Remember that time I taught a "senior" full stack developer what the HTTP PATCH verb was, DURING an interview?

Didn't get the job.

Yeah. Those were good times.

Hey devrant fam!,

Hope everyone is well, recently I've been really looking into contributing in some open source projects!, So i'd love to ask anyone have some advice? Is there a possibility of having a 'Beginner' open source project? would love some advice :-), its my first time going down this path!

thank you!

KDE's new update is finally here.
I can finally use emoji in my rants. 🥰

When learning something new, say a new language or framework, do you go through the docs or tutorials, or do you just learn by doing and figure it out as you go?

I like to learn by doing and getting a finished project and start modding and changing stuff. what do you guys do?

I deployed to production Friday before Christmas holidays.

My team lead thinks using a double Not operator in javascript is too confusing and not readable.

Opinions?

I was laid off. The reason? Well, they didn't really want to say but they were clear it wasn't due to performance. (Thankfully, I got severence pay.) From my perspective it really came out of nowhere, no warnings or even hints that this was coming, which has me spinning. 😵 If I'm doing well at my job and the company is doing well, how in the seven hells could I get laid off??

What they said was partly the reason didn't seem true, or not the whole truth. They essentially stated that "they talked with everyone I worked with" (probably not true based on their decision, but who knows) and came to the conclusion I wasn't suitable to work on large teams, and that's the direction they are moving in. As if it wasn't something that could be improved on 🤔

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best communicator face-to-face, mainly due to my social anxiety but also because I have too many thoughts. It can be difficult to condense them down for other people in the heat of the moment. (I'm an INTP, if that helps you to understand what I mean.) However, I know I'm a pretty good communicator overall since I listen and pay special attention to phrasing and word choice. So most people I worked with there seemed quite satisfied with communication with me. There were only 2-3 out of more than 12 who I had any difficulty working with.

So why did I have trouble properly working with a couple people? I hesitate to say this but, like other jobs I've had, well... they didn't have either the experience or knowledge to understand me. Basically, they were stupid. I was pretty frustrated working with such inadequately prepared people on a complex project with ludicrously short deadlines, and had no desire to work overtime so I could educate or guide them.

To give perspective, one React developer didn't understand how object properties work with JavaScript. 🤦‍♀️ (They are references, by the way. And yes you can have an object reference inside another object!) Another React developer thought it was okay to have side effects during the render lifestyle because they didn't affect the component itself, even if it was a state change in a parent component. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

So what is the real reason I lost my job, if not performance? Could be I pissed off the stupid (and loud) ones which hurt my reputation. My main theory, however, is that I was raising the cost of the company's healthcare. I had a diseased organ so I did miss some work or worked from home more than I should have, and used my very good health insurance to the fullest extent I could. Of course, if they say that's the reason then they can get sued.

Huge bummer, whatever the case. I definitely learned some lessons from this situation that others in a similar position could find useful. I can write that up if anyone expresses interest.

Honestly though, this is a good thing in the end, because I was already planning to leave in a month or 2 once I found a better job. I was waiting for the right time for the project I was on and for my own financial stability. So I'm trying hard not to let this affect my self-esteem and think of it as an opportunity to get my dream job, which is working with a remote-first company that is focused on improving the human condition.

Being unemployed isn't ideal, but at least I didn't have to quit! And I get to have a bit of a vacation of a sort.

Why the fuck does Apple hate developers so much? I just want to test and play around a bit. Why do I have to own a fucking Mac? Why do I need to pay 99$ a year just to install a debug build on my own device?! It's literally impossible to get into ios development without being rich or having some kind of plan for revenue...

Testing my app on Android:
Install Android studio -> plug in phone -> run code in Android Studio or simply install the resulting apk on your phone.

Trying to test my app on my iPad:
Google how to build app for iPad -> reading that you have to own a Mac to run xcode when you want to build Code for iOS -> searching for a workaround -> find a way to build my app online -> setting the tool and building it -> Trying out 5 different tools to sideload the app, no one works -> finding out that you need a developer account to sign the app for testing purposes on MY OWN DEVICE. I really would appreciate it if I would be able to install personal stuff for testing and LEARNING without being forced into insolvency. Why are people putting up with this kind of bullshit?

Job market these days... 😂

*Taken*

Me: We have a bug, we are not sure what's really happening yet. We have to look into it.

