• Richard (unregistered) in reply to Knux2
    Knux2:
    Next on TVStation67, SportsTeam29 is going against SportsTeam938 in Competition399!

    Too late: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

  • Crash Magnet (unregistered) in reply to Some Wonk
    Some Wonk:
    Mike:
    Why would you use a float for currency?

    Because no one is on the gold standard, anymore.

    Sure, blame it on Nixon. But he did open up China.

  • Cujo (unregistered)

    Wait a goddamned second here. Why bother with multiple databases and tables? Just throw it all in one big table and let the application code figure it out from the primary key?

    That trick always works, Bullwinkle.

  • Procedural (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    This needs to be a featured comment. Big time.

  • Leifbk (unregistered)

    The One True Lookup Table

    The article surely can't describe an open source project. I came up with a remotely similar concept in my blog the other day, and was suitably castigated.

  • Funky D (unregistered)

    Comment57

    Word1 Word2 Word3 Word4 Word5. Phrase1; Word6 Word7 Word8. Invective1!

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Knux2
    Knux2:
    We should probably re-organize real life to fit this idea. Next on TVStation67, SportsTeam29 is going against SportsTeam938 in Competition399! Stay tuned!

    (Doesn't matter that SportsTeam29 plays basketball and SportsTeam938 plays water polo...it's generic!)

    Woo! Go fighting 29s!

  • unaballer (unregistered) in reply to Skeptic
    Skeptic:
    Funny trick with the Starbucks reference there. And by "funny" I mean "gave me cancer of the eyes."
    I wouldn't mind some funny tricks with Starbuck. You know, the remake. It might be quite a challenge out-laying her.

    If it happened on a wooden table with the Irish girl, I wouldn't mind faxing some pictures to your FTP site. Unless of course it is an embedded system, in which case it doesn't have a file system. Then I'd have to recruit little Bobby Tables.

    captcha: secundum - it would take at least two!

  • glwtta (unregistered)

    So this guy couldn't be bothered to find out the specifics about his stock options (which are apparently somewhat important to him) during the interview process?

    Was this the conversation: "There will be stock options.", "Sign me up!" And he wants to critique how others do things?

    Why do I get the feeling that a lot of these stories are whitewashed quite extensively in favor of the submitter?

  • KMan (unregistered)

    It is very important for the candidate(as well) to understand how sort of company he is "actually" interview at. Well companies would go to the extent that they would ask candidate to write the code. But what if candidate ask company to see their existing software development standards? coding practices? their release management system? their actual working process?!

  • (cs) in reply to KMan

    As someone who has interviewed candidates, one of the biggest questions I always toss out is: "Do you have any questions for me?" If they don't have any good questions, I chuck 'em down a few pegs. Either they're not really interested, or they're not really qualified.

    //Conversely, I bring a list of questions to an interview.

  • (cs) in reply to somedude
    somedude:
    The only viable solution here is a complete genetic purge.

    I say we tell them the planet is doomed and send them off in a spaceship to colonize another planet.

  • dan the man (unregistered) in reply to Skeptic
    Skeptic:
    Funny trick with the Starbucks reference there. And by "funny" I mean "gave me cancer of the eyes."

    I don't normally mod funny posts up, but you make a good point, hilariously.

    Now, where's the Mod Up button..... d'Oh!

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    As someone who has interviewed candidates, one of the biggest questions I always toss out is: "Do you have any questions for me?" If they don't have any good questions, I chuck 'em down a few pegs. Either they're not really interested, or they're not really qualified.

    //Conversely, I bring a list of questions to an interview.

    so do I, but the good interviewers cover that during the course of the interview.

  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    As someone who has interviewed candidates, one of the biggest questions I always toss out is: "Do you have any questions for me?" If they don't have any good questions, I chuck 'em down a few pegs. Either they're not really interested, or they're not really qualified.

    //Conversely, I bring a list of questions to an interview.

    That doesn't always work because the biggest question a developer should ask a potential company is "Can I see a sample of your source code" so you can see if the code looks like the shit on this site, and no company will ever let you do that (but they'll ask to see samples of YOUR code).

  • Vic (unregistered)

    I worked in (unrevealed) industry where one of the most popular applications for that industry had a relational database in which one of the tables had the first 60 or so columns containing specific data followed by over 100 columns of (name, value) pairs (i.e., column n contained the name, and column n+1 the value). Null values weren't stored, so one row might have "PRICE" in the 80th column, and another would have it in the 90th column.

