My first job: The Mystery of The Powered-Down Server

I paid my way through college by working every-other-semester in the Cooperative-Education Program my school provided. My first job was with a small company (now defunct) which made some of the very first optical-storage robotic storage systems. I honestly forgot what I was "officially" hired for at first, but I quickly moved up into the kernel device-driver team and was quite happy there.

It was primarily a Solaris shop, with a smattering of IBM AIX RS/6000. It was one of these ill-fated RS/6000 machines which (by no fault of its own) plays a major role in this story.

One day, I came to work to find my team-leader in quite a tizzy -- cursing and ranting about our VAR selling us bad equipment; about how IBM just doesn't make good hardware like they did in the good old days; about how back when _he_ was in charge of buying equipment this wouldn't happen, and on and on and on.

Our primary AIX dev server was powered off when he arrived. He booted it up, checked logs and was running self-diagnostics, but absolutely nothing so far indicated why the machine had shut down. We blew a couple of hours trying to figure out what happened, to no avail. Eventually, with other deadlines looming, we just chalked it up be something we'll look into more later.

Several days went by, with the usual day-to-day comings and goings; no surprises.

Then, next week, it happened again.

My team-leader was LIVID. The same server was hard-down again when he came in; no explanation. He opened a ticket with IBM and put in a call to our VAR rep, demanding answers -- how could they sell us bad equipment -- why isn't there any indication of what's failing -- someone must come out here and fix this NOW, and on and on and on.

(As a quick aside, in case it's not clearly coming through between-the-lines, our team leader was always a little bit "over to top" for me. He was the kind of person who "got things done," and as long as you stayed on his good side, you could just watch the fireworks most days - but it became pretty exhausting sometimes).

Back our story -
An IBM CE comes out and does a full on-site hardware diagnostic -- tears the whole server down, runs through everything one part a time. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.

I recall, at some point of all this, making the comment "It's almost like someone just pulls the plug on it -- like the power just, poof, goes away."

My team-leader demands the CE replace the power supply, even though it appeared to be operating normally. He does, at our cost, of course.

Another weeks goes by and all is forgotten in the swamp of work we have to do.

Until one day, the next week... Yes, you guessed it... It happens again. The server is down. Heads are exploding (will at least one head we all know by now). With all the screaming going on, the entire office staff should have comped some Advil.

My team-leader demands the facilities team do a full diagnostic on the UPS system and assure we aren't getting drop-outs on the power system. They do the diagnostic. They also review the logs for the power/load distribution to the entire lab and office spaces. Nothing is amiss.

This would also be a good time draw the picture of where this server is -- this particular server is not in the actual server room, it's out in the office area. That's on purpose, since it is connected to a demo robotics cabinet we use for testing and POC work. And customer demos. This will date me, but these were the days when robotic storage was new and VERY exciting to watch...

So, this is basically a couple of big boxes out on the office floor, with power cables running into a special power-drop near the middle of the room. That information might seem superfluous now, but will come into play shortly in our story.

So, we still have no answer to what's causing the server problems, but we all have work to do, so we keep plugging away, hoping for the best.

The team leader is insisting the VAR swap in a new server.

One night, we (the device-driver team) are working late, burning the midnight oil, right there in the office, and we bear witness to something I will never forget.

The cleaning staff came in.

Anxious for a brief distraction from our marathon of debugging, we stopped to watch them set up and start cleaning the office for a bit.

Then, friends, I Am Not Making This Up(tm)... I watched one of the cleaning staff walk right over to that beautiful RS/6000 dev server, dwarfed in shadow beside that huge robotic disc enclosure... and yank the server power cable right out of the dedicated power drop. And plug in their vacuum cleaner. And vacuum the floor.

We each looked at one-another, slowly, in bewilderment... and then went home, after a brief discussion on the way out the door.

You see, our team-leader wasn't with us that night; so before we left, we all agreed to come in late the next day. Very late indeed.

"Hey nephew, why doesn't the FB app work. It shows blank white boxes?"
- It can't connect or something? (I stopped using the FB app since 2013.)

"What is this safe mode that appeared on my phone?!"
- I don't know. I don't hack my smartphone that much. Well, I actually do have a customised ROM. But stop! I'm pecking my keyboard most of the time.

"Which of my files should I delete?"
- Am I supposed to know?

