I. FUCKING. HATE. MOBILE. DEVELOPMENT.

I already manage the data, devops, infra, and most of the backend dev.

We had a mobile guy. He was great. I never had to think about it and kept moving quickly on my work. #SpecializationOfLaborFTW

He left. Why? Because they wouldn't give him a small raise despite being one of the best mobile engineers in the firm. WTF.

I made the mistake of picking up just enough slack on this workflow in the interim such that I'm, apparently, the fucking god-damned release manager, fixer of pipelines, fixer of build configs, fixer of anything where someone just needs to RTFM for a half-hour to not fucking break things.

Now, 8 months later...and, apparently, Fortune 500 companies are too fucking god-damned cheap to pay for someone who actually knows WTF they're doing for a very reasonable thing to have at least one dedicated set of eyes for.

I never wanted to be a mobile dev.
I never will want to be a mobile dev.
And I certainly don't want to manage your HALF-FACE-FUCKED detached expo configs.

There's a reason I never intentionally involved myself in mobile. All the way down, it's just shitty cross-compilation, transpilation, dependency-hell, brittle-as-fuck build processes so we can foot-gun and mouth-gun react-native and expo and babel and whatever the fuck else cargo-culted horseshit into the wild.

And why? What's the actual fucking root cause? The biggest white elephant that ever fucking elephant-ed? It's because Apple and Google decided to never collaborate on a truly-native cross-platform SDK--where engineers could write native code that compiles to native binaries that's simply write-once, run-everywhere. They know they could have done that, and they didn't. So what'd they get back? Expo--a too-cleverly-designed backdoor/hack--more-or-less a way to circumvent the sane release process software has usually followed: code -> executable -> deploy. Or code -> deploy (for interpreted langs). Expo's like "keep your same executable, we're just gonna to do updates by injecting new code into it whenever we want". Didn't we learn anything with web? Shit gets messy real quick? Not to mention: HEY EXPO, WE WERE ALREADY BUILDING NATIVE APPS, YOU SHORT-SIGHTED FUCKS. THANKS FOR LURING OUR CTOs INTO FORCING EXPO DOWN OUR THROATS W/ THE IMPLICIT (BUT INCORRECT) TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE PROMISE THAT WE CAN HAVE WRITE-ONCE, RUN-ANYWHERE WITHOUT ANY BUY-IN OR COOPERATION FROM THE ACTUAL TARGET PLATFORMS.

And, we just, like, accept this? We all know it's garbage engineering. The principles we learned in the classroom aren't just academic abstractions--they actually yield real-world results--and eschewing them yields real-world failures. Expo is tightly-coupled to high-heaven, with leaky abstractions six-ways-to-christmas, chock-full of foot-guns, and fails the most basic test of quality: does it, "just work?"

Expo is fucking shameful and it should fucking die. Its promises are too bold, its land-mines too many, its future-proof-ness is alway, always, always questionable as fuck and a risk to every project that uses it.

You want a rant? This is my fucking venue, 'tis not? Well, then this is a piss and vinegar rant straight from my blood-red, beating fucking heart:

EXPO FUCKING SUCKS. AND IF YOU'RE A FAN, YOU FUCKING SUCK TOO.

I've been very busy in the last weeks so I haven't read a lot about the recent "Linux CoC drama".

Now I'm reading what happened and, well... I'm disgusted.

Especially being a woman, I'm disgusted knowing that a group of people pretend to speak for me saying that we don't need meritocracy, but only more "inclusivity" (whatever that means). I don't give a fuck of your gender, write useful code and I'll appreciate you. And please, give me back the original Linus Torvalds: his irreverence made me laugh.

Sure, sometimes discrimination exists, however good companies will hire you if you are competent, no matter how you look. Instead, I encountered some incompetent women whining about "nobody listen to my ideas because I'm a woman". No, RTFM and maybe you will able to propose better ideas and people will listen to you.

Yesterday Mr Senior told us that "it's not possible to do that".
I (30 years younger) replied I read about that possibility in the manual.
So he challenged me to do it, laughing at me.

Today I went to the office really angry, I put the headphones on, with the song "Suicide Silence - O.C.D." in loop, and after 5 hours I solved the "big problem".

So, go fuck yourself Mr Senior, and RTFM.

Damn, I'm still listening that song.

Truer words haven't been spoken

junior dev: how do i-
senior dev: RTFM
junior dev: `npm install rtfm`

When you write a guide and people completely ignore it, then bug you about problems they wouldn't have had if they read the damn guide in the first place.

return soup(i-1)+soup(i-2);

When people post non-issues on GitHub issues 😡

Issue: "How do I...?"
Issue: "Nevermind, figured it out!"
Issue: Closed.

Mechanical Keyboards.
I mean, just look at this beauty.

If you want people to RTFM, then write a better FM

I gave resignation so am on my last weeks. The top priority is suddenly an authentication service that is completely unfamiliar, proprietary, requires me to RTFM, and requires contact with a slothful vendor about details for our specific instance. Can you do it on a 10 day deadline?

