Details
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AboutFull stack, constantly vacillating between loving my career and hating it. I would happily go start a chicken farm or some such bullshit if I could afford it. Military Veteran, so I drink a lot anyway. Myspace was the best social network.
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SkillsTolerating bullshit, PHP, Python, SQL, Perl, C#, Visual Basic/ASP, Front End, Javascript, React, Vue, NextJS. Also now a bitter IT generalist/server bitch, because no one else will do the work. All my homies know it's GNU+Linux or death!!
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LocationHell (Amurca - Appalachian region)
Joined devRant on 12/2/2016
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Spent weeks cleaning up legacy code, because my phone was ringing non-stop about errors and crashes, got it done. The CEO has been on vacation for like a month and a half, so I had to make executive judgements, and has just now returned. I got called down to the CEO's office so that I could get bitched at for marginally changing the appearance and behavior of a part of the site. I explain that it was necessary, and the response I got was "it was working fine for five years". All I could say to that was "no it fucking wasn't, are we working at the same company?" When I go to take another job, I might just put all of the old code back in place to remind them of how much "better" things ran before I worked here. Massive headache now, physical and proverbial.
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Got a legit question/semi rant for anyone who may know. I want to start by saying that I'm not really a "network" person, at least on MS systems. I can physically plug cables in and shit like that, but the software side of networking is not a thing with which I can claim familiarity. Anyone who's read my recent rants will know that I am forced to deal with IIS, because my boss is an insufferable microshit fanboy of the highest level, and is easily frightened and threatened by the use of a keyboard for anything other than using facebook.
I've got a couple of microservices running under IIS, and our customers thankfully are able to access them with no issues. Those of us in the "IT department" are also able to access it. No one else in the building, on our network can, and despite me not having set up this network, or really having anything to do with it, the rest of my "team" (LOL) refuses to help me solve the problem, because developer = networking specialist and printer fixer. Does anyone here have an idea? I found a think on Stack Overflow about firewall rules, but those are already set appropriately.11 -
So the saga of broken fucking everything continues at work, and I'm managing it, effectively, and doing it correctly on the first go-round. It's a long process though, because the two retards who preceded me were equally inept for completely different, yet equally disruptive and destructive reasons. The first dude was just plain psychotic, probably still is. I'd post some of his code, but I don't want anyone's face to melt off like those Nazi dudes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I can handle it because I'm constantly inebriated, which is not as fun as it sounds. If you have to ask yourself if you can handle it, you probably aren't, unless you've had to Uber to/from work due to still being fucking drunk. Anyway, enough about that, and it was only like twice. The rest of the times, I was more blazed than Jerry Garcia at a weed smoking contest. Moving along.
UPS shipping labels broke two weeks ago, I fixed it, but these fucking 10xers jointly decided to not only never implement anything resembling error handling, other than EMPTY GOD DAMN "try/catch"es (empty catch, wow so efficient), and instead of using COMMENTS, which I know are a new thing, they'd wrap blocks of code in something like: if 1 = 0 {} FUCK YOU DICKFACES. As I was saying before I got emotional again, they tied the success to all kinds of unrelated, irrelevant shit. I'm literally needle/haystacking my way through the entire 200GB codebase, ALONE, trying to find all the borked things. Helpfully, my phone is ringing all the time from customer service, complaining about things that are either nothing to do with the site, or due to user stupidity, 75% of the time.
A certain department at my company relies on some pretty specific documents to do their job, and these documents are/were generated from data in the database. So until I can find and fix all of the things, I've diverted my own attention as much as possible to the rapid implementation of a report generation microservice so that no one elses work is further disrupted while I continue my cursed easter egg hunt from fucking hell.
After a little more than two days, I'm about to lauch a standalone MS to handle the reports, and it's unfortunately more complicated than I'd like, because it requires a certain library that isn't available on Winblows, so I've dockerized the application. Anyway, just after lunch, I've finished my final round of tests, and I'm about ready to begin migrating it to the server and setting up (shitty fucking shit) IIS to serve it appropriately. At this point, this particular report has been unavailable by web for about 8 days.
