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So a few days ago I felt pretty h*ckin professional.
I'm an intern and my job was to get the last 2003 server off the racks (It's a government job, so it's a wonder we only have one 2003 server left). The problem being that the service running on that server cannot just be placed on a new OS. It's some custom engineering document server that was built in 2003 on a 1995 tech stack and it had been abandoned for so long that it was apparently lost to time with no hope of recovery.
"Please redesign the system. Use a modern tech stack. Have at it, she's your project, do as you wish."
Music to my ears.
First challenge is getting the data off the old server. It's a 1995 .mdb file, so the most recent version of Access that would be able to open it is 2010.
Option two: There's an "export" button that literally just vomits all 16,644 records into a tab-delimited text file. Since this option didn't require scavenging up an old version of Access, I wrote a Python script to just read the export file.
And something like 30% of the records were invalid. Why? Well, one of the fields allowed for newline characters. This was an issue because records were separated by newline. So any record with a field containing newline became invalid.
Although, this did not stop me. Not even close. I figured it out and fixed it in about 10 minutes. All records read into the program without issue.
Next for designing the database. My stack is MySQL and NodeJS, which my supervisors approved of. There was a lot of data that looked like it would fit into an integer, but one or two odd records would have something like "1050b" which mean that just a few items prevented me from having as slick of a database design as I wanted. I designed the tables, about 18 columns per record, mostly varchar(64).
Next challenge was putting the exported data into the database. At first I thought of doing it record by record from my python script. Connect to the MySQL server and just iterate over all the data I had. But what I ended up actually doing was generating a .sql file and running that on the server. This took a few tries thanks to a lot of inconsistencies in the data, but eventually, I got all 16k records in the new database and I had never been so happy.
The next two hours were very productive, designing a front end which was very clean. I had just enough time to design a rough prototype that works totally off ajax requests. I want to keep it that way so that other services can contact this data, as it may be useful to have an engineering data API.
Anyways, that was my win story of the week. I was handed a challenge; an old, decaying server full of important data, and despite the hitches one might expect from archaic data, I was able to rescue every byte. I will probably be presenting my prototype to the higher ups in Engineering sometime this week.
Happy Algo!8 -
I'm the biggest dumbass, the laziest procrastinator I know of..
Joined devRant in June 2017, got eligible for the stickers in a week's time, sent a mail requesting them, but never received it. Given the size of our community, I thought I'm way behind in the list and probably receive them in few months. After a year, I totally forgot about it.
But, the colossal stupid that I am, had also lost the key to my mailbox (the physical one). I never cared about the lost key, because who sends post these days !!!
When I finally got a duplicate key for my mailbox after 2 years, guess what I found.. a first class international mail from devRant which arrived on July 2017 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️, couple of weeks after I originally requested
But, yay... I finally got them..16 -
Nobody:
Senior frontend Dev at my company: "microservices best thing ever"
Also him: "Relational databases gonna die"
Also him (talking to the DB team): "You're gonna dissapear, Mongo is the future"
Me: "Eh... Dude, Mongo is still a database.."
Him: "Microservices"
Send help...27 -
WHOA
My grandpa just gave me 100$ for fixing his TV:
-And here is you paycheck son...
-What? Noo, it was literally 2 minutes factory reset, I don't need this :D
-Oh come on. I'm not paying you because you because you pressed some buttons. I pay you, because you exactly knew which buttons to press. Now, take it!
Truly, the man of honor...12 -
TLDR : I left a company which doesn't understand the concept of email id and passwords.
Me (trying to login to the alumni website) *no register user option*
Customer support - you've to click on forgot password to create an account.
Me - Wonderful
*clicks on reset password*
*enters employee id, name, email, father's name, DOB, date of joining , date of leaving, current city because apparently if I just enter my employee id it is as if they never knew me. Sigh*
*your password will be sent to your email id*
Me - okay. *waits for two weeks because I assumed someone will manually go and create my account and email me, considering the state of system. *
After two weeks,
Me - I still haven't received my password on email after I created my account. Can you please check?
After one week,
Customer support - you need to click on forget password if you forgot your password.
Me - *inventing new curse words* I have not forgot my password, I never received it in the first place!
After one week,
Customer support - yes you'll receive your password on your email id.
Me - *runs out of curse words* seriously dude?
