After listening to two of our senior devs play ping pong with a new member of our team for TWO DAYS!
DevA: "Try this.."
Junior: "Didn't work"
DevB: "Try that .."
Junior: "Still not working"

I ask..
Me:"What is the problem?"
Few ums...uhs..awkward seconds of silence

Junior: "App is really slow. Takes several seconds to launch and searching either crashes or takes a really long time."
DevA: "We've isolated the issue with Entity Framework. That application was written back when we used VS2010. Since that application isn't used very often, no one has had to update it since."
DevB: "Weird part is the app takes up over 3 gigs of ram. Its obviously a caching issue. We might have to open up a ticket with Microsoft."
Me: "Or remove EF and use ADO."
DevB: "That would be way too much work. The app is supposed to be fully deprecated and replaced this year."
Me: "Three of you for the past two days seems like a lot of work. If EF is the problem, you remove EF."
DevA: "The solution is way too complicated for that. There are 5 projects and 3 of those have circular dependencies. Its a mess."
DevB: "No fracking kidding...if it were written correctly the first time. There aren't even any fracking tests."
Me:"Pretty sure there are only two tables involved, maybe 3 stored procedures. A simple CRUD app like this should be fairly straight forward."
DevB: "Can't re-write the application, company won't allow it. A redesign of this magnitute could take months. If we can't fix the LINQ query, we'll going to have the DBAs change the structures to make the application faster. I don't see any other way."

Holy frack...he didn't just say that.

Over my lunch hour, I strip down the WPF application to the basics (too much to write about, but the included projects only had one or two files), and created an integration test for refactoring the data access to use ADO. After all the tests and EF removed, the app starts up instantly and searches are also instant. Didn't click through all the UI, but the basics worked.

Sat with Junior, pointed out my changes (the 'why' behind the 'what') ...and he how he could write unit tests around the ViewModel behavior in the UI (and making any changes to the data access as needed).

Today's standup:
Junior: "Employee app is fixed. Had some help removing Entity Framework and how it starts up fast and and searches are instant. Going to write unit tests today to verify the UI behaivor. I'll be able to deploy the application tomorrow."
DevA: "What?! No way! You did all that yesterday?"
Me: "I removed the Entity Framework over my lunch hour. Like I said, its basic CRUD and mostly in stored procedures. All the data points are covered by integration tests, but didn't have time for the unit tests. It's likely I broke some UI behavior, but the unit tests should catch those."
DevB: "I was going to do that today. I knew taking out Entity Framework wouldn't be a big deal."

Holy fracking frack. You fracking lying SOB. Deeeep breath...ahhh...thanks devRant. Flame thrower event diverted.

Manager: Why aren’t you working?

Dev: I am, I’m just not typing because I’m thinking an issue out.

Manager: Well what is taking so long? You haven’t written any code for like 15 minutes, you’ve just been doodling on your notepad.

Dev: I’m not “doodling”. I’m taking notes and trying to visualize the issue. It’s a complicated issue with application stat—

Manager: Well just simplify it then

Dev: ?

Manager: Instead of making it a complicated issue just simplify it and then it won’t take you so long. You’re likely overthinking it, I never spend more than 30 seconds thinking about any issue before coming up with a solution. That’s what makes me so effective at my job is my ability to be lean like that.

Dev: …this issue is a bit harder than deciding what to have for lunch

> Receive sudden phone call in the middle of the night
> Check caller, unknown number
> "Either something bad happened or it's something urgent. I'd better answer."
> "Hello?"
> Friend of friend of friend says he updated his gpu drivers and now has some random fps drops.
> I was in a good mood so I agreed to help him over teamviewer, even though I don't know him.
> Downgrading to an older version of nvidia driver seemed to have fixed the drops.
> 5 minutes later, he calls again. His headset is not working properly.
> Helped him fix the issue over teamviever.
> This continued for at least 2 hours, calling me every 5 minutes to install just another driver or change some random win setting. Turned out he had some retard format his pc because he thought it'd "make it go faster".
> Calls me again, this time he's pc isn't booting up at all. After 20 minutes on the phone the fucktard admits he just tried to reformat his pc because "my pc automatically installed a bad windows update" ( no, I don't understand either) but he fucked it up.
> I begin explaining him how to make a bootable usb stick, how to change the boot order etc to reinstall windows. I even suggested that I'd help him setup win/drivers after windows's done installing.
> He lets me go for about an hour explaining.
> "So that's it. When the setup is over, call me again and I'll help you install the drivers."
> "Bro this sounds complicated, why don't you come over? This won't even take you 5 minutes"

YOU MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT
YOU FUCKING TRASH
CALL ME AGAIN AND I'LL SHOVE YOUR GIGABYTE GEFORCE GTX1060 6GB UP YOUR ASS, PERPENDICULARLY

The motherfucker even called me "bro"

You know who sucks at developing APIs?

Facebook.

I mean, how are so high paid guys with so great ideas manage to come up with apis THAT shitty?

Let's have a look. They took MVC and invented flux. It was so complicated that there were so many overhyped articles that stated "Flux is just X", "Flux is just Y", and exactly when Redux comes to the stage, flux is forgotten. Nobody uses it anymore.

They took declarative cursors and created Relay, but again, Apollo GraphQL comes and relay just goes away. When i tried just to get started with relay, it seemed so complicated that i just closed the tab. I mean, i get the idea, it's simple yet brilliant, but the api...

Immutable.js. Shitload of fuck. Explain WHY should i mess with shit like getIn(path: Iterable<string | number>): any and class List<T> { push(value: T): this }? Clojurescript offers Om, the React wrapper that works about three times faster! How is it even possible? Clojure's immutable data structures! They're even opensourced as standalone library, Mori js, and api is great! Just use it! Why reinvent the wheel?

It seems like when i just need to develop a simple react app, i should configure webpack (huge fuckload of work by itself) to get hot reload, modern es and jsx to work, then add redux, redux-saga, redux-thunk, react-redux and immutable.js, and if i just want my simple component to communicate with state, i need to define a component, a container, fucking mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps, and that's all just for "hello world" to pop out. And make sure you didn't forget to type that this.handler = this.handler.bind(this) for every handler function. Or use ev closure fucked up hack that requires just a bit more webpack tweaks. We haven't even started to communicate to the server! Fuck!

I bet there is savage ass overengineer sitting there at facebook, and he of course knows everything about how good api should look, and he also has huge ass ego and he just allowed to ban everything that he doesn't like. And he just bans everything with good simple api because it "isn't flexible enough".

"React is heavier than preact because we offer isomorphic multiple rendering targets", oh, how hard want i to slap your face, you fuckface. You know what i offered your mom and she agreed?

They even created create-react-app, but state management is still up to you. And react-boierplate is just too complicated.

When i need web app, i type "lein new re-frame", then "lein dev", and boom, live reload server started. No config. Every action is just (dispatch) away, works from any component. State subscription? (subscribe). Isolated side-effects? (reg-fx). Organize files as you want. File size? Around 30k, maybe 60 if you use some clojure libs.

If you don't care about massive market support, just use hyperapp. It's way simpler.

Dear developers, PLEASE, don't forget about api. Take it serious, it's very important. You may even design api first, and only then implement the actual logic. That's even better.

And facebook, sincerelly,

Fuck you.

Holy fucking shit.

Why do people always expect you to know absolutely everything the second they ask?!

PM: "Yes yes of course we can do that!!! We've done it a million times, we do it for breakfast HAHAHAHAHA"

ME: "Well not really, we've never implemented a solution like that one, its gonna take some time to figure it out"

PM: "HAAAAHAHAHA HE'S SOO FUNNYY LMAOFUDKSJ DONT WORRY WELL HAVE IT READY FOR TOMMORROW :P".

Holy fuuuck I understand you wanna make the sell but you need to give the costumer a realistic look at things, at least give a reasonable deadline for what he's asking! FFS ASK ME HOW COMPLICATED ARE THE THINGS HES ASKING FOR BEFORE TELLING HIM WHEN THEY'RE GONNA BE READY! MAKE A FUCKING ESTIMATE, WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE A TEAM!

Oh and this rant is gonna happen, dont care if I get fired.This needs to change.

One week, and it turned out to be worse than that.

I was put on a project for a COVID-19 program in America (The CARES Act). The financial team came to us on Monday morning and said they need to give away a couple thousand dollars.

No big deal. All they wanted was a single form that people could submit with some critical info. Didn't need a login/ registration flow or anything. You could have basically used Google Forms for this project.

The project landed in my lap just before lunch on Monday morning. I was a junior in a team with a senior and another junior on standby. It was going to go live the next Monday.

The scope of the project made it seem like the one week deadline wasn't too awful. We just had to send some high priority emails to get some prod servers and app keys and we were fine.

Now is the time where I pause the rant to express to you just how fine we were decidedly **not**: we were not fine.

Tuesday rolls around and what a bad Tuesday it was. It was the first of many requirement changes. There was going to need to be a review process. Instead of the team just reading submissions from the site, they needed accept and reject buttons. They needed a way to deny people for specific reasons. Meaning the employee dashboard just got a little more complicated.

Wednesday came around and yeah, we need a registration and login flow. Yikes.

Thursday came and the couple-thousand dollars turned into a tens of millions. The amount of users we expected just blew up.

Friday, and they needed a way for users to edit their submissions and re-submit if they were rejected. And we needed to send out emails for the status of their applications.

Every day, a new meeting. Every meeting, new requirements that were devastating given our timeframe.

We put in overtime. Came in on the weekend. And by Monday, we had a form that users could submit and a registration/ login flow. No reviewer dashboard. We figured we could take in user input on time and then finish the dashboard later.

Well, financial team has some qualms. They wanted a more complicated review process. They wanted roles; managers assign to assistants. Assistants review assigned items.

The deadline that we worked so hard on whizzed by without so much as a thought, much less the funeral it deserved.

Then, they wanted multiple people to review an application before it was final. Then, they needed different landing pages for a few more departments to be able to review different steps of the applications.

Ended up going live on Friday, close to a month after that faithful Monday which disrupted everything else I was working on, effective immediately.

I don't know why, but we always go live on a Friday for some reason. It must be some sort of conspiracy to force overtime out of our managers. I'm baffled.

But I worked support after the launch.

And there's a funny story about support too: we were asked to create a "submit an issue" form. Me and the other junior worked on it on a wednesday three weeks into the project. Finished it. And the next day it was scrapped and moved to another service we already had running. Poor management like that plagued the project and worked in tandem with the dynamic and ridiculous requirements to make this project hell.

Back to support.

Phone calls give me bad anxiety. But Friday, just before lunch, I was put on the support team. Sure, we have a department that makes calls and deal with users. But they can't be trained on this program: it didn't exist just a month ago, and three days ago it worked differently (the slippery requirements never stopped).

So all of Friday and then all of Saturday and all of Monday (...) I had extended panic attacks calling hundreds of people. And the team that was calling people was only two people. We had over 400 tickets in the first two days.

And fuck me, stupid me, for doing a good job. Because I was put on the call team for **another** COVID project afterwards. I knew nothing about this project. I have hated my job recently. But I'm a junior. What am I gonna say, no?

Manager: So great news, we will also be building a new app this year!!

Dev: We only have 2 devs and we already struggling to maintain/build our current portfolio of applications. I don’t think we have the resources to support another.

Manager: Nonsense, this is a very small project management app that was requested by the CEO himself!

Dev: …We already have MS project, why can’t they just use that?

Manager: The executive team isn’t interested in learning MS Project, it’s way too complicated. They want us to build an internal version of MS Project one feature at a time so they can pick it up over time instead of getting overwhelmed with learning MS Project all at once. It also needs to have loads of customizable automation features so leadership doesn’t ever have to get “in the weeds” having to work with it. It needs to basically run itself!

Dev: …What about this is small?

Manager: Well that is the requirement.

Dev: …

Dude, FUCK automated bathrooms.

First of all, what the hell is so complicated about making a motion sensing faucet that works? Why does it *need* to be motion sensing? I stand there for 5-10 seconds with my stupid soapy hands extended, waiting for a squirt of the divine liquid.

And then the immediately following experience isn't much better. Motion sensing paper towel dispenser. The first go works fine, but it always dispenses half of what you need to get your grimy paws dry. So you go in for seconds, and it just flat out ignores you. Leaves you on read. You flap your pathetic noodle arms at it again. It isn't happening. Please wait 3-5 business days.

Oh, and god forbid you forget to cover the automatic toilet with a few wasted squares. Lean into a shit ONCE and you've just been prematurely flushed. Your ass is misted with the cold, unforgiving equivalent of an automatic insult.

Asshole design

I do tech support for our platform for real estate agents. Today I got a call from a user saying she can't find her files.

Me: "are you logged into the platform?"

Her: "Yes, but I hate this whole technology thing. Why is it so complicated and unintuitive"

Me: "which part exactly, we welcome feedback"

Her: "when I download my pictures from your site, I don't see them on the desktop..."

Me: "...ummm... have you checked your 'downloads' folder?"

After 5 minutes of explaining how to get to it...

Her: "you see, this is exactly what I mean, why does it have to be so unintuitive... your web site is poorly designed"

😑🔫

Should I just delete her "FREE" account?

"Hey, Root, someone screwed up and now all of our prod servers are running this useless query constantly. I know I already changed your priorities six times in the past three weeks, but: Go fix it! This is higher priority! We already took some guesses at how and supplied the necessary code changes in the ticket, so this shouldn't take you long. Remember, HIGH PRIORITY!"

1. I have no idea how to reproduce it.
2. They have no idea how to reproduce it.
3. The server log doesn't include queries.
4. The application log doesn't include queries.
5. The tooling intercepts and strips out some log entries the legendary devs considered useless. (Tangent: It also now requires a tool to read the logs because log entries are now long json blobs instead of plain text.)
6. The codebase uses different loggers like everywhere, uses a custom logger by default, and often overwrites that custom logger with the default logger some levels in. gg
7. The fixes shown in the ticket are pretty lame. (I've fixed these already, and added one they missed.)
8. I'm sick and tired and burned out and just can't bring myself to care. I'm only doing this so i don't get fired.
9. Why not have the person who screwed this up fix it? Did they quit? I mean, I wouldn't blame them.

Why must everything this company does be so infuriatingly complicated?

"Fuck JavaScript, its such a shitty language" seems to be quite a common rant today. It seems as if JS is actually getting more hate than PHP, which is certainly odd, considering the stereotype.

So, as someone who has spent a lot of time in JS and a lot of time elsewhere, here are my views. Please, discuss your opinions with me as well. I am genuinely interested in an intelligent conversation about this topic.

So here's my background: learned HTML/CSS/JS in that order when I was 12 because I liked computers. I was pretty shitty at JS until U was at least 15, but you get the point, Ive had it sploshing about in my brain for a while.

Now, JS certainly has its quirks, no doubt, but theres nothing about the language itself that I would say makes it shitty. Its a very easy leanguage to use, but isn't overdeveloped like VB.net (Or, as I like to call it, TheresAFunctionForThat)

Most of the hate is centered around JS being used for a very broad range of systems. I doubt JS would be in the rant feed so often if it were to stay in its native ecosystem of web browsers. JS can be used in server backend, web frontent, desktop and mobile applications, and even in some system services (Although this isn't very popular as of yet). People seem to be terrified that one very easy to learn language can go so far. And, oh god, its interpreted... How can a system app run off an interpreted language? That's absurd.

My opinion on JSEverything is that it's progress. Thats what we're all about, right? The technologies already in place are unthreatened by JS, it isn't a gamechanger. The only thing JS integration is doing is making tedius and simple tasks easier. Big companies with large systems aren't going to jump ship and migrate to JS. A startup, however, could save a fucking ton of development time by using a JS framework, however. I want to live in a world where startups can become the next Google, because technology will stagnate when youre trying to protect your fortune, (Look at Apple for fucks sake) but innovation is born of small people with big ideas.

I have a feeling the hate for JS is coming from fear of abandoning what you're already doing. You don't have to do that. JS is only another option (And a very good one, which is why it's becoming so popular).

As for my personal opinion from my experiences... I've left this part til the end on purpose. I love programming and learning and creating, so I've never hated a lamguage, really. It all depends on what I want to do. In the times i've played arpund with JS, I've loved it. Very very easy. The idea of having it on both ends of web development makes a lot of sense too, no conversion, just direct communication. I would imagine this really helps with speed, as well. I wouldn't use it in a complicated system, though. Small things, medium size projects: perfect. Running a bank? No.

So what do you think about this JSUniverse?

Client: We want a contact form on our site that accepts files.
Me: OK. Here are the backend options (custom built, WordPress, third-party service, etc).
C: Mmm... why is it so complicated? A simple form doesn't need a backend.
Me: FFUUUUU Y DONT YOU DO IT THEN! DIDN'T KNOW BROWSERS SEND EMAIL?!
Me: *backspace*, *backspace*, *backspace*
Me: Browsers cannot send emails; you need a backend to process the form.

!dev
!!misery

I'm drunk, so it's time for some faux-emotional, blunt oversharing. and lots of profanity. It won't be pretty.

------

I'm miserable. I can't sleep at night. When I finally manage to, I sleep like crap. In the morning, early, I get woken up by my children screaming or pulling my hair or jumping on either the bed or me, or talking ad furore, or any number of other miserably unpleasant things that completely prevent sleep. So I'm tired every single day, which totally surprisingly makes focusing on work fucking difficult. Doubly so because the work is fucking uninteresting and the code is awful to read and difficult to understand because it's complicated and often poorly written. And extending it takes enormous mental effort I simply do not have to give. Oh! Guess what my job is?

To make matters worse, time to myself basically does not exist, ever. I wake up, I attend standup, I cook and eat breakfast, I work while fighting against endless distractions and interruptions, I cook and eat dinner, I work some more, and finally: I can go to bed and try to sleep. The next morning, I wake up and repeat this misery, ad nauseam.

Et ad nauseam? Nauseam est nunc.
It's not proper latin, but fuck you. it's good enough. and nobody speaks it anyway.

Ego sum miseriae. Is that good enough for you?

