penguins ...

So my boss is staring a new security oriented product and he asked one of my colleagues to prepare a presentation about the possible attacks on the product.

During the presentation there was a section on DoS attacks. The boss didn't know what DoS was and after a brief explanation, he interrupted the presentation and said DDoS is not a threat because there is no data stolen. This is a webapp.

Ok, so I need some clarity from you good folk, please.

My lead developer is also my main mentor, as I am still very much a junior. He carved out most of his career in PHP, but due to his curious/hands-on personality, he has become proficient with Golang, Docker, Javascript, HTML/CSS.

We have had a number of chats about what I am best focusing on, both personally and related to work, and he makes quite a compelling case for the "learn as many things as possible; this is what makes you truly valuable" school of thought. Trouble is, this is in direct contrast to what I was taught by my previously esteemed mentor, Gordon Zhu from watchandcode.com. "Watch and Code is about the core skills that all great developers possess. These skills are incredibly important but sound boring and forgettable. They’re things like reading code, consistency and style, debugging, refactoring, and test-driven development. If I could distill Watch and Code to one skill, it would be the ability to take any codebase and rip it apart. And the most important component of that ability is being able to read code."

As you can see, Gordon always emphasised language neutrality, mastering the fundamentals, and going deep rather than wide. He has a ruthlessly high barrier of entry for learning new skills, which is basically "learn something when you have no other option but to learn it".

His approach served me well for my deep dive into Javascript, my first language. It is still the one I know the best and enjoy using the most, despite having written programs in PHP, Ruby, Golang and C# since then. I have picked up quite a lot about different build pipelines, development environments and general web development as a result of exposure to these other things, so it isn't a waste of time.

But I am starting to go a bit mad. I focus almost exclusively on quite data intensive UI development with Vue.js in my day job, although there is an expectation I will help with porting an app to .NET Core 3 in a few months. .NET is rather huge from what I have seen so far, and I am seriously craving a sense of focus. My intuition says I am happiest on the front end, and that focusing on becoming a skilled Javascript engineer is where I will get the biggest returns in mastery, pay and also LIFE BALANCE/WELLBEING...

Any thoughts, people? I would be interested to hear peoples experiences regarding depth vs breadth when it comes to the real world.

“scaling”

code review

Question about burnout here!

I've been a developer for a year and a half now and I've reached a point of burnout. Experiencing a lot of external stress as well as internal (handled well with a fantastic and supportive team)

I'm taking some time away from work and having a much needed break but I'm worried that for now, I can't code! I've got no drive at all to learn anything new, I'm just sat here waiting for a production push.

I'm by no means thinking of changing careers or leaving my current role and the lack of concentration is likely as a result of stress, I just wanted to hear some of your stories so I feel a little less alienated!

Being new to this is pretty overwhelming at times!

We have a quiet room
WHAT THA FUCK DO I NEED A QUIET ROOM FOR, I NEED A ROOM TO FUCKING RAGE BREAK SHIT AND FUCKING KILL SOME FUCKING CATS AND 9DFEHYPIUFHVBQHEWFOQ0EFVQOEIIIIUCFQOYWREIUXBNMFYKJDTYNSBGVBF

Found on a forum 😅😂

How do you comfort a JavaScript bug?

You console it!

;)

GIT PUSH LIVE

Is logout useless on a Rest API that uses JWT token?

Discuss

rant¡

Client: "Can you add some logos to the homepage?"
Me: "Sure, I've just added it, take a look at staging."
Client: "Great, we can move it to live"

** 5 days later after it being moved to live and telling them I'm going on holiday. **

Client: "EMERGENCY change logo now, we need to change x logo. These logos look crappy too. How did this happen?"

Fuck this. I'm not employed by you, you don't have any right to speak to me like that. Especially after working tirelessly for your company.

**sent email back explaining how to upload files**

Told them not to contact me unless it's technically related.

What exactly is a junior developer?

I mean what it depends on?

I ask because some colleagues have told I'm not junior but I have a junior role at my company

I don't even care and I don't like these classifications of devs but when someone asks me if I'm junior I actually don't know what to answer

I thought it was getting crazy when I read about ninja developer role but let's not talk about it

PS: I have been coding for 5 years now if it matters

Um, thanks Meetup.

