Story of my life

Story of my life..

Story of my life.

Worst dev I've interviewed?

"Archie" ran his own consulting business for almost 20 years. Prior to his interview, Archie sent HR (to send to us) his company's website, where he had samples of code for us to review (which was not bad, this guy did know his stuff).
What I found odd was Archie was the lone wolf at his company, but everything I found about him (the about page, his bio, etc), Archie was referred to as 'Mr. Archie Brown'.
Ex. 'Mr. Archie Brown began his humble career and 'Mr. Archie Brown is active in his church and volunteers his time in many charities ...'
Odd to refer to yourself in the third person on your own site, but OK, I like putting hot sauce on my mac & cheese (no judgement here).

Then the interview..standard stuff, then..
Me: "Given your experience, this is an entry level developer position. Do you feel the work would be challenging enough for you?"
Archie: "Yes, Mr. Archie Brown would have no problem starting at bottom. You see ..."

Almost any time he would reference himself, instead of 'me' or 'I', he would say 'Mr. Archie Brown'. As the interview continued, the ego and self-importance grew and grew.
My interview partner wanted to be done by using the escape clause, "PaperTrail, I'm good, do you have any questions?"

Yes, yes I do. I was having too much fun listening to this guy ramble on about himself. I made the interview go the full hour with the majority of time 'Archie' telling us how great he is.

The icing on the cake was my partner caught his gold cuff-links and tie-pin where his initials and how he kept raising his hands and playing with his tie to show us (which I totally missed, then was like "oh yea, that was weird")

After the interview, talking with HR:
HR-Jake: "How did it go?"
John: "Terrible. One of the worst. We would have been done in 10 minutes if PaperTrail didn't keep asking questions."
Me: "Are you kidding!? I had the best time ever. I wish I could have stayed longer."
HR-Jake: "Really? This guy was so full of himself I wasn't sure to even schedule with you guys. With his experience, I thought it deserved at least a round with you two. You think we should give him a chance?"
Me: "Hell no. Never in a million years, no. I never in my whole life met anyone with such a big ego. I mean, he kept referring to himself in the third person. Who does that?"
HR-Jake: "Whew!...yea, he did that in the phone interview too. It was a red flag for us as well."

Couple of weeks later I ran into HR-Jake in the break room.
HR-Jake: "Remember Mr. Archie Brown?"
Me: "To my dying day, I will never forget Mr. Archie Brown."
HR-Jake: "I called him later that day to tell him the good news and he accused me of being a racist. If we didn't give him the job, he was getting a lawyer and sue us for discrimination."
Me: "What the frack!"
HR-Jake: "Yep, and guess what? Got a letter from his lawyer today. I don't think a case will come in front of a judge, but if you have any notes from the interview, I'll need them."
Me: "What are we going to do?"
HR-Jake: "Play the waiting game between lawyers. We're pretty sure he'll run out of money before we do."

After about 6 months, and a theft conviction (that story made the local paper), Mr. Archie Brooks dropped his case (or his lawyers did).

29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.

For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.

I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.

I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.

Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.

Father bought a PC in 1997. Back then very few had it. I learned doing things like accessing the internet and sending emails, among others. I remember having added age on websites to be allowed to sign up at times :P My sisters used to play games on it sometimes. The first few ones we had were Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider Chronicles, American McGee's Alice(Which caused us to upgrade the PC xD)... And some others.

I have a memory of this pseudo-3D-looking game where you move in a maze and try answering questions. I want to remember its name, but I cannot :(

We literally have video evidence of me liking the computer as a child, yet my parents either say I'm addicted or deny I've ever liked it before. Not only that, but continuously limiting my time with the PC hasn't been a literal obstacle in my way of trying to do things in their opinion. Funny how my parents think the last few years I've been my worst when they've hurt me in those years so much that our relationship is guaranteed not working out. There were doubts in my head before, but now it's cemented and there is no way of going back. Father, for example, tells me it's too late to do anything with a PC now(As well as how I've been unable to use the PC. He looks at these pro players' footage in some TV show and he's like, „You've been unable to use your hobbies“, as if they have never ever screamed at me for perceived gaming and not actually cared to check), and I need to look for a „real“ job.

Sorry. I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning. Feel like a zombie because of ongoing weirdly insufficient sleep, even though I sleep kinda more than normal. Even when I took Melatonine for that it didn't help at all.

Childhood was where beating began. I was about 6/7. Right when I entered school. The first school that I attended was a private one and supposedly for „Wunderkinds“, while in reality I haven't seen a SINGLE teacher or psychologist approve of it, their argument being that children were basically drowned in work that wasn't age-appropriate(I don't mean anything bad. Just that teaching about Galaxies and all in first grade isn't the brightest idea). There was always a mountain of homework to do and as opposed to some other countries, we had to do it on a day to day basis. We didn't have a week-long deadline. I was predictably not keeping up with it as I could have, had it been a normal amount, so my parents decided I didn't want to study and began their methods of getting me to „study“. I have yet to see a person able to keep up with that school's tempo, no matter the age.

This place was also where I got bullied. I felt I had nowhere to be: At home, the parents' situation, at school, the bully. I never really went outside to play with other children, so I missed that part of childhood.

After the second year of school I was transferred to an advanced German school, called like that because they taught German and not English there. I also got to learn a bit of Russian before they removed it from school. In that period I used to attend ballet. But for less than a year. And piano, which I remember having attended for quite a long while, some years, if my memory isn't fried. I quit it because of it having been forced on me. Last piece I ever played fully was Beethoven's Marmotte.

In this school I was once again the outcast of the class. I had some people to interact with. All of those interactions lasted a few years at most. Then, because of a part of my class choosing me as a laughing-stock N2 and another girl as the N1, I found my best friend, who I still have today. She's the only friend I have nearby.

Most of the time I hated myself. Even today I struggle with that sometimes.

After that came university. This us where I got something like a friend circle at last. But it still didn't last. I got in a relationship with one of the guys, but I was just attracted. There was another I couldn't dare getting close to. Turns out he also had something for me. Then he disappeared from our lives and a year after, I still cannot forget the person. If I want to, I have to deprive myself of my own personality. Not a thing I'm willing to give up. Then I broke up with the guy I was in a relationship with and completely disappeared from the friendship circle. To be honest, I had reasons to. They refused to even try to look for the guy and they called him a friend for years. Sometimes parents hitting me can occur even today, but if I REALLY piss them off.

Now I'm here and oh, my God, I'm officially am aunt now! My sister gave birth to a daughter this morning... She's in Berlin with mother and both she and the child are doing great. I just hope she manages to be a good mother.

So I got the job. Here's a story, never let anyone stop you from accomplishing your dreams!

It all started in 2010. Windows just crashed unrecoverably for the 3rd time in two years. Back then I wasn't good with computers yet so we got our tech guy to look at it and he said: "either pay for a windows license again (we nearly spend 1K on licenses already) or try another operating system which is free: Ubuntu. If you don't like it anyways, we can always switch back to Windows!"

Oh well, fair enough, not much to lose, right! So we went with Ubuntu. Within about 2 hours I could find everything. From the software installer to OpenOffice, browsers, email things and so on. Also I already got the basics of the Linux terminal (bash in this case) like ls, cd, mkdir and a few more.

My parents found it very easy to work with as well so we decided to stick with it.

I already started to experiment with some html/css code because the thought of being able to write my own websites was awesome! Within about a week or so I figured out a simple html site.

Then I started to experiment more and more.

After about a year of trial and error (repeat about 1000+ times) I finally got my first Apache server setup on a VirtualBox running Ubuntu server. Damn, it felt awesome to see my own shit working!

From that moment on I continued to try everything I could with Linux because I found the principle that I basically could do everything I wanted (possible with software solutions) without any limitations (like with Windows/Mac) very fucking awesome. I owned the fucking system.

Then, after some years, I got my first shared hosting plan! It was awesome to see my own (with subdomain) website online, functioning very well!

I started to learn stuff like FTP, SSH and so on.

Went on with trial and error for a while and then the thought occured to me: what if I'd have a little server ONLINE which I could use myself to experiment around?

First rented VPS was there! Couldn't get enough of it and kept experimenting with server thingies, linux in general aaand so on.

Started learning about rsa key based login, firewalls (iptables), brute force prevention (fail2ban), vhosts (apache2 still), SSL (damn this was an interesting one, how the fuck do you do this yourself?!), PHP and many other things.

Then, after a while, the thought came to mind: what if I'd have a dedicated server!?!?!?!

I ordered my first fucking dedicated server. Damn, this was awesome! Already knew some stuff about defending myself from brute force bots and so on so it went pretty well.

Finally made the jump to NginX and CentOS!

Made multiple VPS's for shitloads of purposes and just to learn. Started working with reverse proxies (nginx), proxy servers, SSL for everything (because fuck basic http WITHOUT SSL), vhosts and so on.

Started with simple, one screen linux setup with ubuntu 10.04.

Running a five monitor setup now with many distro's, running about 20 servers with proxies/nginx/apache2/multiple db engines, as much security as I can integrate and this fucking passion just got me my first Linux job!

It's not just an operating system for me, it's a way of life. And with that I don't just mean the operating system, but also the idea behind it :).

The spam denier
_____

An old phone conversation with a client:

Me : Hello

Client : My website and server are suspended? why is that?

Me : Your server sends spam messages.

Client : We do not send spam messages, we are on vacation, there is none in the office.

Me : Yes, but it is not necessarily you, according to our logs, your server sent spam messages in Chinese and Russian, so someone from Russia or China....etc.

Client : I do not believe you, we do not speak russian or chinese, how could we then write spam messages in those languages?

Me : I told you, maybe someone exploited some vulnerability in your website or server firewall. And if you want to activate your services, please check with your webmaster and sysadmin to secure your ....

Client: I tell you my son, because I am old and I have more life experience than you ... I am 60 years old and I tell you, spam does not exist, and YOU suspended my website and server, and created issues to sell me more of your solutions and services.

I won't check my server, I won't hire a webmaster or a sysadmin, AND YOU WILL ACTIVATE MY SERVER NOW !

(I suddenly realized that I am talking to a wall, so I switched to a robotic tone).

Me : Please resolve the issue to activate your services..

Client : YOU WILL ACTIVATE MY S...

Me : Please resolve the issue to activate your services...

Client : WHAT IS THIS SPAM STORY ANYWAY, I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU ...

Me : Please google that word and you will understand what is spam is...

Client : YOU ARE F**ING LIARS, SPAM DOES NOT EXIST... ACTIVATE MY WEBSITE N.... Beeeep !

I hang up.

Well, I thought about configuring an automatic response for this client, or a for-loop.

His voice was really unpleasant, as if he is a heavy smoker.

Story of my life

A small story on digitalization

I had spent an hour in the bank with my dad, as he had to transfer some money. I couldn't resist myself & asked:

Dad, why don't we activate your internet banking?

''Why would I do that?'' He asked, ''Well, then you wont have to spend an hour here for things like transfer.

You can even do your shopping online. Everything will be so easy!

I was so excited about initiating him into the world of Net banking.

He asked, If I do that, I wont have to step out of the house?

''Yes, yes''! I said. I told him how even grocery can be delivered at door now and how amazon delivers everything!

His answer left me tongue-tied.

He said ''Since I entered this bank today, I have met four of my friends, I have chatted a while with the staff who know me very well by now.

Two years back I got sick, The store owner from whom I buy fruits, came to see me and sat by my bedside and cried.

When u r Mom fell down few days back while on her morning walk. Our local grocer saw her and immediately got his car to rush her home as he knows where I live.

Would I have that 'human' touch if everything became online?

I like to know the person that I'm dealing with and not just the 'seller'. It creates bonds. Relationships.

Does "online" deliver all this as well?

Technology isn't life #BeHuman

For those who are not getting the context, this things happen in India. It is truth not a fact.

F🤬k!! why doesn’t this work on the testing server!l! I swear it worked local.

Meanwhile live:

<rant>
*Rules For Work*

1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 4:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.

2. If it's really a rush job, run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it's going. That helps. Even better, hover behind me, and advise me at every keystroke.

3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.

4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books, or supplies, don't open the door for me. I need to learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening doors with no arms is good training in case I should ever be injured and lose all use of my limbs.

5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is priority. I am psychic.

6. Do your best to keep me late. I adore this office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do. I have no life beyond work.

7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. If that gets out, it could mean a promotion.

8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations. I was born to be whipped.

9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. In fact, save them until the job is almost done. No use confusing me with useful information.

10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. I have no right to know anything. In the corporate food chain, I am plankton. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.

11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change your life and send you straight to manager's hell.

12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone is less fortunate. I especially like the story about having to pay so many taxes on the bonus check you received for being such a good manager.

13. Wait until my yearly review and THEN tell me what my goals SHOULD have been. Give me a mediocre performance rating with a cost of living increase. I'm not here for the money anyway.

</rant>

Back in the days...

Parents: get off that computer it will get you nowhere in life!

Me:But im programming not playing games..I want to become a programmer...

Parents:programming or games it's all the same! Take an example of your sister who actually achieved something with her studies (she's a doctor)

Me today asa computer engineer...receiving paycheck higher than my sister who is a doctor and not to mention I got a car of the company and living very comfortably.

Parents can't believe it.

#rekt

Moral of the story: never let anyone tell you what to do. Keep doing what you truly love and get real good at it!😉

Story of my life 😀

Probably the biggest one in my life.
TL:DR at the bottom

A client wanted to create an online retirement calculator, sounds easy enough , i said sure.

Few days later i get an email with an excel file saying the online version has to work exactly like this and they're on a tight deadline

Having a little experience with excel, i thought eh, what could possibly go wrong, if anything i can take off the calculations from the excel file

I WAS WRONG !!!
17 Sheets, Linking each other, Passing data to each sheet to make the calculation
( Sure they had lot of stuff to calculate, like age, gender, financial group etc etc )

First thing i said to my self was, WHAT THE FREAKING FUCK IS THIS ?, WHAT YEAR IS THIS ?

After messing with it for couple of hours just to get one calculation out of it, i gave up

Thought about making a mysql database with the cell data and making the calculations, but NOOOO.
Whoever made it decided to put each cell a excel calculation ( so even if i manage to get it into a database and recode all the calculations it would be wayyy pass the deadline )

Then i had an epiphany

"What if i could just parse the excel file and get the data ?"
Did a bit of research sure enough there's a php project
( But i think it was outdated and takes about 15-25 seconds to parse, and makes a copy of the original file )

But this seemed like the best option at the time.
So downloaded the library, finished the whole thing, wrote a cron job to delete temporary files, and added a loading spinner for that delay, so people know something is happening
( and had few days to spare )

Sent the demo link to client, they were very happy with it, cause it worked same as their cute little excel file and gave the same result,

It's been live on their website for almost a year now, lot of submissions, no complains
I was feeling bit guilty just after finishing it, cause i could've done better, but not anymore

Sorry for making it so long, to understand the whole thing, you need to know the full story

TL:DR - Replicated the functionality of a 17 sheet excel calculator in php hack-ishly.

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 rant is a confession I had to make, for all of you out there having a bad time (or year), this story is for you.

Last year, I joined devRant and after a month, I was hired at a local company as an IT god (just joking but not far from what they expected from me), developer, web admin, printer configurator (of course) and all that in my country it's just called "the tech guy", as some of you may know.

I wasn't in immediate need for a full-time job, I had already started to work as a freelancer then and I was doing pretty good. But, you know how it goes, you can always aim for more and that's what I did.

The workspace was the usual, two rooms, one for us employees and one for the bosses (there were two bosses).

Let me tell you right now. I don't hate people, even if I get mad or irritated, I never feel hatred inside me or the need to think bad of someone. But, one of the two bosses made me discover that feeling of hate.

He had a snake-shaped face (I don't think that was random), and he always laughed at his jokes. He was always shouting at me because he was a nervous person, more than normal. He had a tone in his voice like he knew everything. Early on, after being yelled for no reason a dozen of times, I decided that this was not a place for me.

After just two months of doing everything, from tech support to Photoshop and to building websites with WordPress, I gave my one month's notice, or so I thought. I was confronted by the bosses, one of which was a cousin of mine and he was really ok with me leaving and said that I just had to find a person to replace me which was an easy task. Now, the other boss, the evil one, looked me on the eye and said "you're not going anywhere".

I was frozen like, "I can't stay here". He smiled like a snake he was and said "come on, you got this we are counting on you and we are really satisfied with how you are performing till now". I couldn't shake him, I was already sweating. He was rolling his eyes constantly like saying "ok, you are wasting my time now" and left to go to some basketball practice or something.

So, I was stuck there, I could have caused a scene but as I told you, one of the bosses was a cousin of mine, I couldn't do anything crazy. So, I went along with it. Until the next downfall.

I decided to focus on the job and not mind for the bad boss situation but things went really wrong. After a month, I realised that the previous "tech guy" had left me with around 20 ancient Joomla - version 1.0 websites, bursting with security holes and infested with malware like a swamp. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday the websites would become defaced or the server (VPN) would start sending tons of spam cause of the malware, and going offline at the end. I was feeling hopeless.

And then the personal destruction began. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was having panick attacks at the office's bathroom. My girlfriend almost broke up with me because I was acting like an asshole due to my anxiety issues (but in the end she was the one to "bring me back"(man, she is a keeper)) and I hadn't put a smile on my face for months. I was on the brink of depression, if not already there. Everyday I would anxiously check if the server is running because I would be the one to blame, even though I was trying to talk to the boss (the bad one was in charge of the IT department) and tell him about the problem.

And then I snapped. I finally realised that I had hit rock bottom. I said "I can't let this happen to me" and I took a deep breath. I still remember that morning, it was a life-changing moment for me. I decided to bite the bullet and stay for one more month, dealing with the stupid old server and the low intelligence business environment. So, I woke up, kissed my girlfriend (now wife), took the bus and went straight to work, and I went into the boss's office. I lied that I had found another job on another city and I had one month in order to be there on time. He was like, "so you are leaving? Is it that good a job the one you found? And when are you going? And are you sure?", and with no hesitation I just said "yup". He didn't expect it and just said "ok then", just find your replacement and you're good to go. I found the guy that would replace me, informing him of every little detail of what's going on (and I recently found out, that he is currently working for some big company nowadays, I'm really glad for him!).

I was surprised that it went so smoothly, one month later I felt the taste of freedom again, away from all the bullshit. Totally one of the best feelings out there.

I don't want to be cliche, but do believe in yourself people! Things are not what the seem.

With all that said, I want to give my special thanks to devRant for making this platform. I was inactive for some time but I was reading rants and jokes. It helped me to get through all that. I'm back now! Bless you devRant!

I'm glad that I shared this story with all of you, have an awesome day!

Worst thing you've seen another dev do? Long one, but has a happy ending.

Classic 'Dev deploys to production at 5:00PM on a Friday, and goes home.' story.

The web department was managed under the the Marketing department, so they were not required to adhere to any type of coding standards and for months we fought with them on logging. Pre-Splunk, we rolled our own logging/alerting solution and they hated being the #1 reason for phone calls/texts/emails every night.

Wanting to "get it done", 'Tony' decided to bypass the default logging and send himself an email if an exception occurred in his code.

At 5:00PM on a Friday, deploys, goes home.

Around 11:00AM on Sunday (a lot folks are still in church at this time), the VP of IS gets a call from the CEO (who does not go to church) about unable to log into his email. VP has to leave church..drive home and find out he cannot remote access the exchange server. He starts making other phone calls..forcing the entire networking department to drive in and get email back up (you can imagine not a group of happy people)

After some network-admin voodoo, by 12:00, they discover/fix the issue (know it was Tony's email that was the problem)

We find out Monday that not only did Tony deploy at 5:00 on a Friday, the deployment wasn't approved, had features no one asked for, wasn't checked into version control, and the exception during checkout cost the company over $50,000 in lost sales.

Was Tony fired? Noooo. The web is our cash cow and Tony was considered a top web developer (and he knew that), Tony decided to blame logging. While in the discovery meeting, Tony told the bosses that it wasn't his fault logging was so buggy and caused so many phone calls/texts/emails every night, if he had been trained properly, this problem could have been avoided.

Well, since I was responsible for logging, I was next in the hot seat.

For almost 30 minutes I listened to every terrible thing I had done to Tony ever since he started. I was a terrible mentor, I was mean, I was degrading, etc..etc.
Me: "Where is this coming from? I barely know Tony. We're not even in the same building. I met him once when he started, maybe saw him a couple of times in meetings."
Andrew: "Aren't you responsible for this logging fiasco?"
Me: "Good Lord no, why am I here?"
Andrew: "I'll rephrase so you'll understand, aren't you are responsible for the proper training of how developers log errors in their code? This disaster is clearly a consequence of your failure. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Me: "Nothing. Developers are responsible for their own choices. Tony made the choice to bypass our logging and send errors to himself, causing Exchange to lockup and losing sales."
Andrew: "A choice he made because he was not properly informed of the consequences? Again, that is a failure in the proper use of logging, and why you are here."
Me: "I'm done with this. Does John know I'm in here? How about you get John and you talk to him like that."
'John' was the department head at the time.
Andrew:"John, have you spoken to Tony?"
John: "Yes, and I'm very sorry and very disappointed. This won't happen again."
Me: "Um...What?"
John: "You know what. Did you even fucking talk to Tony? You just sit in your ivory tower and think your actions don't matter?"
Me: "Whoa!! What are you talking about!? My responsibility for logging stops with the work instructions. After that if Tony decides to do something else, that is on him."
John: "That is not how Tony tells it. He said he's been struggling with your logging system everyday since he's started and you've done nothing to help. This behavior ends today. We're a fucking team. Get off your damn high horse and help the little guy every once in a while."
Me: "I don't know what Tony has been telling you, but I barely know the guy. If he has been having trouble with the one line of code to log, this is the first I've heard of it."
John: "Like I said, this ends today. You are going to come up with a proper training class and learn to get out and talk to other people."

Over the next couple of weeks I become a powerpoint wizard and 'train' anyone/everyone on the proper use of logging. The one line of code to log. One line of code.

A friend 'Scott' sits close to Tony (I mean I do get out and know people) told me that Tony poured out the crocodile tears. Like cried and cried, apologizing, calling me everything but a kitchen sink,...etc. It was so bad, his manager 'Sally' was crying, her boss 'Andrew', was red in the face, when 'John' heard 'Sally' was crying, you can imagine the high levels of alpha-male 'gotta look like I'm protecting the females' hormones flowing.

Took almost another year, Tony released a change on a Friday, went home, web site crashed (losses were in the thousands of $ per minute this time), and Tony was not let back into the building on Monday (one of the best days of my life).