I can't find it in myself to care about anything. I've been doing whatever I can to feel a little more normal, but mostly I just feel numb. If I drink, it helps a little because I notice my misery a little less. That's a great solution right there: drink until I don't care anymore, and keep doing the same shit without even trying to make things better. Why? Because I fucking can't. I hate this house, I hate the lack of quiet, I hate this city, I hate the dust and the clutter, I hate this state, I hate this codebase, I don't like my coworkers, I hate that I can't get a fucking thing done without spending 6x longer than it should, I hate that I can't fucking think of a single thing I want to do, I hate that I can't ever enjoy anything, I hate that I'm beginning to hate myself, and I fucking hate everything else, too.

In short:
I'm not happy. I'm fucking miserable.

And no, I'm not posting this here for you to psychoanalyze me or suggest solutions. It's for me to vent. Fuck your opinions and fuck your advice and fuck you.

I was assigned a girl that's new to the industry (but with a master's degree).

I had high hopes, as people told me she is quite a curious fellow. As I am just a junior Dev with 2 yrs of experience Ididn't know if I could handle her.

We started working on a project. Which was a change request for a previous project I had developed. I gave her 2 days to read and understand the functional requirements of previous project and this CR. Then explained everything too.

Then I gave here another 3 days to read the previous design document to learn how this code worked.

I asked her multiple times if she has any questions. She said she got everything. Cool.

One week goes by. We start to code the CR while she is shadowing me. I explained why we chose one of the two approaches. And why we are making any of the changes. She as usual nodded in agreement.

I asked her to create Unit test cases.

She couldn't write even one. So, I quizzed her, she knew nothing about the project! Nothing at all!

FUCK!

I wrote down the test cases in short hand and told her to document it (by reffering previous UTC). She wrote the test cases in short hand in the document. And she reused the previous document and did not even clean it out.

After fixing the document I asked her to execute them. But nope, she doesn't even know how the application flows for this project. FML.

It took her 3 days to write and test 8 test cases.

Now she is assigned to me in another project. This one is more complicated. And I gave her a function skeleton to complete. I figured that it will take me 15 minutes so let's give her a day. But nope. 3 days no progress.

I get it someone might not be quick to grasp something. But you know what grinds my gears? That even after this you act like a know it all! Fuck! For someone who hasn't worked with her she is the most dilligent developer.

How the fuck does someone survive masters and suck so bad!

> Root struggles with her ticket
> Boss struggles too
> Also: random thoughts about this job

I've been sick lately, and it's the kind of sick where I'm exhausted all day, every day (infuriatingly, except at night). While tired, I can't think, so I can't really work, but I'm during my probationary period at work, so I've still been doing my best -- which, honestly, is pretty shit right now.

My current project involves legal agreements, and changing agent authorization methods (written, telephone recording, or letting the user click a link). Each of these, and depending on the type of transaction, requires a different legal agreement. And the logic and structure surrounding these is intricate and confusing to follow. I've been struggling through this and the project's ever-expanding scope for weeks, and specifically the agreements logic for the past few days. I've felt embarrassed and guilty for making so little progress, and that (and a bunch of other things) are making me depressed.

Today, I finally gave up and asked my boss for help. We had an hour and a half call where we worked through it together (at 6pm...). Despite having written quite a bit of the code and tests, he was often saying things like "How is this not working? This doesn't make any sense." So I don't feel quite so bad now.

I knew the code was complex and sprawling and unintuitive, but seeing one of its authors struggling too was really cathartic.

On an unrelated note, I asked the most senior dev (a Macintosh Lisa dev) why everything was using strings instead of symbols (in Rails) since symbols are much faster. That got him looking into the benchmarks, and he found that symbols are about twice as fast (for his minimal test, anyway), and he suggested we switch to those. His word is gold; mine is ignorable. kind of annoying. but anyway, he further went into optimizing the lookup of a giant array of strings, and discovered bsearch. (it's a divide-and-conquer lookup). and here I am wondering why they didn't implement it that way to begin with. 🙄

I don't think I'm learning much here, except how to work with a "mature" codebase. To take a page from @Rutee07, I think "mature" here means the same as in porn: not something you ever want ot see or think about.

I mean, I'm learning other things, too, like how to delegate methods from one model to another, but I have yet to see why you would want to. Every use of it I've explored thus far has just complicated things, like delegating methods on a child of a 1:n relation to the parent. Which child? How does that work? No bloody clue! but it does, somehow, after I copy/pasted a bunch of esoteric legacy bs and fussed with it enough.

I feel like once I get a good grasp of the various payment wrappers, verification/anti-fraud integration, and per-business fraud rules I'll have learned most of what they can offer. Specifically those because I had written a baby version of them at a previous job (Hell), and was trying to architect exactly what this company already has built.

I like a few things about this company. I like my boss. I like the remote work. I like the code reviews. I like the pay. I like the office and some socializing twice a year.

But I don't like the codebase. at all. and I don't have any friends here. My boss is friendly, but he's not a friend. I feel like my last boss (both bosses) were, or could have been if I was more social. But here? I feel alone. I'm assigned work, and my boss is friendly when talking about work, but that's all he's there for. Out of the two female devs I work with, one basically just ignores me, and the other only ever talks about work in ways I can barely understand, and she's a little pushy, and just... really irritating. The "senior" devs (in quotes because they're honestly not amazing) just don't have time, which i understand. but at the same time... i don't have *anyone* to talk to. It really sucks.

I'm not happy here.
I miss my last job.

But the reason I left that one is because this job allows me to move and work remotely. I got a counter-offer from them exactly matching my current job, sans the code reviews. but we haven't moved yet. and if I leave and go back there without having moved, it'll look like i just abandoned them. and that's the last thing I want them to think.

So, I'm stuck here for awhile.
not that it's a bad thing, but i'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed. and it's just not a good fit. but maybe I'll actually start learning things. and I suppose that's also why I took the job.

So, ever onward, I guess.
It would just be nice if I could take some of the happy along with me.

*rants to some people I met in a cafe about how irresponsible making a ground rail live is*

Girl: "well people do make mistakes, right"
Me: "but they shouldn't! It's civil engineering ffs!"
Girl: "that doesn't change the fact that it's impossible for people to not make mistakes"

*realizes that I'll have to explain redundancy*

Me: "okay, so I have 2 mail servers. If I make an inevitable mistake, during an update or so, it only affects one of the servers but not the other one. So service is uninterrupted."
Girl: "that's far too complicated and technical.. explain it more easily."
Me: "alright, what job do you have"
Girl: *tells her job*
Me: "alright, so imagine that you get sick or go on a holiday or something. When there's someone else in the company that's got the same skills, they can ensure that the job gets done regardless. That's redundancy."
Girl: "aah, still too complicated!!"

What the fuck?! I removed all of the technical stuff and it's still too complicated?! How willfully ignorant or plain stupid can you be?!! Well fuck her then, but not in the way of taking her home. Now guess why I don't really like the muggles in my town. Fucking idiots!!!

"But muh BuzzFeed, conspiracy theories, deferring updates because they hog my WiFi, and casual games on my iPhone"

FUCK!!! FUCK PEOPLE!!!

I interviewed a guy with quite a few years of experience, university studies from a first world country, very long CV with stuff that he did, most of it relevant to the job, and 5-6 certifications, 2 of which relevant to the job, which would qualify him as an expert (as he himself declared in the CV), of a higher qualification than mine, but less experience.

Welp, if we're gonna hire someone with a higher salary, from whom I am to learn, I better come up with an interesting, but simple to understand problem, relevant to the position, that I would solve in 30 minutes, and give him 2h (surprise factor, unpreparedness, nervousness should be considered).

40 minutes in and I understand that there is lots of doing, lots of code, but the guy has no idea what he's doing.
I simplify the problem, remove the complicated bit. Turning it into a "business case description" of an entry level problem.
...
Same shit. In 20 minutes, zero progress. At this point the solution should be exactly 4 short lines of code. He gives me 50 that produce a completely wrong result, and he has no idea why.

I simplify further. I explicitly express the problem as the entry-level problem that it is - to count the number of interactions on the website in a specific day. That's it.
10 minutes more pass. I don't know why I'm wasting my time. Maybe I just want to be polite. Maybe I want to eliminate all doubt that it's not something else.
Nope.
He couldn't even react to my explanation of why he got the wrong result, and that all he had to do is move some stuff around.

Certifications, experts, universities.

What the fuck people? Can't we be simpler, and instead be knowledgeable? The time it took him to write that list of certifications, he could've learned how to solve this problem from any introductory course.

Why Pdf is a new religion:
Pdf is complicated.
Pdf is ubiquitous.
Everyone follows their own conventions and calls it a standardised pdf.
Conversion from pdf to any other format is problematic.

Keep adding to the list...

I wrote a database migration to add a column to a table and populated that column upon record creation.
But the code is so freaking convoluted that it took me four days of clawing my eyes out to manage this.
BUT IT'S FINALLY DONE.
FREAKING YAY.

Why so long, you ask? Just how convoluted could this possibly be? Follow my lead ~

There's an API to create a gift. (Possibly more; I have no bloody clue.)
I needed the mobile dev contractor to tell me which APIs he uses because there are lots of unused ones, and no reasoning to their naming, nor comments telling me what they do.

This API takes the supplied gift params, cherry-picks a few bits of useful data out (by passing both hashes by reference to several methods), replaces a couple of them with lookups / class instances (more pass-by-reference nonsense). After all of this, it logs the resulting (and very different) mess, and happily declares it the original supplied params. Utterly useless for basically everything, and so very wrong.

It then uses this data to call GiftSale#create, which returns an instance of GiftSale (that's actually a Gift; more on that soon).

GiftSale inherits from Gift, and redefines three of its methods.

GiftSale#create performs a lot of validations / data massaging, some by reference, some not. It uses `super` to call Gift#create which actually maps to the constructor Gift#initialize.

Gift#initialize calls Gift#pre_init (passing the data by reference again), which does nothing and returns null. But remember: GiftSale inherits from Gift, meaning GiftSale#pre_init supersedes Gift#pre_init, so that one is called instead. GiftSale#pre_init returns a Stripe charge object upon success, or a Gift (and a log entry containing '500 Internal') upon failure. But this is irrelevant because the return value is never actually used. Pass by reference, remember? I didn't.

We're now back at Gift#initialize, Rails finally creates a Gift object using the args modified [mostly] in-place by all of the above.

Another step back and we're at GiftSale#create again. This method returns either the shiny new Gift object or an error string (???), and the API logic branches on its type. For further confusion: not all of the method's returns are explicit, and those implicit return values are nested three levels deep. (In Ruby, a method will return the last executed line's return value automatically, allowing e.g. `def add(a,b); a+b; end`)

So, to summarize: GiftSale#create jumps back and forth between Gift five times before finally creating a Gift instance, and each jump further modifies the supplied params in-place.

Also. There are no rescue/catch blocks, meaning any issue with any of the above results in a 500. (A real 500, not a fake 500 like last time. A real 500, with tragic consequences.)

If you're having trouble following the above... yep! That's why it took FOUR FREAKING DAYS! I had no tests, no documentation, no already-built way of testing the API, and no idea what data to send it. especially considering it requires data from Stripe. It also requires an active session token + user data, and I likewise had no login API tests, documentation, logging, no idea how to create a user ... fucking hell, it's a mess.)

Also, and quite confusingly:
There's a class for GiftSale, but there's no table for it.
Gift and GiftSale are completely interchangeable except for their #create methods.

So, why does GiftSale exist?
I have no bloody idea.
All it seems to do is make everything far more complicated than it needs to be.

Anyway. My total commit?
Six lines.
IN FOUR FUCKING DAYS!

AHSKJGHALSKHGLKAHDSGJKASGH.

A rant from the old box, with some minor edits because I don't remember the exact wording anymore.

So last time I had this window cleaner visit me, and he'd do his job while I was troubleshooting a broken tablet that my past home supervisor donated to me. After he was done he came to me, very impressed.

He then said: "Wow, you are disassembling this.. you must be very technical."
Me (kinda tired): "Thanks. And yeah pretty much."
He: "Does this mean that you can fix anything?"
Me: "Kind of. It depends. But I can't fix printers."
He: "Why is that? Are they so complicated?"
(the tablet I had disassembled is orders of magnitude more difficult than a printer)
Me: "Not really. It's just that that's often what users ask next."
He: …

The guy immediately left 🤣

I was recuited to do devops work for a client. The project started in late '14. Until mid '15 I was forced to just sit there and do nothing. And I mean nothing. The ops team needed my help but the project lead didn't allow that (endless discussions). Somewhere around the end of '15 I could start to work and quickly learned that I had to report to two leads that couldn't disagree more on what to do and how to do it. I also learned that the companies mentality is "Clean me but don't get me wet". So the ops team demands a lot but is really uncooperative with everything. So I am currently sitting between three grindstones and everything I do is worthless. Because nobody agrees with anybody and I cannot fulfill my job for which I have been hired: Make ops more efficient because they are drowning in manual work. My job is further complicated by the following facts: This company uses no standard whatsoever but their own. Thru this they have created a Rube-Goldberg-Machine. But they think their system is the greatest in the world and the only one that makes sense. Which makes automation pointless because it is not maintainable. They call it diversity and they say that it is the clear reason why automation is not for them even though they schedule meeting after meeting in which they discuss about how to automate things. But in general they do just block everything useful and sabotage my work. And behind my back they make me the reason for the fail. Every real decision is blocked anyway. Also the ops guys think they are the leetest in the world. And everything they invent is above and beyond. If you ask them why they have over 400 VLANs for example (in a company of unter a thousand employees) they stutter and stumble because they cannot explain their complicated shit. They also change their decisions like underwear. Another really "kewl" thing they just did: They hired a devops engineer and everybody loves him. During the interview he said that he has no prior experience with devops whatsoever and it will take him around six month to get started on the basics of devops. I could go on for hours here about the insanity of this company that in my opinion will cease to exist within the next 5 years, if you ask me.
Long story short I am getting out of there by the end of march and will be on sabbatical shortly after because I am burned out. And I mean burned out. Not like "Oh I am burned out". I mean really burned out, with health problems and everything. Another external guy got out here last month because of the same health conditions.

Working on a project where the coordinator is insisting on using OneDrive. Lost the link he sent out in an email so decided to:

- Google "OneDrive": Eventually brought me to "office.live.com/...." with a view of my settings and apps ... no OneDrive.

- Spent a while using a bit of logic to click around and find it, forgot logic doesn't work well with MS products and ended up on Outlook instead.

- Spent a while searching for the original email with the link, found it, brings me to "...sharepoint.com/....".

- Inside sharepoint (OneDrive?) the banner says "Office 365".

- But the browser tab says OneDrive.

Are Microsoft just afraid of consistency at this point? I mean seriously, pick a name and use it everywhere. Why is that so hard? why is that so complicated?

I fucking hate HTML forms! Especially representing bloody nested objects within them!

Fighting with html forms has taken at least 80% of my time over the past three features. Why can't I just do this via API? It would be soo much freaking simpler! ugh.

But today.
Today is not going to be a good day.
I not only get to expand a complicated vanilla form with with one nested object today, I get to expand it to include three nested objects. Normally this wouldn't be a problem because it's just moving elements around, but two of those nested objects need to be broken up and combined into three+ segments each. I have no idea how to even approach this.

ugh.

I'm currently rewriting perfectly clean and functioning Scala code in Java (because "Enterprise", yay). The amount of unnecessary boilerplate I have to add is insane. I'm not even talking big complicated code but two liners or the lack of simple things like a range from 5 to 10.

Why do I have to write
List<Position> occupiedPositions = placedEntities.stream()
.flatMap((pe) -> pe.occupiedPositions().stream())
.collect(Collectors.toList());
instead of simply
val occupiedPositions = placedEntities.flatMap(_.occupiedPositions)

Why on earth does `occupiedPositions.distinct` suddenly become a monstrosity like `occupiedPositions.stream().distinct().collect(Collectors.toList())` where the majority of code is pure boilerplate? And this is supposed to be the new and better Java8 api which people use as evidence that Java is now suddenly "functional" (yeah no, just no).

Why do APIs that annotate parameters with @Nullable throw NullPointerExceptions when I pass a null? Why does the compiler not help prevent such stupidity? Why do we use static typing PLUS those annotations and it still crashes at runtime like every damn dynamic, interpreted language out there? That's not unfortunate, it's a complete waste of time.

Why is a simple idea like a range from x to 10 (in scala literally `x to 10`) not by default included in Java? There's Guava's version of Range which does not have a helper for integer ranges (even though they are the most used ones). Then there's apache.commons version which _has_ a helper for integers, but is strangely not iterable (wtf I don't even...).

Speaking of Iterable: How difficult could it be to convert an abstract Iterable<T> into a concrete List<T>? In scala it's surprisingly `someIterable.toList`. I found nothing like that so I took to stackoverflow where I found a thread in which people suggested everything from writing your own ListUtils helper class, using Guava (which is a huge dependency!) to using the new Java8 features inline (which is still about three lines long). I didn't know this was such a hard problem in computer science, TIL.

How anyone can be productive in this abomination of a language is beyond me now, even though I've used it for many years while learning to code (back then I didn't know there were much better ways to do things). The only good part is that I have to endure this nonsense for only about 3 days longer then I'm free again!

"Install through npm"
"Install through gulp"
"Install through compiling"
"Install through x"
"Install through y"

WHY CAN'T I JUST SIMPLY INCLUDE THE MOTHERFUCKING THING IN THE HTML LIKE A FUCKING NORMAL PERSON?!

ALL I WANT IS TO INCLUDE A GODDAMN UI FRAMEWORK.

When I just started web development, this stuff was so fucking easy! Why did it become so motherfucking complicated to include simple shit like this?!

All I want is to start programing this motherfucker, not spend 3 hours on compiling CSS and whatnot (because I'd have to learn this bullshit first).

Mother of god, why did this become so fucking obnoxious?

I. JUST. WANT. TO. INCLUDE. TWO. FUCKING. FILES.

How do I don’t over complicate things?

Background: I’m currently working for a game with some base project. It alr has pretty complicated ai and some other system.

