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About<aboutme> If anyone bothers to read and screenshot this, I'll personally build you a website for free* </aboutme> *FAKE NEWS
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SkillsI'm playing with so many sneks! HEEEEEELLLLP
Joined devRant on 5/14/2016
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Turns out you can treat a a function mapping parameters to outputs as a product that acts as a *scaling* of continuous inputs to outputs, and that this sits somewhere between neural nets and regression trees.
Well thats what I did, and the MAE (or error) of this works out to about ~0.5%, half a percentage point. Did training and a little validation, but the training set is only 2.5k samples, so it may just be overfitting.
The idea is you have X, y, and z.
z is your parameters. And for every row in y, you have an entry in z. You then try to find a set of z such that the product, multiplied by the value of yi, yields the corresponding value at Xi.
Naturally I gave it the ridiculous name of a 'zcombiner'.
Well, fucking turns out, this beautiful bastard of a paper just dropped in my lap, and its been around since 2020:
https://mimuw.edu.pl/~bojan/papers/...
which does the exact god damn thing.
I mean they did't realize it applies to ML, but its the same fucking math I did.
z is the monoid that finds some identity that creates an isomorphism between all the elements of all the rows of y, and all the elements of all the indexes of X.
And I just got to say it feels good. -
Oh, $work.
Ticket: Support <shiny new feature> in <seriously dated code> to allow better “searching” (actually: generating reports, not searching)
UI: “Filter on” inputs above a dynamic JS table don’t update said table; they trigger generating a new report.
Seriously dated code: 12 years old. Rails v3-isms. Blocks access without appropriate role; role name buried in secrets configuration files. Code passes data round-trip between server/client/server/model that isn’t ever used. Has two identical reports with slightly different names, used interchangeably. Uh, I guess I’ll update both?
Reports: Heavily, heavily abstracted; zero visibility.
Shiny new feature: Some new magical abstraction layer with no documentation nor comments. Nobody in my team knows how it works. The author… won’t explain, but sent me her .ppt presentation on it (the .ppt, not a recording).
Useless specs for seriously dated code: Tests exclusively factory-generated data; not the controller, filters/lookups, UI, table data, etc.
Seriously dated code and useless spec author: the CISO.
The worst part: I’m not even surprised at any of this.2 -
!dev
There’s this person at $work who never uses punctuation of any kind. She has mental issues and insists on neutral pronouns (and strongly advertises these) so I’ll use the indefinite to pretend to be respectful. It has multiple thoughts while typing a message and just keeps typing through all of them without stopping. It pauses not to collect its thoughts, to edit for clarity or to fix mistakes, to separate anything (including disjoint topics), to summarize, etc. (Though calling these “thoughts” is a huge stretch, given its lack of propensity for that particular subject.) It’s as if it has zero distinction between writing and speaking, and simply lets the mental diarrhea flow while their fingers do their best to keep pace. Reading these trainwrecks of thought — and gleaning any useful information from them — is always difficult and a little bit painful.
It is also in charge of IT security, which is more than a bit worrying. (But I hate the company with a passion, so it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it otherwise would.)40 -
!rant I pity anyone who may have overheard my interaction with a gecko that managed to sneak inside my house when I went to get a package on my doorstep last night around midnight
“Hey little guy, let’s try to get you to go back outside, okay? Nonononooo not that way, fella. Down the wall. DOWN. DO NOT CLIMB BACK UP. Okay. Yeah, see, there you go. Good job. OH MY GOD DO NOT DO THAT. Listen, I think you’re fucking cute, okay? BUT IF YOU CHARGE AT ME LIKE THAT, YOU TRIGGER MY FEAR RESPONSE AND YOU MAKE IT REALLY HARD FOR ME NOT TO KILL YOU. Hooooooly shit, little dude. You were so almost dead. Okay. Okay, yeah, go out the door. Door. Yesssss.”
closes door, only to realize little dude’s tail is still on this side
“OMG LITTLE DUDE, are you okay?!!” opens door, little dude sneaks back inside
“Noooooo you need to go outside. Come on, you know you want to go outside”
Finally managed coax him out the door and confirmed he’d cleared the doorway before closing and locking it.5 -
New developers(5-6 years experience) these days are so pathetic. They dont have any sense of code review. All they want is to put their opinion out without giving any thought.
