Impossible Things Programmers Were Asked To Do

[@bobbyhinner3225]

I’m at an engineering college studying computer engineering. The amount of people who don’t know the difference between “computer” and monitor” is shocking.

[@PokeMageTech]

Christ...

[@rodannnkekw2866]

... sorry

[@rosyidsyahruromadhonalimin8008]

yea,they shock difrently

[@WhiteKestrell]

Every time I see "Mac or PC" my brain crashes.

[@Sunset553]

I know the difference, but I sometimes point to the monitor when I refer to the computer connected to it. I’m apologize for sounding ignorant.

[@Jorgelhus]

I received a request to issue a quote for a project from a guy: He wanted to sell battery power. Let me explain: He wanted me to create an app that would allow people to download power to charge their battery. He had a good budget for a standard project, but not money enough to defy the laws of physics.

[@oompalumpus699]

Bright lad that one. Downloadable power! Jesus Christ.

[@Ramsey276one]

Did they reference the 4chan IPhone hoax ad?

[@johnuferbach9166]

People download RAM all the time, why not battery power aswell?! :o

[@toxin1882]

@@johnuferbach9166 XD

[@ik2254]

Tesla did it. Apparently. The dude just wanted a Tesla Jr. I wonder what is an hourly rate of geniuses.

[@DavidNasr]

"Hey so, i like this gir-" me: "No i won't hack her"

[@THESJS]

I was always curious if there was a way to do this petition but not having the responsabilities behind hacking like Since the client told me so like make them sign a responsability paper saying that they will assume 100%

[@bulldozer8950]

@@THESJS “why are there so many forms for this job” Well buddy you indirectly asked me to make bank fraud malware so this is a form saying you won’t use it for that and it is not my fault if you do.

[@THESJS]

@@bulldozer8950 yes exactly so its possible

[@hiimryan2388]

There's a hack called "kidnapping" bounus point if they get stockholm syndrome so you dont need to invest even more time

[@cheesball96]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@youdontneedtoseehisidentif4939]

One of my "favourites": I was asked to develop a project in six months; I quoted a price I was then asked "will you reduce the price by half if we compress the work into three months..?" They didn't seem to understand that doing the same amount of work in less time was not going to cause the price to go *down* … 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@R77ification]

When parents asks "Why dont you just make a Facebook?" and get angry when I dont give them an entire college course on how me, a singular backend programer, cant make a social media platform on my own with only a minimal fraction of the money The Zucc had for the project.

[@Powerlevelspy]

This reminds me when I read a comment saying, “It’s so easy to create the next Facebook, Twitter, or discord. It’s not that hard.” I was going to reply with “alright then, make it and come back to me when you make millions”, but I remembered the quote “ if you fight or argue with stupid people they will only bring you to their level.” It was hard to resist, but worth it. Seriously though, why don’t they understand how hard it is to make something even as simple as a calculator or to do list app. Yes, these things get easier to make overtime, but the amount of code you have to write, time to make sure the computer sees it as good, and finally setup the design is exhausting. Sorry your parents didn’t understand the difficulty of coding something that massive not to mention the legal work if it gets big assuming you pulled it off.

[@animeepstudios9110]

Luckily, my dad is a programmer, so he taught me how to program and analyse code. He knows how hard it is just to make freaking login screen.

[@jellohouse1288]

As a third-year CS major, I am now scared lol.

[@user-ml3hl6vr4t]

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

[@Erhannis]

Eh, don't be TOO afraid - the jobs I've worked at have been pretty reasonable; my current supervisors, for instance, understand that certain things can sound easy but are actually hard, and actually ask us how long things will take, haha.

[@user-ml3hl6vr4t]

@@Erhannis just remember, in job descriptions, the words: “other duties as assigned” are four words to be feared.

[@jellohouse1288]

@@TheBoundlessNexus hey thanks for the reply! Honestly my biggest fear is I feel like college isn't doing much to prepare me for the real world. Also with covid I feel like I retained nothing over the semester even though I got Bs in all my classes. Im nervous of being completely unprepared when I get into the industry even though ill have a piece of paper saying I am haha. I'm not sure if this is normal or if its a bit of imposter syndrome. My question is how did you transition from lectures and programming assignments to being a software engineer? Any advice that could help me be more prepared for that transition?

[@LenweTaralom77]

@@jellohouse1288 impostor syndrome is normal (had it for 6 Months starting out until I learned how the senior engineers work... lol... mostly Stack Overflow and Duct Tape) and the best thing is: With a CS Degree in your pocket you can literally always leave. I only have a Bachelor's, and I can get 20 Interviews in a week if I wanted to. There really aren't enough of us going around. As for the transition from lectures to the real world. Make sure that your future employers know that the are hiring a junior engineer when they write that on the job description. Also, ignore the bs that says "2 years js experience, eyperience with AWS and whateverthefuck", most of that you literally pick up in a week. Nobodybreally has those requirements anyways. Instead go with your gut after the interview and use it to find out what you will be doing. And as a junior dev you'll get help, timw or both to figure your shit out and you'll often get the easy but trdious jobs first, like unit tests or documentation. TL;DR go with your gut, nobody knows anything, you'll probably be fine

[@Ptero4]

People who "want a clone of Office/Outlook/Windows" can't seem to understand that those already exist. They are LibreOffice, Evolution and Linux.

[@notyou2353]

OpenOffice

[@amateurprogrammer25]

Thunderbirb

[@giovannipezzin5707]

GNU/linux

[@gui18bif]

Found the Linux user (just a joke)

[@giovannipezzin5707]

OH, BTW I USE ARCH

[@MikeStoneJapan]

My cousin: Make me a website! Me: What do you want it look like? What do you want it to say? Cuz: I dunno. You figure that out! Me: That sounds like a lot of work... Cuz: Why are you so mean to me??