"Where did my Microsoft Word Doc1.docx go?"
- It lets you choose the location before you hit save.

"What is 1MB?"
- Search these concepts on Google. (some of us did not have access to the Internet when we learned to do basic computer operations as curious kids.)

"What should I search?"
- ...

"My computer doesn't work.. My phone has a virus. Do you think this PC they are selling me has a good spec? Is this Video Card and RAM good?"
- I'm a programmer. I write code. I think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently. I analyse concepts such as abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. No, I will not fix your PC.

Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.

If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.

First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)

So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.

What the fuck, Dell.

As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?

Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.

VS Code is pretty good, though.

Was explaining a technical concept at a "family" dinner. Suddenly stepmother wanted my help for something technical.

Stepmother: Say Awlex, could you help me install some software I recently bought?

Me: (Not this shit again) I even don't know what software you're talking about. How is the software called, what does it do?
Sm: it's calles digital... *long pause*
Me: (I don't like where this is going)
Sm: software... *another long pause*
Me: (fuck me harder than that lightly clothed woman outside)
Sm: something... *long pause*
Me: (alright brain, which way out of here doesn't involves me creating a bullet hole in either one of us?)
Sm: And you can use it to sell something...
Me: (tf do you event sell?!)
Sm: but not like ebay
Me: (what is it then? A platform for selling services? I don't even know what kind of software you'd have to install, given that most of these platforms are be web applications, whcih makes sense for selling stuff on the internet)
Sm: Anyway, could you help me install it? It would take me hours to get into it.
Me: (You think just installing would solve it? As soon as I install it, you probably expect me to be your walking manual as well, don't you?) Look, I'm gonna be honest with you, since I started working I don't have nearly as much free time as I used to have (Not everybody works when they feel like it, you know that?) I get home at around almost 7pm (most of the time) and don't really wanna work afterwards. Most of the time there's a support service from the people who made this software and they would be glad to help you. (Sorry support team, for pushing this bundle of incompetence onto you, but I guess she didn't even listen to my advice).

After that she didn't back down and still wanted my help. Then my grandmother derailed the conversation and got me out of this. When I thanked her later she yold me that she saw I saw uncomfortable and wanted to help. I love my grandmother.

So I am not going to be your "family" tech support. You b(r)ought this onto yourself. Are more than twice my age and still can't use your brain to solve problems like these on your own and you can even less reason abiut your motives and desires when asking for help. I am sick of you and shutty opinions about people, just because I work as a software engineer doesn't mean I'm exist solely for satisfying your unreasonable desires.

Stop offending me and my profession and get yourself some common sense.
Protip #0: Give me one fucking reason to help you, because you're not family enough and your personality really doesn't bring forth any emotion but annoyance

You know. I have mixed feelings on the way people have been reacting to senzory's rant regarding the way he deals with clients. Some people believe that he is unethical, some people see it as just business(me included) but to see what the community says is somewhat interesting.

First, let me be clear on something: i have been fucked over by clients many times for being a nice guy and trying to play it nicely.

Because of this I am selective of who deserves good treatment and who gets to fuck off. But regardless of the client I do the same thing: regardless of who it is, nice or otherwise. If a project will take 1 week to complete then I tell them that it will take 3 to 4 weeks. Why? Well because I have many things on my plate, I am married and have two children, one lives with me and I try to spend as much time with them as I can. I work from 8 to 6, sometimes later and when I get home I sometimes don't do shit since at work I maintain the web services of 2 fucking college campuses.
I don't look for my clients. Through word of mouth they come to me. And being in a privileged position(there are about 5 devs here and they all suck) they can either do with my times and fees or can fuck off over the border where Pedro will do their shit on vbscript and classic ASP(which I like, but you know why this is not an option in 2018)

Apps can be sold for large quantities of money, regardless of what their use case is, if a company wants to outsource their apps to an external developer(such as yours truly) that means that they are willing to play the game. And that is what business is: a game, a survival game.

Where I live, a company will not think twice of firing a single mother for whatever reason. In the U.S of A, and specially in Texas, you can be fired for whatever reason. I have automated people's jobs without knowing it, I have made people lose their jobs and saved companies thousands with my apps. Things like that were not know to me, had I known that someone would have lost their jobs I would have tried differently.

If a company is willing to tell employees(loyal employees) to fuck off, then i do not regret charging what I do and hustling the way I do with rat faced dickheads that care not for people. If I could I would destroy entire companies here. But that is for another story.