I had a PR for review today which contains mock specification to match a regular expression and return the corresponding response
The regular expression I put was
104000(02|06|20|48)
Now, this guy comes and puts a comment that we could "simplify" as 104000\d{2}
I replied, the ending digits are not contiguous. The specific pair of digits have to match for these mocks.
Then this guy replied, then we could simplify as 104(0{4}(2|6)l0{3}(20|48)).
I said, I cannot understand how that is simplification. Why do we need such a complex regex to match something very straight forward.
And the guy replied, we should be writing proper regexes, otherwise we could just specify everything explicitly.
I was like WTF man. You try deciphering this next week without taking at least a minute to know which values are matched.
Anyhow, another senior person approved my PR, and I merged it.12 -
Our customers are fucking incredible QA Engineers, holy fuck tits. Every single day, some fucking fuckface finds a way to break this garbage can legacy application that I've spent the last year combing over and patching as I find problems or are otherwise made aware of them.
Honestly, I have some QA background myself, but these types of issues would just absolutely never in a bajillion shitting farting years occur to me to do.
They are masters of breaking shit, I am so FUCKING IMPRESSED. Almost as impressed that this application hasn't been replaced after ten years of bullshit, and that the two massive fucking retards that preceded me didn't just do it the right way by accident or fucking kill themselves out of shame.9 -
Deleted over 1'500 lines of code over the last 2 days and replaced it with 80 lines of readable, simple, generic code.
And I'm feeelin' gooood 🎶7 -
I'm averaging 3 hours a day outside of meetings. Mostly in 30 minute blocks.
Manager is wondering why I can't get work done...5 -
I actively job hunted for close to a year without success. Now I have two offers in addition to my existing position, and that, without even having to apply for either. Knowing I can't combine all three, I've turned one down cuz it offers the least compensation for the most work but the guy is insisting he "wants my skin in the game". I know he's not stupid and obviously knows nobody else would be sympathetic to such peanuts
But it's not as though my life took a dramatic turnaround after months of turmoil. All three opportunities are still within the same meagre region, albeit with minor improvements. I do NOT feel grateful because the circumstance of one of the new offers is such that I'm still tied to my old buddies apron strings. Not only did I stagnate but I've got them paying my salary now. They rub it in by telling me I might get a car in two years time if I join them now, and how many properties they've acquired in our time apart
It sucks how little headway I've made in their absence, and how much harder I have to work to have any hope of earning close to their monthly wages1 -
I think I've asked this before. Just cropped up again cuz I'm pushed to do some stuff in nextjs
I Wonder how much longer before js framework devs realise they've been reverse engineering the browser this whole time, that the current browser spec was outdated since the dawn of Web fidelity and real time applications
I wonder whether there are some guys who have seen this and are already cooking in the background. The browser still treats the Internet like front end and back end, whereas with the way apps are going (eg deprecation of the front/back end roles), it seems apparent the browser needs to scale up by fading whatever js is now
I'm seeing "use server", which was one of php's infamous atrocities back in the day (lack of separation of concerns, everything in index.php). It's shocking how those who ridicule that language let this fly, but that's probably a separate thread. Point is, a bunch of these stuff done by front end frameworks seem like boilerplate but the syntax is far different from what I remember javaScript to be. I only vaguely recollect and understand what I'm reading
Why not merge all the cryptic syntaxes struggling to achieve bare minimal expectations, into advanced markup language controlled by dom attributes? Overhaul and Rethink client - server communication to fit modern standard. Someone needs to step out of the box and take a good look at the rat race. I find our lives would be made much simpler if api integration into client side behaviour wasn't a separate thing altogether
You have all these funny hoops and precarious bridges to cross. The reality is what we're fighting to overcome is the manner the architecture is setup. We need a Google/meta/amazon/apple to step in with a new browser since it's not a weekend gig and might need their reach to catch on with mainstream users. Sadly, they're the same guys rolling out new js frameworks2 -
Sometimes it's better to burn a bridge so you don't even think about crossing it in the future.
