Andy Young @anerdguynow Twitter profile

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Andy Young

5 months

I'm a successful software engineer by any definition but sometimes I wonder where I'd be if I didn't "waste" 20+ hours a week playing video games.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

The Windows 11 Start Menu is comically bad. This machine has a $1600 Core i9 CPU and 128 GB of RAM and this is the performance I often get. What is going on in Redmond?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I didn't say Windows 11's performance was bad. I said the Start Menu's performance was bad. Don't twist my words and fix your sensationalist headline. @TechSpot Or take the article down wtf.

TechSpot

@TechSpot

1 month

Former Microsoft developer says Windows 11's performance is "comically bad," even with monster PC Plenty of people still dislike Windows 11 – it's partly why adoption rates for the most recent OS are disappointing – so it's not surprisi...

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

20 days

DevToys is seriously a fantastic app. So many great little tools all in one place, and open source to boot.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Do devs still create little tools or scripts that address dev pain points and/or make them and the rest of the team more productive? This has been super commonplace during my career, but I almost never see this anymore. Everyone is too busy working on user stories. 🫤

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Senior dev challenge: go one week without saying "it depends".

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@TheBlakeZone

Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

My favorite Windows feature is opening the Start menu, typing "notepad", hitting Enter, and having it open Edge to a Bing search for "otepad".

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@DanielW_Kiwi "Hey [team that owns the API], can you add filtering support?" "Not this release, filter on the UI for now and we'll add that support next release." Next release comes, repeat ad infinitum.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

My favorite Windows feature is opening the Start menu, typing "notepad", hitting Enter, and having it open Edge to a Bing search for "otepad".

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

In a meeting, a senior dev gives you (another senior dev) credit for an idea that was actually that of a jr dev on your team. The jr dev quickly clarifies it was their idea. What are your next steps? Leave it be? Confirm it was the jr dev's idea? Followup via DMs later?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Everyone always shares code that they're proud of. I want to see code you wrote that makes you cringe. Here's mine, and it's been in production for years, and there's a very good chance you've executed it before. No, I will not be taking questions. 😅

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

I'm a Principal software engineer (referred to as a Principal Member of Technical Staff where I work) and have been in the industry about 17 years now. I wanted to echo George's statement: We've worked hard but do not discount the luck, privilege, and the efforts of other

George Mayer

@GeorgeMayer

4 months

I'm an E7 at Meta (principal-ish). I worked hard to get here. Here are all of the ways I was privileged/got lucky (in chronological order): 1) When I was in college, my mom wanted to start an online dating site. She had personal insight. I studied marketing and English in school

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@DegenApeDev I'll check this out, what is the default, 30 seconds?! 😅

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@dgkimpton "Why yes, I'd love to see Bing results for f*cking notepad!" SAID NO ONE EVER

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@techsavvytravvy This 1600-line component better be curing cancer.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

26 days

I get the same dopamine hits when writing code, docs, etc. as I do when playing video games. Is this normal? Do people enjoy their job tasks as much as their leisurely pasttimes?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

I almost never use git stash. I'll just commit half-baked code to my local branch if I need to switch branches or something. How do you use git stash?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

@icculus As someone who converted a very popular sign-in page from 1 stage to 2 and tested the hell out of cred prefill on all major password managers and browsers, this is a problem with the website. It's usually just a matter of inserting a "hidden" password field on the username stage.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

People shit on JavaScript but its impact on the global economy rivals Excel's.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Picked up a Keychron Q6. Am I a real developer now?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@jamonholmgren This is surprisingly a controversial opinion.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

8 months

I know they're dumb, but I'm pretty proud of these.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Questions I ask senior+ software engineer candidates: 1. Tell me about a time you helped a colleague succeed. 2. And tell me about a time a colleague helped you succeed.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

29 days

http://lolcathost:3000 Please tell me I'm not the only one who makes this typo.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

8 days

Data is pronounced "data". Enum is pronounced "enum". Gif is pronounced "gif". Did I miss any?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Today the glue on my sink failed and it fell into the vanity. How's your day going?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@bad_at_computer The number of times I've had this exact thought. I can't even imagine shipping that and being like "yes, this is acceptable performance".

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@SchizOhio Microsoft needs to hurry up and acquire voidtools Everything.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@gavin_gee 😅

Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

My favorite Windows feature is opening the Start menu, typing "notepad", hitting Enter, and having it open Edge to a Bing search for "otepad".

