You know what's the difference between
- static page written purely in HTML with inline styling
and
- dynamic page generated in PHP, that actually loads data from MySQL database and is correctly styled in separate CSS document
on national level exam necessary to earn a title of technician?
ONE HACKING PERCENT!

Ok, backstory. So, few days ago I got results from that exam. To be honest, it was very, very easy so I wasn't worried at all, unlike some of my classmates who just don't understand programming at all (you need at least 75% to pass). Our task was to create database, write website in PHP that shows contents of that database and use CSS to give it a look that of example web page and run it on XAMPP. I've got result of 96% and while I was wandering what I've done wrong i hear my colleague almost screaming with joy "I passed! And I haven't even touched PHP. I was soooo sure I'll fail." So I asked him what's his result and he says 95%. And then another colleague said he got 95% without PHP. So, in other words what I thought to be the main task was worth 1%. Apparently, what was more important was for the page to look identical to the example, so I guess some examiners didn't even look into the source. And don't get me wrong, I don't wish my classmates had failed. That's not why I'm ranting. But why in the name of Ada Lovelace the task said to use PHP and all that if it weren't supposed to check our knowledge of programming in PHP? Sometimes I think the people who design these tests don't even know what they're doing.

There comes a moment in every coders life where he must prove his programming chops by solving an arbitrary problem for one of their random relatives. If they fail, they have brought shame to their family name. But if they succeed, there is no greater glory.

Random Uncle: "Hey my wifi isn't working. Can you fix it?"
Me: Restarts laptop. Wifi works.
Uncle: "Wow nice job!"

Indeed. There is no greater glory.

Wow... this is the perfect week for this topic.

Thursday, is the most fucked off I’ve ever been at work.

I’ll preface this story by saying that I won’t name names in the public domain to avoid anyone having something to use against me in court. But, I’m all for the freedom of information so please DM if you want to know who I’m talking about.

Yesterday I handed in my resignation, to the company that looked after me for my first 5 years out of university.

Thursday was my breaking point but to understand why I resigned you need a little back story.

I’m a developer for a corporate in a team of 10 or so.

The company that I work for is systemically incompetent and have shown me this without fail over the last 6 months.

For the last year we’ve had a brilliant contracted, AWS Certified developer who writes clean as hell hybrid mobile apps in Ion3, node, couch and a tonne of other up to the minute technologies. Shout out to Morpheus you legend, I know you’re here.

At its core my job as a developer is to develop and get a product into the end users hands.

Morpheus was taking some shit, and coming back to his desk angry as fuck over the last few months... as one of the more experienced devs and someone who gives a fuck I asked him what was up.

He told me, company want their mobile app that he’s developed on internal infrastructure... and that that wasn’t going to work.

Que a week of me validating his opinion, looking through his work and bringing myself up to speed.

I came to the conclusion that he’d done exactly what he was asked to, brilliant Work, clean code, great consideration to performance and UX in his design. He did really well. Crucially, the infrastructure proposed was self-contradicting, it wouldn’t work and if they tried to fudge it in it would barely fucking run.

So I told everyone I had the same opinion as him.

4 months of fucking arguing with internal PMs, managers and the project team go by... me and morpheus are told we’re not on the project.

The breaking point for me came last Wednesday, given no knowledge of the tech, some project fannies said Morpheus should be removed and his contract terminated.

I was up in fucking arms. He’d done everything really well, to see a fellow developer take shit for doing his job better than anyone else in [company] could was soul destroying.

That was the straw on the camels back. We don’t come to work to take shit for doing a good job. We don’t allow our superiors to give people shit in our team when they’re doing nothing but a good job. And you know what: the opinion of the person that knows what they’re talking about is worth 10 times that of the fools who don’t.

My manager told me to hold off, the person supposed to be supporting us told me to stand down. I told him I was going to get the app to the business lead because he fucking loves it and can tell us if there’s anything to change whilst architecture sorts out their outdated fucking ideas.

Stand down James. Do nothing. Don’t do your job. Don’t back Morpheus with his skills and abilities well beyond any of ours. Do nothing.

That was the deciding point for me, I said if Morpheus goes... I go... but then they continued their nonsense, so I’m going anyway.

I made the decision Thursday, and Friday had recruiters chomping at the bit to put the proper “senior” back in my title, and pay me what I’m worth.

The other issues that caused me to see this company in it’s true form:
- I raised a key security issue, documented it, and passed it over to the security team.
- they understood, and told the business users “we cannot use ArcGIS’ mobile apps, they don’t even pretend to be secure”
- the business users are still using the apps going into the GDPR because they don’t understand the ramifications of the decisions they’re making.

I noticed recently that [company] is completely unable to finish a project to time or budget... and that it’s always the developers put to blame.

I also noticed that middle management is in a constant state of flux with reorganisations because in truth the upper managers know they need to sack them.

For me though, it was that developers in [company], the people that know what they’re talking about; are never listened to.

Fuck being resigned to doing a shit job.

Fuck this company. On to one that can do it right.

Morpheus you beautiful bastard I know you’ll be off soon too but I also feel I’ve made a friend for life. “Private cloud” my arse.

Since making the decision Thursday I feel a lot more free, I have open job offers at places that do this well. I have a position of power in the company to demand what I need and get it. And I have the CEO and CTO’s ears perking up because their department is absolutely shocking.

Freedom is a wonderful feeling.

I finally did it. I finally got rid of that client in a positive, respectful manner.

So basically, my dad has a freelance colleague. For a side project that person asked me to make him a website. My dad mentioned to said person that my sister's boyfriend does web design (he's trained to use autocad for designing the structure of furniture, nothing fancy just straight lines and upside down doors that fail after a while..

So my brother in law charged the guy 400 money for the design. I charged the guy 200 for the programming because my dad forced me to drop down my price to fit the budget because business relationship and he obviously couldn't let my sister's boyfriend not make more money than he deserves.

In the end after waiting on the design for weeks (I literally saw him do it in photoshop all in 2 layers on his laptop in half an hour) I had to rush the project because the due date was coming up. I already had most of it done but I had to redo a good part of the front-end to fit the design structure. I also had to re-do the design in photoshop to get the images and colors I needed, then cut it up into html. So realistically, my sister's boyfriend barely did anything.

Now the deal was that I'd develop the website and perform any updates/upgrades to it. I'd also host it on my webserver for a monthly fee. My sister's boyfriend was to handle any and all content related support.

At first it was all good, I only ever spoke with the guy when he needed a feature added and he paid me well for it. Overall the hit I took in initial development was paying off. As time went by, my sister's boyfriend started ignoring the guy's calls and the guy started calling me instead.

Now, he had this deal with my brother in law where he could charge his time at 35 money an hour. That's about 4 times minimum wage for not doing much.
Then I started to basically take over all support, but I was only allowed to charge 30 an hour. Pretty reasonable still and I wasn't too busy so it was all good.

As time went by I ended up getting asked to do more and more minimal changes. At some point I had done so many minimal changes I had to charge the guy about 2 hours extra that month and he went completely mental saying I can't just work for hours without telling him beforehand. We decided I had to discuss a price before any change. I charged my time on the phone with him twice after that and both times he bitched about me being expensive and once he even said he wanted to leave.

Now comes the fun part. A week ago he had an issue that was 100% support related. He tried calling my sister's boyfriend but the guy obviously didn't pick up. He called my dad about it, and my dad ended up calling my my sister's boyfriend. Now this guy is so slimy, he purposely didn't hang up the phone knowing my dad would use his cell and assume the other party would hang up because calls cost money. The guy heard my dad call my sister's boyfriend and heard him pick up immediately. He went completely mental saying how he wants both of us to always reply and call him back immediately.

This guy was always my lowest priority. He didn't really make me money and his calls and requests were annoying and unnecessary. Add to that that I specifically didn't want to handle support and was forced into it anyway, while all 'design' things (up to figuring out where and how to display a visitor counter) absolutely had to go to my sister's boyfriend..
But regardless of that, I generally replied to his emails within 10-20 minutes and rarely more than 25 hours.

My dad agreed (for us) that we now both had to reply to him within 24 hours. I was now stuck checking my voicemail every couple hours because my sister's boyfriend sucks at life.

During his rant he threatened to leave me, again. That was the point where I said fuck it.