See, I left a company some years ago because I didn't see my future in it and all management combined had a collective intelligence of a chicken.
However, I got a call from them a couple of months ago asking me if I could return. The salary was double and the working arrangement seemed fine. On paper. WFH. Flexibile hours...
Since I actually liked the project itself for its technical challenge, I accepted the return offer. What a bad idea that was.
Of course, the things that made me leave for the first time had only gotten worse. Bad leadership, idiot developers in team leader positions. Tech debt higher than Mount Everest. Bad infra that makes you want to off yourself every time you work on it. The whole circus.
Seriously, the "senior" team leader will happily merge code that includes assert(true == true), but hold up a well written MR because he has a personal vendetta with the developer.
Personally, I always check him whenever he starts being an ass. But the poor juniors are in hell. They're terrified.
Now I'm leaving again, but this time I've made sure I can't come back.3 -
I've been at this company 2 years and 9 months. I never use e-mail. Evolution just runs for the calendar notices.
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Made a website and 4K final for university in 10 days with Angular, FastAPI, ArangoDB and docker. No prior experience with Typescript whatsoever. Sessions, User Management, data manipulation and a d3-force graph which doesn’t dance around like a fucking clown. I feel like a fucking god right now8
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Writing a brainfuck interpreter is a lot fun: Mine does recursion within loops. I also added functions: strings, you can cheat. Stackdump(!), Exit script(*) , go to first cell (^), go to last cell(?), nulling cell (0) It parses this for example: "retoor" ^[.>]. It will dump string retoor. Explanation: the string moves ptr to sixth place. ^ will reset pointer to first. [] is a loop that executes as long there's data in current cell. The "." prints char of current cell (Number if not alpha etc). ">" moves a cell to right. [.>] will thus print until it moved to an empty cell. To move to first, I could've also used my repeater function by adding times to repeat after command: <6 moves six places to left. .>.>.>.>.>.> is also a way to print six chars. +[,.] works as the Linux program "cat". , is one char keyboard input.
Thanks for listening to my tedtalk8 -
ChatGPT sucks so much for coding tasks and it's laughable.
Like, it's come to a point where it's unusable for me. At all.
It's like a toddler, anything you tell it, it agrees. Then spits out non-existent functions.
The thing actually slows me down.
And yes, I've tried Claude AI and it's slightly better but in no way, shape or form did it improve my productivity.
Those who claim it made them n times faster were never working on complex tasks to begin with.8 -
Sorry to keep whining about my stupid fucking job, but y'all, I think I'm nearing my limit.
There's some good...I am pretty much free to resolve issues any way I want to, as the only other person in the company who "codes" only knows one old ass language that doesn't apply to 90% of the rest of the tech stack at all, and some SQL - all of that to say, we may disagree, but ultimately, these matters are always deferred to me at the end of the day, insofar as the actual implementation goes (which is to say I am not micromanaged). At least as far as non-visuals are concerned, because those of course, are the most important things. Button colors and shit, woo hoo**. That's what we should focus on as we're bringing in potentially millions of dollars per month - the god damn button color and collapsible accordions based on data type over the shit ass DB performance bottleneck, the lack of redundancy or backups (aside from the one I made soon after I started -- literally saved everyone today because of that. My thanks? None, and more bullshit tasks) or the 300GB+ spaghetti code nightmare that is the literal circulatory system of the FUCKING COMPANY. Hundreds of people depend on it for their livelihoods, and those of their families, but fuck me in the face, right? I'm just a god damn nerd who has worked for the federal government, a handful of fortune 500's, a couple of fortune 100's, some startups, etc. But the fuck do I know about the lifecycle of companies?
