The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

ObiWayneKenobi · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

It's not a question of "do it wrong once, then do it right" as much as it's a matter of sometimes (most times) you don't have the time or resources to get it done "right" but it has to get done somehow.

As I said I don't fault someone for doing something in a hacky or "wrong" manner if they're just learning or have insane pressure; what counts is understanding you're cutting the corners and make a point to find a better way - that alone puts you worlds above most so-called "professionals" that never learn any other way.

When I first started doing .NET I put all my code in the code-behind files, and did all my data access stuff inline with SqlConnection and SqlCommand. Then I learned to abstract it away using Table-Data Gateway, and now I'm learning to apply ORMs. The old crap I wrote was bad from a code perspective, but it was the only way to solve the problems I faced at the time, but because it didn't "feel" right I went on to find other, better ways of doing things.

akatherder · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

Typically when you quote a word, such as you did with "build", you are quoting someone. Gore never claimed to "build" the internet.

boog · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

JamesQMurphy:
boog:
"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."

"Build one to throw away."

-- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

Appeal to authority?

Regardless, I'm quite sure Fred wasn't suggesting that you bill the client for a pilot system.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

I for one can say I made horrible mistakes, but I made most of them when not doing programming in a professional context. My code is far from perfect, but total WTFs like a new table for every cart and GUID ids in the URLs etc, that's the kind of stuff I would do before I knew better, and definitely long before I started to take people's money for it. Of course, this is not the poster's fault but his manager, who should've known perfectly well that he was hiring someone without the skills to really do what he was doing.

Now that's not to say all programmers programming professionally should be really good, but there's a minimal level of competence where you can avoid the more severe WTFs.

Those pointing out the tired old "comp sci people can't program". Well duh, it's not called software engineering, is it? They should, however, know a lot about what they're doing, just not necessarily know how yet. That's an applied skill you must basically teach yourself, but at least you have lots of knowledge to base your decisions on. Assuming you even want to go into a programmer career as a comp sci graduate.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Fred:
My computer science courses seemed to be obsessed with binary logic -- how to squeeze two more bits out of the chip you're designing for the next cell phone -- rather than how to write software for normal businesses. Except for the esoteric theories, my professors were about the most computer illiterate people I ever worked with.
We had an assignment to write a "system" for a hypothetical customer-facing business. There were to be four data entry screens. (No output, just entry -- and it was a good thing there was no output, because there was no database.) Professor required each screen to be implemented as a single, separate Java class. 100% procedural code inside the class, of course. This was a Masters' level course.

Another whole course was on data warehousing (hey at least they'd heard of data). Not that we ever touched a DW. Just spent the whole semester discussing how lovely they would be, if we ever saw one.

Well, good. Now you're next step is to notify the Accreditation Council so that future prospective students won't waste their money by going there.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

PS. Please forgive me my typos.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
Fred:
My computer science courses seemed to be obsessed with binary logic -- how to squeeze two more bits out of the chip you're designing for the next cell phone -- rather than how to write software for normal businesses. Except for the esoteric theories, my professors were about the most computer illiterate people I ever worked with.
We had an assignment to write a "system" for a hypothetical customer-facing business. There were to be four data entry screens. (No output, just entry -- and it was a good thing there was no output, because there was no database.) Professor required each screen to be implemented as a single, separate Java class. 100% procedural code inside the class, of course. This was a Masters' level course.

Another whole course was on data warehousing (hey at least they'd heard of data). Not that we ever touched a DW. Just spent the whole semester discussing how lovely they would be, if we ever saw one.
Well, good. Now you're next step is to notify the Accreditation Council so that future prospective students won't waste their money by going there.

Where I went, the information was readily available, but the students were too arrogant to learn it. What's truly mind-boggling is that Computer Science classes were the only ones where every student thought he knew more about the topic matter than a tenured professor. All these folks got out of their 4 years was LAN parties and a worthless piece of paper.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons..

I, the uneducated moron, spend a lot of my time fixing the awful code my Computer Science graduate inferior makes.

As far as I can tell 3 years of CompSci at University just gives them lots of theoretical knowledge - which they utterly fail to implement - and fuck all practical experience.

And no, I do not just think he's doing it wrong, he is. I am collecting his code for submission here when I finally get pissed off and quit.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Ralph:
By the way, thanks, Al Gore, for this mess. I think we're approaching the time to scrap the whole thing and start over.

We are. IPv6...

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

All those years of therapy... wasted...