For the past week I've been ignoring his calls. When he emails me I don't take more than 5 minutes replying. This morning I found an e-mail with 4 requests;

He wanted me to make a content-related change;
He wanted me to give him access to the site's Google analytics;
He wanted me to add a feature and write a guide on how to use it;
And fucking finally, he wanted a 'token to transfer his website'.

I promptly emailed him back saying I added his email a week ago and that he'd gotten an email from Google about it then, that I'd changed the content he wanted me to, a price for the last dev task and a token for his domain name, adding that its valid for 35 days and that his new host can contact me to receive a backup file of his website.

Sadly, I do have this on 10-minute dev job to do, but then I'm invoicing him all jobs I haven't invoiced yet and he can find another host willing to deal with his insanity.

The best part is I lose a webhosting client but I'm sure he'll still ask my sister's bitched parasitic boyfriend whenever he needs a photo resized and he'll still pay him 35 money for 2 minutes of work.

Fuck customers.

(Written March 13th at 2am.)

This morning (yesterday), my computer decided not to boot again: it halts on "cannot find firmware rtl-whatever" every time. (it has booted just fine several times since removing the firmware.) I've had quite the ordeal today trying to fix it, and every freaking step along the way has thrown errors and/or required workarounds and a lot of research.

Let's make a list of everything that went wrong!

1) Live CD: 2yo had been playing with it, and lost it. Not easy to find, and super smudgy.

2) Unencrypt volume: Dolphin reports errors when decrypting the volume. Research reveals the Live CD doesn't incude the cryptsetup packages. First attempts at installing them mysteriously fail.

3) Break for Lunch: automatic powersaving features turned off the displays, and also killed my session.

4) Live CD redux: 25min phonecall from work! yay, more things added to my six-month backlog.

5) Mount encrypted volume: Dolphin doesn't know how, and neither do I. Research ensues. Missing LVM2 package; lvmetad connection failure ad nauseam; had to look up commands to unlock, clone, open, and mount encrypted Luks volume, and how to perform these actions on Debian instead of Ubuntu/Kali. This group of steps took four hours.

6) Chroot into mounted volume group: No DNS! Research reveals how to share the host's resolv with the chroot.

7) `# apt install firmware-realtek`: /boot/initrd.img does not exist. Cannot update.

8) Find and mount /boot, then reinstall firmware: Apt cannot write to its log (minor), listed three install warnings, and initially refused to write to /boot/initrd.img-[...]

9) Reboot!: Volume group not found. Cannot process volume group. Dropping to a shell! oh no..

(Not listed: much research, many repeated attempts with various changes.)

At this point it's been 9 hours. I'm exhausted and frustrated and running out of ideas, so I ask @perfectasshole for help.
He walks me through some debugging steps (most of which i've already done), and we both get frustrated because everything looks correct but isn't working.

10) Thirteenth coming of the Live CD: `update-initramfs -u` within chroot throws warnings about /etc/crypttab and fsck, but everything looks fine with both. Still won't boot. Editing grub config manually to use the new volume group name likewise produces no boots. Nothing is making sense.

11) Rename volume group: doubles -'s for whatever reason; Rebooting gives the same dreaded "dropping to a shell" result.

A huge thank-you to @perfectasshole for spending three hours fighting with this issue with me! I finally fixed it about half an hour after he went to bed.

After renaming the volume group to what it was originally, one of the three recovery modes managed to actually boot and load the volume. From there I was able to run `update-initramfs -u` from the system proper (which completed without issue) and was able to boot normally thereafter.

I've run updates and rebooted twice now.
After twelve+ hours... yay, I have my Debian back!

oof.

Security rant ahead - you have been warned.
It never fails to amuse and irritate me that, despite being in the 2019 supposed information age, people still don't understand or care about their security.
I've travelled to a lot of ports and a lot of countries, but, at EVERY port, without fail, there will be at least one wifi that:
- Has default name/password that has been cracked already (Thomson/SpeedTouch/Netfaster etc)
- Has a phone number as password (reduces crack time to 15-30 mins)
- Someone, to this day, has plain old WEP
I am not talking about cafeteria/store wifi but home networks. WTF people?! I can check my email (through VPN, of course) but it still bugs me. I have relented to try and snoop around the network - I can get carried away, which is bad. Still...
The speed is great though :P

So, a rather unfortunate bug on the Minecraft website.

Minecraft allows you to change your name every 30 days. I was reverse engineering their API so I could use it personally.

On the username change form there are two fields: your desired username, and your password.

To protect myself from actually changing my name, I purposefully put in password123 so that it would fail. Then, I clicked "Change name" to monitor the network traffic.

Well that's when two unfortunate things combined.

#1: I used my last name to test. It's a unique word that is relatively short and very easy for me to type out of habit.

#2: That password field doesn't actually get validated.

So imagine my shock when I clicked "change username" and it WORKED.

And now my username is doxxing me for at least 30 days + the permanent name history

FUCK me

Best part about the covid19 manufactured crisis?
Liquor stores deliver. Worst part about liquor stores delivering? Needing to use their shoddy websites.

I've been using a particular store (Total Wines) since they're cheaper than the rest and have better selection; it's quite literally a large warehouse made to look like a store.

Their website tries really hard to look professional, too, but it's just not. It took me two days to order, and not just from lack of time -- though from working 14 hour days, that's a factor.

Signing up was difficult. Your username is an email address, but you can't use comments because the server 500s, making the ajax call produce a wonderfully ambiguous error message. It also fades the page out like it's waiting on something, but that fade is on top of the error modal too. Similar error with the password field, though I don't remember how I triggered it.

Signing up also requires agreeing to subscribe to their newsletter. it's technically an opt-in, but not opting-in doesn't allow you to proceed. Same with opting-in to receiving a text notification when your order is ready for pickup -- you also opt-in to reciving SMS spam.

Another issue: After signing up, you start to navigate through the paginated product list. Every page change scrolls you to the exact middle of the next page. Not deliberatly; the UI loads first, and the browser gets as close as it can to your previous position -- which was below that as the pagination is at the bottom -- and then the products populate after. But regardless of why, there is no worse place to start because now you must scroll in both directions to view the products. If it stayed at the very bottom, it would at least mean you only need to scroll upwards to look at everything on the page. Minor, but increasingly irritating.

Also, they have like 198 pages of spirits alone because each size is unique entry. A 50ml, 350ml, 500ml, 750ml, 1000ml, and 1750ml bottle of e.g. Tito's vodka isn't one product, it's six. and they're sorted seemingly randomly. I think it's by available stock, looking back.

If you fancy a product, you can click on it for a detail page. Said detail page lists the various sizes in a dropdown, but they're not sorted correctly either, and changing sizes triggers a page reload, which leads to another problem:

if you navigate to more than a few pages within a 10 or so second window, the site accuses you of using browser automation. No captcha here, just a "click me for five seconds" button. However, it (usually) also triggers the check on every other tab you have open after its next nagivation.

That product page also randomly doesn't work. I haven't narrowed it down, but it will randomly decide to start failing, and won't stop failing for hours. It renders the page just fine, then immediately replaces it with a blank page. When it's failing, the only way to interact with the page is a perfectly-timed [esc], which can (and usually does) break all other page functionality, too. Absolutely great when you need to re-add everything from a stale copy of your signed-out cart living in another tab. More on that later. And don't forget to slow down to bypass the "browser automation" check, too!

Oh, and if you're using container tabs, make sure to open new tabs in the SAME container, as any request from the same IP without the login cookie will usually trigger that "browser automation" response, too.

The site also randomly signs you out, but allows you to continue amassing your cart. You'd think this is a good thing until you choose to sign in again... which empties your cart. It's like they don't want to make a sale at all.

The site also randomly forgets your name, replacing it with "null." My screen currently says "Hello, null". Hello, cruft!

It took me two days to order.
Mostly from lack of time, as i've been pulling 14 hour shifts lately trying to get everything done. but the sheer number of bugs certainly wasted most of what little time i had left. Now I definitely need a drink.