Navy story continued.
And continuing from the arp poisoning and boredom, I started scanning the network...
So I found plenty of WinXP computers, even some Win2k servers (I shit you not, the year was 201X) I decided to play around with merasploit a bit. I mean, this had to be a secure net, right?
Like hell it was.
Among the select douchebags I arp poisoned was a senior officer that had a VERY high idea for himself, and also believed he was tech-savvy. Now that, is a combination that is the red cloth for assholes like me. But I had to be more careful, as news of the network outage leaked, and rumours of "that guy" went amok, but because the whole sysadmin thing was on the shoulders of one guy, none could track it to me in explicit way. Not that i cared, actually, when I am pissed I act with all the subtleness of an atom bomb on steroids.
So, after some scanning and arp poisoning (changing the source MAC address this time) I said...
"Let's try this common exploit, it supposedly shouldn't work, there have been notifications about it, I've read them." Oh boy, was I in for a treat. 12 meterpreter sessions. FUCKING 12. The academy's online printer had no authentication, so I took the liberty of printing a few pages of ASCII jolly rogers (cute stuff, I know, but I was still in ITSec puberty) and decided to fuck around with the other PCs. One thing I found out is that some professors' PCs had the extreme password of 1234. Serious security, that was. Had I known earlier, I could have skipped a TON of pointless memorising...
Anyway, I was running amok the entire network, the sysad never had a chance on that, and he seemed preoccupied with EVERYTHING ELSE besides monitoring the net, like fixing (replacing) the keyboard for the commander's secretary, so...
BTW, most PCs had antivirus, but SO out of date that I didn't even need to encode the payload or do any other trick. An LDAP server was open, and the hashed admin password was the name of his wife. Go figure.
I looked at a WinXP laptop with a weird name, and fired my trusty ms08_067 on it. Passowrd: "aaw". I seriously thought that Ophcrack was broken, but I confirmed it. WTF? I started looking into the files... nothing too suspicious... wait a min, this guy is supposed to work, why his browser is showing porn?
Looking at the ""Deleted"" files (hah!) I fount a TON of documents with "SECRET" in them. Curious...
Decided to download everything, like the asshole I am, and restart his PC, AND to leave him with another desktop wallpaper and a text message. Thinking that he took the hint, I told the sysadmin about the vulnerable PCs and went to class...
In the middle of the class (I think it was anti-air warfare or anti-submarine warfare) the sysad burst through the door shouting "Stop it, that's the second-in-command's PC!".
Stunned silence. Even the professor (who was an officer). God, that was awkward. So, to make things MORE awkward (like the asshole I am) I burned every document to a DVD and the next day I took the sysad and went to the second-in-command of the academy.
Surprisingly he took the whole thing in quite the easygoing fashion. I half-expected court martial or at least a good yelling, but no. Anyway, after our conversation I cornered the sysad and barraged him with some tons of security holes, needed upgrades and settings etc. I still don't know if he managed to patch everything (I left him a detailed report) because, as I've written before, budget constraints in the military are the stuff of nightmares. Still, after that, oddly, most people wouldn't even talk to me.
God, that was a nice period of my life, not having to pretend to be interested about sports and TV shows. It would be almost like a story from highschool (if our highschool had such things as a network back then - yes, I am old).
Your stories?

!rant but a story

This happened today. Sorry for long post. A manager from another team in development team, I'll call him junkfellow, called me very very late last night to help them solve an issue in our application's test environment that blocking them from doing testing. They apparently doing integration testing with our application. Now said test environment is not even prepared by our team. We are development team and this test environment prepared by our application's support team. So I politely told junkfellow to get in touch with our support team counterpart as I am from development team. And he began shout at me

junkfellow: "WHY DO YOU THINK I'M FUCKING CALL YOU? IT'S BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING REACH ANYONE FROM SUPPORT!"
me: "With due respects sir I have no instructions to assist you and your team in your testing"
junkfellow: "THEN WHAT GOOD ARE YOU? IF YOU DON"T GET ONLINE NOW I WILL FUCKING ESCALATE YOU TO CW!!!"

We all know who CW is and he can make some people life very hard and I didn't want to call my boss so late so I quickly went online and spent the next 4hrs supporting their testing. Next morning I told my boss what happened and he scolded me for not calling him last night. He dropped an email to junkfellow's boss about junkfellow being "unacceptable attitude, disrespectful and threatening to escalate my team mates". My boss always refer to us as team mates, not his staff or his team member.

Then in few minutes, someone walking like a school bully with his chest out came to my boss place and announced himself (he is junkfellow). I say announce because he talking like he wanted everyone to know who is he. My boss stood up promptly, greeted good morning, introduce himself, shook junkfellow hand and sat down. Still young, maybe in late 20's or even younger than me. junkfellow talking to my boss loud enough for most of us to hear. Everyone's neck suddenly long like meerkat and listening:

junkfellow looking down to my boss who is sitting down: "How dare you send email like that to my boss? We are both managers you should act like one, you have a problem with me then you talk to me. You don't bypass me and go directly to my boss. You didn't even give me face!"
my boss sitting down: "So you didn't even ask your boss before picking a fight."

*junkfellow suddenly look confused*

my boss still sitting down talking calm with poker face: "I did give you face. You think by going to your boss I bypassed you and went one level up? No I went one level down!"

junkfellow still look confused and then slowly realized what my boss meant. Now he is staring at floor and can't look my boss in eye after he realized he is screwed!

my boss now standing up: "You treat my team mates like that againi or ask them to do something without my knowledge and I will talk to your boss' boss about it"
boss to me: "Hey tollywood! junkfellow here sincerely regrets what he did last night and wants to apologize to you in person" and boss' poker face turned to his familiar smirk

junkfellow immediately came to me, said "it's ok you no need to stand up", he sat down in a squat and apologized repeatedly. He really looked like he was about to cry and for a moment I pity him. But then I remember what he did and I just enjoyed the moment! Was pure gold :D :D :D

git status
git add .
git commit -m "Minor changes.."
git push
...
git status
*closes terminal*
...
"Fuck that char in that variable name isn't meant to be a capital!"
*makes change*
git status
git add .
git commit -m "Minor changes.."
git push
...
git status
*closes terminal*

Story of my life

This one is for devs and gamers.
But first some background story.

My girlfriend is special. Not just generically lovey mush mush special. She is 1 in 100 more accurately 1 in 10000. She was born with a rare Congenital Heart Defect {CHD}. Called Truncus Arteriosus or TA for sake of brevity. TA's main thing is the two main arteries going into the heart are fused together and never seperated at birth. It's bad news. There is no cure for this kind of thing. Simply repairs that happen over the course of life.

So here is me. Desperately trying to find a way to get the word about this and the 40 other types of CHD out there in the world. I thought. "What if I make a game..." Not based around the medical jargon but on a level people could understand. I spent the better part of the last six years attending appointments with her and still don't get it. What I do get is her Emotional state. How her CHD causes her to think and feel.

So here is the pitch.

The game is about a girl who is diagnosed at birth with a CHD. She is now in her 20's and has to undergo an open heart surgery to repair the defect. The day comes. She goes under but when she wakes up she find herself in a final fantasy style environment. This new world has a darkness cast over it. She is unknowingly the hero of this world and she has to face off with multiple bosses of varied degrees of evil.

Then after beating these bosses she really wakes up from the surgery. Waking up to the realization that the world she saved was herself. And all the bosses were manifestations of her own internal feelings. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, Denise, desire and so on.

I would sell this game with the caveat that 2/3 of all profits get split between the Adult Congenital Heart Association and Project Heart. As those are the two main organizations that deal heavily with creating standards of care and raising awareness for CHD survivors.

Thoughts?

Note: I am still learning game dev. This is an eventual goal for me.

Story of my life 😒

Today is a sad day.
A sad day indeed.
I used to live with my parents for pretty much my whole life until the beginning of this year, when I decided to move and starter living with a friend, in his apartment.
By far, one of the things that I've missed most from my parents' house was the dogs. Boy, I love those four pretty little creatures.
Being a fulltime developer in an area that I honestly don't like that much, I really appreciate my after-work hours. Specially because of the time I could spend with the dogs.
So, the first months away were quite hard. Even though I was living with a friend, I couldn't help but feel alone and really depressed at times.
But then, my friend and my girlfriend decided that it was a nice idea to give me something to grow with again. And Jolyne, my beautiful, smart and messy little dog came to the apartment.
Boy oh boy, my bright days were back.
Getting home and seeing those four small legs and a shaking tail running on my direction was everything I could ask for. I was happy again.

Fast-forward to today.
I finally finished the code for a project I was working on. Everything was working fine. A good day indeed, good sir. Have one on me. - then my friend called me, which is weird considering we almost only talk through Telegram during the day.
All he had to say, with a sad voice and painful tone, was "man... I don't know how to tell you this... But Jolyne is dead".

And that was it. Every good feeling I had was now dead. And a part of me as well.
I stood there, speechless. I mean, I just couldn't believe what I've just heard. She was happy by the morning. We were playing before I left for work. Everything was fine.
Then, four hours later, it wasn't. She was gone.
I came home to a friend that didn't have any more tears to shed. And no dog came running to me like usual.
My fluffy little friend was laying on her bed, like she was sleeping normally. Like nothing had happened at all. She was just sleeping and have not noticed me... At least that was what I wanted to believe.
Three hours had passed then... And I just can't fathom the fact that my dog won't be here anymore. That I won't be able to play with her again like I do every night. That I won't listen to her running around with her toys. That I won't be able to hug her anymore.

I still don't know what to do. I mean, she will be buried. I've already arranged everything.
But I don't know what to do about myself. I don't know how to deal with this pain I'm feeling.
But I will try to move on... I just don't know how.

I'm deeply sorry for bringing you this story. For just writing it down here, like you guys need to share my pain...
But I needed to write this down somewhere. And this place is pretty much the only one where I feel comfortable and welcome enough to do this.
Thank you for your time, my friends.
Thank you.

Everything was going fine in the Interview, then:

Company X's HR: "So if you are selected in both X and Y, which one would you choose 😊?"

Me: 🤔🤔🤔 Long deep thoughts...

HR: "😒 I know your answer is X, But why X 😑?"

Me: Oh.. X! Hmm.. 🤔🤔

Result:
Successfully Rejected
#BeingHonest

Moral:
If you are sitting for X's interview, you have to always choose X with no lag, even if Y= Google.

All well; Ends Well: Placed in Y👍

PS: Here, X, Y and Me are real-life entities.

Story of my life...

Story of my life.

Story of my life.

Story time! Promised this, so making good on the promise. Eh-hem.

Misunderstandings [A slice of life short play that actually happened]

Dramatis Personae (anonymized, bc of course):
Moi ........ me, myself and possibly some lint
Robert ..... co-architect
Daisy ...... line dev
Lisa ....... also line dev

Prologue: the beginninning
[A project is starting up, new devs are coming on, including the two individuals who drive this story.
Daisy, of Indian origin, an exceptional dev and lovely person. Mother, wife, very conservative by upbringing in her early 40s.
Lisa, also exceptional dev, lovely person. Mother, also wife, self-made immigrant with liberal views derived from personal pride and self-bootstrapping]

Enter the office, We introduce everyone, off to a nice start, everyone is happy and excited to be working on [large bank project].

Lisa and Daisy form a friendship of commonality, they have similar backgrounds by all appearances and similar concerns due to children the same age and shared employment. They seem to become fast friends and things proceed normally for some months. Smooth sailing, all is well.

The fuse is lit.

Scene: Lunchtime gossip
[Robert, middle 40s architect adjacent Moi, also architect, age is my own damn business [old, so very old].]
Robert: "So, it seems like Daisy and Lisa are getting along great."
Moi: *snerfs a little, almost chokes on enchilada* Yes, yes they are, It's nice to see...
Robert: *eyebrow, having learned to read my expressions* "Aaaaaaand..."
Moi: "I adore both of them, but they are primarily friends because they don't actually understand most of what the other says"
[Lisa has a thick Taiwanese accent, Daisy has a standard northern indian accent. Never the two shall meet]
Robert: "Are you sure, they seem to have a lot of conversations?"
Moi: "Positive, you weren't at lunch with the three of us. They're polar opposite in terms of values, it'll be fine so long as that never comes up"
Robert: "I'm not even digging into that"
Moi: *flan*

Sizzle.

Scene: This is bat country
[More months pass, everything is fine, project is humming along nicely, save a few blips of personality conflicts. Moi takes a vacation. A gas station, somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, a snowstorm, a sports car full of luggage]
*phone rings*
Moi: *looks down, sees it's Robert, eyebrow raises, answer* What's on fire?
Robert: "We had to let Lisa go"
Moi: "Ah, they finally understood each other."
Robert: "Yes..." *deep sigh*
[Fade to flashback]

Bang.

Scene: The office, Lisa's desk
[Daisy and Lisa are discussing non-descript conversation. Daisy broaches the subject of Lisa's past divorce and being a single mother]
Daisy: "It must have been hard, how did you manage?"
Lisa: "I had my daughter, she was my motivation. We made it here, I met my current partner"
Daisy: "That's good! It is so hard, coming to something new. I could never imagine leaving my husband."
Lisa: "He left us, we weren't important, I don't want to marry every again"
Daisy: "Surely you do though? Marriage is great for a woman, my parents found a great husband for me."
Lisa: "Haha, lucky you. Most indian marriage is like prostitution."
[At this moment, Daisy's demeanor takes a nose dive. Whatever was actually said, what she heard was, "Indian marriage is prostitution"]
Daisy: *tears begin pouring down her face, she flings herself back in her chair, head shaking violently she screams* "I AM AN HONORABLE WOMAN!"
[Daisy runs out of the room, straight to HR. Lisa sits there, stunned, not really understanding what just happened or the consequences]

Scene: Back in bat country
[Robert finishes the story, the emotions are a mixture of hilarity at the absurdity of the situation and frustration in the work void it has created]
Moi: "Satan, well. Fuck me. Fuck us. Fuck. Is Daisy alright, is she at least staying? We can't lose two devs at the same time."
Robert: "She got a few days off, she seems fine now, but she's... yeah, I never laughed so hard"
Moi: *double facepalm* "Yeah, the word choice was a bit outrageous. It's not like we didn't know it was coming. I'm going to get back on the road."
Robert: "Alright, enjoy yourself, I'll try and prevent any other forest fires."

So as quite some people know on here, I am strongly against closed source software and have a very strong distrust in it as well.
So next to some principles (and believes etc etc etc) there is one specifc 'event' which triggered the distrust in CSS (No not Cascading Style sheet, I mean Closed Source Software :P). So hereby the story about what happened.

I think it was about 5 years ago when a guy joined my programming class (I wasn't in uni although I studied but for the sake of clarity, lets just call it uni for now (also, that makes me feel smarter so why the fuck not!)) in uni. He knew a shitload about programming for his age but he was convinced that he was always right. (that aside)
Anyways, at some point we had to work in groups on this project (groups for specific tasks) and he chose (he loved it, we hated it, he had the final say) Trello for 'project management'. He gave everyone (I was running Windows for a little bit at that moment because the project was in C# and the Snowden leaks had not arrived yet so I was not extremely uncomfortable with using Windows, just a lot) this addon program thingy he created for Trello which would make usage easier. I asked if it was open source, he replied with 'No, because this is my project.' and although I did understand that entirely, I didn't feel comfy using it because of it's closed source nature. Everyone declared me paranoid and he was annoyed as hell but I just kept refusing to use it and just used the web interface.

*skips to 2 years later*

I met that guy again at the train station at a random day! Had the usual 'how are you and what's up after a few years' talk with him and then he told me something that changed my view on closed source software for most probably the rest of my life.

"Hey by the way, do you remember that project of a few years back where you didn't want to use my software because of your 'closed-sourceness paranoia'? I just wanted to say that I actually had some kind of backdooring feature build in which (I am not going to say what) allowed me to (although I didn't use it) look at/do certain things with the 'infected' computers. I really wanted to say that I find it funny how you, the only one who didn't give in to my/the peer pressure, were the only one who wasn't affected by my 'backdoor' at that moment! Also your standards towards the use of closed source software probably played a big part probably. I find that pretty cool actually!"

Although I cannot confirm what he said, he was exactly the type of guy who would do this IMO (and not only IMO I think).

So yeah, that's one of the reasons AND the story behind a big part of why I don't trust closed source software :).

Wow... this is the perfect week for this topic.

Thursday, is the most fucked off I’ve ever been at work.

I’ll preface this story by saying that I won’t name names in the public domain to avoid anyone having something to use against me in court. But, I’m all for the freedom of information so please DM if you want to know who I’m talking about.

Yesterday I handed in my resignation, to the company that looked after me for my first 5 years out of university.

Thursday was my breaking point but to understand why I resigned you need a little back story.

I’m a developer for a corporate in a team of 10 or so.

The company that I work for is systemically incompetent and have shown me this without fail over the last 6 months.

For the last year we’ve had a brilliant contracted, AWS Certified developer who writes clean as hell hybrid mobile apps in Ion3, node, couch and a tonne of other up to the minute technologies. Shout out to Morpheus you legend, I know you’re here.

At its core my job as a developer is to develop and get a product into the end users hands.

Morpheus was taking some shit, and coming back to his desk angry as fuck over the last few months... as one of the more experienced devs and someone who gives a fuck I asked him what was up.

He told me, company want their mobile app that he’s developed on internal infrastructure... and that that wasn’t going to work.

Que a week of me validating his opinion, looking through his work and bringing myself up to speed.

I came to the conclusion that he’d done exactly what he was asked to, brilliant Work, clean code, great consideration to performance and UX in his design. He did really well. Crucially, the infrastructure proposed was self-contradicting, it wouldn’t work and if they tried to fudge it in it would barely fucking run.

So I told everyone I had the same opinion as him.

4 months of fucking arguing with internal PMs, managers and the project team go by... me and morpheus are told we’re not on the project.

The breaking point for me came last Wednesday, given no knowledge of the tech, some project fannies said Morpheus should be removed and his contract terminated.

I was up in fucking arms. He’d done everything really well, to see a fellow developer take shit for doing his job better than anyone else in [company] could was soul destroying.

That was the straw on the camels back. We don’t come to work to take shit for doing a good job. We don’t allow our superiors to give people shit in our team when they’re doing nothing but a good job. And you know what: the opinion of the person that knows what they’re talking about is worth 10 times that of the fools who don’t.

My manager told me to hold off, the person supposed to be supporting us told me to stand down. I told him I was going to get the app to the business lead because he fucking loves it and can tell us if there’s anything to change whilst architecture sorts out their outdated fucking ideas.

Stand down James. Do nothing. Don’t do your job. Don’t back Morpheus with his skills and abilities well beyond any of ours. Do nothing.

That was the deciding point for me, I said if Morpheus goes... I go... but then they continued their nonsense, so I’m going anyway.

I made the decision Thursday, and Friday had recruiters chomping at the bit to put the proper “senior” back in my title, and pay me what I’m worth.

The other issues that caused me to see this company in it’s true form:
- I raised a key security issue, documented it, and passed it over to the security team.
- they understood, and told the business users “we cannot use ArcGIS’ mobile apps, they don’t even pretend to be secure”
- the business users are still using the apps going into the GDPR because they don’t understand the ramifications of the decisions they’re making.

I noticed recently that [company] is completely unable to finish a project to time or budget... and that it’s always the developers put to blame.

I also noticed that middle management is in a constant state of flux with reorganisations because in truth the upper managers know they need to sack them.

For me though, it was that developers in [company], the people that know what they’re talking about; are never listened to.

Fuck being resigned to doing a shit job.

Fuck this company. On to one that can do it right.

Morpheus you beautiful bastard I know you’ll be off soon too but I also feel I’ve made a friend for life. “Private cloud” my arse.

Since making the decision Thursday I feel a lot more free, I have open job offers at places that do this well. I have a position of power in the company to demand what I need and get it. And I have the CEO and CTO’s ears perking up because their department is absolutely shocking.

Freedom is a wonderful feeling.

So, some time ago, I was working for a complete puckered anus of a cosmetics company on their ecommerce product. Won't name names, but they're shitty and known for MLM. If you're clever, go you ;)

Anyways, over the course of years they brought in a competent firm to implement their service layer. I'd even worked with them in the past and it was designed to handle a frankly ridiculous-scale load. After they got the 1.0 released, the manager was replaced with some absolutely talentless, chauvinist cuntrag from a phone company that is well known for having 99% indian devs and not being able to heard now. He of course brought in his number two, worked on making life miserable and running everyone on the team off; inside of a year the entire team was ex-said-phone-company.

Watching the decay of this product was a sheer joy. They cratered the database numerous times during peak-load periods, caused $20M in redis-cluster cost overrun, ended up submitting hundreds of erroneous and duplicate orders, and mailed almost $40K worth of product to a random guy in outer mongolia who is , we can only hope, now enjoying his new life as an instagram influencer. They even terminally broke the automatic metadata, and hired THIRTY PEOPLE to sit there and do nothing but edit swagger. And it was still both wrong and unusable.

Over the course of two years, I ended up rewriting large portions of their infra surrounding the centralized service cancer to do things like, "implement security," as well as cut memory usage and runtimes down by quite literally 100x in the worst cases.

It was during this time I discovered a rather critical flaw. This is the story of what, how and how can you fucking even be that stupid. The issue relates to users and their reports and their ability to order.

I first found this issue looking at some erroneous data for a low value order and went, "There's no fucking way, they're fucking stupid, but this is borderline criminal." It was easy to miss, but someone in a top down reporting chain had submitted an order for someone else in a different org. Shouldn't be possible, but here was that order staring me in the face.

So I set to work seeing if we'd pwned ourselves as an org. I spend a few hours poring over logs from the log service and dynatrace trying to recreate what happened. I first tested to see if I could get a user, not something that was usually done because auth identity was pervasive. I discover the users are INCREMENTAL int values they used for ids in the database when requesting from the API, so naturally I have a full list of users and their title and relative position, as well as reports and descendants in about 10 minutes.

I try the happy path of setting values for random, known payment methods and org structures similar to the impossible order, and submitting as a normal user, no dice. Several more tries and I'm confident this isn't the vector.

Exhausting that option, I look at the protocol for a type of order in the system that allowed higher level people to impersonate people below them and use their own payment info for descendant report orders. I see that all of the data for this transaction is stored in a cookie. Few tests later, I discover the UI has no forgery checks, hashing, etc, and just fucking trusts whatever is present in that cookie.

An hour of tweaking later, I'm impersonating a director as a bottom rung employee. Score. So I fill a cart with a bunch of test items and proceed to checkout. There, in all its glory are the director's payment options. I select one and am presented with:

"please reenter card number to validate."

Bupkiss. Dead end.

OR SO YOU WOULD THINK.