Today, I was asked by boss to help him set up a test environment for testing taking damage of a character.

First I tried to read up how the battle system and ai works in the base project. Figured, it’s overkill for this testing purpose.

Then, tried to use some plugin to automate the ai and movement. Make the enemy follow the target and stuff.

Alr spending half day, then suddenly realised all I need is just to make one script that takes damage on collision.

Why am I still a programmer? 😭

When managers look at my code, it’s shit, it’s over complicated, it’s overly difficult to read, it took too long, it’s too much for a simple ticket, i handled too many edge cases, we’ll never need most of it, why did I bother making it extensible when it’ll never need to change, how dare I use “unless”, why did I bother writing all these comments, why did I update the documentation that nobody reads because it’s outdated, etc. They say I should be more like the legendary devs and push janky code quickly, and complain that I don’t have any flops (problems in prod) like those are a good thing.

When my coworkers look at my code, they say it’s clean, amazingly easy to read, a monster feature that’s somehow still a joy to review and work on, it makes their lives easier, that it does exactly what it should in all cases, that they learned something from reading it, and thank me for the comments and documentation. And marvel that I finished it so well in so little time.

Am I bragging? Not intentionally; I’ve heard these things repeatedly since I started here, and the contrast between the above is so stark.

In reality, the managers are just idiots who were promoted far above their competence, and make everything worse. (Gee, who woulda thought?) It’s just so frustrating.

Here’s one that has been the reason that I’ve not been on devRant for a while.

School counselor decides to come to me saying “Oh hey, it’s your last semester and at this rate you’re not gonna graduate bud” Why the duck couldn’t you tell me earlier?! Fine, fuck you, just give me FOUR extra online classes. ELA, Game Dev, Web Des, and Criminology. Alright, ELA and Game finished with no issue. Then comes Web.

This class is a complete piece of dog shit wrapped in HTML5 memorization hell. I don’t give a single fuck what a scrum is, or that this bitch doesn’t know how to ask her client if she can use their logo, the dumbass. How about you teach me more about actual STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION, HUH? MAYBE SOME EDUCATION THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE MEMORIZING ALL THE FUCKING HTML TAGS EVER?!

I am literally brute forcing my way through the tests. Failed? Open the lesson, close it, test reset and unlocked. Try again until you pass. Fuck this class in its miserably over complicated yet somehow over simplified existence.

Now I’m gonna go get some goddamn sleep. I’ve been at this shit for hours.

A dev team has been spending the past couple of weeks working on a 'generic rule engine' to validate a marketing process. The “Buy 5, get 10% off” kind of promotions.

The UI has all the great bits, drop-downs, various data lookups, etc etc..

What the dev is storing the database is the actual string representation FieldA=“Buy 5, get 10% off” that is “built” from the UI.

Might be OK, but now they want to apply that string to an actual order. Extract ‘5’, the word ‘Buy’ to apply to the purchase quantity rule, ‘10%’ and the word ‘off’ to subtract from the total.

Dev asked me:

Dev: “How can I use reflection to parse the string and determine what are integers, decimals, and percents?”
Me: “That sounds complicated. Why would you do that?”
Dev: “It’s only a string. Parsing it was easy. First we need to know how to extract numbers and be able to compare them.”
Me: “I’ve seen the data structures, wouldn’t it be easier to serialize the objects to JSON and store the string in the database? When you deserialize, you won’t have to parse or do any kind of reflection. You should try to keep the rule behavior as simple as possible. Developing your own tokenizer that relies on reflection and hoping the UI doesn’t change isn’t going to be reliable.”
Dev: “Tokens!...yea…tokens…that’s what we want. I’ll come up with a tokenizing algorithm that can utilize recursion and reflection to extract all the comparable data structures.”
Me: “Wow…uh…no, don’t do that. The UI already has to map the data, just make it easy on yourself and serialize that object. It’s like one line of code to serialize and deserialize.”
Dev: “I don’t know…sounds like magic. Using tokens seems like the more straightforward O-O approach. Thanks anyway.”

I probably getting too old to keep up with these kids, I have no idea what the frack he was talking about. Not sure if they are too smart or I’m too stupid/lazy. Either way, I keeping my name as far away from that project as possible.

This one's for all the SysAdmins out there.

About 4 years ago I was asked to take over a dental offices systems administration (~20 machines) after their previous guy had allowed their servers RAID 1 to fail and hadn't done any updates or general maintenance. (please take note this office is my parents dental office).

I since have been recovering from his poor configuration and setup by instating an active directory environment and installing up to date software as well as updating machines on the domain to Windows 10 since windows 7 is no longer supported. I have also been properly licensing everything.

My bosses (my parents) are annoyed with this because "it's more expensive" and "it's too complicated we don't know how to manage it" and I don't know how to explain to them that they aren't fucking systems admins. They asked why they could do it before and I tried to explain that now it's secure and things need to be rolled out on the network level. They had every user running full local admin on every workstation plus the server.

Some people don't fucking understand that just because it's simple doesn't make it a good fucking idea. And because it's cheap doesn't mean it will always be (just wait till Microsoft audits you).

Oh and they also don't understand fucking CAL licensing and refuse to pay for gsuite for all their staff who use it. Instead they just have two gsuite accounts and give everyone the fucking password.

I'm going to have an aneurysm

Does linux suck? Imho, Yes.
A lot of the people bash windows regarding automatic restarts, updates, bsod etc.
I may be unusually lucky, but the last bsod I saw was in 2014 because of a faulty synaptics driver.

I've really tried to use linux to see what the hype is all about. Quite frankly, it sucked. The first time it wiped out all my data, I realized the value of backups. Hence I do not have a single pic of my school now, thanks to complicated ubuntu mounting.
Next is driver support. When I plug in a device, I expect it to work. I don't want to spend a day googling for drivers.
Why the fuck would I want to use a black terminal which gives me a headache. Am I in 1980? Which sadistic asshole designed vim ?
I have seen linux developers who claim to be linux experts and love linux. They take so long to do simple shit. For god's sake don't tell me there are GUI versions of linux available. I'd rather work in windows 95.
Why in the world would anyone want to use ls to see the contents of a directory! It is seriously so fucking unproductive.
I can't just download a software, click next a couple of times, and be done. No no no. I've to do sudo apt get update. Then try to find the fucking package. And if all goes well, there's always the dependency issue which is going to bite me in the ass. If google and stackoverflow go down, most linux devs will die a cruel death.

Fuck you linux.
I'm not saying windows 10 is the best, but at least I don't have to crawl through shit to use it. If you don't like automatic updates, disable it you moron. It is easier than renaming a damn file in linux.

WHY ARE PEOPLE USING QUORA?? WHY AREN'T WE SWITCHING TO A GOOD ALTERNATIVE ALREADY??

• You can't browse it anonymously, they force you to sign in.
• You can't use it on web browser on phone, they force you to install mobile app.
• They don't let you put description to your questions.
• It's complicated to use and the UI isn't user friendly ( personal opinion )
• If you signed up with Google, Facebook etc.. They'll save your profile pic and won't update it ever.
My profile pic on quora is from 4 years ago and I can't change it yet.

001 REM Code review

010 PRINT "Nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick"
011 GOSUB REFACTOR

020 PRINT "This function is too complicated, break it up"
021 GOSUB REFACTOR

030 PRINT "Why do you have three methods for this? Put all the logic in one method."
031 GOSUB REFACTOR

040 GOTO 020
041 REM ARGH

998 PRINT "Looks good."
999 STOP

"I'm almost done, I'll just need to add tests!"

Booom! You did it, that was a nuke going off in my head.

No, you shouldn't just need to add tests. The tests should have been written from the get go! You most likely won't cover all the cases. You won't know if adding the tests will break your feature, as you had none, as you refactor your untested mess in order to make your code testable.

When reading your mess of a test case and the painful mocking process you went through, I silently cry out into the void: "Why oh why!? All of this suffering could have been avoided!"

Since most of the time, your mocking pain boils down to not understanding what your "unit" in your "unit test" should be.

So let it be said:

- If you want to build a parser for an XML file, then just write a function / class whose *only* purpose is: parse the XML file, return a value object. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
- If you want to build a parser for an XML file, it MUST NOT: download a zip, extract that zip, merge all those files to one big file, parse that big file, talk to some other random APIs as a side-effect, and then return a value object.

Because then you suddenly have to mock away a http service and deal with zip files in your test cases.

The http util of your programming language will most likely work. Your unzip library will most likely work. So just assume it working. There are valid use cases where you want to make sure you acutally send a request and get a response, yet I am talking unit test here only.

In the scope of a class, keep the public methods to a reasonable minimum. As for each public method you shall at least create one test case. If you ever have the feeling "I want to test that private method" replace that statement in your head with: "I should extract that functionality to a new class where that method public. I then can create a unit test case a for that." That new service then becomes a dependency in your current service. Problem solved.

Also, mocking away dependencies should a simple process. If your mocking process fills half the screen, your test setup is overly complicated and your class is doing too much.

That's why I currently dig functional programming so much. When you build pure functions without side effects, unit tests are easy to write. Yet you can apply pure functions to OOP as well (to a degree). Embrace immutability.

Sidenote:

It's really not helpful that a lot of developers don't understand the difference between unit, functional acceptance, integration testing. Then they wonder why they can't test something easily, write overly complex test cases, until someone points out to them: No, in the scope of unit tests, we don't need to test our persistance layer. We just assume that it works. We should only test our businsess logic. You know: "Assuming that I get that response from the database, I expect that to happen." You don't need a test db, make a real query against that, in order to test that. (That still is a valid thing to do. Yet not in the scope of unit tests.)

I hate buying new laptops. HATE IT. The manufacturers are always trying to do something that makes it more complicated to buy a laptop confidently.

Why not name all of the laptops with numbers? Make them really hard to differentiate. Then offer the same model number across multiple years so it is difficult to determine which year the laptop is from.

Oh. And let’s make sure every laptop has a major flaw in the form factor.

Let’a add a numpad that squishes the keyboard to the left in a weird way. Lets do something to the trackpad to make it awkward to use. Maybe the keyboard should have a weird configuration. Maybe we can put 4 spare characters of various colours on the symbol key caps. How about a battery only lasts a few hours. May we add specialized hardware so you are stuck with windows. Maybe we can make it super thick and heavy. Lets have a screen with terrible viewing angles. Since this laptop has no major flaws we should overprice it. No repairs or upgrades on this one because we filled the computer with glue. Lets double the amount of useless media keys.

It is like manufacturers are trying to design laptops like RPG game character classes. The fighter has no magic or stealth. The magician is weak and gets fatigued. The rogue is very stealthy but has poor defence and attack. The cleric can use magic but only to heal so it is useless in battle. The ranger is good at distance but has poor defence and no magic.

The only notebooks sold that are trying to make balanced character classes are MacBooks. Those cost a premium and aren’t reparable.

To this day I can't figure out why people still drink the windows koolaid.

It's less secure, slower, bloatier (is that a word?), Comes with ads, intrudes on privacy, etc. People say it's easier to use than Linux, but 99% of what anyone does happens on a chrome based web browser which is the same on all systems!

When it comes to dev, it boggles the mind that people will virtualize a Linux kernel in Windows to use npm, docker, k8s, pip, composer, git, vim, etc. What is Windows doing for you but making your life more complicated? All your favorite browsers and IDEs work on Linux, and so will your commands out of the box.

Maybe an argument can be made for gaming, but that's a chicken an egg scenario. Games aren't built for Linux because the Linux market is too small to be worth supporting, not that the games won't work on it...

Why is starting a C++ project so overly complicated and annoying?!

So many different compilers. So many ways to organize the files. So many inconsistencies between Linux and Windows. So many outdated/lacking tutorials. So many small problems.

Why is there almost no good C++ IDEs? Why is Visual Studio so bizarre? Why are the CMake official tutorials literally wrong? Why can't we have a standard way to share binaries? Why can't we have a standard way to structure project folders? Why is the linker so annoying to use?

Don't get me wrong, I quite like the language and I love how fast it is (one of the main reasons I decided to use it for my project, which is a game almost comparable to Factorio)... But why is simply starting to write code such a hassle?

I've been programming in Java for years and oh god I miss it so much. JARs are amazing. Packages are amazing. The JDK is amazing. Everything is standardized, even variable names.

I'm so tempted to make this game in Java...

But I can't. I would have a garbage collector in the way of its performance...

Me *setting up some coding environments via the terminal in Ubuntu Budgie*

Some random person next to me: Sorry to interrupt, but what you're doing looks very fascinating. What is it?

Me *tries to explain it as simple as possible*

Person: I didn't know you could do that on Windows! What version are you running?

Me *explains about Linux, dies inside*

Person: but why don't you just use Windows? This sounds too complicated

*friend calls after me, have to leave, saved*

Look, I'm not even mad that your dataset is the spaghettiest of all spaghetti, but why do you have ten different jupyter notebook files lying around?

I mean, I'm not implying that a monkey has more brain in his armpit than you have in your entire body, but like, you call this a dataset while all over seen so far is half-processed garbage. You could've just dipped your pc in sewage and the results would still be cleaner than this.

Luckily, your paper is half decent so what the hell, let's see if I can fish anything useful out of this. But I swear to god if I come across another static path in this... And here we go! Another static path! Ladies and gentlemen, I propose we get this guy's phd back until he learns to fucking do a decent code.

(It's actually a massively complicated project, so it kinda makes sense to be this big of a mess. But still!)

I’m trying to add digit separators to a few amount fields. There’s actually three tickets to do this in various places, and I’m working on the last of them.

I had a nightmare debugging session earlier where literally everything would 404 unless I navigated through the site in a very roundabout way. I never did figure out the cause, but I found a viable workaround. Basically: the house doesn’t exist if you use the front door, but it’s fine if you go through the garden gate, around the back, and crawl in through the side window. After hours of debugging I eventually discovered that if I unlocked the front door with a different key, everything was fine… but nobody else has this problem?

Whatever.
Onto the problem at hand!

I’m trying to add digit separators to some values. I found a way to navigate to the page in question (more difficult than it sounds), and … I don’t know what view is rendering the page. Or what controller. Or how it generates its text.

The URL is encrypted, so I get no clues there. (Which was lead dev’s solution to having scrapeable IDs instead of just, you know, fixing them). The encryption also happens in middleware, so it’s a nightmare to work through. And it’s by the lead dev, so the code is fucking atrocious.

The view… could be one of many, and I don’t even know where they are. Or what layout. Or what partials go into building it.

All of the text on the page are “resources” — think named translations that support plus nested macros. I don’t know their names, and the bits of text I can search for are used fucking everywhere. “Confirmation number” (the most unique of them) turns up 79 matches. “Fee” showed up in 8310 places before my editor gave up looking. Really.

The table displaying the data, which is what I actually care about, isn’t built in JS or markup, but is likely a resource that goes through heavy processing. It gets generated in a controller somewhere (I don’t know the resource name so I can’t find it), and passed through several layers of “dynamic form” abstraction, eventually turned into markup, and rendered as a partial template. At least, that’s how it worked in the previous ticket. I found a resource that looks right, and there’s only the one. I found the nested macros it uses for the amount and total, and added the separators there… only to find that it doesn’t work.

Fucking dead end.

And i have absolutely nothing else to go on.

Page title? “Show”
URL? /~LiolV8N8KrIgaozEgLv93s…
Text? All from macros with unknown names. Can’t really search for it without considerable effort.
Table? Doesn’t work.
Text in the table? doesn’t turn up anything new.
Legal agreement? There are multiple, used in many places, generates them dynamically via (of course) resources, and even looking through the method usages, doesn’t narrow it down very much.

Just.
What the fuck?
Why does this need to be so fucking complicated?

And what genius decided “$100000.00” doesn’t need separators? Right, the lot of them because separators aren’t used ANYWHERE but in code I authored. Like, really? This is fintech. You’d think they would be ubiquitous.

And the sheer amount of abstraction?
Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Have you encountered projects that were beyond saving?

Been freelancing for a client via agency for the past year. In the beginning the deal was to maintain identity verification sdk for android maybe 10-15 hours a month or so. Their flow consisted of around 25-30 screens, so I took it thinking it was easy. Boy I was wrong.

Codebase was and still is a complete spaghetti, backend weird and overcomplicated and impossible to talk with someone in backend. Had to reverse engineer their complicated flows many times just to make a small change on the app. There also are lots of issues with capturing/sending camera recordings especially on older devices. The fact that Im the only dev maintaining this doesnt help either.

First few months it was just maintenance, later some small features and soon it become a 40 hour a month gig. I was able to deal with it but then management changed, they started micromanaging me heavily and now they want me to do 60-70 hours a month. Also they asked to implement some unnecessarily complicated features and to be honest without refactoring most of the codebase I cant even begin to think of how to implement them.

Also workload in my main job increased. Started sacrificing my evenings, weekends and basically my wellbeing to work on their product. Tried to relax but then I realized Im just spending my freetime thinking about their project all of the time. Best part is that last few updates fucked up the whole flow and I dont even understand where the problem is anymore: backend, 3rd party integration issues or something else that I did.

Last friday told them that my availability changed and Im quitting. Told them that Im gonna provide support till the end of the month but no big features. Just spent a full shift in my main job and another full shift working on their product, trying to untagle their spaghetti.. Im totally lost and burned out. Meanwhile stupid manager is asking why "simple" stuff according to him is taking too long.

I should receive my last payment from agency this week, also asked them to send it to me earlier but no answer so far. At this point Im so burned out that I dont care anymore about the last payment, even if client complains that everything is broken and doesnt want to pay me. Project is beyond fucked and that SDK as well as their backend is a ticking time bomb. Im done.

Hey, it's 2023.

If your component isn't written in TypeScript, I'm not using it :)

"TypeScript is overly complicated!!!" why, because it pointed out everything wrong in your JS code?

"TypeScript is not flexible!!!" why, because it makes you not rely on fragile "only possible in javascript" patterns?

