Comment On Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

First and foremost, I wanted to remind everyone about the first-ever Olympiad of Misguided Geeks at Worse Than Failure (or OMGWTF for short) Programming Contest. The entries have been streaming in and are looking really fun and interesting. There’s plenty of time left to get started, so go hack up something and submit your own entry! Who knows, you might very well win the Grand Prize of a High-Resolution JPEG of an OMGWTF First Prize Trophy and a brand-new laptop to view your highly-valuable JPEG. [expand full text]

So, without any further ado, here is Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style, the story of Owen Morgan’s very first professional programming experience...

Back in the mid 1990's my large, U.S. government organization made the move to the newly introduced Microsoft Mail. Not too long after the roll out, someone high up in the organization wanted the ability to have all of their e-mail available to them on the road, not just what was in their inbox (this was a limitation of MS Mail). At this time all e-mail was stored on the server, and the remote software didn’t allow access to anything but the inbox.

That’s where I came in. There I sat in my helpdesk cubicle, having only been on the job a couple of months, and happily surfing the corporate network for unauthorized games to “eliminate,” when in walks the MS Mail Install Guru asking, “does anyone in here know how to program?”

Being that we didn’t have a programming team on staff, this wasn’t an odd request. I dutifully answered “I’ve programmed a little in the past,” not explaining I was self taught in BASIC (the most basic BASIC ever devised).

“Good,” he stated, “I have a project for you.” Thus I was off to help solve this great leadership e-mail problem.

I was handed an unopened (still shrink wrapped) copy of “WINBATCH” and given instructions on what to do. Since the MS Mail Install Guru had already figured out how to allow the users to take their e-mail folders on the road with them, I was to implement his design in software. Here was the method:

A user would take their laptop to a strategic e-mail upload/download point in the home office (think of a router and you get the point) and plug the network cable in

They would run the program I created which would move the users e-mail folder from the server to the laptop.

When they returned to the office they would reverse this procedure to move the folder back to the server.

The real trick, the guru told me, was to build this so that multiple people could check their e-mail from the same laptop, since laptop were often a shared resource amongst a traveling team of leaders! I cautioned the MS Mail Install Guru that they should probably get someone who’s actually experienced in MS Mail and, perhaps, programming, but he insisted that it’d be a cinch.

Applying my entirety of BASIC experience and vast knowledge of WINBATCH (read: the back of the WINBATCH box), I got started. I worked long hours and was finally able to churn out a clunky, barely tested program that somehow managed to meet the constantly changing desires of the guru. Oh, and it was all done within an insanely short time window.

I suppose that I was fortunate that I never had to actually use my traveling email program. I did have to support it, though. Day after day, I struggled to work with frustrated users who couldn’t get their e-mail on to or off of the laptop, couldn’t read their e-mail after using the program, or had some other obnoxious problem as a result of some oversight in my code.

Through all this experience, I did learn a very valuable lesson. Spec it , design it, code it -- just let someone else support it.

And on that note, Jake, Derrick and I will be taking next week off. Don't worry, though, we'll be posting plenty of Classics throughout the week.

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Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:06 • by Mickey (unregistered)

134923

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This is kind of weak with no offending code to match.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:11 • by nobody (unregistered)

134924

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He should have insisted all support requests be emailed.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:12 • by Wildpeaks (unregistered)

134925

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You're forgetting in the end "and let a real programmer do it" duh

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:12 • by Wildpeaks (unregistered)

134926 in reply to 134924

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nobody:
He should have insisted all support requests be emailed.

:-D

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:15 • by Pap

134928

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Italics ftl

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:25 • by dkfal (unregistered)

134929

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well

i don't get the WTF??

Is the WTF the fact that the installation guru asked a non-experienced programmer to produce something,

or

that the U.S. Government was using MS Mail,

or

that the non-experienced programmer was also asked to maintain and support the produced code

or

what is it???

i really really don't get it.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:29 • by The whole office is going on vacation at once? (unregistered)

134932 in reply to 134923

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The Real WTF (tm) is that all 3 of you are gonig on vacation, at once!

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:30 • by morgano

134933 in reply to 134929

Reply Quote

dkfal:
well

i don't get the WTF??

Is the WTF the fact that the installation guru asked a non-experienced programmer to produce something,

or

that the U.S. Government was using MS Mail,

or

that the non-experienced programmer was also asked to maintain and support the produced code

or

what is it???

i really really don't get it.

Yes to all!

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:31 • by snoofle

134934

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Alex:
Jake, Derrick and I will be taking next week off.

Are you planning on blowing anything up this time around?

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:33 • by Jonh Robo (unregistered)

134935

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The WTF are the italics!
I had to copy and paste the article in a text editor just to read the damned thing.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 13:37 • by akatherder

134936

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He got sucked into a situation that he wasn't qualified for (and that he claimed to be unqualified for after hearing the whole story). He created an important internal application that barely worked and screwed over everyone involved. Then he got stuck supporting it on someone else's conditions. Where's an Indian call center when you need it.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 14:08 • by Magus (unregistered)

134948 in reply to 134935

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Jonh Robo:
The WTF are the italics!
I had to copy and paste the article in a text editor just to read the damned thing.