[@k.u.m.o.r]

I had a guy once call me and asked if I can do a website for him. I asked him to describe in his words how he would like it to look like. "You are the web dev, you tell me" fuck him never called him back

[@MrLordZenki]

I think the worst thing programmers are asked to do is estimate how long it will take to do something they've never done before.

[@jfan4reva]

No, the worst thing is when you're on an Agile project where they ask everyone in the room to estimate it. Including non-programmers, and people who are working on another part of the project that's being done on a different machine using a different OS and language.

[@chompyzilla]

Oh, shouldn’t take long. Between an hour and, um, eleven months.

[@rchrch4922]

I really terrible at doing estimation lol, better longer than shorter. Throwback when place where I work asked me to make a 'proper' marketplace in 2 months, and I only do that by myself while simultaneously doing tons other things lol

[@DeveloperToast]

That was my last job, asking me how long every little thing would take. Exhausting.

[@pokealja]

"Just build me a website." Which is why you do a Client Brief package and a branding design brief before EVERY project. You gotta set up what's equivalent to a 'contract' between you and the client, detailing exactly what you're designing and coding, as well as any extras that come with it, too.

[@GarlicGrinder9]

when I say im learning to code and someone immediately says "Ooh can you make me a game but with this really wierd mechanic that makes no sense and only I would enjoy?"

[@Ramsey276one]

Somehow learning some science means YER A WIZARD XD

[@narc2.036]

Yer a coder harry

[@afj810]

Can you name the specific mechanic I need original shit for my games will credit ig

[@guy-dev]

Or "wHy iSnT mY pRiNtEr WoRkInG"

[@Powerlevelspy]

I may not be a very experience programmer, but when I was starting out and learning how to even get a loop working or variable in Python, I was asked by a friend to make a platforming game with multiple levels and a story (basically Mario). I was like “Bruh, you realize I just started to learn coding again two weeks ago.”

[@knote4958]

"They wanted IE6 to pull data from a bluetooth device" "Hey, so you know how modern browsers are intentionally sandboxed from accessing various device data & resources for security reasons? Yeah, we want you to circumvent that and compromise user information so we can tout this cool new feature" It's alarming how much business relies on software, yet how ignorant businessmen are of development and how incompatible business functions with development projects

Chrome has support for bluetooth (LE) since version 56 (2016 november). It also has a driver for XboX360 controllers and other random and low level stuff. I mean, yeah, there is better security and isolation nowadays, but I wouldn't say in 2020 that browsers don't have _everything_ in them.

[@knote4958]

@ The point being that these at best are specialty features implemented with serious considerations and requiring permissions from both the OS and the user. There's a very good reason why modern browsers have very limited access to system resources, and it's the same reason vulnerability to malware attacks has become less of an issue.

[@notyou2353]

The main area of my expertise is hardware side IT, though I program as a hobby. I say this to say that, even though I'm not a programmer, I realize that there's a damn good reason why Internet browsers are sandboxed. Those things are very serious security threats, especially since most people have very dangerous, very lazy, browsing habits (e.g., visiting a phishing link from a malicious email). If I was a programmer by trade I don't think I could, in good conscience, compromise user security in that manner. It's easy to say this, so maybe I'm fooling myself, but I think I'd quit over that if I was ordered to do it anyways...

[@HrHaakon]

Imagine what exactly the EU would do to anyone doing that. The GDPR requires a blood sacrifice for such sacrilege.

[@jacobw703]

To anyone who thinks they have a great idea for an app/service. The harsh truth is that whether the idea is good or not isn't really important. The two most important things are: 1) execution & 2) marketing. Even a silly or stupid idea can be turned into a successful product if it's implemented and/or marketed extremely well.

[@catlovingtrio]

That is absolutely proven by the Thneed.

[@Powerlevelspy]

@@catlovingtrio This may be the marketing talking, but the thneed is something I would probably buy if it existed. Only if they had it in red, blue, or grey.

[@ashark4906]

If programmers can't do these task, nobody can.

[@clearcontentment3695]

A Shark some are plausible but this ain’t myth busters

[@EnigmaGameMaster]

The programmers of today are mostly idiots who think that duct taping a few bits of somebody else's code makes them smart. So don't worry too much if a programmer fails at doing a task, unless he's an old guy, then you best start panicking!

[@bruce5464]

@@EnigmaGameMaster you are 100% right about the new programmers but the old programmers too aren't so good, the real problem is that IT is too fast, and generally speaking an old programmer can't follow this rhythm, the older you are the less inclined you are to update yourself, and that's proved by a LOT of researches

[@EnigmaGameMaster]

@@bruce5464 Oh yeah, there were definitely a lot of bad ones back then too, but it's gotten many times worse now, and the system has followed too. Being a real programmer nowadays makes you want to commit genocide upon humanity, I've literally never once gotten a library to work without it crashing due to incorrect documentation and having to spend hours, if not days trying random syntaxes and shit until I discover the correct one.

[@bulldozer8950]

Or they won’t do it because like a quarter of these are illegal....

[@foxvulpes8245]

That cold rage you feel when your bosses say "we are going to use AI/cloud to solve X."

[@Ramsey276one]

My immediate response: HAVE FUN GOOD LUCK

[@ericb3157]

reminds me of a silly line in a TV show...i think it was "CSI": "i'll write a GUI program to track the hacker." GUI means Graphical User Interface. every time anyone CLICKS on something with a MOUSE they are using a GUI! just ONE example of how poorly Hollywood scriptwriters misunderstand computers.

[@Powerlevelspy]

I respect ambition and desire to improve, but these companies and bosses need to be reasonable. The amount of effort and time to make an AI is a LONG journey of 5+ cups of coffee a day, dealing with multiple syntax errors, and finally ending up in a loony bin just to create an AI. I respect any programmer, but I cannot respect any boss. Also the cloud IMO pisses me off. I just hate the idea of my shit being on someone else’s computer. Especially with Samsung now removing the Sd slot in their newer phones likely to charge more upfront or to create a cloud. No clouds in the sky is an example of a good day, remember that if you ever use the cloud in a company. To any programmers, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for creating the future.

