• moz (unregistered)

    After all, what's the worst John's brand new script could do?

  • WTF (unregistered)

    Hard to read, uninteresting, WTF lacking story.

    Unsubscribe.

  • Rnd( (unregistered)

    Source for frist not found!

  • psuedonymous (unregistered)
    John asked Roman what he had changed. Nothing, he was told
    So, Roman's unchanged copy of the program pulled the config file and data from production (because he never changed to to look locally) and kept naffing up the production process by fighting for the same data?
  • Squiggle (unregistered)

    Hello you're through to 3rd line support. How can I help?

    Oh, the critical data import isn't working? Well that is to be expected, because $staffmember is currently on holiday.

    Please check back in a week.

    WONTFIX. click

  • np (unregistered)

    There is less risk in not changing anything. Management doesn't know that John's new script won't break things in a catastrophic way. Also some shops value a dev's work over IT.

    As long as John handed the ropes over to Roman to maintain for the upcoming weeks/months of trying to figure out why a trivial local change broke production, who cares? Roman may give up eventually and John's new script will get promoted. Or Roman decides he doesn't want to change anything and reverts his local changes and stops breaking production.

  • That admin guy (unregistered)

    So the policy is to not try and fix something that isn't broken, so why doesn't the story just end with:

    "And they put the old, working, .BAT file back into production and everyone lived happily ever after"

  • Kabi (unregistered) in reply to np
    np:
    Roman may give up eventually and John's new script will get promoted. Or Roman decides he doesn't want to change anything and reverts his local changes and stops breaking production.
    Or Roman remembers that John already has a (possibly) working script, takes that and sells it to management as his brilliant fix...
  • QJo (unregistered)

    TRWTF is:

    a) not immediately finding the problem that caused the job to fail.

    b) not immediately rolling back to the pre-Romanised version of the bat file, followed by Roman being required to share his proposed new (broken) version with John, who would then go over it with Roman to work out what it was that went wrong.

    c) allowing Roman to continue with his broken script after the second time it happened.

    After b) has happened, it would then be confirmed that it was something that Roman had done that broke it. (Note that it still has not been established that Roman's changes did in fact break it -- it could have been coincidental). It would also be an opportunity to call Roman out on his untruth that he never did nuffink.

  • faoileag (unregistered)

    Erm... 44 lines, 831 words and 4848 characters just to say: "In company X management prefers to find the root cause of a problem first, even if that means waiting longer, before applying a fix"?

    And it's not as if that would be a wtf.

    Actually, saying "I don't know what causes the problem, but here is a replacement script that does not exhibit the same problems, so it must be a fix", that's wtf.

  • S (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    Actually, saying "I don't know what causes the problem, but here is a replacement script that does not exhibit the same problems, so it must be a fix", that's wtf.

    Well, it certainly can be. But on the other hand, when production is already failing, it's a lot easier to justify that kind of thing... telling the boss "I don't know what caused the bug, but the relevant code no longer exists".

  • Craig (unregistered)

    TL;DR - Management being management

  • (cs) in reply to moz
    moz:
    After all, what's the worst John's brand new script could do?
    It might replace their forums with Discourse :( :( :(
  • Schol-R-LEA (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    moz:
    After all, what's the best John's brand new script could do?
    It might replace their forum-going with intercourse :) :) :)
    FTFY.

    CAPTCHA: ratis - this sort of cheap humor barely ratis as worth the trouble, but I did it anyway.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to WTF
    WTF:
    Hard to read...
    Agreed!
  • (cs)

    No picture. I didn't even start reading because there's no picture!

  • cyborg (unregistered) in reply to geocities
    geocities:
    No picture. I didn't even start reading because there's no picture!

    Given your name I presume it'd have to be a small animated gif of a rotating bone?

  • GWO (unregistered)

    TBW, DR.

    / Too Badly Written, Didn't Read

  • (cs) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    It would also be an opportunity to call Roman out on his untruth that he never did nuffink.
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says he didn't change anything.

    NEVER believe such a statement. For working-relationship purposes, it's usually a bad idea to directly challenge it, but you turn it around. "I didn't change anything." "OK, so what did you do?" This isn't guaranteed to get a useful answer, but starting from "What did you do?" instead of "What did you change?" is possibly more useful. "Show me what you did." might be even better.

  • Smug Unix User (unregistered)

    I'm sure a bash script would work much better.

