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 :).

StackOverflow knows everything!

One night I asked question on SO first time. So next morning, really excited man, want to see my scores. But result was -3 rating! "F**k!" And urgently deleted my question. But SO gave me `Peer pressure` badge, badge for `Delete own post with score of -3 or lower.`... OMG!

Achievement Unlocked: "Peer Pressure" on Stack overflow.
Should I feed good?

Peer pressure :/

I finally gave in into the peer pressure and made myself a Twitter account.

WHAT A FUCKING SHIT SITE.

When registering the only thing I provided was my email and username. Nothing more.

One day later when visiting Twitter I get a big ass pop-up that briefly tells me my account is locked for 'unusual behavior', 'suspicious activity' and 'not following of Twitter's rules'.

I want to remind you that my account was barely one day old, and had no activity whatsoever.

So if getting your account locked for no single reason isn't bad enough. The only and ONLY way to unlock my account was TO PROVIDE MY FUCKING PHONE NUMBER. No other single way to unlock my account.

YOU WANT MY PERSONAL DATA SO BADLY?

On top of that I didn't receive a single email from them for this 'suspicious activity' or 'breaking of Twitter's rules'.

THIS IS SCAREWARE. Lying to people in order to get more personal data. My account was perfectly fine. And without providing your phone number you can't even delete your account.

GO FUCK YOURSELF FUCKING ASSHOLES WITH YOUR ASSHOLE DESIGN

FUCKING SHITSITE

Peer pressure is using VSCode for work because all of your colleagues uses it.

Heya,
College is no place to chill and be laid back as shown in movies. The reality is that it is more challenging than school with peer pressure being no stranger to us.
Being a newbie in the tech domain, and being a girl, I felt the gender gap and the intimidation newbies like me go through when we see legit programmers who flaunt their skills and make it obvious that they exactly know what they are doing.
But along with all this ranting, for all the newbies out there, remember that this phase too shall pass and its not as scary as it seems (I kept convincing myself).
Always start with something easy and take baby steps, one good coding language to start with would be python, as it is more understandable and less intimidating and complex-looking than languages like C and C++.
I still struggle, but there are times when it gave me great joy like the time I developed an app with Flutter or when I managed to grab a free tee from hacktoberfest 2019.
Stay home and Stay safe buddy ;)
P.S: If you a dev and want some cool swags check the website devswag, you won't be disappointed :)

Rant...ish? It's more mixed feelings...

Had my first day yesterday at a new job in a big company. I came dressed really nicely in a suit and tie. Went to orientation with everyone new coming in.

Felt like I made the right choice to up my effort in dress code.

Met with my manager, was led to my team. Everyone is dressed casually. Unshaved. Giving me hate stares.

Felt out of place. But kind of happy that I can try less.

Still. What's up with programmers and being toxic to people dressed nicely o.0 I don't need to look like I came out of crunch time every single day to prove my worth...

It's really weird getting these looks. It's almost like highschool all over again. When I let my mother dress me and looked like the nerdiest kid on the block...

Then again, today I'm wearing sneakers and causal clothes. I either feel like I cave in to peer pressure... But at the same time I don't mind it. Erghhh... Still hate this...

Mixed feelings... I donno.

I love learning by doing.

Building MVPs and prototypes is the best way. Even better if you have a chance to show and share them in front of an audience (peer pressure can be good!).

Share the lessons you've learned and what you've done wrong, it will help many more people than just yourself.

I've been working for an eLearning company for the last 4 years (CloudAcademy.com) and I'm in love with the idea of learning something new every day. And not just coding. Code is "only" a tool to solve problems, and learning something about those problems and fields will make you a better developer.

I can't come to terms with people's terrible reasonings.

You read a news about something. Let's assume it has to do with a sensitive topic, like race, gender, culture, religion, something polarizing, that makes you pick 1 of 2 sides.

So what do some people do? They ask themselves "ok what group do I adhere? How do I label myself?".

Then they ask "what do other people in said group/label think about the matter?", sometimes it's people in the media, friends,

sometimes people even create a mental construct of a stereotypical person of said group, a hypothetical one, and use the opinion of said construct as representative.

And final step is a knee jerk reaction of "I believe that too!!!!!!".

Obviously, all of this can't bring no one closer to the theorical truth or the least flawed conclusion.

What does? Case by case basis.

You judge every case as if every case was its own thing.

But why does some people have a hard time doing that? Just general ignorance maybe?

Maybe this tends to occur in families where parents don't teach their kids to challenge their beliefs, or teach them that doing so could result in lack of parental acceptance.

People also have peer pressure, the need to belong and feel accepted. That means sharing the same points of view with close people and considering the opposite taboo.

There's also the very ignorant people that have conspiracies for lunch.

In any case, I feel some people don't even fucking try to be neutral.

Telegram or Signal? Got essentially blocked from Messenger because I was stupid enough to fold to peer pressure to get it for robotics and since I enabled it with a GV number they stopped allowing its use for specifically security checks while allowing it even to reset a password, and I somehow got a security check triggered, with no customer support and no ability to call with code, so I'm looking to switch. Even if I get Facebook back, I want to move to something at least that doesn't randomly trigger security checks and then has no customer support.

Back in the early 90's I never switched from vi to emacs, despite the peer pressure to do so
<ESC>
:wq