Guys, my unfortunately daily rant of my pm

I was told to create a docker env for our team. Good. Document the process so everyone can know what to do. Good.

My PM follows what he wants to instead of step by step and changes whatever he wants to.

I am asked for help because he doesnt know. No prob.

Me: "Do this, do this and.."
PM: "that doesnt matter, trust me, I could change it and.."
Me: "...and it wont work"
PM: "I know suff too, check" *does his changes aaaaaand doesnt work*
* awkward staring*

That happened a while ago.
This week, he crashed his git repo because he was doing things in docker team (including him) decided not to.

Took me more enough time explaining him "you are not supposed to do that in the container" funny fact he wanted to prove that his way was right and even if he did my way it would crash.

Sooooo he did my way just to prove how wrong I was. Everything worked flawlessly. Rage-still-awkward staring.

Plus the "aww that's weird. I dont know how this happened"

Many years ago at school the machines were imaged using Norton Ghost. A floppy disk containing Norton Ghost and it's configuration would be put into the machine, which would automatically start the imaging process.

When these floppy disks inevitably started erroring they'd be tossed into the rubbish bin. I grabbed one of these broken disks, inserted it a few times until my machine would recognise it, and hey presto, the config file along with the domain admin password were now visible.

Going through a WordPress site that hasn't been updated in over a year. It's so severely infected that even the Wordfence and Security plugins say it's fine. So I'm going through the file structure manually.

File by file, folder by folder manually searching for infected files. This is the most tedious thing I've had to do. But I'm learning some really interesting tips. One file looked empty and I almost missed it because the code had been tabbed over a few hundred times clearing it way off the the right of the screen.

I attempted on national competition in an IT field, where there were tens of great projects (in other fields as well, like chemistry and so..). We had to push everything to their portal, so they can study it in advance. While pushing the docs, I found that there were SQL injections that allowed me to list everyone's rating and to download every single doc / additional sources.
Worst part is, that even after I reported vulnerability, they obviously didn't had time to fix it.

I just got a mail from a software company in Denmark that they wanted to hire, because they "analyzed my open source GitHub contributions" and they think I'd be a good Backend Engineer using Java.

What they don't seem to realise is that the only thing I use GitHub for is college projects and 2 Minecraft mods, that I'm only 17 years old and not really in a position to move from the Netherlands to Denmark...

I really enjoy my old Kindle Touch rather than reading long pdf's on a tablet or desktop. The Kindle is much easier on my eyes plus some of my pdf's are critical documents needed to recover business processes and systems. During a power outage a tablet might only last a couple of days even with backup power supplies, whereas my Kindle is good for at least 2 weeks of strong use.

Ok, to get a pdf on a Kindle is simple - just email the document to your Kindle email address listed in your Amazon –Settings – Digital Content – Devices - Email. It will be <<something>>@kindle.com.

But there is a major usability problem reading pdf's on a Kindle. The font size is super tiny and you do not have font control as you do with a .MOBI (Kindle) file. You can enlarge the document but the formatting will be off the small Kindle screen. Many people just advise to not read pdf's on a Kindle. devRanters never give up and fortunately there are some really cool solutions to make pdf's verrrrry readable and enjoyable on a Kindle

There are a few cloud pdf- to-.MOBI conversion solutions but I had no intention of using a third party site my security sensitive business content. Also, in my testing of sample pdf's the formatting of the .MOBI file was good but certainly not great.

So here are a couple option I discovered that I find useful:

Solution 1) Very easy. Simply email the pdf file to your Kindle and put 'convert' in the subject line. Amazon will convert the pdf to .MOBI and queue it up to synch the next time you are on wireless. The final e-book .MOBI version of the pdf is readable and has all of the .MOBI options available to you including the ability for you to resize fonts and maintain document flow to properly fit the Kindle screen. Unfortunately, for my requirements it did not measure-up to Solution 2 below which I found much more powerful.

Solution 2) Very Powerful. This solution takes under a minute to convert a pdf to .MOBI and the small effort provides incredible benefits to fine tune the final .MOBI book. You can even brand it with your company information and add custom search tags. In addition, it can be used for many additional input and output files including ePub which is used by many other e-reader devices including The Nook.

The free product I use is Calibre. Lots of options and fine control over documents. I download it from calibre-ebook.com. Nice UI. Very easy to import various types of documents and output to many other types of formats such as .MOBI, ePub, DocX, RTF, Zip and many more. It is a very powerful program. I played with various Calibre options and emailed the formatted .MOBI files to my Kindle. The new files automatically synched to the Kindle when I was wireless in seconds. Calibre did a great job!!

