Comment On On a Budget

At least your clients havent outsourced you to INDIA for 80% less than what I used to charge. I may as well get a job at Home Depot for that pay - and have no real responsibility. Be happy you're working.

012f!

The phrase you are looking for is

Run! Get out while you can!

Look on the bright side, at least the mouse will have a wire to hang yourself with

This is why I like this site, it make me feel better about my crappy job.

Oh come on, the equipment isn't fully depreciated yet and the hard disk LED still blinks!

How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

OMG - My coworkers thought I was crazy, laughing like a hyena when I read that last line! Hilarious!

How did he type the braces if the 0 key doesn't work?

Watch Thine Fingers:

How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

Copied and pasted an existing close bracket, of course! You could code an entire app with just control-c and control-v!

@Watch Thine Fingers && JaeRae:

not on every keyboard layout the closing brace is on shift+0. On german for example ist shift + 9

Sadly this type of shit is all too common in small companies - they refuse to spend any money at all on equipment, and expect you to get by with the same garbage they've been using for the past 10 years, and throw a fit like a spoiled child when you hint that maybe, just maybe, 256MB of RAM is not enough to run the program you need to do the work required of you. But no, ask for more RAM and they'll give you some whining excuse why they can't afford it ("But boss, you just bought a new Mercedes-Benz last week!") right now.

This is also why so many small businesses pirate software:

Boss: But I already bought a copy of Office 2007 (Home and Teacher edition... it was the cheapest). Why do I need to buy nine more?

You: Because you bought *ONE* copy, and you want to install *TEN* of them. It'll cost you $X much.

Boss: That's ridiculous! We don't have the money to afford that! (Hmm... where shall I go for my vacation next weekend? Bahamas? Rome? Australia is nice, I hear...

*sigh* Just more proof that 90% of small businesses don't really care about running a business, the owner just wants a quick way to cash in and the added satisfaction of telling other people what to do. Can we shoot these idiots? Please?

maybe there was some sort of auto-complete feature in the environment? Like, you type "if" and the brackets come in automatically.

When my IT programming job was outsourced to India, I just upped and opened an Indian restuarant.

Not just small comapnies either, try Wal-Mart some time.

The phrase is "Penny wise and pound foolish."

A real coder would have known to hold down left Alt and type 48 on the numeric keypad.

tonecoke:

When my IT programming job was outsourced to India, I just upped and opened an Indian restuarant.

Thanks! Coffee spewed out my nose when I read that!!!!!

I wonder why he could type the 'f' in "if", but not in "of".

I worked for a company that once refused to buy a calendar one employee asked for.
All he asked for was 1 paper calendar so that he could make basic planning for the year to come. This calendar is really expensive, like 0.3€ a piece...

The order for 20 calendars (one for each employee) was refused, justified by the fact that this year, we had already been offered.... a USB key (it contained in fact a programm to connect to our extranet web site... which is an other WTF in itself)

jgayhart:

Watch Thine Fingers:

How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

Maybe the Shift key(s) was sticking? Of course he would have to type most everything with the Caps Lock on. And, he would have problems with the equals sign.

Maybe he was could type Alt+041? Of course, that would assume he had a working numeric key pad.

Sometimes when my keyboard dies, I have to use my mouse to copy and paste characters to save my documents before restarting.

If he could type Alt+041, he could type "0" ...

Start, Programs, Accessories, Accessibility, On-Screen Keyboard.

I use to bring my own monitor, keyboard and mouse at work. Had my own keyboard at every place I worked, and monitor and mouse at the last two: if the management wants to save a buck, I want to save my health, and prefer the wide format for screens too.

How expensive can a keyboard be ? If that guy preferred to work with a defective keyboard instead of just quitting when they refused to replace it, or bringing his own, I wonder who's defective ... the management or that poor sop.

kasn:

@Watch Thine Fingers && JaeRae:

not on every keyboard layout the closing brace is on shift+0. On german for example ist shift + 9

On a frogboard it's sh + degree sign. The opening one is sh + 5, for some reason.

