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Cover image for thef!#%: Channeling Your Misdirected Rage for Catharsis and Greater Productivity
Zephyr Prusinski
Zephyr Prusinski

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thef!#%: Channeling Your Misdirected Rage for Catharsis and Greater Productivity

Warning: if you don't partake in ~the swear words~, there will be a lot of them here and this tool probably isn't for you.

For those of us accustomed to receiving concerned looks from our co-workers: Welcome! Let me introduce you to my favorite command-line application - and a crucial part of my workflow and mental well-being - nvbn's thefuck.

Once you set this bad boy up, you will never want for another article on "How to ease developer frustration with 5 simple breathing tips, a Lush face mask, and a spur-of-the-moment trip to Bali".

Because you know what? Fuck it! You're busy and you're angry. You didn't install with sudo. You tried to checkout amster. You didn't set an upstream branch yet. Your eyes widen, your lip curls up, you let that quick burst of air out your nose, and internally you're screaming "You know what the fuck I'm going to type next just fucking do it!!!"

And that is what thefuck was made for. You type the thing. It returns an error. You type fuck. It does the thing! And it feels fantastic.

Check out their github for installation instructions for your chosen rage machine.

It's set up for a lot the most common errors we see as devs, like git commands, docker, yarn, apt/pacman, etc., and adding extra rules for your particular platform is pretty easy if you know a little python. This won't insert your missing semicolon or undo that git reset --hard, however.

For those, we can still type fuck. and it will return:
no fucks given

Because you know what? Most of the time, it's our fucking fault, and we deal with this shit all the goddamn time.

Developers have the stereotype of being incredibly patient where others would quickly lose their cool. And that's good! But let's be honest, we're a bunch of fuckin' powder kegs and we need to vent more than we often give ourselves the space to.

There's a reason people use this nasty word. It's gross sounding, it's offensive, and you know what else? It's fucking cathartic!

I love you. Take care of yourself!

Top comments (2)

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him)

YESSSSS I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS!!! I found out about this awhile back and I couldn't remember what it was!!!!!

There's a Ruby REPL and gem called pry that does has a similar command, but not quite the same functionality.

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zazzyzeph profile image
Zephyr Prusinski

hah!! adding question marks and exclamation points to wtf?!?!!!?! to extend the stack trace is a fantastic feature. i wish PHP folks had the whimsy of the ruby community :)