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Being a dev by day and a simracer by night. I made a skin because I wanted to see what devRant would look like on a race car.
14 -
I was building a controller for an autonomous RC car at a racing competition. We were having issues with line detection leading to poor performance in the steering module. For the drag race we pioneered an innovative new steering strategy: never steer. Won the event.6
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Each sticker on a race car increases speed by a small amount, which is why they all have so many. Same thing with laptops.3
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I'm a freelance web developer and I normally work on small to medium sized websites, 9 out 10 times based on WordPress and 10 out 10 times with a limited budget.
8 out of 10 times the sites content will be updated by someone with at best casual knowledge in website management.
Say what you will about WP but it's my bread and butter and it works great for just these kinds of websites; where the cost is a dealbreaker and the end product should be as user friendly as a standard word processor.
No, you probably wouldn't build a control panel for the next space shuttle or an online bank in WordPress, but I rarely need to concern myself with those kinds of projects so that really doesn't affect me.
Pretty much the same reason I have a Kia car even though I wouldn't win a Formula 1 race with it.
I for one am grateful that there's an open source tool available to my clients that more than adequately meets their needs (that's also fun to work with and build custom solutions on for me as a developer).7 -
Programming Languages are Like Cars:
Assembler: A formula I race car. Very fast but difficult to drive and maintain.
FORTRAN II: A Model T Ford. Once it was the king of the road.
FORTRAN IV: A Model A Ford.
FORTRAN 77: a six-cylinder Ford Fairlane with standard transmission and no seat belts.
COBOL: A delivery van. It's bulky and ugly but it does the work.
BASIC: A second-hand Rambler with a rebuilt engine and patched upholstery. Your dad bought it for you to learn to drive. You'll ditch it as soon as you can afford a new one.
PL/I: A Cadillac convertible with automatic transmission, a two-tone paint job, white-wall tires, chrome exhaust pipes, and fuzzy dice hanging in the windshield.
C++: A black Firebird, the all macho car. Comes with optional seatbelt (lint) and optional fuzz buster (escape to assembler).
ALGOL 60: An Austin Mini. Boy that's a small car.
ALGOL 68: An Aston Martin. An impressive car but not just anyone can drive it.
Pascal: A Volkswagon Beetle. It's small but sturdy. Was once popular with intellectual types.
liSP: An electric car. It's simple but slow. Seat belts are not available.
PROLOG/LUCID: Prototype concept cars.
FORTH: A go-cart.
LOGO: A kiddie's replica of a Rolls Royce. Comes with a real engine and a working horn.
APL: A double-decker bus. It takes rows and columns of passengers to the same place all at the same time but it drives only in reverse and is instrumented in Greek.
Ada: An army-green Mercedes-Benz staff car. Power steering, power brakes, and automatic transmission are standard. No other colors or options are available. If it's good enough for generals, it's good enough for you.
Java: All-terrain very slow vehicle.10 -
I spent over a decade of my life working with Ada. I've spent almost the same amount of time working with C# and VisualBasic. And I've spent almost six years now with F#. I consider all of these great languages for various reasons, each with their respective problems. As these are mostly mature languages some of the problems were only knowable in hindsight. But Ada was always sort of my baby. I don't really mind extra typing, as at least what I do, reading happens much more than writing, and tab completion has most things only being 3-4 key presses irl. But I'm no zealot, and have been fully aware of deficiencies in the language, just like any language would have. I've had similar feelings of all languages I've worked with, and the .NET/C#/VB/F# guys are excellent with taking suggestions and feedback.
This is not the case with Ada, and this will be my story, since I've no longer decided anonymity is necessary.
First few years learning the language I did what anyone does: you write shit that already exists just to learn. Kept refining it over time, sometimes needing to do entire rewrites. Eventually a few of these wound up being good. Not novel, just good stuff that already existed. Outperforming the leading Ada company in benchmarks kind of good. At the time I was really gung-ho about the language. Would have loved to make Ada development a career. Eventually build up enough of this, as well as a working, but very bad performing compiler, and decide to try to apply for a job at this company. I wasn't worried about the quality of the compiler, as anyone who's seriously worked with Ada knows, the language is remarkably complex with some bizarre rules in dark corners, so a compiler which passes the standards test indicates a very intimate knowledge of the language few can attest to.
I get told they didn't think I would be a good fit for the job, and that they didn't think I should be doing development.
A few months of rapid cycling between hatred and self loathing passes, and then a suicide attempt. I've got past problems which contributed more so than the actual job denial.
So I get better and start working even harder on my shit. Get the performance of my stuff up even better. Don't bother even trying to fix up the compiler, and start researching about text parsing. Do tons of small programs to test things, and wind up learning a lot. I'm starting to notice a lot of languages really surpassing Ada in _quality of life_, with things package managers and repositories for those, as well as social media presence and exhaustive tutorials from the community.
