Ran into a girl who I had a crush on in high school at a bar last week. Hanged out for a bit, but then I had to run catch the last train home.

Today I get a message from her that reads: "Hey, it was nice to meet you last week. Can I call you some time, there's something I want to tell you. 😉"

I think to myself -- sweet and say that I have no meetings today, call me whenever you can.

A couple of minutes later she calls me, and the first thing she says: "I have this app idea..."

fuck, shouldn't have hyped myself up.

One day when I was about 8 years old my friend and I were in the library. We decided we wanted to try to make a baseball website because we both likes baseball (this was around 1998). We picked up a book on HTML and my dad took it out for us. My dad was also a programmer so he said he would help us learn. We went home that afternoon and made a little website!

I knew right then that I really enjoyed programming and creating things with code, but I realized I wanted to be a programmer in middle school and high school. One of my friends and I started building Flash games. To see if people were playing them, I added in a call to each game that hit a PHP script on our server. I'll never forget the days/weeks that one of our most popular games caused our sever to get hammered and our shared host said they were going to boot us.

It was an awesome feeling knowing people were enjoying these games that we worked really hard on, and that's one of the main reasons I always wanted to be coding/creating things that people enjoy using.

I'm almost 29 and only have finished high school. I never new what I wanted to do until 7 years ago. Software engineering and development.

It took me a little while an some effort to find a employer who sees my potentials and is willing to invest in me.

Two weeks ago I decided to finally go back to school again (self study). Last week my boss told me he is proud and willing to share the costs.
Today my books arrived.

I am so excited and nervous!! November 5th (also my birthday) will be the first day of school.

Le me having a chit chat with a student after sharing about programming in my former high school..

Student: "I learnt Java the other day, and I don't really like it"

Me: "Why?"

Student: "Because we can import existing packages on the community to do almost anything"

Me: "And? How is that bad for you?"

Student: "It's not very challenging, isn't it? I want to build everything in my program with my own code!"

Me: [silence]

Me: "Listen here, you little shit..."

People are posting their setups so I thought I'd post this.

It's a 2012 MacBook Pro, 13 inch. I put 16GB ram and some solid state in there just so it gets the job done.

When I was a freshman in high school, my dad saw something in me that he believed in (and I didn't). He decided to put his money where his heart was. He told me that he would go out and buy me a computer, and I wouldn't have to pay him back, if I would work hard at programming to pay for my own college.

His investment payed off. I just graduated high school and started a job last week that will get me through college debt-free through the gap year that I'm taking. This machine's getting a little old, but it means a lot to me. It reminds me that my dad believed in me even when I didn't. 🖖🏼

Got caught using linux terminal by school security. They took my laptop away and drove me across campus in their security carts to take me to the office.

It took a long time to explain that I wasn't maliciously hacking the school.

This is the third time I've been in trouble for tech-related activity.

On the bright side, one of the security guards said, "I'm done dealing with teenagers. Next time I won't work for a high school."

I think he's going to quit. :)

I’ve been inspired by programming many times, but a few early moments really stand out for me. Some of those most memorable early moments came when I developed Flash games with my friend in high school.

Growing up, at this point in time, around 2005, Flash games were really hot. All the kids in my school played games on addictinggames.com during any classes that took place in the computer lab, and when my friend and I started making games, it was our dream to get a game featured on addictinggames.com.

When one of our early games ended up getting featured, we were absolutely ecstatic and I’ll never forget the feeling of seeing our own work on this game website that we loved for years prior and that so manly people at our school used. It was the coolest thing and I think went a long way to encouraging me to continue to want to create things, after seeing the impact we were able to make with a simple game (as two high school students).

And I think that shows the beauty of the internet today and the power people with few resources have to get stuff out there. I think it’s maybe gotten harder as of late since there’s probably more competition, but I also think the audience is ever-growing and I hope many more people get to experience that awesome feeling of having something you worked hard on become popular.

I was 15 years old and the first year of high school. Everything was new to me and I was such a newbie. At that time I had 2-3 year of programming behind me at an institution where they taught competitive programming. And I knew something about computers. Not much but more than most of my school mates. At that time I wanted to become "super cool hacker".

So we had this very very thought teacher for history which was also our form master. She really knows how to explained everything about history and in an interesting way. But while she was teaching we also had to write down notes from her powerpoints that were on a projector. And occasionally she would wait for us to copy everything and then move on with her lecture. But sometimes she didn't. This was frustrating as hell. The whole class would complain about this because you couldn't take notes down normal, you had to do it at double speed.

But she got one weak spot. She was not very good with computers. Our school computers were locked in some kinda closet so that students didn't have physical access to a computer and were also password protected. So I came up with the plan to plant wireless mouse in her computer so that I could control her mouse. At that time it seemed like SUPER HACKER MASTER PLAN.

So I got an opportunity one time when she left the classroom and let closet where the computer was open. I quickly sneaked the USB of the wireless mouse in the computer and then go back to the seat.

So THE FUN began.

Firstly I would only go back in powerpoint so that all my schoolmates could write down notes including me. And it was hilarious to watch when she didn't know what is happening. So then I would move her mouse when she tried to close some window. I would just move it slightly so she wouldn't notice that somebody else is controlling mouse. And by missing X button just by slight she would click other things and other things would pop up and now she had to close this thing so it became a nightmare for her. And she would become angry at the mouse and start complaining how the computer doesn't work and that mouse doesn't obey her.

One time when she didn't pay attention to her computer and projector I went to paint program and drew a heart and wrote we love you (In Slovenian Imamo vas radi -> See the picture below) and one of my school mates has the picture of it. We were all giggling and she didn't know what is was for. And I managed to close everything before she even noticed.

So it got to the point where she couldn't hand it more so she called our school IT guy so that he would check her computer (2 or 3 weeks passed before she called IT guy). And he didn't find anything. He was really crappy IT guy in general. So one week passed by and I still had messed with her mouse. So she got a replacement computer. Who would guessed all the problems went away (because I didn't have another mouse like that). I guess when our IT guy took the computer to his room and really thoroughly check it he found my USB.

So he told her what was the problem she was so pissed off really I didn't see her pissed off so much in all my 4 years in high school. She demanded the apology from whom did it. And at that moment my mind went through all possible scenarios... And the most likely one was that I was going to be expelled... And I didn't have the balls to say that I did it and I was too afraid... Thanks to God nobody from my school mates didn't tell that it was me.

While she waited that somebody would come forward there was one moment when our looks met and at that moment both of us knew that I was the one that did it.

Next day the whole class wrote the apology letter and she accepted it. But for the rest of 4 years whenever was there a problem with the computer I had to fixed it and she didn't trust anybody not even our IT guy at school. It was our unwritten contract that I would repair her computer to pay off my sin that I did. And she once even trusted me with her personal laptop.

So to end this story I have really high respect for her because she is a great teacher and great persons that guide me through my teen years. And we stayed in contact.

I’m kind of pissy, so let’s get into this.
My apologies though: it’s kind of scattered.

Family support?
For @Root? Fucking never.

Maybe if I wanted to be a business major my mother might have cared. Maybe the other one (whom I call Dick because fuck him, and because it’s accurate) would have cared if I suddenly wanted to become a mechanic. But in both cases, I really doubt it. I’d probably just have been berated for not being perfect, or better at their respective fields than they were at 3x my age.

Anyway.
Support being a dev?
Not even a little.

I had hand-me-down computers that were outmoded when they originally bought them: cutting-edge discount resale tech like Win95, 33/66mhz, 404mb hd. It wouldn’t even play an MP3 without stuttering.

(The only time I had a decent one is when I built one for myself while in high school. They couldn’t believe I spent so much money on what they saw as a silly toy.)

Using a computer for anything other than email or “real world” work was bad in their eyes. Whenever I was on the computer, they accused me of playing games, and constantly yelled at me for wasting my time, for rotting in my room, etc. We moved so often I never had any friends, and they were simply awful to be around, so what was my alternative? I also got into trouble for reading too much (seriously), and with computers I could at least make things.