A little after lunch, and with no forewarning of any kind, the manager of managers runs upstairs and screams at me to "work faster" and that "this needs to be back online RIGHT NOW", but I also know that this individual is going to throw a fit if things on this pdf aren't a pixel perfect match. So I just say "that's some amazing advice, I wish I'd had the foresight to just do it better and work faster". Silence for a good five seconds, then I follow up with "please leave and let me get back to my work". At that moment from around the corner, my "supervisor" suddenly, magically even, remembers that he has had the ability to print this crucial, amazingly super fucking important document all along, despite me directly asking him a week ago, and he prints it and takes it where it needs to go. In the time that it takes him to go to that other department and return, I deploy my service.
I spent the rest of the day browsing indeed and linkedin jobs, but damn this market is kinda weird right now, yeah?1 -
I've recently been enjoying the music of The Flower Kings while programming. Check em out!
Also, Hall & Oates, Kansas, Camel, Journey, Eddie Money, Van Halen, Megadeth, Spock's Beard, YES, RUSH, Metallica, Al Di Meola, Frank Gambale, Allan Holdsworth, etc. IDK, but that non-modern music where people actually played instruments is resonating with me hardcore. It has for a while, but especially now.1 -
Just want to take a moment to thank Sir Francis Regex (AKA Stephen Kleene) for creating regex. Thank you for making my life easier and better through your efforts. Rest in peace, my friend.
Regex is the shit y'all. We all stand atop the shoulders of giants. Spare a moment to reflect and appreciate. -
IIS is a piece of shit. Windows is for playing video games and looking at stupid memes, not for real work. Defenders say that wInDoWs SeRvEr Is PoWeRfUl REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, but it only appears powerful because microshit took all of the things that normal servers can do easily, split it up nonsensically, and hid it in bizarre places in an overdesigned and FUCKING CONFUSING set of config menus. No one can change my mind about this.13
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FUCK UPS. Fucking dickheads killed our XML api a month ahead of schedule, and now I'm having to quickly implement stuff for their new api, and their docs are fucking dogshit. Seriously, the united parcel service can burn to death in a god damn fire.1
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Anyone else burned out? I'm fucking burned out. Definitely taking a week off soon. That sort of makes it harder to get motivated though. I was humming along nicely with my new project, but got sidetracked fixing stupid shit in the legacy code and dealing with a moron in customer service, and I guess that kicked me off into a small depression. I feel like I should have worked harder in school, so that I could have gone into sales or something high paying, instead of "software engineering". With all the ass I've been kicking over the last year, I sure hope I get a raise soon.13
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So this place seems to be relatively inactive, especially compared to how it was back in 2016, 2017. What happened?24
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Got one right now, no idea if it’s the “most” unrealistic, because I’ve been doing this for a while now.
Until recently, I was rewriting a very old, very brittle legacy codebase - we’re talking garbage code from two generations of complete dumbfucks, and hands down the most awful codebase I’ve ever seen. The code itself is quite difficult to describe without seeing it for yourself, but it was written over a period of about a decade by a certifiably insane person, and then maintained and arguably made much worse by a try-hard moron whose only success was making things exponentially harder for his successor to comprehend and maintain. No documentation whatsoever either. One small example of just how fucking stupid these guys were - every function is wrapped in a try catch with an empty catch, variables are declared and redeclared ten times, but never used. Hard coded credentials, hard coded widths and sizes, weird shit like the entire application 500ing if you move a button to another part of the page, or change its width by a pixel, unsanitized inputs, you name it, if it’s a textbook fuck up, it’s in there, and then some.
Because the code is so damn old as well (MySQL 8.0, C#4, and ASP.NET 3), and utterly eschews the vaguest tenets of structured, organized programming - I decided after a month of a disproportionate effort:success ratio, to just extract the SQL queries, sanitize them, and create a new back end and front end that would jointly get things where they need to be, and most importantly, make the application secure, stable, and maintainable. I’m the only developer, but one of the senior employees wrote most of the SQL queries, so I asked for his help in extracting them, to save time. He basically refused, and then told me to make my peace with God if I missed that deadline. Very helpful.
