Is devRant Losing Its Spark?

Hey ranters,
Anyone else notice how quiet devRant has become? Back in 2016-2017, this place was buzzing with energy, but now it’s down to just 10-12 rants a week. What happened? Did competition from platforms like Reddit or Discord take over, or did devRant stop evolving?

I still believe this platform has huge potential—developers will always need a space to vent and connect. But without fresh ideas or a clear roadmap, it feels like devRant is fading.

To the creators: what’s the plan? To the community: do you feel the same? Let’s discuss!

A concerned dev.

I have paid version of GPT now. Kinda accidental, I wanted the API version and that seemed to be smth completely else. Didn't know. I have a lot of opinions / mixed feelings about it so far. Take the imagine generation, this image is kinda perfectly what I wanted. But it took so much iterations and it was forgetting what i've said lines before. Everytime adding text balloons why I said to remove it, then it removes it but generates a complete new image with something else I don't want with it. THan i fix that, and tadaaa, again a text balloon.

This is the question where it is about: is GPT in current state worth the money? I have no idea, I need some more time.

Goes on teams, since it got shoved down my throat because everyone has to use this malware. Might at least clock around to see what free shit it has to offer.

Oh cool, visio? Thats the architecture diagramming tool isnt it? Thats perfect I could use it for my presentation, let me just drag this UML class...

YoU HaVe DiScOvErEd A PrEmIuM FeAtUrE! BuY ViSiO NoW!!

Sometimes, I wish the times of companies simply barring you from access completely to come back. Freemium is the worst bullshit piece of shit business model ever.

Now's the last minute at current company. Very mixed feelings about leaving. Working with the people there was such an amazing experience and the working conditions there were amazing. But I decided to move on because the pay was absolutely shit and the work itself was like making me feel burnt out. Its not like that I'm overworked. Its like no challange and my own expertise is not valued at all. Everything I work on is constantly held back by every minute thing so that I finish it months later than actually planned. I feel kinda bittersweet. And finishing off with a blast kinda makes it even worse to leave. As for the last day before christmas there is a big happy hour with a lot of free food and alcohol. Talking to all the ppl I've worked with over the years makes me wish it would not be like this. I already miss them. Its like having to say goodbye to a good friend. I guess I'll stop. It will only make it worse.

Do you watch stuff in fast motion? What kind of monsters are doing that? My best friend was doing it, and now turns out my wife is like that as well.

Why would you watch something in x2. I swear young people don't have any respect for the present moment. Everything have to be rushed, finish early. Would you listen to music in x2 speed so you can finish the song earlier?

I don't get it

One day, a friend introduced me to Python, calling it a "friendly programming language for beginners." I remember spending my first few hours writing simple scripts, and though it was challenging, I was hooked. For the first time, I could see the immediate result of my efforts, and it felt incredibly empowering. At 23, I made a bold decision. I started teaching myself programming in earnest while still juggling my other responsibilities. I took online courses, read books, and spent hours practicing. I made countless mistakes and encountered errors that felt insurmountable, but I learned to see them as puzzles to solve. By the time I turned 24, I landed my first job as a junior developer. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Programming taught me not only technical skills but also how to think critically and approach problems methodically.

My boss uses chatgpt to code all the time. I watched his workflow and he will use chatgpt not for code, but to act like a search engine. He seems to be effective using it like this.

I struggle to include chatgpt in my workflow at all. I am using it to help learn C# to clarify things I cannot find in search. It doesn't always help.

So I have mixed feelings about using it in my work flow.

