Things have been a little too quiet on my side here, so its time for an exciting new series:

practiseSafeHex's new life as a manager.

Episode 1: Dealing with the new backend team

It's great to be back folks. Since our last series where we delved into the mind numbing idiocy of former colleagues, a lot has changed. I've moved to a new company and taken a step up as a Dev manager / Tech lead. Now I know what you are all thinking, sounds more dull and boring right? Well it wouldn't be a practiseSafeHex series if we weren't ...

<audience-shouting>
DEALING! ... WITH! ... IDIOTS!
</audience-shouting>

Bingo! so lets jump right in and kick us off with a good one.

So for the past few months i've been on an on-boarding / fact finding / figuring out this shit-storm, mission to understand more about what it is i'm suppose to do and how to do it. Last week, as part of this, I had the esteemed pleasure of meeting face to face with the remote backend team i've been working with. Lets rattle off a few facts to catch us all up:

- 8 hour time difference to me
- No documentation other than a non-maintained swagger doc
- Swagger is reporting errors and several of the input models are just `Type: String`
- The one model that seems accurate, has every property listed as optional, including what must be the primary key
- Properties go missing and get removed at the drop of a hat and we are never told.
- First email I sent them took 27 days to reply, my response to that hasn't been answered so far 31 days later (new record! way to go team, I knew we could do it!!!)
- I deal directly with 2 of them, the manager and the tech lead. Based on how things have gone so far, i've nick named them:
1) Ass
2) Hole

So lets look at some example of their work:

- I was trying to test the new backend, I saw no data in QA. They said it wouldn't show up until mid day their time, which is middle of the night for us. I said we need data in our timezone and I was told: a) "You don't understand how big this system is" (which is their new catch phrase) b) "Your timezone is not my concern"

- The whole org started testing 2 days later. The next day a member from each team was on a call and I was asked to give an update of how the testing was going on the mobile side. I said I was completely blocked because I can't get test data. Backend were asked to respond. They acknowledged they were aware, but that mobile don't understand how big the system is, and that the mobile team need to come up with ideas for the backend team, as to how mobile can test it. I said we can't do anything without test data, they said ... can you guess what? ... correct "you don't understand how big the system is"

- We eventually got something going and I noticed that only 1 of the 5 API changes due on their side was done. Opened tickets. 2 days later asked them for progress and was told that "new findings" always go to the bottom of the backlog, and they are busy with other things. I said these were suppose to be done days ago. They said you can't give us 2 days notice and expect everything done. I said the original ticket was opened a month a go *sends link* ......... *long silence* ...... "ok, but you don't understand how big the system is, this is a lot of work"

- We were on a call. Product was asking the backend manager (aka "Ass") a question about a slight upgrade to the new feature. While trying to talk, the tech lead (aka "Hole") kept cutting everyone off by saying loudly "but thats not in scope". The question was "is this possible in the future" and "how long would it take", coming from management and product development. Hole just kept saying "its not in scope", until he was told to be quiet by several people.

- An API was sending down JSON with a string containing a message for the user with 2 bits of data inside it. We asked for one of those pieces to also come down as a property as the string can change and we needed it client side. We got that. A few days later we found an edge case and asked for the second piece of data to be a property too. Now keep in mind, they clearly already have access to them in order to make the string. We were told "If you keep requesting changes like this, you are going to delay the release of the backend by up to 2 weeks"

Yes folks, there you have it, the most minuscule JSON modifications, can delay your release by up to 2 weeks ........ maybe I should just tell product, that they don't understand how big the app is, and claim we can't build it on our side? Seems to work for them

Thats all the time we have for today,

Tune in for more, where we'll be looking into such topics as:

- If god himself was an iOS developer ... not
- Why automate when you can spend all day doing it by hand
- Its more time-efficient to just give everything a story point of 5
- Why waste time replying to emails ... when you can do nothing instead

See you all next week,
practiseSafeHex

This is super childish but it's the gameserver insidstry and karma is a bitch.

TLDR: I hacked my boss

I was working for a gameserver and I did development for about 3 months and was promised pay after the network was released. I followed through with a bunch of dev friends and the guy ended up selling our work. He didn't know that I was aware of this as he tried to tell people to not tell us but one honest person came forward and said he sold our work for about 8x the price of what he owed ALL OF US collectively.

I proceeded to change the server password and when he asked why he couldn't log in I sent him an executable (a crypted remote access tool) and told him it was an "encryption tunnel" that makes ssh and file transfers secure. Being the idiot that he is he opened it and I snagged all of his passwords including his email and I changed them through a proxy on his machine to ensure I wouldn't get two factored with Google. After I was done I deleted system 32 :3

Trashy Girl that literally did not talk to me in over five years and even back then only talked to me if she needed something texts me today:

Girl: Hi :) How are you?

Me: *oh fuck no* Hi! Good, how about you?

Girl: Great! You know how to program apps right?

Me: *Fuck you* Yeah, whatcha planning?

Girl: Sooo my boyfriends brother has an idea for an app, it’s basically like instagram and snapchat but it’s actually *insert location based snapchat ripoff idea*

Me: Well sure but that’s quite a long term project and App Development kinda isn’t cheap to outsource!

No answer.

I’m like what did you expect?

Same shit everyday. Sometimes I consider starting a new life in a country where noone knows I can code, work remote and answer with “pleas” when people ask me what I do.

My morning (RO = remote office):

Me: Your xxx implementation is very strange.
RO: Yes we are following a new example from experts in this field. See this link.

Me: Paragraph 1, use xxx class in these situations. Were not doing that.
RO: Yes we had problems with that, we decided to skip that.

Me: Paragraph 2, always use xxx when accessing data. Were not doing that.
RO: Yes that create many bugs, we skipped that.

Me: This section on debugging says to enable this flag while in development to allow the IDE to alert you to issues.
RO: Yes this causes the app to crash constantly. So we took it out.
Me: ... because its finding issues ... and telling you where the problem is, with an error message.

... your not following the experts at all.

RO: We are!, please read the link we provided.

... this will be discussed on my exit interview

Last Friday company-wide call consisted of the sales CEO bossman, the remote contractor dev, and myself. The only topic of discussion was CTO-bashing (bossman's favorite). Neither person had much of anything to say about their week, and they didn't want to hear my rather-lengthy summary either (I did a lot). All they wanted to do was bash the CTO (API Guy).

The CEO asked how many hours I had worked, and seemed annoyed when I said less than 40. Well screw you. Monday was Christmas, and Sunday was Encroaching Estranged Asshole Day. (Earlier rant)

I've been spending most of my time trying to learn the steaming mountain of rancid hippo shit that API Guy squeezed out, since he's leaving forever in 10 days. Sure, CEO bossman says he'll still be around to answer questions, but even with him right next to me in the office he's less than useful. After he's gone and finally feeling free of this farce? It'll be worth fuck-all.

So bossman is mad at me for both not working enough over Christmas, and not pumping out features at a frantic pace despite multiple explanations of why this is a bad idea. And he didn't care about what work I actually did do.

My every interaction with him makes me angry. Whenever I -- or anyone else -- does something he doesn't approve of, seemingly no matter the reasoning, he makes it out to be a failure on their part, and like he can't trust them as much now.

Well I'm sorry we're trying to make sure our websocket works perfectly before putting it in the hands of our customers who rely on it for cash processing.

I'm sorry I'm trying to recall printers that aren't configured properly, which also prevent customers from using our goddamn service they're paying for.

I'm sorry I'm trying to learn how everything works while I still have someone to talk to and ask questions of.

I'm sorry I'm preparing for the day I have to take over and have you breathing down my neck. Once API Guy's gone I'll be responsible for everything, and you'll be yelling at me and having a @Root bashing session instead if I don't know how to fix everything right away.

But no. All you care about is that I talk to you about what's going in so you can micromanage development despite having zero fucking understanding of goddamn anything. All you ever fucking want is the next shiny feature you can push to make more sales / keep your current contacts happy. Doesn't fking matter if it makes development awful later; that's tomorrow's problem. And yet you have the gall to bash API Guy over and over and over again for the codebase being a mess? Sure he's a terrible programmer, but been putting up with this exact same shit for five years. No wonder it's a mountain of rancid hippo shit. That's as much your fault as his, asshole.

I'm so sorry you "have serious concerns" about me. I don't want to put up with your shit either.

Fuck off and die.

*Opens some Computerphile video on YouTube in Chrome Canary*
CPU > hey ho dude, wait a minute..! I can't process all of this in realtime!!! >_<

Alright.. I think I've still got a copy of all their videos sitting somewhere in the file server.. perhaps I could use that instead.
*Opens said video from the file server in SMPlayer*
CPU > aah, thanks man. Now I can allocate 15-ish % of my resources to that and give you a good watching experience.

Web browsers are really great for being the most general-purpose document viewers, application execution environments (remote code execution engines as someone here called it), and overall be one of the most versatile programs on any PC's standard software suite.

But that comes at a price.. performance. And definitely when it comes to featureful fucking WordPress shitsites (shites?), bloated YouTube, Google, Facebook, and all that fucking garbage.. I fucking hate web browsers and this "Web 2.0" that people keep on talking about. Your boatload of JavaScript frameworks just to ease your own fucking development has a real impact when it happens on dozens of tabs, you know.

