Boss: "I looked at a testing suite. It is $2,500 a license and I'm buying 60 licenses. You should probably get familiar with it."
LeadDev: "Um, we already use NUnit, and it's free."
Boss: "Hmm...I'd better add Pluralsight training in the budget so you can learn about the new program."
LeadDev: "Oh, no...we need new laptops more than we need software."
Boss:"New laptops? Not my budget. When we buy this new software, everyone is going to use it"
LeadDev: "Everyone? How will you monitor it's usage?"
Boss: "I'll have networking send me captures of all the running tasks on the dev machines. The test suite better be running. Writing good tests will be our #1 priority."
LeadDev: "Um, we already write tests using NUnit."
Boss: "I don't understand what you are saying. I need something I can visualize. This UI testing suite is exactly what I need."
LeadDev: "Maybe the testing suite would be better suited for you and QA?"
<click..click>
Boss: "Submitted the budget. There will be a test server available for you to configure. This whole project costs over $100,000, so don't screw it up. Any questions?"
LeadDev: "Oh...well...what server ..."
Boss: "Dang...sorry, I'm taking off the rest of the afternoon. We'll talk about this more on Monday. Get started on those Pluralsight videos. I'll expect a full training and deployments by next week. Have a great weekend!"

there's nothing we can do about that!

So I got the job. Here's a story, never let anyone stop you from accomplishing your dreams!

It all started in 2010. Windows just crashed unrecoverably for the 3rd time in two years. Back then I wasn't good with computers yet so we got our tech guy to look at it and he said: "either pay for a windows license again (we nearly spend 1K on licenses already) or try another operating system which is free: Ubuntu. If you don't like it anyways, we can always switch back to Windows!"

Oh well, fair enough, not much to lose, right! So we went with Ubuntu. Within about 2 hours I could find everything. From the software installer to OpenOffice, browsers, email things and so on. Also I already got the basics of the Linux terminal (bash in this case) like ls, cd, mkdir and a few more.

My parents found it very easy to work with as well so we decided to stick with it.

I already started to experiment with some html/css code because the thought of being able to write my own websites was awesome! Within about a week or so I figured out a simple html site.

Then I started to experiment more and more.

After about a year of trial and error (repeat about 1000+ times) I finally got my first Apache server setup on a VirtualBox running Ubuntu server. Damn, it felt awesome to see my own shit working!

From that moment on I continued to try everything I could with Linux because I found the principle that I basically could do everything I wanted (possible with software solutions) without any limitations (like with Windows/Mac) very fucking awesome. I owned the fucking system.

Then, after some years, I got my first shared hosting plan! It was awesome to see my own (with subdomain) website online, functioning very well!

I started to learn stuff like FTP, SSH and so on.

Went on with trial and error for a while and then the thought occured to me: what if I'd have a little server ONLINE which I could use myself to experiment around?

First rented VPS was there! Couldn't get enough of it and kept experimenting with server thingies, linux in general aaand so on.

Started learning about rsa key based login, firewalls (iptables), brute force prevention (fail2ban), vhosts (apache2 still), SSL (damn this was an interesting one, how the fuck do you do this yourself?!), PHP and many other things.

Then, after a while, the thought came to mind: what if I'd have a dedicated server!?!?!?!

I ordered my first fucking dedicated server. Damn, this was awesome! Already knew some stuff about defending myself from brute force bots and so on so it went pretty well.

Finally made the jump to NginX and CentOS!

Made multiple VPS's for shitloads of purposes and just to learn. Started working with reverse proxies (nginx), proxy servers, SSL for everything (because fuck basic http WITHOUT SSL), vhosts and so on.

Started with simple, one screen linux setup with ubuntu 10.04.

Running a five monitor setup now with many distro's, running about 20 servers with proxies/nginx/apache2/multiple db engines, as much security as I can integrate and this fucking passion just got me my first Linux job!

It's not just an operating system for me, it's a way of life. And with that I don't just mean the operating system, but also the idea behind it :).

Non-dev coworker (ndc) sees me using google chrome: I don't understand why chrome is so popular. I hate it and don't know why anyone would use it.
Me: what browser do you use?
NDC: internet explorer.
Me: why do you like ie better than chrome?
NDC: it does everything chrome can do and it's free.
Me: ie can NOT do everything chrome can do and chrome is free. You just have to download it from google.
NDC: no I read that chrome is proprietary software and why would I pay to use it when ie is free.
Me: ie is also proprietary software. Proprietary doesn't necessarily mean it costs money it's just not open source. Plus ie is not free. You paid for it when you bought the windows license that came with your computer.
NDC: no ie was already on the computer when I bought it so I didn't have to pay for it.
Me: it was included in the price of the computer but you still paid for it.
NDC: whatever I'm going to keep using ie because it's free for me.

ARE YOU RETARDED???

Lads, I will be real with you: some of you show absolute contempt to the actual academic study of the field.

In a previous rant from another ranter it was thrown up and about the question for finding a binary search implementation.

Asking a senior in the field of software engineering and computer science such question should be a simple answer, specifically depending on the type of job application in question. Specially if you are applying as a SENIOR.

I am tired of this strange self-learner mentality that those that have a degree or a deep grasp of these fundamental concepts are somewhat beneath you because you learned to push out a website using the New Boston tutorials on youtube. FOR every field THAT MATTERS a license or degree is hold in high regards.
"Oh I didn't go to school, shit is for suckers, but I learned how to chop people up and kinda fix it from some tutorials on youtube" <---- try that for a medical position.

"Nah it's cool, I can fix your breaks, learned how to do it by reading blogs on the internet" <--- maintenance shop

"Sure can write the controller processing code for that boing plane! Just got done with a low level tutorial on some websites! what can go wrong!"

(The same goes for military devices which in the past have actually killed mfkers in the U.S)

Just recently a series of people were sent to jail because of a bug in software. Industries NEED to make sure a mfker has aaaall of the bells and whistles needed for running and creating software.

During my masters degree, it fucking FASCINATED me how many mfkers were absolutely completely NEW to the concept of testing code, some of them with years in the field.

And I know what you are thinking "fuck you, I am fucking awesome" <--- I AM SURE YOU BLOODY WELL ARE but we live in a planet with billions of people and millions of them have fallen through the cracks into software related positions as well as complete degrees, the degree at LEAST has a SPECTACULAR barrier of entry during that intro to Algos and DS that a lot of bitches fail.

NOTE: NOT knowing the ABSTRACTIONS over the tools that we use WILL eventually bite you in the ASS because you do not fucking KNOW how these are implemented internally.