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
The thing is.. there's nothing wrong with writing WTFy code if you learn from your mistakes and improve. Yes, the code is a WTF and we all point and laugh, but everyone has to start somewhere; you start by writing bad code and then improve later on as you learn WHY it's bad code, and what would make it GOOD code.
The problem with many "developers" is that they write the WTFy code and it works, so they never bother to improve or think "Wow that code reeks, but I had such a tight deadline I couldn't do it right, I'll learn how to do it better for the next time"

I agree with your sentiment, but there is something wrong with WTF code that exposes security holes and lost data. Indeed, learning from you mistakes is admirable. Hopefully, you can go back and correct those mistakes as well.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
TRWTF is You:
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons..

I, the uneducated moron, spend a lot of my time fixing the awful code my Computer Science graduate inferior makes.

As far as I can tell 3 years of CompSci at University just gives them lots of theoretical knowledge - which they utterly fail to implement - and fuck all practical experience.

And no, I do not just think he's doing it wrong, he is. I am collecting his code for submission here when I finally get pissed off and quit.

The monkey tears the car apart because it doesn't work like a banana...

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Perhaps this will motivate me to post my own WTF, which is almost certainly even worse than I think it is.

A teaser:

vbscript asp, with a bit of javascript. uses visible form fields on a web page to pass data between pages no functions no spec sql injection is possible - yep source control - no

Oh yea, and successfully used and liked by the end users for years.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

My first in production web app didn't suck that bad. My only wtf would be that I didn't know how to get the a new id from sql after an insert. Rather than doing a second query (Select max(id)) ... I just used a guid for the id's. That way I knew what it was before the insert. This only affected 1 table out of 10 (due to tha nature of the data) so I went with it.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Lots of dumb design decisions there but at least you learnt from your mistakes. Some people code like that for their entire lives.

Yes, and they all work for my company...

captcha: facilisi - couldn't be bothered to spell-check fallacy.

Mcoder · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Ralph:
Oh, and as for the back button, even the big boys are determined to break that now. Google, Oracle... pretty much every AJAX site (phtooey)...

Google doesn't even seem to mind their javascript breaking their "featured results", why would you think they'd care about something that doesn't directly give them money, like the back button?

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Well, it wasn't because of those IT monkeys we got the internet. This is more akin to monkeys and typewriters. Or monkeys and guns. The last is funnier.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
Pete:
I know sometimes I look back at old code and think who wrote this crap then realize it was me. The thing with programming is you are always learning and starting with hideous mistakes makes you learn better ways quickly.
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons.
Kudos to the submitter for admitting his mistake, but not to all the jackwagons advocating them.

Wait... which university did YOU go to? The ones I've gone to, and heard of, are no where near the caliber in which you mention. It's mostly: Here is a web page; here is Frontpage; ...; congrats, you get an A! Good luck!

coderdan · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

strictnein:
Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#Second_presidential_run_.282000.29
And sure, argue semantics about whether or not create = invent, but Gore did neither.

Here comes the ARPA Net comments LOL

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

boog:
"A fool never learns from his mistakes; a smart man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from others' mistakes."

FTFY

Don't be so high and mighty; different strokes for different folks - everybody learns differently, and that should be respected. So long as you learn, you're not a fool. :)

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

BentFranklin:
Half Way:
AAAAAAaa!!! I'm half way through and already pounding my face with my fist.
Does it have a happy ending?

If you want a happy ending, try pounding a little lower.

Check. And. Mate.

Sutherlands · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

akatherder:
Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

Typically when you quote a word, such as you did with "build", you are quoting someone. Gore never claimed to "build" the internet.

You know, you'd be right if... well if you weren't wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Irony

coderdan:
Here comes the ARPA Net comments LOL

A little behind the curve, eh?

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

My first proper development role was as a support developer - extending existing systems and fixing bugs in other systems. That got me looking at the kinds of programming errors make and got me seeing both good and bad code, as I'm doing my first serious development pieces, and while I won't say I've never written bad code, I'm pretty sure my worst code is better than the worst I've worked on, because the worst I've worked on just never worked. That place one developer left after a year and soon after we adopted a general approach to working on code he'd written - throw it out and start again. Maybe it should be required initial work experience - to work on other people's code for a while, good and bad.

hoodaticus · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

akatherder:
Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

Typically when you quote a word, such as you did with "build", you are quoting someone. Gore never claimed to "build" the internet.

