causticTech

the interview zoo

so... for the last few months i've been doing interviews in order to fill some development positions that have opened up. fuck man... i can't think of anything more fucking soul-leeching (and depressing) than having to give "the technical interview."  as i see it, there are two major, major, major fucking issues with this ungodly, unholy process. both these issues more or less make sure that it will never fucking work. they would be:

• the potential candidate
• the  interviewers

why don't we start with...

the potential candidates

what is happening today? has some fucking alien civilization pointed a planet-wide ray-gun at our fucking world, bypassed the "stun" and "kill" settings,  went straight to the dreaded "stupid beyond all fucking belief" setting,  and just let it rip???? i just don't fucking get it. due to my own complete lack of fucking knowledge in software development, i don't consider myself to be too tough an interviewer (although i guess it's all relative). nevertheless though, i do have some minimum expectations such as:

• you must be breathing (if possible without the assistance of your mouth or terry gilliam-like portable iron-lung machine)
• you must be able to show up dressed (as long as you're not naked, anything will do)
• you must understand basic personal hygiene (anything past basic and we're pushing it here, folks)
• regardless of the language you speak, your entire vocabulary should not consist of only the words "like", "um", and "ajax" or their foreign equivalents (and you better fucking believe me... i know them when i hear them)
• i'm going out on a limb here, but i think that it is probably a good fucking idea not open the interview with questions regarding sexual harassment and how tolerant we are of pornography in the work place

jesus, if you can get past those few simple guidelines, you're almost HALFWAY THERE!!!! it truly is a fucking unfortunate state of affairs that these basic minimums cut my pool of fucking candidates down to about 10%. for your convenience, i've broken down what's left of the available pool of candidates by type (this is by no means comprehensive... feel free to let me know of others). let's take a look at these animals...

bookman

ah... this one took me by  total fucking surprise. i would never expected that this kind of thing is now socially acceptable... i think an example here would more than adequately convey what i mean:

caustic interviewer: so... tell me a little bit about blah-blah-blah...

bookman (looking straight into caustic interviewer's eyes): well... that was never mentioned in the book that I read... how important can it be??

well blow me down!!! i had no idea people were just so fucking blatant about this shit in today's world. as much as i would like to say that the above was modified for dramatic effect, it wasn't. let me get this straight... wait... i just can't. how the fuck is that kind of answer supposed to help your cause? i guess all you need to fucking do today is just show that you've read a little bit on the pertinent topic, and your good as fucking gold! i can't speak for everybody, but i know back in my day, a little bit more was expected out of you than just, "yeah... i read the book." what was really fucking sad was that this fucking person was actually still employed somewhere and thought his response was perfectly reasonable!! even more hilarious was that in speaking to his recruiter later that week, i found out that he thought he nailed the tech interview...

the buzzfucker

this fucking guy's MO is to mention at least 2 or 3 acronyms or buzzwords into every-fucking-thing he fucking says. in addition, said buzzwords are thrown together regardless of the fact that it might not even make fucking sense! here are some typical responses:

buzzfucker: on my last project i used ruby-on-rails, ajax, soa, wcf, and wpf...

caustic interviewer: wtf?!

while not quite as audacious as the bookman, i just plain hate this shit. for some reason these fucking people really think they have a fucking career going for them in software development. i couldn't fucking think of anything more wrong. fortunately, i know how to deal with these fuckers in a very simple and effective fashion. i look them right in the eye... and then in a very serious tone of voice ask... "have you ever considered a career in sales...???"

the know-it-all

here's one i'm sure you've all come across... the douchebag who thinks he knows fucking EVERYTHING. i'm not even talkin' bout various aspects of technology or writing code... i'm talking EVERYTHING... EVERYTHING. the last thing i need to be fucking debating about during an interview is if i know how to make a fucking decent peanut butter & jelly sandwich. what the fuck is that about? why is it that people can't admit to fucking ignorance in some things? jesus... i think just about the only fucking thing that keeps me out of trouble is a complete lack of knowledge about almost everything... let me show you what i mean:

causticWifey: what do you know about installing crown molding?

causticPhil: ????????????

causticWifey: ok, i'll call the contractor...

see? my complete ignorance saved the day!

what really gets my goat is when the know-it-all is also "an arguer." no matter what he says, it's correct goddamnit, and he's going to let you know this by arguing with every little fucking thing you say to the contrary. not to also mention that during an interview, regardless of being wrong or right or neither, acting like a total and complete asshole is no way to win my love and affection (or get hired, for that matter)...

the one trick pony

nothing subtle about this one... no matter what you're discussing or what is on his resume, he  always manages to steer the conversation/answer to the one and only fucking thing they might possibly really know something about (or not). example:

causticInterviewer: so... what tools/compilers do you normally find yourself turning to when programming 8 bit microcontrollers?

one trick pony: have you ever heard of sql server 2005 analysis services?

causticInterviewer: er... what about real-time satellite systems programming?

one trick pony: oh... analysis services all the way... you'd be surprised the kinds of real time stuff they're doing with that now

causticInterviewer: really...

wow... i had no idea about the kinds of things you can use analysis services for... do you think microsoft knows? i hear the analysis server team might be hiring...

slick dick

oh no.... not the slick dick... out of all these morons, i think i hate these fucking infantile cocksuckers the most. these guys are the slick hipster doofuses that think they are god's fucking gift to web 2.0. leather jacket, passive aggression, devoted to the indy rock band flavor of the month, thumb ring, hair that is tousled just so, and of course... a fake vintage tee that fits... just... right (and possibly vans or puma sneakers). these are just some of the tell tale signs you have slick dick coming your way.

just thinking about these fucking diseased pagans makes me want to rip my insides to a fucking bloody pulp with an apple corer and then have them sucked into an industrial hvac unit. in a way they are a combination of all the above, except they are packaged in an arrogant, sarcastic, holier than thou shell, answering every question with subtle tinges of smugness and contempt, letting you know that as a rockstar programmer, they are just way to good for your little outfit, and maybe, just maybe they might deem their presence here necessary (because in their minds, whether or not they'll get an offer is already a foregone conclusion). if you see one of these walking through the front door, do yourself a favor and just terminate the interview right fucking there. for some reason, ever since the web started getting popular, our industry has been flooded with these types.. my advice is to either go back to art school, or (preferably) kill yourself.

ok, enough of these idiots... let's move onto the people that are a real pain in the ass...

the interviewers

ok, here is the major paradox... tech interviews are possibly the biggest fucking waste of time and resources. BUT. how do you find people dumb enough to work with schmucks such as yourselves?? the answer is... i have no freakin' clue! while i can't add an iota to the solution space, i can and certainly will  instigate and add to the problem space...

first off, why is it that every person doing the interview automatically thinks they know more than the potential candidate? now i know most programmers relish any little opportunity to show dominance/big-penis syndrome, but what kind of fucking petty-minded, small-dicked arrogance is that? i've seen this shit time and time again... i just don't get it... even when it is quite clear that the interviewee's knowledge far outstripped the interviewers. i once sat in on a collegue's interview and after the interview was over, the guy who conducted the interview waves me over and says, "i'm not sure how strong he was technically because of x, y, and z."  while he was in mid sentence, i blurted out, "what the FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?!?... HE KNEW ABOUT 100 TIMES MORE THAN YOU ABOUT THAT SHIT!!!!" the last thing i need to hear is that a fucking stellar candidate was passed over because the dipshit doing the interview was too fucking stupid, ignorant, and useless to realize that we could have just hired a fucking genius... of course, this is usually avoided by having the potential candidate interview with more than one person, but that brings on a whole new fresh wave of complete unmitigated fucking disasters.

then there are the morons that always want to see code samples. fuck you... if you can't figure out whether or not somebody can write some fucking code after spending an hour (or hours) grilling them, than the only sad conclusion i can come to is that you are a total fucking ignorant tool. first of all, i can't think of one company that i've ever worked for that would allow me to show any production code from something i've written for them to another company i'd up and leave them for... (it doesn't take a fucking brain surgeon to figure that one out). ok, so what about something you've done in your spare time or code written from a personal project?? now that just reeks of desperation... "please, please, just show me something!!" god, that is just fucking pathetic. in the interviews that i have done over the course of my 15+ year career, i've only been asked to provide a code sample maybe 3 times. each time i've told them that that was completely unacceptable right from the get go (in order not to waste any more of my fucking time). after the shock that somebody dare tell them how it's gonna be wears off, they usually waive the whole thing all together and tell me that they'd still love to meet me. (for the record, i was offered the job all 3 times, and one of those offers i took up... it turned into the greatest 5 years i've ever spent working anywhere). the bottom line is that code samples are completely useless and tell you nothing. if you think you can gleam something about a potential candidate from their so-called "code sample" than you are more naive than you think, and somebody made a serious mistake in putting you in charge.