Why do you think compiler designers, kernel designers and embedded developers make the BANK they made? Because they don't know memory efficient ways of deploying a product with minimal overhead without proper data structures and algorithmic thinking? NOT EVERYTHING IS SHITTY WEB DEVELOPMENT

SO, if a mfker talks shit about a so called SENIOR for not knowing that the first mamase mamasa bloody simple as shit algorithm THROWN at you in the first 10 pages of an algo and ds book, then y'all should be offended at the mkfer saying that he is a SENIOR, because these SENIORS are the same mfkers that try to at one point in time teach other people.
These SENIORS are the same mfkers that left me a FUCKING HORRIBLE AND USELESS MESS OF SPAGHETTI CODE

Specially to most PHP developers (my main area) y'all would have been well motherfucking served in learning how not to forLoop the fuck out of tables consisting of over 50k interconnected records, WHAT THE FUCK

"LeaRniNG tHiS iS noT neeDed!!" yes IT fucking IS

being able to code a binary search (in that example) from scratch lets me know fucking EXACTLY how well your thought process is when facing a hard challenge, knowing the basemotherfucking case of a LinkedList will damn well make you understand WHAT is going on with your abstractions as to not fucking violate memory constraints, this-shit-is-important.

So, will your royal majesties at least for the sake of completeness look into a couple of very well made youtube or book tutorials concerning the topic?

You can code an entire website, fine as shit, you will get tested by my ass in terms of security and best practices, run these questions now, and it very motherfucking well be as efficient as I think it should be(I HIRE, NOT YOU, or your fucking blog posts concerning how much MY degree was not needed, oh and btw, MY degree is what made sure I was able to make SUCH decissions)

This will make a loooooooot of mfkers salty, don't worry, I will still accept you as an interview candidate, but if you think you are good enough without a degree, or better than me (has happened, told that to my face by a candidate) then get fucking ready to receive a question concerning: BASIC FUCKING COMPUTER SCIENCE TOPICS

* gays away into the night

Storytime!

This customer comes in and practically throws a computer on the counter.

Customer: This computer isn't working. I've ran the diagnostics and it says it's software. *places a dvd case with a 32 bit Windows 7 disk in it on the counter* It had Windows 10 on it, but I want Windows 7 on it.

Me: Well, you may have issues with the drivers if you put Windows 7 on it--

Customer: I don't care, I just want Windows 7.

Me: You SHOULD care. That means no wifi, no display, no mouse... Windows 7 doesn't like Windows 10 hardware.

Customer: Then... check to see Windows 7 compatibility!

Me: Alright.... *makes notes to check for Windows 7 compatibility*

Me: So has this Windows 7 been used before?

Customer: Yes, it has.

Me: On how many computers?

Customer: I've installed it on two computers and it works just fine.

Me: That's weird because Windows license keys are for one computer only. Are both of them connected to the internet?

Customer: Yes.

Me: Well, okay then... *finishes up ticket*

Customer: I work in this field and I just don't understand why they don't come with the disks anymore. How much is a Windows 10 disk?

Me: *gives price*

Customer: And do you have any?

Me: Let me check *I go to where they are, find some and come back out*

Me: Unfortunately we're out at the moment and would have to special order some back in.

Customer: OK. So then how much to fix this computer?

Me: *price of installing Windows and backing up data*

Customer: That's halfway to the price of a new one of these!

Me: Well yes, an HP at Walmart... But you do have that option if you want to take it.

Customer: Well, why does it cost that much?

Me: Well, it's $labor1 to install Windows, $labor2 to do some basic setup and drivers, and $labor3 to backup and restore data.

Customer: Oh, well I don't want data.

Me: Okay, well then it would be $total - $labor3

Customer: ...Okay, fine

Me: *updates the ticket*

When she finally left I put it on the bench and the first message said "SMART ERROR." I then did 4 different tests that said "lol, the hard drive is failing."

If you "worked in this field," you would know that a SMART error is hard drive related.

If you worked in this field, you would know that Windows is only a 1PC license, so why are you lying about installing it with no issues on other computers?

If you worked in this field, you would know you would want a 64bit Windows on your computer.

If you worked in this field, you would know how to find a Windows 10 installation media online.

If you worked in this field, you would know that HPs are not good computers to get.

IF YOU FUCKING WORKED IN THIS FIELD YOU WOULDN'T BE SUCH A FUCKING CUNT.

An intern I was supposed to lead (as an intern) and work with. Which sounded kinda crazy to me, but also fun so I rolled with it. But when I met her I quickly found out she didn't even have a coding editor installed and when I advised one she was "scared of virusses". She had Microsoft Edge in her toolbar, and some picture of a cat as a background. We were given some project by our boss, and a freelance programmer helped us set it up on Trello. Great, lets start! Oke maybe first some R&D, she had to reaeach how to use the Twilio API. After catching her on WhatsApp a few times I realised this wasnt gonna go anywere. After a few weeks of coding and posting a initial project to git I asked her if she could show me the code of the API she made so far..

She told me she was using the quickstart guide (the last 3 FUCKING weeks) which contained some test project with specific use cases.

The one that I did 3 weeks ago that same fucking morning.

AND SHE WAS STILL NOT DONE...

A few days later I asked her about the progress (strangly, I wasn't allowed ti give her another task bcs the freelanc already did) and guess what... She got fking pissed at me

Her: "I will come to you when im done, ok?"
Me: "I just want to see how it is going so far and if you are running into any problems!"
Her: "I dont want to show you right now"

She then goes to my fucking boss to tell him I am bothering her.

And omg... Please dear god please kill me now...

Instead of him saying the she probably didn't do shit. He says to me that the girl thinks im looking down on her and she needs a stress free environment to work in. She will show me when its done. ITS A FUCKING QUICKSTART GUIDE YOU DUMB BITCH.

He then procceeded to whine to me about the email template (another project I do at the same time) which didn't look perfect in all of his clients.

Dont they understand that I am not a frontend developer? Can you stop please? I know nothing about email templates, I told you this!!!

