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Was struggling with depression and stress for an extended period. So, naturally, I had more sickdays than average.
However, I was still managing to overperform on my goals, so when it came time to discuss salary I was hopeful.
Didn't get a raise, not even a pat on the back. My manager told me he couldn't justify giving me the raise I had earned simply because I had had too many sick days. So my actual performance didn't count. Everybody else got raises though.
On a previous occasion he told me that I had to 'Learn what it means to have a job' and get my priorities straight. I told him I already had very little social life so I could spend what little energy I had on work. I tried to explain to him how depression works and he assured me he understood.
Yeah, right. My colleague with back problems, who suddenly couldn't walk, didn't get that treatment.
Depression is real. I'm so glad they ended up firing me so I could work for a place that cares.8 -
So there's a recent rant, about making a website work for IE.
I get it, you don't want to make it work for IE because you don't use IE.
But get this: you're not doing the site FOR YOU. You're doing it for the intended user, which is a lot of users that use all kinds of shit. If you don't want to do that, get the fuck out of web development, or from development overall. It's not for you.
I remember when I started my career, I had to make a web app that was intended to be used by, say, 100 people. As a developer I had the best tools for that - cool new 19" monitors, good GPU able to spit out a humongous resolution, and I designed that portal to look great. You know what my superior did then? He took away my 19" monitor and gave me a 14" monitor instead, saying that I became a spoiled brat that totally ignored the customer. I was angry at that, but immediately realized that he was completely right.
It doesn't matter! that it works on your machine. Who the fuck cares about your machine?
Does the software work for the intended user? If not, then you're a shitty developer.22 -
Forgive me father, for I have sinned. Alot actually, but I'm here for technical sins. Okay, a particular series of technical sins. Sit your ass back down padre, you signed up for this shit. Where was I? Right, it has been 11429 days since my last confession. May this serve as equal parts rant, confession, and record for the poor SOB who comes after me.
Ended up in a job where everything was done manually or controlled by rickety Access "apps". Many manhours were wasted on sitting and waiting for the main system to spit out a query download so it could be parsed by hand or loaded into one of the aforementioned apps that had a nasty habit of locking up the aged hardware that we were allowed. Updates to the system were done through and awful utility that tended to cut out silently, fail loudly and randomly, or post data horrifically wrong.
Fuck that noise. Floated the idea of automating downloads and uploads to bossman. This is where I learned that the main system had no SQL socket by default, but the vendor managing the system could provide one for an obscene amount of money. There was no buy in from above, not worth the price.
Automated it anyway. Main system had a free form entry field, ostensibly for handwriting SELECT queries. Using Python, AutoHotkey, and glorified copy-pasting, it worked after a fashion. Showed the time saved by not having to do downloads manually. Got us the buy in we needed, bigwigs get negotiating with the vendor, told to start developing something based on some docs from the vendor. Keep the hacky solution running as team loves not having to waste time on downloads.
Found SQLi vulnerability in the above free form query system, brought it up to bossman to bring up the chain. Vulnerability still there months later. Test using it for automated updates. Works and is magnitudes more stable than update utility. Bring it up again and show the time we can save exploiting it. Decision made to use it while it exists, saves more time. Team happier, able to actual develop solutions uninterrupted now. Using Python, AutoHotkey, glorified copy-pasting, and SQLi in the course of day to day business critical work. Ugliest hacky thing I've ever caused to exist.
Flash forward 6 years. Automation system now in heavy use acrossed two companies. Handles all automatic downloads for several departments, 1 million+ discrete updates daily with alot of room for expansion, stuff runs 24/7 on schedule, most former Access apps now gone and written sanely and managed by the automation system. Its on real hardware with real databases and security behind it.
It is still using AutoHotkey, copy-paste, and SQLi to interface with the main system. There never was and never will be a SQL socket. Keep this hellbeast I've spawned chugging along.
I've pointed out how many ways this can all go pearshaped. I've pointed out that one day the vendor will get their shit together they'll come in post system update and nothing will work anymore. I've pointed out the danger in continuing to use the system with such a glaring SQLi vulnerability.
Noone cares. Won't be my problem soon enough.
In no particular order:
Fuck management for not fighting for a good system interface
Fuck the vendor for A) not having a SQL socket and B) leaving the SQLi vulnerability there this long
Fuck me for bringing this thing into existence5 -
*bunch of if statements*
Friend shouts proudly everywhere : I implemented an AI!
