adventures of Alice and Friends: Hacking the NSA?
You decide..(or maybe I'll pick the second one :D)

Refactoring that old code written by you

My colleges and I were talking about salaries in our company. Our team as about 10 members. Many of us are receiving interesting offers from other companies, and we concluded that we were being underpaid.

In this life, unless you ask to, no boss will raise you, even if you put some extra effort and work the shit out of you, to bring that profit, new client or something else good to the company.

Nobody was interested in talking directly about that to our manager. Just a side note, our manager is an awesome senior developer and a very nice guy. It shouldn't be too hard to talk about this issue to him.

I waited until our annual performance and salary revision to talk about it. Everyday our team talks about this. Everyone is going crazy.

So I went straight to the point, during this meeting with our manager, and said that we needed to be raised. All of us, because other companies were offering much better salaries.

He said to me: "Take this paper, write down what value should every one receive, including myself."

I took this opportunity and put down the values, raising about 600€ for each one.
I looked at it and said: "This looks ok. I'll will ask your colleagues to do the same task. Wait here."

So he went and requested everyone to do the same thing, without explaining why.

Guess what happened? Some mother fuckers actually cut on others salaries, instead of raising everyone equally.

Anyway the manager said he would show that to the CEO, and maybe something would happen.

We were all raised in the values I said so, because the CEO want us to be among the companies that pay the most.

After the backstabbing, no one ever talked about that. Except for 3 good fellow developers, that thanked me for my initiative.

Fuck docker documentation.

I hate you Gandalf!!!!!

Gandalf Sax Guy

I grew a Gandalf beard, and android studio is still loading

Made an Android app a while ago. I needed some pet project so I decided to go with Java for Android. First time, no experience at all.

So everything went ok, I had a little help from a colleague, structuring code, and pushing to the store. Work done app was doing ok.

A year later I came back to this project. I needed to fix a bug - date time and daylight savings crap. 😥

Spent a week on it. Ready to push a new version to the store, with some extra features! Build apk. All good.

Wait. I need to sign the APK? Wtf. I had to format my hard drive. How do I recover my fucking certificate?

*Google's for a while*

No fucking way. I can't restore the certificate. Or get the keystore back. The solution is to create a new app with a brand new package name?

Thanks for nothing, I'm done with Android development.

"Hi"

Yes? Stop sending Hi, Hello, in slack! FFS not even asking: how are you doing? Throw your question or whatever made you talk to me in the first place! I'm just ignoring everyone like this from now on...

Yes, the client says it must work on IE 8. 😢

Use the force, Harry!

- Gandalf

Been watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy since yesterday for the third time in my life. I shed a tear at the end. That movie is as good today as it was 15 years ago. Awesome.

Now, to make this post relevant, im going to close VLC media player, open Android Studio and go on a Kotlin (which is becoming more and more like Gandalf the White) journey

Fuck my boring job.

Read the fucking code! Stop asking questions that could be answered if you spent 5 minutes reading the code.

