I think the weekly rants just exist because @dfox & @trogus got banned from stackoverflow and they still have questions.

When it comes to learning cutting edge tech... Go build already!

I found Rust intimidating.

I read the first few pages of the official book, got bored, gave up.

Few months later, decided to write a "simple" tool for generating pleasing Jetbrains IDE color schemes using Rust. I half-finished it by continuously looking up stuff, then got stuck at some ungoogleable compiler error.

Few months later I needed to build a microservice for work, and against better judgement gave Rust a try in the weekend. Ended up building an unrelated library instead, uploaded my first package to crates.io.

Got some people screaming at me that my Rust code sucked. Screamed back at them. After lots of screaming, I got some helpful PRs.

Eventually ended up building many services for work in Rust after all. With those services performing well under high load and having very few bugs, coworkers got interested. Started hiring Rust engineers, and educating interested PHP/JS devs.

Now I professionally write Rust code almost full-time.

Moral of the story:

Fuck books, use them for reference. Fuck Udemy (etc), unless you just want to 2x through it while pooping.

Learning is something you do by building a project, failing, building something else, falling again, building some more, sharing what you've made, fighting about what you've built with some entitled toxic nerds, abandoning half your projects and starting twelve new ones.

Reading code is better than reading documentation.

Listening to users of your library/product teaches you more than listening to keynote speakers at conferences.

Don't worry about failures, you don't need to deliver a working product for it to be a valuable experience.

Oh, and trying to teach OTHERS is an excellent method to discover gaps in your knowledge.

Just get your fucking hands dirty!

Microsoft is at the Edge of dropping Internet Explorer.

Got laid off my by old employer back in 2019 because they have their priorities completely wrong.
Got a mail today whether I could fix something for them (ofc, they wanted me to do it essentially for free).
One of the websites I built for a customer back when I still worked there had a massive bug (that I was aware off and patched in later versions of the library causing it).
They never updated it so, I told them "just update the library".

Apparently, the idiot that was in charge of maintaining said site after I left didn't know how to and completely broke everything.
The hilarious part: While I setup everything using stuff like Docker and Git to make rollbacks easy...
That idiot went back to FTP and manually upgrading the databases through PhpMyAdmin :^)
He nuked the entire site.
Database? Gone.
Codebase? Borked (installed a version with a lot of breaking changes without properly reading the migration guide).
And knowing that shit company, they don't have any backups either.

They said "I wasn't needed because we have other good devs" when they laid me off.
Uhu, I can eh... see those good devs doing their job :^)

This definitely counts as a rant

Ep 1

The precise size difference between 3Gb and 232Gb visualised in windows NT2000 :D

One team was delivering for 12 months.

... but definition of done not met. Code crap everywhere. Tests barely there and are total mess.

I inherited mess after previous lead engineer.

I exposed all the issues to the management in a straight way, no sugar coating.

... and now guess who's the bad guy for "complaining" instead of shut up and "making it work"?

P.s.
"Giving accurate report about situation" is seen as "complaining".

Thanks for putting a 2 hour long meeting at 6 pm boss.

Random advice: don't get an AI degree. It's as useless as a liberal arts degree considering how most countries are still using stupid systems.

CEO "If you make costs to build a home office for covid, please be aware that you can fully declare your bills, and you'll retain ownership over the ordered goods. Please all buy some good desk chairs and keyboards, so you can work ergonomically"

6 months later, CFO: "Bittersweet, why did you try to declare €35000? What are these invoices even? Concrete rebar?"

Me: "CEO told us to build a home office. I got permits from the town to dig a souterrain layer under my house. This is just for the foundation, the bills for drainage pumps, sheetpiling, geothermal heat exchangers, insulation, flooring, electricity and of course desk & chair will follow later"

CFO: 😳

(To be fair, I really did make those costs, but was just trolling by uploading all the material bills)

I once worked until 8am to get a demo ready for a client of the client. I knew the client was a bit thick, so I made some comprehensive video demos and sent them over to him, to save him trying to demo it himself. I wake up at 11am with him screaming down the phone at me:

“It doesn’t work, none of it works!”

