Finally learning docker. I feel like it's too good to be true.

It's so funny how customers like the small and unimportant things. They are impressed by a display of skill rather than skill.

For instance, I needed to quickly create a password. So, I opened my terminal, typed in as always

dd if=/dev/urandom count=500 | base64 -w 0

Then I copied a random chunk of some 200 to 500 chars and copied it as the temporary password and sent it around.

I was told later on that I impressed with my technical know-how and skills...

But I guess, now that I impressed, I can profit of the halo effect.

Guess, take this as PSA. Sound confident. That's more important than being confident. They have no idea what's going on.

Code tells a story.

It is usually not especially interesting. It is not captivating. But it is a story.

The story often goes like this: Instead of using the class directly, an interface was used. Someone expects this implementation to change a lot. Or they want to break the logic of the code apart. Speed up compilation times. Maybe they plan on having multiple different implementations.

That's, well... no, it is not exciting. But sometimes you look at it and wonder why. And you muse to yourself, what could be the reason for this curious choice. Is the whole project written like that? Maybe two developer developed the feature together and they agreed at the very beginning to write the interface in order to be able to cleanly work in parallel. I did this with a colleague. We worked on a common feature. We decided to write an interface first, then we worked separately and in parallel on the two sides of the interface. In the end we left it in and we were asked why we decided to use an interface.

Code tells a story. But so very often now, the story I hear when I ask why is "copilot did it." Fuck you. And fuck your "hey, copilot says you could do something better" in merge reviews.

I don't care if you want to use AI. I don't think it is good. You dull your skills. But hey, I don't really care about it. I don't care if you decide to use a plastic fork to remove your left eye. I mean, I would have recommended a sharper instrument, but fuck, if you want to mutilate yourself. Go for it. But when git blame tells me it was you who wrote the code, then don't fucking excuse any decision with "copilot did it." And when copilot tells you there is an improvement in my merge request, you don't need to tell me that it came from copilot. That is no authority. If you think copilot is right, you argue for it, and you give me arguments and reasons. But if you don't even understand yourself why it is supposedly better, just fuck off.

Oh dang you guys have been busy enough that there are new rants all the way at the end of the recents list

I just learned that my distry (cachyos) has enabled and setup for https://waydro.id/ :D

Dear diary,

It's really amazing what learning curve AI has but what you are able to do with in the end. I think I finally fully understand now and delivered three projects today. i made a FastAPI port from Python to C using a monster vibe. I created a production grade webdav server with user management and quota support. The webdav market is very limited. It does support the whole RFC (Latest one for webdav). This was a huge project. It became perfectly what I wanted. And, I had to wait until Claue was done with my monster prompt and I had my language specification. So I tought, I do another one but the most minimal source code but still the implementation that I had described (so far). This resulted in a 504 lines of code single file interpreter with a modern looking language supporting OOP and complex functions like split() (yeah, that is a complex function). I've just built it on the side and have no intentions with it, but the source code is so beautifully done that it's worth a repository: https://retoor.molodetz.nl/retoor/.... It's in Python (not a serious project) but readable for everyone. It's interesting source code but does not contain any good patterns relating interpreter design. But still; it works well and has quite some examples. It's cool to be able to read a whole interpreter source code. Just like the wren language, I have read all. was very cool. Wren regarding source code quality always #1.

Showing off, guaranteed zero upvotes :P

I am just happy, finally I can build big quality things. Quality is WAY higher and more compleet than I would've done it myself. All the investment was not for nothing, that's great. I do not have double coude and whatnot because of vibing style. New hobbie.

Programming language is hard to get performant (in comparison to Python for example) while it IS a bytecode interpreter. String concat is very slow, but there are tricks for that. My C will be a bit like Arduino C. IIRC it is C without having to take length for strings into account. But the new version of syntax will be as my 504 lines project mentioned here.

Happy retoor (L)

This world can fuck right off.

March of 2025. I dove into a depression as a complication of my bipolar 2. Has less mania and more I want to die episodes. I noticed this as losing all interest in everything in my life. I DIDN'T HEED THE WARNING!!!

This results in me being distracted at work and struggling to learn a new platform. It also doesn't help that my supervisor keeps pulling me off the project to work on other shit. ALL OF WHICH I COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY. They even gave me a 4% raise in March. Apparently it didn't help my depression.

We get to May and my supervisor takes away the programming tool used to program the platform I am working on (embedded processor). I complain and they say I am not getting it back. In my head I should have seen this as a fucking RED FLAG and pushed back.

Then in July the CTO says I need to have my code finished for the new platform in one month. I tell my supervisor I don't think I can (should have spoke up about the programming tool because I CAN'T TEST ANY FUCKING CODE!) He says: "I think you can do it!"