[@WadelDee]

5:58 I don't trust programmers so I want a non-programmer do the programming for me! I don't trust lawyers so I want a layman to do my taxes for me! I don't trust big pharma so I want alternative medicine to do the healing for me!

[@neongaminglp8071]

Fun thing is, the pharma thing is actually real with people trying to heal everything with "essential oils".

[@Scarletraven87]

I wouldn't trust BPharma either if I lived in the USA. Just consider how you treat mental illness over there: you treat the symthoms, not the cause.

[@WadelDee]

@@Scarletraven87 Are you referring to gay conversion therapy?

[@Kanitoxx]

I'm studying programming and I often get "offers" to work in a website from friend and acquaintances to sell stuff, when I tell them that making a web means to rent the name on the domain, the hosting, design, maintenance and my work, then they said that's too much, and that they wanted to pay 100 dollars top for a working page, oh and I had to take the photo of the products that they wanted to sell too. Man just the domain and hosting are around 75 to 80 USD where I live.

[@TheTadek2001]

Today, my dad said that I should make a video game. My startup does that, but... 1. He wanted the entire Kashubia region (around the size of Rhode Island) as a 3D map, to be made only by me. 2. He wanted this to be an educational game. 3. He says that he would sell it in Poland (only for people interested in The topic, too). My games are popular only in Japan (and I'm not even Japanese)! 4. He wants me to make this huge map by myself, in a couple of months, because "maybe they would give me a scholarship". 400$ is enough to recreate Kashubia right?

[@KnakuanaRka]

You’ve made games that sell in Japan? Interesting.

[@badumtss4032]

what are your games?

[@KnakuanaRka]

@@badumtss4032 My question too.

[@lineriderrulz]

I've had the Augmented Reality one literally, unironically at my last job. Clueless client-facing people didn't know how to say no and seemed unaware of the irony of even attempting it when everything in our tech stack was 10+ years old Edit: Also I was the only person doing actual programming on this product after the previous programmer threatened to leave if they didn't put him on another project. When I handed in my 3 months notice they suddenly put 3 devs, two of them new, on the product to replace me.

[@oldchannel2892]

I just love "if (About to crash) { // Don't }"

[@ericb3157]

reminds me of a story on "the daily WTF", where a self-proclaimed "expert" thought it was MORE EFFICIENT or MANDATORY to write code like this: if then (do nothing) else (do something) and when SHOWN that it was NOT necessary, said something like "the most be a short circuit making it do something impossible!"

[@axiezimmah]

Just put a return before the crash.

[@christopherm4739]

Isnt this basically what a crash handler does tho?

[@angelaqbridge2079]

I’m a programming student in training and most of the time we learn through mistakes and Google.

[@anarhistul7257]

that won't get you very far

[@immortaltoaistisascamdonot4938]

@@anarhistul7257 which part the learning from mistakes or Google????

[@anarhistul7257]

@@immortaltoaistisascamdonot4938 mistakes

[@zinjanthropus322]

@@anarhistul7257 fail fast is a motto

[@vibaj16]

@@anarhistul7257 the way you think people should learn won't get you very far

[@Rizing4Combat]

I'm a third year CS student in the UK. After my second year, I was part of a Hackathon (2 day non stop coding challenge) online where me and my team were competing for internship opportunities. At the end of the challenge, we found out the Hackathon company itself actually wanted to take on 20-25 individuals for different roles in a project they wanted to do (they wanted marketers, designers, developers, etc). Bare in mind we are all interns with no real world work experience. I decided to take up on this unpaid 'internship' opportunity. The project was acc pretty large and required actual work from actual employees. The task was to develop 5 new Hackathon sites, and also develop a subscription service with a full frontend/backend with payment functionality. This may seem fine at first, but we are all unpaid interns, and had no idea what we were doing lol. We would only get paid if the system was successful. To me, this seems like the CEO didn't know anything about the complexity of the project, and wanted more and more stuff added on. For example, another developer in my team mentioned machine learning (idk why they mentioned that) and the CEO jumped on that idea and wanted that implemented. Provided this whole project was meant to be completed in 3 months... Oh yh, they also wanted us to rebrand their current site and create a new brand for them... I ended up leaving after 1 month :)

[@scriptKiddieOG]

*Clicks Finger* "Machine Learning! I'm into that." Like it's some kind of sexual preference.

[@octyedesign8408]

9:50 "And how come there is some weird Spanish on the page instead of content" Fuck me, the amount of times a client has told me this.

[@rchrch4922]

When I started learning programming I was wondering wtf lorem ipsum means and how everyone seems to remember the sentence so well then found out it was only placeholder texts and there's a generator for it lol

[@DJ11223344]

I run a small web dev team. Our clients always scoff at my estimates for "small" changes.

[@jfan4reva]

"Fast. Good. Cheap. Pick two. No, you can't have all three."

[@PokeMageTech]

19:10 - *programs a 7D space* Okay. There. (The cat request) “I would remind you that I am also a mathematician (by education and inclination, not by profession) - and a cat is not a line. It might be represented by a collection of coplanar line segments, but it’s not a line.”

[@FelmastProMclane]

Came loking for this answer. And whom ever has to find out how to render it on a screen will know true pain, or just do 7 separate views.

[@advanceringnewholder]

I think the skit name is Expert. Here's the sauce: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHzSo4NraqakrMk

[@PokeMageTech]

Oh, yeah, if they ask me to render it, I’ll tell them “what? No. It’s a 7D thing. I haven’t even made a clean way to render stuff in 3D (from scratch.) And considering it’s a number of infinite lines, all perpendicular, showing various planes of it would be pointless.”