“What do you mean?”

“I go to login and I can’t enter anything.”

“I haven’t sent you anything to log into...wait, are you trying to log into a video? Tell me you’re not trying to log into a video of a login page.”

“Uh...oh hang on, it just worked. Ok no pr-“

“No wait, what do you mean it worked?”

“I logged in fine.”

“It’s a video. You can’t log into a video.”

“Uh...alright, bye mate, thanks!”

The moral of the story is: never assume any level of intelligence on the part of a client, even if they exhibit signs of it at first. If they are paying you they will forget how to tie their own shoelaces.

So, when there is shit hitting the fan at work I tend to stay during lunch to take care of it and make sure I can take as much of a hit for it before it reaches my employees.

the lead developer walked to my office to let me know that he was about to take lunch and asked if i had plans for lunch. I told him that there were some reports to be done and some meetings that i had to attend and would be staying back, he asked if i was going to get something to eat and I said that I would try to get something as soon as possible. My man knows that I am on a strict regimen due to my workouts, and he normally takes concern over it.

I did not get something to eat, but the hour mark when he came back I was fucking starving and still stuck on a call T___T my man walks into my office as I was on a call (meeting) and he leaves a bag with my favorite burgers in my desk as I was waving hello T___T I thanked him afterwards.

Y'all, if youse a manager, take care of your people, fight for your people, my boys know i go the extra mile for them and we used to chill out having bbqs every other week playing pathfinder(i suck but make a fun party member) before the pandemic. Your coworkers might very well be your extended family. Even if you are the manager them peeps will look out for you if they know you are not a power hungry egomaniac that is more focused on keeping higher ups happy.

These dudes are my friends, my family, they were the board of members tasked with knowing if I was to get hired when i first joined in, and even tho I am now their manager I am still their friend, shit like this is possible and what I would implore everyone to strive for, because even if your organization is a faceless entity full of people that don't care for you, the dude at arms reach from your office is there, people are there, fellow human beings are there.

Fuck, just be nice to everyone else and I severely hope y'alls work life is a chill as this one.

Dear teenager who came up to me and said "Oh python, you must be a beginner programmer"

kill yourself

sincerely,
Angry dev who is tired of people shaming python

Worst of 2020:

Seeing company get stuck in an organizational swamp. Devs tend to be reasonably good at working from home...

Management isn't. Meeting quality has gone down the drain, half of management thinks "if the boss can't see me why work at all?", the other half has constant calls with tiny working groups where nothing is final and everyone is left confused.

I'm convinced: Everything management is afraid of about allowing devs to work from home is based on projection of their own weaknesses.

They're not passionate enough to work without oversight. They might not be introverts, but extroverts are perfectly able to communicate poorly, especially when a few digital hurdles get in the way.

The average developer might actually be more attuned to the intricacies of emotionless text chats, and preventing disruptive elements in video calls.

Also, unless someone physically helps a manager to remove their head from their own ass once in a while, their "gut feelings" about the market and products are actually just amplified bias caused by their endless self-absorbed yelling into the echo chamber that is their stretched out rectum.

Holy motherfucking hell, have I seen some weird projects float by in 2020, pooped out by isolated product managers whose brain clearly has melted when they had to survive without office fruitbaskets and organizational post-it walls.

Yeah let's promote our international character, by giving away travels and hotel bookings, using pictures of happy hugging people in foreign countries... Great promo during a pandemic.

Or let's get "woke" and promote the "colored users" on our platforms, by training ML to categorize people by skin pigment (Apart from how illegal and ethically insane that is on multiple levels, about 85% of our users pick shit like anime characters and memes for their avatar).

Or how about we make a Microsoft Store app, even though the vast majority of our end users are students using cheap Android phones, older iPhones, Macbooks and Chromebooks.