  • Florent (unregistered) in reply to WTF
    WTF:
    Hard to read, uninteresting, WTF lacking story.

    Unsubscribe.

    After unsubscribing, remember to stop commenting.

    captcha: enim, an enumeration with roman numbers.

  • Ziplodocus (unregistered) in reply to Florent
    Florent:
    WTF:
    Hard to read, uninteresting, WTF lacking story.

    Unsubscribe.

    After unsubscribing, remember to stop commenting.

    Maybe they're commenting on a replacement version of the production program that creates the article on his own PC

  • (cs) in reply to cyborg
    cyborg:
    geocities:
    No picture. I didn't even start reading because there's no picture!

    Given your name I presume it'd have to be a small animated gif of a rotating bone?

    And flashing text in a really odd colour over a really bad pixelly background.

    Does anyone else wish Yahoo had kept Geocities around just for laughs?

  • Josh (unregistered) in reply to psuedonymous
    psuedonymous:
    John asked Roman what he had changed. Nothing, he was told
    So, Roman's unchanged copy of the program pulled the config file and data from production (because he never changed to to look locally) and kept naffing up the production process by fighting for the same data?

    TRWTF is that it was a move and not a copy

    CAPTCHA: distineo. The production file's distineo was Roman's local machine.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    QJo:
    It would also be an opportunity to call Roman out on his untruth that he never did nuffink.
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says he didn't change anything.

    NEVER believe such a statement. For working-relationship purposes, it's usually a bad idea to directly challenge it, but you turn it around. "I didn't change anything." "OK, so what did you do?" This isn't guaranteed to get a useful answer, but starting from "What did you do?" instead of "What did you change?" is possibly more useful. "Show me what you did." might be even better.

    "But I didn't do anything."

    "What, nothing at all? Absolutely nothing at all?"

    "That's right, I didn't do anything!"

    "So remind me again: why do we pay you?"

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to tin
    tin:
    cyborg:
    geocities:
    No picture. I didn't even start reading because there's no picture!

    Given your name I presume it'd have to be a small animated gif of a rotating bone?

    And flashing text in a really odd colour over a really bad pixelly background.

    Does anyone else wish Yahoo had kept Geocities around just for laughs?

    Well, they did keep it around for Japan. There's also always Neocities.

  • phuzz (unregistered)

    Did someone say they wanted Geocites back?

  • Bill (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    "That's right, I didn't do *anything*!"
    This ranks right up there in the collection of common lies along with LUsers describing their problems to the help desk:

    HD: Do you see any kind of error message?

    LU: Nothing.

    HD: What's on your screen now?

    LU: Nothing.

    HD: Your screen is completely dark?

    LU: Well not exactly.

    HD: What color is it then?

    LU: Mostly gray, except for some funny words at the top.

    HD: I see. And what do those words say?

    LU: (proceeds to relay the error message that didn't exist two seconds before...)

  • (cs)

    I did not get the punchline for this story.

  • Spanner number 3 (unregistered) in reply to phuzz

    Obligatary XKCD reference...

    http://www.torwuf.com/xkcd-geocities/

  • Chelloveck (unregistered)

    So, BAT file watches a magic directory for a file to appear, then ftps the file to another machine. Developer does something on his dev machine and the production system breaks. SysAdmin writes a replacement BAT file using Powershell. Management decides to keep BAT file in place until the root cause is found.

    Scenario 1: Developer changed the production code or the production config file. Proposed solution: Rewrite the BAT file in Powershell. This might work, but will require test time and is likely to introduce new problems. Actual (but not suggested) solution: Revert the changes. Duh.

    Scenario 2: Developer didn't change the production code or the production config file. That means his dev work is somehow preventing the file from being put into the magic directory, or manages to delete the file from the magic directory before the production code processes it. Proposed solution: Rewrite the BAT file in Powershell. This will not work, because the BAT file is not the problem. The file still won't be in the magic directory when the new Powershell script runs. Actual (but not suggested) solution: Fix Developer's dev environment so it doesn't touch production.

    So, can anyone come up with any scenario here in which rewriting the production code from scratch is actually the right thing to do? 'Cause I sure as heck can't think of any.

  • CigarDoug (unregistered)

    This is one of the few stories I have read on the Daily WTF where the villain is not clear after the first couple of paragraphs.