Besides, can't those framework creators just make it into a "compiler" * of sorts? So that front-end devs can flail their dicks in an shit-infested environment full of libraries and frameworks all they want, but the framework can convert it into plain JS code that the web server can then serve. Or better yet, the JavaScript standard could be improved to actually be usable on its own!

Look, I'm not a front-end dev. Heck, I'm not even a dev to begin with. But what I do know is that efficiency matters, especially at large scale. Web browsers being so overgeneralized and web devs adding a boatload of fucking libraries or frameworks or whatever, it adds up, both to the CPU's and my own temper.

(*) Quote marks because source code to source code isn't really compiling, but then uglified JS looks worse than machine code anyway so meh :/

Was asked to help a team of interns in a remote country, finish an app. Not only were they terrible at literally every aspect of development, but were arrogant and argued their "new" ways were right.

Spent weeks on the project being nice, trying to help them, sending them links to standards and documents, pointing out unit tests shouldn't be failing, everyone needs to have the same versions of the tools etc. You know, basic shit.

Things got quite heated a few weeks in when they started completely ignoring me. Shit was breaking all over the place and crashing, as I thought we were going to build it one way, and they went and built it another.

Was practically begging the team architect and my manager for help dealing with them. Only reply I got was the usual "were aware of the problem and looking into it" bullshit.

Eventually after the app was done, a mutual agreement was reached that the 2 teams would split (I maintain they were kicked out). All the local devs were happy, managers had mentioned how difficult they were and it would be great for us to finally work on our own.

So I thought everything was fine ... until my end of year performance review came along.

Seems I'm quite poor at "working with others" and I "don't try hard enough with others", it was clear I was struggling with the remote team and "made no effort".

WELL FUCK RIGHT OFF

Not being cocky, but I've never had anything like that in a performance review for the past 7 years. I'm a hard worker, and never have trouble making friends with colleagues. Everyone in the country complained about these remote fuckers, even the manager, who I begged for help. And the end result is I need to work harder.

I came in early, stayed late to fit their timezone, took extra tasks, did research for them, wrote docs. And I was told to work harder.

Only reason I didn't quit, was my internal transfer request was approved lol. New team is looking at projects orders of magnitude more impressive, never been happier.

So we are a development company, we have some remote coders.

This one is very good coding BUT

Sometimes he disappears and then comes back with an history, the other day he said his grandpa was about to die of cancer so he had to go to see him.

Three days ago, he had to finish a landing page manager, in React. just a form and unzip (nodejs server side) the files... It was not so difficult.

He said was going to finish later that day.

Then he disappeared, for 3 days!

And i got a message from him on facebook saying he got robbed and he was going to rent a laptop to continue working.

Then i asked if he had any progress on the code before that happened. and he started sending
me screenshots of the code , but in one screenshot i was able to see a part of the desktop background. Checked on the history of files @ Slack and that was his background lol.

Please guys , don't do these kind of things.
If he had told me that he needed to study or something i would have understood him

Now i feel i cant trust him anymore.

Moral: Lies/attitudes like these one can have a big negative effect on your life and you will miss some big opportunities!

TL;DR
A "friend" is a tech fraud. Faking his resume as a software engineer! Only interested on the salary. This is unfair to all of us putting the hours of effort/practice just to improve our craft! 😠😤

I have a "friend" who is faking his resume, putting fake experiences and putting jargons not even related to tech just to make himself smart. He's using his customer service rep experience to talk confidently. His resume fcking long, 3 pages of fakery. I can't help, but to laugh when he sent it to me.

He has a tech degree, but worked in a BPO industry for 4 years, then recently, he quit. He got jealous with the lucrative software development industry and he wants to relearn coding, as a friend and I like sharing my knowledge, I agreed to guide him in the process.

After 3 moths, he got his first job, but unfortunately he got fired after two weeks because he commited sensitive data to the remote repo.

Then after a month, he got his second job and worked there for 6 months, he still don't know what his doing and always ask me solutions when he is stuck.

He got his 3rd job, remote work with high compensation. Fast forward after 3 months, he only got 1 month of salary, the other 2 wasn't given for unknown reason, my best guess is the company noticed his experience on paper does not match on real life.

Currently, he's working on another remote work with same compensation as before, and he still asks me super simple questions from time to time.

This is so unfair to all the devs who truly deserves the opportunity.

You want to land a job as PHP developer? About to go to an interview?

There are two ways:

1. Be able to explain the difference between an interface and an abstract class and their purposes. (I shit you not.)

2. If you aren't able to, then simply state you don't know and are eager to learn.

(The second approach might not work if you claimed to know object oriented programming "very well" before though.)

Yet I am astounded in how many interviews people were either playing smart and just rambled on not wanting to lose face. During the remote calls of some special candidates I could even hear them typing on their keyboards in the background googling the answers to my questions.

And the irony is that I thereby had to veto their appliance. As they had lost my trust in being able to communicate honestly. And for wasting my time.

Our domain is complicated and ever-changing and not knowing certain parts of software development is *normal*.

Yet don't just try to fake it in order to land a job. It won't work, and when it does you may find yourself literally in the company of like-minded individuals.

I started hearing about Git about a few years ago (I think I was in the first or second class of my study, am in the fifth now). I understood the concept but found it really hard to work with, as in, so hard that I just didn't use it. It kept coming back again and again and a few months ago I thought: Fuck it.

What is one thing that a lot of devs are good at? Automation, exactly. So, I had a GitLab account (idc about their recent fuckup, will keep using it) and had to keep asking people to set stuff up for me.

I started to do research and stumbled upon the empty repo page from GitLab which provided clear instructions on how to locally do stuff so I could interact with a remote repository. Then I started to bash script.

After one day, I had a fully working bash script which, with just two parameters, initiates a new repo, clones it locally, creates a README.MD and commits + pushes it.
Then I put it as executable in the /usr/bin.

So now, whenever I start a new project, I just have to create a directory, go into that directory and call a command with two parameters and I'm good to go!

Actually pretty proud of that, although it might be the most usual thing for a lot of peoples, I wrote a workaround/automation thingy for the thing I find the hardest in development :).

First rant. 3 years in my first job as a developer. It's been great. I've learned a ton. But the past 6 months have been awful. Our client is forcing us to remote into a cloud pc, which we then use to remote into Ubuntu. All development must be done this way. Everything is extremely slow. To the point that you can type faster than the screen can update. I want to jump out of the window. I'd basically have to move to get a new job, which Im not really into. Just bought a house a year ago, family is here, blah blah. Just hoping if I ride it out, client will wise up and let us use our own computer again.

*edits file on remote server*
WanBLowS: naah you can't 😈
*le wild BSOD appears for the over 9000-th time*

... Yeah. Windows, great job. Who needs system integrity when they're working on remote servers anyway, right?!

And to top it all off, le reboot mentions that they're working on fucking "features" again. That's what you needed to BSOD for?! For a goddamn motherfucking feature?!! Fucking piece of shit.

At least when I opened vim on that server again, it's saved everything neatly in the .swp files, ready for recovery. Now that's neat, isn't it? Microsoft, the Linux community has already moved on to nvim in terms of development, but maybe, just maybe, you can learn a thing or two from our "legacy software", vim.

As for me, maybe it's time to take out my Arch laptop again. At least that won't crap out on me because the sun and the stars are in a position that the OS doesn't like, or something stupid like that. FUCK YOU MICROSHIT!!!

I have worked with a handful of very green devs in the last 10 years. A common theme has emerged.

They don't heed any of my advice.

An exercise to the reader:

If you have a Windows machine, but need to work in a Linux environment, what would be your first instinct how to proceed?

In this exercise, you are as green as it gets. You have very little professional development experience, let alone server admin experience. And your lead dev has suggested setting up a VM.

1. Set up a Linux VM
2. Use a live CD or set up a dual boot system
3. Pay for a cloud server and set it up from scratch

I have no idea how this person intends to get any work done on a remote, terminal only, Linux server. That is if I can even get their environment into a sane configuration.

I walk into the kickoff meeting today. The first part of this project had 5 developers and a project manager. Former project manager handled communication and sheltered us from bullshit. We built an amazing piece of software in a very short time. Customers were so amazed that they decided to reboot the project, boost the funding by several million, and let us go again. They specifically requested the same team.

Now the team looks like this: the neediest tester guy, a UX lady that doesn't have any UX background, an agile "visionary", a project manager that doesn't understand how development works, a solutions architect, 3 COTS platform specialists, a devops specialist, and an account lead. They have booked all kinds of workshops and other shit to kick things off.

So development capacity is only 60% of what it was. Management ratio was 1:5 before. Now the management ratio is 9:3. The new project manager thinks developers should be on more customer calls and responding to all customer emails during sprints. We already built this system and devops pipelines end to end. The COTS people, solutions architect, or the UX person can't program. They want us to magically convert this custom application into one based on COTS. What we need to do is make the rest of the business processes that we omitted, integrate known feedback, rework the backend, build better automated testing, improve logging and reporting, add another actor to the system, add a different authentication method, and basically work through the massive backlog.