I have been used, insulted, gambled with and have been lied to, to my face by these companies. Which has left me jaded.

Oh now, trust me. I am still highly optimistic and nice. And if someone has a small business and I can help them out, then I will lower my rate and give positive vibes in the hopes of making things better through karma. I want to see the best in people. But this does not stop me from being a shark and giving quotes the way I do.

Because companies, as an overall entity are not people with the best intentions(sometimes) and they will not take your kindness, they will take advantage if possible in an effort to save money. Its just dickhead business.

So why, as a professional and privileged developer that obtained his skills through intense study and practice, a wizard by all means, should lower to these nameless, Faceless entities?
Why should i give them the fairness they do not give others? Why should I play the high morale game and come out as a loser?

At the end of the day, I get to swim in my own pool of success, knowing that they did not get the chance to fuck me over

So if you tell me that you took advantage of your hard earned skillset, and built a cross platform app(which compiles to native binaries) and sold 2 products for one, I will tell you that you are an excellent player at their game. If you tell me that you finished before and got to charge for 2 weeks of work doing just 2 days I will say that you are an excellent time manager. And if you tell me that at the end of the day you managed to keep said customer I will tell you that you are a true professional.

There is a difference lads, in selling a product to big momma jamma's cajun restaurant, to the largest logistics company around.

Be nice to those that desserve it.

I love it when unethical companies' marketing chaps assume that I care about their SMS garbage more than I get pissed off by it. Damart, I didn't even know about your existence or what the hell you do as a business (selling woman clothes apparently.. am I a woman?!) until you shoved your ad crap into my face, and Unigro I really don't have a pending contract with you so kindly fuck off with your reminders (that are in French but am I a Walloon? No!).

Makes me wonder though, with email I usually just give everyone a different email address to deflect spam - since I can reroute email to any particular address straight to /dev/null on the server if so desired. With SMS and SIM cards that isn't really possible.. hence why I'm always so hesitant about sharing my phone number. In email the addresses are scraped off the internet.. but phone numbers? How do such shitcompanies even obtain those?! Their level of pushiness and unethical behavior boggles my mind.

I am very frustrated today and I do not know where to "scream" so I will post this here since I believe you will know how I feel.

Here's the case...
I am developing an e-commerce web application where we sell industrial parts. So my boss told me on March that when we are going to show these parts, we should not show Part Number to visitors because they will steal our information.

Ok, this makes sense but there was a problem.

The Primary Key for these products in our internal system is a string which is the Part Number itself.

I told him on March that we have to come up with another unique number for all the products that we are selling, so this unique number will be the primary key, not the Part Number. This will be best because I will be dependent from the original Part Number itself. And in every meeting he said "That is not priority". So I kept developing the part using the original Part Number as primary key and hid is from the web app. (But the Part Number still shows on URL or on search because this is how my boss designed the app.)

I built the app and is on a test server. Until one of out employees asked my boss: "There is no unique number or Part Number. How are the clients going to reference these parts? If a client buys 20 products and one of those has a problem, how is he going to tell us which products has a problem?"

My boss did not know what to say, and later said to me that I was right and primary key was priority.

I really hate when a guy that knows shit from developing does not listen to suggestions given by developers.

FUCK MY LIFE!

I'm sorry if you did not understand anything.

Currently balancing my full time job. A Rails bigass project and certain php contracts.

The rails one is unpaid, and I am doing it on my free time since my "payment" would be a portion of the company and a CTO position once it is done. I am building it with one of my best friends and he got the contract from this one dude he has who is loaded and will be selling this to the dptmnt of education of certain country.

The thing is, we all know how it works with those projects. The CEO had contracted this project to some people. He paid them handsomely and as is the case with certain situations the project was abandonded, the devs took the money and ran. So that is why he decided that instead of paying people like he should he would instead try and see if he could get someone interested. He told my friend to get himself an "American developer" since he was fed up with the devs of said country and that is how I am here now.

But the thing is, he is somewhat desperate to see something and even tho I show advancements on a weekly basis I hate the wordings of his group text messages:
"All right guys. I need to see some advancements, show me what you got now"

Motherfucker. You sit your ass and WAIT for me to want to show you something, but don't demand shit like if you are paying me. As far as I know my priorities lie in my current day job or the other people that ARE paying me.

