Going through the latest bug tickets like...

Whenever someone starts a sentence with "But [Linux|Windows|Mac] is better because..." in the open space developer pit...

The worst part of being a dev? Working in teams.

And I don't mean that in the "I'm the best ninja code wizard in the whole world and you're all holding me back" kinda way. I'm thinking more in the lines of someone who has to deal with that kind of attitude on a daily basis. As someone who recently was put in a leading position in a dev team, this is by far one of the worst experiences that came with it.

Some examples?
- One dev completely changed the naming scheme for variables in a class he worked on for one. single. bug fix. His reason? He just didn't like it!
- Another one noticed that data he was supplied with was not in the specified format. Instead of flagging this with the project leads, he just rewrote his parser to fit the data. A couple of weeks later the supplier noticed the error, fixed the format and suddenly everyone wondered why the software failed processing the data.
- Or that one senior dev, that just refuses to accept changes because "it was always done like this and it worked" No, it didn't. That's why it was changed!

Once a dev team reaches a certain size, people need to realize that stuff like coding rules and process guidelines are not there to annoy them but to help the whole team work as efficient as possible. I don't care how good a programmer you are, if you can't check your ego you don't belong in any kind of team-oriented development project!

Look what arrived just in time for another crunch time weekend. This ball will surely see some usage the next few days 😀
Thank you so much @dfox!

This talk by Rich Hickey had a tremendous influence in how I approach my work:
https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc

His Hammock Driven Development is my absolute favorite when it comes to work principles in programming/engineering. It also the one that is the hardest to explain to most PMs and leads because it can look like you are slacking off while others are producing hundreds LOCs. That you'll write better, less error prone code that won't need as much QA iterations is something you first have to prove to them but to me, it's well worth the effort.

If you have 40 minutes of time, do yourself a favor and watch the video. Maybe it'll have as much influence on you as it had on me 😃

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A wild boss appears.
He uses surprise six hours meeting...
It's super effective!
Developer is dazed and confused 😵

This article (based on a series of real tweets) is a hilarious description of the current state of the Internet of Things 😂
https://theguardian.com/technology/...

Update to this rant: https://www.devrant.io/rants/210575

Now, roughly one week before the revised delivery date, they realize that we won't be able to finish the workload on time and they are thinking about moving the due date...

by two weeks 😒

If only more manager would think like this! Constant interruptions are poison to the performance of any dev team.

!rant

My employer is a subcontractor on a big and rather complex project, that already is way behind schedule and over budget (as these monsters tend to be). To get back some confidence from the client our principal moved an important milestone up two weeks. Which we protested against vehemently because the projected workload was already a very tight fit for the original timeline, without any reserve to speak of left. They wouldn't listen though...
The result? The whole team has to work the next weekends to have even the slightest chance of making the earlier timeline. Which is exactly what we told them would happen when they moved the milestone.

The worst? This isn't the first time this has happened while I worked on the project 😑

That's basically the current state of my project...

When your happy your rant has enough votes to earn you a stress ball only to realize that they raised the limit since the last time you checked...

"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." - Nathaniel Borenstein

Still wished I had opened my master thesis with this quote 😁

This is one of my favorite lines of documentation 😁

Found in the description of flags for SVN commands: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/...

This is one of my favorite quotes when it comes to programming. So many developer are too eager to start coding instead of spending a bit more time on thinking.

I hold two degrees in computer science/engineering and to this day, whenever I have to help my dad with any computer related stuff, he *always* says:

"Good thing we let you study this stuff!"

Yeah, right dad. Fixing your windows problems is exactly what I learned in university 😒