• bigbob (unregistered)

    Sergio was not the frist and will not be the last programmer to leave his employment prematurely after seeing the mess he inherited.

  • WTF (unregistered)

    Still a better love story than Twilight.

  • (cs)
    Sergio pointed to a line he had commented out, followed by the corrected.
    Shame he didn't correct the one after it to use the correct variable.
  • (cs)
  • (cs) in reply to bigbob
    bigbob:
    Sergio was not the frist and will not be the last programmer to leave his employment prematurely after seeing the mess he inherited.

    Think like a businessman. The more the mess, the longer you have the contract.

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered)

    My favourite part of the article:

    Last but not Least {unpublished}
    Please leave it like this!
  • (cs)

    I travelled into the future to comment on here, but still not even close to FRIST!

  • Alargule (unregistered)

    Omg please make it stop

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    bigbob:
    Sergio was not the frist and will not be the last programmer to leave his employment prematurely after seeing the mess he inherited.

    Think like a businessman. The more the mess, the longer you have the contract.

    Think like businessman. The more the mess from offshoring, the more getting production back home is a viable option.

  • (cs)

    So compare this to yesterday's classic WTF. The classic story was still entertaining to read without this "Let's embellish everything" nonsense, and didn't need to be broken up into 3 parts when one would suffice. Take note, Mr. Gern. You don't have to turn everything into some cliche story, let the WTF speak for itself. The less that gets embellished, the better. Dialog could be embellished for flavor, but the story should stay intact.

    Let's take bets on how much of this is embellished. Likely the original WTF was something like "Hi this is Sergio from Spain, I started a new job at a state run retirement community and found that there was zero documentation since they went through three developers in like a month. Here's some code ... I ended up quitting within a month since the code was so crazy, but hey at least I documented some stuff for the new guy."

    And Spain = Don Quixote so boom let's run with that, and here we have a three part tale of bullshit that almost loses the actual WTF in bad, superfluous storytelling.

  • Tobias (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    So compare this to yesterday's classic WTF. The classic story was still entertaining to read without this "Let's embellish everything" nonsense, and didn't need to be broken up into 3 parts when one would suffice. Take note, Mr. Gern. You don't have to turn everything into some cliche story, let the WTF speak for itself. The less that gets embellished, the better. Dialog could be embellished for flavor, but the story should stay intact.

    Let's take bets on how much of this is embellished. Likely the original WTF was something like "Hi this is Sergio from Spain, I started a new job at a state run retirement community and found that there was zero documentation since they went through three developers in like a month. Here's some code ... I ended up quitting within a month since the code was so crazy, but hey at least I documented some stuff for the new guy."

    And Spain = Don Quixote so boom let's run with that, and here we have a three part tale of bullshit that almost loses the actual WTF in bad, superfluous storytelling.

    Pretty much. It's shit like this which turn me off from terrible sites like notalwaysright. It's just a one-sided badly written embellished story without any redeeming core to it. Thank god it's suppposed to be the last one in this "series".

  • Taco (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    bigbob:
    Sergio was not the frist and will not be the last programmer to leave his employment prematurely after seeing the mess he inherited.

    Think like a businessman. The more the mess, the longer you have the contract.

    Hear! Hear!

    And besides that, walking away is just far to easy.

  • (cs) in reply to Taco

    Jeez. I'm going back to discourse, if this is the best that tdwtf can offer...

  • Pock Suppet (unregistered) in reply to foo AKA fooo
    foo AKA fooo:
    My favourite part of the article:
    Last but not Least {unpublished}
    Please leave it like this!
    I also was pleased to see "Just one left."
  • qazwsx (unregistered)

    We can only hope "Just one left" means Erik Gern stories, and this one was it.

  • Chris P. Peterson (unregistered)

    Sergio does not track people down for help. He is a jack wagon that likes to try to feel superior by identifying bad code and pointing it out to the original developer. Sergio is just a loser that deserves a good punch in the throat.

  • Hannes (unregistered)

    I still don't get how "tracking down" the other developers should help at all. If they worked on that code a few months (or even years) ago, chances are, that they don't remember anything helpful at all.

