• Jay (unregistered) in reply to esoterik
    esoterik:
    while the concept of a doomsday clock is pretty awesome, it is the TRWTF. It shows the original coder knew that he was creating a problem, but only created a way to monitor it instead of doing it the right way.

    That's what makes it so brilliant! If you discover a major design flaw, instead of fixing it, just document it.

    Remember, once it's documented, it's no longer a bug, it's now a feature.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    "That table doubles as orders, employee info, and scratch space. All of the IDs between 1 and 199 are reserved for employees, 200-499 for product codes, and then everything up to 30000 for customer orders."

    So what's the problem? Who could possibly imagine a company with over 199 employees or that sells more than 300 products? Those are clearly such absurdly large numbers that they may as well be infinity.

    (Note: Not a troll, just sarcasm.)

  • (cs) in reply to Jay

    My day at work today has involved tracking down problems relating to an overflow in a VB6 integer. A decade ago, someone said, "How could they possibly ever exceed 32,768 contract revisions?" if they even thought about it at all. We exceeded it on Tuesday.

  • YF (unregistered)

    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

  • Bill C. (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    My day at work today has involved tracking down problems relating to an overflow in a VB6 integer. A decade ago, someone said, "How could they possibly ever exceed 32,768 contract revisions?" if they even thought about it at all. We exceeded it on Tuesday.

    That's easy to do in VB6 without realizing it, since just plain "integer" is 16-bit signed.

  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    My day at work today has involved tracking down problems relating to an overflow in a VB6 integer. A decade ago, someone said, "How could they possibly ever exceed 32,768 contract revisions?" if they even thought about it at all. We exceeded it on Tuesday.
    Easy...
    if (contract.Version == 32,768)
{
   // RPorter [2/15/2012] - Fixed overflow bug as per defect ID: 2,147,483,646*
   SqlHelper.Exec("Delete from contracts where version < 32768");
}
    * Hmm, they'll never have more than 2 billion bugs** ** They obvisouly didn't count on Remy working there ;)
  • Not Jimmy Wales (unregistered) in reply to YF
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Mebbe the original programmer threw it together for a specific project set to run for a limited period of time. Then a bunch of pointy-haired middle-management types saw it, & said, "Hey cool! I wanna use it for my projects, too! It's all set up & ready to go, & I don't need to spend my budget money to create something like it!" And despite repeated requests & providing detailed justifications, the original programmer was never given the time or resources to make it work properly.

    Not that something like that hasn't happened in the real world. Nope, things like that never happen.

  • letatio (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    letatio:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.

    If you two are great minds, then I'm einstein (deliberately lowercased, you nitpicks; it's used as a common/collective noun).

    Well, they're not. And neither are you.

    And, I didn't claim to be. BTW, judging by the name you used, you're belong to the same bucket as the other two.

  • letatio (unregistered) in reply to nitpicker
    nitpicker:
    letatio:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.

    If you two are great minds, then I'm einstein (deliberately lowercased, you nitpicks; it's used as a common/collective noun).

    If you are using it as a collective noun, then you are using it wrong.

    You wouldn't say "I'm geese" or "I'm people".

    If you are using it as a common noun then you are referring to the particle; that doesn't make much sense either.

    Sorry, I'm not following: did I say that, in given siguation, I was an "einstein" or "einsteins"? I don't think your analogy is in place.

  • letatio (unregistered) in reply to Vlad Patryshev
    Vlad Patryshev:
    Oh, we in orkut team one nice Friday got out of user ids, and started assigning old ones to new customers. Luckily, account #1 (Orkut Buyukokten), as well as those of her girlfriend and other famous people (Brin, Page, Meyer etc) were spared, and were not shared with perplexed new guys in Rio (where orkut was most popular).

    Took half a week to throw in more ids and disambiguate between "old guys" (cf. MiB) and "new guys".

    Google Orkut? I thought Google's programmers were geniuses. I guess they're human. So, I could probably replace almost any one of you.

  • Mahognay (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

  • (cs) in reply to Mahognay
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...