>i need to see some advancements

Fuck off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today at 7am i got s phone call please go to this client

I responded sure no problem what am i going to do at this client.....

Don't worry they said you will find out when you get there...

So i go to the client and as I expected its not dev related at all

It was for installation of point of sale tills and printers 😱😱

That are 7 years old with no cables
(2 hour drive to get here)

Anyway I ended up selling hardware to them....this developer is going places 😂🙈

I don't know what to chose.

The fact that for three months, I had to design a 16-page catalog, when I have no experience and my job is web development;

The fact that I have to do SEO for the site, but that means for my boss that for a one-page long text, we have to find at least 60 (sixty! ) times the occurrences of the keywords;

The fact that when I finally have something interesting to do, the boss finds that it doesn't go fast enough and decide to drop the project even if making a whole new dynamic stock system with the db we have is something hard and long to do;

The fact that when I come to work five minutes late, my boss is at the verge on screaming on me, even if I come ten minutes early every other day;

The fact that when I'm coding, I need concentration, I don't need the boss to give me the phone to answer customers, stop everything I am doing and explain them what products we are selling;

The fact that I am paid the minimum wage for a trainee, and when there's no coffee anymore, we have to buy some ourselves because "you drink way too much coffee, you understand" (three a day, sorry for wanting to stay awake);

The fact that I have asked for one year how many days of vacation I still had, and the only answer they gave to me yet was: "Oh, we have to ask the accountant". I still don't know how many days I have left;

The fact that the site is made only by trainees since the beginning, so circa 2008, and the code is horrible but "it works, so don't touch it". The admin part is in CodeIgniter, the front in laravel 4.2, there are a lot of useless code but we can't touch it because the boss doesn't think it is worth the time.

I almost made a burn-out last year, my doc saw my state right before and made me stop for a week. I still have to work there 'till end of august, then I will have my diploma and find another company to work with. Now, I check everyday on my calendar.

Our team (devs and QAs) have been doing a series of overtime work.

So, the company has provided us a place to sleep. Everyday, we would go to work at 10AM and then return to our place to rest at 12 midnight (sometimes at 2AM).

We've been doing this for a week now and we'll resume again tomorrow.

I already feel exhausted, and I was thinking of resigning after all of this mess was over.

However, I am having second thoughts. Since this is my first job, I have no point of comparison.

Perhaps a series of overtime like this one is normal? Is this type of work environment to be expected when being a developer? Or am I selling my self short and there are better options out there? What do you devs think?

I'm writing a book that teaches everything I have learned in the past 20 years about writing small niche software and selling it.

Need some help from my fellow DevRanters.
Anyone who comments here with something constructive gets a free copy when it's done.

When I say:
"Why don't you just write your own software and sell it to end users"

What is the first thing that pops into your head?

Is it "I don't know how to advertise"
or
"that's a pipe dream"
or
"I tried starting my own business, but _______"
or
"I am doing that, i have this side project "
(how long have you spent on that side project?)

I need to know all your concerns questions fears, skepticism etc around the idea of writing your OWN software.

After 20 years I have like, so much knowledge, but it's sometimes hard to get it all out, UNLESS someone has a question or concern, then, out it comes.

So, I'm going to (hopefully) collect all the questions here ... and answer them, and it'll help me out a lot to extract this knowledge.

A lot of stuff I do without even thinking and realizing all the years it took to even know that.

What would you like to know the most?

You have the skills, you have the know how, you can probably see it in your head, so what's stopping you from making the leap?

Listen, i really understand you want to know how much a certain resource is downloaded/viewed and so on. But what gets on my nerves is to sign up my email address every fucking time i want to see your semi-tech-but-actually-selling-you-a-pile-of-sperm-fermented-shit whitepaper . yes i know there is something called disposable email adresses and such... But if stuff is 'free' as you say you have, then make it available free!

Every time i think 'hey, this is actually relevant to my interests, let me read up more on that...' i hit the fucking 'insert your email for a free download'

Fuck off! Put your fucking form in the pits of hell and seal it in a fucking fucking dome next to fucking research subject akira with 99 fucking layers of fucking nuclear blast proof wall domes! I dont want you to fucking send me your fucking spam mails about every ideafart your sales dept has fired becausz they were high on computer cleaner spray tubes and thought 'let's trick those stupid people into our marketing scheme', go and fucking jump into a barrel of highly concentrated radioactive waste!

