The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

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by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2017-09-29

"So is this the email equivalent of one man's trash is another man's treasure?" writes Allan.

12 comments - Last comment @ 06:51

EquiTF

by Remy Porter in News Roundup on 2017-09-28

We generally don’t do news roundups when yet another major company gets hacked and leaks personally compromising data about the public. We know that “big company hacked” isn’t news, it’s a Tuesday. So the Equifax hack didn’t seem like something worth spending any time to write an article about.

But then new things kept coming out. It got worse. And worse. And worse. It’s like if a dumpster caught on fire, but then the fire itself also caught on fire.

41 comments - Last comment @ 08:15

An Exception to the Rule

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2017-09-27

“Throw typed exceptions,” is generically good advice in a strongly typed language, like Java. It shouldn’t be followed thoughtlessly, but it’s a good rule of thumb. Some people may need a little more on the point, though.

Alexander L sends us this code:

24 comments - Last comment @ 11:13

An Emphasized Color

by TJ Mott in Feature Articles on 2017-09-26

One of the major goals of many software development teams is to take tedious, boring, simplistic manual tasks and automate them. An entire data entry team can be replaced by a single well-written application, saving the company money, greatly improving processing time, and potentially reducing errors.

That is, if it’s done correctly.

29 comments - Last comment @ 12:59

The Strangelet Solution

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2017-09-25

Chris M works for a “solutions provider”. Mostly, this means taking an off-the-shelf product from Microsoft or Oracle or SAP and customizing it to fit a client’s specific needs. Since many of these clients have in-house developers, the handover usually involves training those developers up on the care and maintenance of the system.

Then, a year or two later, the client comes back, complaining about the system. “It’s broken,” or “performance is terrible,” or “we need a new feature”. Chris then goes back out to their office, and starts taking a look at what has happened to the code in his absence.

17 comments - Last comment @ 2017-09-29

Choose Wisely

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2017-09-22

"I'm not sure how I can give feedback on this course, unless, figuring out this matrix is actually a final exam," wrote Mads.

20 comments - Last comment @ 00:56

The In-House Developer

by Charles Robinson in Tales from the Interview on 2017-09-21

James was getting anxious to land a job that would put his newly-minted Computer Science degree to use. Six months had come to pass since he graduated and being a barista barely paid the bills. Living in a small town didn't afford him many local opportunities, so when he saw a developer job posting for an upstart telecom company, he decided to give it a shot.

We do everything in-house! the posting for CallCom emphasized, piquing James' interest. He hoped that meant there would be a small in-house development team that built their systems from the ground up. Surely he could learn the ropes from them before becoming a key contributor. He filled out the online application and happily clicked Submit.

40 comments - Last comment @ 2017-09-25

A Dumbain Specific Language

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2017-09-20

I’ve had to write a few domain-specific-languages in the past. As per Remy’s Law of Requirements Gathering, it’s been mostly because the users needed an Excel-like formula language. The danger of DSLs, of course, is that they’re often YAGNI in the extreme, or at least a sign that you don’t really understand your problem.

XML, coupled with schemas, is a tool for building data-focused DSLs. If you have some complex structure, you can convert each of its features into an XML attribute. For example, if you had a grammar that looked something like this:

23 comments - Last comment @ 2017-09-28