The formatting was 99.5% perfect for the great majority of pdf’s I converted and now happily read on my Kindle. Calibre even has a built-in heuristic option you can try that enables it to figure out how to improve the formatting of the raw pdf. By default it is not enabled. A few of the wider tables in my business continuity plans I have to scroll on the limited Kindle screen but I was able to minimize that by sizing the fonts and controlling the source document parameters.

Now any pdf or other types of documents can be enjoyed on a light, cheap, super power efficient e-reader. Let me know if this info helped you in any way.

So I'm a new junior dev, been working for around 4 months.
What's some advice from you've learnt from experience that you would give to someone in my position?

For context, I taught myself Java a while ago, was taught Python and some PHP recently and have patchy self taught knowledge of JavaScript.
So no degree and minimal formal training!
I have done 3 or so months of Ruby (self taught) doing back end web dev with Rails and soon am going to get involved with a small PHP and front end built from scratch.

This is an old rant from over 10 years ago in my first job at 19. I was tasked with turning off one of our clients email because they had left the company. Easy enough, logged into cPanel, job done. Later that day I get a phone call from the clients company asking if there was a problem with the email. No I said, everything should be fine, I did remove a 'joe.bloggs@blah.com' email address as instructed because... *reading job bag*... they had left the company. The client then said, that's my email you've turned off and hung up. Turned out he had been fired and no one told him. I felt horrible. I will always remember that conversation 😓

Freelance developers, how do you get clients?

I am developing apps/websites with a friend and so far er have found our clients mainly on project-listing sites (sites like freelancer.com). My experience is though, that it always becomes a price-race, and with many projects only being small static websites, it just doesn't seem that this is the way to Go.

So if any of you have suggestions on how and where to find larger/more serious clients that will be much appreciated - it should be said that we already have quite a few projects to show in our portfolio, so I think we are ready to take on some larger projects

Fucking hell, our .net site uses a modal pop-up after the user submits data so they can explain what the did and why. Bootstrap styles it with an x in the top right, but the x doesn't do anything. I can't find where bootstrap adds it, I can't find any way to access it, it just annoys users because if they don't need to explain, they click it, and it doesn't work. Only the cancel button closes it. Where the fuck does this thing come from?

So, company I work at, is on desperate need of PHP developers, who can work in WordPress and Magneto. Company announced vacancy.

Only 20 CVs were dropped 4 days before from today. So company called all of them for interview and I was one of the interviewer. Most of applicants told me that they know Laravel but not WordPress.

I was like fine. Maybe they can work on WordPress too. But I was wrong. Here are some funny interviews:

Me: how many types of inheritance does PHP support?
Applicant 1: 7. Single, multiple, etc..

Me: Do you know difference between interface and abstract class?
Applicant 2: (he just said some gibberish)

Me: why do u prefer Laravel to WordPress?
Applicant 3: because by default Laravel support payment gateway, so we can create e commerce application faster. WordPress doesn't support payment gateway.

Me: how many WordPress site you have worked on?
Applicant 4: I have 4 themes in WordPress.org
Me: Do you create all of them by yourself?
Applicant 4: Yes
Me: Do u know difference between require and include?
Applicant 4: No
Me: Do u know difference between query_posts and WP_Query?
Applicant 4: No
Me: (facepalm)

Client: "the content is pretty confusing and inconsistent. Would you say the frontend is ready?"

Me:"please do not ask that way."

Client: "i just asked a question. What do you mean?"

Me: "well.. you basically say that is bad and then asked me if I thought it was bad."

Client:" i was asking a question. It is your problem if you find that offensive. You were to deliver a finished design until 3pm. "

Me:"you just reviewed it and came up with new input..and apart from that there were just some buttons in the wrong shade."

Client:"yes but I expect that kind of critical input from the developer. "

Me: "I understand, but this was a tiny project for 300 cash. I can't go all out on a budget like this. "

Client:"but all the other jobs I gave you lately were paid much better.."

Me: "yes. Those were other jobs, right? Should I feel obliged to work overtime I eager expectation of more and different work?"

Client: "you used to be more excitable...."

:/

The learning curve for programming is more like steps than a curve.

Really tall steps.

And they go on forever.

Eventually you die. Leaving your body as a landmark for those who come after you. Unless you're completely useless. Then your body just ends up at the bottom of a gully.

The point is don't give up. Don't die in a gully. Each dead end is a wall to clime. Every plateau is just the path to the next step.

I'm not an iOS expert, I just wanted to get Google ads on my iOS app so that I could make a few petty dollars at the expense of my users. Is that too much to ask?

I started by following Google's instructions: install cocoapods, copy and paste some swift code... Compile failed, app broke. Carefully retrace my steps. Nothing.

