My mom died when I was 7, after which my dad bought me a Commodore 64 so I had something to lose myself in during the mourning process.

I learned everything about that system, from my first GOTO statement to sprite buffers, to soldering my own EPROM cartridges. My dad didn't deal with the loss so well, and became a missing person 5 years later when I was 12.

I got into foster care with a bunch of strict religious cultists who wouldn't allow electronics in the house.

So I ran away at 14, sub-rented a closet in a student apartment using my orphan benefits and bought a secondhand IBM computer. I spent about 16 hours a day learning about BSD and Linux, C, C++, Fortran, ADA, Haskell, Livescript and even more awful things like Visual Basic, ASP, Windows NT, and Active Directory.

I faked my ID (back then it was just a laminated sheet of paper), and got a job at 15-pretending-to-be-17 at one of the first ISPs in my country. I wrote the firmware and admin panel for their router, full of shitty CGI-bin ASP code and vulnerabilities.

That somehow got me into a job at Microsoft, building the MS Office language pack for my country, and as an official "conflict resolver" for their shitty version control system. Yes, they had fulltime people employed just to resolve VCS conflicts.

After that I worked at Arianespace (X-ray NDT, visualizing/tagging dicom scans, image recognition of faulty propellant tank welds), and after that I switched to biotech, first phytogenetics, then immunology, then pharmacokynetics.

In between I have grown & synthesized and sold large quantities of recreational drugs, taken care of some big felines, got a pilot license, taught IT at an elementary school, renovated a house, and procreated.

A lot of it was to prove myself to the world -- prove that a nearly-broke-orphan-high-school-dropout could succeed at life.

But hey, now I work for a "startup", so I guess I failed after all.

FUCK VISUAL STUDIO ANBD EVERYTHING IT FUCKING STANDS FOR. PIECE OF SHIT IDE CANT HANDLE MORE THAN THREE FUCKING WINDOWS AT A FUCKING TIME WHY CANT A BILLION DOLLAR MOTHERFUCKING COMPANY MAKE COMPETENT SOFTWARE FOR ONCE? WHY IS MICROSOFT SO FUCKING AWFUL IN EVERYTHING IT DOES? WHY THE FUCK IS THERE NO AUTOMATIC VERSIONING LIKE EVERY CIVILIZED BASIC FUCKING IDE THAT EVER EXISTS? WHY DO I HAVE TO FUCKING MANUALLY VERSION MY FUCKING FILES? WHY THE FUCKING FUCK IS VISUAL STUDIO FUCKING GOING TO A FILE I USED 300 YEARS AGO WHEN I DEBUG AN APPLICATION? MOST USELESS, UNINTUITIVE PIECE OF SHIT SOFTWARE IVE EVER USED. IF YOU ARENT USING SOME GODDAMN SERVER SOLUTION TO KEEP TRACK WITH YOUR PROJECT VERSIONS, GOOD EVER FUCKING LUCK RECOVERING LOST CODE BECAUSE FUCKING MICROSOFT CANT DO WHAT FUCKING INTELLIJ DID 5 MILLION FUCKING YEARS AGO

Can someone tell who the fuck lets morons with absolutely 0 knowledge of how the industry works go on and write articles concerning "what programming languages to learn" clickbait articles?

Look, I never looked into them. Not even when starting, I knew (out of spite) that the people that built Windows Vista were developers and then I went ahead to look what a software engineer was. I went down the rabbit hole from that and my next step at the time (I was on the local library) was to go ahead and look for programming books, C++ and Java caught my eye, so I got them two books and went down. Later on I found about JS and Python and similar shit like that and I just continued to learn. I seldom bothered to learn from internet articles because to my opinion if I needed to read documentation then I might as well fucking read it from the people that designed X technology.

some were good, some were shit, etc etc, but I never bothered to look for "what programming languages to learn" articles because I could give close to two shits about some other dickhead telling me what to learn, I have always been rather hesitant to take other people's opinion into consideration when it comes to my own learning.

BUT today I clicked on one of those articles out of curiosity.....

