It's so funny how customers like the small and unimportant things. They are impressed by a display of skill rather than skill.

For instance, I needed to quickly create a password. So, I opened my terminal, typed in as always

dd if=/dev/urandom count=500 | base64 -w 0

Then I copied a random chunk of some 200 to 500 chars and copied it as the temporary password and sent it around.

I was told later on that I impressed with my technical know-how and skills...

But I guess, now that I impressed, I can profit of the halo effect.

Guess, take this as PSA. Sound confident. That's more important than being confident. They have no idea what's going on.

Ah fuck my asshole of course it wasn't that easy

Great that my GC can detect any managed pointer off the stack et al. Yeah but what if a GC ptr is behind some random non-gc allocation, inside a future, etc.

fuckkkk

Best idea right now I replacing the global allocator. Then I know all allocations and can conservatively still traverse them (means way more checks... ugh). And if one allloc is a gc object then I know its vtable and can do precise analysis

Really not perfect. But guess what: boehm does the same lol

I should really stop being that dismissive of myself

It's funny how retoor was in the leading member taking the responsibility of taking out the spam messages from this platform.

And now cut to, she being the one who posts spam now, babbling about how great she is, at AI, models and all that hooplah.

It all goes back to the saying - You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Btw, this rant is posted from `https://dr.molodetz.nl/`. Cry about it.

I've been thinking a lot about garbage collectors for compiled languages again

Funnily enough my idea for a multi threaded gc for Rust is basically how boehm does it too (well at least on linux): On a GC cycle you send a unix signal to all other threads to make them pause and then in the signal handler you save all regs, then walk the stack and regs upwards over 8 byte values. Any value that falls into the gc heap and is a valid allocation is assumed to be a ptr and that object gets marked

Pretty clever

Though I'm working on a single threaded GC for Rust now. That one actually has a real use case too: I don't have to use Rc<T> and .clone() them all over the place in my compiler! Just beautiful wrapped pointers with copy semantics 😌

Code tells a story.

It is usually not especially interesting. It is not captivating. But it is a story.

The story often goes like this: Instead of using the class directly, an interface was used. Someone expects this implementation to change a lot. Or they want to break the logic of the code apart. Speed up compilation times. Maybe they plan on having multiple different implementations.

That's, well... no, it is not exciting. But sometimes you look at it and wonder why. And you muse to yourself, what could be the reason for this curious choice. Is the whole project written like that? Maybe two developer developed the feature together and they agreed at the very beginning to write the interface in order to be able to cleanly work in parallel. I did this with a colleague. We worked on a common feature. We decided to write an interface first, then we worked separately and in parallel on the two sides of the interface. In the end we left it in and we were asked why we decided to use an interface.

Code tells a story. But so very often now, the story I hear when I ask why is "copilot did it." Fuck you. And fuck your "hey, copilot says you could do something better" in merge reviews.

I don't care if you want to use AI. I don't think it is good. You dull your skills. But hey, I don't really care about it. I don't care if you decide to use a plastic fork to remove your left eye. I mean, I would have recommended a sharper instrument, but fuck, if you want to mutilate yourself. Go for it. But when git blame tells me it was you who wrote the code, then don't fucking excuse any decision with "copilot did it." And when copilot tells you there is an improvement in my merge request, you don't need to tell me that it came from copilot. That is no authority. If you think copilot is right, you argue for it, and you give me arguments and reasons. But if you don't even understand yourself why it is supposedly better, just fuck off.

update: oh boy, spent the whole day in the hospital - bronchopathy. They did some exams and you know that propylene glycol thingy vape liquids use to produce all that vapor? It seems that while that shit's safe to eat, your lungs can't digest it, obviously. Therefore I am now stuck puking that shit out the next couple of weeks. Don't touch ANY sort of vape, friends

Around half a year ago I had a client... Client that told me I would be responsible for quite big system that needs to be written, that he vibecoded a lot of, and that I am supposed to use as much AI as possible and buy myself claude max plan.

Fine, at that point I needed something, anything, as I didnt had any project.

