The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-03-17 Reply Admin

frits:
Ah yes. Another vanity "featured comment".

You're a jerk. I like you.

2010-03-17 Reply Admin

caper:
Stop using MS-Access (ie. MS-Jet) for web applications
Even Microsoft says so: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q303528/ "Microsoft Jet is not intended for use with high-stress server applications, high-concurrency server applications, or 24 hours a day, seven days a week server applications."

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222135/en-us "When you need unlimited users, 24x7 support, and ACID transactions, Microsoft strongly recommends that you use Microsoft SQL Server with Internet Information Server (IIS)."

And what in this story suggests than any of the bolded parts above apply to this situation? It's a one-off app that will be used for a couple of weeks, isn't critical, and will only be used by a handful of users at a time.

2010-03-17 Reply Admin

Holy crap. T0pCod3r, or whoever's running that account these days, TAKE NOTE: Bim Job just schooled the fuck outta TDWTF trolls.

Swedish tard:
Well, to be honest, this is the famed troll of TDWTF, TopCod3r.

Mason Wheeler:
You do know that the term "trolling" originally comes from a fishing technique, right?

Anonymous:
Jesus Bim Job, we know you're stupid but failing at the most basic level of reading comprehension is a new low even for you. If you're trolling, that's sad, but if you honestly read the above post as "hope you catch something [like herpes]" then you're an idiot, plain and simple. He meant "hope you catch something" as in catching a fish with his troll-bait.
Let's see some examples:

Example 1: "Fishing today? Hope you catch something!".

Example 2: "Fishing today? Hope you get gonorrhea you fish-fucking asshole!".

See, example 2 is you. Example 1 is us. Now do you see why we don't want you around? Exactly, because you're an idiot.

Nailed it, mothafucka:

the beholder:
See children, these are two fine examples of trolling. You may notice that TopCod3r didn't catch anything today, maybe because his skills got rusty and the prey was aware of his intent, but most likely it is because he isn't the REAL T0pCod3r (with a zero. Or was he TopC0der?)
Bim Job on the other hand was extremely successful. By playing dumb he managed to catch quite a big bite in little time. Watch that and learn to avoid it, because it seems that biting a troll is bad for your teeth. And for your ego, once you finds out it was a troll.

Now sing your win!

2010-03-17 Reply Admin

sino:
Holy crap. T0pCod3r, or whoever's running that account these days, TAKE NOTE: Bim Job just schooled the fuck outta TDWTF trolls.
Swedish tard:
Well, to be honest, this is the famed troll of TDWTF, TopCod3r.
Mason Wheeler:
You do know that the term "trolling" originally comes from a fishing technique, right?
Anonymous:
Jesus Bim Job, we know you're stupid but failing at the most basic level of reading comprehension is a new low even for you. If you're trolling, that's sad, but if you honestly read the above post as "hope you catch something [like herpes]" then you're an idiot, plain and simple. He meant "hope you catch something" as in catching a fish with his troll-bait.
Let's see some examples:

Example 1: "Fishing today? Hope you catch something!".

Example 2: "Fishing today? Hope you get gonorrhea you fish-fucking asshole!".

See, example 2 is you. Example 1 is us. Now do you see why we don't want you around? Exactly, because you're an idiot.
Nailed it, mothafucka:

the beholder:
See children, these are two fine examples of trolling. You may notice that TopCod3r didn't catch anything today, maybe because his skills got rusty and the prey was aware of his intent, but most likely it is because he isn't the REAL T0pCod3r (with a zero. Or was he TopC0der?)
Bim Job on the other hand was extremely successful. By playing dumb he managed to catch quite a big bite in little time. Watch that and learn to avoid it, because it seems that biting a troll is bad for your teeth. And for your ego, once you finds out it was a troll.
Now sing your win!

What you say? Main Screen, Turn On!

Kuba · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

foxyshadis:
Gaspar:
Using VB and an Access data file I can put a finished, polished and fully tested system like this in about an hour and a half (maybe 3 hours with extensive error handling and testing).
Using PHP, Apache and MySQL, you will get a much more robust system that you can expand upon. It will also take you more than a day to write, and much more to test.

One is not better than the other, they both have their places. For lightweight, one time use systems, VB+Access are cheaper in development cost for the same result.
I dunno. I've hacked together plenty of one-offs in PHP and some random database in a few hours. (Once even PHP+Access.) Unless you have to use ASP for some reason, or you just don't know any other languages, PHP is a better choice. Apache and MySQL each install very quickly if you don't need to configure anything - although on NT4 here it might be hard to source compatible versions, and I'd just live with whatever was on it at the time.

