What ever happened to the teachable moment? It seems to have been replaced by the insultable moment. I was fortunate enough to have mentors who didn’t immediately assume the worst of my intelligence when I asked a question. I’m going to try do the same.

Ranters this week

Is Microsoft going to ruin GitHub? NO!

Are we going to get amazing git integration in VSCode? ABSOLUTELY!

They're a 600 billion dollar company and they're one of the leading contributors to open source. They know the community they are handling and how fragile it is. This is just a developer trust move from them.

Stop pretending this is the end of GitHub, cause it isn't.

The amount of rants on here I see of 'Devs' complaining that other non-tech people aren't knowledgable/ can't understand 'simple' explanations / etc and are mean, or even cruel to those non-techy people is alarming.

Just because you've spent a lot of time on something youre interested in, doesn't mean:
A. Everyone else is interested in it.
B. Everyone knows everything about it.

These 'Devs' are the reason most Universities require mandatory social classes so they can make sure you can talk to people in a nice manner and get your point across.

Majority of the time I need to explain a concept I find simple or I know to someone, I try to find an analogy about something both parties know. I know that pulling the documentation information and giving to them will just result in more questions and they won't understand.

You just gotta know how to talk to people without getting angry at them for being who they are, human.

String TLDR = "Don't be a dick because someone doesn't know something you do"

The fluent design on Edge is incredible! Really tempted to switch to edge now.

A big shout out to all the polyglot developers out there who understand that languages and frameworks are just tools with trade offs.

May we always evaluate thoroughly and choose the best tool for the job at hand.

Cheers 🍻

Bonus Round:

What tools are you currently wielding while reading this rant?

I am getting so tired of devRant being composed 80% of posts where someone talks about how stupid their professor is when they have probably only read the dust jacket of a Python book. If you really knew anything about being a developer, you would know to look for what you can learn from people instead of being a cynical little know it all dipshit.

I Love PHP and I develop on Windows. And I have a light theme on my IDE

Group assignment: writing a own Java logger component in a group of four, using nothing else than Java SE libraries, Maven and Jenkins. The software must be able to substitute the logger component without recompilation, just by editing the config.xml (setting jar file path and fully qualified class name of the logger).
I asked around on Slack which group is ready for a component exchange, so that we could test the switch. I found another group and I started doing some testing.

Then I got a `java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Logger`. I got in touch with my peer from the other group and asked him, if they've been using log4j. Apparently they did, so I told him that the assignment was to write a logger of one's own, not just using log4j. Then he told me: "Uh, ok, I'm going to tell the guy responsible for the logger part about that..."

X-D

Somehow every programmer that i met, started programming at age of 8-10
Like wtf were you programming, an alarm clock to watch Spongebob Squarepants?

Is anyone else noticing an increase in rants / stories that are clearly bullshit.

I think the community is garnering a lot of fantasists who are detailing scenarios they have imagined, in some bizarre attempt to impress people.

This is the real shit

It seems that linuxxx could post a rant detailing the growth phases of beans and people would ++ it through the roof. Fucking A man... Really makes the "top" page a boring read when 50% of it is random shit that he posted. Could use some fucking variety in here.

That's mostly aimed at the brainless people that instantly ++ popular people, not really at linuxxx.

About slightly more than a year ago I started volunteering at the local general students committee. They desperately searched for someone playing the role of both political head of division as well as the system administrator, for around half a year before I took the job.

When I started the data center was mostly abandoned with most of the computational power and resources just laying around unused. They already ran some kvm-hosts with around 6 virtual machines, including a cloud service, internally used shared storage, a user directory and also 10 workstations and a WiFi-Network. Everything except one virtual machine ran on GNU/Linux-systems and was built on open source technology. The administration was done through shared passwords, bash-scripts and instructions in an extensive MediaWiki instance.

My introduction into this whole eco-system was basically this:
"Ever did something with linux before? Here you have the logins - have fun. Oh, and please don't break stuff. Thank you!"

Since I had only managed a small personal server before and learned stuff about networking, it-sec and administration only from courses in university I quickly shaped a small team eager to build great things which would bring in the knowledge necessary to create something awesome. We had a lot of fun diving into modern technologies, discussing the future of this infrastructure and simply try out and fail hard while implementing those ideas.

Today, a year and a half later, we look at around 40 virtual machines spiced with a lot of magic. We host several internal and external services like cloud, chat, ticket-system, websites, blog, notepad, DNS, DHCP, VPN, firewall, confluence, freifunk (free network mesh), ubuntu mirror etc. Everything is managed through a central puppet-configuration infrastructure. Changes in configuration are deployed in minutes across all servers. We utilize docker for application deployment and gitlab for code management. We provide incremental, distributed backups, a central database and a distributed network across the campus. We created a desktop workstation environment based on Ubuntu Server for deployment on bare-metal machines through the foreman project. Almost everything free and open source.