[@ianmoseley9910]

It sounded like a Dilbert thing to me

[@HrHaakon]

Just get some vector art of a cat, make sure the line is not infinitely thin, so that it's visible, and paint the vector art on the line. DONE. It's a squished cat. Alternatively, repeat the cat decoration.

[@Scarletraven87]

The first rule you learn when you get into game design is that "game idea" is worth 0.00¥ Everyone has them, most people have more than one, and they change over the course of months because the human mind keeps evolving (aging). Even within the same project, what seems like a great idea to you now will be a completely different idea in two years, and you would notice if you dared to take notes and be very specific in what the game does. Over times you'd notice that your notes are no longer true, as your idea evolved and is never ultimately stable until the day you die. The "idea guy" game industry profession doesn't exist, not even as occasional freelance sacred guru genius. "The idea is nothing! The execution, is everything!" -Game Developer Ra's Al Ghul

[@StefanTravis]

One company I worked for had hundreds of 3-hour VHS cassettes, and some free software that captures 30 seconds of video at a time. They wanted to capture each cassette in 30 second blocks, and stitch the captures together. I suggested they use free software that could do 3-hour captures. This was "bad attitude".

[@k.u.m.o.r]

I hope they fucking bankrupt lol

[@groszak1]

if it's free software they could modify the limit

[@volpo5046]

@@groszak1 free =/= open source + modifying source is much scarier than using an alternative that works.

[@HrHaakon]

@@volpo5046 Free software means you have the four freedoms, which *includes* the right to modify it.

[@modellking]

@@HrHaakon sure go ahead and modify some machine code. Free more often then not refers to the cost only.

[@tzisorey]

Gah. Not a programmer, but some of these stories remind me of a time we went to a client to quote them up on a server and network in a building they were going to be moving to. They implied they'd be getting more staff and more computers, so my question of "And how many more computers are you expecting" seemed logical enough, even if the response was "That's way down the track, we don't need to worry about it - just the server and network" - so I ended up speccing the system based on the assumption that they'd add about 10 staff (they already had 17) per year, for a 3 year system life. We get everything set up and installed a few months later (in the 12 hour window they insisted we be able to install everything in) and the next week they call up. "Okay, now we're going to have 25 new staff members starting next week...." They got up to 75 staff before the 3 years were up. Fuck You, Michael. You made me miss my grandmothers funeral by pulling that shit.

[@Ramsey276one]

Oh My God I am sorry Hope you got paid in full

[@tzisorey]

@@Ramsey276one Company did. I got my salary. And use of the work-experience kid for one day.

[@tzisorey]

@eric Spencer Thanks. But it was almost 15 years ago now, so I've come to terms with it. And, of course, left that job.

[@jfan4reva]

The (virus you can't say on KZbin) vaccine just became available for my tier this morning at 8:00am. The sign up site immediately crashed. I texted my daughter who's been very concerned about her parents getting vaccinated ASAP. She replied back "You're a programmer. Hack the site and get an appointment!" Lol!

[@apocalypticblox2346]

Imagine if programmers could simply hack into whatever they want...the chaos that would create would be horrific. “Oh yeah, I’m just going to take all of Amazon’s earnings”. Lol.

[@MappingRobloxAnimations]

uh oh

[@yeicore]

Every single startup think they are Facebook. And they ask you to use very complex things with expensive technologies for their app with only 1k users. Then the startup will go broke and they realize they are not Facebook

[@czolus]

"Chance is neither fair nor kind" is a phrase I get a lot of mileage out of when programming

[@MyLPMaster001]

"look, I don't know what's so hard about adding some code that recognizes if the program is about to change, and if so, don't" It is literally scientifically proven that such a problem is not computable! I had a whole university class only teaching about proving that something is not computable so you don't start an impossible project

[@KnakuanaRka]

Yeah, error correction can only go so far.

[@fungo6631]

10:04 This can be done, sort of. It's called error handling. Though it's much easier to do in games, where you just mask the crash as a game event. Sonic 3D blast does that and sends you to the level select screen.

[@ConcasicoWoodworks]

CD Projeckt Red developers must have heard a lot of this from higher ups xD

[@dewoiski]

I agree, this is what happens when people who knows nothing about software and development of games get involved!

[@blightning1476]

Definitly. So sad...

[@fitmotheyap]

@@dewoiski yeah.. honestly i was quite annoyed at why they released the game so early then i realised it's not the decision of the developers it's the decision of the higher ups..

[@aidenmiller3832]

@@fitmotheyap It was released so early because everyone got super mad when they delayed it by a month, so they didn’t want to delay it more

[@occamsrazor1285]

9:52 Weird Spanish? Lorem Ipsum? *facepalm*

[@axiezimmah]

Lol, didn't realize. That's even funnier.

[@genghisdingus]

10:00 sounds like you have to agressively implement try catch statements on everything

[@ZeWitchKid]

i was once asked to make a fully responsive interface for a dashboard application( as in, it scales and reorganize its layout depending on the screen size ) designer provide only the 1024px wide desktop mockup ... printed on paper , want everything to be pixel perfect ... i ask for the original files so i can ballpark the proportions and convert to relative sizes in % of the screen size, its exported in pdf format, the original was never saved ( they always do their work in one go and never saves ) , designer then proceed to complain its not identical to their mockup , proceed to step by step adjust everything until it look good on my 27 inch monitor, then go back to their desk , show the pushed version to their superior, then write an angry email about how it dosent fit on their 11 inches laptop ... how the fuck that designer ever earned their diploma is still a mystery to me ...

[@minuit6305]

They paid for a diploma but never earn the skill.

[@xavierroades5647]

"I need a full-fledged keyword generator, spider, parser, scanner, and dumper written in Rust by tomorrow evening. With a GUI."

[@compositeembryo7186]

What do you mean by spider?

