Really, Really Custom Software was originally published August 29, 2007.


"Tim was a hardware engineer for a large technology company," wrote in Brent, "and was responsible for analyzing cable signals. He purchased a tool to analyze these signals from a different company, call them Initech."

"From the start, Tim noticed curious feature about Initech's tool and its corresponding hardware. For example, the documentation described how to connect probes to the hardware, but Initech had accidently reversed the labeling such that plus connected to minus and minus connected to plus. Oops.

"Even more odd, Initech's software tool expected the user to know what strangely-worded buttons did, and in what order they had to be pressed. Still, for the most part this tool got the job done.

"Then one day Tim encountered a problem. He realized that Initech's tool needed a pause feature, so he contacted Initech to request this feature be added. Suprisingly, they responded very quickly. The very next day he receieved a new version of the program, and this screenshot of the new "pause" feature should speak for itself:

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