So I am trying to code blindly on a platform I can't test the code. I get to August and report I am testing code on Linux because I have no way to test on the platform. Apparently the CTO doesn't like this. So he starts sending people to walk by my office to "spy" on me because he suspects a character flaw. I don't realize this is happening until after the fact. Apparently I am on my phone too much (which is not typical, but I suspect my depression fucked me here).

I get called to a meeting with HR and my supervisor. They are firing me for performance and violating policy of using my phone outside of break times. This is August 14th. I am compliant and don't make a scene (it won't help). My supervisor is crying and the CTO made him fire me and sign everything.

The CTO also made a statement about how I was never deserving of the job title because I was never creative enough or good enough or some shit. This is the same guy that praised my past solutions for creativity and unique ways of solving the problems. The dude flat out lied and rewrote history. I even found a review from 2022 saying I was good at the role. Also, the dude gave me the damn job title. Up until this point I respected the guy. Now, I have lost all respect for him. It is one thing to fire for cause. It is another to lie about it sell the point.

On the way out the door my supervisor offered to be a reference for me. Several other people I worked with offered the same and couldn't fathom why I got fired. People I worked with for 7 years.

So I get thrown into the shittiest job market in the last 20 years. I can't find anything online or local. My fucking degree is a shit tech degree. So even though I can write decent software nobody wants to consider me because there hundreds of thousands of out of work SWEs on the market. I was already trying to recover from working at a shitty startup after losing a decent job due to a layoff. This was also affected by my un-diagnosed bipolar at the time. I made poor financial decisions because of some of my rare manic phases.

Unemployment from DOL finds that I was not at fault for being fired. They determined the company applied inconsistent policy on cell phone usage. Which is true to an extent. I have seen people take a lunch for 2 hours watching movies. Saw another dude sleep for 2 hours. Snoring and everything. But unemployment has no power other than giving me unemployment. Which isn't enough.

So now I am 3 months into job search and I find out that as much as 60% of the job postings on LinkedIn are fake. So there is a good chance that all of the jobs I applied for are fake.

My wife has a business, but it won't be enough when savings run out in 6 months. Because of the shit market I can't get a fucking job doing anything it seems.

I am tired, and the bullshit keeps piling up. I realize the only way I can survive is to create some kind of business.

I know, my perception of what happened is my perception. But if I was ever a valued employee they would have asked "What is wrong, and how can we help?" Instead I find out the CTO had harbored ill will toward me and NEVER FUCKING TOLD ME! I had asked for feedback in the past about my work and was told it was good work. I asked: "Am I too slow." The CTO said: "Your a little slow, but I don't have to worry about your code." Yet when they fired me they said I was getting complaints from other departments. But guess what? They NEVER FUCKING TOLD ME. This is the most sadistic way I have ever heard of managing people. Hold them to a standard that you never tell them about. I should have been clued into this when they fired the last guy. They never told anyone he was gone. I asked the CTO why they never told anyone. He said something about that is how that works. This is some serious mind fuck shit.

Love seeing the expected delivery time of a delivery slowly slide from the morning into the afternoon (including the latests at!) -_-

And these guys don't always ring the bell, so I need to listen to a running truck thingy and the beep as they scan the package.

And it's dev related stuff ;p

The mods are sleeping now. Let's party!

Job spec fallacies and red flags. I will start:

* "Fast-paced environment" = "You will rarely finish something before start something else"
* "Ability to juggle competing priorities" = "our leaders don't align holistically and everything is important"
* "Opportunity to interact with all departments" = "You will accumulate functions"
* "Industry pioneers" = "We didn't research our competition when we started"
* "Leaders in the segment" = "We still haven't researched our competition"
* "Matrixed teams" = "we don't know how to structure our organisation"

Devrant just became fast again!
I hope it‘s not temporary 🥲

Yea of course my company is like family

A dysfunctional family in a mini van everyone is on LSD

The van is driven by a monkey

Note: The monkey is also on LSD

npm === node package malware

Are we overengineering everything in modern frontend dev?

Okay, serious question (but also low-key rant):
How did we go from “just load a page with some content” to entire frontend stacks with build pipelines, 300 dependencies, and five levels of abstraction just to render a freaking button?

Do we really need a separate config for everything (webpack, eslint, prettier, tsconfig, package.json, and don't forget the .babelrc and .env.local)?
Or is it just modern dev trying to look smarter than it is?

Is this the new normal? Or have we lost the plot?

Would love to hear what others think — devs from all backgrounds welcome. Bonus points if you're building sites without frameworks and surviving

Unofficial slogans for programming languages:

Javascript - JustShitting out frameworks every week.

