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
-
Showers
99% of my bugs are fixed whilst I'm in the shower
Honestly, I should just get a waterproof computer and write code in there14 -
Spending 5 years at University with a friend....uh???
Let me explain...
I have a friend. A very good friend I can say. I know him since 18 years but I started being everyday with him at the beginning of my "University's journey".
And when I say everyday, I am not joking...every lesson, every exam, every project...
The problem is that he is one of the smartest person I have ever met in the "scientific field". So? He is also unable to say that he doesn't understand something. He is unable to say the he is wrong or to admit that someone else is better then him.
Let just say that he is not good in "relating to other people".
I am very smart too and suddenly he started to fail where instead i was doing good. Jealousy, anger. Every occasion to point out my errors. Every occasion to say to the others that I am stupid and he is smart.
But I know him and I am not like him. So I continued to stay with him, work with him and also going out with him. Because he is my friend.
And you know what? After 5 years he started to be more "human". I learned so much from him and he learned to be respectful and humble.
It was a very stressful period but thanks to that I know that I can be strong and work hard also when someone try to stop me. I am not afraid to say my opinion just because someone is yelling at me. And I know that I can go over stupid judgements and still work good as a team member.
That's it.
Be respectful. Be patient but defend your opinions. Trust yourself but listen and learn from everyone. And if sometime you fail, remember that it's normal. No one is perfect. No one can be perfect alone.
I hope that this rant can help someone else.
Good week to all of you.7 -
Mountain climbing. Increases social skills, teamwork and trust.
Building a house. Increases spatial visualization and planning skills.
Electronics. Increases mathematical and problem solving skills.
Chemistry. Increases precision and analytical reasoning skills.
Psychedelic drugs. Increases imagination, inspiration and abstraction skills.24 -
Tanking World of Warcraft raids. I had severe depression and low self worth. I played the game all the time to cope. I decided to get good at tanking because I heard it was a challenge. I ended up getting fairly decent, started tanking raids and people would ask me on more and more raids saying I was a great tank.
This gave my self confidence a boost and I figured if I could do that (which everyone said was hard) I could get good at coding (which everyone also said was hard.)
Stopped playing wow, started coding all the time. Today I earn very, very decent money as a software dev. (and I don't have depression anymore)
Thanks World of Warcraft.12 -
Playing Warcraft and similar games prepared me for understanding Classes and Instances in Object Orientation later.
5 -
Non-dev activity that made me a better dev?
That's an easy one.
Playing the piano. Or better: learning to play the piano.
(With the help of my teacher) I developed many skills that help me learn faster and I learned how to properly use and organize my time.5 -
Gaming anytime!
The reason I become intrested in computers was gaming.
Given I started out as a game dev, playing games helps me think more about it and imporve my skills.
Also sometimes it reduces my productivity :P3 -
Non-dev thing that made me a better dev?
Music, and trying to learn music theory. I was never very good at it, still am not, but the harder I try at this, the easier programming becomes...7 -
Taking a dump and showering are my number one non dev activities. They help to clear your head and when your head is empty you will get the best ideas and solutions.4
-
Some of these have been mentioned already but here they are, these things make me be a bit better at programming (at least I think so)
• sleep, I love sleep and I think a good night's sleep can do wonders
• music, music theory which is a language in itself and playing an instrument which teaches hand-eye-coordination and also creates patterns in your head, but certainly teaches us that you need to practice a lot to achieve your goals, that it's hard for beginners but gets a bit easier with time
• solving puzzles and riddles, I've been a huge fan of puzzles from an early age, it is something that teaches us solving problems and creating strategies
• other types of games that are helpful are games where you have to find things in a picture or in an environment, this has trained me a bit on finding nasty bugs in my code or at least syntax errors
• googling: sometimes you find out something that is not really related to your problem, but you remember it nevertheless and later on it can help you with something else
• maths, yes, you read correctly, I'm not a big fan of maths either, but what you learn in maths is that there are certain procedures you're often repeating and that you're always building on your knowledge and expanding it, sometimes solving mathematical problems is fun too ;)
• getting fresh air - self explanatory
• listening to other people's life stories, this helps me generally in life, to know that I'm not the only one struggling with something and so on
And I probably could go on with a lot more things, but I think that's enough for now15 -
Washing the dishes.
