Devs regularly complain that our skills are not valued enough and that people think what we do is easy.

But, we don't really help the cause when we run around casually claiming to be "full stack" and not turning down work that clearly isn't in our area of competence.

We act more like Victorian amateur scientists.

Every seen a "full stack" doctor when you go to hospital? "Brain to feet---I can do it all."

OK, we have general practitioners, but they are really the BAs of the medical world. When it comes to getting into the weed, everyone specializes.

Full stack lawyer? "Hey, you did an excellent job of dealing with my house purchase. I've just been accused of murder. Can you represent me?"

While we continue to say that we can provide a high quality "full stack" experience I think we are signaling that this stuff *is* easy.

Can't a girl get a pair of heels on this site?! I like to look fabulous when I code.

Marketing wants to remove the word "sex" from one of my slide decks.

Fuck people who get outraged for others. They are making a bad situation much worse.

Yes, there are people who get triggered by the slightest thing---but those people are going to be triggered no matter what you do. And it seems to me that I'd not want to have them as customers anyway---massive support cost.

We are in danger of washing everything until it becomes an inoffensive shade of beige.

Why do the 99% have to be bored for the 1%?

It's not like I'm doing a live demo...yet...

So, fuck outrage by proxy. If you are personally outraged then say that. If not, shut the fuck up.

Upon suggestion of @platypus I went to the cafe and just took my tablet there (unfucking the laptop's rootfs flash drive took too long, and ArduinoDroid's avrdude didn't seem to work very well), so just doing some chatting in IRC and trying to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to make a serial link to a Proxmox VM from the host (thinkstation on the top left pane).

Attached below is the screenshot of that.. much turminel, very h3xx0r! But so far nobody has come up to me calling me "evul h3xx0r" yet.. very intriguing! I expected things to be much worse.

A glass of Duvel in front of me, tastes great! Cheers!

Had to built a "theme color" switcher for a website. Total waste of time, but the desktop app had it and customer was convinced it was a key feature.

What the fuck has one of my clients been up to?! Every request he makes he suggests we might want to do it via a function.

"We need to ensure this is password protected. Maybe wrap the calls in a function."

I wander if he goes into the bakery and says, "I need a loaf of bread---use flour."

All I can think of is that someone influential in his life is an FP zealot and he's latched onto this word.

But, I quite like FP. Maybe I'll refactor everything to static classes to meet the requirement.

Hope to Christ he doesn't find out about HTML, etc. "Maybe add a CSS rule."

Anyone here uninstalled *Linux* to replace with another OS, or is the traffic all one way?

Why is innumeracy acceptable in our society?

It riles me where I see something like a current affairs or political show, (basic) stats are presented and someone says "I don't understand statistics, but [personal story follows]"

And when a person says they don't understand numbers there's laughter and nodding.

Imagine if I was on a panel and someone handed me a sheet of paper and I said that I can't read big words. Would hilarity ensue or would they assume I wasn't qualified to be commenting on *anything*?

People, if you are functionally innumerate, it's not funny. You have a 5th grade, at best, education. Be embarrassed and get help.

When can we expect to have sex robots that can also be used for domestic chores? I don't want to invest in a robot that only gets occasional use.

And a Roomba isn't very erotic.

If anyone is working on this, GraphQL API will be handy. I'm going to be doing a lot of things with it that you can't even start to imagine so needs to be fully configurable.

Can use Raspberry Pi...I don't need it to be too bright.

I wish my clients would stop reporting "bugs" in my app that are legitimate results calculated from crap feed to it by their upstream systems.

Just because my app is easy to use it's the first place that they find out that their ecosystem is fundamentally broken.

GIGO, people.

No, I do not wish to work on your Scrum-managed project.

I do not wish to contribute to the Taylorism of my profession.

I do not wish to be an interchangeable cog in your software sausage machine.

I do not wish to be tracked by some pointless metrics like a call-centre worker.

I do not wish to bust my tight, cute ass to sprint after some idiotic management request that could have been factored in earlier.

