Comment On Straight Shooter for Upper Management

Who hasn't met one of those fools ? At least some of them leave funny memories [:D]

Delphi- SQL 7.0 e-commerce system in Iowa talk to a JD Edwards AS/400 backend s

 

should have tried System objects Delphi/400

JavaScript? Come on!

Now if he had answered "Have you tried XML?" to every question, he'd be seen as a visionary and be making millions!

A long time ago, I worked on a product that was supported on Vaxes
running VMS and Ultrix, Sun 3s and Sun 4s running Sun OS, and IBM
PC-RTs and RS/6000s running AIX.  One release cycle, the Ultrix
testing was completed, but the Sun OS testing was taking a long time,
so our brilliant QA manager, named Nabil, asked the sysadmin how long
it would take him to convert one of the MicroVaxes to run Sun OS so we
could put another tester on the Sun OS testing.  Everybody in the
meeting just sat there gob smacked.  After that, my coleague Dan
stated calling him "inNability", which I thought was the best English
pun I've never heard a French-Canadian make.

The bigger and truer WTF is really how this guy got hired, and how whoever hired him got hired...  

:

The bigger and truer WTF is really how this guy got hired, and how whoever hired him got hired...  

and how the company made money  

My favorite was in a meeting where a big-wig making 5x my pay used
"memory clusters" to mean "hard drives".  He was trying to say
that it would be a good idea to get a lot of servers with a shitload of
memory and little storage space, but kept saying "strip out the memory
clusters and load them with RAM".  It took about 5-10 minutes to
figure out WTF he was even talking about, and another 5-10 minutes of
stifling laughs until I could muster an interested looking nod.

but seriously... did you tried WSH + JScript? [;)]

You guys laugh, but you'd be surprised how many people use "hardcore" Javascript applications. I know it's ridiculous. I've seen these monstrosities. It's really amazing what you can do when you throw enough Javascript at it.

zinglons_ale:

JavaScript? Come on!
Now if he had answered "Have you tried XML?" to every question, he'd be seen as a visionary and be making millions!

[Y][Y]

I was a Developer for a company that promoted this DBA to management based purely on his ability to suck up. He was such a good DBA that he had to come to me and ask to do a string comparison in T-SQL.

 

 

Speaking of XML, I actually had a development manager ask me if we should re-implement our client-server communication code to use XML instead of using encrypted Java serialization.  When I asked him why, he said that it was so that other companies other than us could write applications to access our proprietary, confidential, encrypted information.  After trying to explain why we wouldn't want to rewrite a secure protocol that was already working perfectly well so that our competitors could use our back-end, I just gave up and told him that we would look into it.

They didn't and now they are almost gone[:D]

I don't see any wtf here... the goal the team was trying to accomplish
could have been very doable with some advanced javascript libraries.



He probably left the company not because he was about to get laid off,
but he realized that upper management just couldn't swallow his
"outside of the box" thinking and innovative ideas... a pure loss to
the company.  

Oh! I know the guys. He works with me now...

:

I don't see any wtf here... the goal the team was trying to accomplish
could have been very doable with some advanced javascript libraries.



He probably left the company not because he was about to get laid off,
but he realized that upper management just couldn't swallow his
"outside of the box" thinking and innovative ideas... a pure loss to
the company.  

So where did you end up going?

Heheh. Reminded me of a good one.



We had a recent hire with an apparently good selection of technical
background in programming languages and MS SQL. As he came on board, I
was in the middle of some discussions with a current client about some
fairly advanced SQL replication problems they were having. I don't have much experience with SQL replication, so I sent our
new hire a very detailed email describing some of the issues and asked
if he had run into anything like that before, or if he had any ideas
about a direction to pursue. Here is his one-sentence email reply:

...have they tried I am don't know what all they have tried, what about MAPI

I just stared at the email for the longest time in stunned silence.



The biggest WTF is that for about 2.5 seconds I thought "wow, and I thought MAPI was just an email protocol!"

:

You guys laugh, but you'd be surprised how many people
use "hardcore" Javascript applications. I know it's ridiculous. I've
seen these monstrosities. It's really amazing what you can do when you
throw enough Javascript at it.

Hm, Why do I get the image of someone throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks?



This guy seems like the perfect PHB.