How do they think this is going to work? Do they think we can download a custom engineered enterprise grade software system from Microsoft and double click all the way to customer satisfaction? The licenses alone are too much for the customer on an ongoing cost basis. I guess we can discuss it during the agile team-building weekend at some remote lake that the team "visionary" has set up. For the sake of fuck.

Like development isn't hard enough. Hire two more developers and lose all of the dead weight. Get a project manager that won't let the trivial shit roll down on us. What the fuck.

Two things before this all:
- I fucking love gitlab so far
- I miss the fuzzy searching from sublime text, as vsCode still can't do it properly..

I was fed up with all the shitty overbloated git deployment scripts, sync scripts, automatic backup solutions and hosted git servers out there, so now my own solution is:

- remote git cloned local files
- local files are synced via dropbox, to easily edit them on any device
- all changes and deleted files are saved up to 1 year on dropbox
- remote has gitlab running and webhooks setup
- the webhooks point to my node scripts, which then rebase the code to its dedicated dev server
- daily server backup with 7 days roll
- cold storage backup each 30 days

Sounds like overkill, but from my experience, you really can't have enough places that have a backup, especially coldstorage backups.

My goal in general though is to have everything on my computer backupped and ready to go asap, if something happens.

I wanted to just use a virtual machine for development stuff, but that wouldnt be able to run on my laptop, so I need a more general solution, where I sync all configs and all projects across. (and have some sort of basic list of tools needed, so I dont need to remember them)

Found for example something for vscode to sync its settings and plugins via any sort of git, will give it a try in near future too.

I'm intentionally resigning from my remote software development job to teach my company a lesson. The guy who wrote the codes previously really knew how to cook spaghetti 😀😂.

To add a single line takes minutes, because when you do something else breaks, and you'll keep fixing what breaks when you tried fixing what breaks when you try fixing what..... endless loop of bug-fix cycle.

Now they blame it on me.

They won't understand if they don't get someone new, my reputation will fix itself through that..

My first opinion after sighting the codes was, "re-write the whole project using better patterns and architecture", the reply as you can guess, we'll do that later.

I couldn't even upgrade the server to use even PHP 7.1 because the framework breaks, the guy has editted a lot from the vendors files. Don't ever try composer updates.

Two word to describes the situation. "It sucks".

The previous developer needs to be shot, literally.

To the remote dev who ghosted me right after we discovered a major bug in your code, and whom we paid up front for development, thanks for nothing.

You’re fired.

Have u ever had the perfect job opportunity and u screwed up? This idiot just did!! 😓😭 It's a 100% remote c# role. I literally had the job, all I needed to to was be patient and wait. But, noooooo I had to go and turn down the offer because it was "taking to long". He was getting the proposal ready and I was growing impatient. It's been almost a month since I started talking to the CTO and we were/are on the same level of understanding. He told me today just hours after I consulted with someone who's a business owner and he helped me write an apology to him. Man do I feel like an idiot. He didn't ask for a resume or references. Just seen my GitHub and a few game I did and let me talk to the lead Dev and I was in. The lead Dev even told me "welcome aboard, can't wait to work with you." AND I still screwed this op up!! Now he's telling me he will talk to the CEO and see what he says cause it maybe out of his hands.😞😞😞😞😞😭😭😭😓😓😓 What fool I am, eh??? P.S. which makes it even worst is that he reached out to me via LinkedIn without me sending him my resume or applying for any job that had posted.

!rant
Going to apply for Remote Development Jobs. Wish me luck guys because I really don't have any qualifications just experience and knowledge. As you know some recruiters look for qualifications as well.

So here's my problem. I've been employed at my current company for the last 12 months (next week is my 1 year anniversary) and I've never been as miserable in a development job as this.

I feel so upset and depressed about working in this company that getting out of bed and into the car to come here is soul draining. I used to spend hours in the evenings studying ways to improve my code, and was insanely passionate about the product, but all of this has been exterminated due to the following reasons.

Here's my problems with this place:

1 - Come May 2019 I'm relocating to Edinburgh, Scotland and my current workplace would not allow remote working despite working here for the past year in an office on my own with little interaction with anyone else in the company.

2 - There is zero professionalism in terms of work here, with there being no testing, no planning, no market research of ideas for revenue generation – nothing. This makes life incredibly stressful. This has led to countless situations where product A was expected, but product B was delivered (which then failed to generate revenue) as well as a huge amount of development time being wasted.

3 - I can’t work in a business that lives paycheck to paycheck. I’ve never been somewhere where the salary payment had to be delayed due to someone not paying us on time. My last paycheck was 4 days late.

4 - The management style is far too aggressive and emotion driven for me to be able to express my opinions without some sort of backlash.

5 - My opinions are usually completely smashed down and ignored, and no apology is offered when it turns out that they’re 100% correct in the coming months.

6 - I am due a substantial pay rise due to the increase of my skills, increase of experience, and the time of being in the company, and I think if the business cannot afford to pay £8 per month for email signatures, then I know it cannot afford to give me a pay rise.

7 - Despite having continuously delivered successful web development projects/tasks which have increased revenue, I never receive any form of thanks or recognition. It makes me feel like I am not cared about in this business in the slightest.

8 - The business fails to see potential and growth of its employees, and instead criticises based on past behaviour. 'Josh' (fake name) is a fine example of this. He was always slated by 'Tom' and 'Jerry' as being worthless, and lazy. I trained him in 2 weeks to perform some basic web development tasks using HTML, CSS, Git and SCSS, and he immediately saw his value outside of this company and left achieving a 5k pay rise during. He now works in an environment where he is constantly challenged and has reviews with his line manager monthly to praise him on his excellent work and diverse set of skills. This is not rocket science. This is how you keep employees motivated and happy.

9 - People in the business with the least or zero technical understanding or experience seem to be endlessly defining technical deadlines. This will always result in things going wrong. Before our mobile app development agency agreed on the user stories, they spent DAYS going through the specification with their developers to ensure they’re not going to over promise and under deliver.

10 - The fact that the concept of ‘stealing data’ from someone else’s website by scraping it daily for the information is not something this company is afraid to do, only further bolsters the fact that I do not want to work in such an unethical, pathetic organisation.

11 - I've been told that the MD of the company heard me on the phone to an agency (as a developer, I get calls almost every week), and that if I do it again, that the MD apparently said he would dock my pay for the time that I’m on the phone. Are you serious?! In what world is it okay for the MD of a company to threaten to punish their employees for thinking about leaving?! Why not make an attempt at nurturing them and trying to find out why they’re upset, and try to retain the talent.

Now... I REALLY want to leave immediately. Hand my notice in and fly off. I'll have 4 weeks notice to find a new role, and I'll be on garden leave effective immediately, but it's scary knowing that I may not find a role.

My situation is difficult as I can't start a new role unless it's remote or a local short term contract because my moving situation in May, and as a Junior to Mid Level developer, this isn't the easiest thing to do on the planet.

I've got a few interviews lined up (one of which was a final interview which I completed on Friday) but its still scary knowing that I may not find a new role within 4 weeks.

Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms?

Love you DevRant <3

Visual Studio Code - ever since the beta.

VS Code is... amazing. There's no words to describe it. It's just amazing.

VSCode since the inception was just this tiny version of Visual Studio that you can transform into your own little IDE. That was the whole point of VSCode - it was a extensible editor. For many years I've used it and never looked back, I still use VS from time to time but Microsoft really nailed this one.

Most of the editors I knew lacked good auto completion and good linting, which IntelliSense was good, and it became even greater once support for languages started piling up. Themes also were top notch, I still remember you can't theme the entire window just the editor, nowadays you can.

And last but not the least is the Remote integration. I didn't need to leave my OS just to do work from another, I just need a SSH agent and it works. It's very straightforward and easy.

Overall Visual Studio Code is a editor that is more about choice and your own style - which makes it unique from IDEs, its fresh and its definitely earned its place as one of the most sought after tools in development.

Alright lads here is the thing, have not been posting anything other than replies to things cuz I have been busy being miserable at school and dealing with work stuff.

Our manager left us back in February. Because she was leaving I decided that I wanted to try a different path and went on to become a programmer analyst for my institution, if anything I knew that it was going to be pretty boring work, but it came with nice monetary compensation and a foot in the door for other data science related jobs in the future. Thing is, the department head asked me to stay in the web technologies department because we had a lack of people there and hiring is hard as shit, we do not do remote jobs since our work usually requires a level of discretion and security. Thus I have been working in the web tech department since she left albeit with a different title since I aced the interview for the analyst position and the team there were more than happy to have me. I have done very few things for them, some reports here and there and mostly working directly with the DBA in some projects. One migration project would have costed my institution a total of 58k and we managed to save the cost by building the migration software ourselves.....honestly it was a fucking cake walk, if you had any doubts about the shaddyness of enterprise level applications regarding selling overpriced shit with different levels of complexity, keep them, enterprise is shaddy af indeed. But I digress.