then there are the idiots that like you to interview with the team. oh man... what a hoot!! where the fuck do people like this come from... instead of wasting maybe 2 or 3 people's time, you manage to waste EVERYBODY'S TIME!!! nice... i don't think circle jerking get any bigger than this... here's what fucking i love about this one... let's say there a n wankers on the team... that usually means i know i'll have to now answer the same pet question that everybody on the team has n times!! and of course, it's usually related to what they coded earlier that day... don't you love when 3 mindless, drooling, drones who are all dressed in khakis and polo shirts ask you, "so... can you tell me the difference between a dataset and a datareader??" you're joking right? (because i'm laughing so hard i just peed my pants!)

another one of my favorites are the guys who feel the need to ask - the deep questions. i remember during one interview i had, we started talking about design patterns. ok, fine. anyway, after answering all the "technical" questions (e.g. how would you implement a double dispatch pattern?), he thought he'd move into the deep questions, and looking me right in the eye and speaking as solemnly as possible, he pulls this one out, "so which patterns don't you like, or have a strong aversion to?" HA, i almost burst out laughing right there... oh man, what a great question... let's see, i remember when i was a boy a singleton broke into my house, beat up my dad, shot my mother, and stole the family jewels!! i guess i hate singletons! and then there was this other time when a decorator mugged me in downtown new york... in broad daylight!! i guess he qualifies too. or what about the time when that evil factory method teased me in 5th grade!! HA... "what pattern's don't you like??" that's fucking great... i wish i had more questions like that on interviews, this way we could all be fucking comedians instead of developers!

just thinking about this shit gets me sick to my stomach... i mean, what about the guys who ask questions like, "name all 16 methods of datatable.writexml()??" uh... ok... give me a fucking sec while i open up msdn... why the fuck would you ask somebody any kind of fucking question that could be answered by any kind of reference??? man, talk about useless. then there are the "what would you do if you were in x situation???" i love those. i'll tell you what i'd do.... i'd fire your ass!! it just never ends. i could go on forever...tech interviews have turned into such circuses.

catching up (throwing up)...

so... it's a been a little while since i've last posted and have now completely turned myself into a non-entity (for those of you who could possibly give a shit). 

well... i gotta say... with our industry being the complete fucking disaster that it always is, it wouldn't have mattered how long i've been out... i know i could come back at any time and still find over half a million fucking things to induce an attack of diarrhea so fucking foul that it would steam it's way through all 1000 steel lined feet of the vault that microsoft keeps it's most current copy of the windows source code hidden in.

unfortunately there are so many disasters and so little time in which to give each one their proper due... let's see if i can weigh in on a few from very recent to not so very recent:

amazon schoolyard meathead beats up some hippies for their milk money
what can i say about this? oh man, this had me in fucking stitches. what drama! what tension! what heights! what lows! only in our industry can we resort to the spectacle of teen existential anger, abuse, and self-loathing in public dairies at the level involving ctos! of billion dollar companies no less!! oh man! you gotta love it! from what (lack of) intelligence i could gather, the encounter went something like this:

meathead: so... why should i do this?
hippies: um... everybody else is doing it??
meathead: really? that's all you got?
hippies: ah... yeah... more or less.
meathead: i see...

and so on. big fucking deal. so a bunch of adults who know better managed to turn their little corner of the web into a 4th grade showdown at the playground. gee... how fucking surprising. i'll tell you what, it might not be surprising, but it sure as hell is pathetic. now... i'm going to take a guess and assume that when robert scoble talked about how blogging can help you (or your company) he didn't quite have this kind of thing in mind... which is going to lead me into the following conclusion:

these people are fucking crazy...

absolutely fucking nuts. outta their fuckin' minds! just what are these people thinking? and i don't just mean the people involved in this particular incident, i mean the whole fucking lot of them. what is the point? what is trying to be accomplished here? i have no fucking idea... will somebody tell me...PLEASE??? i just don't get it. i hear so much fucking nincompoopery from the idiots that i see live and in the flesh everyday that the last thing i need is more of the same fucking idiocy coming from somebody's online presence via their blog. especially when it's in the context of so called corporate blogging. this leads me to my next earth-shattering, ultra-profound conclusion:

people don't want conversation or discussion.
they want to be right...

coporate blogging is so fucking ridiculous that it deserves a post of its own. unfortunately since we're only human this kind of bullshit will always be the norm. however, i do appreciate tremendously when grown, so called intelligent men act like 5 year olds just so i can be amused and entertained... and for that - i thank you.

web 2.0?  (this actually can use a post all on it's own)
does anybody have the fucking cd i can install to get this? i don't know... i've been hearing so much about this shit lately, i thought...WOW... i gotta try this thing out!!! so i feverishly fired up my fucking browser and waited... nothing really happend though... i sat in front of my computer staring at fucking google's homepage waiting for something to happen... hmmmmm, i thought... this looks mysteriously like "web 1.0" to me... maybe i didn't do something right... after giving google the "eye" for about 20 minutes, i started to think... well i am running windows... so maybe it's broken i and i have to reboot to get this new thing working... so i carefully shut my fucking behemoth of a computer down, waited for about 10 minutes, and then turned the fucker back on... lo and behold!! the same fucking thing happend. maybe google is just broken today... so then i figured web 2.0 MUST have a homepage, right??  well apparently not. how can there be no fucking homepage!!!! jesus fucking christ... what kind of software IS this web 2.0? stuff...

i decided to do a search on "web 2.0" all that came up was a bunch of weird stuff about markets, ajax, platforms, patterns and apparently this guy tim o'oreilly (who is apparently some guy that loves animals)... what the fuck was this bullshit!!!!!! i was getting NOTHING! AJAX?? what the fuck is that? something to clean my fucking kitchen floor with?? MARKETS?!?!? what the fuck... maybe i can find web 2.0 at fucking whole foods?!?! PLATFORMS?? what, like what my fucking wife's shoes? man... this web 2.0 shit was just getting more and more fucking confusing... now i was definitely convinced... google MUST be fucking broken... i've never seen it return such weird results like this before... ok, ok, i thought. i heard that microsoft has this new search "engine"... i'll try that one. maybe this one knows what web 2.0 is... well... when i got to microsoft's new search thingy (i think it's called something or other "live" which to me makes absolutely no fucking sense), i typed in "web 2.0" in the box at the top... and waited... finally some results came back and despite the fact that they were hard to read because shit kept popping up, moving all over the place, and changing sizes, i was able to make out the results... and they were the same fucking ones that google returned!! what the fuck is this?!? at this point i realized the only thing it could be... conspiracy.

at this point i was getting desperate... so i decided to see if "web 2.0" had a tech support hotline i could call... i figured if those fuckers in tech support couldn't help, then i knew i was finished. believe it or not, my FUCKING MOM actually had the number... so i dialed and some guy from bombay, india named raj picked up. now this didn't surprise me, because like everybody else, i just figured that they fucking outsourced their whole operation. FINALLY somebody can explain this shit too me... i was going to get some ANSWERS!! to make a long story short, we had a very nice chat. apparently it's is fucking ass steaming hot in bombay. anyway, raj told me he would email me a chart/table of the differences between "web 1.0" and "web 2.0" i thanked him, and anxiously awaited his email. i logged on to "web 1.0", surfed over to my gmail account, and then started pounding the "refresh" button on my browser 150 times until i saw the email... oddly enough, here is what i saw:

web 1.0	web 2.0
javascript	javascript
xmlhttprequest	xmlhttprequest
rss/atom/syndication	rss/atom/syndication
photo/music sharing web sites	photo/music sharing web sites
web services	web services
wikipedia	wikipedia
hype	hype
buzzwords	buzzwords
... and so on	... and so on

HOLY SHIT IN MY PANTS, BATMAN!!... they are the same fucking thing! would you believe that??

seriously folks... i have never seen such a fucking buzzword in need of a fucking idea. "OH I GOT IT!!! IF I YAMMER ENOUGH ABOUT FUCKING WEB 2.0, IT WILL JUST MAGICALLY FUCKING APPEAR!!!!' where the fuck do you think you live... disney world?? getting sodomized by a fucking amtrack acela train would be less painful than listening to people pathetically trying to grasp at straws using anything to describe a concept so nebulous that it doesn't actually fucking exist. who would actually use the fucking phrase "web 2.0" in an actual real life converstation and not break up in utter hilarity?? who could fucking take this kind of thing seriously?? "web 2.0"... HA... that's fucking great...WEB 2.0... i'm laughing so hard i just crapped my pants!! in addition, (outside of apple and google) i can't think of a buzzword that is such a fucking pretentious slap in the face...

windows ship date slips!
oh my god! what are we going to fucking do now! i don't know about you.... but if i don't have vista on my home pc right fucking NOW... i'm going to implode in a fucking mess of nasty smelling organs and viscera. holy shit... how the fuck have i managed for so long with out it??

people, you just need to shut the fuck up. as much as watching the windows vista disaster unfold has been entertaining, if any of you actually assumed that it would ship on time, you should get the fucking living shit slapped out of you. MICROSOFT = MISSING SHIP DATES! actually let's change it around about to be more accurate: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT = MISSING SHIP DATES. that's better. why would so many people waste so much important time writing, carping, and yammering about something that was such a no fucking brainer?? i'm glad to see how the fucking so called "pundits" couldn't see this one coming from a mile away.