“Are you sure this wouldn’t be a better fit for someone that has implemented this authentication system before? Someone with existing relationships with contacts that manage the authentication service? Maybe I should be the one transferring my understanding of the other 60k lines of code that I singlehandedly wrote? I’m starting from zero here. Maybe it would be good for the guy who isn’t leaving to do this one so that he can retain the knowledge of the authentication system for next time you need to implement it?”

They just plug their ears now because they clearly don’t trust me due to my resignation state. Just do it. Wow.

I'm fairly certain that someone who is willing to type:

$command -h
$command --help
or
man $command

...would be more valuable than a lot of the people I work with who ask me for help.

Launched a CMS-site for a customer, created a 5-page "manual" (with screenshots) on how to update basic things like adding/removing employees from the site. One week later, I receive an email: "Could you please remove Paula from our site?"... Sure, it'll take me 2 minutes and you'll be billed for half an hour instead of you just RTFM!

I swear to fsck, "RTFM" is gonna be engraved on my tombstone

At what point is it acceptable to return support requests with Read the ****ing Manual?

"Hours of debug can save you minutes of reading documentation"

Just happened to me

Dear customer,
You pointed out, that the program is failing due to insuffizient memory.
"Memory" is the RAM in your Laptop.
"Insuffizient" means YOUR FUCKING RAM CANT HOLD THE ENTIRE 2 TB DATABASE!

GTFO and RTFM!

Best regards
me

In order to RTFM you need to HAFM (have a fucking manual).

I've decided to tattoo "RTFM" across the knuckles on my right hand. One day I'm gonna snap and instead saying it, I'm gonna punch someone in the face and they should know why.

I just love it when our clients decide to make a clone of live production server..then put it immediately online..and don't tell anyone about this.. and then start bitchin how data gets doubled all of a sudden..

Yeah, no shit sherlock.. you have two prod servers for 'hot swapping' and some services may only be running on one at a time.. You even have a manual on how to switch primary to secondary (turn off services on primary first, then turn them on on secondary and all)..or in case primary actually dies, just turn on services on secondary and you're good to go, right?

So how do ya think cloning the one with running services and putting the clone immediately online will work out?! 🤔

God, I thought it was common sense to not do that..but here I am, bitchin about how people fail to RTFM.. :/ or use brain..fuck..

Is there anyone the who reads the manuals? Am I missed a revolution or something? What's going on guys?

I am extremely particular about writing good READMEs in my repositories. I make sure that it has everything from prerequisites to run the code and tests on a new machine to how to actually run it (and the tests) and everything in between.

Despite all that I was asked questions that should have been avoided if you had seen the README.

One of these times was by a junior DevOps asking me about an error which was clearly due to him running the code without a virtual environment. Pings me with the entire stacktrace, I go to his desk and tell him to install the environment, which he does. 3 minutes later, another error message.

He was running the wrong script. I go to his desk again. Open the repository. Show him the README. Show him the section titled "To run the pipeline"!

There's a reason they're called README. You're supposed to READ them! 😑

Today something amazingly incredible happened, I met a nice guy on stackoverflow, he even asked me if he could edit my question to make it better, and did not reproach me for asking a RTFM question.

While most people want the force to get stuff like a TV remote, I want to use it to get people thinking how they can solve their problems independently

Daaaamn! For the longest time I thought that customizing your avatar would cost you ++!

Question everything!

Comments lie.. sometimes code does too.. Customers..they lie the most..and are sloppy..

Don't be like customers, don't be sloppy. If you were sloppy own it & don't lie about it!

Pick your fights (trying to fix vs rewrite the shit out of it)..you will know what to do more with experience..

RTFM & docs.. If things still unclear, ask before your dick gets stuck in a toaster!

Ask away, learn about the customers & how they use your product.. you'll be surprised how something intuitive to you might be a rocket science for them..meaning more room to fuck things up when using it..more ways you can adapt & prevent things..

Most of all, don't fuckin lie.. ever!!
If you lie on you're CV, we will find out.. If you fuck up something & lie about it, we will find out.. but it will cost us precious time when solving it from scratch.. People fuck up..that's a fact..how you go about it is what makes/breaks it for me. So don't ever fuckin lie to me!!

And don't be arogant.. if you complain about fixing bugs, this is not a job for you.. if you can't even fix the obvious ones you've put there in the first place..twice as bad..

So think before you code..what do you want to do, how you want to accomplish this, is it reusable, can it be extended, does it introduce new technology into the project, will it fuck up current setup.. once you have this shit figured out, code will write itself..

Did I mention already you're not to lie to me, ever?!

And don't try talking about me behind my back either..I've seen it backfire before, results were not good..

$ mysql -uroot -p > file.sql instead of
$ mysqldump -uroot -p > file.sql

And not checking the result file before reinstalling my server 😭😭

...my ego is bruised. Someone just hit me with the ole “RTFM!!”

😵🤣🤣

Can't wait for AI's to reply with RTFM to our prompts

This was a straight-to-devrant moment...

Referred a work colleague to a man page for a command they were having trouble with.