Really... the whole fucking internship the only thing the girl did was ask people if they want more tea. Then she starts cleaning the windows, talk to people for an hour, or clean everyone's dask.

all this while I already made 50% of the fucking product and she just finished the quickstart tutorial 😭. Truly 2 months wasted, and the worse thing is I didn't get any apprication. They constantly blamed me and whined at me. Sometimes for being 3 minutes late, the other for smoking too much, or because I drink to much coffee, or that I dont eat healthy. They even forced me to play Ping Pong. While im just trying to do my job. One of the worst things they got mad at me for if when my laptop got hacked bcs it was infected with some virus. He had remote access and bought 5 iPhones 6's with my paypal while I was on break. I had to go home and quickly reset all my passwords and make sure the iPhones wouldnt get delivered. strange this was, this laptop I only used at the company. So it must have been software I had to download there. Probably phpstorm (torrent). Bcs nobody would give me a license. And the freelancer said I * have to *.

the monday after I still had to reinstall windows so I called them and said I would be late. when I came they were so disrepectfull and didn't understand anything. It went a little like this:

Boss: why u late?
Me: had to reinstall my laptop, sorry.
Boss: why didnt you do this in your own time?
Me: well, I didn't have any time.
Boss: cant you do this in the weekend or something? Because now we have to pay you several hours bcs you downloaded something at home.

Me: I am only using this laptop for work so thats not possible.

Boss: how can that even be possible? You are not doing anything at home with your laptop? Is that why you never do anything at home?

Me: uhm, I have desktop computer you know. Its much faster. And I also need to rest sometimes. Areeb (freelancer) told me to torrent the software. He gave me the link. 2 days later this happends

Boss: Ahh okeee I see.. Well dont let it happen again.

After that nobody at the compamy trusted me with anything computer related. Yes it was my own fault I downloaded a virus but it can happen to anyone. After that I never used Windows again btw, also no more auto login apps.

Arguing with a woman is like reading the Software License Agreement. In the end, you ignore everything and click "I agree".

Buckle up kids, this one gets saucy.

At work, we have a stress test machine that trests tensile, puncture and breaking strength for different materials used (wood construction). It had a controller software update that was supposed to be installed. I was called into the office because the folks there were unable to install it, they told me the executable just crashed, and wanted me to take a look as I am the most tech-savvy person there.

I go to the computer and open up the firmware download folder. I see a couple folders, some random VBScript file, and Installation.txt. I open the TXT, and find the first round of bullshit.

"Do not run the installer executable directly as it will not work. Run install.vbs instead."

Now, excuse me for a moment, but what kind of dick-cheese-sniffing cockmonger has end users run VBScript files to install something in 2018?! Shame I didn't think of opening it up and examining it for myself to find out what that piece of boiled dogshit did.

I suspend my cringe and run it, and lo and behold, it installs. I open the program and am faced with entering a license key. I'm given the key by the folks at the office, but quickly conclude no ways of entering it work. I reboot the program and there is an autofilled key I didn't notice previously. Whatever, I think, and hit OK.

The program starts fine, and I try with the login they had previously used. Now it doesn't work for some reason. I try it several times to no avail. Then I check the network inspector and notice that when I hit login, no network activity happens in the program, so I conclude the check must be local against some database.

I browse to the program installation directory for clues. Then I see a folder called "Databases".

"This can't be this easy", I think to myself, expecting to find some kind of JSON or something inside that I can crawl for clues. I open the folder and find something much worse. Oh, so much worse.

I find <SOFTWARE NAME>.accdb in the folder. At this point cold sweat is already running down my back at the sheer thought of using Microsoft Access for any program, but curiosity takes over and I open it anyway.

I find the database for the entire program inside. I also notice at this point that I have read/write access to the database, another thing that sent my alarm bells ringing like St. Pauls cathedral. Then I notice a table called "tUser" in the left panel.

Fearing the worst, I click over and find... And you knew it was coming...

Usernames and passwords in plain text.

Not only that, they're all in the format "admin - admin", "user - user", "tester - tester".

I suspend my will to die, login to the program and re-add the account they used previously. I leave the office and inform the peeps that the program works as intended again.

I wish I was making this shit up, but I really am not. What is the fucking point of having a login system at all when your users can just open the database with a program that nowadays comes bundled with every Windows install and easily read the logins? It's not even like the data structure is confusing like minified JSON or something, it's literally a spreadsheet in a program that a trained monkey could read.

God bless them and Satan condemn the developers of this fuckawful program.

*reads JSON license*
"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

Well that's actually a nice license.. if only nuclear research etc could be licensed like that.

Wait actually.. WanBLowS is using XML for its "diagnostic data", right? I always found it so weird that they don't use JSON for that.. but I guess that this is why 🙃

Any code I make for clients is under a strict license unless specified otherwise. It's a straight forward license pretty much stating that they can't sell it or claim it as their own. I've had a few clients break that license but one stood out. I had made a piece of software that cost her over $2,500 due to the amount of hours that went into it. The transaction went along smoothly so there was nothing to be alarmed about. She came back for more work about 6 months later and I decided to do some checking up on her to see how her business was going. Immediately smack bang on the home page was my software being sold for $30/month. Needless to say I was outraged. She said there was no talk of a license which I responded with pulling out the contract that she signed where it explained that signing the contract meant she was in agreement with the specified license. 2 months after this started, I'm being awarded any profits made from said software along with her closing down the website. As much of a bitch as she was, it wasn't worth my time trying to get more out of her.

Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.

The story of my webshop with this fuckin' asshole continues! I decided to stop with the webshop as my partner didn't do anything, so I handed over my shares to my business partner. This was done formally at the notary. Immediately after, we agreed that I would hand over everything that same week. 1 day later I cannot access any accounts. He said that a hand over was not necessary and that he took appropriate measures. Now, 4 months later, I got a letter from a collection agency telling me to hand over the tradename. Uhm what? Tradename? I don't own it so I replied that there's nothing to hand over. A day later again a letter that he will sue me if I don't hand over the tradename. Mr. Prick Lawyer, I understand that you mean the DOMAINname, but why the fuck do you keep referring to the tradename?! You too stupid to understand the difference? So, to get rid of this crap I made an offer to sell him the domainname, which he accepted. But mr. Asshole moved the shop to a different hostingprovider thinking that the dns would be magocally updated. Of course not asshole. So I offered (to be cooperative) to update dns so his site will work again. I did. A day later again a letter that site still not reachable and he'd sue me for all damages etc.

What a muppet show! You think ypu can sue me because YOU made a config mistake? He's a funny guy! I told the lawyer to not send me any 'issues' caused by mr. Asshole's unprofessional acting and if he does, I'll charge him for every second spent.

Today mr. Asshole's webshop says 'Apache is functioning normally' and that's it. Well done, asshole! See how eaay my job is and how little knowledge it requires? You proved ypu can do it yourself Big boy! Good luck selling shit on your website. Good luck with your seo rankings. And good luck fucking yourself in the ass!

Now I'm going to sue you because of copyrights violations. You use my software and you don't have a license. Either pay or remove it or I'll make you pay!

