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Search - "real world bugs"
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This Part 3 and finale of the tale of Mr DDTW, or the worst coworker I've ever had to deal with. I suggest you start from the beginning if you don't have the context, it's been a trip.
Part 1: https://devrant.com/rants/4210605
Part 2: https://devrant.com/rants/4220715
The problem with this man threatening to snitch on me to the professor if I didn't revert my commit was that he backed me into a corner. Letting him go at his pace with his quality standards would have ruined the project for the rest of us, and I'm not going to let three other people's grades suffer because one was lazy. I'm the PM, team lead, the guy who will ultimately be held responsible for this project succeeding or failing and the mediator of problems.
So I snitched first.
The professor knew us. He had an idea of how we worked as a team, who was enthusiastic about this subject, who was diligent, and who wasn't. It'd been half a semester and he wasn't stupid. I'd also taken the not-so-minor task of testing our software and handling all the little integration problems between components and between the professor's server. This had resulted in several calls between me and him because he'd been flying by the seat of his pants with some of the upgrades he'd been doing to the server code and as the fastest group we were the ones running into all the bugs on his end. And he'd also noted our prior complaint and seen the discrepancy in commits, author tags and hours logged. Mr DDTW had been graded significantly worse than the rest of us. So when I sent him a goddamn novel about our team's internal problems, the bomb was set. And so we get to the conference call, with everybody panicking and with no clue what any of this is about. Except me.
Dear god. That call was pure catharsis. Never have I seen a man get demolished so hard. Mr DDTW got a 45 minute LECTURE, a goddamn SMACKDOWN, about how he needs to take some responsibility for this team effort and that in the real world he'd have been fired. And the professor was so incredibly serene throughout! He could've blasted him with the rage of a thousand suns but he said it in such a way that Mr DDTW's only real responses were "yes", "I understand" and "I'm sorry". An entire semester of this useless fucking bitch being nothing but a leech on our team in three separate projects and he was finally getting SCHOOLED. And then, it gets even better. The professor asked how we could solve this problem, as Mr DDTW needs to do work to be graded but he can't hold us back.
I dropped a suggestion: As I had implemented the module in a way that worked, we could carry on using my version while Mr DDTW could work on a separate branch. Everything else was working reasonably well for an MVP, we just needed to improve and test now, so if Mr DDTW got it working we could merge it back into the main branch. This solved the team's problem of not being able to progress, it solved Mr DDTWs problem of not wanting to fail the course, and it solved my problem of not having to work with this shit-for-brains for the forseeable future. A weight was lifted off my shoulders. No more Mr DDTW. No more bitching and no more shitcode. A grating arsehole that had been bugging everyone all sememster put in his place and out of my hair.
On the way home from uni that day, I rang a friend and told him the entire story as I needed to get it off my chest. Every time I brought up a problem, an issue, a setback, an argument, he made a remark.
"Damn, if only he just... did the work."
Every time he said it it was in a slightly different way, but every time it made me laugh harder as he just didn't stop interrupting me with the same comment. If only he did the work. But the funniest part of all was how right he was. Mr DDTW had so many opportunities to just sit down, shut up, and do the work like the rest of us, but instead he decided to do fuck-all until he got flak for it and proceeded to dig his own grave. What sort of delusional entitlement, sheer incompetence or other dumbfuckery was he suffering from to make such terrible decisions? It's his last year of university and he still hadn't learned to just do the goddamn work (I would later find out that his friend had covered his shortcomings a lot and was apparently the reason why he hadn't flunked out of uni yet).
And so ends the story of Mr Didn't Do The Work the worst person I have ever had the displeasure of working with. We never did merge his branch as we ran out of time during testing. The professor passed him, possibly out of pity or just so that he wouldn't have to resit the course and burden some other poor sods. We weren't the top scorers this time, partially because of my shortcomings as PM but mostly because of the huge delays and manpower deficit, but we did well enough to pass the course with some very high grades. With one exception of course.4 -
Alright, I've already ranted about this but I feel like that was rather incomplete.. there's some other things that make me want to kill myself every time I enter <!DOCT- WHERE IS THAT FUCKING KNIFE?!!!
First one I've mentioned earlier is its <repetitiveness></repetitiveness>. What was wrong with {brackets}? If only HTML was more like CSS.
