Details
-
AboutName's Tudor, I'm from romania and I've joined the dev world about 2 years ago.
-
SkillsPhp, html, css, bash
-
LocationBucharest
-
Website
Joined devRant on 1/31/2017
Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
This is what I have to deal with right now... 🙂🔫
Why?
Why would you not comment or name your variables so someone else can understand wtf is going on here?
Why!?16 -
I absolutely HATE "web developers" who call you in to fix their FooBar'd mess, yet can't stop themselves from dictating what you should and shouldn't do, especially when they have no idea what they're doing.
So I get called in to a job improving the performance of a Magento site (and let's just say I have no love for Magento for a number of reasons) because this "developer" enabled Redis and expected everything to be lightning fast. Maybe he thought "Redis" was the name of a magical sorcerer living in the server. A master conjurer capable of weaving mystical time-altering spells to inexplicably improve the performance. Who knows?
This guy claims he spent "months" trying to figure out why the website couldn't load faster than 7 seconds at best, and his employer is demanding a resolution so he stops losing conversions. I usually try to avoid Magento because of all the headaches that come with it, but I figured "sure, why not?" I mean, he built the website less than a year ago, so how bad can it really be? Well...let's see how fast you all can facepalm:
1.) The website was built brand new on Magento 1.9.2.4...what? I mean, if this were built a few years back, that would be a different story, but building a fresh Magento website in 2017 in 1.x? I asked him why he did that...his answer absolutely floored me: "because PHP 5.5 was the best choice at the time for speed and performance..." What?!
2.) The ONLY optimization done on the website was Redis cache being enabled. No merged CSS/JS, no use of a CDN, no image optimization, no gzip, no expires rules. Just Redis...
3.) Now to say the website was poorly coded was an understatement. This wasn't the worst coding I've seen, but it was far from acceptable. There was no organization whatsoever. Templates and skin assets are being called from across 12 different locations on the server, making tracking down and finding a snippet to fix downright annoying.
But not only that, the home page itself had 83 custom database queries to load the products on the page. He said this was so he could load products from several different categories and custom tables to show on the page. I asked him why he didn't just call a few join queries, and he had no idea what I was talking about.
4.) Almost every image on the website was a .PNG file, 2000x2000 px and lossless. The home page alone was 22MB just from images.
There were several other issues, but those 4 should be enough to paint a good picture. The client wanted this all done in a week for less than $500. We laughed. But we agreed on the price only because of a long relationship and because they have some referrals they got us in the door with. But we told them it would get done on our time, not theirs. So I copied the website to our server as a test bed and got to work.
After numerous hours of bug fixes, recoding queries, disabling Redis and opting for higher innodb cache (more on that later), image optimization, js/css/html combining, render-unblocking and minification, lazyloading images tweaking Magento to work with PHP7, installing OpCache and setting up basic htaccess optimizations, we smash the loading time down to 1.2 seconds total, and most of that time was for external JavaScript plugins deemed "necessary". Time to First Byte went from a staggering 2.2 seconds to about 45ms. Needless to say, we kicked its ass.
So I show their developer the changes and he's stunned. He says he'll tell the hosting provider create a new server set up to migrate the optimized site over and cut over to, because taking the live website down for maintenance for even an hour or two in the middle of the night is "unacceptable".
So trying to be cool about it, I tell him I'd be happy to configure the server to the exact specifications needed. He says "we can't do that". I look at him confused. "What do you mean we 'can't'?" He tells me that even though this is a dedicated server, the provider doesn't allow any access other than a jailed shell account and cPanel access. What?! This is a company averaging 3 million+ per year in revenue. Why don't they have an IT manager overseeing everything? Apparently for them, they're too cheap for that, so they went with a "managed dedicated server", "managed" apparently meaning "you only get to use it like a shared host".
So after countless phone calls arguing with the hosting provider, they agree to make our changes. Then the client's developer starts getting nasty out of nowhere. He says my optimizations are not acceptable because I'm not using Redis cache, and now the client is threatening to walk away without paying us.
So I guess the overall message from this rant is not so much about the situation, but the developer and countless others like him that are clueless, but try to speak from a position of authority.
If we as developers don't stop challenging each other in a measuring contest and learn to let go when we need help, we can get a lot more done and prevent losing clients. </rant>14 -
Dear team,
Train people well enough so they can leave
Treat them well enough so they don't want to
Regards,
A member of dev team2 -
FUCK.
