array

array, 2 days ago to random

I've been a couple of days to write... Say, about 5 LOC. In the meanwhile, I've read thousands, run the debugger more times than I can count, read a lot of external docs and try almost hopelessly to figure out what was really happening in the code soup I'm struggling with. Now I'm almost sure that my solution to what on paper looked like an easy problem to solve should work and hopefully won't break anything else.

Or not. :P

array, 8 days ago to random

I'm experiencing first hand the beauty of, ahem, "legacy" code in prod. Four code blocks in a row that insert a break statement... After a return one; up to 13 levels of nested if- else if blocks (something so common my colleagues call that figure the "Doritos"); one class with a couple of thousands lines which has class declarations in the middle of pure spaghetti functions; TODO comments from a decade ago; functions with 3 (!) different declarations to perform the same exact logic... 1/2

array, 15 days ago to random

The ETA just for setting up the development environment in $newJob is no less than 2 weeks, but it's no problem if it's two months. I know many of you are used to this kind of scale in dev work places, but I'm kind of terrified (that, plus the ~300 person IT workforce all in the same place, the git repo with more than 100 repos -and this is, apparently, just the tip of the iceberg-), the commits in 1000+ LOC files made in the past century... This will be fun, fortunately. And sadly. :P

array, 19 days ago to php

My first #PHP was 8.0, still in school, and I confess that I began learning it with the prejudice of it being a junky, terrible language everybody was making fun of. Fast forward ~1 year later, after finishing my internship, where I used full stack #Laravel mainly, and having discovered that not only it wasn't that bad, but really a pleasure to work with. Not perfect, but perfectly suitable for its use cases and, what's perfect anyway? So reading this has been a joy. :D https://developerjoy.co/blog/php-doesnt-suck-anymore

array, 19 days ago to random

Commuting to $newJob will be complicated. The place is close to the beach, so the public buses, at least in the hot season (so half of the year or so, and counting), will be full of tourists to the point that I'll likely miss more than one because full capacity overflow.

I still refuse to have a 🚗.

array, 23 days ago to Java

I've got the impression that the #EclipseIDE doesn't get all the love it deserves, but I'm quite a fan myself. It's really impressive how featureful it is, and sure doing #Java would be way harder if I couldn't count on it. My $newJob, I've been told, makes using Eclipse mandatory for Java dev, so this is great news for me. :)

array, 23 days ago to ubuntu

I, for one, would like not to having to think about my OS much. Just knowing that it's FOSS, and get sh*t done. So here I am, mostly stuck on #Ubuntu for dev work because reasons, and not a day I don't read someone telling us it's bad and we shouldn't use it. It's a bit tiring and I've got enough on my head to consider a switch ATM. So note to myself: keep using whatever works for me while I don't have to compromise personal values, and thus become:

array, 25 days ago to Java

My #Java project goes on, as a learning practice preparing for $newJob. I have, on purpose, excluded any frontend frameworks, just plain old HTML and CSS, and some JS strictly when needed. I build my templates with JSP, and I'm not using any backend framework. A bit more work? Maybe. But it's crystal clear, less bloated, and so fast! Plus, I get to see behind the abstractions, implementing models, services, factories, servlets, utils, etc. all by myself. In other words: I'm having fun. :)

array, 1 month ago to random

What ends with my patience when I'm in "helpdesk mode" is that most people I'm trying to help seem to have learned to use their GUIs just by repetition and memory, and fsck heuristics. Switch a button's position, move a menu item, and they are lost. No matter how many times you say, "you just have one screen to explore, so just read what's there, move your pointer, read the tooltips, click and read the menus..." But it's parrot's way or the highway. 🤦‍♀️

array, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

I can relate: "From a Lorry Driver to Ruby on Rails Developer at 38" https://www.writesoftwarewell.com/lorry-driver-to-rails-developer-at-38/ I was a bookstore clerk with nearly 50, I went back to school instead of doing a boot camp, and I just got a full stack #Java+#Angular+PL/SQL position, but otherwise this sounds quite familiar. So the obvious moral of our tale is "you can do it, if you work hard and are passionate about it". But is it? I've seen younger, about the same age and even older folks try and fail. And it's OK. =>

array, 1 month ago to random

This morning I received a call to have a job interview this evening, dev position, in a big enterprise ("big" according to my humble standards; ~200 people in the IT department I've been told, a noticeable change from being just 2 developers in my former job). Stakes are high and probabilities are low, but having another chance when everything seems to be going south is nice. :)

