The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

DCRoss:
That still leaves the most important question unanswered.
Who own the Chiefs?

Own-ZUH, own-ZUH!

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.

There isn't a single hockey-related pun in the article. Plenty of metaphors, yes; and a lot I wouldn't get if I hadn't played a few hockey video-games because there's almost no hockey in my country. But no puns.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

This comment went wide of the uprights, landing in foul territory and losing game, set and match for a TKO in double overtime.

cellocgw · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.

And you think it's anything else? I speak as a long-time hockey fan (saw Orr live at the old Gahden), and so far as all USA/Canada pro and semipro leagues go, it's all about the fights.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

I was watching a fight once, and a hockey match suddenly broke out over nothing.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Ross Presser:
This comment went wide of the uprights, landing in foul territory and losing game, set and match for a TKO in double overtime.

That sounds more like Sally Jockstrap from Private Eye

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
Ah the old classic. Can't be how WE do things here at Initrode, must be that the new guy is just a clueless noob, even though he's only new to our company and has experience elsewhere in doing similar things.
I always love how companies treat a new employee as though they were fresh out of college with zero experience even when they are experienced and just new to that organization, and summarily dismiss anything they say as "They're just the new guy". God forbid that someone new to your organization could provide some good insight or alternatives that might work..,

Addendum (2014-05-20 06:58): I specifically recall a situation at my previous job where we had hired a guy who had over 10 years experience in .NET, but the director treated him like some inexperienced moron who knew nothing, and any piece of good advice he gave based on his decade of experience was dismissed as being ridiculous. He left within a few months because his experience wasn't being utilized at all.

It's a tough balance though, because those guys with the 100 years of experience are also the "functions and classes are stupid", "I've been doing it ___ way for 20 years!" guys as well.

Where I used to work they brought in consultants and one of them tried talking the bosses into not letting us use ifs because switches were "faster".

Nagesh · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

So was mystery finally revealed or is there part 2 to this story?

Nagesh · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

skotl:
I'm British. When I read "hockey", I think of this; http://vintagetablehockeygames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3.jpg

That is only hockey I know of. Also Shahrukh Khan movie called Chak De India must watch for vision of jingoism and love of Hockey.

Zylon · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Ross Presser:
This comment went wide of the uprights, landing in foul territory and losing game, set and match for a TKO in double overtime.

If they hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Bananas:
If any code made so much as one test case fail, QA would have a fit and purge the offending changes from source control. Adam had to keep a local copy of his work so his changes weren’t lost in their reversion frenzy.
WTF!

I'm confused. What insane VCS were they using? Can't be decentralized, or he'd always have a local copy. Subversion? I think you'd have to restore from a backup, or dump and load every revision but the ones you don't want, or something similarly drastic and time-consuming. Clearcase, or some other abomination?

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

np:
Steve The Cynic:
20 comments, and nobody has even thought to mention the issues surrounding a QA department with revert rights in the source code repository...

Not only revert rights, but purge rights. Anyone purging (or perforce obliterating) something needs to be taught the meaning of source control / or pummeled.

I can envision that conversation. Did you fix that bug? Yes. Revision blah. But that revision broke our test case because the test case was set up to work around the bug, so we reverted it.

Not to mention, WTF, was this compiler thingy that "nobody understood" even though the author, Jason, (if you could call him that) still worked there? What was Adam building and testing with? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this: "so I know that if it compiles here, it will work perfectly when released."

herby · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

On being the "new guy":

It happens all the time. You try to introduce new ideas in the workflow, and nobody listens. Everyone else has years of experience and "know better". This happens even after still being the "new guy" for one year, and having more years of programming experience (I started in the 60's) than the others.

Oh, well. Never mind.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

cellocgw:
Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.
And you think it's anything else? I speak as a long-time hockey fan (saw Orr live at the old Gahden), and so far as all USA/Canada pro and semipro leagues go, it's all about the fights.

If Americans see hockey as fighting on ice, it's no wonder the sport isn't popular compared to Canada. Tell me, how many fights broke out in the current NHL playoffs ?

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

He should have reverted ALL of his changes back quipping something close to "Well if I'm not good enough for this company, neither is anything I did." Let them start exactly where they were only with far less time on the clock.

DrPepper · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Anyone else wondering why the QA department just sat around while the "compiler" was eating up QA time?

