Tips on staying focused while wfh?

Who the fuck cares. Be unfocused. Live a little. We’ll be back on the office grind soon anyway.

Trying to spend non-work time doing things other than coding. Which means picking up new hobbies. 😅

Currently trying to teach myself how to draw cartoon cats.

Today, I worked on facial expressions.

[wk249]
My specialty, I don't think I actually have specialised in anything, maybe that's why I never run out of work, shove a problem on my desk and it gets done, don't have experience? Welp, you do now!

Maybe that's the point, you see a lot of people fall of the wagon or get stuck without work, and here I am just plowing through the next problem at hand.

My career was founded on trying something new, seeing something and going, it's needs X, or Y and building my own with it - no degree got me into software, and no degree is going to replace the years of experience gained by just trying new things.

It also allows you to be well versed in a lot of areas and not feel the paradigm shift when changing stack, language, framework, or whatever, it's just another tool in the shed that has its purpose.

The most positive things about hackathons I can think of are the facts that they're are rarely mandatory and doesn't matter much to anyone other than the organisers or "winner" ...
On occasion swag or catering (if there's a bar) can kinda make up for it :)

Question, have you ever felt like you have been pigeonholed into specific languages? I am feeling more and more like I am getting forced onto projects because to few people know the language (LabVIEW). getting tired of it, and not sure what the way out is.

The way 90% of the population wears their face masks really explains a lot about their approach to using software, apps & websites as well.

I feel like giving up.

I am not a developer for the salary, or just to solve analytical puzzles. Those are motivators, but my main drive is to make the world more comfortable and enjoyable, better optimized, build ethical services which bring happiness into people's lives. I want to improve society, even if it's just a tiny bit.

But if users invest absolutely zero percent of their limited brain capacity into understanding a product that already has a super-clean design and responds with helpful validation messages...

...why the fuck bother.

I used to think of the gap between technology and tech-incompetent people as an optimization problem.

As something which could be fixed by spending a fortune on UX research. Write tests, hire QA employees, decrease tech debt, create a bold but unified & simple design.

But the technologically incompetent just get more entitled with every small thing you simplify.

It's never fucking fool-proof enough.

Why can't I upload a 220MB PDF as profile picture? Why doesn't the app install on my 9 year old Android Froyo phone? Why can't I sign up if my phone number contains a  U+FFFC? Why does this page load so slowly from my rural concrete bunker in East Ukraine? WHY DO I HAVE PNEUMONIA, HOW DID I GET INFECTED EVEN THOUGH I WAS WEARING A MOUTH MASK ON MY FOREHEAD?

This is why I ran away from Frontend, to Backend, to DBA.

If I could remove myself further from the end user, I would.

At least I still have a full glass of tawny port and a huge database which needs to be normalized & migrated.

Fuck humans, I'm going to hug a server.

I really like this book on the basis of the philosophy overall, no this doesn’t solve all problems but it’s a good baseline of “guidelines/rules” to program by. Good metrics or goals to architect and design software projects high and low level projects.

Fight Software Rot
Avoid duplicate code
Write Flexible, dynamic, adaptable code
Not cargo cult programming and programming by coincidence.
Make robust code, contracts/asserts/exceptions
Test, Test, and TEST again and Continue testing.. this is a big one.. not so much meaning TDD.. but just testing in general never stop trying to break your software.. FIND the bugs.. you should want to find your bugs. Even after releasing code the field continue testing.

This just made my day 😂

encouraged by you beautiful folks i present my weekend doodle: a text2asciiart converter with cli commands and optional terminal responsiveness.

https://github.com/erroronline1/... if it matters

So, tonight I didn't really have much planned (I found out) so when I mentioned a side-remark my boss was quick to suggest an evening phone meeting, which I couldn't turn down...
So tonight we've cleaned and archived in our repositories, weeded out teams, member permissions, and such...

The thing is; I like my boss and he's much more of a friend, so when I mentioned that a cleaning would be good, he suggested to do it over a glass or two of something good :)
We ended up spending an hour or two getting a lot closer to the bottom of things — beer in hand and laughs in the air :)

Q: Your data migration service from old site to new site cost money.
A: Yes, I have to copy data from old database and import to the new one.

