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Admin
Run... Run for the hills!!!
Admin
Hi Dean, welcome to my life.
Admin
<FONT face=Tahoma>wow... just wow... i'm surprised they haven't printed it out and placed in the wooden table... :D
"there's more to ASP.NET than just .aspx extensions..." -me (i think)
</FONT>
Admin
How would this conversion even work. All you are going to do is get a snapshot of what the page looked like for that particular run. I mean, the jsp would have to have code to dynamically generate the page, and saving the page would lose all that. This technique won't work at all, but this WTF implies that it had already been done? So was it in production? Were they still working on adding back the dynamic code to the asp pages? I just don't get it, this would never work, never.
[Note from Alex: Looking back, I realize it wasn't obvious from the write-up that they added coding to the ASPX pages saved -- I've updated the post with this as a step]
Admin
Sweet! I'm going to convert thedailywtf back to Java by following the steps in reverse order.
Fifth I hope...
Admin
wow, too bad dead didn't know that UltraEdit [www.ultraedit.com] has a 'find & replace across files & directories' function.
[i'm not a shill. at least, not a piad one]
Admin
I strive for such "individuality" in all my code segments.
Admin
He passed up the opportunity of automating this 1218 step process.
Admin
Wow, that is just insane!!
Admin
An enterprisey Web Jungle!
But seriously, I do this all the time. When I don't have the right codec or driver to view print or do whatever I want to do, I change the extension and it works.
Admin
I would imagine it would make a static site. Maybe that's the WTF. Or are you just being sarcastic?
Admin
You mean, ASP.Net can be dynamic? ;-)
Admin
Well, that solves it then - if only he had used UltraEdit, it wouldn't have really been so bad.
Admin
I've worked for managers like this in my previous job. This is enterprise-grade WTFery. Running away is the best defense strategy, as the developers will always be blamed for anything that goes wrong and the manager promoted.
Admin
Dilbert's PHB has been found. A team of six maintenance developers for goodness sake. Plenty of money available to have people doing something mindnumbingly stupid but none to sort the mess out. I'd sure like to have asked the PHB why a rewrite was out of the question.
A thoroughly worthy WTF.
Admin
Will to live fading...
Admin
Aren't there going to be a ba-zillion copies of the common graphics etc.?
[<b>edited by:</b> Bus Raker at 2:57 PM (GMT -5) on Mon, Jun 19 2006]Oops .. there's 6, and 1218 is a multiple of 6. My bad.
Admin
I would have used a crawler like web whacker and resticted to the site, and have a static picture of site in minutes.
Then calclulated the time it would have take and devote the time to find a new job!
WTF- rewrite is off the table, for a conversion!!!!
Admin
this does seem like something straight out of dilbert.
Admin
1
Admin
People I work with have this same sort of odd compulsion. They wish to update a project done in revision 1.1 of our framework to the 2.0 revision (not related to .NET 1.1 vs. 2.0)
The amount of work necessary to port the code up that high (1.2 and 1.3 were non-trivial minor revisions of the framework and changed certain areas of the entire system pretty deeply; however none of them really marked a major version upgrade like 2.0 has) is a lot less than starting over from scratch and bringing the rules and customizations in.
But yet they insist. Especially when all of the hacks that were needed in an earlier revision of the base code to get X to work are completely useless now that X is in the framework itself.
Admin
FWIW, I would have rewritten the site anyway on my own time. When el senior management comes by to see the progress, show them the enhancements to see if they are good to go---THEN drop the bomb that you rewrote everything.
They can either go back to fixing all that old crap, or suck it up and switch to the new crap. It's a tactic that has always worked every time I used it. If it hurts your bonus/salary raise then just run around the PHB and have a 1-1 with the VEEP who approved the changes originally. Be political! It's not like they really care that you stay there.
For all the PHB whining that goes on out there, you will discover that you can combat some of it if you are just a bit more aggressive, forceful and convincing (not conniving)--exactly the material "Management" looks for.
Admin
Sheesh. A team of 6, eh? I would have talked to them about banding together and mutinying by rewriting everything proper. With the amount of WTF'ery going on here, I bet the ol' boss wouldn't even notice.
Captcha: Genius
Admin
What's the point in converting from JSP to ASP anyway? Isn't JSP more enterprisy?
Admin
Im pretty sure my girlfriend would disown me if i spent my free time rewriting a "enterprise" web application.
Admin
Sheeesh, the real WTF is converting to ASP.NET at all. I mean really, what do you gain?
But given some PHB decided they needed to do that, isn't it easier to modify the Java in the JSP to the equivalent code in ASP? There should almost be a 1-1 match between those two in most constructs and objects. I think it much more difficult to work with html output and try to figure out where the loops/logic/etc go, and what they were calling and what queries they were running, etc. Oh never mind, even my attempts at understanding how to do this the right way justify a WTF!
Admin
I find it pretty amazing how many of you say you would up an quit. Maybe its just me but if you have the attitude of "my boss told me to do something that is stupid so i will just quit" why not go for broke and tell him its stupid. Say this isn't the best way of doing things, here are the reasons why, and here is the way it should be done.