I mean, if this is a code quality tool, then the dev's should have been running the code through the tool all along.

If instead this is a QA tool, then QA should have scheduled some actual testing time after dev is done.

If there was no time for testing (because the dev was occupied with the tool for a few days) then the QA manager should have put the kabosh on deployment until QA is done. That is his responsiblity -- to ensure the quality of the product.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Zylon:
Ross Presser:
This comment went wide of the uprights, landing in foul territory and losing game, set and match for a TKO in double overtime.
If they hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

Looks like you've scored an own goal. I can see we're back to square one, and I'm stumped.

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Zylon:
Ross Presser:
This comment went wide of the uprights, landing in foul territory and losing game, set and match for a TKO in double overtime.
If they hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

You're a man's man. No wait. You're a man's man's man.

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

cellocgw:
Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.
And you think it's anything else? I speak as a long-time hockey fan (saw Orr live at the old Gahden), and so far as all USA/Canada pro and semipro leagues go, it's all about the fights.

Hockey season is over now that the Bs are out. :(

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

skotl:
I'm British. When I read "hockey", I think of this; http://vintagetablehockeygames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3.jpg

I like the way you think.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

I'm confused. I thoguht Hockey was played on grass, on a field similar to Soccer.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

jonkenson:
TRWTF is that QA has any access at all to the source control server and even worse that they actively make changes to it without warning the developers!

Yep, because the simple minded QA shouldn't be able to look at source diffs to get a better understanding of changes. Or even worse, provide feedback on unit test coverage up front to help prevent issues before they occur.

Yea, definitely should segregate the departments even further instead of hiring competent QA professionals.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.

What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Jeremy:
ObiWayneKenobi:
Ah the old classic. Can't be how WE do things here at Initrode, must be that the new guy is just a clueless noob, even though he's only new to our company and has experience elsewhere in doing similar things.
I always love how companies treat a new employee as though they were fresh out of college with zero experience even when they are experienced and just new to that organization, and summarily dismiss anything they say as "They're just the new guy". God forbid that someone new to your organization could provide some good insight or alternatives that might work..,

Addendum (2014-05-20 06:58): I specifically recall a situation at my previous job where we had hired a guy who had over 10 years experience in .NET, but the director treated him like some inexperienced moron who knew nothing, and any piece of good advice he gave based on his decade of experience was dismissed as being ridiculous. He left within a few months because his experience wasn't being utilized at all.

It's a tough balance though, because those guys with the 100 years of experience are also the "functions and classes are stupid", "I've been doing it ___ way for 20 years!" guys as well.

Where I used to work they brought in consultants and one of them tried talking the bosses into not letting us use ifs because switches were "faster".

There is some quality method that tries to reduce the number of branches in any function, but allows exemptions for Switches and Macros (which although they generate branches, are somehow seen as "less complicated" or "more reliable" or something than an if statement - or perhaps I oversimplify a bit).

I think I saw it in Six Sigma or CMM(I?), but it could also just have been some organisations arbitrary implementation of something.

I could imagine someone having worked there and knowing that "case" statments were good but "if"s were bad and then not being able to explain why (I read: "It's faster" as code for "I don't know what I'm saying but it's meant to be better and I know people like speed"

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

jonkenson:
I never wrote code for iOS 5 but I'm assuming Apple's policy of validating all apps was still implemented. How would this app get past that process when it can't even launch without crashing?
TRWTF is that QA has any access at all to the source control server and even worse that they actively make changes to it without warning the developers!

Simple, re the iOS stuff - it was written for droid.

I'm not sure I understand how something that didn't even load was deployed. Surely the developer themselves does at least enough testing to convince themselves "it appears to work".

Or perhaps this is the "it compiles" story rehashed from a slightly different perspective

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

George:
chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.
What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

Yes, that's why it's such a tough game.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
George:
chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.
What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

Yes, that's why it's such a tough game.

I think me too is not understand your original. Does game time not elapse until the first goal?

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

OP:
chubertdev:
George:
chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.
What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

Yes, that's why it's such a tough game.
I think me too is not understand your original. Does game time not elapse until the first goal?

At the risk of starting a Holy War (tm) the likes of which has never been seen before, I think it should have been 'lapses' not 'elapses'

HardwareGeek · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

OP:
chubertdev:
George:
chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.
What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

Yes, that's why it's such a tough game.
I think me too is not understand your original. Does game time not elapse until the first goal?