Somehow it helps me think more clearly. This is why I'll never buy a dish washer.2 -
Hardcore loli porn.
Just kiddig. Video games and math study. I believe that the most elegant solutions come in the form of math and the challenge they impose as well as the satisfaction of getting the correct result (or the estimate for it) are comparable to running a succesfull application.11 -
Non dev activity that has helped...
Erm, working in retail stores for many years before deciding to take a serious look at devWork as a full time job rather then a hobby.
Has helped make a great base knowledge to what customers expect and what sales people expect a platform to be able to do which just makes things easier in an over complicated environment 🤣1 -
My current favourite music genre.
I've listened to rock, metal, general top40 music and so on but when I listen to a good rawstyle mix, I get into a very high/hyper concentration state.
I haven't had that with any other music genre.
Currently looking into producing it myself.9 -
Reading books, not sure if you can even call it a non-dev activity since it is essential in my opinion but reading improves my programming skills everyday!
-
What really helps me is knowing electronics, having a solid understanding of maths and experimenting around with computers and hardware in my spare time.
At some point you start to see programming as being more than just "kreating" (as Karlie Kloss would say) an "app".
I see programming as pushing your machine to go beyond its seemingly narrow boundaries. -
Martial arts. Learned to think calmly under stressful situations. Whether that's deadline or a fat fuck laying on top of you trying to choke you out.1
-
Being in a semi-professional dance company, and just generally being a dancer from a young age.
Taught me how to deal with constant criticism, to not take it personally, but to use it to my advantage.
I also have no problems with giving presentations since I was used to being on stage, even though I'm a pretty shy person.
Still waiting for the day that super-fast wardrobe changes, and callused point-shoe damaged toes come in handy 🤔1 -
Sudden realization: wk82 rant... year has 52 weeks?! Ok, must be from the beginning of week rants and going on... But are these week rants a thing from the start of the devRant?
Is devRant.getAge() == weekRants.getAge() true?32 -
I've became a better dev/sysadm since I've got a girlfriend. She has no freaking clue what I am doing when I'm working or sitting in front of my laptop. But she's often interested in the things i'm talking or ranting about when somthing doesn't work out like i've planned or some stupid problem occurs that I'm not able to fix. I am so glad i've got her. :)2
-
Working out regularly.
It's a nice break and it wakens my mind and body.
And it eliminate tension headaches2 -
So I'm not sure I understand this question fully, if it is meant only through code, than I guess none or those people I got to know while I was doing my algorithms and data structures project last semester where we were helping each other with our code
If it's meant generally through code related activities then I gained lots of friends in uni in classes and here on devRant of course and actually yesterday I got to talk unexpectedly about coding and programming languages on an event with a guy who actually studied financial maths in Vienna but now works as a tester and works with databases, that was nice6 -
sleep. this isn't even a fucking sarcastic answer. my motherboard almost got fried from my drool after falling asleep on my keyboard.2
-
Analyzing code from stack overflow until i get it, before i use it.
that way you can pick up lots of useful features about a language or deepen your understanding for a topic, especially when you're just getting started.3 -
Going to the gun range and going through a couple of hundred rounds always helps clear my head when I am stuck.1
-
Pretty much anything involving a computer?
Unrelated task -> this feels sorta boring, is there a better way... -> thinks about automating it -> starts coding2 -
If someone asks you something that's easily google-able, they are probably just trying to break the ice with you.
Been reading a few books this year on people skills. We write code to make the lives of people better. To do that we need to understand and emphasise with each other -
Playing Portal 2
Not only has this game a need for understanding highly complex problems - but it also was the first game besides Minecraft I started to mod and really had something valuable come out!3 -
Damn this week topic is hard.