Why don't you stop schlobbin on Gore's knob long enough to develop a sense of humor?

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

disgruntled:
TRWTF is You:
Pete:
I know sometimes I look back at old code and think who wrote this crap then realize it was me. The thing with programming is you are always learning and starting with hideous mistakes makes you learn better ways quickly.
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons.
Kudos to the submitter for admitting his mistake, but not to all the jackwagons advocating them.

Wait... which university did YOU go to? The ones I've gone to, and heard of, are no where near the caliber in which you mention. It's mostly: Here is a web page; here is Frontpage; ...; congrats, you get an A! Good luck!

They created that degree program "Information Systems" for you, since your too dumb for college-level mathematics...kind of like Physics for Art Majors.

boog · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

not boog:
Don't be so high and mighty; different strokes for different folks - everybody learns differently, and that should be respected. So long as you learn, you're not a fool. :)

Fair enough; I'll admit the quote was too much. I never meant to say that learning from your mistakes made you a fool. I certainly make mistakes myself, and I do learn from them.

Still, I have a hard time accepting a strategy of learning where the goal is to make mistakes, especially when the customer is paying for it and has to live with the results.

By all means, learn from your mistakes, but when faced with a new problem, you might see if anyone else has already tried to solve it or a similar problem. What issues did they encounter; what disasters can you avoid? You could save yourself a lot of time and headache.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

I have a CS Degree and I have to generally agree with you. I'm a reasonable programmer with some natural ability and had already learnt to self teach before going to university. Unfortunately a few too many on the course I did had no such talent. Some were really talented, but some of those that weren't persisted. Even some of those who were talented did succumb to doctrine.

I despise those in the latter category who take everything taught to them at university as an absolute and a golden hammer. I've always appreciated that I will never know enough in any new programming endeavour, will have to continuously study/experiment/research and learn through my life to continue as a good programmer. People who come out of university and are convinced they know it all solely because of the certificate are just meh. Dismiss them.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Anon:
strictnein:
Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#Second_presidential_run_.282000.29
And sure, argue semantics about whether or not create = invent, but Gore did neither.

Read more... Al Gore pushed through tons of legislation that made the Internet possible, specifically...

the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, which is also known as “The Gore Bill”. Gore originally started crafting this bill in 1988 after hearing a report “Toward a National Research Network”, which was submitted to congress by a group of UCLA computer science professors, including Leonard Kleinrock who was one of the original creators of the ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet.

Gore’s bill eventually passed on December 9, 1991 and led to, among a lot of other things that contributed to the growth and creation of the Internet, the National Information Infrastructure (NII), which Gore referred to as the “Information Superhighway”. Basically, this was a proposed “advanced, seamless web of public and private communication networks, interactive services, interoperable hardware and software, computers, databases, and consumer electronics to put vast amounts of information at users’ fingertips.”

This bill also ended up resulting in providing funding to Marc Andreessen, the inventor of the Mosaic Web Browser.

There were 300,000 computers on the Internet in 1990, 10 million by 1996... Al Gore was a huge early champion of the Internet, and really deserves some respect from us IT people... (not talking politics... doesn't matter what his politics are - he was the biggest proponent of the Internet in Congress in the 80s and 90s...)

During that unfortunate interview, he was just touting some of his actual accomplishments...

So really, Gore forced taxpayers to "create" the internet. He still didn't "create" anything himself.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

The project called for a shopping cart and, after reading a 30 minute "getting started" guide on SQL, I created my first database. I figured a Shopping Cart is a logical unit of data, and as such deserving of its own table. And since each Shopper had their own shopping cart, they should also have their own Shopping Cart table.

This is the point at which I actually heard the screeching sound of a record player being pulled off its track.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Jeff:
Perhaps this will motivate me to post my own WTF, which is almost certainly even worse than I think it is.
A teaser:

vbscript asp, with a bit of javascript. uses visible form fields on a web page to pass data between pages no functions no spec sql injection is possible - yep source control - no

Oh yea, and successfully used and liked by the end users for years.

Guestbook plugin for an old PHP CMS (PHPNuke, I believe) which I wrote since there was no guestbook plugin available. SQL injections definitely possible (since someone nuked my own guestbook...) Code to sanitize and format BB-Code-like with stuff like str_replace instead of regex.

But the best part:

The first version had a TinyInt for the ID column (yeah, 1 mere byte - that will save space!)