so vista had BUGS... check
release is delayed... check
slashdot has a field day... check
scoble & other ms bloggers doing damage control... check

as far as i see, this is the only software pattern that microsoft has mastered...

you haven't seen this fucking episode before? this fucking kind of garbage is the NORM not the EXCEPTION.

with that being said... what the fuck is taking so long for what is going to amount to my new service pack for xp? you fuckers have yanked out half of the "supposed" features, so what the fuck is your excuse this time? what are we fucking waiting for exactly? i don't need a fucking shiny new interface... i want something that won't fucking crash... or become a spyware infested piece of shit... man... you fuckers better get your fucking acts together. if i wasn't fucking addicted to pc games, i would be using ubuntu 110% fucking percent of my time.

anyway...
since most tech bloggers basically write nothing but the same boring shit over and over again, i've moved on to other blogs... here are some i've been reading that have kept me riveted:

( i suggest you start at the beginning in the archives, and work you way up...i guarentee your afternoon will go by quicker)

• learning curves
• just tenured
• reassigned time
• bitch, phd

i started reading these blogs, and just got fucking SUCKED IN... i can't explain it (aside from the fact that they are all fucking great...) anyway, they sure beat reading something written by a fat fuck wearing khakis...

exciting and innovative!!!! uh... no... try boring and useless

well...here we are. we are probably in what i would consider to be the most absofuckinglutely most god awful period ever in software development. jesus fucking christ. we are in the software equivalent of elvis in his vegas years...fat, bloated, barely functional, and shitting our pants. i don't know about you guys (or gals), but i am fucking sick of this shit. in addition, it's not just single pieces of software that i'm talking about. i'm talking about whole categories of applications that are so fucking completely useless and asinine, i wouldn't even know where the fuck to start.

let's see if i can at least dredge up the fucking energy to browbeat some of my favorite fucking culprits...

google
hmmmmmm..... am i missing something here people? maybe i just. don't. fucking. get. it. here i thought there could never ever be a company as arrogant as apple is. boy, was i fucking mistaken. everything from their "do no evil" motto to their google "blog"(which is nothing but some of the worst advertising ever) does nothing but reek of fucking arrogance. let's get a grip here folks...they have a pretty decent search engine, and... no, that's basically it as far as i'm concerned. there is nothing more diarrhea inducing then hearing yet another fucking bullshit google product announcement fawned over by a bunch of moronic imbeciles (eweek, wired, register, oreilly, etc...) and treated like a staggering revelation that will change the world as we know it. let's take a look at some of their more recent offerings...

gmail
wow... fucking web-based email!! yes!! yes!!... that's just what i fucking needed. another free web-based email account. as far as i know gmail has two claims to fame:

• the use of client side javascript
• the size of the mailbox

as far as the first would be concerned, i was not aware of the fact that client side javascript was something new... ah, but i hear you spew out the "ajax, ajax, ajax" bullshit. well, as far as i know adopting a technology that was invented by one of your biggest competitors is hardly anything new or innovative. especially when they have apps that do it better...

as to the size of the mailbox... that's a simple one. i just can't consider spending money to be something that should be thought of as new or innovative. as long as you can afford the storage and the infrastructure needed for it, you're pretty much good to go... again, i just don't see what the big fucking deal is.

actually the only really new idea that gmail has is scanning your email and vomiting forth ads and marketing that would be relevant. so if you're wondering why your gmail account has nothing but click-through ads for blow-up dolls, pocket pussies, and anime porn, it's not because gmail is reading your mind... it's just that by reading your email it's determined that you are a lonely tech-dork that has some spare time...

google maps/moon/whatever...
let me just say first... google maps is a fine piece of technology. as a matter of fact i get the feeling that most of the tech-morons out there refer to this application as cool. the combination of javascript, satellite imagery, overlays, etc is something that is fairly new and innovative. (even if all they did was take 1/2 terraserver, 1/2 mapquest,  mix, shake and pour) unfortunately when it is all said and done, and all the glitz and bullshit are removed, all it really does for me is provide me with driving directions. i have gotten driving directions over the web for some years now, and i can't say having yet another site with driving directions is too terribly exciting. this is basically the same piece of shit ford pinto web application, but with a new coat of paint. you can only get a hard-on from seeing your house via satellite imagery so many fucking times before you just go limp...

and so on...
despite the above two, google has many other services and applications. they also have a toolbar. however, i'm just so fucking incredibly amazed that the public is stupid enough to value these arrogant buffoons close to the tune of  a billion dollars. people... it's a fucking search site! nothing more or less... and you know what else is hilarious... when i hear from all these fucking instapundits that microsoft better watch out, because google is "out-innovating" them. oh, that's rich...ya gotta love it... let's see... a search engine, driving directions, newsgroup archives (which they bought) and a blogging service (which they bought as well) among other things. gee... i guess if i was microsoft i'd be crapping my pants in fear too...

social software
social software... social. software. this has got to be a fucking oxymoron, right? from my space to del.icio.us, i can't think of bigger fucking waste of bits & bytes. do you honestly think that i'm going to be impressed by your oh-so-ultra-hip listening habits? or your cool taste in movies?? and why the fuck would i want to be a part of this utterly fucking moronic community? (i have to say though, it would be fun to browbeat a bunch of emo kids, but i digress...) and let me tell you...i really couldn't give a shit about what you're bookmarking... the only things i can see that these sites serve is to force your completely fucking juvenile taste in books, music, and film onto the unsuspecting public in a desperate plea for attention while hoping these things serve as a beacon showing just how hip, cool, and utterly original you really are...

in addition, those fucking cliche bits of poetry that i find on some of these profiles...jesus christ. i dunno...maybe your pathetic attempt to be deep and profound will finally pay off and get you all the pussy you deserve. (i'm guessing probably not though...)

while i'm at it... let me tell you... i couldn't give a shit about your fucking photo albums. from the completely moronic phenomenon of moblogging to sites like flikr, i think the web has had just about as much disgustingly bad amatuer photography as it can take.

also, anybody who has used the word folksonomy and still take themselves seriously should be gagged, defecated upon, pistol-whipped and finally shot. you know who you are...

desktop search applications / browser toolbars
are you that fucking disorganized? jesus fucking christ... i've been using various computers and operating systems just as long as the next guy has and i've never needed this kind of shit. maybe i just don't have that many files worth giving a shit about. or, maybe i just know how to use simple things like folders, directories, file names that aren't idiotic...but that's me. why desktop search applications have gotten so much press in the last year is just so fucking completely beyond me. i can't tell you how many people i saw writing stuff about this shit... telling me it's going to change the way i use my computer! has software gotten so fucking abyssmal that desktop search utilities are deserving of such press? and speaking of moronic bullshit...

so let me get this straight... google, microsoft, and yahoo are supposed to have some pretty bright people working for them. so in order to make our web browsing experience better, they release... toolbars!?!? what the fuck is that? i can't think of a better way of saying, "well that browser you're using is kind of broken...but we got this nifty toolbar you can download to fix it!!!!" you know what you sorry-assed losers? i don't want a fucking toolbar... i want a fucking browser that works. all these so called features that you see in these toolbars should be part of the fucking browser in the first place. i don't care if it's internet explorer or firefox... spell-checking, searching, etc... you shouldn't need a fucking add-on for these.

what annoys me is that in the last year i've just seen way, way too much bullshit about both desktop search and browser toolbars. i have neither and i can't say i've suffered too much. such completely useless bullshit...

(and of course)
open source

(don't worry... microsoft is going to get their due too...)

let me tell you something... i've always thought it pretty fucking slightly ironic that the biggest fucking craybabies ever about innovation, passion, etc... base the majority of their creative endeavours on making inferior free versions of already existing software... these are the lunatics that have the nerve to criticize companies like microsoft?? holy duechemasters batman!!... these bastards don't have a leg to fucking stand on.

having the attitude that one should not get paid for their hardwork is not very innovative or exciting either. and no, as far as i'm concerned peer recognition and respect, pride at a job well done, being part of a pathetic self-rightous proselytizing community and being a celebrity in my own mind is not what i would call proper compensation. nor is it pretty fucking exciting for the people who do this kind of thing to provide for their kids, family, mistress, deadbeat uncle, etc... who have to hear constantly that the software they are creating should be replaced by software that costs nothing. maybe that's an innovative way of destroying morale in some cases but that's about it.

i'm so fucking tired of hearing all these fucking self-congratulatory press releases about one fucking moronic open source product after another. jesus... just what was i thinking. of course i could always use one of the following:

• yet another buggy IM client
• yet another buggy mp3 player
• yet another bloated linux distro
• yet another fucking incredible useless spreadsheet/powerpoint clone

you know what i find to be even more fucking hilarious... oh, this is so fucking rich... the fucking fastest growing development platform for linux is.... TA-DA... MONO!! man, i can barely type this shit i'm laughing so fucking hard. how great is this. this is just fucking too good to be true! in my book, this fucking takes the cake. i think now it's only a matter of fucking time before some young, ambitious open source developer decides to port cmd.exe and explorer.exe to linux as well... jesus. fucking. christ.