* proceeds to reset password*
System - your password has been reset. Your new password will be sent to your email id. *apparently anyone can reset passwords if you have the employee id, which is an integer*
After a week
Me - Am I going to ever receive the password? I've tried generating passwords, resetting my password. I never get my passwords. What should I do!!
Customer support - yes you need to click on Forgot password.
Me - are you fucking kidding me!!!
You fuckers need to be fired and replaced by a FAQ page which has no question and just a single answer, because a peanut has higher IQ than you. For any questions you may have, just reset password. Goddammit idiots!
Also, which email id are you sending my passwords to?
Customer support - myname@oldcompany.com
Me - you do realize that this is the alumni website for the company. Alumni means ex members.
Being ex members, you can assume we don't have access to our company email ids obviously?
Customer support - yes.
Me - how am I supposed to get the password using my old email id then?
Customer support - you need to click on forgot password option.
I think I should probably move to the Himalayas for my anger management issues. Plus it'll be probably easier to throw idiots off a mountain.31 -
Shared screen with a client over Skype. Showed them in Postman that their API wasn't working as expected. It was expecting a json. Instead it was giving error code 400 instead of 200.
Message :
"Error: No error. All OK"
I'll never forget the words of the client:
"Don't use all this fancy software, you don't know how to call APIs, open Internet Explorer or chrome and paste it in the bar. You'll see All OK, means all is okay."
*insert you dense mf meme here*20 -
My girlfriend is amazing:
After a long uphill battle trying to finish a huge open source project I started months ago. She noticed I was getting a little deflated.
So she donated a small amount to the donation page to lift my spirits.
She wanted to do it secretly but didn't know that it wasnt anonymous.
The little things spur us on.40 -
Big client, sells products in 30+ countries.
Tries to generate newsletter subscribers, so asks for a system to send a coupon upon subscription.
2 days later, client calls in panic. “We have too many subscribers, our marketeers say it’s a bot issue, can you do something?”.
Checked the data, checked analytics, turns out there’s a lot of referral traffic from freebie-sites, no sign from a bot issue.
Called the client back, “sorry, but there’s nothing you can do about that, you wanted your newsletter to become popular. Not you’re the victim of your own success”.
Client: “can we add captcha?”
Me: “why would you want to do that? You don’t even have a bot issue”
Client: “to make it harder for people to subscribe”
I tried to talk som sense in their heads, but after 3 times I gave up and implemented the damn captcha. It’s still there, doing nothing but annoying thousands of people, including me...7 -
Some ideas for variable names. Thank me later :))
1. bool sheet;
2. int entionally;
3. char mander;
4. double penetration;
5. string cheese;
6. long schlong;23 -
My team: gets fired
8 other colleagues: here’s our notice, we leavin
Love it, they’re left with 4 devs so good luck finding people who know how to work in your 20 year old legacy that every app in ur company is built on lul10 -
So... Just overheard a conversation at an Apple store...
tl;dr;
The customer gets furious for not getting to buy a mac pro for the price he wants and it doesn't even include the monitor there.....
C - customer, S - Sales person.
C: Hey, I've heard that apple released new home computers. May I get one?
S: Hello, they are not out yet.
C: WHAT?! How can they not be out yet? They released it like a week ago.
S: Well, they announced it, not officially released it for sale.
C: Ah, whatever. Can I pre-order it now?
S: Sure, we'll need your details and a deposit.
C: What? A deposit for what? That $1000 machine?
S: Sir, do you know the prices?
C: Of course. They have released a new machine and it will cost like previous ones - from $1000.
S: Then you might be talking about Macbook Air...
C: *Interrupts* No, I'm talking about the desktop computer, the whole box.
S: Ok... It starts at ~$6000.
C: WHAT?! It can't be... Oh well, I'll buy it. I hope it's the fully-specked one. Oh and does it come with a monitor?
S: No sir. It's the base model and it has no monitors.
C: WHAT?! How can this be?
S: You see, these are devices created for professionals. They are not for home users since our iMac line is....
C: *Interrupts again* Are you saying I'm not a professional?
S: I'm sorry but by the questions and lack of information - it seems to be true - you are not a professional.
C: FUCK YOU, I'm going to another store and they will sell it for me for $1000. What a piece of crap is this.
*Customer leaves furiously*
S: *to another S* - What is wrong with that dude? Is he high or what?