Project manager: what's happening

Me: We dont know yet

Project manager: How much time will it take to fix it

Me: We dont kn... actually *quick maths* unknown multiplied by "I dont know" divided by logic and addition of past experience - how many times we cant put time on bugs multiplied by we have been here before subtracted by the sqaure root of can we have time to investigate first?

Me: ....mhh an hour or so (then I remember Harry Potter wasnt my classmate) oh actually 2 hrs (in my head, safer)

Bug takes 2 days to solve 🙃

Project manager: you said 2hrs

Me to myself: I said it's a bug. A damn bug.

1. take a web application working in somebody computer since 4 years with tons of features.
2. Believe that the application is the future and solve brilliantly a general market need.
3. multiply income of current only customer by 10: you are going to be rich.
3. start to install 2, 3 customers.
4. discover the application is shit. Doesn't solve well the problem. Functionalities are different for each customer
5. discover that customers are willing to pay 1/10th of the original customer
6. quickly reingeneer the application to a multitenant cloud application, because with 3 customers and different versions you are already in deep shit
7. keep giving away the application for free to flagship customers. With a lot of customisation developed for free.
8. reach 200 customers in 5 years and still no break even, but lot of debts
9. resort to financial tricks to keep the company going

Luckily money are not mine. They could be recovered.
Unluckily the time spent was mine. It couldn't be recovered
Hope that the application will finally crash so that I can move on to the next thing: retirement in a mental asylum

A wild Devrant bot has appeared!

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https://github.com/Hampusm/...

There is no BUG on release day, just some random features.

So I thought I will set up a PIN to make logging into the corporate PC easier. Hm... based on these requirements I can probably stick with password.

So a few days ago I felt pretty h*ckin professional.

I'm an intern and my job was to get the last 2003 server off the racks (It's a government job, so it's a wonder we only have one 2003 server left). The problem being that the service running on that server cannot just be placed on a new OS. It's some custom engineering document server that was built in 2003 on a 1995 tech stack and it had been abandoned for so long that it was apparently lost to time with no hope of recovery.

"Please redesign the system. Use a modern tech stack. Have at it, she's your project, do as you wish."

Music to my ears.

First challenge is getting the data off the old server. It's a 1995 .mdb file, so the most recent version of Access that would be able to open it is 2010.

Option two: There's an "export" button that literally just vomits all 16,644 records into a tab-delimited text file. Since this option didn't require scavenging up an old version of Access, I wrote a Python script to just read the export file.

And something like 30% of the records were invalid. Why? Well, one of the fields allowed for newline characters. This was an issue because records were separated by newline. So any record with a field containing newline became invalid.

Although, this did not stop me. Not even close. I figured it out and fixed it in about 10 minutes. All records read into the program without issue.

Next for designing the database. My stack is MySQL and NodeJS, which my supervisors approved of. There was a lot of data that looked like it would fit into an integer, but one or two odd records would have something like "1050b" which mean that just a few items prevented me from having as slick of a database design as I wanted. I designed the tables, about 18 columns per record, mostly varchar(64).

Next challenge was putting the exported data into the database. At first I thought of doing it record by record from my python script. Connect to the MySQL server and just iterate over all the data I had. But what I ended up actually doing was generating a .sql file and running that on the server. This took a few tries thanks to a lot of inconsistencies in the data, but eventually, I got all 16k records in the new database and I had never been so happy.

The next two hours were very productive, designing a front end which was very clean. I had just enough time to design a rough prototype that works totally off ajax requests. I want to keep it that way so that other services can contact this data, as it may be useful to have an engineering data API.

Anyways, that was my win story of the week. I was handed a challenge; an old, decaying server full of important data, and despite the hitches one might expect from archaic data, I was able to rescue every byte. I will probably be presenting my prototype to the higher ups in Engineering sometime this week.

Happy Algo!

Hi all! I've finally published my first open source project!

I give to you, The Web Toolbox! https://thewebtoolbox.cc/

A few years ago I used to make heavy use of thetoolbox.cc, but unfortunately it went offline. I thought I'd revive the project and improve upon the previous version.

I'm going to be adding new tools soon, and I'm really looking forward to any suggestions from the community.

Hope you all find it useful :)

A cache - related bug that gets triggered only at high loads, 10k parallel sessions or so.

Parsing 30GB of logs, trying to find something to work with....

yippee......

It works!

HR people working in tech companies, let's talk about them...

*phone rings and I pick up*
HR Lady: Hi, this is [name] from [company]. I'm calling you regarding your application you submitted [some date 2 months ago!].