"TypeScript isn't needed!!!" why, because you've never worked on a project with more than 100 lines of code where dependency management and clean code policies were implemented?

god just stop with the JavaScript purist BS, you aren't going to win this battle, and it's even worse because not only are you injuring everyone in the software community, you're injuring your own productivity and skillset

actually, you know what, fine. just use pure JS and HTML implementations. see you in 10 years when i'm retired and you are still running around in circles wondering why the world has left you behind

So today I saw another 'OOP should die' article.
And I decided I should google around a bit to find out why.

Reasons I found:
- Things get too complicated
- Things get too abstract (same as the above really)

But when I search for alternatives, only functional programming and different ways to use OOP get mentioned.
I still don't get why OOP is supposedly bad though.
Maybe my 20-30k LOC projects aren't big enough to see it?

For me the abstraction works very well. The abstraction is used to keep the complexity low(er).
And the different ways of using OOP are a plus-point for me. (Like the Entity-Component system)

I don't know enough about functional programming to be able to say it's better or worse, but the ideas behind it a perfectly usable in languages like C#.

So if any of you have a good concrete reason to not use OOP, please feel welcome to tell me in the comments :)

The ones who use it, what do you like or value about Linux? Why do you use it?

Before I answer, let me say that I am a noob compared to the rest of this community. I run Ubuntu because Arch was too complicated when I tried and bash scripts equal to frustrations for me. That's my knowledge level.

- I don't feel "observed" when using a Linux distro compared to Windows and macOS.
- Feel more connected to the open source thought and the free spirit.
- Feel like I can do anything I want. Learning new programming languages easily, trying out web servers, try and setup own website or mail server etc.
- Everything is accessible. Read something cool about docker? ALT+T to open a terminal and start up a docker container to try out.
- No Internet browsing for software, like googling "Firefox download english".
- Sometimes forces me to learn about the workings of a computer, like networks, servers, routing, firewalls, bootup sequence etc.
- So many great command line tools. Want to find out quickly who owns a website? Want to query a specific DNS server? All possible within 5 seconds!

All in all using Linux feels like watching a documentary while using Windows is more like watching a dumb comedy show where I can turn my brain off, but get more stupid after a while.

When I was in college OOP was emerging. A lot of the professors were against teaching it as the core. Some younger professors were adamant about it, and also Java fanatics. So after the bell rang, they'd sometimes teach people that wanted to learn it. I stayed after and the professor said that object oriented programming treated things like reality.

My first thought to this was hold up, modeling reality is hard and complicated, why would you want to add that to your programming that's utter madness.

Then he started with a ball example and how some balls in reality are blue, and they can have a bounce action we can express with a method.

My first thought was that this seems a very niche example. It has very little to do with any problems I have yet solved and I felt thinking about it this way would complicate my programs rather than make them simpler.

I looked around the at remnants of my classmates and saw several sitting forward, their eyes lit up and I felt like I was in a cult meeting where the head is trying to make everyone enamored of their personality. Except he wasn't selling himself, he was selling an idea.

I patiently waited it out, wanting there to be something of value in the after the bell lesson. Something I could use to better my own programming ability. It never came.

This same professor would tell us all to read and buy gang of four it would change our lives. It was an expensive hard cover book with a ribbon attached for a bookmark. It was made to look important. I didn't have much money in college but I gave it a shot I bought the book. I remember wrinkling my nose often, reading at it. Feeling like I was still being sold something. But where was the proof. It was all an argument from authority and I didn't think the argument was very good.

I left college thinking the whole thing was silly and would surely go away with time. And then it grew, and grew. It started to be impossible to avoid it. So I'd just use it when I had to and that became more and more often.

I began to doubt myself. Perhaps I was wrong, surely all these people using and loving this paradigm could not be wrong. I took on a 3 year project to dive deep into OOP later in my career. I was already intimately aware of OOP having to have done so much of it. But I caught up on all the latest ideas and practiced them for a the first year. I thought if OOP is so good I should be able to be more productive in years 2 and 3.

It was the most miserable I had ever been as a programmer. Everything took forever to do. There was boilerplate code everywhere. You didn't so much solve problems as stuff abstract ideas that had nothing to do with the problem everywhere and THEN code the actual part of the code that does a task. Even though I was working with an interpreted language they had added a need to compile, for dependency injection. What's next taking the benefit of dynamic typing and forcing typing into it? Oh I see they managed to do that too. At this point why not just use C or C++. It's going to do everything you wanted if you add compiling and typing and do it way faster at run time.

I talked to the client extensively about everything. We both agreed the project was untenable. We moved everything over another 3 years. His business is doing better than ever before now by several metrics. And I can be productive again. My self doubt was over. OOP is a complicated mess that drags down the software industry, little better than snake oil and full of empty promises. Unfortunately it is all some people know.

Now there is a functional movement, a data oriented movement, and things are looking a little brighter. However, no one seems to care for procedural. Functional and procedural are not that different. Functional just tries to put more constraints on the developer. Data oriented is also a lot more sensible, and again pretty close to procedural a lot of the time. It's just odd to me this need to separate from procedural at all. Procedural was very honest. If you're a bad programmer you make bad code. If you're a good programmer you make good code. It seems a lot of this was meant to enforce bad programmers to make good code. I'll tell you what I think though. I think that has never worked. It's just hidden it away in some abstraction and made identifying it harder. Much like the code methodologies themselves do to the code.

Now I'm left with a choice, keep my own business going to work on what I love, shift gears and do what I hate for more money, or pivot careers entirely. I decided after all this to go into data science because what you all are doing to the software industry sickens me. And that's my story. It's one that makes a lot of people defensive or even passive aggressive, to those people I say, try more things. At least then you can be less defensive about your opinion.

!personal

So, I was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus at an early fucking age. This is complicated for people who've never heard of it before to comprehend, until they notice the eyes of the person in question. Think of it this way: I lack the biological form of optical image stabilization. Because of nystagmus, I can't fucking drive.

Now, let me tell you, it really fucking sucks. I've never had a girlfriend, never been able to get a job, basically never been able to do the type of shit most of you can already fucking do. Pile that on with college, where I don't really fucking know anybody, and it's really fucking easy to see why I've had depression and nearly fucked my GPA over last semester (2.08, yeah it's embarrassing but fuck it).

That out of the way, nystagmus is rare. So rare that any surgeries to fix it aren't guaranteed to fix the problem, and are only marginally better. I have strong skepticism for any optometrist who acts like they perform this surgery every day, because the numbers simply don't back them up. If there's so few who have this issue, then the amount of operations and opportunities to do them are fucking slim.

Today, my mom came over to Indiana from Ohio, and took me to the local Cheddar's (do other countries have those??). We sit down, and she wanted to re-hash this surgery idea. I have made the statement before that these are the only two eyes that I will ever have, and there's no guaranteed ROI on any procedures, and is probably going to fuck me over if shit hits the fan.

Then she tells me there's this doctor in Maryland. I might be geographically challenged (lol), but I'm pretty sure that's over on the east coast. It's forever from here, we'd probably have to take an airliner.

This doctor made some pretty bold fucking claims. Not only was it possible he could fix the nystagmus, but he could help me use a special form of glasses that would enable me to learn to drive. Knowing that R&D on nystagmus was sketchy because of the aforementioned conditions, I had to tell her that I still don't know how I feel about it. Also, if this doctor moves from Maryland to any of the other states, would he still be allowed to do these things?

I told her I don't know how I feel about it. I'm not sure it's worth the money if we follow through and come to find out it's not enough, and I still can't drive. She acts like this stuff is dead simple. I don't think it is. You have perceived benefits, but there have to be caveats. This would be a major change, and I don't know how I feel about following through with it.

I am currently looking for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), because my music projects are starting to get a little too complex for Audacity.

So I started looking for a good, easy-to-learn, ideally free program, and quickly learned that Avid now has a free version of Pro Tools called First.

So I go to their site and fill out the registration form to get the download. In addition to creating an account with Avid, you also need to create one with iLok, which apparently has something to do with how they manage their licenses. Kinda overkill for a free program, but okay...

I download the program (about 3gigs...), install it and try to start it. It gives me an error message about missing some service. Okay? I'm confused because I notice that an 'Application Manager' service has appeared in my tray, and when I open that I can log into my new account just fine. But it still doesn't work.

There's a link in the error message to the iLok website, and it looks like ai need to dowload and install another component. Why didn't that get installed with the program if it's required?

Hmm...

So I go to the iLok site, download it and install it. Pro Tools First still won't start. I realize that the PTF installer asked me to reboot, which I didn't do because: a) I always have a lot of windows open, and b) How often is a reboot ACTUALLY required? Why would you need to reboot?

So I (begrudgingly) reboot, and now the program seems to start initializing... but then it throws an error message about some plugin that it can't load because it doesn't work for the 64 bit version. Then... why are you even looking for it?
And then it says something like: 'I can't handle that, I'm just gonna shut down'.

What?

I try starting it again. Same error appears, but then it gets past it this time... Only to throw another error message about something else it can't load, and therefore it must shut down.

Deep breath.

Third time is the charm, the program actually made it to the project create/load screen! Huzzah!
So I look around a bit, but don't do much. It doesn't seem too intuitive to me, so I start watching some tutorials on YouTube from Avid themselves. It's a little late by now, so I don't get my hands dirty that day.

Next time I want to try out the program I start it up, still get error messages, but it does seem to initialize okay. But then the 'Create project' button doesn't react when I press it.

It turns out that the program takes a looong time to log in to the avid account, even though the manager service is running and logged in...

When it finally logs on I create a new blank project, but it doesn't ask me where to save it to. I see there is a counter saying 1/3 and looking around I find some info about 'cloud based projects'.

It would seem that this program only supports saving projects to the cloud, and you get only 3 projects total. Three. THREE?

Ahem...

I add an instrument track to my new project and select the one and only plugin, which is a synth. I don't see the plugin window, like in the tutorials I watched. I fiddle around with the windows, but I only manage to get the layout fucked up. There's a handy 'Window' menu, but none of the options resets the view. The main window is now sporting a WINDOWS FUCKING 7 BORDER! And partially blocking the view of the top menu.

Blaaargh!

Frustrated, I shut the program down and restart it. I now select one of the project templates (after waiting for it to LOG IN AGAIN!) in the hope that I might have a bit more luck with that starting point.

But when the template has loaded, out of nowhere, the program goes from maximized to windowed mode! And the fucking Win7 border is back again, still messing with the main menu!

FFS!

I get the sucker maximized again and select one of the synth tracks, and Lo and Behold! The synth plugin window actually shows up! But of course there is no sound produced when I play, neither with the keyboard or my midi keyboard.

Oh no, that would have been too easy.

I see some the meters moving when I play, but no sound is produced. I check the options menu, but find out nothing useful except for the fact that the program only support 48kHz sample rate. That's pretty disappointing when you have a 192kHz/24bit soundcard.

I'm done. This piece of shit software is NOT for me. It's bloated, complicated to sign up for and install, extremely limited and buggy as hell!

The final insult is that it takes 5 minutes to uninstall because there is no uninstall option in the so-called 'Application Manager' (of course fucking not!), and doing it through Programs & Features there are 5 (FIVE!!) different apps and services to uninstall, one by one.

0/10, would not recommend.

Fuck Homestead.

For the fortune of you not to know, Homestead is a sad attempt at a Wix-like build your own website platform.

However, Homestead is the most unusable piece of shit platform that humans have ever had the misery of interacting with

Lets start off with the login page. The login page is small, unresponsive and half the time just deletes your input whenever you press submit.

It's important to note that unless you're running MacOS or Windows, Homestead will send to an error page on which there's a link to contact support, but pressing that link requires MacOS or Windows.

Fine, I'll fiddle around with my user-agent, and we'll be in soon enough. But now we come to the joy that is the website editor itself.

The website editor is clunky, hard to use, and has enough menus and submenus and sidebars to make the Jira UI shake with fear. Each interface option label is either ridiculously ambiguous or just straight up wrong. The built-in HTML editor doesn't support HTML5, in the name of "browser compatibility".

CSS? Pah! Who needs it! Our psuedo-90s skeuomorphic ugly-as-shit prebuilt styles will work just fine. Responsive design? Bullshit! Nobody uses a smartphone to browse the web, so why do we need to handle it?

Uploading a file? Good fucking luck buddy. There's a complicated dance among the minefield of pop-ups that ask you to confirm some shit or modify some shit and you gotta click the right option each time or else the file won't upload.

Wanna use https like 86% of the entire web and all modern websites? That's a premium feature. Fork over an extra $10 a month

Ok ok, I made it through all that. Dig through the thousands of menus to find the 'publish changes' button, and sigh with relief.

Open up a private browser tab to check my work, and nope. The site looks like shit, even by Homestead's standards. That's because Homestead claims to be a WYSIWYG editor, but it's a damn lie. The site looks like shit, so it's time do dive back into the hellhole that is this damn site editor.

And rinse and repeat. Deal with the shitty editor, publish, and pray it doesn't look like garbage. Be too scared to test on other devices because this flaming pile of dog shit pretending to be a website is bad enough on my device.

Two more months, then I'm done with this client. Someone get me a drink

My lead loves to over engineer crap and waste weeks building complicated solutions.

And then during retro when a team member has the stones to say we should've thought about it a little more or used the input of some other teammates, he shuts them down by saying that more input would've been bad for the design. I can see where he's coming from, but he always seems to have an excuse for us. Why can't he just be more transparent and clear with us? If he has a problem, just say it. That's what retros are for.

Oh and then he takes a shot at me saying that we shouldn't have built a UI in tandem with it. I didn't even recommend a UI for the thing. All I said was that if we ever have a UI, we should consider a database setup that assists both the server and UI. But nooo, he's stuck with this "server design" approach. Everything has to be built to make it easier for the server.

I still don't understand why anyone would have their server logic influence the design. Especially the database. I just seems too targeted. It just creates these nasty denormalized tables.

Ugh... Our team is getting dragged around by this arrogant and silly man.

Pulled into an 'emergency' meeting with a group of web designers deeply concerned a particular service wasn't going to meet all their requirements.
DevA: "For each page, Its going to be A LOT of work to retrieve all the data and store it's state. Every page load will require a round trip to the service."
DevB: "Yes, we aren't sure how the service should be changed to do what we need."
Mgr: "What is it not doing now? Doesn't the service already returns all the necessary data?"
DevA: "Well...um...its all the boolean fields. Some may be defaulted from the database or false because the user unchecked the box. We have to know which is which"
Me: "Why? Are you doing anything different in the UI? Checkbox will be true or false. What or who set that value is irrelevant"
DevC: "Well, it matters if the user didn't fill out all other other values."
Me: "How so?"
DevA: "Its matters because the values in the other fields. Its going to be A TON of work to figure out."
<mgr goes to the white board>
Mgr: "Lets map this out...what fields are you needing to trigger the state on?"
DevA: "Um...uh...the 'Approved' field...and um...'OK to Contact' field"
Mgr: "Just those two?"
DevA: "Yea..um...there are other fields, but whether or not to show the edit box depends on those two."
Me: "The service already returns data, you only have two fields to check? I don't see a need to change the service at all."
DevA: "Returning all that data, we are going have a serious scaling problem. We'll be hitting the service A LOT. All that javascript could cause performance problems too"
Me: "How much data are we talking about? Name, address, couple of booleans?"
DevA: "I have to serialize the data. All that logic is going to be reeeaaallly complicated. It might be better if the service returned only the data I need."
Me: "$64,000 question, how often is this feature going to be used on the web site? Maybe once? Few hundred a week?"
Mgr: "We have no idea. A lot of the data will be pre-populated and we're only sending out a few thousand invitations. More around the holidays...but honestly, not very many."
Me: "Changing that service only for this particular area of the web site isn't going to happen. Changing the UI is the only course of action."
DevA: "Oh frack I can't wait until this project is over."

DevA...how the funck do still have a job here? You wasted about half-hour of my time with your cry-baby crap. Where is my hammer...no...no..don't go there...ahhh...thanks devrant. Prison sentence diverted.

Is it only me who's falling in love with JS day by day. I don't know why people hate JS and find it complicated. May be the NODE development is easier

Why has web development become so complicated?

I'm learning React with JSX . Why is JSX even necessary? HTML works fine. Its simple and gets the job done.

I can't stand the node_modules directory either. Opening it up reveals what seems like hundreds it not thousands of dependencies that all have their own recursive node_modules folder and the dependencies continue.

Why are we creating more unnecessary abstractions on top of more unnecessary abstractions? What happened to K.I.S.S?

What was wrong with vanilla Javascript and becoming great at that and using just that?

Why won't you just approve my PR???

Whats wrong with you?!

I don't understand your cryptic one-sentence feedback. I'm not even sure you understand what you're asking yourself.

What the hell does "make it a transaction" mean? Don't give me pseudo-code examples that don't even work fucking asshole!

Its a small change that does NOT need a canary build dammit. Don't go testing the ORM, its a goddamn standard library. Why does working with you make everything so complicated?!?!

The code fucking works! There is no need to make it comply to your specific tastes goddamn it. Working with you is like pulling teeth!

/endrant

I used to be a sysadmin and to some extent I still am. But I absolutely fucking hated the software I had to work with, despite server software having a focus on stability and rigid testing instead of new features *cough* bugs.

After ranting about the "do I really have to do everything myself?!" for long enough, I went ahead and did it. Problem is, the list of stuff to do is years upon years long. Off the top of my head, there's this Android application called DAVx5. It's a CalDAV / CardDAV client. Both of those are extensions to WebDAV which in turn is an extension of HTTP. Should be simple enough. Should be! I paid for that godforsaken piece of software, but don't you dare to delete a calendar entry. Don't you dare to update it in one place and expect it to push that change to another device. And despite "server errors" (the client is fucked, face it you piece of trash app!), just keep on trying, trying and trying some more. Error handling be damned! Notifications be damned! One week that piece of shit lasted for, on 2 Android phones. The Radicale server, that's still running. Both phones however are now out of sync and both of them are complaining about "400 I fucked up my request".

Now that is just a simple example. CalDAV and CardDAV are not complicated protocols. In fact you'd be surprised how easy most protocols are. SMTP email? That's 4 commands and spammers still fuck it up. HTTP GET? That's just 1 command. You may have to do it a few times over to request all the JavaScript shit, but still. None of this is hard. Why do people still keep fucking it up? Is reading a fucking RFC when you're implementing a goddamn protocol so damn hard? Correctness be damned, just like the memory? If you're one of those people, kill yourself.