If they got mad at me for any (real or imagined) reason (which happened almost every other day) they would steal my things, throw them out, or get mad and destroy them. Desk, books, decorations, posters, jewelry, perfume, containers, my chair, etc. Sometimes they would just steal my power cables or network cables. If they left the house, they would sometimes unplug the internet altogether, and claim they didn’t know why it was down. (Stealing/unplugging cables continued until I was 16.) If they found my game CDs, those would disappear, too. They would go through my room, my backpack and its notes/binders/folders/assignments, my closet, my drawers, my journals (of course my journals), and my computer, too. And if they found anything at all they didn’t like, they would confront me about it, and often would bring it up for months telling me how wrong/bad I was. Related: I got all A’s and a B one year in high school, and didn’t hear the end of it for the entire summer vacation.

It got to the point that I invented my own language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet just so I could have just a little bit of privacy. (I’m still fluent in it.) I would only store everything important from my computer on my only Zip disk so that I could take it to school with me every day and keep it out of their hands. I was terrified of losing all of my work, and carrying a Zip disk around in my backpack (with no backups) was safer than leaving it at home.

I continued to experiment and learn whatever I could about computers and programming, and also started taking CS classes when I reached high school. Amusingly, I didn’t even like computers despite all of this — they were simply an escape.

Around the same time (freshman in high school) I was a decent enough dev to actually write useful software, and made a little bit of money doing that. I also made some for my parents, both for personal use and for their businesses. They never trusted it, and continually trashtalked it. They would only begrudgingly use the business software because the alternatives were many thousands of dollars. And, despite never ever having a problem with any of it, they insisted I accompany them every time, and these were often at 3am. Instead of being thankful, they would be sarcastically amazed when nothing went wrong for the nth time. Two of the larger projects I made for them were: an inventory management system that interfaced with hand scanners (VB), and another inventory management system for government facility audits (Access). Several websites, too. I actually got paid for the Access application thanks to a contract!

To put this into perspective, I was selected to work on a government software project about a year later, while still in high school. That didn’t impress them, either.

They continued to see computers as a useless waste of time, and kept telling me that I would be unemployable, and end up alone.

When they learned I was dating someone long-distance, and that it was a she, they simply took my computer and didn’t let me use it again for six months. Really freaking hard to do senior projects without a computer. They begrudgingly allowed me to use theirs for schoolwork, but it had a fraction of the specs — and some projects required Flash, which the computer could barely run.

Between the constant insults, yelling, abuse (not mentioned here), total lack of privacy, and the theft, destruction, etc. I still managed to teach myself about computers and programming.

In short, I am a dev despite my parents’ best efforts to the contrary.

So, I grew up on the US/Mexican border, in a city where saying there's no opportunity is like saying the Titanic suffered a small leak on its maiden voyage. There were two kinds of people in said town: Mexicans trying to find something less shit than juarez and white trash reveling in their own failure. I came from the latter, for whatever that's worth.

I graduated high school when I was almost 16 years old. Parents couldn't really afford to support three kids and pay the rent on the latest in a long line of shit holes we migrated in and out of. If being a serial eviction artist is a thing, my family were savants.

I applied to college and got accepted only to be told by my father that he didn't see the need. Turns out the only reason he'd helped me graduate early was so I could start working and help pay his bills. I said okay, turned around and tossed a bag and my shitty af spare parts computer into the back of the junkyard Vega I generously referred to as a car and moved cross country. Car died on arrival, so I was basically committed.

Pulled shifts at two part times and what kids today call a side hustle to pay for school, couch surfed most of the time. Sleep deprivation was the only constant.

Over the first 4 months I'd tried leveraging some certs and previous experience I'd obtained in high school to get employment, but wasn't having much luck in the bay area. And then I lost my job. The book store having burned down on the same weekend the owner was conveniently looking to buy property in Vegas.

Depression sets in, that wonderful soul crushing variety that comes with what little safety net you had evaporating.

At a certain point, I was basically living out of the campus computer lab, TA friend of mine nice enough to accidentally lock me in on the reg. Got really into online gaming as a means of dealing with my depression. One night, I dropped some code on a UO shard I'd been playing around on. Host was local, saw the code and offered me a job at his firm that paid chump change, but was three times what all my other work did combined and left time for school. Ground there for a few years until I got a position with work study at LBL that conflicted too much for it to remain mutually beneficial. Amicable parting of the ways.

Fucking poverty is what convinced me to code for a living. It's a solid guarantee of never going back to it. And to anyone who preaches the virtues of it and skipping opportunity on grounds of the moral high ground, well, you know.

I was an intern - as a high school student. They had no idea what to do with an intern, let alone a high school student that was only there around three hours a day.

They tried to saddle me with a massive "how to use Perforce" manual, but I flat refused and told them to give me some real work.

In the end I wound up writing a text parser in Python to get some specific info from some files. They decided it wasn't actually needed after I finished it (I don't think they expected me to), on my last week there. I just played solitaire the rest of the time. I learned a few things:

1. I never want to work at Adtran.
2. Perforce should die in a fire.
3. Experience != Expertise.
4. Don't be afraid to put yourself on the line if it means potentially accomplishing something.

I don't care if you're a friend, acquaintance, or we fucking knew each other in high school!

If I fucking agree to do some free work for you, feel fucking happy about it! Don't fucking ask for more work or demand work or give me fucking deadlines just because you know me!

I'm doing you a fucking favor! Do you want me to send you the fucking invoice? I don't care if you're on a budget, I agreed to help you out, but don't you dare fucking cross the line!

Ya know I'm getting really fucking tired of this female only shit in the tech field. Like yes, there's a representation gap in the field. But you ever think it's because lots of females just don't want to fucking do it?

Most of the females I graduated high school with are going for something medical, teaching, and other fields that allow lots of human interaction and helping people. (You sure as fuck don't see people breaking their neck over the misrepresentation of males in the nursing or education field, do ya?)

You know who needs fucking attention in the tech world? Small towns. There's no fucking actual computer classes in any of the fucking high schools near me. Not a fucking thing. I had one class but it taught me how to use office software (word, excel, access, the whole shitfest).

But noooo let's just fucking focus on one specific group and everyone else gets fucked over.

Not to mention, a lot of the females here (at least from the ones I've read) just want to be treated like normal people.

I'm tired of this bullshit. Fuck every bit of it. Don't even care if it makes me a fucking dick. It's unnecessary sjw bullshit.

It was fun to watch my entire high school (~1200 people) freak out when I ran "net send * Big brother is watching you..." on what I found to be an insecure computer in my high school's library. Every single computer in the building displayed the pop up message. The town's IT director even showed up to figure out what happened.

I was caught, but they were more happy it wasn't a hacker, and that I discovered that the IT firm the town hired totally botched properly implementing network security, so I was let off the hook.

When I was in high school, the IT had the bright idea to use the same username/password for each machine in our site, and there was this jerk who knowing this, would occasionally SSH into the computers of the other classmates and wget porn mp4s to their home directory to embarrass them, as some sort of weird-ass prank.

So, in order to give him a lesson, I one day had logged in and set a rule on the class' router to forward all port 22 traffic back to his own IP address, and had SSHed into his machine, aliasing wget with a full-screen kiosk mode chrome, followed by a force disable of the USB HID devices.

It might have been less awkward and he might have seen less scared, if it wasn't for the fact that I had also remotely set his machine to maximum volume, and the teacher wasn't in the middle of a lecture. 😏

To this date, his expression is the most precious reaction I have ever seen.

Just met my two friend dev and jay after a long time. After some initial random conversation.

Dev: What is your job profile?

Jay (excitedly): I design electronic circuits and write some low-level programs for them.

D: So you are a low-level programmer?

J: Yeah.

D: My cousin is also a programmer. But, I think he is smarter than you.

J (confused and thinking that he must be a good programmer): Oh great! It would be nice to meet him. But, why do you think he is smarter?

D: Although still in school, he is a high-level programmer.

J: -_-"

So I got a call from a school friend today.

I'm currently doing majors in Computer science and I hadn't talked to her since high school.

She: "Hi! How are you?"
Me: "Hey, I'm great! How are you?"

It's really difficult to talk to someone after 2-3 years, considering you didn't talk much in school also.

She: "I'm great too!"
Me: "So what's up?"

She: "Listen, my friend lost her iPhone today. Cab you help us in retrieving it?"

Me: *hangs up*

Recruiter: I see you got a good degree, however, what were your high school results (A-levels)?

Me: why would you need them?
(they were average, but I tell the recruiter)

Recruiter: Oh, so you were pretty lucky to get a good degree.