I could continue ranting, but what's the point? I've got a nice little adage that I've started to live by, and y'all might appreciate it: "If everything is a priority/is important, nothing is". These folks just don't fucking get it. I'm torn because, on the one hand, they waste my time and kinda underpay me, in addition to forcing me to be onsite for 50 hours a week. They don't listen to me, couldn't give a flying shit about my experientially based opinions. I'm just a fucking chimp with a typewriter, there to take commands like a fucking waiter. But there's a lot of job security, assuming I don't fucking snap one day, and the job market for devs (I'm sure I don't need to tell you) is hostile atm. I'm also drinking far more than usual, and I really need to do something about that. It's only wednesday - I think...not 100% on that truth be told, and I logged my fourth trip to the liquor store this week already.
**Dear backenders - don't ever learn front end, or if you do, just lie about it to avoid being designated full stack. It's not worth it.5 -
The fact that I can buy a game for $70 price tag today, and still run the risk of it getting taken away from me, by the company that built it, is why I'll always pirate games.
If buying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.13 -
Bit of an essay. TLDR: come Monday I'm either getting fired or promoted. And the CTO is a dickhead. If you think you work with me or know who I am, no you don't, shut the hell up.
Was having a discussion with my team, went on for a bit, at one point my manager mentioned that the CTO wanted me to go into the office occasionally, same thing I've had since I joined when they literally wanted me to move hundreds of miles to be close to the office mid covid when the office was closed. I give a nondescript answer. He's a bit more persistent, I snap a little but the conversation moves on. Discussion of company and team dynamics, at one point he makes a comment about people at another company being told if they don't go into the office they won't be eligible for promotion.
I ask everyone else on the call to leave.
I point out that 2 years ago me and him were interviewing candidates. He on a few occasions introduces me to candidates as a _senior_ engineer. My job title does not contain the word senior. I let it slide the first time, not worth it for a slip of the toung. Happens a couple more times, I take him aside and privately point out my job title does not contain the word senior. He says he didn't realise and thought I was.
My take away then: I'm expected to do the work of a senior without being paid for it and without being given the acknowledgement of the appropriate job title. I remind him of this. My job title hasn't changed. Fuck, I took a low ball offer when I joined and have had a minimal pay rise in like, 3 years. My tone is "not happy".
His response? He discussed promoting me with CTO however budged constraints. I somewhat understand, however.
We have promoted several people in the last few years. We have grown by hiring new people in the last few years (5 in a company of 30). There are ways to compensate someone in ways that do not impact day to day budget (shares, TC, total compensation, is normal terminology in the tech field for this). I ask why the hell should I travel a few hundred miles to the office to get get to know people, put effort in to a company that demonstrably doesn't value me? Particularly as all levels of management have completely failed at developing a social atmosphere during covid? My first month, I had 3 5 minute meetings with my manager a week. That was all of the communication I had with people. I literally complained and laid out what they should do instead, they adopted most of it.
I also ask him if he genuinely thinks being here is in my professional interest? My tone has well passed pissed off.
I will say, I actually quite like my manager, we have a good working relationship and I've learned a lot from him.
He makes some mediocre points, tries to give advice about value of shares. To me, the value of shares is zero until they are money. The value to the company, however, is that it's a sizeable chunk on their balance sheet and shares sheet that they have to be willing to justify. If I wanted money, I'd go work at a high frequency trading bank and make 5x what I'm on now. No joke, that's what they pay, I could get a job, came close in the past but went to amazon. He understands.
He says will discuss with CTO. They were on a call for like an hour. His tone has changed to "you will be promoted ASAP, comp may be structured as discussed". Point made.
I'm in this job because it's convenient, is easy for me. Was originally lower challenge than previous, has a range of chances to learn and _that's_ the value to me. He's suitably nervous.
Point made I think.
So given I swore a few times, at least once about the CTO. Interesting to see how it goes.
Message from him to the effect that he spoke to CTO, has been told to write a proposal for promotion (kinda standard), will discuss with HR on Monday as they're on holiday.
So, maybe not getting fired today?
Blood pressure still very high.10