So yeah. I started writing my own implementations out of pure spite. Because I hated the industry so fucking much. And surprisingly, my software does tend to be lightweight and usually reasonably stable. I wonder why! Maybe it's because I care. Maybe people should care more often about their trade, rather than those filthy 6 figures. There's a reason why you're being paid that much. Writing a steaming pile of dogshit shouldn't be one of them.

These ignorant comments about arch are starting to get on my nerves.

You ranted or asked help about something exclusive to windows and someone pointed out they don't have that problem in arch and now you're annoyed?

Well maybe it's for good.

Next comes a very rough analogy, but imagine if someone posts "hey guys, I did a kg of coke and feeling bad, how do I detox?"

It takes one honest asshole to be like "well what if you didn't do coke?".

Replace the coke with windows.
Windows is a (mostly) closed source operating system owned by a for profit company with a very shady legal and ethical history.

What on earth could possibly go wrong?

Oh you get bsod's?
The system takes hours to update whenever the hell it wants, forces reboot and you can't stop it?
oh you got hacked because it has thousands of vulnerabilities?
wannacry on outdated windows versions paralyzed the uk health system?

oh no one can truly scrutinize it because it's closed source?

yet you wonder why people are assholes when you mention it? This thing is fucking cancer, it's hundreds of steps backwards in terms of human progress.

and one of the causes for its widespread usage are the savage marketing tactics they practiced early on. just google that shit up.

but no, linux users are assholes out to get you.

and how do people react to these honest comments? "let's make a meme out of it. let's deligitimize linux, linux users and devs are a bunch of neckbeards, end of story, watch this video of rms eating skin off his foot on a live conference"

short minded idiots.

I'm not gonna deny the challenges or limitations linux represents for the end user.

It does take time to learn how to use it properly.
Nvidia sometimes works like shit.
Tweaking is almost universally required.
A huge amount of games, or Adobe/Office/X products are not compatible.
The docs can be very obscure sometimes (I for one hate a couple of manpages)

But you get a system that:
* Boots way faster
* Is way more stable
* Is way way way more secure.
* Is accountable, as in, no chance to being forced to get exploited by some evil marketing shit.

In other words, you're fucking free.
You can even create your own version of the system, with total control of it, even profit with it.

I'm not sure the average end user cares about this, but this is a developer forum, so I think in all honesty every developer owes open source OS' (linux, freebsd, etc) major respect for being free and not being corporate horseshit.

Doctors have a hippocratic oath? Well maybe devs should have some form of oath too, some sworn commitment that they will try to improve society.

I do have some sympathy for the people that are forced to use windows, even though they know ideally isn't the ideal moral choice.
As in, their job forces it, or they don't have time or energy to learn an alternative.

At the very least, if you don't know what you're talking about, just stfu and read.

But I don't have one bit of sympathy for the rest.

I didn't even talk about arch itself.
Holy fucking shit, these people that think arch is too complicated.

What in the actual fuck.

I know what the problem is, the arch install instructions aren't copy paste commands.
Or they medium tutorial they found is outdated.

So yeah, the majority of the dev community is either too dumb or has very strong ADD to CAREFULLY and PATIENTLY read through the instructions.

I'll be honest, I wouldn't expect a freshman to follow the arch install guide and not get confused several times.
But this is an intermediate level (not megaexpert like some retards out there imply).

Yet arch is just too much. That's like saying "omg building a small airplane is sooooo complicated". Yeah well it's a fucking aerial vehicle. It's going to be a bit tough. But it's nowhere near as difficult as building a 747.

So because some devs are too dumb and talk shit, they just set the bar too low.

Or "if you try to learn how to build a plane you'll grow an aviator neckbeard". I'll grow a fucking beard if I want too.

I'm so thankful for arch because it has a great compromise between control and ease of install and use.

When I have a fresh install I only get *just* what I fucking need, no extra bullshit, no extra programs I know nothing about or need running on boot time, and that's how I boot way faster that ubuntu (which is way faster than windows already).

Configuring nvidia optimus was a major pain in the ass? Sure was, but I got it work the way I wanted to after some time.

Upgrading is also easy as pie, so really scratching my brain here trying to understand the real difficult of using arch.

Small company, sole engineer. Non-tech management. Increasingly fancy job titles despite working alone most of the time, with the promise of hiring someone (again) I can actually manage soon.

Backlog of projects/tasks is truly a mindfuck, with new things being added each week. This backlog will never ever get done, and nothing matters anyway because the next idea is "the future", all the time.

While I have influence on some aspects of decision making, it usually ends up being what the boss wants. Actively opposed a project because it's just too big of an undertaking, it was forced through anyway. I'm trying to keep the scope manageable as I'm building it now, and it's hard.

"It's the future, we absolutely have to do this. It will be the biggest thing we've ever done."

Boss's excitement then quickly faded since it's actually in development, now nobody really seems to want to know where it's at, or how it will all work. I need to scope it out, with the knowledge that many decisions boss signed off will be questioned when he actually looks at it. We now have even more "exciting" ideas of utter grandeur. Stuff that I can't even begin to comprehend the complexity of, while struggling to keep a self imposed deadline on the current one.

Every single morning we sit on Zoom for a "valuable" "catch-up". This is absolutely perfect for one thing: Completely destroying whatever drive and focus I have going into the day. Unrelated topics, marketing conversations, even more ideas, ideas for ideas sake, small problems blown out of proportion, the list goes on. I recently argued in detail why it should be scrapped or at least be optional to attend. No luck, it's "valuable".

Today a new idea was announced, and we absolutely have to do it ASAP because it can only be better than the current solution. I raise my concerns, saying it's not as easy as you make it out to be, we should properly think about it. Nope! We'll botch something to prove that it works... So you'll base your decision whether it's good on some half ass botch job that nobody really has the mental capacity to actually pay attention to. What a reliable way to measure!

"Our analytics data isn't useful enough to tell us the impact of things we do. We (you) have to fix this." Over the last 2 or so years, I've been pushing for an overhaul and expansion of our data analysis capabilities for exactly this reason. Integrating different data sources into a unified solution so we can easily see what we're doing, etc. Nope, never happened.

The new project idea which is based on wild assumptions is ALWAYS more important than the groundwork.

Now when I mentioned that this is what I wanted to do all along, it got brushed aside. "We don't need to do anything complicated, just fix this, add that, and it's done. It should be an easy thing to do. This is very important for our decision making." Fine, have it your way.

I'm officially burned out. It's so fucking hard to get myself to focus on my work for more than an hour or two. I started a side project, and even that effort is falling victim to my day-job-induced apathy.

I'm tempted to hand in my resignation without another offer on the table. I just need time to rediscover my passion, and go job hunting from that position, instead of the utter desperation of right now.

If you've read through all this rambling, kudos to you!

Oh no AI can destroy hummanity in the future! It is like skynet and such... Bad! It will be the end! FEAR THE AI!

Yeah so i cant sleep now so im writting a rant about that.

What a load of bullshit.

AI is just a bunch of if elses, and im not joking, they might not be binary and some architectures of ML are more complex but in general they are a lot of little neurons that decide that to output depending on the input. Even humans work that way. It is complicated to analyse it yes. But it is not going to end humanity. Why? Because by itself it is useless. Just like human without arms and legs.

But but but... internet.... nukes... robots! Yeah... So maybe DONT FUCKING GIVE IT BLOODY WEAPONS?! Would you wire a fucking random number generator to a bomb? If you cant predict actions of a black box dont give it fucking influence over anything! This is why goverment isnt giving away nukes to everybody!

Also if you think that your skynet will take control of the internet remember how flawless our infrastructure is and how that infrastructure is so fast that it will be able to accomodate terabytes per second or more throughput needed by the AI to operate. If you connect it to the internet using USB 2.0 it wont be able to do anything bloody dangerous because it cant overcome laws of physics... If the connection isnt the issue just imagine the AI struggle to hack every possible server without knowing about those 1 000 000 errors and "features" that those servers were equiped with by their master programmers... We cant make them work propely yet alone modify them to do something sinister!

AI is a tool just like a nuclear power. You can use it safely but if you are a idiot then... No matter what is the technology you are going to fuck shit up.

Making a reactor that can go prompt critical? Giving AI weapons or controls over something important? Making nukes without proper antitamper measures? Building a chemical plant without the means to contain potential chemical leak? Just doing something stupid? Yeah that is the cause of the damage, not the technology itself.

And that is true for everything in life not only AI.

Why React is soo complicated? Seriously why do we always need to use some stupid shit like this

const [state, setState] = useState();

what the fuck is this? Who designed it that way, why it should always look like shit for no reason? Why its API feels like spaghetti? When i am comparing other front-end frameworks they feel like heaven in their structure.

AND WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME HAVING A QUOTE ON A PARAGRAPH ELEMENT, WHY DO I HAVE TO USE FUCKING HTMLENTITES FROM 2000?

FUCK&apos;ERE

Why is planning so awful at so many tech companies (and in general I guess)?

I’m barely a month in and already having to drop current projects because someone made a promise to someone else and realized at the last minute “wait we need infrastructure for this” and came to me out of nowhere “hey we need this super complicated pipeline and complex architecture built”

I ask boss about how this should fall in priority, he basically says “figure it out”. Okay….thanks.

I ask for the business case from the requesters and when they need it and I’m told “we’re going live in late September”

Go back to boss, tell him what I “figured out” and asked if this was something he intended for me to take on. He skimmed through the ticket and gave a non-committal “I’m not sure what this is”. I’m still trying to figure out the infra here, still haven’t gotten access to half the things linked in the JIRA, but there’s been about 3 email chains and a Director recently DM’d me on slack asking for an update.

So I guess I’m flying in the dark on this one.

If you never hear from me again in this community I probably flew into the side of a mountain or something. This new job ain’t it.

The guys who made Android Studio have absolutely no idea what normal life is like. I'm just a regular person from Germany (a country known for low Internet speeds) and decided to spend my time with creating a primitive Android app.

Why the hecking heck does it need to download anything when creating a blank project? Okay, maybe I'm just a boomer who is stuck in the Visual C# 2005 era and this entire dependency stuff has become a bit more complicated over the years...

BUT WHY DOES THIS ATROCITY OF AN SDK NOT HAVE ANY KIND OF PROGRESS INDICATION WHEN DOWNLOADING STUFF?

Listen, I'm just a regular person with a regular internet connection. Developing an SDK is not my job, but using one might be. And if so, I'd really like to know how much time downloading gradlelib_bin_exe42069.zip is likely to take when it's so important for creating an app.

As a junior dev from a sysadmin and security background, this is a list of software development concepts I never seemed to truly understand but hope to(rated from most intimidating to least):

1) Frontend web development and all the huge world of javascript frameworks and tools. - It's more overwhelming than the political geography of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages.

2) Machine Learning, Deep Learning and A.I- too much math that fucks with my brain.

3) low-level programming(kernel,drivers) - sounds extremely interesting but the code in assembly/C/C++ looks like Linear A Minoan hieroglyphics.

4) Rx(insert language here) - I never get why it is useful or why someone invented this. Seems interesting though.

5) Code Reflection - sounds like Thelemic magick.

6) Packaging, automation, build tools, devops, CI, Testing -seems too complicated. I just want to run an executable at the client or make a web app that does something. Why all this process?

I'm not going to lie, the surge of bootcamps really irks me. Not because I'm afraid of competition, or that I'm an elitest. Mainly because a lot of people who attend these bootcamps have no real interest in software engineering. I sometimes attend a meetup, and it's a beginner meetup. I try to help out. And a lot of people clearly have no patience for learning software engineering. I try to be encouraging, but sometimes I just want to be dick and tell them "Why the hell do you want to be a dev, if you're not interested in how computers work".

I'm an 100% myself taught developer. Granted I'm 38 and taught myself programming at 14. But it came out of an earnest desire and love for technology in general. So I never shyed away from learning? C and assembler? Bring it on. Theoretical computer science? I can get with that. For me I loved computer so much, that I was willing to learn about anything in the realm of computing.

This is what annoys me with the adult bootcamp crowd. I feel they're only willing to learn as long as it's easy. If something gets complicated or complex, then they check out. And I a lot of their questions is "tell me how to do this/that". But they don't know why they would do it.

To me it feels like they're trying to fast track themselves to a dev job. Yet you would think if they're trying to do this all professionally, they would be open to learning as much as possible, and not closing themselves off.

My semi-friend who runs the meetup is trying to start a bootcamp himself. So I try I severely hold my tongue when I attend those meetups. And I want to be supportive. I certainly don't want to be the reason why people are turned off by programming. But at the same time, I hate how people are abusing this profession because they think it's fast money and an easy way to earn 6 figure salaries.

Hey! This is a followup to my last story.

TL;DR: I thinking of quitting my old job, got an offer at a startup, about the same pay, but much better working conditions.

First of all, the meeting with my lead. It was a performance report on her side to me, and I got 100 to 110% in performance in all points. My lead said "this team without you wouldn't be this team anymore" - which makes me feel a little bit bad for her if I decide to quit. She is a great team lead, but I don't belive the old company is worth my time anymore.

Now to the new company. Shortly after that performance report meeting, I had a call with the ceo, and what do I have to say besides: What a cool dude. He listened to me, asked me questions about my previous jobs (not just as programmer) and so on. But because first looks are deceiving, I went to their office last thursday. And wow. Their are exactly what I imagined them to be. Cool, young folks, 100% tech enthusiasts, and open minded.

One of the new hires in the new company wanted a 6 months internship between his studies. Instead they offered him a full time job - for the 6 months. They even offered me to pay back my scholarship that I will own my old company for leaving early. This is awesome.

The only things that will be worse than my old job are, that I have to negotiate payment instead of yearly increases, 4 days less paid vacation, so only 26 days, and 40h weeks. And they have no workers council, which isn't good, but it's not the worst either.

I got them fixed on 57.000€, not including an up to 10.000€ annual bonus. The way you achieve your bonus seems good to. It's split in two parts, internal and external bonus. Internal bonus is when you engage with internal events like tech calls, sharing your knowledge on your main IT topics, etc. External Bonus is a bit more complicated, but also straight forward. You work on projects for customers, and if you have less than 3 weeks a year that you dont participate in an project, you get the full bonus.

Last friday, I filed a request for a certificate of employment from my current team lead, this is odd for her because I have never done it before, and she asked why I requested it. I said to her that we can talk about it, and she agreed but didn't call me, yet.

Lastly, another good friend of mine will be employed by my team soon, but for a fraction of the payment that I currently receive! He is doing the exact same work, and even worse, he is doing project managment for his main developer project too! And is getting less paid... I just cant...

Yesterday we needed to update a few cloud instances, the only other person who knows about setting up CICD and our OpenShift Containers than me is only in part time and works two days a week, his trainee didn't know anything, so it's up to me. This isn't hard or anything, but it shows that this system our mangement maintains will fail soon, maybe even with me going? I sure hope so tbh.

One of you guys said, I should go to my team lead and negotiate a higher pay, but the truth is, that because we are a big ISP we have an collective agreement for payment and are grouped by tasks (which is bull shit btw, because I'm doing tasks much higher paid than currently). This also means that I cannot simply jump in another group, and can only increase my current pay to about 115%, which is done automatically every year by 5% up to 115%. Anything above is considered extra, but I don't think they will go with it.

I will decide this week about my future at the old company, but I really don't know what to do...

Why!!!
Why must some devs make life complicated!!!!!!

So, here I am enjoying my day (well enjoying the meetings that are taking me away from working) when I get a bug report that script X isn't sending out emails anymore.

Ok that's weird, this as far as I know uses the same email class as every other email being sent out from this project, and they all work.

Let's go have a quick dig...

function sendEmail(){
/*do a bunch of stuff*/
}
Is being used, well that's odd, it should be $emailService->send()
But what ever, it's probably an old wrapper for legacy sake since this script was written years ago. But nope, I almost cried, it's a wrapper for mail() isolated into this script.

Like for fucks sake, why in the hell would this be used when there's an entire fucking class that's tried and tested and only looses 1 email every few months, coz shit happens.

Errrrr.... sometimes i really wonder why people can't just do what they need to do the first time round.

I need to vent or I'm going to fucking explode like a car filled with bombs in motherfucking Iraq...

A couple of months ago I inherited a project in development from our team leader who was the sole developer on it and he was the one who designed every single thing in it.

I was told the project is clean, follows design patterns, and over all the code is readable and easy.

Those were all fucking lies.

See throughout the period he was working on it, I saw some of the code as it was going through some pull requests. I remember asking the dev why he doesn't comment his code? His response was the most fucking condescending shit I've ever heard: "My code is self-documenting"...

Now that I have full control over the code base I realize that he over engineered the shit out of it. If you can think of a software design pattern, it is fucking there. I'm basically looking at what amounts to a personal space given to that dev to experiment with all kind of shit.

Shit is way too over engineered that I'm not only struggling to understand what the hell is going on or how the data flows from the database to the UI and in reverse, I'm now asked to finish the remaining part and release it in 8 weeks.

Everything is done in the most complicated way possible and with no benefits added at all.

Never in my career have I ever had to drag my sorry ass out of bed to work because I always woke up excited to go to work... well except for the last 2 weeks. This project is now taking a mental toll and is borderline driving me crazy.

Oh, did i tell you that since he was the only dev with no accountability whatsoever, we DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT IS LEFT TO BE IMPLEMENTED?

The Project Manager is clueless.. the tickets board is not a source of truth because tickets set to resolved or complete were actually not even close to complete. FUCK THIS SHIT.

For the last week I've been working on 1 single fucking task. JUST 1. The whole code base is a mine field. Everything is done in the most complicated way and it is impossible for me to do anything without either breaking shit ton of other features (Loosely coupled my ass) or getting into fights with all the fucking libraries he decided to use and abuse.