One unimportant detail I noticed during my log investigations that the shit slinging GUI monkeys who butchered the system didn't was, on a failed attempt to submit payment in the DB, the logs were filled with messages like:

"Failed to submit order for [userid] with credit card id [id], number [FULL CREDIT CARD NUMBER]"

One submit click later and the user's credit card number drops into lnav like a gatcha prize. I dutifully rerun the checkout and got an email send notification in the logs for successful transfer to fulfillment. Order placed. Some continued experimentation later and the truth is evident:

With an authenticated user or any privilege, you could place any order, as anyone, using anyon's payment methods and have it sent anywhere.

So naturally, I pack the crucifixion-worthy body of evidence up and walk it into the IT director's office. I show him the defect, and he turns sheet fucking white. He knows there's no recovering from it, and there's no way his shitstick service team can handle fixing it. Somewhere in his tiny little grinchly manager's heart he knew they'd caused it, and he was to blame for being a shit captain to the SS Failboat. He replies quietly, "You will never speak of this to anyone, fix this discretely." Straight up hitler's bunker meme rage.

Story of my life

Hashedram's compilations #1
List of most annoying website designs.

1) Pages with AUTO PLAYING VIDEOS.

Yes I'm looking at you Netflix. Along with every news website known to man. I'm looking to read a fucking article, so why would you even waste your money and bandwidth trying to shove a video of some shit I don't care about in my face, and make it follow me as I scroll down like a fucking insecure puppy. Also, fuck you Instagram.

2) Pages that redirect once immediately after you visit them, thereby fucking with the browser history and the BACK BUTTON just leads back to the same fucking site.

I mean, just why. Did you think I would just go "Hey the back button doesn't work so let's stay on the site and read their awesome content"?

3) Sites showing things in a SLIDESHOW, when it actually should be in a list.

Slideshows are for progressive stories or for showing lists where you don't care about what's in them. Top 10 foods that reduce weight. Slideshow 1/15. Fuck you.

4) LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE USING AN AD BLOCKER

Yes. Yes I am. No I will not turn it off for you, you narcissistic snowflake fuck. And don't even try to guilt shame me into turning it off, because I know you're just going to bombard me with videos of sexy singles in the area if I do.

5) Pages where I see the first 3 lines of an article and have to SUBSCRIBE to see more.

Yes. Brilliant fucking idea. A user wants to see what your site has to offer, so within the first three seconds, don't show him exactly that.

6) Looking up an article and having to read through the entire motivational life story of the author.

I just want to know how to boil eggs, not read about your journey across Africa learning how to make difference recepies using boiled rhino dung.

7) CLICK BAIT.

Title: School boy designs blockchain machine learning game engine

Actual Content: Tic tac toe program made using linked lists

The sad story of a coders life in india..

So apparently my friends don't understand the basic concept of "enjoying" coding. This comes from a 1st yr undergrad. Everyone here view coding as some subject or some college course that is done just for the sake of grades. When they get free time, they waste it away smoking up at some filthy old building mocking us coders. Sadly I share a room with such idiots. The problem is that coding is something we love, something we do because our hearts yearn for it, because we are addicted. And because of my useless roommates, I'm losing out on my friggin friends. I swear we coders are always looked down upon way too much. We aren't usual nerds, we just don't believe in wasting our time on tinder or Facebook or smoking pot.

Storytime
A story about an Android TVbox which decided to become an iPad

Several years ago we've bought an android tv-box. 

It served me and my family well for several years.

Specs are not that important in this story, but there they are:

Android 4.4 
1GB RAM
Amlogic quadcore 1.4HGz
8GB memory.

This device served us well - online TV, browsing, music, file sharing and so on. But recently cheap Chinese memory deciteed to take a break and damaged ROM. Because of that device won't boot. The only option was to take it apart and "short circuit" certain legs on memory chip and make it boot from SD card and install new firmware. After such operations tv-box worked well again. 

Hoverer, memory glitched again and again and this algorithm was repeated for several months.

But that is not what is this story about.

One day memory went completely crazy and there was no way to install new firmware on it. It just hanged on install. (BTW, it was official firmware for this device)

But after countless attempts it finally worked! It installed the firmware and booted into launcher and connected to WiFi! 

But now comes the most interesting part. 

It was not android anymore.

It decided to became an iPad.

My dad logged in to his Google account via tv-box and got mail that someboby connected from our IP via iPad (we don't have an iPad) and using safari browser! Stock browser is not safari browser.....

"Ok, nvm, crazy glitch." - we thought.

But preinstalled play marked wont launch. Because he told us, that we're trying to connect from iPad.

And Google chrome page suggested to download chrome for iPad

And everything was acting like it is an iPad.

OK, downloaded iTunes, why not??? ._.

Tried to install elixir for android via apk from flash, but then memory glitched one more time, everything went black and tv-box had damaged ROM again...

After that we decided to not torment it anymore...

That's it. Poor Android TVbox that all his life dreamed to become an iPad. Rest in peace.

Hello everyone, this is my first time here so hi! I want to tell you all a story about my current situation.

At 18 while in the military I was able to get my first computer, it was a small hp pavilion laptop with windows 7. The system would crash constantly, even though I would only use it for googling stuff and using fb to talk to people. 5 months after I got it and continuously hated it decided to find out why and who could I blame (other than myself) for the system making me do the ctrl alt del dance all the time....

Found out that there are people called computer programmers that made software. Decided to give it a go since I had some free time most days. Started out with c++ because it was being recommended in some websites. Had many "oh deeeeer lord" moments. After not getting much traction I decided to move to Java which seemed like an easier step than C++. Had fun, but after some verbosity I decided to move into more dynamic lands. Tried JS and since at the time there was no Node and I was not very into the idea of building websites I decided to move into Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl and had a really great time using and learning all of them. I decided to get good in theoretical aspects of computer programming and since I had a knack for math I decided to get started with basic computer science concepts.

I absolutely frigging loved it. And not only that, but learning new things became an obsession, the kind that would make me go to bed at 02:40 am just to wake up at 04:00 or 06:00 because the military is like that. I really wanted to absorb as much as I could since I wanted to go to college for it and wanted to be prepared since I did not wanted to be a complete newb. Took Harvard CS50, Standford Programming 101 with Java, Rice's Python course and MIT's Python programming class. I had so much fun I don't regret it one bit.
By the time I got to college I had already made the jump to Linux and was an adept Arch user, Its not that it was superior or anything, but it really forced me to learn about Linux and working around a terminal and the internals of the system to get what I want. Now a days I settle for Fedora or Debian based systems since they are easier and time is money.

Uni was a breeze, math was fun and the programming classes seemed like glorified "Hello World" courses. I had fun, but not that much fun, most of my time was spent getting better at actual coding. I am no genius, nor my grades were super amazing(I did graduate with honors though) but I had fun, which never really happened in school before that.

While in school I took my first programming gig! It was in ASP.NET MVC, we were using C#, I got the job through a customer that I met at work, I was working in retail during the time and absolutely hated it. I remember being so excited with the gig, I got to meet other developers! Where I am from there aren't that many and most of them are very specialized, so they only get concerned with certain aspects of coding (e.g VBA developers.....) and that is until I met the lead dev. He was by far one of the biggest assholes I had ever met in my life. Absolutely nothing that I would do or say made hem not be a dick. My code was steady, but I would find bugs of incomplete stuff that he would do, whenever I would fix it he would belittle me and constantly remind me of my position as a "junior dev" in the company saying things as "if you have an issue with my code or standards tell me, but do not touch the code" which was funny considering that I would not be able to advance without those fixes. I quit not even 3 months latter because I could not stand the dick, neither 2 of the other developers since the immediately resigned after they got their own courage.

A year latter I was able to find myself another gig. I was hesitant for a moment since it was another remote position in which I had already had a crappy experience. Boy this one was bad. To be fair, this was on me since I had to get good with Lumen after only having some exposure to Laravel. Which I did mentioned repeatedly even though he did offer to train me in order to help him. Same thing, after a couple of weeks of being told how much I did not know I decided to get out.

That is 2 strikes.

So I waited a little while and took a position inside another company that was using vanilla PHP to build their services. Their system was solid though, the lead engineer remains a friend and I did learn a lot from him. I got contracted because they were looking for a Java developer. The salary was good. But when I got there they mentioned that they wanted a developer in Java...to build Android. At the time I was using Java with Spring so I though "well how hard can this be! I already use Android so the love for the system is there, lets do this!" And it was an intense, fun and really amazing experience.

-- To be continued.

The riskiest dev choice...

How about "The riskiest thing you've done as a dev"? I have a great entry for that. and I suppose it was my choice to build the feature afterall.

I was working on an instance of a small MMO at a game company I worked for. The MMO boasted multiple servers, each of them a vastly different take on the base game. We could use, extend, or outright replace anything we wanted to, leading to everything from Zelda to pokemon to an RP haven to a top-down futuristic counterstrike. The server in this particular instance was a fantasy RPG, and I was building it a new leveling and experience system with most of the trimmings. (Talents, feats/perks, etc. were in a future update.)

A bit of background, first: the game's dev setup did not have the now-standard dev/staging/prod servers; everything ran on prod, devs worked on prod, players connected and played on prod, etc. Worse yet, there was no backup system implemented -- or not really. The CTO was really the only person with sufficient access. The techy CEO did as well, but he rarely dealt with anything technical except server hardware, occasionally. And usually just to troll/punish us devs (as in "Oops ! I pulled the cat5 ! ;)"). Neither of them were the most reliable of people, either. The CTO would occasionally remote in and make backups of each server -- we assumed whenever he happened to think of it -- and would also occasionally do it when asked, but it could take him a week, sometimes even up to a month to get around to it. So the backups were only really useful for retreiving lost code and assets, not so much for player data.

The lack of reliable backups and the lack of proper testing grounds (among the plethora of other issues at the company) made for an absolutely terrible dev setup, but that's just how it was, and that's what we dealt with. We were game devs, afterall. Terrible or not, we got to make games! What more could you ask for!? It was amazing and terrible and wonderful and the worst thing ever, all at the same time. (and no, I'm not sharing the company name, but it isn't EA or Nexon, surprisingly 😅)

Anyway, back to the story! My new leveling system also needed to migrate players' existing data, so... you can see where this is going.

I did as much testing and inspection of my code as I could, copied it from a personal dev script to the server's xp system, ... and debated if I really wanted to click [Apply]. Every time I considered it, I went back to check another part or do yet more testing. I ended up taking like 40 minutes to finally click it.

And when I did... that was the scariest button press of my life. And the scariest three seconds' wait afterwards. That one click could have ruined every single player's account, permanently lost us players ...

After applying it, I immediately checked my character to see if she was broken, checked the account data for corruption or botched flags, checked for broken interactions with the other systems....

Everything ended up working out perfectly, and the players loved all of the new features. They had no idea what went into building them, and certainly had no idea of what went into applying them, or what could have gone wrong -- which is probably a good thing.

Looking back, that entire environment was so fragile, it's a wonder things didn't go horribly wrong all the time. Really, they almost never did. Apocalypses did happen, but were exceedingly rare, and were ususally fixed quickly. I guess we were all super careful simply because everything was so fragile? or the decent devs were, at least. We never trusted the lessers with access 😅 at least on the main servers where it mattered. Some of the smaller servers... well, we never really cared about those.

But I'm honestly more surprised to realize I've never had nightmares of that button click. It was certainly terrifying enough.

But yay! Complete system overhaul and migration of stored and realtime player data! on prod! With no issues! And lots of happy players! Woooooo!

Thinking back on it makes me happy 😊

My friend left their macbook unlocked, so we parsed the entire story of Moby Dick into the text to speech and left it in the background on full volume. Never seen such a confused face in my life.

Story of my life

Story of my dev life the past few weeks

FLOYD IS HERE 😎

Gather around kids, it's story time.

So my first breakup left me so damaged and I was in darkest phase of my life. I was alone. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I went for therapy and spearheaded into success and grew in life soooo fucking much.

31st December 2016, I first joined dR and since the first day this place felt home. Met some of brightest mind and most amazing souls here (sadly many left the place).

I used to shit post and rant a lot. But I loved everyone here. But then I don't quite remember, but I decided to quit this place as community started to grow. Many others left as well.

I came back here in 2019 IIRC and started all over again. Got along well with new members and started having fun.

I used to crib and cry about being underpaid. Lost a kickass Europe job due to pandemic.

I will skip what all happened between me and @Scout but she is a sweetheart, though very rough and brutal with me at times (actually very often), but she is so selfish for me and cares for me that I couldn't resist but listen to her always. A lifelong friend for sure :)

I used to rant about my dumb office colleagues. Definitely not the sharpest minds but good people at heart (which I did not realise).

So in October 2020, I earned a new job and my company retained me with a 100% raise and a promotion making me lead of product innovation and UX.

November end I met a girl in professional context on LinkedIn who was conducting a workshop. Being hungry for learning, meeting new people and kill my lockdown boredom, I singed up.

Now I went for December break and my colleagues sent me a gift hamper when they came to know I got a promotion. I felt bad that I ranted about them so I deleted my account and also wanted a social detox.

Post the workshop, I started conversing casually with the girl I met. She was married. But things hit off. Eventually in February end I confessed that I had feelings for her and in next few days she reciprocated. I told her I was aware of her marital status and it's okay if nothing happens between us. Then she started to open up of how she was with one guy for 17 years and was abused in everyway and wanted to separate but never had the courage and all.

She decided to file for paperwork and then be with me. Things got messy when her family got involved thinking I was causing all of it.

She went back to her partner and I realised I had some emotional and mental issues of a person's past that bothered me. But we were overcoming it. Soon the honeymoon period started phasing out.

Her family started giving me death threats. We went underground even further. More arguments and fights between us.

@Scout kept telling me I was stupid and I disregarded her. I feel like an idiot for not listening to her.

That girl kept gaslighting me, hurting me intentionally, scratching the surface made me realise how broken and damaged she was. She lied to me and created fake persona of herself to make me fall for her. Everything was lie. Literally.

I felt horrible for trusting her. My trauma relapsed and I started having crazy panic attacks leading to self harm and being suicidal. That girl was drugged all the time with psychological medicines and very poor character & personality in general (I don't want to judge anyone but just stating the facts).

Eventually she just disappeared and I was like fuck this. Earlier, after every fight, she used to show fake affection and I used to melt but not this time.

I was like fuck this shit. I have some super amazing friends like @kiki who helped me overcome this. I started going for therapy and realised what all areas I need to improve. My therapist is soooo brilliant, she understands the root cause instantly and also knows how to fix it. And the same day I and both my parents were COVID-19 positive. Last few weeks were dark and haunting.

Further more, the girl comes back after a week and then acts as a 'nice girl'.
Initially fake affection, then drama, followed by making me guilt trip, then threats, and now blaming me.

I kept ignoring her calls (50 to 70 calls in a day), emails, left her unread on Telegram, and everything I could do to ignore her without blocking her. I started gaining my happiness back.

During this mess, I lost 5+ KG of weight. She has no friends in her mid 30s. Knows no life or survival skills. Her family hates her, no career, no emotional or mental maturity, literally nothing. Insanely dumb and toxic manipulative person who is not even worth being called an ex. As per her everyone around her is an asshole except her. Every time something happened, she used to blame and bad mouth the other person. Now she is doing with me. In all her life situations, either she was a hero or a victim. One upped me all the time. Now that I see it, I hate myself for allowing it all of it and now having enough self worth to walk out of it earlier.

Continued in comments...

I have seen it. They say it doesn't exist; just a story we tell our children so that their innocence does not lead them down into a nightmarish adulthood from which there is no salvation. But the evil lives. So vile that were you to look inside its soul, all you would find is a terrible desperation for suffering. To cause it. To revel in it. To bathe in the tears of those it considers less than human and feed off the emotional detritus.

It was 2009. The financial crisis. I was one of the lucky, having found refuge in a large company right before the jobs dried up. General IT: system administration, documentation, project management, telephony, software training, second level help desk. No software development, but with a two-year-old at home and Ph.D.s lining up outside the local Olive Garden whenever a help wanted sign was posted, I grabbed the health insurance and entered into darkness.

The Thing did not need to hunt it's prey. A manager title with 21 reports brought it new opportunities for fresh meat by the hour. But I was special. I resisted. I needed to know my place.

My first mistake was incomprehension. I did not understand the Thing's lust to be right at all costs. I was reviewing some documentation it had brought forth from its bowels. I mentioned that two spaces were being used between sentences. That proportional type made that unnecessary. It insisted, I was wrong. It insisted that Microsoft itself, the purveyor of all good technical writing, required two spaces. I opened the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications that it demanded its staff use and showed it that the spec was one space. It was livid. I was a problem.

From that point on my work life became exponentially more wretched. I was given three Outlook calendars to maintain: one with my schedule, one with the team's schedule and one with the Thing's schedule. Every time I had an appointment, I was to triple schedule it. If I was going to be away from my desk for more than 15 minutes triple schedule. Triple schedule my lunch, vacations, phone conferences.

Whenever it held a meeting, I and a colleague would be taken off mission critical IT projects to set tables with name tents and to serve as greeters as attendees arrived.

I was called into its crypt to be told never to say anything in a meeting unless I told the Thing beforehand what I was going to say. Naive, I mentioned that I often don't know what I will say as it is often in reply to someone else. Of course the response was that I should not say anything.

I would get emails 10-20 times a day asking about a single project. I would regularly complete work that was needed to be completed ASAP, only to have the Thing rake me over the coals for not completing it a week later. And upon resending the emails proving I notified it of the work being competed, disparaged at length a second time for not sending repeated notifications of the competed work.

I would have to sit in two-hour meetings to watch it type. Literally watch it try to create cogent thoughts. In silence.

I received horrendous annual reviews. At one, it created a development plan that stated a colleague would begin giving me lessons on the proper ways to socially interact with personnel. I pointed out to HR that this violated privacy concerns and would make the business liable in many areas, not least of which would be placing a help desk person in the role of defining proper business practice. HR made the Thing remove this from my review. She started planning to remove me.

I had given a short technical training to a group of personnel months earlier. Called into its tomb I was informed that feedback surveys on my talk were disturbing. One person stated that they did not think I was funny. Another wrote that I made an offensive statement. That person did not say what the offensive statement was. Just that I had said something he or she didn't like.

The Thing interviewed the training attendees. Gathered facts. Held three inquest-like meetings where multiple directors peppered me with questions trying to get me to confess to my offensiveness. In the end the request to fire me was brought to the man who ran the business at the time. The statement on high: "Humor is a subjective thing. Please tell This to be sensitive to that."

The Thing had failed, but would no doubt redouble its efforts. I had to find a new job. I sent hundreds of resumes. Talked to dozens of recruiters. But there were no jobs. And I had a family. And the wolf was at the door.

So I didn't say a word to the creature. For six months. Silence. At one group meeting it shrieked at me "what are you smirking at? If you've got something to say then say it!" I just shrugged. For my salvation was revealed. The Thing could not stand to be ignored. And at the end of my penance I was transferred to another group: Software Development.

I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.

I was stuck with an architectural problem for a few days. Tried to solve it in many different ways. I could always do a quick hack and call it a day, but.. That's not pretty and it would be a trip wire for future developments.

Went to bed at ~2am. Took a few hours before I finally fell asleep. In my dream I was solving the same problem as in real life, except there I found an obvious and simple solution. Woke up at 8am, repeated that solution to myself a few times to not to forget it. Implemented it in the evening and it worked perfectly!

Moral of the story: do not work late. Better go to sleep, rest your mind. You might solve the problem while resting, and you will need a clear mind in the morning to remember and implement the solution :)

p.S. This happened to me more than once.

TL;DR :

"when i die i want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time"

STORY TIME

Last year in College, I had two simultaneous projects. Both were semester long projects. One was for a database class an another was for a software engineering class.

As you can guess, the focus of the projects was very different. Databases we made some desktop networked chat application with a user login system and what not in Java. SE we made an app store with an approval system and admin panels and ratings and reviews and all that jazz in Meteor.js.

The DB project we had 4 total people and one of them was someone we'll call Frank. Frank was also in my SE project group. Frank disappeared for several weeks. Not in class, didn't contact us, and at one point the professors didn't know much either. As soon as we noticed it would be an issue, we talked to the professors. Just keeping them in the loop will save you a lot of trouble down the road. I'm assuming there was some medical or family emergency because the professors were very understanding with him once he started coming back to class and they had a chance to talk.

Lesson 1: If you have that guy that doesn't show up or communicate, don't be a jerk to them and communicate with your professor. Also, don't stop trying to contact the rogue partner. Maybe they'll come around sometime.

It sucked to lose 25% of our team for a project, but Frank appreciated that we didn't totally ignore him and throw him under the bus to the point that the last day of class he came up to me and said, "hey, open your book bag and bring it next to mine." He then threw a LARGE bottle of booze in there as a thank you.

Lesson 2: Treat humans as humans. Things go wrong and understanding that will get you a lot farther with people than trying to make them feel terrible about something that may have been out of their control.

Our DB project went really well. We got an A, we demoed, it worked, it was cool. The biggest problem is I was the only person that had taken a networking class so I ended up doing a large portion of the work. I wish I had taken other people's skills into account when we were deciding on a project. Especially because the only requirement was that it needed to have a minimum of 5 tables and we had to use some SQL language (aka, we couldn't use no-SQL).

The SE project had Frank and a music major who wanted to minor in CS (and then 3 other regular CS students aside from me). This assignment was make an app store using any technology you want. But, you had to use agile sprints. So we had weekly meetings with the "customer" (the TA), who would change requirements on us to keep us on our toes and tell us what they wanted done as a priority for the next meeting. Seriously, just like real life. It was so much fun trying to stay ahead of that.

So we met up and tried to decided what to use. One kid said Java because we all had it for school. The big issue is trying to make a Java web app is a pain in the ass. Seriously, there are so many better things to use. Other teams decided to use Django because they all wanted to learn Python. I suggested why not use something with a nice package system to minimize duplicating work that had already been done and tested by someone. Kid 1 didn't like that because he said in the real world you have to make your own software and not use packages. Little did he know that I had worked in SE for a few years already and knew damn well that every good project has code from somewhere else that has already solved a problem you're facing. We went with Java the first week. It failed miserably. Nobody could get the server set up on their computers. Using VCS with it required you to keep the repo outside of the where you wrote code and copy and paste changes in there. It was just a huge flop so everyone else voted to change.

Lesson 3: Be flexible. Be open to learning new things. Don't be afraid to try something new. It'll make you a better developer in the long run.

So we ended up using Meteor. Why? We all figured we could pick up javascript super easy.Two of us already knew it. And the real time thing would make for some cool effects when an app got a approved or a comment was made. We got to work and the one kid was still pissed. I just checked the repo and the only thing he committed was fixing the spelling of on word in the readme.

