Some empty-headed helpdesk girl skipped into our office yesterday afternoon, despite the big scary warning signs glued to the door.

"Hey, when I log in on my phone, the menu is looking weird"

"Uh... look at my beard"

"What"

"Just look at this beard!"

"Uh.... OK"

"Does this look like a perfectly groomed beard"

"Uh... it's pretty nice I guess"

"You don't have to lie"

She looks puzzled: "OK... maybe it could use a little trimming. Uh... a lot of trimming". "I still like it though" she adds, trying hard to be polite.

"I understand you just started working here. But the beard... the beard should make it clear. See the office opposite to this one?"

"Yeah"

"Perfectly groomed ginger beards. It's all stylish shawls and smiles and spinach smoothies. Those people are known as frontend developers, they care about pixels and menus. Now look at my beard. It is dark and wild, it has some gray stress hairs, and if you take a deep breath it smells like dust and cognac mixed with the tears caused by failed deploys. Nothing personal, but I don't give a fuck what a menu looks like on your phone."

She looked around, and noticed the other 2 tired looking guys with unshaven hobo chins. To her credit, she pointed at the woman in the corner: "What about her, she doesn't seem to have a beard"

Yulia, 1.9m long muscled database admin from Ukraine, lets out a heavy sigh. "I do not know you well enough yet to show you where I grow my unkempt graying hairs... . Now get lost divchyna."

Helpdesk girl leaves the scene.

Joanna, machine learning dev, walks in: "I saw a confused blonde lost in the hallway, did you give her the beard speech?"

"Yeah" -- couldn't hold back a giggle -- "haha now she'll come to you"

Joanna: "No I already took care of it"

"How?"

"She started about some stupid menu, so I just told her to smell my cup". Joanna, functional alcoholic, is holding her 4pm Irish coffee. "I think this living up to our stereotype tactic is working, because the girl laughed and nodded like she understood, and ran off to the design department"

Me: "I do miss shaving though"

The university system is fucked.

I've been working in this industry for a few years now, but have been self taught for much longer. I'm only just starting college and I'm already angry.

What does a college degree really mean anymore? From some of the posts I've seen on devRant, it certainly doesn't ensure professional conduct, work ethic, or quality (shout out to the brave souls who deal with the lack of these daily). Companies should hire based on talent, not on a degree. Universities should focus more on real world applications or at least offer such programs for students interested in entering the workforce rather than research positions. A sizable chunk of universities' income (in the U.S. at least) comes from research and corporate sponsorships, and educating students is secondary to that. Nowadays education is treated as a business instead of a tool to create value in the world. That's what I signed up for, anyway - gaining the knowledge to create value in the world. And yet I along with many others feel so restricted, so bogged down with requirements, fees, shitty professors, and shitty university resources. There is so much knowledge out there that can be put to instant practical use - I am constantly shocked at the things left out of my college curriculum (lack of automated tests, version control, inadequate or inaccurate coverage of design patterns and philosophies) - things that are ABSOLUTELY essential to be successful in this career path.

It's wonderful that we eventually find the resources we need, or the motivation to develop essential skills, but it's sad that so many students in university lack proper direction through no fault of their own.

Fuck you, universities, for being so inflexible and consistently failing to serve your basic purpose - one of if not the most important purpose on this earth.

Fuck you, corporations, for hiring and paying based on degree. Fuck you, management, for being so ignorant about the industry you work in.

Fuck you, clients, who treat intelligent people like dirt, make unreasonable demands, pull some really shady shit, and perpetuate a damaging stereotype.

And fuck you to the developer who wrote my company's antipattern-filled, stringy-as-all hell codebase without comments. Just. Fuck you.

"Fuck JavaScript, its such a shitty language" seems to be quite a common rant today. It seems as if JS is actually getting more hate than PHP, which is certainly odd, considering the stereotype.

So, as someone who has spent a lot of time in JS and a lot of time elsewhere, here are my views. Please, discuss your opinions with me as well. I am genuinely interested in an intelligent conversation about this topic.

So here's my background: learned HTML/CSS/JS in that order when I was 12 because I liked computers. I was pretty shitty at JS until U was at least 15, but you get the point, Ive had it sploshing about in my brain for a while.

Now, JS certainly has its quirks, no doubt, but theres nothing about the language itself that I would say makes it shitty. Its a very easy leanguage to use, but isn't overdeveloped like VB.net (Or, as I like to call it, TheresAFunctionForThat)

Most of the hate is centered around JS being used for a very broad range of systems. I doubt JS would be in the rant feed so often if it were to stay in its native ecosystem of web browsers. JS can be used in server backend, web frontent, desktop and mobile applications, and even in some system services (Although this isn't very popular as of yet). People seem to be terrified that one very easy to learn language can go so far. And, oh god, its interpreted... How can a system app run off an interpreted language? That's absurd.

