• Kissy Kissy With The Pissy Pissy (unregistered) in reply to Cyrus
    Cyrus:
    Beaker:
    Bull. I've worked in small companies (less than 20 employees TOTAL, a fraction of which are developers) and they've all had source control, local development boxes, and QA environments.
    Mine doesn't (though I'm working towards it).

    Neither does mine, and we're a 1000+ employee org.

    I think Beaker is either incredibly lucky with the places he's worked, or he's only ever worked in small companies with source control, local dev boxes & QA envs. in cloud f*ckin' cuckoo land!

  • Sid (unregistered)

    Herb is terrible. The Company he works for is terrible. This article is terrible. This website is terrible.

  • Terrible (unregistered) in reply to Sid
    Sid:
    Herb is terrible. The Company he works for is terrible. This article is terrible. This website is terrible.
    No, I'm Terrible!
  • Ron Piler (unregistered)

    Lots of pedantry and semantic hand-waving around the word "change". Why? Quite clearly, the software was not the same as it was before Herb undertook whatever he wants to call it, ergo it had changed. If this story was real, of course. Which it probably isn't. The only way it's real is, Herb knew damn fine what he'd done and didn't want to look stupid (d'oh) in the vain hope he'd be able to put it back as was

  • Olius (unregistered)

    "...to help build reports off of the accounting data..."

    Can I introduce you to a friend of mine called, "From"? He helps build things.

    He could help you build your reports from the accounting data, leaving you to build a Lego castle off of Lego.

    Cheers.

  • (cs) in reply to Hank Yarbo
    Hank Yarbo:
    nonny nonny:
    No, that's Fight Club.

    How do you know about Fight Club?!

    He doesn't wanna talk about it. Nor, for that matter, do I.

  • (cs) in reply to Calli Arcale
    Calli Arcale:
    And while a good change control system would've at least revealed who changed the report in this instance, I've seen instances where the change control system didn't reveal who was to blame. There are often ways to conceal one's changes, and the one I see most often (which is never malicious, and never with the intent to deceive) is for a developer to be making an approved change and slip in another, unrelated change at the same time.

    There's this little software process step I'd like to introduce you to called 'code review'. Doing crap like that should be caught in code review. If it isn't, either you're doing your code reviews wrong, or you're not doing your code reviews - which is wrong.

    The thing I find here is one of our developers has recently developed a penchant for rolling out an additional change - he's approved to roll out the changes in version 972, and he rolls out the changes in versions 972 and 973.

    Of course, this is an improvement over the prior stunt of deploying changes in production to rarely changed files without review. People have already mentioned the problems this causes.

  • Meh (unregistered) in reply to Claxon
    Claxon:
    Deviod:
    Code Dependent:
    Mike also learned a very different definition for the word “change” that day.
    Hopefully, here's how he learned it.

    ['img] White redneck with gayishly small bat and racist context/text[/img]

    Yepp, that is really relevant to the story and context. Funny--.

    I agree completely!

    [image]

    Old picture or someone re-attached her head?

  • (cs) in reply to Jabrwock
    Jabrwock:
    TMG:
    I have to call shenanigans on this story merely by premise...

    Every software developer I know understands what a change is

    You'd be surprised. I've run into the "I didn't change a thing" ranging from "I really didn't change anything" to "I changed a few settings" to "I installed totally different software" from support staff, developers, customers, etc.

    I had one incident, years ago, where the user insisted nothing had changed. Upon further review, I found the following had changed:

    1. The hardware was upgraded from a desktop to a laptop. The old desktop was not available anymore. (Well, that's what the user said. But I had contacts.)
    2. The OS upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows NT 4.
    3. The web browser changed from Netscape to IE. ...
    4. The ethernet jack was replaced.
    5. a new cable was run.
    6. New switch.
    7. The person who submitted the ticket had just transferred to the department. The person who had previously used the working desktop had retired. (Yep, even the user had changed.)

    On the bright side, it was still the same cubicle, and I'm pretty sure it was still the same router. The server side was mostly the same. I was just fortunate to have a good relationship with some of the support guys - I'd heard them grousing about a system upgrade which went horribly wrong the prior Friday, which caused them to work all weekend to fix the fallout.

  • MikeL (unregistered)

    Not exactly what I submitted but certainly more entertaining.

  • MikeL (unregistered) in reply to IronMensan

    They weren't. The site moderator made a story out of my submittal.

  • happy one (unregistered) in reply to nonny nonny

    Thanks. It was a weak joke that I had to read more than once. And yet you've made this wasted time seem an even greater tragedy, by ruining an already bad joke.

    Are you always this much fun?

  • Company names need to be used.... (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    TRWTF is that the guy was allowed to change code directly on a production server, without passing through Dev/QA first. Especially on something as critical as accounting.

    HA never worked in a corperate accounting department have you.

    Those bastards want changes last week and no you cant do it right. Half ass it and make the numbers look right is all they care about.

    When I reviewed a piece of code that was wrong and was calculating things wrong for years I was told point blank to STFU.

    We were overcharging customers on sales tax, there was no way in hell they were going to pay it back.

  • Vecchio Corvo Stanco (unregistered) in reply to Company names need to be used....
    Company names need to be used....:
    Anonymous:
    TRWTF is that the guy was allowed to change code directly on a production server, without passing through Dev/QA first. Especially on something as critical as accounting.

    HA never worked in a corperate accounting department have you.

