Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
I know a guy, about 50 years old. He is a self-taught programmer since he was young, and he has always used Visual Basic (never anything newer than VB6).
He once needed to interface with a web application I wrote, so I asked him to send me a POST HTTP request. He didn't know what I was talking about. No notion of REST, sockets, HTTP, nothing.
The he showed me his code. Actually, his codes. He had multiple copies of the project, one for each version, and he even kept multiple variations of the software in different separate folders. He probably doesn't know what "version control" even means.
You think this is messy. You didn't see the actual code (it's a huge application!).
Spaghetti all over the place. Meaningful variable names, what are they? Default names for the controls, like button1, button2, etc, with forms with more than 30 buttons and text fields. This was the most incomprensibile code I have ever seen.
You might think that this guy is just a hobbyist.
No.
He sells his applications. To companies. They are obviously full of errors, but they buy them.
Now, if you're still with me, two questions come into my mind:
- why?? I hate this, because it's impossible to prove to a non-technical person that this is *not* software development.
- how do I know that, to someone else, I am not like him? How can I be sure that I know and will know what needs to be known?4 -
Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.1 -
I just got hired as a systems administrator at a company that develops web forms. NO ONE in the company has heard of git. They don't use any kind of version control.
I'm a little worried...6 -
Here is my list of horrible techs which are common in my current and previous workplace which should be extinct ASAP:
SAP
SharePoint
Java applets
Java Swing desktop apps
C# Windows Forms desktop apps
ASP/JSP
VB
RemoteApp
Shitty insecure php web apps
Micorsoft Access DB
Windows XP
Windows Servers
Closed Linux-based appliances which lack many basic GNU software and are forbidden to tamper with
Every single Symantec product
Post yours below19 -
"Ad targeters are pulling data from your browser’s password manager"
---
Well, fuck.
"It won't be easy to fix, but it's worth doing"
Just check for visibility or like other password managers handle it iirc: assign a unique identifier based on form content and fill that identifier only.
---
"Nearly every web browser now comes with a password manager tool, a lightweight version of the same service offered by plugins like LastPass and 1Password. But according to new research from Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, those same managers are being exploited as a way to track users from site to site.
The researchers examined two different scripts — AdThink and OnAudience — both of are designed to get identifiable information out of browser-based password managers. The scripts work by injecting invisible login forms in the background of the webpage and scooping up whatever the browsers autofill into the available slots. That information can then be used as a persistent ID to track users from page to page, a potentially valuable tool in targeting advertising."
Source: https://theverge.com/2017/12/...
14 -
update of after i got fired: after the fuck developers company llc was left with no developers, there was a girl there that i didn't mention earlier because as i said: the story is more complex. she came there with good intentions but after she knew the cruel nature of fuck and shit she became notoriously mad, we're still in contact with her so it's nice to hear from her some of the gags that happen there, one of which my really intelligent ex-boss the wordpress DEVELOPER himself told her to finish one of the projects i was working on, and a friend of mine who is infamous of his coding shenanigans left it in my hands before he left as well a couple of months prior (well he was fed up before us, and when i told him to stay with us he said "dude just listen to the motherfucker's voice, i can't do this anymore", my lovely ex-boss has this equally lovely screechy high pitched voice that caused me tinnitus), it's an asp.net project, uses web forms, and a lot of apis, the database is sql server, standard shit but there's no original creation script and i fucked up the only existing database which was in a local computer he used to like calling a SERVER, now to the point: this girl is not a developer, she was however working as a reporter?? kind of like jaspersoft the human or sap crystal woman and she claims that she's pretty good at it, and she's a genuinely good person who was dragged to hell just because she wanted to be close to her daddy (she was working in a different city with more than double the salary she's given now), but she's rich and her dada convinced her to come. she's currently learning java ee on her own so she'd probably leave in the next two months, in her resume she wrote that she know php, well i know php you know php we all know php (the syntax) kind of like mr. shit who passed the sololearn php CERTIFICATE and couldn't stop telling his boss and his boss a.k.a my ex-boss goes "sweet!". going back to the punchline of this rant: she told us that he came to her and asked her to finish the project with php.12
-
Did some updates to an older Web Forms website built by a previous SENIOR developer who is a notoriously horrible developer.
Now before I start, you have to understand this guy studied at a University and had been working for at least two years before I even started working. He is supposed to know the basic shit mentioned below.
This also happened a couple of days ago, so I have calmed down since then so I apologise for the relaxed tone. My next rant will contain a lot more swearing.
This fucking guy did the stupidest shit imaginable.
On the details view of a post|page|article|product|anything that would require a details view this jackass would load the data from the DB.
Using an OleDbConnection, OleDbDataAdapter, DataTable and the poorest writter fucking sql statements you have ever seen. All of these declared in the Page_Load method.
There was literally no reason for him to use OleDb instead of Sql, but he simply did not know any better.
He especially liked: "select * from tbl where id = " & Request("T") & ""
ZERO fucking checks to see if the value is even passed or valid, nothing. He did not even check whether the DataTable had any rows.
He then proceeded to use only the Heading column of the returned row to change the page's title.
Stupidly I assumed the aspx page will be in a better state. Fuck NO!