But maybe putting up with all of this is worthwhile because of their loyalty program? Apparently if you spend $500, you can take $5 off your next purchase! Yay! 1%! And your points expire! There are three levels; maybe it gets better. Level zero is for everyone; $0 requirement. There are also levels at $500 and $2500. That last one is seriously 5x more than the first paid level. and what does it earn you? A 'free' magazine subscription, 'free' classes (they're usually like $20-$50 iirc), and a 'free' grab bag (a $2.99 value!) twice per month. All for spending $2500. What a steal. It reminds me of Candy Crush's 3-star system where the first two stars are trivial, and the third is usually a difficult stretch goal. But here it's just thinly-veiled manipulation with no benefit.

I can tell they're employing some "smarketing" people with big ideas (read: stolen mistakes), but it's just such a fail.

The whole thing is a fail.

Back in the day, I joined a little agency in Cape Town, small team small office with big projects, projects they weren’t really supposed to take on but hey when the owner of a tech business is not a tech person they do weird things.
A month had passed and it was all good, then came a project from Europe, Poland to be specific. The manager introduced me to the project, it was a big brand - a segment of Lego, built on Umbraco (they should change the name to slowbraco or uhmmm..braco somewhere there) the manager was like so this one is gonna be quite a challenge and I remember you said you are keen on that, I was like hell yeah bring it on (genuinely I got excited) now the challenge was not even about complexity of the problem or code or algorithms etc you get my point… the challenge was that the fucking site was in polish - face palm 1 - so I am like okay code is code, its just content, and I already speak/familiar with 13 human languages so I can’t fail here ill get around it somehow. So I spin up IIS, do the things and boom dev environment is ready for some kick ass McCoding. I start to run through the project to dig into the previous dev’s soul. I could not relate, I could not understand. I could not read, I could not, I could not. - face palm 2 - This dude straight up coded this project in polish variable names in polish, class names in polish, comments in freaking polish. Look, I have no beef with the initial guy, its his language so why not right? sure. But not hey this is my life and now I should learn polish, so screw it, new tab - google translate, new notes, I create a dictionary of variables and class etc 
3 days go by and I am fucking polish bro. Come at me. I get to read the previous devs soul through his comments, what a cool dude, his code wasn’t shit either - huge relief. So I rock on and make the required changes and further functionality. 

The project manager is like really, you did it? I am like yeah dude, there it is. Then I realise I wasn’t the first on this, this dude done tried others and it didn’t go down well, they refused. - face palm 3 -

Anyway, now I am a rock star in the office, and to project managers this win means okay throw him in the deep - they move me to huge project that is already late of course and apparently since I am able to use google translate, I can now defeat time, let the travelling begin. - face palm 4 - I start on the project and they love me on it as they can see major progress however poland was knocking on the door again, they need a whole chunk of work done. I can’t leave the bigger project, so it was decided that the new guy on Monday will start his polish lessons - he has no idea, probably excited to start a new job, meanwhile a shit storm is being prepared for him.

Monday comes, hello x - meet the team, team meets x

Manager - please join our meeting.

I join the meeting, the manager tells me to assist the new dev to get set up.

Me: Sure, did you tell him about he site?

Manager: Yes, I told him you knocked it out the park and now we just need to keep going

Me: in my head (hmm… that’s not what I was asking but cool I guess he will see soon enough -internal face palm 5 - )

New dev is setup, he looks at the project, I am ask him if he is good after like an hour he is like yeah all good. But his face is pink so I figured, no brother man is not okay. But I let him be and give him space.

Lunch time comes, he heads out for lunch. 

1hr 15mins later, project manager is like, is the new dude still at lunch.

We are all like yeah probably. 

2hrs pass 

3hrs pass

Now we are like okay maybe something happened to him, hit by a car? Emergency? Something… 

So I am legit worried now, I ask the manager to maybe give him a ring. 

Manager tries to call. NOTHING, no response. nada.

Next day, 8am, 9am, 10am no sign of the dude. 

I go to the manager, ask him what’s up. 

Manager: he is okay. However he said he is not coming back. 


!!oracle

I'm trying to install a minecraft modpack to play with a friend, and I'm super psyced about it. According to the modpack instructions, the first step is to download the java8 jre. Not sure if I actually need it or not, but it can download while I'm doing everything else, so I dutifully go to the download page and find the appropriate version. The download link does point to the file, but redirects to a login page instead. Apparently I need an oracle account to download anything on their site. stupid.

So I make an account. It requires my life story, or at least full name and address and phone number. stupid. So my name is now "fuck off" and I live in Hell, Michigan. My email is also "gofuckyourself" because I'm feeling spiteful. Also, for some reason every character takes about 3/4ths of a second to type, so it's very slow going. Passwords also cannot contain spaces, which makes me think they're doing some stupid "security" shenanigans like custom reversible encryption with some 5th grade math. or they're just stupid. Whatever, I make the stupid account.

Afterwards, I try to log in, but apparently my browser-saved credentials are wrong? I try a few more times, try enabling all of the javascripts, etc. No beans. Okay, maybe I can't use it until I verify the email? That actually makes some sense. Fine, I go check the throwaway inbox. No verification email. It's been like five minutes, but it's oracle so they probably just failed at it like everything else, so I try to have them resend the email. I find the resend link, and try it. Every time I enter my email address, though, it either gives me a validation error or a server error. I try a few mores times, and give up. I try to log in again; no dice. Giving up, I go do something else for awhile.

On a whim later, I check for the verification email again. Apparently it just takes bloody forever, but it did show up. Except instead of the first name "Fuck" I entered, I'm now "Andrew", apparently. okay.... whatever. I click the verify button anyway, and to my surprise it actually works, and says that I'm now allowed to use my account. Yay!

So, I go back to the login page (from the download link) and enter my credentials. A new error appears! I cannot use redirects, apparently, and "must type in the page address I want to visit manually." huh? okay, i go to the page directly, and see the same bloody error because of course i do because oracle fucking sucks. So I close the page, go back to the download list, click the link, wait for the login page redirect (which is so totally not allowed, apparently, except it works and manual navigation does not. yay backwards!), and try to log in.

Instead of being presented with an error because of the redirect, it lets me (try to) log in. But despite using prefilled creds (and also copy/pasting), it tells me they're invalid. I open a new tab container, clear the cache (just to be thorough), and repeat the above steps. This time it redirects me to a single signon server page (their concept of oauth), and presents me with a system error telling me to contact "the Administrator." -.- Any second attempts, refreshes, etc. just display the same error.

Further attempts to log in from the download page fail with the same invalid credentials error as before.

Fucking oracle and their reverse Midas touch.

Product name: K.I.D.

Product version: v2

Project duration: 9 months

Deployment to LIFE ETA: within next 24 hours

Tests' status: GREEN

uuhhhh soooo exciting! Hopefully this time deployment tools do not fail, like they did when releasing v1. Thanks God it still ended well.

Inspired by the comment I posted on another rant.

My uni decided to be one of those progressive tech schools that start people with Python. Mind you, I had prepared myself with studying as much as I could with math and programming by automating things and similar stuff in our computer when I was at my previous job, so I had a better idea as to what i could expect.

Introduction to computer science and programming with Python or some shit like that was the name of the class, and the instructor was a fat short ugly woman with a horrible attitude AND a phd in math, not comp sci and barely any industrial knowledge of the field.

She gave us the "a lot of you will fail" speech, which to me is code for "I suck and have no clue what I am doing"

One assignment involved, as per the requirements the use of switch cases. Now, unless someo knew came about, Python does not have swio cases. Me and a couple of less newbie like students tried to point out that switch cases were non existent and that her switch case example was in Javascript, not python, curly braces and everything. She told us to make it work.

We thought that she meant using a function with a dictionary and we pass the key and shit, a simple way of emulating the switch case.

NOPE she took points and insisted that she meant the example. We continuously pointed out that her example was in JS and that at the time Python did not have switch cases. The nasty woman laughed out and said that she didn't expect anyone to finish the assignment with full points.

Out of 100 points everyone got a 70. No problem. Wrote a detailed letter to the dean. Dean replied and talked to her (copied her in the email because fuck you bitch) and my grade was pulled up to full mark.

Every other class I had with her she did not question me. Which was only another class on some other shit I can't remember.

Teachers are what make or break a degree program. What make or break the experience, going to college is putting too much faith on people. If you ask me, trade certification, rigorous training is the future of computer science, or any field really. Rather than spending 4+ years studying a whoooole lotta shit for someone to focus on one field and never leave it.

dear api author at my company pt. 2:

If you're gonna create an api method that takes some arguments.