A person just bought a 3000€ workstation and asked me to install cracked versions of Office, AutoCAD, full Adobe suite and Rhino with plugins. And he's going to use them at work to make money.

So, since I have to, I installed 2-3 years old versions of each, in English (he only knows Italian) and blocked all the connections so he can't receive any update/fix or use web related functionalities. I also disabled all autostarting components and contextual menu / OS integrations (although this can be seen as a plus).

When he's calling me asking to "fix" things, I will simply say "sorry, it's the only way for the crack to work, if you want everything you'd better pay for a license or else go open source".

Why can't people understand the value of the complex software they use? Just because it's not a material thing doesn't mean it's not a steal

Dear Atlassian Support,

In my life I had a lot of experiences...

But your software manages to replace all these experiences with a unique feeling of depression, hatred, anger... Only negative emotions.

Not once have I said anything good about your software - not once in > 5 years.

Whenever your chum bucket of mismanagement and misanthropy stops working, it's never the fault of the end user, the administrator or someone else.

It's entirely your fault.

Fucked up upgrades, lack of documentation, catastrophic handling of logging, lack of support of current database systems, lack of proper migration and clean up of plugins, ....

I could go on. But it's really just and endless tirade.

I wish I could stop management for even giving you money for the pile of poo you call software, but sadly they don't listen.

But there's hope on the horizon.

Thanks for making people go cloud only.

No one wants that.

It would mean entrusting that pile of poo to the craptastic hands of your irresponsible people.

No one really wants that.

Not even management who blindly paid the license fees all the times.

Thank you for your cloud only movement.

Maybe we can finally find an alternative and I can finally start a therapy for the PTSD I have thx to your software.

I'm so fucking sick of the lack of great modern open source DB tooling.

MySQL Workbench can go suck a big fat herpes-ridden cock, it's horrible.

Dbeaver is a clunky 90's tool, which charges two Netflixes (yes, that is a valid $/month monetary unit) just to connect to a NoSQL DB.

Datagrip is nice, but has the same outrageously expensive pricing. I paid for it, and couldn't use it for my local docker DB during my holiday because it couldn't connect to the license server. Fuck you, Jetbrains. Your software is nice, but your DRM makes me hate you.

And then ERD software... It's either some hard-to-use afterthought piece of crap bundled with the DB IDE, some generic diagramming tool which makes DB-specific work needlessly unergonomic, or some vendor-locked online tool.

Fuck this shit, I'm making my own DB admin tool. With blackjack. And hookers. 😡

The best software license ever seen :

my patches and additions on top of Ian's code are licensed under the ABSE ("Anyone But Stefan Esser") license.
note that an additional exception to the license is added, forbidding use/redistribution of said content to his
trainees as well, but only when in a 5 mile radius from "Stefan Esser" or while holding any sort of (video)conference/chat with him.

note that this license will only be used as long as what would capstone decode / that one other arm64 ida
plugin thing by i0n1c ("Stefan Esser") are not under the MIT license.
afterwards, all exceptions are cleared and basically WTFPL applies

if you need a copy of the rest of the license feel free to google it or something.

I don't know why I am a programmer. I went into engineering because I wanted to make video games. I did controls engineering to make physical systems go vroom. Now I mainly write software to make specialized physical systems go vroom. When I was a kid this was not what I would have wanted to do with my life. My 10 year old version of me is standing over me looking down saying "Pathetic". I feel like I need to do something about this before I die.

I want to make a game system for RPGs that is similar to an authoring tool to allow me to make games with some very specific features. Think creation kit for arbitrary RPG games. I am thinking I could make the authoring tool a product as well. If people want to make their own games. But I also want to make moddable RPG games using the authoring tool. I want to give people the ability to mod the game. So I am struggling with how to allow modding and sell an authoring tool. License to distribute unique games? I dunno, maybe I will just keep it as a modding tool for the games I make. I feel like good quality games are moddable. I hardly want to play anything that isn't.

disableSslVerification()
download("https://...", "update.exe")
execute("update.exe")

In a license reporting software, took them 1,5 years to fix!
If we hadn't specifically requested how to run this software with lesser privileged accounts, it would have had access to all our customer's machines.

I have a VP constantly harassing my people about some reports that we need to do as per federal law.

The thing is, these live inside of such system that I get to see exactly how many "hits" they get on a yearly basis. The only traffic we have on those sections is of people going ahead and putting the information from our reports there.

That's it, literally. Our user base does not go there. Federal agencies do not go there. No one gives two blips of shit about those sections. Yet she continuously acts like they are the most important thing in the fucking world. To make it better, I was told not to generate actual analytical data from said reports, since people with PHDs will come down on me to ask me who the fuck do I think I am from gauging them with such systems. So shit is a mute point on all fucking accounts.

I told my VP I can generate traffic information to let them know that shit is not really the most important thing in the fucking universe. His eyes glowed.

I don't want to see head rolls, but from staying till the next morning awake trying to give the best to our userbase, and just to be called out on shit like this as if I did not do enough for our people just.....well....it fucking hits man.

The worse part was me literally getting 30 minutes of sitting down after an all nighter, doing something for my users, to get to a meeting the next morning (I should not have driven there honestly) to hear this bitch complain about us not doing enough or not caring or whatever other bullshit she would spew.

I was livid, lack of sleep makes me dangerous. I turned to say something when my boss stopped me and took care of business. I seriously love this man. By all accounts and generational gaps a boomer, but one of the few good golden ones.

I just hate how unappreciated the realm of software development is by people that think that our shit is as simple as making a fucking powerpoint presentation.

Consolidate that with a director from another department taking all fucking glory during a major event of an application that I built by myself with 2 fucking weeks of no sleeping. And shit just gets glorious.

I have considered moving to other places, and heck, have gotten amazing offers, what with having a degree with a big fucking GPA and having the credentials of a senior, lead, full stack and manager role, the sky is the limit. But i know that if I leave then my users suffer, and I just can't fucking have that.

I have heard them speaking about doing something with X app that I built (with my department) I have even heard one of them saying "how is this made?" and a part of me hoped that it would be a good time to grab them and tell them of the field and the things that they can do. But I don't like announcing myself that way, always seemed to presumptuous, so I just smile, fuck yeah, my users are doing their thing with what I built to better their lives, what more can I have?

I have gotten criticisms from them, one recognized me, told me about his pain points and how it makes it hard for him to do what he must. Getting the data from the user base in an effort to make shit better for them drives me, my challenge being "how about this? better eh?"

But fucking execs man, think only of themselves, not the users, they forget about the users. Much like a shitty rock band forgetting about the music, about the fans.

