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Search - "not quite convinced"
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Its that time of the morning again where I get nothing done and moan about the past ... thats right its practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!
Today I'd like to tell you the story of "i". Interesting about "I" is that he was actually a colleague of yesterdays nominee "G" (and was present at the "java interface" video call, and agreed with G!): https://devrant.com/rants/1152317/...
"I" was the spearhead of a project to end all projects in that company. It was suppose to be a cross-platform thing but ended up only working for iOS. It was actually quite similar to this: https://jasonette.com/ (so similar i'm convinced G / I were part of this but I can't find their github ID's in it).
To briefly explain the above + what they built ... this is the worst piece of shit you can imagine ... and thats a pretty strong statement looking back at the rest of this series so far!
"I" thought this would solve all of our problems of having to build similar-ish apps for multiple customers by letting us re-use more code / UI across apps. His main solution, was every developers favourite part of writing code. I mean how often do you sit back and say:
"God damn I wish more of this development revolved around passing strings back and forth. Screw autocomplete, enums and typed classes / variables, I want more code / variables inside strings in this library!"
Yes thats right, the main part of this bullshittery was putting your entire app, into JSON, into a string and downloading it over http ... what could possibly go wrong!
Some of my issues were:
- Everything was a string, meaning we had no autocomplete. Every type and property had to be remembered and spelled perfectly.
- Everything was a string so we had no way to cmd + click / ctrl + click something to see somethings definition.
- Everything was a string so any business logic methods had to be remembered, all possible overloaded versions, no hints at param types no nothing.
- There was no specific tooling for any of this, it was literally open up xcode, create a json file and start writing strings.
- We couldn't use any of the native UI builders ... cause strings!
- We couldn't use any of the native UI layout constructs and we had to use these god awful custom layout managers, with a weird CSS feel to them.
What angered me a lot was their insistence that "You can download a new app over http and it will update instantly" ... except you can't because you can't download new business logic only UI. So its a new app, but must do 100% exactly the same thing as before.
His other achievements include:
- Deciding he didn't like apple's viewController and navigationBar classes and built his own, which was great when iOS 7 was released (changed the UI to allow drawing under the status bar) and we had no access to any of apples new code or methods, meaning everything had to be re-built from scratch.
- On my first week, my manager noticed he fucked up the login error handling on the app I was taking over. He noticed this as I was about to leave for the evening. I stayed so we could call him (he was in an earlier timezone). Rather than deal with his fucked up, he convinced the manager it would be a "great learning experience" for me to do it ... and stay in late ... while he goes home early.
- He once argued with me in front of the CEO, that his frankenstein cross-platform stuff was the right choice and that my way of using apples storyboards (and well thought out code) wasn't appropriate. So I challenged him to prove it, we got 2 clients who needed similar apps, we each did it our own way. He went 8 man weeks over, I came in 2 days under and his got slated in the app store for poor performance / issues. #result.
But rather than let it die he practically sucked off the CEO to let him improve the cross platform tooling instead.
... in that office you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a retard.
Having had to spend a lot more time working with him and more closely than most of the other nominees, at a minimum "I" is on the top of my list for needing a good punch in the face. Not for being an idiot (which he is), not for ruining so much (which he did), but for just being such an arrogant bastard about it all, despite constant failure.
Will "I" make it to most incompetent? Theres some pretty stiff competition so far
Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!6 -
Our current designer is convinced that 00FF44 bright green fits well with the rest of our soft purple/blue color scheme.
I am not a designer, but have worked in a color laboratory, so I've tried time and time again to explain CIE LAB color space, and how at least HCL is a good way to pick & group colors into palettes by using 2-3 luminances for equidistant hues while keeping chroma constant.
I've tried to tell him that the bright green almost physically makes my eyes bleed, because humans are quite sensitive to greens.
He just keeps using the phrase "but it makes the buttons pop nicely".
I just want to pop his skull open with my keyboard. 😫11 -
So as quite some people know on here, I am strongly against closed source software and have a very strong distrust in it as well.