Me: No... I worked really hard for it.

Recruiter: Anyway, my client only deals with people who got high grades in high school.

What the fuckkkkkkk?

#stopthismadness

My friend at school (IT High School in Poland if you're interested) just asked me what version of Windows does Elliot in Mr. Robot use. After I said that it's not Windows, he didn't let me finish my sentence and said that you can't push macOS theming this far.

Medium Article Title: How to Optimize Your Use of the Terminal

Dev: Oh goody.

Article Content: The terminal is a cli that devs use in order to work at their jobs. It is a very important tool in which… (continued)

Dev: …

WHO IS THIS ARTICLE FOR?? PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GET BETTER AT THE TERMINAL BUT HAVE NO IDEA WTF A TERMINAL IS?

This isn’t high school english class, you can skip the circle jerk introduction.

Coding won over my first girlfriend!

My senior year of high school I taught myself C++ and thought it was the coolest thing (lol). So I wrote a stupidly simple program that would ask your name and output a random riddle. But if the name was hers it was a riddle in which case the answer was "a date". Looking back, even if she was on my robotics team it was the nerdiest thing.

We dated for 8 months and broke up as friends. But to this day it provides a great story as I pursue software development.

Me reviewing some high school level exams after an Excel course.

"hmmm the next question is 'what does the symbol $ mean when found inside a FORMULA in Excel' ... Let's see what they answered..."

* "it's the symbol for DOLLARS" <-- well, he tried
* "I don't know" <-- mmh ok, he doesn't know
* "it can be either a plus or a minus" <-- mmmh maybe the interpreter will just figure out the correct one
* "it's used to keep an index fixed when you copy/drag the formula" <-- nice, someone who actually followed the lesson or at least knows how to google things when the teacher doesn't see
* "it's the symbol for POUNDS" <-- WTF!! Wait a moment: POUNDS???? Have you ever lived a single moment in this world?

For years I've had this friend, since high school, and now we are 21. Our paths had always been different, i decided to go to a technical high school that provides more specialized education (around IT in this case) and he went to a normal high school that provides a more wide range of knowledge and barely anything related to what we both wanted to study. Different tastes for different people huh? Well sure but during that time he was being snobbish towards me because normal high schools are considered more prestigious, or rather, technical high schools are infamous for attracting lazy students or students that don't wanna move up to a university.

We fought a few times over this, sometimes even stopped talking for long periods of time but we always got back together. A few years later, after our university entry exams I joined what roughly translates to technical university, its just more focused on practical IT stuff with a lot of lab courses every semester. He joined a more academically inclined one that is half economics and half IT (applied informatics). And now he has another thing to be snobbish about since the relation between the 2 unis is similar to that between the high schools but I don't care anymore, I don't feel like im missing out on anything with my choices.

3 days ago he called me on discord to check his python script and why it wasn't working. Good Odin that piece of code was worse that anything I've seen. Littered with global variables, inconsistent function and variable names, duplicate code, unused variables. I was honestly shocked and disappointed cos he always mentions different projects he is working on, an aspiring web developer.

I took those 300 hundred lines of atrocity and turned them into 80. But more importantly it was something that worked and did the damn job well. A thing of beauty.

I don't know if he was more surprised that i got it working or that it was so different from his initial "solution".

All of a sudden he is not so dismissive of me...

Fuck you for underestimating me and every choice I made to get here.

P.S. I kept his original code, always gives me a shit eating grin.

Wanted to make a website with some of my friends about whatever kid thing we were into at the time. None of our parents cared, it was the 90s and nobody took the internet seriously.

Copied and pasted bits of html into notepad and FTPed them to some free webhost over dialup. The website lasted three weeks -- my friends got bored, I got hooked.

A few years later I found myself wondering why some websites used ".php" instead of ".html". I discovered this shiny new thing called PHP 4. Built a website for some video game I was into using it. Spent the next two years teaching myself everything there was to know.

Took programming in high school. Chose CS over mechanical engineering because I liked the university better. Got an internship which turned into a job which turned into a career.

As a high-school student who has learned to program, i can't understand why programming isn't standard curriculim. It makes it so much more fun to learn math and physics. I also think even basic understanding of it improves how we use technology

Remember to teach your youth to program!

I have been in this field almost 13 years and experienced multiple burnouts. But now feels different.

I miss those days when i spent all nights doing programming on junior high school.

Once you turn your hobby into a profession, it may ceases to be your hobby anymore.

import LongRantKit
import NonRantKit
import TldrKit

I don't like stickers on my laptop because it clutters it up. But today I realized the importance of them.

A few months ago I was sitting at a coffee shop working on a paper and I noticed a guy with this cool sticker on a MacBook Pro: it had the integral symbol to the left of the Apple logo, and to the right of it a lowercase d and another Apple logo. It took me a few hours to realize what it meant, but I finally did and at that point I also guessed that not many people know what it is.

So I, as antisocial as I am, I finish up my work and before I leave I walk up to him and say hi. At this point I'm a senior in high school and I learn he's a junior in the same college I plan to attend. We talked a little before I had to leave and got to know each other somewhat.

After I leave I find him on Instagram and Facebook and friend him and such.

Recently I posted a picture saying I had recently joined the Apple Developer Team, and also recently reposted a memory on Facebook from 5 years ago that was a screen capture of an iPhone 4 simulator running iOS 5 showing off one of my first apps.

Then yesterday I get a message from the guy I met at the coffee shop asking for some help with an iOS project he's working on. We decide to meet today and I spend the entire morning showing him the basics of Swift, Xcode, Interface Builder, etc. I feel like I really helped him jumpstart his app and helped him understand the basics of different concepts.

If he didn't have that integral sticker on his laptop I would have never had this opportunity to finally share some iOS development experience.

For this I would like to thank my high school calculus teacher, with whom I spent many classes at Starbucks because I was an only student. I'd like to thank laptop stickers, and finally I would like to thank the coffee shop.

TL;DR: Said hi to a guy with an integral sticker on his laptop, a few months later he approaches me for help understanding iOS development.

So I created this really cool messaging program for my CS class in high school. Though when I say for - I mean for the students which were bored when the teacher told us how to "resize images in Word".
I used python and tkinter to create it all, and didn't even need to touch sockets. (Mostly because I didn't know how to use them back then, but also because I kept the messages in a file on the school nas.)
Anyway, the program worked and we used it every week, with me listening to suggestions and improving it each week. I even managed to create a sort of notification system.
But sadly, my teacher found out about it and shut it down.

Have you ever had a similar experience?

seriously, I know git is not the most user friendly, but really....

I attend to a course in my high school, like, it offers you a technical and a high school diploma in the end of tree years of course, anyway

last year I had this project. I had 4 other people working with me. I suggested we use git as there would be many people working in the project and git would help us manage all the files and get everything together in the end.

they didn't even bother to try learning it, I was like "fuck it, let's go without it", no one did anything till the last 2 weeks. then I was all stressed out getting the code together, manually, and the deadline was close.

In the end I wasn't able to put the chat this guy have made, he got mad and I was like "motherfucker, it would be one damn command `git merge` and your fucking chat would be in the final project"

oh it was great to get this out 😎😀
don't even know if I'm making sense xD

We have a group slack chat for my class which was intended to be a space for asking questions about assignments and getting help from your peers. Instead it has become a dick measuring contest in there where guys who know very little can act all high and mighty about their (plain wrong, in some instances) facts they're distributing without care. It pisses me off so much seeing how toxic it has become in there. It's the same 5 guys using it to bully each other and God forbid anyone else asks a question, they'll be mocked for not being confident handing in a solution they aren't sure is right. Why can't people treat each other with respect? We're in school to LEARN. Not impress other students with how much (read: little) we know. GJ, guys. You created a smaller version of stack overflow.

Right after high school, I was looking for an internship. I mailed my cv to a bunch of local companies and got quite a few responses. Two of the companies invited me for an interview.

The first one was a somewhat big company and they would have had me working on some angular web app. The other one on the other hand was a small team of 6 people, 2 of which were the bosses.

It was one of the nicest interviews I could have ever imagined. We just sat down and talked about what kind of programming experience I already had and what I wanted to learn.

They hired me right away. The internship was just 6 weeks and after that my studies in computer science were gonna start. They offered me a part time position with flexible hours and I gladly agreed.

