06.14.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:20 am by gatormha
It’s been OVER A YEAR since I’ve done anything with this blog, and I feel I am ready to begin anew. I have done many things since that fateful day in June of 2007 when I wrote my last article: I have a new job (woohoo!), I’ve began woodworking as a hobby aside from programming — pictures will soon come, and I have immatured significantly as a person.
It’s funny, but I it seems the older I get, the lower my maturity level goes. I laugh harder than ever at silly things that made me laugh as a kid like farts, or milk shooting out of noses, or seeing someone get hit in the nuts with a football — things that 10 years ago made me laugh, and now make me laugh hysterically!
I hope that in the following weeks and months, I can share some of that immaturity with you and perhaps refine it. I look forward to what lies ahead and I’m glad it involves you.
-Matthew Adjemian
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06.06.07
Posted in apology, Random, General at 6:45 pm by gatormha
So, as it turns out, my post about programmer classification wasn’t as nearly well received as my other posts. Even though it was front-paged on DZone, it received more negative votes than positive votes. And most comments about it were talking about how incomplete it was. One guy even went out of his way to make a blog post about how un-funny it actually was! Though, in my opinion, his attempt to redo failed even worse than the original. My post was at least trying to be light-hearted and funny; his post was way too harsh. Combined with an extremely basic grasp of English, the humor of the post was completely lost on me:
“It’s hard to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys, but it’s also difficult to soar gracefully at all when you’re chained by the neck to a Lear jet doing mach 4.”
What?
Anyhow, it turns out that if people are actually going to read this stuff, I’m going to have to limit my time investing in trampoline stocks and really put 110% of my efforts into writing these posts. Even though I’ve made a KILLING after they released the new 5′ x 10′ “Super Tramps”, I’m just going to have to become totally quality driven. I want to ramp up the interactivity of these posts, become more scalable, flexible, and client-centered. I think if maybe I were a little more adaptive, I could reach all the low-hanging fruit and really get on the bleeding edge of blog awesomeness.
In case you haven’t seen it Buzzword Bingo rocks — a lot (especially if you’re going to a meeting today).
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06.01.07
Posted in Dorks, Dweebs, Geeks, Programming, Funny, Work, General at 9:34 pm by gatormha
Have you ever met a programmer? Do you wonder what a programmer might be like in real life? Would you know how to communicate with him? This guide will classify programmers into their three distinctly unique groups and provide detail into how these different types of programmers go about their daily lives.
The Dork
The dork is, by far, the most common type of programmer. The dork will seem to the untrained eye a normal, albeit oddly dressed, member of society. Dorks can be spotted in many common places such as the grocery store, the barber shop, the movie theater, or popular restaurants, but will most often seem uncomfortably out of place as he would much rather be in front of a computer screen leveling his 4th gnome warlock.
Communication with dorks, though taxing, can be facilitated by surrounding yourself with expensive computer equipment, carrying World of Warcraft installation discs on your person, or starting the conversation with the following question, “As a feral druid, would it be wiser for me to dual wield or to carry a two handed weapon?”
WARNING: Touching a dork’s computer without invitation, insulting his PvP abilities, or refusing to believe his story about his online girlfriend who is a model in Iowa
can result in the dork becoming violent, flailing his arms about wildly, and accompanying this with high-pitched shrieks and wails.
The Geek Who Doesn’t Want to Be a Geek
This is the second most common type of programmer, though he is significantly rarer than the previously mentioned dork. He is rarely spotted in public, though can be easily differentiated from normal people by his distinct lack of taste in clothing and hair style and by his pasty white skin. This type of programmer will go to great lengths to hide the fact that he just used Dijkstra’s Algorithm to determine the quickest path to the grocery store through traffic, but generally fails miserably to deceive anyone.
WARNING: Be gentle with these individuals. The soft glow of his several monitors provides just enough sunlight to prevent complete vitamin D deficiency, but his weakened bone structures can be damaged from even slight contact. Additionally, he will own you in Unreal Tournament.
The Geek Who Know’s He’s a Geek — And Loves It
This is the rarest — and most dangerous — form of programmer. He is well aware of his physical shortcomings, but thrives on developing new software modules for obscure programming languages. He is often known on the internet by a moniker that he will often respond to in real life. He often has an army of computers at his disposal, and he could tell you all about his most recent achievements in person, but would rather IM you the link to his wiki page where his life is detailed by the minute.