Me : but that's not how AI works
Friend : but it works just as an AI, so it is one, who cares?
😥3 -
"I don't have any issues with that (OS, code push, software, etc), so I'm not sure why you are having issues." I love reading comments like that, as if that solves the issue. The fuck does it matter if you don't have issues, they are having issues you moron. For a place for developers you'd think they'd be able to think logically, maybe they're in the wrong line of business. Maybe that software had an error parsing some file because some bit got flipped when writing to the HDD because there's an issue with the drive and the ECC failed for some reason, who cares. There's an issue and you saying it works for you makes you sound like a fucking moron... There's an error/crash, it happens, that's software.4
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I have successfully employed a function that uses recursion....
Because I stubbornly tried every possible iteration of the code until it became right.
I still don't get why it works.7 -
So ok here it is, as asked in the comments.
Setting: customer (huge electronics chain) wants a huge migration from custom software to SAP erp, hybris commere for b2b and ... azure cloud
Timeframe: ~10 months….
My colleague and me had the glorious task to make the evaluation result of the B2B approval process (like you can only buy up till € 1000, then someone has to approve) available in the cart view, not just the end of the checkout. Well I though, easy, we have the results, just put them in the cart … hmm :-\
The whole thing is that the the storefront - called accelerator (although it should rather be called decelerator) is a 10-year old (looking) buggy interface, that promises to the customers, that it solves all their problems and just needs some minor customization. Fact is, it’s an abomination, which makes us spend 2 months in every project to „ripp it apart“ and fix/repair/rebuild major functionality (which changes every 6 months because of „updates“.
After a week of reading the scarce (aka non-existing) docs and decompiling and debugging hybris code, we found out (besides dozends of bugs) that this is not going to be easy. The domain model is fucked up - both CartModel and OrderModel extend AbstractOrderModel. Though we only need functionality that is in the AbstractOrderModel, the hybris guys decided (for an unknown reason) to use OrderModel in every single fucking method (about 30 nested calls ….). So what shall we do, we don’t have an order yet, only a cart. Fuck lets fake an order, push it through use the results and dismiss the order … good idea!? BAD IDEA (don’t ask …). So after a week or two we changed our strategy: create duplicate interface for nearly all (spring) services with changed method signatures that override the hybris beans and allow to use CartModels (which is possible, because within the super methods, they actually „cast" it to AbstractOrderModel *facepalm*).
After about 2 months (2 people full time) we have a working „prototype“. It works with the default-sample-accelerator data. Unfortunately the customer wanted to have it’s own dateset in the system (what a shock). Well you guess it … everything collapsed. The way the customer wanted to "have it working“ was just incompatible with the way hybris wants it (yeah yeah SAP, hybris is sooo customizable …). Well we basically had to rewrite everything again.
Just in case your wondering … the requirements were clear in the beginning (stick to the standard! [configuration/functinonality]). Well, then the customer found out that this is shit … and well …
So some months later, next big thing. I was appointed technical sublead (is that a word)/sub pm for the topics‚delivery service‘ (cart, delivery time calculation, u name it) and customerregistration - a reward for my great work with the b2b approval process???
Customer's office: 20+ people, mostly SAP related, a few c# guys, and drumrole .... the main (external) overall superhero ‚im the greates and ur shit‘ architect.
Aberage age 45+, me - the ‚hybris guy’ (he really just called me that all the time), age 32.
He powerpoints his „ tables" and other weird out of this world stuff on the wall, talks and talks. Everyone is in awe (or fear?). Everything he says is just bullshit and I see it in the eyes of the others. Finally the hybris guy interrups him, as he explains the overall architecture (which is just wrong) and points out how it should be (according to my docs which very more up to date. From now on he didn't just "not like" me anymore. (good first day)
I remember the looks of the other guys - they were releaved that someone pointed that out - saved the weeks of useless work ...
Instead of talking the customer's tongue he just spoke gibberish SAP … arg (common in SAP land as I had to learn the hard way).
Outcome of about (useless) 5 meetings later: we are going to blow out data from informatica to sap to azure to datahub to hybris ... hmpf needless to say its fucking super slow.
But who cares, I‘ll get my own rest endpoint that‘ll do all I need.