This fucktard went, added server tags to the opening of the asp:Content tag, copied that shit he used to fetch the data and pasted it between the server tags.
He did not know how to access the DataTable mentioned above from the aspx page!
He did this on every fucking project he worked on. Any place that required <%= %> to display data instead of using asp server controls, this cunt copied whatever was written in the code behind and pasted everything between server tags.
Fuck I could go on forever, but I think this is enough for my first rant.
2 -
Two types of people. I see this way to often in the community, and yes, I know this to be true to every industry, but being that I am in I.T I will thus focus just on I.T.
We never know about the situation of other people, we can always tell them that it is natural to be confused at first and they should learn to look at the docs, but to be nasty just for the sake of it, because some screen protects you from catching hands.... that is the legit personification of the fat ugly little troll nerd that is so pathetic that he needs to shit on others over the internet.
Lads, web development can be complex, but it is one of the lowest forms of development, certainly not complex and glamorous enough to act as if we were gods...do we really need to be that mean and nasty?
28 -
Before becoming a developer, I used to work as a sales rep at this company that spent a good amount of time building what they believed to be an innovative state-of-the-art “code generator”. It was basically a scaffolding tool for generating software.
They were using it to auto generate customized iOS and Android native mobile app templates, along with a web backed.
The problem was that the generated code was shit, and the developers on the team basically spent more time fixing bugs than if they had built everything from scratch. But their passion for the product meant they just kept using it.
For some reason they never fixed issues in the original templates, so basically all the bugs that were found, kept showing up with each new app!
I have never seen apps like this that essentially had more bugs than features. Opening more than 10 app screen meant the app would freeze and crash. Sign up forms were actually dummy forms. The list goes on...
All the apps had the same shitty UI. For example, Product pages had a product image area that was like 5% of the screen view!
Last but not least, apps had a backend IP address hardcoded pointing to a server with an IP address that was temporary. So one day they had to restart the server and suddenly all customer apps stopped working and required a software update to work!
It was amazing seeing how a team of 3 developers trying to fix messy autogenerated code, couldn’t accomplish what was essentially a website on an app that I managed to build in my free time.
That’s how I knew it was time to quit my job and code full time.2 -
I work as the entire I.T. department of a small business which products are web based, so naturally, I do tech support in said website directly to our clients.
It is normal that the first time a new client access our site they run into questions, but usually they never call again since it is an easy website.
There was an unlucky client which ran into unknown problems and blamed the server.
I couldn't determine the exact cause, but my assumption was a network error for a few seconds which made the site unavailable and the user tried to navigate the site through the navbar and exited the process he was doing. It goes without saying but he was very angry.
I assured him there was nothing wrong with the site, and told him that it would not be charged for this reason. Finally i told him that if he had the same problem, to let me know instead of trying to fix it himself.
The next time he used the site I received a WhatsApp message saying:
- there is something clearly wrong with the site... It has been doing this for so long!
And attached was a 10 second video which showed that he filled a form and never pressed send (my forms have small animations and text which indicates when the form is being send and error messages when an error occurs, usually not visible because the data they send is small and the whole process is quite fast)
To which I answer
- It seems that the form has not been send that's why it looks that way
- So... What an I supposed to do?
- click send
It took a while but the client replied
- ok
To this day I wonder how much time did the client stared at the form cursing the server. -
An IT guy told me during a phone meeting set up to talk about how he builds these web forms on a dumb CRM for a client of ours that he has been an IT professional for 25 years.
He says he doesn't know much about the codey stuff.
What do IT professionals do again?8 -
>be web designer at last company
>be put into marketing Dept
>do everything from design to dev, working closely with engineers in IT Dept
>whyamihere.png
>leave to join new tech startup
>get job title "Web Developer"
>startup forms a new marketing Dept
>be put into it
3 -
/*
"Not wk135, but blah blah blah"
Please don't misuse wk135 (Sorry)
It's about coding tests
Thank you. */
=>
A company took their technical test on this really weird website. There was a Windows Narrator guy's voice giving instructions while a timer was running. I had to flash my ID to the webcam and then fit my head on an outline on the screen. It was for a web dev position. I had to speak into the microphone to answer the Narrator's questions and then send the video to them. The questions were weird and hypothetical, mostly. I just thought that their process was dumb and unnecessary.
=>
I don't like aptitude and algebraic tests. One company, I remember, had their test on Google Forms. For some multiple choice questions, they put check boxes instead of radio buttons. So, I could just blaze through it selecting all options. Some of the questions had their first option as "All of the above" 🤔. Fortunately, I didn't pass the test.
=>
The company I'm interning with, starting from next month, had a good interview process. They asked me questions on JavaScript, CSS, and a few on algorithms and data structures. I was also given a task where I had to make a css animation of trees. I'm glad they didn't have an algebra entry test.
😊 -
I get an email about an hour before I get into work: Our website is 502'ing and our company email addresses are all spammed! I login to the server, test if static files (served separately from site) works (they do). This means that my upstream proxy'd PHP-FPM process was fucked. I killed the daemon, checked the web root for sanity, and ran it again. Then, I set up rate limiting. Who knew such a site would get hit?