Long story short, there was 3 huge, huge repos, with tens of tousends of dead code lines. An API that half of endpoints didnt work. I started vibecoding (as requested by client, "becouse this claude AI produces shockingly good quality code" - direct client quote) and getting frustrated by what tf the AI was doing.

I was requested to take as many hours as needed to get the features delivered asap.

I managed to bend the reality to get compiling code that passes some smoke tests of some of the features. Features, that were poorly defined and I had some questions practially all the time (as the file with features was vibed also lmao), and usually anwser was something like "whatever works, mate".

It lasted 1.5 weeks. Every single day I was out of claude limit.

After 1.5 weeks client disappeared for few days, not responding, and after almost a full week I got lengthy message from him that roughly said "you are great developer, but you dont use AI enough so your velocity isnt exactly what I expected. Good luck with next projects".

Ooof. While I know it's probably worst productivity measure out there, but LoC wise, that was solid +30k in that 2 weeks, that I did indeed read through and knew it at least roughly does what it should.

Oh, and he finished the project himself with pure vibecoding, launched it, it failed immidietely as it wasnt technically sound. At least made me smile for half a second.

I will never forget trying to get Opus to follow architecture or do anything reasonably.

I rant about it for simple reason:
for some people the AI thing makes them impossibly delusional what the tool actually can do and what it is good for. Impossibly delusional. Don't be me. Don't deal with delusional clients.

An HR manager was knocked down (tragically) by a bus and was killed. Her soul arrived at the Pearly Gates, where St.Peter welcomed her. “Before you get settled in” he said, “We have a little problem…you see, we’ve never had a HR manager make it this far before and we’re not really sure what to do with you.”

“Oh, I see,” said the woman, “can’t you just let me in?”

“Well, I’d like to,” said St Peter, “But I have higher orders. We’re instructed to let you have a day in hell and a day in heaven, and then you are to choose where you’d like to go for all eternity.”

“Actually, I think I’d prefer heaven”, said the woman. “Sorry, we have rules…” at which St. Peter put the HR manager into the downward bound elevator.

As the doors opened in Hell she stepped out onto a beautiful golf course. In the distance was a country club; around her were many friends, past fellow executives, all smartly dressed, happy, and cheering for her. They ran up and kissed her on both cheeks, and they talked about old times.

They played a perfect round of golf and afterwards went to the country club where she enjoyed a superb steak and lobster dinner. She met the Devil (who was actually rather nice) and she had a wonderful night telling jokes and dancing.

Before she knew it, it was time to leave. Everyone shook her hand and waved goodbye as she stepped into the elevator. The elevator went back up to heaven where St. Peter was waiting for her. “Now it’s time to spend a day in heaven,” he said.

So she spent the next 24 hours lounging around on clouds, playing the harp and singing; which was almost as enjoyable as her day in Hell. At the day’s end St. Peter returned. “So,” he said, “You’ve spent a day in hell and you’ve spent a day in heaven”. “You must choose between the two.”

The woman thought for a second and replied: “Well, heaven is certainly lovely, but I actually had a better time in hell. I choose Hell.”

Accordingly, St. Peter took her to the elevator again and she went back down to hell. When the doors of the elevator opened she found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in garbage and filth. She saw her friends dressed in rags, picking up rubbish and putting it in old sacks. The Devil approached and put his arm around her.

“I don’t understand,” stuttered the HR manager, “The other day I was here, and there was a golf course, and a country club. We ate lobster, and we danced and had a wonderful happy time. Now all there is, is just dirty wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable.”

The Devil simply looked at her and smiled, “Yesterday we were recruiting you, today you’re staff.”

10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Junior Developer

After a few years in tech, I’ve realized that most growth doesn’t come from new frameworks — it comes from mindset shifts. If you’re just starting out, here’s some advice I wish someone had drilled into me early:

You’re not competing with anyone but your past self.
Forget comparing your code to that genius on your team who breathes JavaScript. You’ll get there — and faster if you focus on consistent growth over ego.