Their reply: "I really hate man pages. They are not useful to me. They are full of blah blah blah blah blah. I just want 'run this' or 'run that'."

Then my eyes exploded right out my head, making room for my brain exploding right behind them.

A friend shared his feelings with me this morning.

1) Remove kernel linux
2) Change kernel to linux-zen
3) Make init ramdisk
4) Everythings great -> hit reboot
5) Stuck at Grub
Me: Fuck.. Forgot to update grub config.
(Lesson : RTFM first.)

3/16: I need a service account for $domain. I've opened a ticket with Subject: please create $account name for $domain and Description: please create $account for $Domain. I need this by 3/23.
3/21: hello?
3/23: hello?
3/28: hello?
3/30: hello?
3/30: yes, hi, is this for $domain or $differentdomain.

I think the doctor might be a programmer...

New rule for coworkers: Stupid questions get stupid answers.

"What does this deactivate button do?" It deactivates the object. //They wrote the functionality.

"What does x do?" RTFM. Did you check the file with common questions and answers? No? Do that.

Sigh

So I help out in a development forum for a framework I use at work. I learned a crap ton by seeing questions people ask, then learning to solve them myself. I have really enjoyed being in that forum that past 4 years.

Yet, I see people who cannot seem to reason themselves out of a paper bag at times. I see questions of I cannot run this linux executable because there are parenthesis in the filename. I mean most console interfaces are just tab complete even with special characters. This is for a developer in their 50s that has been coding 30 years. Or I see other programmers asking basic questions that 5 minutes with the docs would solve. Most of the ones that I have issue with seem to have been a part of that community a lot longer than myself.

How do developers survive without problem solving skills to understand the frameworks or tools they use?

I had another conversation with a dev in another forum about using "man" in Linux to figure out how to use something. They said something to the effect: "try learning awk from a manpage". I explained about how "back in the day" we learned EVERYTHING from man pages. That is why they are called "man" pages.

Is the industry flooded with idiots now?

"Your documentation doesn't specify what should be returned if there is no item matching the id, so currently I'm just gonna have it throw a 504"

Why on earth would you? What's wrong with you, you sick bastard?

"How do you do X?"

"RTFM"

* npm install RTFM *

Finding out you've done a project wrong because you completely misinterpreted the direction you got at the start and your brain took it in a totally different direction and having to start over again with it is lots of fun. I recommend it to everyone.

So I was writing docs for my project the hard way. Manually. Every time I added something new, I had to find the right place for it to be alphabetically in the reference. And god forbid I want to have the same information in two pages: I would need to copy/ paste and pray that I not forget to update the information EVERYWHERE.

I didn't feel like installing and learning some new markdown generating bullshit so I just made my own system. It's very simple and intuitive and I love it.

I made sure it can cover two use case: reading partial documents from the disk, and rendering in-memory objects to markdown too (like rendering a collection of tuples into a table)

I didn't care much for templating, so there's no templating capability.

Massive panic attack much?

Does noone RTFM these days?

Hello, Win2D! You seem to be right up my alley. We will be good friends.

Also, proud of myself for actually RTFM.

Funny topic. I normally am very understanding of incompetence when it comes from nothing more than lack of experience. Happens to all who at one point is a junior dev.
As long as people have the willingess to learn I find myself being very understanding.

I take a lot of effort in helping others, I don't mind at all, and I would rather take them extra 10 mins to explain how to do something than to slap people with rtfm and then blame them completely when their lack of experience messes up stuff. I also take care of providing isolated environments and giving explanations. Even when they screw up, it is isolated from the rest and I can teach them what was wrong, most of the time they figure it out themselves. It has made my coworkers respect me more, rather than being a total dick that believes that what I do is sacred and should be spared from newbs (like all the idiots in S.O) i take the approach of a very patient mentor.

But I am a hippie, shit works for me.

But I do not excuse shitty attitudes and arrogance. I find that not knowing is fine, but acting as if one knows all and then fucking shit up makes it bad.
Which is when I change, I am a hippie but can get violent pretty quickly.

I have been screwed over shitty attitudes more than incompetence.

I am so fucking lost.

I literally have zero expectations from life for now and future.

There was a time when I had so much clarity in my life. Rather, I was known for it.
Folks used to reach me out for guidance and my approaches even worked for others.

I was goal oriented and biased towards action. Failing and learning from it, I used to make things happen and with constant feedback kept progressing.

While none of that has changed, I still feel lost and numb. No, I am not depressed or suffering through any mental illness. I am physical active and able to feel the happiness.

But the recent incident with a narcissistic, left me emotionally handicap. I can no longer feel any kind of love or affection. I overcame the damage done and healed myself.

But now, I am done. Even if I engage with anyone for a relationship it would be mostly for sex. I can care for people around me and be affectionate towards them but when it comes to an intimate relationship, I feel it's not something I can do in this lifetime. I tried multiple times but failed.

These days, all I am doing is putting my heads down and working like crazy. Never in my life I worked more than 10 hours in an entire week. Now, I work 10+ hours everyday. During that time, I am highly productive.