"Many DEVELOPER (notice the lack of proper grammar) choose to leave Visual Basic in favor of more modern frameworks like C#, Java or .NET"

Ok, so, for whatever the fuck reason Java is mentioned along C# and a fucking framework (.NET) rather than just C# for microsoft shit, is this moron talking about VB.NET at all? is he going about VB6? what? what is going on here?

Obj C is not relevant at all and should be immediately replaced by Swift since it is a modern, and stable language (never mind that each release has breaking changes on entire code bases, yeah, fuck it, just jump alltogether and ignore Obj C and the decades of stable code it has)

"Coffeescript has been replaced by the newer features of Java" <--- ok fam, you lost me here, give me your "ITPro" card please and then kick yourself repeatedly in the groin since I won't be bothered touching you, i might get some stOOpid on me.

Fuck, these articles are all over the place, from idiots like the one above, to the moron raving about pharo smalltalk shitting on every tech you use.

Just.....please bring back shit like byte magazine and shit.....please? or Linux Format, make Linux Format more popular across the board, where people who know their shit think twice before spewing their bullshit to the masses? Some fucking kid there might want to know where to start and these fucking idiots are out there just ruining shit for everything.

Helping this lady with her Microsoft Access work. Wrote some complex Visual Basic script to make the database look pretty. This is what she is asking:

"Hey, where did you get all this code from? YouTube? Can you please send me the link?"

ffs I'm a dev, why the fuck do you think I need YouTube for this simple VBA script.

I still remember developing my personal website using Microsoft FrontPage when I was a young kid. At that time I saw Microsoft Visual Basic on programs list too but don't even bother to click on it.

If only I clicked on it.

In my second year of A levels in secondary school (college) we had to make a quiz game using Microsoft Visual Basic. Was my first time using the software, got annoyed within a few weeks and downloaded a template off the internet. The whole IT department thought I was some form of genius until I crashed the servers (in over 200 schools) trying to hack them 6 weeks later.

Sir if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

!Rant

A couple hours ago I had an "interview".
It was like that:
- Show me your SQL skills, select from 2 tables, aliases, groups
-- Passed
- Ok, Now you have to learn Visual Basic .NET for getting this job, your first task is to create a simple calculator

My mind just exploded. Visual Basic?!? Noooo.... Really? I don't want to learn that Microsoft shit.... But it's good paid work so I'm trying it right now.

To be honest? I'm suprised, it's not that bad and I think that problems are not in languages, it's about cooperation, flexibility and enthusiasm to solve problems.

So don't judge programming languages and solve problems with them.

Still hate pascal and my English🤔

P.S.: Boss is amazing, smart....

I started out on a Sinclair ZX 80. It has just 512 bytes of ram and you had to use a function button together with a key for each command since it did not have enough memory to keep the source in memory ;)

I attended few basic courses and then went on to hold them.

After a year there was suggestions of starting pascal courses so during the summer I read up in turbo pascal 5.5 but since the summer home did not have electricity I had to do it all theoretically for the first month before getting to try it out.

I got to try visual basic when doing school practice with Microsoft but the name was not set by then as it was a few months before the release.

Thats also where the more professional programming got going even though I did one pascal program that was used professionally before that.

I learned basic, Visual Basic and java in high school, then one year of college studying c++. I really hate c++ and swore I would never become a programmer. After that one year of college, I spent two years out of the country with no computer usage at all. Then 4 years working at a grocery store.
Then my friend told me about an opening at his work place for a java programmer. This was 7 years since doing java and 6 years since I had programmed anything at all. But I applied and interviewed. When asked about databases, I said “I know a little Microsoft Access.” Had no idea what relational databases were, never heard of php, but by some miracle they hired me anyways. Still working for them 6 years later, now an experienced java, php, MySQL, front end developer.
Still have no idea why they saw fit to hire me.