For the sake of anyone who is genuinely confused by this, as opposed to just trying to be humorous, and the last poster seems to be confused, I will rephrase:

In order to be a valid goal, the puck must completely cross the goal line before time expires at the end of a period.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

HardwareGeek:
OP:
chubertdev:
George:
chubertdev:
Adam was to hit the ice as the extra attacker to score the multi-platform support goal at the horn.

The puck has to completely cross the goal line before time elapses in the period.
What? so until the puck crosses the (either?) goal line, no time would elapse?

What a peculiar game. I bet the physicists love it.

Yes, that's why it's such a tough game.
I think me too is not understand your original. Does game time not elapse until the first goal?
For the sake of anyone who is genuinely confused by this, as opposed to just trying to be humorous, and the last poster seems to be confused, I will rephrase:

In order to be a valid goal, the puck must completely cross the goal line before time expires at the end of a period.

Take it from me, those here genuinely confused are well beyond help, and everyone else is either a troll or rates themselves as a comic genius....

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

*has elapsed

[image]

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

anonymous:
faoileag:
Miriam:
Can this site's QA team please reject stories with such an inane amount of dumb sports puns?
You must be new around here. I would be suprised if the original submission mentioned hockey even once.
Knowing TDWTF, it probably was football (the international kind) and changing it to hockey was part of the "anonymisation" process.

I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Anonymii:
cellocgw:
Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.
And you think it's anything else? I speak as a long-time hockey fan (saw Orr live at the old Gahden), and so far as all USA/Canada pro and semipro leagues go, it's all about the fights.
If Americans see hockey as fighting on ice, it's no wonder the sport isn't popular compared to Canada. Tell me, how many fights broke out in the current NHL playoffs ?

It's the way Canadians see hockey too, and here's why it's popular:

Americans fight by invading countries. Canadians fight by donning gloves, wielding a big stick, and getting pucked.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

If The Compiler operated like make instead of like cc, I'm amazed it compiled anything.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
anonymous:
faoileag:
Miriam:
Can this site's QA team please reject stories with such an inane amount of dumb sports puns?
You must be new around here. I would be suprised if the original submission mentioned hockey even once.
Knowing TDWTF, it probably was football (the international kind) and changing it to hockey was part of the "anonymisation" process.

I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

How so? Yeah, usually it's at a really bad time (ie. chance at goal), but not having it would mean you could leave a player or two deep in the opposition's half with only the goalie between them and the goal. Rugby League and Union both have similar rules, although requiring players to be behind the kicker rather than the last line of defence.

If you want to talk bad rules in [s]soccer[/s] football, how about yellow card accumulation between games (not a rule in every tournament), or not being able to challenge a card after the game (when video replays obviously show the ref is a fucking idiot [image]

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

DrPepper:
Anyone else wondering why the QA department just sat around while the "compiler" was eating up QA time?
I mean, if this is a code quality tool, then the dev's should have been running the code through the tool all along.

If instead this is a QA tool, then QA should have scheduled some actual testing time after dev is done.

If there was no time for testing (because the dev was occupied with the tool for a few days) then the QA manager should have put the kabosh on deployment until QA is done. That is his responsiblity -- to ensure the quality of the product.

This is what I was thinking. Isn't it QAs job to make sure a crashing app isn't released? Like...shouldn't the firing be because they blame him for not meeting the deadline, not because a crashing app was released?

Also, why didn't he test it on his own device?

We need the OP here

Steve The Cynic · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

cellocgw:
Anonymii:
Seriously, way, WAY too many hockey-related puns. And bad ones, too.
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.
And you think it's anything else? I speak as a long-time hockey fan (saw Orr live at the old Gahden), and so far as all USA/Canada pro and semipro leagues go, it's all about the fights.

I'm disappointed. Nobody(*) quoted this:

"We went to the big fight, and a hockey game broke out."

() Well, OK, I just did, but nobody quoted it beforeme.

Scarlet Manuka · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
I'm disappointed. Nobody(*) quoted this: "We went to the big fight, and a hockey game broke out." (*) Well, OK, I just did, but nobody quoted it *before*me*.

... except for QJo in comment 433684.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Zagyg:
skotl:
I'm British. When I read "hockey", I think of this; http://vintagetablehockeygames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3.jpg
Funny, I'm going to be thinking of something reasonably similar to that, tonight. Can you guess what the differences will be?