My opinion on JSEverything is that it's progress. Thats what we're all about, right? The technologies already in place are unthreatened by JS, it isn't a gamechanger. The only thing JS integration is doing is making tedius and simple tasks easier. Big companies with large systems aren't going to jump ship and migrate to JS. A startup, however, could save a fucking ton of development time by using a JS framework, however. I want to live in a world where startups can become the next Google, because technology will stagnate when youre trying to protect your fortune, (Look at Apple for fucks sake) but innovation is born of small people with big ideas.

I have a feeling the hate for JS is coming from fear of abandoning what you're already doing. You don't have to do that. JS is only another option (And a very good one, which is why it's becoming so popular).

As for my personal opinion from my experiences... I've left this part til the end on purpose. I love programming and learning and creating, so I've never hated a lamguage, really. It all depends on what I want to do. In the times i've played arpund with JS, I've loved it. Very very easy. The idea of having it on both ends of web development makes a lot of sense too, no conversion, just direct communication. I would imagine this really helps with speed, as well. I wouldn't use it in a complicated system, though. Small things, medium size projects: perfect. Running a bank? No.

So what do you think about this JSUniverse?

Best part of being a dev :
You get to live the stereotype. "She doesn't talk much, she is always on her laptop - coding, always has headphones on. Too much of a geek. Let's not invite her to a party. "

No awkward "Uh , I cant come. " Yay! B-)

When you see a semi bald man with a messy beard, bit too much belly, a dead look in the eyes that carries a pc bag.

And your first thought is "oh, a sys admin" x)

Dad: Why don't you become a doctor?

Yes I'm asian and my dad is the stereotype asian dad😥

devRant is going to change the stereotype of introverted programmers. Clearly we are not! We just need the right people to talk to :)

The head of the software department of a company I did an internship at once said:

'the stereotype that programmers sit in a dark room all day with empty pizza boxes on their desks is wrong. They are very social and communicate a lot'

Me: yeah, for sure ...

My GF is a non-tech-savvy linguistics bachelor who uses elementaryOS as her only operating system on her only laptop. I'm not responsible for this, I only helped her install it instead of Windows when she asked me to do so.

She's a living proof that the stereotype of Linux being "too hard" or "exclusively for geeks" is outdated to say the least. Yes, Ubuntu and elementaryOS are not as kewl as Arch and Gentoo, but they are still better than a popular blue-colored American operating system that sends unencrypted screenshots of your desktop to some unknown IP addresses every 10 minutes.

Connecting people

God I'm fucking done for today.

We just finished a "Climate-conference-simulation" in school.

Basically ~90 students split into 6 groups representing a delegation of a country or a group of countries.

EU,
USA,
India,
China,
Other developing countries,
Other industrial countries

The target of our efforts was the reduction of global warming from ~4 C° by 2100 to around 2 C°.

My group (USA) elected me to speak and represent (I did kind of mimic the American stereotype of being egoistic and self centered, no offence intended)

As all the other nations and groups were planning great schemes, my group simply continued to put, well, basically rocks in their path by not playing along cause aforementioned stereotype.

It's the working phase after the second presentation of results, I'm sitting there with parts of the Chinese and EU delegation and suddenly two of my friends, in different groups, put my hood over my head, drag/carry me out of the assembly hall, toss me out and leave me there.

Was funny and all, but damn, it's fucking exhausting to stand in front of around 100 people (including teachers and stuff) and completely not play along with the other group's opinions and plans.

But hey, I've been congratulated a lot of times cause I've perfectly stayed in my role.

Yes it was weird

doNotMessWithITTeamInAFuckingProject();

Last night me with my team have a discussion with my project team. Currently we have a project for our insurance client building a Learning Management System. The project condition already messed up since the first day i join a meeting. Because since its a consortium project with multiple company involved, one of company had a bad experience with another company. It happened few years back when both of company were somehow break up badly because miss communication (i heard this from one of my team).

Skip..skip... And then day to day like another stereotype IT projects when client and business analyst doing requirements gathering, the specs seems unclear and keep changing day by day even when I type this rant I'm sure it will change again.

Then something happened last night when my team leader force our business analyst to re index the use case number (imho) this is no need to be done, and i know the field conditions its so tough for all team members.

So many problems occured, actually this is a boring problem like lack of dev resource, lack of project management and all other stereotype IT projects had. Its sucks why this things is happening again.