The only time this type of programmer is spotted is during his rare sustenance excursions when he travels to the nearest grocery or convenience store to replenish his supply of Cheetos, Tab, and Mountain Dew. Any human contact is often responded to with loud hisses and scratching.
WARNING: This individual is a master in all forms of online combat. He has killed you in Battlefield 2 about a dozen times and has probably managed to do the same to most members of your extended family. Any attempt to subdue this individual on the internet will become violent — programmatically speaking, of course.
I sincerely hope this guide has enlightened you to the different types of code monkeys you might encounter during your day-to-day life. Memorizing the aspects of each class might save your life some day.
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05.31.07
Posted in Programming, Sad, Depressing, Visual Basic, VB6, Funny, Work, General at 9:31 pm by gatormha
I learned everything I need to know about my job in the first week I was there.
When I graduated college, I thought that my days of carefree and reckless abandon were over. I had started a career with a respectable, billion-dollar publicly traded software company in the midwest. I was no longer a poor college student, I was a “Software Developer”! I had a job description, roles, and responsibilities; I had to go to meetings, meet deadlines, and make money; but most importantly, I had to develop software.
Some of my key responsibilities included:
- Working with Solution Designers (Business Analysts) to define and clarify software requirements,
- Creating (and having reviewed) technical design documents consisting of well defined database diagrams, solid class definitions using object-oriented design principles, and well defined and structured database designs,
- Writing elegant, maintainable, well documented code,
- Reviewing the code of my peers in order to improve said elegance and maintainability as well as to learn and share new coding tips and best-practices.
I used to read The Daily WTF and laugh thinking, “Nobody could ever program so poorly!” As far as I knew, all IT departments ran as smoothly as the one I was at. Like a well-oiled software writing machine.
After almost two years of this near utopia for software developers I felt my needs were no longer being met by my employer, and I decided to move on to greener pastures. I decided to find a new job.
The search was quick! I found a seemingly solid job in South Florida with a respectable, billion-dollar publicly traded construction company. I was no longer going to be a complacent software engineer from the midwest! I was going to be a VB (not yet known to me 6) programmer! I didn’t blink an eye at the difference in title. I assumed my responsibilities would be similar and my new work environment would at least be comparable to my previous one. I expected to continue being a naive software developer. But as I soon found out, my days of reckless abandon were just beginning!
One of my first jobs was to begin fixing defects for an application that nobody on my team of 3 programmers understood or had even looked at for more than 10 or 15 minutes before blowing off. The customers needed bug fixes and bug fixes I was going to give them! The programmer who originally wrote the application still worked for the company, but in another capacity at another location. I tried to call, but got no answer. I sent an email and got a nearly immediate, single syllable response that didn’t even come remotely close to answering the myriad of questions I asked. Maybe he just got back to his desk.
Another phone call — answering machine. Was he ignoring my calls?
Out of pure desperation, I sent another email thinking he was very busy and just didn’t have time to respond. I made sure to make it perfectly clear he could get back to me whenever it was convenient for him. Another immediate, monosyllabic response.
Definitely ignoring my calls.
After nearly a dozen back and forth emails like the first two, I felt I had dragged enough information out of him to begin looking into the defects I had set my sights on. I opened the code.
It was at this point, I learned the difference between being a developer and being a programmer. No longer did I have the key responsibilities I mentioned above, the responsibilities of a programmer are much different:
- Don’t even think about trying to get requirements! Even if someone tells you what an application needs to do, it’s almost guaranteed to be different tomorrow. And again the day after.
- Technical design documents are for cowards. So is testing. The only way to find out if something will work is to do it and get it into production! Most designs I have anymore consist of poorly scribbled, incoherent circles and boxes on the back of a notebook that even I don’t understand anymore. Any text is probably the phone number to a restaurant or what my coworkers want for lunch.
- Writing maintainable code is the quickest way to get yourself fired! If you write code that only you can understand, you’re guaranteed to have a job — at least until they rewrite your application (which is probably never). And documenting is just going to set up your replacement to succeed! He took your job, why the hell should he succeed?! You know what the code does, why would you need to waste your time writing useless filth like comments or user manuals? They pay you to code!
- Code reviews at my work are kind of like the unwritten rule in a men’s locker room. You just don’t look. I don’t want to see yours, you don’t want to see mine, let’s just keep our eyes above the neck.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like my job. Nowhere have I had the freedom to do what I want, when I want, how I want, where I want like this place. The only thing is that everyone I work with has the same freedoms. Everything I do, the guy next to me does 10 times worse. And chances are, I’ll be the one maintaining his code in a year.
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