I do not wish to obtain some piss-ant qualification that "authorises" me to do my job.

I do not wish to be party to your lie that technical debt will be avoided by refactoring---whatever the cost.

I do not wish to contribute to the death of software engineering to have it replaced by software development.

Agile? Sure. I can pick up the phone and talk to the client, users and fellow devs. After all, that's what it FUCKING MEANS. Communi-fucking-cation.

See that burndown chart? See your anus? Know what's happening next?

Fuck Scrum and every fucking bottom-feeder that is scamming a living by promoting it. You're killing this business.

Hugs and kisses,

Platypus

So, you ask me for a quote. You know nothing about the technology or the problem, but you think the quote is too high.

On what fucking basis are you assessing the quote? On the number of words? Font? Whether your spouse/cat hates you (both do). Basically, whatever I said, you'd have said it was too high, right?

Fuckwit.

Next time *you* tell *me* how much you have to spend and I'll tell you what you can get for your budget.

Maybe a coffee and a small cake.

Don't fucking call me again.

Who are the people who are pushing for phones, laptops and desktops to be even thinner? Do they actually exist?! Or are that mythical creatures invented by Apple engineers so they can get paid to invent new stuff?

"Yeah, we need to invent a new keyboard design as customers are complaining how fat our pro laptops are."

I don't think I've looked at a laptop built in the last decade and wondered how I'll carry it with my tiny frame.

Just give me a Mac Pro that is a solid chunk of aluminum with a removable drive and access to the RAM. It'll look fine and it's going to sit quietly on my desk. I promise not to move it without hiring at least two men with appropriate safety equipment.

I want someone to stand up at an Apple keynote and say, "We made this thicker---you're welcome."

Client dev inlined all my single line functions as it's "more efficient".

Speechless is not the word.

If you CC: me on an email I won't read it because I'm clearly not the intended recipient and I'm not going to do your work for you in trying to work out why I should give a fuck.

If you wish me to actually *give* said fuck then send me my own fucking email explaining why I should give a rat's anus about your shitty little problems.

And, if you try to use "but I copied you on the email" as an excuse for your incompetence in a meeting, I will eviscerate you on the spot. You will be looking at your small intestine while I ask your assembled co-workers if they have any other business.

CC: basically means you have no respect for my time. So, if you do it, I'm coming for you...and your family...and your friends...and all the people you know on Linked-In...

What happens when your DevRant score surpasses your Stack Overflow one? Do you ascend to a higher spiritual plane?

I wish I hadn't looked *just* at that particular point...

666...can't be a good omen.

So, giving a talk soon and marketing wanted to see the slides.

Comments come back. On every slide that is purely visual they've suggested I add a title and a para or two of text.

Fuck you and your fucking slideuments. If you want them to read the material send them a memo and save me the fucking trip.

Or even better, turn up yourselves and read lists of bulletpoints off the screen for 30 mins while I sit in hotel hot-tub with a cocktail.

I hate the inanity of corporate life.

Next time I'm going to send you a blank slide and live draw my diagrams. See how you like that, arseholes.

What's with all this micro-certification nonsense that seems to plague the industry? Does anyone actually give a shit that I may have passed some vendor's five day bootcamp?

Apparently I can now have a trophy (virtual, of course) if I complete X online MS courses.

Some of these courses seem to focus on stuff that has no use in day-to-day work.

And I have to actually pay because I learned your product and then pay to maintain the cert in some cases. WTF?!

I can see why the vendors do it---I like free money too---but why have we even let this become a thing.

It's like collecting baseball cards.

I despair of what our industry has become...I really do.

The posts about love coding interviews and low paid freelancing work just reminds me how little anyone know about process of using code to solve real problems.

If someone wanted to give me a JavaScript test then I'd point them at Fivver where there are tonnes of JS devs available for minimum wage.

No one is paying me for my ability to write code. They are paying me to solves problems that businesses have that are likely to involve software.