Python - Shit programmers become slightly less shit and call themselves "data scientists" here.

C# - We know we are better than you, and even though we don't need to say it, we will say it anyway.

Pascal - The only recognized version of Pascal is from one single vendor.

Haskell - Stay is school if you want to use this professionally.

Swift - (honestly don't know what to say here, Lensflare can fill in on this one.) Maybe this: The first rule of Swift club is we don't talk about Apple club.

Java/Kotlin - We are in everything, including your mom's vibrator.

C - The rest of the programming world doesn't exist. Especially in embedded. Happily using K & R compilers for 3 decades.

C++ - We will pretend to care about the rest of the programming world, but like C, we will do whatever the fuck we want. or, Being held back by the ABI for at least a decade.

Rust - I feel bad for you for using other programming languages.

These are probably highly inaccurate, mostly just wanted to talk about Java being in your mom's sex toy.

I'm developing a board game and it’s so much fun to come up with structures and logic to implement the rules of the game and make it in a way that is clever and doesn’t require a lot of repetition and explicit definitions which would increase the probability to introduce bugs and make future changes tedious.

This is what I love about programming. The pure joy of thinking about those problems and solving them.
I'd never want to delegate this task to an AI even if I'd be convinced that it would do a good job.

Everything development related I see recently are related to LLMs and I’m starting to get sick of it :(

devrant cert expired

Too early for node_modules joke?

Opened a legacy PHP file from 2008.

No functions.
2,000+ lines.
Inline SQL.
HTML inside echo statements.
A single if (true) wrapping the entire thing like some cursed gift box.

At the top:
// Do not modify. Works perfectly.

At the bottom:
It writes to two databases. Only one exists.

Somewhere in the middle:
It sends an email…
to the client’s ex-wife.

I closed the file.
Rebooted my laptop.
Took a walk.
Still not okay.

You know what I find truly despicable? Consultants who grossly over-sell worthless digital products.

Take a guy who throws together 2 text boxes and a list in Figma and calls it: "The disruptive platform that will solve all your problems at once today!". Are you fucking kidding me? Such an insult to people's intelligence.

There is a saying: "A salesman will sell you a dirty cloth for the price of a house".

Tetris is an inventory management survival horror game

Speed, quality, scope. Why managers dont understand that they can pick only two and expect all three?

Once upon a time, there was a young, clean-shaven dev.
Soon in his career the smooth faced dev realized he had a knack for cloud setup. He understood permissions and network configurations, he could tell apart security groups from access groups, he could get all the information needed for an IPSec VPN in a single breath.
But if things got really tough, if the network layout was really messy, if the security settings too arcane, some older, bearded senior dev would come to solve everything.
Time passed, the junior dev got better at stuff, switched companies many times, solved a million problems, delivered countless projects, attended infinite meetings - twice - and, as often is the case, the senior devs, one by one, left the companies and run ever more scarce each day.

One day, a long, loooong time after his first meeting, the once young dev was solving network problems. Weird ones. Tough security requirements. Poorly documented cloud services. For hours, the dev and his colleagues toiled away, chipping at the problem without getting at its core.
The silence fell in the meeting. Everybody looking at each other, waiting for someone to say something.
Then they all looked at the dev, their eyes crying for help.
And the dev realized that he hadn't shaved in weeks.

-------‐‐-------------------------------
I've shaved since then.
And I did solve the problem. Took many more hours, though.

Client began micromanaging our project :/ . Now we have to log our hours on each task and then replicate that in another time tracking system. Double-accounting...

And we do not get the Jira's Tempo plugin to see a summary of what hours we've logged.

It's reached the point where now I have to create a task to cover for the hour spent for time logging alone :/

damn it. It was a fun project though.

Me and a fellow friend started working as a freelancer.

of 3 projects that we have:

One has a terrible code (like really nasty and over engineered to the maximum). albeit each new feature is a challenge to our sanity... they pay are are somewhat nice.

Another after we did the job they don't want to pay (thankfully we are on a platform that is like the middle man for work, they already have the money so should be "trivial") because they say we did not do what they asked. Brother, the 2 A.M. is not an hour to be called, and we did all the little shitty task they askend AND the original tasks...

And in the last one we hired a team to work with us because we don't have more hours in a day... and they only rename some vars, call it a day, ignoring the task on the sprint and they wanna get paid for the "job"

I just wanna drink a few pints of guinness...

No, thank you.😆

draft a ticket 3-4 months ago, try rereading and don't remember anything

pls stop putting talking into music mixes. you're ruining my jive. I don't wanna hear your opinions. just play the math noises

T'is 'bout the fine things in life