And one of those arguments is an array.

THEN MAKE THE FUCKING ARGUMENT'S NAME PLURAL YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

REPEAT WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER.
ARRAY, PLURAL, NON-ARRAY, SINGULAR.

I need to pass a shitload of filters for the data for this table, and for every suckin fuckin filter I need to singularize this shit. Thank god for es6.

I know this sounds like nitpick, but I swear to fucking alpha omega this guy is inconsistent as fuck.

Every time it feels like he makes up a new rule.

Sometimes I need to send arrays of ids, other times arrays of objects with an id property on each.

He uses synonyms too, sometimes it's remove, other times erase.

PICK ONE MOTHERFUCKER.

If you can't do the basic things well, then what is to expect of more advanced stuff?

Naming conventions you fucking idiot, follow them. It's programming 101.

You're already sending them as plural in the fucking response. Why change them for the request?

And that's just style, conventions.

This idiot asshole also RARELY DOES ANY FUCKING CHECK ON THE ARGUMENTS.

"Oh, you sent a required argument as null? 500"

We get exceptions on sentry UP THE ASS thanks to this useless bone container.

YOU'RE SEEING THE EXCEPTIONS TOO!!!!! 500'S ARE BUGS YOU NEED TO FIX, YOU CUMCHUGGER

And sometimes he does send 400, you know what the messages usually are?
"Validation failed".

WHYYYYYY YOU GODDAMN APATHETIC TASTELESS FUCK???
WHAT EXACTLY CAUSED THE FUCKING VALIDATION TO FAIL????

EXCEPTIONS HAPPEN AND THANKS TO YOU I HAVE NO IDEA WHY.

The worst of all... the worst of fucking all is that everytime I make a suggestion to change shit, every time, you act like you care.
You act like the api is the way it is because you designed it in a calculated manner.

MOTHERFUCKER. IF A USER HAS ONLY PRODUCT A, THEN HE SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO ACCESS DATA FOR PRODUCT B. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO JUST RESTRICT SHIT WITH ADMIN ROLES. IDIOT!!!!!

This is the work of someone who has no passion for programming.

How are these EU-Upload Filters even practical for anyone except google? This seems like the most unrealistic specification by non-tech bosses in history to me 😭 What do these people expect the upload filters should compare the uploads to? How the fuck should, say a blog website, ensure that none of the uploads are copyright inflicting? Are quotes copyright inflicting? Or only when I copy paste an entire book and write my name under that? How will that get detected? Do we have a database with all the copyrighted works somewhere, that every company has access to? This shit can basically only work for companies like google which have enough data to implement such filters and thats why they already had an upload filter on youtube anyways. This entire amendment is so fucking ridiculous that it basically has to fail, no doubt. In a few months still nobody is going to have upload filters, watch...

I move that the term snake case be renamed sausage case because it makes way more sense.

this_is_a_sausage

Snakeslookmorelikethis

Hi every developer! My name is Allen. English is not my native language so forgive me if I say something that does not make any sense. Let me tell you my story how I become a programmer. (I am still learning) My first computer was a DELL OptiPlex GX 720 desktop. My father bought it for our self-employee job. Before he allow me to use the computer, I used to sit next to him and watching what he do, what he click and what he gets. When he allow me to use the computer, I was slow at typing. One or 2 WPM (word per minute) my father taught me how to use the computer. Very slowly, my typing speed improves. I understand how to use the computer. but one day, I do what make me regret. I was playing with some executables, when I double clicking it, it does not work I used to associate files with apps. I associate music files with every player I want. So, I did what I used to, I associate exe files with windows media center! The computer started to open hundreds of windows media center (WMC for short) whenever an app is clicked, it opens windows media center. Today, I realized that windows were trying to open every app and every process that regularly run. However, since I associate it with WMC, instead of the app itself, it opens WMC some days after the mistake, I wonder how apps work and how I can create my own. My father  told me before that a program is simply a binary file that the computer can read. However, it was too advanced to me at the time.I begin my search with google. Everytime I search, it says "learn to code" or something like that. I see some C++ code but, it was disgusting. when I read just a few lines of a hello world code in java. it was too complex

What I seen

#$$#% $%&$%&*#!@

~

(&*%&$ (_(*^% #&&* (^^$(&^$%^( %^*$())

~

^$70^(`*#%`*#&%^)*!"   Hello world   "#@

~

~

The actual code:

class helloworld

{

    public static void main(String args[])

    {

         System.out.println("Hello World!");

     }

}

I look for an easy way but my attempts fail. then. I push

I to learn how to code.I try learning java. but it still

Very complex. i tried LibertyBASIC. from LibertyBASIC to

Java. after learning LibertyBASIC, it was easy!

LibertyBASIC -> Java -> Ruby -> NOW, C# and XAML

Today, I am learning C# and XAML.

My first OS                         :  Windows 7

My first Computer             :  DELL OptiPlex GX 720

My first successful click  :  The Start menu

My first used App              : Microsoft Encarta 2009

My first created App         : Hi-Lo(number-guessing game. written in LibertyBASIC)

Thankyou for reading this Long story.

 

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.)

Oh boy, finally something to rant about.

I got hired in a "small" company (not even 2000 people in it), then got "shipped" to a way bigger company. Basically, I work for this company (the french biggest internet / phone service provider) but in the name of my own. And this since last wednesday.

First off, I'm fucking stupid. After leaving the big company that I was in before, I swore to myself that from now on, I would work for smaller companies, mainly because I couldn't stand the inertia that big company have. You ask for something, you get it a month and a half after. The old company has about 6000 employees... This company has 98k people in it. Fuck. My. Life.

Now, to the rant: Orange (the company) decided that they had to move their office somewhere else. They set up a lot of things so that all we needed to do was to put things in boxes, to work somewhere else until next monday, then we could go to the new office on tuesday morning.

Keep in mind that I have been there for 8 days: I keep learning how they do their stuff. For example, if I need a specific docker image, I can't get it from the Docker Hub, the download will fail. However, if I hit an Orange subdomain's registry, I will get this image from a mirror. Because fuck logic.

When we join the company, they give us a Windows laptop ("yeaah we have useless but required Orange softwares that don't run on Linux" "Yeeaaah fuck you") that have a specific VPN allowing us to use the Orange network and, in theory, you can download docker images or clone orange repositories from that network.

In practice, you can simply just go fuck yourself. Why? Because whenever you want to curl, wget or pull anything (or even pip install), your connection keeps being shut down while it waits for the response's header.

The worst part? According to my (new) boss's evasive answers, the way to fix that works with glue, sticks and the power of the Force.

WHY THE FUCK DO YOU ENFORCE US A SHITTY OS FOR DEVELOPMENT, WHEN THE TOOLS YOU SHOVE IN IT WITH A FAKE SMILE DON'T EVEN WORK, AND WE HAVE TO HACK OUR WAY TO FUCKING WORK?

Well... I once accidentally deleted a classmates entire assignment. Basically we were working together on one and we had the code in Github, I had named the repo after the module code.
He was having some weird git issues and I thought it would be easier to just delete and re-clone on his machine. You can probably see where this is going.

Me: rm -rf <DIR NAME> Enter
Him: wait, which folder did you just delete

Turns out he had the repo cloned inside another directory with the EXACT SAME NAME, which also contained his previous assignment, the only copy of it in the entire universe (it was a group project and they did it all on his laptop with no source control, which i found hilarious).
It wasnt so bad since that assignment was already submitted and graded, but a bit of a fail on both our parts.

If you are a web developer, consider using proper page titles.

Page titles are one of the most basic elements of a web page and yet websites often fail to make proper use of them.

Without a proper page title, your user does not have an accurate idea of what page is in the tab without having to open the tab, which gets tedious if many tabs are open. With a proper page title, an instant glance on the tab does suffice.

Some sites only put in their site name or something like "Search - Site Name" without including the search query in the page title, or "User profile - Site Name".

An example of this is, disappointingly, archive.org. As thankful as I am for the Archive, they could make better use of page titles to make browsing their library more convenient. While they use proper page titles on item pages (including both title and author!), they use non-descriptive titles on their 2023 search feature (downgraded from lightweight static HTML+AJAX to a JavaScript app) and user profile pages.