First try: error 500, 2. try: 20 seconds later, error message in html, content type json, a few days later the c# guy manages to deliver a kinda working still slow service, only the results are wrong, customer blames the hybris team, hmm we r just using their fucking results ...
The sap guys (customer service) just don't seem to be able to activate/configure the OOTB odata service, so I was told)
Several email rounds, meetings later, about 2 months, still no working hybris integration (all my emails with detailed checklists for every participent and deadlines were unanswered/ignored or answered with unrelated stuff). Customer pissed at us (god knows why, I tried, I really did!). So I decide to fly up there to handle it all by myself16 -
'nother "teacher" story here.
Little background knowledge: I'm repeating the things he told us about at home and try to learn them by myself. I use the newest Visual studio and .NET framework version.
In school we have pretty old PC's and even older .NET framework. But let this insanity begin...
As normally i entered my classroom a little late (I have a dangerous habit of ignoring my alarms) and sat down on my chair. We were only 3 people including me at that moment so everything was pretty chill. I ask him what our task was and something along these lines occurred:
Me: what's our task?
Teacher: you remember your shopping list program? I want a textbox in it next to the listview and I want it to show every listview item
Me: that doesn't make sense
Teacher: yadda yadda just do it
Me: kaaaaay, anything else?
Teacher: actually yes! Please use inheritance.
Me: *baffeld* that doesn't make any sense at all. We have 5 different fruits; you tell me i should make a class per fruit!?
Teacher: yes of course! This is how professionals do it all the time. Please give them a distinct attribute, too.
Me: *angry* I'm. Not. Gonna. Do. This. This is total bullshit and also really bad coding style. I'm not going to teach myself something that doesn't make sense at all.
(Note: i know how inheritance works and he knows that too)
Teacher: You have to do it, you won't be prepared for final exams otherwise!
Me: leave my exam prep to me. I won't do this.
Teacher: *grumbles* fine
Later that very same lesson i got a .NET compatibility error. I couldn't work because I wasn't allowed to change anything on the installation nor to install a newer framework. So basically he told me I should've used 'sharpdevelopment' (which is not able to do windows Forms, but hey who cares) and this would not have happened. I was so furious at that moment i just took all my stuff, told him that I work 'from a place where i got decent software and space to think' and left the room.
Why did this person decide to become a programming teacher?7 -
I really hate PHP frameworks.
I also often write my own frameworks but propriety. I have two decades experience doing without frameworks, writing frameworks and using frameworks.
Virtually every PHP framework I've ever used has causes more headaches than if I had simply written the code.
Let me give you an example. I want a tinyint in my database.
> Unknown column type "tinyint" requested.
Oh, doctrine doesn't support it and wont fix. Doctrine is a library that takes a perfectly good feature rich powerful enough database system and nerfs it to the capabilities of mysql 1.0.0 for portability and because the devs don't actually have the time to create a full ORM library. Sadly it's also the defacto for certain filthy disgusting frameworks whose name I shan't speak.
So I add my own type class. Annoying but what can you do.
I have to try to use it and to do so I have to register it in two places like this (pseudo)...
Types::add(Tinyint::class);
Doctrine::add(Tinyint::class);
Seems simply enough so I run it and see...
> Type tinyint already exists.
So I assume it's doing some magic loading it based on the directory and commend out the Type::add line to see.
> Type to be overwritten tinyint does not exist.
Are you fucking kidding me?
At this point I figure out it must be running twice. It's booting twice. Do I get a stack trace by default from a CLI command? Of course not because who would ever need that?
I take a quick look at parent::boot(). HttpKernel is the standard for Cli Commands?
I notice it has state, uses a protected booted property but I'm curious why it tries to boot so many times. I assume it's user error.
After some fiddling around I get a stack trace but only one boot. How is it possible?
It's not user error, the program flow of the framework is just sub par and it just calls boot all over the place.
I use the state variable and I have to do it in a weird way...
> $booted = $this->booted;parent::boot();if (!$booted) {doStuffOnceThatDependsOnParentBootage();}
A bit awkward but not life and death. I could probably just return but believe or not the parent is doing some crap if already booted. A common ugly practice but one that works is to usually call doSomething and have something only work around the state.
