The OFFICIAL programming thread
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@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
Because CTOs are selected for big org operations not developers. Whatever programming they had which likely wasn’t involved gets left behind on that techie management climb.
Yeah I thought something similar when I read it but it was still amusingly written I thought.
I really know nothing about the mid to upper management at the place I work. My direct supervisor and his boss are smart and are programmers/ex-programmers which is a huge help since it’s easy to explain issues to them when I need to. I maybe cross paths with someone in middle management once every few years and it’s usually when there’s 30 to 50 people on the call because something shat itself in production.
I’m also lucky I have two lower level managers (one IT, one in a business area) who go in to bat for me every 3 months when my contract comes up for renewal. This next renewal which just got approved apparently came with “an option to extend” which I assume means the mid level manager got tired of being harassed by those guys and I’ll get a renewal next time easily if there’s work (and there always is).
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
The above guy has a pretty amusing, if sometimes a bit overly toxic, blog where he rants about his job and the industry. I’m frankly amazed he hasn’t been fired for it since it would be trivial to identify him using all the details he’s posted.
Anyway, this in particular amused me just now:
Consider this: the lawyer I mentioned in this post had opinions on whether statically typed languages are superior to dynamically typed languages, and had engaged in some complex meta-cognition. See, they reflected on how every time they felt that something in Go was ugly, it later turned out that Go was well-designed and they simply didn’t understand the issues being designed around. This turned into a rough rule that seeing a problem with Go typically reflected a flaw in their own understanding, thus flaw with Go is actually best processed as flaw in own brain until proven otherwise.
I don’t know much about Go, but that’s not important. What is important is that I’m on my knees, arms outstretched, gazing up at the sky, tears streaming down my face, and begging to have one question answered:
Why does a practicing lawyer have more thoughts on programming than every CTO I’ve had a 1:1 with at a big company?
That guy could be me if I wrote more eloquently. I have been lucky in my career having had many good managers and even some great leaders in the companies I worked for. Even the not so great ones at least had some merit behind their thinking. The law of averages has caught up to me hard in my current situation where I work for an absolute moron and our departmental “leader” has no fucking idea what she is doing. She is exactly what this guy describes, overusing “leadership” and other buzzwords at every chance, but can’t describe in any useful detail what she wants us to build. If you ask her a simple question about her view on some task, she inevitably replies with “center of excellence”, like she just has to draw an org chart and it will happen. It’s become a meme among her direct reports.
My actual boss shouldn’t even be a manager at all let alone have achieved the level he did. In many large companies you see people who managed to survive past the entry level jobs and hang on for years because the process to have them let go is made so difficult by HR that people would rather pass them off on coworkers than do the paperwork. So they shift from job to job and end up in some corner that few people know exists doing something that has to be done but nobody else wants it. Also if it breaks, few will even notice for a while. The guy is super nice and sociable which the dumbass “leader” took for ability and unfortunately we have to live with him now. He hasn’t delivered on anything since he’s been here, but no signs that he is on the hot seat at all. I should have left a long time ago but unfortunately I have other stuff going on in my life that makes me kind of stuck.
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Guessing someone got fired over that.
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
Because CTOs are selected for big org operations not developers. Whatever programming they had which likely wasn’t involved gets left behind on that techie management climb.
Yeah I thought something similar when I read it but it was still amusingly written I thought.
I really know nothing about the mid to upper management at the place I work. My direct supervisor and his boss are smart and are programmers/ex-programmers which is a huge help since it’s easy to explain issues to them when I need to. I maybe cross paths with someone in middle management once every few years and it’s usually when there’s 30 to 50 people on the call because something shat itself in production.
I’m also lucky I have two lower level managers (one IT, one in a business area) who go in to bat for me every 3 months when my contract comes up for renewal. This next renewal which just got approved apparently came with “an option to extend” which I assume means the mid level manager got tired of being harassed by those guys and I’ll get a renewal next time easily if there’s work (and there always is).
Don’t worry. We always have a very prestigious position available here for app development.
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It’s always available because you can’t find anyone who will work for Lithucoins?
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@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
It’s always available because you can’t find anyone who will work for Lithucoins?
Typical Democrat always lying.
PRESTIGIOUS POSITION. We don’t hand out LithuCoins™ to just anyone, nor provide sought after opportunities for the much awaited LOT 4.0.
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@Lithu said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
It’s always available because you can’t find anyone who will work for Lithucoins?
Typical Democrat always lying.
PRESTIGIOUS POSITION. We don’t hand out LithuCoins™ to just anyone, nor provide sought after opportunities for the much awaited LOT 4.0.
The Rats need your kind of hucksterism, er thinking.
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Wasn’t going to say anything since it’s company business, but since 94% of all US healthcare has been impacted, I will tell you I am quite busy with this charming bit of hackery-
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Fucking with healthcare should be life prison terms. Even if they aren’t hacking machines that go beep and directly keep people alive, any disruptions and distractions is going to lead to avoidable deaths even if it’s just because people’s surgery was delayed.