Potential client: "We need this project done, but don't have much of a budget. But, if it's successful, could result in a lot more work."

If you want me to invest in your company, offer stock.

FFS.

There's so much hype and bullshit around Machine Learning (ML). And if I have to read one more crappy prediction of who survived on the Titantic, I'll go postal.

So, what real-world problems are you using it to address...and how successful has it been? What decisions have you supported using ML? What models did you use (e.g. logistic regression, decision trees, ANN)?

Anyone got any boringly useful examples of ML in production?

And don't say you're using it to predict survival rates for the design of new cruise ships...although, to be fair, that might be quite interesting...

Handed off a Markdown presentation to the marketing dept to add some pizzaz too---just to see what happens.

My bet is that they'll redo it all in PowerPoint. Or fire me. Latter is the lessor of two evils.

Can someone explain the philosophy of the "not for me" downvote?

There are many things that are "not for me" in life, but, presumably, this action executes a global downvote on the post/comment---which is pretty much an expression of "not for anyone".

If this action were to train a recommendation engine---so I get recommendations that like-minded people see---then great. But why should that result in a public downvote?

I don't go up to people in the bar and say "Drinking Guinness? Not for me, mate." As an adult, I understand that my preferences are not universal.

Personally, I can't square the idea of "not for me" with its consequence of a public downvote.

I'm sure this must have been covered before...but all rants, as physiological and emotional activities, are unique. Your rant can never be mine.

Is there's an "edit history" feature in DevRant. Some comments makes no sense after a post is edited.

I'm thinking of posting "Arch Linux and Firefox for the win. Who's with me?"

Then, when I have some comments, I'll switch it to "Windows 8 and IE for the win. Who's with me?"

That could ruin a lot of lives.

Contact wants to discuss a list of projects with me next week.

What's the betting that these are unfunded ideas that need code?

I should just check by email, but it's been a while since anyone walked this path with me, so I'm up for some fun.

I see myself taking an advisory role in these projects for equity.

"First thing you need to do is obtain funding for them all. Then get back to me for my insights on next stage. Not sure how to get funding, but I'm not the the 'creative' side of the team."

Ideas aren't worth shit. I have a bunch every day and they are as worthless as yours.

Ideas without execution are like owning a book without reading it.

Just had to write an old-skool for loop. Index...termination condition...whole works. I feel dirty.

Bit embarrassing as someone saw me writing it, thought I was a hacker and informed the authorities. Spent the last hour being waterboarded.

We had a big laugh about it when they realized I was just fixing bugs in a legacy app.

National Security. Hilarious.

Moved to Australia, because it's cooler over there. Pissing on outback stones right now. Who's your daddy?

Why does Ubuntu get so much hate on here?

Is it because people believe it doesn’t act according to the spirit of the Linux community (whatever that is) or are their technical reasons?

Just uninstalled Bubble Witch Saga 3 from my Windows 10 *Pro* system.

Silently installed for me, even through I've never installed a Windows game in my life.

Changed the reg setting, so we'll see if that is an end to it.

I've never been a Windows hater, but they are really testing my patience with this shit. A *paid* business OS that downloads crappy games.

Are they intent on turning Windows into a Shovelware platform? This is the sort of thing which would cause me to leave the platform for good.

I hate it when book publishers of tech books don't have their own DRM-free formats. I then have to go on Amazon and see that the Kindle version is only 10% cheaper than paper. Then I factor in the fact that they probably fucked up the formatting on the ebook. So, I end up just buying the paper one and my office continues to resemble a mad scientist's library.

Who are devranters?

I know many devs and very few of them run Linux as their primary OS. And I've never met a single one using Arch.

Also, hardly any use Vim as their primary IDE...or even editor.

Yet, if DevRant was my first introduction to devs I'd be down Best Buy looking for a laptop (why so many laptops here?) running Arch and Vim as my word processor.

Don't misunderstand me---I have nothing against Arch and Vim. I don't give a rat's arse about the OS on my machine as I'm mostly in apps. I'm sure Arch would be fine. And whatever floats anyone's boat is fine by me.