Q: Can I just provide you content separately so you don’t need to do that?
A: Yes, but I will have to charge you for copying and pasting your 100 pages of content manually.

Q: Can it come with part of the web development service and not as an additional service?
A: Yes, but the price for web development service will have to be increased to combine the two. If you don’t want to pay for it, I can just set up a few sample pages with the layout and you can handle your own content entry. Does that work for you?

Q: Well, but then I will have to spend extra time to work on it.
A: Yes you will. (At this point I think she starts to understand the concept of Time = Money...)

It's Friday morning, I haven't had my coffee yet and already stumbled upon 2 bugs in staging. How did QA miss this on development?

Oh wait, we don't have QA!

I'm trapped in a sea of one line work requests. How fucking difficult is it to actually write down your requirements. If you can't be arsed, even after I have asked for clarifications several times, don't act all upset when what I implement doesn't match your expectations.

Why are people complaining about debugging?
Oooh it’s so hard.
It’s so boring.
Can someone do this for me?

I honestly enjoy debugging and you should too..
if it’s not your code, you’ll get to understand the code better than the actual author. You’ll notice design improvements and that some of the code is not even needed. YOU LEARN!

If it’s your own code (I especially enjoy debugging my own code): it forces you to look at the problem from a different perspective. It makes you aware of potential other bugs your current solution might cause. Again, it makes you aware of flaws in the design. YOU LEARN!

And in either case, if it’s a tricky case, you’ll most likely stop debugging at some point, refactor the shit out of some 50-100 line methods and modulize it because the original code was undebuggable (<- made up a new word there) and continue debugging after that.

So many things I know, I know only because I spend days, sometimes even weeks debugging a piece code to find the fucking problem.

My main language is java and i wouldn’t have believed anyone who told me there’s a memory leak in my code. I mean, it’s java, right? We refactored the code and everything worked fine again. But I debugged the old version anyway and found bugs in Java (java 6.xx I believe?) which made me aware of the fact that languages have flaws as well.. GC has its flaws as well. So does docker and any other software..

Stop complaining, get on your ass and debug the shit out of your bugs instead of just writing it in a different way and being glad that it fixed the issue..

My opinion.

Fullstack dev: Hey I need your help with one of this method in the service layer (We use Java).

Me: Sure. What’s up!

Fullstack dev: When you get a user ....blah blah blah...

Me (typing code):

if (user != null) { ... }

Fullstack dev: Wait! This won’t work. You need to write this:

if (null != user) { ... }

In Java, you write like this. In JS it’ll work, not in Java.

Me: (also fuck this guy)

He’s among the famous devs in the company - (A very very very famous European bank).

I checked his commits for the frontend (React Native)

switch (some_expr) {

case foo:
return stuff()
break // <— note this

case bar:
return moreStuff()
break // <— note this

// more cases here with break after return statements

}

Me: Hey if you’re returning from a case why are you using a break. It’s dead code.

Fullstack dev: It’ll fall through otherwise.

———————
You’re a fucking dunce! Please drink a litre of Carborane in a rusty HIV infested container! Cheers!

PS More to come!

Algo makes this sound like a personal journey of figuring out how StackOverflow works...

I can feel the PAIN :(

I thinks I've figured out jAsE — the elusiveness, obscurity, secrecy, continuous re-spawning is to hide that it's really "Jeff Atwood, Stack Exchange" 🤔

I finally perfected a script that helps me fix my procrastination! It hooks into DNS's log and spies on my and blocks me if i get too addicted!
No joke I spent on it likely cumulatively over 48 hours of pure coding time but it was worth it.

If anyone would like to take a look or criticize my coding, here it is: https://github.com/meowxiik/...