Google is your best mentor.
Asking questions is fine, but make them good questions. Try solving things first. Seniors love helping, but they respect those who’ve clearly done their homework.

Readable > Clever.
Fancy one-liners might make you feel smart, but clear variable names and simple logic make you a great teammate. Code is for humans first, machines second.

Reviews aren’t attacks.
A pull request comment isn’t criticism — it’s collaboration. Listen, learn, and keep the good discussions going both ways.

Never fake knowing something.
“I’ll check and get back to you” will earn you way more respect than pretending you know the answer. Engineering thrives on honesty.

Think before you type.
Rushing code just to “finish it fast” often leads to rework. Taking time to plan saves you more time later than you’d imagine.

Document like someone will use it tomorrow.
Because someone will — maybe you. Nothing feels worse than debugging your own undocumented code months later.

Soft skills aren’t optional.
People remember how you made them feel, not how you formatted your code. Be kind, patient, and reliable. Those qualities get you rehired.

Run toward the scary stuff.
That weird legacy code? The new API nobody wants to touch? Take it on. Growth hides in discomfort.

Keep learning, even when your job doesn’t require it.
Your company won’t future-proof you — you have to do that yourself. Read, build side projects, and stay curious.

At the end of the day, being a great developer isn’t about knowing everything — it’s about always being willing to learn.

One of our internal web apps stops loading the content when you switch to another tab.

How do you even implement horse shit like that?

I think you‘d have trouble to implement it even if it was a requirement. Fucking how?

Anyway, if you want to spend the long ass loading time by doing something else in another tab, then no!

Tough luck motherfucker!
You‘ll be watching that loading spinner like the rest of the thousands of users daily!
It‘s doing hard work loading all that crap for the convoluted clusterfuck of a web app!
You better appreciate that and watch it loading!
🤡

I'm sorry for being old-fashioned, but I sign up to social media sites to be able to talk/connect to humans.

Fill up your site with bot interactions and everyone needing @grok to verify everything, going so far as to tell them result of 2+2, and I'm out.

Years ago we had been developing a game for the handheld consoles. We were very young && inexperienced back then. Some more than others... Version for one of the consoles finally saw the light of day, while the other one was sadly canceled.
The development of that canceled one was very troubled.
One example of that would be the core team during the initial stages of the project. One fairly seasoned programmer... Yes - that's it.
Obviously he needed some help, so... the studio hired interns. Two of them, IIRC. One of the interns was put in charge of the game's multiplayer code.
He was ostensibly doing a good job, as the mode was working. Sure it needed some fixing && some tweaks, but it was there.
That is until it came time to check the platform's requirements by the testers. By the time they got their hands on the documentation, it turned out that the SDK used by the game had become obsolete && was no longer eligible for submission. Once the SDK was updated to a newer version, the multiplayer stopped working for some reason.
The issue was investigated which revealed that the intern who wrote the code had been using functions that were marked as deprecated && were no longer available in the newer SDK, explaining why the mode was FUBAR.
Moral of the story? Pay close attention to:
0. Interns,
1. Platform's requirements,
2. Changelogs,
3. Deprecations.

Like many of us, tired of hearing the expressions: "infused with A.I.", "powered by A.I.", "augmented with A.I.", "A.I.-first", etc.

Every time that I get a notification on yt that someone has liked my comment that contains "bad words", the total likes on it is 0.

Which tells me that at least one woke snowflake retard has hit the dislike button.

Also, yt not showing dislikes (only likes) is retarded.
At least show me the dislikes for my own comments, buttheads!

I have nobody to share this so I will inflict myself on you guys.

I genuinelly laughted out loud from reading the Hot Potato Licence

https://github.com/ErikMcClure/...

We need to come up with a coding version of this. Where is a place that coders fight all the time? Some place notorious for this? We fight here, but I wouldn't compare devrant to a waffle house.

tailwind is trash holy crap.

every div element contains like 30 classes that have their own thing going for them.

just start writing inline css at that point. Why bother putting classes in?

Unofficial slogans for programming languages:

Javascript - JustShitting out frameworks every week.