I've been working at that company for over a year now and it couldn't be going better.

My dad was a computer engineer, taught me a bit, my high-school boyfriend (now husband) studied computer science, and I studied liberal arts. I couldn't get a job but got at job at my husband's startup. I learned a lot on the job and started doing tutorials online and I am the only person in my MA cohort with a job. Always been comfortable in the tech/dev world but didn't get into it myself until last year.

It all started in the year 2013.
I was 13 years old back then. I was a fan of Minecraft and so I learned how to setup a bukkit server and ran it. Installing plugins was fun, because I could be a "hacker" and change the configs.
After a while, (~2014), when I was in the 9th grade of elementary school, I saw Unity. A free game engine. Of course, me being a 14 year old I was intrigued and so I downloaded it, made an account and a new project. I had absolutely ZERO knowledge of programming. Didn't even know what languages existed, so i resorted to presets and poorly put together characters + weapons.
After some time fiddling around with Unity, I've gotten a hang of the basics (not programming related).
My actual programming started when I started High School (year 2016). It's a computer engineering school and for the first part of the year, I've learned from my teacher in C# (Console.WriteLine/ReadLine/Loops/Variables). At the second semester I started to gain interest and motivation to program at home. I did the programs we made in school (random number guessing game) but better. Improved it, added colors.
After that, I started developing in Unity - Actually learning something and having the ability to develop something all by myself. It keeps driving me on. In the second year (the year I'm visiting right now) I tought myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP. I'm very happy and also can't wait to discover and learn new things in these languages!
My latest project was an Android application for my father that he asked for (it calculated the price of the 3D print he would make).

// Sorry for the long post!

EDIT: Forgot to add a fun little detail. All my classmates make fun of me because I program so much !
Also: Tabs > Spaces

Somewhat unpopular opinion time. I don’t 100% hate Facebook.

I do not support their data collection, but my biggest problem with FB is the users. My connections are inherently idiots because I’m in high school with people who are way too narcissistic and full of drama. I left FB because of the toxicity, and the data protection as a result was a bonus.

I support the original mission of Facebook, to connect people. I just wish it was still about that.

I work for healthcare client project in a start up, worked two years straight without a break.

Client is very inconsiderate about developers work-life balance, he always wants to release every features yesterday.

Never had a reasonable deadline, worked late nights most of the time. No one had backbone to control this client from our side.

Its only developers team, no project management, scrum masters or anything, everything has to be taken care by Dev's.

I decided to take a week break from work.

The first day of my leave he pinged me 3 times to change an "from email" address for notification email which no one give a damn about.

I never replied or did anything. But the part of myself is dying of guilt.

Now I can't relax myself completely.

Re-thinking of my life choices atm.

I loved programming since high school, I can work on computers 24/7 without tired. That's how much I love it. Now I'm just tired of it.

If anyone who read this till here. Thank you.

Resumes don't mean jack shit!!

I just got off an interview call with a candidate for a hardware role. On paper this guy is absolute gold, having worked for some of the best robotics companies and research groups(in India at least) It took me an hour to realize that the was just spitting out buzz words. So I started asking him some very fundamental questions, like ohms law and such.. high school stuff. But, phrased in real world terms. And it took me another half an hour to realize that the guy is dumber than a sack of peanuts!

I can't believe how easy it is for people to coast by on paths paved by seniors and teammates. By any objective assessment this guy would be lucky to get a job as an electrician and instead I'm wasting my time interviewing him for a six figure salary (well, the Indian equivalent). Gaaah!!

Made a bunch of bad decisions.
This one is the absolute worst.
Studying biology as a main subject intstead of computer science in high school.
Indian people in here would know, studying PCMB is no less than being a dare devil. 🤣
Why did I do that ?
I didn't want to get into medicine.
I just wanted to study it for fun.

And thought, I'll be able to study all of computer science in college 😶.
Its totally useless now.
How much of biology do I remember now ?
Not much.
Studying CS would have been much more beneficial for me.

I pretty much just copied code from Google for a good 2 years, following tutorials on Java, until I actually got a basic understanding of wtf I was doing. I could understand the syntax, loops, and conditional statements well, but for some reason I didn't quite understand the concept of an object until I took a class on Java development during my high school career, where it finally 'clicked'.

(possibly political, but not really)

I think there's an under-reaction culture around covid19. People are mitigating it to be "just a bad flu" and keep bringing up the 2-3% death rate.

I see that people may have good intentions but spreading lies just to make it seem like the virus isn't bad is worse than the media overreacting.

I'm tired of people just repeating the same "ugh, calm down, it's just the flu!" Just because they don't want people to worry. While panic isn't good, disregard is worse.

The "bad flu" stage is only the second of three stages. Stage one is minor symptoms (so nobody cares if they are sick at this stage) coupled with patients being highly infectious (you can imagine, this is a bad combo)

Stage two is of course the famous "bad flu".

Stage three is fucking respiratory issues including pneumonia, AFTER you have already gone through stage two, which can be rough on its own.

The CDC (not any media) has issued warnings to those at high risk to stock up on supplies and medication they may need. As usual for this sort of stuff, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions are in the high risk groups.

2% death rate (low end) is one in 50 people. That could be someone you know. 4% (high end) is one in just 25 people. That's the average high school class size where I live. That's a lot, that's pretty deadly.

Stop calling it a bad flu. Stop listening to people on Facebook, CNN, and devRant. Please visit the CDC, they are constantly giving updates.

Stay smart

Sometimes, I find myself around a bunch of annoying newbs who ask dumb questions...

because I'm a part time CS instructor at a high school...

but when I see light bulbs switch on and the smell of enthusiasm in the air, makes teaching so worth it.

I was fresh out of college, love Java and looking for a job.

Well, after exact 1 month I sucked the reality. I found an Ad for a designer and got selected. Point is I mention my qualification in high school because I was feeling bad to disclose my higher degree for such a job.

I worked for 6 months there and every day was like working as the covert operative. I always knew I can write an automated script for all that daily shit. But for the sake of the landlord rent, I kept quiet. (I literally care for his children, I was the only source of income)

Then, my friend that day 16-Sep-2012 I wrote a program to do all the repetitive thing I used to do.
My boss found out and I expose my self as Spiderman do to Jen, Sir! I am a Programmer.

Sadly it was, no surprise to him. He said, on your first day I found out that you are not high school. Because with such accuracy only a graduate can do such level of the job.

He praised me and motivated me, my first non-technical master.

> starts coding at a young age
> makes it my whole personality
> goes through a rough year of quarantine, graduates high school, changes changes changes

* no. coding for a super extended period of time*

now I'm slowly trying to get back into it consistently. miss you besties lol hope yall are doing ok I'm back and I'm better and also older. I think the last time I was consistently on here I was 17 lmao

I work at another bank now. I finished my first year of engineering at my uni. Ontario is slowly opening up. I'm doing better :)

High school. The teacher in IT made some learning platform for the school in PHP. There was a module where you could upload files.

You could just upload a PHP file, and get it to run by accessing it through a direct link.

"A world where skill, not birth, would be valued.. isn't that the world you wish to make?"
- High School DxD Hero
(yes I'm a fucking weeb, get over it)

Post-meritocracy and all its assocated bullshit, it's played a major role in 2018. Because clearly merit is a bad thing. Let's make success dependent on how you're born, and what features you have upon birth. Let's have it be decided by what you are, rather than my what you aspire to be.

You know what's an already existing system like that and I despise? The caste system. A system in which not your merit but your family, your heritage, decides your success. Not merit, not what you, yes you, want to be. Fuck family, and fuck family-related hierarchies. Yet that's what the post-meritocracy society would be. One that's decided - just as much as the family factor is - on what you are, not what you want to be.

Fuck post-meritocracy, and fuck the caste system. Let's make 2019 a year of change, one where merit becomes important again.

On my first year of high school made a flash webpage for my class. It is still online.
...
Too embarrassed to share link.

I failed in my high school exams because I had Business as my main course. So basically, I wasn't going to get to go to college because of this result.
My father told me, to my face that I am a failure and I will do nothing with my life. And he wanted me to join family business, which I didn't want to do.
So I begged him to give me a chance at computers, and this would be the last one. If I failed in the entrance exam for computers, I was done for life. But I loved computers, and I got selected in the best college possible. Since then, I've never stopped coding. I owe it my life in a way.