Get a better font?

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 14:21 • by wiregoat (unregistered)

134957 in reply to 134932

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The whole office is going on vacation at once?:
The Real WTF (tm) is that all 3 of you are gonig on vacation, at once!

On the same airplane? Watch out for captcha:ninjas

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 14:32 • by Dustin (unregistered)

134959

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But did you get a pay raise for moving to software development?

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 14:56 • by AGould

134966

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I distrust any time someone says "so-and-so already designed it, you just need to implement it". Usually means they either (a) don't understand the problem well enough to solve it themselves, or (b) are dodging a bullet.

You know that mail administrator was laughing his ass off the whole time - he gets credit for "solving" the problem, and some other schmuck gets all the work and ongoing hassle.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 15:08 • by Jonh Robo (unregistered)

134968 in reply to 134948

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Magus:
Jonh Robo:
The WTF are the italics!
I had to copy and paste the article in a text editor just to read the damned thing.

Get a better font?

WTF?

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 15:17 • by Jerry Kindall (unregistered)

134971 in reply to 134968

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WTF: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 15:41 • by Saladin

134977

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If you have problems reading stuff just because it's italicized, I'd hate to see what you do with anything that's *gasp* handwritten.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 15:46 • by KattMan

134978 in reply to 134977

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Saladin:
If you have problems reading stuff just because it's italicized, I'd hate to see what you do with anything that's *gasp* handwritten.

But that is how I secure all my communications. My handwriting is so bad it might as well be encrypted. Maybe it should be used for the captcha text instead. I know, I'll write an app that provides handwritten text by me, printed on paper set on a wooden table and photographed. The perfect captcha every time!.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 16:30 • by MX5Ringer

134982

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I get it!!!

You guys forgot to tur your calendars and for you it's still April 1st????

This is no WTF even the worst attempts I'v seen so far pale into insgnifiance next to this!!!!!

CAPTCHA:- Crap (yes I'm registered I don't have a Captcha but I figured this deserved one!)

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 17:27 • by dkf (unregistered)

134989 in reply to 134936

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akatherder:
He got sucked into a situation that he wasn't qualified for (and that he claimed to be unqualified for after hearing the whole story). He created an important internal application that barely worked and screwed over everyone involved. Then he got stuck supporting it on someone else's conditions. Where's an Indian call center when you need it.

Hah. Remember that these days, everything is just the same in every important detail, except Owen is now called Rajesh and he's in Bangalore. Nothing else is different. Sucky Microsoft mail system? Check. Sucky pseudo programming language? Check. Sucky assignment? Check. Sucky project management? Check. Sucky results for everyone concerned apart from those smart enough to run screaming? Check. The correspondence is spooky!

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 17:33 • by emurphy

134990 in reply to 134935

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Jonh Robo:
The WTF are the italics!
I had to copy and paste the article in a text editor just to read the damned thing.

Italics are my native language, you insensitive clod!

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 17:35 • by mthamil

134991

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Man, the real WTF is WinBatch. I was an IT intern at a company in undergrad, and instead of rolling their own automated MSIs and pushing them out to users to install software, they used WinBatch to write install scripts. Most of them consisted of copying an install file (sometimes it even WAS an MSI!) from a remote share to a temp directory on the users's desktop, executing the install, and when this couldn't be done silently, actually programming in mouse-clicks to automate the process. This was all a huge WTF itself.

I was eventually given the task of updating these scripts since they couldn't find anything for me to do, yet they wanted to keep me around. WinBatch itself was a chore to use, and for some awful reason, they made it possible to write GUIs with it. Ugh. I could never find a way to "include" other script files or code snippets within another script, so the code repetition was ridiculous.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 19:50 • by Tigger

134999 in reply to 134923

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Owen Morgan:
Through all this experience, I did learn a very valuable lesson. Spec it , design it, code it -- just let someone else support it.

Mate, this will just make you a really crappy programmer for the rest of your life. If you design it and code it then walk away and let someone else support your crappy product, then you'll never learn how crappy it really is, and you'll keep producing the kind of crappy code that your support guys will submit to this very website.

Either find a job outside of IT, or find a job in a big department where they have team of actual programmers to do the programming, or get used to the fact that people will want you to do a little coding from time to time. Does this suck? Yes. Is it asking you to do something that you're not really trained to do? Yes. But, mate, that's life.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 20:23 • by Pap

135002

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http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/extra_slanty_italics

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-03 20:49 • by Automator (unregistered)

135005 in reply to 134991

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You wrote:
>the real WTF is WinBatch.

Complain about WinBatch as much as you would like, but it usually isn't the tool that is the problem -- it is the person using the tool that causes the WTFs. I agree that WinBatch isn't an install/deployment tool, but it does have its place in some automation environments.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-04 02:58 • by Pedant (unregistered)

135019 in reply to 134999

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Tigger:
Owen Morgan:
Through all this experience, I did learn a very valuable lesson. Spec it , design it, code it -- just let someone else support it.