The user name of a profile or a search query and ideally a page number should be in the page title so a browser tab with a search can be found faster and can also be seen on social media sites that auto-generate preview cards with page titles.

Descriptive page titles also improve your search engine ranking! You surely don't want to miss out on that, do you?

!dev

I had semi-jokingly changed my username from dextel2 to nothappy, because of that one bad day.

But, it is now when I realized that I am actually NOT HAPPY, things are lately rough, I am constantly scared for no reason, I doubt my skills, I doubt myself for no reason, and top of that there's always a chance for another epileptic attack.

I tried and keep trying to distract myself from negative thoughts but the more I try the more I fail, I've become distant with my younger brother, for the record I'm very overprotective about him. I don't even know if he feels the same, as this year ends or every day passes by I feel changed from my past self (not in a good way).

Switched my first job to get another good job, turns out they don't even have any projects and I'm just a guy they are showcasing like they have ONE amateur developer and we are looking for an entire project and it did work for one client which I'm gonna deny personally because the client is not clear about the project itself, I do not care about the consequences, my heart lies in academics and I'll put my 100% in academics, shall I'm kicked.

A lot has happened in this year, but this one is/was unique and very hard to process. I've always been joyful, sarcastic, funny, you name it, but all of it has just vanished, don't know why. I'm also becoming distant from my ONLY 3 friends and parents.

Rant at least once a day.
If i fail this, i wud change my name to quietass.

College is worse than cancer.

Worse than tumor.

Worse than any (un)imaginable death or torture.

I feel dull.

I feel DUMBED DOWN.

I FEEL DUMBER AFTER 6 YEARS OF COLLEGE COMPARED TO BEFORE STARTING COLLEGE.

6 fucking years of wrecking my healthy brain in college.

Has now became unhealthy and mentally unstable.

I forgot almost EVERYTHING i knew about coding.

Because in a "COMPUTER SCIENCE" college they teach everything BUT coding.

The professors and assistants have no morals.

They are INHUMANE.

Professors are ready to walk across a fucking corpse.

If your mother gets cancer and you are unable to come to class or study, the professors dont give a FUCK, they will drop you down so you have to study for exams again instead of helping your ill mother.

Professors have NO COMPASSION.

NO DIGNITY.

They are just BRAINLESS robots.

Sentients, agents working for the matrix.

They keep reading the same script every year and call that a successful career.

IF PROFESSORS AND ASSISTANTS AT COLLEGE ACTUALLY KNEW TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL IN LIFE, THEY WOULD NOT BE PROFESSORS AND ASSISTANTS FOR THE MAJORITY (OR WHOLE) OF THEIR LIFE.

I gave my maximum effort.

I SACRIFICED MY LIFE FOR SCHOOL.

Just to end up with school spitting on my face.

I feel DUMBED down.

Robotic.

Procedural minded.

As some brainless retard who has to follow orders as if im a 6 year old who doesn't know what to do.

Like a computer.

Because of college - i have no will to live.

Because of college - i no longer have passion for coding.

Because of college - i no longer know what is my purpose in life.

Because of college - i feel like im floating in cosmos, somewhere far deep into the space, without knowing where im going, what im doing, why im doing what im doing...

I feel void inside me.

I also feel vengeance inside me.

SCHOOL HAS RUINED MY LIFE.

It made me mentally insane.

It made me mentally so sick that i had to watch head decapitation gore videos to calm myself down, so i can imagine the victims being murdered are the professors and assistants from my college.

PROFESSORS AND ASSISTANTS HAVE 0 UNDERSTANDING FOR OTHER HUMAN LIFE.

MILLIONS of people have private problems going on in their lives every day.

What if someone cant pass an exam because of private problems that's going on in their life?

What if the student is abused by a family member?

What if the student has ANY non-self destructive negative event happening to them, which they're not at fault, and can not control?

What if the student got cancer and cant study for exams, is he supposed to fail?

What if the student came home and the police knocked on his door and said "sorry for your loss, your whole family just died in car accident" and student falls into depression and cant study for exams, is he supposed to fail???

There are infinite multitude of random events this damned universe can do to a human life.

BUT PROFESSORS AND ASSISTANTS;
DO
NOT
GIVE
A
FUCK.

I feel soulless.

I feel like i signed a contract with the devil when i started college by selling him my soul.

School (when i say school, i also mean college, because its the same fucking shit under a different name) is supposed to represent "education".

Lets talk about it.

What exactly are we being "EDUCATED" in school?

To memorize pdf slides?

Memorize textbook?

Memorize notes?

Memorize formulas?

Memorize memorize memorize???

First of all, all of what we're "studying" is BULLSHIT, second of all MEMORIZING all of this means you're gonna forget 60% of it tomorrow, 80% in the next 2 days and you'll forget 100% of what you "learned" by the 7th day.

SOCIETY TOLD YOU TO MEMORIZE USELESS BULLSHIT AND TOLD YOU THAT YOU'RE BEING EDUCATED THAT WAY. YOU MUST BE FUCKING DUMB TO BELIEVE THAT.

If memorizing == education, then i do NOT want to be a part of this "education".

BEFORE starting college i coded many projects.

I self-learned everything.

6 years of college and it taught me LESS THAN ZERO.

NOT EVEN ZERO.

LESS THAN ZERO because i got dumbed down, below the underground, and had to dig myself up on the surface.

I built software for an american real estate agency and sold it for 5 figures.

I built software for 3 people from New York for another 5 figures.

I even got offers to work in local software companies without having a degree.

At internship i was given a task to finish in 2 weeks. I finished it in 3 days. They were shocked and wanted to hire me for further work.

At another internship there was 4 of us working together as a team. At the end company contacted only ME and told me i showed the best results on their list out of ALL the teams and the team members that were with me.

Ever since i had to study for disgusting college i had to stop working.

Because of college, i have no source of income for MONTHS now.

Because of college, i had several mental breakdowns.

---

To all professors and assistants:

I pray that karma ruins your life with lethal outcome, and your kids die of cancer in pain.

I just had to quit a part time programming job because I couldn't do it. I'm not really sure how I feel, there were alot of factors.

I took an internship about a year back to do some embedded C. I kicked ass and developed a system that really solved alot of problems for the company and so people started giving me "the hard back shelf problems". Like those problems that are really valuable if someone can get it working but not so important that it blocks anything day to day. Totally fair work for an intern, that is both complex and interesting.

When school started I took a part time remote role working on one of these problems. Fast forward to now (few months of remote work at school); i can't handle the stress. If I devote more time to work I fail a test. If I ace a test my work duties go neglected. On top of that my boss misses scheduled calls with me left and right, I even reminded him everyday 3 days before hand once!!!

Naturally I started feeling like I should quit. I was no longer interested in the work from a pure academic view, and emotionally hated doing it. However, since I was a good performer this place offered to interview my little brother!! Fuck, so do I choose my happiness or my brothers. It feels evil to choose myself over my brother. My brother, he's just a freshman so I know his odds are very low of getting an internship this year are low. And the place I worked at had some weight in the name so I could seriously jump start my little bros career. I do know however that if I don't quit that I will fail school, and do it while being miserable.

And so I quite my first remote job, from my first internship. I feel happy about, but also like I let someone down (them?, Me?, BROTHER?).

So I bought 2 dvd packed with old rpg games.

I didn’t know my first quest will be to get those games working.

To make my life more miserable I decided to convert those dvd to iso.

First I needed to find computer with dvd because those I use apparently don’t have dvd anymore.

Found one with windows 7 inside.
Yeah first mission complete.

Now just find dvd to iso software and burn those bastards.

I need to update date / time to be able to use internet over https.
Checked.

Started looking for the dvd to iso software. Microsoft answers giving links to bloatware with detailed instructions how to install desired things without crap. The link to download doesn’t work but at least I have the name ImgBurn.
They have website so I click on first mirror and run setup.
First fail they’re linking to bloatware that downloads another bloatware that installs some search plugin for firefox.
Uninstalling search plugin.
1 hour passed by.
Clicking last link. Success.
Now time to click it smart to omit any unwanted software and get only what I want. Reading trough install instructions and checking out not wanted checkboxes is like great quest.
Finally I have what I want and I can backup my dvd.
What a great evening.