I can't let that slide. But this fucking field. I sometimes fucking hate it, and I hate it because of the normies that don't understand and do not want to understand.

I do way too much, my guys do way too much and all I want is for the recognition to go to them. They do not need the ego boost, but to see my guys sitting in a meeting in which some dumb fuck is trying to drill us for taking to long, not doing something and what not, it fucking pisses me off. As their boss I always stand up and tell bitches off, but instead of learning, the bitches just keep pressing on their already defeated points.

Everything in human life gets fucking erradicated by: humans. People really do fucking suck.

I sometimes wish to go back, redo my diesel tech license and just work there, where I think one would be better of talking to an engine. But no, even then you get people, you have to interact with people, deal with people, and I am so far up my game and in my field that starting from scratch is a fucking mute point.

Maybe I need to keep fucking with stocks, get rich and just keep investing on bullshit. Whatever the fuck it takes me from having to feel the urge to choke a motherfucker in public.

It grinds my gears to no end as to how insanely BAD most Electrical engineering software is. Lets start with Tina. A circuit simulator. A few versions ago it was rather good but now it feel like its built upon more legacy crap than fucking Windows! This causes it to have memory access violations and crashes even when you look at it from an odd angle.
On topic of circuit simulation. LT-Spice! It has less errors than Tina but is impossible to use without being lobotomized first. Who the FUCK decided it was a good idea to reinvent keyboard shortcuts by movin all of them to the F-row at the top of the keyboard. Also there is no option to delete a component. YOU NEED TO USE CUT IN ORDER TO REMOVE IT!
And at last Altium Designer for Layouting and Schematics. Whose license costs 9 grand. No one outside of some companies will buy this because of the price. Altium realized this and made two watered down versions of it. Which dont really get updates anymore. (last one was in 2018) So they essentially made a cash grab from people who cant afford their actual product. There also exist other (and a lot cheaper) products than what Altium offers. The problem is that they dont work well with interoperability. Schematics drawn in one program will look distorted in another or not import at all. And since Altium is the industry standard you got yourself this nice steaming soup of impossible collaboration. Its kinda like Adobe being absolute shit at progressing their software just because they got no competition. Or rather they do but the industry wont switch cause adobe is so engraved into it.

Me (out loud in a meeting): "we currently have a SQL Express license, but the traffic with the additional servers is causing crashes when the cache fills up. We need to upgrade to the standard version.”

Follow up email from mngr planning to retire in 6 months currently making roughly 3x my salary: "See if we can get a proposal to purchase better Sequel software and install."

Me:
(-_-;) ... ಠ︵ಠ ...

┻┻︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵┻┻

Ever had that frustrating moment that the customer overreacts a small issue into a big issue? Just happened to me today.

Client: "Hey can you check why we are not getting any software update/patches to our firewall?"
Me: "OK. Lemme check"
** Checking **
Me: "I found that its not getting the latest updates because the license file registered has a product serial # mismatch with their support site. You can see it clearly here..."
Client: "THAT'S TERRIBLE!! QUICK!! MAKE IT A PRIORITY 1 ISSUE AND HAVE IT RESOLVE ASAP!!!"
Me: *Facepalm*

Nope, definitely not going to work for that customer anymore. Fuck this shit. At least for this week.

My background: mid-30 years old, some kind of business & IT consultant / lead dev working for a mid sized CRM consulting company, with approx 15 years of experience in development and software architecture, most of the time "thinking" in C#, still learning new languages, being a cloud evangelist and team lead. We usually have customers with customers (B2B/B2C).
Personality type "campaigner" (ENFP-A).

Today the project lead of my client (a big corporation in the energy industry) told me that he still didn't order all the necessary resources for the cloud project. Just to be clear: He's on the client side. We (the architects, one internal and me) told him one month ago what we need for the beginning. Just a few things - an Azure subscription, a license for the CRM platform, and our dev tools.

And now let's guess when the project is planned to begin? Yeah, right: 1st of April. NO APRIL'S FOOL. And guess what? Next Tuesday we'll do the onboarding for the new (external) devs, and NOTHING will be ready. Yeah, just let us build stuff in our minds, and on the whiteboards, because it's an AGILE project, right? We don't need any systems and tools...

And now he sent me the questionnaires which need to be answered before any cloud service can be ordered by the corporate IT. And yes, he didn't answer a single thing, and just meant "Those are architecture questions" (they are not) and (of course) "please provide the answers until Monday morning, so we can FINALLY order the services."

Yeah, you fucktard. Of course it's MY FAULT now. Maybe I should write an email to your boss asking how we can speed things up a little bit...

Absolutely not dev-related.

Blah, blah, weird conversation and shit. I'm too tired and lazy to write this crap again, but let's do it.

The guy is a dev I randomly found on some chatting service, he was interesting to talk with until this conversation. I'll write this out of memory, so yeah.

Him: So by the way I wrote an app that you give your penis size to to get measurements and stuff about it.
Me, thinking it was dev humor: That's hilarious. Tell me more, I'm interested.
Him: So the idea behind all of this was to gather some big data style info about people's penis size and habits and all that stuff.
Me: Man that's awesome. Can I see the source?
Him: No, it's proprietary. You can buy a license though.
Me: You went that far for a joke?
Him: What joke?
Me: The whole software you just told me about.
Him: That's not a joke, I'm being very serious about it.
Me: Oh well. What did you get from the stats?
Him: I got some tips from people's habits! I never thought that shaving it could make it look bigger, but that's awesome!
Me: Do you really care about it that much?
Him: Studies have proven that size correlated with confidence. Since I started doing it, I've been more confident than ever!
Me: Great.
Him: I'm a bit disappointed to see that I'm in the lower percentiles though.
Me: Well of course you are.
Him: Why would you say that?
Me: Well since people with a big dick tend to go more willingly into the subject and might even buy a fucking app for it, of course you'd have the higher average in your stats.
Him: You're only saying that because you have a small cock.
Me: Why the fuck would you say that? You're the one that's concerned about it, not me.
Him: Go on, what's your size?
Me, because I don't care about discussing that stuff: *Tells him*
Him: [stats, comparisons and stuff]
Me: Well I never gave a fuck and your stats won't make me change my mind.
[ ... Some other shit about my size compared to his ... ]
Him: Would you want to work with me for the database maintenance?
Me: You must be joking?
Him: I'm serious.
Me: *Deletes account*

Seriously, fuck that guy. I rewrote that quickly so you only had the best, but it was a whole fucking conversation.

After being a miserly bastard and settling on VirtualBox for my VM needs on OSX, I downloaded a Parallels trial a couple weeks back, and today, I'm happy to announce I bought a license!