The thing is, doctrine does use TINYINT for bool and it gets all super confused now running commands like updates. It keeps trying to push changes when nothing changed. I'm building my own schema differential system for another project and it doesn't have these problems out of the box. It's not clever enough to handle ambiguous reverse mappings when single types are defined and it should be possible to match the right one or heck both are fine in this case. I'd expect ambiguity to be a problem with reverse engineer, not compare schema to an exact schema.
This is numpty country. Changing TINYINT UNSIGNED to TINYINT UNSIGNED. IT can't even compare two before and after strings.
There's a few other boots I could use but who cares. The internet seems to want to use that boot function. There's also init stages missing. Believe it or not there's a shutdown and reboot for the kernel. It might not be obvious but the Type::add line wants to go not in the boot method but in the top level scope along with the class definition. The top level scope is run only once.
I think people using OOP frameworks forget that there's a scope outside of the object in PHP. It's not ideal but does the trick given the functionality is confined to static only. The register command appears to have it's own check and noop or simply overwrite if the command is issued twice making things more confusing as it was working with register type before to merely alias a type to an existing type so that it could detect it from SQL when reverse engineering.
I start to wonder if I should just use columnDefinition.
It's this. Constantly on a daily basis using these pretentious stuck up frameworks and libraries.
It's not just the palava which in this case is relatively mild compared to some of the headaches that arise. It's that if you use a framework you expect basic things out of the box like oh I don't know support for the byte/char/tinyint/int8 type and a differential command that's able to compare two strings to see if they're different.
Some people might say you're using it wrong. There is such a thing as a learning curve and this one goes down, learning all the things it can't do. It's cripplesauce.12 -
Finally made my node production server stable enough that I could focus on writing tests*. I start by setting up docker, mocking cognito, preparing the database and everything. Reading up on Node test suites and following a short tut to set up my first unit test. Didn't go smoothly, but it's local and there are no deadlines so who cares. 4 days later, first assert.equal(1+1, 2) passes and I'm happy.
I start writing all sorts of tests, installing everything required into "devDependancies," and getting the joy of having some tests pass on first try with all asserts set up, feels good!
I decide to make a small update to production, so I add a test, run and see it fail, implement the feature, re-run and, it passes!
I push the feature to develop, test it, and it works as intended. Merge that to master and subsequently to one of my ec2 production servers**, and lo and behold, production server is on a bootloop claiming it "Cannot find module `graphql`". But how? I didn't change any production dependencies, and my package lock json is committed so wth?
I google the issue, but can't find anything relevant. The only thing that I could guess was that some dependencies (including graphql) were referenced*** in both, prod and dev, and were omitted when installed on a prod NODE_ENV, but googling that specific issue yielded no results, and I would have thought npm would be clever enough to see that and would always install those dependencies (spoiler: it didn't for me).
With reduced production capacity (having one server down) I decided to npm uninstall all dev dependencies anyway and see what happens. Aaaaand it works.....
So now I have a working production server, but broken local tests, and I'm not sure why npm is behaving like this...
* Yes I see the irony.
** No staging because $$$, also this is a personal project.
*** I am not directly referencing the same thing twice, it's probably a subdependency somewhere.2 -
So working for a company and the dev team I’m apart of works on a legacy rails app. Technical debt is high, no automated tests, no proper routing and also running unsupported versions of the language.
I joined seven months ago and got the current team doing automated testing so that’s a plus, they bought this app four years ago and there’s been no language updates, testing, cleanup, security updates, nothing, just adding to bad code.
Now we’re looking to actually upgrade language versions, the language and the framework now this will cause a lot of stuff to break naturally due to how outdated it is.
So I started putting proper routes into place how things should of been when things were being built as we have some spare time I decided to go out of my way to clear up some of the technical debt to get ahead of the curb. Re-done an entire section of the app, massive speed improvements, better views, controller, model, comment clean up and everything exactly how it should be.
I push the PR,
*other dev* - “why are we doing all of these other changes”
*me* - “well to implement routes properly, we have to use the new routes I just did some extra cleanup along the way”
*today, me* - “can you lend me a hand with one of the routes the ID isn’t getting passed”
*today, other dev* - “this wouldn’t of happened if you didn’t redo all these files, let’s just scrap the changes”
…
Sooo, I’ve spend three weeks improving one section in the app, because I’m having issues with one route according to this dev I should scrap it? Wait come again, am I the only one in this team who cares about making this app better all round?