😡

Anyway, now that I have dressed up my Christmas tree with some manager intestines...

Best of 2020:

I got to play through my Steam backlog, work on hobby projects, and watch a lot of YouTube.

All this pandemic insanity has convinced me all the more that I want to work way more in Rust, and publish way more on open source projects.

I became maintainer/collaborator on a bunch of semi-prominent libraries & frameworks, and while no community is perfect, I enjoy my laid-back coffee-fueled debugging on those packages much more than listening to another crack addicted cocksucker in a suit explain their half-assed A/B test idea to me at 9AM.

So, 2021 will be me half-assing through the spaghetti at my official fuckfest of a job so I can keep filling my bank account — and investing way more time and effort into stuff I find truly engaging, into projects with a heart and a soul.

Why do people say "Well, I don't know about that" to voice disagreement?

If you admit your own naivety on a subject compared to your peers, if you admit that you do not have the required knowledge to have formed an opinion, how can you disagree?

So it can either be expressed with genuine innocence, like 'Well, I don't know about that, tell me more!', which is never the case.

Or it means "Well I don't know anything about that... and I'm ashamed of the fact that I can't find any counter argument, so I refuse to trust your fucking expertise, shut the fuck up until I give you the right to voice your knowledge"

Which is a bit rude.

Now that we're on the topic of annoying expressions and platitudes...

"It's not rocket science" -- Rocket science, understanding how a rocket works, is surprisingly simple. You fill a cylinder with fuel and oxygen, add a pump or two, put some sparks underneath. Chemical reaction equals energy, direct energetic particles using a nozzle, Newton's first law does the rest. It's so simple that people don't actually study rocket science. They study aerospace engineering, or astrodynamics, which are difficult topics.

So if someone says "Devops is not rocket science", they're right, but for the wrong reason. It's actually harder than rocket science. Maybe easier than developing thermal protection system materials or solving n-body orbital problems with a slide ruler though.

"Great minds think alike" -- No, great minds actually think creatively and generate unique thoughts, if two minds think alike, the solution was just fucking obvious.

"Don't reinvent the wheel" -- First of all, pretty much nothing in code looks or even remotely functions like a simple wheel. Even metaphorically, all existing code equates to oval or square wheels. If you said "Hey, don't bother making better wheels, I like my ride to be bumpy because it stimulates my asshole", say no more, who am I to come between a product manager and their anal stimulation.

Anyway, those were four coworkers who I would've strangled with an Ethernet cable if it weren't for a certain pandemic and the risk of infection which comes with choke-coughing.

What are your linguistic pet peeves you get homicidal over?

"I am not happy with the quality of the product"

*Ignores

"I dislike how I am forced to work here"

*Ignores

"The team does not understand software design and is writing 2000 line single functions"

*Ignores

"I am starting to think the product cannot be saved unless we start focusing on quality"

*Ignores

"I am not happy in my job anymore because I want to work as a professional..."

*Ignores

"All I ever do now is put out fires"

*Ignores

"I quit"

My employer keeps sending booze to our houses.

Officially meant for coronaproof zoom social meetings where they play stupid bingo games and quizzes on Friday afternoons.

Why they're sending 2 liter bottles of Rum, 3 bottles of rosé wine and 12 cans of craft beer for the 6th week in a row... I really don't know... I don't even attend the zoom meetings.

All I know is that during breakfast, rum is better mixed into coffee than through cornflakes.

Anyway... Why was this a rant again? Oh right. Can I sue my employer for baiting me into an addiction? 🤔

Everytime someone says stakeholder I picture a rich fat guy in a suit, hugging a giant human-sized steak with tears in his eyes whispering "Oh steak, I love you so much, I will forever hold you in my arms", dancing a little waltz around his room while his cheeks and dress shirt get drenched with the exquisite richness of a good pan sauce.

One year ago, I quit my job in order to "make life easier". And by that I mean work+home in the same city. I went from 40 minutes commute - to 3 minutes. I had a blast the first week.