Stackoverflow (praise be with them) suggests upgrading Xcode. Go to app store and click to upgrade Xcode. No progress bar, no status updates, just that pissy little spinner for several minutes. I become impatient try a few more times. It ain't happening.

Stackoverflow (holy of holies, defender of the weak) points me to an alternate source for Xcode, on the app store dev console. 4GB and some time later, an attempt to unzip gives "unknown error". Genocide of sorts.

Stackoverflow (all that is pure, all that is kind, all... I think you get it) says upgrade your OS. I tried months ago but I had issues with that pissy little spinner. Persist. 5GB and a "heavy-year" of time later (sorry), it installs. Then Xcode installs. Then bar a few errors, the app compiles.

So after almost 24 hours, life resumes. The lesson.. respond to all obscure iOS errors by upgrading. If fully upgraded, calmly acquire a baseball bat and destroy your machine. Make sure you have a good book nearby in case of either event.

Thank you for reading my rant. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pay Apple
$150 so that I may list my app in the app store.

Hey everyone - just a note on rants about politics: we've had a long-standing policy not to really allow any of them. So if you post one and see it quickly disappear from the feed, that's why.

We've gathered a lot of feedback on this and Tim and I both agree that Facebook is ridden with posts about politics and one of the more refreshing aspects of devRant is we've kept it free of that. It's also an aspect of Facebook that many people I've talked to really hate.

Thank you, and feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Anyone else ever had a scrum master or a project manager that just drives them insane?

Like they bug you every hour asking "what's our eta?", "are you done yet?", etc.

And they turn everything into a 2 hour long meeting (including standup) where everyone on the team is required and then they wonder where all the budget went.

And you have to explain the same god damned thing to them over and over again at these meetings. I wish they could be just technical enough to understand.

!rant

What's your dream GSDR/GWDR setup?

(Get shit/work done room)

Spacious desk, three 21" monitors. MacBook Pro laptop and windows/ubuntu desktop.

A nice big dry erase or smart board on the wall.

Hardwood/hard carpet floors.

One empty wall so that I may bounce a tennis ball against it while I contemplate.

Electric piano.

A tough padded bench for naps and laying down to change perspective.

Very good lighting.

Close proximity to a gym.

I guess I'll have to move out of my parents first though 😅

So before the Age of JavaScript, when programming was trying to be an engineering discipline, I felt like we were getting close to figuring out what worked and what didn't. We had rules of thumb (more general than Patterns) and code smells.
Then JavaScript came in and no one had time to think about "engineering" anymore. I'm fine with MVP and small iterations, but the disdain I see for making code clean and extendable and improvable is baffling (and annoying). First-time coders might never have had to fix someone else's code, but two weeks in a chair should have fixed that.
It's not that understanding code is so hard (although it can be); understanding the _intent_ is hard. This MVP is great, but when no one had time to document what is actually supposed to happen, programmers have to reverse-engineer the *design*.

In my CS class I turned in some assignments recently. Two of them were extremely similar: one was to test if a number was even or odd, the other to test if the length of a string was even or odd. I completed the first one and then started to work on the second one and decide to just call the isEven method from the previous lab so I can follow DRY (Dont repeat yourself) and not have to write the same code again. I turned it in and she took off points for it. -.-

!Rant

Lessons from this picture:
1. Not all opportunities are to be taken. Some are traps.
2. A person can become so determined to destroy another person that they become blind and end up destroying themselves.
3. You fight best in your natural element and environment. Here the bird has advatange in his natural element.
4. Know your limits, we all have them.
5. Sometimes the best response to provocation is not to fight.
6. Sometimes to accomplish something you need team work, you will not always win alone.
7. Stick to what you do best and don't pursue what will kill you.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

11:45am: "Ok one more issue to fix and then I can take a nice long break and relax a little bit. My next meeting isn't until 2.

12:45pm: "Well this issue is taking longer than expected but that's okay. I can grab lunch and still relax a little bit."

1:59pm starving, thirsty and really need to pee and can only choose one. Oh, and the issue still isn't fixed: "god dammit."

Me: So here's the completed website.

Client: *goes to Google and searches for media agencies india* What the hell is this ? I was told that my name would come on the first page in Google.

Me: Sir, we had quoted to build SEO friendly pages and not for doing SEO.

Client: This is fraud. How the hell could you cheat me by using these technical words. I want my name on the first page in Google.

Me: *types companyname.com in Google* Here Sir, your website is on the first page in Google.

Client: I very well know fraudsters like you. If I wouldn't have checked it then you'd have charged me for this later on. Here's your cheque.