That feeling when you get inspired with an idea for a web app, do a quick search and find out there are already 2-3 sites that offer exactly what you envisioned...
My motivation just sinks so low after cases like this!
PISS.15 -
10 Things You’ll Find Shocking About Asynchronous Operations:
3.
2.
7.
4.
6.
1.
9.
10.
5.
8.
(found on twitter by @iamdevloper 😂)6 -
Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.
If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.
First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)
So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.
What the fuck, Dell.
As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?
Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.
Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.
VS Code is pretty good, though.20 -
Me: so, ifconfig, what is my gateway?
ifconfig: [ip address]
Me: nmap, what is this IP address?
nmap: it's a network switch with an open telnet port.
Me: what happens if I connect to it?
switch: WHAT IS THE PASSWORD?!?!
Me: is it blank?
switch: correct. what do you want to do?
Me: can I look at all the IP and MAC addresses on the network?
switch: WHAT IS THE ADMIN PASSWORD?!?!
Me: is it... admin?
switch: correct. Here's everyone that's connected to the network: [400+ IPs and MACs]
Me: ok python, would you filter through these and tell me what manufacturer each one belongs to?
python: sure.
[~50 manufacturer lookups later]
python: there's a bunch of apple product, a bunch of miscellaneous laptop and printer manufacturers, and some raspberry pis.
Me: raspberry pis?
python: yep. about 20 of them.
Me: What happens if I connect to one?
rpi: WHAT IS THE PASSWORD?!?!
Me: raspberry?
rpi: correct. what do you want to do?
Me: can I make you do my bidding in the background when you aren't being used?
rpi: sure, sounds fine.
I love ignorant sysadmins.8 -
It saved me from suicide.
You have to understand first that things in India work differently. Academics are not personal, but a social business. Academic competition in India is very high and not in a good way, or for the good reasons.
As a teenager was sent off from my home to the other side of the country. I didn't like it. My studies suffered, and I failed my exams. Came back home and faced months of emotional abuse (guilt trips, scornful comments, plain insults) from my parents, neighbours and relatives. Indian society is just built that way. They didn't know they were damaging my psyche, or they were too angry to care. Lots of other shit (lost friends, lost love) happened at roughly the same time period and everything started to fall like dominos.
I fell into severe depression. Lost appetite, lost sleep. Nothing mattered anymore. There were mornings when I would wake up and not get up from my bed for hours, and not even move a finger. Self-hate became the motto of the day. I became violent and anti-social. I would either be angry or trying not to break down and give up all the time. Many a night, I considered suicide. I would end up googling for easy ways out to take.
But what gave me a way out of the pains of my reality was programming. It helped my keep my head, figuratively and literally. It kept my mind distracted and gave me a sense of purpose. I would shut myself in, plug in my headphones, shut the world out and just experiment.
I am not saying that I am the best at what I do, but those sleepless and troubled nights, and many other similar nights over the years have given me a definite edge over my colleagues.
Even today, when everything is falling to pieces, I know I have something to fall back on. I still get episodes of depression every now and then, but I know I can always pick up a new project and distract myself. It probably isn't healthy, but eh...
I am alive. I code. I kick ass. My colleagues respect and value my opinion. I love my job.
Computer does what I tell it to do (mostly :p) and I feel good. Because for that small moment, I am in control of everything. For that infinitesimally small moment of my average, boring, and somewhat painful life, I am God.51 -
When i was 16 i said fuck school, i will be a game developer. Of course everyone said noop, you will not, grow up. Now i am 20 and a game developer with a highly paid job. The people said to grow up are either unemployed or doing shitty jobs. Also i never finished school :D7
-
So i heard that docker is now a thing and decided to put my servers into containers as well (see image)...but somehow I still don't understand how is this supposed to simplify deployment, vertical scaling and so on...? :D6
-
I make games, I don't do frontend fucking webdev; this isn't my fucking job and I don't fucking understand it. Fuck you, client with money. (Yes that is a CSS for beginners page, no I don't care. Screw you.)19
-
OK morning rant from yesterday.
Get into the venue, connect my surface to the dock, keyboard won't work.
Try more USB ports, try another machine, keyboard (corsair k70) is totally broken.
Ugh.
Fine.
Disassemble keyboard, someone asks me a question, turn around and knock full coffee cup over my surface book.
Fuck sake.
Now I need a new laptop.4