I've always wondered whether it has anything to do with the number of applicants whom are black. It's the same argument with why there are fewer women developers, there could simply be that there are more men in the industry.

Let's assume that 9 out of 10 applicants for a developer role are men, then the odds of that role being filled by anyone that isn't a man is 10% (not factoring other considerations such as skill, experience etc).

Is this not a similar challenge with black developers? According to the stack overflow survey, the ethinicity of the respondants whom are Black or African descent is only at 4.5%.

I'd be interested to see data on the demographics of, not only the employed staff at a company but all applicants that have applied including those whom were rejected or turned down the roles.

The question for me is what can PHP do better than any other language out there?

I've worked with Laravel for a few years and while it has sooo many great features out of the box, it doesn't quite detract from how unpleasant working with PHP is, when comparing with any other common/modern language. Of course this is only my opinion and experience with it.

I don't think I would ever recommend PHP to anyone unless they live in an area where you can only find PHP job opportunities. Otherwise, any other language can do what PHP can do and will provide a better programming experience IMO.

The reality is that there are a lot of people who can't afford to own their own property.

The council/govenment simply cannot house everyone, and the population is growing faster than the rate new houses are built.

Private landlords actually solve a lot of people's problems by renting their properties out to said people. And the contract that is signed between the tenant needs to be a win-win situation for it to work.

Specifically speaking for people who are renting. The 'win' for them is that they have a place to stay, they do have a choice where they stay. If they want to stay in a 3 bed house, they'll need to pay whatever rate that rent is going for.

One problem is that some tenants try renting in a property they simply cannot afford. So when it's time to pay rent, they take advantage with the system and refuse to pay. It's actually really difficult to evict people from your rented properties even though they signed and agreed to a contract.

The 'win' for landlords is that they get rent. If you're a good tenant who looks after the property and pay rent on time, imagine that there is a problem with the property and the landlord doesn't get it fixed or refuses to get it fixed then really the tenants should aim to look for somewhere else to live. The landlord will lose out on a good loyal tenant.

I don't think its fair to claim that all landlords are parasites. Tenants can be horrible, landlords can be horrible, but unless the agreement is a win-win situation for everyone. Somebody is going to have a bad time.

I agree that regression scenarios are difficult to identify, this is why its good to have unit tests to begin with.

You're only unit testing the code how you 'intended' for it to work at that time. Even though the tests are written, it probably wouldn't be uncommon for a bug to slip through when running your code, what you then can do is write another test to account for that scenario, then repeat and your code becomes more robust as a result.

I think Microsoft's OneNote is probably the best one I've used personally. The only thing that is a little labourious is setting up your notebooks/sections but once you have that set up, its actually pretty good.

I just wished it had markdown support built in and also Syntax highlighting for code examples.

I have found that working for startups, that unless you're the team lead or the only dev, there is usually very little room for growth or advancement. The annual pay increases are terrible and the employee turnover rate is usually quite high.

These pros/cons are based of my own experiences (I'm based in the UK).

The pros: - Come into work whenever you like (within reason) - Working with latest tech - company culture is usually great - Your team are usually very motivated and passionate about what they do - The challenges you usually face are exciting and interesting - Being present when the company meets new milestones is very satisfying

The cons: - Sometimes the features requested doesn't have enough information. This leads to the development team to either chase management for more information or make do with the information thats there. Which then leads to complaints or feedback after the work has completed (which could've been outlined before the work started) - Management usually want to know the fastest way to do a feature and then claim to allocate time to deal with the technical debt later (it usually never happens) - Management also doesn't prioritize the stabiliy of the application which in turn can lead to more issues and bugs along the way. - Deadlines get shorter and stricter as the company gains momentum. As a result you're expected to do more overtime or work later if you fall behind. There is usually no room for error here. - Work/life balance is not so great - Doesn't provide great benefits such as pensions/healthcare/dental - No room for advancement

I don't think its too bad working in a startup, but once I became employed to a (self-funded) medium sized company, their culture seemed significally better. They provided all the pros outlined above and had fewer cons. Work/Life balance was much better, allowing us to work from home or flexibility to do so if we needed to be home for a delivery or take the car to the garage for example.

Also, its more relaxed. While there were deadlines, we're also not encouraged to rush anything, we were the ones who dictated how long it takes to add a feature and set our own deadlines based on the complexity of the feature. We also had the ability to push back the roadmap accordingly if necessary in order to make sure something is done right. The reason for this is that bugs or issues can really damage the companies repuation and so its pretty important we take our time and do all the due-diligence required before our releases.

I suspect working for a self-funded company is better because the clients/customers are already there or on-boarded. There is no/little pressure from the shareholders or investors to get things done quickly. I would imagine that a startup has a lot to prove and so needs to impress in order to get more funding.

Note that these are my personal experiences, I've only worked for 4 startups but I've had very similar experiences with all of them. If Startups are able to at least alieviate all of the cons I've outlined above then I would be happy.