• BlackBart (unregistered)

    From the frist control to the 754th: "Access - let the bonne temps rouler"

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Even 754 rainbow-bright unicorns couldn't make this job any better.

  • (cs)

    Limitations are meaningless say zen philsopher.

  • (cs)

    Well, if ain't broken... Oh, whait!

  • (cs)

    Management is messing around with worker heads. This is sucker position for computer programmer.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Limitations are meaningless say zen philsopher.
    47 separate limitations in MS Access, says Microsoft's official documentation. I guess the MS Access team aren't Mahāyāna Buddhists.
  • (cs)
    A new job is like a child. At first, it appears completely harmless and full of wonder. It's only after you've invested grinding years of your life into it, surrendering sleep and any sense of fun, that you discover that it's a complete disappointment and will never amount to anything, never respect you, and it certainly isn't going to take care of you during your twilight years.

    Ugh. This took me about 2 years at my current job to figure out. </facepalm>

  • martin (unregistered)

    What a poor introduction

  • Chuck (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Even 754 rainbow-bright unicorns couldn't make this job any better.
    I only got to about 250 rainbow-bright unicorns before Firefox crashed, but you're probably right.
  • No brain access (unregistered)

    Once, on my first CO-OP term about 8 years ago the company I was working with had no technical staff, saving the occasional CO-OP and everyone used the networked shared access databases (plural) for everything... the worst part? they had a copy of MS SQL installed and someone had helpfully put many of the tables there and we were using pass through queries to it through access...

    Access was standing in for crystal reports and simple form based applications. I suggested that we change over, but I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to fix things in the 3 months I had... They ignored my advice and got a consultant to create another(!) access database for them while I was there.

    Years later after completing my Computer System Technology diploma I was back in school taking my Software engineering degree. First CO-OP there, and again access was being used poorly, this time by a tech company.

    They were using it to map a sharepoint page to an access table... which was then queried by a .net application. Not exactly the fastest process on earth. Again, lowly CO-OP (who was in charge of maintaining it) suggests replacement only to get shot down... managed to slowly start phasing out the access database each time I touched anything in that system anyway and thus avoided entirely crushing my eager young engineer's soul.

    Had to leave some soul crushing for my post school career after all.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to martin
    martin:
    What a poor introduction
    If by "poor" you mean "depressingly accurate" then yes, yes it was. Thanks for the reality check Remy, now I resent my job and my kids.
  • (cs) in reply to No brain access
    No brain access:
    Once, on my first CO-OP term about 8 years ago the company I was working with had no technical staff, saving the occasional CO-OP and everyone used the networked shared access databases (plural) for everything... the worst part? they had a copy of MS SQL installed and someone had helpfully put many of the tables there and we were using pass through queries to it through access...

    Access was standing in for crystal reports and simple form based applications. I suggested that we change over, but I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to fix things in the 3 months I had... They ignored my advice and got a consultant to create another(!) access database for them while I was there.

    Years later after completing my Computer System Technology diploma I was back in school taking my Software engineering degree. First CO-OP there, and again access was being used poorly, this time by a tech company.

    They were using it to map a sharepoint page to an access table... which was then queried by a .net application. Not exactly the fastest process on earth. Again, lowly CO-OP (who was in charge of maintaining it) suggests replacement only to get shot down... managed to slowly start phasing out the access database each time I touched anything in that system anyway and thus avoided entirely crushing my eager young engineer's soul.

    Had to leave some soul crushing for my post school career after all.

    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".

  • Bill's Kid (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Management is messing around with worker heads. This is sucker position for computer programmer.

    This is a normal position for a programmer.

  • Macro King (unregistered)

    my guess:

    Some idiot had been reading about the IEEE 754 standard floating-point format and 754 coincidentally happened to match their house number.

    With the words 'surely that'll be enough controls for anyone!' they typed in the immortal line of code.