[@themilestonelp1524]

In our exams of the computer class thing whatever it is in english, we have write the code with a pen on paper. Not on the pcs where we are sitting. Which is stupid imo because in real life your code never ever works first try, and you obviusly cant get a sheet of paper to execute code.

[@rchrch4922]

Literally my web programming class exams lol. The teacher ask is to write code for simple crud applications and by I meant by write is literally writing on paper with pen. Many students get terrible scores from this exams lol

[@MrIse2]

3:30 Turm image of map into spreadsheet? Easy! Well, ofcourse you understand, that it will take a huge server with some petabytes of space(to store every tile of map in every possible resolution), purchasing of very expensive library to make perceptive hashes(to find map tiles by image), and some years of work. Just to find map coordinates. I believe, you had already allocated this spendings with business people? Seriously, blyn. If you are facing task that looks impossible, try to ballpark the costs. Business people are stupid in relation to tech, but they are smart with money (ok, ok, sometimes they are).

[@Ryan50Ryan]

9:59 It's actually pretty easy. if (program.aboutToCrash()) { program.don'tCrash(); }

[@groszak1]

undefined reference to program undefined reference to aboutToCrash undefined reference to don undefined reference to tCrash

[@Ryan50Ryan]

@@groszak1 I'm gonna fire my editor.

[@StrzelbaStian]

CrashEventHandler.Event += PreventCrash;

[@KnakuanaRka]

@@Ryan50Ryan xD

[@luisgentil]

This could be used to stop self-driving cars from crashing

[@WadelDee]

To be fair, the most popular mobile games, like Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, are really easy to recreate. Especially if you only want the core gameplay. Candy Crush Saga but with balloons? Angry Birds but with building blocks? Doodle Jump but with a kangaroo? Easy. I can guarantee you that the gameplay will be the same, the difficulty will be the same, and the success will be completely miniscule!

[@Skwisgar2322]

17:54 this response actually made me literally lol.

[@Se7enDsinSGaming]

Create 007 GoldenEye with a team of non videogame programmers, Or how about making mortal Kombat with only 4 programmers?

[@michaelgum97]

Not possible.

[@Se7enDsinSGaming]

@@michaelgum97 that's what i thought too

[@Ramsey276one]

FOR REAL?! Both of thoses?!?

[@Se7enDsinSGaming]

@@Ramsey276one they are amazing stories of games that shouldn't have happened.

[@Ramsey276one]

@@Se7enDsinSGaming YIKES

[@ericb3157]

a story came to mind: boss of a company demanded that the product read his mind. that is, it would do what he wanted NO MATTER WHAT NONSENSE HE TYPED IN. they DID manage to this this well enough to satisfy him...but of course, NO ONE ELSE COULD EVER USE IT AT ALL. and this was their MAIN product. yeah, the company failed. ZERO sales EVER.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Can you give some more details? What product this was, how the heck exactly they managed to do this, and why it was so hard for anyone else to use?

[@danamoore1788]

Blame Hollywood. They do the whole monitor is everything on a computer. Need to stop a computer? Shoot the monitor, etc.

[@tentaclesmod]

Literally the only place I have seen a hollywood movie realize the monitor is not the computer was Into The Spiderverse: "The good news are, we don't need the monitor."

[@vibaj16]

well, if the computer is behind the monitor, that'll probably work

[@WadelDee]

11:34 "Yes, you used the right hex code, but I want the color to look like what the color looks like on my monitor. I can lend you my monitor if you want." If someone said this to you would you be able to comply? If so please tell me how you'd do it!

[@ianmoseley9910]

WadelDee photometry?

[@DigitalJedi]

There's no way to make the same color code look the same on every display. Even factors like ambient lighting can slightly change the color the user sees.

[@WadelDee]

@@DigitalJedi No, I mean make the color look like that on a "real monitor".

[@DigitalJedi]

@@WadelDee What do you mean by a "real monitor?" Any monitor or display I can imagine using is definitely real.

[@WadelDee]

@@DigitalJedi I mean whatever phoenixmatrix meant by "real monitor".

[@Simmlex]

Lady I worked for a web programmer (she wanted to remake her website) told us the job, we did it, then she said she doesn't like it and we should change it back and it a different way. This went on for 3 weeks and refused to pay us until it's how she wants it. She also kept adding new stuff. After a while I just noped out and told the guy who brought in the job and who kept saying yes to everything she demanded to deal with it and have fun.

[@benkato_]

I am at the start of my programmer career and I hope that I don't have to deal with things like all of that xD

[@Noobsmove]

Trust me. It is this and only this. You basically have 2 Options: A) Fight the Battle B) Maliceous Compliance

[@anothisflame8266]

Clients have no idea how it actually works so they just think it's easy to do whatever they want. Your job is more telling them how it works.

[@gj8683]

I did webmastering part-time for ten years. You're going to be dealing with people who expect magical things to happen, events that transcend time and space. You'll also deal with utterly unqualified people who think it's their job to tell you what your job is. The way I dealt with all of it was, ultimately, to quit. Still, I wish you luck!

[@rchrch4922]

Pretty sure things like that would happen sooner or latter. I'm unfortunate enough to work in a company where they think IT staff are a bunch of wizards, and creating applications is just using black magic lol.

[@callumuzzell907]

I was once asked to make a website that sells used underwear for creeps and spunky clothing. Needless to say, I rejected that offer, especially since they expected me to do it for free.

[@ThePowerofD]

The guy who explained what API is a hero I mean I knew what it meant but most other post just expect me to know what AWS or whatever stands for and what it means

[@Netro1992]

Did I misunderstand 10:00, or were they asking for a program that can solve the halting problem and then rewrite the code to have it continue running?