So next to some principles (and believes etc etc etc) there is one specifc 'event' which triggered the distrust in CSS (No not Cascading Style sheet, I mean Closed Source Software :P). So hereby the story about what happened.
I think it was about 5 years ago when a guy joined my programming class (I wasn't in uni although I studied but for the sake of clarity, lets just call it uni for now (also, that makes me feel smarter so why the fuck not!)) in uni. He knew a shitload about programming for his age but he was convinced that he was always right. (that aside)
Anyways, at some point we had to work in groups on this project (groups for specific tasks) and he chose (he loved it, we hated it, he had the final say) Trello for 'project management'. He gave everyone (I was running Windows for a little bit at that moment because the project was in C# and the Snowden leaks had not arrived yet so I was not extremely uncomfortable with using Windows, just a lot) this addon program thingy he created for Trello which would make usage easier. I asked if it was open source, he replied with 'No, because this is my project.' and although I did understand that entirely, I didn't feel comfy using it because of it's closed source nature. Everyone declared me paranoid and he was annoyed as hell but I just kept refusing to use it and just used the web interface.
*skips to 2 years later*
I met that guy again at the train station at a random day! Had the usual 'how are you and what's up after a few years' talk with him and then he told me something that changed my view on closed source software for most probably the rest of my life.
"Hey by the way, do you remember that project of a few years back where you didn't want to use my software because of your 'closed-sourceness paranoia'? I just wanted to say that I actually had some kind of backdooring feature build in which (I am not going to say what) allowed me to (although I didn't use it) look at/do certain things with the 'infected' computers. I really wanted to say that I find it funny how you, the only one who didn't give in to my/the peer pressure, were the only one who wasn't affected by my 'backdoor' at that moment! Also your standards towards the use of closed source software probably played a big part probably. I find that pretty cool actually!"
Although I cannot confirm what he said, he was exactly the type of guy who would do this IMO (and not only IMO I think).
So yeah, that's one of the reasons AND the story behind a big part of why I don't trust closed source software :).5 -
Insecure... My laptop disk is encrypted, but I'm using a fairly weak password. 🤔
Oh, you mean psychological.
Working at a startup in crisis time. Might lose my job if the company goes under.
I'm a Tech lead, Senior Backender, DB admin, Debugger, Solutions Architect, PR reviewer.
In practice, that means zero portfolio. Truth be told, I can sniff out issues with your code, but can't code features for shit. I really just don't have the patience to actually BUILD things.
I'm pretty much the town fool who angrily yells at managers for being dumb, rolls his eyes when he finds hacky code, then disappears into his cave to repair and refactor the mess other people made.
I totally suck at interviews, unless the interviewer really loves comparing Haskell's & Rust's type systems, or something equally useless.
I'm grumpy, hedonistic and brutally straight forward. Some coworkers call me "refreshing" and "direct but reasonable", others "barely tolerable" or even "fundamentally unlikable".
I'm not sure if they actually mean it, or are just messing with me, but by noon I'm either too deep into code, or too much under influence of cognac & LSD, wearing too little clothing, having interesting conversations WITH instead of AT the coffee machine, to still care about what other humans think.
There have been moments where I coded for 72 hours straight to fix a severe issue, and I would take a bullet to save this company from going under... But there have also been days where I called my boss a "A malicious tumor, slowly infecting all departments and draining the life out of the company with his cancerous ideas" — to his face.
I count myself lucky to still have a very well paying job, where many others are struggling to pay bills or have lost their income completely.
But I realize I'm really not that easy to work with... Over time, I've recruited a team of compatible psychopaths and misfits, from a Ukranian ex-military explosives expert & brilliant DB admin to a Nigerian crossfitting gay autist devops weeb, to a tiny alcoholic French machine learning fanatic, to the paranoid "how much keef is there in my beard" architecture lead who is convinced covid-19 is linked to the disappearance of MH370 and looks like he bathes in pig manure.