however, since these guys are so fucking lacking in innovation, maybe they can turn to...

microsoft
you know what is really exciting? over the course of two or so years hearing essential features being ripped out of what was going to be THE ONE YOU ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR (and still are). on top of that many so called features and innovations are now going to be available for some of their older operating systems as well. but i guess when one of your main selling point is new and improved desktop search, what the fuck are you expecting??

as far as i'm concerned i'm still waiting to upgrade any microsoft software since office 2000. i mean what the fuck is so goddamned compelling about a fucking word processor that i need spend $400.00 to upgrade?? i just don't get it. i'll tell you what... office has just gotten sooo fucking ridiculous. how can anybody be fucking passionate about microsoft office? uh, yeah... word processors and spreadsheets get me real fucking excited... no matter how you fucking cut it, no matter what fucking euphemism you use to describe the soul-sucking, life-leeching thing we call work, there is nothing that is going to make these products more exciting. i can't think of a more useless upgrade than office.

i'm sorry. at this point not even the fucking deluge of developer tools do it for me. how many fucking times do you need to hear that visual studio 2005, sql server 2005, and fuckmaster 2005 are finally going to be the tools to boost you to the next fucking level. this shit has gotten so fucking anti-climatic already. enough...i've fucking had it! holy shit!!! i can now code those 1.5 million lines faster, stronger, and more productively due to nullable types!!! yes... yes...bring it the fuck on!!! lately i've also been hearing vague things about c# 3.0 regarding database integration... wait... just wait... you mean to fucking tell me that you have just fucking figured out that 80 or so fucking percent of applications built with your tools work with a fucking database?? what the fuck is that? when i hear shit like this, do you actually have to wonder why i might be just a little unexcited? unfortunately i can't think of something more boring to code than yet another web or desktop application that reads in data from a database (or even better yet... a web-service), let's a user completely fucking mangle it, fails your validation logic 4 fucking times, and then finally get shoved back into the database... and you're just starting to fucking realize that there might be an impedence mismatch between the data store and the application?? you guys have been doing this for how long??

sigh...
unfortunately this kind of shit is neither exciting nor interesting. i'd rather get a hand-job from a fucking cheese grater.

more productive, or more...moronic??

being productive is usually considered a good thing. however, over the last decade or so there have been tools and technologies unleashed upon the world that while they have certainly made us more productive, they have turned the average developer into a drooling, babbling idiot. more than ever, the gap between tool users who call themselves developers and people who can actually build, implement, design, and engineer solid, robust software systems is widening. how the fuck did we get to this point?? lets investigate...

the RAD fallout...

just like we have our favorite buzzwords of today, lets not forget every decade had it's own set of buzzwords. in the 90s, one of the most popular ones was RAD...rapid application development. it was motivated by a single concept...make the developer as productive as possible and stop at nothing no matter how assinine it is to make this possible. while not a new concept (it was really what smalltalk was supposed to do, but that's another story, and after that case tools, but that is another story as well), it was during the 90s that software developers were inundated with all the typical marketing bullshit telling us that RAD will take our productivity to new heights and will change the face of software development forever... well, um...hmmm....i totally agree...RAD really did change the face of software development forever...it opened up the doors to millions of fucking morons who under normal circumstances would have never, never, never, NEVER, NEVER EVER be qualified or even allowed to code "Hello World!", let alone contemplate a fucking career in software development. 

there are two RAD tools especially that i see as blowing the doors wide open to let everybody and their mother try their luck as a software developer...microsoft visual basic and microsoft access (surprised, right...thank you microsoft!)  ok, ok, before all the access and vb fanboys start having a fucking heart-attack, let me make a couple of things clear...

• i am NOT saying that all access and vb developers are completely incompetent fools who are so fucking clueless they should just kill themselves while simultaneously realizing that, yes they really are a fucking waste of humanity... for that my friends, you'll have to wait for another post ;)
• access and vb are by no means the only tools or technology that are responsible for this. trust me...i will detail more below. (some of which are non-microsoft related.)

what i am saying is that with these two tools, the barrier of entry for developing software was lowered considerably. by no means was microsoft the only vendor to get in on the RAD action. during the nineties, almost every software manufacturer attempted to get in on it. remember sybase's powerbuilder?? and who knows how many failed attempts ibm had at developing some kind of RAD tool?? and of course there is borland's beloved delphi, which out of the bunch was probably the most well thought out and implemented RAD tool, hailed by all the critics, was the feel good movie of the year, and designed by mr. c# himself...unfortunately it had a total user base of two. (and no, i am not one of them.)  ok...lets move on now, shall we...

the web fallout

all right! raise your hand if you know somebody that got their career in building "enterprise, multi-threaded, distributed systems" with...html???? man!... h. t. m. l. ...fucking html... between html and the .com boom, there was a time where everybody on the fucking planet was somehow associated with the tech industry. who could've have predicted that software development was going to be so fucking confused with document design?!?!?!  learn html in 3 seconds was spotted being eargerly carried by every graphic designer, secretary, middle-manager, and mcdonald's employee world-wide. this blissful state of affairs and ignorance did not last too long though...unfortunately for them, somebody had the fucking unmitigated audacity to decide that static pages weren't good enough for the web..."what do you mean...these web pages just sit there????" soooooooo...over time we went from seeing nancy (or bob or biff or bubbles) in accounting carrying learn html in 3 seconds to carrying learn cgi, perl, isapi, asp, or coldfusion in 3 seconds.  and of course if they really wanted to dazzle 'em...they picked up learn javascript in 3 seconds as well...after that, more bad news...they needed to learn a database system as well. so now we can add learn access in 3 seconds to the quickly growing pile of books too.  now not all of our htmlers made it this far, but some had no choice. when they went beyond the point of no return and gave everything up to be a web designer, all they could do was hope for the best with all this shit.

let me pause for a second... at this point you basically now have people doing mixed-language, client-server, distributed systems development. this is something that even a well experienced honest to god skilled software engineer/architect would find daunting with a decent toolset, let alone these fucking half-baked moronic web technologies. this is a pretty fucking scary situation. i can't tell you how many fucking times i've been asked to help out on projects (which is really just a euphemism for, "holy shit...get us the fuck out of this mess...NOW!!!!!!"), where the so called "tech-lead" (or whatever these buffoons fucking call themselves nowadays)  didn't know at least one of the following:

• the difference between late and early binding
• the difference between call by reference and call by value (you don't even want to know how this one came up)
• what a "pointer" is (i'm being fucking serious here folks...)
• that visual interdev is NOT a programming language (i shit you not)
• what an XOR operator does
• that xml  was not invented by microsoft (oh..man you should have heard this guy..."i won't use xml because it's a microsoft technology...")
• what the newton quotient is (all right, that has nothing to do with technology, but i was still surprised)

i am not making this up. these are things that regardless of platform, tool, or sexual preference you would think that everybody would just know as a matter of course (or at least i thought any developer would know). well, we can take heart in the fact that if these guys need any advice, they can always just ask the RAD developers that are sitting in the cubes next to them...

the java fallout

well...what can you possible say about the most hyped programming language in the fucking world??? jesus...talk about being in the right place at the right time. unfortunately the sun marketing department did a hell of a better job marketing it than then sun engineering department did in implementing it. i mean how many of us remember all the "write once, run anywhere" bullshit?? (jesus with some hindsight, i should have just sued those fuckers for false advertising, but once again that's another story.) also ironic is that aside from simplicity and portability, the most hyped part of java was applets...oh man...what a fucking success story that was!! oh yeah...while i could go on for days bashing java...my point is... is that java hype became so prevelant at one point, it attracted those same nancys, bobs, biffs, and bubbles from above...who armed with their trusty learn java in a ridicously short amount of time books went right to work amongst our RADers and web developers.

of course though...these guys had a little bit more of a harder time of it. apparently though the payoff was worth it. they might not be able to write a decent swap function,  but they could all now say bullshit like, "well...java is a pure object-oriented language", while not even realizing that that's just plain wrong, and spout new acronyms they learned like jvm, rmi, and (for the truly fearless) jni, all while looking petulantly down at vb developers for not programming in a real language. this is pretty ironic being that sun was desperately trying to woo vb developers by touting how easy java was to learn and that anybody could be productive with the java platform in no time. woohoo!!! time to start the wankfest!!!

ramifications...

so...just what exactly does all this add up to?? i think this is the most interesting part, because when you take all the above into account,  many things start to fall into place like:

the fact that most software systems today have a standard of quality that to call it fucking disgraceful  is being way, way too kind. most software written today is a fucking abomination. the quickest way to write better software is to have better people build it.

the real reason why many microsoft developers go fucking completely apeshit when their manager talks about moving to an open source solution...they have neither the skills nor the mental capacity to develop on the linux platform. they feel threatened and insecure because programming in c, pointer arithmetic,  manual memory management, and working on a system whose primary mode of communication is via a command line is just too mentally overwhelming for them. most open source development is done at a level of abstraction that is considerably lower than the level of abstraction offered by the typical microsoft tools and technologies. these are the kind of reasons why these developers gravitated to vb in the first place...

the whole vb6 petition fiasco. when microsoft released the .net platform along with vb.net, they tremendously improved the vb language. all i remember for years is hearing the vb community bitch and moan, and bitch and moan about things like theading, true object-orientation, being a toy language, getting no professional respect from their c, c++, and java peers, and so on. so what does microsoft do? amazingly enough, they give these cocksuckers a version of vb that has all of those long requested features finally implemented!! this is a perfect case of be careful what you asked for... because when these total fucking morons finally got it, they also got all the added complexity that these things bring with them. i wonder how many people who actually signed this petition know anything about actually writing code and developing software...(of course the only execption to this would be bill vaughn.) blinded by their fear of the unknown, these people do nothing but validate everything i've said above about vb'ers.

and about half a million other things...

finally, a couple of things...