Finally my fellow business analyst type a quite long message in our group and said that he maybe quit because its too tired and he felt that the leader only know about push push pushhhhhy fcking pussy, he never go to the client site and look what we've done and what we struggle so far.

I just don't know why, i know this guy earlier was an IT geek also, but when he leading a team he act like he never done IT project before, just know about pushing people without knowing what the context and sound to me like just rage push!

Damnit, i maybe quit also, you know we IT guy never affraid to quit anytime from the messed up condition like this. Even though we were at the bottom level in a project, but we hold the most main key for development.

Hope he (my leader) read this rant. And can realize what happened and fix this broken situation. I don't know what to say again, im in steady mode to quit anytime if something chaos happen nearly in the future.

doNotMessWithITTeamInAFuckingProject();

How much exercise do you guys tend to do? There's definitely a stereotype that developers aren't particularly sporty, but I break that mould (gym, squash, rock climbing, skiing, etc)

Any other sporty developers out there?

PHP is the Fidel Castro of programming languages; after all Castro outlived five US presidents who ordered his assassination. And of course, like reports of Mark Twain’s death being exaggerated, it’s patently absurd to call a language that powers 80% of the web dead.

Sitting at Starbucks cause my train is delayed and it's the only place with freaking free wifi.

I found the stereotype hipster :D

A guy having Beats Headphones on with a MBP, iPhone X obviously next to his MBP, searching for Elon Musk Audiobooks and Courses for Smalltalk and Management on Audible 🤣

i don't think that i'm having a burnout but i think that i'm maybe not so far away from it... several people, including friends, my therapist and also a colleague, told me they see me at risk of sliding into a real burnout.

i've known this for longer that i have a crappy work life balance. the habit of making work the most important part of my own life. thinking about work even in my private time, when i fall asleep, when i wake up in the night or in the morning. the tendency to think about problems, plans, coworkers, not being able to quit work mentally. the idea that i have to prove to everybody at work that i'm awesome. the feeling that, after a work day, i'm just "waiting" at home for the next day, in idle mode, so i can continue working on a problem (like a bug) that's occupying my whole mind. and at the same time, feeling totally empty after work, having no energy. i've lost interest and quit several hobbies in the last two years that once were important for me. and i think one important reason is that i didn't have any mental energy left to deal with that.

another factor for this development was also the pandemic for sure, because for some time, i had no real social life except for that at work.
but more important is probably that i find my job most of the time really fun and am highly motivated. i have the tendency to say yes to everything and to really commit to and own the problems that are handed to me. (right now, however i feel like there's not much motivation left)
then again there is the feeling that what i do is never good enough, i have little self confidence in my own abilities as a software engineer. there's a big discrepancy between how i myself perceive my work and how other people do (not only at work). on a rational level, i know that what i do is at least "good enough", otherwise i wouldn't have this job, and i wouldn't receive this amount of positive feedback from people. but it's hard to really deeply understand this thing, when there are deep-rooted beliefs like "only perfect is good enough" or "your colleagues will be disappointed and get a negative idea of you (and something bad will happen), if you don't give your best"... and there's also this idea that i have to be this super nerdy person who also codes in their free time, reads IT magazines and stuff, because only then i will fit this stereotype of a software developer, and only then i can be taken seriously and be good enough. no matter if this is fun for me or not.

anyway, right now i'm at a point in life where i'm realizing all this not only rationally, but with full emotional impact... :/ my life feels like it's gone stale and empty. i've lost creativity, warmth and human connection and that hurts a lot.

i'm trying to change my life.
one thing that really helps me right now is to talk with people who have (made) similar experiences. can you relate? if yes, how do / did you address those problems? i would really appreciate to hear your stories...

!rant
Devrant really goes against the movie techie stereotype. Almost everyone has a girlfriend or wife and family!!!

Workload rant.

Our new line manager is overly expecting from all of us (product/design/tech) and is micro managing on ground level without having any real sense of reality. He just wants everything to be built overnight.

He is smart, no doubt about that. But guess, I learnt from him what I had to. Not to stereotype but he is a typical Indian manager who keeps pushing boundaries.

He just added 80 features for Q1 roadmap with on 3 PMs, 1 Designer, 1TPM, and bunch of techies .

What the actual fuck! 😂😂😂 And he wanted to add more, thankfully we ran out of time in the meeting.

And my super talent and genius blabbering co-woker who works mechanically just fucked herself real bad. Lol

I kept telling her not to add Feature XYZ to the roadmap because:
1. There'll be spill over from Q4
2. She is already overloaded with 1 task and keeps crying all day about being unable to handle it
3. She is setting wrong expectations with management for herself and rest of the team
4. Boss will add more work and she'll be fucked

She was adamant and did not listen.

