Wow, function overload is worst than garbage! Is more like toxic waste!

If you run out of names for functions just name them:

DoThatStuff1(int, string)
DoThatStuff2(object, int, string)

instead of:

DoThatStuff(int, string)
DoThatStuff(object, int, string)

Your coworkers and future you will thank you!

I already got tired of “AI”. The hype train has been so ridiculous. It’s been months since at least 50% of the orange website is not about AI. Every other tool/company that I use is adding new gimmicky “AI” features.

It’s probably just me but I’m exhausted of AI…

I’ve been in a sabbatical for the last few months and it’s been incredibly enlightening!

One of the things that I discovered is that I can still enjoy working with computers!! Just because something has been done doesn’t mean that I can do it again. It’s been done, but not by me yet. I’m not claiming is objectively better or anything like that, I’m just saying that is mine!

Together with that I’m also finding out that making things “my own way” is very motivating and satisfying! I don’t think this would work on a team, but it certainly makes programming a creative endeavor, which I think is why it sucks so much to work in the tech industry nowadays! Creativity is risky and dangerous and so, if Facebook became a million dollars company using ______ then let’s call that “industry standard” and do it everywhere, even if all it is is distilled excrements that only works because of the billions…

I guess the bottom line is that I’ve found out that I like programming because I’m a creative and places that force me to program while killing my creativity are both toxic and miserable… and I never wanna go back!

Work on a product to categorize text… previous guy implemented an NLP solution that took 20 per body of text (500 words or so) in a $400/mo AWS instance, was about 80% accurate and needed “more data for training” 🤦‍♂️

I thought (and still think) that for some use cases AI is straight up snake oil. Decided instead to make an implementation with a word list and a bunch of if statements in Go… no performance considerations, loops within loops reading every single word… I just wanted to see if it worked and maybe later I could write it more optimized in Rust or something…

first time I ran it it took so little that I thought it had a bug… threw more of the test data we had for the NLP, 94% accuracy, 50 flipping milliseconds per body of text in a $5/mo AWS instance!!!

Now, that felt good!!
(The other guy… errr… left, that code is still the core of product of the company I built it for, I got bored and moved to another company :)

So… C++ seems kinda ok, as long as you don’t use like 80% of the language :-)

This is me making concessions when a library I really want to try (Dear ImGUI)is written in C++…

(yes, I know about cimgui, but for some reason I wanna learn upstream instead of generated bindings…)

I know we are supposed to rant here... but I've been on sabbatical for a bit and just rediscovering how fun computers are has been so refreshing!!

Here's the next little post about a toy chip8 emulator I've been working on 😊

https://benjcal.space/posts/...

So something you find fun! I remember hearing a mom telling how there was a bunch of stuff that she couldn’t do in her life, but sure as heck could solve the problems of Hyrule in TOTK!

For me atm the next fun thing looks like trying either void Linux or gentoo… I might die… but it’s still sounds fun!

Oh gosh, if you like building stuff, how do you find a job that is actually building stuff instead of dealing with software complexity bs, bureaucracy, red tape, processes to justify other people’s jobs… 🤦‍♂️

Yesterday I wrote a post about a project I’ve been working on. My wife loves to proofread stuff so I handed it to her before sharing it. It was so funny to see her having no idea what I was talking about, but still fixing me since I don’t English good 😂

Here’s the link in case you are curious

https://benjcal.space/posts/...

how do you go about working with a teammate that the best thing would be to rewrite the code he worked with for the last 5 months!?

I mean, no separation of concerns, layers upon layers of unnecessary abstractions, unneeded parallelism and mutex and whatnot...

Like, 5000+ lines of code that could be done in 400...

take a walk!
take a naps!

The ONE thing that has had the biggest impact in my career is likely walks and naps.

Some years ago out frustration I decided to pause a project and took a walk (or a nap, I don't remember) and 30 mins later I had a clearer idea of what to test next, a possible solution or something...

Nowadays I don't wait at all to be frustrated, way before that, when I feel myself spinning my wheels, slightly stuck, or just a little slower than what I usually am, I just stop right there and take either a walk or a nap. I can't count all the times in which I've come up with solutions/alternatives/approaches/etc. to problems/tasks/etc.

So now walking and napping IS part of my work. I'll get familiar with the problem, or spent some time understanding the goal and then I'll go for a walk or take a nap. And my career keeps progressing, I'm less likely to snap, haven't been anywhere near burnout for years, raises, and other great stuff, and a huge part of it I attribute it to taking walks and naps!

Give it a try!

the CEO is trying to release a product that has had a total of 1 test user, himself!! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Any ideas to convince him to do something like a slow launch instead of sinking a bunch of money on marketing!?!?
(I'm pretty sure dilbert or xkcd should have something related...)