But there's some other ones as well.
- Frameworks! Ain't there nothing like a good dozen resources that every single one of your web pages wants to get JS from.
- Quantity over quality. Let's just publish early with tonnes of bugs, move fast and break things, amirite 🤪
- General noobness of apprentice web devs. Now I'm not talking about the real front-end devs here - AlexDeLarge was one of them.. forever holding a special place in my heart - that know how to properly use their tools. But there's a metric shitton of people who think that being able to write <html><body>Hello world!</body></html> makes them a dev.
- The general thought of "it's slow? Slap in more hardware." Now this is a general issue with software development, optimization costs valuable resources while leaving it in a shitty state but released quickly costs pretty much nothing. A friend of mine whose post I'll attach in the image section illustrates this pretty well. You can find it at https://facebook.com/10000171480431....
I'm not sure if this is an exhaustive list, but those are the most important things that irritate me about web development in general.
On a side note, apparently 113 people visited my hiddenbio.html page.. I'm genuinely impressed! I had no idea that so many people on devRant would click through. On Facebook pages this has been an ongoing significant issue of getting people to leave the platform - it's huge but engagement on off-Facebook links is terrible. I guess that I'm dealing with an entirely different community here. And I'm pleasantly surprised actually!11 -
Another real-world argument for why I always say git is worth learning properly.
Had to track a really weird bug down today. Had no idea where it came from, how long it'd been in the code and hadn't the foggiest what was causing it. Realistically it could have been introduced any time in the last year or two, and that's tens of thousands of commits in this repo.
Git to the rescue. Knocked up a quick script to test the case in question, fed it into "git bisect run", and 30 seconds later git found the exact (small) commit that caused the issue.
It's a brilliant part of git, yet it seems like almost no-one I know uses it. Some use "git bisect", but using "git bisect run" and passing a script to it seems to be alien to most - yet it's probably my most used tool when it comes to tracking down bugs like these.8 -
Wish I could be Geralt in real life. Fighting ghouls, slaying griffins, brewing potions, repairing swords, helping people, getting laid and roaming across seeing wonders of nature.
Instead I'm here fighting with QA's, squashing bugs, brewing tea, wasting hours in stand-up, pulling my hairs out and finally trying to stay sane in an insane world 😐14 -
that one legendary guy who cranks out code and builds insane features. PMs (product management) love him because he builds features in several months which 10 devs together couldn't have built in the same time (so they say), features that are loved by customers as well, become their new standard and that have saved our company's asses in the past.
features are really awesome, performant and have very few bugs (compared to the rest of the software シ).
but this guy seems to live for this job. he also works at weekends, at unholy times of day and night and even in his holidays (he doesn't care that this is actually illegal, in terms of employee's rights, and he wouldn't listen to his superiors, no matter what they tell him)
so far, so good - except that he will probably die of some stroke or something very soon due to this lifestyle.
but it must be an absolute pain in the ass to work with him, as long as you're a developer (or his superior).
he lives in his own world and within the software, his features are also his own world. since the different modules interact with each other, sometimes you would be assigned a bug that might have its cause in some interaction of your and his module. talk with him about it? forget it. he wouldn't answer most devs who contacted him for some reason. ever. fix it in his module yourself? might happen that he just reverts your changes to his module without comments. so some bugs would lie on your desk forever because theoretically you know what would need to be done but if you cannot reach out into HIS world, there's no way to fix it. also - his code might be good in terms of performance and low bug numbers. but it seems to be hard to work on that code for everybody else but him.
furthermore, he is said to be really rude. he is no team player, but works on a software that is worked on by a huge team.
PMs think he's a genius, just a great dev, but they don't understand that other devs need to clean up the mess behind or around him.
everyone who's been his superior so far recommends to get him fired, but the company wouldn't fire him because they don't want to lose his talent. he can just do what he wants. he can even refuse to work on certain things because he thinks they are boring and he is not interested in them. devs seem to hate him, but my boss said, they are probably also a bit jealous because of his talent. i think, he's not wrong. :)
i haven't actually met him so far or was actually "forced" to deal with him, but i've never heard so many contrastive things about one person, the reputation of his, let's say vibrant personality really hurries ahead. he must be a real genius, after all i've heard so far, like he lives in the code. i must say i'm a bit curious but also somewhat afraid of meeting him one day.
do you also have such a guy at your company?11 -
I really think there should be a subject in every CS course to teach us how to handle/work-under Grade-A assholes and dumbfucks. Not that it would help, but atleast warn us on what we are getting into.