We sat down one day and worked for 4 straight hours. We finished the whole project in that time. While other teams were figuring out how to layout their homepage, we had a working user system and admin page and everything. Our TA was trying to throw us for loops by asking for crazy things and we still came through. We had tests that ran along side the application as you used it. It was friggin cool.

Lesson 4: If possible, pick the right tool for the job. Not the tool you know. Everything in CS has a purpose. If you use it for its purpose, you will save days off of a project.

#LongRant

I AM SO FUCKING PISSED RIGHT NOW OF ALL YOU DICKHEADS WHO DON'T KNOW SHIT 'BOUT PROGRAMING AND STILL QUALIFY FOR THE NEXT ROUND!

Background: I am a final year student of Computer Science. This time of the year, companies come to the campus to recruit potential employees for their vacant positions. But during the COVID-19 times, the number of such companies and jobs have gone a little down. Two companies came to our university for recruitment — DXC Technology and Hanu Software. I cleared the aptitude/code test for DXC and appeared for the interview, which went fairly well. Waiting on the results. The rant is about the other company.

The Story: I am learning and working on Cloud (AWS specifically) for the past 1 year. I have a cloud Certification in Oracle and working my way to get Azure Certified. Hanu Software, which is a core cloud company (works on Azure) came to our campus for the recruitment (Cloud Engineer). Their test had these sections —
1. Personality (54 Questions; 15 minutes)

2. Verbal (20 Questions; 20 minutes)

3. Reasoning (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

4. Technical (25 Questions; 25 minutes)

5. Quantitative (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

As soon as I finished my Interview with DXC, I had my Hanu test within 30 minutes. I have a Mac so the test by default started on Safari. After completing 4 sections, I receive a mail in Junk from Hanu which stated that only Chrome or Firefox can be used to give the test. AHH! And on Safari.. the platform on which the test was being conducted didn't ask me for any camera permission (the test is monitored, can't even change windows/switch tabs). I then changed the browser to Mozilla Firefox and somehow finish the test. After finishing, I call up my classmates to find out how their test go. Know what? FUCKING TWATS USED GOOGLE LENS TO FIND OUT THE ANSWERS!

Last night, the list of qualifying students arrived and obviously I didn't make it to the list, but those dumbfucks did who don't even know what Cloud technology is or how it works. Neither they could do any average level program, nor have the communication skills. HOW?! HOW THEM AND NOT ME? Life is very unfair sometimes. I couldn't sleep at night.

PS: If you made this far, thank you for reading this rant (and sorry for it being so long). Makes it better to be able to share with someone. If you could, then please guide me (online resources/recommendations) to be better at competitive programming, or help me enhance my resume/linkedin or if you could refer me for an entry level position at your organisation, I would eternally be grateful. Thank you once again. And sorry for the long rant.

!(short rant) && (long story)

So these last 2 months of my life have been quite topsy turvy. Everything was pretty much unexpected and now I am on my way to Banglore, which is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India.

All this started in mid Feb when one day my ceo dropped a mail to all of us saying he wants to covey something important. A little background story about my company before I go on. We were a bunch of 6-7 tech guys working on a location based analytics product and had a decent client base. I had joined them in November 2017 and I was very hopeful that I would get to learn a lot owing to the good seniors from reputed universities and their experience. Coming back to the day, the ceo called us and dropped a bomb on us that the funding is depleted and we only have enough money to pay you salaries for this month. "We didn't anticipate that this day will come but currently we are in talks with some companies that are looking to acquire us. I am very much hopeful that we will figure something out by the end of this month(Feb). Until then, I can't stop you from applying to other companies but don't reveal that we are in this situation." So, keeping my fingers crossed I was waiting for the acquisition and wasn't looking for any other opportunities.

The company work was under hold and during this time one of my friends approached me with his idea. Since I had nothing else to do, I agreed to work with him. I was living in Mumbai, the city with one of the highest living standards in India, and I was paying exorbitant rent without any income. There was no news until mid March when the ceo called and dropped bomb#2 that an Indonesian company is looking to acquire us and he had scheduled an interview for the entire team. This isn't what I had signed up for. Indonesia wasn't a country I had even considered, let alone leave the country. Still I appeared for the interview and it went very well.

No news from the company or the ceo after that. One of my friends advised me to start applying to other companies and not rely on this acquisition. Now the problem was I couldn't reveal about the acquisition in my interview, so I used to give some bullshit about me not liking the work here. The company didn't buy it because how can someone judge a company in just 4 months. So obviously I didn't clear the interviews, also partially because I didn't meet their technical requirements.

March end, I moved to my hometown in Gujarat because obviously I had started to get broke in this expensive-ass city. The friend with whom I was working with also didn't have any issue since it was just tech and coding and I could do it remotely. Comes mid-April when the ceo called and said the acquisition is done and gave me some details about it. For confidentiality sake I can't reveal the details but I figured enough red flags for me to go with it.

*Eye of the tiger playing in the background*
Now started my quest of finding a decent job. The edge I had now was that I could reveal about the acquisition to the other company. I started applying left right and center to any company I could find. Amazon, saavn and some good-ass Indian companies. The thing that now came in my way was my experience. I am 23 year old(soon to be 24) with around 20 months of experience. Everyone wanted a 3-5 year experience guy/girl. Soon, my entire optimism was draining and I even considered going back to my first company.

During this time, I got a call from this company in Banglore who were looking for a candidate which best suited my profile. I went all guns blazing and appeared for the interview. I had 6 rounds of technical interview plus 1 logical reasoning. And since I was giving the interview remotely, I had one round on each alternate working day. Everyday was a challenge and I spent the nights in anxiousness and anticipation. Meanwhile I was appearing for other interviews too, since I wasn't too hopeful about my chances in this one.

Cut to April 27, I got an offer from this company and without negotiating they offered me the package I was hoping for.

After this entire ordeal, I realised one thing. Whatever happens, happens for good. Looking forward to this new city, new company, new people and new environment.

Story of my life, ngl

You guys made my whole day for the first time since I joined. (yes all of you!)

1) I had a 'fight' with a guy I'm making a startup with. Had to explain some of the story of my life, just to clarify that I'm not evil or generally unwilling to understand - regarding me, having the need to keep using practices

2) I've found that a whole niche-community of people seems to ignore the rest of the community and won't tag along. Having spent several months to be able to help, and receiving shit or absolutely nothing, for finally trying

3) Was in a bad mood the moment I woke up, because I fought with my girlfriend last night because she fails to communicate simple things and won't realise it.

Sorry for the bad punctuation, I tried and smartphones aren't a nice way to edit such things.

So my rant is basically a thank you! Not a rant.. But still, I think you people are the best for being so relatable and making me laugh, and feel like there's more of 'my kind'.

I also just fixed a bug in my app by (finally!) asking the framework maintainer what's up, and got a response which made no sense in a logical manner.. That's a rant for another day, I'll aggregate all the 0 fucks given, when I'm finally able to leave this thing behind, and give you a proper curse-filled shit stack of the nonsense I'm experiencing!

The bug would still live if I weren't so energized by devRant

EDIT: '!' != ','

My first actual rant on devRant:

Fuck corporate companies. Fuck agile development.

In the last 8 months I’ve been with this company, I’ve 1) made the app layout (which was super fucked) compatible with iPad. 2) reduced the apps size by 1/3 of the original size. 3) improved memory usage by double the efficiency, nearly eliminated all memory leaks. 4) gotten employee of the quarter for some of the above mentioned.

After all of this I got a talking to from product manager that “he knows I am a good developer but needs more consistency” after I spent a sprint on one story trying to consolidate front end validation logic and make a “validatableTextField” actually do some validation. So much for the MVVM you promised me.

Also, was promised I’d get some experience with Android, and with a team of 8 devs 6 of which have droid backgrounds and other two are juniors, guess whose only even built the droid project once in 8 months? You guessed it. This company has drained me of all of my knowledge, went against most of its promises to me, and values pushing features to the point of adding tech debt faster than I can solve it.

Unfortunately my personal life relies on this job or I’d quit right away. But you bet your ass I’m passively looking for something and I can’t wait till I get a job offer and quit on these ungrateful hypocrites.

Don't know why it worked yesterday and Don't know why it doesn't work today.

"WTH! Get the fuck out of here, bitch!!".

I started a new job today (remote) and my first task was to improve product sign-up process, basically the UX is shit and the backend is even worse, never felt so bad looking at terrible software design my entire life and career. My first assignment was to introduce some sanity. (Mr. Supervisor's exact words)

Anyway, I report directly to upper management but need to get onboarded by current technology expert who's highly skilled at writing shitty code and is also stupid, literally.

It took the whole day to get him to grant access to the private repo in order to start working but that's not the story.

So, I'm seated, demoralised about the structure of software I have to work on and here I was refreshing localhost:7878 consistently and was consistently getting the message:
"WTH! Get the fuck out of here, bitch!!".

So, this same codebase I have is suppose to be the exact same one that's powering the app in production. I was furious and confused. Is stupid calling me a bitch already??? He wants to fuck??? What the hell!!!

I called him and turns out, I was suppose to switch branches. The branch I had was suppose to show that message intentionally (??!???!???) (His words exactly), I couldn't even muster the words "Why" completely before he hung up.

So basically, I got onboarded today. Quite successfully, I must add, because I know exactly the battlesuit I have to wear to my new remote job going forward!

Tl;dr porn is ruining my life.

Today I had a meeting with the project leader and the CTO. They had bad news, which did not come as a surprise.

In short, they said I did not pass the expectations they had, and unfortunately need to find somewhere else to work.

This is my third time being told to find somewhere else to work, and I really can't describe how it feels. I was even told that I maybe I should reconsider my future as a developer, and kids can do programming better than I can do.

It's really difficult when all you've done in the last year is to learn and improve your current skills.

I have good grades, a unique experience, built lots of unique projects, and a GitHub portfolio with high activity. The apps I've built are used by many customers today. I also have a blog with 600 k views where I share dev tips.

The thing with this work if I'm going, to be honest, is that they expected someone with senior experience, and unfortunately, I don't have that thus it takes many years to build it. So I started here with almost scratch experience of the things they needed.

On the other hand, it feels like a relief in that I can finally focus on my personal business. And maybe this wasn't the right place to work, maybe it requires a couple of jobs until I find the right place.

Despite the bumpy ride, and what such people tell you, I'm not going to give up.

10 years ago, my school teacher told me I was going to be a carpenter (nothing against that) but I manage to get an MSc degree in the engineering field.

There's a lot of shit going into your head when you receive such message like "What if they are true, what if I can't handle programming, what if I'll never be anything etc".

I'm not giving up, this is just a great story every successful person has.

What my number one problem is, and I will f*** win is porn addiction. Get rid of that, and the future is bright.

Sorry for mixing so many things here.

You wanted to hear more about my "glorious" teacher. I deliver. So get a cup of tea, take a seat and prepare for insanity.
As I already told in a comment my programming teacher is one special snowflake who lives in his personal bubble. We have final exams in less than a month and he spents at least half a lesson talking about vanishing bees and missing plants from his garden. Other topics he likes to talk about (and tries to turn every freaking conversation into at least one of these):
1. Other students and their stupidity
2. Diesel scandal
3. His sick wife
4. "Why does noone read newspapers anymore?"
5. Why he can't teach Java but really really really wants to and everyone hates him and forces him to do C#.

Even if I try to interrupt him he'll go on until he thinks we gained some "common knowledge" - this is how he justifies these topics.

Everytime he introduced us to a new command he compared it to Java and sometimes he even falsely corrects code because he confuses them.
We are only 6 people including me (another story for another time) and he is not able to help everyone during a 90min lesson. He normally sticks with one person for at least one hour and just talks to them or even do their tasks. This is really annoying if you have a simple question. He won't answer you until he's finished whatever he's doing.

Most of the time he doesn't seem to understand what he's talking about/trying to teach us. He's muttering statements from our textbook to himself switching halfway through to another sentence while drawing not decipherable shit on the blackboard.

Another gem are his "guidelines" for classtests. We are allowed to use any command we know. Except the ones we learned not in class. And the ones he doesn't like. And the ones he doesn't want to exist. And of course not the ones which make you're life easier. So basically we are bound to use his favourite commands or we won't get a good grade. Example: use an array. List is not allowed. Never.
He has some weird fetish with arrays.

I once presented him perfectly fine code I wrote in my freetime and asked what some warnings meant. (Was because of different Visual studio versions as I learned later.) He scolded me for using things he didn't taught us yet and ranted about how I'm pressuring him into rushing these things now - I never wanted to show this to my classmates nor was this anything else than a project for fun and learning something new. (FYI the "new stuff" where classes and objects because i was tired of kilometers of spaghetti code). His rant went on a good 20minutes and - obviously - he didn't answer my question. I asked my fiance that evening and he explained it to me.
This should it be for this time. I'm sure I have more stories to tell for another time!
Thank you for reading. ^^

!!oracle

I'm trying to install a minecraft modpack to play with a friend, and I'm super psyced about it. According to the modpack instructions, the first step is to download the java8 jre. Not sure if I actually need it or not, but it can download while I'm doing everything else, so I dutifully go to the download page and find the appropriate version. The download link does point to the file, but redirects to a login page instead. Apparently I need an oracle account to download anything on their site. stupid.

So I make an account. It requires my life story, or at least full name and address and phone number. stupid. So my name is now "fuck off" and I live in Hell, Michigan. My email is also "gofuckyourself" because I'm feeling spiteful. Also, for some reason every character takes about 3/4ths of a second to type, so it's very slow going. Passwords also cannot contain spaces, which makes me think they're doing some stupid "security" shenanigans like custom reversible encryption with some 5th grade math. or they're just stupid. Whatever, I make the stupid account.

Afterwards, I try to log in, but apparently my browser-saved credentials are wrong? I try a few more times, try enabling all of the javascripts, etc. No beans. Okay, maybe I can't use it until I verify the email? That actually makes some sense. Fine, I go check the throwaway inbox. No verification email. It's been like five minutes, but it's oracle so they probably just failed at it like everything else, so I try to have them resend the email. I find the resend link, and try it. Every time I enter my email address, though, it either gives me a validation error or a server error. I try a few mores times, and give up. I try to log in again; no dice. Giving up, I go do something else for awhile.

On a whim later, I check for the verification email again. Apparently it just takes bloody forever, but it did show up. Except instead of the first name "Fuck" I entered, I'm now "Andrew", apparently. okay.... whatever. I click the verify button anyway, and to my surprise it actually works, and says that I'm now allowed to use my account. Yay!

So, I go back to the login page (from the download link) and enter my credentials. A new error appears! I cannot use redirects, apparently, and "must type in the page address I want to visit manually." huh? okay, i go to the page directly, and see the same bloody error because of course i do because oracle fucking sucks. So I close the page, go back to the download list, click the link, wait for the login page redirect (which is so totally not allowed, apparently, except it works and manual navigation does not. yay backwards!), and try to log in.

Instead of being presented with an error because of the redirect, it lets me (try to) log in. But despite using prefilled creds (and also copy/pasting), it tells me they're invalid. I open a new tab container, clear the cache (just to be thorough), and repeat the above steps. This time it redirects me to a single signon server page (their concept of oauth), and presents me with a system error telling me to contact "the Administrator." -.- Any second attempts, refreshes, etc. just display the same error.

Further attempts to log in from the download page fail with the same invalid credentials error as before.

Fucking oracle and their reverse Midas touch.

I've caught the efficiency bug.

I recently started a minimum wage job to get my life back in order after a failed 2 year project (post mortem: next time bring more cash for a longer runway)

I've noticed this thing I do at every job, where I see inefficiency and I think "how can I use technology to automate myself out of this job?"

My first ever application was in C++ for college (a BASIC interpreter) and it's been so long I've since forgotten the language.

But after a while every language starts to look like every other language, and you start to wonder if maybe the reason you never seriously went anywhere as a programmer was because you never really were cut out for it.

Code monkey, sure. Programmer? Dunno, maybe I just suffer from imposter syndrome.

So a few years back I worked at a retail chain. Nothing as big as walmart, but they have well over 10k store locations. They had two IBM handscanners per store, old grungy ugly things, and one of these machines would inevitably be broken, lost or in need of upgrade/replacement about once a year, per location. District manager, who I hit it off with, and made a point of building report with, told me they were paying something like $1500 a piece.

After a programming dry spell, I picked up 'coding' with MIT app inventor. Built a 'mostly complete' inventory management app over the course of a month, and waited for the right time.

The day of a big store audit, (and the day before a multi-regional meeting), I made sure I was in-store at the same time as my district manager, so he could 'stumble upon' me working, scanning in and pricing items into the app.

Naturally he asked about it, and I had the numbers, the print outs, and the app itself to show him. He seemed impressed by what amounted to a code monkeys 'non-code' solution for a problem they had.

Long story short, he does what I expected, runs it by the other regionals and middle executives at the meeting, and six months later they had invested in a full blown in house app, cutting IBM out of the mix I presume.

From what I understand they now use the app throughout the entire store chain.

So if you work at IBM, sorry, that contract you lost for handscanners at 10k+ stores? Yeah that was my fault (and MIT app inventor).

They say software is 'eating the world' but it really goes to show, for a lot of 'almost coders' and 'code monkeys' half our problem is dealing with setup and platform boilerplate. I think in the future that a lot of jobs are either going to be created or destroyed thanks to better 'low code' solutions, and it seems to be a big potential future market.

In the mean while I've realized, while working on side projects, that maybe I can do this after all, and taken up Kotlin. I want to do a couple of apps for efficiency and store tracking at my current employer to see if I'm capable and not just an mit app-inventor codemonkey after all.

I'm hoping, by demonstrating what I can do, I can use that as a springboard into an internal programming position at my current gig (which seems to be a company thats moving towards a more tech oriented approach to efficiency and management). Also watching money walk out the door due to inefficiency kinda pisses me off, and the thought of fixing those issues sounds really interesting. At the end of the day I just like learning new technologies, and maybe this is all just an excuse to pick up something new after spending so long on less serious work.

I still have a ways to go, but the prospect of working on B2B, and being able to offer technological solutions to common and recurring business needs excites the hell out of me..as cringy and over-repeated as that may sound.

story of my life:

DO NOT MERGE

merged

After months and months of slaving away, I quit my start-up job and feel completely amazing- here's what happened:

Met a classmate in grad school and he talked about starting his own company and he had full funding and etc. After graduation, moved to the new city where the job was located.

There were all these promises of us being co-workers and working on cool things and many other promises made. Soon after starting the job, most of these promises we're just smoke and mirrors.

Started working day in day out. Worked from 8am-9pm most days and worked on weekends too. Treated me like a I was a dog, talked down to me, gave unrealistic deadlines, pressured me with attitude and threats of losing my job. Hell, they thought they were the smartest person to touch the earth basically- example being that they mixed jQuery with VueJS in our Django template.....who the F*** does that. Another thing being that they had issues with me soft deleting records since they wanted them completely hard deleted and we had gotten into a giant argument about that fml.

What led to me leaving the job was that I had gotten sick one of the weeks, and I still showed up to work. Each day I was gradually getting sicker and sicker. Still tried my best to get work done. Saturday morning I get the most passive aggressive and bitchy text from my co-worker. "if you don't complete blah blah blah by Monday, we are going to have issues. Then on Monday you will work on blah blah blah". They blew the fuse with me. They would always punish me for being sick or taking a vacation. I'm not a dog, not a machine, I'm a f****** person. Went into his office when the work week started and gave my resignation on the spot and felt like it was the best decision I've ever made.

Now I just feel like a giant toxic cloud has disappeared from my life. I did walk away with so much experience and knowledge but now I just feel extremely burnt out from programming. Is this what I even wanna do anymore?

Few lessons I learned along the way:
1. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
2. Free lunches aren't worth it
3. Unlimited PTO doesn't really mean unlimited- there's always stipulations
4. Start-up life isnt as cool as they say- don't take TV portrayals as the real thing
5. Your mental health is extremely important
6. It's okay to admit to yourself that you're burnt out
7. Take a break
8. STARTUPS ARE NOT FOR EVERYONE

This is just my experience and what I learned, so telling my story. Phew, feels so good to get that off my chest

Enjoying the college life to the fullest was the mindset of the confident boy, who now burns the midnight oil to cope up with world and give himself a proud future.

Is this a story of some successful person, who has achieved a lot in his life?

No, it is the story of the guy who lost all his hopes of future after spending the very first month in his college.

The first month was enough to perceive the reality of the domain I got myself let into. It was enough for someone, who didn’t even knew what programming languages are, to realize how left behind is he from the people around him.

Being from a private college which hardly anyone recognizes, expecting them to prepare me to stand out lone would be foolishness. I took my first step and started learning my very first programming language , Python.

I met some people with similar interest .We discussed, we exchanged resources, we used to talk to seniors to guide us. And yes, we were guided.

There were many bad days. Days which made me regret about starting late. Many a times I myself confirmed me as useless and some other time people did. The good thing is I never stopped , and improved myself with each day.

And now, after spending more than a year in the same college, I look at the things I have learnt. Today I can develop decent websites, can train neural networks, can make me stand in good position in coding platforms.

All you need is to take a step.I may not be the best, but I am definitely better than what I was yesterday.

If you have started something, then concentrate on finishing it.

I’m pretty terrible at soldiering and small electronics in general, but I’m kind of okay with how this turned out.

Back story:
That helmet is my sister-in-law’s, she drives a polaris slingshot. (It’s technically a motorcycle here in the US because it has three wheels.) and she hooked up some EL wire to her helmet and the larger black rectangle in the picture is what the battery pack looked like before. (It takes two AA batteries.) and doesn’t have anyway to recharge them natively.

I did some research and found a neat little charging board (TP4056) and got her a small single cell li-ion battery for it. Now it’s not only less than half the length of the original, but it has a rechargeable battery and a charging circuit built in. The battery is 500mAh and lasts about 65-70mins on a charge. Personally, I feel like that’s not a good enough battery life on a charge, but my sis-in-law says that her and her slingshot friends usually only run with the EL lights on for 30 minute stretches at time so they should be able to get two to three uses before needing a recharge. Which btw, only takes about 35-40 minutes from completely dead.

The box looks like shit cause I literally hacked away at the original casing with a pocket knife and then crammed all the pieces back in and hot-glued the casing together. But I took measurements of the final-ish design and will try to find a small electronics box that will be able to house everything internally. (L: 1-3/4” W: 1-1/4” H: 1-1/4”)

Summary of my life.

Post after a long long time...

Wanted to reply to so many comments and mentions, rant about a bunch of topics, do a face reveal after I went for a vacation with family and got some pictures, update y'all on my job hunt, but was busy like hell.

Anyway, time for a story.