The only thing you manage to do for me like that is to fucking close the tab i had a slight interest in and never look back again!

Am i the only one getting angry about this?

I don't care about market cap. Stick your hype-driven business practices up your ass. Infinite growth doesn't exist. I won't read your fucking books and attend your fucking bootcamps and MBAs. You don't have a business model. Selling data is not a business model. Fuck your quick-flip venture capital schemes, and especially fuck your “ethics”.

I will be the first alt-tech CEO. I only care about revenue. The real money, not capitalization bubble vaporware. You don't need a huge fleet of engineers if you're smart about your technology, know how to do architecture, and you're not a feature creep. You don't need venture capital if you don't need a huge fleet of engineers. You don't need to sell data if you don't need venture capital. See? See the pattern here?

My experience allows me to build products on entirely my own. I am fully aware of the limitations of being alone, and they only inspire lean thinking and great architectural decisions. If you know throwing capacity at a problem is not an option, you start thinking differently. And if you don't need to hire anyone, it is very easy to turn a profit and make it sustainable.

If you don't follow the path of tech vaporware, you won't have the problems of tech vaporware, namely distrust of your user base, shitty updates that break everything, and of course “oops, they raised capital, time to leave before things go south”.

A friend of mine went the path I'm talking about, developed a product over the course of four years all alone, reached $10k MRR and sold for $0.8M. But I won't sell. I only care about revenue. If I get to $10k MRR, I will most likely stop doing new features and focus on fixing all the bugs there are and improving performance. This and security patches. Maybe an occasional facelift. That's it. Some products are valued because they don't change, like Sublime Text. The utility tool you can rely on. This is my scheme, this is what I want to do in life. A best-kept secret.

Imagine 100 million users that hate my product but use it because there are no alternatives, 100 people in data enrichment department alone, a billion dollars of evaluation (without being profitable), 10 million twitter followers, and ten VC firms telling me what to do and what data to sell.

Fuck that. I'd rather have one thousand loyal customers and $10k MRR. I'm different, some call it a mental illness, but the bottom line is, my goals are beyond their understanding. They call me crazy. I won't say it was never about the money, of course it was, but inflating your evaluation is not “money”. But the only thing they have is their terrible hustle culture lives and some VC street wisdom, meanwhile I HAVE products, it is on record on my PH. I have POTDs, I have a fucking Golden Kitty nomination on health and fitness for a product I made in one day. Fuck you.

Some of you know I'm an amateur programmer (ok, you all do). But recently I decided I'm gonna go for a career in it.

I thought projects to demo what I know were important, but everything I've seen so far says otherwise. Seems like the most important thing to hiring managers is knowing how to solve small, arbitrary problems. Specifics can be learned and a lot of 'requirements' are actually optional to scare off wannabes and tryhards looking for a sweet paycheck.

So I've gone back, dusted off all the areas where I'm rusty (curse you regex!), and am relearning, properly. Flash cards and all. Getting the essentials committed to memory, instead of fumbling through, and having to look at docs every five minutes to remember how to do something because I switch languages, frameworks, and tooling so often. Really committing toward one set of technologies and drilling the fundamentals.

Would you say this is the correct approach to gaining a position in 2020, for a junior dev?
I know for a long time, 'entry level' positions didn't really exist, but from what I'm hearing around the net, thats changing.

Heres what I'm learning (or relearning since I've used em only occasionally):

* Git (small personal projects, only used it a few times)
* SQL
* Backend (Flask, Django)
* Frontend (React)
* Testing with Cypress or Jest

Any of you have further recommendations?

Gulp? Grunt? Are these considered 'matter of course' (simply expected), or learn-as-you for a beginner like myself?

Is knowing the agile 'manifesto' (whatever that means) by heart really considered a big deal?

What about the basics of BDD and XP?

Is knowing how to properly write user-stories worth a damn or considered a waste of time to managers?

Am I going to be tested on obscure minutiae like little-used yarn/npm commands?

Would it be considered a bonus to have all the various HTTP codes memorized? I mean thats probably a great idea, but is that an absolute requirement for newbies, or something you learn as you practice?

During interviews, is there an emphasis on speed or correctness? I'm nitpicky, like to write cleanly commented code, and prefer to have documentation open at all times.
Am I going to, eh, 'lose points' for relying on documentation during an interview?