• i am talking mostly about developers found in corporate IT environments who are typically writing applications meant to be used in house.
• these are just my own personal opinions formed from watching this shit happen over the last 12 years or so. i would expect your opinions and experiences to hopefully be different
• what was once considered to be baseline common knowledge among software developers is disappearing altogether or is considered to be too 'specialized' for typical corporate IT developers.
• due to financial reasons, these are just the developers that most software vendors cater to, so they are just fueling the fire...
• to be fair...believe it or not, i have met access developers who happend to be tremendously talented software developers.  i know this is a total paradox (yes, bad pun intended), but there a few out there. also there are (believe it or not) many visual basic guys out there too that are fucking awesome developers. i try not to judge a book by it's cover, but i feel there are valid reasons why these tools and the developers who develop with them have the reputations that they do.

perspective (or lack of)

it seems a complete lack of fucking perspective is de rigeur and quite trendy among developers today. actually, this extends beyond developers to almost all involved in the tech industry. like laziness, it is a trait that is found in tremendous quantities. how the fuck have we got here? where the fuck does it come from? i don't know for sure, but i'll go out on a limb and venture a few guesses:

• just regular fucking cluelessness
• ignorance
• an over-inflated sense of self-importance (in addition to individuals this also applies to movements or sub-cultures)
• a sense of arrogance that is usually only reserved for ultra-conservative, right wing, god-fearing, fundamentalist politicians
• not listening (oh man...on this point, programmers beat anyone...hands down)

these are just a few to get us warmed up.

ok, to start with, we have just about everybody's favorite whipping boys...the open source advocates! oh man...are these guys just insanely gluttonous for punishment? are they trying to make themselves such easy targets? do they enjoy spreading wide and getting the business end of an industrial strength dry/wet vac rammed up their ass? these guys are such boobs, i can't even take myself seriously anymore when writing about them.

a couple of weeks ago (prior to the holidays) i was very non-chalantly surfing the web, minding my own business, when it hit me...WHAM!!! right there in black and white was this (paraphrased)

...and here's another great holiday gift idea...burn your favorite linux distro onto a home made "best of" open-source CD and pass it out to your friends and loved ones...

i had to read this a couple of times...i thought, "you gotta be kidding me... is this some kind of fucking sick joke?" after about 30 minutes or so of non-stop laughter and wanting to send a congratulatory email to the sick fuck who thought up something this funny, i started to realize that this was not a joke. i started seeing this little "gift idea" on other web sites as well. "holy shit...they're really serious about this.", i was thinking.

actually i was thinking that this might be the open source movement's last ditch attempt to steal the desktop from windows...you know...they've tried every kind of conventional marketing technique, hell, they even give this stuff away! i really want to meet the wankmaster that was thinking way, way outside the box on that day. i can hear him now..."i've got it!!! it's soooo obvious!! we can increase our desktop share by going on a holiday stocking stuffer campaign!!!

oh my fucking god! can you imagine the fucking disastrous/hilarious consequences of this little holiday stocking stuffer??

hilarity aside (and the fact that the OSS movement is now using AOL as a role-model...remember their CD blitzes?), i couldn't think of a better gift that shows both a lack of perspective and unusually strong arrogance on behalf of the giver. this kind of thing is right up there with religious evangelists, pro-lifers, and fucking vegans (uhhh...the worst). this kind of thing is really starting to annoy me. don't these fucking people get it?? since they apparently do not, let me explain it to them in a fairly straight-ahead easy to understand manner...

nobody gives a shit...

i know that sounds unusually cruel, but get over it you preachy, holier-than-thou, arrogant buffoon. that's just the reality of it. the bottom line is that nobody outside of the tech industry really fucking cares about things like linux, open source, the evil microsoft hegemony, etc, etc...i know how tough it is realizing that the 99% of the planet couldn't give a shit about the things you hold nearest and dearest, but that's how it is. no big deal...you can stop losing sleep over it...

oh...by the way, this also applies to what is the oss's latest hope, firefox. while i'm very, very proud of them putting that nice little ad in the new york times, i just can't help feeling sorry for them. despite the fact that firefox is probably the best browser out there right now. i just love how people in the tech industry are talking about a "heating up of the browser war again", or any other related phrase those moronic, clueless, side-splittingly hilarious idiots who call themselves columnists in any ziff-davis owned publishing organization spew out on a weekly basis. yeah...the pundits are right on target with this one. maybe it's just me. maybe i'm the one is terribly fucking confused. i mean, no matter who i talk to outside of the tech industry (which has been quite a lot of people), they have never heard about this thing called "firefox", let alone the whole concept of a "browser war..."

blogs, bloggers, blogosphere...
as bad as the open source zealots are, these fuckers just take the cake. "oh i got it!!...i'm going to single-handedly change the world with my on-line diary!!!" ok, bub...i'm sure that you and your 4 readers are really going to make a difference...but keep trying...it's really cute.

you know, back before when there were only on-line journals or diaries, there was basically no delusions about the whole thing. whether it was a well-known developer sharing programming tips,  an angry, pseudo-intellectual, starbucks drinking, existentialist wanna-be, indy rock listening, chronically masterbating, art college student, a future film critic in the making, or the latest thoughts from one of our favorite porn stars, there was no fooling ourselves. aside from the massive ego involved in writing anything on-line and assuming anybody would want to read your pathetic thoughts (or mine for that matter), it was just that. nobody had any delusions of grandeur. nobody took themselves too seriously...there was still some sense of perspective.

however...

a while ago somebody, somewhere decided that the concept of a journal or a diary just wasn't cutting it. their thoughts were so important, so huge, they needed to invent a special word to describe their collection of them. before you know it...BAM...weblogs were born. it took all of 4 seconds to shorten that to the most feared and dreaded piece of lingo ever conceived....blog. i'm sure you know, it justs gets worse from there. now we have "blogger conferences", "blogger dinners", "blogger insert-moronic-concept here." oh yeah, and my personal favorite...the blogosphere. this shit is hilarious...and completely out of fucking control. ok, let's get a few things straight here, people:

• stop taking yourselves so seriously. please. it's just so fucking embarrassing. anybody that has ever lost sleep over something they have blogged has some serious issues. anybody that has gotten personally offended from something they have read in a blog has some issues. shit if i had a dime for everybody i've offended, i'd be one rich bastard. please people...go out and live life...stop getting so goddamn upset, angry, or apologetic about things written about or responded to in your on-line diary.
• contrary to popular belief, being a blogger does not make you part of some ultra-cool, underground, elite, technical cult of uber-geeks. if you were a dork before...well...i hate to break it to you, but...you're still a dork.
• being a blogger does not make you a professional pundit/journalist/critic/tech-writer/whatever. you weren't one before, and having a blog will not make you one now. for the record, you aren't going to put msnbc, cnn.com, slate, salon, or roger ebert out of business.

ok...the next time your spewing your next diary entry, please remember...it's just not that important. there's a reason why the words diary and diarrhea are very similar sounding.

microsoft
microsoft, microsoft, microsoft. like your open source foes, you lack just as much or even more perspective. with all your bloggers, evangelists, software legends, mvp summits, spot watches, media center devices, infopath, etc, etc...have you forgotten the fact that your goal should probably be to write and release reliable, secure, relatively bug-free software?? let's see here...