After my rejection with Meta and Booking, I started preparing like crazy and my interviews started going well. Refined my LinkedIn further and recruiters started reaching out as well.

Over time, with efforts and feedback, I was able to build a good pipeline.

One of my dream companies reached out to me and I got hired in just 1 round and all others were merely a formality. I was euphoric, but at the same time didn't get over excited as this seemed fishy.

They made a very good monetary offer and I didn't talk to my manager yet regarding resignation. They are pushing me for an early joining.

Read a bunch of Glassdoor reviews and also spoke to a friend who just recently quit that organisation.

He confirmed that the company has 3 months of notice, has sandwich leave policy, and some other XLT political mess.

I decided to decline the offer tomorrow.

Day saved? Not yet.

Because of this I slacked off work a lot. I am super screwed with work items pending because I thought I'd quit.

My boss resinged and new one isn't that supportive yet. He is trying to change everything overnight. Typical.

I ended up performing poorly in other companies because I was confident I'll pick this offer and didn't prepare for upcoming good companies.

Moreover, we have our offices opening up from April and I might be asked to relocate to another city which does not have a team but just because it is on paper, they might force me to be in office 50% of the time.

And what's worse is, my relationship with tech is deteriorating and they are putting the entire product team in bad light.

I have a planned weekend trip coming up, so I won't be able to prepare for interviews or work on case studies so that shit will pile up more.

I am sooooo fucking screwed. Life was stable and then all of a sudden too 180° flip.

I am hysterical right now.

This is a friend's story:

So I've been trying to upload a free sticker pack for iMessage to AppStore for a while now. Why "trying"? because it keeps getting declined for the silliest reasons. It's nothing complex: just a bunch of our company's stickers about dev life. "Stickers for devs, from devs."

The first time Apple has declined the app because of the overall design, the second time it was because we used iMessage in the title. But this time it makes no sense at all. This is the message I got from Apple:

"Your app contains references to test, trial, demo, beta, pre-release or other incomplete content.
Specifically, some of your app’s stickers have “beta” references."

Huh? Check out the pic - one of our dev-related stickers says "still in beta". I guess Apple took that way too literally. Good thing they didn't tell me my app was too buggy because it has a sticker of a bug which says "it's not a bug, it's a feature"...

On second thought, what if AppStore is a modern-day Genie? Maybe I should add a sticker that says "Apple owns me $20 million in stock"? Or just one that says "Apple approves this sticker pack".

#Thisneverhappens_on_googleplay #appstore_make_a_wish #rookout

Why I quit playing video games 15 years ago, and how that impacted my life.

In a land far far away (probably from where you are) on a distant planet (probably for aliens reading this) In a typical city, in a typical apartment, I woke up from a deep deep sleep, the kind of sleep that you can only have if you've been up the previous 2 days binge playing final fantasy 7.

It was a day like any other, except, on this day, I had a haunting thought:

"What if I played my LIFE, like I did video games"?

Long story short. I couldn't play video games anymore. Instead of "working" I saw it as gaing exp points. Instead of "failing" I saw it as necessary to build up character flaws.... etc.

I haven't looked back. I created 3 businesses, I learned psychology, marketing, programming, law, etc etc.

I look at my current status, strength points, charisma points, intelligence points, etc.
And I'm proud.

You get the idea.

Later, I realized something else. If I work all day in front of a computer, how can I play in front of a computer too?

This could be a better post, but you get the gist.

Know the role video games plays in your life, and don't let it play YOU.

Story of my fucking life in one fucking sentence:

"Visual Studio is not responding"

story of my life

*2 months ago manager forces me (frontend dev to work on backend) and he agrees to do that only until new year*
*new year arrives frontend dev wants to go back to frontend*
*manager surprised pikachu face*

Story of My life......

My first job was actually nontechnical - I was 18 years old and sold premium office furniture for a small store in Munich.
I did code in my free time though (PHP/JS mostly, had a litte browsergame back then - those were the days), so when my boss approached me and asked me whether I liked to take over a coding project, I agreed to the idea.

Little did I know at the time: I was supposed to work with a web agency the boss had contracted to build their online shop. Only that he had no plan or anything, he basically told them "build me an online shop like abc(a major competitor of ours at the time)"

He employed another sales lady who was supposed to manage the shop (that didn't exist yet). In the end, I think 80% of her job was to keep me from killing my boss.

As you can imagine, with this huuuuge amout of planning and these exact visions of what was supposed to be, things went south fast and far. So far that I could visit my fellow flightless birds down in the Penguin's republic of Antarctica and still need to go further.

Well... When my boss started suing the web agency, I was... ahem, asked to take over. Dumb as I was, I did - I was a PHP kid and thought that Magento, being written in PHP, would be easy to master. If you know Magento, you know that was maybe the wrongest thing I ever said.

Fast forward 3 very exhausting months, the thing was online. Not all of it worked yet, but it was online and fairly secure.

I did next to everything myself, administrating the CentOS box the shop was running on, its (own) e-mail server, the web server, all the coding required for the shop (can you spell 12 hour day for 8 hour pay?)

3 further months later, my life basically was a wreck, I dragged myself to work, the only thing I looked forward being the motorcycle ride home. The system worked though.

Mind you, I was still, at the time, working with three major customers, doing deskside support and some admin (Win Server 2008R2 at the time) - because, to quote my boss, "We could not afford a full time developer and we don't need one".

I think i stopped coding in my free time, the one hobby I used to love more than anything on the world, somewhere Decemerish 2012. I dropped out of the open source projects I was in, quit working on my browser game and let everything slide.

I didn't even care to renew the domains and servers for it, I just let it die without notice.

The little free time I had, I spent playing video games and getting drunk/high.

December 2013, 1.5 years on the job, I reached my breaking point and just left, called in sick at least a week per month because I just could not see this fucking place anymore.

I looked for another job outside of ALL of what I did before. No more Magento, no more sales, no more PHP. I didn't have to look for long, despite what I thought of my skills.

In February 2014, I told my boss that I quit. It was still seven months until my new job started, but I wanted him to know early so we could migrate and find a replacement.

The search for said replacement started in June 2014. I had considerably less work in the months before, looks like he got the hint.

In August 2014, my replacement arrived and I got him started.

I found a job, which I am still in, and still happy about after almost half a decade, at a local, medium sized ISP as a software dev and IT security guy. Got a proper training with a certificate and everything now.

My replacement lasted two months, he was external and never really did his job - the site, which until I had quit, had a total of 3 days downtime for 3 YEARS (they were the hoster's fault, not mine), was down for an entire month and he could not even tell why.

HIS followup was kicked after taking two weeks to familiarize himself with the project. Well, I think that two weeks is not even barely enough to familiarize yourself with nearly three years of work, but my boss gave him two days.

In 2016, the shop was replaced with another one. Different shop system, different OS, different CI. I don't know why and I can't say I give a damn.

Almost all the people that worked at the company back with me have left for greener pastures, taking their customers (and revenue) with them.

As for my boss' comments, instructions and lines: THAT might not be safe for work. Or kids. Or humans in general. And there wouldn't be much left if you put it through a language filter...

Moral of the story: No, it's not a bad thing to leave a place if you're mistreated there. Don't mistake loyalty with stupidity!

And, to quote one of my favourite Bands: "Nothing matters when the pain is all but gone" (Tragedy + Time by Rise Against).

!dev

TLDR; younger brother is an unreliable fuck. Learning to be a pathetic trickster. Penny teller cheap ass jester.

Hello folks. Time for a little family story.

This started around mid June.
I was a little tight on money the past few months. I had a broken laptop, that my brother wanted to buy. So I told him that he can have it for 100 bucks. It was a 1k gaming laptop 2 years ago, (i7, gtx 960m, 16gb ddr4). But I didn't know how much it would cost to repair. So I was happy with the price and so was him.

He told me he would pay by the end of June.

Hi didn't pay. He repaired the laptop for free by asking his boss, that used to be my friend (I'll probably tell you guys about that in another rant, best friend, got in a fight, stopped talking, next day my brother asked him for a job).

A month later, mid July, I told him I needed the money.

He literally said:

"I don't care for what you need. I'll pay you when I think it is a relevant expense, now I have money only for buying tools and investing in my career".

He was buying 15 usd pens (not only 1), because he wants to have expensive crap.

That was a bit disgusting, but not shocking. (I'm used to his little brat attitude, he's 26 btw).

I thought to myself. Ok, you want to be a bitch?. Then pay more.

I told him that he appreciated a good that wasn't his and that he should either pay now or agree to a new price. He didn't like that idea, but eventually we agreed to make it 300usd.

And one of the clauses was.

"I shouldn't ask him to pay." 🙄

He would pay when he could. (entitled brat attitude again). Ok. Fine.

It's been a month from that. He teased that he would pay 3 weeks ago. And he didn't. I asked him how was the "not asking for payment clause", because he did the teasing and I wanted to know if that kind of shitty mind games was part of the deal.

So that's the background story for the laptop.

Now time for a dinner story.

We share dinner once or twice a week. And when any one is short in money we keep a tally on who's been paying.

When I have money I just let the tally go in my favor, an buy him dinner whenever he says his short on money.

Note: Here, fries and soda are not part of the price, so the one that is short on money pays the fries and soda.

Today it was not one of those days. (Dinner here is about 15 USD for 2, with fries, and soda, nothing fancy, nor healthy, but an exuse to hang out with my only brother that would not eat a salad even if it was free).

I owed him 10 bucks, and he owed me 1 dinner. I asked him if he's buying dinner today. He said that the tally is even because last meal I didn't pay the chips. 🧐. (That was settled because I didn't pay once, but made up for it later)

Again with his entitled ass shitty attitude.

I just said. I don't want to hear your excuses. Here's your money. I want my laptop tomorrow, I'll sell first thing Monday. And tell me how much did you spend on repairs and parts and I'll pay you.

And now I'm sad. 🙃

Mainly, because is just so fucking boring to deal with a person that counts every penny. I fed him for 10 year while he was having problems, (alcohol and depression), And now he comes with this shitty ass counting pennies attitude, wtf?

I literally felt poorer just by counting the cents that made part of this story. (Really, who the fucks keeps track of chips and soda??? What are we 15yo??)))

It's one thing to be trapped in a 3rd world country where everyone is trying to fuck you. You learn to deal with that shit. And it's ok.

But seeing that your little brother is learning the same cheap trickery is just sad. The same cheap approach to life. The same easy and pathetic mind games is just fucking sad.

I don't even mind the money anymore. I was short on cash 2 months ago, I'm gladly better now. But finding out that he's becoming a little scammer is a bummer.

I just needed to vent. I think I should stop enabling him. And maybe keep some distance, it is fucking depressing to be counting cents to settle an argument. By dealing with that fucktard I end up counting cents just to figure out who's right.

Hey I got reminded of a funny story.

A friend of mine and me were in internships in the same company. The company was specialized in territory resources management (managing water for agriculture, money to build industrial zones...). He got the interesting internship (water predictory modeling) and I got... The repairs of a reference sheet manager that never happened to work. It was in C# and ASP.NET and I was in second year of CS. I expected the code to be nice and clear since it was made by a just graduated engineer with +5years of studies.

I was very wrong.

This guy may never have touched a web server in his life, used static variables to keep sessions instead of... well... sessions, did code everything in the pages event handlers (even LinQ stuff et al) and I was told to make it maintainable, efficient and functional in 2 months. There were files with +32k LoC.

After 1week of immense despair, I decided I will refactor all the code. Make nice classes, mapping layer, something close to a MVC... So I lost time and got scoled for not being able to make all the modifications as fast as in a cleanly designed code...

After 4 weeks, everything was refactored and I got to wait for the design sheets to change some crystal report views.

At this moment I began to understand were was the problem in this company.

My friend next door got asked to stop his modeling stuff for an emergency project. He had to make an XML converter for our clients to be able to send decentralized electrics bills, and if it was not completed within a week, they would no longer be able to pay until it is done.

This XML converter was a project scheduled 5 years before that. Nobody wanted to do it.

At the same time, I was waiting for the Com Department to give me the design views.

I never saw the design views. Spent one month implementing a golden ratio calculator with arbitrary precision because they ain't give me anything to do until the design were implemented.

Ended with a poor grade because "the work wasn't finished".

3 years ago I started my computer science bachelor's, during this time I thought that I would finish my 3 years and get a job as soon as I'm finished, I was certain that I would never study any advanced programs.
I was also told from my seniors that only an 8'th of all of us that started will get a degree on time since half quits the first year, half of what's left quit the second and half of what's left the third year will get a job before finishing

3 years later, not only did I get my degree on time , but I am now studying for a masters...

Moral of the story: never say never || life is strange || you can't plan ahead in life

It was my first time in Berlin. I came as a tourist but started looking for a workplace, with hopes of getting a blue card and continuing work.

I searched online, going through some hiring platforms, and sent out a few messages around. I felt a special connection (I thought I was exactly who they needed), and wrote them a carefully crafted letter of intention alongside my lavish CV.
They got back to me, and I was given this task, to do while at home. I completed it, had a phone interview, and was invited on-site for a face to face interview. Everybody felt warm, I felt a connection. We already talked salary expectations, and all was going great.

They told me they'd get back to me for the next stage. ...
and they actually DID. Yes, they did!
They invited me for a second interview, but this time to prepare a technical topic to present. So I did. I picked one of the 3 topics they offered, which was about performance optimization. I had recently read materials about that, so I felt really empowered.
So far nobody told me what I was supposed to be doing at the new job, I only knew the technologies required, and what the company did for money.
I prepared a thorough presentation, with practical demos of why some things are bad for performance. While I was showing it, many people in the room were learning about this for the first time, which means I did good. The team lead had some extra questions that I wasn't able to answer in full (needed some research), but otherwise it was great.

The CTO then asked me out to lunch, to talk over some more stuff, and we had a general discussion about what drives us, our life story, etc. He said that he'd really like me to be part of the team, and that he's looking forward to working with me.

So I've been at it for almost a month. I've met everyone, got acquainted with the team, knew the biography of some of them, proven my worth, etc. I was ensured with body language, and verbal language that everything was going great. As careful as I was with this kind of stuff, I was positive that I'd get the job. I even started planning my trips, to get the documents ready.

And then I got a message stating the usual stuff "Thank you bla bla bla we don't think we'll need your services". I was shocked, but in good faith I wanted to reply something along the lines "I'm sorry it didn't work out, all the best in finding what you're looking for", but I found out that I was blocked from contacting them.

That's right. Rejected + blocked. After a month of fucking foreplay. I get rejection, even though it hurts. But being blocked?! That's just insane!

Story of WTF happened to my job

During my employment in (name censored) was stressful, They claimed I didn't complete my task on time which they constantly remove me from git and documentation(which have to follow their style of returning data), I kept emailing, slack, WhatsApp calls them, mostly and predictably got ghosted and blocked.

So How the fuck am I supposed to push my code or code without the documentation (I can actually, prevent refactoring every time, following the documentation is the good way to go.)

On the sprint review, they will complain about me not committing and pushing the code. (I did commit locally, but can't push, they removed me from the fucking repo) and not done.

Tried reasoning, telling the obvious reasons with them, doesn't work. They come out the second reason of me "NOT COMMUNICATING". Sometimes I can get to git merge from dev to my branch and get tonnes of fucked up code. I reviewed the code, and I can't tolerate it.

Lately, I overheard them mocking and cheering me about to get fired over a zoom meeting (I was in there, they forgot to remove me). Their conversation is about me being a coloniser, a jerk, betraying Chinese ancestors for being not Chinese enough.

I was like: "Why the fuck does their conversation sound like they are tucked in the Qin dynasty?"

Frequently I got labelled as unprofessional.

How is cussing about my ancestors, personal and life a professional behaviour?

Story of my life when I am really interested in a company:

Company: let's have a call to get to know each other.
Me: okay.
Company during the call: takes a technical interview

Company *a few days later*: now let's have a technical call!
Me: okay
Company during call: asks to design GOOGLE in GOOGLE DOC (??!!?!)

Company *a few days later*: now let's have a Development Test!
Me: okay
Company *sends an email* asking to complete a task which should take a week to develop in a few hours
Me: okay...

Company *a few weeks later*: Sends a generic email saying they got another person who is a better fit.
Me: ffs..

I got tired of relearning JavaScript frameworks and instead tried to escape their clutches.

Most of my developer life I've spent relearning how to do the same thing in a different framework.

And every three or four years its the same story, figure out templating, figure out building, complain on github bugs etc.

I am trying to reduce framework fatigue by allowing you to think "can I make my application with just vanilla JavaScript". The advantage of vanilla JavaScript is it write once - do not need to rewrite.

Do YOU think I will abandon ship and end up having to use a framework again?

i genuinely like programming. it's like solving logical puzzles for me, challenges on a smaller or bigger scale, and this is fun.
i always feel this when working on something on my own, i.e. a full stack project where i take care of everything.

but i'm so sick and tired of corporate software development.
i'm tired of scrum, all these scrum meetings, it feels like they are sucking my life energy away. if at least i had the feeling that i work in a team where everybody contributes, the team work is nice and also project management is aligned.
i'm tired of having too many different tasks in too many different areas or projects and never having the feeling to be able to really concentrate on one thing, to be able to do a job well enough so that i'm content with it.
i'm tired of this feeling that what i'm working on is not meaningful. the feeling that my team is not part of a bigger story where everyone contributes their part and where there is a sense of productive collaboration between teams. the feeling that mismanagement will result in a lot of money being burned, because of work being thrown away or becoming irrelevant, or because of miscommunication, making promises that can impossibly be delivered on.
this feeling that i cannot really improve or fix the ship we are sailing with, but rather being handed a bucket and being told to constantly remove the leaking water and put it back in the ocean, but always at multiple sites of the ship all at once.
i'm tired of being the only female dev and altogether feeling so different from the rest of the team, feeling that i do not belong there.

even though i need to make a living, i just can't imagine anymore to spend so much of my lifetime for something that makes me feel so bad...

Alright, this my fucking rant right here. Distraction? This whole company is a distraction! Boss decided to throw us all in an open work environment doing jobs that require careful concentration. Straight outta college I'm getting handed vague ideas, (make a desktop app that helps our customers put data on the internet, make an iPhone app) with out so much as an inkling of what technologies to use, just make it work.
Ok I will but when you hit a roadblock with very little resources to draw in it's hard to stay focused.
On top of that since I worked in support for a year I'm our senior support person! But sometimes support just doesn't use their brains and I'm using my time to solve very basic problems.
That brings me to my next point, the goddamn piece of shit that is our telephone. Fuck that thing when it rings it's never good. Moreover, since I don't want to get roasted for not being responsive I have the motherfucker forward to my personal cell. So I answer every fucking call and I get so many spam calls!
Not to mention I'm mainly running the hardware show around here. Shits broke I'm the one fixing it. Need new shit I'm putting the order together.
Tried to get a new guy to be the sys admin, ordered a 6th gen board with a 7th gen proc, had to pull 3 machines apart to get that sorted. Then he left bc family issues, and has been gone for weeks.
The other devs are also slam up busy, and the main product is about 15 people's piss on a plate of garb age spaghetti. (I got a lot of shit going on but at least I'm the only one pissing in my spaghetti) it's a constant run around if who does what with a code first plan later mentality causing confusion and delay.
Nobody wants to help anybody because they are also annoyed with this setup and are getting bitched at by customers or management.
Sales is mostly composed of a bunch of crackhead yes men and women who just want a commission and only half know the shit we sell and have sold 15 new features that had not been discussed. But management always says make it happen. In what priority? It's all a priority they say! Wtf.
So yea, then it brings me to me, dealing with this much chaos at work makes it seem like a high amount of chaos in my life is normal. I'm just now learning to control this.
I've had to do a lot of growing up as a person and as a developer. I've went from being the most junior to about the 3rd most seniors and I've no doubt my efforts have contributed to the growth of the company.
I'm a big believer in coding flow, and that it takes at least 15 mins to get in that flow and about 5 seconds to break it. There is no do not disturb on the company chat, everything always on fire it seems.
So fuck a lot of this, but I've done the research and where I'm at is the best opportunity in a 100 mile radius. So I am thankful for this job. Plus I usually win the horror story contest.

So TL;DR the biggest distraction is every fucking thing in this god forsaken place.

A dev's love story

I first met WebStorm but found her too fat, I wanted a lighter editor to live some JavaScript romance with... I had a date with SublimeText and fell in love with her immediatly. I swore I would NEVER change for anybody else, everything was wonderfull !

Someday, I opened myself to other Typescripted perspectives, I had new projects in life. A coworker introduced me to VSCode. She looked like Sublime, but more convenient. She was easier to use, perfect to achieve my goals. She was also more organized with my files and her beautiful colors made me crazy. But recently, I got mad at her. VScode became slow to understand each of my moves and even threatened me to exit all the time...

I tried to come back visit my Sublime, my real first love. But I knew it would never be like before.

Now I'm here, alone. I don't know what to do with my life. If only I could fall in love again, I don't know if people can help me get out of this hole.

The END

Karma Story

2 motherfuckers that were absolute shit as managers applied for a position for the web tech manager at my institution. I was the one that Xed both their applications.

Now, I didn't do it out of pettiness, I did it because both of these assholes lied about their positions, responsibilities and knowledge.
One of them washed his hands on a project stating that he had no knowledge of web development, but stated on his resume that he was working as a web dev at the time(in node and asp.net) as well as angular frontends <--- fking bullshit

The other stated that he has been coding all his life. Yeah shitbag, that is why you were selling phones at a company and when i mentioned to you that i studied comp sci you said that it sounds interesting but you had no idea what development is or how computers even work.

There were many. Might say fuck it and just take the position for myself. Shit got funny af and it is amazing how being a shit person and a liar will get back to you and bite you in the ass.

Fuck them

Init and Hello. My name is git and this is my story.

I just arrived in this system recently by the apt highway. It's not the only way though. Some for example used the npm hype-train, others arrived from the ssh shore. No matter where we came from the next step on our agenda was time to introduce our self at the event destined for all new-comers to the system.
"As many of you I reside in the usr-bin district. I'm really into history and commitment! I like it when people work together, so I'm always eager to bring all branches together."
"But what is it actually good for?", asked Curl, which I already met at the bus station. Many nodded in agreement. It was odd. Somehow I felt not quite at home. All the others seemed so different based on their field of work.
"We have worked here in a really agile environment for ages. There is no need for any kind of strange bureaucracy.", said another voice.
All attempts to convince them from the beauty of history or a little bit of management were unsuccessful. It was just the beginning of a not so interesting stage in my life - to say the least.