A good friend of mine turned 38 yesterday. It will be his last birthday. Last month was his last Christmas and New Years. He entered hospice care this month. His doctors have said he's only got a few weeks left, so he's come off the treatment for his brain tumour. His kids are old enough to understand he won't be here much longer. A bunch of us, friends from high school, flew up to see him in the fall. It's hard to believe someone our age won't be with us to see another year. It puts things in perspective.

I developed and have been maintaining an organization website for the past 6 years for free. The organization gave me a full scholarship 15 years ago which opened up so many doors and allows me to finish high school and college without a single cent, and now I’m living comfortably with good job.
My parents wouldn’t be able to afford me the higher education. So I’m very grateful and paying it forward for the future students.

!dev rant about social media 🤡 s like this one.

I hate when people seek for a reason to bitch on social media. This tweet for example.

1) I went to a small high school (small compared to a lot) and we still had a personal management class and this was covered.
2) Who the fuck uses checks still.
3) It's addition and subtraction, not brain surgery.
4) if you actually cared, Google it. There's a shit ton of information on balancing a check book out there.
5) You're probably in debt due to a shitty lifestyle combined with terrible money management, but keep playing victim. It's never your fault.

But of course she doesn't care. It's another case of someone wanting a reason to bitch and moan on social media. Get a hobby you clown.

I hate SQL Server so much, don't matter how Microsoft say they improve themselves at SQL Server.

There's a lot of fucking bloat, messes your system and your services, adds tons of crap in your system registry, while more advanced SQL engines such MariaDB/PostgreSQL are more contained, and its very small.

Why SQL Server has to mess with Windows' ACL and his own privilege systems?.

Uninstall it and a lot of components remain hidden and tons of registry entries, not even TotalUninstaller or CCleaner can help.

I hate it since my technical high school and my goddamn college is forcing us to use SQL Sever for EVERYTHING, instead of good alternatives, messed my computer entirely requiring to format.

I try always to convince my freelance clients to use open-source alternatives, and say how SQL Server is so crap, (i had variant degrees of success).

!rant

Wanted to share a project with you, which I heard about at a Python Conference I attended.

It's a Raspberry based Hacking Station to educate and sensitize students about data privacy. The amazing thing about the project is, that it is a graduation project from a high school student.

If you're interested, check out spypi.ch

This is not an ad or something, I was just amazed by the talk and the idea of the project and wanted to share it with you.

Well, I just learned how much of a pain it is to learn the math for learning neural networks. I really should have paid more attention in high school.

I will learn, the hard way I guess...

Why am I such an average ?

It's just a sad realisation. Nobody cares but I wanna send this out there, just to write thoughts.. I am 18 in 3rd year of high school (grammar school so nothing IT related, basically waste of time) and in IT I'm all self taught but I feel like I could be better if I just didn't [something]..

I feel like I wanna learn so many things but when I look at you, it seems like a common problem in the IT sphere so hey, average guy joining the club.

I also feel dumb when programming. I didn't manage to learn C++ in it's entirety because to really accomplish something, you've got so many ways to do it and finding the best one requires deep understanding of the tools you've got at your disposal with the language and I feel like I'm not capable of this(self learn, in school/Uni that's different story).. But many (most) of you are. I've tried many coding challenges and when I got it working, I just saw how someone did it in one line just by layering functions that I've never heard of..

Also, we've got kinda specific national competition here in many fields including IT for high schools.. And the winners always do sometimes like "AI driven Life simulation" or "Self flying drone made from ATMega from scratch with 3D simulation in C# to it" or "Game engine" or whatever shit and it's always from grammar schools and never IT related schools.. They are like me. Maybe someone helped them, I don't know, but they are just so far away from me while I'm here struggling to get the basic level of math for any kind of machine learning..

Yeah I've written Neural Network from scratch in C but meh, honestly it's pretty basic stuff .. I'd rather understand derivatives which we're going to learn next year and I'm too lazy to learn it from khan academy because I always learn something else.. Like processing (actually codetrain started teaching tensorflow so that might be the light for me...) Or VHDL (guys you can create your own chip / CPU from scratch and it's not even hard and OMFG it's so fucking cool , full adder done yay) or RPi or commodore 64 assembly or game development with Godot and just meh..

I mean, this sounds exactly like not knowing what to do and doing nothing in the end. That was me like 6-12 months ago. Now I'm managing to pick 2-3 things and focus them and actually feel the progress.

But I lost track of the original point.. I didn't do anything special, every time I'm programming something, everyone does it better and I feel dumb. I will probably never do anything special, everyone around says "He's still learning he's genius" but they have no idea.

I mean, have you seen one of the newest videos on Google's YouTube channel (I openly hate them, but I will keep that away for now), something like "Sarah story" ? It's about girl that apparently didn't care about IT but self learned tensorflow on high school. I think it may be bullshit (like ALL of their videos ) but it's probably just fancied, not complete lie.

And again, here I am. I now C but I'm incapable of learning to program good which most of you did and are now doing for living. I'm incapable to do anything cool, just understanding what everybody else did and replicating it. I'm incapable of being clever.

Sorry, just misusing devrant to vent a bit

So I read this morning about some web teacher. Here is my story:
In high school I had a teacher who was "THE GOTO WEB GUY", at least that was what other theachers thought. Here is what reallity looked liked in a lesson of his:
He comes up with some ancient example he just found on some tutorials page and he just remembered bits of how to do it. So when he got stuck he fired up a google search. When a student had a question he fired up a google search. Because he didn't know shit. Of course you cannot know everything but he was so cocky about his skills that it really annoyed me. Best part? He sold web sites (joomla) where his greates achievment was to change the color of the template. Everything he teached in that semester had I already learned through selfteaching and tutorials in an evening.

Hey there! -first rant-

I need your advice mighty ranters.. I'm an introverted gal studying Computer Science at uni, and i love this field. Wanna be a web or app developer..

I need your help about 2 things:

1. Literally ANY advice, or things you wish you knew, when you were a rookie

2. I'm currently living in solitude, because of hard times in the past and i find making friends much more difficult at uni than in high school. It even starts to affect my productivity in a bad way. I have a hard time trusting people.
So any advice about this? How do you cope with too much solitude? Is there maybe a group for girl programmers? I don't know..

All advice are welcomed! (and IT jokes too, to make my day :D )
Thanks a lot !

Ps.: You are great! Awesome community.

I just remembered something I did like freshman year of high school lol

So our school system had just adopted a new site blocking program. It did even better than the one we had used before it.

Literally every good site to play games was blocked, and it really pissed me the fuck off. I had an easy class that was in a lab, and I finished my work early literally everyday, so I played the games to kill time.

Finally I got fucking fed up, and I made a site using weebly where I put the games I wanted to play on it. This way I was in control of it, and I had all the game files on a flash drive, so if it got blocked, I could just keep making new ones.

It actually got to the point that after a week, a few of my friends were using the site daily as well, and they kept asking for games to be put on it.

Simpler times man, simpler times.

Never worked before so I'll talk about one of the former staff at my school.

This guy worked as IT and did some teaching in the high school. Early last year, he suddenly disappears for no reason.

Now, I'm going to go in order of what we (the students) found out, not, chronological order.

Firstly, turns out that in class he would make comments about female students. Nothing explicit, just kinda strange. I forget the examples I heard but think like the overly friendly old guy. Those types of comments from a 40-something IT guy. (Some female students knew about this for a long while but I only heard about it after the investigation)

Next, rumor got out that they found some stuff on his computer. I don't know how, but it turned out to be accurate, and we were accurate at the follow-up assumption that it was porn.

After that, the school made an announcement that we had been arrested. Up until then, we just assumed he had been sacked. He was weird sure, but we didn't think criminal.

Some other students looked into the police records, and it turns out this guy had been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography.

Pretty sick right? Its worth pointing out now that our school has Pre-K through 12th grade students.

I gained a new level of respect for my female classmates after that. I didn't even know that was going on, really wish I could have helped out.

