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Chris Hartjes
@grmpyprogrammer@yac.grumpy-learning.com
Software developer with almost 30 years of experience looking to help your team ship better software faster from my snowy Fortress In Exile in Canada using PHP, Python, Go, and TypeScript.
Currently working as a Senior Staff Engineer at TheGuarantors.
I used to write books and go to PHP conferences to shout at people to write tests for their PHP code. Still a legend in the eyes of some.
Professional computer toucher since 1997.
https://grumpy-learning.com
793 Followers
213 Following
50 Posts
Joined February 08, 2025
“Just a quick phone call to get some feedback on the interview process and confirm some details” is interview number six with this company.
Very strange bird at the feeder today.
I am working my way through Go-By-Example and I have to say that this way of declaring a function and it's parameters is not intuitive at all:
func SlicesIndex[S ~[]E, E comparable](s S, v E) int {}
I am looking at it and trying to figure out how to explain it in computer-English
"This function accepts an array and some other value you want to find inside that list and then returns the index"
Coming from PHP all I can think is "why do I need to do this"
The job rejections for positions I applied for back in July are starting to trickle in.
Hiring is so broken.
For my American friends who might not know the details:
The US asked Canada for two things in trade negotiations that we would never agree to:
remove French language from packaging requirementsany future trade agreements with some other as-yet unspecified countries need to be approved by the US
I am far from the only person mad that code review tools and documentation finally get some attention now that other programs have to interact with them. Fuck people needing clarity, only LLM’s are deserving.
I made it through the gauntlet and have gotten a job offer that I will be accepting. Will reveal more once everything is signed. I got to interview for this position based on a recommendation from a PHP community member and friend.
For my fellow developers who are unemployed — it is brutal out there. This was the only interview I received during my job search although my ego says some will likely materialize now that I have received an offer. I hope your struggles end in success.
I have spent 20 years networking and trying to help folks in the PHP community. I don’t ever expect anything in return but I am grateful for the help I have gotten (and hopefully given out) over the years.
Replying to
@Crell@phpc.social @ramsey@phpc.social and pay the best ones about One Million Freedom Dollars per year
If you know, you know
My wife just got an email from a retailer telling her she can preorder an advent calendar now.
It’s July.
Still the best elephpant #PHP
https://phpc.social/@ProjektGopher/117050832715759567
Replying to
@sarah@phpc.social @acelaya@mastodon.social I am not trying to be difficult here but are you seeing a future where you cannot update your packages unless you pay? That would cause the death of the whole system IMO
After not working for more than two months I am actually wondering how I will handle starting the new job on Tuesday. Have I gotten too used to “loosely structured existence”?
Replying to
@sarah@phpc.social Why is that?
Replying to
@acelaya@mastodon.social @sarah@phpc.social @packagist@phpc.social Asking places that benefit to sponsor the project is an expected thing. Again, I ask what points to having to pay just to use it as a developer?
This is not meant to start a nerd fight but I am wanting to know the case for writing “network accessible backend services” in Go/Rust/Zig/Python as opposed to what I would call “web native” in PHP or JavaScript/TypeScript?
Replying to
@JosephLeedy@phpc.social I had a pair of roller skates like that 45 years ago and used to use them all the time on the street in front my childhood house and at the local skating rink for a few years before my feet outgrew them
Great look at how AI can ruin your business by highlighting dysfunction that was there but leadership was ignoring
https://youtu.be/z2fRYLaItyc?si=I72NgnqOrDQnlCNG
Telling a person who is struggling to not drown “don’t worry, the water levels are going to recede in 6-12 months” is not helpful
The job application rejections have started tickling in…
So far only got one series of interviews and made it to the third one. Waiting to hear back from that one.
As a reminder — I am looking for full-time or contract work where my almost 30 years of backend programming experience with PHP and Python can help you. I can work remotely from Canada.
CV for the last 15 years can be found at https://grumpy-learning.com/cv
#getfedihired #fedihired
Had a 5th interview with a company today. I thought it went well. Haven’t been able to get any other interviews (only rejections) so NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING
I said this before and will say it again — as a professional computer-toucher it is vital to Find Your People, engage with them, and learn the power of networking and community. Help them out and good things will happen.