But where are all the devs maintaining VB6 apps using XP? Is the community inclusive enough to welcome them?

Where are the "dark matter" devs? Lurking? Speak up!

Now, it may be that, say, China and India run on Arch Linux and Vim and I have a limited perspective. If so, Wow! My eyes are opened.

I live in a time when irony comes with an obligatory emoji.

I have a 4S I leave lying around and most apps are dogs on it or crash.

Not DevRant app, though. Pretty solid. Impressive job.

I see loads of rants complaining about getting asked for tech help. And then I see Linux getting recommended as an OS.

Me? I'm telling everyone to use ChromeOS so they leave me the fuck alone.

In the future, I'll tell everyone they are too fucking stupid to own a computer and phone is the way to go.

Systems thinking, people.

t-shirts are an ideal way to express one's frustration with the world, yet the devrant avatar t-shirts options are pretty benign.

Can't we have more ranty options?

Dear API vendor,

Please get off your arse and learn about REST, OpenAPI, JSON Schema, XSD and basic documentation so that I don't have to guess how to use your shitty, inconsistent, RPC over HTTP service.

With Love,

Platypus

The CEO of Harley Davidson once said his was the only company logo that people tattoo on their body.

Anyone sad enough to have a tech tattoo...and brave enough to admit it?

Those of you who run Linux *exclusively*... What are you doing in the OS that makes it a big deal for you?

Personally, I spend the bulk of my time in *apps*---editor, IDE, browser, messaging, calendar, etc. OK, a little time in command line, but minutes a day, if I add it up. And I can get Bash anywhere.

Now, you could argue that, if I spend most of my time in apps, then I should have a minimalist OS. Fair comment. Is that all it is?

But, I feel OS is quite an unimportant part of my day. App launcher for much of it.

Leave the house for 30 fucking minutes and the courier attempts to deliver my new notebook just then---after four days in transit. And, of course, they don't deliver at the weekend.

I swear the guy was camped outside my house waiting to fuck me over.

My biggest problem with designers is when they have no empathy for the platform(s). Here's a design that I made based on my love of graphic design and Photoshop. Over to you to just slap it on iOS, Android and web. Ends up as a substandard result everywhere.

And, of course, the Photoshop designs look great to managers.

WTF of the day.
WTF did a duck fuck?

How are people writing documents/reports? Markdown/Latex in your fav editor and export to PDF? Word? Pages? Libre Office?

I use Markdown, via VSCode, Bear, iA Writer, Marked and then push to PDF. If I have to, then export to DOCX.

In love with Laravel events, listeners and mailables. What a beautiful way of doing this. Can't say how much I love this framework. <3

Can't wait to implement redis and queues. Am excited to try this for the first time. Share exp. if you have, pls.

Do other industries have their own rant apps?

Adm Grace Hopper. I mean what's the chance of a dev getting to flag rank?

Fiddling with the UiPath RPA tool. What the fuck is this monster?

So, you create apps by drawing a flowchart, like some kid using Scratch. Then, suddenly, you have to create a .NET object just to get a random number!

Who the fuck is the target audience that can create objects, call a directory read function, etc, but can't write a loop?! Show me that fucking person.

Then I have to debug the fucking selectors when they don't work correct. All this requires is understanding how UIs are structured under the hood. So, you know that a menu bar is a window, but you need to draw a fucking if statement?!

And how would you debug and manage this monstrosity?

It like we learned nothing from all the Excel apps we build for decades.

I mean, it's an impressive app. But, why does it exist?

Someone needs to stop this before it gets out into the wild or we'll all be debugging flowchart a created by business analysts.

You have been warned. Join the fight or accept the consequences.

People who put stickers on laptops... Are they badges of honour or aspirational?

So, if you code in VB6, but want to write Reason code, do you have VB6 stickers, showing you have lived through it, or Reason stickers, hoping that recruiters read your laptop stickers.

Or, is it just some undirected mess when you are handed a sticker and you put it on---like a reflex action?