Not a hack but more of an orchestrated attack. It was high school and our computer labs ran windows and all of them were connected to a central server. Now i had just learnt about windows api and how it can be used to check the space available on a disk. So i wrote a small script to to write chunks of 5mb files in the directory where TURBO C++ was installed and let it run till the system ran out of space.
Then in the spirit of conspiracy i added the said script to the central node and asked everyone in the lab to copy it locally and execute.
Then a few days later, the poor lab incharge corners me and say who added the ms91.dll file(do not remember the exact name😐). I said that it is a standard Microsoft dll and also how would I know. Then he goes on saying how he had to reinstall windows on all computers. At first I felt sorry but then the spirit of satan rose in me and I denied any responsibility about it and returned back to class where each of my classmates had a good laugh about it. 😂😂

Me in school: Math? When do I need know those details? I can look them up and just code it.

Me in high school: Computer science is way too math-y. I want to code!

Me coding php: Just make it work.

Me coding typescript: Just make it work.

Me coding scala: Just make it ... what ... how do I make it work!?!

Me asking stackoverflow: How do I do X in scala some functional programming stuff in mind in order to keep immutability.

Somebody way smarter than I: "In scalaz, a function A => A is called an endomorphism and is a Monoid whose associative binary operation is function composition and whose identity is the identity function"

Me now: Fuck my old arrogant self.

A few years ago I was in high school and used to have a small reputation of hacking things. I could hack, just would never hack any school networks or systems (reputation + notice that there was a breach is a bad combo since everyone would immediately suspect you).

Anyways one day the networks internet connection went down in the school district and I was the only one who used a laptop to take notes. So I quickly opened the terminal and ran Wireshark and said to the person to my right "see that button there? yeah I programmed this last night. anytime I press it I can shut down the network so the teacher can't reach her files (she famously only saved them online). *Long dramatic press* Wireshark started scanning the network so all the numbers and lines were going crazy as it viewed the packet info "Now just wait", soon the whole class knew what I had done through whispers and lo and behold a few minutes later and the teacher couldn't reach her files.

Everyone loved me for the rest of the year for saving them from the homework for the week the wifi network was out since it also ended up having to cancel two tests in the class, and a lot more homework and tests in all their other classes. Solidified my reputation and no one fucked with me from that day on.

At a previous company we hired an 18 year old guy and father from a minority and without a high school degree. He could write enough code to get the job. However, he took 3h long lunches, came in late to work and apparently had a problem taking orders from women. At one point all the juniors got an earful because of his attitude and he got let go, not long after. It still saddens me because he could have made a really good career if wasn't for his attitude.

I started programming 2 years ago. I didn't know what to do with my life after high school, so I went to an event where you can meet students. I ran across the IT schools section, wearing a GEEK sweater, and almost immediatly, 5 students were right in front of me to talk about their school.
One hour later, I said "yeah why not", even if I didn't know ANYTHING about programming.
One or two weeks later, I took the entrance exam, and one month later I knew that I passed.
I learnt the bases when I entered in Sept. 2014

I wrote some code using microcontrollers to control peripherals and robotic extremities using an armband called the MYO. It was a fun project I did 2 years ago in high school, I even won a couple of international awards for it!

This is going to take a second to get dev related, please bear with me.

So, I'm from a pretty small (and poor) town. Like most small towns, not many give a damn about computer science/IT (that shows by the fact I'm the only CS major. And there's one IT major).

Now, my high school offers a few "career prep" classes. There's (no exaggeration) almost 5 or 6 classes for medical majors to prepare themselves; like 4 different agriculture based classes; 2 business major classes; and surprise surprise...not a damn Computer Science or IT class.

Yes, we have a computer class. But can you even call a "How to Use Microscoft Products" class an computer class? Finally by my senior year, I got pissed off by this.

I had/have relatives that have worked/are working in the school system, so it wasn't hard to get a meeting with the superintendent and the assistant superintendent to discuss my thoughts. They were both open to and even supported my ideas. But due to funding, it wasn't a feasible idea at the time. (Especially since not many care about CS or IT.)

This is where I get really really pissed off. Being that the town is small, the people with money/a name tend to control things. So, a former principal retired with the expectations to work in another county. However, this job fail through. But there was a "magical" opening for a job that didn't exist before this job fail through.

This pisses me off. We can create a job for someone and afford a full time salary for them, but we cant get an actual CS class. (And this isn't the first time a job was created for someone.)

So I finally got my senior project approved by my school's assistant principal (the one who deals with every student's project) and he said that the three forms of evidence I suggested were not enough. A quick summary of my project: I'm supposed to make a game engine in Java before April of 2017. Every student needs 3 forms of evidence that they did the project so I suggested screenshots of my work, the finished source code, and pictures of me actually working on it. In addition to all of that I would have a ton of documentation and sample projects to test different features of the engine. Well, he doesn't really understand that for a high school student, that's already enough work for a couple of years and thinks I need more evidence. So what does he do?

He requires me to find at least 5 people to test the engine and complete a survey about it. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except I'm a high school student and don't know more than 2 people who are fluent enough in Java to work on a game. And, I have to finish the project before January now to give the people enough time to work with it.

Long story short, I'm not even out of high school and I'm already experiencing the struggles of dealing with non-technical people.

I started a project at high school 7 years ago, I had no idea what's clean code or design pattern, just learn while keep coding. I eventually stopped because my code is so terrible I cannot understand it anymore.

Now, after 1 year of working, I look back those dirty codes and think it is actually not that bad. Within hours I even fixed a bug with concurrency.

I start to think, instead of learning to how to write good code, maybe I should learn how to read bad code. That's just much more practical.

Back when I was in high school I created something like a simple version of MS Paint using Turbo C where the only graphics library function I used was putPixel().

I was so excited and showed it to my mom and what she said was : "Don't you have MS Paint for this, why do you bother creating a new one? Do something productive with your life."

Boss: ABC
Me: as an intern at XYZ firm.

ABC: this is internet is very slow today, AmanDeep what happen check it.

me: Sir,there are too much user on the wifi.

ABC:So how we can disconnect them without their knowing.

me: We have to deauth all of their connection using fluxion.

ABC: Do it fast...
me: its take time to be done, you have to do by linux.

ABC: I had done it before in my high school on cmd you and your excuses for the work.You are lame at work...
...\../..
\......../
Me: Now i am searching a new internship...

My IT teacher in high school. Got me into programming, helped me take programming from a hobby to a career and is still helping me today. Honestly one of the coolest people I know.

Just got accepted as a volunteer (teacher assistant) in a non-profit organization, funded by Microsoft.
They teach high school students CS twice a week.
I know it might not be much, because I will not be payed, but I will be trained and teach alongside Google and Microsoft engineers.
The organization is called TEALS.

I hope it is a good experience and build a good network.
I do not have any friends, nor any engineer friend since I moved in USA, so I think this is a good opportunity.

P.S. Please for the love of god do not bash here Microsoft. Everyone, even the people who rant about hating Microsoft, will accept a job there if they got the chance. So please stop the hypocrisy if you intend to do some "sarcastic" comment about this organization funded by Microsoft.

A bit different than wk93, but still connected and a fun story.

Back in high school when it began to digitalize everything, so began our teachers journey with technology. We, as IT class were into these things, but as far as I can say, others in the school including both teachers and students were like cave mans when it came to IT.

Most of them kept the different wifi networks password on the windows desktop, in a file 'wifipassword.txt'. When we were on robotics seminar, we had to use a teacher's laptop. The wifi network was incredibly fast and powerful,, yet so poorly configured that even the configuration page user/pass was the default admin/admin, because the IT admin wasn't the most skilled one.

We got the idea to sell the password of the wifi network to other students. Not much, for about 1 dollar a week. The customer came to us, we took the phone, took note of the MAC address, entered the password, and if the guy were to stop paying every week, we just blacklisted that MAC on the next robotics course.

Went well for months, until a new sysadmin came and immediately found it out, we were almost fired from the school, but my principal realized how awesome this idea was. You may say that we were assholes, and partially that is true, I'd rather say we made use of our knowledge.

!rant

Sometimes when I have a 10s break, I think about what I did to get here, and what to do to get... somewhere alive (if possible)

6 years ago, I got my high school diploma in letters.

5 years ago, my depression started while I went to a development / management school. Dropped off one year before graduation, but I prefered to stay alive than having this diploma in my coffin.

1 year ago, I got this (kind of shitty but it pays well but it has drupal so fuck) job and my depression ended.