VirtualBox can go do one.

I've ditched Studio for Rider, and now Parallels, what has the world come to when a dev actually buys software?!

The end is nigh I say, nigh.

Rant!
Got an email from an extension developer who releases code under GPL. Had a list of all sites using "our copy" of his software and demanding that we pay twice as much now for download access. We've only asked for support on one domain ever so this feels like an underhanded way to treat customers when your software is supposed to be GPL.

Absolutely need his product so we paid it. Feeling very annoyed that GPL software license isn't really being honored. And it's creepy that he's tracking it that way.

This shit makes me fucking rage! Ok, so here it goes. I use Multiswipe (multiswipe.com) and I'm actually very happy with it. It works as advertised and doesn't crash. Then I bought a new laptop. I wiped the old one and installed multiswipe on the new one. After launching I'm greeted with the registration (I bought it) where it claims I have already registered the software on a different computer. So I reach out to the owner and ask him to help out and am told

"MultiSwipe can be installed and updated as many times as you want as long as it is in the same machine, but if you change laptops then you will need to purchase a new license, this is because MultiSwipe implements a serious of optimizations depending on your touchpad brand and model and as such it's physically linked to it."

This sounds like horseshit to me. If I download a fresh copy, wouldn't it optimize depending on the new system?

But ok. I'll purchase another one, only to be told that my e-mail address is already in use. After reaching out I am told that I HAVE TO CREATE A NEW EMAIL ADDRESS.

Jon, if you read this, I seriously love your software but what the fuck is this fuckery. Like, seriously, how god damn hard can it be to allow customers to purchase multiple licences?

I'm so angry that I'm considering pouring time into cracking it and sending him the new version with the text "nvm, got it to work."

I'm open to suggestions....

Pet peeve of the day: Open source software that shouts about all the benefits of being freely available to everyone, open, loving the community, etc. - but the moment you install it you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to avoid making a hefty donation or buying a license.

If you're aiming to be a corporate overlord, at least admit to it and don't play all your marketing on the open source aspect.

WHY WOULD A LICENSE WORK FOR A BACKUP SOFTWARE ONCE, AND THEN NOT BE RECOGNIZED?!

I haaaaaaaaate shoddy license management.

Oh and Sage is an awful company with terrible software as well.

TLDR: I need advice on reasonable salary expectations for sysadmin work in the rural United States.

I need some community advice. I’m the sysadmin at a small (35 employee) credit card processing company. I began as an intern and have now become their full time sysadmin/networking specialist. Since I was hired in January I have:

-migrated their 2007 Exchange server to Office 365

-Upgraded their ailing Windows server 2003 based architecture to 2012R2

-Licensed their unlicensed VMware ESXi servers (which they had already paid for license keys for!!!) and then upgraded them to 6.5 while preventing downtime on hosted VMs using tricky transfers and deployments (without vMotion!)

-Deployed a vCenter server to manage said ESXi servers easier

-Fixed a three month gap in their backups by implementing Veeam, and verifying its functionality

-Migrated a ‘no downtime’ fileserver to a new hypervisor host, implemented a ‘hot standby’ server as a backup kept up to date by the minute with DFS replication.

-Replaced failing hard drives in a RAID array underlying their one ‘business critical’ fileserver, which had no backups for 3 months at that time

-Reorganized Active Directory and Group Policy deployment from a nightmare spiderweb of OUs and duplicate policies

-Documented the entire old network and now the new one as I’ve been upgrading this

-Audited the developers AWS instances and removed redundant machines, optimized load balancing on front end Nginx servers, joined developer run Fedora workstations to the AD domain and implemented centralized syslog monitoring on them.

-Performed network scans and rewrote firewall exceptions to tighten security

There’s more, but you get the idea. I’ve now been tasked with taking point on an upcoming PCI audit which will be my first.

I’m being paid $16/hr US, with marginal health benefits. This is roughly $32,000 a year, before taxes.

I have two years previous work experience managing a third party Apple repair facility (SimplyMac) and every Apple certification for warranty repair and software troubleshooting. I have a two year degree in general sciences, with about 4 years of college credit (Two years of a physics education and two years of computer science after I switched focus) I’m actively pursuing a CCNA and MCSA server 2016 with exams paid for and scheduled.

I’m going into a salary negotiation in two months. What is a reasonable salary to request, from your perspective, for someone in my position?

Thanks in advance!

Why can't GitHub allow you to use a
`/Licenses/` folder for multiple licenses.

Example:

Using a `LICENSE` (AGPLv3 for software) and
`LICENSE-HARDWARE` (OpenHardware Permissive)

That's 'only' two, however there could be
more and regardless they only clutter the root..

TL;DR: Read it.

Tag: oswars

Please don't redistribute without permission. *PUT OPEN SOURCE LICENSE HERE*

devRant presents:
OS
WARS

Story:
Many users in devRant use Windows but then the "Arch Linux Alliance" short ALA came together to invade devRant. After some weeks, the small group FedB ("Fedora Bureau") also joined the OS Wars. When the release of Ubuntu 16.10 was near the UBO ("UbuntuBestOS Alliance") joined and was near to victory, because dpkg was faster than ever before. But then the macOS Defenders woke up. They finally finished the upgrade to Sierra and tried to fight the other OSes. They wanted to attack with their package manager, but that attack failed. After days of war Windows crashed while updating, which made it unoperational. They called it Blue Screen. After windows gave up, the other groups realized, that they are all built with the same base. They called it Unix. They grouped up (except macOS, because they just want to make money) and discovered the remains of Windows. They found a software named "Ubuntu bash for Windows". Everyone in the group was angry, because UBO teamed up with Windows. They destroyed UBO and continued.

To be continued.
Should it continue? Comments...

* Don't abandon projects
* Read a bit every day
At least one chaper of a normal
book and one volume of manga
that's written I a language I still have
problems with
* Learn to write better code, better software architecture
* Fly to japan
* Get a driver license
* Rise again in Osu!
* Tell everyone I use Arch Linux
* Get a job or start freelancing
* watch the animes I always wanted to watch
* Find more awesome musicians and genres to listen to
* Build a desktop pc

Maybe I'll comment some more if I can think of some

There's like one guy in the office who actually knows anything about the software we sell. It's a mess of bolted together chunks of code from different client projects (that the clients have paid for and continue to pay a license fee for) we just cherry pick the best bits and repackage it for the next release.

I'm panicking right now.

My ReSharper license expires in 2 minutes.

Arrrrgh!

Old boss: Can you tell me why we need to purchase Mac?