So... I would really hate to ever have to look for a new employer.
I would really hate to ever lose my protective human meat shield... I mean, my "team".
I feel like, despite having worked to get my Karma deep into the red by calling people all kinds of rude things, things are really quite sweet for me.
I'm fucking terrified that this peak could be temporary, that there's a giant ravine waiting for me, to remind me that life is a ruthless bitch and that all the good things were totally undeserved.
Ah well, might as well stay in character...
*taunts fate with a raised middlefinger*13 -
I built a feature. I asked questions for days. Nobody helped. I built it anyway, and while I'm not sure it's quite right, it works.
During a code review, I asked for clarification on who the fuck it's for. Simple fucking question. Didn't get an answer. I did get the same crap response twice, though. It's great because it both doesn't answer my question and makes things worse.
Let's refer to this as "branding." Here we go!
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Root: "Should this be changed to blue? I'm not sure who the end-user is."
TC: "should be purple, then call it something more convenient" (...what?)
Root: "Better phrasing: if we use the feature, it should match our colors and be blue. If customers use it, it should match their colors and be red. It shouldn't be both. I looked through everything again, and i'm convinced that it's only for us, so it should be blue so it matches everything."
TC: "this should be purple, and then call it something [sic] red" (...what!? also: lolcopypaste)
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But like, that's wrong in every single way. It's internal, not external. Doing both makes it confusing. Doing both and calling it external is fucking stupid. Did she even read the PR? or any of my questions? ugh.
I swear, it's like arguing with a boulder and expecting it to listen. An ugly, oversized boulder that comically resembles Jabba the Hutt. No joke.
Whatever, it can be purple. Later, if someone complains that it's confusing, I'll just link them to the damned PR. Then again, almost everything here is confusing AF, so I doubt anyone will actually notice.
Screw this place. So glad I'm on my way out.rant thundercunt the ugly boulder responds jabba the hutt root asks questions root has a code review6 -
I built a tracking suite for our fleet of printers quite some time ago. Once a day, "bizteam" (aka sales) gets an alert detailing how many printers are in critical need of attention (out of paper, mechanical error, etc.), and how many of them are flat-out offline. They don't seem to care. I mean they do, I think? but. the offline percentage hasn't changed much in the past month or two.
These printers constitute a primary part of our business model and... screw it. they're goddamn important, okay?
A full 16% of our printers are OFFLINE. Most of those HAVE BEEN OFFLINE FOR 3 FUCKING MONTHS.
3% of our printers have been online BUT OUT OF PAPER FOR OVER A MONTH.
and what really baffles me...
We've convinced a few of these merchants to actually plug in their goddamn printers. (and yes, they actually *paid* for these things, and they're absolutely not cheap.) Some of those were previously both offline AND out of paper, yet after being plugged in, they're *STILL* OUT OF PAPER?! What the crap, people! It's a printer! it's not difficult! It's the same as every other fucking printer you have! and it's probably the same goddamn fucking model!
Did AlexDeLarge skullfuck your brain into mush? FIX YOUR SHIT!12 -
So...my first experience with Scrum. How many fucking energy and productivity draining meetings can you squeeze in to two weeks?!!!! Agile? Hahaha. Don't get me started! Leave me alone and let me get some work done!4
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A friend saw me on stack overflow and said 'wow, 4,000 points - you must do this all day.' I explained that I just do it to reinforce my understanding and not really for points(although those are useful for bounties). I showed them an account with 22k and tried to show how one might choose questions for maximum points vs quick solves for noobs etc. I write overly thorough answers to try and pin-point the blind spot as opposed to just fixing other people's code. It's not often rewarded by points. My friend - conspiracist - was convinced that the 20+k accounts were cheating the system.
At my old work we had a stack overflow account just for asking embarrassing questions that you didn't want on the company record. Silly, I know. Occasionally some of the guys would use it to have fake arguments or just cause trouble for fun / vote each other's stuff up.