I was making really good time on it too, nearly complete after 60 days of working on it, along with supporting and maintaining the dumpster fire that is the legacy application. Suddenly my phone rings, and I’m told that management wants me to implement a payment processing feature on the site, and because I’ve been so effective at fixing problems thus far, they want to see it inside of a week. I am surprised, because I’ve been regularly communicating my progress and immediate focus to management, so I explain that I might be able to ship the feature by end of Q1, because rather than shoehorn the processor onto the decrepit piece of shit legacy app, it would be far better to just include it in the replacement. I add that PCI compliance is another matter that we must account for, and so there’s not a great chance of shipping this in a week. They tell me that I have a month to do it…and then the Marketing person asks to see my progress and ends up bitching about everything, despite the front end being a pixel perfect reproduction. Despite my making everything mobile responsive, iframe free, secure and encrypted, fast, and void of unpredictable behaviors. I tell her that this is what I was asked to do, and that there should have been no surprises at all, especially since I’ve been sending out weekly updates via email. I guess it needed more suck? But either way, fuck me and my two months of hard work. I mean really, no ego, I made a true enterprise grade app for them.
Short version, I stopped working on the rebuild, and I’m nearly done writing the payment processor as a microservice that I’ll just embed as an iframe, since the legacy build is full of those anyway, and I’m being asked to make bricks without straw. I’m probably glossing over a lot of finer points here too, just because it’s been such an epic of disappointment. The deadline is coming up, and I’m definitely going to make it, now that I have accordingly reduced the scope of work, but this whole thing has just totally pissed me off, and left a bad taste about the organization.10 -
Productivity hack - For me, it’s mostly a single word - planning. I wasn’t always good at it, definitely not yet a “master” of it, but breaking that proverbial elephant up into smaller pieces, and organizing a plan of action for dealing with them is the #1 productivity “hack” for me. Sorry that it’s not an actual shortcut, or anything…I personally don’t believe in those anymore. Complementary habits to this are thoroughly commenting code, having descriptive commit messages, file names, and variable names, maintaining documentation. Use that Readme.md. This is true of any project, even if I’m the only developer - never underestimate your own ability to totally forget shit.1
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Being a developer in my country is great. We have Sam Adams fountains instead of water fountains everywhere, triple - double bacon and duck fat fried cheeseburgers with Twinkie buns, massive desktops that burn coal and dump pure toxicity into the atmosphere. We sit on chairs made from the carcasses of soon to be extinct animals, and instead of rubber ducks, we have majestic bald eagles screeching their encouragement as we pound out our buggy ass code. But we have the best bugs, don’t we folks?2
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Spec meeting with my client: "Accessibility is very, very important to us. We want to be sure that we meet AA guidelines, at a minimum."
Client delivers front end mockups, can do nothing. Not one single element on it is compliant - have to send it back for revisions.
The fact that they were aware of the WCAG and the AA tier guidelines, and still handed me these shitty designs is pretty impressively stupid.2 -
Know what really grinds my gears? The fact that at many companies, PM's and QA people aren't required or expected to have even a basic level of knowledge, making communication pretty unpleasant. Even having a grasp of relevant vocabulary would make things so much easier.
Combine this with the bedside manner of a barn-raised sociopath, an ignorance of human and technical capabilities in general, and we have several good reasons to stay at home "sick". What the hell do I keep getting myself into?2 -
Pretty much all of them now, thanks to the unfettered access to everyone's data on the one hand, and the crazy PC ass-kissing "censorship" ban hammer that gets dropped for absolutely any arbitrary reason on the other.
They make strange bedfellows don't they?2 -
As someone who works with front end stuff regularly, know what I love about safari? Specifically mobile safari?
Not a god damn fucking thing. If safari was a band, it'd be Nickelback, featuring Kenny G and Michael Bolton.3 -
Oh my God I'm a failure. Been working on this booking system backend for two weeks, refactored some code, and now it doesn't work at all.