This site is full of stories about programmers that would rather cut and run then try to make it better. Thats the real WTF.
Admin
You've obviously never worked for a company that KNOWS its crappy, but wont invest the time and money to do it the right way. He said in the post that he was told 4 times that there would be no rewrite. its obvious his manager KNEW it needed it.
CAPTCHA : tps
Admin
What do you gain? You're comparing ASP 3.0/JSP to ASP.Net and are asking the question what do you gain? Of course I agree that this was not the best upgrade path, but we've upgraded lots of apps to ASP.Net to take advantage of the tonnes of features/classes/functionality that is available in asp.net right out of the box.
Admin
This reminds me of that experiment done with rats, where the manager electrifies some cheese, and everytime the rat tries to eat the cheese, it gets shocked. After some time, the rat learns that the cheese is going to cause a great deal of pain, and they decide to find something else to eat. I imagine programmers are at least as smart as these rats, and have similarly decided to stop chomping on the electrified cheese, and go look for a better hunk of cheese elsewhere.
Admin
Right, and that is all the more reason to make sure you seriously torture that manager for staying at a job where his superiors are so dumb, and he has no spine to contradict them BEFORE you cut and run :D
Admin
How would you smartasses QUICKLY convert a jsp application to an aspx application ?!
Well, image files and css's should be in one (two) folders, but the rest is fine.
Admin
Repeating the non-sensical means I will do the nonsensical. It's a publicly held company, not the military. Just play the political game. You might not survive... but if you want to cut and run anyway what's the point in not trying to end-run around the idiots?
Admin
I didn't realize it came in a box! (Are you a sales droid? Those are the only types who talk about how great a product is "out of the box") Also, I didn't realize Java was so crippled. Yeesh! I guess you have to have Microsoft write all your features/classes/functionality and put it in the box for you? Oh well, no point arguing with microsoft borgs, heh.
Admin
WRONG! Where are non-US companies ?
1
Admin
This reminds me of an episode of This Old House (looked like it was from the 80s) where they were talking about how they used computers to create staircases.
To get a drawing to the computer controlled router they have to:
Captcha: 1337
Admin
And if you stick around playing the game, you've got a item on your resume that will be a net negative in the future, rather than cutting and running and finding something that will be a net positive.
Biggest mistake in my life was not realizing what a dysfunctional organization SunGard Trading Systems was until I'd been there a year. I hired a guy who realized it was dysfunctional after a week and quit and went back to his old job - I don't know if he stayed there, but I'll bet you anything he doesn't mention SunGard on his resume.
Admin
Admin
I don't recall bad-mouthing Java at all! Don't know where you got that impression. Java has a bunch of great functionality as well. An no, I don't need MS to write all of my functionality for me, but if some of that functionality is already at my disposal we reinvent the wheel? I've worked with your type too: You hate to use anyone elses code and would reather re-implement something over using a component or built-in functionality. Oh well, no point arguing with anti-microsoft types, heh.
Admin
Admin
...here come the whiney slash-dotters
Admin
These decisions are ALWAYS the manager's fault. Either the manager forced the team into this situation by not providing the right tools, mandating the approach, or hiring idiots (or perhaps a combination of these). This is an extreme case, no doubt, but there are far too many bad decisions made by the wrong people that ultimately result in horrible systems. And in the end, the last developer to touch it right before it collapses is the one that gets blamed.
Admin
Whoops, sorry, misread your post.
Admin
RTFP. Notice the word our before the word framework. My company has a base framework for projects that is maintained by a different department.
Sorry, please try again.
Admin
My point was Java has everythign you need, and "upgrading" a Java application to .NET isn't really much of an upgrade, and is almost guaranteed to be more a pain in the butt that it is worth. I have no problem using someone else's code, I just prefer to be able to pick what code I'm going to use. Java has plenty of frameworks both free and for sale out there, but as far as I have seen, with .NET you are stuck mostly with Microsoft's vision on how things are supposed to work.
Admin
HA HA! Best joke of the day! No one who posts, let alone reads, this website has a girlfriend!
Admin
You folks aren't thinking enterprise-y enough....
The static pages are dynamically generated every time. Then the asp code is stream-edited into them on-the-fly. There is, of course, the extensible option in the system to print out the resulting pages (they fall onto a wooden table), a timer snaps a digital image, which is then returned to the users' browser as a gif in a page with nothing but mapped sensitive areas.
Admin
I don't get it...is this another case of missing source code?
Admin
I think you've got something here -- more user involvement. Why not have the user do the conversion from JSP to static HTML, print whatever they need (digital image on wooden table, etc.), fill out the forms manually (including the login? what security!), and submit the paper? Tech-savvy users could use a scanner to submit a scanned image via e-mail.
Don't know what form the response pages would take.
Admin
Or instead of telling them that you re-wrote it, you put it in place without telling them (would they really notice?).
Then when you're "making fixes" you and the other devs find creative ways to waste your time ;)