I wrote the specification for the manager position along the previous manager, we had decided that the next candidate needed to be strong with development knowledge as well as other things as to properly understand and manage a software team, we made the academic requirement(fuck you, yes we did ask for academic requirements) to be either in the Computer Science/software engineering area or at least on the Business Administration side. We were willing to consider BA holders in exchange for having knowledge of the development process of different products and a complete understanding of what developers go through. NOT ONE SINGLE motherfucker was able to satisfy this, some of them were idiots that I knew from before that had ABSOLUTELY no business even considering applying to the position, the courage it took for some of these assholes to apply would have hurt their mothers, their God if they had one, and their country, they were just that fucking bad in their jobs as well as being overall shit people.

Then we had 1 candidate actually fall through the cracks enough to get an interview. My dude here was lying out of his ass through the interview process. According to him he had "lots of Laravel experience and experience managing Laravel projects" and mentioned repeatedly how it would be a technology that we should consider for our products. I was to interview him alongside the vice president of our institution due to the head of my department and the rest of the managers for I.T being on vacation leave all at the same bloody time.

Backstory before the interview:
Whilst I was going over the interview questions with the vice president literally offered me the job instead. I replied with honesty, reflecting how I did not originally wanted him but feeling that our institution was ready to settle on any candidate due to the lack of potentials. He was happy to do it since apparently both him and the HOD were expecting me to step up sooner or later. I was floored.

Regardless, out of kindness he wanted to go through the interview.
So, going back to the interview. As soon as the person in question referenced the framework I started to ask him about it, just simple questions, the first was "what are your thoughts on the Eloquent ORM? I am not too fond of it and want to know what you as a full time laravel dev think of it"
his reply: "I am sorry I am not too familiar with it, I don't know what that is" <--- I appreciated his honesty in this but thought it funny that someone would say that he was a Laravel developer whilst not knowing what an ORM was since you can't really get away from using it on the initial stages of learning about Laravel, maybe if one wanted to go through the hurdle of switching to something like doctrine...but even then, it was....odd.

So I met with the hod when he came back, he was stoked at the prospect of having me become the manager and I happily accepted the position. It will be hell, but I don't even need to hit the ground running since I have been the face of the department since ages. My team were ecstatic about it since we are all close friends and they have been following my directions without complaints(but the ocational eat a dick puto) for some time, we work well together and we are happy to finally have someone to stop the constant barrage that comes from people taking advantage of a missing manager.

Its gonna get good, its gonna get fun, and i am getting to see how shit goes.

Just learned that yesterday someone suggested putting the dev team on "workspace", when I was on leave.

My first question, "what the hell is workspace?"
"It's a remote environment..."
Okay I get it. Are you kidding me? Doing development on remote desktop?

My second question, "Why the hell did someone suggest that?"
"We have had issues with devs using MySQL but the target prod will be using PostgreSQL. That caused issues, inconsistencies... And we found some issues after deployment."

Okay so much for DB agnostic. I called it out that everyone now install PostgreSQL on local. Problem solved, hopefully.

Why we had MySQL in the first place? Yes DB agnostic is one of the reason. The other being I'm more familiar with MySQL so it's quicker to perform tasks (like "can you clone that environment for me" and "can you fix the data on XYZ"). But that's trivial.

Just some ridiculous suggestion that set me off.

I’m currently learning development thru a remote bootcamp, I spend 80% of free time trying to build stuff and doing challenges. None of my friends understand or care, how do you combat loneliness/make friends when you’re a beginner? I’ve been to a few meetups but everyone’s way ahead of me. Bootcamp classmates are cool but none are in my city.

So lets start here, as i have been preparing myself for a while for that rant. I have been putting it off for a while, but today I had enough.
Fuck react-native and fuck facebook react-native team. Bunch of lazy incompetent twats.
The all amazing framework that suppose to be speed up your development process, since you don't have to compile your code after each change. SO FUCKING WHAT if the god damned framework is so fucking buggy and so fucking shit that you constantly have to fix build, dependancies etc issues. Every day since I work on this project that is using react-native I have to deal with some of the react fucked up behaviour. You got an issue ? don't worry google it just to find out that 100 other people had the same issue. Scroll through down the bottom of the page just to find out that facebook devs have closed the issue as resolved (without fucking fixing it) because there wasnt recent replies to the post. Are you fucking kidding me? It's ok thou, create a new issue just to get an automatic reply from the bot that locks the thread and keeps it locked till you update your React-native version to the newest one. You do that and guess fucking what? Their newest version fucks up remote debugging on iOS(fucking android been broke for over a year) so say good bye to debugging your js code. Documentation is fucking trash. You found a nice function like autoCaptialise on your text input? Great! Ah wait, its not fucking working, what is wrong? You google this just to fucking found out it, function never worked on android, so why the fuck you still have it exposed and still have it in your docs? You want to add package? So fucking ez, just type npm install <name of the package>. Ha! fuck you, you still have to go and add them fucking manually in gradle in android and in pod in xcode, because obviously react-native is a one big fucking bullshit. Oh and a scroll view is a fucking glorious highlight of that framework, try add some styling to it, you gonna have loads of fun. Fuck react-native. And fuck the fucking idiot who convinced my boss that framework is so fucking great and now I have to work on this shit. Sincerely Xamarin Developer.

This would be my first official post.

Been a IT Technician for a managed service provider for the past 9 years up until last year August. Managing director pulls me in with a movement to App Development after coming across some personal hobby projects I have done in the past.

Started in the new position in November as Junior Developer and workloads get dumped on me and left to figure it out. 4 weeks of running through code without documentation and the solutions started to make sense.

Started a new solution for a Large remote customer with documentation and timelines in December and I get pulled in again for a second time in front of the MD.

Good News:With effect in January I have been promoted to Head of Application development.

Bad News: The existing department head is leaving end of the month and I am to go 900km from home to hand over all responsibilities for the next 3 weeks.

Better News: Department has started shifting to DevOps and it is up to me to set the policies and work flows to how I see fit.

Worse news: it starts by expanding the team asap as 10 projects accounting to 4000 man hours with deadlines in Q3.

Wish me luck. It's going to be twisted Rollercoaster ride...

!Rant

TLDR: What's your favorite REST API Documentation tool?

I'm about to start developing a really large REST API. I have never really had need to document my previous API's since they were small, self explanatory and had only me using them. Aside from this one being too large for me to keep track of there is also a remote team that will need to integrate with it.

Basically I need write exceptional documentation while using as little time as possible. I love postman and am planning to use it for documentation since I currently use it to test during development anyway but I have seen some really neat looking tools like swagger and apiary so I figured I would check for some other suggestions.

What is your current / preferred REST API documentation method?

I have multiple (in no particular order) :

Nextcloud : It was an idea that I had in my head as well - to take on corporations like Google in the space of personal cloud. Be free, open-source and put the users in charge.

Gitlab : The most open and transparent company that I've ever come across. And they work 99% remote. They've got features that no other players in the space have. All while putting users in control.

Fediverse social media - Mastodon, GNU Social, Diaspora (soon) : For taking a major step in the direction of putting the users in control of their data; all while enabling a decentralized social network.

Ruby : An open community and building a programming language that runs a lot of software of the world.

Python : The oldest thriving community that has a special place in the development community (and my heart)

Javascript / ECMAScript : The scripting language that grew to be a beast of it's own.

Trying to get part time or remote mobile app development job in Milan.

Somehow got a job interview for a company based in USA for remote work. Cleared 3 rounds, got the final contract. For the final assessment, had to make changes in their existing project. Didn't get proper answer to my queries on time. Submitted results as per understanding. Got a rejection mail rn.
It was going on for 3 weeks and all my hopes were based on that.

Feeling Fcuked up.
😣

Week 1 of the new job, and it seems I have some pretty low expectations to meet.

Seriously, I just did the math. Let's say one works an average of 48 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. Just as an average. That's 2400 hours in a year.
In the Micro-scale, a manager would mess up their team once every 2.4 hours (2h24m) or about 4 times per day (assuming 5 working days per week).
That is a pretty low bar to clear. It easy not to be an antsy brat that are-we-there-yet's a professional dev four fucking times a day.

And yet... that is what the complete moron who previously sat on my chair used to do.
Seriously, apparently he used to remote access the team's dev envs *while they were working* and even mess up some of their code. Just as a "monitoring measure". He logged their "keystroke time" in a day (using a primitive windowing method, I must add).
At least 7 requests for updates per person per day. I have his slack history, I checked. Dude literally did nothing else but be an annoying anxiety death pit.

And then there is his bulshit planning...
He created tasks out of his stupid whims, no team review or brainstorming, not even a fucking requisites tallying interview.
He prioritized those out-of-nowhere tasks using panic-driven-development practices and assigned them by availability heuristics.
No sizing method, just arbitrary deadlines for tasks.

I think I will need to have daily standup meetings and an open door policy (that is to say, do no actual work) for a couple months until I can instill some sense of autonomy on my new team. Shit.

Someone has another idea? How do I bring some confidence&autonomy back to devs that are used to be treated like dogs?!?

This isn't a funny rant or story. It's one of becoming increasingly unsure of the career choices I've made the path they've led me down. And it's written with terrible punctuation and grammar, because it's a cathartic post. I swear I'm a better writer than this.