Me: Because we are all using Mac in HK and UK offices and we can share the company license

Old boss: Why can't we just purchase the software license in Windows?

Me: Because it is expensive, and the total cost will be much more than purchasing the Mac alone

Old boss: I still don't understand why we need to purchase Mac.

Me: Ok. (Walked away with approval form. Finally got the approval from UK office)

My old boss was the only person that using Windows!!

The last one and only one I joined was online and called “flex bug squash”.
It was about ~8-9 years ago.

I won Flex Builder desktop software license and I was using it after so I think it was cool.

Fun, creative times it was.

That was also first and last significant thing I won and then Steve killed flash on mobile and as a result killed flash.

Thanks Steve if you’re reading this.

Is it me or software subscriptions make developers lazy?

There is a great photo editing software: Capture One. Every year they release a new major version, so users need to buy an upgrade. In the past developers packed a bunch of big changes into major update, also they released 3 minor updates yearly, and every minor update brought some cool features. But then they added subscription model which was cheaper then perpetual model. And at the same time major updates became not that cool. Developers started to add enterprise features needed by museums, features involving other camera brands users, changes targeted at newbies and so on. For perpetual model users most of these changes are not worth 80-255 EUR yearly (depends on license type and offs) but is ok for subscription model users because they continue using the software and even small updates and enhancements are fine for them.

Not every major update is that weak but many of them are not worth upgrade. And developers are not motivated to do more cool stuff because subscription model users will continue paying for their subscriptions.

Am i the only one who ignore the license agreement while installing any software?

The code is under "GNU General public license as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 or any later version" and I used it as a reference.
Should I redistribute the my new code under the same licence and make the source open? Should I make just the component open source or the entire app?

Monitoring tools madness: quest foglight.

So, setting a blackout for an FMS "HA cluster" (which does not work due to a bug infested custom jboss implementation) can bring the servers down... And no way to bring them back up.

This brilliant piece of enterprise APM software costs 600.000€ for a 5year license.

I,ve added more drama (logs, threaddumps, support bundles and screenshots) to the support portal...

45 cases now in total, oldest case still open date 2017...

Fuck you quest software

Is there like a "You can see but can't touch" software license? Or like you can't use it commercially or distribute it? 🤔

I am on a forum that is mainly professional developers. The forum is specific to one library that is owned by the company that runs the forum. The participants are mainly volunteers as the project is open source. Most of the time it is great place to exchange experiences and help new comers to the library. However lately there has been a rash of shit posts about needing help with shit unrelated to the library.
I get it on some level, but come on people try to understand what the forum is about first. Don't bring your OS and hardware issues that have nothing to do with the library. Also, go fucking read the GPL/LGPL and any other license you have questions about. Seriously, if you want to be a developer you need to at least have an idea of what you can and cannot do. Software is an IP field. Learn what IP is and the rules to follow.
I was feeling like a jerk yesterday and started giving bogus answers to obviously unrelated questions. I know, not very pro like, but come on people! The guy was asking about monitor resolutions and changes since he updated his window manager. It was his first post on the forum. He was kind of sassy too. At least my state of mind at the time interpreted it that way...

This happened last November. I was on my merry way, not using Windows on my laptop. When suddenly a friend asks me to do some heavy video editing work.
And none of the softwares on Linux are as good as Premiere Pro, After Effects etc
Davinci Resolve on Linux has codec issues and is a pain to deal with

Anyway, I boot up windows and somehow it updates itself (I distinctly remember disabling the update service permanently).
So now, it bugs me every fucking minute to reboot.
Luckily I decide to finish my project before rebooting.
Coz as soon as I reboot, it throws me an error saying something like my license key couldn't be verified. One key recovery doesn't help
I have a OEM licensed Windows 10 Home that came with the laptop.

The solutions are to either recover windows, which needs a fucking 11GB download or reinstall Windows (but hey... Lenovo didn't give me a Windows License key. And I have a lot of pre setup folders on the windows drive linked to my Linux, making it a bad choice to wipe that drive). To put the cherry on the top, I have to download a software that Lenovo provides (Windows only) to download that 11GB iso.
Every sane person around me uses Linux (I only used Windows for Video Editing)
Also, living in India, 11GB is a fucking big size to download.... And the software doesn't support interrupted downloads
One more pain in the ass....
So, fuck you Windows. Fuck you Lenovo.

Living happily with elementary OS since then
Never bothered to download the Windows iso

So I’m a huge fan of visual studio, but it let me down today.

“Find all references” just straight up fails to find all references of a member in this big F# solution I’m documenting.

I need to be able to reliably find what I’m looking for.

Reshaper for visual studio appears to not be that maintained for F#. FML.

Download Rider evaluation on the off chance, it works flawlessly.

One begrudging commercial license purchase later (despite being the only employee) and I now have software that actually fucking works.

What a wonderful time when Microsoft’s official IDE fails in analysis of its own language.

The way I understand software licenses.

Cool bro MIT: Free to do whatever you want as long as you include a copy of the license and you can't hold the original accountable.

fair dude Apache 2.0: Like the MIT license but more bureaucratic and few more minor things you need to keep track of.

scumbag GPL: free as in the same way that prison food is free. used by java in gotcha cases as a source of revenue because no one understands java licensing. Often used in the form of a deterrent so you never dare to open up the github page.

scumbag GPL who, realising they have no friends, becomes slightly less of a dick LGPL: But please stop using this and use our more restrictive "freedom" license.

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

GPL or MIT License ? What you guys prefer to contribute, use, or whatever on Open Source software?

I Paid 32€ for this world atlas.
When I'm in the Premium area I can only see maps in a craptastic quality.
When I download your "Online Globe" software thing I can't make it flat, but can draw on it (it's buggy, slow and weired to use) and your menu from 1990 I guess don't has a print option.
And when I want to use your digital Version of the atlas I would need a license for 4€???

I am done with NetBeans! This damn fucking stupid shit of software 😤. PhpStorm let me feel I am in heaven 😍.
Today I have setuped new system. Pray for convincing my boss to fork some license for me within the next 30 days 🙏🙏🙏.

!tech (sorta)

I am a 24yo Software Engineer guy and had just started working professionally 2 years ago, and most of my work life went in WFH due to covid. Before that, my college was also near to my home, so i have never left my home for more than a few hours to do studies.

Life had went pretty smoothly so far but now I see a lot of hurdles coming into my path . i am 24 and don't have a license for even a 2 wheeler. I don't have a good idea of my own city (but fortunately it has a great infrastructure , so i know how to travel via public transport to anywhere easily). mainly I don't know how to live alone.

