Sometimes I still see job postings that are like “MUST KNOW OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING” and I’m wondering who in 2026 isn’t at least passably familiar with it.
But then again I also see job posts that are like “must know Java or JavaScript”
Sure, could be. They didn’t have any automated checks, and I saw errors like “that’s too many parenthesis” and “you’re trying to use a library you didn’t add to the dependencies list” sail through.
I feel sorry for you and hope you cna find more fulfilling work that will let you grow, but I dont’t know what the job market is like right now
Where I work, there’s really no emphasis on code quality or testing. There’s also like no mentorship or senior developers leading the way.
They hired a guy with 1-2 years of experience and I feel really bad for him. Not only is he learning very little, he’s learning actively bad patterns. No one is teaching him about automated testing. Code reviews are just “you skim it. Don’t spend more than 30 minutes”.
Management of course loves LLMs and wants more usage.
On the one hand, you don’t really want to give people the power to decide what books are available. Assholes would use that to remove queer books, for example.
On the other hand, that power is already implicitly in place. There’s finite space in a library, so they must choose a subset of all possible books. I’d want to know how the existing processes work before suggesting changes.
So as a senior, you could abstain. But then your junior colleagues will eventually code circles around you, because they’re wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you’re still riding around on a fixie bike
Lol this works in a way the author probably didn’t intend. They are wearing extremely dangerous tools that were never really a great idea. They’ll code some circles, set their legs on fire, and crash into a wall.
People are emotionally driven. Admitting something scary is more emotionally taxing than pretending it’s fake.
It is! I spent a lot of time manually cleaning up the CSV, and there were still problems.
Apparently there’s some other way to export data that’s not horrible but I’m not authorized to use it for some reason.
I work at a big company with very weak testing culture.
At my job I have to use this “SAP” software and I think it’s the worst professional software I’ve ever used. The dates export as three pairs of two digits. No indication of what’s what. The numbers export with commas, so like “1234” comes out in the csv as “1,234”. I hate it. It also mangles some other data so like “0000” turns into “” for some reason.
It’s not really that different from like
my_get_mock = Mock(side_effect=Some exception("oh no"))
result = some_func(http_getter=my_get_mock)
There’s many ways of writing bad code and tests, but mocks and patches aren’t always a bad tool. But sure, you can definitely fuck things up with them.
Javascript has mocking with jest: https://jestjs.io/docs/mock-functions
There’s an example there of mocking our axios (a common library for network requests, a la python requests)
It’s been a long time since I’ve used java, but mockito exists: https://site.mockito.org/javadoc/current/org/mockito/Mockito.html#2
(Usage note for anyone unfamiliar, but despite the name java and JavaScript are radically different languages.)
I vaguely remember Java also has mocking libraries, as does JavaScript. (Though JavaScript isn’t a language I’d hold up as the ideal.)
with patch("some_file.requests.get", side_effect=SomeException("oh no")):
result = func_using_requests()
Though not every language makes mocking as easy, and multiple responsibilities in a single function can quickly get messy.
I used to be better at math and coding. If I pulled up my old project euler solutions I’m not sure I’d understand them anymore.
“There must be in-groups that the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups that the law binds but does not protect.” That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.
They are worse than villains from a child’s story.
It’s always just emotional slop. Conservatives’ words don’t mean anything. There’s no internal logic beyond “in-groups to protect and out-groups to bind”, and “no one tells me what to do. I tell you what to do”
My cat likes to drink from people cups. Sometimes I “accidentally” leave one on the table for him to discover.
The main role of CEOs seems to be schmoozing with other CEOs and venture capitalists. I don’t know if AI can do that just yet.
The fact that so much of our economy and world is based on the whims of some rich assholes is concerning.
Oof. I’ve had places that the pipeline was getting long. At one of my previous jobs I made it so all the tests could run locally, and we were keeping the full build as slow as possible.
We also didn’t do any browser tests (eg: selenium) because those tend to be slow and most people are bad at making them stable.
It’s important to know whats worth testing.
There’s a lot of fear at my job about changing code. I’ve been trying to tell them to start writing automated tests. Or at least a linter to check for syntax errors. They’re all like “ooh that sounds hard maybe next quarter”
Meanwhile, a trivial change requires a whole day because the developer has to manually test everything.
I just unilaterally added checks to code I have ownership over, but anything shared I’m getting “maybe in two quarters we can prioritize this” from management.
I really dislike all the “ceremonies” that seem to be involved in software development now. It’s just so much useless ritual.