    I had to write an in-house application to access the data; the only nice thing was that with Perl, I could access a row and then assign all those variable columns at the end to a hash with one statement.

  • (cs) in reply to jdavidbakr
    jdavidbakr:
    somedude:
    The only viable solution here is a complete genetic purge.

    I say we tell them the planet is doomed and send them off in a spaceship to colonize another planet.

    But if we do that, we'll all end up dying from a virus from an unsanitary telephone!

  • Veldan (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Knux2:
    We should probably re-organize real life to fit this idea. Next on TVStation67, SportsTeam29 is going against SportsTeam938 in Competition399! Stay tuned!

    (Doesn't matter that SportsTeam29 plays basketball and SportsTeam938 plays water polo...it's generic!)

    Do you, male123, take this personType2, female456, to be your legalDescription2186.567.2.PP2 joinType37 spouseType3, for wealthState31 or for wealthState32, in wellBeingState29 and in wellBeingState30, for all the timeInterval13 of your lives, till lifeState96 do you part?

    I BooleanType.FileNotFound!

    you sir, just made my week :D

  • Drew Eckhardt (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    That doesn't always work because the biggest question a developer should ask a potential company is "Can I see a sample of your source code" so you can see if the code looks like the shit on this site, and no company will ever let you do that (but they'll ask to see samples of YOUR code).

    I've started getting build, code, and test walk throughs from potential employers and found them to be about as enlightening as asking interview candidates for code and to code solutions to simple problems. Most places you'd want to work will do it, although there's variation in how deep they want to go on their special sauce.

    "we believe in good test coverage" can turn into "but we don't have automation or unit tests"

    "we believe in thorough documentation" can turn into "Fred actually does it, but the rest of the team is going to be up a creek in a few years"

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    GLaDOS:
    frits:
    So this guy wanted to make a relational DB into a key-value store?

    And then give it a cutesy name like Cassandra or Voldemort?

    Or an accurate name like BigTable.

    What?? Not WoodenTable?

  • (cs) in reply to Steve-O
    Steve-O:
    Knux2:
    We should probably re-organize real life to fit this idea. Next on TVStation67, SportsTeam29 is going against SportsTeam938 in Competition399! Stay tuned!

    (Doesn't matter that SportsTeam29 plays basketball and SportsTeam938 plays water polo...it's generic!)

    I don't know... SportsTeam29 seems pretty specific. I'd prefer to see that MediaSignal67 is showing GatheringOfPeople29 v.s. GatheringOfPeople938 at Event191... Now, the New York Rangers can play Croquet against a Women's Right's Parade group at a rap concert.

    HA! Great post.

  • (cs) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    Anybody else notice the gay rainbows and my little pony theme going on when you click on portions of the page, or did my computer just turn gay?

    Either lay off the shit or abstain from posting after taking your medication.

  • Burpy (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    ClutchDude:
    What makes it ever crazier is that, some way and somehow, these projects are generating income. That's the only logical reason such abominations are allowed to exist, with their blackened, rotten applications sitting in racks of servers.

    Somehow....These projects make money and achieve the goals.

    It's because crap is quick to develop and then sell. When it gets big and unmaintainable, you can blame the support devs for sucking and avoid any sort of introspection that would avoid a repeat of this mess.

    I've seen quite a few crap softs in dev for two years while they would have taken six month to write properly.

  • Lee K-T (unregistered)

    Seems quite standard to me. I have worked on three different ERPs and they all had a bunch of "non standard fields" on each tables so that when you see NonStandardField5 its meaning depends on each customer.

  • Kempeth (unregistered) in reply to Lee K-T
    Lee K-T:
    Seems quite standard to me. I have worked on three different ERPs and they all had a bunch of "non standard fields" on each tables so that when you see NonStandardField5 its meaning depends on each customer.
    I think that's a bit different. You still have a good number of sane columns. Adding a few user defined fields to the table is a cheap way of providing some customization to the product. The problem only starts when you skip the design phase and convince yourself that it makes your product better...
  • Tim (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    amischiefr:
    Anybody else notice the gay rainbows and my little pony theme going on when you click on portions of the page, or did my computer just turn gay?

    I think it's just you.