That's what on-screen keyboards are for. Well, not really, but still...

mallard:

Watch Thine Fingers:

How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

The real WTF(tm) is that he managed to type "if", yet has to type "ov" instead of "of".

That could just be an ordinary typo
After all - the story does indeed not tell which key(s) are broken :D

My previous employer was tight - I remember asking for a book once to help install and maintain our new server system (software engineer doing IT as well - I am sure that's common) but I was told to read the online help manuals whilst installing it..

keelerm:

I wonder why he could type the 'f' in "if", but not in "of".

Probably copy-pasted the if with the brackets from somewhere ... but was too annoyed with the situation to go to extra copy the F for comment-rant ... nor to actually go on a 0-hunt.

hm ... ZERO-hunt ... :P

h0w ab0ut c0py and paste? S0rry, s0me 0f my keys are br0ken.

0h cr*p, captcha = m0d0... 0h well, I'll c0py and paste th0se then.

The () and f in if can be explained by code completion. In eclipse I can type i<ctrl>+<space><enter> and get both.

keelerm:

I wonder why he could type the 'f' in "if", but not in "of".

Same as with the close paren--in source code, there should be plenty of source to copy from. If the maintainer were truly brilliant, he would have written a source code editor which would translate trigraphs for keys that no longer worked.

Even better, he could have written a modified form of brainf#(@ to code in.

Grovesy:

Having left MS a year ago, where I was somewhat spoilt. We had purpose build team rooms with white board walls, 50" HDTV, 24" wide screens on each desk and brand spanking new decent laptops and an xbox (we could play against people in the other team rooms).

Next contract, ended up on a customer’s site which had no room for the dev team so we ended up in the canteen and a couple of desks that were stored in the warehouse. Next contract ended up in a corridor next to the kettle and microwave... I ended up bringing in my own equipment.

This contract, I am perched on the of a desk, yesterday I ended up in the canteen for the day and Monday I actually at one point sat on the floor with the laptop on my knees. A mere three das in I have yet to meet the project manager or the team I’m leading... I believe they are around somewhere.

At this rate I think I'm for the fore mentioned office next


Addendum (2008-01-30 08:46):
evidently, reading that back with all those types I have lost the ability to type.

You were LUCKY! In my last contract, we sat in a cardboard box in the middle of a freeway, we were forced to work 23 hours a day, given nothing but mud to eat for lunch and beaten with sticks every time a bug was found in the code.

I think this is obvious, but I just learned some lessons on murdering your employees' morale. All of my co-workers and I had P3's with 512-768MB of RAM and 15" CRTs running Windows 2000. Me and one of the other developers (a contractor no less) ended up with dual flat screens, Windows XP, dual core processors and a couple GB of RAM. We assumed it was a phased approach to upgrade everyone. The other two developers never got an upgrade. No one else has heard anything about them getting upgrades.

He was a maintainer, not a developer.
Chances are he just had to edit the file to change the condition to check for 0. The if statement and brackets would be there already in that case.
Of course, he could have used Character Map or even just spent $5 of his own money on a working but basic keyboard in order to make his life that little bit easier.
Or, he could have wrote his code by hand, photographed it on a table, then scanned and OCR'd the photo to enter his code.

I have been in the same situation, it is *possible* to code by using cut and paste. (Poor man)

ObiWayneKenobi:

Sadly this type of shit is all too common in small companies - they refuse to spend any money at all on equipment, and expect you to get by with the same garbage they've been using for the past 10 years, and throw a fit like a spoiled child when you hint that maybe, just maybe, 256MB of RAM is not enough to run the program you need to do the work required of you. But no, ask for more RAM and they'll give you some whining excuse why they can't afford it ("But boss, you just bought a new Mercedes-Benz last week!") right now.

This is also why so many small businesses pirate software:

Boss: But I already bought a copy of Office 2007 (Home and Teacher edition... it was the cheapest). Why do I need to buy nine more?

You: Because you bought *ONE* copy, and you want to install *TEN* of them. It'll cost you $X much.

Boss: That's ridiculous! We don't have the money to afford that! (Hmm... where shall I go for my vacation next weekend? Bahamas? Rome? Australia is nice, I hear...

