The Two Faces Of Developer Assistance

Content I wanted to dress my nephew as a zombie, but he ended up looking like a full stack developer

Content What does the ??!??! operator do in C? Asked 9 years, 11 months ago Active 1 month ago Viewed 279k times I saw a line of C that looked like this: 2134 ! ErrorHasOccured() ??!??! HandleError () ;

The ultimate developer keyboard has arrived! Just two keys: TAB and ACCEPT. Because let's face it, your entire coding career is just hitting Tab for autocomplete suggestions and then smashing Accept when something looks vaguely correct. No more pretending you actually write code from scratch – this is how we all really work in 2024. The perfect companion for those 3am coding sessions when Stack Overflow is your real IDE and your brain is running on caffeine and desperation. Bonus: comes with free licenses to rendering tools you'll need when your Frankenstein code inevitably crashes!

Content I've interviewed a lot of people over the last year (Java), and my favorite test is to throw a Stack Trace at them and ask them to figure out what the problem is. The answer is actually quite clear, however. Half of them don't know it's called a stack trace. Some don't know what they're looking at (BYE!). Several focus on the wrong section of proprietary code. Some ask to "open a debugger". however the answer is right there in plain english if you just read the method names. Many don't realize the line numbers are RIGHT THERE, and then start focusing on the lines ending with "Compiled Code". Then there are the ones who work their way up from the bottom, starting with the application container code, and lose their minds. Some who figure out what is happening don't have a solution to prevent it from happening. No, I'm not sharing the trace; suffice to say it's been reviewed by more than 5 of my peers and they all passed. Like Reply 1h Edited I mean, it isn't hard to eliminate people with a coding question. Do you find it impossible to teach people how to read text stack traces, or is this a skill without which they will be unable to do anything of use, or do you just not want to hire anyone? 1 am serious. 1 can come up with dozens of useful programming skills I can test a candidate on that most perfectly skilled programmers would fail. Start with eliminating people who can't code at all. Then find out what they can do that could be useful. If I have 5 people who can already take a printed out stack crash dump, I probably don't need another, and if I do, a qualified candidate can be taught that skill by someone who knows it in under a week. Then again, maybe you work for Stack Trace Inc, and your entire job is looking at stack traces. If so, by bad. Like Reply 22m

Content IF THE WORLD WAS CREATED BY A PROGRAMMER IN THe BEGINNING, THERE WAS ThE hEaven AND THE EARTH BUT THE EARTH WAS FORMLESS AND BUGGY, WITHOUT DOCUMENTATION BY toggl AND THE PROGRAMMER SAW THAT IT WAS NOT GOOD THEN YOU SAID "LET THERE BE LIGHT! BUT ThE LIGHT Did NOT COMPILE. On THE SECOND DAY YOU MERGE WATER YOU CREATE HACK SO THAT LIGHT IS PART OF THE LAND TO CREATE DARKNESS, YOU NEED TO HIDE THE LAND, BUt That's OK CAUSE CREATURES WONT BE ADDED UNTIL LATER. AND STACKOVERFLOW SAID IT'S FINE Wherev BUT BECAUSE OF ThE DEPENDEncY, LIGHT BREAKS AS LAND IS ACCIDENTALLY CLOODED YOU CHECK STACKOVERFLOW (IN THE DARKNESS) IT'S ThE THIRD DAY. YOU TRY TO ADD CREATURES YOU ADD THEM IN THE TURNS OUT the CREATURES IN THE DARKNESS, BUT BROWSER USINg COoKIES, NEEDED TO BE ADDED SOONER, THERE'S NO LAND WITHOUT we Tart UNFORTUNATELY MAKES THEM MORTAL BuT The CLienT FOrGoT to LIGHT, AND YOU CAN'T HAVE LIGHT BECAUSE OF THE MENTION THAT WATER IT's THE FOuRTH DAY. YOU DECIDE TO USE C YOU ALSO USE ST TURNS OUT THE ISSUES TO CREATE A BALLOON FOR ABSTrACTIONS,AND THAT INFLATES THE EARTH IT WORKS OUT GREAT WERE CAUSED BY THE WITH FLAT EARTH DESIGN COMPLICATIONS WHATSOEVER! IT'S THE FIFtH DaY YOU START ADDING PeOPLE TO HELP YOU ON THE SIXTH DAY YoU LOOK AT THe CHAOS YOU CREATED ON THE SEVENTH DAY YOU REALLY WANT TO REST BUT YoU NEED To ORGANISE ALL YoU'VE CREATED DANGLING POINTE YOU DECIDE TO CREATE THEM IN YOUR LIKENESS, WHICH IS A MISTAKE REACT THEY IMMEDIATELY POPULATE THE EARTH WITH HACKS FADS AND UNNECESSARY JAVASCRIPT LIBRARIES FUCKIT.JS) SQUERI YOU ATTEMPT TO LEAD PEOPLE BACK TO SENSIBLE PROGRAMMING, BUT IT IS TOO LATE- EVERYTHING RUNS ON DEPENDENCIES. DAVTIMEAIR.JS HORMONE SEA.JS REALISTIC.WAVES.JS BETTERBANKS.JS BASE.JS GIRAFFE.JS SUNDE MONGODB TOGGL.COM MART VIRKUS '17

The career progression of every developer in one image. Junior asks a simple question, Senior tosses back "just google it" like they're throwing a bone to a dog. Meanwhile, the Senior's internal monologue: "I could explain dependency injection for 45 minutes or I could go back to my coffee before it gets cold." The circle of programming life continues unbroken.