The year was 2006. During the first half of my career, I use to work in the NOC. This was before I made my transition to software engineer. I worked on the third shift for a bank services company. The company was on a down turn. Just years earlier they just went public, and secured a deal with a huge well known bank. Eventually they entered a really bad contract with the bank and was put into a deal they couldn't deliver on. The partnership collapse and their stock plummeted. The CEO was dismissed, and a new CEO came in who wanted to "clean things up".

Anyway I entered the company about a year after this whole thing went down. The NOC was a good stepping stone for my career. They let me work as many hours as I liked. And I took advantage of it, clocking in 80 hours a week on average. They gave me the nick name "Iron Man".

Things started to turn around for the company when we were able to secure a support contract with a huge bank in the Alabama area. As the NOC we were told to handle the migration and facilitate the onboarding.

The onboarding was a mess with terrible instructions that didn't work. A bunch of software packages that crashed. And the network engineers were tips off, as they tunnel between our network and the banks was too narrow, creating an unstable connection between us and them. Oh, and there were all sorts of database corruption issues.

There was also another bank that was using an old version of our software. The sells team had been trying to get them off our old software for over a year. They refuse to move. This bank was the last one using this version, and our organization wanted to completely cut support.

One of the issue we would have is that they had an overnight batch job that had an ETA to be done by 7 AM. The job would often get stuck because this version of the software didn't know how to fail when it was caught in an undesired state. So the job hung, and since the job didn't have logging, no one could tell if it failed unless the logs stopped moving for an hour. It was a heavily manually process that was annoying to deal with. So we would kill the JVM to "speed" the job up. One day I killed the JVM but the job was still late. They told me that they appreciated the effort, but that my job was only to report the problem and not fix it.

This got me caught up in a major scandal. Basically they wanted the job to always have issues everyday. Since this was critical for them, all we needed to do was keep reporting it, and then eventually this would cause the client to have to upgrade to our new software. It was our sales team trying to play dirty. It immediately made me a menace in the company.

For the next 6 months I was constantly harassed and bullied by management. My work was nitpicked. They asked me to come into work nearly everyday, and there was a point I worked 7 days with no off days. They were trying to run me so dry that I would quit. But I never did.

On my last day at the company, I was on a critical call with a customer, and my supervisor was also on the line. My supervisor made a request that made no sense, and was impossible. I told her it wasn't possible. She then scalded me on the call in front of customers. She said "I'm your supervisor, you're just a NOC technician, you do what I say and don't talk back". It was embarrassing to be reprimanded on a call with customers. I never quite recovered from that. I could fill myself steaming with anger. It was one of the first times in my adult life that I felt I really wanted to be violent towards someone. It was such a negative feeling I quit that day at the end of my shift with no job lined up.

I walked away from the job feeling very uncertain about my future, but VERY relieved. I paid the price, basically unable to find a job until a year and a half later. And even was forced to move back in with my mother. After I left, the company still gave my a severance. Probably because of the supervisor's unprofessional conduct in front of customers, and the company probably needed to save face. The 2008 crash kept me out of work until 2009. It did give me time to work on myself, and I swore to never let a job stress me out to that degree. That job was also my last NOC job and the last job where did shift work. My next few jobs was Application Support and I eventually moved into development full time, which is what I always wanted to do.

Anyway sorry if it's a bit long, but that's my burnout story.

At school during my first Java project we had to make a simulation of a parking garage and what effects price changes would have in order to find the most optimal business model from some company.

At the project kick off.

School: "we will be checking your code for plagiarism. if you use code from the internet, even if its 2 lines you need to mention the source. otherwise you will fail this cource."

We go on to do the project.

Friend of mine who was in another class sees a group presenting a 2 days old version of my teams application. theres literaly a credits button that displays the names of the people that worked on it in a popup.

Me: mentions to a teacher that my project was stolen.

They literaly didnt even change the name and pulled the entire repository from github and handed it in.

The fucking teacher doesnt even check the code / git logs after i mentioned that the entire codebase was stolen from a public github repository.

There was an endless mountain of proof to support my claim such as our team members names hard coded in the code they handed in and about 500 commits from our accounts.

I will from now on NEVER EVER mention sources when i hand in code at school.

TLDR: I didn't & still not sure if it is..

I love bug hunting & fixing & figuring out how stuff works, but many will argue this is not even real programming..

Long version how I ended up programming:
Back in highschool, I was deciding between english and mathematics & computer science.. I filled in the form for the latter. Got a change of hearts but I already gave the extra/backup empty form to schoolmate..

Figured it's for the better because it's a hell to get a job as an english teacher/prof anyways + I dislike comunications with people + documentation (if any) is in english etc..

At the end of first year, I didn't even apply for all the exams because you had to have both programming 1&2 to pass or even be eligible to take the year again.. I figured I'd fail them, so once I actually passed both (& actually not with bad grades), I was fucked.. had to retake the year, which means I lost time + still had to pay the rent etc.. decided to drop out and return home and do the IT engineer course instead to at least have some formal education to help me find a job. Finished that without problems, I 'specialised' in network administration.
I got a job straight out of school as a web developer.. the irony.. got some conflicts with the boss and was terminated (material for another rant).

Later I sought out admin jobs, but got declined because I was overqualified and had programming experince. FML, right?

Ended up sending out mandatory job applications for IT administration & programming to not lose the bonuses & got called up to a meeting in the company I work for since then.

No qualifications for .net & MS technologies, but they liked my CV so the ended up setting up the interview anyway. I didn't know half of the technologies and concepts by proper name, but they figured I understand enough of the content to give me a try. A few years later, I got the most fucked up project they have because of my love for new thigs and trying to understand everything. It's aaaalmost bearable now.. still needs a lot of work, but I'm happy where I am. Saddly, I'm still second guessing if I'm doing a proper job as a dev, but they seem to be very ok with my work. (:

God, playing SoulSilver has made me remember an era (or two, but I wasn't alive for one and the other was my childhood) where games were actually fucking *GOOD.* Some games can be absolute home runs now on rare occasion, but if I name consoles from these periods, you can INSTANTLY tell me at least one game that is pretty universally regarded as a best-ever.

Examples and predicted responses:

-Gamecube: Too fucking many to even count. Instant answers vary immensely, but everyone who's played games on this thing have one.

-Original Xbox: Halo 2 is the one instantly on one's lips, or maybe CE for some. Also JSRF.

-Dreamcast: SA2 or Phantasy Star or JSR or...

-PS1/2: Resident Evil, Spyro, Final Fantasy, Ratchet & Clank...

-PS3: Lara Croft games, Uncharted, Infamous... (this one's right on the border, it seems)

-NES: The fucking birthplace of modernized gaming.

-Genesis: Sonic games, obviously. Some may answer with arcade titles, too.

-SNES: Mario games. Mario Paint, SMW, SMW2, SMAS, a couple like Super Metroid or Kirby's Dreamland or F-Zero may come up too.

-N64: Banjo Kazooie, F-Zero GX, Waveracer, 1080, Zelda games...

-Gameboy (all systems:) Pokemon is the instant answer.

Now, a harder one:

-Wii U? Maybe one of the Mii game things? U-less games? Not many people remember the games for this system.

-Xbox One? Halo 5, pretty much. You probably played everything else on PC.

-PS4? The PS3 lineup, but without any soul? You played pretty much everything here on PC, too.

Is there a point to this rant? Yes. Kind of.
Games used to be great, not just due to better hardware, but due to people putting some goddamn heart and soul into making games, and due to creativity stemming from working on such limited hardware. It seems the more powerful consoles (and PCs!) get, the more gaming becomes a soulless cash grab to drain cash from wallets on subpar products with paywalls every 20 feet you have to clear to get the "full experience." Gaming has become less about letting people have fun and being creative with games and more about the bottom dollar, whether that be through making games as fast and as cheap as possible with as much paid content dumped on top as possible, or the systematic erasure of archival efforts to preserve gaming history. From what I read here on devRant, that seems to be the moral of anything computer-related as well. Computers are made to slow down and fail far faster than normal via OEM bloat and shitty OSes, and are used to constantly empty one's wallets with constant licensing fees and free trials and deliberate consumer ignorance. None of it's about having fun anymore. Fun seems to no longer have a place in computing at all.