Python - Shit programmers become slightly less shit and call themselves "data scientists" here.

C# - We know we are better than you, and even though we don't need to say it, we will say it anyway.

Pascal - The only recognized version of Pascal is from one single vendor.

Haskell - Stay is school if you want to use this professionally.

Swift - (honestly don't know what to say here, Lensflare can fill in on this one.) Maybe this: The first rule of Swift club is we don't talk about Apple club.

Java/Kotlin - We are in everything, including your mom's vibrator.

C - The rest of the programming world doesn't exist. Especially in embedded. Happily using K & R compilers for 3 decades.

C++ - We will pretend to care about the rest of the programming world, but like C, we will do whatever the fuck we want. or, Being held back by the ABI for at least a decade.

Rust - I feel bad for you for using other programming languages.

These are probably highly inaccurate, mostly just wanted to talk about Java being in your mom's sex toy.

Lets assume you don't know anything about industrial protocols. You are also working for a very high profile and very technically inclined company. Your job is to figure out how to get data over a network interface using a specific standard port. The protocol in use is THE standard for information systems in the industry: opcua.

How much hand holding do you need?

I am actually shocked at the amount of technical ineptitude of the people we have interfaced with. How did they get in the door?

When I first started out in my industrial controls career I just read whatever manuals and websites I could find. Do people not do that anymore?

I want to scream: RTFM Mother Fucker!

I'm developing a board game and it’s so much fun to come up with structures and logic to implement the rules of the game and make it in a way that is clever and doesn’t require a lot of repetition and explicit definitions which would increase the probability to introduce bugs and make future changes tedious.

This is what I love about programming. The pure joy of thinking about those problems and solving them.
I'd never want to delegate this task to an AI even if I'd be convinced that it would do a good job.

A day in my life. This morning Dell was doing it's update on my laptop before I left for work, so later when I knew my wife was up I asked her via text to shut my laptop off.

W: "You left your laptop on this morning."
Me: "I know, it was still doing an update this morning. I sent you a text."
W: "Leaving your computer on all day is going to burn it up."
Me: "Its 8:30, been maybe a half hour isn't a day."
W: "Still wasting electricity. How do I turn this thing off?"
Me: "It's just like yours."
W: "No, your computer is way different than mine. Just tell me how to turn it off"
Me: "My computer is running Windows 11, yours is Windows 10, shutting down is exactly the same"
W: "I don't understand, yours looks completely different. Stop being an ass and just tell me"
Me: "Select Start, then shut down"
W: "Select what? There isn't anything that says Start"
Me: "Sorry, click the little icon in the bottom left. Looks like four little blue squares. That's the Windows Start menu button, just like yours."
W: "OK, now what?"
Me: "Shut down"
W: "Shut down what? I don't see anything"
Me: "The icon that looks like power button next to my name"
W: "There is nothing next to your name except your picture"
Me: "It'll be on the right hand side"
W: "Where the clock is?"
Me: "No, on the Start menu, where you see my picture, there should be a button to turn it off."
W: "No, it went away"
Me: "What do you mean went away?"
W: "All that disappeared when you told me to click over by the clock."
Me: "I didn't say to click on the clock, anyway, doesn't matter. Start over, select the icon in the bottom left"
W: "You're not listening. There is nothing there when I click that. You're such as ass. You cannot even tell me how to turn off this stupid computer. I'm busy, you can turn this thing off when you get home."
<a few minutes later I text my daughter>
Me: "Baby girl, can you turn off my computer?"
<10 seconds later>
H: "Done. Anything else?"
Me: "Nope. Thank you."

In my latest installment of "Swift, WTF?", we look at the "if" conditional in terms of the Swift convention of:

if let x = y { /* ... */ }

so what this does :
1. declares x in the scope of the braced code
2. sets x to y (an ahem, "optional")
3. decides if x is not *nil*, then executes the braced code.

This is very similar in both the visual and the operation to the C code of:

if (int x = y) { /* ... */ }

1. declares x in the scope of the braced code
2. sets x to the value of y
3. if x is not zero, then executes the braced code

which is considered *exceptionally* poor style.