array, 1 month ago to Java

Back to the basics. I've started another web pet project, this time with #Java. And I mean plain vanilla Java, with no backend or frontend frameworks. I get the utility of those when doing corporate stuff, but for a relatively simple web project, with time on my side? It more than suffices, it will likely be way lighter, and I get to see behind some of the framework's abstractions, so it's another opportunity to learn. :)

array, 1 month ago to random

Today I've learnt first hand of an enterprise with an IT staff of ~200 people stuck on a Java 6 (from... 2006!) codebase. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess they must be on their own, because it's been a while since it went EOL. That makes one think again on how difficult must be to migrate such huge codebases... And how difficult must be to patch it to keep the engines running on a daily basis. Sigh, computers were supposed to make everybody's life easier, but. :P

array, 1 month ago to random

The story of my life when developing some web project is mostly always the same: I can surf on the code waves for a while... And then some apparently minor, silly detail got me stuck for hours. Now it's been a Vue component that refuses to display a selected placeholder by default, so you don't have to stare at an empty select bar. Yes, I've tried that already but no dice. Will I make it? Yeah, or bust. :D

array, 1 month ago to programming

I have a silly question for you, Fedi. I have a 1:N relationship between artists and countries table. I know countries may change, but let's assume that it's a fixed list for now. What would you do to retrieve the countries data to use in a form to create a new artist: query the DB, or just declare a constant array in the form view, and why? Thank you in advance. :)
#Programming #Database

array, 1 month ago to Laravel

I'm pretty amazed with #Laravel+ #Vue+ #Inertia. In a nutshell, you don't have to write routes for your API endpoints and then routes in your frontend views, and then frontend methods to retrieve data and so on. You mostly work as if you were serving your server-side rendered views, write your models and controllers, and then you just pass the data as props to your Vue pages and components, and bang, done! I'm really having fun with my pet project. :)

array, 1 month ago to random

It's official, wrote my renounce letter today, so back to the desert caravan of job search again. But I feel fine, as I've shown no other but myself that I could land a job as a programmer and survive the experience. Why I'm leaving is long to tell, but let's just say that I'd still be there if I could just keep on doing web programming projects, but that would have been no longer the case. I'll have my chance again, and if not... I'll just keep on coding, no matter what. :)

array, 1 month ago to random

I began with programming about 3 years ago, and did an Associate Degree in web programming. If I may say so, I passed with pretty good grades, but 3 months after I landed my first gig, I am more convinced every day that I arrived too late for this. I have an Humanities background, zero Science/Maths in my belt, and I'm just too old for this. It's been a ride, trying to make my way from zero to code monkey at 50. So let's call it a day now that I'm still winning. <3

array, 2 months ago to random

I can relate: https://blog.ignaciobrasca.com/opinion/2024/03/15/javascript-nightmare.html Maybe some day I will tell the story of the three days I spent trying to find out why my full stack JS project, which ran just fine in local, failed miserably after hitting some API endpoint in production, why it was so hard to debug, and why, even after solving two unrelated consecutive issues "works in my machine, dies on deployment", I still don't really know what caused any of the errors (?) #JavasScript

array, 2 months ago to wordpress

After "enjoying" the "pleasures" of #WordPress with Elementor and WPBakery in a few projects, I can confidently say that I'd pick the old HTML+CSS+JS poison any day of the week, thank you. :P

array, 2 months ago to random

I had to implement push notifications on a project that had a particular constraint. Long story short, I can't (can but can't; don't ask) use my backend to store anything. But for this to work, I had to store the subscriptions to the notifications (again, don't ask). And... Enter #SQLite. There's a npm package ready to use and it works flawlessly, so I can have a full fledged, simple and lightweight SQL database right in my frontend. This solved my problem and I'm grateful for this to exist. :)

array, 2 months ago to random

It's been a while since I updated my #Arch Linux install, so here's a nearly-one-gig ready to download and play Russian roulette with my system. And you know what? Just another smooth update. I don't know how the maintainers can do this kind of magic, but please keep on doing this. <3

array, 3 months ago to random

My first project has died at the worst of times: on deployment. Node/Express+Vue, on a Plesk server. Two whole days trying to make something that did wonders on my local env, doing the same on prod. Because who knows, and believe me: I've tried all I got. I guess I will get the boot and start again. :P

array, 3 months ago to random

In other news, today's my birthday and someone who loves me (there's always people for anything you can think of) brought me this, the Exegesis of my beloved P. K. Dick, Spanish edition. Dick was as much a genius as a weirdo; with the weirdo part, I can relate. And it's hard to get weirder than Dick's Exegesis. <3

array, 3 months ago to random

After just a couple of months as a junior full stack code monkey, I can state what I love and what I don't from this.

What I love:

It's a new challenge everyday. You never get bored.

What I don't:

It's a new challenge everyday. You never get bored.