    And that Don Quixote punch line was just lame.

  • fa2k (unregistered)

    For the first bug, could anyone explain in what circumstance the first day in the month is not 1 ?

  • FreeMarketFan (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that Hanzo was better than this junk. I can only imagine the original document.

    Probably went like this: "I got hired to work at this place. All the other developers were gone. The code was really bad. I tried to make heads or tails of it but it wasn't worth the headaches so I looked for a new job....once I found one I quit"

  • (cs) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    Jeez. I'm going back to discourse, if this is the best that tdwtf can offer...

    +1. This La Mancha crap is terrible.

  • (cs) in reply to bigbob
    bigbob:
    Sergio was not the frist and will not be the last programmer to leave his employment prematurely after seeing the mess he inherited.

    I think the bigger the mess, the longer the time you can stay employed at the big conglomerate.

  • cyborg (unregistered) in reply to fa2k
    fa2k:
    For the first bug, could anyone explain in what circumstance the first day in the month is not 1 ?

    Well you probably want the first working day of the month in this case.

  • (cs)

    Needs more Hanzo.

  • fa2k (unregistered) in reply to cyborg
    cyborg:
    fa2k:
    For the first bug, could anyone explain in what circumstance the first day in the month is not 1 ?

    Well you probably want the first working day of the month in this case.

    Don't think that's it, getActualMinimum() is an API function which returns the minimum allowed value. (unless I'm missing something)

  • fa2k (unregistered) in reply to fa2k
    fa2k:
    getActualMinimum() is an API function
    That is, calInicioFacturacion is a Calendar object (sorry to reply to myself)
  • cyborg (unregistered) in reply to fa2k
    fa2k:
    fa2k:
    getActualMinimum() is an API function
    That is, calInicioFacturacion is a Calendar object (sorry to reply to myself)

    Pointless change then but not wrong and not one that should break anything.

  • emaN ruoY (unregistered)

    Despite all the naysayers, I enjoyed the "attempt" at a continuing story.

    But, this particular story, the WTF was definitely Sergio. I mean, who tracks down the 3 previous employees to get their thoughts on a system that is so horribly broken.

    Sure, I could see a visit to the original designers, a company, to try and bleed of some sort of documentation. But Sergio was persistent in wasting time and resources of his company by tracking down the rest.

    Really? Just rewrite where necessary. Fix the thing in parts. After a year or two, the software should be as clean and documented as you want it to be.

    Yes, I think Sergio took this Casa de Quixote for a ride chasing windmills.

  • fa2k (unregistered) in reply to cyborg

    Looking closer, the first snippet is quite badly broken. set() returns void, so it is a compiler error in the first, commented line, to assign that to an int. Then (as others pointed out), the int variables in the second and third lines don't match.

  • Pawel (unregistered) 
       //int startingDay = calInicioFacturacion.set(GregorianCalendar.DATE, 1);
    int startingDay = calInicioFacturacion.getActualMinimum(GregorianCalendar.DATE);

    Anybody care to explain WTF the difference is between these two?

    I spelunked into the implementation of Calendar and GregorianCalendar and found that this ominous getActualMinimum method at the end of the day just defers to an array of hardcoded MIN_VALUES. And guess what we find for DAY_OF_MONTH (which is a synonym for DATE):

    static final int MIN_VALUES[] = {
  [...]

         1,              // DAY_OF_MONTH
  [...]

};
  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to no laughing matter
    no laughing matter:
    I travelled into the future to comment on here, but still not even close to FRIST!
    Pro tip: If you want to be frist, try travling into the past next time ... I mean previous time ...
  • nllp (unregistered)
    Casa de Quixote is a small, state-run retirement community ...

    Yes, the story is crap, but apart from that: since when do state-run facilities hire their own developers to write something like billing software rather than using the software mandated by the state?

  • (cs) in reply to fa2k
    fa2k:
    For the first bug, could anyone explain in what circumstance the first day in the month is not 1 ?