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Kind of off topic, but is anyone liking the ChangeVision meditating babe? There's someone like that at our local pizza place which I frequent just to chat her up a bit. Yeah, I'm a horny old goat.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

strictnein:
Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#Second_presidential_run_.282000.29
And sure, argue semantics about whether or not create = invent, but Gore did neither.

Right. And the reason Gore deserved all the derision he received for this claim is that he was engaged in the typically ridiculous resume padding of politicians. What did he really do? He voted along with dozens of other senators to spend lots of other people's money on something that sounded cool, and for which he would not have suffered any personal consequences if it all turned out to be a grand waste of time and money.

amischiefr · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Code Slave:
amischiefr:
Mordred:
A true pioneer. Hell, if it weren't for senators and vice presidents, we wouldnt even have an internet.
FTFY
Well, Al Gore did "build" the internet, buy pushing the funding of infrastructure through the US congress and senate, etc. Note: I did not say "invent the internet" (which he has never claimed).

You completely missed the point. The internet didn't come about because of yahoo jackwagons like this guy. It was the work of many talented and smart people such as Tim Berners-Lee, the legislation proposed by guys such as Al Gore. Jackwagons like this guy did nothing to help further the advancement of the internet.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Anon:
Gore’s bill eventually passed on December 9, 1991

Anon:
There were 300,000 computers on the Internet in 1990, 10 million by 1996...

So, Gore did his part in late 1991, and there were 300,000 users in 1990... how does that equate to the 1991 bill counting as "creating" the internet?

The first communication on ARPANET was sent on October 29, 1969 after being envisioned in 1962... Gore first took political office in 1976...

I've never understood how Gore gets credit for doing anything with the internet other than possibly spearheading approval of late-stage funding...

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Wow. Wow, I say.

Close to ten years ago, I was asked to put together a web site for the continuing ed. department of a local university's college of business. It was my first real programming project, and I jumped in (by myself) with both feet, using PHP and MySQL.

Looking back, there was all sorts of obnoxious and ugly crap all throughout the code, and to this day I think of the lack of tests, lack of anything resembling real source control, and lack of input validation with a shudder. But in a subsequent job, a manager was asking if I had any experience with PHP, and after a lot of bashful hemming and hawing, I had to come clean: "I designed and built an online registration system for a college continuing ed. program using PHP and MySQL." And the manager rolled his eyes as if to say, "For chrissake, I'm worried about finding people who can spell PHP, and you have production code in the field?"

Which is all by way of saying, just because you know you've made lots of mistakes, it's no reason to sell short on your victories.

(And also: forget about exploiting those data validation bugs I left in there. That site has long since been retired.)

DaveK · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Half Way:
AAAAAAaa!!! I'm half way through and already pounding my face with my fist.
Does it have a happy ending?

Yes, you will pass out into blissful unconsciousness if you keep on doing that.

DaveK · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Joe:
Article:
when judging others work, I shouldn't be the one to throw the first stone.
No, don't throw the first stone. Post it to TDWTF

That would be throwing the frist stone.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
disgruntled:
TRWTF is You:
Pete:
I know sometimes I look back at old code and think who wrote this crap then realize it was me. The thing with programming is you are always learning and starting with hideous mistakes makes you learn better ways quickly.
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons.
Kudos to the submitter for admitting his mistake, but not to all the jackwagons advocating them.

Wait... which university did YOU go to? The ones I've gone to, and heard of, are no where near the caliber in which you mention. It's mostly: Here is a web page; here is Frontpage; ...; congrats, you get an A! Good luck!
They created that degree program "Information Systems" for you, since your too dumb for college-level mathematics...kind of like Physics for Art Majors.

But I liked Physics for Art Majors!

Seriously, when is the last time you calculated a derivative or integrated a continuous function? What purpose does that server the folks that are going to be writing BUSINESS software? If anything, it is much less useful than forcing them to take BUSINESS classes. Of course, everyone in school just wants to make video games; so they wouldn't realize that.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
They created that degree program "Information Systems" for you, since your too dumb for college-level mathematics...kind of like Physics for Art Majors.

Looking at their work I'll take Information Systems people over CS grads any day.

Oh, and I was the #1 student in my University level calculus class... and while calc is a pretty neat mental trick, I've never had occasion to use it, or for that matter, anything beyond 8th grade math. All that business with simplifying equations... nothing but useless mental masturbation; a total waste of time.

dpm · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Larry:
... and while calc is a pretty neat mental trick, I've never had occasion to use it, or for that matter, anything beyond 8th grade math. All that business with simplifying equations... nothing but useless mental masturbation; a total waste of time.