Now this is what happened:
1. ALL her Q4 items got pushed to Q1. LMFAO
2. She was literally crying since morning on calls for being overloaded and we are yet to start Q1 assignments
3. Additional tasks along side feature XYZ were added on her plate

I tried to push back the manager and that's when he said okay, let's keep some items for Q2.

But holy shit. 80 features between such a small team and wanted to done in few weeks.

I need to pump more steam in my job hunt activity. This place is ridiculously toxic.

Why computer science student have a stereotype to have a 'gaming' or high-end laptops? my first impression was that. and i think that is stupid. is this only in my country or apply all-over the place?

Just got asked to fix a friend of my mom’s (whom I have met all of once) brother’s computer. 😒

It’s a stereotype and it’s so frigging true.

super random

I never got the notion of "men don't like smart women", it's not a stereotype that I see in real life too much.
And I kinda think the opposite way, like yes honey please go on about mathematical topics I don't know a thing about <3

!(rant && story)

It hit me today. I literally 100% fit the exact stereotype for a backend developer.

And it's not wrong, I love backend dev and hate frontend work with a burning passion (even though I can do it)

whyyyy

What’s your favorite programmer stereotype? 👩‍💻

Had a job when nobody believed I was able to program because the way I dressed was apparently not "geek enough"..

So if I'm a developer I should follow up the stereotype?

Here we go, the winter is happening #BecauseItsAlreadyComing

The Fcuking Stereotype of MDFK Projects Deadline was not achieve, everybody starts throwing blame words, the management had their heads burned, aaannd... This is nearly 11pm I'm enjoying my chicken Satay and I don't give a fcuking damn with this situation. #MyCodeMyAdventure

lets have a junkie dinner my fellow devRanters! 😂

Is anyone also proud of fitting in the "programmer stereotype" ? :d

Why are non-technical people put in charge of technical people? I get there's a stereotype that programmers aren't good with people, but that's not really my experience. How can I fail to achieve expectations when you don't outline any? How is "I didn't see you run enough scripts" a valid criticism when they're run locally from my machine with no record being created? Especially when those scripts are only for very specific processes I generally don't deal with? Seriously I was on the team less than 5 months come my yearly review and I'm already under-performing? I can't even switch teams because in-house recruiters always request the last performance review and mine sucks thanks to that asshole. Nevermind the one before that I excelled, but different role doesn't matter I guess. Some days I'm so tempted to cash out that 401k and just hope I find a better job within a year. Anyone have advice on dealing with this shit?

When did you feel that you were a *Serious* Programmer?

Mine had to be when I got a second monitor for my workstation. Felt like some 80's stereotype hacker. Even bought a Guy Fawkes mask just for a meme Instagram pic haha... Fml

It's not a real dev regret but it's related to it: Not being able to fix a price or a value for my skills.
It's a real regret.
Just coming out of college I have tried my hand at freelancing at found it real hard to fix a value for what work was offered because I just found it weird to fix a monetary value on something that I've done for free for my entire life ( at school and uni I mean).
To make it worse my first experience was with a grad student who wanted me to complete her project.
Now being from India, I know that we have a stereotype of doing work for a lower price.
But this girl took the cake.
She wanted me to create a custom Image classifier using tensorflow.
It had to train with live images and then detect those images in the live video feed.
It's quite simple but still training the basic network(which would be used to just detect features) would take a decent amount of time and effort.
No pre trained models was also a prerequisite for her.
After hearing all her requirements I asked her what price she was willing to pay.
She said 50$ lump sum.
Being really confused as to what to say to that I just stopped replying.
To this day I have no clue what would be a reasonable price to quote a client like that.
After that I just continued dealing with people I knew personally and am currently doing that as an internship. But entering the proper freelancing system again has become a kinda weird thing in my head now, since I have no clue as to what price to put on my skills.
Is there any advice that any of the more experienced people would give?
Also consider the fact that I'm relatively fresh out of college and have no corporate experience.
Even if you've read my rant and have no advice it's okay. I guess this is a path of self realization after all.

It seems a bit unusual, but my parents approved immediately of my going into programming (was 13 at the time), although their reasoning was because of the stereotype of those days that anyone who works with computers with computers makes a lot of money.

Its 7am and I haven't finished my gin yet. Does this make me a stereotype?

!rant

OMG Hackernoon has the shitiest and cringeworthy interface! I mean WTF is that green and mono shit! Why do you have to glamourise a stereotype!!! I mean don't you think the tech and dev community already suffers a lot because of stupid stereotypes?

Being a Java programmer have to be strong and fight the stereotype.