The highlights:
- I left a low-paying incredibly stable job with room to grow (think specialized office worker at a uni) to become a QA tester at a AAA game studio, after growing bored with the job and letting my productivity and sometimes even attendance slip
- I left AAA studio after having been promoted through the ranks to leading an embedded test tools development team where we automated testing the game (we got to create bots, basically!) and the database, and building some of the most requested tools internally to the company; but we were paid as if we were QA testers, not engineers, and were told that wouldn't change; rather than move over or up, I moved out to a better paying, less fabulous web and tools development job for a no-name company
- No-name company offered one or two days remote, was salaried, and close to home. CTO was a fan of long lunches and Quake 3 Arena 1-2 hours at the end of every day. CTO position was removed, I got a lot of his responsibilities, none of his pay, and started freelancing to learn new skills rather than deal with the CFO being my boss.
- Went to work as a freelancer for an email marketing SaaS provider my previous job had used. Made loads of money, dealt with an old, crappy code base, an old, cranky senior dev, and an owner who ran around like the world was on fire 24/7; but I worked without pants, bought a car, a house, had a kid, etc;

Now during ALL of this, I was teaching game dev as an adjunct at my former uni. This past fall, I went full time as a professor in game dev. I took a huge pay cut, but got a steady schedule (semester to semester anyway) and great benefits. I for once chose what I thought was the job I wanted over more money and something that was just "different". And honestly, I've regretted it so much. My peer / diagonally above me coworker feels untrustworthy half the time and teaches the majority of the programming courses when he's a designer and I've been the game programming professor for 8 years (I also teach non-game programming courses, but those just got folded into the games program...); I hate full-time uni politics; I'm struggling with money for my family; and I am in the car all the time it feels like. I could probably go back to my last job, which had some benefits, but nowhere near as good; my wife doesn't want me back to working in the house all the time because that was a struggle unto itself once we had a kid (for all of us, in different ways); and I have now less than 24 hours to tell my university I want to not pursue longer term contracts for full-time and go back to adjunct next Fall (or walk away entirely), or risk burning a bridge (we are reviewing applicants for next year tomorrow, including my own) by bailing out mid-application process.

I'm not sure I'm asking for advice. I'm really just ranting, I guess. Some people I know would kill to have the opportunities I have. I just feel like each job choice led me further away from a job I liked, towards more money, which was a tradeoff that worked out mostly, but now I feel like I don't have either, and I'm trapped due to healthcare and 401k and such. Sure, I like working more with my students and have been able to really support them in their endeavors this semester, but... that's their lives. Not mine. The wife thinks I should stay at the university and we'll figure out money eventually (we are literally sinking into debt, it's not going well at all), while most people think I should leave, make money, and figure out the happiness factor once my finances are back on track and the kid is old enough to be in school.

And I have less than 24 hours it feels like to make a momentous decision.

Yay. Thanks for reading :)

So this happened a few days ago.

Me: (chilling like a mo'fucka then suddenly an email alert)

*Opens email and realises it's from a recruiter*

Recruiter: We are a venture-based startup out of LA, funded by a top VC. We have developed the first turnkey Serverless Swift platform for app development.

We are looking at expanding our team and we have a few different openings for remote and contract work.

Simply reply to this email with your resume attached.

Me: Thanks for reaching out and presenting me with this opportunity.

I plan on going back to school this January and for that reason I humbly have to bow out.

I will surely keep an eye out for {company_name}. The idea is rather interesting I should say.

*I go back to chilling like a mo'fucka*

*The next day I'm at work, I get an email from the same recruiter again*

Recruiter: Thank you for submitting your resume.

We are expanding our team and are looking for Swift rockstars to join the movement of bringing server-side Swift to the masses.

We were impressed by your resume and wanted to get to know you better. This survey is the first step in that process.

Please take a moment and complete. It should not take longer than 10 minutes.

Me: ...........................
*Calmly walks away from my desk to the bathroom*

WHAT FUCKING RESUME HAVE I SUBMITTED TO YOU? BITCH, MY EMAIL EXPLICITLY SAID: THANKS BUT NO THANKS...

You can't just force an applicant

When you want to resign to your full time job but you are having difficulty on making decision.

Reasons to resign:
1. They are giving tasks that are not related to web development such as data entry.

2. I can't see a good future ahead on this company. It feels like it doesn't have a goal to grow. The boss is not focusing on this line and instead she is focusing on her other businesses. The boss also has admitted that she can only give 20% of her time. We don't have new projects and challenging tasks.

3. 4 months have been passed and still we haven't receive the yearly salary increase. It should be effected on February.

Reasons to stay:
1. No salary deduction if you are late or didn't complete 9 hours / day. Sometimes I just work for 7 or 8 hours a day.

2. Office is just 30 mins away from my house.

3. When I don't have a task, I usually do my freelance project at the office secretly. So even though there are no challenging tasks at the office, my freelance project helps a lot.

4. You can play games with your friends when you feel exhausted or you don't have assigned tasks.

I recently received an offer from my remote part-time job to work full time 8-10 hours a day and the salary is twice higher compare to current one.

Warning long rambling story cause sleep deprivation

I never really bothered with ssh outside of using putty to remote into my servers and rpi's from my desktop to run updates, install something, or whatever else.

But today I was on a call with my cousin bored cause she was just rambling, so I opened vscode to clean my install of unnecessary extensions I installed and haven't used more than once or twice.

I saw Remote - SSH and as I was bored listening to a teenager complain about high school just like I used to (lol) and responding when she asked me something. I scrolled through the page, then the documentation just casually skimming the text

I setup an ssh key on an rpi I threw manjaro arm following the instructions on their tips and tricks page
I then moved the key to my desktop using winscp (cause lazy)
leading to having a minor hicup of rsa not being an accepted keytype (thanks 'your favorite search engine' for the help)
Finally, I was able to connect using the private key

at this point my cousin went to bed cause she has school tomorrow. But I was still doing stuff with ssh, I created a new ssh connection in VSCode, but had to go to the documentation to figure out how to make it use my fancy new key file, not hard took 30 seconds of looking to get it working.

Now that I was in, I moved to my development folder, created a folder for PiHole, created a compose yml, created a pihole-data folder.
I opened the yml and pasted in a compose from dockerhub.

at this point I thought 'i can't just run this from terminal can I'. and Obviously it worked cause there's literally no reason it wouldn't I'm just stupid to think it might not.

So I created folders and files on a remote system, launched a docker container, checked for package updates after on a linux machine. All from VS-Code on a windows machine.

I know this is simple for some people, i know some people are like 'where's the interesting part'. but ehhh I thought it was cool to get it setup, I now really regret not getting into ssh sooner, and I'm definitely going to uninstall vscode on all my smaller graphical VM's in favor of doing this. and this will definitely help with my headless vm's.

I also will have to thank my cousin, might not have done this if I wasn't stuck at my computer on messenger call with her lol

I'm gonna go to bed now, But I feel accomplished for the first time in a while even if it's for something so simple as setting up anssh key for the first time

Old story, happened some way back. I worked part-time for a small web development company that did between other things something called SharePoint development, basically .net webforms with shit glitter on top of it.

The most weird part of it, was the fact that we were working on vms that hosted the app, it was our dev, test and staging environment, as well as were we showed the client the polished turd.

Did I say that it was on a vm? Well it was on a remote vm, that each of use had access to it, through our domain accounts, and they couldn't configure the windows server to accept more than two or three users at once to be connected.

That was our test enviroment and dev enviroment, sooo showing the app to the client meant for the rest of us to not write any code because it might crash or get stuck.

The app was accessible and discoverable by url and through google search from outside, I dont think that should have been allowed.

The most disastrous part was that we had NO source versioning whatsoever, just plain old copy and paste in different folders.
Deploying to client meant remoting to the clients host or whatever it was, and manually copying the source files

If someone wanted to debug the application you had to shout, and you also could hear it, in the office: "I'm debugging!" or "I'm deploying!". Because we were on the same machine, there was only one process with the server and it meant that if you debug or deployed it would block it for the others.

Should I talk about code quality? Maybe not.

I actually only started programming a little less than two years ago. I entered my freshman year of college as a mathematics major, but as time went on I ended up enjoying coding in C++ much more than trying to work out partial equations.

I have since become fascinated with many aspects of computer science, mainly web development and systems programming (I discovered Linux and the command line only a year ago and I'm practically in love). I've since been working for a couple fairly new startups with duties from developing a mobile native app in AngularJS/Ionic to migrating content to new servers and developing custom themes on WordPress. I have deep, deep aspirations of eventually being employed by Google as a Senior Software Dev (although I'd definitely prefer working for a company that would allow 100% remote work 😁). I've even finally began developing my own projects, ranging from a URL shortening service to a basic online encyclopedia.

I wanna spend the rest of my life doing this shit. Hell, I hope I die at my computer.

So I'm trying out docker and see how I can make use of it, current setup:
1. Ubuntu on VM and Mac for Asp.Net core development
2. Windiws for MS only stuff like SQL Server
3. Ubuntu Server on VM and is running docker images: MS image for SQL and Ms image for dinner core.