What's with this "!rant" thing at the start of rants? Is it some ettiquette thing when you mistakenly mis-tag, but can't change the tag, so you have to add this to say "genuine mistake"?

When a client asks us to support IE 6 can we start noting that there are some fucking useless clients out there and that Microsoft is inflicted with more of them than most? The continued existence of IE 6 isn't really down to Microsoft---it's down to their useless fucking customers.

So, let's beat those people with a stick until they upgrade to Edge.

At that point everyone can return to fighting about FF, Chrome and Edge---apart from me as all browsers seem to support cat JPGs.

I need to encrypt some large files at rest and then decrypt them immediately prior to processing.

App and files are on a Linux system (CentOS). App is in C. Machine is controlled by a third party.

What encryption libraries would you recommend? And, is there any clever way of managing the decryption key beyond compiling it in the code and doing some basic obfuscation?

Are they fancy obfuscation libraries out there, for example?

And, the reason I'm not going to SO (well, one reason) is that I don't want to have 50 answers that tell me that's it's impossible to 100% protect data on a machine you don't control. This I understand---just looking for "best effort" solution.

Reducing API access to third party apps seems like a fucking short sighted move, Twitter.

Presumably given up on innovating on the platform and decided to milk what you have.

Doesn't excite me about your future.

They promised us flying cars and we got 140 character text messages.

Yes, it's lazy having Peter Thiel write my rant---and he didn't put enough fucks in it (he's three short)---but it expresses what I feel on the subject.

I keep hearing how amazing AI yet I'm still stacking the sodding dishwasher and other such life-diminishing fuckery.

Google's attempts to follow the iPhone just make me think, "Might as well get an iPhone."

I wish Google would create a high-end phone with grippy, durable case, replaceable two-day battery and SD card slot. Vanilla Android with latest updates. Bring it in at a reasonable price (which I'd hope would be possible if not trying to squeeze everything).

Given me a real alternative here. Don't try and lead with design. It's letting Apple choose the battlefield.

I have an issue with my Laravel routing. Can you help me out, @bittersweet?

I have a custom "/home" route called "/admin" and I set the protected property in the LoginController:

$redirectTo = "/admin";

And it works fine, if I log in from guest. But when I navigate to "/login" as auth-user it still redirects me to "/home".

What the fuck is this? What do I have to change to make this work? Who has to be fucked? Is it possible to solve this without sacrificing a virgin at bloodmoon? And why are Platypus so fucking ugly?

Anyone using Robotic Process Automation (RPA)---such as UIPath---in their work? If so, can you share what you are doing with it and how you feel about it?

And how does RPA differ from Automator on macOS, if at all?

What's the best dev-related book you ever read?

I've sure I'm forgetting some, but I'll go with "Don't Make Me Think".

Thought I might see if there's anything intriguing I've not come across yet.

Dell et al should start selling pre-stickered laptops so execs could buy that "dev cred" look.

There's probably a science to producing a look that doesn't make you look like someone's mum at a cool party.

What sticker placement approach do people use?

Jonny Ive---It's not great design when the first thing most of your iPhone users have to do is mod your product with a case just to use it for its intended purpose.

Especially as the primary purpose of your design seems to be to focus on the visual aesthetic---which is voided by said case.

Looking forward to trying out ChromeOS for a while.

I like the idea of a minimal OS. Frankly while Windows, macOS and Linux are all incredible bits of engineering, they all suck ass and are maddeningly frustrating.

Usually I'm on a computer to complete a task and just want the OS to quietly do its job and leave me out of its myriad personal crises. I don't want to see or hear from that fucker.

If experience tells me anything it's that I'll be swearing at the Chromebook within the week.

But, the fact I'm trying shows I haven't lost hope.

These fucking calendar e-mails. Fuck. Right. Off.

They never display correctly in all clients.

If the meeting is at 1pm, just fucking say that. I don't want to pick through a load of shit only to find that the calendar app lied about UTC.