  • not BG but someone else (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    My day at work today has involved tracking down problems relating to an overflow in a VB6 integer. A decade ago, someone said, "How could they possibly ever exceed 32,768 contract revisions?" if they even thought about it at all. We exceeded it on Tuesday.
    640K ought to be enough for anybody.
  • john (unregistered) in reply to Not Jimmy Wales
    Not Jimmy Wales:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Mebbe the original programmer threw it together for a specific project set to run for a limited period of time. Then a bunch of pointy-haired middle-management types saw it, & said, "Hey cool! I wanna use it for my projects, too! It's all set up & ready to go, & I don't need to spend my budget money to create something like it!" And despite repeated requests & providing detailed justifications, the original programmer was never given the time or resources to make it work properly.

    Not that something like that hasn't happened in the real world. Nope, things like that never happen.

    Oh....Enterprise Architecture?

  • Mahognay (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...
    Nah mate, I'm some dude descending from the convicts Mr Westwood et al sent out here to develop the game of cricket to a point where they can't beat us anymore....

  • pecus (unregistered) in reply to Mahognay
    Mahognay:
    C-Octothorpe:
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...
    Nah mate, I'm some dude descending from the convicts Mr Westwood et al sent out here to develop the game of cricket to a point where they can't beat us anymore....

    It appears that Mahognay wants to mate with you.

  • (cs) in reply to letatio
    letatio:
    frits:
    letatio:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.

    If you two are great minds, then I'm einstein (deliberately lowercased, you nitpicks; it's used as a common/collective noun).

    Well, they're not. And neither are you.

    And, I didn't claim to be. BTW, judging by the name you used, you're belong to the same bucket as the other two.

    Do you have something against fried potatoes?

    BTW- Insulting my intelligence doesn't bother me. I know what really dumb motherfuckers look like, and I don't see any around here.

  • (cs) in reply to pecus
    pecus:
    Mahognay:
    C-Octothorpe:
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...
    Nah mate, I'm some dude descending from the convicts Mr Westwood et al sent out here to develop the game of cricket to a point where they can't beat us anymore....

    It appears that Mahognay wants to mate with you.

    I prefer livestock...

  • Ben Jammin (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    pecus:
    Mahognay:
    C-Octothorpe:
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...
    Nah mate, I'm some dude descending from the convicts Mr Westwood et al sent out here to develop the game of cricket to a point where they can't beat us anymore....

    It appears that Mahognay wants to mate with you.

    I prefer livestock...
    Less splinters

  • jMerliN (unregistered)

    Copy table to ordersYYYYMMDD, empty orders, start over. Repeat every 30,000 sales.

    They should totally hire me! Don't ask me what to do on 12012, we'll all be flying around in spaceships by then, dude. We'll fix that problem when we need stardates!

    Captcha: modo

    This is a do branch that works on a monthly basis. Perfect! Now I can make my doomsday clocks even more obscure!

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to ubersoldat
    ubersoldat:
    There's a hidden screen in the application with a doomsday clock on it.

    OMG! This is so funny I have to do it.

    Me too!

  • Minos (unregistered)

    They could do like the last place I worked and just start re-using order numbers when they got too long for Sales to memorize. By the time I left, they were cycling through order numbers every 6 months. It made it difficult to interface with the shipping system that expected to uniquely identify orders by order number (gasp!).

  • (cs) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    Mahognay:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.
    Universal minds run in parallel gutters

    I think that basically means people who think the same as everyone else think shit

    Matt Westwood, is that you? You're on earlier than usual, and much less violent too...

    Oh fuck off, course it's fucking well not! (blows kisses)

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Machtyn
    Machtyn:
    Also, I would assume that Daryl magically disappeared one day after giving short notice.

    /incassum he was ever needed again.

    If I were him, I'd probably disappear shortly too.

  • geoffrey (unregistered) in reply to YF
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

  • (cs) in reply to Ed
    Ed:
    Anyone else get to the first link then go on a massive Strong Bad-viewing-spree on YouTube and completely forget about the fact that they were trying to read TheDailyWtf?

    ... :D

    i was going to, but i remembered before starting the spree that i have to finally go to bed. added the video to favorites and postponed the spree until tomorrow procrastrination time

  • fred bob (unregistered) in reply to geoffrey
    geoffrey:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

    Yes, but we've established you're a cunt before geoffrey. No, that's not true, cunts are useful....