Some fucking script kiddie set up a proxy, ran Scrapy behind it, and crawled our site for DDoS-able URLs - even out of forms. I say script kiddie because no real hacker would hit this site (it's minor tourism in New Jersey), and the crawler was too advanced for joe shmoe to write. You're no match for well-tuned rate-limiting, asshole!1 -
Wow so much hate for WordPress. Le me to the rescue 💀
Yes WP is bloated and crappy and full of security issues etc etc. Agreed. That doesn't mean it is useless though.
It is alright to use for someone who is not really good with web, someone who just needs a blog, someone who just needs a home page, about page and contact form with a possibility of updating photo and text once or two times a month.
It is not suitable for e-commerce nor lots of transactions/forms involving websites.
As long as you know what kind of horse/vehicle you are on, you won't end up in the dirt.4 -
Suck my hairy asshole, devs who disable paste for web forms. Or more likely, management softs who read in a trade magazine that paste is bad.1
-
Putting a PDF Form on the Web this morning.
Money is money... but god damn people are fucking stupid.5 -
As a web designer/developer I hate this recent trend of very light gray text fields on forms that have a white background. I don't want to have to peer at my screen for objects. My vision is average, so why would a client want this?
5 -
In cour company we need an online dashboard that monitors logfiles from various interface processes.
My collage and me, the newest company members (for almost 2 years) get the task to build this and get it presented as some intern project where we can try out some more recent technologies/frameworks.
Now in the first meeting our senior team leader told us we shoeldn't use the noew hot buzzword js frameworks.
Reason? They are not proven and wil probably lose popularity next year and we don't want to migrate everything every half year. Plus he had negeative experiences with Angular in some project he had to work on, probably just because his limited JS skils.
So he wants us to use jQuery to build a modern web application.
I get it you don't want to migrate to TheNewHotThing(tm) every year. Guess what? You fucking don't have to. If I build sonting in Vue.js now, it won't stop working when a new framework comes along.
Look at our own fucking ASP.NET Web Forms prooject, that stil works. Just don't deny the usability of modern frameworks.
5 -
JSF: Yeah, we make it so can focus on what's important and you never have to write HTML or CSS like those lowly web developers.
Also JSF: You can't nest <h:form> components because nested forms are invalid HTML. Oh, that breaks the composite component you were trying to use? Ha, fuck off.
Primefaces: You know how you can just provide an ID and OverlayPanel will open on its own? Well, for a Dialog, the API is completely different. Here's a glob of JavaScript in an onclick event.
I swear this entire thing was regurgitated by a murder of seagulls.1 -
As I already said on devrant, I'm a freelance web developer and I also often sell my services for teaching, loving that. Currently I'm teaching PHP with 30 students and it's going very well.
But yesterday, I received an offer for giving another course next month, this time on HTML and CSS, for a company I don't know yet. Almost every line of this email is wrong, outdated by 20 years, or just basically meaningless...
So I thought I could do my best to translate this as close as possible to the original, preserving the wrong formulations too, just for you devranters fellas.
"Hello,
I have an offer for a 2 days course for 5 people (level 1+ and/or 2), on HTML5 and CSS3. Below, the program :
1. XHTML AND CSS2 INTRODUCTION
Advantages and benefits of change
Understanding compatibility for different versions of browsers
HTML, XHTML, CSS edition tools : presentation of the different tools
The CSS language : different types of selectors : class of selector, identifier of selector, contextual selectors, grouped selectors
Blocks of text, boxes of text
The CSS1, CSSP, CSS2 properties
Relative and absolute measures units
2. LAYOUT TECHNIQUES
Full CSS, XHTML websites demo
Positioning with the position property, positioning with the float property
Columns creation
Layout for forms
Layout for data tables
Layout for menus
3. INTRODUCTION TO SVG (SCALABLE VECTOR GRAPHICS)
Role and importance of SVG
Using SVG on client side : basic shapes
SVG structure of document, tags examples
Using CSS styles with SVG
Different integration methods for SVG in a XHTML document
4. OPTIMISATION OF JAVASCRIPT CODE
Introduction to DOM and Javascript
Access to document objects : different access techniques, using this keyword, create elements dynamically
Positioning elements with the help of Javascript : positionning elements relatively to the mouse, move elements
Show/hide elements for creating hierarchical menus
Code optimisation techniques : using objects, objects litterals, loops optimisation
Can you please give me your availability ?"
Seriously...
CSS-fucking-1 ! Is it a course for dinosaurs ?
...And if only my rant was just about the program...
It's totally impossible to cover all these subjects in only 2 days with people of different levels and experience.
The guy exactly said to me : "don't worry about the program, it's an old text but they agreed to it anyway. They just want to learn HTML and CSS, some of them already know it but want to learn more, and the others are total beginers.".
And here is the meaning for the "(level 1+ and/or 2)" part in the email.
So... Surprizingly, I accepted the offer, but asked for at least a 3rd day. I'm waiting for their answer, but I'll do it anyway, adapting the course content to the actual students knowledge. I need the money, after all.
Wish me luck...
It's just sad that these formation companies are selling bullshit to clients that just want to learn something useful. It's too often like that, they sell shitty/useless programs and we have to catch up in real time with students that don't understand why they don't learn what was told to them.3 -
I have an idea and I want some feedback.