I'm an average programmer on my good days, and the only thing I really have going for me is a *weird* combination of ADD and autism-like focus that basically neutralize each other. The only other skill I have is talking at people's own level to gauge what they need and understand. Unfortunately, and contrary to the grifter persona I present for lulz, I hate selling, let alone grifting.
Otherwise I would have enjoyed telemarketing way more and wouldn't even be asking this question. But thankfully I escaped that hell and am now here, asking for your timeless nuggets of bitter wisdom.

What are truly *entry level* web developers *expected* to know, *right out the gate*, obviously besides the language they're using?

Also, what is the language they use to program websites? It's like java right? I need to know. I'm in an interview RIGHT now and they left me alone with a PC for 30 minutes. I've been surfing pornhub for the last 25 minutes. I figure the answer should take about 5 minutes, could you help me out and copypasta it?

Okay, okay, I'm kidding, I couldn't help myself. The rest of the questions are serious and I'd love to know what your opinions are on what is important for web developers in 2020, especially entry level developers.

!dev
So as usual I received some call from telemarketer and I started from other perspective this time.

I asked how I can be sure that the person on the other side is telling the truth.
That pissed the telemarketer that started challenging me by reading my company data but I calmly responded that it doesn’t proof anything cause I don’t know anything about you - the person who are calling me.
I know who I am but how I can trust who you are ? You just provided me your name that I don’t know it’s true cause I have no methods to verify that.
That pissed telemarketer so much.

Some time ago before you put money in bank you know the banker. If someone was stealing this money you probably know from your police who is it and where he’s probably hiding.

The future we’re trying to go right now with this machine stuff that makes job for us is completely different.
We’re more and more separated from reality that is our planet dying. More and more animals and plants are dying, nobody cares about it.

Despite me working a lot with new tech I am more and more sceptic of how technology is shaping us. We sooner or later wont be able to shit without computer ( lots of us is probably already there bringing cellphones as companions for good nice shit rolling ).

Is it the future we want ?
The future where you need to beat computer to have contact with nice people. Cause I see it everywhere now. The technology is stupid and not perfect so lots of us is forced to align to this crap right now. Use the technology and beat the algorithms to connect with human. That’s the future we want ? Really ?
Some idiotic algorithms that are trying to tell us that this is what you need to watch ? This is what you need to eat ?
This is where you need to be ?
Take our time and turn it to view count slash likes and subscribes shit hole ?

The technology power show that everyone wants to buy but you won’t even use 10% of it’s capabilities cause it’s blocked by company that sells it ?

I’m more and more disappointed by this world.

Anyway Telemarketer didn’t want to admit that is alien robot who is trying to kill humans by selling me this machine so I hanged up cause I had nothing more interesting to say.

I think they will finally stop calling me.

!dev !tech

it's 2 am, nd just out of curiosity i put on earphones and tried to dance on a romantic couple song . interestingly, my life has been so single and restrictive that I can't even imagine holding hands of someone , nd that feels a bit sad.

after being burdened with the family ethics, relgions, family fights and financial crisis for so long, i feel i have lost a personality that i should have had.

1. i have lost the sense of random naughtiness and unnecessary bravery/arrogance. from what i know, the best way to reach your path is to remain focused on it. unnecessary acts of curiousity or nuisance leads to fights, frauds or worse.
however, people enjoy life by doing unnecessary banter, gossips, nuisance and having fun with unknown things, people and surroundings.
i guess this makes people a likeable/interesting character in social scenarios as me being an alert dog trying to focus on resching the party place, have a safe party and come home at time becomes a less interesting character than the guy entertaining everyone by his stupid talks in the car.

2. i have lost sense of compassion or showing love , expressing love or doing things out of love and not just for transaction.
From what i heard, people in relationship are clumsy to the max level. messages every 5 seconds, random acts of flirting, teasing, playing hard to get, what not.
i ... am simple. if i like someone, they are gonna know in 5 seconds (which is followed by a lifetime of awkwardness, so i have stopped even letting this thing to be known). physically nd financially i have enough resources and plans to be a good person to be with : i can be helpful in situations, am always up for doing anything interesting and have reputable personna. but expressing via those sugary baby talks is not my ☕

