rule

writes innovative new software
ahh, fuck
- I'm hoping the context implies that it only has to seem innovative to the kinds of people who can't tell the difference between software engineers and tech bros.
- Well, think about it. If you are writing software that already exists, it's not innovative. But, think about how rare that is. Has anyone combined the business logic in your specific way before? Chances are no, because if they had, they already beat you to market or you can reuse yourself.
  
  Yeah this customer-specific config flag is something like the world has never seen!
  I'm gonna get replaced by AI, huh? 😭
  
  Most of my stuff "it already exists, but its so horrible i can do it better..." now theres two shitty software.

The engineer here definitely has ASD or ADHD and I'm fucking down for it. Way better than narcissistic tech bro syndrome.
Edit for context: I'm teaching strengths based pedagogy regarding neurodiversity, it's on my mind lol
- Lemmy is slowly shifting from "Communism, Linux, and Beans" into "ADHD, Linux, and Beans"
  
  We should bring back some socialism into that list, bean-friend
  
  How do you think Beans became a thing?
  I'll tell you, if we were all on my Adderall 24/7, beans, beef stroganoff, stock photos, etc would all be a weird eyebrow raise before onto the next post.
- AuADHD reporting in.
- I have an adhd engineer coleague. We don't give him large or complex tasks, that doesn't work, but he gets all the little things and bugs done before anyone else thinks of picking them up 👌
  
  Shit! I love my job as a software developer and my employer is amazing, but I wish they would do this for me. Also ADHD and I have an existential crisis every time I’m on a larger task with little direction.
  I love the small things or when things are spec’d out in to small parts. Currently have to extract this sick calendar my boss coded and repurpose it in an application I am creating for them and man it’s not as easy as it sounds when you get overwhelmed.
- What strengths are associated with NPD?
  
  NPD doesn't get the same treatment since I don't think it's protected under ADA (and IDEA in schools) but even then, there's a school of thought that it comes from an overabundance of high self esteem (rather than a fragile self esteem). If you follow that logic, then things associated with high self esteem, such as confidence, is it's strength.
  Mind, I teach non-narcissism high self esteem as both good and bad. On the one hand, you have confidence and are more likely to take action. On the other hand, you're more defensive and it's likely to accept criticism, plus if you think you're awesome you tend to also have contempt for others. Take that to an extreme and you've got narcissism.
  Americans are usually taught self esteem as a universal good, so just bringing it up like this raises eyebrows, but there is actually some research to back it.

fuck, I remember now I unironically wrote code on my ti84 before I knew what coding was or how it worked at all
not that it's complicated in any way
IIRC you write in "TI Basic" which is very human readable
- I wrote a rudimentary roguelike on the TI Nspire
- Yeah I was reading that and I hit everything on the right side except, writes innovative software...
  And that's only because I'm not good enough at coding.
- Yep! That’s how I started too. The student teacher installed a bunch of programs for us, and I started editing them and making my own games, like black jack. In high school, I modded my calculator with custom firmware that allowed you to cut/copy and go to lines when editing a program instead of holding down an arrow. I used this a ton as I was making a poker program that used the graph to draw the cards out. It took over half of the RAM, and I regularly backed it up. My calculator crashed hard and couldn’t boot up, so I wasn’t able to finish it.

Smart home stuff is unfairly maligned. You just need a few basic rules and some hobby time.
Don't buy wifi stuff.
If it needs its own dedicated app, don't buy it.
Don't buy smart appliances. If you want to smart up something expensive, get a cheap smart outlet or a cheap sensor that does the job.
Use an open source platform like Home Assistant, not Google or Alexa or whatever.
When you find something it can't do that you want it to do, write some Python code and make it open source. You'll get so much love from the community for the simplest things. Also the occasional person that angrily wants to know why your free thing doesn't support his hyper specific use case but you can safely ignore that.
- Can you recommend brands that sell smart devices that fulfill those requirements? Home assistant sounds like a fun hobby to get into but I'm wary of spending 99% of the time in web searches for what to buy instead of hours in web searches for tinkering.
  