I am gonna go with managing a team. I have to use the DRY SOLID YAGNI KISS on daily basis at non-dev tasks too.3 -
Becoming member of a political party.
I met a lot of smart people, had many great debates about different issues, yet most of all: I learned how dangerous group dynamics can be. (It's insane how fast Us-vs-Them-group-thinking can manifest itself.) I learned to reflect myself (the hard way) and that if I want to convince someone, rational arguments is not enough if you are a dick about it and that sometimes the how you say things is so much more powerful than the what.
Basically, I learned a valuable lesson on how (not) to communicate. I still profit from that on a daily basis in my work as a developer.
(On the other hand, the whole experience made me rather cynical about the state of the world at large.) -
Giving up expectations of people.
People don't know what the fuck they want, so what made me think they could actually deliver anything? Idk, but it doesn't matter now, my life has been easier since I stopped caring.1 -
Exercising. Which I stopped doing a few months ago. Which probably explains why everything I’m doing is turning to crap.
-
Best non dev activity for me is riding public transports home after coding. It's so underwhelming that my brain focuses really well - comes with the problem of looking crazy when I take out my laptop in the middle of the subway1
-
Bouldering helps me get my mind free. Since I go climbing once a week I recognize how stressed I am when I miss it.4
-
Social interactions. Made me realize what people expect from an application. Earlier I didn't have end user perspective and used to design complicated GUIs with too many technical words. Now I make simple and easy to use UI with instructions that can be understood by non-devs too.
-
Explaining difficult things in a way that they are understandable by non-expert audiences.
This helps a lot to focus on simplicity when programming. And simple means it'll get understood by your peer programmers, it is simpler to test and it will be easier to maintain, and so on... -
Working at an IT help desk for a public University. I get to see exactly the kind of shit software that I want to avoid creating, every day.1
-
Two things have helped me solve issues, and improve myself as a developer which are showers and sleep.2
-
Listening to hardstyle - gives me energy
School (I don't mean this in a positive way) - creates a lot of hate and anger which gives me plenty of energy to code and to change things (mostly privacy and also a bit of freedom related)
I just realized that I could create a whole rant about the issues I have with school2 -
Simply walking. While walking I'm getting many ideas how to implement my features/changes. Especially when they are interesting.
-
Has to be writing.
Not exactly a better dev, per se, but close enough.
I used to read books and imagine all sorts of possible scenarios to different events. One day, after replaying the Mass Effect series, I began to think about alternate ways to end it. Opened Libre Office and started hammering away. 10 minutes later, I had an outline. Never actually finished that story, but the spark was there.
I began noting down outlines and creating structures for interesting games and books; that soon carried over to my work. Before and after every meeting with my boss, I'd have outlined how the meeting was going to go, and how it actually went. Gave me a sense of order.
This in turn helped me be a better manager (I work with a team of 9), and I tell you guys, it couldn't have come at a better time. I had been promoted quite suddenly, and had been fucking up quite a bit at the start.
I had my shit in order. My team was happier and more efficient. My boss was happy. I was given bigger goals and tighter deadlines. I fucking loved it.
All this, from writing some fanfiction. (there, I said it!)
P. S: I stared at this for a solid minute, still not sure how it all came together.1 -
Well, I gotta give it to the following:
Gaming-
It was the thing that made me curious about programming and actually brought me into programming in the first place.
Makes my mind fresh and ready to code as well ☺️
Curiosity-
I always had curiosity and that helps me learn all I know. It helped especially in programming since it’s much easier ( imo ) to code if u dive deep in the intricacies of the system.
Support from parents-
I got a lot of support from my parents. Especially my mom who always listened to me babbling of programming and showing interest, and motivating me to continue it 🤗🤗 -
Having a degree in math helpes immensely with programming. Abstract reasoning, calculation simplification, sussinct data representation, nice things to have.