I'm the only web developer and I've been updating our systems so they can be maintainable. Previously we have used Wordpress for landing pages which is complete overkill So here's the idea:
Static sites for landing pages and any forms that would need to filled out would be on a separate site.
Ok so here me out. First the landing pages barely need any maintenance so using pure HTML/CSS/JS wouldn't be a problem. This means I can strip away all of the crap from Wordpress and make the load times faster. Second all of the landing pages forms would be hosted in a single place making analytics easier for the reporting system.
Really I just despise Wordpress and am trying any practical reason to not use it as much as possible. Oh and don't worry I'll use preprocessors and minify the production files.7 -
Took a web accessibility course somewhat recently. Here’s the list of typical accessibility problems according to those who use assistive technologies, from the most common to the least common:
1. CAPTCHA
2. Buttons and links that don’t work
3. Lacking/incorrect alt attribute
4. No input labels
5. Sudden layout shifts/content changes
6. Lacking/wrong headings
7. No keyboard access
8. Too many links
9. No skip link in header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)
10. Lacking/broken search
11. Complicated and/or long forms
12. No closed captions for videos
13. Bad grammar
14. Bad contrast
15. Custom checkboxes
16. Custom dropdowns
17. Font size
I never knew CAPTCHA was THE worst offender. I also never knew that font size was perhaps the least problematic aspect.11 -
3.5 fucking hours wasted. Trying to get a fucking webform to post using smtp and swiftmailer. Fucking webforms, I fucking hate them. Done it now though.
-
So in my current workplace we have an IT department of... 7-8 people, with 3 developers (or 2.5, but that's debatable)
The oldest dev is old school, over 65 now came from Visual Basic, of course, and is a father of department's director - this is a story in of itself, but besides the point of this rant
Anywho, this dev is of course in this workplace way longer than me, and historically is in charge of finance and Microsoft CRM systems.
Guess the reason why Microsoft CRM was chosen at all in the company?
Because dev said he is not good with creating web forms from scratch, and apparently with MSCRM you can craft them without much trouble.
Yes, that's it, our MSCRM is used as a web application with custom forms that store data into custom DB tables that dev creates... nothing to do with actual CRM use cases.3 -
I fucking hate asp.net web forms. Today we implemented listboxes, so we expected them to just be a wrapper for HTML listboxes. NOPE! They are simply selects. Why they decided to hijack the name and do this, I don't know. That does explain why they don't have multiple columns like true listboxes.
So glad that for the next project, which we should start by the end of May, we'll be moving to MVC and .Net core. This shit is so stupid!3 -
No offense to anyone who uses it, but I can't stand ASP.net web forms. It just feels so wrong. Then to add the unexplainable behaviour that fixes it's self after creating a new file and pasting in the previous contents without changes.
Asdfdhfjjdsha
Sorry needed that off my chest :) -
So I want to inform my internet provider of my new phone number, but I can't remember any of my login info for their web interface because I never used it. Luckily, they have a "forgot my username" function, where I submit my email address and get a confirmation that my username has been sent to me.
Yet, I just don't get said email. I try again, but no avail. So I just guess my username and use their "forgot password" form, which – hooray! – confirms it just sent my an email.
But I don't get any email. I retry, I retry after a day, but no automatic response. I remember a incident a few years back when I didn't get some automatically generated mails from a company and decide to contact their support if they could just reset my password manually.
Nearly a week passes.
Now I received the answer. I just don't have an account.
Lesson learned: Next time I'll just input garbage first to check if those forms are sane. -
Most of us have scary stories about professors that think that they know about what they are talking about when it comes to teaching comp sci subjects. Shit is so backwards in most parts of the world with teachers showing outdated or completely pointless tech.
A friend called me the other day asking for classic ASP help because it was being used in his web class. Another was asking me about flipping c cgi web scripting. Wtf are schools teaching? Having the drive to LEARN actuall useful topics that are relevant on the market is hard enough as it is...shouldn't schools help at least a little bit? I was lucky, we were thaught Java, Python, cpp, js, sql, html5, css3, php, ruby and we had classes for node (for those interested) and asp.net mvc. Those were RELEVANT and good classes and while some outdated tech was good the rest is just bullshit. Specially since most teachers have 0 market value as develpers...but hey!! Wtf do I know! Of course my word is shit against all them doctorate and master degrees.
Gimme a break. School can be great. But a lot of the leadership there is toxic af for our industry. And while I appreciate the effort in me being thaught modern languages (and thaught is a hard word since I already knew how to program way before going to school) i still remember a teacher taking points away from an assignment for not using switch statements in Python...despite my explaining that there was no such thing (you can go around it by using a lil technique using functions, its pretty cool..pero no mames)
Or what about the time I mentioned to a fellow student how he could use markup for having more control with his windows forms while the very same teacher contradicted me saying that shit was not possible. Or the guy at the school in which I work teaching intro to programming using fucking vba...fk man if you are going the BASIC route at least teach them b4j or something fuuuuck.
I had good teachers, but they were always cast asside by dptmnt heads as if they knew better. I just hate pendejo teachers I really do.