    I saw the unicorn and rainbow images too. Could there be a problem with the ads on this site injecting js into the webpage? The images were of various sparkley unicorn and rainbow cartoons that appeard anywhere within the web-page, and kind of multiplied when you clicked on them. One of the images had graphicsarcade.com written on it.

    A page refresh cleared them and I havn't seen them so far since then.

  • doo is (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    amischiefr:
    Anybody else notice the gay rainbows and my little pony theme going on when you click on portions of the page, or did my computer just turn gay?

    I think it's just you.

    Shun the nonbeliever. Shuuunnn!

  • (cs) in reply to Tim
    Tim:
    Dave:
    amischiefr:
    Anybody else notice the gay rainbows and my little pony theme going on when you click on portions of the page, or did my computer just turn gay?

    I think it's just you.

    I saw the unicorn and rainbow images too. Could there be a problem with the ads on this site injecting js into the webpage? The images were of various sparkley unicorn and rainbow cartoons that appeard anywhere within the web-page, and kind of multiplied when you clicked on them. One of the images had graphicsarcade.com written on it.

    A page refresh cleared them and I havn't seen them so far since then.

    It's sad how you can't just accept your true self. Love who you want and don't pay attention to mockery. BUT STOP telling us this site has become The Daily Watch The Fairy

  • jerk_programmer (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    Happens all the time, Dunning-Kruger effect + dishonesty. I had quite similar experience myself recently - with a plainly stupid dude who thinks he's a total hotshot, super negotiator, and who knows what else, on basis of a single not yet concluded deal that he ever negotiated in his whole life.

  • Pedants R Us (unregistered) in reply to TrXtR
    TrXtR:
    The CEO was succesful because crap can get the job done just as well as code that looks perfect and beautifull. It's a WTF if you think the perfect design and perfect code is what will put the food on the table.

    Please sign any code you write so I can leave immediately when I see it.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to Pedants R Us
    Pedants R Us:
    Strictly speaking, that should be "We are pedants".
  • JM (unregistered)

    I've actually seen a package that looks exactly like this. It was called "Customer/1" and sold by Accenture (then Andersen's) and all the developers had data dictionaries printed out on 132 column fan-fold.

    "What's Column3 for again?""

  • bw (unregistered)

    TRWTF: Greg bought the promises of the startup.

  • (cs) in reply to JM
    JM:
    "What's Column3 for again?""

    Check in the table-and-column meta-database Table5 Column219.

  • Pedants R Us (unregistered) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    Pedants R Us:
    Strictly speaking, that should be "We are pedants".

    I'm just pedantic, not smart.

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Some Wonk
    Some Wonk:
    Mike:
    Why would you use a float for currency?
    Because no one is on the gold standard, anymore.
    Yes… it's a goldish standard these days.
  • CrazyRayMann (unregistered)

    This kind of things would be almost funny if it wasn't the ugly truth... The only single thing you must actually do is to run away or if you can't (and believe me sometimes you just can't) is to laugh alone like a mad man. Pretty sad...

    But it can be even sadder if you've got the silly idea to try to make things right... Actually, it could be the only thing you could possibly do if you are disignated as the "alpha guy in the pack" from the start. Tooo baaaad buuudyy!

    Happy coding, we love our job and long life to the king.

  • Dugeen (unregistered)

    Humans are primates, not canids, so the pack/arse-sniffing metaphor is inaccurate.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    As someone who has interviewed candidates, one of the biggest questions I always toss out is: "Do you have any questions for me?" If they don't have any good questions, I chuck 'em down a few pegs. Either they're not really interested, or they're not really qualified.

    //Conversely, I bring a list of questions to an interview.

    Absolutely agree. Pro-tip for interviewees; the wrong answer to that question is "no". It's shocking how many people don't seem to get that.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Dugeen
    Dugeen:
    Humans are primates, not canids, so the pack/arse-sniffing metaphor is inaccurate.

    Okay, how about this then:

    It was very chummy, and Greg wasn't part of the crowd yet; they'd need to fling poop at each other and decide who was the alpha in this pack.
  • Luis Espinal (unregistered)

    I actually worked at a place where some of the major organs of the system were written by my supervisor. According to him, his sycophants and inept management, it was a visionary SOA-like thing. The underlying database was a monstrosity (just as in this story), and the Java code was the uber-generic solution to SOA...

