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Admin
That sounds exactly like one of my former companies except that instead of paying the vendor to make major feature changes, we did it ourselves.
Yes, we did work for the vendor for free that they can then roll into their product. The catch was that our work was pretty highly specialized so at best, they would have to generalize some of it.
Admin
No, as previously stated I am English, I just can't spell.
Admin
I sthis jeff, my coworker? :-)
Admin
The software that I currently work on was an identical setup - PHP, no VCS, all changes made on production. Fortunately, the guy behind that setup left soon after I came into the picture, and all of that changed... but there were some pretty nice disasters.
Admin
Nobody expects a completely incorrect Monty Python reference, either.
Admin
Love it. Reminds me when, working on a project, the Project Manager tells me that he just promised the client that it would be delivered that evening. No time to test, except on my work machine where the current version was, ah, slow to execute, which I pointed out but that didn't seem to bother Project Manager.
When the msi went to SA for deploy, Project Manager told me that I looked really tired and could go home. I was and did. On getting home, the phone rang, CTO telling me that all the servers had gone down, klang klang emergency, and would I come back to work right away.
Project Manager still works there, I don't. Guess it pays to be drinking buddies with one of the C-team members.
Admin
FTA: "The business didn't have to run its usual expensive testing cycle."
Yes, because when things look ok in UA/QA/PreProd you still need to test them thoroughly because there might be hidden, subtle bugs, but when everything looks ok in Production, then it must be OK!
Admin
All you college boys think you know how software is developed. The WTF was his boss was trying to be a red tape task master by forcing him to spend a week testing a his change. My guess is he was afraid of the guy getting too good of a reputation as a fast and good coder so he blamed the production outage on him, and then posted the incident on the daily wtf for good measure. What ever happened to teamwork?
Admin
Same here.
I've been at my job for almost two years. (PHP sites)
Zero source control. You test by making backup copies of the relevant files and then copy over the live files when you're done.
The thing is, as awful as the system is, it works remarkably well - with only 4 developers, there's little chance of stepping on toes, and what problems arise are usually minor. Code changes can go live within a couple hours or even minutes, but the tradeoff is code that's harder to maintain.
I'm still pushing for true source control and a development environment. I think a dev server is right around the corner, and getting chunks of code moved into SVN is probably going to be one of my top priorities. But when problems are sparse and it's hard to blame problems on a bad dev environment, it's hard to instill a sense of urgency to switch to a real dev environment.
Admin
It's a sad reality that probably dozens of thousands of PHP asshats do this as a daily routine.
Admin
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Admin
This was the ship's captain's decision.
Admin
what is this 'deploy' and 'qa' that you speak of ?
i must surely be better to program straight into the production code like a real man.
Admin
Do not joke, that is how I am forced to work pretty much atm :'(
Admin
I guess this means you have to write all documentation as if it were to be read by Amelia Bedelia.
Admin
That's what our company does. Every single fucking day.
We also code directly on production.
And there's absolutely noone uses source control (though I've been pushing for months, demonstrated SVN ("oh, that's useful!"), even got the admin to install a server).
The management thinks this is cool (low turnaround time!) and it's the perfect source material for WTFs (oops, my trigger accidentally dropped the whole table, help me fix that before the client notices!)
Bah, the pay's good at least.
Admin
Anyone doing exercises with weapons armed with live ordnance when the exercise does not actually intend for the weapon to be fired needs to be dismissed (or whatever they call it in the military) for criminal negligence.
Admin
Well there seems to be Matt.C and Matt C. So they are not the same
Admin
I call this operation of an open heart (at least as far as databases are concerned)
Admin
Admin
I'm Matt C!
Admin
Ah, but it still needs to weigh as much as a normal bomb.
Not many people like having a ton of concrete dropped on their heads/houses/cars from an altitude of a few miles...
In fact, there was talk a few years ago of using concrete bombs as real ordnance. With todays guidance technology, they can be dropped neatly onto the target without causing significant collateral damage (apart from flying bits of debris from the squished tank/building/bridge/terrorist/whatever)
Yes, using a nuke, or even a live HE bomb in test runs would be dumb, but using a dummy bomb still doesn't mean you should drop it over Chicago...
Admin
That would be nice but they had to be prepared for bad weather over the target, which meant bombing by radar, which made New Mexico a poor target.
Admin
The real WTF is, of course, that there's no segregation of duties. It's f*ck-ups like this that make it a best practice.
Admin
I don't think it has been posted yet Jake. But don't worry, I'll post it now:
http://www.xkcd.com/378/
Admin
I'm sorry, but you have absolutely no clue whatsoever.
The Air Force Strategic Air Command NEVER, and I repeat NEVER, used live nukes for practice runs over populated areas. Never. That's what proving grounds and test areas are for; you know, test areas like New Mexico and atolls at sea?