Then I realized that it was actually a mistake. I did not like working with "that kind of systems" and "that kind of tasks". It was tedious, stupid, and I was angry every, single day because the previous ones had built a system on 10-15 year old hardware because "it is cheaper".

That continued for a year. I discovered new stupid "solutions" every week that was potentially dangerous for the company. It built up a huge pile of shit and I started to feel that my mental health was disappearing, fast.

And equipment such as servers, switches, routers, storage started to fail because of age. Despite my warnings from day 0 to the CEO who only kinda laughed it off and said "you can to solve that", but I never got the approval to actually buy the equipment that was needed. Because "the company did'nt have the money for it". Somehow, the company had the money to buy expensive cars for the CEO - I can't really figure out that equation.

So today, one VERY old UPS died at our office. It caused some powerspike that killed off some switches and a NAS.
"Whatever" I thought, I just have to find the backup of the files and get a new one.

Then I discovered, that the NAS that acted as a iSCSI target for VM's and document storage was backed up using VEEAM on another server - that was configured to backup everything to the same NAS. I just wanted to cry, because I could not take anymore shit.

So I picked up my phone, called my old employer and asked if I could start working for them again. My old boss got insanely happy and gave me a great offer which I immediately accepted.

So tomorrow, is the day that I am going to walk into my current boss and say that I will quit. My last day will be on Christmas day. And I will start my new year with a few weeks off, and then back to the job that I actually loved.

Life is to short to work with something you hate.

How not to design a modem...

Cables hide perfectly - inside the wall...

Companies: We can’t find any senior developers to hire.

Also companies: We pay seniors like juniors.

This should not be called wisdom teeth, should be called stupid teeth
Mother fucker is growing perpendicular.

What fuck is wrong with you bro , grow upwards you dumb fuck!!

Jesus fucking christ, entering w3schools.com (don't ask) and I immediately get a cookie consent thing shoved in my face.

WHY?! Please don't tell me it's so I can get the 'best experience' because that's straight out bullshit. I don't need cookies and you fucking name it to get 'the best fucking experience' while looking up again how that one PHP or HTML or CSS or WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER thing worked.

E-v-e-r-y GODDAMN site has this nowadays, to 'improve my experience' - I block ads anyways so what's the motherfucking point?!

Mother of FUCKING god.

alskdjaioethsdjlkjrfoikmedr

1. Have some issue with my code which spits out cryptic compiler error.

2. Ask on stack overflow, Reddit, etc for a solution.

3. Get scolded at for "not reading the documentation" and "asking questions which could be answered by just Googling". Still no clue what I'm doing wrong, or what the solution would be.

4. Find someone else's vaguely related problem.

5. Post my problematic code as the answer, with arrogant comment about OP being a retard for not figuring that out for themselves.

6. A dozen angry toxic nerds flock in to tell me how retarded and wrong I am, correcting me... solving my original problem.

7. Evil plan succeeded, my code compiles, and as a bonus I made the internet a worse place in the process.

I think if you tell a bunch of autistic neckbeards that "all coronaviruses are fundamentally incurable", you'd have a vaccine within a week.

As a German developer living in Germany, I am used to write my code completely in English. In all of my former companies that was also the norm. In one company, we even talked completely in English with each other to a point where even if only German people where in a room, they would default to English at one point in a conversation because it became second nature to us.

(That company was very international and we had a lot of people from all over the world working there.)

Now, I work at a new German company that focuses on the German market. And for some reason I failed to ask them:

Do you write your code in English?

Because that's the norm, isn't it!? I just assumed it to be the case.

Nope! This time it is a mess of German and English term intermixing in glorious abysmal ways I never thought possible.

Sometimes we translate terms, sometimes we don't. So you have to wrap your mind around collections of words that COULD mean the same thing unless they don't. Best case, you have two words for the same thing, but I've seen up to five words (or abbreviations) to describe one business entity. Madness.