[@user-ml3hl6vr4t]

at 1:55 ... on a technical geeky coding and general electronics and automation forum. People come on to ask stuff and if someone with the knowledge FEELS LIKE ANSWERING they get an answer or help. Most of the time, good manners and friendly and we share. Some just BS or talk about current projects. Now having a login and minor sysgod powers as a moderator.. fellow comes on from India (that is where he says he's at) and Apple had just come out with the Apple Watch. So, he asks/demands that someone tell him exactly how to make one of these. ALL the details. He wanted to start up a factory making knockoffs to be fat-keystered rich and thought that we had all the lowdown on how. And started getting obnoxious and upset when we all started laughing and blowing him off. (no nasty words said, with a mod sitting there nobody wanted a banhammer) He got really worked up so one of the guys said Okay I'll tell you how. So he's all excited and gets his good manners back out. The guy first told him about degrees he needed to get, capital to hire R&D, then after designing something that works, more capital and set up his factory. Guessed 5-10 years of work and some millions of dollars. Um he lost his everloving mind. The others said hey, Apple busted theirs for years and put MONEY into that, they have patents and they have lawyers and very deep pockets. If one of us knew how to put something to the market to compete, what makes him think we'd hand it over to him just because wants it and asked. He got really nasty so he got the official warn and the 1 hour banhammer. Still around and an hour later he came back and started on the same rant and this time he was a lot less nice and got nasty really quick. Second warning, got vicious, 24 hour banhammer. Behind scenes full document and sent to mods-land. He came back a day later, got really nasty and basically threw a fit and got into vilespew and threatening. Happened to be there. The behind scenes was authorized if he came back for the big spike. Gave him third and final and he was just beside it because nobody would hand over how he had decided he was going to become filthy rich without working because he had the right to get the info handed over RIGHT NOW for free. Looked up his IP and some other details and permanently banhammered him. He got back on in about forty five minutes with a new account but his origin was already redflagged and he got kicked off permanently again. Head shake.

[@ericb3157]

reminds me of a "fox trot" comic: the youngest kid, Jason, tried to write his own operating system. after getting hit with a C&D from Microsoft, he decides the OBVIOUS answer is to BUY Microsoft. "think dad will cosign a loan?" and no, his dad is NOT rich, he does paperwork for a small company. heck, his dad can't even USE a computer for SIMPLE tasks! he once BROKE a tutorial disk!

[@bruce5464]

Build a neural network to.predict the future stock market is easy to do, the real problem is the level of accuracy, It would predict like a normal economist...

[@ericb3157]

a story i read somewhere: a smart guy figured out a way to calculate what he called the "true value" of a company's stock, that is, what it SHOULD be worth. then he would simply buy when it dropped below that, and sell when it went above. BUT it required EXTENSIVE research, learning EVERYTHING about that company. so trying to do that with EVERY stock would be absurd.

[@bruce5464]

@@ericb3157 another problem is that the market isn't objective but subjective, It depends on the degree of belief that people have in some companies, so it's useless having a software that gives you an objective value, AND you can't know what could happen in future, for example you can assess an airline Company using this method, but maybe the next day there Is a big incident for this Company and their action go down, the real problems are these 2. 1) you can't predict the future, too much variables 2) it's not objective but subjective Sry for my bad english

[@insertcreativenamehere492]

15:45 This sounds like that one time Spotify got complaints that their shuffle function wasn't random enough because occasionally you would get the same artist or album twice in a row, and they had to physically make it less random to make people happy

[@yunix7965]

It's astonishing how many people have no clue how many works goes into developing even seemingly tiny things. And a lot of stuff programmed also need graphic's besides the code. That right there is a hole 2nd job. "Most modern PC or console games take from three to five years to complete." - Wikipedia But yeah sure, go ahead and ask a programmer to create a hole freaking game for a few bucks... I often feel very bad for freelancer, when i hear sh*t like that. But hearing that even employed people get stupid requests like this breaks my heart.

[@RatEatingChetto]

Not an a professional programmer, just someone who knows there is better ways to get stuff done. I had provided my boss with an option to automate a good majority of the time consuming mundane office tasks. He love the idea so much he bought the annual license for the workflow platform, and then he cut me out of it before I could start/ finish configuring workflows. All this so we can have very expensive digital forms that don't do anything, they can, but choose not to and chooses to still file all this shit the old fashioned time consuming way. I won't bother with bringing innovation to this table.

[@bobbyhinner3225]

7:18 it’s called libre office

[@StefanTravis]

Or Open Office. Or a number of other MS Office clones. The number of clients who demand MSO because a free, open-source, portable clone of MSO would be "too different".

[@bobbyhinner3225]

@@StefanTravis I’m not sure why so many people aren’t willing to learn something new. My college pays for office services and I like it but I never used office until now because I didn’t want to pay

[@StefanTravis]

@@bobbyhinner3225 I used to think there was something special about computers - the way people were _resentful_ and having to learn how to use them before, well, using them. I mean, you don't find people complaining about learning how to drive a car before driving one. But no, there's a great mass of people who want technology to work like telepathic magic, doing what they want effortlessly, even when they don't _know_ what they want. And all these people relying on the few who enjoy understanding stuff.

[@tessjuel]

4:46 What vexes me is the number of *designers* and *developers* who don't know the difference between front-end designer and back-end developer. Although to be fair, when we are faced with designer created code that takes ages to perform the simplest task (provided it doesn't crash) or GUIs that requires a 100+ page manual to explain where to find the most basic functions (a manual written in a language more similar to C# than plain English) it's usually because of the poor people on the floor trying their best to comply with ridiculous requirements from upper management.

[@LukasJosai]

I feel attacked

[@ericb3157]

i just remember a Dilbert comic where the PHB water Dilbert to do something complicated, like writing an email program, in 15 minutes. "anything i know nothing about must be very easy to do."

[@koopaking6148]

Seriously... A boss wanted there employee to start working on an app before they knew what they wanted... That's like starting to work on building a new car without blueprints... you can do it but you have no idea if it will end up being what people want...