Me: *realizing that I've applied 2 freaking months ago* Hmmm OK....

HR Lady: Yes, well, we asked for your GitHub account, but you seem to have forgotten to provide it.

Me: *open up the email and see that I've sent them my GitLab account* Well, I have the email right here and I did send you a git account. I mean, it's not GitHub specifically but it's a GitLab account, pretty much the same thing, you should be good with that.

HR Lady: OK, let me put you on hold for a minute.

*2-3 minutes passes*

HR Lady: Hi sir, I've asked my colleague [which I suppose is another HR] and he told me that they're not the same thing, we cannot proceed until you give us the right link, you need to send us a link to your GitHub account.

Me: I mean, they aren't the SAME EXACT thing, but both companies provide essentially the same service, it's like Messenger and WhatsApp. Look, I'm pretty sure that if you give this to another programmer they'll be fine.

HR Lady: No, Messenger and WhatsApp aren't the same thing. Sir, please stay polite. We need a GitHub account not a GitLab account.

Me: *mumbling* Oh boy.... M'am, it's OK, I don't need the job anyway, I've found something. Two months is a long time and I needed something quickly. Thank you, have a good day.

I found this in one of my older projects. And I felt it.

In a nutshell, i severely underestimated myself, applied to a bunch of places and now they all want to hire me. Oh well.

When you ask the design team to provide you with a svg of an image, and they give you an svg with a png inside it...

Javascript makes me want to flip
the table and say "Fuck this shit", but
I can never be sure what "this" refers
to.

Subject: FW: Twilio integration
Date: 20th June
From: <program-lead>

PractiseSafeHex I need you to fill in the dev completion dates for the Twilio task for the mobile team by EOD today. Backend have already supplied theres. Otherwise I will be forced to mark the task as “At Risk”. Please let me know if there is an issue or you are blocked.

—- Begin Forwarded Mail ——

Subject: Twilio integration
Date: 18th June
From: <program-lead>

Hi All,

Documenting today’s meeting minutes. Backend confirmed they will handle the Twilio integration from their side entirely. There will be no mobile work required for this task.

Thank you,
<program-lead>

So today I'm going to join Reddit
Tell me subreddits where I can learn more and at the same time it doesn't go too much above my head

Interests in which I'd like to invest time:
Machine learning
Statistics
Distributed systems
Or general computer science research

Suggest me

I asked my friend to design a flyer for an organization's annual dinner, asking her to send me an invoice so I could pay her (I can't design worth shit, she's doing me a huge favor).

She said she'll do it, declined payment, and doesn't even want me to get approval for her to put it in her portfolio...

How the hell do I pay her back for her work? If we lived in the same town, I'd at least take her to coffee and lunch, but she moved states and I moved countries :(

This will definitely trigger many but the truth regardless of how you feel is the greatest programmers are those who understand both the hardware level and software .. only then are you more than a dev or programmer.. you are an engineer...

I challenge the devs who dis believe to go out and learn to build circuits, write optimized, efficient bare metal code.: no sdk.. no api... no drivers ..remove the unneeded abstraction layers that have blinded you...build it yourself, expand your potential and understanding..

Not only will you become more valuable overall, but you will write better code as you are more conscious of performance and space and physics of the physical layer.

I’m not talking about Arduino or raspie

Those who stand strong that high level abstraction languages and use of third party apis is a sufficient sustainable platform of development are blind to reality.. the more people who only know those levels, the less people pushing the industry of the low level.., which is the foundation of everything in the industry.. without that low level software the high level abstractions and systems cannot run

Why did we have huge technology advancements from 70s to early 2000s.... because more people in our industry understood the hardware layer..: wrote the software at the less abstracted layers..

Yeah it takes longer todo things at that low level abstraction.. but good robust products that change the world and industry don’t take a few week or months to build.....

Take this with what you will... I’m just trying to open the eyes of the blind developers to the true nature and reality of our industry

Found this awesome license plate in Oslo today

8 am, got in to work, everything has exploded overnight. The servers are dead, the scripts aren't running, everyone has panicked. So many emails.. So many Skype messages. I wish I wasn't the only one who can fix it. Send help (and coffee).

Me: Want to copy this file to another computer
Bluetooth: Use me!
Google Drive: I'm better!
USB: I can help
Network shared folder: I'm in position!

Me: Let me add it as an attachment to a new email and download it on the other computer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