And don't get me started on the plurals. In English, it's almost exclusively: add an `s`.

In German, the singular and plural can be the same (e.g. all nouns ending with `-er`) so tough luck determining if you are on an object or an array of objects. (Weak typing language in use does not help either but that's an entirely different rant.)

cat > /dev/null

I use it to take notes during meetings, they are temporary in the terminal so I am forced to polish them afterwards

me : *leaving 15 min earlier*
manager : IT'S UNACCEPTABLE, HOW CAN WE BUILD A TRUST RELATIONSHIP LIKE THAT

manager one week later: yeah we need you to work till midnight if needed today. You cannot say no.
me : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First there was Lo-Fi hip-hop then it started with Merkelwave and now there is Code-Fi. It just like Lo-Fi but for programmers.
Sometimes I really wonder what the hell is going on on the internet today.

Dear Target App Developers,

I think you left some debug code in your app...

I know you want to know if someone is using a VPN and that's cool with me, I get it.

But when I'm on a VPN your app constantly pops up a modal with my IP address every time I change a page in your app....

Might want to look things over a bit closer before you put it in production ;)

Watch 3 videos about iOS/Swift on YouTube, and now I'm getting a frontpage full of recordings of app development events and iPhone reviews.

Listen to one kpop track on Spotify out of curiosity, and now the recommendation playlist is polluted with music I really don't like.

If we are going to hand our balls to AI and expect it to be a glorious fondling fest, don't cry if it suddenly realizes "nuts? aren't those supposed to be cracked?".

I mean what's fucking next? Where will this "smart" shit end up?

I accidentally click on a my little pony meme, and amazon will drone-strike me with 500 gallons of glitter? I drunkenly mumble "OK google how do kangaroos fuck" in the back of a self-driving Uber, I'm going to be dropped off in a shady alley and raped by a dozen walibis?

STOP FUCKING TRYING TO UNDERSTAND ME, INTERNET. I JUST WANT TO FUCKING USE YOU, NOT BE USED BY YOU, THIS WASN'T THE DEAL.

If you truly understood me, internet, I would probably not even give a fuck about privacy. But you are all building these profiles wrong.

You don't understand that I might be interested in juggling tricks today, tomorrow it might be all about crocheting a wool sweater for my penis, and the day after that I'm curious how many corpses it would take to fill up an olympic swimming pool.

NO I'M NOT ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN THAT QUORA, STOP SENDING ME RECOMMENDATION EMAILS ON HIDING MURDER VICTIMS, MY BOSS WILL THINK I'M WEIRD.

Yeah of course I could pulls some plugs, anonymize the shit out of my online life. I respect those who manage to just say "Fuck you Google, I'm sick of your shit, I'm going cold turkey".

But these platforms are feeding us heroin-laced candy.

All your coworkers friends and family with their oled-lit zombiefaces, staring at tiny screens, all absent-mindedly grasping your ankles whispering "aww take one more hit with us, check out this funny youtube clip, let me send it to you on whatsapp.... what you don't have whatsapp? You deleted your facebook? don't you love grandma anymore? Why do you hate your family?"

Before you know it, you watched ten episodes about cultivating cactuses, have a year subscription to brilliant, skillshare, squarespace and 3 different organic foodboxes are delivered to your door, Netflix is spamming you about a cupcake baking show, and you're thinking about same-day delivery for a baseball bat so you can just beat the crap out of every pretty glass display you see.

I want to break up with you, Internet.

I love you, but I hate you.

Since you passed 2.0, you have grown into a manipulative bitch.

I just don't know if I'm strong enough. It's all "let's just be friends" with you, but I know you'll be trying to reel me back in.

Before I know it, you're feeding me cookies once again, and I'll end up balls deep with your trackers stuck to my dick.

Wanna mess with users? Take

“OK” and “Cancel”.

You know what looks visually the same but means the opposite?

“NO” and “Confirm”.

Deploy that little ui update overnight and watch the world burn.