Chinguen a su madre, bola de babosos.11 -
To me this is one of the most interesting topics. I always dream about creating the perfect programming class (not aimed at absolute beginners though, in the end there should be some usable software artifact), because I had to teach myself at least half of the skills I need everyday.
The goal of the class, which has at least to be a semester long, is to be able to create industry-ready software projects with a distributed architecture (i.e. client-server).
The important thing is to have a central theme over the whole class. Which means you should go through the software lifecycle at least once.
Let's say the class consists of 10 Units à ~3 hours (with breaks ofc) and takes place once a week, because that is the absolute minimum time to enable the students to do their homework.
1. Project setup, explanation of the whole toolchain. Init repositories, create SSH keys for github/bitbucket, git crash course (provide a cheat sheet).
Create a hello world web app with $framework. Run the web server, let the students poke around with it. Let them push their projects to their repositories.
The remainder of the lesson is for Q&A, technical problems and so on.
Homework: Read the docs of $framework. Do some commits, just alter the HTML & CSS a bit, give them your personal touch.
For the homework, provide a $chat channel/forum/mailing list or whatever for questions where not only the the teacher should help, but also the students help each other.
2. Setup of CI/Build automation. This is one of the hardest parts for the teacher/uni because the university must provide the necessary hardware for it, which costs money. But the students faces when they see that a push to master automatically triggers a build and deploys it to the right place where they can reach it from the web is priceless.
This is one recurring point over the whole course, as there will be more software artifacts beside the web app, which need to be added to the build process. I do not want to go deeper here, whether you use Jenkins, or Travis or whatev and Ansible or Puppet or whatev for automation. You probably have some docker container set up for this, because this is a very tedious task for initial setup, probably way out of proportion. But in the end there needs to be a running web service for every student which they can reach over a personal URL. Depending on the students interest on the topic it may be also better to setup this already before the first class starts and only introduce them to all the concepts in a theory block and do some more coding in the second half.
Homework: Use $framework to extend your web app. Make it a bit more user interactive with buttons, forms or the like. As we still have no backend here, you can output to alert or something.
3. Create a minimal backend with $backendFramework. Only to have something which speaks with the frontend so you can create API calls going back and forth. Also create a DB, relational or not. Discuss DB schema/model and answer student questions.
Homework: Create a form which gets transformed into JSON and sent to the backend, backend stores the user information in the DB and should also provide a query to view the entry.
4. Introduce mobile apps. As it would probably too much to introduce them both to iOS and Android, something like React Native (or whatever the most popular platform-agnostic framework is then) may come in handy. Do the same as with the minimal web app and add the build artifacts to CI. Also talk about getting software to the app/play store (a common question) and signing apps.
Homework: Use the view API call from the backend to show the data on the mobile. Play around with the mobile project to display it in a nice way.
5. Introduction to refactoring (yes, really), if we are really talking about JS here, mention things like typescript, flow, elm, reason and everything with types which compiles to JS. Types make it so much easier to refactor growing codebases and imho everybody should use it.
Flowtype would make it probably easier to get gradually introduced in the already existing codebase (and it plays nice with react native) but I want to be abstract here, so that is just a suggestion (and 100% typed languages such as ELM or Reason have so much nicer errors).
Also discuss other helpful tools like linters, formatters.
Homework: Introduce types to all your API calls and some important functions.
6. Introduction to (unit) tests. Similar as above.
Homework: Write a unit test for your form.
(TBC)4 -
Start my Monday by trying to decipher non-tech people's "bug" reports whee they submit a small portion of a web page where some problem occurs, when I asked them to include the ENTIRE browser window including the URL of the page they're on.
Business Analyst says most of the forms aren't working, because they're not creating leads in the CRM system. I made a column in the form list where I explicitly mention the form submission destination, such as email, CRM, newsletter, or some combo of these. Forms work, she just can't read.
Just can't win.3 -
So as a student developer with years of background in web development (including both front and backend), c++, java and c#, I was more than surprised when I found out my Informatics assignment hadnt received the proper excellent mark. In fact both me and a friend of mine who has been working with C++ in particular for years got a --mark.
// The assignment was the most simple Windows Forms Application with 2 buttons and a textbox
When we asked about that the teacher said we hadn't labeled the buttons and textboxes, though we had actually taken our time to put labels next to each UI element that would need usage directions.
Though what she meant was renaming the actual variable names, those being textBox1, button1 and button2.
We of course got really mad, because w both follow the accepted naming conventions for each of the languages we write in. Arguing was to no avail. Even telling her that variable naming was not in the assignment instructions was pointless as she said it had been self explanatory..
The others for whom computers are powered by magic, did their assignments as they had memorized everything that teacher had shown them. Why? Because she didn't teach them how to code in the first place. So they copied what would work.
Fucked up educational system, sadly nothing new..
Oh and btw, the naming she uses and teaches students to use is:
button1 - btname
label1- lbname
textBox1 - tbyear2 -
ASP.NET Web Forns?
Can't tell how many times I printed out the page lifecycle diagram for myself or a coworker. So many hours lost trying to figure out which lifecycle hook to use for a specific scenario and then have it all break down because something new was added to the feature. Or figuring when data can be bound, or doing some hack because things break when handling a POST event or some shit.