I think that using any decent framework it should go way faster than "more than a day". I'm fond of web2py, and it should take no longer using it than in VB+access.

Kuba · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

Mason Wheeler:
JP:
Using "MySQL" and "Robust" in the same sentence is amusing, and along with the assertion that Access is acceptable for anything demonstrates a certain level of naivette. Spend some time and investigate the pros and cons of other available packages. The only time you'd ever use MySQL for a new project is if you planned to deploy to one certain webhost that did not offer anything else, or if you already have major infrastructure that is already MySQL. There are far better choices than both Access and MySQL for webapps, even those one-offs that "take an hour and a half".
BTW - give me a database schema and a half hour (30 minutes) and using PostgreSQL and Django I'll have a web app for you.
Why does Firebird get no respect? It's an industrial-strength open-source database that's ridiculously easy to set up, but no one ever talks about it.

Because for as long as I can recall it had, at best, second-class-citizen support from major distros. Its heritage makes the setup just plain old feel weird. I had to deal with it once a good while ago and I wasn't quite in love with it. I'd take postgresql any day instead. I guess it all boils down to the human factor side of things. If it stinks, you try to avoid it at first.

Addendum (2010-03-18 01:44): It may turn out to be blue cheese (yummy!) in the end, but it still initially stinks.

Kuba · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

DWalker59:
Finder Seeker:
everyone cheered at the chance to get a free copy of the office software
Ahem... http://download.openoffice.org/
Oh, that's right, back in the dark ages people thought only one organization was allowed to write software, and even though it costs about a penny to make another CD, software can't be any good unless you pay several hundred dollars for it.

Oh sure, the OpenOffice.Org spreadsheet that has a complete object model that matches the code I have written for Excel, AND has the Solver add-in, AND has links to external databases, AND lets me store 10 years worth of daily stock prices horizontally, one column per market day, AND has add-ins for real-time updating stock prices, AND ...

Or, maybe not...

If you're doing it in Excel, you're doing something wrong IMHO. There's no way, other than writing scripts, to make sure that said spreadsheet does not have a mistake somewhere. If you depend on this data too much, you may get burned. Why on earth would one store so much data in a spreadsheet? Those are pretty much designed for interactivity. If it doesn't fit in a few screenfulls, it doesn't belong in a spreadsheet.

There's no way to interactively do anything on a spreadsheet that's thousands of columns wide. You lose key benefits of the spreadsheet: you have to type addresses manually (good luck selecting exactly 365 columns with a mouse), you need code written to ensure that the cells adhere to your stencil/template, you can't get meaningful diffs, and so on. By the time you're done making it robust, you end up with so much non-visual scripting that you might have as well done everything in some scripting language to begin with.

Spreadsheets are visual, purely-functional programming paradigms. They are the living proof that people can think in terms of purely functional programs. That's the key power of a spreadsheet: a visual, purely functional environment. If you are writing a lot of scripts around them, the benefits evaporate very, very quickly. A spreadsheet with controls in it is the first sign that the project needs to be transferred to a better environment.

Myself, I'd probably do it all in Octave, if you're into open source solutions. There are way more powerful optimizers for Octave/Matlab than Solver, it's easy to get data from pretty much any source, and so on.

Alternatively, something like Ocaml might be useful if you're into keeping it robust and not prone to errors.

I know that many people who do finances and trading use Excel a lot, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. I know a guy who was dealing with the fallout from those spreadsheets in Worldcom. Try getting some Joe Schmoe to notice that a few formulas somewhere on sheet #5 were copied/pasted wrongly to sheet #3, and they don't do their job anymore. Good luck.

Kuba · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

Frank Earnest:
Well as long as we're reciting anecdotal stories as if they apply to everyone, I've been using OpenOffice for years and never had any trouble with it. No, I don't use it to develop complicated "applications"; I have programming languages and real databases for that. But for a basic office suite that opens damn near everything (including MS word documents that MS word won't open any more) it does just fine. And it's free. So you don't have to waste hours keeping track of licenses when you deploy it for everyone.
And oh yes it runs on everything, not just proprietary platforms.

I'd say that the biggest problem with OpenOffice is the barrier to entry if you wish to tweak it, as in modifying the source of it (vs. playing with macros/add-ins).