3. I haven't gained any passion for anything. i see people having deep thoughts on their passions for poetry, music, dance , guitar, travel, political alignment, causes, or whatnot.
i am not that much passionate towards anything because life doesn't give everyone the chance to choose passions.
i sat with my father in a flea market selling stuff. that wasn't passion, that was a necessity. for me, money>>study>>>anything
i am only passionate about having food on my plate and a roof over my head

-------

so all these things makes jack a boring person. i jave been chasing money so much that i question everyday of its worth it, as it's currently just being used to battle with the financial crisis while having a little bit in savjngs to enjoy life. but am so much worn out by this pressure of earning money that I don't even know how to enjoy life or have someone to enjoy life with , so its even more pointless to increase that limit.

i do try to explore the things i like : dance, singing, traveling, working out but not at the level that those attributes define me

#awkward_loney_life

I am currently weeks apart from releasing my pet project, which I am working on for almost 6 years now. Of course, there were a few stops here and there, but overall I've spent a lot of time and effort on this to make it work. It is far from complete but I am really happy with the results.

Now, since I am not a professional by any means - it is all a hobby for me - I was wondering, that how much my work would cost, if it were to made by professionals. Below the details so you can get a grasp of the thing.

The whole system is for our family business. We are selling parts for an old-timer truck model. The website was pretty much done already, people like it, it only needed some polishing and adding of the new features. But the thing behind it is monstrous (at least for me).
Apart from the custom-made CMS for the website (most of it was done already and didn't need to change), we can handle orders, partners, prices, stocks, overdue partners, pretty much anything a CRM would do.
There is a logic to automatically make orders based on import prices, or give the customer a custom discount based on the price gap of each product. There are products, which can contain other products, and their prices are dynamically changed based on a given formula, once an underlying product price changes. We can send e-mails when an order status changes, and there is also a page, where a user can interact whit their order, like changing the shipping or the delivery address. The system is (or will in the following weeks) also connected to multiple shipping companies' API, so we can order deliveries and print labels directly from our system. The whole thing is a custom made Laravel project by the way. There are countless more features, but I've just spent 2 hours explaining all to my father and was only be able to cover like half of it.

And why it is all custom made, you ask? Well, the business logic is a bit twisted, so it would be hard to operate as a regular web shop, since the availability of the products are uncertain, given the fact that it is a model, which isn't manufactured in 30 years. So, we can't just accept and send orders without confirming. It is also a thing, that people usually don't know what they need to order for their truck, so we have to help them, so they don't waste their money and the precious last pieces of a part unnecessarily.

Sorry for this rather long post, and it might feel like I just want to brag (well, I kinda do), but I am honestly interested in what such a custom product would cost in the market.

Thank you for your time answering.

a lion in captivity forgets to hunt. a man loosing everyday forget about winning.

I am feeling so sad and worthless right now. Like, so worthless that if I am walking down the street tomorrow and if some car hits me and i die, i wouldn't mind.

I find it questionable about what I am living for? why am i selling myself in front of keyboard till 12 am every day to earn some bucks when all this money is being / will be used to give happiness to a bunch of people that don't give 2 shits about me.

why can't i get some love? why can't i get some respect? i feel like a disabled 5 year old boy trapped in an abled 25 year old body. I can feel my legs, but I don't have the permission to use them. its like i am tied by ropes. and this rope has been on me for so long, that i can feel my legs, but i can also feel that those are having cuts so deep that i won't be able to use them even once the rope is taken out.

being a single child, loneliness has always been my shadow at home. and The middle class poor income, fighting parents, sickness and lack of culture ensured that loneliness remained my friend in school, college and other areas too.

the only goal of becoming an ideal son has shadowed every other thing in life. I can't drink, i can't go outside after 10pm, I can't take a jobbin different city. I can't fucking have female friends or think about relatiion-shits with people. i can't drive the car that was bought by my salary money. the list goes on and on.. i think every Indian (girls more than boys ig) have gone through at least 1 such restrictions at some point of their life. but me? a GUY in his fucking 25 , is going through ALL OF THEM, from day 1.