Worst part of being a dev is handling less techy people than you 😫

So, there is this company (let's call it A) with an average idea, who got the android app and webservices from a company(B) . The service was awful but cheap. The owner of the A was a friend and gave my company the handover to manage the project. I actually ranted about that on wk11(The worst project). Now, The project was terrible. It took me months to give it any real structure, fix the services, make it compatible with iOS. Now, that majority of the work was done, suddenly we were too expensive and the work was being given to another company while much of our payment wasn't going to come(Friggin company politics). But, guess which company did the project now go to, it was 'B'.
After a couple of weeks I see, inline styles and js errors start emerging on the website.
Tell you what, if there's any justice in this world, he will one day come back to me and then I will respectfully tell him to fuck off!
Thank goodness there's devRant to just whine about this shit!

A colleague from university cried the last week that he cannot use git. For him it was just a big pile of software BS. I didn't bother to ask, as he is a very whiney person and complains about everything.

I asked him today...

He tried to create a git repostitory on his usbdrive. How else could he work on different machines???🤔😝

I tried to introduced him to Github/Bitbucket/...
He knew about them but was afraid they would sell/use his bugriddeld programming excercises😂

The Top 20 replies by programmers when their programs do not work:

20. "That's weird..."
19. "It's never done that before."
18. "It worked yesterday."
17. "How is that possible?"
16. "It must be a hardware problem."
15. "What did you type in wrong to get it to crash?"
14. "There is something funky in your data."
13. "I haven't touched that module in weeks!"
12. "You must have the wrong version."
11. "It's just some unlucky coincidence."
10. "I can't test everything!"
9. "THIS can't be the source of THAT."
8. "It works, but it hasn't been tested."
7. "Somebody must have changed my code."
6. "Did you check for a virus on your system?"
5. "Even though it doesn't work, how does it feel?
4. "You can't use that version on your system."
3. "Why do you want to do it that way?"
2. "Where were you when the program blew up?"

And the Number One reply by programmers when their programs don't work:

1. "It works on my machine."

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick, erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick, rewrite it
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip, unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, curl it, find it,
View it, code it, jam, unlock it
Surf it, scroll it, pose it, click it
Cross it, crack it, twitch, update it,
Name it, read it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax, rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop, format it.

!rant I got permission from @dfox for this.

I'm a visual learner and like to see and hear what I'm being taught. I also am fed up with StackOverflow.. plus, it lacks in detailed learning and best practices. I created a new platform that allows you to view and create live talks for development discussions, demos, and presentations. Think of it like a 24/7 dev conference.

I'm releasing it early to devRant users. Just note, that it is in early beta but I do regular releases.

Go ahead and start creating your talks at http://unityco.de

C'mon people! Spread the word! "The cloud" is not "just someone elses computer", it's a completely different way to compute!

I'm so tired of the oversimplifications done trying to explain the consept. The massive amount of work, sweat and tears put into the orchestration, automation and abstraction layers to deliver truly elastic, scalable and self healing infrastructure, applications and services deserves a fuckload more respect than "just someone elses computer"!

Hosting and time-sharing have been with us almost as long as we have had computers (mainframes etc), but dismissing the effort of thousands upon thousands of devs and ops people to make systems robust and automated enough to literally being able to throw a wrench in the engine any time during production and not have the systems suffer is fucking insane!

The whole reason the term "cloud" is so fitting is not just because it was coined from the cloud-shape used in technical and non-technical drawings and illustrations symbolising the internet, but also because of the illusion of magic it gives the end-user not being able to see "whats inside the music box".

Life with Windows 10:

An absolute nightmare. My oven doesn't work, Washing machine started rattling, toaster toasted more than it was supposed to toast. Every time windows updates it restarts my TV in my living room.

Then I met my neighbour. He lives a very happy life. I always wanted to know his secret ingredients.

One day I invited him to my house and he saw my Windows machine. He immediately insisted that I install Linux so that I can be happy and cool like him.

And that's the day my life changed. My oven started to bake beautifully, my washing machine was spinning at full speed.

Linux changed my life. I'm now part of the cool kids. Everyone loves me, embraces me.

Is your life hard? Are you not being noticed by other cool boys/girls? Are you having pain in your back? Remember:

Whatever bad happens, it's Windows 10's fault.

Finally decided to quit from my current job. Fuck it. They still don't understand that an estimate is an approximation. They still don't understand that I have to fix all the shit made by all the contractors they hire and pay much more than me to implement solutions that work only until they leave the building, something that many barely understand but pretend to be experts in. I quit because of the managers that have no clue about what's happening although I stress them to make changes.

Should I care less about the product an just ship shit? Should I just do my tasks first and stop really helping others but pretend to do so?

Fuck it. I've tried to get it right they want it wrong but in a nice box. I'm an engineer not a fucking magician.