• reading about how one of your employee's is having a fantastic vacation in some exotic locale on his blog isn't going change just how much of a goddamned resource pig vs.net 2003 is (or help me make it any faster).
• tell you what...instead of coming up with something like infopath, why don't you get excel and word to work properly for fuck's sake? this would also include the idea of not adding anymore features to them, and just getting the ones you already have to just fucking work right.
• here's another hard to believe idea...there is plenty of active development with legacy technologies. as much as you would like to believe the entire world is using the ctp versions of vs.net 2005, sql 2005, and the .net framework 2.0 to do all of their enterprise (or any other kind of) development...that's just not the case. that also isn't going to change anytime soon. most software written with your tools is being written with vc++ 6.0, vb 6.0, and the .net framework 1.0 (1.1).  i know it's hard to believe, but the internet will survive without the asp.net 2.0 personalization and membership components.
• it would also be nice of you to please stop spamming my inbox with email on such engaging, timely, relevant and thoughtful topics like windows vs. linux...the real TCO, how open source is going to be the downfall of civilization as we know it, or that hotfix number 2, 345, 234 has finally been released of internet explorer. i use your products to make a very nice living, and i'm not abandoning them anytime soon.
• i know you have some pretty fucking bright people working for you, so why, oh dear god why is the technical content on msdn written to cater for the romper room set? do you really think we have the iq of barney?? you realize it's professional developers that are reading that shit right? jesus fucking christ...believe it or not this shit is fucking important. actually tell you what...why don't you focus on moronic, dipshit diarrhea like "the code room pilot", while a fucking search engine becomes the ultimate resource for all things microsoft.

man, the list just goes on...and on...and on. as soon as you get a whiff of some moronic, half-baked programming fad, you shouldn't feel need jump right on the fucking bandwagon and go fucking apeshit. trust me, visual studio doesn't need any new wizards or designers. microsoft, i love ya like a brother, but you just need to chill the fuck out and start refocusing...

unfortunately there are just too many assinine aspects of our industry that have a lack of perspective. i mean...what about java?? shit..i think their entire community is worse than any of the above offenders (and truth be told their lack of perspective could fill a goddamned book). there is also the whole lack of perspective in software architecture as well. however, this post has gotten long enough, and if you've made it this far...well, i congratulate you on be a completely fucking S&M freak...

since around september you might have noticed (if you would even give a shit), that i've been relatively quiet. you know why...?? because after getting married and going on my honeymoon, my moronic, over-glorified diary was just not a priority. having a shitload of hot, passionate, steamy sex with my ridiculously gorgeous, beautiful, hot, sexy wife was.(god,  imagine that...). there are more important things than sitting in front of a computer and having a wankfest with my "blog." it's all about putting shit into some perspective...

(ok, here come some gratuitous thank yous)
i'd like to thank andy who really understands this.
i'd like to thank bill for his warm welcome-back
and...
everybody make sure to stop by and congratulate peter on his new venture...congrats!!

laziness

you know what is the fucking bane of my existence (besides PMs)??? lazy fucking developers. if i can pick any single word to describe the culture of software development, it's lazy. this is a problem. to be honest, this disease is not just limited to software developers, it also infests PMs, analysts, clients, and just about any other moronic cocksucker who is too fucking stupid too avoid this kind of work. regardless of the situation, leave it to laziness to fuck things up beyond all belief. by the way, i was a professional musician for a long time, and i naively thought that musicians were the laziest fuckers on the planet...boy oh boy was i in for a fucking surprise...

why don't we look at some of the more prevalent scenarios (in no particular order)...

source control disaster man
this lazy piece of shit comes in three flavors:

• the fucker who only checks his code in every other month
• the shithead who checks in code that won't compile
• and both of the above combined

i'm going to stretch here a little bit and assume that this is something that most of you have run into at one time or another. This behavior is just COMPLETELY FUCKING MINDBOGGLING!! why does it exist? who works like this? let's break this down a bit... we'll use visual studio for simplicity's sake:

• to build a solution, you need to press the ctrl-shift-b key combination. now i don't know about you, but at most, this is only 3 ...only 3 fucking keystrokes. (most of you press these keys simultaneously, so it's really only 1, but i'm doing a worst-case scenerio here.) that's all it takes to make sure you can at least get the damn thing to compile. i don't know about you guys, but 3 goddamn keystrokes just doesn't seem like a whole hell of a lotta work to me (carpal-tunnel syndrome excluded of course). also, because microsoft is sooooo wonderful, it'll build a solution regardless of how many projects are in it!! throw 100 of 'em in there, it'll build them all (or at least try to)!! for FREE!! imagine that!!
• ok, now to check something in, you can just right click the file in the solution explorer window, and select the check in option from the context menu. it even works for project and solution files... at most, this is 2 mouse clicks. one right handed click to bring up the context menu, and one left handed to select the check in option. again, this doesn't seem like a whole lot of work to me (but i can just be completely fucking off my rocker on this one...)

now there are other ways of doing the above, but that's not important. what's important is that between the two actions above we have a total of 3 keystrokes and 2 mouse clicks. 3 KEYSTROKES AND 2 MOUSE CLICKS. you mean to tell me that at least once during the day you are too fucking lazy to do this?? are YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!? pure unadulterated LAZINESS!! these people should be taken out back and disembowled. ironically enough, most of the einsteins that exhibit this kind of behavior have no idea of the amount of work this would actually save them later on. alright, just thinking about this is giving me diarrhea like you wouldn't believe...let's move on...

the plagiarizer (very similar to something i wrote earlier here)
amazingly enough, my buddy bill just blogged about this here. There is nothing wrong with cut and pasting code. However, there is a shitload wrong with cut and pasting code and then not reviewing it carefully for mistakes, not making sure there are no irrelevant bits and pieces, not checking to see if additional code is needed, and finally not checking if the code you just cut and pasted even makes sense for what you need (like cutting and pasting ratfor code into a managed c++ source file). friends, this is just beyond laziness...it is the fucking height of stupidity. most of the code out there on the web is usually used for illustrative purposes, and is rarely ready to be integrated into any type of production codebase. it's usually missing such non-important things as error handling and security checks, among others. how can you just blindly fucking cut and paste code like that?? how many times have you had to fix somebody else's shit just because they couldn't get the fucking code they just cut and pasted working??

unfortunately, this is just a prelude to a whole new realm of laziness. with the internet, it is becoming more and more fashionable to just blindly start looking for code and than cutting and pasting as necessary. who gives a fuck if i don't understand what it does...just get it off the internet and away you go!! this kind of shit is becoming an epidemic. it's turning into this lazy as fuck version of software developer's instant gratification. pretty soon all you'll ever need on your resume is a listing of all the web sites you can rip some code off of. who cares about problem solving skills, experience, and the ability to communicate well?? instead of building systems out of re-usable components (or services for all you buzzword types), the reality is we're going to get so fucking lazy that the only thing we're going to be building systems out of is cut and pasted code from the fucking internet...

the half a unit tester
this is the fucking lazy moron that thinks along the lines of, "well...most of it seems to be working pretty well, do i really need to test those last two methods?...i'm sure they're fine too." holy shit! this guy is completely oblivious to the world of pain he has just entered...this is the dipshit that writes a couple of unit tests see's that everything is going fine, and then decides he doesn't need to write tests to cover the rest of his code. poor miserable excuses abound for these lazy wankmasters. everything from i didn't have the time to those methods don't really do anything are just some of the more creative, original, thoughtful excuses as to why you're just a fucking low down, good for nothing, piece of shit, puke-inducing lazy fuck (let me tell you how i really feel...).

a little while ago, there were all sorts of shit going around the web as to what and what wasn't unit testing. people were saying things like:

• i only test public methods
• i test all the methods in each class
• this unit testing shit is all a bunch of bullshit to just make me do more work, so fuck it

(here comes a small digression) let's get something straight...i don't know about you people, but this testing shit is not all together too difficult. let me give you the causticphil definition of testing:

testing: making sure the shit works properly

that's it. short and simple. like the c language, most is left up to you... all this simply boils down to is use your fucking head when it comes to shit like this. if you have a private method, but there is some insidious piece of logic in it, guess what...write the fucking goddamn test for it and make sure it is working properly. pure and fucking simple. get off your lazy ass and do it, you lazy fuck!! who the fuck cares if it's not a public member? if i were you buddy, i'd be more concerned about making sure the shit works, than about following some blind dogmatic bullshit just because, "oh, so and so said do it this way..."

the bottom line with this is that testing is not fun. i don't know anybody who said, "oh rapturous joy...let's write some unit tests and test cases!!" this shit is fucking tedious. sometimes it's difficult. make no mistake, it's also a serious pain in the ass. that's why to do it well, it often takes a good sense of discipline, experience, and will-power. which are qualites most lazy fucks like yourself just don't have.

also, before moving on, i would just like to point out there is also the laziness associated with the fact that just because your code made all your little fucking circles green, that it actually does what it is supposed to do...but that's another story...