    MAX_CONTROLS = 754

    Later that day they got hit by a bus and since then everyone has been too scared to change it.

    Does this make me a cynic?

  • (cs) in reply to Bill's Kid
    Bill's Kid:
    Nagesh:
    Management is messing around with worker heads. This is sucker position for computer programmer.

    This is a normal position for a programmer.

    Best work for CMM Level 5 company, then.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to dohpaz42
    dohpaz42:
    No brain access:
    Once, on my first CO-OP term about 8 years ago the company I was working with had no technical staff, saving the occasional CO-OP and everyone used the networked shared access databases (plural) for everything... the worst part? they had a copy of MS SQL installed and someone had helpfully put many of the tables there and we were using pass through queries to it through access...

    Access was standing in for crystal reports and simple form based applications. I suggested that we change over, but I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to fix things in the 3 months I had... They ignored my advice and got a consultant to create another(!) access database for them while I was there.

    Years later after completing my Computer System Technology diploma I was back in school taking my Software engineering degree. First CO-OP there, and again access was being used poorly, this time by a tech company.

    They were using it to map a sharepoint page to an access table... which was then queried by a .net application. Not exactly the fastest process on earth. Again, lowly CO-OP (who was in charge of maintaining it) suggests replacement only to get shot down... managed to slowly start phasing out the access database each time I touched anything in that system anyway and thus avoided entirely crushing my eager young engineer's soul.

    Had to leave some soul crushing for my post school career after all.

    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".

    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Macro King
    Macro King:
    my guess:

    Some idiot had been reading about the IEEE 754 standard floating-point format and 754 coincidentally happened to match their house number.

    With the words 'surely that'll be enough controls for anyone!' they typed in the immortal line of code.

    MAX_CONTROLS = 754

    Later that day they got hit by a bus and since then everyone has been too scared to change it.

    Does this make me a cynic?

    Or it was a deliberate effort to limit the platform and force people onto more expensive products. Does this make me a cynic?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    47 separate limitations in MS Access, says Microsoft's official documentation.

    They wanted to have more but 47 was, well.., the limit.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

  • Dan (unregistered)

    It's funny because 829 is a prime number.

  • Manta (unregistered) in reply to dohpaz42
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".

    That matches my observation - the management rules of second version: 1, The software is broken. Then it needs to be fixed and there is no need for second version. 2, The software works. Then there is no need for second version.

  • (cs) in reply to renewest
    renewest:
    ms:
    47 separate limitations in MS Access, says Microsoft's official documentation.

    They wanted to have more but 47 was the limit.

    First funny comment of today!

  • TRWTF (unregistered)

    Now the burning question is: did Freddy ever returned? Was he one of the fired developers, hanging around until a sucker ^H^H^H^H^H^H new guy stepped in?

    ... Hey, This is not spam!

  • Nick (unregistered)

    754 controls ought to be enough for anybody.

  • (cs) in reply to Chuck
    Chuck:
    Anonymous:
    Even 754 rainbow-bright unicorns couldn't make this job any better.
    I only got to about 250 rainbow-bright unicorns before Firefox crashed, but you're probably right.

    I got to 755 and then everything went all fire-and-brimstone and the intro to Slayer's "Hell Awaits" played on a continuous loop.

  • An Old Hacker (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    It's funny because 829 is a prime number.

    Which means he did NOT get it by doing straight multiplies, correct?

    Ever hear of conditional code?

  • An Old Hacker (unregistered) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    754 controls ought to be enough for anybody.

    The thread has been won!

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    We share the office with the sales and advertising folks, so if we're quick enough, we can run in and grab a cup of coffee before anybody notices.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to TRWTF
    TRWTF:
    Now the burning question is: did Freddy ever returned? Was he one of the fired developers, hanging around until a sucker ^H^H^H^H^H^H new guy stepped in?

    ... Hey, This is not spam!

    I thought the same thing. Sounds like Freddy ran for the hills. Smart man.