In my opinion, development is not *that* hard or frustrating but is made so by these shitty people. But again, what do I know.
I was scolded by my boss for using for-loop to iterate through an array recently. Apparently for-loop is not used in real world projects and this iteration should be done "in-memory". My colleagues and I are still trying to understand and process that.
I was asked to add fitbit integration to a project within 2 hours just because I had "already done it a week ago" in *another* project. Luckily, it was then given to a "senior" developer who took 4 days for it and essentially copy-pasted my work without much changes, ofcourse it stopped working every now and then.
I am given unreal deadlines on my tasks, on technologies I haven't worked on before, and then expected to churn out production ready code with no bugs in them.
My boss literally just sends me the links of 1st three google results on the problems I encounter and report, after humiliating me ofcourse. Yes, I did google it and yes I went through all I could find from Google forums to GitHub issues. When the library/plugin author himself says that this feature is not yet available, don't expect me to develop it in 2 hours you dumbfuck.
And for the love of God, please stop changing the data model every single day and justify it with agile development. Think before making any changes to it. Ever heard of Join queries? Foreign keys? Or any other basic database concepts.
We reached a point where each branch in the repo had different data model. Not kidding. And we were a team of just 4 developers. Atleast inform us when you change models after discussing it with your shit for knowledge "senior" developer, so we don't have to redo it all over again. The channels on slack are not for sharing random articles only.
I am just waiting to complete my year here.
I should have known what I got myself into the day he asked me to remove the comments I had added to explain what my code does. Why you ask? Because "we don't write comments". -
Back when I was still in school for comp sci we had an advanced software engineering and design class with c++. At this time, everyone was expected to be proficient enough with cpp to go ahead and properly work with whatever the instructor would throw at us. And pretty much everyone was since past classes included a lot of c++ development. Of course, efficient at least related to academic studies rather than actual real world development.
Our teacher would mix in a lot pf phyisics and mathematics into what we were doing, something that I greatly enjoyed, while at the same time putting real world value concerning cpp best practices to avoid common pitfalls in the development of said language. Since most bugs seemed to be memory based he would be particularly strict about that.
One classmate, good friend and an actual proper developer now a days would ALWAYS forget to free his resources...ALWAYS for whatever fucking reason he would just ignore that shit, regardless of how much the instructor would make a point on it.
At one point during class on a virtual lecture the dude literally addressed a couple of students but when he got to my boy in particular he said: "you are the reason why people are praying to Mozilla and Hoare to release Rust as fast as possible into a suitable alternative to high performant code in C++, WHY won't you pay attention to how you deal with memory management?"
And it stuck with me. I merely a recreational cpp dev, most of my profesional work is done on web development, so I cannot attest to all the additional unsafe code that people encounter in the wild when dealing with cpp on a professional level.
But in terms of them common criticisms of C and C++ for which memory is so important to work with, wouldn't you guys say that it comes more from the side of people just not knowing what they are doing rather than a fault on the language itself?
I see the merits and beauty of Rust, I truly do, it is a fantastic language, with a standardized build system and a lot of good design put into it. But I can't really fathom it being the cpp killer, if anything, the real cpp killers are bad devs that just don't know what they are doing or miss shit.
What do y'all ninjas think?8 -
So there is a mall here that idk how but has little currents pass through it's supporting rails. And every time you touch it, it gives you a little shock.
I have been waiting for about 3 months now expecting a patch fix when I realized that physical production bugs have no patch fixes. More than 3/4th of the population is unaware of a whole different level of bug fixing frustration. Damn1 -
There has been a post today about the existence of too many js frameworks. Which reminds me of this awesome post https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels...
At first I thought someone was corpseposting, as it is my understanding that the js ecosystem is calming down a bit. But then I noticed that post got almost 20 upvotes. So here's my thoughts:
(I'm not sure what I'm ranting about here, as it feels kinda broad after writing it. I think it's kinda valid anyhow.)
