Last few months have been quite calm. Nothing to really rant about. The egocentric asshole PM (see my past rants) left the company, so things have been better at work. I thought that there would be so much chaos because of all the roles that he had (project manager, engineering manager, lead developer, dev ops) but we managed to keep things running smoothly, which shouldn't have been a surprise for me, but I was a bit scared at first. Relieved, because well... the egocentric asshole left, but a bit scared either way. Anyway, everything has been fine. I'm pretty much the lead frontend developer now, even tho there's no official structure or hierarchy, everyone just keeps looking up to me for help and guidance. I've received a good pay raise. Work has been interesting and challenging. All's well.

This all coincided with me deciding to take a little break from devrant, and the lack of ranting material kept me from coming back. I just dropped by to say hello and check how devrant is going. I hope you are all doing well :)

Open source, free, decentralized social network:

https://www.manyver.se/

Conversation between some kind of executives on the table next to mine:

A: do you know this app that'll let you hack into any Wi-Fi? You just click here, copy that and paste it here... and I hacked the restaurant's Wi-Fi. **laughs**

B: oh, only X? Bought. Wait... what is this "allow app to access your location"?

A: yeah, click "allow". You should also install a VPN.

B: what? BPN?

A: no, no. VPN. When you use a VPN you have a secure internet connection. You're protected from tracking, hacking and virus.

Something I ranted about 1 year and 2 days ago just saved my life today. Those lost hours that day saved me a few hours today.

I wonder though: if I hadn't written about it on devRant, would I still remember it today?

Sometimes I feel like my job is just babysitting my coworkers. I need to find a way to teach them how to think for themselves.

I'm not a senior dev but I am the one my coworkers turn to for help. I like helping (even if it's annoying some times), so I'm thinking about embracing the mentor role in my team. My plan for now is to stop giving the answers right away (which I usually do to get back to my work) and instead try to guide my coworkers into figuring out the issue themselves. This will take more of my time of course and will require I practice my patience in a possibly stressful environment (depending on how close deadlines are), but I'm hoping that it'll produce better coworkers (one can dream, at least).

Do any of you know of any good reading resources about mentoring or becoming a mentor, specifically in tech/development?

Coworker: I give up! Please help me!

Me: What's up?

C: Take a look at this. I have this function here that gets the tab index and I'm passing it to the Tabs component over there. I'm logging the index and as you can see it's 3, but the Tabs component isn't working. However if I replace the function call with a 3 it works!

Coworker 2: While you were explaining all that, shellbug already thought about at least 3 reasons why that isn't working.

Me: **sighs** Of what type is the value that function is returning?

C: **stares at me for a few seconds** It's a number.

Me: Are you sure?

C: Well, it's returning 3.

Me: Please do a typeof.

It was string.

RIP headphones

Need suggestions for new ones.

My MacBook's graphic card might be dying, or something I have installed or plugged in is causing graphical issues.

Worst code I ever had to touch: a React application, createClass era, before redux was a thing, that had everything in one fucking component.

Every fucking thing.

This was a simple video chat application, but still. The component's code included:

- Views (contact list and video call screen) and logic to switch between them;
- All application state;
- API calls;
- Websocket message handling;
- WebRTC logic (getUserMedia and p2p streaming).

This app was built by one person in one month for a demo. That person left the company after the demo and I had to maintain that mess without zero React knowledge (I was doing angular at that time). On his last day he gave me a crash course and an overview of how the app worked.

Around that time I attended a few meetups and a conference with talks about React. That, my curiosity and ability to learn by refactoring helped me a lot when I had to add new features and fix bugs in that app.

Bug I had to fix today: some elements in our React app were being swapped with other elements.

We had `<foo>bar</foo>` on the component but on the html `foo` was being swapped with some other element in our app. It's contents ("bar" in the example) were being left in place, though, so we were getting `<baz>bar</baz>`.

This would only happen when running on production mode. On development everything was fine.

Also, everything seemed fine on the React dev tools. `foo` was where it was supposed to be, but on the html it was somewhere else.

Weirdest shit I ever saw when using React. I found a way to go around it and applied that fix, but I'm still trying to track this down to the source.