  • itsmo (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    It's funny because 829 is a prime number.

    Prime numbers are not funny (not peculiar and definitely not haha)

  • (cs)

    Access and VB: A marriage made in DLL hell.

  • (cs) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    754 controls ought to be enough for anybody.

    2nd Funny comment of the day!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

    I'm not getting into a pissing match with you but my company is CMMI Level 5 and AS9000 certified. It doesn't change the fact they're tight-fisted bastards.

    Are you seriously still working to CMM? That was superseded about 10 years ago.

  • Flaming Foobar (unregistered) in reply to Macro King
    Macro King:
    Some idiot had been reading about the IEEE 754 standard floating-point format and 754 coincidentally happened to match their house number.

    While you certainly could be right, I'd wager it's something along the lines of:

    legacy.h:

    #define MAXSEGSZ 65536

    frm.h:

    #define MAXNFRMCTL (MAXSEGSZ/sizeof(struct frm_ctl_t)) /* 754 - DON'T CHANGE!!!1 -Chris 10/12/1992 */
  • (cs)

    If it aint broke don't fix it. There are still millions (billions?) of lines of cobol code running mission-critical apps, that haven't changed in decades. Hows that for scary?

  • boog (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

    I'm not getting into a pissing match with you but my company is CMMI Level 5 and AS9000 certified. It doesn't change the fact they're tight-fisted bastards.

    Are you seriously still working to CMM? That was superseded about 10 years ago.

    Don't forget Nagesh is Indian, they only just got running water.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to dogbrags
    dogbrags:
    If it aint broke don't fix it. There are still millions (billions?) of lines of cobol code running mission-critical apps, that haven't changed in decades. Hows that for scary?
    But it was broke. "We're right in the middle of a production outage." Sounds broke to me.
  • Mike (unregistered)

    ...This makes me sad because solving these kinds of problems is pretty much my day job...

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

    I'm not getting into a pissing match with you but my company is CMMI Level 5 and AS9000 certified. It doesn't change the fact they're tight-fisted bastards.

    Are you seriously still working to CMM? That was superseded about 10 years ago.

    We have one old poster in our canteen that says "Beyond CMM 5". We are definitely CMM (i)

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    But it was broke. "We're right in the middle of a production outage." Sounds broke to me.
    But Chuck was able to get it going again. So it's fine. No need for any expensive fixing there.
  • (cs)

    I don't see the wtf in this one... unless competent programmers and real budgets are a wtf?

  • (cs) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Anonymous:
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

    I'm not getting into a pissing match with you but my company is CMMI Level 5 and AS9000 certified. It doesn't change the fact they're tight-fisted bastards.

    Are you seriously still working to CMM? That was superseded about 10 years ago.

    Don't forget Nagesh is Indian, they only just got running water.

    booger (fake), Are you even remotely serious? We have got running water in monsoon so much that our paddy fields are drowning. Stop making fun of my country, madarchod!!!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    Nagesh:
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".
    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Best work for CMM level 5 company then.

    I'm not getting into a pissing match with you but my company is CMMI Level 5 and AS9000 certified. It doesn't change the fact they're tight-fisted bastards.

    Are you seriously still working to CMM? That was superseded about 10 years ago.

    We have one old poster in our canteen that says "Beyond CMM 5". We are definitely CMM (i)

    Having a pretty poster on your wall does not make you CMMI compliant. You do realise that CMM and CMMI are separate models that require separate appraisals, don't you? Compliance with CMM does not automatically make you compliant with CMMI. You need to go through the whole appraisal process again and the process areas have been considerably expanded so it's far harder than gaining CMM compliance. It sounds like your company are working to a completely obsolete standard.

  • QJ (unregistered) in reply to dogbrags
    dogbrags:
    If it aint broke don't fix it. There are still millions (billions?) of lines of cobol code running mission-critical apps, that haven't changed in decades. Hows that for scary?