(here's the last one for today)
the spec skimmer
this is the bastard that is just too lazy to read the fucking spec properly. "oh, you mean it was supposed to do this???" yeah, i do you lazy, incompetent, fool. IT IS RIGHT THERE ON PAGE 2345 OF THE SPEC!!! Guess what...most specs that are written are complete and utter pieces of shit, that require many iterations for them to be even remotely comprehensible (even for the poor bastard writing it). However, this is no fucking excuse. if there is something that you can't make sense of, don't fucking ignore it pretending that it will just fucking go away!! don't just start blundering into writing code based on what you assume it might mean. you can call this whatever you want, but again...it's laziness, pure and fucking simple. unfortunately it is your job to figure out what this shit means, and if it's not 100% clear, than you need to bug the living shit out of the person who wrote this miserable piece of shit. i don't care if i have to ask the same fucking question 8 million times and people think i'm a complete fucking nincompoop. i just want some understanding. it's no big fucking secret that putting in the time, energy, and effort to make sense of these things can actually create less work for you in the end, regardless of whether you're using something like RUP or more agile methods.

believe it or not, these or just the top 4 cases that immediately came into my head without requiring any thought at all. i'm not saying that laziness is the ultimate cause of the industry's complete inability to write bug-free software, but it is definitely right up there with the best of 'em. unfortunately laziness is so fucking rampant in this industry that there are also people who are too fucking lazy to comment code properly, work on documentation, use appropriate algorithms, etc... (i know this is shocking, huh?) now i know how much you love doing this shit, but trust me...it's having the self-discipline to do all the tedious, boring garbage that often separates a good developer from a bad one.

by the way, if you're going to cleverly point out that i'm too fucking lazy to use the shift key for capital letters, you would be quite correct. the reason i know about all this laziness is because i happen to be the biggest, laziest fuck of all...so go fuck yourself!

the plunge

i am sorry that i have not been able to post anything lately. it has come to my attention that i am getting married, and then going on a honeymoon.

i can't tell you what a shock this is...i mean, who the fuck would want to put up with me for the rest of their lives??

after i get back (in case you just have to know, we're spending 12 or so days on maui), i plan to continue to provide what is hopefully some of the best ranting and browbeating around. There have been some specific situations that have provided a shit load of fodder for some great causticteching...

and if you bastards behave yourselves, maybe i'll post some pictures...

5 jazz albums...

for your listening pleasure, i present to you 5 jazz records:

Extended Play / Live at Birdland
Dave Holland
dave holland's group is probably one of the best modern jazz groups playing today. this live double cd is fucking amazing. everything about this record is superlative. the playing, compositions, soloing, and interplay are some of the finest to be heard. just buy it, and take heart in the fact that your getting one of the greatest live records to be released in the last ten years or so.

Gone, Just Like a Train
Bill Frisell
this was one of frisell's earlier post trio releases. it is also one of his greatest records (in a discography that is full of a shitload of great records.) some people find it really difficult to categorize frisell's music, but with someone like frisell, musical genres become completely meaningless. it's just awesome shit, and this disc has some of the best on it.

Still Live
Keith Jarrett
the piano trio format (piano, bass, drums) is one of jazz music's oldest and most venerable formats. here is one of the greatest piano trios ever, captured live on one of their best nights. if you think you know anything about jazz, and don't know who these guys are, you need to be shot, or have your ears ripped off for being so insolent (or maybe just a really good brow-beating will do). if you think your a pianist, bass player or drummer, listen to this and realize you should just give up.

Hyperion With Higgins
Charles Lloyd
in the late 60's charles become on of the tenor saxophone players. after some personal debacles, he went into forced retirement and obscurity. at somepoint decades later, he came out of retirement and started recording some really amazing, beautiful (almost chamber-like) music for the famous ECM label. this is one of his greatests discs from that period. it is also one of the few discs ever to capture the same intense emotional and spiritual mood that made coltrane what he was.

Anthem
Ralph Towner
unlike the albums above, this one is just solo guitar music. many guitarists have no fucking clue who ralph towner is, and all that shows is that they are completely ignorant to one of the most influential guitarists of the last 3 decades (and good music in general). neither flashy, immature, or tone-deaf, ralph plays some of the must sonically crystalline, pure, and beautiful music ever to come out of a guitar. most solo guitar music is either just intellectually insulting, just plain masterbatory wanking, or completely devoid of any emotional and spiritual depth. fortunately for us, their are players like ralph towner.

The Language Snob

part 3 in an ongoing series of developer stereotypes...

for some reason that is so fucking completely beyond me, programmers all over the world are ridiculously proud of and have an almost erotic obsession with what they would call "their programming language of choice." As a matter of fact, there are some developers out there that are so fucking gung-ho about their language that they become one of the most dreaded programmer stereotypes of all time...the feared and ignorant Language Snob. trust me... these close-minded cocksuckers are probably numero uno when it comes to making trouble (aside from the Open Source Zealot, of course)...

actually, i'll be honest. i have no fucking clue where these people come from. something tells me though that as soon as the 1st programming language was born, the first moronic diabolical Language Snob was born very shortly thereafter. What on earth could make somebody so obsessed with a programming language that they are literally willing to mutilate and kill for it? i can only imagine the bizarre childhood that these absolute weirdos must have gone through where a pavlovian response of an intense, raging hard-on is induced just by the mere mention of the letter C (or the letters V and B for that matter). it's like they're the meatheads of software development and are always on a fucking constant roid-rage. personally, i can think of many other things that would give myself a raging hard-on (like boobs for instance), but that's just me.

As far as developer stereotypes go, these insolent bastards are probably the most visible of them all. (at least in my experience...your milage may vary.) This is usually due to the rampant steaming diarrhea that is vomited forth from that stenchful abyss they call their mouths...constantly. i mean these guys are fucking implacable! they are absolutely relentless in excreting the bullshit that is the "virtue of my programming language." there is no place, time or person that is safe from all this nonsense...

let take a look at some of the more interesting Language Snob scenarios:

the book store ambush
how many times has this happend to you (or maybe it just happens to me because i'm such a goddamn asshole magnet)...you're in the book store checking out the books on programming languages, and as soon as you pick up a promising title on language x... WHAM!!! some imbecile starts approaching you (who you could've sworn was not even there a second ago) and without any further introduction, says something along the lines of, "why would you want to check out that shit for?? you should do yourself a favor and check out this language instead!!"

what the hell is that?? how the fuck do i even begin to answer a question like this? obviously since i'm a developer my communication skills are sorely limited to begin with, in addition there is the fact that i have problems talking to complete fucking nincompoops, AND i just love having my time being completely fucking wasted on morons such as yourself. right, the last thing i want to do during the day is have a fucking competely inane, pointless argument with a 18-25 year old, trenchcoat wearing, acne-ridden, mildly overweight, greasy haired virgin like yourself. however, let me think of some possible responses:

• a good swift kick in the ass
  direct and simple. sometimes that's the only way to combat such pure fucking idiocy. it also has the element of surprise. the last thing that anybody would be expecting from a software geek (especially in a book store) is an ultra violent, deadly, ninja like beating that would be considered borderline psychotic. despite all these advantages though, it is a little too flashy for a nonchalant guy like myself. i have also found that it attracts way too much attention from onlookers as well. it also has the serious side effect that if you work yourself into a wild enough frenzy, an innocent bystander or too might get caught in the horrific crossfire.
  
  
• ignore (which is also basically the same as the abort and retry responses)
  i have a fondness for this approach because i'm lazy and this response requires the least expenditure of effort. it also carries with it the extra bonus of really pissing off the moron that approached you in the first place. with the exception of the fact that it does not produce the instantaneous feeling of smug satisfaction and is not quite visually spectacular as the method above, it generally is the most often used.
  
  
• tell him your moronic BlunderMan boss is making you buy it for him
  oh, wait...nevermind. this response is a disaster because you'll probably get some sort of response like, "yeah dude!!...like i totally know what you mean, man!" thereby inducing more garbage from this guy as opposed to just shutting him the hell up.

there are plenty of other responses as well but i don't want to go on forever, so i'll leave some of the others as exercises for the reader to discover on his own. please feel free to be creative as possible...interpretive dancing, ethnic music, chrome kitchen appliances, and marital aids are all things you should feel free to incorporate...

the language war
you knew i couldn't get through this without mentioning the Language Snob's weapon of choice, right? where else but in a language war can you see adult and children alike act like completely moronic, cocksucking, fools? man, i love following these things. talk about something to brighten your day! anyway, they usually start off because wankmaster x has decided to publish, post, or yammer something derogatory about language y, thereby insulting and causing much loss of manliness from development community z, who write code in nothing but the aforementioned language. now obviously this ridiculous geek/dork/wank challenge cannot go unanswered. inevitably there is somebody who is either insecure enough, sick and tired of being bullied, or is just plain stupid enough to respond to this shit (that was said with the express intention of starting just this kind of shit in the first place). before you know it, every fucking dork on the planet now feels the duty, obligation, or whatever to defend their language. YEEHAW!!...let the fireworks begin!! it's great...and every language has their stock statements of choice that usually follow these well known patterns:

"well i use my language because it's soooooo much more productive!
"well my language gives me so much more power"
"sigh...why can't we all get along and just use my language??"

now...to see how ridiculous all this is, substitute the word "cock" for the word "language" in the bullet points above. what you might not know though is that there are all kinds of wars like this each one with their own themes and flavors. here are some of the ones that have been fairly prominent:

• me against the world
  this is the one that c++ programmers all over the world have been and currently continue to fight. despite their best efforts, they are slowly losing this brutal war of attrition. (on both fronts: the c# and java). lisp is fighting this very same kind of war as well.
  
  
• the civil war
  this is the one between programmers who program in vb.net vs. those who program in c#. despite the fact that they share a common framework, there are morons out there that feel the insecure need to beat each other up and cause other mindless dissension in the ranks.
  
  
• jihad, or the holy war
  this one is between java programmers and c# programmers. never has there been a more heated debate between to languages (or the morons who develop in them). to see what i mean, just do a search on "c#" in the comp.lang.java.advocacy newsgroup. i can't tell you how much time i have wasted laughing so hard at the shenanigans between these two languages. in case your wondering, the ongoing hootinanny between perl and python belongs here too.
  