At the time I didn't really get programming language specific package managers (I do now), but I still brought this up to the community. Don't do that. They don't like new ideas. Odd for a language which at the time was so innovative. But social media presence did eventually happen with a Twitter account that is most definitely run by a specific Ada company masquerading as a general Ada advocate. It did occasionally draw interest to neat things from the community, so that's cool.
Since I've been using both VisualStudio and an IDE this Ada company provides, I saw a very jarring quality difference over the years. I'm not gonna say VS is perfect, it's not. But this piece of shit made VS look like a polished streamlined bug free race car designed by expert UX people. It. Was. Bad. Very little features, with little added over the years. Fast forwarding several years, I can find about ten bugs in five minutes each update, and I can't find bugs in the video games I play, so I'm no bug finder. It's just that bad. This from a company providing software for "highly reliable systems"...
So I decide to take a crack at writing an editor extension for VS Code, which I had never even used. It actually went well, and as of this writing it has over 24k downloads, and I've received some great comments from some people over on Twitter about how detailed the highlighting is. Plenty of bespoke advertising the entire time in development, of course.
Never a single word from the community about me.
Around this time I had also started a YouTube channel to provide educational content about the language, since there's very little, except large textbooks which aren't right for everyone. Now keep in mind I had written a compiler which at least was passing the language standards test, so I definitely know the language very well. This is a standard the programmers at these companies will admit very few people understand. YouTube channel met with hate from the community, and overwhelming thanks from newcomers. Never a shout out from the "community" Twitter account. The hate went as far as things like how nothing I say should be listened to because I'm a degenerate Irishman, to things like how the world would have been a better place if I was successful in killing myself (I don't talk much about my mental illness, but it shows up).
I'm strictly a .NET developer now. All code ported.5 -
Today I saw, and heard, two attractive young women show a lot of annoyance over a dude revving his car's engine as he drove past them in an obvious effort to somehow impress them.
I have not once in my 32 years of age met a single regular woman (read as in, not a woman who is a car enthusiast, and even then they are annoyed) that has been impressed over a dude driving a car as if he were in a race track. Not once.
So I seriously wonder, what is the point? annoying people? I am a very standard dude, I like cars, but that shit fucking irritates me and I seriously do not get the point.11 -
If ya ever feel frustrated as all fuck because that retard friend is too fucking dense to bundle a vue.js instead of pulling it from cdn for a fucking phonegap build.
0) get in yo car
1) find a bmw at a red lite
2) signal 4 race
3) floor dat shit and leave em in the dust bc bmws have no fucking launch control
Yall know who the fuck wrote this rant dontcha1 -
is being a tech/dev person, a dead end job?
i have been thinking about this for sometime. as a dev, we can progress into senior dev, then tech lead, then staff engineer probably. but that is that. for a tech person :
1. their salary levels are defined. for eg, a junior may earn $10k pm , and the highest tech guy (say staff engineer) will earn $100k pm, but everyone's salary will be spread over this range only, in different slots.
2. some companies give stocks and bonuses , but most of the time that too is fixed to say 30% of the annual salary at max.
3. its a low risk job as a min of x number of tech folks are always required for their tech product to work properly. plus these folks are majorly with similar skills, so 2 react guys can be reduced to 1 but not because of incompetency .
4. even if people are incompetent, our domain is friendly and more like a community learning stuff. we share our knowledge in public domain and try to make things easy to learn for other folks inside and outside the office. this is probably a bad thing too
compare this to businesses , management and sales they have different:
1. thier career progression : saleman > sales team manager> branch manager > multiple branch manager(director) > multiple zones/state manager (president) > multiple countries/ company manager (cxo)
2. their salaries are comission based. they get a commission in the number of sales they get, later theybget comission in the sales of their team> their branch > their zone and finally in company's total revenue. this leads to very meagre number in salaries, but a very major and mostly consistent and handsome number in commission. that is why their salaries ranges from $2k pm to $2-$3millions per month.
3. in sales/management , their is a always a room for optimisation . if a guy is selling less products, than another guy, he could be fired and leads could be given to other/new person. managers can optimise the cost/expenses chain and help company generate wider profits. overall everyone is running for (a) to get an incentive and (b) to dodge their boss's axe.
4. this makes it a cut-throat and a network-first domain. people are arrogant and selfish, and have their own special tricks and tactics to ensure their value.
as a manager , you don't go around sharing the stories on how you got apple to partner with foxconn for every iphone manufacturing, you just enjoy the big fat bonus check and awe of inspiration that your junior interns make.
this sound a little bad , but on the contrary , this involves being a people person and a social animal. i remember one example from the office web series, where different sales people would have different strategies for getting a business: Michael would go wild, Stanley would connect with people of his race, and Phyllis would dress up like a client's wife.
in real life too, i have seen people using various social cues to get business. the guy from whom we bought our car, he was so friendly with my dad, i once thought that they are some long lost brothers.
this makes me wonder : are sales/mgmt people being better at being entrepreneur and human beings than we devs?
in terms of ethics, i don't think that people who are defining their life around comissions and cut throat races to be friendly or supportive beings. but at the same time, they would be connecting with people and their real problems, so they might become more helpful than their friends/relatives and other "good people" ?