-
Playing pokemon. I'm extremely into the series and played nearly every gen since the first ones. Even bought the cheap 2ds just to play these 3ds versions even tho i got acutally no time during exams and sometimes even played the different editions of the same gen just because i can.😅
And I have the habit to think about "how is it done?" With everything that is displayed on a screen or just blinks. And with 800 pokemon and their stats and subforms and IVs and all that nerdshit (back then compressed in such a small rom and running on pretty low end devices) i began to think about data structures, organization of them and such, especially when there are many big, wide datasets.😪3 -
Playing saxophone and learning music theory helped me a lot. Also reading books and being a scout boy contributed getting my mind away from computers and clearing my ideas, like a reboot or something.
-
Studying human languages.
They are so much more complex than a programming language and full of irregularities and stuff you can't really learn but have to 'feel'. This helped me a lot developing methods to learn new things quite easily and knowing foreign languages are kinda useful when I have to communicate with people too.3 -
Yoga! Helps me to maintain a sound mental health. As a result analytical thinking becomes more enjoyable and less stressful.4
-
Sleeping but I accidentally had come up with solution in a coding problem.. there are also times where you can’t sleep and thinking of how to solve the problem but in reality you’re just trying to get some sleep....
-
You got it all wrong, it's being a dev that helped me a lot in a lot of domains: organization, logic, basic maths that I kept struggling with for years, and the love to learn new stuff everyday
-
Playing video games on my PS1 when I was a kid inspired me to explore programming 😎
When I learned how Gameshark works I was blown away! -
Managing a small team - poorly.
I was in charge of testing a legacy calculations engine together with two scientists, for whom I set up a python and interop environment so they could test the engine easily.
The two were very excited at the thought of validating the calculations and in fact found many bugs.
I was very supportive, told them to fix the bugs and gave them a pet on the back.
All three of us were happy the legacy engine is shaping up, that's until my boss heard of it, and boy did he grill me hard for it.
Turns out our efforts were highly unappreciated by the client, whose only request was that we test the engine and report the bugs. Not to fix them. My goodwill cost the company a lot of money, since the client paid by the hour, and was now due a refund. Crap.
It took me a year to finally understood the moral of the story. Which is to always respect the client's wishes and convey maximum transparency to him. -
Cup Noodles, they are a saviour when you want to finish something but are unable to since your stomach is empty
-
Drinking beer. Yes, seriously. I especially remember one Friday afternoon in the late 90s when I was still a trainee at a major Swedish telecom company. I had been working on a test application which gave visual output in the shape of dots teeming around on the screen, each one of which represented a network node. Then my colleagues and I had an afterwork at a nearby bar. After a few pints, when the others went home, I returned to the office and, in an inspired mood, made a few modifications to the test app so that you from each client could control one of the dots with the keyboard, basically turning the app into a multiplayer game. Over time I improved it further with some sprites and the possibility to shoot at each other. We had great fun while performing tests :D
-
I got inspired to make my code as closest to perfection as possible for me by my uncle. Seriously - he was real handyman.
Once he had an accident in his car (I think it was Škoda 100) because of the drunk pedestrian. The car engine was ruined, as like back of the car. He disassembled the car bolt by bolt (he was writing all the actions in his notebook). He then bought exact parts and paint (which wasn’t easy in 80’s Poland) and fixed the car alone in his garage.
Even tho everyone was telling him to give up, it will not work, etc. the car started at the first try and you couldn’t spot any damage. Even the paint on the body was matched 1:1.
This story inspires me to don’t give up and try to do my job as best as possible - even if everyone else says I can’t do it. -
Being a scout.
It allows me to practice leadership, patience and explaining and it forces me to be outside and active every now and then.
The fresh air really helps, and I always bring a notebook 🤓3 -
I just draw for hours and play games. Sometimes I play the piano (very rarely now, idk where to progress in play by ear). Currently I'm learning spoken languages (Japanese, sorry not fan of anime, just finding something to learn, I did deutsch and russian at first but failed so yea.)