    It is certainly the first one where I STILL don't know who the bad guy is after finishing the article. So, what was the WTF, and was there a solution?

  • (cs)

    Looks to me like the well of understanding is bone dry; since it seems very unlikely that Roman will bone up on reality.

    I feel in my bones that this is now a permanently manual process. This tickles my funny bone, since it will be Roman (the cause of the problem) wearing his fingers to the bone.

  • CigarDoug (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    Looks to me like the well of understanding is bone dry; since it seems very unlikely that Roman will bone up on reality.

    I feel in my bones that this is now a permanently manual process. This tickles my funny bone, since it will be Roman (the cause of the problem) wearing his fingers to the bone.

    I think your understanding of the story is too marrowly defined.
  • Valhar2000 (unregistered)

    To be fair, PowerShell is quite a bit more powerful than CMD (even CMD is more powerful than most people realize). You can generally make a shorter and clearer script to do something in PS than you can in a BAT file.

    Given that, it may not be that bad an idea to replace the BAT.

  • (cs) in reply to CigarDoug
    CigarDoug:
    It is certainly the first one where I STILL don't know who the bad guy is after finishing the article. So, what was the WTF, and was there a solution?
    Turns out the president's daughter was deleting the source files off the server.
  • rekcuf rehtom uoy siht esrever (unregistered)

    So the WTF is not using source control to track changes to the batch files?

    Or is the WTF that the story is unreadable?

  • MoarCynical (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says [s]he didn't change[/s] anything.
    FTFY :-)
  • (cs)

    Does anyone else feel that this story was accidentally truncated, despite it being ten times as long as it should have been?

  • MoarCynical (unregistered) in reply to MoarCynical
    MoarCynical:
    Steve The Cynic:
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says [s]he didn't change[/s] anything.
    FTFY :-)
    Sorry, I forgot strike-through doesn't work here. Maybe it works better on Discourse? :-(
  • haero (unregistered) in reply to tin
    tin:
    cyborg:
    geocities:
    No picture. I didn't even start reading because there's no picture!

    Given your name I presume it'd have to be a small animated gif of a rotating bone?

    And flashing text in a really odd colour over a really bad pixelly background.

    Does anyone else wish Yahoo had kept Geocities around just for laughs?

    I thought that's why Yahoo kept themselves around?! LOL

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Spanner number 3
    Spanner number 3:
    http://www.torwuf.com/xkcd-geocities/
    My Eyes! The goggles do nothing!
  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to MoarCynical
    MoarCynical:
    Sorry, I forgot strike-through doesn't work here. Maybe it works better on Discourse? :-(
    It does.
  • (cs) in reply to MoarCynical
    MoarCynical:
    MoarCynical:
    Steve The Cynic:
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says he didn't change anything.
    FTFY :-)
    Sorry, I forgot strike-through doesn't work here. Maybe it works better on Discourse? :-(

    FTFY

  • (cs) in reply to MoarCynical

    EDIT: double post o_O

  • CEO of IBM (unregistered)

    WTF is the need to mention 'all over again' all over again right after saying 'déjà vu'?

    Use our cloud services and Watson to avoid embarrassing mistekes like these. Watson doesn't have much work these days anyway lol.

  • FormalWare (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the implication that it is EVER summer in Winnipeg. Winnipeg has 3 seasons: Winter, Mosquito, and Roadwork.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to psuedonymous
    psuedonymous:
    John asked Roman what he had changed. Nothing, he was told
    So, Roman's unchanged copy of the program pulled the config file and data from production (because he never changed to to look locally) and kept naffing up the production process by fighting for the same data?

    That is the way I read it as well.

    So, TRWTF is that Roman's development environment had modify access to critical production files.

    Also that they didn't just disable Roman's copy of the BAT (I'm assuming he had it scheduled) until Roman could grok it enough to fix it.

    It seems that John intentionally encouraged Roman to leave his broken instance running so there would continue to be a production issue to justify John working on a new script.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to MoarCynical
    MoarCynical:
    MoarCynical:
    Steve The Cynic:
    TRWTF is believing any colleague who says [s]he didn't change[/s] anything.
    FTFY :-)
    Sorry, I forgot strike-through doesn't work here. Maybe it works better on Discourse? if you do it correctly. :-(
    FTFY.
  • deleted (unregistered)

    Maybe the president's daughter got boned with a vibrating .bat

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