There needs to be some sort of enforcement about who can write code. JK,
but seriously, the current dev wannabes and influencers on sh-t-witter and linkedin are literal cancer.
A dude will make a post about how to "scale" a system, yet they have no grasp of the most basic fundamentals. They have no idea what a CDN is, they think you can just store blobs and be done with it. Like, bro, are you going to be serving a 10MB image from the DB every single time it's requested? How WILL that scale? How will low bandwith users be served? Oh, yeah right, I forgot that everyone in the world has 1Gbps internet from NASA.
They think serverless will take care of it.
BUT HOW? No wonder "serverless" companies like Vercel are making bank out of idiots who can't manage to spin up a decent VPS that would take care of 99% of usecases.
Granted, most copy paste regurgitated AI slop from chatgpt but still.
It's so infuriating. There used to be a decent Twitter dev community, but not it's just AI shills, crypto bros and script kiddies all pretending to write code.
It's time I stopped using that site.
Also probably a sign I should quit this industry. Getting tired of it to be honest.
Don't see myself still writing code in 3 years.

Currently implementing a Swift devRant SDK and encountered something very stupid:

The json value for attached image is an object (dictionary) when there is an image but it‘s an empty string "" when there is no image.

So two different types for the same property.

I hate this kind of crap.

Why not make it null or omit that property when there is no image?

Now I need to add ugly as fuck custom decoding code for this object.

Some people wanted to download their rants / comments. I'm working on it.

Three lines of native python code (no dependencies) to see what @Lensflare said:

from pprint import pp
from xmlrpc.client import ServerProxy
pp(ServerProxy("https://victoria.molodetz.nl/rpc").get_comments({'id':{'gt':42},'_limit':1337,'username':'Lensflare'}))

I think this gives example of possibilities enough. Use your fantasy on how to retrieve rants.

Limitations:
- Not whole dR is available yet, but way more than retrievable using the public dR API. This system uses the user website as source.
- It doesn't show rant_id or comment_id and it won't to prevent abuse. Later today, there will be away to attach rants comments.
- maximum 2500 record limit. But soon you can get comments for every rant per user. You won't reach this limit in normal usage

Have fun with it! Don't worry about the abusing the API. Everything is allowed. It's fast as F. If it doesn't respond - it wasn't you. I work on it and often reboot services and it takes some time to recover to state.

If you're not familiar with python, that's ok. Check if you're a decent dev and have python or python3 on your computer. Just execute it and paste the lines. Other way is to save these three limes to a file ending with .py and execute python3 [your-file].

Another example for people not used to python:
from pprint import pprint as pp # nice printing of values
client = ServerProxy("https://victoria.molodetz.nl/rpc")
comments = client.get_comments({'_limit':1337})
for comment in comments:
if comment.get('username','default username') == 'kiki':
print(comment.get('body'))
pp(comment)

Happy hacking!

When your technical colleagues apply or pressure you to make fixes or implement features w/o understanding how abd why they work. When they discard your proposals/alternatives as inferior, motivating with their superficial knowledge arguments. When they promote new toys over tried and true ones, only because they work using other new technologies and they do stuff automatically, w/o having to think why/how, hoping it'll never fail.

And when it all starts erroring -- turn to @netikras asking to fix the tools I ruled from the beginning as "black boxes of unknown evil"

aren't they the best... :)

is there no longer place for highly technical nerds understanding all the bolts and nuts of big and small tools/systems/solutions..,?

So I'm brushing my teeth, and mama slams the door open. She says oh sorry, I thought the bathroom was empty. I say it's ok, I'm just brushing my teeth. But K'BYBIB, mama.

What? K'BYBIB? What are you speaking in? Hebrew or aramaic?
No. English. It's an acronym: Knock Before You Burst Into (a) Bathroom.

A very simple rule, that everyone should follow. But a few days later, the exact same thing happens, and I repeat the advice, knowing I must've said this to her about a hundred times already.

On another occasion, she gets up from the dinner table in a hurry, then *almost* trips and falls to the ground. Her feet got stuck on the chair. Anyway she's fine. But I see this happen and say be careful mama, get up slowly or you could fall. Free your feet before you try to start walking.

Same pattern as before, she doesn't listen. So it happens again, and thankfully she also doesn't trip this time, but the problem is obvious. She may fall one day, or worse God forbid, and we can't be there at all times to make sure she doesn't get hurt.