>>
He probably left the company not because he was about to get laid off,
but he realized that upper management just couldn't swallow his
"outside of the box" thinking and innovative ideas... a pure loss to
the company. 



"Thinking Outside of the box"  does not mean "Coming up with
stupid ideas", despite what the people with stupid ideas will tell you !

zinglons_ale:

JavaScript? Come on!

Now if he had answered "Have you tried XML?" to every question, he'd be seen as a visionary and be making millions!

That would especially be true in 1999 since XML was quite unknown back then. [:P]

Katja:

That would especially be true in 1999 since XML was quite unknown back then.

Don't you mean not quite as big a buzzword as JavaScript at the time? XML was relatively well known in 1999, and would actually be a decent solution to the problem they were discussing.

:

You guys laugh, but you'd be surprised how many people use "hardcore" Javascript applications. I know it's ridiculous. I've seen these monstrosities. It's really amazing what you can do when you throw enough Javascript at it.

BTDT.  I wrote a SOAP server from scratch using JScript in an IIS environment.  Not a complete implementation of the spec by any means, but it did support authentication and provisions for authorization support.  It worked great.  Why did I do it?  My client's senior software architect didn't want to use the Microsoft SOAP tools and left us little choice.  This, on a system that was already being re-written for a new platform (J2EE/Apache/Tomcat), so to my mind it mattered little whether we used free, easy to use MS tools to implement it.  Probably the worst WTF I've been forced to write.  Happily the whole system is now re-written, so nobody ever has to maintain that piece (especially me!).

A while ago (2003?) there was some publicity about some website defacement competition among hackers on some day or weekend. I specifically did not tell my higher-ups because they would freak out about something we couldn't do anything more about.

Some I work with however saw it on slashdot.org and felt the need to pass the warning on up. The pointy-haired-boss comes over and starts ranting about how we need to prepare for this and he wants all the firewall ports closed except what needs to be open.

Of course we already had setup the firewall. I knew better than to explain it so I said "okay, we'll take care of that today". The guy who told him about the hacking contest didn't get it and felt the need to explain that it was already done. Of course the whole thing was a waste of time.

I worked with a PM like this once... We were going to re-write the legacy system (Basic) in a more robust language... This guy didn't know anything and came to me to ask what language we should use...

Well being out of school for 6 months I told him Java (its what I wanted to learn).

Well I learned Java and got the hell out of there but they canned the PM after I left and the project...

alexb:

Katja wrote:

That would especially be true in 1999 since XML was quite unknown back then.

Don't you mean not quite as big a buzzword as JavaScript at the time? XML was relatively well known in 1999, and would actually be a decent solution to the problem they were discussing.

Katja:

alexb wrote:

Katja wrote: That would especially be true in 1999 since XML was quite unknown back then. Don't you mean not quite as big a buzzword as JavaScript at the time? XML was relatively well known in 1999, and would actually be a decent solution to the problem they were discussing.

huh?

:

I worked with a PM like this once... We were going to
re-write the legacy system (Basic) in a more robust language... This
guy didn't know anything and came to me to ask what language we should
use...

Well being out of school for 6 months I told him Java (its what I wanted to learn).

Well I learned Java and got the hell out of there but they canned the PM after I left and the project...

Am I reading this right?  It sort of sounds like "Well, I somehow
lucked into a job just 6 months out of school, and my manager was so
clueless he came to ME for advice on how to proceed.  I gave him
an answer that would let me study what I wanted to, on company time,
regardless of whether it was the best solution or not.  I learned
what I wanted to and got the hell out of there.  They canned the
guy who listened to me."



And then "the project..." really leaves me wondering!

This is all well explain in Paul Graham essays Great Hackers...

He says :
"The problem is, if you're not a hacker, you can't tell who the good hackers are. A similar problem explains why American cars are so ugly. I call it the design paradox. You might think that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? By definition you can't tell from his portfolio. And you can't go by the awards he's won or the jobs he's had, because in design, as in most fields, those tend to be driven by fashion and schmoozing, with actual ability a distant third. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. American cars are ugly because American car companies are run by people with bad taste."

Well, i doesn't agree with him all the time, but he got some good examples!

Paul Graham:

A similar problem explains why American cars are so ugly. I call it the design paradox.

I call it "Beatuy is in the Eye of the Beholder." If a designer can produce designs within budget and they sell well, then he's a good designer. I believe the technical term for a designer who sticks with his work regardless of what everyone else says is "jobless."

