Feature Articles

Happy New Year, everyone! To kick off the New Year (and celebrate the new, new, new name), I'm giving away a whole bunch of free stickers!

Although I've taken the rest of the year off, I wanted to share a few fun classics this week. "Tinfoil Hat Program" was originally published on 2005-05-24...

Although I've taken the rest of the year off, I wanted to share a few fun classics this week. "Fisher Price Technology Integration" was originally published on 2006-11-13...

Although I've taken the rest of the year off, I wanted to share a few fun classics this week. No Quack was originally published on 2006-12-01, and has become one of my all time favorites...

Although I've taken the rest of the year off, I wanted to share a few fun classics this week. The Abstract Candidate was originally published on 2006-08-24, and seems to fit so well with today's earlier article...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Instead of a normal tale of incompetence, failure, or disaster, here's a fun story that's kind of the opposite of that. "Print or Fish" was originally published on 2005-11-22, and never seems to grow old...

Although I've taken the rest of the year off, I wanted to share a few fun classics this week. The Great Google Banner Ad Conspiracy was originally published on 2006-12-09.

At the turn of the 21st century, Initrode Global's server infrastructure began showing cracks. Anyone that had been in the server room could immediately tell that its growth had been organic. Rackmounted servers sat next to recommissioned workstations, with cables barely secured by cable ties. Clearly there had been some effort to clean things up a bit, but whoever put forth that effort gave up halfway through.

Some years ago, Pete, a clever coder, developed an application that tracked commissions for futures trading. Pete had long since left the company, his role now filled by Andy M.

A few weeks ago, I shared the RemoveSpecialCharsExceptQuote AmpersandApostropheOpenBracket CloseBracketCommaHyphenFull StopCommaForwardSlash() method that Paul G. was forced to implement by his superior. Now this may come as a surprise, but there were a few more "oddities" at that organization. And shortly after leaving the longest-three-months-of-his-life contract, Paul was nice enough to share some more of them.

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve decided to rename the site once again. While the New Name (“Worse Than Failure”) seemed like a good fit at the time, and the New, New Name (“The Daily Worse Than Failure”) seemed like an even better fit, it turns out that there was one name that was still better: the New, New, New Name, or “The Daily WTF.”

Christian R. was in trouble. Despite his experience across hardware and software, desktops and server clusters, thumb drives and SANs, he hadn't found any freelance work in weeks. It was clear that he'd have to figure something out to pay the bills.

First and foremost, thank you all for taking the survey. Your answers and comments (which I’m still making my way through) have really given me a good insight and some ideas on where to go in the near future. Speaking of which, as a result of your feedback, I’ve implemented a few simple changes. Featured Comments

When Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to us mortals, the mortals struggled to understand it. The power users of fire knew to fear and respect it, enjoying its benefits and working to minimize the risk of disaster. The newbies probably had a harder time with it.

After graduating college, Trevor didn't have much trouble finding a job. He worked in a small branch of a large company with no more than 20 people, all of whom had creative job titles that they probably chose themselves. Web scripters weren't "web scripters" — they were Solution Engineers. Some people were Systems Engineers, but they did exactly the same thing as the Solution Engineers. Trevor chose to refer to himself with the less impressive title of "programmer."

After 18 long months, it was finally time to celebrate. David M. and his fellow dev team members received word that their latest build had passed QA testing and was ready for delivery.

R. Young got his first job as a developer right out of college. He was a Programmer Consultant I, which meant that he'd be sent to a client site to fix bugs in some old system. But on his first assignment, he got lucky: the client actually wanted him and the junior-level programmer to develop a small application.