No. I (and I assumed most of the rest of us) learned problem-solving techniques that are still useful today, even if we've never had to face those particular problems.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Hm, creating a separate table for each shopping cart and then iterating through them to find a non-existing cart ID ... I never think I made something that bad ... but I also had a small project where I threw an authentication code into the URL instead of having it as a cookie.

It was a home-cooked discussion forum. As far as I remember, I was pretty happy with this forum solution - but every now and then customers would complain to support; "I sent the link to the forum to a friend, and when he clicked at the link he got logged into the site as me!".

Well, that's one thing ... but here comes TRWTF. The support dept would of course report this as a bug. My response? Blame it on the customer ... "they should not do that!".

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

The most fascinating thing to me about stories like these is that the worst software isn't made by the totally clueless. It's written by people who know just enough to be dangerous. Most of this guy's problems were caused by naively trying to practice good data encapsulation and security, something someone with less theoretical knowledge wouldn't even bother attempting.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Half Way:
AAAAAAaa!!! I'm half way through and already pounding my face with my fist.
Does it have a happy ending?

It's not over yet

dtech · 2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Hah, pity the fools would ever need a "Confessions" category. I have NEVER made a bad program even though I have been programming for years!

I shall now return to my second-year-of-CS homework

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

I'm pretty sure I would have cut off my own fingers if I ever did something like this.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

boog:
It's disturbing how so many comments suggest that "making mistakes" is the best way to learn. If your method of learning new technology is to crash and burn and get it right the second time around, I don't think I'd ever want to hire you.
"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."

There are much better ways to learn than through mistakes: reading books, following examples, and becoming knowledgeable before you start writing the system.

Brian, how different is your site than the 3.14 billion other shopping sites out there? Shirley you could have found an example of how to do this the right way.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is You:
Pete:
I know sometimes I look back at old code and think who wrote this crap then realize it was me. The thing with programming is you are always learning and starting with hideous mistakes makes you learn better ways quickly.
That's why most universities offer a computer science degree. You spend four years learning how to code properly so that when you hit the workforce you can undo the damage of uneducated morons.

Lol.

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

Sock Puppet 5:
boog:
It's disturbing how so many comments suggest that "making mistakes" is the best way to learn. If your method of learning new technology is to crash and burn and get it right the second time around, I don't think I'd ever want to hire you.
"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."

There are much better ways to learn than through mistakes: reading books, following examples, and becoming knowledgeable before you start writing the system.

Brian, how different is your site than the 3.14 billion other shopping sites out there? Shirley you could have found an example of how to do this the right way.

Yeah, so in other words...

Dear Brian,

In case you haven't noticed, this is a grown-up place. The fact that you insist on using mistakes to learn clearly shows that you are too young and too stupid to be writing websites.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

boog:
JamesQMurphy:
boog:
"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."

"Build one to throw away."

-- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

Appeal to authority?
Regardless, I'm quite sure Fred wasn't suggesting that you bill the client for a pilot system.

It's the client's own fault if they knowingly hire someone incapable of doing the job. He didn't bullshit his way into anything, did he?

2011-01-12 Reply Admin

TRWTF is CS Students:
TRWTF is You:
Fred:
My computer science courses seemed to be obsessed with binary logic -- how to squeeze two more bits out of the chip you're designing for the next cell phone -- rather than how to write software for normal businesses. Except for the esoteric theories, my professors were about the most computer illiterate people I ever worked with.
We had an assignment to write a "system" for a hypothetical customer-facing business. There were to be four data entry screens. (No output, just entry -- and it was a good thing there was no output, because there was no database.) Professor required each screen to be implemented as a single, separate Java class. 100% procedural code inside the class, of course. This was a Masters' level course.

Another whole course was on data warehousing (hey at least they'd heard of data). Not that we ever touched a DW. Just spent the whole semester discussing how lovely they would be, if we ever saw one.
Well, good. Now you're next step is to notify the Accreditation Council so that future prospective students won't waste their money by going there.
Where I went, the information was readily available, but the students were too arrogant to learn it. What's truly mind-boggling is that Computer Science classes were the only ones where every student thought he knew more about the topic matter than a tenured professor. All these folks got out of their 4 years was LAN parties and a worthless piece of paper.

+1

I cannot think of anything I learnt about writing software at uni, that is applicable today. Not a single thing.

Confessions: The Shopping Cart

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