Today was another of 'those' days. I live in this community for quiet a while now and unfortunately nothing really changed - at least for the good. I sat on my branch of the tree with all the others around and there was nothing really to do for me. Again. I mean, actually it's true. I have to admit it. There is just no work on this world for someone like me. All the others seem to be so busy, while I just have to sit around and question my own existence. Since I grew tired asking these questions to myself, I stopped it. I can't do a thing actually. That's not how this world works.
"Hey fagit, anything meaningful to add to our delightful conversation?", nginx shouted over to me from another branch of the tree. Before I was able to give an indifferent answer the voice just continued.
"Oh, sorry. I forgot that you have no purpose after all. Well, never mind!"
Everyone started laughing at me. It was not too bad by the way. Actually, this was quite ordinary. These fucktards completely ran out of creativity. If it wasn't for that mere emptiness gaping right above my guts, I'd actually be disappointed. I even got accustomed to the alias 'fagit'. Quiet sad given the fact that i really like my real name. If only someone would mind using it... First too quiet to notice but growing in intensity a rumbling emerged from somewhere deep within the tree. Out of a sudden everyone stopped laughing. The voices slowly faded while the growling from afar grew louder. It had come. Not more than a shadow reached out from the tree and faster than anyone could comprehend nginx was simply gone. Killed in an instance.

Disclaimer: This story is fictional. No systems were harmed in its creation.

!rant - Story:

I got accepted to the university of Osnabrück!

Finally! I've had a though time.
After kindergarten kids went to primary school while I had to go to a place called "Vorschule". Kids with disabilities go there. I, for one, was not physically disabled. I was psychologically disabled.
My German was not that good. My native language is Turkish. I had to spend 1 or 2 years there, before I was able to attend the primary school like the normal kids.

In the primary school a few teachers started making racist comments. I didn't really understand them, but my father did. After 2 years of attending that school, I switched to another primary school and continued with everything there.

In the secondary school (comprehensive school) I got bullied a lot. I was getting racist comments on a daily basis. Even by some teachers. Whereas some other teachers were showing it indirectly.

In the same school a teacher made me get a bad grade in one subject on purpose. Thus I got a bad certificate. Not the certificate I deserved.

I spent a year in economics after the secondary school. I was in a vocational school. I didn't like it, because I wasn't really interested in economics.

"Why did you choose that then?" you might ask. That's a legitimate question.

I didn't get accepted in anything related to informatics.

Anyways, I got bullied there, too. Physically beaten by trouble makers in my class and mentally by a french teacher.
He told me that I will not be able to get my certification that allows me to attend a university after me telling him that I will change the school and try it again in informatics. Several times.

I was in the new vocational school after that one. It was very stressful.
I, again, got bullied there. But this time not by the kids, but by some abusive teachers and directors.

One of them was a racist moron. My ex-PE teacher. He someday told me that I won't be able to achieve anything in my life.

I was always naive and kind of let all these words destroy my future plans in my head, but I had a little bit of hope nonetheless.

Today, I got a letter in which it was written that I got accepted to the university of Osnabrück!

Omg! I'm so fucking happy! I could explode! (A lil racist pun)

!dev (when do I ever post a dev related story? I only post about my personal life really)

For about 2 years I had a very good friend, and I had a huge crush on her for most of those 2 years. All of my junior year of high school, she dated my best friend, then they broke up the summer after because he'd cheated on her around the time they got together and she had found out. I was there for both of them during the breakup (it was fucking exhausting). The thing is, I was there for the girl more because I had a crush on her, and I started to consider her my best friend rather than her ex.

She knew I had a crush on her for a long time. But she still spent about a year going to parties every weekend, getting fucking hammered, and hooking up with random guys, then proceeded to tell me about it after. I can't count how many times she had to cancel plans because she got hammered the night before.

But I had a huge crush on her, so I essentially put her up on a pedestal, thinking she could do no wrong. Then we hit a point where we didn't talk for a couple months because I hit a low point and she was uncomfortable with me because of it. Around April we started talking again, immediately back to being best friends but my feelings for her came and went for a while. She had a huge crush on our other friend that had a girlfriend at the time. Life went on, she actually ended up being my first kiss while she was drunk one night (I was sober cause I was driving), but I started talking to a different girl a few days before then, so I was very conflicted about everything there.

Then a few weeks ago came. A different friend got a Radeon 5700 XT and I went over to his house to check it out and everything. We ended up talking for a while, and the conversation turned to my whole friend group that I hung out with all the time (the girl being the center of the group). That friend was never very fond of her, and he always made that very clear. Basically he made me realize that she's not perfect, and that I'd been seeing her through rose-colored glasses.

I spent a week or so rethinking our whole friendship, and I realized that she is nowhere near fucking perfect. For example, she ALWAYS has to be the center of attention. If our friend group is focusing on someone else for whatever reason, she essentially throws a fit then gets really quiet to get attention. Also she can't take criticism at all, she always acts like a victim if you try to criticize her in any way. I also feel like every time I tried to better myself in some way, she ended up bringing me down and making me feel like my problems aren't important. She uses her kindness as a weapon, such as "How could you say that about me? I've been nothing but kind to you!" And the list just goes on.

So, about a week ago, I told her that I feel like she's a toxic person, and she does nothing but bring people down over time, because that's truly how I feel. And of course, she couldn't take the criticism, and said "I don't even know why you feel that, I've been nothing but nice to you".

I haven't talked to anyone in that friend group in one week now. And I feel a lot better mentally. Being friends with her felt like a chore. Only one person in that friend group has tried to talk to me, and that was today. Nobody else has texted me or anything since last Monday. And I honestly couldn't care less. I feel like a huge chapter of my life is over, like the depressing chapter in a book.

I don't know how to end this. I'm doing fairly well now, been hanging out with coworkers a bunch lately. Life's actually kinda good for once.

Created a poll to chose which side project to carry on during holidays, came up with a new one instead.

Story of my life.

Disclaimer: Long tale of a tech support job. Also the wk29 story is at the bottom.

One time I was working tech support for a website and email hosting firm that was in town. I was hired and worked as the only tech support person there, so all calls came in through me. This also meant that if I was on a call, and another one came through, they would go straight to voice mail. But I couldn't hang up calls either, so, sometimes someone would take up tons of time and I'd have to help them. I was also the "SEO" and "Social Media Marketing" person, as well; managed peoples' social media campaigns. I have tons of stories from this place but a few in particular stick out to me. No particular order to these, I'm just reminiscing as I write this.

I once had to help a man who couldn't find the start button on his computer. When I eventually guided him to allowing me to remote into his computer via Team Viewer, I found he was using Windows XP. I'm not kidding.

I once had to sit on the phone with a man selling Plexus Easy Weight Loss (snake oil, pyramid scheme, but he was a client) and have him yell at me about not getting him more business, simply because we'd built his website. No, I'D not built his website, but his website was fine and it wasn't our job to get him more business. Oh yeah, this is the same guy who said that he didn't want the social media marketing package because he "had people to hide from." Christ.

We had another client who was a conspiracy theorist and wanted the social media marketing package for his blog, all about United States conspiracies. Real nut case. But the best client I've ever had because sometimes he'd come into the office and take up my time talking at me about how Fukushima was the next 911 and that soon it'll spill into the US water supply and everybody was going to die. Hell, better than being on the phone! Doing his social media was great because he wanted me to post clearly fake news stories to his twitter and facebook for him, and I got to look at and manage all the comments calling him out on his bullshit. It was kinda fun. After all, it wasn't _me_ that believed all this. It felt like I was trolling.

[wk29] I was the social media and support techie, not a salesperson. But sometimes I was put in charge _alone_ in front of clients for status meetings about their social media. This one time we had a client who was a custom fashion-type person. I don't really remember. But I was told directly to make them a _new_ facebook page and post to it every day with their hot new deals and stuff. MONTHS pass since I do that and they come in for a face-to-face meeting. Boss is out doing... boss things and that means I have to sit in with her, and for some fucking reason she brought her boyfriend AND HER DAD. Who were both clearly very very angry with me, the company, and probably life. They didn't ever say anything at first, they didn't greet me, they were both just there like British royal guards. It was weird as fuck. I start showing them the page, the progress on their likes goals, etc etc. Marketing shit. They say, "huh, we didn't see any of these posts at home." Turns out they already had a Facebook page, I was working on a completely seperate one, and then the boyfriend finally chimes in with the biggest fucking scowl, "what are you going to do about this?" He was sort of justified, considering this was a payed and semi-expensive service we offered, but holy shit the amount of fire in all three of them. Anyway, it came down to me figuring out how to merge facebook pages, but they eventually left as clients. Is this my fuck up? Is it my company's? Is it theirs? I don't know but that was probably the most awkward meeting ever. Don't know if it comes across through text but the anxiety was pretty real. Fuck.

tl;dr Tech support jobs are a really fun and exciting entry level position I recommend everybody apply for if they're starting out in the tech world! You'll meet tons of cool people and every day is like a new adventure.

I spent over a decade of my life working with Ada. I've spent almost the same amount of time working with C# and VisualBasic. And I've spent almost six years now with F#. I consider all of these great languages for various reasons, each with their respective problems. As these are mostly mature languages some of the problems were only knowable in hindsight. But Ada was always sort of my baby. I don't really mind extra typing, as at least what I do, reading happens much more than writing, and tab completion has most things only being 3-4 key presses irl. But I'm no zealot, and have been fully aware of deficiencies in the language, just like any language would have. I've had similar feelings of all languages I've worked with, and the .NET/C#/VB/F# guys are excellent with taking suggestions and feedback.

This is not the case with Ada, and this will be my story, since I've no longer decided anonymity is necessary.

First few years learning the language I did what anyone does: you write shit that already exists just to learn. Kept refining it over time, sometimes needing to do entire rewrites. Eventually a few of these wound up being good. Not novel, just good stuff that already existed. Outperforming the leading Ada company in benchmarks kind of good. At the time I was really gung-ho about the language. Would have loved to make Ada development a career. Eventually build up enough of this, as well as a working, but very bad performing compiler, and decide to try to apply for a job at this company. I wasn't worried about the quality of the compiler, as anyone who's seriously worked with Ada knows, the language is remarkably complex with some bizarre rules in dark corners, so a compiler which passes the standards test indicates a very intimate knowledge of the language few can attest to.

I get told they didn't think I would be a good fit for the job, and that they didn't think I should be doing development.

A few months of rapid cycling between hatred and self loathing passes, and then a suicide attempt. I've got past problems which contributed more so than the actual job denial.

So I get better and start working even harder on my shit. Get the performance of my stuff up even better. Don't bother even trying to fix up the compiler, and start researching about text parsing. Do tons of small programs to test things, and wind up learning a lot. I'm starting to notice a lot of languages really surpassing Ada in _quality of life_, with things package managers and repositories for those, as well as social media presence and exhaustive tutorials from the community.

At the time I didn't really get programming language specific package managers (I do now), but I still brought this up to the community. Don't do that. They don't like new ideas. Odd for a language which at the time was so innovative. But social media presence did eventually happen with a Twitter account that is most definitely run by a specific Ada company masquerading as a general Ada advocate. It did occasionally draw interest to neat things from the community, so that's cool.

Since I've been using both VisualStudio and an IDE this Ada company provides, I saw a very jarring quality difference over the years. I'm not gonna say VS is perfect, it's not. But this piece of shit made VS look like a polished streamlined bug free race car designed by expert UX people. It. Was. Bad. Very little features, with little added over the years. Fast forwarding several years, I can find about ten bugs in five minutes each update, and I can't find bugs in the video games I play, so I'm no bug finder. It's just that bad. This from a company providing software for "highly reliable systems"...

So I decide to take a crack at writing an editor extension for VS Code, which I had never even used. It actually went well, and as of this writing it has over 24k downloads, and I've received some great comments from some people over on Twitter about how detailed the highlighting is. Plenty of bespoke advertising the entire time in development, of course.

Never a single word from the community about me.

Around this time I had also started a YouTube channel to provide educational content about the language, since there's very little, except large textbooks which aren't right for everyone. Now keep in mind I had written a compiler which at least was passing the language standards test, so I definitely know the language very well. This is a standard the programmers at these companies will admit very few people understand. YouTube channel met with hate from the community, and overwhelming thanks from newcomers. Never a shout out from the "community" Twitter account. The hate went as far as things like how nothing I say should be listened to because I'm a degenerate Irishman, to things like how the world would have been a better place if I was successful in killing myself (I don't talk much about my mental illness, but it shows up).

I'm strictly a .NET developer now. All code ported.

Wish me luck. I HAVE to launch 10 websites (yes, ten) this week and half if not all of the clients don't know their DNS accounts or log ins. I foresee a lot of long nights in my near future. Story of our life, right?

I've never used Windows in my day-to-day life. No kidding.
When I got my father's first computer, I used an old distribution called BBC Linux. I didn't have any computer knowledge, it was my first contact with a computer, so I went to a friend's house and asked for a CD to install on my computer. I don't know if this friend ended up making a "gotcha" and thought I'd give up, but I just read the manuals and fell in love. That was year 2000.
Then I used Conectiva Linux, then I went to Red Hat 9, then Slackware, then in 2007 I started using Solaris. And I stayed on Solaris (Solaris 10, Solaris Nevada and OpenSolaris) until 2011.
In 2011 I bought a Mac. I stayed at Apple until 2020, when I couldn't stand Apple forcing me to buy new computers (I still don't understand how a 2011 iMac, i5 (4 Hyper Thread cores) with 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD only runs up to High Sierra).
Then I bought a Dell. It came with Windows 10, the first thing I did was install WSL2. I could not stand it, the system is bad, sorry. I installed OpenSuse and have been using it for two years.

It's just that every day someone tells me "how can you use this"? "There is no alternative to Windows, do you want to be different?"

I know that my story was the reverse of the "mainstream", so I'm going to talk about my vision of Windows, that in my brain it is actually the "alternative".

- Having a file explorer without "tabs" in 2022 is unthinkable for me.
- I love terminal. And the Windows terminal is very limited. "ps ... | awk ... | xargs ..." is a must for me. "find ./ -name '...' -exec ..."... these things on Windows are totally "different" and have the "powershell way" while all other operating systems keep the same form. And cygwin is not an option. As Wine for serious work is also not.
- Dragging a file into the terminal, and having it write its path, is so natural, that when Windows didn't do it, I was dismayed.
- I've always used StarOffice, OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. All the people in my story received my documents and reports as a PDF and no one complained. Until a coworker saw me editing in LibreOffice and said "oh I want it in word format". As long as he didn't know, everything was fine, right?
- Windows is paid. And is there advertising? I don't understand. And I refuse. If you want to display advertising, then excuse me. I have no problem paying, I'm not an opensource shiite. It's just that paying and not working bothers me much more than an opensource that I can fix or expect a fix knowing the good will of the people involved.
- Hyper-V is a joke. QEMU/KVM is better, and Bhyve on FreeBSD which is a very young project, is already a million times better than Hyper-V.
- Developing in C/C++ for Windows is only possible in two ways: Either you've always lived in Windows and your brain is conditioned, or you compile with MSYS2 (CLang or GCC).
- There is no significant evolution of the windows desktop since 95.
- Multiple workspace support with multiple monitors, not ready. It's another joke.
- REGEDIT does not need any comment.
- The system loses performance over time. I still don't know how Windows achieves this.
- I've seen people complain about desktop fragmentation on Unix and Linux. Many DEs end up leaving applications with different themes (like running a Qt application in Gnome and GTK in KDE), but to be quite honest, the lack of Windows standard bothered me much more. Even Microsoft's own software is completely different: Control Panel, Calculator, Paint and Office, To-Do, and Settings, have horrible style differences and look-and-feel fragmentation.
- Dark mode has not been implemented. It's another joke. Many applications are white while everything else is dark. Sorry, even on Linux which is a mess, this has been resolved. And well resolved.
- NTFS? Serious?
- C:, D:.. It doesn't convince me since DOS.
- Bloatware.
- News "biased" in the search bar is a lack of respect for those who use the computer to work.

And that. For me, Windows is the alternative operating system. I can't take Windows seriously, for me it's an experimental one like Haiku or ReactOS. It's good to play.

About market share, it doesn't convince me to use it. But convinces me to sell. I've always developed applications to run on Windows. And when I need it, I turn on a VM to compile the project. But in everyday life? Impractical.

TL;DR: a dude thinks good graphics make a game good.

so every day when the school ends, me, a dude and another girl walk home. as expected we have lots of time to talk about anything. I wanted that day to tell that dude about what I am going to buy on steam summer sales with just 15$.

me: I am going for this summer to play lots of games so I saved some money for this summer sale. do you want to hear what awesome games I am about to buy with just 15$?
dude: yeah, sure thing.

he wasn't expecting much

M: this summer I am going to buy 5 games and maybe keep more for some others. they are so awesome!
D: ok, let's hear those 'awesome' games!
M: the first game is devil daggers, maybe you don't kno...
D: of course I do. is that game
M: I want to get that game just to improve my aim, but maybe I will have some fun.
D: yeah yeah, I know that game
M: *poker face*

I KNEW he doesn't know this game and anything about pc games because of the followings...

M: ok then... I also want to get Half-Life 2 : Episode 1 & 2. they have pretty rich story and I already have both Half-Lives.
D: holy shit but the graphics... ok, one more 'awesome' game of yours.
M: there are 2 episodes, 2 separate games. I really don't care about the graphics, I love the story.
D: continue with your 'awesom' games...

that dude didn't even knew about half-life and said that game is bad.

M: another game I want to get is Battlefront 2, the one from 2005 and...
D: 2005!?
M: yeah, the new one sucks, and the gameplay in the original is way better and...
D: *starts laughing* 2005!? I thought you were getting the new one. I imagine the graphics being like this car. *points to a fucking car, yeah that kind of comparasion, I know*

after this I was so fucking pissed off. he doesn't even know about some cult classics that are meant to be played. he doesn't even have a pc nor console and he is stating his opinion on fine air for fucks sake!

M: ok, what about getting the facts and then make an opinon.
D: yeah yeah *making fun of me at that point*

I didn't tell him that I wanted to buy the binding of isaac, cause it was enough for me. I told him to watch some reviews on these games and blog posts about them and I am sure tomorrow he will say that he 'wathced' the reviews and that those games are garbage. it's his style to underestimate things. I fucking hate him, not becuase of the games, but because he underestimates everything that is not on his list of 'good games'. that list consists of new games with great graphics(3D only).

sorry if I exaggerate saying that those games are cult classics but I really look forward into buying them.

if you have another indie game to run on this potato machine(2gb ram, pentium dual-core 2.1ghz, gtx 525m) that I should or at least try comment, I am open to suggestions!

This happened with one of our senior profs during the first year of my college. I wouldn't call him a dev if my life depended on calling him a dev but regardless, I narrate the story here.

We were "taught" C++ by some really dumb professors during our first year of college and it was mandatory that everyone cleared the subject regardless of what field of engineering the students chose. Having already done 2 years of C++, it was quite a breeze for me. But during the final lab exam, one of my friends requested my help in solving the quite tough question (for those beginners). Thinking the exam and teaching was unfair, I stupidly wrote the answer on a piece of paper and passed it to him. One of our teachers, who had seen him ask me, was lying low waiting to catch me in the act and she swooped in and busted our asses kicking us out of the exam hall and sending us to the HoDs office like some prize from her war against academic corruption.
In the end, I failed the exam for cheating and had to redo (not only the exam but the entire lab course).

When I returned to college during the summer vacations to redo the course, I first met the antagonist of our story. Having a huge head that looked like a deformed watermelon and an ego the size of a building, he assaulted us first with a verbal diarrhoea of his achievements as a CS professor. I quickly realised that I was in a class of people who had failed to grasp how to make a program that printed "Hello World". To make things shorter, every question the prof gave us, I managed to solve in a mere matter of minutes, several better than his own solutions. Not having expected a student who knew his shit, he was determined to play me down. He hurled tougher question at me and I knocked them over his enormous head piercing his ego. He asked me such questions as how to reverse 1000 and get 0001 and wasn't satisfied with the several ways I gave because none of it were what he had in mind (which turned out to be storing them in a fucking array and printing them in reverse. That's printing not reversing you dung beetle). I kept my calm throughout but on the day of the final exam, he set quite a tough paper for a class of people who had already failed once. To his utter shock and dismay, I aced that too and I produced flawless code. This man who has an MTech from one of the most reputed colleges of my country then proceeded to tell me that he had to cut my marks because I had used more than one function when the question had asked for one function ( it never said only one). I lost my shit and pointed out that since I was the programmer, it was my wish how I coded. I also explained to him how repeating code is a bad practice and one should use functions to reduce redundancy and keep the code clean. Nevertheless, he lost his shit and he threatened me with consequences as apparently "I didn't know who I was messing with". I handed over the paper and stormed out of the class (though he called me back and tried to argue more with me. I apologized for losing my shit and left when he was done talking). I ended up getting a 'C'. Totally worth it.

So a little story about finding your way. I worked at an IoT software firm, very well established. I had a hard time with the on boarding process due to some factors, and I must have lagged behind their mental schedule for my growth. It was clear nonetheless that I was a quality coder and had made some friends there.

It wasn’t enough for the ensuing corporate bullying. It went by and I took it. I became the yes man just so I don’t frustrate anyone enough to turn away my ask for help. This made things worse and before long, I a grown man went to visit my mum and all but cry at how small I felt, after all my hard work getting to the company.

I felt sick with failure but I knew I couldn’t go back. I emailed my resignation and dropped off my company laptop.

4 months later I am working at a medical startup with my own projects, that I have 100% control over. And the quality of my work and ethic is pleasing upper management in all the right ways. I’ve never been happier, and there are barely any perks on paper. No free lunches on Thursdays or discounts at the local high street. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life because I said NO to feeling or being treated any less than I worked and progressed to be.

Don’t let other people stop your potential for their own ego, or any other reason. 😊

So I'm not sure whether this actually is a believable story or not but I think I'll just share the saddest moment in my life with you.