[@ericb3157]

reminds me of an old saying...how does it go? "ask a committee to design a horse and you will wind up with a camel." something like that.

[@koopaking6148]

@@ericb3157 to be honest... That sounds about right...

[@shala_shashka]

12:03 LMAO

[@benji9107]

10:01 ah yes the halting problem

[@giovannipezzin5707]

Hacking. They ask for hacking "unhackable" stuff, like profiles for social media.

[@bruce5464]

Well... It Is possible with social engineering or if an user has an easy password

[@EdgyShooter]

19:40 so Rolls Royce? 😅

[@MrOakridge]

As an independent game dev, while I've never gotten to do this kind of work for anyone else, I see people online constantly saying "why can't [game company] add [ridiculously complicated feature] to [game]? It would be so easy!" and facepalm as hard as anyone in these stories. I wish I could tell people with this attitude that if it's so easy, they should do it themselves. I want to see people who know nothing about technical fields but think it's easy actually try to do it, and see if it manages to shove any sense of perspective into their thick skulls.

[@djdomain]

This is why I'll stay an indie game dev, if anyone is going to make stupid and impossible requests that can't be simply implemented it's going to be me!

[@Jaiven]

Client told me the estimations are "wrong". I explain, the figures are estimated. Client changes logic, complains some estimates "went up" and others "went down". Doesn't understand estimates are never accurate... 🤦‍♂️

[@scriptKiddieOG]

Not entirely related but here goes! I was providing some tuition for a tutee who was more or less IT illiterate. This person was signed up with some web dev bootcamp, and was more or less getting me to do his assignments. In one of the latter lessons prior to my ending the tuition, it took 45 minutes to go from unzipping a folder for a static landing page project, and drag and drop into a GitHub repo, only to find out he had dragged the actual zipped folder into the repo, and he couldn't wrap his head around the concept of previewing zipped folders, and actually unzipping them properly. The gentleman also refused to screen share, even after demonstrating how to use the UI for fucking Teams. I would do the website and send it to him, only for him to attempt his own rendition, then to get actual camera photos of 1/4 of a monitor and tiny code, not even an actual screenshot. It was like being trapped inside a fucking kaleidoscope. I had to use my imagination to tell him what he was or should be seeing half of the time. I even had to explain how to use Windows and when to either left or right click!!! It was a fucking nightmare! 😂 One particular lesson involved with creating subfolders lead to difficulties where my demonstrating CLI navigation, literally cd home/desktop, cd .. etc etc lead to a straight up "That's too complicated for me." I mean, this is it. This is what you've signed up for. You need to learn this! This is not optional. It's a quintessential part of web development and using any kind of CLI. Needless to say he constantly struggled with jumbling up the projects I made for him and was forever confuddled with anchor tags and their URL's. The next assignment on his course was to create a REST API/Fullstack CRUD app with Django. Needless to say, I ended up doing a complete 180 and got the hell outa there.

[@maranathashalom9402]

People might be just as stupid and greedy, as my misanthropic mind tells me.

[@sempaidesu]

Learn Computer Engineer, showing my Sample Code of my Photo Editing Program to my old friend from highschool .. She's trying to put me on Graphic Designer Job on her new born startup ...

[@issacthompson330]

I saw the final exam one and immediately thought that the best way to do a programming "final exam" would be as a project. Programming classes definitely should be project based. (Saying as someone who took 2 CS classes in HS that was focused on teaching principles)

[@BuriedFlame]

3:48 Actual genesis of the Cyberpunk 2077 game.

[@HrHaakon]

$100 is three hours of work. You can get a tutorial clone that has just a little bit of twitter.

[@foxvulpes8245]

I cant tell you how many times I got told "just start the work" when NO REQUIREMENTS were provided. I was even told I wouldnt be paid for the last 2 weeks and that I could go home w/o pay for the next 2 weeks because I said I wouldnt start work without requirements defined. I was told by a systems engineer that "that's not how this industry has ever worked!" It was literally a brand new product from scratch .... they completely thought creative processes to invent were the same as buying parts and slapping them together. I am starting to develop a hatred for "systems engineers."

[@rafaelmorales1926]

At about 14:28 ; Best solution for these kind of problems are to ask for examples of what people want. They may not know exactly what they want or how what they want is called, but if they want it they probably saw it somewhere else and will probably point you to somewhere it is use and explain you everything about it and so

[@TheRhetoricGamer]

"I want you to do all of the work and front all of the costs of building --my-- *our* game/app. I'll do all the fun/easy things. We can split the profits 50-50 if the game makes money!"

[@F40PH-2CAT]

Him: "I have a billion dollar idea for a video game" Me: "Cool, i will write it and give YOU 5% of the profits, cuz that's what broad concepts are worth". 🙄

[@Tidalley]

I once had a guy contact me on LinkedIn, asking me if I'd code him a custom battle system (in RPG Maker MV) within a week just for 100$. And that he'd be fine with it being 2 weeks, though he'd pay less. It was ridiculous, since it would require a lot of custom code (the freely available plugins would only cut down on the work somewhat). A more reasonable time frame would be a month, 8 hours a week, with pay no less than $20/hr. "Retarded" is a pretty strong word in current year, but it's freaking Krillin compared to how senseless that job offer was. So naturally, I refused.

[@mandisaplaylist]

18:50 This is actually doable, the only problem is you can't see the result because it requires creating a 7-dimensional universe inside the computer but humans can only see and think in three-dimensional universe terms.

[@rkeenan85]

This video just turned my night around. Amazing.

[@ericb3157]

a story i read: someone wanted an App to turn his device on and off. off is doable, but ON? impossible. and it took a LONG time for the programmer to get that across!

[@randomusername429]

I suppose that this is why they teach us basic coding in school now, so that we have at least some understanding of how it works and know at least somewhat about what we're talking about when asking other people for help.