1 whole week and I can't even get the task done. Everyday I have to tell the project manager, face to face, that I'm still struggling with this or that. It's true, but i think the project manager now thinks i am incompetent or just lazy and making excuses.

Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand the what and why behind every decision he made with this code. But I'm sick to my stomach now thinking that I have to deal with this tomorrow again.

I don't know if I'll make the deadline. But I'm really worried that when this is released, I'll be the one maintaining that nightmare of a code base.

From now on, if i hear a fucking developer say their code is "self-documenting" I will shove my dick + a dragon dildo + an entire razor gaming keyboard up their ass while I shoot their fucking knees off.

oh... and there are just a couple of pages of documentation... AND THEY ARE NOT COMPLETE.

I told you fucking moron clients doing that "little" change would be complicated and in the worst case it would end fucking up your whole spaghetti crap. A really HUGE spaghetti monster of that you aren't aware because you guys don't know a shit about coding conventions.

*Clients call me complaining about their software is broken*

-Hey, we're in serious trouble. Our users aren't being able to see the proper calculated values. Why that little change had so much side effects?
- I already told you why.
- Can you fix it asap? Our clients are complaining.
- No. Deploy an old copy of the affected modules while you give me a prudent time to refactorize that crap.
- Refactorize?
- ...

I used to work in their place, 3 years later I quit that crappy job and decided to make them my clients. I escaped from the micromanaging thing but I didn't from their ugly practices.

Anyways, I have to fix this shit asap. Money talks, at least until I can find a better client.

"Why do we need to use Django, it is so complicated, let's use Flask instead"

Getting a location in android is so complicated:
First there's the permissions. Ok add it to the manifest. Oh wait, run-time permissions.
Gotta check if user has allowed the specific app to use location or ask for the permission.
Ok. That's done. Why am i not getting a location? Of course, user can turn it off from settings. Gotta check for that aswell. Or ask for it somehow.
Finally i should be able to get the location! Now, how to I use the Location service to get location in the most efficient way that suits for me? Or should I use the Google api.
Every answer in stackoverflow uses a different method. Oh well, gotta try out them all :).

Need to rant / maybe some advice.

Working remote is hard.
New company, remote on boarding. I feel like my coworkers are robots, and I'm being tossed into the deep end with minimal guidance.

The codebase is so unnecessarily complicated, its impossible to read. I've been trying to figure out how things work for a whole month, still not sure.

My mentor that is supposed to help onboard me is a robot, and answers questions in a somewhat acceptable manner, but it still feels like a lot of "figuring out" is still left for myself.

My other work partner that is also a newbie like myself is also a robot - doesn't talk or ask many questions whenever we have a sync up meeting.

The codebase is huge and feels quite overwhelming, I don't feel like I got a team "with my back", I don't enjoy work as much as I have before, I barely do any coding (mostly reading code and trying to understand how everything is working by setting breakpoints and debugging tests that take foreeeever to run), and some days I'm seriously considering cutting my losses and jumping ship just to save my sanity.

Am I paranoid? Am I just dumb? Should I just suck it up and be happy I have a job? Is this how Remote work is supposed to feel like? Why does it feel like my soul is dying?

Anyone in similar situations, or who can give some insight/advice/etc, I would highly appreciate it.

And this is supposed to be a good company too from the reviews. I don't know how it can be so crappy in reality. Did I make the wrong choice joining? Should I jump ship sooner rather than later? I've only been here about a month or so, and maybe its too soon? Halp!

Pinterest, one of the most wonderful and elegantly designed products has gone to rats.

The performance was smooth, the UX was kickass, the content was lit.

I once watched Ben's interview and absolutely loved his thought process on how he identified a problem and went ahead to build a solution for it.

Unlike Facebook/Instagram, which are designed to make you compete for dopamine shots and trigger jealousy, Pinterest was kind of different where you have a custom feed and yet no comparison or showing off. Cool right?

However, towards the end of the interview, Ben did mention that they are going (or already bagged) another round of cash. I was sceptical of why that was needed when they already had good reach, scaled product, and overall a stable ecosystem. They could instead focus on exit plans.

Pinterst has become a piece of garbage now. Cluttered with all the original features, which made it different, have been taken away. Moreover, not only the product is complicated and difficult to understand (let alone use), it is bloated with ads. The amount of ads and redirection of every search result to their shopping tab is just nauseating.

Feed has same content for days, if not weeks. You can no way customise the content been showcased and no matter how many times you report unwanted or inappropriate images, shit still shows up. The algo is rusted now.

Remember kids, this is NOT how you build and grow products. Lesson learned, capitalism has the power to destroy everything.

Why printer services is stuck in time?

The windows printer spooler is old like my grandma. He fuck all the time but nobody wants to recode it ? I need to search for old driver a day long to make it fucking work at 10%

On linux generic printer driver do the job but cannot do all the things you want

Why is so fucking complicated all the time ? ( Don't think that scanner work you don't have de correct driver )

Solutions printer share the code for how de fuck i work ?

I'm a C++/Obj-C programmer finding it ludicrously hard to switch to Swift.

I find that the constant ability (leading to very poor programmer code) to reduce syntax and add tokens reduces readability and nowhere is this more apparent that with closures.

I'm working through (to my shame) Ray Wenderlich's Swift course and the closure chapter has this:

PS I loathe K&R as much as I do Swift so it's all in Allman formatting for clarity.

let multiply: (Int, Int) -> Int =
{
(a: Int, b: Int) -> Int in

// do Something else

return a * b
}
Why oh why isn't this more simply and elegantly written as:

let multiply = (a: Int, b: Int) -> Int
{
// do Something else

return a * b
}
The equals sign shows clearly that it's a closure definition assignment, as does the starting 'let'. But this way all of the stupid excesses, like the 'in' keyword, the repetition of the params / return type only this time with useful labels and additional tokens are removed and it looks and reads much more like a regular function and certainly a lot more clearly.

Now I know that with the stupid ability of Swift you can reduce all this down to return $0 * $1, but the point I'm making is that a) that's not as clear and more importantly b) if this closure does something more than just one line of code, then all that complicated stuff - hinted to by the comment '// do Something else' means you can't reduce it to stupid tokens.

So, when you have a clousure that has a lot of stuff going on and you can't reduce it to stupid minimalism, then why isn't is formatted and syntactically better like the suggestion above?

I've mentioned this on the Swift.org (and got banned for criticising Swift) but the suggestions they came up with were 'use type inference' to remove the first set of params / return type and token.

But that still means the param list and return type are NOT on the same line as the declaration and you still need the stupid 'in' keyword!

i often do tech support in chat rooms in my free time (because i like spreading good will,) so here's a tech horror story

"""

"hey, can you help me fix something?"

sure?

"so i dug my old XP machine out of my closet and replaced the bad Ethernet card with a different one and when i plug in the ethernet cable the PC bluescreens."

# oboi

did you install the drivers? Sounds like it needs drivers

"no"

then install them

"no"

why not?

"it doesn't need any"

why do you say that?

"it said \"This device is set up and ready to use.\" in the balloon in the corner"

it has generic drivers to deal with devices before the real drivers can be found

"shouldn't they work?"

some devices need the extra support provided by the intended drivers, so the generic ones cause issues in those cases

"ok, well, where do I find them?"

do you have a model number?

"yes, it's " # scrubbed for... privacy? i dunno

gimme a few minutes

<insert 45 minutes of aggressive Googling for (str(DEVICE_MODEL_NUMBER) + " xp drivers")>

alright i have the drivers, go here:
# again, removed for... idk.

"they don't work"

# oh here we go

why not?

"These drivers are not compatible with your system architecture."

what version of XP are you using?

"XP Pro"

x86 or x64?

"x64"

# fucking...

ok so this is gonna get real complicated real fast: use x86 XP or I can't help you, none exist for x64 XP.

"oh ok"

<User left the IRC channel.>

"""

Day 1 with Chromium OS: Inclusion of packages and stuff

Day 2 with Chromium OS: Setting up CI, and realize Azure is fucking gay because their own agents disconnects after 4 hours.

Just why.

Day 3 with Chromium OS: resolve their shitty problem, now their own agents have no disk space. I blame Google.

Day 4 with Chromium OS: Fix CI in at 10 commits, give up and cry.

Day 5 with Chromium OS: Realized Travis might stood a chance, build time limit reached, now I'm shook.

Day 6 with Chromium OS: Buried myself with endless tabs of Gentoo documentation. Lost count on when's the last time I came out of my room.

Today with Chromium OS: I blame Google for making my life suffer more than the last time I had depression.

Conclusion: Chromium OS is Gentoo with extra steps and I hate it

I will never fully understand why some people think command line package managers are "more complicated" than searching for and downloading software through the web browser.

I feel like the only reason why they think this is because the command line is not a user-friendly tool to them. All of my friends on Discord use Windows, and after showing them what a fantastic tool the Chocolatey package manager is, they don't want to have anything to do with it, because it involves entering commands.

I give up. If they don't want to use this amazing tool, that's their loss, not mine. I will just continue to run

> choco upgrade outdated -y

and update all of my programs with a single command, while they have to download installers and manually go through the setups.

Started writing a parser for moonscript. Because I want to do my own syntax highlighting and error support.

I'm sorry, but was this supposed to difficult? Every article I read claimed this was gonna be some impossible feat of herculean effort. I half dreaded it, the other half was kinda elated.

Only it didnt live up to the hype. The tokenizer is a glorified character stream. The lexer is little more than a tokenizer, and the "most complicated" bit is nothing but a fancy transformation of the token output into a tree.

I'm completely to new parsers proper and semantic checking and maybe that's why it seemed easy, but I dont see what all the forewarning in tutorials were ever about.

I wasted fucking hours just trying to find out why curl doesn't send the data I've interpolated from a variable.

It doesn't even send the fucking hardcoded part of the data. I've compared it with a curl command generated by firefox, which works fine. Literally the only difference is that I interpolate a variable and I've echoed the contents of that variable and that was fine as well. I've even checked the interpolated string and it was fine.

And then I moved more stuff into the hardcoded part and it just started to work.

Wtf is this bullshit. I really feel like learning intermediate bash scripting is just a waste of time, just how complicated can you make debugging something so simple.

Every fucking time I give bash scripting a chance this shit costs me so much time, patience and motivation, I really wanna prefer that shit to python, because managing python dependencies for a script sucks ass^2,, but at least I can get shit done in Python. Just fucking end me or give me a language that doesn't make me wanna shoot myself

Data wrangling is messy

I'm doing the vegetation maps for the game today, maybe rivers if it all goes smoothly.
I could probably do it by hand, but theres something like 60-70 ecoregions to chart,
each with their own species, both fauna and flora. And each has an elevation range its
found at in real life, so I want to use the heightmap to dictate that. Who has time for that? It's a lot of manual work.

And the night prior I'm thinking "oh this will be easy."

yeah, no.

(Also why does Devrant have to mangle my line breaks? -_-)

Laid out the requirements, how I could go about it, and the more I look the more involved
it gets.

So what I think I'll do is automate it. I already automated some of the map extraction, so
I don't see why I shouldn't just go the distance.
Also it means, later on, when I have access to better, higher resolution geographic data, updating it will be a smoother process. And even though I'm only interested in flora at the moment, theres no reason I can't reuse the same system to extract fauna information.
Of course in-game design there are some things you'll want to fudge. When the players are exploring outside the rockies in a mountainous area, maybe I still want to spawn the occasional mountain lion as a mid-tier enemy, even though our survivor might be outside the cats natural habitat. This could even be the prelude to a task you have to do, go take care of a dangerous
creature outside its normal hunting range. And who knows why it is there? Wild fire? Hunted by something *more* dangerous? Poaching? Maybe a nuke plant exploded and drove all the wildlife from an adjoining region?
who knows.

Having the extraction mostly automated goes a long way to updating those lists down the road.

But for now, flora.

For deciding plants and other features of the terrain what I can do is:

* rewrite pixeltile to take file names as input,
* along with a series of colors as a key (which are put into a SET to check each pixel against)
* input each region, one at a time, as the key, and the heightmap as the source image
* output only the region in the heightmap that corresponds to the ecoregion in the key.
* write a function to extract the palette from the outputted heightmap. (is this really needed?)
* arrange colors on the bottom or side of the image by hand, along with (in text) the elevation in feet for reference.

For automating this entire process I can go one step further:
* Do this entire process with the key colors I already snagged by hand, outputting region IDs as the file names.
* setup selenium
* selenium opens a link related to each elevation-map of a specific biome, and saves the text links
(so I dont have to hand-open them)
* I'll save the species and text by hand (assuming elevation data isn't listed)
* once I have a list of species and other details, to save them to csv, or json, or another format
* I save the list of species as csv or json or another format.
* then selenium opens this list, opens wikipedia for each, one at a time, and searches the text for elevation
* selenium saves out the species name (or an "unknown") for the species, and elevation, to a text file, along with the biome ID, and maybe the elevation code (from the heightmap) as a number or a color (probably a number, simplifies changing the heightmap later on)

Having done all this, I can start to assign species types, specific world tiles. The outputs for each region act as reference.

The only problem with the existing biome map (you can see it below, its ugly) is that it has a lot of "inbetween" colors. Theres a few things I can do here. I can treat those as a "mixing" between regions, dictating the chance of one biome's plants or the other's spawning. This seems a little complicated and dependent on a scraped together standard rather than actual data. So I'm thinking instead what I'll do is I'll implement biome transitions in code, which makes more sense, and decouples it from relying on the underlaying data. also prevents species and terrain from generating in say, towns on the borders of region, where certain plants or terrain features would be unnatural. Part of what makes an ecoregion unique is that geography has lead to relative isolation and evolutionary development of each region (usually thanks to mountains, rivers, and large impassible expanses like deserts).

Maybe I'll stuff it all into a giant bson file or maybe sqlite. Don't know yet.

As an entry level programmer I may not know what I'm doing, and I may be supposed to be looking for a job, but that won't stop me from procrastinating.

Data wrangling is fun.

Oracle... Why is it so complicated ?

Some humans are calm and thoughtful, some annoyingly complicated, while others with behaviours too difficult to comprehend.
I got a call from the office (former from 6 months ago) and it's from the G.M herself.

** Phone rings **
Hmm see who's calling...

Me: * Picks up phone and set it on loud speaker, so my partner can also listen *

Me: Hello Ma

G.M: Hey (calls me by my full name)

Me: It's really nice to he...

G.M: Why would you move the YETI server hosted on AWS to Azure! We have been faced with lots of challenges ever since and that has cost the company a lot.

Me: Pardon me Ma, but that...

G.M: That is a very bad and unacceptable behaviour from you and I can have the company sue you for this.

Me: Excuse me Ma, but...

G.M: I have spoken with the director of C.M.D quaters (A sister company) and explained the situation on ground about what you did before leaving without having any prior permission. What nonsense!

** At this point my partner let's call her "CC"... was more confused than me**

CC : **Panicking** Who's that? What did you do? I thought you said you no longer work at that firm, what's going on?

Now I'm confused cus I don't even know who to reply.

Me: **Signals CC to calm the fuck down**

G.M: ** Still talking and spitting out millions of threats to the guy who left the company with evil deeds in mind...**

CC who literally hates suspense and also a half cool and half crackhead kind of person... Tries stealing the phone from me so she could pour out whatever is on her mind to the caller because of how disgusted she felt, mostly for reasons I quite understood but nevertheless i kept the phone far from her reach while we both enjoyed the suiting voice of *a threat giver*

Honestly at this point my closest guess was "Joe, who must have fucked up big time" because Joe is the company's SysAdmin and has a lot of fucked up records (One time Joe tried to convert all system OSes to Linux even with our hydra servers with pre-installed windows running smoothly, his action caused a noticeable server down-time all for the reason of Joe being a Linux freak). He and only he has the power to transfer/switch/off/on servers at will. I really don't know what Joe must have done but sure thing is there is a fuck up somewhere.
Talking about me, I was only a developer enthroned only within his desk and secondly I no longer worked there. Who fucking calls a retired soldier about a lost battle after six freaking months later! Just fucking sink with your ship captain!

But how can I explain all of this to G.M without implicating Joe and also not look like snitch, I thought to myself.

While I was pondering within myself and the call which has long been disconnected, CC broke the silence.

CC: Giddy, Can you honestly explain me why your old company is calling talking about lawyers and suing you? Have you been lying to me about your work?

Me: *Explained the situation to CC*

CC: But why was she that saucy and acting a bitch? You should have spare me a minute with her.

Me: She wouldn't let me speak but we good CC. We good.
The woman that just called is the G.M. of the firm I had formerly worked with and she's also the wife to the M.D of the same firm which was my former direct Boss whom I respect a lot. Having a disjunct with the wife can also affect the relationship with the husband, which I don't want to lose. So we cool!

Maybe I should text her or maybe not... But before then
** Another call comes in **
It's her again.

GM: Hello Giddy (Sounding calm)

Me: (WTF. She called me by my first name and also sounds cool... More confused than a stray dog) ...Yeah Hello

GM: I just called to let you know that my accusation was wrong because I was misinformed. Joe Nosa was in charge on Systems but why didn't you correct me on that during our last conversation?

Me: ... 😲

CC: (Drags the phone) Hello and Good morning whosoever...

G.M: Sorry who am I speaking with?

CC: (Introduced herself) I overheard your last conversation with Giddy, and I demand you appogise to him both in written and in verbal because not only did you accused him falsely, you also almost bridge the trust between us which may have cost the relationship.

Me: ...
** Long awkward silence **

G.M: Hey Giddy, I'm sorry. Just angry about what went down recently.

Me: All good ma'am

CC: ** Hangs up **

after exploring a lot of ui frameworks and architectures, i am trying to go back to android dev but again with the curiosity for the one single question that i had at the start of my career 5 years back : why is it's ui so complex?

can anyone help me understand it?

like comparing with the most basic ui framework : html/css/js, why android is so different? we got activities, fragments and views. the worst thing in android is lifecycles, that each of these ui components have.