    Those bastards want changes last week and no you cant do it right. Half ass it and make the numbers look right is all they care about ...

    Another thing is that different departments within a big business have different positions in a hierarchy of importance. The only thing that ranks higher than accounting department and its rules is the safety section and its rules. When the accounting department speaketh, even the board sits up straight and listens.

    Whereas, except in software companies, the IT department ranks somewhere between rock bottom and "I thought I told you to outsource these guys, what the &^$% are they still doing in my building!?!"

    Really, outside the IT department itself, pretty well no-one actually cares that it has rules that say "pass through Dev/QA first", no matter how sensible they may be. And apart from the porn thing, the consequences of breaking IT's rules are pretty well limited to whining.

    On the other hand if you disobey accounting's rules, you will be summoned to a very alarming meeting with a very humourless balding individual in a dull grey suit. And if he doesn't like the sound of your answers, you will be advised to bring an attorney to the next meeting, which will be conducted in a shiny glass building downtown, which you aren't allowed to park in front of. And if that meeting doesn't turn out too well, you won't need to worry about revision control systems for a long, long time.

  • Big Bird (unregistered) in reply to MikeL
    MikeL:
    Not exactly what I submitted but certainly more entertaining.

    Most of the time it's

    "Not even close to what I submitted but at least now none of the story makes sense."

    captcha: imanidiotforpostingthis

  • de_bugger (unregistered)

    Insects are killed by insecticides. Herbs are killed by herbicides?

  • AndyC (unregistered)

    Anyone who ever worked in support knows "I didn't change a thing" == "I didn't change a thing that I think would have broken it and I'm sure as hell not going to admit to having changed something just in case it did."

  • tehfixer (unregistered) in reply to Claxon
    Katrina said while storming into Mike’s office
    FTFY
  • aramj (unregistered) in reply to happy one
    happy one:
    Thanks. It was a weak joke that I had to read more than once. And yet you've made this wasted time seem an even greater tragedy, by ruining an already bad joke.

    Are you always this much fun?

    Thanks. That was a weak comment that I had to read more than once. And yet you've made this wasted time seem an even greater tragedy, by not attaching any context.

    Are you always this useless?

  • aramj (unregistered) in reply to MikeL
    MikeL:
    They weren't. The site moderator made a story out of my submittal.
    What/who are "they"? And if you didn't submit a story, what exactly did you submit? A ragtag collection of random sentences?
  • Matt (unregistered)

    "Mike also learned a very different definition for the word “change” that day."

    How about: "change management"

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Lo
    Lo:
    HVS:
    CHANGE = Modify line DELETE = Remove line ADD = Insert line
    Well, when you append some text to a file, don't you think the file has changed?

    By my definition, if it changes the MD5 hash of the file, it's a "change". Nuff said.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to TMG
    TMG:
    I have to call shenanigans on this story merely by premise...

    Every software developer I know understands what a change is

    Herb is a reports developer. You expect too much.

  • So Damn True... (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    I think you nailed it. If you don't believe it, go see it for yourself. Otherwise, have fun wasting a lot of time...

  • milop (unregistered) in reply to aramj
    aramj:
    MikeL:
    They weren't. The site moderator made a story out of my submittal.
    What/who are "they"? And if you didn't submit a story, what exactly did you submit? A ragtag collection of random sentences?

    I hit Reply instead of Quote. I submitted a story and the site admin changed is completely, although the part about adding code to the bottom of the report was not a "change" in Herb's mind was accurate.

  • milop (unregistered) in reply to Big Bird
    Big Bird:
    MikeL:
    Not exactly what I submitted but certainly more entertaining.

    Most of the time it's

    "Not even close to what I submitted but at least now none of the story makes sense."

    captcha: imanidiotforpostingthis

    The real story was I was a consultant brought in to write a data conversion system from Foxpro 2.6 to an IBM i5. After a few weeks I was done, the data looked good, reports footed, etc. Then all of a sudden one report stopped balancing because Herb, the in-house IT guy, added lines to the bottom of it. His statement was "I didn't change it I just added some lines to the bottom of it." After the software guy (who worked for the company that wrote the third-party app that Herb's company purchased) removed Herb's code everything was fine again. I have no idea who Katrina is!

  • milop (unregistered) in reply to Ron Piler
    Ron Piler:
    Lots of pedantry and semantic hand-waving around the word "change". Why? Quite clearly, the software was not the same as it was before Herb undertook whatever he wants to call it, ergo it had changed. If this story was real, of course. Which it probably isn't. The only way it's real is, Herb knew damn fine what he'd done and didn't want to look stupid (d'oh) in the vain hope he'd be able to put it back as was

    The site admin created a story around my submittal. Herb is real and what he said and did is real.

  • DiverKas (unregistered) in reply to Null
    Null:
    IronMensan:
    When they are running 2006 numbers at the end of the year (they've been at it for weeks), yes the solution is to roll back the new rate calculations.
    Gotcha. They wanted year-end reports with 2006 rates, but Herb the Twat had stuffed the 2007 rates in already.

    TRWTF is that the rates are in the fuggin report. What idiot does this and thinks its a good idea?

    Crystal Reports? Seriously?

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    reminds me of a story: someone called Tech Support and complained that he could no longer get online. the tech asked, "did you make any changes to your system configuration recently?" NO!" the guy replied. after much back and forth, the guy admitted that he had gotten a completely different computer...

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