If you take anything from any of the madman-esque loosely-structured rambling i'm saying here, make it that "the enemy of creativity is the abscense of limitations... and the presence of greed." Another message i'd like to leave you with is "start having fun when making things whenever possible, as it improves not just the dev process, but user experience, too." You can't always apply this, and sometimes you can never do so, but always keep it in mind.

When Do You Stop Taking Responsibility?

Let me clarify by describing four scenarios in which you are tasked with some software development. It could be a large or small task. The fourth scenario is the one I'm interested in. The first three are just for contrast.

1. You either decide how to implement the requirements, or you're given directions or constraints you agree with. (If you hadn't been given those specific directions you probably would have done the same thing anyway.) **You feel accountable for the outcome**, such as whether it works correctly or is delivered on time. And, of course, the team feels collectively accountable. (We could call this the "happy path.")

2. You would prefer to do the work one way, but you're instructed to do it a different way, either by a manager, team lead, or team consensus. You disagree with the approach, but you're not a stubborn know-it-all. You understand that their way is valid, or you don't fully understand it but you trust that someone else does. You're probably going to learn something. **You feel accountable for the outcome** in a normal, non-blaming sort of way.

3. You're instructed to do something so horribly wrong that it's guaranteed to fail badly. You're in a position to refuse or push back, and you do.

4. You're given instructions that you know are bad, you raise your objections, and then you follow them anyway. It could be a really awful technical approach, use of copy-pasted code, the wrong tools, wrong library, no unit testing, or anything similar. The negative consequences you expect could include technical failure, technical debt, or significant delays. **You do not feel accountable for the outcome.** If it doesn't work, takes too long, or the users hate it, you expect the individual(s) who gave you instructions to take full responsibility. It's not that you want to point fingers, but you will if it comes to that.

---

That fourth scenario could provoke all sorts of reactions. I'm interested in it for what you might call research purposes.

The final outcome is irrelevant. If it failed, whether someone else ultimately took responsibility or you were blamed is irrelevant. That it is the opposite of team accountability is obvious and also irrelevant.

Here is the question (finally!)

Have you experienced scenario number four, in which you develop software (big as an application, small as a class or method) in a way you believe to be so incorrect that it will have consequences, because someone required you to do so, and you complied *with the expectation that they, not you, would be accountable for the outcome?*

Emphasis is not on the outcome or who was held accountable, but on whether you *felt* accountable when you developed the software.

If you just want to answer yes or no, or "yes, several times," that's great. If you'd like to describe the scenario with any amount of detail, that's great too. If it's something you'd rather not share publicly you can contact me privately - my profile name at gmail.com.

The point is not judgment. I'll go first. My answer is yes, I have experienced scenario #4. For example, I've been told to copy/paste/edit code which I know will be incomprehensible, unmaintainable, buggy, and give future developers nightmares. I've had to build features I know users will hate. Sometimes I've been wrong. I usually raised objections or shared concerns with the team. Sometimes the environment made that impractical. If the problems persisted I looked for other work. But the point is that sometimes I did what I was told, and I felt that if it went horribly wrong I could say, "Yes, I understand, but this was not my decision." *I did not feel accountable.*.

I plan on writing more about this, but I'd like to start by gathering some perspective and understanding beyond just my own experience.

Thanks

- I love blowing my mind. Even if it is the most confusing thing. Things like security mechanisms, neurons' behaviors, mathematics (even tho I hate it when I fail lol), electronics, medical terminology and chemistry.
- I love collecting rare coins, personally never-seen stones and put them into my collection. I love to be a designer. Not only on my laptop. I have a book shelf and within that book shelf I put stones that create the yin yang sign while pushing the books to two sides. That makes them look like they are levitating. I have stones (including obsidian) that create a triangle and a knife hanging down the wall of my room.
- I love visiting touristic, historic, naturally-beautiful but also non-touristic (non-touristic? yes. by that I mean visiting e.g. the areas of touristic cities which are dangerous, because you can easily fall down off of a slippery ground and take serious injuries) places around the globe, talk to complete strangers in public (I am trying to be an extrovert), take pictures with my camera and collecting antiquities.
- I love taking risks (no. I don't play any poker games etc on the internet) without trying to put other people in risk. Driving insanely with whatever I have. Car, bike, you name it.
- I love reading books. Books that are about human psychology, fantasy novels and books about programming languages.
- I love to cook (I am at the beginning).
- I love to use the konMari method of tidying up my room.
- I love plants.
- I love having everything in my room tidied up (even if I am too busy with other stuff and skip this cleaning process for a week upto a month sometimes. Sorry, room.).
- I love doing sports. But mostly sport that I have never tried before. This can be, because of my greedy wish for an adrenaline kick. That led me into taking a balloon flight at 4 am (sunrise) and to paragliding at sunset above Mediterranean sea btw. (I am normally afraid of flying, but paragliding was awesome).
- I love swimming. Like, you cannot pull me out of the sea for a minimum of 2 hours, if it is not important.
- I love laying above the sea water and let the sea carry me to somewhere else.
- I love being alone. I love the silence. I love to be free in my thoughts.
- I love watching the sunset, the light that shines through the forest, the moonlight and the stars at night.
- I love dreaming. No, like, lucid dreaming for example.
- I love being open to any opinions.
- I love to learn about other people's views about the world and their religion.
- I love pets and would do anything to keep them alive when they are ill. It hurts my heart seeing them like this.
- I love watching demonic "A: Holy shit! Did you see this thing, too?! B: Yes!" YouTube videos just for the fun of it, but I hate horror movies and games.
- I love trying out new things. The creation of music and video for example.
- I love to give my hair and beard a shape, if I am too lazy to go to the barbershop lol. By that I don't mean just going to the barbershop, but taking an electric razor and cutting my hair myself even if I get bad results from time to time that can be corrected by letting any family member tell me in which area of of my head the hair problem is.
- I don't like disco clubs.
- I don't like toxic people even though I can be a quite toxic person myself without realizing it. If I appear toxic to you, inform me about it. Having so much testosterone in that moment, can make me do things that I don't want to do.
- I don't like drugs even tho I have to admit that I am trying a few from time to time (maybe 6 months in-between) to have a dopamine kick. I am not an addict.
- I hate myself for things that I did in the past.
- I used to watch MMA videos etc.
- I used to use a telescope, but I can't find it anymore.
- I used to have a microscope, but I can't find it anywhere and besides of that the seller did literally piss in it before selling it to me many years ago. Don't want to touch it tbh.
- I used to play games, but I don't enjoy games anymore. That makes me feel sad.
- I miss the old moments of my life.

In conclusion:
I like how things went and go so far. It changed me so much. It made me a good and a bad person. I became more open and confident, but it also particularly made me a leader who can say "fuck off" in a bad way to his family. I would like to undo this particular part of me.

Linux, you never fail to amaze me!

Started using Arch based Manjaro with xfce de couple of months ago. Everything was mostly fine even though I've never used anything that was based on Arch but it had a learning curve.
Couple of weeks ago I couldn't update my packages, I thought it would fix it by itself but I was wrong as you already probably know.
So yesterday I tried to manually fix it. Famous last words. After a lot of googling, trying some terminal commands - and failing, I see a warning labek on some text on the arch wiki - sudo pacman -Syi --force. I said fuck it and did it. Let's see if it works, I try to install a package, I mistype the name, press backspace - it puts a space instead of deleting?!?!?
I tried restarting, googling - nothing...
Guess I'll switch back to Debian based OSes.

Disclamer: I don't want to give out what app I am talking about, so all names will be random to just represent the nonsense and my frustration.

So I was working with that app's API....
To begin with, some retrieved Objects have collection (iterable structure) of "Thing" objects, called "Things". But... there can be max one element in that particular collection!
Ok... I get it... I might exaggerate a bit... fine, let it be.
I had to mention it for the further part, and also got to mention that "Thing" objects are globally available and predefined, and Objects can only choose one, unused "Thing".

To the point.
Someone thought it would be good to separate representation of one structure into two classes.

We have collection of "A" objects ("As"), which have "Name", "Things" and other, mostly GUI/config related attributes.
Collection "Bs", of "B" objects, they have "Name" and rather lower-level attrs.
The "As" and their attributes can be set in the GUI, but the list where you do it is named "List of Bs" and vice versa.
Interesting, huh?

I had to use both "A" and "B" definition for given name, so I tried to map it... and things gone South.

