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LocationIsle of Man
Joined devRant on 1/4/2018
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I am of the firm belief that a function should always return just one type.
I think it's the most convoluted thing that a function should be allowed to return any kind of type.
I've seen shit like return a string when something is valid and then a boolean if it's not valid.
To me, that kind of flexibility has some funky code smell.
I'm looking at you WordPress 🤨11 -
The biggest problem with many open source projects is that they are built by very clever people, trying to show other very clever people just how clever they are.9
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I just hate npm dependencies.
If you want to write a small website with npm dependencies (some frontend deps like Bootstrap and some development deps like gulp or babel) you will have more npm dependencies in your project than own code. It is ridiculous, how some lazy developers just add dependencies to their projects, without evaluating their dependencies. The source code of one of my projects is around 4MB (without any dependencies). If you then run yarn as required, it grows to around 80MB (where 73MB are node_modules).
This is just terrible.
I rant about this, as I made the mistake to upload my node_modules directories when restoring a backup of my server. Worst idea one could ever have.9 -
!rant
After over 20 years as a Software Engineer, Architect, and Manager, I want to pass along some unsolicited advice to junior developers either because I grew through it, or I've had to deal with developers who behaved poorly:
1) Your ego will hurt you FAR more than your junior coding skills. Nobody expects you to be the best early in your career, so don't act like you are.
2) Working independently is a must. It's okay to ask questions, but ask sparingly. Remember, mid and senior level guys need to focus just as much as you do, so before interrupting them, exhaust your resources (Google, Stack Overflow, books, etc..)
3) Working code != good code. You are an author. Write your code so that it can be read. Accept criticism that may seem trivial such as renaming a variable or method. If someone is suggesting it, it's because they didn't know what it did without further investigation.
4) Ask for peer reviews and LISTEN to the critique. Even after 20+ years, I send my code to more junior developers and often get good corrections sent back. (remember the ego thing from tip #1?) Even if they have no critiques for me, sometimes they will see a technique I used and learn from that. Peer reviews are win-win-win.
5) When in doubt, do NOT BS your way out. Refer to someone who knows, or offer to get back to them. Often times, persons other than engineers will take what you said as gospel. If that later turns out to be wrong, a bunch of people will have to get involved to clean up the expectations.
6) Slow down in order to speed up. Always start a task by thinking about the very high level use cases, then slowly work through your logic to achieve that. Rushing to complete, even for senior engineers, usually means less-than-ideal code that somebody will have to maintain.
7) Write documentation, always! Even if your company doesn't take documentation seriously, other engineers will remember how well documented your code is, and they will appreciate you for it/think of you next time that sweet job opens up.
8) Good code is important, but good impressions are better. I have code that is the most embarrassing crap ever still in production to this day. People don't think of me as "that shitty developer who wrote that ugly ass code that one time a decade ago," They think of me as "that developer who was fun to work with and busted his ass." Because of that, I've never been unemployed for more than a day. It's critical to have a good network and good references.
9) Don't shy away from the unknown. It's easy to hope somebody else picks up that task that you don't understand, but you wont learn it if they do. The daunting, unknown tasks are the most rewarding to complete (and trust me, other devs will notice.)
10) Learning is up to you. I can't tell you the number of engineers I passed on hiring because their answer to what they know about PHP7 was: "Nothing. I haven't learned it yet because my current company is still using PHP5." This is YOUR craft. It's not up to your employer to keep you relevant in the job market, it's up to YOU. You don't always need to be a pro at the latest and greatest, but at least read the changelog. Stay abreast of current technology, security threats, etc...
These are just a few quick tips from my experience. Others may chime in with theirs, and some may dispute mine. I wish you all fruitful careers!219 -
A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.
It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.
Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).
So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...
So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.
We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!390 -
My eyes hurt everytime our backend guy gives me a new REST API to implement in our app and always the formatting of the json is something like this. Like why can't you just fucking format it properly so I won't have to look at my code and feel disappointed for writing such ugly code. All because your lazy ass didn't care to understand the fundamentals of how json objects and arrays work !!! It's been a month since I've joined this company and I'm tired of explaining why we should use the status code for failure checking and not this stupid pass/fail status flag. I don't even remember how many times I've brought it up but everytime I get reasons like "Dude, you know what our server is never going to go down or fail so it doesn't even matter". And at that point I feel like I shouldn't even argue with him anymore.3
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The current state of wordpress "web development" makes me want to punch myself in the balls.
I remember when we coded a lot of stuff, now everything is janky drag and dropping, all plugins have premium versions with the actual features you need, templates are more and more full of dependencies that are trash. Wordpress is ruined. I want it to die already.4 -
For fucks sake, Amazon Prime has also decided that they are adding ads to their *paid subscription*. Because I guess paying them fucking monthly is not enough for them greedy fucks. It's not like they were loosing money either, the service had a slow but exponential growth ever since 2014 (slow in the sense that it was only hundreds of millions at first, but luckily it was tens of billions by 2022, poor amazon eh?) ... first fucking Netflix does this, and now these retarded fucks follow suit like little retarded ducklings with dollar signs for eyes. You can bet your fucking hats that the other services will jump on the adWagon soon too...
"you will own nothing and be happy".. yeah fuck you, you fucks. As if owning nothing wasn't bad enough, now that nothing comes with fucking ads on top FOR THE SAME FUCKING PRICE?!... And they have the audacity to fucking ask for *more* monthly money to get rid of the ads they oh so graciously provided?!