Story time...
full-stack dev with a side project
get fired, side project gets investors money enough for me to do side project full-time
over-inflated CTO title but suddenly I'm not only coding but in charge of interns, operations, ML, strategic planning, etc...

should feel lucky but at the same time kind of not really sure what to do first since I'm kind of in charge of everything... facepalm.exe

any suggestions? thx!

when you open your domain registrar and see there all the half-baked ideas you one had there 🤦‍♂️

If you want a self stem boost talk to some non programmers sometime. They seems to see us as gods with some mystical magical powers!!

Talked with a broker today and he told me about a damaged computer that he had with some important files. I told him that I'm not that kind of computer guy and proceeded to explain him briefly what I do (I build stuff) and he was like "oh, so you a the the REAL computer guy!" (no offense to any technicians here!)
I loved it!

So, get out and talk to the muggles and stop complaining that you are not good enough to work for Google (or Google is not good enough for you anymore anyways...)

!rant

What better thing to do than explore devRant while nervously waiting for the bride in the day of your wedding...

I think the advantage of CS is that it forces you to explore things you might not think interest you, it also gives a general base and vocabulary to speak "the language" of this career. With that said I often look to hire people without CS degrees but that has the motivation to learn by themselves (I'm self-taught). The degree doesn't say much about, but if during it you explore, stay curious, look beyond 20y/o outdated advice from some professors you'd get the most out of it.

Start making a portfolio even before starting college and stay curious!

quick question: If you are writing a software to start a business around it, would you make that software (or not) open source?

I have in mind something like the Insomnia REST client by @gschier (FOSS) vs Postman (Commercial)

Thanks!

I haven't been ranting in a while but y'all are so smart that I can't get enough of your wisdom!

So... Client wants me to build something. That something has a lot of commercial value as a product or even a startup...
How do I go about communicating that? Do I reach an agreement to release it open-source and then I can offer commercial support? Do I offer them a discounted price for my services and I remain the owner of the code?

Thanks! 😊

How do you get yourself to work when you are tired/sleepy or unmotivated?

Release my own software!
(Like the guy behind insomnia, he is one of my heroes!! 😁)

I have an interview in an hour and for all my efforts and preparation I'm starting to sweat bullets! 😅

After frantically browsing Twitter and devRant and HN and stuff it's just a matter of waiting now.

Any advice or tips?

Maybe is just me but I'm starting to move from the idea that work needs to be fun at all.

If it is, awesome! If it's not it's OK because work is just about 20% of my life in which I don't have a lot of control but enables me to have control over the other 80% (hobbies, relationships, community, fun)

planning to start a intentional, systematic job hunt... any tips?

// please help!!

Today I woke up 🌅 wanting to write code that is more art 🎨🖌️ than just the usual dry technical stuff...

I want to look at my commits this afternoon and feel proud about mastery and craft!

so, any EE here?
I'm a self-taught EE (shots fired! I was told to call myself an "inventor" so I don't offend my dear EE friends!)

Anyways... I just made a huge insight that wanted to share!

in the circuit that has been breaking my head for the past couple of days (switching DC-DC [boost, buck] converter the inductor takes care of holding the current stable while the capacitor the voltage. (apart from an low-pass filter...) The higher the frequency the smaller the capacity of the inductor needed, the less amount of wire, less resistance, more watts!!!!!

Quick vent...

I just hate how other people in my organization keep blaming the systems instead of taking a second to verify if the data that they are feeding the system is accurate!!

It's like adding "4+5" in a ti83 and blaming the TI engineers because the result is not the "4" they wanted! 🤨

First patch for buildroot submitted and added applied to master!! 😁

I had the impression that git (like, more than "git add ." was just too complicated and that making patches was some sort of dark magic using some obscure unix tools.

Well, it turns out that is actually pretty easy, fun and exhilarating!!

Looking forward to build up until I'm making contributions to the kernel! 🤓

If you are one of all those awesome developers and hackers and I only understand 20% of your rants then props to you and keep scrolling :-D

But if you are a young developer, fresh grad or just learning programming I have an idea, how about a mentor?

This literally just pop in my head right now while cleaning my kitchen!

I'd be learning along your side and also having lots of fun! I don't have any formal experience providing mentoring but have some education credits and patience.

I'm gonna stop the sales pitch because it's annoying even me! but Idk, i just thought that maybe there's someone else out there interested in mentoring services :P

I just switched from Arch to Fedora...

I know I know that all the cool kids use arch, but right now I'm not up for checking out random gdm bugs or some other manual tasks. I need a stable, fairly supported and well maintained distro and fedora just works!