Frustrating…4 -
I'm shitting there hammering out some code butchering some real problems when I suddenly realise I'm surrounded. I look around and yes it's the bloody committee.
The committee is what I call the rest of the department and it is dominated by the old guard which comprises of the programmers that have been around for longer.
None of the old guard can program particularly well but because they had been around the longest they'd all grown senior. The committee had free reign but anyone else doing anything differently has to get approval from the committee.
The only way to code otherwise was to copy and paste existing code then to primarily rename things. If anyone did anything that hadn't been seen before then it would have to be approved by the committee. Individual action was not permitted unless you were old guard.
I swept my headphones away expecting it to be something unimportant. It was.
First things first they announce. We're going to add extraneous commas to the last element of all possible lists separated by comma including parameters or so they say. Ask but why so I do.
Because the language now supports it. They added support for it so it must be the right way someone proclaimed. Does it? I didn't realise we were waiting for it. Why do we want it though?
Didn't you hear? It's all over the blogosphere. It massively improves merge requests. But how I ask?
Five minutes later I grow tired of the chin stroking, elbow harnessing, slanted gazes into the yonder and occasionally hearing maybe its because and ask if they mean when you for example add an element the last element registers as changed from adding a comma. Turns out that's all it is.
How often do we see that tiny distraction and isn't it pointless to make the code ugly just for a tiny transient reduction in diff noise I ask. Everyone's stumped. This went on and on and got worse and worse. But it makes moving things around easy half of them say in unison like the bunch of slobs that they are. I mean really. It doesn't make expanding and contracting statements from multiline to single line easy and it's such a stupid thing. Is that all they do all day? Move multi-line method parameters up and down all day? If their coding conventions weren't totally whack they wouldn't have so many multiline method prototypes with stupid amounts of parameters with stupidly long types and names. They all use the same smart IDE which can also surely handle fixing the last comma and why is that even a concern given all the other outrageously verbose and excessive conventions for readability?
But you know what, who cares, fine, whatever. Lets put commas all over the shop and then we can all go to the pub and woo the ladies with how cool and trendy we are up to date with all the latest trends and fashions then we go home with ten babes hanging off each arm and get so laid we have to take a sick day the following to go to the STD clinic. Make way for we are conformists.
But then someone had to do it. They had to bring up PSR. Yes, another braindead committee that produces stupid decisions. Should brackets be same line or next line, I know, lets do both they decided. Now we have to do PSR and aren't allowed to use sensible conventions.
But why, I ask after explaining it's actually quite useful as a set of documents we can plagiarise as a starting point but then modify but no, we have to do exactly what PSR says. We're all too stupid apparently you see. Apparently we're not on their level. We're mere mortals. The reason or so I'm told, is so that anyone can come in and is they know PSR coding styles be able to read and write the code. That's not how it works. If you can't adjust to a different style, a more consistent style, that's not massively bizarre or atypical but rather with only minor differences from standard styles, you're useless. That's not even an argument, it's a confession that you've got a lump of coal where your brain's supposed to be.
Through all of this I don't really care because I long ago just made my own code generators or transpilers that work two ways and switch things between my shit and their shit but share my wisdom anyway because I'm a greedy scumbag like that.
Where the shit really hit the fan is that I pointed out that PSR style guide doesn't answer all questions nor covers all cases so what do we do then. If it's not in PSR? Then we're fucked.4 -
"This site uses cookies" is the most useless thing ever... Who fucking cares if it does. What is next? We should put explanation how DNS server or apache works?7
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I was late with getting into programming and only started considering it after completing an education in animation before (unwillingly) working jobs outside of that field for a few years.
I had to really dig to try and figure out what I'd enjoy doing, and it's when I asked myself what I enjoyed about things in the past like railroad tycoon that I got on the track (eh?) of putting stuff together and making it work.
I remember seeing my friend play and I was screaming internally at his "who cares it works" solutions. When we later played ottd I would try to set up my stuff so that it was readable and because I realized how annoying it is when I can't figure out what my friend's tracks are supposed to do without asking him.
I was basically a developer all along. It's just that my only programming language was railroad tracks and signals. -
Avoid the words blockchain, microsoft, competitive, startup, and equity. This works well for a primary screening. Second at the interview talk to them if they don't know shit either the company is shit or don't give a shit who they hire. Third figure out what you need to make to live without stress, any company that will pay it cares about their employees as long as it's somewhat reasonable
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