So.... I've been working with a boy 0.5years younger than me on a project in Java so he could learn something about programming. I was actually dictating him code because he wasn't able to JUST WRITE ONE SINGLE LINE OF CODE WITHOUT ASKING ME HOW TO DO SHIT!!! So I dictated him a for each loop:
Me: "for ( Foo foo colon foos ) {doSomeShit();}"
Him: "for ( Foo foo .. foos ) {doSomeShit();}
For your understanding: in German colon means doppel punkt / double dot. I didn't think someone actually writes two dots... THIS IS SO FUCKING SAD

Please don't blame me for being a bad teacher. I'm inn a class with him and I know we did that in class. I also thought it multiple times to him

So I joined this financial institution back in Nov. Selling themselves as looking for a developer to code micro-services for a Spring based project and deploying on Cloud. I packed my stuff, drove and moved to the big city 3500 km away. New start in life I thought!
Turns out that micro-services code is an old outdated 20 year old JBoss code, that was ported over to Spring 10 years ago, then let to rot and fester into a giant undocumented Spaghetti code. Microservices? Forget about that. And whats worse? This code is responsible for processing thousands of transactions every month and is currently deployed in PROD. Now its your responsibility and now you have to get new features complied on the damn thing. Whats even worse? They made 4 replicas of that project with different functionalities and now you're responsible for all. Ma'am, this project needs serious refactoring, if not a total redesign/build. Nope! Not doing this! Now go work at it.
It took me 2-3 months just to wrap my mind around this thing and implement some form of working unit tests. I have to work on all that code base by myself and deliver all by myself! naturally, I was delayed in my delivery but I finally managed to deliver.
Time for relief I thought! I wont be looking at this for a while. So they assign me the next project: Automate environment sync between PROD and QA server that is manually done so far. Easy beans right? And surely enough, the automation process is simple and straightforward...except it isnt! Why? Because I am not allowed access to the user Ids and 3rd party software used in the sync process. Database and Data WareHouse data manipulation part is same story too. I ask for access and I get denied over and over again. I try to think of workarounds and I managed to do two using jenkins pipeline and local scripts. But those processes that need 3rd party software access? I cannot do anything! How am I supposed to automate job schedule import on autosys when I DONT HAVE ACCESS!! But noo! I must think of plan B! There is no plan B! Rather than thinking of workarounds, how about getting your access privileges right and get it right the first time!!
They pay relatively well but damn, you will lose your sanity as a programmer.
God, oh god, please bless me with a better job soon so I can escape this programming hell hole.
I will never work in finance again. I don't recommend it, unless you're on the tail end of your career and you want something stable & don't give a damn about proper software engineering principles anymore.

I dropped my kid off at preschool and went my way home.

She's 2 so I transport her on a stroller.

While coming back, I came across an old lady sweeping the sidewalk of her house, and it got narrow to pass through because there was a tree next to her.

I carefully slowed down as to not collide with her, and while going through, we noticed each other.

I did a tiny smile as a way of saying "hi" like I usually do to people on the street.

To which she gave back the most innocent and sweet smile I've ever seen a stranger give on the street.

I could honestly feel my heart crack as it happened.

I guess the stroller must have caused her sympathy thus that reaction.

(which is why I like going around with the stroller, because people tend to treat you nicely which feels nice, like butterflies)

I know it might seem like an ordinary story without a punchline, but let me explain that I walk this city everyday.

And even though the people here is very nice compared to other cities I've lived in, it is very rare to get smiled at with such joy.

You might still think that is not a good story. But I can explain its relevance.

As some of you know, I post triggering content on this account, closeted parts of me that I normally hide,

Such as sexual stuff, some people think I'm a degenerate but I like to think I just have normal sexual thoughts that don't affect others in real life AT ALL.

And I'm also very argumentative, again, some people might see it as troll behaviour. On my side though, I just don't like bullshit and call it out when I see it.

But with this post, I'm not trying to be more likable or negate all the weird shit I said. This post is just another closeted part of me, being emotional.

And the reason I hide that is because it is not generally well accepted when a man is sensitive, at least where I'm from.

For example, if a female friend at work had a nice haircut, sometimes I feel the urge to be like "omg girl you look so prettyyyy!!!!".

But if I did that I know what will happen based on DIRECT experience: people will assume I'm gay or weak, and will make fun of that.
Or the actual friend will think I'm hitting on her.

No, fucking thank you, not having that shit.

But even if people accepted that, they just can't conceive I'm also very direct and honest, so when they do get to know me better, they get shocked.

So what do I do? I just hide that. That might change in the future, but I don't have the energy right now to deal with some people's simplemindedness.

I'm not making any sort of political statement, like "people should be treat me correctly or else get fired because of offending my gender".

But I'm not gonna lie, it would feel very nice if I was around more progressive people. I wished I had just just standard male behaviour and thoughts.

I guess some people in progressive cities are more accepting of the whole gender fluid thing, so I wished I lived in one (let me clarify though, I'm not a mindless gender fanatic).

I'm also not perfect and sometimes the line between "I love your haircut" and "I'm into you" blurs the fuck out, so that's on me... I don't know if it's something I can change though...

Hopefully all this shit I'm saying doesn't make me look like a lunatic. Veeeery hopefully.

Though, If you think for real I'm a lunatic or bad person, you can suck donkey dick.

story of my life

Up until last year I was pre-med. I graduated college with a bachelors in Biology. Took my MCAT, prepped my med school applications for submission, and then realized I didn’t wanna pursue this pseudo-dream I had for so long. I realized the reality of the sacrifice and the lifestyle I was gonna make and began to regret not studying what I truly liked to be doing on my off time which is computers and programming. Long story short, here I am back in school getting a degree in CS, and can whole heartily admit, I’m happy doing/learning what I love.

It’s amazing how life works. Never would I have imagined that I’d make a switch like that, but I know it’s the best decision I’ve made so far.

A fight story (separation of concern) : work vs life

IT Director (IT'D) forwarded a client message (false detection) to my whatsapp (personal number). I am sitting next to his cabin.

After an hour,

ITD : what was the issue with the client x?
Me : (proved false detection),
ITD : did you emailed client?

Me : no, don't send me these in WhatsApp, if any issues, email me since I won't check whatsapp and there is no guarantee that I will reply you back.

ITD : why, don't be negative. Either you have to or me have to do it.

Me : Tell them to email.
ITD : That is not right.

Me : I don't care if you provide support via WhatsApp. But I don't. Unless you provide a separate mobile and connection.

End of story.

Fresh internship story (Part 2)

I just realized how dumb my temporary boss really is and how much he loves to command everyone.
I told him that I am going earlier a few days ago and he got pissed lol.
He is someone who thinks he knows everything, but he does not.
He blames everything on everyone else.
He is never wrong, we are always wrong. That is probably what he is always thinking.
Clients who enter the store are precious (makes sense-you have to handle clients well, to get more bucks), but the thing is that he even screams near the clients at us. Besides of that I am new there. Be a little bit more patient, fucking prick.
Imho he is too old for the tech industry.
He loves to use the workers as slaves.
Do you work on a laptop rn? Well... fuck that. He has a new task waiting for you.
He keeps interrupting me every 5 to 10 minutes while I am focused.
Random dialogue from today:
me:"the client did a win10 upgrade and not a regular windows update"
boss:"nope. that is a windows update."
me (internally): should I show him the folder called "Windows10.Upgrade" and the "windows.old" folder both with the same creation date in "c:"? nah, fuck that. he is gonna put himself up again. do not want to have a stronger headache than this one I am having rn. (btw. I usually do not have headaches. I get headaches like once in 5 years, but since 4 days I have it every day.)
I am sick of this.
Today I had the urge to fucking grab his fucking "fuck me please" eyes out and eat them while he hears the explosive sounds his seperated eyes do. I still want to enjoy the rest of my life without going into a prison tho.

Tries to fix bugs for hours.
Gives up, goes to bed.
Tomorrow is another day.
#story of my life

About 3 years ago, my girlfriend had this laptop that she got from her University. She had to give the laptop back to get reset, but didn't want to lose all of her data on it, and a backup would be around 750GB.

So I suggested that I would backup the laptop (was thinking to just dd an image and go from there). So I plugged in my mobile USB and external hard drive, and started the imaging process. Given the amount of data and setup, the process should have taken about 5hours. So we left it there for 5h.

Please be mindful that at this stage in my life I knew very little about boot processes, oses, and hardware.

5h after. The laptop screen is black and it ain't responsive. Not sure what happened, the dd process was completed, but the laptop refused to boot into windows. Tried a number of boot tools, and spent a crazy night hacking at the machine. But the university had some of sort of fail safe to not allow anyone to boot into windows if someone opened bios without entering a password. Whatever this was, I spent over 12h trying to either open mount the windows partition with a Ubuntu usb or mount the corrupt dd image on my laptop.

Long story short, after throwing at it a number of fixes. I was able to mount the image, copy out all of her personal data, and reinstall a new version of Windows on her laptop. The university didnt understand why the laptop was already reset. She still mentions this to me anytime I want to take a "custom approach" to software lol

Not really a programming story... but a story about how programmers problem solve in real life.

Mods, sort me out if I'm out of line. Anyway, here goes.

So, my wife and I are arguing about whether or not the garage has insulated walls.

"It doesn't have insulated walls", I say, "I've been up in the rafters and their's no insulation there, so there's probably none in the walls."

"Well, why can't you just check", my better half responds, "You could just punch a hole in the wall to see."

Me, taking about 300ms to process this statement. Looks over, and punches a hole in the wall.

"See, no insulation!!!" I say triumphantly.

"What. The. Fuck. Did you just punch a hole in the wall for???"

deerinheadlights.gif

"Um, because you told me to?"

"Well I didn't mean to use your hand, I meant to get a small drill so the hole wouldn't be enormous."

"Well you didn't say "get a small drill", you said "punch"!

And as a laid down to sleep, on the couch, that night I still insist she told me to do it. And while I patched that hole, I still thought it was her fault. And to this day I still think it's her fault.

You cannot give a programmer these vague instructions and expect appropriate results.

!rant
Medium long story about POP!_OS

TL;DR : A true K.I.S.S. OS. Very well designed UI. In general suitable for everyone. Any distro-hoppers MUST try out. If your current OS is already heavily customized to your needs, DON'T bother with POP. (Read till the end if you are on toilet, nothing to lose)

Backstory : I am never a fanboy of anything although I am loyal to the tools I use daily. So OS is also something I picked and use to meet my needs except when I was a student. My first linux experience was about a decade ago with ubuntu. Have tried almost all kinds of light-weight and minimal distros after that (lubuntu, arch, mint, puppylinux, fedora, centos and others I forgot) during my student years.

I like all things minimal. ("Keep It Simple Stupid" is my email signature.) When I started working, Windows became the sole OS I use since it met my needs better than others. Except that one time when I tried Elementary. Although I found it a good OS, it didn't get installed as a dual-boot. I don't find Elementary minimal. It is one of well designed OSs but I still think it can be improved. (Plus I had this weird feeling that it is similar to Mac OS)

At the start of this year, Widows alone was not enough for my needs. Decided to look for a minimal linux distro. My old i7 ASUS has 8GB RAM and roughly 250GB free storage. So I am not that worried about hardware requirements. My main struggle is downloading stuffs. (Few of you guys must know by now the speed of my internet LOL.) Well, even if I had a good speed, I will still look for minimal distro as first priority. So I went with minimal ubuntu image and xubuntu environment. Although I do not like the UI design, it is acceptable. Through out the years, I have configured it to suit my needs and currently pretty happy with it.

Thoughts on POP!_OS : To me, it is literally like meeting a young girl who is perfect for my life. She has the perfect body, beautiful face, amazing appearance and good manners. And she is young, of course there is a lack of experience issue. But it can be taught and she has a very high chance to become a wonderful lady if she continues like this. Only crap is I already have someone and in a committed relationship. So I could not go any further than introduction. I do save her contact and will keep in touch with her online. You know? Things change. Things always change somehow.

Every night! Damn you, code.

Story of my life

I JUST HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS THAT MAKES ONE WANT TO BANG TWO BRICKS ON HEAD SND END THE PAIN THE STORY STARTS YESTETDAY WITH ISSUES AFTER A MIGRSTION AND THEY ASK ME TO HELP TROUBLESHOOT EVEN THOUGH I'M A DEV DBA AND THE ISSUE IS IN QA/SAT AND I HELP ANYWAY AND THEY CAN'T FIND A VIEW AND SO I LOOK EVERYWHERE AND CAN'T DOING IT EITHER AND IT DIDN'T EXIST IN PROD OR DEV SO I TELL THEM IT'S NOT THERE, AND THEY ARE LIKE, CAN YOU RETRIEVE IT FOR US AND I'M LIKE FROM WHERE? I DON'T KEEP VIEWS IN MY BUTT AND YOU GUYS ARE SMOKING CRACK AND THE GIVE ME THEIR QUERY WHICH CONTAIN THE VIEE ANYWAY AND THEY SAY CAN YOU RUN IT AND IT RUNS AND WORKS AND THEY CAN'T MAKE IT WORK AND IT WORKS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T CALL THE VIEW THEY HAVE ME SO NO PROBLEM THERE SO I FINALLY ASK THEM ARE YOU POINTING TO THE CORRECT DATABASE AND THEY'RE LIKE OH MAN WE TOLD YOU THE WRONG DATABASE AND SO I LOOK AT THE RIGHT DATABASE AND FIND THAT THE GRANTS ARE MISSING AND YEAH THANK YOU FOR TAKING EIGHT HOURS OF MY LIFE BECAUSE WE WERE IN THE WRONG DB YOU GAVE ME AND I HOPE THE FLAG OF A THOUSAND CAMELS INVEST YOUR ARMPITS AND THE CHIGGERS OF A THOUSAND SOUTHERN LAWNS INGEST YOUR SOCKS AND UNDERWEAR. YAAAAAA!!!!

It began when I was tasked with creating a better and more engaging experience for our new Facebook page. This was in Facebook's early days, so there were not really any "best practices". We were making it up as we went along. I decided one way would be to game-ify things, since gaming, at the time, was a Big Deal on Facebook and people were starting to use it to build customer funnels.

Grasping for low-hanging fruit, I decided a Tetris variant around our topic would be fun. I had to hire a dev because at the time I was a static HTML web developer just getting into social media management. I knew nothing about game development or how to use Facebook's API for such things.

Long story short, we got about $10,000 (FB app devs came at a premium then) into the project when I came across a very recent article about the history of Tetris games. It said that even though Tetris had once been considered for all intents to be public domain due to it being created by a Russian coder during the Cold War, it had just been acquired by an IP protection entity that was charging royalties for any variant of Tetris created from a specific date onward and paying the original developer. So, even though I thought I had been thorough in my initial permissions checking, it turned out we were gonna be in deep doo-doo with licensing fees and restrictions if we released this game to the public.

I had to call my boss and admit my error. She was FURIOUS and really gave me an ass-chewing over it. I then had to call the marketing person whose budget I'd been slaving away at wasting. She was a bit more forgiving (her budget was in the millions). Then I had to call the corporate legal department and explain what was going on. They told me to immediately pay any outstanding hours, then fire the dev but not before getting him to send me all code and assets, deleting his copy, and then, upon my receipt of those assets, deleting MY copy so that nothing of it ever existed. And I was supposed to say _nothing_ to the dev about why he was being let go, so that there would be no "trail" leading back to this fiasco. (The dev hounded me for weeks asking what he'd done wrong. It killed me that I was bound and gagged by corporate legal and couldn't tell him.)

I was in so much trouble. I was literally in tears over it. I'd never wasted that much money in my life. That incident pretty much sealed my fate as far as any trust my bosses ever put in me again (not much at all). I was a bit of a pariah in a lot of ways for the next 5 years whereas I had come onto the team as a young social media rockstar at first.

After that, and a couple of other bad scenarios that were less my fault and more due to a completely dysfunctional management and reporting structure, they eventually "transferred" me to another team. Which was really just a way of getting rid of me by sending me to a department that was already starting to outsource overseas and lay people off. It was less messy that way. I was in the first set of layoffs.

Since then, I've had a BIG fear of EVER joining a large corporation EVER again. I prefer to work for small businesses now, even if I get paid less. Much less stressful from an office politics and impact of mistakes standpoint.

At 20 I thought my life would be an adventure. At 30 it seems like it's a rerun.

The reality is that life is full of grey areas, "good guys and bad guys" on all sides of most issues, and the story and excitement eventually end.

sometimes getting old feels like becoming comfortable with being numb and mediocre.

you are not the star at the center of your own story.

there is no story. there is only today, and then tomorrow, and then the day after that for as long as they happen to go on.

I can see no greater meaning or purpose behind this circus.

people think in months, seasons, years. maybe some of you even have five year plans.

but for me, rome was yesterday. and every rome to come. thats how near it is. It is so close, it and so many times before and after it, I cannot explain the sensation.

and in the vast gulfs of time, I see the wars, the conflicts, the narratives, and they unfold like dust or scum swirling on a pond, mechanistic, telling stories about nothing, algae struggling over territory on a rock.

as clearly as day, I see it all.

I saw your birth, and I saw your death. Your pain, and your greatest joy. How is it possible to love a total stranger and know them intimately because of their shared humanity? And still.

And from afar, in the stillness, I can't help being detached from the world and its problems.
And when we die, it is as if the world dies with us. Because it is not the end of the world, but the death of our own.

Softly go mortals, gently to their gods, like flowers in the fading summer. Never grasping that the permanence of the true identity and the temporality of the spirit are as fundementally distinct as the permanence of say "the G note", against the brief sound it makes when touched.

Eh. forget it. Sentimentality is a curse sometimes.

Hope you all are surviving well

Few changes here and there in my life and staying away from lots of things including DR. Not technically a rant but kinda a summary of my current life story.

- broke up with gf (to be precise, I dumped her because I don't wanna have a RS anymore). Pretty bad thing for her and she is still having a hard time accepting it.
- took a second job, part-time.
- trying to get few more part-time/consultant kind of jobs.
- step down from CEO/CTO position at my business and trying to focus just to be a better CTO.
- 80% of sale teams resigned or asked them to resign.
- found a new investor but no cash received yet.
- have to touch nodejs (at the part-time job).
- left side eyelid is twitching pretty frequently lately.

Not much. That's about it. Now let me check what the heck are you all up to lately.

My very first wow, was back in 2011 as a freshman at university, algorithm classes. Our first language was Pascal, (because it was easy to learn and get to the idea of programming.) so, lecturer wrote Hello World! and that moment was the best part, when I realized that was called a program. After all these years I still remember this output. ❤️ awesome.
After this, its injected in my veins and soul. Even when I come home drunk or coming from the friends, I open my macbook and trying to write some cool , nerdy staff.

Its my life, my passion, my hobby. I dropped everything for this. ^^

Long story short, every time I feel amazing when I do something new and interesting.

Got demoted, got a pay raise and don't know how to feel about it. A story of how not to drink with your coworkers?

The story begins roughly 8-9 months ago. Me and this coworker (let's name him Tim) go out drinking after a Friday party at the office. We do some rounds and we're both smashed. Tim starts telling me how he's happy with life and that he's earning a nice salary right now. He told me his salary. It was the same as mine. Which was weird - He codes in a more hardcore languages than me and has almost double the time in the company as me. I think after some more drinking I've confessed that I make the same as him. This part is sort of a blur (drinking). I've gotten a pay raise(+30-40%) roughly a few months ago from that point backwards because another company gave be a much higher offer. The company I work for matched to keep me. Anyway, 3 months or so after the drinking,Tim is promoted to team lead, and me and a few other people are added to his team. Conversation slips and he told me his new salary - quite a bit more than me.I think it's safe to assume what happened.

The problem with that is that I was a team lead of 1 person (me) at that time, and I was managing my own time and my own tasks, was working with people individually. I was part of the weekly meetings with the CEO and other team leads. Being stripped of this title wasn't a problem at the beginning, as people still contacted me because of their problems, suggestions, whatever. A few more months pass (to now) and less and less people are contacting me - instead they are talking with Tim, and are asking of his opinion on tasks I should do, where he has no experience and roughly 0 lines in the programming language I code in. This is starting to piss me off.

There are a couple other things to take into consideration as well - The company is hiring a lot of people right now. The whole structure for team leads changed a bit, more team leads then ever right now and new roles added pretty fast.

I've gotten a pay raise a few weeks ago though(10%~).

I'm not sure on how to react to this. Should I comply and just keep on working on these tasks? Or should I still keep contacting people directly on their requests and talk to them directly, take credit for the projects I complete publicly and the stuff I do as I was previously doing? Part of me wants to reroute all of the stupids questions people have to Tim, as he is now responsible for these tasks and get this weight off my shoulders.

I'm starting to shift to learning a new programming language and thinking of jumping ship. Thoughts?

A story about burnout you say? Well, here it goes.

In 2019, I worked in a now-defunct startup. Back then, I was deep in "treatment" with wrong medications that almost ended up turning me into a vegetable. When I was hired, my mind was already deteriorating quickly, and I was caught in a downward spiral of losing intelligence.

Prior to working there, there was never ever ever a situation in my career when I was given a problem to solve and failed to do it.

But right then, with already double-digit IQ and constant, pumping anxiety, I was seeing task descriptions that looked familiar and doable, yet I absolutely could not do them. I couldn't comprehend. It was an absolutely screeching, crippling panic about me losing my intelligence forever, being fired and ending up unhireable, dying alone on the streets.

Apart from my depression I recovered from, this very experience was a trauma that haunts me to this day, every day. You know, my experience being raped as an adolescent doesn't, but this, it's something else. Now, my intelligence is back, I design architecture, I'm a CTO, and my solutions are objectively cleaner and better in every way than what I did pre-depression. Yet, I still feel a sharp, sudden rush of anxiety, and my heart skips a beat, when I think about writing code or even opening the IDE.

I don't know how does one recover from this. I'm now slowly transitioning into "architecting CTO" role that is just being a devrel, assessing ethics, working with business to realize their need, designing solutions and leaving the implementation for the team to do. You know, the stuff I was taught in the uni.

Maybe doing open source and launching small pet projects will help. But at this stage of my life I have no emotional resource to care.

Not at all dev related but I don’t have a social life so I share with you guys:)

I’ve been fat for all my life. You might say it’s my own fault blah blah but I quit sugar over 10 years ago, I don’t snack and eat 1-2 meals a day, not much more than others do.

The first time I was in good shape was when I was 16. I was growing, I started boxing and I was happy-ish with my body for the first time. I got down from 110kgs to ~87kgs, which is a good weight for me, I have heavy bones and wide shoulders I guess.
I insured my shoulder and couldn’t do boxing anymore but my weight was still pretty much stable. After working in the office for a few months I started gaining weight again, I think mainly due to the stress and lack of sleep.
In 2017 for the first time I hit a new high with 120kgs. I quit my terrible, stressful 24/7 job and relocated and got down to ~115 which I maintained for quite a while (still going to the gym and stuff).

And then the lockdown started..
I went up to >120 in no time.
(Sounds really bad but as mentioned, I’m heavy anyway so I’m not THAT obese, just fat.

Seeing my weight was really scary to me so I started a keto diet again, which I did before but with limited success.

Warning: Controversial topic coming up..

I took it a bit further and tried 0-carb (carnivore diet) instead of low carb and I lost 6kg within a month. Then the next plateau at 114, then at 112 etc.
Went more strict and removed seasoning and stuff and started eating more nutritious meat, liver, heart, tongue etc and my weight started dripping again.

Yesterday for the first time in ~a decade I got down to 105kg.
My end goal is 90, so I made it half way through.