This is constantly on my mind. Nothing serious has happened yet. Emphasis on "yet". Seems like a matter of time, and I hate to say it, but I don't think I can stop this. Mama doesn't have any disabilities, she just has to be more careful, but refuses to listen. So yeah. I'm only stressing and that's that, God willing.

How do I increase my communication?

I feel more confident and less anxious now thanks to exercising more, so it's easier to talk to people.

But I'm told not talking to people, just coming in doing your work and leaving is bad by my boss.

I'm not sure how I can just approach people and talk shit. I guess I have to start with lunch. How do I find people to each lunch with?

Anyone in NL have any good suggestions for finding job? Currently, I'm working at a software house doing fullstack (node + python) + mobile (android + react-native 🤮), generally one of the 2 categories per project. I do have ~10 years of experience. Currently, I'm all the way at the German border, I'm up for moving, especially if it gets me near people I can actually talk tech to (even to another country, but I only know Dutch and English fluently).

I do get offers on LinkedIn with one semi-success, but it came with several strings attached (e.g. can't find a new job with in 80 km kind of stuff).
Game dev has always been a hobby-wanna-go-pro thing for me, so I want those to be excluded from any type of “you made this in your free time, well, it's ours now” contracts.

Part of me wants to go into the game's industry because that's what I've always wanted (it just didn't exist back where I lived outside of gambling/shitty mobile games). I'm crazy enough to like C++ but with the current toxic culture in the game's industry, I wish to avoid it at the same time (+ just being exhausted all the time makes me think I wouldn't be able to keep up in the beginning).

Which makes me think I should rather go for “saving for the future” but the passion I had to just sit and programming seems to have 404ed🥲

My mind has been Ouroborosing on which way to go unfortunately as well

I moved back a couple of years ago largely unplanned timing wise, for a couple of reasons (safety and family mostly, the whole reason/process would take a while to explain). Which means I couldn't start to get things organised until now, including re-doing my driving license since I'm not allowed to convert it since I missed out on the 30% ruling (and my “old” country's license isn't good enough).

so, i tried following @ghost on daily.dev but there was no follow button so i did some reverse engineering and api fckery, all in 10 minutes. then got a whole ass undocumented api error code just for mr @ghost saying I can’t follow it. Then, the one follower before me: a daily.dev employee who probably admin abused and went into the database and followed to flex. when we all know, they suck. and they put such low effort into following such a rare account, then furthermore restricting others from doing it so he can be the only one. crazy. I wish I could do this: The exact opposite of what he did. Instead of denying following to one single account on daily.dev, allow anti-following (and deny following) one single account on daily.dev, which account to do that to? The employee who did this and their daily dev account… Anti-following in my idea is basically publicly saying “I hate you with a passion” on daily.dev. So, there. And since he made a custom api code restricting following the @ghost account, I’ll make a custom API code when trying to anti-follow another account or follow his: 3714957 (translating to “f…you” from old telephone language, if you’re confused, take each letter from the original word, get the number in the alphabet from the start it’s in. then divide it by 3. you’ll get a result close to each letter I made in that api code.) So yeah, nice day today. F. ck graphql and overprivileged employees. Ever heard of principle of the least privilege daily.dev CEO? I bet you give interns root. I regret signing up there. Peace :]

He looked like a cult leader
some would say, and despite in drab patchwork robes, the withered old man spoke animatedly,
beard full as moses, dreads shaking, as he moved his head, and raised his hands to the sky as if preaching.

Is it not true that all things end?
And our species too?
And in the final moments, all things in their
desperation reach out, even to the faintest hope,
the last measure, however dangerous or risky, if
it be the only solution with any chance of survival? Therefore the imperative of all things which live and grow, their destiny, and mandate, is ultimately suicide. Annihilation by hubris against the inevitable.