And in my free time, I am busy housekeeping different life problems. Either paying bills, figuring out an insurance, planning some investment, or making some kind of life decision.

It's draining me. I feel as if I am losing sanity. But that's the only thing I am able to do.

Maybe it's the lockdown effect. Maybe some damage is yet to be healed.

But I got nothing better to do. I have some good ideas. Not those hipster-ish disruptive Million dollar ideas, but decent enough to solve a problem for a strong use case.

However, all of this is becoming overwhelming these days. Because decision making is complex and difficult task. It can make or break the future.

As of now I am confused how should I go about pursuing two of the important projects that I want to accomplish.

1. Migrating out of Google ecosystem. Is it even practically possible for my use case? What are the alternatives? Planning to opt in for a paid cloud storage so have to factor in that aspect as well.

I want to keep this new setup only for official use like bank and government stuff. Maybe family and close friends. Then have current ids for public logins and sharing it with retards whom I can block or ignore if they harass me. The research is overwhelming but having a structured setup gives insane amount of efficiency when life is spam free.

2. Migrating my Pihole and OpenVPN setup out of Digital Ocean to GCP. Primarily because $5 is a lot of amount for my computational requirements and Google has used my data enough, for me to use the free tier.
However, there isn't a simple script for a tech noob like me, to go ahead and setup something. I did find a Github repository but the documentation is kind of outdated so RTFM failed for me.

I don't know whether to pursue my start-up or let it go and focus on moving to Europe.

It's just so fucking stupid to even exist. And let's not forget taxes. Bloody taxes.

It's technically impossible for this update not to fuck everything up.

Oh, I use Arch Linux btw.

Why do you even bother writing docs if you don't include anything worthwhile in it!

Here’s my step-by-step guide for the idiot:

1) take <cutting-egde tech> (Tech)
2) read documentation for Tech
3) figure out what you want to do with Tech
4) if you are being ambitious, simplify the idea appropriately
5) Go do the thing with the Tech
6 When you fail at something, RTFM
7) Rinse and repeat

RTFM!!!!!!

Even in a space station... RTFM !!!

The legends where true! RTFM will save your butt.

I had a small .NET PoC project I wanted to upload to our git server. So added the project to version control using Visual Studio, meaning that VS created a local repository for it. Then I wanted to push it to the remote repository which were created by my colleague. This one was initialized with a commit (.gitignore and Readme.md), so I couldn't push directly. Googled a bit, OK then tried to fetch the remote repo, didn't help. Googled again, tried some "git push origin master whatever" stuff and then rebate, because nothing seemed to help.
OOPS where are my local files? WTF? 😣

Long story short: Experience in other version control systems is not enough or even dangerous when switching over to git. 😂

Why are some people incapable of reading documentation? THE "DUPLICATE RECORDS" IN OUR KAFKA TOPIC ARE BECAUSE ITS AN EVENT STREAM AND NOT A DATABASE. THIS IS LITERALLY ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE GUIDE YOU ABSOLUTE MORONS.

My Boss Abuses me, should I leave my job?

I overheard this tidbit on a bus recently. Okay I'm lying. But in the great spans of
time I've spent reading "dear annie" type articles, many involving how often my meth head step dads beat me while growing up, or in turn how often *I* beat me (oh yeah)..I've come across this in one form another, this, and other dumbfuck questions from the stuttering meek and halfhearted.

They say there are no dumb questions. Well, like that guy who smoked too much weed and
asked "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" (fap fap fap), there are in fact dumb questions.The world is overflowing with them, like a clogged shitter full of tacobell and glitter covered brown gutter wisdom. And it smells like roses, if roses smelled like shit.

Questions like "How do I make sure my cats don't feel lonely once I have my first child?"

I don't know, they're fucking cats. Did you even google this before asking?

Or

"How to make spaghetti?"

Really, is this question written by a bot?

"What is the best javascript framework in year x?"

All of them and none of them. Welcome to hell.

"Whats your favorite color?"

My answer: I'm not five years old any more. And obviously you are. Why are you on this site instead of eating crayons at daycare?

Yes indeed, this and many more dumbfuck questions await you and can be found on the preeminent quora, amongst other sites.
A place, which censored an eminently reasonable answer of mine (I was totally not being a shithead btw).
I responded in kind by removing a whole mess of long form answers of mine.

What I have learned from the experience is this: Humanity is greatly comprised of many people who, having no brains to speak of, wander aimlessly like beasts of the field, glass eyed and slack jawed, in search of a savior. But their savior came a long time ago, once, and many times before. An engineer, or programmer, or perhaps in another reincarnation a guy parting a sea of koolaid after the local ruler swindled his peeps out of another payment for moving some heavy ass stone blocks, but I digress.

And in response to peoples worries, anxieties, everyday problems and concerns, every one of these would be wiseman, every one of these saviors, leaders, and great men spoke these magic words which resonate now down through the ages like the voice of reason and providence:

"Read the FUCKING manual."

"And don't bother me again asshole." (well this last bit is all me, but I'm sure others said it too.)

RTFM, seriously. I'm assigned to document the git-system even though all it takes is "RTFM" and a link to the official docs. It's even the second time i do this because my last attempt at documentation got lost...