Overly abstract piece of technological excrement. Might as well express the thing in contemporary dance and check that into source control instead of that ungodly mess.
The switch to AJAX and API calls was such a huge relief it's almost hard to explain in words (I can do a dance tho). And then upgrading to AngularJS, man, worlds apart...
I don't care how much they pay me (okay, you got me...), I'm never touching Web Forms again. -
Continuing my saga, I'm now tasked with creating a .NET Web Form app and then converting it to ASP.NET Core as a proof of concept.
Problems:
- Web Forms are not supported in Core and are not planned to
- After 3 weeks I still do not have a work laptop
-- My personal laptop is a Chrome book running Linux
--- I can't install VS2017 on my laptop, I need it for this project.
- Working from home, where I have the resources available, is apparently against company policy (I'm not 100% on this yet, can't find it myself)
- I'm likely going to be sent back to the offline computer lab at a different location to work on this, where I doubt the programs/packages are installed
Perfect.4 -
Working for a large client converting paper forms to the web. Stated goals, simplify data entry for clients, improve data quality, reduce resourcing in backend human processing.
We met to review prototype and discuss workflow questions. Crazy deadlines, with the usual changing scope creep.
We start to point out the need for data validation, to shorten # of questions based on answers.
Business says no. All forms should be submittable regardless of what user enters, don’t put validations in because all that warning messaging confuses them and takes up more time.
Web form should behave like the paper copy....
Welcome to 1975!!! This is why 2018 won’t be like 2018...1 -
I had a complaint about a product I bought from a store a while back. I was resistant to taking into the store because the people there make you feel like you are stealing when trying to return a defective DVD. So I contacted the store via their website. I put in my first and last name and my email in the message to them. This is an excerpt of what I got back:
---
Response By Email (Triston) (12/12/2019 03:56 AM)
Hi Phuckin,
Your satisfaction is our top priority and your comments have been forwarded to your local Store. The management team there will take appropriate action and you can expect a response from them within three business days.
<store specific info>
Customer By (Phuckin Chit) (12/11/2019 03:40 PM)
<details of my complaint, etc>
---
Apparently I had created an account with this store a while back when I was angry. Hence my name being reported as Phuckin Chit. Even though I entered my name in the form it used the stored name associated with my email. At this point I am not sure they are going to help me.1 -
I'm working in a company as fullstack developer where we use Angular for frontend, and C# for backend, lots of cool things to learn, for instance, we need a way to dynamically load forms controlled from backend, not something that is common but interesting to solve.
However, I feel sometimes I don't belong here, not because the things we do is not fun, it's just that most of the developers have very little experience with building web apps. And this means I don't develop as much as I wanted towards the web path.
I was informed before starting here, that 3 web devs would be hired including me, and they have experience with Angular. After I was hired, one guy decided to jump off (skilled web dev), and it was only me and the other guy left. The other guy has little experience with the web in general, but extremely good in terms of architecture and programming patterns in C#.
The salary is fine, but it's just I don't feel the growth I was expecting. Most of the things I learn on my own, which I've done in the past years.
I'm thinking that if I work in a place with skilled web devs, I'll learn lots of great things which I don't have to search all the time.3 -
The more I work on the backend forms validation side of my .NET Core project the more I understand how to fuck up web forms in general... 😈
Never underestimate the necessity of a backend validation other then the frontend one. 👿
4 -
So I don't know if any of you know what BPA (Business Professionals of America) is (and its okay if you dont because its for highschoolers)
They hold competitions for us each year and Im going to be on my classes web dev team as the back-end python programmer. Weve already assigned everyone to their languages and were going to study so we can be prepared.
For the competition we have a few months to work on a website that actually works, front end, back end and all. There has to be forms and maybe even signup sheets that actually work.
Its really exciting and I'm definitely going to post the adventure of programming it along the way on devRant!!
If you wanna learn more about BPA go to their website, if your curious about what some kids get to experience then I'd suggest checking it out!!! -
After my first ever "thing" I wrote (see story here: https://devrant.com/rants/2132057/...) fast forward 7 years to my first project when I /* thought I */ knew what I was doing and didn't write just for myself.
Preset:
I worked in a very small company distributing various materials for medical research, many of them bought from manufacturers and then relabelled as if we had produced it. One part of that was to indicate a production batch / lot number. Before I started there, they would just invent a random number on the spot and use that on the new label and somewhere write it down to document that, I at least used an Excel sheet to have numbers prepared and document it on the same line (still crappy but more than nothing). After some time my boss got the idea to have all of that documented in MS Access (because that was the only database he knew). I had just started with HTML, PHP and MySQL in apprentice school around the same time, so I proposed writing an appropriate solution using those and got permission.
-----
I started coding and learnt so much that I didn't need to pay attention at school anymore as I was years ahead of the curriculum (the others were struggling with If-statements and the likes).
When I was done with Version 1.0 of my web application, it was of course still crude as hell. I used html forms to save input (like editor.php -> submit to save.php, do save -> redirect to editor.php), but it did what had not been done before: keeping it all together and force people to do it properly. 2 years later I wrote a version 2, adding features that showed to be useful and with improved structure, as my last project before leaving, and as far as I know, they are still using it, which is at this point 2 years after I've left.