So - I reached into 1Password and signed into that account and showed him that you could essentially vote up your answers but that it's not likely how people get points. I voted up my last 5 personal answers as an example and made some comment like 'that is right.' And that was that. Closed the computer. The next day my account was suspended and I was reprimanded for sockpuppeting. So, - in case you think you can get away with cheap tricks - you can't, which is nice to know - but after reading the email - my face was red for hours. How embarrassing! Not quite as bad as that time I got caught stealing a G.I. Joe action figure at the mall...2 -
It's my end of probation and I just got demoted, from originally "Senior dev" to "dev".
My manager found it a bit difficult to tell me but funny enough, I am completely fine with it apart from the little dent on my pay check. Let me talk about the bad first: money. I believe I have been on the lower end of the market pay range anyways so this step-back gives me about 5% cut, which is acceptable and fair enough.
And the good? Quite a bit. When I got this job offer 6 months ago, it was when everything literally went to shit. I was upset with a somehow not so smart but stubborn tech lead and I desperately wanted to quit. Then I got the offer, which even after 2 interviews I still didn't recall it was a job ads for "technical lead". The manager thought I was not there yet but wanted to keep me as a senior dev. Then, this pandemic almost took away this job. My manager brought my case to the CEO and convinced him to keep me, by saying a lot of good things about me (which I think might not be true for the tech side...)
Throughout the whole 6 months I have been working remotely from home. WFH is not new to me, just this time it's very challenging as I was starting a new job. I have been struggling to keep my pace. All people in the team are nice. However if I don't reach out, no one would notice I need help. And with zero knowledge for this job, I got stuck with "I don't know what I don't know". This ranges from company culture, practice, new tech.. everything. So, that's how this 6 months feels long, but also short.
In our review meeting I think my manager finally realise this. Otherwise he would have gone for the "terminate employment" option. Taking away the "senior" title also takes away the expectation of "I should know XYZ", which I don't. I told him I am kinda happy with it because this sets me up for a more comfortable position to catch my breathe. He told me he noticed my improvement along the way. I told him yes I have been putting in efforts but just given the situation it's not as quick as anyone would expect. We're on the same page now.
So compared to my previous job, I got paid less. But in return, I get many more opportunities to expose myself to new tech. I get a good team who are respectful and open-minded. This is exactly what I was looking for and the drive for me to quit my previous job.
Not to mention I got a reality check. This is also an indicator for me starting to become an imposter, which is the thing I despise most in the industry. I don't want people to value me for how many years I have got in my career. I want to prove myself by what I am capable of. If I'm not there, I should and will get there.
And the last thing which I'm not very keen but it's 100% worth mentioning, is that my manager said I should aim for taking the "senior" role back. He said the salary raise is waiting when I get there. But... Let me just take my time.4 -
My internship is about to end in two months. I was under the impression that I'll start looking for a job towards mid August and then decide what to do. I didn't expect my company to offer me a position so early before my internship ended.
Initially I had liked the place. The work was pretty relaxed and I had quite a bit of freedom. Soon enough, I proved my worth and my team started respecting my opinions and suggestions. They even consulted me on multiple occasions.
The first thing I noticed on the downside was the company, despite being resourceful enough and having a decent turnover and important clients, was quite stingy in terms of employee welfare. There was no coffee. There was machine but you had to buy the capsule for yourself. And that sucks. I know I don't need to say more but the other problems were there was no enterprise subscription (or any subscription) to PhpStorm even though our team handled so many PHP projects. I know IDEs are personal preferences but not having any professional IDEs is not something to let slide. The lead dev uses NetBeans (and not because he loved it or anything). Even though I worked on WebDev and front end, I had no option to ask for a second screen. I had one display apart from my laptop. Usually most companies in Paris provides food tickets for internships and this company did not even give me that. And worst of all, there wasn't really anyone I looked up to. As much as I enjoy responsibilities and all, I don't think I should be in an environment where I have nothing much to learn from my seniors. For some fucked sense of security and certainty, I was willing to overlook all this when they offered me a position. But I recently had my interview and the regional manager, a fuck face who still makes me wonder how he reached his position, made a proposal for some quite a small amount of salary. What infuriated more than his justifications was his attitude itself. There was absolutely no respect whatsoever. It was more like "We'll give you this, I think this is more than enough for you. Take it or do whatever you want". I asked for more and he didn't even bother negotiating. I declined the offer.