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

22 days

I wish more professional devs shared their day-to-day learnings/frustrations/highlights.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

For my next language to learn... Go or Kotlin?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Twitter, please show me 398 different people tweeting this same "Which monitor configuration do you use?" image. Thank you. And just in case you haven't seen it enough, here it is again.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@Laughing_Mantis

Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@VictoriqueM @Manitcor /shrug, I rounded down from whatever Newegg said it was.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Speaking in absolutes is never a good idea.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 years

Anyone who worked on BNPL should be ashamed of themselves. Stop taking advantage of financially insecure people.

Introducing Buy now, pay later in Microsoft Edge

“Buy now, pay later,” or BNPL, lets shoppers break their purchases into equal installment payments, often interest-free, which can allow shoppers to get their..

techcommunity.microsoft.com

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Guys, I used git stash today for reals. I'm a real developer now!

Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

I almost never use git stash. I'll just commit half-baked code to my local branch if I need to switch branches or something. How do you use git stash?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Me, casually browsing core-js source code... Excuse me, what?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

8 months

I've seen this problem too many times. If you have an array of objects with unique ids: ❌Don't iterate over the array every time you need to get an object from the array by its id. ✅Convert to an object type—keyed by that unique id—then lookup by using the id!

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@DanielW_Kiwi @TechSpot

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@ste_bau It's a shame.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

To be clear, I love Windows. I helped build parts of it. I want it to be as good as it once was. If data suggests the software you build frustrates a significant percentage of users, it means there's work left to be done.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Whenever I want to know how some code works—and I mean really understand it with no stone left uncovered—I read through the code from beginning to end, going down every branch (within reason), and translate it to English, writing it all down in a document. "When a user does X,

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

24 days

Have you ever written code in one language that executes code in another language? Example: WebDriver UI tests in Java/C#/Python that run some JS string in the browser. Ever gone 3 languages deep?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@TechSpot Thanks

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 years

@blowdart @TruBluDevil Working as intended.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

I feel I may not be able to resist the gravity of Rust much longer. 🦀

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Devin submitted a pull request today but closed all my code review comments as "Won't Fix" because he said something about "429 quota exceeded". I didn't quite understand so I rejected his PR.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I'm still a bit bitter that my high school didn't offer any kind of computer programming. Closest thing we had was Typing... where I got bad grades for typing 100+wpm but didn't use the "right" fingers. Thankfully I was able to take a C class at the local community college in '99

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

My sugar momma, err wife, got promoted to partner at her accounting firm. 🎉

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I'm still figuring out this Twitter algorithm thing... 🚫 Post thoughtful, encouraging things from my 20 years of experience. ✅ Dogpile on Windows.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

When I submit a pull request, I will often leave PR comments that provide additional context—on top of normal code comments—describing: - why I chose my particular approach, and more importantly: - what steps I took to figure out what change I needed to make. This can include

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Devin's gonna make self-aggrandizing, completely out-of-touch posts on LinkedIn after getting laid off after 3 weeks, isn't he?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@shanselman Jen DM'd me. I'll try to get another repro tomorrow and work with her. Thanks for the follow Scott, big fan. 😁

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

@unclebobmartin I put "waste" in quotes because even though I don't feel that I'm wasting my time, I've been told the opposite my entire life. I'm mostly trying to combat hustle culture and show that people can be successful without risking burnout.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@gfodor I fire up the Win95 VM quite often when I want to feel something again.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I haven't had a portfolio site in 20 years. I'm tempted to make a new one where you get to choose your desired web browsing era. e.g. choose IE 4.0 and it simulates browsing using IE4 with a web design that matches the time period. Create options for Lynx, Netscape Navigator,

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

29 days

New pfp? Maybe I won't get called a boomer anymore.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@techsavvytravvy Ugh the yoda conditions. Readable it is not.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

7 days

Now with multiple <canvas> layers for showing the geometric construction and the trace simultanesouly. Extremely pleased with this so far!

