The Black Hole Called Node_modules

Content Nom packages Developer Project

Every programmer knows that dark journey. You start innocently searching for "how to center a div" and three hours later you're watching a tutorial on creating realistic fur shaders in WebGL by some guy who sounds like he hasn't slept in four days. The search for animation references is just the beginning of the rabbit hole that leads you to the disturbing underbelly of programming tutorials where people implement sorting algorithms with interpretive dance and explain pointer arithmetic while dressed as anime characters. The YouTube algorithm knows your weakness—it's not cat videos, it's "uncomfortably enthusiastic dev explaining RegEx at 3am."

Content WHEN FRONT END WAS CREATED FASTER.

The classic regex lifecycle in three simple steps: start with one problem, apply regex thinking it's the solution, end up with two problems. And yes, the plural of regex is absolutely "regrets" – a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who's ever tried to debug a pattern that worked perfectly in the testing tool but somehow fails spectacularly in production. It's like watching someone reach for regex to parse HTML. You want to stop them, but it's already too late. Their soul now belongs to the matching group demons.

That moment when you've been manually refreshing the page for 8 hours straight, squinting at console logs, and questioning your career choices... only to realize you never pressed the magic "refresh debugger" button. The browser's been showing you the same broken code all day while you slowly lose your sanity. Pro tip: before throwing your laptop out the window, try Ctrl+F5 first.

Content how I feel centering a div as a backend engineer