Now this would have solved all the issues. But my manager and my lead dev like me a lot. Both of them are pretty nice people. They both were bothered with the fact that I had turned down the offer. My manager even agreed that the offer was too low and had already given me tips to help me negotiate. But after I turned down the offer, she went and discussed the issue with the regional manager and he offered me a new proposal. This time it was decent but still under my expectations. I'm pretty sure I can do better elsewhere. I said I need time to think about it. I get multiple advises from people to take it atleast so that I get my visa converted to a work permit. For some reason, I want to take the risk and say no. And find something else. But today my lead dev called me aside and asked me if was going to say no. He really tried to influence me by telling me a lot of good things about me and telling me about the number of different projects we're going to start next month and all that. Even though I'm fully convinced that I don't want to work here, just the sheer act of saying no to these two people I respect is sooo fucking difficult for me that I can already imagine me working here for the next one year. The worst part is I can clearly classify their words and sentences into stuff they say to canvass me, stuff they're bullshitting about and flattery just to make me stay. Despite knowing I'm being taken advantage of, some fucked up module in my head wouldn't stop guilt tripping me. I don't know what to do. If I only I could find a really better job.
Pardon the grammatical errors if any. I'm just venting out and my thoughts branch in 500 different ways simultaneously.5 -
We have the funniest and weirdest conversations during lunch, most of them not dev related. Have been thinking about ranting them for a while now because they are just good fun.
The following one brought a bit of a discussion so It convinced me to post it because i would like to hear all of your opinions about this one:
Imagine that one day you come home and there is a (deep) clone of yourself having sex with your wife, what would you do?
We got divided into 3 groups mostly.
Group one would send him away and let him life his own life.
Group two would make use of the fact that there are 2 of them.
Group three would murder him, the explanation Why Was quite interesting, because it was the first instinct of them, it would also have been from the clone, that's why that had to.
Again I would like to hear what you all would do :)
Maybe if this one does okay I will post more stories11 -
Am I the only developer in existence who's ever dealt with Git on Windows? What a colossal train wreck.
1. Authentication. Since there is no ssh key/git url support on Windows, you have to retype your git credentials Every Stinking Time you push. I thought Git Credential Manager was supposed to save your credentials? And this was impossible over SSH (see below). The previous developer had used an http git URL with his username and password baked in for authentication. I thought that was a horrific idea so I eventually figured out how to use a Bitbucket App password.
2. Permissions errors
In order to commit and push updates, I have to run Git for Windows as Administrator.
3. No SSH for easy git access
Here's where I confess that this is a Windows Server machine running as some form of production. Please don't slaughter me! I am not the server admin.
So, I convinced the server guy to find and install some sort of ssh service for Windows just for the off times we have to make a hot fix in production. (Don't ask, but more common than it should be.)
Sadly, this ssh access is totally useless as the git colors are all messed up, the line wrap length and window size are just weird (seems about 60 characters wide by 25 lines tall) and worse of all I can't commit/push in git via ssh because Permissions. Extremely aggravating.
4. Git on Windows hangs open and locks the index file
Finally, we manage to have Git for Windows hang quite frequently and lock the git index file, meaning that we can't do anything in git (commit, push, pull) without manually quitting these processes from task manager, then browsing to the directory and deleting the .git/index.lock file.
