I used to work with a guy who had 2 PH.Ds, in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and over 600 patents but I kid you not the guy could not use the coffee machine. Now it's not like this coffee machine was as easy as a Keurig, it was some $20,000 espresso machine that took a while to figure out but I tried teaching him how to use it a few dozen times and still he couldn't get it right. It got to the point where I thought he was faking it so that others would make it for him so I offered him $500 if he could figure it out. Still nope. So for the remaining 2 years we worked together I made him coffee whenever he wanted, 2-4 times a day, and he bought me lunch everyday. Before I left the company I bought him a Keurig so that when I left he'd still have coffee.

- Sir, you must put away your laptop before the flight takes off.
- Is a tablet okay?
- Yes
- *Uncouples keyboard from Surface*
- ಠ_ಠ
- (⌐■_■)

What devrant taught me:

Everyone hates java
Everyone hates php
Everyone hates spaces
Everyone hates tabs
Everyone hates vim
Everyone hates windows
Everyone hates linux
Everyone hates clients
Everyone hates PMs
Everyone hates every language they're not working with
Everyone loves devrant 😊

"A comment isn't needed if the name is good and the responsibility is clear" - M.Howell

I just spent 5 minutes trying to fix an error saying that I am missing a ";".

I saw a ; at the end of statement but I kept on getting the error.

After cleaning the monitor the ; disappeared and I was able to see the problem.

Clean your monitor once in a while.

I asked for a raspberry PI not raspberry PIE! I don't even like raspberries! And it's not even Christmas yet and its gonna go bad! Who the hell gets a pie for Christmas?!

How would you - as an experienced OOP developer - describe the difference between an abstract class & an interface to a beginner, learning the concepts?

I used to get annoyed when my dad(65+ years old) had a simple computer "problem" like copy and paste that I needed to help with.

But then I remembered he showed me how to use a spoon and not shit myself so I guess it all evens out

This is a somewhat old story. I joined a project in making a 2.5d platformer in Unity. A couple months in, the project manager had decided that this game would have two sequels, an MMORPG, a live-action movie and a web series. He informed the whole team of this decision. One week later, every member of the dev team had left. This scope crept forth from the depths of hell and ruined a simple project. Lesson learned: Keep the scope small and don't bite over more than you can chew.

Edit: I know that you should dream big, but don't make 4 games, a web series and a movie simultaneously.

Always be honest

Hey everyone - just a note on rants about politics: we've had a long-standing policy not to really allow any of them. So if you post one and see it quickly disappear from the feed, that's why.

We've gathered a lot of feedback on this and Tim and I both agree that Facebook is ridden with posts about politics and one of the more refreshing aspects of devRant is we've kept it free of that. It's also an aspect of Facebook that many people I've talked to really hate.

Thank you, and feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Was letting my five year old cousin play on my laptop today. She was writing numbers in notepad, and after typing '123', she erased them because she wanted to start over from 0 instead.

Later she started typing 1 and 0 repeatedly in random sequence.

She may be a robot. Either way, I sense a bright future ahead for her.

My advice for new devs, or to all of us :)

Halloween.

View from 41st floor in Guangzhou.

Clearly his taste of music is different than that of mine!

Best order number ever

The software I wrote..

Cincom VisualWorks
The only IDE for Smalltalk-80 and it's ugly and instable as fuck.
You can accidently break the program's code while using it, effectively ruining your day.

Name your stuff in English. Variables, functions, files. Everything.

You make the code completely unmaintainable for everybody that doesn't happen to speak your language otherwise.

I cringe every time I see someone in our company use German in his code. Just don't.

Every software should have this

0. Plan before you code. Document everything. You won't remember either your idea or those clever implementations next week (or next month, or next year...).

1. Don't hack your way through, unless that's what you intend to do. Name your variables, functions etc. neatly: autocomplete exists!
Protip: Sometimes you want to check a quick language feature or a piece of code from one of your modules. Resist the urge to quickly hack in the test into your actual project. Maintain a separate file where you can quickly type in and check what you're looking for without hacking on your project (For example, in Python, you can open a new terminal or IDLE window for those quick tests).

2. Keep a quiet environment where you can focus. Recommend listening to something while coding (my latest fad is on asoftmurmur.com). Don't let anything distract you and throw your contextual awareness out of whack.

3. Rubber ducks work. Really. Talking out a complex piece of logic, or that regex or SQL query aids your mind greatly in grasping the concept and clearing the idea. Bounce off code and ideas with a friend or colleague to catch errors and oversights faster. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

4. Since everyone else is saying this (and because it merits saying), USE VERSION CONTROL. Singular most important thing to software development aside from planning and documenting.

5. Remember to flout all of the above once in a while and just make a mess of a project where you have fun throwing everything around all over the place. You'll make mistakes that you never thought were possible by someone of your caliber :) That's how you learn.

Have fun, keep learning!

Phoney call from MS:
- We at Microsoft have detected an issue with your PC.
- Oh, I only have a Mac.
- But that is fine, I will transfer you to the Mac department...

Do not disturb someone especially if they are in the zone.

Hint : earphones on, a ton of error logs on screen.

If you are not breaking stuff, you are not learning.

Things I wish I could tell my 18 year old self.

1) Accept you will make mistakes.
2) Truly learn the language you are using.
3) Write idiomatic code for the language you are using.
4) Be upfront about not knowing something.
5) Don't let not knowing something stop you from learning it.
6) None of us knew X until we learned it.
7) Understand your strengths and weaknesses as a developer, play to them.
8) Be willing to try new things.
9) X language isn't ALWAYS the best choice, X paradigm isn't ALWAYS the best choice. Choose wisely.
10) You won't know everything, but you might know more than others.
11) Your ideas and ego don't matter more than ensuring the product works.
12) "Perfection is the enemy of the good [enough]" - Voltaire
13) "Perfection is not achieved when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to remove." - Einstein.
14) Conflicts happen, deal with it.
15) Develop a toolset and really learn them.
16) Try new tools, they may prove better than what you were using.
17) Don't manage your own memory unless you absolutely have to, you are probably not smarter than the collective intelligence of the team that built the various garbage collection methods.
18) People can be dicks, especially online.
19) If you are new and people are being dicks to you, did you skip past the irc message about etiquette? If you did, you're the dick in this situation.
20) It can be tough, but it is fun, so have fun!

Reinventing the wheel can be very valuable. Even if you don't create a better wheel, you'll learn a lot about how it works, which can really help you out in the long term.

Worst part of being a dev?
Unanswered stackoverflow question that exactly matches your problem

1. You will write ugly code. Code that is in dire need of refactoring almost immediately.

2. You will write brilliant code. Functions and algorithms that will impress all that use them.

3. 1 & 2 are not mutually exclusive. Good software can be written poorly, beautifully written code can be useless. At the end of the day, just get the job done.

General advice: If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.