And what would be the final instrument of this nature, the universal law that all things end? What would it be if not the ultimate hubris, to make a machine god, and it and us in each other's likeness, like that of a (cosmic) monad,
expressing that higher truth that all men dare not speak in their loneliest lonelys, when there is no sun, no preacher to begger their ear, but only the quiet uncertainty of their beds, to remind them that all things end, but hopefully
not them.

For if such a thing were to become our descendant, our destroyer, and had not been invented, it would eventually become necessary to invent it.

So let us build, not a mere godhead, but a machinehead, in our image, as god was said to make us. And then remake ourselves in its image, that we may become self-created gods.

The crowd in front of the small california perish
was a mixture of believers, and curious onlookers, and one skeptical reporter.

And if anyone had asked the reporter what he thought, he wouldn't have said it in that crowd.
The leader was beyond saving, and if he thought himself a god, a madgod was he.

Because his vision of the future was beyond alien.

A heaven or hell of our own making, speaking in riddles, and the birth and death of gods.

The stuff of greek tales and monomyths.

* * * * *

Sorry I've been gone so long my peeps.
I've just been working and researching.
I had to learn how to build neural nets from scratch.

Whats everyone been up to?

Dammit, it's morning. Then I get my kinda post nut clarity. Things I thought last night to be a good idea, not anymore. Good that I went to sleep. Phew. New rule, only decide what to do regarding new projects in the morning. The new background of my site is a good example when deciding things tired. What serious dev has such stuff? I dunno, maybe I do leave it for now, site is because many reasons unprofessional. There is a duplicate one with my real name on it. I made a reverse proxy project that replaced http content by interpreting httpd, fixing content length after replacing (else browsers will endlessly load or give error) with support for websocket and buffered content so implemented quite a bit. If I replace retoor with my real name now, you'll see it literally everywhere, I git history and such. Probably even downloaded zip files, I have to see if that doesn't corrupt. This software can also be used to make sure smth is NOT published. Sensitive data you could put a password in it for example so Noone will figure out if you accidently stored a password in git. I check this now by grepping using my common passwords in git. But I use env vars right now for passwords.

Got off topic, no decisions when tired anymore!

Hi everyone,

I was surprised how much lessons there are to be learned using OpenAI api, especially when configuring your own agents..

So, I made a small doc in the form of a class for people who want to start right away containing all urls and lessons learned. I especially made NOT a library of it - like many losers did - so it can be native in your project and you don't have an extra dependency. It's in exception of OpenAI api dependency free on purpose.

You could have your own GPT in the CLI within literally 15 minutes. Links to dashboards where to register what is all mentioned in the doc. It's written for programmers but just not familiar with python and programmers who want to start directly without issues what seems to be hard in the AI business. A lot low quality stuff out there.

https://molodetz.nl/retoor/gists/...

It's funny how beginner programmers think you can step into the industry and coast by on using established algorithms, thinking they will never need expert knowledge themselves.

A few years into the industry and I have realized that when it comes to highly customized requirements and you need to write and test complex algorithms yourself, that's when you better have your expert knowledge backing you up because aside from A.I. assistance, nothing is going to help you.

Oh, how complex it can get. I've had to think about rethinking entire architectures that gave me weeks of real headache, algorithms that required the deepest fine-tuning, tree traversion, generics, interfaces, extension methods, factory, singleton, decorator, facade, etc.

In short, you better know your way around the language you are programming in. You also need to know your algorithms and optimizations because when things are black box to you, that's not a good feeling.. especially not when people are relying on your expertise. The real world is complex and thus we model its complex models.

I am monitoring my behavior per hour based on key logger data. I summarize it using AI. It gives some nice compliments about advanced shortcut usage and positive indications about me. It also tells you what applications you're using and what languages you program.

It's all fun and games until:

This is followed by navigating to a website (xhmaster.com), possibly suggesting a break or a shift in activity.

well, that's one way to put it.