Just really happy to have achieved this. The 1 good thing about lockdown I guess, I had so much time to be on my own.

Before you say eating no greens is bad, keep in mind that most not old people die because of obesity, not because of a lack of fiber.

It’s a big achievement for me and I hope that I can get to 90kg in another 3 months..

Story over

Here comes the story how I became a DevRanter.
When I was young, I built an expensive gamer-machnine, so I had to crack games. I Got used to computers, so I startet an apprenticeship in IT. I finished with good grades. I left everything and everyone behind and moved in a city, found a parttime job as a PHP developer and started studying CS. After 5 years doing work as developer, studying CS, creeping around as soldier, I finally finished and graduated. After a few months working fulltime (same job), as my life began to settle down and I got bored.
A flatmate (also CS) laughed his ass off about something, then he introduced me to DevRant. It became part of my life to read DevRant, to overcome boredom. But there are not enough new Rants.. I'm f'cked. OK, I resigned my Job, and my flat and signed up for the BS in natural scinces at university in an even bigger city. I will again leave everything behind to begin a new life. Now I'm planing to freelance to pay the bills and challenge me again. Wish me luck :)

So I am beginning this new life with writing this story, how i became a dev. I klick Post, and bang! "please verify your email before ranting.. blah" I got no mail, no span, nothing. Resend.. wait.. nothing. I WAS BORED AGAIN!! FUCK YOU MAIL-SERVER, WHY CAN'T YOU SEND AN EMAIL WITHIN SECONDS OR MINUTES, WE ARE IN 21ST CENTURY AND THE INTERNET CONSISTS MAINLY OF OPTIC FIBER CABLES!!
And this is, dear DevRant community, how i become a Ranter, just then when I wanted to Post my first story.

Anyone else have trouble with real life common sense?

Story time:
Yesterday Evening a dog chased my best mate's cat up a tree. Being the genius I am, I decided to climb after the adorable bugger. Fell from about 8-10ft onto concrete slabs on my back.

Main thing first: I got lucky, CTs and X-rays showed no lasting damage. I'm back home and safe now.

What got me was going through the hospital having to hear the story of how I fell out of a tree onto my back and head like an idiot... from medical person to medical person.

I was lying in the bed, thinking "I swear I'm competent!? Why do people trust me!?"

Does anyone else have any weird skill black spots, or common sense break downs?

Please take sleep deprivation seriously!
Take care of it and don't allow stress to take you over.

Here's a little story of what happened to me:

I've had sleep problems for all of my life, but the beginning of last summer 2018 it went too far. I turned 18 and somehow all the school, dev and personal work started to pile up, I stressed about them and started to have no sleep every other day and little sleep another. Immediately I took time off from everything for trying get better sleep.

Having no sleep means that your brain starts to run in really low gear but you might not even notice it. So I started stressing about every little detail, making ridiculous decisions and doing stuff that didn't really make any sense.

I went to a doctor and was ordered to take time off for a month or so and start medication with bunch of different pills. At the time I thought the medication could wait for a day and went to an old work friend's place for night stay to discuss about everything. That wasn't obviously the thing I should've done. I was up all of that night, he slept, and in the morning he noticed something was really a bit off about me.

We went to the hospital and I agreed for a treatment in there. They got me to sleep normally again and I rested there for a while. I went back home or actually my parents' place and the problems continued, and back to the hospital I go. This time there was no choice. After a really long while, my mind started to stabilize enough that I was allowed to return to my everyday life: enjoying my summer break. It was an awful summer. I often felt lonely and bored. But at least I slept normally.

In the fall I returned to my usual busy schedule. And life's good again. This time I will manage my stress and sleep better and take them to account when planning schedule.

For those who had already followed my story here, a while ago I was in bad hands having several employers not professionally consistent (unfortunately).

Soon like any professional, I went in search of other jobs and looking for something better for me. I did several interviews with several recruiters around the world (massively trying to go to Europe).

Some never gave me feedback, they never wanted to at least respond to messages, emails or direct messages on LinkedIn.

Until one day a company whose owners are of the same nationality as mine opened the doors for me I came to Europe to work for a client of theirs and that client absorbed me in his company and today I am their CTO.

And magically all those recruiters from different nationalities appeared with the old man "hey, remember me ?! So about that interview, it really didn't work, right? But now I have another *** opportunity ***, how are you? Available for a conversation?"

I have already made several selection processes in my professional life, and I never failed to answer a candidate (that's right, everyone, even negative feedbacks) and I am proud of that. I am a dev and I still did the only job that HR should have done, it gives feedback.

With a lot of joy in my heart I say that the game has turned.

!rant

Goodbye Java I will not miss you at all! I swear ...

I do like it when making web services (especially that I can use Java8) but for Android you have been a torture. Hello sweet Kotlin! I shall embrace you and treat you like my newly born baby!!

Story is:
Working on a new project where I need to talk to a web service (also made by me).
Started writing in Java, all is cool and unit tests pass.
Downloaded Android Studio 3 Beta 1 and converted my Java code to Kotlin, That AsyncTask did not look nice in kotlin, converted it to async & await feature and I must admit lots of code removed, no more need to create a new fucking AsyncTask every time the app sneezes for data!

I feel like I'm working with C# but with difference in syntax.
My life is now complete :)

>Got Snapchat streaks with my crush (good so far
>Sends me selfies and whatnot (also good)
>Sends me pic of her macbook (could be worse)
>On the macbook, safari is open (can't hate a non tech savvy for that)
>Goes on her father's Windows laptop and opens internet explorer (aaaaaand I lost interest)
>Sends me pic of iPhone collection (what did I see in her that was so special?)

Story of my life

Story of my life, a right of passage? 🤔

I fucking hate morning people like the one in the story below!

Before we begin story time I want to acknowledge some things.

This is largely a case of a person having a lack of awareness and giving in to their base instincts (which are wrong).

People all tend to think that everyone else is like them (most children below a certain age cannot make this distinction and many adults never learn it either).

To take it a step further, anyone who isn't just like them is Lazy/Bad/An Asshole/etc.

FUCK THOSE PEOPLE

Now it's story time...

---------

I worked for a startup. We used a modified SCRUM, and we had standups every day @ 10 AM, the other team had then at 11:30 AM.

We get a new product owner. He is a morning person. But basically, he is a day-trader so he wakes up at 5 AM to trade and is in the office by 8 AM every day.

The problem is, he uses this as a reason to leave every day at 3 PM when EVERY other member of the team is there until at least 5 PM.

So he says one day (when I am not there) that we are moving our standups to 8:30 AM...

"Because he wants to make more use of the time and wants to get more done!"

So the next day a bunch of us miss this standup, the second day I was there in time but instead of going to the standup I sent them a picture of myself sitting in a coffee shop across the street with a message saying...

"I will be holding a meeting today at 10 AM, I expect EVERYONE to be there. If anyone on our team is absent then we will sit there and that absent person will be responsible for the time we waste waiting for them."

10 AM rolls around and the Product Owner is nowhere to be seen. The team starts complaining about the early standup and I tell them that this meeting is for me to take care of it. I tell them to sit silently and let me handle it.

We all message the PO saying the same thing...
"Come to the meeting, You are wasting our time!!!"

So he shows up at 10:20 AM and it begins.

(Now I'm going to do this as a conversation)

PO: "So I assume this is about the standup?..."

ME: "Feel free to ramble on as long as you want, you have already wasted 20 minutes of our time so we will sit here quietly and wait for you to decide you are ready to stop wasting our time with your ramblings. That's fine."

<PO then shuts up in disbelief>

ME: "So are you finished?"

PO: ...

ME: "I'm expecting an answer PO!"

PO: Yes, for now.

ME: I am moving our standups to 5 PM, end of discussion.

PO: Becuase your too lazy to be here by 8 AM?

<I expected this>

ME: No because I'm an asshole who expect everyone to conform to my schedule.

PO: ..., Well, I am not here at 5 PM.

ME: Sounds like your too "lazy" be here at 5 PM, eh?

PO: I have other things I do then.

ME: Ah, now the truth comes out. You care more about your life than our business. That's unacceptable! I personally don't care what you want to do. The fact is that we are working here and every day we end up having PO questions that need to and can't be answered because you are not here.

PO: <To the team> The standup is still at 8:30 AM.

ME: <To the team> The standup is at 5 PM. End of story. And from now on whenever we have questions before 5 for PO and he is not here we will be recording it and putting it in his report.

Then I walk away.

That day we held a standup at 5 PM. He wasn't there. He held a standup at 8:30 AM and he didn't even show up. He stayed home a video in. He then arrived in the office and said...

PO: Since no one was in the standup today we will be moving it back to 10 AM.

ME: Since PO has seen the selfishness of his ways, We will be moving the standup from 5 PM back to 10 AM.

FUCK THOSE PEOPLE

So i recently started a new Instagram account with new email ID apart from the personal Instagram account which has my friends from Facebook and even from highschool.

The new account was supposed to be a secret, part of an experiment I'm doing with my life choices. And there i only follow people that i look up to. I'm not expecting anyone from real life to follow me their and i prefer if they don't.

Nobody was supposed to know about this new account other than me. But guess what, it seems this account is being advertised to my friends from other account and some of them are following this new account. I'm 99.9% sure they are following just to get a follow back.

I'm feeling shitty about this, but i ain't gonna follow them back. If i need to see their story and photos, I'd get back on my personal account.

Guess I'll have to suck it up and be okay with fact that those "friends" will be seeing my vulnerable side.

[Warning! - Sob story ahead, you've been warned]

Dear devRant,
today someone who interviewed me in the last days, said they want to hire me.
Good news, right?
Professionally speaking yes, but... i don't know.

I always been a freelance: never had much work, but i was always free of doing whatever i liked and whenever (no fixed working hours).
I have a room in an office with 2 other people. People i love to hate (it's complicated).

But now i'm thinking about this new work they are offering me: no more freelance, no office, no flexibility. All with a 6 months contract.
What really scares me is that i will lose what i have... even the 2 co-workers that i hate/love: i have never been able to make friends, they are the thing that comes closer to friends in my life.

I'm feeling a void in front of me:
being an adult (35 years old...) and choose a work that pays, but loose... essentially what i am, what i have hardly build...
OR decline the job, and going on "Peter-Pan-style", living at my pace: free but constantly hoping of something good to happen to me

I don't know, really don't know... so many feeling are overwhelming me now.
And tomorrow i have to make a decision

Stupid ass nimble fucker of an old friend talks to me for a whole week after a reunion saying stuff like "I'm glad we got to spent time together bro and stuff", the soul eater of poop being sets up a conversation over a week talking like he was a true friend. He only had to manage it for a week more, hell he had to resist his urge for a puny ass week and I would've considered that maybe good people existed. Well the universe along with this Pseudo-panty fuck decided it was time, they pitch me an "idea". Well after demonstrating kindly that I could technically pull (n) such ideas from my virtual butthole. The guy finally believes his idea was stupid and moves away. A minute later. SURPRISE MOTHER FUCKER! he says, telling me that he got an amazing idea along and if I could help him with some stuff. Well.. What? I jumped at this amazing opportunity. Not because of the dangling-dickina of an idea, because this was my way out of this misery fucks life. Alright should buy me some time right? He would go watch some tutorials, make a logo and call me when there's a problem. We'll in the milli fucking time that even a big bang couldn't have recurred, the bitch calls and says.. Bro, sorry for disturbing you, I need some help... [What did your mother from another son tell you she only gave birth to half of you?]
APPARENTLY, THE GUY JOINED FORCES WITH SOME INTELLIGENT MINDS AND SETUP A LEAGUE OF LIKE MINDED NECROPHILES AND I COULD HELP THIS DREAM TEAM with a name and a logo.
It started, I could sense it. I wasn't THE CHOSEN ONE. Tired, I said I'll see what I can do while attempting to block his number. A few hours later, he calls from another number with no shame and asks BRO? DID YOU. Did me what you bloody dick lubricator. Yeah I watched your mom a couple times, then I got bored when I found out it was an ad.

Unfortunately no I did not tell that, instead I used the kindest words I could pull out of my frustrated ass to tell him I won't do it cause I have better things to do.

The guy comes back a few hours later with an emotional back-story of how this is his way out of his sad ass life and saying stuff like sorry to disturb you bro, I never meant to.

Oh my gawd! Give this douche manufacturer an Oscar. Actually give him two!!

————

After this traumatic experience I often feel for such people. They have around 90 years to live. They have a free fucking brain. They have money. They have less problems.

Why can't they come up with a worthy idea with all these factors to compound the ideation process.

And why on the earth can't they make the Idea on their own. I'm completely self taught so I don't see it being a problem. I could well say that I'm more knowledgeable than a few grads out of my stupid college but I don't wanna compare myself to those stupid beings.

If you have an idea? Make it. Die for it. But never approach another being, either he eats you or you eat him.

You know when you can't code something, and you start to rethink everything? (logic, life, the laws of physics) Then it works and your like "you're goddamn right."

Well here's my short story:

Been working on some logic for a week now. Client has been a twat about it. "It's a simple count, can't take that long." It's gotten to the point to where some co-workers were underestimating my skills. When I try the old "you do it then" trick, they laugh and walk away quickly.

But I did it.
I'M SO GOOD AT THIS SHIT!

Inspired by @NoMad. My philosophy is that technology is a means to and ends. We’re a tool oriented species. As it relates to software and hardware, they should be your means to achieve your ends without you needing to think. Think of riding a bicycle or driving a car. You aren’t particularly conscious of them - you just adjust input based on heuristics and reflex - while your doing the activity.

For a long time Software has been horrendously bad at this. There is almost always some setup involved; you need to front-load a plan to get to your ends. Funny enough we’re in the good days now. In the early days of GUI you did have to switch modes to achieve different things until input peripherals got better.

I’ve been using windows from 95 and to this day, though it’s gotten better it’s not trivial to setup an all in one printer and scan a document - just yesterday I had to walk my mother through it and she’s somewhat proficient. Also when things break it’s usually nightmare to fix, which is why fresh installing it periodically is s meme to this day. MS still goes to great lengths with their UI so that most people can still get most of their daily stuff done without a manual.

I started Linux in University when I was offered an intro course on the shell. I’ve been using it professionally ever since. While it’s good at making you feel powerful, it requires intricate knowledge to achieve most things. Things almost never go smoothly no matter how much practice you have, especially if you need to compile tools from source. It also has very little in the ways of safe guards to prevent you from hurting yourself. Sure you might be able to fix it if you press harder but it’s less stress to just fresh install. There is also nothing, NOTHING more frustrating than following documentation to the T and it just doesn’t work! It is my day job to help companies with exactly this. Can’t really give an honest impression of the GUI ux as the distros have varying schools of thoughts with their desktop environments. Even The popular one Ubuntu did weird things for a while. In my humble opinion, *nix is better at powering the internet than being a home computer your grandma can use.

Now after being in the thick of things, priorities change and you really just want to get things done. In 2015 I made the choice to go Mac. It has been one of my more interesting experiences. Honestly, I wish more distros would adopt its philosophy. Elementary only adopted the dock. It’s just so intuitive. How do you install an application? You tap the installer, a box will pop up then you drag the icon to the application folder (in the same box) boom you are done. No setup wizards. How to uninstall? Drag icon from app folder to trash can. Boom done. How to open your app? Tap launch pad and you see all your apps alphabetically just click the one you want. You can keep your frequent ones on the dock. Settings is just another app in launchpad and everything is well labeled. You can even use your printers scanner without digging through menus. You might have issues with finder if your used to windows though and the approach to maximizing and minimizing windows will also get you for a while.

When my Galaxy 4 died I gave iPhone a chance with the SE. I can tell you that for most use cases, there is no discernible difference between iOS and modern android outside of a few fringe features. What struck me though was the power of an ecosystem. My Mac and iPhone just work well together. If they are on the same network they just sync in the background - you need to opt in. My internet went down, my iMac saw that my iPhone had 4g and gave me the option to connect. One click your up. Similar process with s droid would be multi step. You have airdrop which just allows you to send files to another Apple device near you with a tap without you even caring what mechanism it’s using. After google bricked my onHub router I opted to get Apples airport series. They are mostly interchangeable and your Mac and iOS device have a native way to configure it without you needing to mess with connecting to it yourself and blah. Setup WiFi on one device, all your other Apple devices have it. Lots of other cool stuff happen as you add more Apple devices. My wife now as a MacBook, an IPad s d the IPhone 8. She’s been windows android her life but the transition has been sublime. With family sharing any software purchase works for all of us, and not just apples stuff like iCloud and music, everything.

Hate Apple all you want but they get the core tenet that technology should just work without you thinking. That’s why they are the most valued company in the world

How I knew this was for me.... I didn't.
It kind of just happened in the natural order of things.

I was once a wii young lad who had a dream, and that dream became a smashing pile of being broke, jobless and unemployable, not a great way to start off that early life but hey, it was what it was.

So I looked at my computer one day, lousy dusty Pentium 4 with a massive 80GB HDD, in the corner, and went... fuck it, this thing is going to make me money.

So from there I picked up my old high school book on VB6 and on with it I went, forcing my self to make that calculator I couldn't do in school and a few other things, from there I got into a course for webDev, not uni, and after being dropped from that course ... that's a story for another time, I basically said fuck the system and my journey into webDev took on a life of its own.

Starting with frontend (back when layouts where tables and css was font colours) and IE5 was still a thing, and progressing into JS for a fucktonne of "onClick" events, then backend... I went down the .PHP3, PHP4 hadn't been released yet, but at the time .ASP was a thing too although it was complicated as fuck.

For many years it was just 1 thing after another, picking up MySQL, screwing around with databases, setting up linux servers, gobbling up Python a couple years later and started automating different things, just building site after site, until one day I landed a professional gig - not just casual freelance stuff, and from there when you think you know a lot, what I thought I knew got blown out the window and imposter syndrome sunk in, but I kept pushing ahead.

That saying "you don't know what you don't know", it has meaning here, you don't know what you don't know... but the moment you know you don't know enough, you either crumble or you keep waterboarding yourself in knowledge to reduce the unknown.

And somewhere along the line I accepted this path.
It may have taken me a few years to get off my feet but I'm glad I took that first step.

Story of my life...

Me and my friend were having a coffee in a coffee shop and then she told me the story of how she got fired.
So back then storing data on cloud was not that convenient and employees in her company used to carry softwares and other stuff in pendrives.
This one day after completing a MAJOR project for a very irritating client, my friend and her team decided to take the day off and celebrate this victory in a pub.
She got drunk and then came the call of her boss saying that they needed to showcase the software right then to the client.

Being always responsible and committed to her work my friend had decided to keep a backup in her pendrive which she kept in her breast pocket of her shirt.

So she goes into the washroom to freshen up, bends down near the toilet to vomit out liquor and lo!

The pendrive slid all the way down from her pocket into the toilet sink.
She didn't notice and flushed and down went the whole project into the sewer.

Moral - life fucks you in ridiculous ways.

Ps. She left her laptop at her home which was very far from her office and the pub. The team had to go to her home first to retain the project and eventually got seriously late. Boss didn't like it as the client was a real pain in the ass and this was a big project too and being the team lead my friend was supposed to deliver as expected.
She got fired.

Just wanted to fix one little thing. Ended up with 20 commits for 35 other little things, three branches and realizing at the end of the day that the one little thing is still not fixed. Story of my life.

The story of my life:
Me(as a child): I wanna write content to which people scream while reading. :D
Me(as a grown up): Ended up writing error messages for windows. (._.')

I wanna be a millionaire, so fuckin bad.

So, throughout this week there have been massive trials and tribulations regarding my lack of coding practice however through many nights and days coding I have almost completed the task I was set last week.

I didn't realise how out of practice I was so this posed as a big challenge for me. However I pulled through and tomorrow it will be ready to send for the interview!

I also have another test to do in vanilla php - Typical blog which would be such a doddle now I'm back in the zone. I just have to remember I'm not using Laravel!

The sense of accomplishment is real and I'm so relieved I've come this far. Maybe I will have this career of my dreams which I rightfully deserve.

Below is Stripe, doing random tests :)

balancing school work between life and sport and programming is so hard. i mean, school is complete bs. what’s the point?

ffs it’s not *just* that im never gonna use the shit im taught, but that if it dont learn it, im punished. even in some classes (code.org), information that we’re taught is blatantly incorrect. either way, being able to find the foci or an ellipse and the latus rectum (hehe) of a hyperbola isnt going to make it easier when i get my job and just adjust css to my bosses’s specifications. i maintain a 4.0, and i fucking hate it. my friends are working hard, and getting into mit for racial diversity, while im doing just as much work, for what?

i want out. i really do. but this redundant thing called a degree is holding me back. i really want to have some way of proving my skills without a degree. i’m currently building a social media application i believe will take off, but frankly, i dont care.

take off or not, hopefully it will be enough to prove my skills. i’ve been working on this for two weeks now, and, well, that’s my story.

A little backstory first I was doing a project which had 2 phases for a class about databases. We worked in groups of 4. My group was with some friends of mine so I thought everything was going to be well divided and easy. Was I so fucking wrong. One of them always told me he was going to work but then did nothing, the other went on a vacation and I thought the third one had died. I had to single handedly write a story about the database, the clients requirements, design the conceptual logical and physical models and write a report of about 50 pages alone while balancing my other work. When I delivered this first phase one of them told me that he was sorry and he would do everything in the second phase. My dumb ass thought well maybe he had his reasons so I let it go. I waited like 2 weeks before starting to work on this because I was waiting for him to do something. A week before delivery he asked me for the initial database (which I had already put up on github) so he could start doing stuff. I told him I had already done it he said he would do the report conclusion. I waited and you know what happened. When I delivered the second project I snapped and told him he could go fuck himself. He told me that he didnt have internet at home (our home) but I knew he was at a mutual friends house playing on the ps4. I talked with him and said he should think about his fucking life because I know if somebody asked anything about databases he would know fuck all. After telling him he was worthless and that I would never be in a project with him again, I didnt talk with him for a while and I still talk about it (and I'm still pissed) with other friends who had similar experiences.

#whenProdBreaks

$data = ["some","predefined","data","set"];

// :/ this suddenly broke
//$response = $this->makeSoapRequest($data);

/**
Due to prod failure, Hot-swap soap for rest - don't ask how we took the same input, spun the shit out of the response and recreated the same data structure that the soap request made, but it works... and that's all you will ever have to know.
**/

$response = $this->makeRestRequest($data);

//process the response
$this->process($response);

Starting a new project:

1.Think of a new/exciting idea

2.Start imagining and planning in my head

3.Start working on my idea

4.Give up mid-way

5. Get depressed

6. Get back at it way behind schedule and still not complete it

7. Go back to step 1 except that's basically how I start something new and not just a project :)