So in my current workplace we have an IT department of... 7-8 people, with 3 developers (or 2.5, but that's debatable)

The oldest dev is old school, over 65 now came from Visual Basic, of course, and is a father of department's director - this is a story in of itself, but besides the point of this rant

Anywho, this dev is of course in this workplace way longer than me, and historically is in charge of finance and Microsoft CRM systems.

Guess the reason why Microsoft CRM was chosen at all in the company?

Because dev said he is not good with creating web forms from scratch, and apparently with MSCRM you can craft them without much trouble.

Yes, that's it, our MSCRM is used as a web application with custom forms that store data into custom DB tables that dev creates... nothing to do with actual CRM use cases.

!rant

So I have bought a new laptop and this time instead of straight up booting linux I had an idea of giving micro$oft a try, so I have decided to use only their services for 2 weeks.

To be honest, I really did not expect windows to use do much cpu and hdd during updates and background tasks, but after a day it was ok and windows feels snappier than during my last encounrer (maybe cause the new hw?).

I was even so dedicated that I started to use cortana and I have to tell, that she is dumb as fuck, since she fails to understand even the basic tasks and if u want something advanced, she refers to the next update. But boy, tell her to open Visual Studio and she asks if you want VS Code or Visual Studio, which seems great. But my response was 'Code' then she insisted that I said Coke. Im like OK, Im not native english speaker, lets try Visual Studio Code, where she told me that there is no such thing and Spelling VS - Code ended me in bing search for Unesco :/

I really want to like Cortana, she has nice name, nice history, but she is like that A girl from class, who looks gorgeous, has great voice, but then u reallise that she just eats a book before exam and after that she is that dumb basic hoe.

I also gave a shot to Bing and Edge. Bing is something between Google and DuckDuckGo, since it gives you a liiitle less results from search history, yet if you want to find something in different language its even possible to tell you that what are you trying to find does not exist.

But I have to tell, that I like Edge and I mean it. Like... Its fast and has some good features, like pushing all your open tavs away, so you can open them Later. It also does not have that stupid ass feature that lets you control tab from left to right, not by chronological order, so you wont end up in infinity loop of 2 tabs. And even if people make fun of M$ trying to convince you to use Edge by being too aggresive. God go on edge and try to use some Google Service(You still dont use chrome?!).

I also tried to play with .Net core and I have to tell that against java they are a bit further. I liked some small features, but what I just simply loved was rhe fucking documentation. You basically dont need google, sincw they give you examples and explain in a human way.

What I didnt quite get was the 'big' Visual Studio. Tje dark theme to me feels strange(personal and irrelevant). Why the hell I do need to press 2 shortcuts to duplicate line?! Why is it so hard to find a plugin to give me back my coloured brackets and why the fuck it takes like a second to Cut one line of code on a damn i7?!

Visual studio Code was something different. It shows how dark theme should be done, the plugin market is full of stuff and the damn shortcuts are not made for octopi. So I have to recommend it ^^.

I even gave a shot to word and office as a whole and fuck I never knew that there are so many templates. It really made my life easier, since all you need to do is find the right one in the app, instead of browsing templates online, where half of them are for another version of your text editor.

Android Launcher was fast, had a clever widget of notes and the sync was pretty handy to be honest so I liked that one as well.

What made me furious was using the CLI. Godfucking damn what the fuck is ipconfig?! :/

Last thing what made me superbhappy was using stuff without wine and all of the addional shit. Especially using stuff like Afinity Designer and having good looking apps in general. I mean Open source has great tools l sometimes with better functionality. But I found out, that what is pleasure to look at, is pleasure to work with.

To Summarize a bit.

It wasnt that bad as I expected. I see where they are heading with building yet another ecosystem of It just works and that they are aiming at professionals once again.

So I would rate it 6/10, would be 7 if that shit was Posix compatible.

I know that for Balmer is a special place in hell... But with that new CEO, Microsoft at the end may make it to purgatory..

Why the fuck does microsoft feel the need to be different?

One small example is VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

When calling a function iw does not allow you to use brackets.
Example: Funct (arg1, arg2) is not valid but Funct arg1, arg2 is.

If you want the damed brackets you'll have to use call.