I specified a requirement where certain bits in a certain message shall be evaluated for certain items. The tester came up to me and talked some BS about how to guesstimate these bits by totally different bits. I said, look up the interface definition, the bits are there. Got an email, same BS. Tester was just too lazy to look it up. So I answered that message ID X has bits 60-63 for the four relevant items.
However, I carefully avoided telling him which bit was for which item so that he knew what it was, but I still forced him to look up the inter fucking face definition.

Whatever the task needs.

New paradigm? Probably a book first approach.
Library/API: their own suggested tutorials and references cause that shit moves quick.

If I have to read a cave painting to understand an ancient card punch language I’ll happily do it.

I’ve found, when I don’t know something yet I get the “brick wall” feeling, that this is all going to be too difficult... I’ve learned to love that feeling.

If all else fails: RTFM.

!dev
TIL: If you want to use SodaStream the you better RTFM... Fuck, there is water everywhere and I really don't have the time to clean up the mess because there is so much work to be done today...

Why on earth I am doing docs and sending them to the whole team, if they keep asking me how to do X and why is Y not working

YOU WILL KNOW IF YOU READ THE DOCS

GAAAAAAA

Some dev makes a claim that a Serialization library won't serialize a field unless it's public

I don't know the library details after but first reaction was "that has to be BS...."

Then I just do a Google search and yes I'm right.

And of course, in my head I go...why the fuck do these ppl not know how to use Google or just RTFM.....

Or use their brains.... If need for serialization required making all fields public that violates the most basic OOP principles...

RTFM (Read the manual)

Okay so for all of you who think that you can't do shit without stackoverflow. I'll tell you this, fuck SO. There's this ancient technique of programmers of old probably just about 20-25 years ago called RTFM. Why bother copy pasting some one else's spaghetti(that you might not fully understand) when you can write your own better code! (said in good faith). When something is behaving strange or you don't know what something requires just hit the docs or manual and read about the api because it is describes not only what it wants and needs but also what it does. So try this because it might have more information that you need than stack overflow might tell you

Helped an elderly neighbour to fix his landline connection, since it broke down.
Somewhat an emergency, cause he don't have a mobile phone.

It seems, this got around and another neighbour asked if I could plug in his new printer and install the drivers.

Gosh, RTFM and don't buy hardware you can't handle.

No, I won't fix your computer.

RTFM. Nowday it's : go to stackoverflow.com

var manual = '.... use chrome...';

User: "Hey this thing is broken, can you fix it?"
Me: "Works just fine for me, what browser are you using?"
User: "Edge, why?"

..... god I hate browsers.... rtfm bitch.. make my life easier please?...
Sometimes I wish I only did back end work...

People who think programming is just copy+paste, haven't programmed using COBOL, REXX or JCL (or similar "archaic" languages).

Best of luck finding all the answers on Google/SO. This is the world where RTFM is a daily task.

RTFM = Read The Fucking Manual

Hi fellow geeks, so I'm ranting about the lack of basic will and ability of my company people to RTFM that I've prepared to them of how to use the shiny new JIRA that I've configured.
Any idea for a short funny clip (eg simpsons, seinfeld, the office, familyguy whatever) that somehow relates to the above that I can show them in a presentation?
Cheers :)

Not being allowed to post comments on this page for seemingly no reason is the equivalent of invisible walls in video games. I didn't even receive a fucking error message, I had to go to devtools, only to find "You can't post a link in your comments yet.". What do you mean, my comments? I wanted to suggest DaisyUI to some bloke but I guess, I will just try to find the exit for this level then before I can get to the one 2cm behind this wall, in plain sight and no reason not to give me access to it now and no explanation anywhere (cannot wait to get RTFM comments with a link to some about page).

Greetings, I guess, I was only here to lurk and comment but the page won't let me.

Best: Public docs, especially quick start guides... That actually work.

Worst: my team's. It's basically non-existent... I'm the only one that writes docs and design diagrams and well that's mostly for myself to remember/understand stuff and use when ppl ask....

My first response is usually like: "Here RTFM... (Now go away because I have other things to do)"

It's always irked me that people can't RTFM simple things. But I've often just hacked my way through code, brute-forcing equations here and there until they work by trial and error. Nothing for an employer or anything, but nonetheless, I was not RTFMing. I was doing all the D and as little of the R as possible in R&D, just to save time. I'm trying to change that about myself. It's easier to implement systems when you properly understand them. No more hackery.

I suppose this rant was from me, about me.

So last night I ran out of space on my root partition, apparently 30GB isn't enough for `/` besides `/home` and `/data` because both `/var` and `/usr` used around 14GB each so I decided to create partitions for them, had 500GB unallocated disk space on my SSD for if I wanted to install windows on my machine besides Arch Linux.

I edited the fstab file and sure enough, the partitions were mounted on boot, everything went fine. Then U realised the data wasn't actually removed from the first partition so I decided to mount the drive again and remove the files, the system still worked fine.