    ... with services that handled from simple things like querying a database in the same subnet to inane little things like string concatenation and date calculation, the whole abomination redundantly implemented with layers upon layers of marshallers and unmarshallers that converted unstructured data dumbs with xml tags into unstructured typeless hash maps.

    Oh, and it was important to keep the hash maps unstructured and untyped.

    And that was because domain models in general, and pojos in particular were bad. They had a bad experience doing domain modeling and concluded that this abominable, gelatinous mass of untyped unstructured xml-to-hashmap turds was a better engineering fit for their business model (that is, they f* sucked at domain modeling and basic soft. engineering principles, decided to go with his massive example of what-not-to-do and proudly claimed they were revolutionizing SOA.)

    And when people weren't able to maintain or work with that crap, management would declare them incompetent (literally and publicly) for not being able to work with their brilliant piece of stupidity... err... engineering.

    Oh man, that brought some horrible flash backs. Anyways, crap like the one described in the story (CEO/manager dropping a turd and declaring it a brilliant piece of engineering) is not that uncommon.

  • CrazyRayMann (unregistered)

    Sometimes I think to myself that WTF and the comumnity in general is the only link that keeps people away from insanity...

    Humor will save us all !!!

  • Jonhy Zalasar (unregistered) in reply to Skeptic

    It is called retinoblastoma.

  • HumanUnit85 (unregistered)

    ""It's very important to me that we have a generic, object oriented approach," the CEO explained"

    So, everyone in the company got the same wages and benefits?? Because that would be generic and object oriented.

    Sounds something like the failed analogy our director brings up when attempting to promote universal skill sets here - he calls it the "Swiss cheese approach" (don't ask me to explain it..). We like to counter with "so, full of holes, then?" or "so, we all get the same wage - like your wage, for example?".

    Ahh, management.. what fun.

  • (cs) in reply to TrXtR
    TrXtR:
    The CEO was succesful because crap can get the job done just as well as code that looks perfect and beautifull. It's a WTF if you think the perfect design and perfect code is what will put the food on the table.

    It's still a WTF, but I see no reason to hate him ;)

    capatcha: vulputate??

    I conducted a few interviews last week. I asked one individual what were important aspects of good code other than "It meets the requirements". After attempting to re-word "it meets the requirements" a few times, the candidate finally settled on the idea that as long as code meets the requirements, it's done. I'm still looking for the "global IT black list" so I can put this person on it.

  • Grumpy (unregistered) in reply to Vic
    Vic:
    I worked in (unrevealed) industry where one of the most popular applications for that industry had a relational database in which one of the tables had the first 60 or so columns containing specific data followed by over 100 columns of (name, value) pairs (i.e., column n contained the name, and column n+1 the value). Null values weren't stored, so one row might have "PRICE" in the 80th column, and another would have it in the 90th column.
    Lotus Notes implemented in a relational database? Novel approach.

    Captcha: iusto - there ain't no justice.

  • (cs) in reply to Knux2
    (Doesn't matter that SportsTeam29 plays basketball and SportsTeam938 plays water polo...

    Then Competition399 will be... Adjective42, to say the least.

  • viewer (unregistered) in reply to Kensey
    Kensey:
    I don't see what Greg's problem is. If you have a column defined as a signed float for currency, and you want to store a gender in it instead, you just write a wrapper for Company2's application that casts the data appropriately:

    Even values = MALE Odd values = FEMALE Non-integer values = GENDER_NOT_FOUND

    Of course the correct solution (as usual) is to define all columns as binary blobs and do all the parsing, constraints, etc. in the application code.

    Wrong, just store everything as strings! No worries about fixed or float or integers, and anything can be stored anywhere! You lack vision...

  • viewer (unregistered) in reply to Dugeen
    Dugeen:
    Humans are primates, not canids, so the pack/arse-sniffing metaphor is inaccurate.

    So stand still, and we'll throw shit at you.

  • egc52556 (unregistered)

    I'm wondering... if I had to work there and didn't have the choice of leaving (say, for example, I moved to the damn city for the job and had a family to support... which I've done) then how could I live with this?

    I suppose the first thing I'd do is treat it like a maze of twisty little passages, all the same (or all different): I'd make a map. First on paper, then eventually in code with a preprocessor to convert my real code into the CEO's gibberish.

    In a couple of months I would do all my coding in my "higher level" language.

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