I've gone back through the entire thing, and I can't find the problem.
Open up indeed, start browsing for low-skill jobs. Maybe the carnies will have me back!
*Re-reads error message, adds missing underscore to function call.1 -
Had an interview the other day for a fullstack role. They told me I'd have to whiteboard stuff, of course. No big deal.
They had me whiteboard css though. Totally off guard. Pretty sure I got it, but WTF. Is this normal?5 -
Browsing job postings, and some of these requirements are just crazy, and/or wtf. Here's an example:
Front End developer wanted, junior to mid-level. An ideal candidate will be an expert in PHP, C#, and Java. Minimum experience of 10 years. Estimated compensation 30,000 per year.
Entry level full stack developer. Must be an expert in SQL. 5 years experience, BS in computer science required.
Web Developer intern - must have 3 years of experience. Must be an expert in x, y, z. This position is unpaid.
Sheeit.6 -
Sins? I don't want to keep you up all night, so here are some highlights.
Fucking with clients and employers who fuck with me first, or waste my time.
Occasionally not documenting my code (I'm actually pretty good about this), then bitching about poorly documented code.
Honestly wishing other people in the office would *actually* explode, or die engulfed in flames.
Working drunk and/or stoned.
Getting pissed off when I have to do something in a stupid way, or use a workflow that I don't like.
Seriously fucking up out of either arrogance or stupidity, then blaming it on something else.
Zoning out, skipping work, or sleeping in and billing for it (see sin #1).
But my greatest sin? That honor's got to go to becoming a developer in the first place.
I wasn't always a professional asshole, but I fucking am now.1 -
Got a call from a recruiter today
Recruiter: I'm trying to fill a full stack position in Charlotte.
Me: not interested
R: why
M: I hate NC
R: what can I do to make you reconsider
M: I want 120k
R: Ok, well please pass this opportunity along if you know someone who is looking
I *actually* just moved from there.
Guess someone didn't read my job history.
Convo was seriously less than a minute.9 -
I had a pretty good day today. Things are coming together at the new job, and I'm a little less afflicted with impostor syndrome.
Hope everyone else had a pretty good one too. -
Trying to use docker for the first time, and getting nowhere. I think I'm actually unlearning how to use a computer.1
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Hey @dfox, @trogus, the birds on the shoulder are super pimp, but would you be interested in making a parrot? You know, to go along with a Hawaiian shirt, an eye patch, and a pirate hat?
That'd be metal af \m/\m/11 -
Gave my two weeks, two weeks ago. Today was my last day. The designer finally asked to see how I go about doing my job, and was blown away at how "hard" it is. Smug satisfaction +1.
I leave the office at 5, go home, get packed, and start driving to my new city/state. An hour into the trip, my phone rings. My boss, on vacation out of the country acts surprised that I'm not going to be there Monday. I personally gave her my resignation. Exactly two weeks ago. "Are you going to be at the meeting Monday? We still have some stuff up in the air."
WHAT FUCKING PLANET DID I JUST LEAVE?17 -
Interviewing other devs (for job placement) totally sucks. I never realized what a shitty process hiring people can be.
More than half of the applicants are totally unqualified (good fucking job TekSystems), and those who are seem to be only *just* qualified enough, or have really bizarre portfolios and personalities. I'm glad I'm not in HR.1 -
Finally got a new job! Outta here!
Just got out of a meeting that I drove half an hour for (that could easily have been a damn phone call), for hand off stuff with the agency my company has hired to replace me.
I've talked to their senior dev a few times in the past, and he always struck me as an arrogant asshole. I assumed this meant that he had some level of competence to justify this attitude, but evidently not. Turns out he and his employees are a bunch of fucking idiots who don't even know how to use the command line, or anything but a cms with stock themes.
I'm taking all of the specific public stuff I've done for my employer off my resume as soon as I get back, because these dudes are going to fuck it up worse than a soup sandwich. -
Say what you want about imposter syndrome - I just realized why I'm cut out for this line of work.
My intelligence is artificial.