In two weeks, I'll get back to school for this last one year that I'm missing, so I'll finally get a better diploma.

Within 4 years maximum, I'll leave France to start a new / better / better paid life in Canada.

One hell of a ride, ain't it?

So someone decides that the employees need to do these stupid Web-based training's that not even high school kids should be looking into.
What is about ?
Security and Cryptography, and now event the real stuff.

What it covers?
Alice and Bob, Bob and Alice.
Alice wants Bob some pics/messages that she suspects someone else will see. DDDDDDAAAAAAAFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAKKKKKK

A total of 7 useless time wasting interactive and annoying training's, 20+ min each.

But someone forgot that please do not send this shit to engineers of your company, specially Software/Network engineers. Oh another subset, specially not to those who work deeper into the domain.

I'm getting paid to do this time wasting activity, and still.

I also may come back and remove this BUT FOR NOW I NEED TO RANT.

Visual Basic at high-school, pascal and C and Java at University. VBA for macros on a job. html+css+js learnt o er a weekend to pass the screening for a new job, then ruby and php on that job to build internal tools. Now I am into python for data science. It has been fun.

Today I got corrected in the difference between to and too. Another dev told me I made a typo in the documentation where I tripple checked. Then he told me that "too"means "also" and is also used in things like "too much". In high school I got told by my teacher it was "to much".

I've been using the word "to" wrong for fourteen years now...

OKAY BUT WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE HAVE TO ACT LIKE THEY'RE SOME KIND OF GOD WHEN THEY CAN'T EVEN PASS AN INTRO CLASS. Some background: I go to an early college in high school program which offers computer science where you take two college classes a semester starting you junior year in high school. AND THIS GIRL TALKS ABOUT THIS PROGRAM LIKE IT'S AWFUL AND SHE HATES IT AND HOW THE PROFESSORS DON'T TEACH AND SHE FAILED AN INTRO TO PROGRAMMING CLASS WHICH TEACHES JAVA BUT THEN SHE ACTS LIKE SHE'S WAY ABOVE THE OTHER KIDS IN MY CLASS BECAUSE SHE'S RETAKING IT. SHE'S ALSO A STUDENT ASSISTANT IN MY CYBER SECURITY CLASS BUT DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE localhost IP IS. I UNDERSTAND THAT I DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING BUT AT LEAST I DON'T ACT LIKE I DO. IT'S SO INFURIATING!!!!!!

I got VB script blocked from all the computes in high school

I had a laptop to do my work in class on (my handwriting is terrible, dyslexia and other things) and I was playing around with VB script making a little text adventure game with dialog boxes because I was bored, it got quite long and I was happy with it but then one day when I tried to open the file it said the network administrator had blocked this type of file from being opened... Spoilsports

Mom: Give me one single reason why won't you do MBA?
Me: People there won't get my jokes on computers, and it will be all like high school again 😭😭😭

my temper has improved a lot, but around high school i had a really short fuse. we were doing a programming homework and i really blew up with this guy.

the day before the deadline i couldn't finish the work (that i was doing solo), because i had a violin recital. i told the other 3 to finish it, it was very simple stuff. i got at school the next day, they hadn't done what i asked, and this asshat meddled with what i had done, so i had to fix his changes to my code and implement what was left an hour before class. i really gave him a piece of my mind, i was super pissed, and my friends were super awkward because I'm usually a quiet person, and it's scary when i get angry for real.

I started programing when I almost failed at some IT class 7 years ago when I was 16 in high school. So I started googling how to do basic stuff in java (if, for, while,... ) and I just fall in love with it 😊 I still remember how I wanted to make a button in Java so I googled: how to button in java 😂
Here I am still in love with it and I think I will always have this need to learn new programming languages, technologies, frameworks,... 😊🤓

Usually developers start in a team where there are senior and you are a junior who do things and ask things.
Then there's me that starts alone in a company to develop a software in a machine that you've never seen before (POS) with only 15 hours of preparation class, no documentation and with a apprenticeship contract.
I still didn't start but I brought the POS in my home to familiarize with it and in a week I still haven't be able to execute the sample application.
And you could ask, why did you accept if you aren't able? Well, I need money, he searched me through the high school (I had an high score so a lot of people search me) and he required only C, that I know. FML

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

A funny story I just remember while my code is compiling :

Back in high school, in Math, we were taught how algorithm works, and we made some exercises with practical examples.

I didn't know anything about it back then, so was curious. Was pretty fun, but one day, my teacher said that a IF is a loop. I said "no, this is a test" but she keeps saying that it was a loop, ignoring me (I dunno if she actually heard me) and no one actually noticed it as she repeated it several times (while I was saying that it's not). I just gave up trying to say it's wrong.

Best hack... Think it was in high school when I figured out the eurobate free sms api was exposed and with my own php script could send as many free sms as I wanted and sms nuke friends.
Sms cost quite a lot pr message back then.

Goes back to high school.....

Me: This laptop is having issues logging into the network. I have tried restarting as well as restarting the WiFi. You probally should submit a ticket so IT knows it is broken.
Teacher: They would not fix it anyway.
Me: *facepalm*

TL;DR: Teacher thinks that telling IT to fix a computer would result in nothing happening.

I love to program — I discovered that about myself a few years ago. Beforehand, I only KNEW how to program. But then I discovered the power programming gives you to create things, and even help your surroundings. So now, I can surely say, that I love programming. Heck, I am even dating a very talented programmer.

But despite all the pleasure I derive from it, I feel lonely sometimes. True, there are millions of programmers all over the world. I also know I am not the only one who prefers coding over going to the movies, taking a walk, eating or sleeping.

Why do I feel this way?

My loneliness is a gendered loneliness, as there are not many women in my field. For sure, there are women who study computer science in high school or at the university, and some even work as programmers. But they are very, very few!

I often underestimate my abilities and feel intimated for no apparent reason

#random thoughts

Everyone who self taught themselves code, how did you do so? Books, websites, any recommendations?

scar tissue riff by red hot chili peppers now helped me get laid twice. first was in high school, second was yesterday. it works like a fast track first class level skip access to that pussy
going without it takes days
with it takes minutes

I always wanted to be an airforce pilot since I was a kid. Then snes came, spent a great deal of hours playing so many games. I got curious on how they were created and although I did it, I always wondered why people blow on cartridges if the game won't start. Fast forward to CS, Diablo 3, Red alert. I was fascinated whenever I type something on the console and something happened, that got me excited. Add that I was using wordstar and programming HTML/CSS in school when I was just 10-11. When I turned 12, I was programming using Borland C++. It just snowballed from there, curiosity and a series of my programs working made me focus a lot of my time talking to computers (especially when I built robots using lego mindstorms). While my classmates were having a hard tim deciding what course to take in college, I was already certain since I was just a sophomore in high school. I will write and talk to computers until I wear thick glasses.

So there it is, my dev story. Apologies for a lengthy post. 😀

I placed a Virus Found pop-up message at all the schools computer and run the program at start when I was at High School. It was fun :)

My first experience with any kind of development was in a web mastering class in high school. I got super into it and started going really far ahead in the course materials.

During the second semester most students in the class were not interested at all so I decided to start a business of selling custom tailored assignments to about half the class. It didn't make me rich of course, but it felt good being the HTML / CSS god in the class.

The best part honestly was getting caught. The principal was so impressed at the amount of extra work I'd been doing that he just gave me a detention. Thanks Mr. Murray, for being so cool and not putting me down for doing what I love.

I'm back. I'm the old itsnameless. I left programming because high school stuff. It was just overwhelming. I, slowly, left programming until the point I forgot everything. A lot of evaluations, high school stuff just for remembering NOTHING. The only thing I did this year on high school was losing a really big part of my time remembering weird stuff.

After all this stuff, I would love to spend my 2 months vacations mostly in the place that I've met lovely, awesome people. That place is called devRant.

So, yeah, hello there.

