The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

A Horse With No Name

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-12-05

Scared Stanley stammered "I'm afraid of how to explain to the tax authority that I received $NaN."

9 comments - Last comment @ 00:58

Pawn Pawn in in Game Game of of Life Life

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-12-04

It feels like ages ago, when document databases like Mongo were all the rage. That isn't to say that they haven't stuck around and don't deliver value, but gone is the faddish "RDBMSes are dead, bro." The "advantage" they offer is that they turn data management problems into serialization problems.

And that's where today's anonymous submission takes us. Our submitter has a long list of bugs around managing lists of usernames. These bugs largely exist because the contract developer who wrote the code didn't write anything, and instead "vibe coded too close to the sun", according to our submitter.

5 comments - Last comment @ 2025-12-05

The Thanksgiving Shakedown

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2025-12-03

On Thanksgiving Day, Ellis had cuddled up with her sleeping cat on the couch to send holiday greetings to friends. There in her inbox, lurking between several well wishes, was an email from an unrecognized sender with the subject line, Final Account Statement. Upon opening it, she read the following:

12 comments - Last comment @ 2025-12-04

The Destination Dir

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-12-02

Darren is supporting a Delphi application in the current decade. Which is certainly a situation to be in. He writes:

I keep trying to get out of doing maintenance on legacy Delphi applications, but they keep pulling me back in.

19 comments - Last comment @ 2025-12-05

Formula Length

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-12-01

Remy's Law of Requirements Gathering states "No matter what the requirements document says, what your users really wanted was Excel." This has a corrolary: "Any sufficiently advanced Excel file is indistingushable from software."

Given enough time, any Excel file whipped up by any user can transition from "useful" to "mission critical software" before anyone notices. That's why Nemecsek was tasked with taking a pile of Excel spreadsheets and converting them into "real" software, which could be maintained and supported by software engineers.

12 comments - Last comment @ 2025-12-02

On the Dark Side

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-11-28

...matter of fact, it's all dark.

Gitter Hubber checks in on the holidays: "This is the spirit of the Black Friday on GitHub. That's because I'm using dark mode. Otherwise, it would have a different name… You know what? Let's just call it Error Friday!"

8 comments - Last comment @ 2025-11-28

Classic WTF: Teleported Release

by Bobby T. Johnson in Feature Articles on 2025-11-27

It's a holiday in the US today, one where we give thanks. And today, we give thanks to not have this boss. Original. --Remy

Matt works at an accounting firm, as a data engineer. He makes reports for people who don’t read said reports. Accounting firms specialize in different areas of accountancy, and Matt’s firm is a general firm with mid-size clients.

The CEO of the firm is a legacy from the last century. The most advanced technology on his desk is a business calculator and a pencil sharpener. He still doesn’t use a cellphone. But he does have a son, who is “tech savvy”, which gives the CEO a horrible idea of how things work.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2025-12-03

We Want Your Holiday Horrors

by Remy Porter in Announcements on 2025-11-26

As we enter into the latter portion of the year, folks are traveling to visit family, logging off of work in hopes that everything can look after itself for a month, and somewhere, someone, is going to make the choice "yes, I can push to prod on Christmas Eve, and it'll totally work out for me!"

Over the next few weeks, I'm hoping to get a chance to get some holiday support horrors up on the site, in keeping with the season. Whether it's the absurd challenges of providing family tech support, the last minute pushes to production, the five alarm fires caused by a pointy-haired-bosses's incompetence, we want your tales of holiday IT woe.

10 comments - Last comment @ 2025-11-27