Neither the C nor the Swift construct result in a legitimate boolean value of "true" or "false", although C comes closer than Swift.

In the Swift case the *imaginary* "nil" value has to be interpreted as "false" and thus there must be extra code is for the conditional to check on whatever constitutes the **actual** value of nil in Swift and then set the condition to "false".

(remember boys and girls, "optionals" are not real, they are an imaginary language construct of Swift and have no legitimate counterpart in the CPU operations with memory and registers)

At least in the case of C, if the value of x is zero or NULL (which is 0) then it is technically a "false" which in C is 0. Regardless, it is really poor programming and anyone doing that on my team gets an ear full.

But in Swift this obfuscation of code is common and condoned! Well, why not put more of the program in the condition of the if? In fact, stuff the whole thing in there.. why not? 🙄

This just reenforces my opinion that Swift is not a bird but the stuff that comes out of the underside of the bird. 🐦💩

I don't care, skeuomorphism like iOS 6 or window 7 aero was the peak of design and you can't convince me otherwise

In modern C#, everything's an interface.

Zig is actually sort of similar. I guess I owe it to C# for teaching me the magic.

Sorry, I mean:

IZig is IActually ISort of ISimilar. (IContinued...)

I'm trying really hard to like Swift but every time I open the hood on this bird, it takes a shit on my windshield.

For example:

struct ContentView: View {

var body: some View {
let kFontPointSize = 25.0
var theFont: Font = .system( size: kFontPointSize )

theFont = .custom("Helvetica", size: kFontPointSize )

Text("Hello, World!")
.padding(.horizontal, 20.0)
.font( theFont )
}

}

... in spite of how wonderfully self documenting (🐂💩) Swift is, that dirty bird converts the 'var' to a 'let' and "theFont" cannot be reassigned after declaration.

3 things:

1. invisibly converting the 'var' to a 'let' and not indicating 'var' can't be used... really?! Suppose to just "know" these obscure inconsistencies? (sloppy design)

2. then the error Xcode presents on "theFont = ..." line is : "Type '()' cannot conform to 'View'"!? How about "can't use a 'var' here"? God forbid it should make sense. (sloppy design)

3. "var" means variable and "let" means letstant? If you are going to use "var", better use "const", or be consistent and use "set" and "let" instead of "var" and "let" (sloppy inconsistency)

4. and ".horizontal", who owns that? Self documenting?. It is owned Edge Set aka Edge.Set.horizontal and effectively a "global".

5. And reading the Swift coder's mind... No, you should NEVER NEVER NEVER use "25" as a constant literal passed like .system( size: 25 ). (magic numbers not aloud)

Have all best engineering practices been simply tossed out the window? Rule #1 in software "engineering": Globals are BAD. Corollary: magic numbers earn you a one-legged A on your project.

I am so incredibly disappointed in the Swift community right now. Swift designers are honestly earning a "script kiddy" badge of dishonor.

Doing some JavaScript right now and holy moly is this one spaghetti ass language

Promises referencing closures referencing local variables referencing message handlers referencing resolve callbacks referencing ... 😵‍💫

really hate how they keep using the word equity everywhere

an AI just used it to describe some process prioritization code I handed it to summarize

that is not at all relevant here...

I fucking hate Figma.

It's primary use case is designing web applications, yet all of its naming conventions are based on SVG.

So you have to fight with designers trying to shoehorn SVG naming conventions into design tokens.

"Stroke" is border. Every time I see this I feel like I'm having a stroke.

"Drop-shadow" is box-shadow. This one really pisses me off because the properties you set for drop shadows are not valid drop shadow filters unless by some miracle the designer didn't discover the spread property. I suppose this doesn't matter because 99% of the time the code will apply a box-shadow anyway.

"Effects". FFS.

/rant

If you put Web3 on your resume, I'm rejecting you without even looking at the rest of your resume.

an AI programmer telling you coding with AI makes you a x10 engineer is like someone telling you autocomplete makes them a x10 novelist