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

Dear X Algorithm, I'm looking for people to connect with who: - Would never make a post like this unless they were also Eggnog-drunk and multitasking while watching Die Hard on Christmas. - Act like a real human being on Xwitter and care more about the human connection than

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

I just... accidentally discovered that you can generate a (bad) dungeon crawler map using cellular automata. This is just with a minor modification to Conway's.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

How JavaScript calculates pi internally:

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

Beers on me y'all.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

@wagslane As someone who converted a very popular sign-in page from 1 step to 2, what might be a small UI degradation for some users, was a huge improvement for others. What if the account's password is managed by another IDP? What if the account doesn't even have a password? 😀

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

When's the last time you legitimately ran out of RAM?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Lately I've been seeing a lot of conspiracy theory stuff on my timeline. As someone who doesn't subscribe to that mental model, can someone explain why people make claims but invent evidence to back them up? Do people... believe things without evidence for funsies?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

Petition to officially rename caulk to something else. Literally anything else.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 year

@frantzfries Oh, wow. Is that really *injected* into the DOM of the Google-owned page? Or is it browser UI above the Google page? Can you inspect the DOM of the Edge ad with DevTools?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Had one of those days today. Days where you're fighting with technology more than utilizing it. Is IntelliJ IDEA supposed to take 10 hours to index a (albeit large) project? I'm used to opening .NET projects in Visual Studio that open quickly and I can be productive immediately.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

@eloffd new RegExp({}) is the same as new RegExp('[object Object]') since the empty object gets coerced to that string. 'mom' matches the regex "[object Object]" because it contains an 'o'.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

Attended a funeral for a friend's dad today, the first since my own father's. Call your dad.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 year

@mr_enzzo @frantzfries Most definitely. One is just a dark design pattern and the other is arguably a man-in-the-middle attack.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

23 days

Today is the 21st anniversary of my 21st birthday. What a thirsty, young lad I was.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

@kiyov09 That resonates so much with me. I've seen it so many times where people would rather do things the hard and slow way because that's what they're used to.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Why is it so hard to stop using the word "just"? I find myself wanting to replace it with "simply" but that's even more condescending. "You just need to do XYX". Yuck.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

@realneildev Hmm, I never thought of it that way. I'm taking this as a sign to help my junior engineers feel supported and to tell their manager they need to support them too.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

@GeorgeMayer As someone with an incredibly similar story and string of luck, I love this. I'll retweet this tomorrow and share my story too.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@AccidentalCISO Ha, I can't remember the last time I checked my personal email and have NEVER used a personal calendar. I guess I'm unorganized. 🤷 What a joke.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

@jeroendotdot A question repeated once or twice is fine. After three though it's probably time to have a conversation to determine where the disconnect lies. Am I answering the question poorly? Am I misunderstanding the problem? etc.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

22 days

I read code 100x as much as I write it, often in areas I've never ventured before. I both want and _need_ to know how everything in my peripheral vision works. Otherwise, decision and recommendation making is practically impossible. This mentality can take you far.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Without saying anything, show me how long you've been on the Internet.

Jeremy Daly

@jeremy_daly

3 months

Without saying anything, show me how long you’ve been on the internet.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

Yo.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

They see me mowing, my front lawn.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

6 years

@fowlerism Dude that track was the ish...mael

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

9 months

At what point did Mac become a desirable development environment? When I was in college the stinky kids used Windows and the really stinky kids used Linux. Macs were toys.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I miss Chris Cornell.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

6 months

2 things I learned after becoming a software engineer: 1. Not everyone is a super nerd that lives and breathes computers. 2. Every super nerd SWE I've worked with has been incredibly successful.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

Why am I getting nostalgic for the days I would go into the office every day, sit in my own office (with a door even!), have lunch with awesome coworkers in a huge cafeteria with many yummy options, write some code, play a little ping pong, and then go home?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

It's been 3 years already wtf

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

5 months

@DanielWalm60394 Ironically the games are more stressful than the job.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

@florinpop1705 He got tasked with determining the root cause of a livesite incident, determined it was his commit, and recommended he be put on a PIP.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I can't wait for JavaScript to get replaced as the primary language of the Web. That way when I retire I can freelance like today's COBOL programmers and make bank.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 year

@trunarla Oh man, I've been doing it the hard way all this time!

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

2 months

I have a confession to make. I've never watched Dune, Harry Potter, or any anime.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Can we talk about how lonely it can feel when, after 4 years of WFH, your spouse/partner starts going back into the office? 🫤

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

4 months

@VBcodes My profile pic says enough.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

I really like chatting with all you dorks.

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

3 months

Should I learn Svelte, Vue, or HTMX next?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

1 month

Any other answer deserves jailtime. This one does too, but so do all the others.

Ozan Yarcı

@ozanyrc

1 month

This code structure is called an arrow anti-pattern. How to fix this code?

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Andy Young

@anerdguynow

6 years

#depression is like having a shitty friend move into your house unannounced, refuse to leave, and convince you there's nothing you can do to ever get them to leave. Sometimes they go away for the weekend, maybe to Vegas, just to come back more stoked than ever to be back home.

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