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.
guessing there is a correlation with MAGA.
Stupid, selfish, people.
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.
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.
I broke a player’s brain in college playing DND where an NPC just lied to her.
She’d asked where so-and-so was. NPC didn’t like her or her faction, so he just lied and said he’d taken up boxing. This isn’t an especially credible lie because so-and-so was a lightweight nerd. But she says okay and goes tearing up the local boxing clubs, and can’t find the guy.
She’s like “where is he?”
Me: “you don’t see him, and no one’s even heard of him.”
Her: “but the guy said he was here”
Me: “he did”
Her: “so where is he”
Me: “doesn’t look like he’s here”
Her: “but he said he was”
Me: “he did say that”
Her: “so why isn’t he here?”
This went on for a while until one of the other players got impatient and said “the guy who doesn’t like you maybe lied to you! Or was wrong! Can we move on please??”
Pretty much every time I go to one of the local grocery stores I see a crew of firefighters roll up in their truck buying food.
I just link people to good posts I find on here.
You’re not going to get a typical apathetic person to change anything.
…what? Go do something else instead of watching YouTube-style content then. Read a book. Take up knitting. Do crosswords.
You can live a full life without Internet videos.
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.
My job has a “scrum master”. She’s nice, I guess, but as far as I can tell her entire job is sharing her screen so we can look at tickets. Then people tell her what to click on and what text to change. It’s excruciating because it would just be faster for the person talking to change it, instead of being like “remove the second bullet point. No, not that one”
On top of that they have all these tasks for “unit testing” but they don’t actually do unit testing. Someone just said, in the distant past, we should do testing so it’s there.
My parents tried this many years ago.
Since then my dad has gotten better- he runs Ubuntu and so far as I know keeps it up to date. My mother on the other hand gets upset if anything at all changes on her computer, and so never updates or anything
I don’t know if it’s favorite of all time but I thought of this one now:
haha and then what ;)byjawbreaker reunion. Probably gave some software nerds a headache trying to incorporate the semicolon and parenthesis. Points for a confusing band name, too.https://jawbreakerreunion.bandcamp.com/album/haha-and-then-what
“Patches” might be my favorite track on it.