What I did so far one script which will handle updating SQL Server database on windows with the changes done on docker SQL image
Then publish website from Mac or Ubuntu to docker image. I have yet to find a way to execute scripts remotely on a docker image using bash script from a remote

What should I do next? And for home setup go for Ubuntu server or CentOS? Any recommended packages for server administration? Workflow ..etc.?

So I've been hired as a senior software developer with all the tags included (mentoring, innovating, pushing forward changes) for a company that is trying to move away from waterfall development (yup, it's 2019 and this exists) to a more iterative workflow.
I was initially hired and sent out to do some "field work" abroad for 3 months and then worked "remotely" from the local office with our field partners.
During all this time it seemed that my ideas go through smoothly, there was a lot of chatter about how things are moving forward, how new projects, innovations and new methodologies are implemented.
And yet, after my "remote" work has finished and I have to do things locally more, all of the skeletons fell out. It's just talk, nothing seems to be changing at all and yet any attempts to talk with the brass is like hitting a brick wall.
Not only that, I've been handed a 12 year old project with no possibility to refactor, no technical documentation, very few comments and in a terrible style.
The atmosphere in the company is odd as hell. People are either not very initiative, nor they seem to really care about all of the "changes" that "should be happening".
It almost feels that I've arrived in a company that still lives in 2007 more or less.
Should I quit, or perhaps it's a little "too soon" (have spent 7 months in the place already)? What I don't want is to get in the same train again (work for a company for 8 - 12 months, feel burned out because of the divergence between actual things done and "plans" and then change the job).

Change haproxy config on the remote machine so that every developer gets rerouted to an older version of the development app.

Firstly, my main wish is to work in the office. I don't like remote stuff and all that. I would like to have a job where you have to go every day except weekend at a certain time and be there for example 7 hours. I would love to have a good who will tell me what to do, I like to listen to people. I would also want to have a secretary, Im not organized. I would like to do either .NET development, Web Development or 3D modeling. If im working .NET, I would like to work in Microsoft. If Im working Web, I would like to work anywhere, with an office, of course. I don't know, I just love the feeling offices give me and the atmosphere in them. And if im working 3D modeling, I would like to work in Bethesda. Oblivion played a big role in my childhood. I don't care for salary, it doesn't have to be anything big, just enough for bills and my children (which I hope ill have).
There, dream of a 15 yo

How can I ask my coworkers for feedback without coming off as insecure?
A year and a half ago I got my first job as a remote developer when I was 30. I've done web and IT related jobs before but not full time development. Everything was fine for the first 10 months and then I started getting negative reviews, that my productivity rate is much lower than the rest of the team. I felt really sad and stressed, which led to a minor breakdown, which led to my contract being changed from a full time employee to a contractor that gets paid by the (estimated) hour. After a bit of research, I found out that my productivity rate was low because I was the only developer following our "One test per pull request" policy, which was obviously cancelled at some point, but nobody informed me. I didn't bring this up to my boss because I didn't want to make my manager and coworkers look bad. Working as a contractor isn't so good because a lot of times my features are delayed because of external factors I can't control(code reviews, testers, tests randomly breaking). I want to find out if I'm a bad developer or if the company is trying to cut costs by taking advantage of my insecurity and inexperience.

I always thought working remotely from home would be the dream. Now instead of a boss giving me shit, I get to listen to my girlfriend complaining about how much I work. God forbid I spend time doing something I enjoy.

The Coding Apocalypse: A Dev's Rant

June 14, 2024

Okay, gather ’round, fellow code warriors, because it’s time for a good ol' developer rant. If you're reading this, chances are you’ve already faced the dragon that is modern software development, and you’re somehow still using "Agile" as a life preserver while the ship is sinking. So let's dive into the chaos that our world has become.

Here’s the thing: We’re living in a paradox where every other day there's a shiny new framework promising to be the “ultimate solution” while ignoring that it's just recoil from the last big mess. I mean, can we talk about JavaScript for a second? I’m pretty sure if you stand still long enough, a new JavaScript framework will spontaneously generate from the void. Do we really need another one?

And don’t get me started on Sprint Planning. It’s like playing Tetris with stones while blindfolded, hoping that all the blocks land perfectly. Spoiler: They don’t. The product manager’s eyes glaze over as they nod approvingly to your estimates, secretly extending deadlines in their minds. The 'flexible' deadlines then become rigid, unattainable goals, and who gets the heat? The devs, of course.

Also, can we address the insanity of microservices? Sure, splitting a monolith into microservices sounds fun—until you’re drowning in API calls and Docker containers. Debugging a distributed system is like trying to untangle a pair of headphones made of spaghetti.

Oh, and if one more person asks if we’re "leveraging AI" and "blockchain technology" for our simple CRUD app, I might lose it. Sometimes, folks, the wheel doesn’t need reinventing. It just needs a little grease.

Finally, remote work. Blessing and curse. Sure, I enjoy the freedom of working in my PJs, but the endless Zoom calls are killing my soul. Breakout rooms? More like breakdown rooms. The Slack notifications? Let’s just say my sound settings have a hair trigger on mute these days.

So here’s to us, the devs. The ones who stare into the abyss of JIRA tickets and laugh in the face of mounting tech debt. May your coffee be strong, your code refactored, and your deployments ever in your favor.

End rant. Back to the trenches. 🚀💻

I was studying a lot the last year, i learned a lot about Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Data Gathering, Data Analysis, ETL, Model Architecture Design, Training, Fine Tuning, Backend Development, DataBases, API Development, ORMs, Rest, GraphQL, OAuth, CI/CD, Docker, Deployment to Production environments like Heroku, Git and more stuff i dont remember while writing this. I built and keep adding stuff to my Github Portafolio.

Im not able to get a job. I started looking for jobs as Data Scientists, no response never. I take a look at freelancer sites, nothing seems to fit my skills. And when there is a minimal fit, they always want a Full Stack Web Developer, i dont know Frontend Development, i dont like do it.

Dont know what to do or how to land any job.

My options aeems to be:

1.Learn Frontend Dev and work as Full Stack in underpaying freelance jobs

2.Keep applying to Remote-Only startups, but they still wants people with 3+ years of experience.

i cant work in my city, here are not any company startup hiring no one, we are 30 years in the past here.

What you do in my place?

Aggravated after having pointed a remote coworker at documentation that would speed along some development he was assigned to do, only to find weeks later, and several "talking past each other" conversations later, that he had disregarded it or severely misunderstood it and went his own route. Showed him today how something was done under what I supposed he had been doing and he reveals he "didn't know" it was to be done that way.

I got contacted by an other company and I am so unsure whether to accept their offer or stay at my current job.

For now I spend 2 years at my current company. The culture is great and everyone gets treated very well.
The bad part is, that it is located in a part of Germany I really can't stand and to this day fully remote is not an option.

Additionally lots of stuff is really frustrating in my daily work, e.g. colleagues that experiment with critical parts if our infrastructure, resulting in every developer who made the mistake to update the local development stack being unable to work for half a day or so.

This and the fact, that our techstack sucks hard. (mostly bad php for backend and server-rendered HTML and a weird mix of Typescript, Javascript, Vue and some old bits of deprecated angular for frontend). This company has it's own product (a web platform) and no real deadlines in the sense of "something bad happens, when your team won't achieve the project in the originally proposed time"

Company number two seems to work with a wide variety of technologies for very different projects (it's a consulting compan), would pay me ~28% more than my currently raised pay and allows for full remote.

When I try to look objectively on the facts everything points to accepting their offer, but on the other hand there is this weird feeling of this being a joice that would come to soon...

How do you make such decisions? I already talked to a great colleague of mine, who thinks it might not be a bad idea to stay at the company for an additional year or 2, because I haven't yet reached the point where there is not enough to learn here anymore, which I agree on, but this company seems to offer everything I want.

I feel overwhelmed with this situation :D that's why I would like to know how you people try to tackle such a situation

emacs, git and a decent shell like bash with at least gnutools

emacs, because I was searching for the right editor for years
- multi-platform
- extensible
- ready to type (no fucking mode change for typing like vim)
- programming functions like auto indenting, syntax highlight, auto complete, etc.)
- multiple windows in any arrangement
Additionally
- it is completely programmable to do anything you want
- you can find a solution to most common development needs on the web

git, because
- it is usable from small personal projects to heavy duty development
- fast branching and checking out, switching between different workpaths within seconds
- basic version control offline, you only need to be online for remote consolidation
- you don't have to think much about structure from the beginning, if in doubt just commit and your work is saved, then arrange the result when you're ready

sh/bash-like shell with gnutools, because
- simple tools do their job and try not to be smarter than the user
- tools can be combined in any possible and impossible variants
- powerfull scripting (although sh-syntax is often annyoing)
- open as many shells as needed, no single-instance problem as with some GUI-tools
- extensible with gazillions of other tools

And best of all, all these tools are available on all widely used desktop OS.

What the actual freaking fuck?!?! First this company postponed my jobinterview with a week. Ok shit is busy that can happen. No problem.

I was just about to leave my home when i got a call from them.

“I didn’t know if the interview was remote or not so blabla. Last week we talked to a company and are gonna outsource our development. Therefor we won’t hire any developer right now. But maybe in six months”

WTF?! Are you fucking kidding me? Goddamn asshole, this is ridiculous.