Looking back I would do it differently, but for what I knew back then it was not bad at all.2 -
At my first programming job, the codebase was a tangle of legacy web forms, MVC, templates in a content-management-system, and AngularJS. Learning the CMS was particularly stressful.
One Saturday night, after binge-watching videos of DOOM 2 speedruns and mods, I had a dream that the Icon of Sin from DOOM 2 appeared in the code, gazed at me menacingly, and lunged at me before I woke up.1 -
The one in which I am rn is the reason why so many people dislike php, jquery and Java on the server.
Then previous to this one, classic ASP for the web interface and our desktop components were delphi (OLD ass delphi)
Mind you, these are all tech stacks that I do like (php, java and O Pascal in particular) but really dislike in:
php: we have just your standard procedural spaghetti php on some old ass shit.
Classic ASP: Same as with php, no proper structure, made more apparent by the intense limitations of VBScript, I did enjoy the language tho, had it evolved better It would have been more tolerable, but the hoops i had to take to build a propee API in it....boooooy that shit was an eye opener.
Delphi: Not bad in itself, but the original dev had a shit notion about how architecture should work.....or what architecture is for that matter.
The Java one: this shit was coded when Spring was already an alternative to just fucking around with JSP, or any other framework for that fucking matter. Dude tried....TRIED to implement design patterns in it and it failed on every single fucking component. Worst of all, it was coded in such a shit way that during certain...err...conditions, the bottleneck proved too massive of an ubdertaking and the app chokes and needs to be restarted ... constantly
their use cases for jquery are not bad, but loading all of jquery for the shit they mostly do could have been easily done with just standard vanilla JS.
I got more, but thede are just from the top of my head
I love php, mind you, but shit like this makes me see why some people GREATLY dislikes it.
I alsp have some old web forms in c# and vb net that I loathe, funny enough the code for thise in vb.net is more elegant, almost as if it were from a different developer.3 -
So been doing a TFVC -> Git conversion the last 3 weeks. I'm finally seeing an end to this mind numbing frustrating mess, so I was thinking 'this is a good time to write down my experience in a rant'.
So first of all, I'm working on a project that's about 10 years old, and didn't have a serious refactoring in that time (still runs on .net 4).
The project structure is f*cked up and seriously complicated the git conversion. For example forms only used in the winform application were in a solution for a web app, and file referenced in the windows application. But due to the fact that these forms also needed references to some business logic in the winform app, I had to constantly jump from one project to the other, fixing references to get this shit in NuGet. Sadly this wasn't the only case, and the other 40 project I had to convert from TFVC to Git had equally f*cked up stuff.
Only thing positive to come of this, pretty much decided to leave and start as a freelancer. At least I'll get payed better for doing shit like this, and I know it'll be a temporary thing and can move on after it's done.4 -
Was working in an n-tier website, standard Web forms, BAL, DAL, database architecture. Validation and processing of data done in the BAL. Not the best idea, but whatever. Well apparently some developer thought it was too much work to pass his data through the BAL, so he directly accessed the DAL, performing zero validation on the data being passed in. Luckily, this was in a non-critical part of the site but the PM at the time nearly had a heart attack when I told him.
-
So at work we use ASP.NET web forms. Since the .NET Core exists now, and that uses ASP.NET MVC, is it worth looking into that and learning about it? My boss is hesitant to move over for our next project because web forms will go faster because we don't have to learn something new.6
-
So I'm a fullstack Python Dev & I wanted to learn Django Rest Framework so I can ease into making PWA. I figured let me learn it as I build out an MVP for a web app I'm creating...WRONG! This shit is mega annoying! It's taken much much more time than i'd like just to set up User sign up and sign in using a form based on the serializers. I started this project Friday....I still have no forms 😭😭...If i just had used Regular Django Models/Forms, an Ajax call here and there i wouldve been done!! What makes it worse is I feel I'm legit the only person having these issues...sheesh4
-
I feel like being expected to handcode a user interface by supposed progressives is the most ass backwards idiotic tech decision with long and wide ranging consequences anyone ever farted out of the asshole god bored into their ugly faces!
Why the hell would I want to use web when I could use windows forms ?
Why is there no equivalent to the visual designer that's usuable ?
I mean I get it for more customized things
But why would I want to fuck with css when instead I could do about the same thing and store them in a settings file and point and click on a series of dropdowns and see the results as I create them ?
Why would I want to fuck around with an interface a resize destroys ?
Why would I want to mess with html tagging or tk or tcl containers when I could just drag an item into a window and update it's properties and add some fucking event handlers the stubs of which are automatically generated by a single DoubleClick??!!??
I hate it
It's slow
I want my fucking ui to be done quickly !
Am I just missing some vital tool that costs 5 grand ?16 -
How do you guys work with forms on backend? Do you have framework in your language or do you work with raw body, parsing and validating everything with your own tools?7
-
Why is it that most people that reply to feedback/support forms of just about any web site in general are complete dimwits? If they are people, that is. In that case, congratulations! You've just passed the inverted Turing test!2
-
Customers CEO insists we need to start the 3 weeks to deliver crunch website project by having the hottest UX design on the planet done by a professional UX specialist specializing in hotness who might charge a lot and take a few weeks and leave us no time to deliver said hotness. Grrrr.