I don't even use fucking amazon prime, but what the actual fuck. This is *one* of the reasons I canceled my netflix sub. I'm not going to fucking support this behavior even if it doesn't affect me. But I guess some people keep showing netflix dicks into their gaping asses because they sure don't seem to be taking this bullshit back... And I assume even more people will keep sucking amazon dicks as if this was a-ok behavior.
god, shit like this really makes me angry...3 -
Microsoft should start to hire some real web developers, because their websites keep being awful.
Slow data loading, inconsistent UI and UX, just a pain in the ass to use.5 -
Coffee mugs should have an alarm for when the coffee is about to get cold. I'm too focused on work to care about the coffee.8
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For the love of buggery, stop watching bloody videos on your bloody phone with the bloody volume turned up.
I was thinking about something, just starting to get in the zone, when suddenly that tinny little speaker opened up a portal into the howling chaos of the underworld.
It sounds like cats fucking in an empty grain silo.
For the next half an hour, there is no room in my head for anything apart from the diabolical echoes of that bollock-wrenchingly hideous noise.3 -
One step through the door my wife whips around, a look so disgusted she barely seems human. "What's that smell?" she cries. "It's you! You smell like...like bad code!"
Indeed, I am covered with the scent of the forbidden love child of a man who read half a chapter on if-then statements and then pushed out into the world, earthworm-like, a mangled misshapened gelatinous mass that my employer gave the title of line-of-business application purely out of pity.
For more days than I'd like to count I have been porting a ColdFusion 5 application to .NET. Initially written in 2000 and last touched in 2006, it has a data architecture comparable to Dresden after the second world war. It features a table solely comprised of seven columns of IDs so that joins can be made between other tables lacking a common key. Columns that should be contained within a single table spread out among multiple tables. Single columns containing data that should be multiple columns (with handy flags to separate the subsets). A view with 14 joins that playfully displays unintended results. And so much more spread out over almost 200 stored procedures, views, triggers, and tables on the SQL server, and dozens of additional ADO-like SQL statements within the ColdFusion itself. Fortunately, the application overcomes these issues by having absolutely no data validation while allowing nulls pretty much everywhere.
When I am done this will be a very nice ASP.NET MVC app with at least 150 less stored procs, views, and tables. Auto-generated duplicate entries will be a thing of the past. Pop-up windows that inexplicably refresh the underlying screen to display a different part of the program than the one the user wants will be eliminated. And a UI based on the colors of a Rubik's Cube with usability that Mr. Rubik would find challenging will disappear with only the trauma of using it left behind.
Sadly, this is not my worse legacy code experience. Just the most recent. Just the most recent stench added to a lifetime of bathing in code rot.3 -
What I need is an automatic banner that pops up at the top of the screen, saying:
YOU'RE ON THE WRONG BRANCH YOU RETARD
In big red letters.
No idea how to go about automating that, and I suspect it would probably be on the screen more or less permanently, but I reckon it's a useful tool.5 -
The Windows 11 keynote was such a load of bullshit. All the emo yadda yadda. You know, when I work on Windows, what I feel is irritation, anger, and despise for the amateur shitshow that Microsoft delivers.
In particular, but not limited to the fucking update reboots where Windows sits there uselessly and shells fucking prawns in its own ass!
Oh we now have semi-transparent shit. That's progress! It's so great! Only that it's not because already Windows Vista had Aero Glass, and Windows 8 removed it.
But we we have fucking rounded corners now! Crazy shit, some intern at Microsoft discovered border-radius, or did they dig out some fucking Windows XP copy? That also had rounded corners way before Apple even invented them!
To top it off, Microsoft even failed to deliver the livestream seamlessly and recommended watching it at Twitter. Yeah, that's the fucking "Windows experience" as we know it, you clowns!
My favourite BS quote from Nadella himself: "the web itself was born and grew up on Windows." That guy is so full of shit that an unmaintained latrine in rural India would be envious!8 -
TL;DR: Microsoft updates break drivers, make unbootable. Hours wasted. Such rage.
Lol. I come home, try booting my windows desktop. Need desperately to play some videogames. Power is on. Monitor lights up. Bios splash. Windows startup spinner.
Suddenly, windows startup spinner gone, monitor shuts off. Wait 5 minutes, no change. Force power off and reboot, same behavior.
Google says it's probably a bad video driver. I don't remember installing any in the last month, but heck I don't use this computer for shit outside of games, so may as well do a full OS reinstall and hope the problem drivers are gone.
Reboot and force power off halfway through boot to let windows know something's wrong next boot. Literally no other way to get to alternate boot methods.
Run the reset. First time, percent-counter starts. I leave the room at 30% to go get a sandwich. Come back and it says it's "undoing changes". Something went wrong and I have no way of knowing what.
Oh well, I'll just try again and see what the problem was. NOPE! Completes windows reinstall without a hitch on the second attempt.
Okay, now let's get my stuff back on here. First things first, Microsoft updates for my processor, graphics card, "security". Halfway through the updates, monitor shuts off and I'm back to square one. IT WAS THE MICROSOFT DRIVER, NOT THE ONE FROM NVIDIA GEFORCE EXPERIENCE!!!!
Fucking Microsoft. To all ye who rail against Linux as a gaming platform because of its unstable drivers, observe here the stupidity of Microsoft and weep.3 -
Spent the last hour updating windows... Then Windows decided to not complete it and undoing changes. For fucks sake its friday night and I just want to play my fucking game!1
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Fuck you Windows 10 and your fucking mandatory updates that fuckes up every fucking time! Fuck you and your fucking inability to update beyond 71 fucking percent! This is the last fucking time you waste my time, your fucking out! Fuck you!!!19