Yeah, you'll be thinking of the Dutch team, not the British one.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Did anyone else read, "The plan was to support any mobile operating system and any device," and wonder why that never came up in the story? Obviously you can't do that. The closest thing you can do is have a simple web site with almost no functionality beyond hyperlinks and very little data for a given page, but I'm pretty sure there's devices out there that can't handle that either. But the story seems to imply he did somehow do just that. He got into all the stores - even for those devices/OSs that don't have stores or whose stores stopped being maintained a long time ago.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

ga e:
I'm confused. I thoguht Hockey was played on grass, on a field similar to Soccer.

I'm confused. I thought someone who thought hockey was played on grass would say "football" instead of "soccer".

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Spencer:
chubertdev:
anonymous:
faoileag:
Miriam:
Can this site's QA team please reject stories with such an inane amount of dumb sports puns?
You must be new around here. I would be suprised if the original submission mentioned hockey even once.
Knowing TDWTF, it probably was football (the international kind) and changing it to hockey was part of the "anonymisation" process.

I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

How so? Yeah, usually it's at a really bad time (ie. chance at goal), but not having it would mean you could leave a player or two deep in the opposition's half with only the goalie between them and the goal. Rugby League and Union both have similar rules, although requiring players to be behind the kicker rather than the last line of defence.

Leaving them at a 1 man disadvantage on the half of the field where they're trying to defend? Or I suppose the other team could just assign 1 man to guard him so it would all even out. Still not seeing the point of that rule.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

qagoon:
jonkenson:
TRWTF is that QA has any access at all to the source control server and even worse that they actively make changes to it without warning the developers!

Yep, because the simple minded QA shouldn't be able to look at source diffs to get a better understanding of changes. Or even worse, provide feedback on unit test coverage up front to help prevent issues before they occur.

Yea, definitely should segregate the departments even further instead of hiring competent QA professionals.

I agree here. When I worked in QA, I saved a lot of people's time by just doing a quick look at the diffs between when something passed and failed. Usually it was really easy. Change: ABC to ABD. Product failure: ABC not found. And I'm not talking about test failing because the test was hard coded to expect something, but rather that the product doesn't even start up (I don't know what the developer tested before checking in).

Then I switched to development and I still wish more people in QA would do what I did. Instead it feels like I'm doing both QA and Dev. And yes, I still wonder what developers are doing to test their change before checking in.

even worse that they actively make changes to it without warning the developers!

But I still agree to this. When I'm in QA or Dev, I don't revert people's changes without reaching out to them first. If they are unavailable, I still make sure they know their change got reverted because it was blocking thousands of QA and Dev from doing their work (yes, I only revert if it is that catastrophic).

chubertdev · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Spencer:
chubertdev:
I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

How so? Yeah, usually it's at a really bad time (ie. chance at goal), but not having it would mean you could leave a player or two deep in the opposition's half with only the goalie between them and the goal. Rugby League and Union both have similar rules, although requiring players to be behind the kicker rather than the last line of defence.

If you want to talk bad rules in [s]soccer[/s] football, how about yellow card accumulation between games (not a rule in every tournament), or not being able to challenge a card after the game (when video replays obviously show the ref is a fucking idiot

Well, diving is a whole other issue (Reggie Miller is the reason that I don't watch basketball) that makes soccer unwatchable. And the rest of those things are bad, but when you have goals in separate postal codes, and you have a rule that limits how quickly a team can make progress, it brings the action to a snail's pace. There's more action in a single power play in hockey than an entire soccer match.

That being said, how has no one used the term "handegg" yet?

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Anonymii:
It seems the author thinks hockey is all about fighting on ice.

That would make the author correct.

chubertdev · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

How To Be A Hockey Player

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

Then you know nothing of the infield fly rule in baseball.

chubertdev · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Mike Francis:
chubertdev:
I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

Then you know nothing of the infield fly rule in baseball.

It doesn't ruin the game. That rule is silly, but it's nowhere near as bad.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Mike Francis:
chubertdev:
I would just like to say that the offside rule in soccer is the worst rule in all of sports.

Then you know nothing of the infield fly rule in baseball.

Without the infield fly rule, an infield fly with a runner on first would be an automatic double play. An infield fly with runners on first and second would be an automatic triple play.

Quality De-Surance

Leave a comment on “Quality De-Surance”