I'm ok with someone expressing frustration with js. But complaining about progress is definitely off to me.
How is too many frameworks a bad thing?
How does the variety and creation of more modern frameworks affect negatively developers?
Does it make it hard to understand each of these new frameworks?
Well, there's no need to. Just because it has a logo and some nice badges and says it will make you happy doesn't mean you should use it.
You just stick to the big boys in the ecosystem and you'll be fine for a while.
Does it make you feel compelled to migrate the stack of every project you did?
Well, don't. If you don't like being on the bleeding edge of js, then just stick to whatever you're using, as long as it's good code.
But if a lot of companies decided to migrate to react (among others frameworks), it's because they like the upsides: the code is faster to write, easier to test and more performant.
In general, I'm more understanding/empathic with beginner js programmers.
But I have for real heard experienced devs in real life complain about having to learn new frameworks, like they hate it.
"I just want to learn a single framework and just master it throughout my life" and I think they're lowering the bar.
There's people that for real expect occupying positions for life, make money, but never learn a new framework.
We hold other practitioners to high standards (like pilots or doctors), but for some reason, some programmers feel like they're ok with what they know for life.
As if they couldn't translate all they learned with one framework to another.
Meanwhile our lives are becoming more and more intertwined with technology and demand some pretty high standards. Standards that historically have not been met, according to thousands of people screaming to their devices screens.
Even though I think the "js can be frustrating" sentiment is valid, the statement 'too many js frameworks is bad' is not.
I think a statement like 'js frameworks can go obsolete very quickly' is more appropriate.
By saying too many js frameworks is a bad thing you're
1) Making a conspiracy theory as if js devs were working in tandem to make the ecosystem hard,
But people do whatever they want. Some create packages, others star/clone/use them.
2) Making a taboo out of a normal itch, creating.
"hey you're a libdev? just stop, ok? stop"
"Are you a creative person? Do you know a way to solve a problem in an easier way than some famous package? it doesn't matter, don't you dare creating a new package."
I'm not gonna say the js world is perfect. The js world is frantic, savage, evolves aggressively.
You could say that it (accidentally) gives the middle finger to end users, but you could also say that it just sets the bar higher.
I liked writing jquery code in the past, but at the same time I didn't like adding features/fixing bugs on it. It was painful.
So I'm fine with a better framework coming along after a few years and stealing their userbase, as it happens almost universally in the programming world, the difference with js is that the cycle is faster.
Even jquery's creator embraced React.
This post explains also
https://medium.com/@chrisdaviesgeek...13 -
I wish real world would have breakpoints and we could just go back to fix those bugs.
What is wrong with people... Trump, Munich, Ansbach, Nice, Brexit, Orlando... so many bugs to find...3 -
Okay. Here's the ONLY two scenarios where automated testing is justified:
- An outsourcing company who is given the task of bug elimination in legacy code with a really short timeframe. Then yes, writing tests is like waging war on bugs, securing more and more land inch after inch.
- A company located in an area where hiring ten junior developers is cheaper than hiring one principal developer. Then yes, the business advantage is very real.
That's it. That's the only two scenarios where automated testing is justified. Other such scenarios doesn't exist.
Why? Because any robust testing system (not just "adding some tests here and there") is a _declarative_ one. On top of already being declarative (opposed to the imperative environment where the actual code exists), if you go further and implement TDD, your tests suddenly begins to describe your domain area, turning into a declarative DSL.
Such transformations are inevitable. You can't catch bugs in the first place if your tests are ignorant of entities your code is working with.
That being said, any TDD-driven project consists of two things:
- Imperative code that implements business logic
- Declarative DSL made of automated tests that also describes the same business logic
Can't you see that this system is _wet_? The tests set alone in a TDD-driven project are enough to trivially derive the actual, complete code from it.
It's almost like it's easier to just write in a declarative language in the first place, in the same way tests are written in TDD project, and scrap the imperative part altogether.
In imperative languages, absence of errors can be mathematically guaranteed. In imperative languages, the best performance (e.g. the lowest algorithmic complexity) can also be mathematically guaranteed. There is a perfectly real point after which Haskell rips C apart in terms of performance, and that point happens earlier on than you think.