Call Funct ( arg1, arg2)

because after the first function is called, functions within that as arguments need to have the brackets...

Have to work on Windows for a DLL integration project, how does Microsoft managed to build something so disgusting to human eyes for all these years?

Dark mode in Visual Studio Installer is actually pitch black, hello? Common sense? Basic human-computer interfacing? Basic color scheming?

All these installations, frameworks, version management...

Why am I dipping myself into this bloatware shitshow?

Rewriting some fractal generation code for a client in Python. his original code was in Visual Basic. he sent me his original code as a fucking Microsoft Word document...............

When I was 13 and made a Visual Basic application to convert the weight in other unity. I used Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition 😀

I started writing basic in 1980 on my stepfather's Apple ][+. I was about ten. Then I got a Commodore 64 and got this awesome program called Gary's Game Kitchen. It had a Sprite editor and you programmed it by writing pseudo code. From there I learned C, then got jobs in Visual Basic and vb for Microsoft office (yuck!). Then I discovered Linux and became a web developer. *Hugs vim*

So, do any of your poor fuckers have the opportunity - nay, PRIVILEGE of using the absolute clusterfuck piece of shit known as SQL Server Integration Services?

Why do I keep seeing articles about how "powerful" and "fast" it is? Why do people recommend it? Why do some think it's easy to use - or even useful?

It can't report an error to save its life. It's logging is fucked. It's not just that it swallows all exceptions and gives unhelpful error messages with no debugging information attached, its logging API is also fucked. For example, depending on where you want to log a message - it's a totally different API, with a billion parameters most of which you need to supply "-1" or "null" to just to get it do FUCKING DO SOMETHING. Also - you'll only see those messages if you run the job within the context of SQL FUCKING SERVER - good luck developing on your ACTUAL FUCKING MACHINE.

So apart from shitty logging, it has inherited Microsoft's insane need to make everything STATICALLY GODDAMN TYPED. For EVERY FUCKING COMPONENT you need to define the output fields, types and lengths - like this is 1994. Are you consuming a dynamic data structure, perhaps some EAV thing from a sales system? FUCK YOU. Oh - and you can't use any of the advances in .NET in the last 10 years - mainly, NuGet and modern C# language features.

Using a modern C# language feature REMOVES THE ABILITY TO FUCKING DEBUG ANYTHING. THE FUCKER WILL NOT STOP ON YOUR BREAKPOINTS. In addition - need a JSON parsing library? Want to import a SDK specific to what you're doing? Want to use a 3rd party date library? WELL FUCK YOU. YOU HAVE TO INDEPENDENTLY INSTALL THE ASSEMBLIES INTO THE GAC AND MAKE IT CONSISTENT ACROSS ALL YOUR ENVIRONMENTS.

While i'm at it - need to connect to anything? FUCK YOU, WE ONLY INCLUDE THE MOST BASIC DATABASE CONNECTORS. Need to transform anything? FUCK YOU, WRITE A SCRIPT TASK. Ok, i'd like to write a script task please. FUCK YOU IM GOING TO PAUSE FOR THE NEXT 10 MINUTES WHILE I FIRE UP A WHOLE FUCKING NEW INSTANCE OF VISUAL STUDIO JUST TO EDIT THE FUCKING SCRIPT. Heaven forbid you forget to click the "stop" button after running the package and open the script. Those changes you just made? HAHA FUCK YOU I DISCARDED THEM.

I honestly cant understand why anyone uses this shit. I guess I shouldn't really expect anything less from Microsoft - all of their products are average as fuck.

Why do I use this shit? I work for a bunch of fucks that are so far entrenched in Microsoft technologies that they literally cannot see outside of them (and indeed don't want to - because even a cursory look would force them to conclude that they fucked up, and if you're a manager thats something you can never do).

Ok, rant over. Also fuck you SSIS

Still wondering why Microsoft at some point removed this really cute UX to set the position of the form on your CRT monitor instead of writing the values manually. 😢

how i can duplicate form 1 to form 2 in microsoft visual basic 6.0?