I've recently received another invitation to Google's Foobar challenges.

A while ago someone here on devRant (which I believe works at Google, and whose support I deeply appreciate) sent me a couple of links to it too. Unfortunately back then I didn't take the time to learn the programming languages (Python or Java) that Google requires for these challenges. This time I'm putting everything on Python, as it's the easiest language to learn when coming from Bash.

But at the end of the day.. I am a sysadmin, not a developer. I don't know a single thing about either of these languages. Yet I can't take these challenges as the sysadmin I am. Instead, I have to learn a new language which chances are I'll never need again outside of some HR dickhead's interview with lateral thinking questions and whiteboard programming, probably prohibited from using Google search like every sane programmer and/or sysadmin would for practical challenges that actually occur in real life.

I don't want to do that. Google is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I get that. Many people would probably even steal that foobar link from me if they could. But I don't think that for me it's the right thing to do. Google has made a serious difference by actually challenging developers with practical scenarios, and that's vastly superior to whatever a HR person at any other company could cobble together for an interview. But there's one thing that they don't seem to realize. A company like Google consists of more than just developers. Not only that, it probably consists - even within their developer circles - of more than just Python and Java developers. If any company would know about languages that are more optimized such as C, it would be Google that has to leverage this performance in order to be able to deliver their services.

I'll be frank here. Foobar has its own issues that I don't like. But if Google were a nice company, I'd go for it all the way nonetheless - after all, they are arguably the single biggest tech company in the world, and the tech industry itself is one of the biggest ones in the world nowadays. It's safe to say that there's likely no opportunity like working at Google. But I don't think it's the right thing. Even if I did know Python or Java... Even if I did. I don't like Google's business decisions.

I've recently flashed my OnePlus 6T with LineageOS. It's now completely Google-free, except for a stock Yalp account (that I'm too afraid to replace with my actual Google account because oh dear, third-party app stores, oh dear that could damage our business and has to be made highly illegal!1!). My contacts on that phone are are all gone. They're all stored on a Google server somewhere (except for some like @linuxxx' that I consciously stored on device storage and thus lost a while back), waiting for me to log back in and sync them back. I've never asked for this. If Google explicitly told me that they'd sync all my contacts to my Google account and offer feasible alternatives, I'd probably given more priority to building a CalDAV and CardDAV server of my own. Because I do have the skills and desire to maintain that myself. I don't want Google to do this for me.

Move fast and break things. I've even got a special Termux script on my home screen, aptly named Unfuck-Google-Play. Every other day I have to use it. Google Search. When I open it on my Nexus 6P, which was Google's foray into hardware and in which they failed quite spectacularly - I've even almost bent and killed it tonight, after cursing at that piece of shit every goddamn day - the Google app opens, I type some text into it.. and then it just jumps back to the beginning of whatever I was typing. A preloader of sorts. The app is a fucking web page parser, or heck probably even just an API parser. How does that in any way justify such shitty preloaders? How does that in any way justify such crappy performance on anything but the most recent flagships? I could go on about this all day... I used to run modern Linux on a 15 year old laptop, smoothly. So don't you Google tell me that a - probably trillion dollar - company can't do that shit right. When there's (commercialized) community projects like DuckDuckGo that do things a million times better than you do - yet they can't compete with you due to your shit being preloaded on every phone and tablet and impossible to remove without rooting - that you Google can't do that and a lot more. You've got fucking Google Assistant for fucks sake! Yet you can't make a decent search app - the goddamn thing that your company started with in the first place!?

I'm sorry. I'd love to work at Google and taste the diversity that this company has to offer. But there's *a lot* wrong with it at the business end too. That is something that - in that state - I don't think I want to contribute to, despite it being pretty much a lottery ticket that I've been fortunate enough to draw twice.

Maybe I should just start my own company.

Want to fuck other developers? Then make a quite probable project name illegal without documenting it, nor providing any helpful information in the error messages.

I tried to name my Flutter test project flutter_test. Turns out that that name is reserved (it's a package). Fml. 🤦🏽‍♂️

Well, been awhile. The latter half of this is probably gonna be unpopular, but the gist of it is that all of the devs working on camera-centric apps, get your shit together, if possible. As mentioned there may not be a way for you to get your shit together, because Google and the others involved ultimately are a mess. In that case, you're dismissed. I haven't proof-read this, so don't take it exactly verbatim.

Woke up this morning to a need for this, so here goes:

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OPEN LETTER TO SNAPCHAT
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Snapchat,

You guys need to get your shit together. This is a tack-on to what Marques Brownlee already stated.

I woke up this morning to a seriously FUCKED UP UI. UX didn't change as much, still looks Snapchat-esque. But holy hell WHAT THE FUCK?

I'm not averse to change, despite the above. HOWEVER, there's an exception to that: You cannot change out UX/UI from under me with no warning. I need to know that within the coming weeks, there will be changes to how I interact/interface within the app. An option to opt into testing would be nice as well, but doesn't look like you guys have that figured out. With that testing should come feedback, and something like Jira, where issues can be reported and triaged. You're a company, unfortunately, so I doubt you'd be willing to even go as far as accepting feedback in the first place, which is a shame.

Seriously, as Marques pointed out, Android Snaps are shitty because the app takes a screenshot of the viewfinder and uses it as a photo. There's no doubt in my mind this is something that others do, but all Android devs need to either not pull this (because it's not clever) or just not make apps (quality over quantity).

I would like to see either Google step in and require a native API that is the same across all devices and leverages all cameras to their full potential (I want to say that Snap's issue stems from an API provided by Google. In this case, Google, get your shit together), or alternatively I'd like to see manufacturers band up to provide a uniform interface to deal with this. Because I don't see the latter happening anytime soon, Google needs to do something about this, although I feel like they probably won't. That said, IDGAF WHO it is, I just want it FIXED.