  
• blitzkreig
  when the c++ empire consolidated, it destroyed smalltalk in two weeks. one day, smalltalk was there being touted like java was a few years ago (as a matter of fact, byte magazine a very long time ago dedicated an entire issue to it), only to die at the c++ onslaught during the 90s.
  
  

i should thank all the people who have participated in these flamefests the world over for the countless hours of enjoyment you've given me. unfortunately though, this is just one more trick that the monstrous Language Snob has used time and time again to lure innocent young developers into his den of iniquity and have his way...plus, there are much better things to argue about too, like who was frank zappa's best drummer (if you don't know, it's vinnie colaiuta, period), or just how much heroin did miles davis actually take, or was wiles lucky, or did he really know what he was doing when he proved fermat's last theorem??

don't fall for this bullshit...

if all you have is a hammer...
this is another disastrous, project killing Language Snob trait. this basically translates into complete fucking bumblers using the wrong tool for the wrong job. listen, duechebag...there is a reason why people don't write "line of business applications" in assembler. conversely, there is a just as valid reason why people don't write linux hardware drivers in visual basic. regardless, the Language Snob plows on because he's totally confident in the fact that his language is the only tool to get the job done. maybe it's because i'm lazy, but i just can't understand the absolute masochistic need to write a 1000 line console program when you could write the same moronic fucking thing in about 100 lines of c# or java code ( or even less in visual basic or python). not only that, but it would be easier to debug and maintain as well. i guess those things aren't really high on the Language Snob's list. i mean, who writes code that would want to be easy to debug and maintain?? how do you fucking explain such aberrant fucking behavior? i'm sure i'm not the only developer out there who has seen more than his far share of projects that have had to go through complete rewrites because some fucking Language Snob decided that the implementation MUST be in his language. assuming you understand the advanced, complex, and sophisticated concepts of assignment, selection, and iteration, how fucking hard can it be to add another tool to your tool belt, you lazy fuck? why do you think nobody showed up to fujitsu's building transactional web-applications using object cobol for .net seminars??

there are many other disastrous traits as well that the Language Snob has incorporated into his MO. these are only some of the highlights. these guys are dangerous. especially when they are decision-makers. yeah, i got it...i'll take the objective route, and at the risk of completely fucking derailing the project, i'll recommend we go with MY language!!! wow...wouldn't you love somebody like this on the team??

by the way, there recently was a minor skirmish in the civil war here. (this is a fairly well known vb guy's response to a page about c#. put it this way...that page has to be some of the biggest and purely opportunistic FUD i've ever seen, and i'm a c# guy!).

learn blithering idiocy in 21 days

it seems the technical publishing industry has finally given up. it's at the point now where they'll publish anyfuckingthing by anyfuckingbody. although there are many high-quality titles available (you can find a few here), compared to the colossal shit-load of garbage that's out there it's like they're fucking anomalies. there are just so many problems...of which the majority seem to converge on the fact that most publishers are more interested in making a tidy profit at your (and sometimes the authors) expense, rather than offering quality technical material. they're not even subtle about it anymore. even my favorite publisher addison-wesley has managed to publish some of the most god-awful pieces of shit ever written.

let's take a further look...

the complete fucking moron's guide to breaking my builds
ok, this shit has just got to stop. if you're in the book store and any book title that follows the following pattern:

learn (or teach yourself) [insert moronic tech-skill flavor of month] in [insert a ridiculously quick time period]

or

the complete [insert derogatory adjective] idiot's guide to [again, insert flashy tech-skill of the month]

or

[and once more, insert flashy-tech skill of the month] for dummies

starts to arouse your curiosity, please...PLEASE...PLEASE...FOR THE LOVE OF GOD...GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE NOW!! just by putting your hand on the spine of one of these fuckers you're guaranteed to loose about 120 IQ points, drool uncontrollably, shit your pants, and start babbling like a lunatic at an insane asylum. these kinds of titles are not helping anybody. i hear you say, "well, they might be good for the hobbiest, enthusiast, or other non-professional." Well...you would be right, however, i'm not quite talking about that (or any of the people microsoft felt compelled to offer a toddler line to.) what i'm talking about is the dipshit who was doing just fine as whatever for 19 years, and then decides, "i'm sick of this shit...i'm gonna be programmer!" after a quick trip to the bookstore our hero arms himself with several of the aforementioned titles and WHAM...21 days go by and now armed with his newfangled knowledge this fool is ready to lead your next mission-critical project... or at least start applying for jobs that have the words enterprise or architect in their titles.

this is a problem. i've never heard shit like this going on in other professions. when was the last time you were meandering through the bookstore and you spied learn vascular surgery in 24 hours? the whole concept is just so fucking misleading, plain and simple. it's like they're pandering to all those people who are so fucking insecure that they don't give themselves enough credit to actually learn something from a book whose reading level isn't so goddamned dumbed down that a fucking 8 month old chimpanzee could read it. i'm also convinced that to get one of these abominations published, you have to include tips, fast-facts, do's and dont's and enough sidebar material to the point where it's so fucking disruptive you can't even finish the page. and of course, you need to end every chapter with classic lines like this:

"attaboy!! you see, you can do it!! programming real-time, concurrent, multi-threaded, asynchronous medical life-support systems really is easy!!"

i just wished they made these books with considerably softer paper. that way i can use them to wipe my ass with and then when i've used up the whole book, i can wrap it up and fedex it over to which ever publisher was responsible...

WROX bashing from novice to pro
what can i say about these fuckers that hasn't already been said? these guys have been the whipping-boy of the industry forever. in fact, they became such a fucking disaster that a couple of years ago they went belly-up. at one point and time they produced some nice titles that were single authored. i remember a time whenever you looked in the bookstore you would see that fucking face of ivor horton, relentlessly stalking you around the computer section in the various guises of c, c++, and java books for beginners. (does anybody know if that guy is even alive??) somewhere though, they just went totally fucking bonkers. they started shafting their authors, releasing material on questionable subject matter, stopped editing their titles all together, and god knows what else. what i really want to know was who was the fucking genius that decided every one of these blood-red pulsating tomes of horror MUST HAVE 70+ authors? yeah, what a brillant idea! we'll take 80 authors with 80 completely different writing styles and with vastly different levels of expertise, and throw all this shit without any editing or proofing into one book! nobody has said anything, but i am absolutely convinced that somewhere there has to be a wrox java title that actually has a chapter from a c# book that was put into it by accident and nobody noticed. this is the level of incompetency i'm talking about here folks.

in addition to the above, i really wouldn't be doing wrox justice if i didn't bring up their cover concept. who had the balls for that idea? let's take what could be collectively the world's largest group of ugliest bastards on the planet (software developers), and fucking plaster the cover with a nice ridiculously large , no-holes barred, blown up head-shot. unreal! after awhile though, one face just wasn't enough. they started posting team shots! some of these pictures are so bad, after seeing one or two of these cursed titles, my fiance almost turned lesbian. (and that would've really pissed me off.)

it's only a matter of time before we see: "VH1 behind the idiocy: the wrox author team"

a preview of bullshit 2.0 BETA
here's another one of the biggest industry scams. the subject of the book doesn't technically exist yet, but that hasn't stopped them from publishing a book about it and CHARGING your ass for it! you know there might be a problem when you see something on the cover along the lines of "blah, blah, blah, has not been finalized, blah, blah, blah, this is just a preview, blah, blah, blah, we are not responsible." some publishers get so crap-happy over this shit, i remember seeing some book that had NT 5.0 in the title. everyone of these little fuckers should have a large outlined box on the back of the book that says something along the lines of "before you spend your hard-earned cash, you should also check out some of the available FREE resources. [show listing of various free recources] if you find you still need hand-holding and nurturing, then by all means, waste your money on me!"

these books are also responsible for encouraging one of the most insidious and moronic mind-games of all times in the software industry...the "you're falling behind your peers in knowledge and skill, and you need to catch up!" this basically translates into, "you must buy this shit, because if you don't, you'll be obosolete!" BULLSHIT! don't buy into this diarhea inducing garbage for a second. resist the urge to feel rushed into buying this shit so you can be ready. trust me...old stuff, new stuff...it's all going to be around for quite sometime.

publishing industry diarhea UNLEASHED
outside of the above, there are so many, many more disgusting publishing industry shananigans. how many times have you read something like, "the sample code is provided on the CD", only to find that this particular title has NO cd! big fucking surprise there... or how many collective hours has the entire software industry fucking wasted just trying to get the "sample" code to compile?? there is also the "nth edition phenomenon." this where 6 months after the 1st edition is released, the newer, better, faster, stronger, second edition comes out. to get the 50 or so pages of the new content (out of usually 500-1000 pages) you're charged FULL PRICE. there is also the "follow the leader" gag too. this is where one publisher has a book on technology X, so now every other publisher has to have a book on technology X too. in the blind rush to get their book out to market, they will release drivel-infested garbage like you've never seen.

seriously folks....when will it end??