Untill I rebooted. Apparently the bit scripts require files in the`/usr` folder which wasn't mounted at boot, but right after. F*ck, system won't boot and now I'm in a recovery shell in busybox. After googling and reading the arch wiki I noticed a small message saying what you should do if you want to have `/usr` on another partition. I didn't do any of that.

After a couple of hours and a lot of reboots and chroots from a live USB to the broken installation it was fixed without losing any data! I did learn to read the manual or wiki to see any specifics when using more partitions. 😂

First: I have to give credit to my high school CS teacher. She gave us a good grounding in computer theory about: pointers, memory organization, and algorithms.

Second: Second I just read the fucking manual. Then programmed a LOT more than people who didn't get good. Hundreds of hours during college, thousands since then. I got style information from reading other peoples code and also learned about how not to code by reading other peoples code. Ever buy a book that proclaims to teach you X, but actually teaches you a proprietary wrapper they wrote for X that has a shitty license? Fuck those people. Anyway, when internet sharing became more of a thing I started watching videos by experts and reading articles. And now I learn from people here as well. Never stop learning and always RTFM.

In last episode of "How SystemD screwed me over", we talked about Systemd's PrivateTMP and how it stopped me from generating SSL certificates.

In today's episode - SystemD vs CGroups!

Mister Pottering and his team apparently felt that CGroups are underused (As they can be quite difficult to set up), and so decided to integrate them into SystemD by default. As well as to provide a friendlier interface to control their values.

One can read about these interactions in the manual page "systemd.resource-control"

All is cool so far. So what happened to me today?

Imagine you did a major system release upgrade of a production server, previously tested on a standalone server. This upgrade doesn't only upgrade the distribution however, it also includes the switch from SysVInit to SystemD. Still, everything went smooth before, nothing to worry now then, right? Wrong.

The test server was never properly stress-tested. This would prove to be an issue.

When the upgrade finishes, it is 4 AM. I am happy to go to bed at last. At 6 AM, however, I am woken up again as the server's webservices are unavailable, and the machine is under 100% CPU load. Weird, I check htop and see that Apache now eats up all 32 virtual cores. So I restart it, casting it off to some weird bug or something as the load returns to normal.

2 hours later, however, the same situation occurs. This time, I scour all the logs I can, and find something weird - Many mentions that Apache couldn't create a worker thread? That's weird.

Several hours of research and tinkering later, I found out the following:
1 - By default, all processes of a system that runs SystemD are part of several CGroups. One of these CGroups is the PID CGroup, meant to stop a runaway process from exhausting all PIDs/TIDs of a system.

This limit is, by default, set to a certain amount of the total available PIDs. If a process exhausts this limit, it can no longer perform operations like fork().

So now, I know the how and why, but how should I solve this? The sanest option would be to get a rough estimate of just how many threads the Apache webserver might need. This option, though, is harder, than apparent. I cannot just take the MaxRequestsWorkers number... The instance has roughly double the amount of threads already. The cause being, as I found out, the HTTP/2 module, which spawns additional threads that do not count towards this limit. So I have no idea what limit to set.

Or I could... Disable the limit for just the webserver via the TasksAccounting switch. I thought this would work. And it did seem to... Until I ran out of TIDs again - Although systemctl status apache2.service no longer reported the number of tasks or a task limit of the process, the PID CGroup stayed set to the previous limit. Later I found out that I can only really disable the Task Accounting for all the units of a given slice and its parents.

This, though, systemctl somewhat didn't make apparent (And I skimmed the manual, that part was my fault)

So... The only remaining option I had was to... Just set the limit to infinite. And that worked, at last.

It took me several hours to debug this issue. And I once again feel like uninstalling systemd again, in favor of sysvinit.

What did I learn? RTFM, carefully, everything is important, it is not enough to read *half* the paragraph of a given configuration option...

Oh, and apache + http/2 = huge TID sink.

we all know, RTFM doesn't stand for -> Read The Friendly Manual

Spends 9 months on the side developing a library for analysis of a specific programming language. No help, entirely my own work. There's various tools built upon this library. Incorporates project management, an effective build system capable of parallel and distributed builds, a packaging system...

Beta release the library. Wait four months. Ask the community for who's been using it so I can get feedback and other comments. Majority of the comments follow a specific pattern.

"You don't support X, how dare you!?"

One, this is free software, pay me if you want specific things.
Two, I'm the only developer of a project usually undertaken by a small team.
Three, yes it does you fucking invalid... Every fucking time someone claims it doesn't support some feature, it's something I've already written and validated. I swear to fucking God users can't find something themselves and instead of checking the Wiki or asking for help, they blindly assume they can't make mistakes and it must be my defect.

RTFM

How do you.... RTFM !!!

The dust sites heavily over all my man pages. I should #rtfm

Colleague spends most of his day googling how to do something. Doesn't understand why his sh*t doesn't work, since search results are out of context. Doesn't ever RTFM.

Today I finally got around to reading the manuals for my appliances as my Dryer didn't seemed to be working.

Apparently there is a filter that should be cleaned...

How it's not broken, it may be out of warranty...

Also the manual showed that the model that came with my new apartment is actually the cheapest version...