The view lifecycle is simple to get over with : whatever is the lifecycle of its parent, is the lifecycle of view.

a view's parent is another view, whose parent is another view, whose parent is... and so on until we reach the root view which is stored by either a fragment or activity

therefore a view's lifecycle = lifecycle of activity or fragment

till here its very clear. the fuckup is simply in the next part:
WTAF is activity ?WTAF is fragment? why are their various functions called in the sequence they are called? oncreate, on start, onstartview, ondestroy... why?
activity is still somewhat okay, but fragment is completey weird af : it can be a part of activity: basically it can cover your complete screen and behave as an activity itself (so you don't get to say that activity === screen and fragment === view) AND IT HAS ITS OWN FUCKING LIFECYCLES! So does that mean fragment's fucntions cna also be called by OS?

what's more mind fucking, is the fact that android activity can destroy/pause or recreate fragments on its own, by some "views" like viewpager , or even hold multiple fragments as "alive" at the same time, using something called a "backstack" ??!??!

and each of these fragments in the stack can be called by system at any time? like wtf???

all these stuff is super confusing and i haven't even scratched the surface. the newer , more complicated stuff like viewmodel, livedata and again "lifecycles" has a complete seperate behavior and functionality of their own. plus the various "reality-check" scenarios like: when a user is streaming a video in picture-in-picture mode while keeping your app in split screen with maps in the second split, when a call comes and the video keeps running, and user rotates the device, let me know the clusterfuck situation for the 3rd fragment in your 5 icon navigation view currently at the payment page with 2 fragments and 1 activity in backstack!!!

god bless thy soul for this shitty framework isn't going anywhere , rather its super strong and getting more clusterfucked with new beautiful shit everyday.

(if someone can ignore my gentle language, i would really like to know/get redirected to some resources where i can learn more on this)

I hate the US education system, its just designed to fuel capitalism. It keeps getting less funding so that actually passionate, intelligent people get kicked out and replaced with people who only want to be a teacher so they can have power over others.
Why do they block news websites? Why do they block github, so their own robotics team can't even access the essential building blocks for the robot? They make everything more complicated and for the reason that it might distract you. Maybe just make topics engaging and not boring asf, just cramming for the exams so the school gets more funding. Maybe prepare students for jobs, allow them to do projects, pursue classes that interest them, and have any sense of individualism.
Anyways, yeah, the school blocked github so I can't do my FBLA project, I can't access the code for programming our robot for competitions, I can't even download software required for half of these classes. I have a Linksys router, is there any way I could set it up to bypass the firewall?

In my company one of the tech leads created a “framework” for other devs to code on. His main goal is to restrict devs from doing whatever the hell they want and follow his platform. But that makes everything so complicated. If I need to find where it sets the connectionString, I’d have to go 7 levels deep in the code. Do you agree with this whole approach? If they wanted to standardize the dev process why can’t they document it and enforce it in code reviews. Restricting devs will lead to workarounds. They will find ways to do stuff by hacking the “framework”

On the one hand, as an avid programmer having a non-programmer partner, we (I) once wanted to mod some Gameboy Pokémon games (Crystal), but the games were written in Assembly and I was definitely not getting myself into that. My partner was rather sad, as this was quite a big project for the both of us, but it was never finished, and it was still complicated to explain to him why Assembly is such a bitch. Nevertheless, we found other projects to have fun with (simplest of them: random movie picker that chooses a movie based on title/genre/etc. from our own movie list file).

On the other hand, explaining and making programming exciting for people who are not into it, so you still seem like an interesting person for new dates (poly relationship), is really hard. But I would also blame my introverted self and not only programming for unsuccessful dating :D

Dealing with clients is probably the biggest personal challenge. I'm not much of a people person, and I find it hard to converse with friends and people I've known for years, let alone clients who are looking for answers for why things aren't working, and wanting you to explain exactly (but in simple terms) why a thing that seems simple is so complicated.

Another challenge, which is somewhat related is expressing myself. This again, stems from not being super great or comfortable in conversations, but as a dev, even among other devs, your opinion on things gets asked a lot. For someone who was used to sticking with the status quo and mostly agreeing with things, stuff like peer code reviews, or giving pointers on how to implement something is a big challenge (but I'm improving)

My states of learning Flutter:

Oh, this looks easy!
Hm, this example is very complicated.
Aw yeah, I'll never need Android Studio again!
How much is a iOS dev account?
Oh for fuck's sake, why is everything working except displaying a webpage in non-fullscreen dynamically and implementing it in my widget tree? It is unusable for me if this doesn't work but I want to use it! >:(

It's been a while since I first noticed that web development is becoming way too complicated. I'm not sure why people decided to overcomplicate everything. Is it to look smarter?

I just spent a few hours trying to understand why a unit test was failing. I decided to debug every statement of that unit test until I realized what was going on.

This project uses a library called ImmutableJS. I was calling for the "length" property of an array, like a regular human being would do, but that returned undefined because the correct property within this library is "size."

Good Monday, everyone.

buying a car is such an exhausting and depressing experience. i feel like being less of a man and somewhat blind right now.

I, a 24 year old guy, have never driven a car. afaik, we were poor, my city's public infrastructure is very good and cheap, and my family majorly never needed it.

6 years ago, i got my first 2 wheeler. i still didn't needed it but dad did, and so i learnt it a bit, was somewhat comfortable driving it on my own, gave a driving test, failed, nd forgot about it ( coz again, still not needed much). to this day this bit is true about me.

at that time my father had bought a few scooters before, so he had some experience, and we ended up buying a new one. currently that fella sits outside our home and my father uses it for supplies.

coming to 2023, i was/am thinking of buying a car. why? coz (1) car trips while sitting in the backseat have been super fun (2) people with cars tend to reach anywhere independently, and help others easily (3) my few friends have one and they are super smug about it and (4) i am starting a wfo job which requires 2 days of wfo and is 60km away from home (although train route with 3 interchanges is less time taking)

but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WHEN YOU *THINK* ABOUT BUYING A CAR!?

1. buy first or learn to drive first or get a driving license first?
getting a learner's permit is like filling a form; driving schools require no documents but money, and car sellers also do not want any complicated documents. so first step is easy for all.
HOWEVER, driving schools teach the very basics and are controlling your car for 90 % of the time. you can't learn without having your own car, but at the same time you can't buy new car just to *learn*, you will end up denting it.

2. the confusion around how to buy a car?
there are so many fucking parameters.

money being tha major 1 : old cars are coming from $800-$12000 new cars start at $8000 . my current budget is aroud 3-4k as I want to learn on it first with an expected usage of <1000 km per month

brand : there are literally 1000+ models whose base varients start at 8-9k and whose used version is available in my range. i have no idea how to choose.

year : in our country, a petrol car's registration expires in 15 years. cars from 2009 to 2012 are coming in my range but they are gonna expire in 1-4 year . not sure if its a deal breaker, as i plan to buy a new car later, but people are warning me about usage.

km driven : not 1 person is there who i talked to and told me to trust the kms on odometer. most of the cars i saw show 30-60,000kms driven but i am expecting them to be 5-7x more

cng/petrol : cng is cheaper, while petrol is better for engine life, from what i heard. I was inclined towards cng, but everyone i discussed adviced against this as those cars tend to have been driven for very long due to mileage efficiency.

engine power, cc, power steering, body... there are so many stuff that neither i know about and nor am i considering, which makes me more sad and scared of these deals. i have never bought anything without a proper research.

overall its the first time when i am feeling so much dependent on others and being an inefficient and inexperienced adult . my family once bought a used car 10 years ago, which was a total sham and got us to spend so much on it that we had to sell it for scrap in 3 months. It was a painful and nightmarish experience. i don't want that.

How the fuck can people acutally work with freaking windows?!

I use a dual boot with ubuntu and windows, the only reason why there is a small piece of windows is because i like to play games some time, and the freaking developers who are coding them are afraid of windows or whatever ...

Anyway, i wanted to try something with windows and app virtualization which required me to use windows. Holy shit everything is so freaking complicated if you want to do it not with a gui. Need some admin rights, ... no dont use the terminal you need to right click 'run as admin' and shit. I mean wtf?!

How can people who have a freaking idea of what they are doing using windows?!

Every f*cking minute with that shitty os feels like a hour. 2 blue screens so far, and it seems m$ decided to download some updates that freaking block my work and getting my pc to lag ... what a piece of sh*t!

I must assume that whoever designed jinja2 was either on crack, or hadn’t used template systems before. This thing is too fucking complicated, and doesn’t make sense. From their docs:

“Jinja2 supports dynamic inheritance and does not distinguish between parent and child template as long as no extends tag is visited. While this leads to the surprising behavior that everything before the first extends tag including whitespace is printed out instead of being ignored, it can be used for a neat trick.”

My response: “I don’t give a fuck!! I need this fucking website to be fucking done already! I pass data into a fucking template engine, and the engine applies my fucking markdown!! This is bullshit!! Why am I still trying to understand your fucking nonsense?!? AGGJCDJVFD&@!?&@$?)@&!SHHHVBSHK!!!!!!”
*desk flip*

Fuck you to hell you jinja fucker

Oh my freaking gosh! Okay so im "lead tech" on the robotics team. Ive come up with several ways we can improve our system. I had it all planed out and calculated but when i run it by the teacher running the team, EVERY SINGLE FRICKING TIME they shoot it down and they say "that just adds another layer of complexity" and I just want to yell because sure its a bit more complicated but so the fuck what?!?!? It works (theoritically according to math) efficiently and more efficiently than what their doing which is almost unknown to me because why the fuck not?! And omg i sware my entire team has the attentionspan of an ant because any time i need them to explain something, they get dustracted with whatever the hell they get distracted with and they NEVER SHUT THE FUCK UP. Any who other than that being super annoying thats not the point. Point is, the fucking teacher is afraid of making things a bit more complicated for no good reason and ever idea i have they shoot it down so (even as lead tech, and main programmer) i feel extra useless and im not gonna be here next year, so idk what the fuck there gonna do when i leave. (Like seriousally, im not even being conceded, ive been programming for several years. The other programmers have no idea what there doing) but if they dont learn that complexity isnt bad this team will NEVER get higher in the competition.

Just need to vent out a bit. There's already been a few times at work where the senior developer asks me why I take so long to do something, and I'm unable to fully explain why.

Now, I could think of several reasons. Maybe it's my lack of experience; I just start researching on Google for solutions, start putting things together, and then I guess things start to get too complicated for me to be able to explain clearly. Maybe I end up "over-engineering" to solve problems that could be solved in a simpler way.

And this leads to my second reason, and that is there's no code review going on. I've wanted to just tell him, "If you'd just take a long look at my code, you'd understand why it's taking me so long! So you can tell me if I'm doing it right or wrong, or if I'm making it too complicated!" But, of course, being the junior developer, I also think that when he's explaining how to do something, I'm just not understanding it right.

I could ask for clarifications, and believe I've done that on some things, but my third reason is that he's just not good at explaining things, or that there's some miscommunication happening. English isn't his first language. His English is ok, but I know there's a lot of room for improvement. I also notice that our other co-workers are also having a bit of a hard time but it seems they already developed some sort of adaptation to communicate with him.

So yeah, there's my rant, and I'd love to know everyone's input on this.

Why is assigning something to a variable then returning it a code smell?

Simple example:

double makeNumber(String[] numbers)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (String n : numbers)
sb.append(Double.parse(number);

double result = Double.parse(sb.toString());
return result;
}

Why is this bad?

double result = Double.parse(sb.toString());

imagine is a more complicated assignment or calls another function that does some other weird stuff?

If i'm going to debug an issue, i m going to have to unwrap it anyway. So what's the cost of leaving it there?

This poster is shite quality but I've transcribed the gold found on it:

The Technical Support Specialist:

- SEND US AN URGENT EMAIL IN UPPERCASE. We'll flag it as a rush job. Really.

- Loves it when a user calls screaming "the internet is broken".

- Gonna snap the next time a user asks why they don't have permission to install a George Michael screensaver.

- Last vacation: catching the first rays of sun from the back booth in Tim Hortons. Sweeeeeet!

- Most dreaded words: "I don't know what happened, I only opened the attachment".

- Has memorized over 100 access codes, but can't remember what day it is.

- Is amazed a user can have five chatrooms and three celebrity sites opened at once - but reading an I.T. support e-mail sent with high importance - now that's a complicated request.

- When you call with a tech support problem and say you'll be back in 5 - I'll say "Great!" And try not to snicker.

- System crashed last Thursday. Haven't seen my wife and kids since.

Any SUPER AWESOME patient... JS PRO that wants to help me with a few problems it would be appreciated..

Okay so I'm having trouble with JavaScript and this can apply to other languages but for now focus on JS. so I'm learning how to manipulate the DOM and I don't really know how to start I picked out a tutorial but I'm afraid I wont learn a lot from it. here are my concerns and yes they don't all have to do with the DOM

> I don't know how to learn without mimicking what the person is doing and when I try something that's related I cant use the related information and techniques because I either don't remember, dont want to do the literal same thing for something slightly different or dont know how and somethings not working even though it should be.

> I do it one way and when people offer to help its just me getting responses of how it could be done completely different and I dont understand why either way should be used

> Why should I have to generate a webpage or div if I can just use HTML5

>whats the difference between JSON and Arrays???????????

>I am not good with arrays, lists, dictionaries, (I'm stretching to python with lists and dictionaries)

>I recently tried the basic quiz project and it was more complicated and fun than I was giving credit for but I want to do it a different way to show myself I learned but I cant because I dont understand how the person managed to loop through the entire array printing the individual questions and answers to the div. like I understand the parts that use the html tags in the code but I dont know how when or what to use it all

>any good javascript/dom resources?

At this point Im just stressing because all I want is a basic skillset with JS but I dont feel like Im learning anything and I dont know how to apply my knowledge or improve upon the programs ive been learning from or trying to make. and arrays have been tripping me up to especially since I have no clue what the difference is between them and JSON and why I should use one over the other and dont get me started how shit I am with manipulating them. FUCK IM STUPID

The SIM card saga goes on:
To verify yourself, you need to go to some postal office and show them your ID and stuff. Not that this is complicated or anything (well actually, it is. Welcome to 2018 in Germany. We use more papers than potheads for the simplest shit), but you need to have a valid ID. Valid as in NOT EXPIRED. What the fuck. Why does my ID expire. Do I stop existing 3 years after getting it? What does it mean if it is, why is it culpable to have your ID expired. And who gets charged for having none, I mean obviously my ID doesn't identify me anymore?
What the hell man. I don't exist for 6 months now. Am I law free as not identifiable entity or how does it work?

And now the real question:
We got something called Bafög in Germany. Basically you get a bit money while studying. (I still work tho, I don't get really much from it.)
To apply for it, you need some tax number, which seemingly can be seen as a proof of my existence and my identity.
Why is this enough, why don't I need a valid ID there?

Germany is weird man. On the one hand government is all social and you get help if you need it but on the other hand you need to sacrifice 17 virigins to apply for said help..

Today marks the second day of me having to build an email template and I never hated anything more in my life than that. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED? WHY CAN'T THEY UPGRADE THEIR STUPID RENDERING ENGINES SO WE CAN USE MORE MODERN METHODS?!? Sorry but I don't want to create an E-Mail and having to pretend its 1995. The table view is so outdated and I'm aware of the fact that some clients support divs but not Outlook (Outlook itself sucks pretty hard but thats another story). I just wanna be able to use grid, flex, etc. to build my template.
I HATE MY LIFE

So basically I joined this new android dev job 3 months ago. I did android dev for 2.5 years and then had a gap of 1.5 years where I did game development so Im comming back into android dev as "junior" however Im tryharding to prove myself and reach mid level as fast as I can.

I had it planned like this from the beginning: original plan was to do really good during probation period so I could ask for a raise (which I did). Now while Im waiting for answer (which will take 2-3 weeks) I need to keep the show going so I am sacrificing evenings to accomplish goals. I ham going to these teambuildings, I am volunteering in this job fair event and Im joining bars with the not-so-social devs 1-2 times a week just to "fit in" and be noticed. After getting a raise I plan to take it down a notch and somehow relax....

During the usual work week I rely on stimulants (coffee/cigarettes/concerta) to get me through the days and then I use xanax or alcohol to relax. Worst part is that I am totally drained exhausted after long working week. I dont want to go out with my girlfriend. My libido is at its lowest and we do it maybe max 2 times a week and it feels like a chore to me. It feels like I exist only for this job and only to please everyone around me and it drains me out completely.

I feel like I am burned out. I wish I could just quit this job and run away somwhere warm for 6 months to chill alone and take it easy and recover but I cant. Im stuck in a trap. I have to pay off mortgage, I have to pay off bills. I am approaching 30's soon and I became fat and balding, I want to loose weight, I wanna get a hair transplant to at least enjoy my 30's properly. Im only 28 but I already have a lot of grey hair just because of immense ammounts of stress I have to deal daily because of my ADHD and anxiety. Also my gf is kinda dissapointed that I havent proposed her in 3 years of our relationship. I feel so much pressure and obligations to the point where I feel that theres no point in living if I just exist for the needs of others. I cant imagine getting married and having a child now - life is already complicated chaotic mess as it is.

I dont't know why I throw myself 150% at projects and hyperfocus so much to the point where it becomes my priority in life? Am I compensating for my lack of executive functions by throwing lots of effort and care in hopes that I will be validated? How to learn to take it easy instead of always thinking that what Im doing is not enough?

It's not even the problem of this job. Its just me. I had my own company for 2 years and I was dealing with same burnout problems...

That feeling when you inherit a script to automate something that takes 10 seconds. Why would they even write this? It's not like the task is hard....

...

And why would they write it this way? I'm sure if I just move this part and ....

That feeling when you spend several hours improving and redesigning a perfectly functional script to automate a 10 second task for zero gain aside from cleaner code. "But the code for this quick-and-dirty script I'm never going to look at again looks so much better now!"

... If only it did a bunch of complicated parsing, regex matching, and error checking just so I can answer one less prompt.... Unless that parsing fails. Then it should still ask me for that prompt... And also validate that the answers I give are valid and correct....

That feeling when you spend a whole nother day starting from scratch to implement error checking and complex parsing logic knowing full well the original task takes 10 seconds to do manually and is needed at most twice a day (for a grand total of 20s a day)

WHY AM I LIKE THIS?!?!?!