Plus i haven't started to discuss the weird eccentricities that i have to deal with, which are not so common. we follow a special religion where they have lots of philosophy and additional rules ( like no onion garlic mushroom in foods, mediation + pray for 1 hour twice a day ,... etc)

But i didn't complain, until now. I got sadder and sadder with time, but I cooperated. Whome else to live for , if not for the folks who made you in their womb amd sack? yeah I will fucking stay celibate until you find some willing "cultured" girl from your "religion" and arrange a lifelong existence. yes, i will fucking keep paying the car emis and see it in the parking lot everyday , while traveling via a metro. yes i will stay in your house in front of you all the times and never learn to exist independently coz fuck maturity. yes i will be a static atm machine waiting to die as you please.

but i am still not your ideal son? I say one little thing, and you start shouting at me for being selfish? why is religious superstition and those crime storemies so much deep into your head that you folks are micro managing and criticising every single thing in my life?

why is there a need for repetitive arguments, fights and shouting before evry action? why can't we just be happy for once!

I am shattered looking for happiness. I can't live like this anymore. There are no more than 2 people in my life that i care about and if those 2 are always having an upside down , angered face the what is the point of waking up every day?

wish i could just leave them. But can they live without me? or even can i live without them? and no , not talking about emotionally. I am very strong at the emotional side and i can throw word daggers to even 10+ years of companionships and ruin them. this will be just another long term relationship that i will sour.

BUT I CAN'T LITERALLY LIVE WITHOUT THEM. i am a useless guy who don't have any social intelligence outside his computer screen. i don't know how to live alone, and exist, or what my goals will be. I never saw a future without thinking about securing their future first, and them being in my future at all times.

aagh fuck. another painful night to survive and exist until i rise again to live like a corpse coz i can't do anything about it

Hello coders!
I'm a student expected to graduate in about two months.
I (Allhamdolillah) already have an offer for a job in a company with good repo; they usually work in web (python technologies)
As of now, I'm doing an internship at a totally new company (separated from a famous company too but not very famous itself) as an ERP technical consultant (internee). They also have put forward a job offer.
I am hell confused to decide one.
I joined it coz I was curious about ERP. But their offer is a lot less then the other one.
I have decided two pathways.
1) Python web > Cloud > Data Sciences
2) ERP (either NAV or AX)
Any suggestions from the experienced? What should I prefer? A good company? A good package? Take risk?

Things that might help you guys to help me:

I like python a lot, it was my best selling gig on fiverr. But (apparently with no practical knowledge) I'm not much excited about web as of now.
ERP is a gooood field I know that.
It's fun sometimes irritating though.
Though sometimes I feel like I will get stuck in that field...
I have a strong technical background and have won many programming competitions(university level/national level/even stood runnner up, 2 times in ICPC regionals).

My DNS provider does not have an API. They do have one... That is wrong... But on the description page, they say we have to open a ticket to be given access. No requirements. Nothing...

And then I am told "they do no longer offer dns for private hosting". I don't even host with them, I only have a domain with them.

But the magical word is no longer. That means they did offer it. In the description of the API it still says "and for everyone who feels comfortable interacting with a REST API." Oh, and they asked anyone who works on it to be so nice and share any SDK's they might have coded up. Would have shared my SDK. Would have... If no Rust SDK was available yet.

So, what the fuck...
The problem with that is that I need a wildcard certificate for my homelab with DNS validation. So, I need to dynamically set a txt record. Now I wonder... Was this done on purpose? They are selling wild card certificates. Letsencrypt are giving them out for free. I bet they deactivated it, so they can sell more...

Anyway. Solution time.
Short term: I make my own API with black jack and hookers... And selenium.
Long term: I need to fucking move my domains to a different provider.

But what the fuck... What the fuck?

So I just made a deal. I am selling my Galaxy S5 16gb + 16gb mem stick, which is in excellent condition along, with the original flip case and a Spigen slim armor case and a protective screen, for 150€.

I'm replacing it with a Galaxy S6 32gb with a slim case and protective glass along with new headphones and also in excellent condition, for 200€.

For 50€ as true cost to go from S5 to S6, I think it's a pretty decent bargain people and also a nice upgrade. What do you people think?

I've been working for about a year now at a company. It's my first job in the industry. I'm technically still an intern as my role however next week I'm kicking off a project as the technical lead and architect of the project (without a title change). I'm new to the professional industry but I've been programming for a while and do a lot of stuff on my own. Due to being an intern I'm making well below other devs even less than ~1/3 of what some of the people that I would be leading are making I've never worried about money because I'm a student and just am enjoying the learning but at this point. It seems like a bit of stress and risk that I'm taking on without any sort of benefit other than just learning more. Am I selling myself short? Any thoughts? Thanks.