Mate, this will just make you a really crappy programmer for the rest of your life. If you design it and code it then walk away and let someone else support your crappy product, then you'll never learn how crappy it really is, and you'll keep producing the kind of crappy code that your support guys will submit to this very website.

Either find a job outside of IT, or find a job in a big department where they have team of actual programmers to do the programming, or get used to the fact that people will want you to do a little coding from time to time. Does this suck? Yes. Is it asking you to do something that you're not really trained to do? Yes. But, mate, that's life.

I agree with this entirely - first proper work project I was on I was doing batch support. There were a lot of things that went wrong with the system & a lot of these things were problems that developers may not think about the first time around but if they had had to support the application, would have known not to do the next time.
I just had images of these people rolling from project to project churning out badly tested crap :S

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-04 03:44 • by TheJasper

135022 in reply to 134978

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KattMan:
Saladin:
If you have problems reading stuff just because it's italicized, I'd hate to see what you do with anything that's *gasp* handwritten.

But that is how I secure all my communications. My handwriting is so bad it might as well be encrypted. Maybe it should be used for the captcha text instead. I know, I'll write an app that provides handwritten text by me, printed on paper set on a wooden table and photographed. The perfect captcha every time!.

Rats, that's exactly what I thought! I only sometimes have a problem with the decryption algorithm.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-04 05:26 • by danio (unregistered)

135025 in reply to 134948

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Magus:
Jonh Robo:
The WTF are the italics!
I had to copy and paste the article in a text editor just to read the damned thing.

Get a better font?

It's a series of tubes. When you put your message in, it gets in line. When you pull your message out you choose the font. css is a myth. Tahoma is an airline.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-04 08:33 • by Profpylons (unregistered)

135030 in reply to 134978

Reply Quote

KattMan:
Saladin:
If you have problems reading stuff just because it's italicized, I'd hate to see what you do with anything that's *gasp* handwritten.

But that is how I secure all my communications. My handwriting is so bad it might as well be encrypted. Maybe it should be used for the captcha text instead. I know, I'll write an app that provides handwritten text by me, printed on paper set on a wooden table and photographed. The perfect captcha every time!.

Hmmm... I think I can see next year's OMGWTF challenge..! A Handwriting-cum-Wooden-table encryption algorithm.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-07 00:59 • by cklam

135229 in reply to 134936

Reply Quote

akatherder:
He got sucked into a situation that he wasn't qualified for (and that he claimed to be unqualified for after hearing the whole story). He created an important internal application that barely worked and screwed over everyone involved. Then he got stuck supporting it on someone else's conditions. Where's an Indian call center when you need it.

I don't know: Where in any government organization can someone just walk in and assign work for somebody else unless first person is line management/supervisor for the second person ?

I concur of course that Owen was a sucker - inexperienced, stupid and helpful.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-07 06:56 • by Hamstray (unregistered)

135236

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the real wtf is that this Owen person's job consists of deleting games from the corporate network. everyone knows that games raise team spirit and enables better integration of newcomers (especially since they are in desperate need of people who have some knowledge of computers).

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-07 17:53 • by BrownHornet

135323 in reply to 135005

Reply Quote

Automator:

mthamil:
the real WTF is WinBatch.

Complain about WinBatch as much as you would like, but it usually isn't the tool that is the problem -- it is the person using the tool that causes the WTFs. I agree that WinBatch isn't an install/deployment tool, but it does have its place in some automation environments.

Agreed. I used WinBatch at my last job to automate several mundane tasks, and it was great for what I needed. My favorite was a script that would change my system clock, start/stop the timer on our timekeeping software, then set the clock back to normal :)

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-09 12:45 • by RIAA (unregistered)

135627 in reply to 134978

Reply Quote

KattMan:
Saladin:
If you have problems reading stuff just because it's italicized, I'd hate to see what you do with anything that's *gasp* handwritten.

But that is how I secure all my communications. My handwriting is so bad it might as well be encrypted. Maybe it should be used for the captcha text instead. I know, I'll write an app that provides handwritten text by me, printed on paper set on a wooden table and photographed. The perfect captcha every time!.

Hopefully you're not expecting people to circumvent your security mechanism to view your handwriting without prior authorization? Heard of that little acronym, DMCA? At least Alex is covered by "safe harbor".

captcha:=poindexter; /* quickly grabs for nearest tin foil */

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-11 15:59 • by Bruce W (unregistered)

136131

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WinBatch still exists? Wow. I remember that thing from 1995 and thought it died by now. Now I feel guilty for laughing at the resume of a guy who listed it in his "Skills" section.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2007-05-18 14:06 • by JNeumann (unregistered)

137686

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All I can say is that I would never hire this guy. If you can't support your own code, don't code. Code is MEANT to be supported. You build it so it can be supported. If you are unwilling to support it because your design sucks, you blow and should become an admin assistant.

Re: Corporate E-mail on the Road, 1990's Style

2008-11-28 21:11 • by 855 (unregistered)

231578

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