This happen last year during a one day workshop over zoom. We where around 16-18 strangers plus the tutor. We started with everyone introducing themselves (most showing their faces on camera), then it was just the tutor with his shared screen. Two hours in, one of the participants accidentally turned her camera on. I know it was accidental because I still cringe from what happened next: she started picking her nose. At this point, I have to clarify that I'm not familiar with zoom, because I'm on Microsoft teams almost exclusively thanks to my organization. While I looked frantically on how to DM this person (something along the lines of "hey, your cam is on :)" or whatever), I watched in horror as the second act of this play unfolded as she put her finger in her mouth and started to eat it. At this point I was actively dying from second hand embarrassment. Like girl, our orgs payed good money to be on this workshop, gave us a day off (so to speak) and know all I can focus on is you going gold hunting and bringing home some cured cave meat. My boss basically paid so I can get traumatized! And all this while being being in the comfort of my own home. Thanks, zoom! Anyway, she went in for seconds. That is when I died. I am dead at this point. My eyes glued to the screen. Ears ringing. Brain fried. It is done. Now, that the cringe has peaked, does it even matter If I figured out how to dm her? It is too late at this point. We all saw it. The tutor must have seen it. We all witnessed it. We are all witnesses, your honor. She has been witnessed! What else can I do at this point? Me, one bystander amongst bystanders. Idle and powerless.This is exactly how the holocaust started! At this point, I'm no better than your average Joe, who doesn't really like the new regime but doesn't fight it either. At this point, I ask myself what would Jesus do? Or Hollywood? What would happen in the movies in this situation? If I cant fight them, join them? Starting my cam, knuckles deep and double fisting my air holes to save what? It is done. Nothing left. She made her statement. She basically played us for fools. By god, what a freaking boss move that was! Like, can you imagine? Here we were, during the end of a world wide pandemic, bound to our homes, advised to regularly clean our hands, protected ourself and our loved ones and, yes, not eat buggers. And here comes miss fuck-it-all showing us degenerates how its done. You go girl! You showed us the light while we dwelled in darkness. You are our queen! Long may be her reign and just her punishments! I have seen true power and wept with the angles! I was born again. My mind at peace. I was Gandalf the Grey, now I am Gandalf the White. This is the day I will tell my children about. Songs have been written for less. I will never forget this!

Anyhow, I could go on, but that this is basically what happened over the span of a couple of moments in late 2022. I will never forget her. And now you won't either ❤️

Fucking Kubernetes tutorials on youtube. I still have no clue on why. I just get the how.

Fucking explain why we need it in the first place!

15h/day for at least one month.

Manager to someone: How long do you think it will take you to build this?

Someone: Erm... 6 months.

Manager: Fine, I'm pretty sure you can do it in 3 months.

I was invited/forced to join someone's team because he could not do it in 3 months. Neither did we, but we managed to deliver the project in 4 months.

The dickhead manager got a promotion, money prizes etc for burning us out. I can't stand this kind of managers.

Neither I or someone work for that guy anymore.

If a Dev tells you it would deliver something in X believe him, he's telling you the best he can.

Well Gandalf was great...

Some time ago Ex-Boss, who's also a Dev, asks for some opinions about which JS framework we should use in our next project. I gave my 2 cents about react JS and he said no, react won't be any good, we must use Aurelia because it is backed up by Rob etc etc. At that moment I thought: wth is he asking, if he has already made its mind on Aurelia? As at that moment react was getting some hype and I knew the features and advantages, I kept going. Boss, react has shadow DOM. React has this, it has that etc. This discussion ended up with him raising his voice, telling me he is much more experienced than me and telling me to GTFO. That's what I did. And thanks God I did it. I respect other opinions and beliefs but If I'm asked to give my own opinion I will, even if they don't like it.

It's 05:30 and I'm about to leave for the office to do a deploy.
Morale is currently floating between "fuck off and die" and "confused Gandalf meme".

is laravel app really enjoyable to write ?

i started as a laravel dev. the known story , all code in controllers etc. As i started to improve, fortunately i changed company, and worked with a symfony project. A symfony that looked like java. hundreds of classes, tests, yaml injections , objects for requests, for everything.

I thought that i missed the old laravel days, and i took an extra job on laravel again. I was soooo wrong.

It was not only that the code of the previous dev was inferior to what i am now used, it is that i have to be with an open documentation all the time. Even if the project is in the same version that i have used to earlier (an old one).

You have to check all the time the model settings, the migration, the magic tricks of model mass insert, the castings, the validation rules, why the tests are not finding some routes, why this, why that, how it is written this.