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to Bill C.
    Bill C.:
    Remy Porter:
    My day at work today has involved tracking down problems relating to an overflow in a VB6 integer. A decade ago, someone said, "How could they possibly ever exceed 32,768 contract revisions?" if they even thought about it at all. We exceeded it on Tuesday.

    That's easy to do in VB6 without realizing it, since just plain "integer" is 16-bit signed.

    It's a simple upgrade to VB 2010 where it magically turns into a 32-bit signed. Recompile and you're done.

  • geoffrey (unregistered) in reply to fred bob
    fred bob:
    geoffrey:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

    Yes, but we've established you're a cunt before geoffrey. No, that's not true, cunts are useful....

    I feel sorry for you. Everyone knows that struggle begets creativity. You must not be in a work environment that is very conducive to problem solving.

    I place obstacles in front of my team so they are inspired to greatness. And by all accounts, they are very appreciative of my efforts.

  • (cs) in reply to YF
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    From the tale, the programmer was an old-timer. That means he grew up in a time where computer memory was so limited that anything creative you could to do to save space was a Good Thing. The poor old fucker was obviously complete shit at learning new stuff and should have been shuffled off into janitorial and/or doorman duties many ages before.

  • Alex (unregistered)

    Okay, please explain a newbie why the hell couldn't he just change the sql to: DELETE FROM tbl14a_fx004B WHERE id >= 50000

    You know, untill they fix the application (Yeah, right)

  • Nuelo (unregistered) in reply to geoffrey
    geoffrey:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

    What a moron! You Sir, are TRWTF!

  • Mathew (unregistered)

    trwtf: not opening external links in new tab.

  • (cs) in reply to letatio
    letatio:
    nitpicker:
    letatio:
    ContraCorners:
    DanDan:
    No, it's 1ts
    Great minds think alike. And so do DanDan and me.

    If you two are great minds, then I'm einstein (deliberately lowercased, you nitpicks; it's used as a common/collective noun).

    If you are using it as a collective noun, then you are using it wrong.

    You wouldn't say "I'm geese" or "I'm people".

    If you are using it as a common noun then you are referring to the particle; that doesn't make much sense either.

    Sorry, I'm not following: did I say that, in given siguation, I was an "einstein" or "einsteins"? I don't think your analogy is in place.

    Look up "collective noun". Since you don't recognise a collective noun when you see one, the term obviously does not mean what you think it means.

  • Mrobvious (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    2: If you were putting everything all in 1 table, why name it "tbl14a_fx004B" when something like "table1" would suffice?
    You are new on the field, aren't you ?

    The table was called "tbl" in the first prototype build. Then tbl1, tbl2, 1bl3 ... tbl14.

    At that point management introduced changes out of the requirements specification . So for the new requirements then made tbl14a and tbl14b for the old ones.

    They developed both in parallel waiting for management to made up their mind but they found the new requirements broke the former specification and they had to fix it ... hence bl14a_fx.

    They finally decided to go ahead and made some more iterations producing tbl14a_fx001, tbl14a_fx002, tbl14a_fx003 and tbl14a_fx004. The desesperation showed up in the development team started to show up as you can see in the expected hundrends range numbering for new versions.

    But management introduced again changes out of the requirements specification producing bl14a_fx004A and bl14a_fx004B ...

    In fact the table name is a combination of the developers' computing diogenes sindrome and varios unplaned management changes.

    If development had not stalled most likely the name woudl be now: bl14a_fx004B_002v1_4_5_22A2_prod.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to Nuelo
    Nuelo:
    geoffrey:
    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.
    What a moron! You Sir, are TRWTF!
    You really don't understand geoffrey, do you? He isn't a moron. He's the very model of a modern project manager.
  • geoffrey (unregistered) in reply to Nuelo
    Nuelo:
    geoffrey:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

    What a moron! You Sir, are TRWTF!

    And you are an overpaid whiner. The truly passionate in our business take such challenges with aplomb.

  • geoffrey (unregistered)

    pfff why didn't he just increase the column size to 10 digits what a time waster

  • geoffrey (unregistered) in reply to geoffrey

    another geoffrey huh? i guess I will have to use my full name

  • Geoffrey T. Buchanan (unregistered) in reply to Mrobvious
    Mrobvious:
    PiisAWheeL:
    2: If you were putting everything all in 1 table, why name it "tbl14a_fx004B" when something like "table1" would suffice?
    You are new on the field, aren't you ?