  It's easier to shop for protocols and standards instead of brands. If you get a Zigbee dongle from Sonoff or SMLight and set it up with Home Assistant, 99% of devices marketed as Zigbee will work and you'll know for a fact they don't have Internet access and can't really do anything that would be bad for your network security because that's just not how the Zigbee standard works. This is where I would recommend starting.
  If you plan on getting a lot of things, or think you might eventually, I would recommend getting both Zigbee and Zwave. There's also Thread now but I don't have much experience there yet. These are the standards that smart devices can use, with low power, to communicate without needing direct wifi access or anything. Each has their drawbacks in terms of how many devices you can use and their range. Again, this recommendation is only if you plan on going big at some point, but if you get zwave devices where you can, and focus on Zigbee for things like lighting, you'll be able to blend the standards together and have less chance of running into interference or device limit problems. But here I'm talking about when you get over around 50 devices, if you don't plan on doing that then it's not really a concern.
  When it comes to research, I would recommend reserving research time for the devices that have to be wifi. If you want cameras, for example, you'll want to make sure you pick good ones that can be blocked from external access and properly secured. If you want to control a garage door or an appliance or something big like that, there's much easier and cheaper ways than getting a smart appliance.
- Home assistant is the shit. I’ve got lighting automations based on time of day and via motion sensors within specific timeframes.
  Many sensors. Motion, climate, humidity, you name it.
  Home theater automations. If I want to watch something, I tell voice assistant (Siri in this case) “turn on home theater.” It turns on the TV, receiver, and Apple TV, and uses the receiver’s API to switch the input to the media input. When I hit play on a video it turns off the living room lights, and if I pause or stop the video it turns them back on.
  It has monitoring for all my thermostat sensors, solar, batteries, keeps track of my fridge and freezer temperatures, list goes on.
  It also fully supports zigbee antennas and Bluetooth devices over Wi-Fi with simple esp32 Bluetooth extender configs. HAOS is just an outstanding piece of software.
  
  I got a motion sensor set up to blink inside lights instead of a door bell. I now know every time there's a cat or bird on the porch...

If you made a spreadsheet to compare cars and ended up with a Hyundai your spreadsheet had an error.
- I dunno about that. Hyundais are cheap, and until recently they were pretty reliable cars. I drove an '07 accent for 14 years with zero issues and minimal maintenance. I only replaced it in late 2020 because I was having a house built and moving to a rural area, and needed something that could handle country roads and at least light off-roading.
  I compared a bunch of CUVs (compact SUVs) checked out all of them, and finally got it down to the Honda CRV, Toyota RAV4, some Hyundai (Tucson maybe?), and a Kia Sportage (I know, it's basically a Hyundai, and vice versa).
  Every single one of them had some caveat. The Hyundai had a high dash and infotainment blocking part of the view, the CRV had a low front end that caused issues with low obstacles a CVT that struggles with uphill driving. The RAV4 was nice, but cost at least 30-50% more expensive than every other car with few discernable advantages. Plus, several other cars I looked at were CVT with dual clutch, which can burn up and overheat just going uphill.
  In the end, it actually was down to the Hyundai and the Kia Sportage.
  I bought the Sportage because it was all around balanced, still had an ICE engine, AWD, and Kia Finance had a good deal I qualified for. I got the previous year's model new from remaining stock with a zero interest rate. Sweet deal, total cost was like $24k. It's been a good car. Some minor issues and a bit of recall work with the dealerships, but I haven't had any major problems with it, and I barely have to do any sort of maintenance, just like the old Hyundai.
- Senior software engineers drive old, beat up Tacomas with no computers.
- Did a huge spreadsheet comparing electric cars that can charge fast, tow a trailer and are as efficient as possible. Ended up with a Hyundai Ioniq 6. Great car IMHO.
- Hyundai has some of the best EVs
- I made a spreadsheet to compare cheapo cars. Then my brother, who is a car person, went with me to car shop and insisted I buy a '92 Honda Prelude that was in pristine looking condition for 7k. He was very insistent that it was a steal even if I needed to put another couple grand to fix it up, so I bought it.
  Unfortunately, I have indeed needed to put more money into it, its currently in the shop right now in fact.
  I've never owned a fast car before, I'll admit its a fun car to drive. All my previous cars were boring A to B basic cars. I wish it's cruise control worked (still can't figure out why it wont), that it had come with cup holders, and that its speakers weren't so tinny.
  