A
while ago (2003?) there was some publicity about some website
defacement competition among hackers on some day or weekend. I
specifically did not tell my higher-ups because they would freak out
about something we couldn't do anything more about.



Some I work with however saw it on slashdot.org and felt the need
to pass the warning on up. The pointy-haired-boss comes over and starts
ranting about how we need to prepare for this and he wants all the
firewall ports closed except what needs to be open.



Of course we already had setup the firewall. I knew better than to
explain it so I said "okay, we'll take care of that today". The guy who
told him about the hacking contest didn't get it and felt the need to
explain that it was already done. Of course the whole thing was a waste
of time

So
to your boss, you look incompentent.  You had information that you
knew would cause concern, so instead of sending an email with
information about the threat and how the network is already secured
against such threats; you ignore it until someone else tells
them.  Option 1 makes you look proactive, Option 2 makes you look
clueless.  Then, once the manager knows about it and asks you
about it, you say you'll take care of it, implying that currently, you
are wide open for attack.  You're right, it was a waste of
time.  Imagine the time savings if you had spent 10 minutes
sending an email letting upper management know all was safe and secure.

zinglons_ale:

JavaScript? Come on!

Now if he had answered "Have you tried XML?" to every question, he'd be seen as a visionary and be making millions!

You'll be happy to know that the eventual solution involved xml as well
as a crude web-service, not to mention a whole lot of good old
fashioned Delphi, SQL, JDE and DB2 work.  We actually had some
really great folks on the AS/400 team at the time. 

:

I worked with a PM like this once... We were going to
re-write the legacy system (Basic) in a more robust language... This
guy didn't know anything and came to me to ask what language we should
use...

Well being out of school for 6 months I told him Java (its what I wanted to learn).

Well I learned Java and got the hell out of there but they canned the PM after I left and the project...

[:|] This seems less a "stupid manager" story than a "stupid developer" story....

The biggest WTF is that for about 2.5 seconds I thought "wow, and I thought MAPI was just an email protocol!"

WTF indeed. MAPI is not email protocol but an API

This is similar to my friend's experience when dealing with a famous
hardware MNC locally here. My friend back then during the dot-Com era
was proposing to their so called technical manager (who surely
must have had years of experience, especially with a technology
company) the use of Coldfusion as the platform to power the customer
membership club application they wanted.



His counter proposal was, "why can't you simply develop this application in HTML?"



My friend had an extremely difficult time keeping in his laughter.

Oh i forget to add: most probably that manager wannabe had been making perfect use of the Web Economy Bullshit Generator.

I can't stand people that refer to a computer as a hard drive or to a hard drive as memory!!!!!



Just thought I'd vent.

Good: Thinking outside the box.



Bad: Thinking outside the brain.

Katja,

Has anyone told you that (based upon your forum picture) you look a lot like Renee Zelweiger?!?

Now that is funny - I have got to use that... "thinking outside the brain"

Goudinov:

Katja wrote:

alexb wrote:  Katja wrote: That would especially be true in 1999 since XML was quite unknown back then. Don't you mean not quite as big a buzzword as JavaScript at the time? XML was relatively well known in 1999, and would actually be a decent solution to the problem they were discussing.

huh?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

WTF??? I quote a message, type lots of text and again it posts everything except the text I added... This really sucks!



Never thought this WTF site would have a WTF editor. [:@]

Katja:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
WTF??? I quote a message, type lots of text and again it posts everything except the text I added... This really sucks!

Never thought this WTF site would have a WTF editor.

This only seems to be the problem with later versions of Firefox (and probably other Gecko-based browsers). It's not a wtf per se.

And guess which version of FireFox I'm using at the moment? Right... [:S]



This site is quite pro-Microsoft, btw. Look at the URL. It's written in
ASP.NET so no wonder FireFox isn't supported this well. Okay, it has a
nice look but I use FireFox to avoid the many IE vulnerabilities.
Websites should not just focus on a single webbrowser, else thhey're a
WTF in my opinion...

:

Katja,

Has anyone told you that (based upon your forum picture) you look a lot like Renee Zelweiger?!?