If you transitioned from a junior who doesn't get why tests are needed to a competent engineer who sees value in TDD, that's amazing. But like with any professional development, it's better to remember that it's always possible to go further. After the two milestones I described, the third exists — the complete shift into the declarative world.
For a human brain, it's natural to blindly and aggressively reject whatever information leads to the need of exiting the comfort zone. Hence the usual shitstorm that happens every time I say something about automated testing. I understand you, and more than that, I forgive you.
The only advice I would allow myself to give you is just for fun, on a weekend, open a tutorial to a language you never tried before, and spend 20 minutes messing around with it. Maybe you'll laugh at me, but that's the exact way I got from earning $200 to earning $3500 back when I was hired as a CTO for the first time.
Good luck!6 -
Critical Tips to Learn Programming Faster Sample:
Be comfortable with basics
The mistake which many aspiring students make is to start in a rush and skip the basics of programming and its fundamentals. They tend to start from the comparatively advanced topics.
This tends to work in many sectors and fields of Technology, but in the world of programming, having a deep knowledge of the basic principles of coding and programming is a must. If you are taking a class through a tutor and you feel that they are going too fast for your understanding, you need to be firm and clear and tell them to go slowly, so that you can also be on the same page like everyone else
Most often than not, many people tend to struggle when they reach a higher level with a feeling of getting lost, then they feel the need to fall back and go through basics, which is time-consuming. Learning basics well is the key to be fast and accurate in programming.
Practice to code by hand.
This may sound strange to some of you. Why write a code by hand when the actual work is supposed to be done on a computer? There are some reasons for this.
One reason being, when you were to be called for an interview for a programming job, the technical evaluation will include a hand-coding round to assess your programming skills. It makes sense as experts have researched and found that coding by hand is the best way to learn how to program.
Be brave and fiddle with codes
Most of us try to stick to the line of instructions given to us by our seniors, but it is extremely important to think out of the box and fiddle around with codes. That way, you will learn how the results get altered with the changes in the code.
Don't be over-ambitious and change the whole code. It takes experience to reach that level. This will give you enormous confidence in your skillset
Reach out for guidance
Seeking help from professionals is never looked down upon. Your fellow mates will likely not feel a hitch while sharing their knowledge with you. They also have been in your position at some point in their career and help will be forthcoming.
You may need professional help in understanding the program, bugs in the program and how to debug it. Sometimes other people can identify the bug instantly, which may have escaped your attention. Don't be shy and think that they'll make of you. It's always a team effort. Be comfortable around your colleagues.
Don’t Burn-out
You must have seen people burning the midnight oil and not coming to a conclusion, hence being reported by the testing team or the client.
These are common occurrences in the IT Industry. It is really important to conserve energy and take regular breaks while learning or working. It improves concentration and may help you see solutions faster. It's a proven fact that taking a break while working helps with better results and productivity. To be a better programmer, you need to be well rested and have an active mind.
Go Online
It's a common misconception that learning how to program will take a lot of money, which is not true. There are plenty of online college courses designed for beginner students and programmers. Many free courses are also available online to help you become a better programmer. Websites like Udemy and programming hub is beneficial if you want to improve your skills.
There are free courses available for everything from [HTML](https://bitdegree.org/learn/...) to CSS. You can use these free courses to get a piece of good basic knowledge. After cementing your skills, you can go for complex paid courses.
Read Relevant Material
One should never stop acquiring knowledge. This could be an extension of the last point, but it is in a different context. The idea is to boost your knowledge about the domain you're working on.
In real-life situations, the client for which you're writing a program for possesses complete knowledge of their business, how it works, but they don't know how to write a code for some specific program and vice versa.
So, it is crucial to keep yourself updated about the recent trends and advancements. It is beneficial to know about the business for which you're working. Read relevant material online, read books and articles to keep yourself up-to-date.
Never stop practicing
The saying “practice makes perfect” holds no matter what profession you are in. One should never stop practicing, it's a path to success. In programming, it gets even more critical to practice, since your exposure to programming starts with books and courses you take. Real work is done hands-on, you must spend time writing codes by hand and practicing them on your system to get familiar with the interface and workflow.
Search for mock projects online or make your model projects to practice coding and attentively commit to it. Things will start to come in the structure after some time.4