Putting this all together, here's the process for a pull on this production server:
Launch a VNC session to the server. Close multiple popups from different services. Ask Windows to please not "restart to install updates". Launch git for Windows. Run a git pull. If the commits to be pulled involve deleting files, the pull will fail with a permissions error. Realize you forgot to launch as Administrator. Depending on how many files were deleted in the last update, you may need to quit the application and force close the process rather than answer "n" for every "would you like to try again?" file. Relaunch Git as Administrator. Run Git pull. Finally everything works.
At this point, I'd be grateful for any tips, appreciate any sympathy, and understand any hatred. Windows Server is bad. Git on Windows is bad.10 -
"Delete all code!" That should be the mantra!
Was watching some stuff from destroyallsoftware.com. Not entirely convinced. So I should cook up my own shit.
So here is how the argument goes:
There's quite some negativity in the term "legacy" software. Partly it may be the envy to software that runs on actual machines and is not that phantasm, that perfect first lines on a greenfield project until it gets messed up as it has to put up with all the real world messiness. But the negativity it deserves is actually for the code that we cannot get rid of. This ugly class or function that soaked all the complexity and functionality so it defies any positive change. And always when it appears on your screen, it irks you, enrages you, makes you punch the screen, because you can almost feel the distaste physically. - *That* is the definition of "legacy" in its true negativity. No software should be like that. On the contrary. Every line should be replaceable, dispensable, disposable. At the verge to deletable. Because you know: the best code is no code.
This is where my hatred of code could get productive: Delete all the wretched, loathsome stuff and replace it, with something that just sucks less and can be thrown away any time. Don't expect beauty or perfect design. It'll never finish.3 -
This is a rant about the passion of programming and building in the business world (AKA corporate/startup world)
I speak for myself and I believe many programmers out there who set out on their journey into the world of programming by a certain interest kindled some time when they first wrote their first line of code. We innocently eager, and dream of working for large fancy companies and start making money while doing the thing we love doing the most.
And then... reality hits. We find that most companies are basically just the same thing. Our supposedly creative and mind-challenging passion is now turned into mundane boring repetitive tasks and dealing with all kinds of bazaar demands and requirements. You suddenly go from wanting to change the world to "please move this to left by 10 px". And from experience that drives people to the extent of hating their jobs, and hating the very thing they were once so very infatuated with.
One narrative I see being pushed down the throats of developers (especially fresh young eager developers with no experience) mostly by business people/owners is "WORK FOR PASSION!". I personally heard one CEO say things like "It's not just about a salary at the end of the month. IT IS ABOUT A MISSION. IT IS ABOUT A VISION"...bla...bla...bla. Or "We don't work for money we work for passion". Yeah good luck keeping your business afloat on passion.
What irritates me the most about this, is that it is working. People today are convinced that doing shit jobs for these people are all about passion. But no one wants to stop for a second and think that maybe if people are passionate about something, even if that thing is in the field in which they work, they're not passionate about working for someone else doing something they hate? If I am really working for "passion" why don't I just quit and go work on something that I am ACTUALLY passionate about? Something that brings me joy not dread? It's a simple question but it's baffling to me why no one thinks about it. To me personally, jobs are just that; jobs. It's something to make a living and that's it. I don't give a fuck if you think you're building the next "innovative", "disruptive", "shitluptive" thing :D. Unfortunately that is viewed as "negative limited mentality".
I am quite passionate about programming and making things, but I am not so passionate about building your stupid app/website with a glue code everywhere!2 -
Sometimes you don't need to think of an interesting or funny rant because life does it itself!
Several years ago I did my Bachelor's degree in Business Informatics which was not Informatics at all - regret at that time that I had choosen the subject.
After that started working for HP in a business/ marketing role which was quite nice but missing any technics.
So I internally applied for a dev role that was quite purely based on Linux knowledge that I did not have. Seems I convinced with my will to learn something new every day. And I did!
After two years in that role I now have my Linux certificate (CompTia Linux+), did a great job (according to my boss) and I am starting my Master's Degree in pure Informatics next week!
That led me to the most important decision - registering here at devRant. Seems we are colleagues now ;D.
Wish me luck and thank you all!1