As a Gen X cyberpunk fan, I don’t care if the Neuromancer series coming out from Apple sucks. You can never do the books properly unless you did them animated.
I look forward to Wage, Molly, Armitage, the Turing Police, Dixie Flatline, and Wintermute making my 15yo self happy to finally see it on screens.
Replying to
@manchuck@phpc.social Easy — domination in LLM’s by American companies, which then can be leveraged to force other countries to accept terrible options in trade negotiations. This is how your country got everyone else to agree to DMCA style laws forbidding reverse engineering and restrictive copyright laws.
If China “wins”, then they get to dictate those terms.
TIL the phrase “performative conscience”
Replying to
@shawnhooper@fosstodon.org My wife used to work with his son-in-law
I am expecting my MNT Reform Next laptop to show up some time in October or November. For reasons it has to run Debian (mostly hardware + driver support reasons).
I am wondering what I will be left to run for a windowing environment if Gnome and KDE both end up as projects I do not want to support.
(I do have experience with Linux so I don’t necessarily need something beginner-friendly)
Replying to
@kboyd@phpc.social My YouTube feed has been pushing “The West Wing” on me. The characters Josh and Toby are incredibly unlikeable to me
canpol
Knowing that Ed Sheeran played at Robert Kraft’s wedding explains the capitulation pretty clearly
So if I understand things correctly with the two major Linux high-level windowing frameworks:
GNOME is fighting over whether or not to ban LLM-generated contributions to the project.
KDE is fighting over whether or not people expressing Nazi ideologies should be part of the project.
Chrome or Mobile Safari. That’s gonna be it on all computing platforms soon enough.
Of course there are options but Google and Apple have to be working on ways to limit them to people with lots of free time on their hands and modifiable operating systems on their devices.
Your preferred browser that is not one of the two I mentioned is a rounding error.
Replying to
@mfrost503@phpc.social @stevegrunwell@phpc.social Ugh, I just realized my first concert was in 1991 — Winger and Mr Big
Every developer conference that puts out what I call “youth pastor energy” ends up confirming that too many folks think shipping fast matters and everything else is a distraction from that end. Boosting people who are also humongous assholes is a red flag and shows how little you care about others.
Replying to
@mwop@phpc.social @mfrost503@phpc.social @stevegrunwell@phpc.social I must correct the timeline — the first concert I ever saw was in 1988. The Cult was the headliner act. Some British psychedelic metal band named Zodiac Mindwarp went on first. They were terrible. Then followed by a then-unknown metal band from Los Angeles named Guns-N-Roses. They were terrible. The Cult was great as this was, IMO, their peak as a rock band
Today I decided to try a technique @jbrains@mastodon.social suggested to track my work and stop from being distracted. It worked quite well and my wife even commented on how much stuff I got done when I listed it all out.
https://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/inbox-technique/
Replying to
@asgrim@phpc.social Windows CoPilot Edition?
Replying to
@ramsey@phpc.social @Crell@phpc.social It’s an AI-centric role similar to what systems analysts do but with LLM’s they can do a lot of the building of the system too
Today would’ve been my dad’s 90th birthday.
Dementia took his last ten years.
Here is a list of items the US reportedly wanted as part of trade negotiations:
Too many of my American friends still think it’s funny https://youtu.be/SPs9MNl5QTg?si=tczwmm5fpOmSzQUE
TIL about the “Forward Deployed Engineer” and I want to scream until my vocal cords burst
Final numbers from my job search:
28 days since I got let go from ZiffDavis
60 applications — 10 via Apply Now on LinkedIn, the rest all done with custom resume and cover letter (no AI involved)
10 rejections
1 job offer
@ramsey@phpc.social @omerida@phpc.social what is going on with your online RPG sessions? I’m itching to play again
Whenever I watch a TV series and I hate certain characters I always wonder if they are written to be disliked or if it’s just me.
Replying to
@mfrost503@phpc.social Damn, that is a great achievement!