    Well, when you are dealing with ISO Weeks "The first week of a year is the week that contains the first Thursday (and, hence, 4 January) of the year" (Wikipedia). So the first day of an ISO year is often in the last week of the previous calender year.

    Been bitten on the bum by that one.

  • Stabbitha (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    So compare this to yesterday's classic WTF. The classic story was still entertaining to read without this "Let's embellish everything" nonsense, and didn't need to be broken up into 3 parts when one would suffice. Take note, Mr. Gern. You don't have to turn everything into some cliche story, let the WTF speak for itself. The less that gets embellished, the better. Dialog could be embellished for flavor, but the story should stay intact.

    Let's take bets on how much of this is embellished. Likely the original WTF was something like "Hi this is Sergio from Spain, I started a new job at a state run retirement community and found that there was zero documentation since they went through three developers in like a month. Here's some code ... I ended up quitting within a month since the code was so crazy, but hey at least I documented some stuff for the new guy."

    And Spain = Don Quixote so boom let's run with that, and here we have a three part tale of bullshit that almost loses the actual WTF in bad, superfluous storytelling.

    Exactly. Yesterday was such a refreshing flashback to what TDWTF is supposed to be, and now we're back to this horseshit.

    TDWTF authors: If you finish a story, and the best thing you can say about it is, "Well, at least it's not a bunch of hockey analogies.", it's shit.

  • Stabbitha (unregistered) in reply to nllp
    nllp:
    Casa de Quixote is a small, state-run retirement community ...

    Yes, the story is crap, but apart from that: since when do state-run facilities hire their own developers to write something like billing software rather than using the software mandated by the state?

    Since the author needed an excuse to turn a two-sentence WTF into a multi-part story.

  • (cs) in reply to Stabbitha
    Stabbitha:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    So compare this to yesterday's classic WTF. The classic story was still entertaining to read without this "Let's embellish everything" nonsense, and didn't need to be broken up into 3 parts when one would suffice. Take note, Mr. Gern. You don't have to turn everything into some cliche story, let the WTF speak for itself. The less that gets embellished, the better. Dialog could be embellished for flavor, but the story should stay intact.

    Let's take bets on how much of this is embellished. Likely the original WTF was something like "Hi this is Sergio from Spain, I started a new job at a state run retirement community and found that there was zero documentation since they went through three developers in like a month. Here's some code ... I ended up quitting within a month since the code was so crazy, but hey at least I documented some stuff for the new guy."

    And Spain = Don Quixote so boom let's run with that, and here we have a three part tale of bullshit that almost loses the actual WTF in bad, superfluous storytelling.

    Exactly. Yesterday was such a refreshing flashback to what TDWTF is supposed to be, and now we're back to this horseshit.

    TDWTF authors: If you finish a story, and the best thing you can say about it is, "Well, at least it's not a bunch of hockey analogies.", it's shit.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some embellishment to make a story interesting - take yesterday's WTF, Slacking Off, the Lyle stories or something like the Virtudyne Saga for a good example of embellishment that are interesting to read but still stays true to the WTF without going overboard.

    However, I draw the line at a pathetic attempt to drag a story out over multiple days and on top of that having the context be lost in the writing. Both this series and the "Hanzo" series did that - the actual WTF is lost in a sea of poorly-done cliches and stereotypes (never mind the fact the Hanzo stories were downright stupid because the story made it sound like Hanzo was trying to be a Ninja, but he was continuously quoting the Book of Five Rings, which was for Samurai; it basically came off as super amateurish).

    This is not entertainment. This is not an interesting read. Please refrain from this kind of crap in the future - you can embellish and add detail to a submission without it turning into a pile of dogshit.

  • Valued Service (unregistered)

    "He quit the day before we called you for an interview." "That bug you pointed out three months ago... That's his fault."

    I glean from this that it took 3 months to hire the new employee.

    shudders

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    "He quit the day before we called you for an interview." "That bug you pointed out three months ago... That's his fault."

    I glean from this that it took 3 months to hire the new employee.

    shudders

    It also indicates that they went 3 months without anyone at all.