And I do know what I'm talking about; I served in SAC for 6 years during the 70's and 80's, working in both an Organizational Maintenance Squadron and a Field Maintenance Squadron, on the flightline with B-52 bomber and KC-135 tanker aircraft. I even spend time in the nuclear alert area with the bomber pilots and crews.
Nice try, but no go. Better luck with your fiction in the future.
Admin
TRWTF is that they are using concrete bombs. How can you estimate the amount of damage the bomb will cause without actually using it. Calculations are nothing. As one can see with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Everybody was quite surprised about the efficiency. Without real testing (developers, think about it) you always guess, but never know. Look at the famous Tesla experiment. He must have said a very loud ooooooops when he learned about the effect of his Dead Ray.
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-06/st_tunguska http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_2.htm http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_tesla1.htm http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_ciencia_tunguska.htm
So, he did it right (though he only wanted to send a greeting to Peary approaching North Pole by creating north lights). Theory is good, practice and test is better.
Admin
If you are a developer, do you develop cancer, now?
Admin
Isn't that how everyone codes? If it compiles, it's production ready!!
Admin
This particular process sounds, alas, eminently repeatable.
Admin
Thats not funny when you have been doing it a couple of months...
Admin
No, wait, this is a PHP shop, right?
Scratch that thing about reading.
Admin
I've just looked at that deployment "script" again, and I think most of us are missing the point. (I certainly was.)
That has to be the worst deployment script I've ever seen. It seems to boil down to "Squash my jars with new ones."
It also lacks steps that a QA might consider pertinent, such as, ooh, I dunno, actual testing.
It also lacks roll-back instructions.
Even heavily anonymised (although why one would choose to anonymise abstract instructions is beyond me), this is still steaming crap, isn't it?
Admin
That's swell, but in your position you would not have been privy to what was done in the mid 60's at B-58 bases. The weapons on the B-52's are carried internally, so it's possible for the nukes to be made live in flight by insertion of the inner capsule. And you're right, that is never done on a practice run while over the target, it's usually done on the run-in at low level so they can verify that the guy can do the insertion during maximum jinking and turbulence.
But in the 60's, many of the planes then in use F-86's, F-4's, F-105's, and B-58's were either single-seaters or had the nukes mounted externally or both, making in-flight insertions impossible. And the planes were always in the air, or parked at the end of the runway or on 15-minute alert, so there was no time for insertion, so the nukes were kept strapped on and configured and everything but PAL'd.
I agree that was kinda insane, but that's the way things were.
Admin
Now there's a great post. I can understand not knowing that "thou" isn't spelled "though" because of the perils of English spelling versus pronunciation, but not when it's right in front of your eyes. <g>
Admin
Hmm, let me see. In order to be able to do what he has done he would need:
I have never been in a situation where this was all done in one morning before, say, 9 o'clock (Several hours later, the production server went down. And Dave was still there).
There are 2 possibilities:
Now, that is what I call a WTF.
Addendum (2008-06-20 11:25): 23. (Find out about the company and it's culture) This one in brackets. Not really needed. Just, on my first days I arrive around 9 in the morning. Then comes the greeting. Then the showing around (toilets, coffee machine...). Introduction to people. Then you are sat on a desk (physically, because nobody can find a chair). Most often you do not even have a comp yet ("They set it up for tomorrow, or so). You're introduced on what you will do the next few days and the next few weeks. There's only 24 hours in a day, even if it's the first one.
Admin
Do not argue with KenW.
KenW will twist your faulty logic and historical examples into pretzels.
You think that's Bad?
Wait until he calls upon his friend Chuck Norris.
Admin
And then peek you in the nose.
Admin
Clearly the documentation was at fault. It should have read like this:
To deploy server onto QA
Admin
I like "peek," though.
Admin
You continue to spew nonsense. You don't have to have any particular type of weather to practice bombing by radar. You simply practice bombing by radar. Actual conditions have no bearing on anything.
I really wish people who know nothing about a topic would refrain from posting about it.
Admin
No.
If you're Claude, and you Suck, is it just in Germany, or is it everywhere?
Admin
Great. The alert aircraft were kept locked and loaded. But they didn't fly the damned things over populated areas for practice runs using live ordnance, in the 50s, 60s, or any other time in any aircraft.
Quit trying to make excuses for posting nonsense.
Admin
Ahem, one question. Does the New Mexico desert, on radar, look anything like Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Moscow, Gorky, et. al?
Admin
Yeah, but on the other hand, watching them be humilated by your good self is a great spectator sport ;-)
Admin
I wouldn't want to think about poking in somebodies nose, especially before lunch. I prefer the image of somebody peeking into your nose (or vice versa). Aaah, good ol' BASIC! You could even peek into the memory (brain). Or poke. Then peek.