Please tell me this isn't real

Someone in Europe: It's really hot here.
Me: oh really? here it's perfect

Next the 'Then do'
:-)

I hate my fucking job but I can't resign as I can't afford myself financially. Fuck my life

Shared screen with a client over Skype. Showed them in Postman that their API wasn't working as expected. It was expecting a json. Instead it was giving error code 400 instead of 200.
Message :
"Error: No error. All OK"

I'll never forget the words of the client:

"Don't use all this fancy software, you don't know how to call APIs, open Internet Explorer or chrome and paste it in the bar. You'll see All OK, means all is okay."

*insert you dense mf meme here*

What in the fuck? Do all beginner programmers just flat out not read error messages?

Remember: never email the client when sleep deprived and in a rush.

The LinkedIn suggested answers are surely generated by some kind of very sophisticated and clever AI. 🤔

- "Hi Jakub, are you still interested in remote work only?"
- "Haha"

Maybe the blog was written in PHP as well? 🤔

How to create a decent portfolio?
I'm a mobile dev and almost all tye apps I developed are for private use inside companies.

So relatable.

This new guy has a senior position and is 20 years older than me.
Im not a senior because I didn’t study (still have 10y of experience) and i don’t care about the title as Long as the salary is good.
But.. he sucks, he doesn’t know basics, keeps overengineering, I have to explain basic stuff to him over and over again like JOIN in sql, lambda, method references and async threads in java..

He probably makes much more than me and has a higher title..
I feel like nobody notices because I keep helping him to finish his shit.

That sucks!

Does anyone else feel like their brains aren't working, like they cant focus on anything and this has been going on for more than a week now?

I know there are things to do. I have gone through huge pain created github issues for those things but my brain just seems to reject the idea that it can solve those issues. Just feels like playing a game or just killing time would be best!

Needless to say I hate it.

Happens/happening with others?

*This morning*
HR Lady: we saw your profile and we think it fits what we're looking for, I just need to know what you use for front-end programming

Me: I use ReactJs, AngularJs and for backend NodeJs

HR Lady: Hmm, so you don't use Javascript

Me: ... (unhandled exception in my head)

Me: M'am everything I mentioned is using Javascript

HR Lady: oh! ok.

Google translate translated lorem ipsum into this philosophical nightmare

Why are job postings so bad?
Like, really. Why?

Here's four I found today, plus an interview with a trainwreck from last week.
(And these aren't even the worst I've found lately!)

------

Ridiculous job posting #1:
* 5 years React and React Native experience -- the initial release of React Native was in May 2013, apparently. ~5.7 years ago.
* Masters degree in computer science.
* Write clean, maintainable code with tests.
* Be social and outgoing.

So: you must have either worked at Facebook or adopted and committed to both React and React Native basically immediately after release. You must also be in academia (with a masters!), and write clean and maintainable code, which... basically doesn't happen in academia. And on top of (and really: despite) all of this, you must also be a social butterfly! Good luck ~

------

Ridiculous job posting #2:
* "We use Ruby on Rails"
* A few sentences later... "we love functional programming and write only functional code!"

Cue Inigo Montoya.

------

Ridiculous job posting #3:
* 100% remote! Work from anywhere, any time zone!
* and following that: You must have at least 4 work hours overlap with your coworkers per day.
* two company-wide meetups per quarter! In fancy places like Peru and Tibet! ... TWO PER QUARTER!?

Let me paraphrase: "We like the entire team being remote, together."

------

Ridiculous job posting #4:
* Actual title: "Developer (noun): Superhero poised to change the world (apply within)"
* Actual excerpt: "We know that headhunters are already beating down your door. All we want is the opportunity to earn our right to keep you every single day."
* Actual excerpt: "But alas. A dark and evil power is upon us. And this… ...is where you enter the story. You will be the Superman who is called upon to hammer the villains back into the abyss from whence they came."

I already applied to this company some time before (...surprisingly...) and found that the founder/boss is both an ex cowboy dev and... more than a bit of a loon. If that last part isn't obvious already? Sheesh. He should go write bad fantasy metal lyrics instead.

------

Ridiculous interview:
* Service offered for free to customers
* PHP fanboy angrily asking only PHP questions despite the stack (Node+Vue) not even freaking including PHP! To be fair, he didn't know anything but PHP... so why (and how) is he working there?
* Actual admission: No testing suite, CI, or QA in place
* Actual admission: Testing sometimes happens in production due to tight deadlines
* Actual admission: Company serves ads and sells personally-identifiable customer information (with affiliate royalties!) to cover expenses
* Actual admission: Not looking for other monetization strategies; simply trying to scale their current break-even approach.

------

I find more of these every time I look. It's insane.
Why can't people be sane and at least semi-intelligent?