The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Legend

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2016-08-30

Old Peter’s company has a legend. It has been passed down through generations of programmers and staff through an oral tradition. Oh, from time to time, someone would be inspired to record the tale for posterity, but inevitably, the hard copy was recycled, the digital copy was lost.

It was 1982, and the German tech industry was booming. Old Peter’s company manufactured a line of 8-bit computers that were targeted towards businesses. Their targets were generally larger companies and government organizations- like Frequenzhof Busgesellschaft.

39 comments - Last comment @ 2016-09-06

It's Dark In Here

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2016-08-25

September 17, 20XX

48 comments - Last comment @ 2016-08-30

Your Code Might Be Unmaintainable…

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2016-08-23

Let’s talk about maintainability.

Those of you that know me know that in my civillian identity, I work as a SQA professional. QA gets a bum rap sometimes; manual functional testing can be one of the most boring parts of software engineering, but while there’s plenty of button-pushers who will be happy to poke at an application for minimum wage, there’s a lot more to quality than simply functionality. One of the commonly overlooked aspects is maintainability: the ease with which changes can be made to the software system.

55 comments - Last comment @ 2016-09-13

Injection By Design

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2016-08-18

As web developers, we spend a fair amount of time protecting our valuable server resources from the grasping tentacles of Internet ruffians and malfeasants. Occasionally, we're tasked with exposing data endpoints to the public Internet. This is generally a carefully crafted solution of whitelists, authentication, authorization, escaping input, limiting access and other protective measures.

30 comments - Last comment @ 2016-08-22

Technical Debt

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2016-08-16

If you get the rare luxury to start a new project from scratch, there's something deep down inside you that makes you want to do it right. You pick the right people, equipment and tools so that you have the best chance of success. Unfortunately, sometimes incorrect decisions are innocently made and a technical time bomb is placed in the code.

About 20 years ago at Big Money Inc., such a project was started and such a mistake was made. In this case, the mistake revolved around choosing a messaging platform that failed miserably when asked to pump more messages than was intended. The original developers knew not of this otherwise widely-known limitation.

54 comments - Last comment @ 2016-08-30

Aged Like Vinegar

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2016-08-10

It was Brian’s first day at AutoDetective, a website for comparing listed car prices vs. blue book values. His work inbox was overflowing with style guides, best practices, and notes from the dozen or so other developers he would be working with. His interviewer, Douglas, had mentioned that the site ran on a substantial chunk of legacy code, but Brian had experience with plenty of old code.

He spent most of the day digging through the source, getting a feel for the in-house development style. It didn’t take long before he noticed how … off the code was.

An old car mouldering in a rotting garage

54 comments - Last comment @ 2016-08-18

Best Practices

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2016-08-08

In this world, there are those with common sense, and there are managers. In the world of high finance, there are only those with power and those without it. Those who have power make decisions - regardless of their familiarity with the relevant subject matter, or their ability to prioritize things involved in the decision. Those who don't have power (aka: us) live with the aftermath.

A tape measure with some blood splattered on it. Or maybe rust.

James T. joined a major financial company. Because they have over $1B in revenue a year, he was under the impression that these folks knew what they were doing. They paid very lucrative salaries. They all seemed intelligent. They talked a good game about best practices and doing things right. They hit all the right buzzwords during the interview.

34 comments - Last comment @ 2018-01-09

Reader Appreciation Day

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2016-08-03

In lieu of a traditional WTF, I want to use today’s post to talk about the real WTF, or at least the source of all the WTFs we get to write about: our readers.

We’ve got great writers here, and every time I hit “publish” on one of their articles, I’m happy with what’s about to go out to the world. They do a great job building funny, entertaining narratives that highlight some of the unique challenges of working in IT. We get great support from our sponsors, who fund the site and keep it running.

23 comments - Last comment @ 2016-08-07

Super Lag

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2016-08-01

SuperFast Performance Monitoring Systems was an ordinary, average production monitoring company, promising to keep an eye on web traffic and alert customers if they needed to scale up their cloud hardware to match incoming demand. Their core product was simple, straightforward, and solid, doing what it claimed to do without incident ... but it wasn't sexy. Enter Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius Programmer, hereafter called Will for short.

45 comments - Last comment @ 2016-09-01

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