The worst thing currently happening for me is that my company is transforming from WFH to WFO. The office is in a different metropolitan city which is crazy expensive and short on space. I already am uncomfortable with the idea living on my own but the thoughts of sharing a room/bed with some other guy and having my savings cut from 90 to 50% is worse.

i am hopeful that the financial hit will not be that bad as appraisals are coming, but this picture of hustle is scary. will i indulge into bad habits (drinking, gambling, smoking)? will i loose my health? would i need to wash my clothes and cook my food everyday? would i even have time to think and watch some web series, video tutorial? would i cut cost everywhere? every thing is scary. the market is also very bad right now, i am not getting any interviews even after applying to many places.

how do you prepare yourself to live away from home? Also , how do you prepare your family to live away from you?

(for 2nd question, i am a single child of a nuclear family with rarely any relatives or friends. my parents , especially my mom have been super involved in my life and we both have an exteem8 attachment to each other. i have recently started going away for short trips and travels, but she gets super emotional and concerned on thinking about me living and managing things on my own , away from her)

One day I decided I wanted to build robots.
And not kidding the reason I wanted to build them was because I wanted someone interesting to talk to and stil not kidding I even fantasized about a robot girlfriend... Lame I know I think I was a lonely little guy back then, though even after 7 years or so it doesn't feel as though it's that long ago. Maybe because things didn't change that much. Which is worrying but it's not the topic so I will pass on that future-past worries bullcrapper. After learning how robots worked and what made them function so things gradually led up to me being more interested in machine learning applications and software. I learned Arduino at first, I think I still have some messy circuits and old arduinos around. I only finished one robot though and it couldn't even support it's own weight. The servo motors were taking too many amps that heated up the little arduino even with a fan attached. Provably I should have made use of mechanics for robots books and calculated things first. But even though it couldn't walk properly I still felt success and I loved it like my own kid (me taking it apart was questionable but believe me). After that I focused more on writing code than using my hands to make things which was a pain in the ass if I might add.
After learning arduino and making that failed project of mine. I then picked up C++ wrote hello world program usual things a starter would do. It was the language I wrote my first game which I finished and this time it worked. But I never released it which was partly because I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on a license for the engine and I also knew that it was a shit game. If I were to describe; lines in different colors come from the top you need to hit the lines with the same colored columns to break them. The columns changed their height and location on random. The lines sped up and gap between them decreased. Now that I think about it it wasn't half bad. But the code was written in game maker studio's version of C so I have no way to salvage it.
But I learned a lot of things from that project and that was the goal, so I would call it a win. I don't remember but after sometime I switched to python. And I'm glad I did, it's fun to code in which was the main reason I coded in the first place. Fun.
Life happens and time passes,

Now I'm waiting to enter college exams in a few months after hopefully passing them. My goal is to get into computer engineering which will be extremely challenging because it's the highest point department in the university I'm aiming at. But hey if the challenge is great the reward is greater right ? To be honest I'm still not sure about my career path. Too many choices. So I will just let my own road called <millions of similarly random events that are actually caused by deterministic reactions, to affect you and your surroundings leading up to a future which only the Laplace's demon can forsee> guide me. Wish me luck.

Outlook irritates the heck out of me with its distracting notification bar that's recently begun popping up almost every time I start the god damn shitty application. What's worse, there doesn't seem to be any way to disable this annoying crap. Our support technicians are unable to solve it, so I wrote feedback to Microsoft. I don't think they are ever going to answer, though. They haven't even responded to another problem with Outlook that I reported nine months ago! Microsoft are reallly inconsistent, to say the least. Some of their products, like Visual Studio, VS Code and Microsoft Flight Simulator, are excellent! But, more mainstream software, like MS Office and Outlook, suck. Windows (I'm using Windows 10) is so so. It works alright if you know your ways with the registry editor. The same goes for the support. If you're lucky, you can get hold of a real, flesh-and-blood person who patiently guides you through the cumbersome process of, for example purchasing and installing Minecraft (believe me, it isn't easy, took almost an hour for the support person to solve. Creds to him). Sometimes, like when activating an old Windows license, you get to talk to a bot and that, surprisingly, works very well too. However, if you report any bug or feedback to Microsoft through an application's help section, you 'll never hear from them. They just ignore it.

Embarcadero tracked my progress on a potential commercial project. To my employer, I know for a fact my employee email is not connected to my personal PC. How did they get that email?
I used the unlicensed pro version of 10.3 because I thought the community version would have the necessary components needed open the source and not break the project. I planned to use the software over the holidays to dissect the code to see what changes I can bring to the table before asking them to buy me the legit license. Embarcadero caught me. Even know my project directories. How did they do it I wonder?

We should begin refusing to work for companies who enforce using MS products. Need to buy actual desktop office license because their software doesn't accept web-edited elements? Pass.

Seeing a "are you still there" message in MS teams, or figuring out what other browser to use since you already have several MS accounts? Pass.

Azure devops and no way to expand the code during review?
Yup, pass!

Enough of this BS. People who opt for using MS software don't care about their users nor contractors' experience. We shouldn't care about those people.

Favourite software license?

I installed MS visual studio on my company's machine a year back and never really used it. In discussion with a colleague, he said that I shouldn't have the software because our company doesn't have license for it. I wonder why Microsoft would let me download it in the first place.

Rant! When you live in a less technically advanced country, and everyone cheaps out on their software and hires the company that will do it for the least money and because of that it never works decently you can't reserve movie tickets on the cinema's site and get a SQL constraint error directly on screen, if you can't afford custom software buy a license for something that works out of the box ffs

(I'm goin' to see Star wars ofc.)

Setting up new version of provided software with docker. Which is new to me - heard about it but never used it before. Took me a hour.
Waiting for license key: more than 1.5h now.

Today I had the chance to participate as a community member of an ecommerce platform to represent the community and vendor towards developers that are getting in touch with a new product from the vendor. This event was completely covered by the vendor and was awesome in many different ways. Features, tutorials, workshop, presentation, attendees.

Previously I worked on a closed source patent management software and one felt stuck and rigid. The only contact outside were customers. They were sort of the community and friendly as well just without technical knowledge. Events with the customers with a hands on the product was also covered by the vendor and great in their kind.

I am unsure what the reason for the different feeling towards this is. Is it about being a dev at a company that let me participate on a vendor product compared to be the vendor? Is it about the product license? The external people being devs or no-devs? Do you have similar experiences after switching jobs?

They were both friendly so it is not just about people being nice. Both products dont personally affect me as I neither file a patent or trademark myself nor do I own a web shop.