Collecions have "Get" method with name as an argument.
But it turns out that while the "A" use its GUI name all the time, "B" uses either name that can be found in "As" or, if not all "Thing" objects are used, the "Thing" names.

Example:
global "Things" = "t0", "t1"

"As" = "a0"("t0"), "a1"("t1") -> "Bs" == "a0", "a1"
"As" = "a0"("t0"), "a1"() -> "Bs" == "a0", "t1"
"As" = "a0"(), "a1"() -> "Bs" == "t0", "t1"

That means if at least one of "A" objects have empty "Things", then the mapping will fail.

Only solution is that the app works only partially when any of "A"'s "Things" is empty, so I might raise error too, but I have to provide solution that will work even in the cases when the app don't care... so... not gonna happen.

I'll get a dog and name it bug. I'll promise that I can take care of it and then fail like a boss.

grrrr

last week my laptop died out of nowhere. it stopped recognizing the one drive in it. I lost a bunch of files, code. evidently ssds fail out of nowhere unlike hdds which slow down and error all the time before ultimate failure

my warranty for this 4k$ laptop expires in 12 months and this was month 13. nice. I don't like warranties anyway, and the site said they would replace things with "comparable hardware, sometimes refurbished" wtf no thanks

so I found some guides of people upgrading the drive in this laptop. seemed easy enough, unlike older laptops from back when I was in school where you had to take out 12 things first to get to anything
unfortunately I needed a specific screwdriver. I walked several miles to the nearby hardware store thinking they would have said screwdriver. the old guy in the basement said there was a kit where it started from t4 (I needed t5), but he had just sold out his last one. I checked their online store with a friend for a while on my way back home and we kept finding torx screws but the wrong sizes. fuck.
he said screwdrivers this small are only used for electronics, asked if there's any other hardware stores and there aren't near me
however it occurred to me this strip mall has a lot of suspicious computer stores on it. so I walked back up the street looking for one.
found one with a suspicious poster, saying it was an internet cafe but the last point on their poster said they do repairs. walked in. nobody is in there, suspiciously 2 desks with old computers all empty, then you go forward in this dark cave, with plastic wrapped implements on the walls, you finally find a glass shield and behind it was a meek Asian man that took me a moment to notice
I asked him if he had t5
he handed me a plastic baggy full of tiny screwdrivers, for me to take one
I asked if they're t5
the shape looked right, but I can't tell the size
I took one out and tried to find size marking, but nothing
he didn't seem to know what I was asking when I asked about its size
he said if it's wrong I can come back and trade what I took for another. lol
I asked him if I can buy it, since that wasn't evident to me due to how sus this random bag of screws is being thwarted on me lmao
he said 5$ cash
I gave him a fiver
this sus shop literally avoiding taxes lmao

walked back home, ate food cuz starving, tried the screw and FUCK, it's too big. put laptop in a bag and hauled ass fast, checked on maps the store I got this from closes in a few minutes so I really wanted to make it there because what if the receptionist changes and they don't know I took this screw. I got no receipt

got there right before closing, put my laptop down, said it was too big. he used a few screws until he found one that fit, said I could try it and I did (so scam aware!). bingo bango. now I got a screwdriver that fits the laptop.

walked home, sat down and took apart the laptop. been a few years since I did so. the hardware inside looks entirely unrecognizable to me. started cycling through YouTube videos of laptops of the same name as mine, but their insides don't look like mine. is this ram? is this the NVMe? what the fuck is anything?
finally found a video guide where the guy was quite informative. not the same laptop but he's informative enough I figure it out. ram and drives are so different and weird now. took parts out, put them back in, rebuilt laptop, tried to boot, same problem. jiggling parts like this works with desktops often, guess not with a failed NVMe

so I'm screwed. get on Newegg and bought a new NVMe. should arrive in 3 days via Purolator

yesterday was day 3. it was at a sort facility near me, then out on delivery, but nobody ever came. then it went back to sorting. now it's out on delivery again. I'm sitting here thinking that's a little weird, wasn't Purolator the delivery company that had me go 2 hours outside of town to pick up a 15lb desktop case once?

... and then I looked up Reddit comments... then reviews on the purolator facility it's at... I am screwed. last time iirc they were out for delivery for 3 days, never tried delivery, then on the last day at the end of day they stated they attempted delivery but no go. that was bullshit. then it ended up at that facility. which takes 2 hours to fucking reach.
the reviews are so bad... the facility has 1.2 star reviews with thousands of them. they won't leave even a stub, then seem to not know where your package is at the facility, or they deny you have the right to pick it up despite ample IDs, or someone ELSE picks it up and it's not there. they also ship your package back after 5 days, so if they don't leave a note and you miss it tough luck...

fucking hell
also rumours that they just hire "contractors" in normal cars to drop off packages? wat? lol
AND EVERY REVIEW HAS A BOT COMMENT. THEIR SUPPORT IS JUST A CHATBOT

I thought this was just a small hiccup
I think I might not have a drive for weeks now
fucking hell
now I'm sitting on my porch

nothing new, just another rant about php...
php, PHP, Php, whatever is written, wherever is piled, I hate this thing, in every stack.

stuff that works only according how php itself is compiled, globals superglobals and turbo-globals everywhere, == is not transitive, comparisons are non-deterministic, ?: is freaking left associative, utility functions that returns sometimes -1, sometimes null, sometimes are void, each with different style of usage and naming, lowercase/under_score/camelCase/PascalCase, numbers are 32bit on 32bit cpus and 64bit on 64bit cpus, a ton of silent failing stuff that doesn't warn you, references are actually aliases, nothing has a determined type except references, abuse of mega-global static vars and funcs, you can cast to int in a language where int doesn't even exists, 25236 ways to import/require/include for every different subcase, @ operator, :: parsed to T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM for no reason in stack traces, you don't know who can throw stuff, fatal errors are sometimes catchable according to nobody knows, closed-over vars are passed as functions unless you use &, functions calls that don't match args signature don't fail, classes are not object and you can refer them only by string name, builtin underlying types cannot be wrapped, subclasses can't override parents' private methods, no overload for equality or ordering, -1 is a valid index for array and doesn't fail, funcs are not data nor objects when clojures instead are objects, there's no way to distinguish between a random string and a function 'reference', php.ini, documentation with comments and flame wars on the side, becomes case sensitive/insensitive according to the filesystem when line break instead is determined according to php.ini, it's freaking sloooooow...

enough. i'm tired of this crap.
it's almost weekend! 🍻

Things that I learned today (15-07-20):
Suppose you have a hosted zone (both private and public) i.e. y.test.com. in AWS r53. and you created r53 DNS record in the public host zone sample1.y.test.com and if you will try to reach this DNS from ec2 you will not be able to. it will give you an error that DNS does not exist but out of ec2, it will work.
To make it work, you have to create the same record in a private hosted zone. Then only you can connect from within an EC2 instance.
So apparently EC2 always looks for the DNS for your registered name server in private hosted zone.

There should be a fail-safe, if it's not in the private hosted zone, it should look in public as well. (idk)

Maybe it was silly of me to not knowing this in the first place. ( wasted good amount of time)

What is everyone's opinion on companies/organisations 'too big to fail'...?

I was just pondering on how 'just Google it' has become so 'natural' as a way of saying search the Internet. The more I think about it, the less I like it.

I know the chances of them failing/crumbling are neary zero (hence the name) but if an org, Ie Alphabet, made some shit decisions and bankrupted their company, what would happen then? Any ideas? I don't mean in terms of social fallout, economic etc.

I mean in terms of network infrastructure, them being such a central part of 'the web', all their Dns services, their backbone links, Google drive, Google fiber etc. What would happen to all user data? Just be destroyed?

I've never 'seen' a large tech company collapse, but just wander as to how that process would work for such a huge organisation, and the literal mountains of data they have which will need destroying or relocating.

Inb4 watch Mr robot hurrr

VMware 6.5 web GUI programmer fail. Probably forgot to access a specific name property of the object.

I like Navicat, but why does it need to be so hard to edit the name of an entity? I'm clicking, double-clicking, triple-clicking. Most of the times nothing happens, but occassianally it suddenly works. I fail to see a pattern for when it works? Anyone have an idea how I'm supposed to talk Navicat into letting me edit entity names?