S2: *shrugs* and tells that it's the 5th time someone came to order that pc and was scared by the price.
---
So yeah... It's fun to see how idiots think that anything apple releases is for them... Once again I was made sure that apple fans are brainless fucks that will buy anything it produces and if that is not in the right price - they'll get furious.
ps. I own apple product, mac pro 2015. Would never buy a newer one NOR an iphone. I don't think that anyone is dumb just for buying it - people buy whatever fits their needs and that's ok but... More than we would like to admit - people buy it because it's an apple product....23 -
Mam: Hey can I ask you a question about Facebook?
Me: (Christ give me strength) ... sure whats up?
Mam: You know when you get a notification and you click on it and see what someone uploaded?
Me: ... you are not on Facebook, you can't be getting notifications
Mam: well I do. Is it possible to...
Me: No hang on a second, it is 110% not possible for this to happen. Something else is going on that you think is a notification.
Mam: You know when you are on, and you see a message like "12 new notifications"
Me: on? on what? this is happening on your phone is it? Can I see?
Mam: No its on my laptop at home.
Me: ... you have an old laptop with an old windows, you can't get notifications on it.
Mam: OH FOR GOD SAKE! ... you know when you are in your emails and it says "12 new notifications"?
Me: ... right so we are talking about EMAILS about unread notifications and not getting notifications on your phone. So you have an old account then that you don't use?
Mam: Yeah I don't know the password to it, haven't logged in, in years.
Me: of course
Mam: Right anyway. When I get one and click on it, lets say its about you, can you see me reading your notifications?
Me: ..... you can't not read my notifications.
Mam: uh, can you see me reading your emails then smart arse?
Me: ... can't do that either.
Mam: So what the hell am I doing then?
Me: You are reading a post someone uploaded, which you got alerted to from an email.
Mam: Right, can you tell when I've read your POST then?!?!?!
Me: no
Mam: was that so hard?
Me: ... yep7 -
Drop ur file here to convert it to another file type
10 mins later after conversion
99%
"Sorry but u can't convert ur file cause u got an adblocker enabled pls disable it and try again"
Have u guys ever whipped ur dick out and smacked the monitor with ur dick with hope that ur dick smack will transmit the smack into the website across their face9 -
If you invite me to a "lunch and learn" about company policies, and I have to bring my own lunch, well, that's just a meeting during my lunch, isn't it?15
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TFW you see Apple selling display stands for 999$ and you don't care because you never have to use an Apple device anyways.3
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Twice today I've spoken up in meetings and was totally ignored. I guess my idea wasn't even worth a reply? :-/
Five minutes later: oh, right, I forgot I'd muted myself.
- @bradfitz21 -
We need more JS devs for our frontend.
After half a year of PM complaining that he doesn’t find devs, he finally came back to us:
„Sorry guys, I found two devs, but they are not Java developers, they only do JavaScript“
Me:
Team:
*both speechless*
TeamLead: „... wait, you searched for Java devs half a year?“25 -
My mom never touched a PC or smartphone. Well, most people didn't back then, because it was the early 90s.
But I brought a borrowed SNES to the hospital and taught her to blow on the Zelda cartridge if it didn't work. She died after we finished the game.
After that my dad bought me a commodore 64, the machine that taught me about electronics and programming, and molded me into who I am today.
On the first date with my girlfriend (now 12y together) we just sat talking for hours in her room, playing Zelda on her SNES taking turns, and I told her my mom would have liked her.14 -
Today my current company fuck itself.
We were in negotiations about the end of my contract/mission, I want to quit to create a company around AI.
And the actual chairman said to me "You think too highly of yourself. I could find a tenth of people to replace you so shut up and take what we offer".
30 minutes later they received my resignation. 1h after that, the 15 dev under me resigned (after two year working with us they are clearly under paid). At the end of the day, the Head of product and the two good PO resigned.
This morning I get an email, talking about suing me as I made everyone resigned and asking for a meeting.
So I went to the meeting with a lawyer, they weren't expecting it. Boring legal stuff came after that.
And the funny fact: at the end of the meeting the CIO, chief ops and the SRE resigned as well.... As they didn't want to have the run it without all the team...
Funny day :)
Last month the main product, 90% of the company use it, was launched. And in three months 80% if the IT profiles will be out...36