    Day -1: Loser developer quits Day 0: Sergio interviews Day 1 - Day 89: Nobody? Day 90: Sergio hired

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Stabbitha:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    So compare this to yesterday's classic WTF. The classic story was still entertaining to read without this "Let's embellish everything" nonsense, and didn't need to be broken up into 3 parts when one would suffice. Take note, Mr. Gern. You don't have to turn everything into some cliche story, let the WTF speak for itself. The less that gets embellished, the better. Dialog could be embellished for flavor, but the story should stay intact.

    Let's take bets on how much of this is embellished. Likely the original WTF was something like "Hi this is Sergio from Spain, I started a new job at a state run retirement community and found that there was zero documentation since they went through three developers in like a month. Here's some code ... I ended up quitting within a month since the code was so crazy, but hey at least I documented some stuff for the new guy."

    And Spain = Don Quixote so boom let's run with that, and here we have a three part tale of bullshit that almost loses the actual WTF in bad, superfluous storytelling.

    Exactly. Yesterday was such a refreshing flashback to what TDWTF is supposed to be, and now we're back to this horseshit.

    TDWTF authors: If you finish a story, and the best thing you can say about it is, "Well, at least it's not a bunch of hockey analogies.", it's shit.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some embellishment to make a story interesting - take yesterday's WTF, Slacking Off, the Lyle stories or something like the Virtudyne Saga for a good example of embellishment that are interesting to read but still stays true to the WTF without going overboard.

    However, I draw the line at a pathetic attempt to drag a story out over multiple days and on top of that having the context be lost in the writing. Both this series and the "Hanzo" series did that - the actual WTF is lost in a sea of poorly-done cliches and stereotypes (never mind the fact the Hanzo stories were downright stupid because the story made it sound like Hanzo was trying to be a Ninja, but he was continuously quoting the Book of Five Rings, which was for Samurai; it basically came off as super amateurish).

    This is not entertainment. This is not an interesting read. Please refrain from this kind of crap in the future - you can embellish and add detail to a submission without it turning into a pile of dogshit.

    When it becomes harder and harder to point out the intended WTF, because every character sounds like an idiot...

  • gnasher729 (unregistered) in reply to Roby McAndrew
    Roby McAndrew:
    Well, when you are dealing with ISO Weeks "The first week of a year is the week that contains the first Thursday (and, hence, 4 January) of the year" (Wikipedia). So the first day of an ISO year is often in the last week of the previous calender year.
    In general, if you work with calendar weeks, the first week of the year is the one that contains at least four days of the year. There are differences whether a week is from Sunday to Saturday or from Monday to Sunday; so in some places you could use a rule "the week containing the first Thursday", and in other places "the week containing the first Wednesday", but "the first week containing four days of the year" is always correct.

    Trap when using date formatters: yyyy is the actual year, YYYY is the year matching the calendar week. So if the first week of the year starts at January 2nd, then January 1st belongs to the last week of the previous year, and YYYY will produce a value one smaller than yyyy.

  • Valued Service (unregistered)

    Ok, at my limit now. I'll probably come back for the Error'd ones, unless that starts becoming paragraph quotes. Other than that, I'm thinking to move on.

    The creative writing has totally taken over the focus of the site. I mean really. We're going to go off on a completely made up story about what? So you think the coder is mad? Who cares.

    Considering splinter faction.

    I can make a group on facebook or blogger, and people can start sending me stories.

    I'm thinking about not focusing on daily, but rather on good stories. When I get something good I'll post.

    If there's any interest, please comment.

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    Ok, at my limit now. I'll probably come back for the Error'd ones, unless that starts becoming paragraph quotes. Other than that, I'm thinking to move on.

    The creative writing has totally taken over the focus of the site. I mean really. We're going to go off on a completely made up story about what? So you think the coder is mad? Who cares.

    Considering splinter faction.

    I can make a group on facebook or blogger, and people can start sending me stories.

    I'm thinking about not focusing on daily, but rather on good stories. When I get something good I'll post.

    If there's any interest, please comment.