P.S: Of course after the vacations I'll still be here. lol

Welp, here it goes:

High school is feeding me a huge amount of shit that I do not care about. This, causes me not to have enough time to carry on my own programming and infosec studies due to a lack of time, despite the fact that I'm pretty organized. Among all that, is the fact that I have 3 weekly martial arts training in the evening, which equals to even less time.
I am starting to feel quite shitty about this situation, and no, I'm not going to wait precious years of my life before continuing with my studies.
Let's hope I'll pull through. :(

!dev && !rant

So, all through high school I grew out my hair. The last time I cut it was actually my sophomore year, so 2017. I've been thinking about cutting it for a bit, maybe do a different hairstyle. Last night I was hanging out with a few coworkers, and I decided that I'm gonna shave my head, and let it all grow back. It'll probably take at least a couple years, but why the hell not?

Pic is me from like last January? I haven't even trimmed my hair since 2017 so I have bad ends now, and it's basically stopped growing. So the picture is kinda close to what it is now, just a bit longer (like a bit past my chest)

For robotics I decided to write a program that would automatically tune a PID loop (a loop with three magic constants that tells you how much power to give the motors).

Being a high school student who hasn't been taught anything about the theory of PID loops or the right way to tune them, I had no clue what I was doing. So instead of actually learning the calculus to do it, I just made an evolutionary tuner that keeps guessing slight variations of the last-best three constants.

Basically, you press start and the robot spins in circles until you come back in 15 minutes.

Finally I got a dream job! I'm so fucking happy 😁 That was my dream since I went to high school and finally I achieved it. I put a lot of work into it and I knew it will happen. So guys follow your dreams, it's an amazing feeling when they finally comes true 💪💪💪

Anyone else burned out? I'm fucking burned out. Definitely taking a week off soon. That sort of makes it harder to get motivated though. I was humming along nicely with my new project, but got sidetracked fixing stupid shit in the legacy code and dealing with a moron in customer service, and I guess that kicked me off into a small depression. I feel like I should have worked harder in school, so that I could have gone into sales or something high paying, instead of "software engineering". With all the ass I've been kicking over the last year, I sure hope I get a raise soon.

!dev

This has been an eventful week I guess. Not a happy week, however.

A friend of mine passed last Thursday. We weren't too close, but we were still friends, and he was very close to a couple other friends of mine. He'd always had health issues, but he was only 19. He hadn't been out of high school for a full year.

Then I just found out today that another friend of mine got arrested for shooting and killing someone this past weekend. I don't know many details about what happened, mutual friends are saying it was self-defense. He's never seemed like the kind of person that would just murder someone, but shit happens.

There are times where I would be debugging during one of my (high school) classes, and I would finally find that bug that I've been looking into for days, and I would then involuntarily yell out something like "Oh! That shouldn't be there!", and everybody would start staring at me. It really pissed off the teachers.

hsctf (high school capture the flag)

Sounds fun
Looks fun

first hurdle: you gotta have a mail server that accepts RFC uncompliant emails
second hurdle: even when you have it the acceptation link won't work
third hurdle: its FUCKING IN PYTHON
FUCKING HELL

If this how you wanna educate your youth, the for gods sake, die

Best boss I've had was when I was collecting recycling materials as a truck driver.
The company mostly employs unliterated people that can't get a job anywhere else, so It has lots of dumb, jealous people who made his life miserable.
Still, he's so good with people that he could filter it all out and we had a great relationship even in such a poisonous environment.
He was really sad when he told me I wouldn't have my contract renewed. He allowed me to work from 5 am to 2 pm so I could finish my 12grade class (high school) at night and I fell asleep one day. The company does not renew contracts if you miss even one day. When people talked bad about each other he would just nod and do nothing or descalate the situations.

Well, I'm off to help my dad again :( he's the one who gave me the taste for DIY, but fuck his projects take so much time. Were repainting a motorhome :D

Stop. Using. Fucking. ADA. To. Teach. Basic. Programming.

I wouldn't say you should use a dynamically typed language like Python, but having programed since high school, I hated each and every aspect of Ada. We were even taught OOP and generics with it! (And not, you do not want to know how it is, because it is dreadful)

As someone who uses UNIX and UNIX-like systems on a daily basis, and someone dealing with computer support in a school, I experience so, so many issues, many of which others have already ranted about.

For no reason at all, I find it incredibly frustrating how many high school students' understanding of sudo is limited to this:
Student: Hey, isn't sudo the minecraft command
Me: Erm
Student: You know, the one skeppy uses... to troll players? Anyway, you're doing it wrong. There should be a slash before you run the command
Me: aaargh.
and so on. Happens probably every 10th time I invoke sudo.

I mean, really? Surely these kids, with all their complaints and lines: hacking into the mainframe/whats the admin password/why did you block my VPN/ and so on, would know what sudo is. But NO, they just don't seem to get it. Sometimes I lose my hope in the futures of these kids.

Anyone else have a coworker that tries to act like you and manages to completely fuck up everything to the point where if you go to your boss about it you're the one in trouble and not them. -_-

High school tech team job sucks

Once mentored a high school student for a science fair relating to robotics. It was definetely interesting having to relearn many things so I could teach them well but it was definetely worthwhile! I couldn't be prouder of the work my student (mentee, pupil, ??? Idk how else to say it lmao) achieved. He won several awards for the project, even some scholarships!!

When you make the whole damn game using c++ but you copy one tiny bit of code to use the mouse in graphics mode but they catch you and make you explain it to them and you can't...

This was back in high school when I was younger and dumber.

I previously said I had no issues with dev teachers, but in fact I DO have them..
I want to get two things off my chest..

First: Last year I waited like 6 MONTHS to get my grades!! 6 FUCKING MONTHS!! And I wasn't even the only one who didn't get their grades!!
Second: Those dev teachers in high school are actually teachers who normally teach about physics, math and we even have a teacher who normally teaches history!! HOW THE FUCK AM I GOING TO GET A PROPER EXPLANATION ABOUT THE STUFF I SHOULD LEARN IF YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT YOURSELF!!

In defense for my teachers:
After 6 months of long waiting, I got my grades and they all were (and still are) an A!! Happy as fuck!!
My teachers at least TRY their very best to teach me something I don't know about the basic stuff.. And that's worth something right..

Had a teacher in high school who ordered us to learn MS Access, even tho most of us already knew MySQL... It was to learn about relations and the likes...
We spend way to long on that subject, because most of really didn't find the Access interface intuitive and she had to walk from table to table helping...
The only two finished the task where those who say screw it and used MySQL 😅

Hi guys, I got some questions for you:
I'm a 17 years old guy from south Italy with 5 years of programming experience, mainly with Java and Kotlin. Since finding a well paid job here is soooo hard (especially when it comes to IT), I will surely go to another country (England, Sweden, Denmark and Norway in my list) once I get my scientific high school diploma. Here are the questions:
1) I have very high skills on JavaFX, both front-end and back-end. Is JavaFX commonly used in companies? Or should I move to other technologies like Android?
2) Will my diploma (plus a good amount of open source projects) be enough to find a job?
3) What certified English level is commonly required in these countries?

We had a lab in middle school, 5th grade, I think, where they had a few Apple IIe computers.

I remember one day looking over at a smart friend's screen and he was playing a flight simulator. I'd never seen anything like it before. When I asked him how he did it, he showed me a computer magazine where all the code was published for it. He had typed the whole thing in and saved it to a floppy.

It was part of a turning point for me when I was deciding between social groups: wanting to be a dumb jock or wanting to be smart. Thanks to that kid's example, I chose being smart. It cost me dates with the hot girls later in high school when I should have been carrying a pager for all the teachers who needed me to fix their computers for them, but I made sure to cry all the way to the bank when I was eventually making six figures.

I’m one of maybe the 10% of dev boot camp graduates that had a successful outcome. Most people think it’s as easy as just showing up, write mediocre code, get a certificate then you’re automatically an “engineer” with job offers being thrown at you. It’s not. I already had experience writing code throughout high school and took 2 years of cs classes at university before dropping out. TLDR; only worth it if you already have some technical knowledge or experience otherwise your just pissing away your money.

Ok this is a weird story.

So myself and two friends were working on a chrome extension several years ago, probably late high school/early college years.

So before any of us had seen the ballmer peak xkcd, I had discovered it on my own. I was telling my friend that we should start drinking because a)it's Saturday night, and b) I code better buzzed. So he decided to push the limits. He poured my drink super heavy, then another, then didn't finish his and insisted I did. He ended up getting me super drunk. I started going off on how they were doing it wrong, then took over the keyboard. What I wrote cannot even be considered code. I went on an incoherent rant, puked in a trash can, and then w