*sigh* Just more proof that 90% of small businesses don't really care about running a business, the owner just wants a quick way to cash in and the added satisfaction of telling other people what to do. Can we shoot these idiots? Please?

If any of you've watched Kitchen Nightmares, you'll see Gordon Ramsay having a cow about the same things - restaurant owners (especially if they're the cook) hoping to get their little nest egg without investing in the upkeep of the business or caring about the customers. Invariably it doesn't work - hence GR spends a week shouting expletives to get them give a d@*n.

Grovesy:

lizardfoot:

Grovesy:

Having left MS a year ago, where I was somewhat spoilt. We had purpose build team rooms with white board walls, 50" HDTV, 24" wide screens on each desk and brand spanking new decent laptops and an xbox (we could play against people in the other team rooms).

Next contract, ended up on a customer’s site which had no room for the dev team so we ended up in the canteen and a couple of desks that were stored in the warehouse. Next contract ended up in a corridor next to the kettle and microwave... I ended up bringing in my own equipment.

This contract, I am perched on the of a desk, yesterday I ended up in the canteen for the day and Monday I actually at one point sat on the floor with the laptop on my knees. A mere three das in I have yet to meet the project manager or the team I’m leading... I believe they are around somewhere.

At this rate I think I'm for the fore mentioned office next


Addendum (2008-01-30 08:46):
evidently, reading that back with all those types I have lost the ability to type.

You were LUCKY! In my last contract, we sat in a cardboard box in the middle of a freeway, we were forced to work 23 hours a day, given nothing but mud to eat for lunch and beaten with sticks every time a bug was found in the code.

pshh 23hours days!, we had to invent a time slowing machine so we could work 28hours. We were beaten with sticks if we stopped typing, nutrients were fed to us via a drip with a rusty needle and we had to wear giant nappies.

Thats nothing!
on my last job we didnt have a coffee machine!!!!

jgayhart:

Watch Thine Fingers:

How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

Maybe the Shift key(s) was sticking? Of course he would have to type most everything with the Caps Lock on. And, he would have problems with the equals sign.

Maybe he was could type Alt+041? Of course, that would assume he had a working numeric key pad.

Or perhaps his 0 key died after creating the conditional block, or used a fancy IDE that auto-completed the conditional statement structure.

autocomplete could have provided both the close bracket and the 'f' in if.

but its depends on which IDE he was using

keelerm:

I wonder why he could type the 'f' in "if", but not in "of".

Has anyone tried to "count the "f"s in this sentence"? People typically miss a lot of the "f"s in "of" because it sounds like "ov".

anne onymous:

I worked for a company that once refused to buy a calendar one employee asked for.
All he asked for was 1 paper calendar so that he could make basic planning for the year to come. This calendar is really expensive, like 0.3€ a piece...

I just left a company that did the same thing. No paper calendars because "we're digital now". Even though the (single) paper calendar we requested had the nice julian dates on it we used every day. We were also denied phone lists, and the boss went through ripped down any "cheat sheet" of numbers (large or small) if it was at your desk. So much for efficiency.

Or maybe, which makes sense to me, (3-3) is another way of saying "false". His 1 and f(a)(l)(s)(e) keys are broken.

yes, but on a german keyboard the equals-sign is above the zero. So it wasn't on a german one either (the "==") ...

Whiners...
Ever heard of Copy/Paste development?
Or use the "Insert Symbol" dialog...

;-)

Respect dude!

Alt+numeric keypad, copy-pasting, Character Map, On-Screen Keyboard, MS Word -> "Insert Symbol" + copy-paste... plenty of options, but personally I'd probably just buy myself a new keyboard.

this is why i've been trying to convince my job to get me an optimus keyboard

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

anyone can pirate ms office software, but this keyboard? I, um, uh, .... *drool*

i will also accept this keyboard as a runner up

http://www.daskeyboard.com/

Addendum (2008-01-30 10:02):
I might justify a $1500 keyboard, but $80 for das keyboard with blank keys???

here's a cheap DIY solution:
http://www.saneasylum.com/articles/590

and here is a cheaper and lazier solution:
http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KBH&Product_Code=OV-0645