    I would be interested. I read this Website somewhat for entertainment, but mainly, I am interested in how and why things get messed up so that I can avoid such.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

  • JonC (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    "He quit the day before we called you for an interview." "That bug you pointed out three months ago... That's his fault."

    I glean from this that it took 3 months to hire the new employee.

    shudders

    In the UK at least it's not uncommon to have a three month notice period. Wouldn't be surprised if Spain is similar.

  • BrunoTR (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    I read that as

    Day -1: Loser developer quits Day 0: Sergio interviews Day 1: Sergio is hired Day n: Miguel points out a bug Day n + 90: Sergio finally gets around to checking out bug and finding someone he could blame for it

    (captcha: "minim" - with this story we reached the minim)

  • Jeremy (unregistered)

    I've said it before, and hopefully I'll never have to say it again, if anyone ever tried to find me from my old jobs, especially for inane "this would have been better as a loop" not-even-questions, I think that would be grounds for murder.

    What was his goal here?

    "What was this supposed to do here?" "I don't know, that was like 5 years ago" "Why didn't you make that a loop?" [stabbed]

  • (cs)

    What if the system was so bad he didn't know what the software was supposed to do? And his boss is unable to articulate it. Tracking down the previous programmers might be the only way to understand the system requirements that (no doubt) blossomed over time. Since they were such bad coders, the system was unable meet the requirements. BUT the old developers may be able to shed some light on how it is supposed to work!

  • (cs) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    I've said it before, and hopefully I'll never have to say it again, if anyone ever tried to find me from my old jobs, especially for inane "this would have been better as a loop" not-even-questions, I think that would be grounds for murder.

    What was his goal here?

    "What was this supposed to do here?" "I don't know, that was like 5 years ago" "Why didn't you make that a loop?" [stabbed]

    That's more evidence that the whole "Sergio hunts down the previous developers" part is what's made up; there was no real conclusion. He had no reason other than "documentation" to attempt to find them, yet when he did he didn't ask documentation (and would that really require tracking them down versus trying to get an email or phone number and sending a friendly message??) he asked inane crap like "Why did you do this, you should have used a loop!" instead of actually you know refactoring that code to use a loop in the first place.

    The story doesn't even make SENSE.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    TDWTF:
    "I've spent weeks hunting down everything he's done wrong," he said. "I want to find him."
    The film version stars Antonio Banderas as Sergio, carrying a guitar case to each house call. Plus the ending of each story is different.
  • Jeremy (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Jeremy:
    I've said it before, and hopefully I'll never have to say it again, if anyone ever tried to find me from my old jobs, especially for inane "this would have been better as a loop" not-even-questions, I think that would be grounds for murder.

    What was his goal here?

    "What was this supposed to do here?" "I don't know, that was like 5 years ago" "Why didn't you make that a loop?" [stabbed]

    That's more evidence that the whole "Sergio hunts down the previous developers" part is what's made up; there was no real conclusion. He had no reason other than "documentation" to attempt to find them, yet when he did he didn't ask documentation (and would that really require tracking them down versus trying to get an email or phone number and sending a friendly message??) he asked inane crap like "Why did you do this, you should have used a loop!" instead of actually you know refactoring that code to use a loop in the first place.

    The story doesn't even make SENSE.

    It really doesn't. I mean, I think we can take with a grain of salt these things actually happening, and stories about things that we could see our clients/employers doing could still be entertaining anyway, but these stories don't even come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

    If section A would be better if written as a loop, change the effing thing to use a loop. If they used the slightly wrong date function in a place, fix it. Why in the hell would you hunt the people down just to point out they were wrong on something they wrote at a place they used to work at?

    Even if your concern is "maybe they had a reason it's not a loop" then leave well enough alone, and MOVE ON with your life.

    I don't have the love/hate relationship with this site to the degree some people seem to have, but I'm glad this one is over.

  • Franky (unregistered)

    What a pussy. Take the challenge, fix stuff (1), be a hero! (1) and dont just paint over the crap, really fix it

  • (cs)

    Yesterday's story was more original.

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