  How many miles on it? Because if it's low mileage 7k is a steal. Those things can sell for over twice that. I don't know that I'd suggest a car that old as a daily driver for someone that doesn't do their own repairs. Old cars are always going to need a lot of repairs.

Imagine not building your own router out of spare hardware.
WiFi? What’s that? I’ll just run some cat6 through my crawlspace
- Cat6? You rich or something? We use cat5e around these parts.
- I used to have an old beige box router with dual nics. It would hum me to sleep at night ... I still have a box of wrt routers, you know, just in case someone needs one.
- Everything I have that has an Ethernet port is plugged into Ethernet. I have two switches as well as the router.

The router may also have a giant fan screwed onto the back too.
- The wrt54g was a workhorse, but the cooling....
- Or just a huge box fan (as in, a fan used to cool rooms, not a computer fan) behind the thing, we used to do this back then

Where can I get that open source pony-themed RPG dating sim?

pony themed rpg dating simulator 😭😭😭

This hit too close to home. I've been eating at the same place for the past three years, I just say "hi" and go to my usual table now.
Also the spider anatomy. I've explained the origin of Hotwheels sisyphus at least ten times now

Inherits 'maintainer' status on an open-source pony-themed RPG dating simulator
For anyone in the industry out there, if someone has 'maintainer' status on an open source project, hire that mofo right away. That title sounds so casual but is the most hardcore

I feel weirdly caught, because I had a time during college when I could actually say "the usual please" in our local subway (the restaurant not the transportation vehicle).
Also I did program on the calculator in like 7th grade and studied mythological origins of witches and their bogs last month for a d&d round.
Not that big of an innovator, though.
- If I had not moved several kilometers away from my favourite bar, I swear some of the baristas would be communicating with me in grunts by now.
  There was a period where me stepping in was followed by "The usual?" and a couple of times when they saw me out smoking just as the bar opened, so they just poured it without even asking me, as there was little point.
  Life is too short to drive a Hyundai and eat the same meal every day though. Unless the Hyundai is one of their more performant EV models, in which case it can at least be fun.
- studied mythological origins of witches and their bogs
  Say more. Asking for ... Umm ... A friend. Yes, I have those.
  
  Okay first of I actually meant hags not witches in general. (There is apparently a difference)
  I found some weird ways of reproducing in DnD-hags, which I wanted to rework.
  They reproduce (among other things) by devouring an infant and then giving birth to it... Yes, classical DnD.
  I devised a method of hags coming to live in bogs as manifestations of people who died there.
  Parts of the souls then make up the character of the hag or become multiple hags with different personalities. Hence some hags may be friendly to strangers wanting to pass their bog unharmed and others try to "devour" them by killing them in their bog.
  (That is the gist of it)
- I kept requesting the transportation subway travel to my stop until one day I forgot to ask and it still arrived at my stop. That's when I understood what it felt like to fit in.

I've worked as a software developer but it's not my strength. But the spreadsheet (and buying a Hyundai) rings so very true. My life is in spreadsheets, from my finances to my holiday plans to my meal planning...

spreadsheet
- Libreoffice Calc is neat
  
  If you have to make a spreadsheet, yeah. But since I've started working in a company, I have seen things, which will make me avoid making a spreadsheet, even if it's theoretically a good fit for the task at hand.

Accurate.

I am very confused, that this post was not by "FireflyWillNeverDieAndHeresWhy".

Depressing

To be honest I thought tech bros are what you get when you fit into all of the boxes on both sides.

Both of these people sound insufferable. (And I'm autistic)
- a little rude considering one of them isn't actively hurting anyone
  
  I will fully admit I'm more than a "little" rude on this account. This the account I use the vent my depression, self-loathing, and misanthropy. Maybe sometimes I'm nice on here as a treat.

Money talks, wealth whispers dont only apply to financials...