Renee Zelweiger? Have you ever seen her? She's FAT! Are you calling me fat? Now? Speak up! Am I fat?!!! [:@][8o|]

Katja:

This site is quite pro-Microsoft, btw. Look at the URL. It's written in ASP.NET so no wonder FireFox isn't supported this well. Okay, it has a nice look but I use FireFox to avoid the many IE vulnerabilities. Websites should not just focus on a single webbrowser, else thhey're a WTF in my opinion...

The site is not pro- or anti- anything. I (the Editor) am pro-Microsoft, anti-Oracle (could you tell [;)]?), pro-{...}, and anti-{...}. But I do my best (well, except in the case of Oracle and PHP) to not cloud the posts with my "religious" opinions.

The forums software is in (aparantly) Beta1. And it shows. This is really my lack of foresight -- and trust me, I regret it [:-(]. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to try to dig into this overly-complex software and fix it. I do little things here and there, and serious business, those little things take forever to fix because of the 50 layers of abstraction.

However, I would consider switching (again) to different software. ASP.NET/ASP only, and I don't mind paying for it. But, it needs RSS and email subscriptions.

And one last thing -- this is most appropriate for the General Discussion forum ...

Katja:

And guess which version of FireFox I'm using at the moment? Right...

This site is quite pro-Microsoft, btw. Look at the URL. It's written in ASP.NET so no wonder FireFox isn't supported this well. Okay, it has a nice look but I use FireFox to avoid the many IE vulnerabilities. Websites should not just focus on a single webbrowser, else thhey're a WTF in my opinion...

Umm... implementation of the client-side editor (or the look of the website for that matter) has nothing to do with which server technology is being used to run the website.

I know from personal experience that getting the editor to execute correctly on Firefox and IE at the same time can be quite a chore, and more often than not, little bugs like these creep in. As of right now, short of using a Java applet or something like that, there's no standardized way to present editable areas, so all implementations of editors are pretty much hacked together to work as flexible as possible. It's kinda like DHTML was a few years ago, before DOM was standardized.

Alex Papadimoulis:

Katja wrote:

This site is quite pro-Microsoft, btw. Look at the URL. It's written in ASP.NET so no wonder FireFox isn't supported this well. Okay, it has a nice look but I use FireFox to avoid the many IE vulnerabilities. Websites should not just focus on a single webbrowser, else thhey're a WTF in my opinion...

The site is not pro- or anti- anything. I (the Editor) am pro-Microsoft, anti-Oracle (could you tell ?), pro-{...}, and anti-{...}. But I do my best (well, except in the case of Oracle and PHP) to not cloud the posts with my "religious" opinions.

The forums software is in (aparantly) Beta1. And it shows. This is really my lack of foresight -- and trust me, I regret it [:-(]. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to try to dig into this overly-complex software and fix it. I do little things here and there, and serious business, those little things take forever to fix because of the 50 layers of abstraction.

However, I would consider switching (again) to different software. ASP.NET/ASP only, and I don't mind paying for it. But, it needs RSS and email subscriptions.

And one last thing -- this is most appropriate for the General Discussion forum ...

Well, I found a solution to the Quoting problem... I just use IE now when I need to quote things, while reading the site with FireFox. Glad I didn't throw IE away.

You might want to check out http://forum.snitz.com/ for the Snitz forum software, but it doesn't have a nice editor like this one has. It's ASP based (not ASP.NET based) and supports Access and SQL Server. And other databases too. It seems to be pretty stable too and allows you to include URL's too. See their forum at http://forum.snitz.com/forum/ to see what it looks like. No RSS though... But you might be able to write the code to support RSS for Snitz yourself...

And yes, I noticed that this forum still has a lot of work that needs to be done. I do know that the server is able to detect if the user is using IE or some other webbrowser so it should be able to serve proper client-side scripts for the right browser.

And you're right. This should be in the General Discussion forum... This discussion just started here... [:$]

I nearly choked on my lunch reading that!!!  "have they tried I am don't know"... sad but true, these brainiacs are everywhere! [:|]

 

Lol same thing happened to me. A clueless manager saw some other developer move an SQL statement from code into a stored procedure to double the performance. This was in report development and from then on any time I wrote any report that took more than a few seconds to run he would say 'Have you tried using stored procedures?'. AAAARRGHH!!

Anonymous:

Katja,

Has anyone told you that (based upon your forum picture) you look a lot like Renee Zelweiger?!?

 

She's much hotter the Renee Zelweiger(based upon her forum picture) .