I should’ve just hang up right there. If you run your business like this and threat people this way, i don’t even want to work at your company. Motherfucker

So I feel confident at least in my front end development skills to maybe start freelancing in the near future. Does anybody have any good recommendations for where to start? How to draw in remote clients? Etc. I honestly dont know the first thing about remote work other than what I've researched.

Our company is remote-controlled by one or two customer companies. Our CTO is remote-controlled by them also. And if that wasn't enough it feels like he has no competence in the development of normal software (not customer projects).
Officially the management in our company doesn't have the right to give direct orders to the development teams. In reality, they just ignore this rule and play dictator.
It feels that the management thinks that all developers in the company are just asses and idiots who screw up everything.

As a fan of C#, I'll be entering the world of web development with ASP.NET, but there are so many things to learn before getting started! Javascript, bootstrap, css grid stuff, angular vs react things, docker, microservices, http and REST stuff, accessing some remote thing through ssh. I feel so intimated and don't know where to start!

I can't find a remote development job and here's Microsoft built a AI that can code. Well fuck you Microsoft, fix your fucken browsers. oh wait...Your AI again suck.

I think it's best I go back to the farm.

WFH gives me a legit reason to splurge and upgrade my pc: "using a VPN connection to remote into my workstation is less than ideal for development, Dear; I should really upgrade my memory and storage if I'm going to be developing at home for while. I assure you this has nothing to do with gaming or dicking around with virtualization."

Hey guys, first time writing here.
Around 8 months ago I joined a local company, developing enterprise web apps. First time for me working in a "real" programming job: I've been making a living from little freelance projects, personal apps and private programming lessons for the past 10 years, while on the side I chased the indie game dev dream, with little success. Then, one day, realized I needed to confront myself with the reality of 'standard' business, where the majority of people work, or risk growing too old to find a stable job.
I was kinda excited at first, looking forward to learning from experienced professionals in a long-standing company that has been around for decades. In the past years I coded almost 100% solo, so I really wanted to learn some solid team practices, refine my automated testing skills, and so on. Also, good pay, flexible hours and team is cool.

Then... I actually went there.

At first, I thought it was me. I thought I couldn't understand the code because I was used reading only mine.
I thought that it was me, not knowing well enough the quirks of web development to understand how things worked.
I though I was too lazy - it was shocking to see how hard those guys worked: I saw one guy once who was basically coding with one hand, answering a mail with another, all while doing some technical assistance on the phone.

Then I started to realize.

All projects are a disorganized mess, not only the legacy ones - actually the "green" products are quite worse.
Dependency injection hell: it seems like half of the code has been written by a DI fanatic and the other half by an assembly nostalgic who doesn't really like this new hippy thing called "functions".
Architecture is so messed up there are methods several THOUSANDS of lines long, and for the love of god most people on the team don't really even know WHAT those methods are for, but they're so intertwined with the rest of the codebase no one ever dares to touch them.
No automated test whatsoever, and because of the aforementioned DI hell, it's freaking hard to configure a testing environment (I've been trying for two days during my days off, with almost no success).
Of course documentation is completely absent, specifications are spread around hundreds of mails and opaquely named files thrown around personal shared folders, remote archives, etc.

So I rolled my sleeves up and started crunching as the rest of the team. I tried to follow the boy-scout rule, when the time and scope allowed. But god, it's hard. I'm tired as fuck, I miss working on my projects, or at least something that's not a complete madness. And it's unbearable to manually validate everything (hundreds of edge cases) by hand.

And the rest of the team acts like it's all normal. They look so at ease in this mess. It's like seeing someone quietly sitting inside a house on fire doing their stuff like nothing special is going on.

Please tell me it's not this way everywhere. I want out of this. I also feel like I'm "spoiled", and I should just do like the others and accept the depressing reality of working with all of this. But inside me I don't want to. I developed a taste for clean, easy maintainable code and I don't want to give it up.

I've been programming for 15 years now or more if I count my years I programmed as a hobby. I'm mostly self learned. I'm working in an environment of a few developers and at least the same amount of other people (managers, sales, etc). We are creating Magento stores for middle sized businesses. The dev team is pretty good, I think.

But I'm struggling with management a lot. They are deciding on issues without asking us or even if I was asked about something and the answer was not what they expect, they ask the next developer below me. They do this all the way to Junior. A small example would be "lets create a testing site outside of deployment process on the server". Now if I do this, that site will never be updated and pose a security risk on the server for eternity because they would forget about it in a week. Adding it to our deployment process would take the same time and the testing site would benefit from security patches, quick deployment without logging in to the server, etc. Then the manager just disappears after hearing this from me. On slack, I get a question in 30 minutes from a remote developer about how to create an SSH user for a new site outside of deployment. I tell him the same. Then the junior gets called upstairs and ending up doing the job: no deployment, just plain SSH (SFTP) and manually creating the database. I end up doing it but He is "learning" how to do it.

An other example would be a day I was asked what is my opinion about Wordpress. We don't have any experience with Wordpress, I worked with Drupal before and when I look at a Wordpress codebase, I'm getting brain damage. They said Ok. The next day, comes the announcement that the boss decided to use Wordpress for our new agency website. For his own health and safety, I took the day off. At the end, the manager ended up hiring an indian developer who did a moderately fair job. No HiDPI sprites, no fancy SASS, just plain old CSS and a simple template. Lightyears worse than the site it was about to replace. But it did replace the old site, so now I have to look at it and identify myself part of the team. Best thing? We are now offering Wordpress development.

An other example is "lets do a quick order grid". This meant to be a table where the customer can enter SKU and quantity and they can theoretically order faster if they know the SKU already. It's a B2B solution. No one uses it. We have it for 2 sites now and in analytics, we have 5 page hits within 3 years on a site that's receiving 1000 users daily... Mostly our testing and the client looked at it. And no orders. I mean none, 0. I presented a well formatted study with screenshots from Analytics when I saw a proposal to a client to do this again. Guess what happened? Someone else from the team got the job to implement it. Happy client? No. They are questioning why no one is using it.

What would you do as a senior developer?

- Just serve notice and quit
- Try to talk to the boss (I don't see how it would work)
- Just don't give a shit

Incoming rant.

I have 4 years professional experience at a small shop working on a web application for property and liability insurance. The application is ASP.NET with C# as the code-behind. I have a BCS and will finish my MSIS fall 2017. I have no idea why I have the degrees. I know that when I enrolled, it seemed like they would be a nice addition to an otherwise empty resume. I was lucky enough to land my first and only development job during my sophomore year of my undergraduate program. Is this enough experience to land a new job?

I feel like I'm learning nothing at my current job. The specs that come in seem very vague to me. When asked for clarification, there is often push back, and I don't know whether that's because I don't have enough experience to parse what the client means in the two sentence spec I got or if it's because the client does not actually know what they want.

I hate my current job. My productivity is low because I spend more time trying to figure out what the client wants and analyzing an 8 year old system that has 0 documentation. I know some of you will just say, "Suck it up" at this point, but I really want another job. The only thing I like about this job is that it's 100% remote. It also pays $60k a year, so a replacement should be at least that salary.

Most postings I see require professional experience of 5 years or more, and knowledge of other frameworks. I can work on getting knowledge of the other frameworks, but will have no professional experience with them. I don't live in an area with a lot of software development jobs, and the ones I see are for non-IT organizations that want 1 person to run a distributed system from 10 or more locations. A hospital system out here wants to pay $30k a year for a guy to be both software developer for new tools as well as the helpdesk and IT support guy that's on-call for four locations in the county. I made more than that before I got into the development industry, for less work, and would rather leave than settle for something like that.

I've thought about moving to somewhere near San Francisco or San Jose, but I have my daughter to think about. I have joint custody of her, and would have to give that up in order to move out of the county.

I like programming and using it to solve problems. I like designing architectures and how all the components will interface. I like designing and normalizing databases. I like taking part in coding competitions for employers that are well-known (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitch, etc.), even though I often just place middle of the pack. When that happens, I feel like I'm an imposter in this industry.

I think I have the most fun just working on small projects for personal use. My latest is an assistant calculator for the game Transport Fever to figure out cargo throughputs per annum based on the in-game timing information. Past projects have also been small. Ones I could use in a portfolio are a sudoku solver desktop application, PC/Web game in Unity that is a 3D FPS remake of Duck Hunt that allows open world exploration but locks the camera's viewpoint for shooting events, and a building assistant for Rome II: Total War that maps out all the bonuses/perks of user-specified building combinations in provinces so users can record their long term building plans without using all their turns to see the final results.

I seem to be an unproductive, average developer who dabbles in projects here and there.

This is what I want from other Ranters. Just say something. I don't care if it is, "Suck it up and get better." It could be your tips for finding and securing a new position. It could even be empathy, if such a thing exists on the Internet. Whatever you want, just say something that will help get me thinking of what the next steps in my career should be.

How to get a remote development job or how to succeed as a freelance developer..