    The table was called "tbl" in the first prototype build. Then tbl1, tbl2, 1bl3 ... tbl14.

    At that point management introduced changes out of the requirements specification . So for the new requirements then made tbl14a and tbl14b for the old ones. They finally decided to go ahead and made some more iterations producing tbl14a_fx001, tbl14a_fx002, tbl14a_fx003 and tbl14a_fx004.

    You are undoubtedly wrong. Such table names are designed to be machine readable rather than human readable. This style of doing things harks back to the day when programmers had to memorize actual manuals rather than modern "programming" that consists of just searching on google and using fancy IDEs.

    Part of the table name might even have meaning to the application, eg perhaps in the case of tbl14a_fx002, 0xf0214a might be an address offset into an array in the application.

  • frits lange boogiér (unregistered) in reply to geoffrey
    geoffrey:
    another geoffrey huh? i guess I will have to use my full name
    Oh yeah, I'm sure that'll work.
  • (cs) in reply to Mathew

    Opening links in a new tab, as a default behavior, is abad choice.

    Every browser has a simple and easy way to force a link to open in a new tab. No browser has a simple and easy way to force a link to open in the current tab. Unless you have a compelling reason to keep both windows open at the same time (like you've just popped up a documentation page that contains information useful to someone viewing the main page), you should let all links open in the current window by default.

    The user should decide if they want a link to open in a new tab or not.

  • pedxing (unregistered) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    He isn't a moron. He's the very model of a modern project manager.

    And the difference is?

  • janwillemb (unregistered)

    missed chance: the article should have been titled 'the doomsday clock'.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Mrobvious
    Mrobvious:
    If development had not stalled most likely the name woudl be now: tbl14a_fx004B_002v1_4_5_22A2_prod.
    They should have used a hash based distributed VC like Git or Bazaar. Skip the endless prefixes and just have "tbl_72d705804d275407c4e3978e6cbe38ed51f4e90e2"
  • (cs) in reply to geoffrey
    geoffrey:
    YF:
    Yeah, this is a real WTF.

    And likewise... WHY the FUCK people code things like that? It's made to blow up sooner or later, with major rework, lots of frustration and endless hate.

    Everytime I see aberrations like this I think of 'Hostel' movie, Chinese torture techniques... that sort of pleasant thing.

    Captcha: praesent... a greek one, it is!

    You can't know what kind of constraints the programmer has, so it is unfair to judge. Who knows, it could have been a requirement defined by his manager. I know I have put similar constraints on my team before, for no other reason than to see how creative they can be in solving a problem.

    As a management style, no doubt yours works in the academic sphere, where the projects being generated are not being paid for by an impatient customer, and difficult problems are generated artificially as training exercises. However, in the real world of commercial realities, I'm afraid your approach may result in your business losing any competitive edge it may ever have had.

  • Steve (unregistered)

    Am I seriously the ONLY person who read this who thought, "What exactly IS the 'very bottom' of a network drive?"

  • Sobi (unregistered)

    Seems like it's time for a FixOutOfNumersV2.sql

    DELETE FROM tbl14a_fx004B WHERE id >= 40000;

    Should buy him a year.

  • Mathew (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Opening links in a new tab, as a default behavior, is abad choice.

    Every browser has a simple and easy way to force a link to open in a new tab. No browser has a simple and easy way to force a link to open in the current tab. Unless you have a compelling reason to keep both windows open at the same time (like you've just popped up a documentation page that contains information useful to someone viewing the main page), you should let all links open in the current window by default.

    The user should decide if they want a link to open in a new tab or not.

    The compelling reason is the link being external. This is absolutly basic ui stuff. You never want to open an external link in the same window, so it does in no way matter, whether your browser could do that. By default opening it in a new tab, you save the user one extra click. Arguing otherwise is ridiculous.

  • (cs) in reply to Machtyn
    Machtyn:
    Can't see youtube right now. Does that youtube link point to homestarrunner's "The System is Down" email response?

    Oh, yeah, I can watch it on my "phone". Sure enough, it is strongbad.

    I had a 60-something coworker ask me what techno music was, so I brought in the SBmail DVDs, gathered the team in the computer lab, and we all watched in delight as I showed him the Techno SBmail - he was still quite confused, but it was entertaining :D

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