The worst part was waiting for fucking webpack to finish the production bundle on every fucking change I wanted to test. I didn't miss the change-save-compile-test flow at all.

What a shit day.

I came back to work after a two week vacation to find out that some people left the company and others are leaving soon.

What the fuck happened while I was gone?

When your root password is root.

Fuck air line companies.

They always lose your shit.

Like Ensiferum here. Airlines lost their shit so they they have to play acoustic.

Acoustic most pit motherfuckers. That's right. Acoustic. Most pit.

Fucking metal! 🤘

So drunk I'm starting to so see code on the music.

Or music in the code.

I dunno anymore.

Yes, Github, please load those 0 conversations that you've hidden.

After I submitted a code review:

Coworker: What did you mean with this comment?

Me: **translating the comment to Portuguese** Your Footer component isn't rendering any footer element.

Coworker: **blank stare** what?

Me: There is no footer tag here. **points to Footer component**

Coworker: **computing... found approximate result** I'm rendering the Footer here. **shows me where the Footer component is being rendered**

Me: **internal facepalm** Yes, I know, but I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that inside the Footer component you should be rendering a footer element.

Coworker: **segmentation fault** what?

And then I had to explain that there is an HTML footer element. To a mid level frontend developer (or so they say).

HTML is not only divs, for fuck sake.

Am I the only one that gets fucking pissed when others write unnecessary <div>s?

I know sometimes it's necessary for styling, but my coworkers do it because it's easier to add a new div than extending the style of an existing element.

What's worst, when I do it they reject my PR saying to create a new div instead. Fucking fuck off.

My team lead force pushed to master. This guys always complains when we merge PRs with wip or fixup commits and he just did it himself and tried to cover it up doing a rebase on the master branch.

Good job fucking up everyone. 👍

I was fucking paused that some asshole made me spill my beer, but these crazy cabrones have a way to lift up anyone's mood. 🤘

Article title: "Mastering React component composition using children"

<image of a couple holding a baby>

Image caption: "Parents with child."

**Reads the title again**

Wait what?

The office toilet chronicles - episode 3

Someone left shit on the toilet seat. That's right. Shit. On the toilet seat.

This is the second time this happens. I'm working with fucking monkeys here. One of these days they'll start throwing feces at each other. I just hope I'll be long gone when it happens.

Me: Which one do you want me to review first, PR 1 or 2?

Coworker: Yes.

The UI is having a really bad day.

Why don't devs read the fucking docs?

Time and time again I find my coworkers inventing new ways of doing stuff that could easily be done with existing features.

Today I saw this on a code review (functions are from lodash):

head(filter(...))

That's what fucking `find` does, you dense motherfucker!

This is just a tiny example. I've seen so much of this shit. Sometimes it's almost art how they find ways to solve problems without actually reading the docs.

I don't fucking believe it! Who the fuck navigates on right click!? Invision, you fucking piece of shit! Can't you do one fucking thing right?

There's a weird joy in implementing the design style guide for a new project.

Now, if only the designers would stop making changes to it I would be so happy.

Boss decided to limit Wi-Fi access only to company computers.
Ended up blocking everyone, including himself.

My social life consists of spending much of my free time with my girlfriend, seeing my close family on weekends and meeting with a few friends from time to time.

It's enough for me and since there's not much of it, it isn't hard to "balance". Whatever that means.

Seriously tho, "social/work life balance" is subjective. It depends on what you need to feel good and happy. What works for some will not work for others. Don't try to push others into being social when they don't want to. Don't give me that "you need to go out more" crap. I don't. I'm fine just like this. I prefer to stay home and see a movie with my girlfriend.

That "people need to be social" mindset made me feel bad about myself for too long because I'm just not like that and people keep pushing that idea into my head. I'll go out with you when I feel like it, don't push it. Stop asking me every fucking weekend ffs.

React devtools in Firefox is such a pile of shit! It's slow, it hangs when selecting and it doesn't fucking show the whole component tree when it's too deep. I'm forced to switch to Chrome when I need to debug.

Anyone here has problems with it too?

Alone in the office. Everyone left to see Portugal play. Time to blast some heavy fucking metal. 🤘