-
Becoming one of the world's top players in the card game of Yugioh.
A long with actively getting good at other card games and board games. -
Competing on different subjects while in school have taught me how to work efficiently under pressure. My teachers have given me a systemmatic approach to problem solving, from divide and conquer (math), careful reading and analysis of the problem, as well as good documentation (physics).
And last, but not least, I learned to type fast, which is really helpful in speedy expression of thoughts. And for that, I gotta thank IRC. -
Reading. And not just a couple of genres, I mean as much as possible on as many topics as you can deem interesting. Classical literature, epics, poetry, contemporary criticism, post-modernism, every pretentious piece of work you can get your hands on.
Because the greater your vocabulary and the wider your understanding, the more efficient and proficient you become in learning new things.
Also, it makes you a better writer when you finally find yourself needing to put together some technical documentation for that content management system you whipped together in a fortnight.5 -
Understanding vulgarised politics and psychology, it showed me good examples to understand some design patterns or concepts like interfaces...
-
Next weekly rant will be about what demotivates us most...
Yea so my rant: REWRITING MY FUCKING NN FOR THE FUCKING THIRD TIME8 -
Sports. Without sports I would never get my head free from my dev thinking. But getting my head free is necessary to get new ideas and solve old problems.1
-
Studying mathematics, which in fact I consider as the most effective mind practice for a developer, even if you won't utilize some concepts directly in programming.
And also wandering around and walking long distances, probably because I really like to talk to think loud 😄 and it's less weird when you're just passing by. Anyway I enjoy it personally. -
I'd say general every day problem solving and observing the processes of the natural world.
When you take the time to observe and learn from the natural world you can really learn alot from it. Nature has alot of the things we work on already figured out 🙂 -
I cant really contribute much to this wk because im mostly doing dev stuff in my free time.
But league and, well, strategy games in general taught me a lot about micromanaging stuff and thinking ahead. My advice is, if you wanna get better at most mental tasks, go download lol or grab a copy of cities or eu4 and play for half an hour every day.9 -
First thing is quite simply no overtime, I never EVER work overtime, you get my 8/9 hours a day, where I do work and that is it.
However, as dev's our minds never really shut off from 'coding' so if there are any bugs or complex issues, those most often get resolved when I am out for my run or cycle. -
Working in IT Support (1nd, 2nd and 3rd Level) for 3 years. It helped me to understand the customers needs a Lot better.
-
I'd probably say the activity that's made me a better dev is going to school for graphic design. Though it would help more if I was a front end developer, it helps me think more about the end user seeing as that's what my schooling focused on. Outside of schooling, probably painting and drawing just due to thinking creatively in my free time I think helps me approach dev problems in different ways than some of my non visual co workers.
-
Doing sports. Any kind of exercise helps to clear my head. In the last two months I had less time and possibility to train and I can really feel the difference.
-
Probably my language and communication skills.
I tend to think of programming as a conversation between the programmer and the machine.
Similar to being an effective communicator, the key to being a good programmer is knowing what to say when (deciding how to do a particular task, such as reading a file from disk) and not about simply knowing the different ways of saying the same thing (different ways of doing that task in your code). -
Well, you know the feeling when the whole day you solve difficult problems and than get stuck on something that looked simple? Well i go and drive around aimlessly, and when i get back almost EVERYTIME works at first try... (or at least different error message) :)
-
Meditation. Or Awareness Meditation to be precise. It enables me to regain control over my mind, because I get distracted really fast. It really helps sorting things out, taking a step back and getting an overview where I actually am and if what I'm doing right now is actually relevant/has priority. I mostly find that it's not, so I have to return to the important stuff.