Okay, my first serious rant.

An acquaintance of mine when needed my help always explain his problem equivocally. Like, he would explain laboriously of the method to achieve what he needed when the thing he only needed is just a simple API call. Im not saying im an expert in this area but his explanation doesnt help me to understand his problem. If i do not understand his problem, how can i help him? At least if i know what his problem is and i cant help, i can seek help from others.

And hes not even working in the same company as me. And he wants it solved ASAP. I dont know your problem, yet you want me to solve it? I dont even know if im capable of solving it! And I have my own job to do..

He always try hard to explain it. He tried to sound professional. And he always ask for my help first because I knew he doesnt want others to know that he doesnt know how to code. Why do you apply for the position if you know you cant handle it?! Everytime. He's been fired before. And he did it again. I cant. We are fresh graduate. Apply for a fresh grad position. If you dont know anything, just said you dont know unless youre very quick to learn..

I remember once we need to submit a linux commands or something homework. We need to code it during the class and submit it by the end of the class. He asked me to code for him while mine is still half done. "Quicker please!" he remarked. There were still plenty of our classmates still doing it and some even havent done it yet. What the f are you rushing i felt like slapping him in the face with the keyboard at that time but because i am a matured adult i did not do it.

Hes not even a bully he just always get panic without reasons. He wants things done early and then he can post on social media. "Oh so tired this program is so complicated" or like "Oh damn, they want me to lead the group again (roll eyes emoticon)"...

Please somebody run over him.

Hes making me bald everyday and i think this is unhealthy. If he wants to get bald, get bald alone. I was just starting to work but my hair has been falling everyday.

context: Python Sanic Backend, Bulma Frontend
*this is a direct repost of my rant on my discord*

UGH WHY IS EVERYTHING TOO COMPLICATED FOR NO FUCKING REASON
I JUST NEED AN INTERACTIVE UI WITHOUT EXPLICITLY DOING IT MYSELF WITH TONS OF BOILERPLATE CODE
React - uses JSX
Angular - uses TypeScript

what's next? some weird fucking thing that's not even necessary for basic needs
And why the fuck does react need node.js or some JSX compiler to make things easier?
None of this makes any fucking sense
Why not just declare actual javascript objects and functions and that's fuckin it
I just need regex validation and sometimes, custom validation based on other things
Then when the user changes something a small modal shows up asking to save changes
None of this bullshit
It's deadass simple
I don't need routing
No need for your JSX fuckery
No need for your TypeScript shit
I barely would even fucking use those
REEE
Fuck react, Fuck angular
React would've been the perfect thing for this shit
but NO
they had to make things 100x worse
Fucking bitch
because react has event hooks
I can just listen to the changes
then display the modal and get done with it
All other processing is done in the backend
IT'S THAT SIMPLE REACT
Validation is provided by the backend, Just fucking use regex in the frontend and that's it
IT JUST NEEDS TO DO SIMPLE THINGS
IT DOESN'T TAKE ROCKET SCIENCE TO DO MINIMAL WORK

Why do you lil' shits keep making LAYERS and LAYERS of unnecessary abstraction and then call it goddamn progress???
Dude what the fuck is this UEFI shit?!
Why the hell do I NEED to import a frigging library and read tons of boring and overly complicated documentation just so I can paint a pixel on the screen now uh??
Alright alright yeah so the BIOS is a little basic but daaaamit son if you want something a bit more complicated you make it yourself or install an OS that provides it! Like we've been doing it for years!!!
Dude, you don't get to know what a file system is until I tell you!
The PC be like:
"You wanna dereference the 0x0 pointer? There you go: it's 0xE9DF41, anything else?
You wanna write to the screen? Ok I have a perfectly convinient interrupt setup for that.
Wanna paint a pixel yellow? Ok, just call this other interruption. Theere we go.
And it only took four bytes and a nanosecond to do it."

That shit works, and if you want something more complex, but not too much, that still runs efficiently install DOS.
Don't mess around with the hardware pleeease.
We can still understand what's going on down there. Once UEFI steps in, it'll be like sealing a door forever. Long live BIOS damn it all!

I’m working on a new app I’m pretty excited about.

I’m taking a slightly novel (maybe 🥲) approach to an offline password manager. I’m not saying that online password managers are unreliable, I’m just saying the idea of giving a corporation all of my passwords gives me goosebumps.

Originally, I was going to make a simple “file encrypted via password” sort of thing just to get the job done. But I’ve decided to put some elbow grease into it, actually.

The elephant in the room is what happens if you forget your password? If you use the password as the encryption key, you’re boned. Nothing you can do except set up a brute-forcer and hope your CPU is stronger than your password was.

Not to mention, if you want to change your password, the entire data file will need to be re-encrypted. Not a bad thing in reality, but definitely kinda annoying.

So actually, I came up with a design that allows you to use security questions in addition to a password.

But as I was trying to come up with “good” security questions, I realized there is virtually no such thing. 99% of security question answers are one or two words long and come from data sets that have relatively small pools of answers. The name of your first crush? That’s easy, just try every common name in your country. Same thing with pet names. Ice cream flavors. Favorite fruits. Childhood cartoons. These all have data sets in the thousands at most. An old XP machine could run through all the permutations over lunch.

So instead I’ve come up with these ideas. In order from least good to most good:

1) [thinking to remove this] You can remove the question from the security question. It’s your responsibility to remember it and it displays only as “Question #1”. Maybe you can write it down or something.

2) there are 5 questions and you need to get 4 of them right. This does increase the possible permutations, but still does little against questions with simple answers. Plus, it could almost be easier to remember your password at this point.

All this made me think “why try to fix a broken system when you can improve a working system”

So instead,

3) I’ve branded my passwords as “passphrases” instead. This is because instead of a single, short, complex word, my program encourages entire sentences. Since the ability to brute force a password decreases exponentially as length increases, and it is easier to remember a phrase rather than a complicated amalgamation or letters number and symbols, a passphrase should be preferred. Sprinkling in the occasional symbol to prevent dictionary attacks will make them totally uncrackable.

In addition? You can have an unlimited number of passphrases. Forgot one? No biggie. Use your backup passphrases, then remind yourself what your original passphrase was after you log in.

All this accomplished on a system that runs entirely locally is, in my opinion, interesting. Probably it has been done before, and almost certainly it has been done better than what I will be able to make, but I’m happy I was able to think up a design I am proud of.

Calling something "idempotent" is fucking stupid. Why do you have to overcomplicate an already complicated shit such as terraform?

Why not call it unchangeable? Something that can be understood by a 2 year old. What even is the "immutable" word for if not even that is being used??? Why have 2+ words that define the same shit. Are u fking stupid who the fuck coined this phrase Idempotent and thought it was a good idea

When i read idempotent i have to remember and translate in my mind that it actually means "not changeable". On contrary theres "Non-Idempotent" so this fucks up the complexity even more cause Now i have to translate it as "non-not changeable -> which means it is everything But not changeable -> so if it is NOT not changeable -> it means it IS changeable" Fffuck offf

What exactly is a full-stack developer/engineer? I'm confused.

So, I worked as a freelance webdev for a US company where I redesigned a pretty complicated website from scratch with PHP, mysql, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5. I only mention those because it will important later.
Basically, it's a lame mvc framework I wrote which heavily relied on AJAX and bootstrap modals.
I built from mysql <=> PHP -> UI
I Also built an android app that communicates with the php api

I worked for 4.6 years and they were kind enough to give me the designation "Full Stack Engineer" so I could put that on my resume. Alright, cool.

Then I go to this interview and one interviewer took offense. He told me that, there are 3 tiers of web dev; Database, Backend shit and UI. And I'm not a full-stack engineer. He then asked me if I worked with frameworks like laravel, symphony etc. [I did but not in this project]. I didn't know what to say. The other interviewer tried to help me, "Do you know what it means? Or have you ever worked with React.js or Angular?".

Didn't get the job and I'm so embarrassed and just feel like I'm a fraud. How could I not know what full-stack is? And why did I put it in my resume? Fuck!

Anyway can anyone tell me what "full- stack *" is?

>inb4
>incoherent
>bad engrish
Just fuck my shit up fam

Is it just me or are books on algorithms split between being too simplistic and being too detailed to be practical. I read Donald Knuth's book "The Art of Computer Programming Vol.1" read about 10% of it , which is like 3 chapters. I really enjoyed those chapters, Knuth's is such a genius but then the rest of the book was so complicated that the introduction and definition of terms was longer than some whole chapters in the same book. I decided to look for another, found a really good one, but it was analyzing algorithms in Java, sigh, I hardly code in Java so it was exactly easy for me to follow when he keeps mentioning the "comparable" attribute on sorting algorithms. I then got another really followed it till the keep on referencing indicator variables, I had read 3 books now and had not had of these indicator variables. Am sure they are not that common in the Computer Science literature so I was left wondering why I had to learn to analyze code with indicator variables though it was not a standardized in the "Computer Culture" would I be the only one who does this?.. I hence gave up on learning algorithms till I got that book that was just right for me

Feel like shit, can't focus on work, exam coming up in about 2 weeks...
These stupid numerical algorithms are easy, and yet I manage to get stuck on every shitty little detail, I panic, and I completely lose focus.

This shit has been destroying my academic career... Can't focus properly anymore, cannot study even the simplest things - things that I used to do off the top of my head just a year ago.

My sleep schedule is FUBAR, it's a miracle if I manage to stick to the same timezone for three nights in a row.

Yet I'm still learning new things, trying out stuff and solving problems. Just not the ones that I need to pass my exams.
And before anyone says that university is useless and whatnot: I'm studying aerospace engineering.
I love it, I'm having great fun, learning amazing things, and I've met a lot of amazing people thanks to it. It's one of the few choices in life that I am certain of, and would gladly repeat over and over again.

I've burned myself out from stress, far harder and longer than I've ever done before, and I cannot figure out a way to recover from it.
I've been doing better in the last month or so, but I still cannot get any proper work done, and this is gonna bite me in the ass really hard, once again.

Funny story: I had 3 days of break between the end of the previous semester and the beginning of this one. 3 days of pure freedom.
In those 3 days, I spontaneously reverted to a normal sleep schedule (didn't even need an alarm clock) and felt like a mountain had been lifted off my shoulders.

A year ago I had no idea what truly panicking in the middle of an exam felt like.
My mind had never gone completely blank.
I had no idea what impaired cognitive ability felt like.
This shit is scary.

Why do our minds have to make things so complicated?

Wtf. Why is using mail templates in nodejs so complicated in comparison to eg Laravel?!?! I have to install 3 packages with 20+ dependencies and setting it up is a hell -.- I'm losing my love for node since I got to know laravel

So, I have a friend and he asked me to do a discord bot for him. (The language was kinda up to me and I chose Python). Nothing complicated (theoretically). I coded it, tested it and sent it to him. But after installing it, he got a different issue EVERY single day. And he didn't change anything! The most infuriating part is, that I couldn't even reproduce the issues he had. WHY? Why can't it just work? Why can't a simple project not just be simple?

i swear sometimes windows can just piss you off. like why. luvit.exe is in the SAME folder as octi.lua. command prompt sees it and runs it, but powershell apparently doesn't like that and wants to make things complicated.

also inb4 im called a total idiot

Why does maven for eclipse not do what I want? Am I just doing it wrong, or is it too complicated to get an executable jar with all dependency plugins packaged, where no alert like "main class not found" will pop up at execution?!?

I'm tempted to join a cybersecurity challenge and give it a shot. The only problem is that the dates for the admission tests are fully overlapping with my exam period at university, and I *need* to pass some exams this time.
Why does it always have to be so complicated?

So I'm I'll right now and my boss needed to upload an app to Apple store.

So the app was made in unity and it already takes like 5m just to build from unity to xcode.

After that. He could not figure out how to upload the stuff bc there was a missing provisioning profile and then the team information was missing and then other tens of stuff.

Now android does not have this problem at all, like why is iOS so complicated? Fuck Apple

A lot of you here rant about devs being arogant or expecting you to think for a little bit with own head and then write a proper string that will help dev answer straightforward without guessing what the author smoked or so for which there's even a tutorial made (wasn't there always). But I don't see any rants about the other side of the coin.

Let's say you are a random dude, not even that arogant type. You see a question, no answers, everyone piss on that question because it's just a mess. Yet you find yourself in a good mood, so let's help the poor soul with th trouble. Answer like from a book for kids, fully explained example and...

No points, no accepted answer, but not even any feedback! Was my answer wrong? Did I miss something? How can I improve it? Was the example too complicated?

This is exactly the type of idiot that deserves a kick in the ass. It's no site, for hanging spam! Why the hell does that kind of idiot think there's even an option for own answer? People will come back to the question eventually and what will they found? An answer, which probably isn't even correct!

(not really talking about a specific answer/question, so no need to search)

all this talk of australian crypto laws got me thinking. here's a hypothetical (this might get a little complicated):

for the sake of the security facade, the government decides to not ban encryption outright. BUT they decide that all crypto will use the same key. therefore you can not directly read encrypted things, but it's not really encrypted anymore is it?

part two: there's a concept called chicken sexing, named after people who determine the sex of baby chicks. male chicks are pretty useless and expensive to keep alive, so they are eaten. female chicks go on to lay eggs, so ideally, from a financial standpoint, you only raise hens to maturity. this is nearly impossible to discern early on so at first you're just straight up guessing. is this one female? sure? that one? no? really 50/50. BUT if you have a skilled chicken sexer looking over your shoulder, saying right or wrong, then eventually you get better. why? nobody knows. they can't explain it. nobody can. you just sort of "know" when it's female or not. some people can do 1000s of chicks/hr with success up to 98% but nobody can explain how to tell them apart.

part three. final part:

after years, even decades of using this encryption with only one key, I wonder if people (even if only people who are regularly exposed to crypto like NSA analysts or cryptographers) can ever learn to understand it. in the same way as above. you don't know exactly what it says. or how you know it. you didn't run an algorithm in your head or decrypt it. but somehow you get the gist.

28464e294af01d1845bcd21 roughly translates to "just bought a PS5! WOOT!" or even just pick out details. PS5. excited. bought.

but how do you know that? idk. just do.

oh what a creepy future it has become.

Why in the hell does everyone have to have a different fucking CMS and why do they all make it so goddamn difficult to put a simple javascript in the head?

it's 2016 fuckers, sometimes the end user hires a dev to do things and I can't do shit in your fucking site-builder. I want to add a tiny javascript specifically for fb pixel, but frankly this is how most analytics work and it shouldn't be a complicated task for someone to perform if you built a halfway functional fucking CMS.

One simple function is all it would take to let users put a little bit of js in the head, fuck you could even name it something scary to keep idiots away or hide it behind a developers options in the settings or something that would allow someone with the IQ of a dolphin or higher to install some goddamn tracking code on the fucking shitstorm of a site your "builder" came up with.

your SEO practices suck too, but that's a rant for another time

When I follow a lesson or a tutorial nothing fucking work. Why a thing works to all the world but not to me? WHY? WHAT DID I DO?
The amazing thing is that they are not advanced things concerning complicated arguments, but also with basic guides.
Why the hell should I receive an error if I run "npm install <module>"? And for make things better, it looks like I'm the only one in the whole internet to have this problem.
I would have to to be a farmer

Firebase is a fucking piece of dog shit.

Testing is so bad and complicated to set up, I've spent two days trying to write ONE fucking simple test with an auth middleware via expressjs. Why firebase doesn't mock my dung, you pieces of shit. Even the documentation is all spread out, it's difficult and terrible to follow. I would rather build my own backend because of all the workarounds I have to make because of your limited SHIT product. Even the type libraries are shit, import Timestamp? NOPE. YOU HAVE TO IMPORT FIREBASE TO IMPORT A TIMESTAMP. Learn to define types, shitty google devs. You all suck, thanks for making shitty clients sdk's.

I hope this piece of shit gets deprecated and my clients stops using it.

Trying to make a nodejs backend is pure hell. It doesn't contain much builtin functionality in the first place and so you are forced to get a sea of smaller packages to make something that should be already baked in to happen. Momentjs and dayjs has thought nodejs devs nothing about the fact node runtime must not be as restrained as a browser js runtime. Now we are getting temporal api in browser js runtime and hopefully we can finally handle timezone hell without going insane. But this highlights the issue with node. Why wait for it to be included in js standard to finally be a thing. develop it beforehand. why are you beholden to Ecma standard. They write standards for web browser not node backend for god sake.

Also, authentication shouldn't be that complicated. I shouldn't be forced to create my own auth. In laravel scaffolding is already there and is asking you to get it going. In nodejs you have to get jwt working. I understand that you can get such scaffolding online with git clone but why? why express doesn't provide buildtin functions for authentication? Why for gods sake, you "npm install bcrypt"? I have to hash my own password before hand. I mean, realistically speaking nodejs is builtin with cryptography libraries. Hashmap literally uses hashing. Why can't it be builtin. I supposed any API needed auth. Instead I have to sign and verfiy my token and create middlewares for the job of making sure routes are protected.

I like the concept of bidirectional communication of node and the ugly thing, it's not impressive. any goddamn programming language used for web dev should realistically sustain two-way communication. It just a question of scaling, but if you have a backend that leverages usockets you can never go wrong. Because it's written in c. Just keep server running and sending data packets and responding to them, and don't finalize request and clean up after you serve it just keep waiting for new event.

Anyway, I hope out of this confused mess we call nodejs backend comes clean solutions just like Laravel came to clean the mess that was PHP backend back then.

Express is overrated by the way, and mongodb feels like a really ludicrous idea. we now need graphql in goddamn backend because of mongodb and it's cousins of nosql databases.

Fuck me Amazon cert manager is so fucking complicated. Just do it all for me; why do i have to providing a route 53 entry (TECHNICALLY 2 IF I WANT MY NAME CORRECT) BEFORE I set up my load balancer??!! I should be able to test a load balancer first and then add on tls, not have to get a cert all set up and then sit on my fucking ass when the load balancer shits itself

Has someone used AEM, CQ, Adobe stuff? Do you know why it is over complicated?