Just missed a sodding call due to this crap.

Anyone find sequence diagrams useful? I’m working with a BA who loves creating these things—he has a tool he knows and clearly wants to get his money’s worth.

Just seems like busy work to me. Takes more time to understand them than if he just explained the concept in text.

Isn't a dev using the laptop keyboard like a professional mechanic using the toolkit that comes with the car?

It's truly wondrous how far R can propagate shit until it finally gives up.

Looking at the call stack it's been processing increasingly demented bollocks for nine function calls.

Even then it refused to give in. It now appears to be processing an infinite sequence.

I should kill it, but I feel inspired by its tenacity. "This must be crap, but I'll have a go anyway."

Beautiful. A lesson for us all in that.

Stack Overflow is like a re-run of the Milgram experiment. Give a bunch of devs authority over their peers and watch the horror unfold.

Think I'll nip over there and ask what the best JavaScript framework is just to stir them up.

Can anyone recommend good resources for learning how to design NoSQL (document) data models?

I'm interested in stuff that talks about how to make the choices about distributing data across collections, etc.

When to have a single collection, when to split data across different collections, when to duplication data, etc,

Do devranters think that Reason(ML) is too late to the game to compete against TypeScript...or can it ride React success to become more than a niche?

Personally I like it, but, like with F#, I don't enjoying the lack of resources every time I need to get something done.

What UI lib are you React devs using for *desktop* sites and why?

Can anyway recommend a book (or other quality resource) on tensor programming that isn’t focused on all this ML crap?

I’d like to use GPUs for some simulation modelling, so interested in vector and matrix manipulation.

Anyone doing any VR/AR work for their company and can share (without mentioning the company) what they are doing with it---i.e. business problem being solved and how it's being solved?

Feels like there's a lot of hype here and the few niche applications of it (which are great) are getting the press.

But, maybe there's worthy work going on in the trenches that I'm unfamiliar with.

Anyone using the Coconut variant of Python? Looks like it adds the stuff I want Python to have.

Would be interested in any experiences.

How do you feel about using TypeScript with React? I appreciate the benefits, but, as every snippet of React code everywhere on the web is vanilla JS,I just don't want the cognitive overhead.

Yes, I know TS is JS, but, if I'm not going to use the features, why bother? I'd want to strongly type props, state, etc.

What's the status of TypeScript support in the React ecosystem (eg Router, MUI, etc.)?

I'm kinda hoping Reason will get some traction as the type inference is much better, but, will that happen? Or is that going to fizzle so it's a choice between TS and JS?

Appreciate any thoughts on this---including those from anyone who's in the same boat.

Looking for views on TS in React ecosystem---no need to sell me on TS in general.

AI boffins. Get a move on with this conversational UI stuff. Typing is getting old now.

Then two years later, when I'm bored of that, I want to just *think* the text onto the screen.

Leave mention here when ready.

Are there any JavaScripts dev out there using Eclipse (excluding students who are being forced)?

Is this actually a thing in 2019?

I'm being asked to run a JS seminar with Eclipse as the IDE. I've not seen this used in a JS shop for ages. Are there significant pockets of use out there that I'm unaware of?

Anyone using Jetbrains’ Space? How’s it working for you?

If you've recently changed your primary OS which tool/app do you miss the most?

I moved from Windows and miss Ron's Editor and SyncBack Pro.

How do you learn new tech things---large things like framework, language, etc? Books, online courses, instructor-led course, blogs, randomly poking around?

I buy way too many tech books and spend way too many weekends reading them.

Anyone using TabNine—especially the Pro version?

Impressed, or meh?

What language/IDEs have your tried?

Anyone using Crostini on a Celeron Chromebook? How is it? Worse or better than Crouton?

Anyone using nose2 as their primary unit testing framework?

If so, why do you prefer it over pytest? The nose2 homepage effective recommends pytest, so wondering about the future of nose2.

Anyone using a newish Android One phone right now who'd care to comment on the experience?

How are the updates? Stock Android work well?