For those interested: meditation sounds weird, even obvious at first or you just don't get what's it all about. You actually have to practice meditation for a long time and study the concepts until you start to understand what all these phrases and talking means. Behind them lies great wisdom/huge amount of concepts which is easily underestimated. So don't be frustrated too much if you don't feel it working right away. Be assured I've been there too. Also don't start with meditations like 'just stop thinking or think nothing' because in my opinion this is highly complex shit and frustrating at first. Start with awareness or breathing meditations or even get an app to support your daily habit.1 -
I don’t really think this makes me a better dev, but playing guitar and watching tv shows helps me relieve some stress. Also, spending time with my fiancée. If anything, my job made me a worse dev, which is sad and ironic.
-
Learning Philosophy.
It is the most important thing for anyone to do to.
Everyone has one either implicit or explicit.
Learning metaphysics, and then more specifically epistemology has greatly increased my ability to process new information and build better models of the world around me. -
Exercise and sports are good ways of relax and get some discipline. Writting, either blog posts or simply for yourself improves your communication skills. On the communication side, I've specially noticed that I improved by doing talks (dev and no-dev) even if it wasn't for and audiance of more than 30. Games also helped me with problem solving and management. There's a lot a stuff 😅
-
Learning how practice works by playing guitar, working at things slowly first then moving on to harder stuff.
-
Carpel Tunnel has actually made me a far better programmer.
While I've had to cut down on how much I program, I have instead started writing the first draft of any program on the whiteboard and manually debugging it.
Also got my dream internship because it made me far better at coding interviews!1 -
Caving (AKA spelunking/potholing) helped me learn to stay calm under pressure, which made anything devops related much easier to handle.
-
Waking up. Though I wish I didn't have to. Wouldn't it be nice if you could sleep-code (like how some people sleep-walk)?2
-
Bass playing.
Helps me to reset my train of thought when I'm burnt out. And it's another way to get creative!4 -
Kinda sounds like a typical nerd, but playing video games. Thinking about all the moving parts in the game causes me to think harder about how I write my code.1
-
a nearly lethal amount of adderall as well as a small paper cup filled with liquid cocaine. Also somehow getting heart-burn from a singular french fry.4
-
Sports made me a team player and overall determined person. It thought me that progress requires time and that appetite comes with the eating.
-
thoughts of being homeless;
gym, ski - having a break;
talking with experienced people who open my eyes; -
Being a person prior to Dev work. Lol... Jk.
Honestly though... I'm still new at this but I feel like me being a middle ground helps in tech discussions with the business side of the house. I translate for the senior dev and everyone seems to appreciate knowing what he's meaning exactly when he starts going off on functions and objects. -
Blog about personal stuff. Like how my lunch tastes bad today or saw a cool gadget that I can't afford. Or journal my feelings that I didn't buy Bitcoin yet. 😭😭😭
-
I hate the school, but when I study and I keep my grades high I feel better while coding.
Playing some FPS, anyway, helps me find something quicker in a file. -
Not exactly related to the topic but the exact thing is chilling the fuck out .
I always was anxious and was completely paranoid about minor bugs in my application during prod deployments(that is when I didn't know about testing utils and so on) , till the point that I couldn't fix a minor bug in the CSS and I puked 5 times over.
It was rough times but then I got over it and it really helped me alot.
I know bugs are like really not the kind of things you'd want to see in any application but it will arise in every application :3 -
Making music definitely made me a better programmer. In fact playing lots of instruments showed me the different roles that exist on a team. Lead guitarists are kinda like programmers, constantly looking for the next challenging song to make. Singers and rhythm guitarists are like the team leads and PMs who want a nice bow on the product. Drummers are like designers really, they kinda show up and make something bad ass and disappear. Bass players are like solid backend or ops folks silently making stuff stable and grounded.
-
with me its the other way around
not becoming a dev helped me to look at problems like a dev and solving them more or less XD -
Fathers computer store..
I was working there since I was little and got whole hardware perspective and initial user knowledge.. Hell, I even cracked my first game there! -
Well, I haven't done almost anything not dev related for the last 6 years, but I think the thing that helped me the most is gaming1
-
Weirdly enough—doodling/using my adult coloring book app. Focusing on doodling flowers or swirls just helps the process sometimes.
Top Tags
Weekly Rant
View