First one is getting the thing to compile -- it got better over the years, but still it makes compiling gcc look not all that bad. Then wrapping your mind around enough things to make even the slightest change. Something like changing the order of two buttons in a dialog box. Then adding a new button or another control and having it react to events...

I'd say that lack of real documentation for the self-rolled framework they use is the nail in the coffin. Nowhere does it answer "why" something was done this-a-way and not that-a-way. If you think about implementing a new feature, and there's nothing "close enough" -- you will have no mental image of how to use their framework to do what you need. It's easy enough to understand the individual APIs, but unless you know where to look first, you may never find them.

There's no good reason why an open source project on the scale of OO shouldn't be documented enough to have any decent programmer be able to pick up the basics in a couple of days. The difference is that in case of say .NET, Qt or even Java frameworks, there's plenty of documentation that tells you why thing are the way they are, and where to look for certain functionality. For OO, nothing like that exists IIRC. Good luck hacking on it if you don't wish to spend weeks on doing so.

I have a bunch of relatively simple things I'd like to change, and I know it'd take maybe 20-30 minutes to change them in anything that uses Qt/KDE or WPF+.NET. In OO, it'd take me that long merely to figure that there's no real developer documentation. Their DevGuide may as well be written it Chinese. Surely it'd make perfect sense to those who know Chinese. The way it stands, the "First Steps" chapter begins thusly:

UNO (pronounced ['ju:nou]) stands for Universal Network Objects and is the base component technology for OpenOffice.org. You can utilize and write components that interact across languages, component technologies, computer platforms, and networks.

Helpful as hell. So many words, so little content. The DevGuide is supposedly useful if you want to write add-ons etc. To hack on OO itself it's virtually useless at first, and there's no other real document that would do the job. Some Developer's Guide, my ass.

Contrast that with thoughtful tutorials and strategic intros provided with Qt or .NET. OO's developer wiki looks like something that a bunch of monkeys threw together...

I'm a happy OO user, but the fact that it's open source is absolutely meaningless to me. The barrier to entry is needlessly big. To me, OO is freeware, and unless some hard working soul comes up with an "OO hacking" book for real people, with some real and useful examples (not all toy ones, like reversing a menu item), it won't change.

Reading this reinforces the barrier to entry: not only there's no real documentation, but the architecture itself is so counterproductive that I don't really blame anyone who refuses to come anywhere near that codebase. Obviously having just one string class in the project is never enough. I just imagine what's waiting if you dig any deeper than that.

It's a big feat that it works as well as it does, and I'm obviously a happy camper, using both OO.org and NeoOffice. But that's it. I'd pick away on gcc codebase any day over picking away on OO. And I guess that says something IMHO how comparably clean gcc is, even though -- again, purely IMHO -- on a barrier-to-entry scale, gcc scores pretty big.

luis.espinal · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

TopCod3r:
Lars:
TopCod3r:
Try ASP.NET MVC. You will love it

Yeah, I'm evaluating it right now.

Actually MVC was something that I had a hand in inventing many years ago, from some articles I wrote both internally in my company and also online, although it has been changed quite a bit from my original idea.

Citations for articles written online please.

Eternal Density · 2010-03-18 Reply Admin

Mason Wheeler:
Why does Firebird get no respect? It's an industrial-strength open-source database that's ridiculously easy to set up, but no one ever talks about it.

*shrugs* I (and my colleagues) use it in products as a persistence mechanism paired with NHibernate.

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

EngleBart:
belgariontheking:
I think this is the first time that I actually thought "D'OH!" upon reading the punchline.
o I felt my stomach drop (like a roller coaster) when I hit the punch line!
o For something this simple, skip the Access DB and append a line to a comma delimited file. Ready made spreadsheet!

o Memory Lane: I used to run IIS 2.0 on Windows NT Server 4.0 with only 12MB of RAM. I did not have a CD drive nor enough HD space for the database I needed, so I mapped a network drive to another computers CD drive. It was a work of art. It took a few minutes to boot up, but once it stabilized it had acceptable performance. Of course, this was a dev server and we were thankful to have it at all. The production server was state of the art.

There's a little thing called a 'race condition' you might want to look that up.

If there is ANY chance that two people could hit the submit button close enough together to cause a problem Murphy says it'll happen and you will get corrupted data.