I once had a team member who was a self proclaimed technology expert. He was even interviewed on national TV for his opinions on telecoms, net neutrality and the ITC sector in our humble island.

this guy, for several months, probably to this day, cannot figure out how to set his password for his company Gmail account. he could never figure how to use Google drive, docs or any of the most basic tools.

he has no training in any development practices or languages. he did history in college and didn't even finish, but.....somehow he was able to watch half of an HTML tutorial online and then land himself a remote web dev job earning $45 USD/hr!!!!! i still dont know how he did that.

I'm am three parts upset, one part in awe of how far he has gotten just by talking to people.

!rant
Guys, any tip when looking for "Remote Development work". I am very bored at this job and want to move on urgently.

Please anything.

Quick question to you guys and gals,

I really want to become an iOS app developer. I know it would be long and painful way to learn Objective-C (some say it looks like alien language compared to C). Swift is rather new, much easier to learn, but I know Objective-C is a must to be considered as true iOS dev.

The question is: is there such a need of iOS developers (I mean UK/Canada/US/Germany)?. I live in Poland and there's not much to do in iOS development (few job offers, everybody is hyped by JS and frameworks changing every year, some offers are often underpayed remote work for foreign clients). I am now 20 years old, still learning at Uni and not having any responsibilities, so I may go someday to UK for a year or two, since the market for iOS devs is more diversed and bigger than in Poland. I know I am complaining (most Poles do that), but I've learned English since I was 4 and it's a pity not to use it as a resource to get a better job offer than in my mother country.

Thanks for all the responses, especially from people working as iOS devs

why can't apple even provide a consistent interface to load swift package? "add package dependency" interface allows you to add remote package, but doesn't allow you add local in development swift package. to do that, you will have to "drag and drop"... why can't apple just add a button on the same interface for navigate local package? is this suppose to be some hidden up up down down left right left right konami secret thing?

Am I the only one that feels like the development and software engineering will loose the high paying benefit soon? Remote work normalised hiring developers from farther away. I've been approached by quite a few recruiters that want to hire from much farther away then usual. It seems like only a question of time untill most of the things will be outsourced to third world countries where developers get paid basically nothing. Sure they were usually a worse choice in the past, but it always gets better with time. I'm sure that there are a lot of vry smart wngineers there. Why pay your developer 50-90k/year when you can pay 10k/yr for two developers in India?

We're also automating ourselves out of jobs with all these no code platforms. Thoughts?

I am accessing the development server via remote desktop, currently maintaining a win forms app on visual studio. there is that one form which when a break point is hit the whole screen freeze and doesn't respond until you minimize the remote desktop and maximize back. just in this form, not the others. it's reproducable.
it's a gem if you ask me, I show it to everyone I know.

Suffering from the cash flow blues.

Remote contracting roles are far and few between, and so far I’ve only found the one client, the problem is that because they’ve been burned in the past by contractors, they only operate on an order by order basis.

So we’re stuck in this perpetual cycle of issues > estimates > order > development > test > tweak > pay and repeat.

The problem is that there is always significant delay between the stages from both sides, either because they’re busy on stuff, or I’ve burnt myself out rushing to meet an estimate and having to take a bit of breathing room.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great working in blocks of a few days to a week and then having some time to myself (and the money is nice too), but the cash flow inconsistency is super scary when you’re having to manage corporation tax, accountancy fees and a salary.

Anyone else have these issues / know good places to find remote contract work?

Have a question for more seasoned developers/techies in the industry. I started my first software development job 7 months ago and I am contract to hire. There’s only two developers (including myself) on my team and we’ve been working on two separate projects that’s apart of a bigger system. He was a contractor but because our company took too long to get back to him about converting he interviewed and accepted an offer at Amazon (don’t blame him). Now I have to take over his project as well as mine which would be overwhelming to say the least... our team is almost entirely remote so it can be difficult to communicate sometimes and our company is heavy in process so development moves slow. Should I start looking for other opportunities or should I stick it out and gain experience even though the workload is unrealistic?

I want to play some games in my free time, what would be the best option for me ?

choice 1 : ps5 or xbox?
choice 2 : monitor or 4k tv
choice 3 : above choices or simply buy a windows laptop?

context :

1. i have never been a hardcore gamer. i don't dig multiplayer global kinda games like pubg, or other fps. I rather like offline story games like takken or NFS most wanted 2005

2. my current laptop is a macbook. i started development with windows laptop years ago, and at that time i was free enough to complete most wanted 2005 and max payne 1/2 (with cheats) i liked gta vice city / sanandreas as well, but i could not pass its missions and would rather end up roaming around

3. i recently played it takes 2 , some bmx bike racing and some archery game with my friend on his PS5 and damn i liked that crispy super fast and detailed graphical games. might be a good investment for relaxation and weekend time pass

4. i am shifting homes and in need of a personal tv/display as I don't want to share family tv anymore. i don't really watch any cable tv shows apart from news channels and mainly consume ott content (netflix ,prime Hotstar etc) i am wondering if a display could also be mounted on wall and could be able to run otts vis some firestick, jio stick or google cast etc.

5. as i mentioned that i never had a taste for gaming, i wonder if all above would be a bad choice and if i should simply buy a good windows laptop

( whatever that technology is , all i want is to control that screen content with a remote, like we do in tv)

So what's best for me?

100% Remote android development jobs guys?
Anyone any exp in that? I want to travel around when corona is over but keep on working full time and earn at least 70k eur. Is that feasable? Remote seems to be still for digital nomads Backpacker as far as i can see. How can i bootstrap my research into this? Fyi senior android dev with 7 years of exp in mobile software development

Slow internet speed drives me crazy

upgrade vs code

my remote dev environment on development containers is now broken

Hey peeps just asking for some suggestions. We are currently having difficult times financially. My dad used to have food business but its now completely shut down and he is doing some sales job. My mom is somewhat educated (she completed till class 12th i guess) and knows very little abouts computers and stuff but she is interested in getting some job that's remote and computer based.

What things should i give her to learn that she could land a job in computer field?
Like am not talking about programming or development but other non tech fields people get paid for... Like data entry , emails writings etc. Currently i have given her courses to learn ms excel, ms word and basic English.
(Personally am also looking for a job but i know how you guys hate job postings . Checkout my website if you have something for me)

At what point has vscode's remote development gone from the best feature of the entire editor to barely functioning heap of shit?

Is firebase remote config a good option for feature-flags/toggles for our development flow of team?

looking for remote internships/ freelance work in mean stack applications or front end development for experience. Any suggestions?

Anyone know what's the current situation with part-time jobs in the web development field? I want a job but I'm in college so full-time is a no-no. I've been trying to find something part-time (internships mostly) but I'm not a US citizen (some sites require that) and I'm looking for something remote, and that's been pretty hard to find. Any ideas where I can look for this stuff or if such jobs even exist?

The best I've managed to find are full-time internships, I tried applying to them seeing if I can work part-time instead but no one mailed back :(

Does anybody know how to configure eclipse to run in same way as vs code remote( I am kind fan of it) runs?
I tried remote option in eclipse i.e RSE but it looks more like file BROWSER than remote development .
FYI, I have a multi module maven/grade projects. I know I can use vs code for that as well but due to some limitations I want to use eclipse. I have a windows host and have to do development in vm or ec2 and I want to avoid booting in GUI mode.

If it's possible and you know a document which can help me or share the steps with me, it 2ould be very helpful.

I got my first developer job three years ago. I’ve always had a great eye for detail, and getting things done while following best practices. I learned that a few years ago from typography, which I think is a fascinating subject, which has a lot of shared ideas with software development.

In my first job, I immediately took a lot more responsibility than what I was assigned to. This job was as a React Developer, but I quickly got into backend development and set up kubernetes clusters, CI/CD.

Looking back, this was to me quite an achievement, considering I had never done anything even remotely close to it.

I did however, work my ass off. 18 hours work days without telling my boss, so only getting paid for 8. Plus I worked weekends.

I did love it. After a while, I got promotes to Senior Developer, and got responsibility for everything technical. I tried asking for help, but everybody else was either a student, or working purely front-end or app-development. Meanwhile, I was Devops, API-design, backend, Ci/CD, handling remote installations (all our customers are Airgapped), customer support, front-end and occasionally app-development when the app-developers could not handle their shit. Basically, I was the goto-guy for every problem, every feature, every fix. I don’t say this to brag.

I recently quit my job, started working as a consultant, because I almost doubled my pay. However the new job is boring as shit. I’m now an overpaid React Developer. And I really hate React. Not because it is shit, but simply because it is boring.

I’m thinking of going back to my old job. It was a lot of work, but it was really interesting. However, after I quit, they have changed their whole stack. No more Golang, Containers, Kubernetes, webRTC and other fun new technologies. Now, it is just plain, PHP without any dependecies. It is both boring, and idiotic. So I’m thinking of just quitting. Either doing some personal projects like game-development. I dont know.

Thanks vscode devs for the feature where they automatically map the local ports to remote port that are needed to run the node based application and also to the devs those who write such a great extensions (remote development, gitlens, docker and kubernetes)

No more ng serve -host 0.0.0.0
No more remote_ip:4200 in browser.

These two steps were so much frustrating whole pulling or checking out another branch.

I just need to learn how to run maven from vscode where I have to add another project in dependency.(never worked on maven before and hate long nested xml). AFTER that never booting vm in GUI.