Excuse me, but i think the fun and easiness is far from what they say and what i thought it was. I start to change my mind and believe that inserting the request to a simple php object is more controllable than the gandalf tricks that laravel is doing, and you cannot know if it is worth your time to test it . And more importantly, you do not have to look at the cookbook, all the time@@@

I believed the only thing that could humble me was leg day. Guess clicking a shady update link can humble you quicker than a botched deadlift. I had developed my app from the ground up, and that Bitcoin reserve was meant to fuel our international expansion. One minute I was meal-prepping protein pancakes; the next, my wallet was thinner than my fridge on cheat day.

My pulse raced as though I was half-burpee. Panic. Sweating. Guilt. I refreshed the page like cardio, praying the money would somehow reappear. Spoiler: It didn't.

After a long night Googling “how to undo catastrophic life mistakes,” I landed on a cybersecurity webinar. The host casually dropped the name Mighty Hacker Recovery like it was common knowledge. To me, they sounded like the Gandalf of Bitcoin, so I figured they could probably handle my little meltdown.

I reached out to them in a panic, the equivalent of a person who's just discovered they double-booked leg day and pizza night. They responded quicker than my personal best sprint time. They were cool, they were professional, and, most importantly, they didn't laugh when I described how I basically bench-pressed my life savings directly into nothingness.

They got to work immediately. Their team of tech wizards (I’m convinced they actually wear robes) dissected the malware and traced the funds like a GPS tracker on my dignity. Every day, they updated me with progress reports that somehow balanced technical jargon and emotional support, the digital equivalent of a personal trainer shouting, “You got this!” while you struggle under a barbell.

Nine days later, I got the call. Funds recovered. I nearly did a victory lap around my living room but pulled a hamstring from pure excitement. Typical. Due to Mighty Hacker Recovery, I didn't simply get my money back; I got a crash course in cybersecurity that rivals my toughest boot camp. My new digital security routine now rivals my meal plan. I have more passwords than protein shake recipes and back-ups on top of other back-ups.

If you value your gains, both financial and physical, trust me, you want Mighty Hacker Recovery in your corner. They spot you when it matters most. What$app Numb3r + 1 4 0 4 2 4 5 6 4 1 5 email support (at) mightyhackerrecovery (dot) com

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I Couldn't Believe It! I was sipping coffee and scrolling through cat videos one minute, and life was good. The next, my laptop screen flickered, turned black, and flashed back on, this time blood-red, with a message that sent my heart plummeting into my gut. "Your files have been encrypted. Pay $50,000 in Bitcoin, or say goodbye to your data forever." Hackers had hijacked my system, and I was locked out of my $450,000 Bitcoin wallet. I stared at the screen in horror, my coffee abandoned and my cat videos a distant memory. I rattled my fingers as I tried every password to which I believed I could gain access, but it was for nothing. The hackers had me in their sights. Tears accumulated in my head as a nasty thought ran through my mind, would I be forced to end up on my mother's couch again? I mean, I love her, but waking up under my childhood Justin Bieber posters at 35 wasn't what I envisioned for myself. On frantic hours of Googling, reading through forums filled with terms that I couldn't even start to make sense of, I stumbled upon TRUST GEEKS HACK EXPERT at w e b w w w :// trust geeks hack expert .c o m / . It was something from a fantasy novel, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I needed Gandalf at this point. I called them, praying for deafness or a scam, but their response was speedy and professional. They did not just talk tech, they listened to my desperation. They assured me that they had handled ransomware cases before, and their words were a lifeline in my sea of despair. The next nine days took nine years off my life, but our staff kept us up to date at every stage. I could envision them hacking around in their shades, like a scene from an action movie. When they called and informed me that they got back my wallet, I hit the floor on my knees and prayed to whatever higher power my mind could conceive. Every Satoshi was accounted for. My $450,000 was safe. Bonus? Mom can now go ahead and convert my childhood bedroom into the guest suite she's dreamed of—without me as a permanent houseguest. E m a i l: Trust geeks hack expert @ fast service .. c o m

Thank you, TRUST GEEKS HACK EXPERT