The whole system now is easily configurable, allows updating, maintenance and deployment of old and new services. We reached our main goal for this year which was the creation of a documented environment which is maintainable by one administrator.

Although we did this in our free-time without any payment it was a great year with a lot of experience which pays off now.

Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours... of fun.

I guess I have reached the point of no return

Allllllright. Time for another one of these. It's necessary.

We get it, you don't use/like/acknowledge Google. Please, kindly STFU already with it. The entirety of the smart internet has made your point.

Oh, because I use Google I'm a fucking idiot? No, you are for thinking that. I've used many engines and consistently have they given me worse results. "Oh, it's because they build a search profile for you, they're spying" Yeah, I get it already, fuck off.

Linux is NOT the thing that's going to solve every single human problem, so please stop treating it like a good and saying everything else is complete shit and nobody should use it.

Windows has issue, but so does Linux. At least I can (usually) comfortably update Windows, knowing what the update includes, without having to read the source code fhanges or be scared that there's a fucked up package update.

Just because something isn't open source doesn't mean it's the fucking devil. And just because I USE that closed source thing doesn't make me... Well, anything really, except for a guy who actually gets different programs. Please stop trying to tell me what I NEED TO DO to be a "good person" or user or anything like that, I'm going to do what I damn well please. If that means using Windows with Closed source things like Nvidia drivers and cards, the so be it. Got a problem? Go fuckyourself with it.

First job.

CLIENT: It's just a small website, 15-20 pages 2,500$, what do you say?

ME: Sure, sounds easy.

CLIENT: oh, and I need you to sign this contract that you won't copy or competete with me for the next two years.

ME: Sounds reasonable.

-- A year later --
I had finished building a huge CMS system that serves 420+ organizations, the entire thing copied from his competitor.

CLIENT: So there is only about two weeks left of work...

ME: Goodbye, I have a new job that actually pays money.

CLIENT: Don't forget our contract...

ME: Sure..

At least he paid me, but 2,500$ for a whole year's work isn't such a good deal anymore.

Reading through the devRant feed recently is like reading the acceptance speech of pseudo celebs for questionable awards.

Something that really grinds my circuits:

When programmers talk about making their own language but they know nothing about programming language theory.

What most people think of designing a language is actually just replacing keywords.

Algo strikes very often or people just continue to repost the same things... maybe I know the answer. 🤔

"who is 'Drew Paul? And why do you hate him so much?"
"It's D-R-U-P-A-L, mom. And don't worry about it, you don't need that aggravation in your life."

Can we stop reposting every single meme out of /r/programmerhumor? Thanks!

Reading devRant feed is so fucking hard nowadays. Every other rant is about Windows rebooting, Google being evil, Quantum beating Chrome, M$ users being cunts and all these fanboy shits.

Fucking hell. Write some actual code and rant about some solid problems rather than being a stupid fanboy.

I need to do codereviews at work...

Everytime i get c# code im just happy, it's beautiful to look at, easy to follow, new language features every couple of months or so...

And then I get Java/Android Code.... 😩☠🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️.

(I mainly code in C++)

Sometimes I really don't understand why so many CS students take pride in talking in a highly disrespectful manner about their professors. While it is true that not all professors are upto the mark, but imo that still is no reason to use derogatory language for someone senior to you, which sadly is quite common these days.

Words to live by as a developer:

“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”

But somehow people(you guys knows who they are) doesn’t seem to get that!

HW issue causing blue screens? Windows' fault.
Driver bug? Windows' fault.
A program crashing? Windows' fault.
"Forced" updates you could've turned off? Windows' fault.
You have no common sense? Windows' fault.
Your girlfriend leaving you? Windows' fault.

Let's blame Windows because I got nothing else to blame.

No, you cannot ask us to move our tech meeting elsewhere because we're being "loud", for the same reason we don't ask you to leave the area because your non-work-related chatter is distracting us from our said meeting. It's the only video conferencing system in the joint, and it's not our fault you and your people sit nearby. How dare you go past us and complain to our boss as if we're nothing to you - just because you were recently promoted, don't act like you were never in the trenches with the rest of us. It's like you have no respect for us now that you've gone a step up the ladder. The next time you or your team members try to fuck with us like that over petty shit like this, we're going to bring the hammer down on your asses and burn every last vestige of self-worth you have by making sure you never get a moment's peace. It's bad enough you and your team suck each other off during our bi-weekly department meeting by patting yourselves on the back for doing what's supposed to be your fucking jobs - don't you dare try to drag us down to make yourselves look like fucking saints. That is where I cross the goddamn line.

For those that celebrate Halloween, and for those that can simply appreciate when being a dev IS life... :)