Found this ironic piece of code in our codebase. Thought i’d share :)

sales-managers: How long do you need to implement feature X ?
software-dev: Hmmm, that's nothing we have in our default-packages ... could be nasty, because it won't work without feature Y, which also does not exist in the current version 3 of our system.
I need to investigate this issue.
... 2 days later:
software-dev: This is really a nasty problem - to make X work, we've to reimplement Y for our system version 3, but this won't work with feature Z.
If we do this, it may take several weeks.
sales-manager: we need to go live in 2 months.
software-dev: might work.
------
1 week before go-live:
sales-manager: The customer saw us testing feature X. He does not like it. Could we just do it in ... blabla ... this way?
software-dev: This would work out of the box with feature Z, yes - we've to remove feature Y and X for that. But be warned - this might work next week without testing only.
sales-mamanger: do it now!
day of go live:
The customer tried the new feature X - it won't work.
software-dev: But it's not there, was removed, instead he has to use feature Z.
...
sales-guy comes back: He does not like it.
software-dev: why not? its working!
sales-guy: Yes, but he still wants it to work like feature X as he ordered.
software-dev: according to the specs, its exactly what he ordered. look at that: (showing the general specifications of project, showing feature Z).
...
sales-guy: The customer did not review this new document since last week.... Its still feature X
...
dev: really? why? I sent that version to you the day, he said, he doesn't like feature X, and you said I've to change that just urgently.
sales-guy: Please switch back to the version with X of last week. - could you. please ?
me: This won't work, because the other colleagues already finished their stuff on that currently running system - we'll lose all the optimations we've done to make this and other stuff work.
----- FAIL ------- NEVER DO ANYTHING WITHOUT SIGNATURE OF THE CUSTOMER !!!
One week onsite and rescheduled go-live is just so-what expensive.
Today (some weeks later) ... I saw someone else sitting in sales-guys office.

Developers that prefer to play the asshole card because it is easier than going through the trouble of acting like a normal person and lose a chunk of their time.

I come across this more and more: if I have a conversation with a random stranger at an event, and we touch upon a new thing that neither one of us knows about or whatever, there is this sudden cut off when one stops the conversation and leaves, rather than staying and keep on exploring the subject and risk of saying something stupid.

Am I just in the wrong place talking to the wrong people?
Or is there some developer budget your time manual that I haven't heard about?

How do I get stickers

Were the fuck are all the rants?!

All this funny shit is 'fun' but fuck. I miss old rants.

Fuck those useless calls!

PM: customer X wants a call in an hour.
Me: they didn't send emails before. No questions, no prep, no call.
PM: yeah but they want to talk.
Me: these unprepared calls are pointless. I'll be sitting there, noting down the questions and telling them I'll have to look up the details.
PM: shall I tell them that you don't want to talk to them?
Me: I don't care, it's your call, do whatever you want.
PM: that's not professional.
Me: oh you're calling it professional to sit there with a pencil, writing down crap or what?
PM: what's the problem?!
Me: I've had this shit for the last two fucking calls, and they were so unprepared that they wasted half of the call just reading up, and I'm fed up with this shit!
PM: but they are the customers, and they aren't that happy.
Me: yeah, and do you know why? Because our schedule is completely fucked up and our management has been ignoring ANY warning from engineering for WEEKS! That's why they are unhappy and not because I'm not holding their fucking hands!
PM: hey, but you can't tell me what I have to do!
Me: and you can't tell me either! [he's my PM, but technically not my superior.]
PM: so no call or what?
Me: you're free to have your call. I'll sort out the shit that they're concerned about, putting that down in a proper email, and then we have at least some basis for discussion!
PM: (left for his call)

Btw., my cursing was the same in the live conversation with him.

For the Danish, Danish-speaking, and Danish-understanding ranters:

Når du bliver spurgt om et estimat på noget du ikke har en jordisk chance for at estimere foreløbigt:
https://youtube.com/watch/...

Tell me what are they doing?

I hope it's not a repost 😂

In lame man terms..!

A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a programmer are riding in a car.

The car breaks down and coasts to the side of the road.

"Hang on," says the mechanical engineer. "The problem is probably the engine, let me have a look at it and I'll have us on the road again in no time."

"Wait," says the electrical engineer. "The way it just stopped like that, I think it's the electrical system. Let me have a look and I'll get us going again in a minute or two."

"Hold on," says the computer engineer. "Why don't we all just get out of the car and get in again, and then see if it starts?"

Alternate punchlines:

"Why don't we open and close all the windows, and then see if it starts?"

"Why don't we remove parts from the engine until it starts successfully?"