I felt like Sirus Black as a dog bouncing of the chest of the werewolf.
When I explained in full why it's a great idea to have a great UX concept, the project is an education website, for the government, and it's WCAG AA. Balanced against all the reasons that we had more urgent things to look at with such a short timeframe they insisted "The UX Guy" will save us. Dear fascist bully boy. I am a UX guy! I may not be "The UX Guy" but I remember when Javascript was for popups and the extent of most peoples PHP was sending forms via anonymous SMTP. I bet the design will look something like the CNN website or Apple.com. Both bastions of web accessibility standards. Grrrrrr. -
Am I doing something wrong in integrating bootstrap into my web design.
I'm just making some cool looking password reset forms and stuff.
1. Is it overkill?
2. Is there a better alternative?
3. Any good tutorials to understand bootstrap better than what I do know? (afaik it's just a collection of html elements and css styles)
4. I still have a problem with auto padding at different resolutions which messes up the alignments and stuff I'm really inexperienced at this.
5. I'm a noob at web UI and I want to add it to my skill set so I don't mind a good recommendation to some sort of path I can follow. (I'm alright with Photoshop concept designs, I'm bad at implementing them)4 -
Hello all, recently I have been doing alot of front end work in web forms and lead generation. I would love to learn more about marketing and how it can be applied as a dev.
Does anyone recommend any good books atall?
Thanks!2 -
A lot of our web forms are done with AngularJS and combined with jQuery it does everything I need to satify the needs of people who are most impressed CSS transitions and have no technical knowledge whatsoever. I have no peers to ask this question.
I'm the only person deciding on what JS libs to use at the company... and since AngularJS goes into maintenance mode... what would you guys suggest to handle form input and add/remove CSS classes to HTML elements?
Should I get on the VUE bandwagon this year?13 -
How difficult is it to decide for your own future?
It's a month that I'm in total panic 'cause of a difficult choice I have to make about my job.
I really need some external opinions and points of view from other developers, maybe more experienced than me (I'm a medium-junior JS developer).
The situation is as follows:
1) I work as a Frontend Web Developer for a wonderful enterprise-like company with 100+ employees, where the individual rights are fully respected, there are no whatsoever pressures and there is a peaceful paradise-like atmosphere most of the days. I also love my teammates, which is something rare because I often dislike other humans.
2) I received a proposal from a Fintech startup, which required me a long time to complete a complex programming test they gave me. They look all very young, modern, fast and passioned about their job. But they are only living with bank's investments and are not producing any money at the moment. Also, I don't know if Fintech will be a successful field in the future.
3) I received another proposal, from a Healthtec startup this time, which has a lovely mission in the medical field, has received millions of investments, it's gaining some KK net each month but has a team of only 2 developers (3 with me if I accept). I know one of the developers and I remember he had issues of not getting paid months ago.
What's the problem with the first company? I totally dislike the product we are building, the development stack (fully Microsoft-based), the company's view (they still sell and think about software like in the 90's) and how the repository is managed. Everyday there are huge problems that end up blocking the frontend work and the final product is super ugly and works only if you know all the quirks behind it.
It's an old-fashioned desktop app with inside Chromium which should execute some components like graphs, tables, forms and shit like this. Every component is configurable through a property editor which is an utter giant mess of collapsed menus. I also suspect that the company's main business model is based on the difficulty to use this software (because they sell licenses and courses to use it).
There are no modern UX/UI concepts applied at all, nor they seem to care about it.
Each time I propose something there is a huge chain of approval-waiting that end up in a stale mate.
Also, it's useless to show my frustration about all these issues because I count very little in a so populated office.
------------------------------------------------
TLDR: I need to choice if staying in a Enterprise Microsoft-based and old-fashioned company, but in which the atmosphere is paradisiac or accept the risk to work for a Fintech or a Healthtec startup.
------------------------------------------------
What would you do if you were in my situation? What's for you the most stable field in the future?
Many thanks for the attention!6 -
I am not so sure about what I am going to do after high school.
I have been working part time as a backend web developer, and I think that the experience combined with my profound interest in the subject has made me quite good for my age.
I also took part in national and international coding competitions.
I am writing all this to prove that, although I am no genius, I have a decent enough curriculum to get a job as soon as I am out.
The problem is, (please save your insults for later) I want to be a Java developer. I just love the syntax, the and the code just forms in my head better than the other languages.
Up until a few years ago I wanted to go to uni and get a 5 year degree in computer science - and I would still like to do so if it is going to help me get away from web development, and I would get lear lots of cool stuff in the mean time.
My question is: should I study computer science?
If I don't get, I could go choose engineering with computer science focus in another uni, but should I? Should I just get my job to full time and wait the next year?
Will studying in uni get me a better paying job, or some sort of tangible improvement over just working right away?
I am very interested to hear your opinions, and sorry for the long post :)2 -
Hello guys!
There is any web designer around here? i know there is! I need your help
I'm trying to join a web design school, but they ask me to get some real feedback from web designer before. some of you are willing to answer few question?
there is a google form if you prefer:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/...2
Top Tags
Weekly Rant
View