[@Slenderman63323]

Schools teach basic coding now? Where?

[@ericb3157]

i just remembers a different story, on "the daily WTF": someone was working on a mobile game, and was wondering why is seemed to be draining the battery so fast... and noticed the some idiot had made the game program check GPS coordinates once per SECOND for NO REASON. it NEVER did ANYTHING with that data! oh, and then there was the story "a-shining-perl"... (KZbin doesn't like links to other sites)

[@louisrobitaille5810]

15:55 That's basically what Apple had to figure out back in the day: how to "randomize" songs in a playlist (for iTunes) to pick songs at random without picking the same song a 2nd time if it's not been long enough 🤓.

[@hugoandre96]

My intro to Programming teacher told us to program a game of battleship in 2 class days. Farthest most of the students got was making the board and randomly putting ships onto the board. But nothing to save position so each turm ships would be placed in a new location

[@LukasJosai]

Unless you were limited in what technologies you could use, battleship can certainly be programmed in less than 48h

[@hugoandre96]

@@LukasJosai not with novice programmers. Most of us could barely make a a sorting array at that point

[@przemekkozlowski7835]

3rd year University programming course in an engineering program (ie all of us knew how to program but were not really trained programmers and ranged from basic to medium-advanced in skill). The final project seemed fine until we actually started to implement it and realized that we were never taught the needed algorithms. In retrospect I now realize that it was at the least a PHD level project for a Computer Science post-graduate student. The dean of the Engineering School got so many complaints about that class that the prof never taught it again.

[@kombatace7971]

I may only have the most basic understanding of the most basic of programs, but to me these are all incredibly funny

[@MathematicalJoeBiden]

"Billion-dollar video game idea" Yeah right man, I don't think even Minecraft has that. (Idk they might, but only barely)

[@squorcle3607]

no, because its not made by EA forcing you to pay for every little thing

[@johnuferbach9166]

Minecraft was sold for 2.5 billion wasn't it?^^ I don't really get why microsoft paid that much for it tho, I doubt they made much of that back^^

[@MathematicalJoeBiden]

@@johnuferbach9166 right i forgot how much it was sold for

[@applecider7307]

A robot reading technical terms just comes out gibberish

[@critica77y77]

Look, alt tech is viable, especially now. But you have to actually be willing to put work into it, and it still won’t get big overnight. You can’t just decide to “make the next Facebook” and instantly do it.

[@John010]

most unrealistic thing ever asked: can u hack her account

[@Skraeling1000]

I just got reminded of a programming job I did back in the day - I'd just been made redundant and found a local small software company that needed a programmer. The owner was fricking paranoid. I learned visual basic (yeah, long time back) in a week or so in order to fix/complete the job another programmer had messed up and got fired for, and he didn't want to believe anything I told him. "So I set this page to automatically focus on the first text input field." "Aye well, the last programmer told me it couldn't be done!" As if it was MY damn fault! I'd fill him in on all the work I'd done that day, on the customer's site, and he'd disbelieve half of it. He (a Scot) didn't seem to understand local humour (Cumbrian, NW England) and when the customer said something to the owner in a jokey fashion, he interpreted it to make it seem that I'd effed up. I worked for the guy for maybe three or four weeks, still not officially employed though he paid me a half decent rate, before I finally realised that the previous programmer had created such a poorly organised relational database that it'd all have to be torn down and started from scratch. I "resigned".

[@scriptKiddieOG]

SQL - Scottish Query Language GEEZ * FAE users

[@Skraeling1000]

@@scriptKiddieOG lol

[@squashtomato]

I think the worst one I had was this company wanted to start to use selenium to test there web app. I wrote a progam that allowed them to interact with the app via css selectors. Later get told they wanted the scripts to be hard coded to each and every step because they didn't want the testors to do it... it's... it's there job to write test scripts.

[@slurbson215]

I took classes and it scares me how much I forgot. I was all oho I know computers now but I can't code, but then when I don't even understand the jargon I am like. Aha my knowledge is zero now

[@slurbson215]

Tbf i did more networking than anything else but still

[@ianmoseley9910]

jargon evolves - as soon as users realise someone understands it they change it

[@chrisengland5523]

"Can you integrate it with Microsoft Office?" "Err ... to do what, exactly? "Well, just so that they work together; so users can go from one to the other." "Yes, they just need to have both open and click on the one they want." "But, how does Office know what information to get from it?" "It doesn't." "Well, that's no good. They need to be integrated together." "I don't think Office works like that." "OK, can you contact Microsoft and get them to change it?" "Err.... no."

[@bigfatbaataed]

I'm a retired programmer & reading what people expect to pay for your services is lol funny, I especially liked the one where they wanted to pay $20, add a one to the front of that & you have my going rate when I retired...

[@altairtodescatto]

when the business man dont know programming language and the bondaries and get projects that the current system can't handle or the implementation is enormous. The most common thing in start ups

[@Pay-No-Mind]

6:24 - What's nuts is how many companies have ideas like this and really the only things that stop it happening is either the IT guys/programmers have the conscience and intelligence not to do something so incredibly stupid, or they are 100% down to do so but don't know how. 😂 Either way it's a blessing really that the same people who have the same sort of ideas as "viral marketing" (Obviously not in the most common and popular meaning of the term) luckily don't have the skill / time / patience / intelligence / money to bring such things to fruition. "Hey so I have design working on a company mascot, I want you guys to code something that will put our mascot on a customers' desktop where they can tell them all about our products, offer them deals but also access their contacts and send every one of their contacts the mascot installer thingy disguised as a .pdf, kinda like Bonzi Buddy! Remember that guy?! He was so dang cool......"

[@LeglessWonder]

This makes me glad I didn’t go into that field

[@axenledgie1423]

As someone who knows literally nothing about programming or how computers function, I'm sorry for this. We are morons.