I have already been a big fan of Elixir for some time now, but seeing this during my inquiry into Elixir's official catalog of documentation has defanitely galvanized my already colorful opinion of this grate language.

I overheard this mid level dev discussing a new task with a senior dev. They're discussing compile error in cmake. I realized that the mid level dev asked so many basic stuff that are easily google-able. Mind you, our codebase is cmake based, how come she didn't know even the basics and yet survive in our company for years?
I felt bad for the senior dev, as I knew he's busy with his work. He couldn't do his job because he had to do hand-holding with this dev.

My biggest mistake is often trying to solve things by myself which will take hours instead of just asking a senior. But asking other dev for every little things are also annoying. Why can't you just google shit up or RTFM?

Do we need to modernize RTFM -> RTFAPI for developers?

Or is there too much fap in this?

Would be nice to have a closed ticket status on jira that just says RTFM. Hell, even reading the error message would be a start. As would not trying to upload year-old data prepared for a different CRM platform.

that moment when a fellow dev asks you a web dev ( PHP ) for help and you see
... -03 -0fast & funroll fruity loops ...
im not surprised that Gentoo box died ...

Someone had been too lazy to read the documentation and now we have to come up with a solid and correct implementation, which should have been done months ago

RTFM, people..!!! 😏🤦🏻‍♂️

I need to RTFM...
Wish me luck guys, gonna dive deep into this shit ..

!rant

i hate the QA guys when they gets excited finding a "SUPER REGRESSION OMG THE APP IS BROKEN" just to find out that they haven't read the new specifications.

@dfox next week RTFM?

I was tasked to parse some complex output oft another application so that it can be displayed nicely in our Frontend. The output had lots of inconsistencies and exceptions - I spent the entire fucking day to wrote the craziest regex I have ever written in my entire life. With a few minor issues it worked pretty well. I was happy... Then a colleague came into my room, peeked into my screen..
Him: "You are aware you can just specify a --json flag to get json output?"
Me: "..."

*long silence*
Me: 😵🔨

Please end my life.

!rant

My ecig mod (or box how some call it) started to missbehave, it started at random not liking more and more batteries and generally it was good time for replacment. Fast forward, im at shop, and I have few options, i dont want to cheap out becouse I know how it ends, and I want reaible box for longer and I can pay a little more for that.

So there was few quite competetive options, but most of them had build quality i wasnt fan of, some even plastic outter shell, magnets which tend to break off, but their feature list was quite competetive, and there most expensive of all (400 pln +-90ish $) that seller presented me had (seemingly) no features. No menu even. But build quality is solid buttons feel are just better, and it looks like it could survive longer than half a year. Fine, i shell out what it looked missing features for solid build quality.

I go home, rtfm, and wtf? "Before use update firmware with XYZ software". Okay, done. But hmmm what is that?

It has plethoria, absolute TON of customization but from PC program. Hell yeah, that was fucking good choice and seller missed whole selling point of this box. Like literally, he didnt know its best feature. I can go as far as customize entire GUI on that small screen. Its been awhile since I did my last pixelart thingy but monochromatic so not too bad :)

TLDR: RTFM...

My dad (taught me how to code when I was a kid) was stuck serializing a Java enum/class to XML.... The enum wasn't just a list of string values but more like a Map(String,Object>.

He tried to annotate it with XMLEnum but the moment I saw this enum, I'm thinking that's unlikely to work.... Mapping all that to just a string?

He tried annotating the Fields in it using XMLAttribute but clearly wasnt working...

Also he use XMLEnumValue but from his test run I could clearly see it just replaced whatever the enum value would've been with some fixed String...

Me: Did you read the documentation or when the javadocs?

Dad: no, I don't like reading documentation and the samples didn't work.

I haven't done XML Serialization for years thought did use JSON and my first instinct was... You need a TypeAdapter to convert the enum to a serializable class.

So I do some Googling, read the docs then just played around with the code, figured out how to serialize a class and also how to implement XmlTypeAdapter.... 20 mins ...

Text him back with screenshots and basically:

See it's not that hard if you actually read up on the javadocs and realized ur enum is more like a class so probably the simple way won't work...

RTFM
Read and understand story/task assigned to you

TGIF... And once again solved another issue brought up by another dev by just reading the javadocs on the problematic Spring annotation

How senior do you need to be to finally learn the first step to solving most problems is to RTFM....

Friend goes to work on snowblower, quits because they don't know what to do.
I ask: RTFM?
Response: I don't RTFM, I TIFU

The best documentation evar for *nix open-source projects on GitHub:

$ make

<?
if(!RTFM)
die();
?>

Come on, how hard can it be?

On every fucking TLV data structure I get to handle, the hobo who defined the structure obviously stopped reading the TLV specification after the second sentence.
Fucked up tags, misuse of length encoding, and as a result no real TLV parser can handle that crap. Workarounds and manual parsing all over the place for *every* *single* interface.

Get your shit together, and if you don't want to handle the complex parts, then at least make the simple types right.