Additionally, the skills of sales/mgmt translate directly to entrepreneurship, so every good salesman/manager is a billionaire in making. whereas we devs are just being peas in a pod , debating on next big npm package and trying to manage taxes on our already meagre , "consistent" income :/
mann i want some people skills like these guys10 -
"Averice - a serial novel"
2021 - found on the remnents of an old 'youtube' server rack.
A gaunt but handsome man walks into the view finder. Adjusts the camera. "Hi guys and girls." he smiles weakly. rubs his blonde unshaved stubble, running his hand over his mouth, inhaling as if trying to find the right words.
"How can I say this. god. ...americas fucked and rapidly going down the shitter,
college is a fucking scam,
all success in the modern day is based on fraud, bullshit, mythmaking, and "who you know."
we're on the verge of a new cold war, the merger of the fed and the treasury combine with negative oil is the legit death signal of the petrodollar, we're gonna go through a *50% haircut* in living standards and a doubling of taxes on *everything* in the next six months, the tech bubble is gonna burst taking with it half the industry jobs overnight, the credit bubble will burst even as the fucking stock market climbs higher, a quarter or more of all retail will shut down leaving empty assets turning every state property market into the equivalent of fucking detroit. MAD as a protective doctrine is dead with the spread of hypersonic weapons so enjoy living with the constant threat of being obliterated without warning, my entire generation basically has no meaningful or stable future to look forward to, and none of us have really had an actual, genuine say in anything involving society for decades."
He exhalled visibly on camera, as if exhausted by the demons of anxiety he'd poured forth, a torrent of fears, uncertainties, and revelations like the tormented ghost of christmas past
A long pull from a bottle of southern comfort.
"look. we have an out of control intelligence apparatus that are in their operation more orwellian than the real life stasi ever were, a government at both the federal and state level thats made of millionaires and billionaires who give no fucks at all except for their own power, out of control and absolutely dogshit-corrupt *local* leaders, nothing is audited, nothing is meaningfully transparented, rampant fraud, destruction of evidence, witness tampering, railroading, intimidation, violence, threats of violence, skyrocketing cost of living, skyrocketing spending, skyrocketing taxes, skyrocketing policies of total control by police, skyrocketing homelessness, fatherlessness, poverty, political corruption, drug abuse, massive politically funded thinly veiled state propaganda, collapsing and decaying infrastructure, the loss of all tradition, culture, community cohesion we might have had, and on and on and on and on.
and all I want right now is to get my dick sucked. drink a beer and blow my motherfucking brains out.
and when people start fighting in the streets over some bullshit and it turns into race riots, because the motherfuckers in the media serving wallstreet always make it about race or some stupid shit like that, I wont be in america to put up with it.
do us all a favor. when you're hanging bankers, hang some fucking journalists too. they never tell the truth. doesnt matter which side they are on
they only divide people and advocate for more of the same bullshit, expanded state powers, more federal dollars, more workers for their campaign, more privileges. they're fucking cancer. yes even your favorite journalist. they're a tumor on society.
our government has become hostile to us even being *alive* anymore. it has for me become intolerable, and in time I have grown to hate it.
there is no way to change it. no way to salvage it. I cannot see any hope for the future anymore. And if you search yourself I know many of you feel the same."
He took another long pull from the bottle.
"we no longer have a voice in america and no means to air our grievances peacefully.
theres nothing in it left worth saving when it all can be taken away at a moments notice by a deaf and hostile bureucratic government. I should have voted for bernie last year. At least he would have destroyed it.
many of you will disagree with this sentiment, thinking things can still work out. because you still have your creature comforts. your apartment which you cant afford. your car with its maintenace bills and monthly payments you've fallen behind on same as half the country now out of work, but in a short few months, a year at most, you will learn what I have learned, and the reason I drink, what I knew about as early as june of 2019, that this is it. this was as good as it was ever going to get. and that the good days, the best days are behind us. that all that you hold dear could be taken. all that you worked for, was already gone, and you just havent realized it yet. I've set this to autoupload once it's done recording. I built a company just to watch the people who dont want any of us to succeed burn america down around it. Im done. Goodbye america."
The man got up from his chair, camera still recording, and left. Only the red flashing dot remained, the only witness to the silence.12 -
Whenever we have to do Sprint Retros i feel like i am trapped in self-help group.
Recently, we had to describe our work/team like we would do amazon reviews. That is, we had to write "reviews" about our last sprint.
I sincerely would like to know why we can't discuss problems like grown adults, if there are any. Why do we have to pretend we are in a space rocket, on a sailing boat, in a formula one race car or reviewing amazon articles to articulate our needs?
I feel like developers are treated like stupid, little kids, and the majority of the developers don't have a problem with it.4
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