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
Fucking with healthcare should be life prison terms. Even if they aren’t hacking machines that go beep and directly keep people alive, any disruptions and distractions is going to lead to avoidable deaths even if it’s just because people’s surgery was delayed.
It’s a billing clearinghouse so it doesn’t stop emergency surgery but it does kill pharmacy account payout when you need to get it now and don’t have hundreds or thousands on hand to buy it retail.
Depending on how much the doctor/medical org is in, could be total cash flow starvation- any hospital living procedure to bill paycheck might go under or destroy any savings they have, then care is impacted.
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I think I must run the most expensive (per-user) accounting system on the planet. It’s completely custom built, multi-user, multi-language, multi-currency and, now since Chhunly does more important work, has exactly one user (me).
In previous years, I fell for the mistake of enhancing it whilst I was actually doing my end of year taxes but, since I prefer programming to accounting, it just meant I lost weeks doing stuff I enjoyed while my tax deadline drew closer without any real progress. Now I wait until after my taxes are done and fix things that irritated me during the previous weeks. To that end, I just implemented dark mode:
I could probably just use an off the shelf solution (or even just a spreadsheet) but one of the technologies it uses is something I use professionally so it’s good to ride the bleeding edge of that tech and experiment with it / learn. And it’s nice having the freedom to make it do whatever I want. For example, the number of web apps that insist on blowing out the back of my retinas at 11pm because they still don’t support dark mode in 2024 is too damn high.
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Probably 30 years ago I set up an Excel workbook which has served me well to this day.
I have an accountant, a necessary evil for the business, and I just send him the workbook each year around the end of February or towards the middle of March.
I suppose if I were a programmer I would have looked for a more difficult way to get the job done. ;-)
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
I think I must run the most expensive (per-user) accounting system on the planet. It’s completely custom built, multi-user, multi-language, multi-currency and, now since Chhunly does more important work, has exactly one user (me).
In previous years, I fell for the mistake of enhancing it whilst I was actually doing my end of year taxes but, since I prefer programming to accounting, it just meant I lost weeks doing stuff I enjoyed while my tax deadline drew closer without any real progress. Now I wait until after my taxes are done and fix things that irritated me during the previous weeks. To that end, I just implemented dark mode:
I could probably just use an off the shelf solution (or even just a spreadsheet) but one of the technologies it uses is something I use professionally so it’s good to ride the bleeding edge of that tech and experiment with it / learn. And it’s nice having the freedom to make it do whatever I want. For example, the number of web apps that insist on blowing out the back of my retinas at 11pm because they still don’t support dark mode in 2024 is too damn high.
What’s the blurred out line? Porn subscriptions?
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Was just wrestling more than I should have to with a simple MongoDb query when I was reminded by how much I dislike MongoDB in general. Actually, I’m not a huge fan of document databases to begin with but they’ve certainly got their very specific use cases. They aren’t a replacement though for relational DBs in 99% of normal enterprise software. Unfortunately, I chose a software stack that was hot in 2014 that was based on MongoDB which was also hot a decade ago and now I’m fucking stuck with it unless I want to spend weeks on a rewrite.
When I was first exposed to the MongoDB hype, lets say I was highly skeptical. After years of using now, I’m certain that whatever dubious time savings it gives you are wasted in working around its issues. Mongo seems to be on the nose now maybe in part because they are trying to squeeze money out of its users but at least in part because for most people it was a wasted fucking investment based on bullshit marketing lies:
The Marketing Behind MongoDB
Countless NoSQL databases competed to be the database of choice. MongoDB's marketing strategy helped it become the winner.
the majority of application software that developers write will be in use cases that are better fits for MongoDB and other NoSQL technology
MongoDB’s CTO feels that nearly 90% of database installations would benefit from switching to MongoDB.
I fucking tech marketing.
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
I fucking tech marketing.
When one is filled with hate, sometimes words go missing.
I bet that I can read your mind though! ;-)
"laissez les bons temps rouler!"
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@Hog welcome to my world but it’s worse by eleventy. There are hundreds of tools out there all with hungry sales reps trying to tell you that their shit will change the world and the competing tools are terrible. The chart below was made to show how crazy it is, but the crazy thing is each box isn’t even all of them for that category.
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@Jam said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
@Hog said in The OFFICIAL programming thread:
I fucking tech marketing.
When one is filled with hate, sometimes words go missing.
I bet that I can read your mind though! ;-)
I had to re-read the line you quoted 3 times before I saw the problem.
I drop/miss words way too often in my writing. I read a how-to book on speed reading in my early teens and I think it permanently broke me because unfortunately I seem to write the same way I read - leaving out chunks that can be inferred from the surrounding words.
Dev Loses $440 Million in 28 minutes, Chaos Ensues
Change Healthcare - Wikipedia