    A job I recently left had me maintaining FORTRAN that I wrote some 20 years before because I was the only one left in the company who knows FORTRAN. They never replaced it with new technology because it was such a well-designed and bug-free system. But now I've left they may have to.

  • SeySayux (unregistered) in reply to Flaming Foobar
    Flaming Foobar:
    Macro King:
    Some idiot had been reading about the IEEE 754 standard floating-point format and 754 coincidentally happened to match their house number.

    While you certainly could be right, I'd wager it's something along the lines of:

    legacy.h:

    #define MAXSEGSZ 65536

    frm.h:

    #define MAXNFRMCTL (MAXSEGSZ/sizeof(struct frm_ctl_t)) /* 754 - DON'T CHANGE!!!1 -Chris 10/12/1992 */
    I'm not such a Windows wizard, so correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't sizeof return a size_t, which has to be integral? 86.917771883289125 is certainly a strange value for a struct's size.
    • SeySayux
  • (cs)
    A new job is like a child. At first, it appears completely harmless and full of wonder. It's only after you've invested grinding years of your life into it, surrendering sleep and any sense of fun, that you discover that it's a complete disappointment and will never amount to anything, never respect you, and it certainly isn't going to take care of you during your twilight years.
    I couldn't go past this utter stupidity...

    You being a sociopathic moron doesn't imply that everyone is, boy.

  • Keith (unregistered) in reply to Dan

    The loops aren't necessarily the same size each iteration. If they were the math would be fairly straightforward.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to toshir0
    toshir0:
    A new job is like a child. At first, it appears completely harmless and full of wonder. It's only after you've invested grinding years of your life into it, surrendering sleep and any sense of fun, that you discover that it's a complete disappointment and will never amount to anything, never respect you, and it certainly isn't going to take care of you during your twilight years.
    I couldn't go past this utter stupidity...

    You being a sociopathic moron doesn't imply that everyone is, boy.

    Here, let me help you understand this better: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humor. You're welcome.

  • golddog (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    dohpaz42:
    No brain access:
    Once, on my first CO-OP term about 8 years ago the company I was working with had no technical staff, saving the occasional CO-OP and everyone used the networked shared access databases (plural) for everything... the worst part? they had a copy of MS SQL installed and someone had helpfully put many of the tables there and we were using pass through queries to it through access...

    Access was standing in for crystal reports and simple form based applications. I suggested that we change over, but I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to fix things in the 3 months I had... They ignored my advice and got a consultant to create another(!) access database for them while I was there.

    Years later after completing my Computer System Technology diploma I was back in school taking my Software engineering degree. First CO-OP there, and again access was being used poorly, this time by a tech company.

    They were using it to map a sharepoint page to an access table... which was then queried by a .net application. Not exactly the fastest process on earth. Again, lowly CO-OP (who was in charge of maintaining it) suggests replacement only to get shot down... managed to slowly start phasing out the access database each time I touched anything in that system anyway and thus avoided entirely crushing my eager young engineer's soul.

    Had to leave some soul crushing for my post school career after all.

    In the breakroom of my company, there is a quote on the "quote board" that says, "Broken gets fixed; shoddy lasts forever".

    You have a breakroom? What luxury! We don't even have a water cooler, much less a breakroom or kitchen. Aye, and we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean with our tongues.

    But you try and tell the young people today that...

    Luxury!

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    toshir0:
    A new job is like a child. At first, it appears completely harmless and full of wonder. It's only after you've invested grinding years of your life into it, surrendering sleep and any sense of fun, that you discover that it's a complete disappointment and will never amount to anything, never respect you, and it certainly isn't going to take care of you during your twilight years.
    I couldn't go past this utter stupidity...

    You being a sociopathic moron doesn't imply that everyone is, boy.

    Here, let me help you understand this better: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopathic. You're welcome.

    FTFY

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