“Let’s add another style/Layout for h2 so it looks like an h3. The content managers will figure out!” -client PO

MAYBE YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR CONTENT WANKERS TO READ THE FUCKING MANUAL

RTFM, stupid!

PROTIP: Using ed(1) can be a fun experience. Just remember to RTFM and be patient.
Using a cheesy amber CRT helps, as well.

So apparently all you have to do to get mad kudos from a DocuSign API dev, is to implement an integration without contacting them for help...
Guess they don't trust their own documentation and I don't blame them, it is kinda bad. Tho it is a whole lot better than the other systems I've been working with lately...
Those have been nonexistent at best, completely wrong at other times...

my lesson as a new dev was when the senior told me to RTFM....by not using Google... as in ... real books... dusty... old... valuable... and BIG mother farking ones.

I'm about to send an email to a client with some well-written recommendations and advice in it. I swear that if he calls me quickly like he usually does, and before sufficient time has passed for him to actually read and grok what I've written, I will ignore that call and wait until tomorrow morning to get back to him. RTFM, dude!

Some time ago, I gave a tutorial and wrote page with some brief instructions for configuring and start using git for a team of researchers. A few day later I came back to check how they were doing and I found that following my instructions, several people were committing as:

John Doe <john.doe@example.com>

Perfect! I don't think that there is anything else I can do to help them.

So hypothetically I have a friend who wants to get a job in cyber security but has no formal education or means to afford one, at the moment. He knows enough about computers to navigate and execute most common tasks, and certainly has the drive, common sense, and brains to succeed but can't afford to in this almost cutthroat field...
How would he begin to teach himself?
He has a laptop, Kali Linux, The BTFM and RTFM books, The Hacker's Playbook 3; and the internet.

Make his day with your two cents.

I had to import some resources into infrastructure-as-code ( IaC ) for a new project. I found the right tool for the job and started working on it.

But I had a lot of resources to import. I decided to use the API of the source provider and transform them into the configuration format required for the IaC tool.

After spending a good half of a day scripting with a combination of `jq` and `yq` and another bunch of tools, I finally completed the import yesterday.

Today, I had to refer to the documentation of the IaC tool for something else and I found that there was a built-in command for pulling resources from the target to the source ( basically what I did with my script ). 🤦‍

( I hope my manager doesn't find out that I 'wasted' half a day when I could have completed the job within around an hour )

Lesson learnt the hard way ( again ) : READ THE F**KING MANUAL even if it may seem trivial.

*thought to self* : YTF won't you learn this simple thing after so many incidents? RTFM!

Really need to make it a habit to read every single piece of documentation and included read me file for a plugin and framework that I'm using even if they essentially say the exact same thing...wasted so much time just to find out I literally needed 1 line of js instead of all kinds of custom code -_-

That feeling when you get a call about your Android COSU app release being shit, because the positioning does not work at all.

- are the Sim cards activated? -> ofcourse I did, do you think I'm stupid?!?
- did you enabled data? -> what? gps doesn't need data!
-RTFM

I have technical problems with postgresql, AlienVault, Xenservers and Fortigate. I should be reading manuals and going through forums and mailing lists but instead, I'm reading ebooks in personal development like time management, verbal communications improvement and personal finance.

What is wrong with me?

I point out to a guy which documentation and which section he should read to solved his problem, 30minutes later I swing by and the dude sits and watches tutorials on YouTube. I ask him "did you figure it out and solved the problem?", he replies " nah! This tutorial is really great, it shows step by step...blah blah.. I can send it to you! We should all watch it tomorrow after standup" ... Really? He honestly believes were getting paid to drink latte watch tutorials on YouTube? I almost imploded at that point, went into "whatever"-mode and seriously pondered how much mentoring sucks some days. But seriously tutorials on the tube were targeted for 14year old beginners a last time I checked,did the world do a double revolution and left me behind?? Or is that guy just plainly trying to hide the fact how incompetent he is at reading docs?

Thought I'd give kotlin spring boot a shot. I assumed it would work out of the box like with java. It didn't. Apparently with jdk 17 I chose an incompatible version with the gradle version provided. Downgrade gradle. 'runApplication()' still marked with an error, which I cannot seem to solve. Answers from the internet are no solution.
But I can run the project ... but I cannot reach my dummy address, same with maven ... wtf, which part of rtfm did I miss? Wasn't kotlin supposed to be the better java?

GOD DAMN THAT OLD BROKEN DATABASE.

Having to work with a legacy old database system running MySQL 4.0 is a pain. Especially when even finding a frikin manual for the thing is hard af.

And a cherry on top is dealing with encoding and collation in a system, that didn't really have a wide support for it yet.

10/10. At least I am only dealing with it so that we could later shut it down for good.

Need a bit of help and I think the simple answer would've been to RTFM more carefully but yea.... Kinda late now.

I'm looking for the installers for Chromium 74.0.3707.0. I should've written form the download link but I forgot you can't just look it up with this version number.

Hence my problem. I went on the site and somehow need to lookup a revision version like 54321. But I can't find the mapping for it... Closest I got it's going the commit hash but then what...

...rtfm!