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

Dan:
Finder Seeker:
Oh, that's right, back in the dark ages people thought only one organization was allowed to write software, and even though it costs about a penny to make another CD, software can't be any good unless you pay several hundred dollars for it.

Plus the cost of the programmers who supplied something to put on that $.01 CD. Or do people work full-time for free on your planet?

Well you see in a properly functioning free market the price will be pushed towards the marginal cost of a good (ie the $0.01 for pressing the CD), the development costs do not matter. This is why monopolies are bad for consumers, they keep prices high, stifle innovation (how long was IE6 the current version, with effectively no change, more than a decade?))

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Cad Delworth:
In 1999, any M$ shop which was MS-only would probably not have heard of Apache, PHP, or MySQL: that's why.
And even if the said 1999-vintage M$ shop had heard of Apache, PHP, and MySQL, those pieces of software would be regarded by management as:

'Beardy sandal-wearer' software.

'Suspicious' and/or 'unproven.'

Subject to hacker attacks or otherwise 'not secure enough.'

Not compatible with the company's corporate software.

And in all fairness, in 1999, at least 2.5 of those would have been correct!

(Come on, don't you remember just how bad PHP and MySQL used to be?)

'Beardy' probably still applies...

PHP yes, it was hard to write secure code in it... (I never did, but I read about the things it used to do brrr) you could always just write it in perl or something...

MySQL... well it should be hidden from evil people anyway and it'd be better than Access :P (and if you don't need REALLY high concurrency it'd be just fine)

Apache was probably pretty solid.

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

Gaspar:
Using VB and an Access data file I can put a finished, polished and fully tested system like this in about an hour and a half (maybe 3 hours with extensive error handling and testing).
Using PHP, Apache and MySQL, you will get a much more robust system that you can expand upon. It will also take you more than a day to write, and much more to test.

One is not better than the other, they both have their places. For lightweight, one time use systems, VB+Access are cheaper in development cost for the same result.

I dunno about that, depends on how much setup you have to do, if you have some infrastructure in place already you could get it to the point where you just create the tables and upload your php... (like it is on most commercial webhosts)

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

Anon:
You get what you pay for:
Finder Seeker:
everyone cheered at the chance to get a free copy of the office software
Ahem... http://download.openoffice.org/
Oh, that's right, back in the dark ages people thought only one organization was allowed to write software, and even though it costs about a penny to make another CD, software can't be any good unless you pay several hundred dollars for it.

I've used OpenOffice and seen others use it. After seeing things like, "oh, you moved your PPT (or whatever OO calls it) to a thumbdrive so you can display it on a different computer and btw, all those objects you thought you embedded, we really only linked to them, so you're hosed" just made things wonderful. I presume they fixed that within the last 3 years, but at the time, it was a MAJOR surprise to me that it couldn't do a feature that MS Office had been doing for years.

I had a similar frustration with OO Impress (their version of Powerpoint) a few months ago. It turns out that there is no way to pass command line parameters to an external program that is triggered when you click on something in your presentation. It's a trick we use all the time to synch up some external hardware with the presentation. Works fine in Powerpoint, impossible in Impress. And their community forums was absolutely useless for trying to get help.

I doubt it's impossible, you could almost certainly write a macro in OOBasic to do it

2010-03-24 Reply Admin

JP:
Gaspar:
Using VB and an Access data file I can put a finished, polished and fully tested system like this in about an hour and a half (maybe 3 hours with extensive error handling and testing).
Using PHP, Apache and MySQL, you will get a much more robust system...

I am amused at the assertions contained in this threadlet. Robustness does not necessarily come from the technology used - you can design a crappy application, or a good one, in either Access or PHP.

Using "MySQL" and "Robust" in the same sentence is amusing, and along with the assertion that Access is acceptable for anything demonstrates a certain level of naivette. Spend some time and investigate the pros and cons of other available packages. The only time you'd ever use MySQL for a new project is if you planned to deploy to one certain webhost that did not offer anything else, or if you already have major infrastructure that is already MySQL. There are far better choices than both Access and MySQL for webapps, even those one-offs that "take an hour and a half".

BTW - give me a database schema and a half hour (30 minutes) and using PostgreSQL and Django I'll have a web app for you.

Hey now MySQL is a real grown up RDBMS now, and has been for some time, didn't really used to be, but times change.

2010-03-25 Reply Admin

Lurker Indeed:
Anonymous:
Sounds like a classic case of user error - as they say, a bad workman blames his tools. If you don't like the default settings then change them, genius.

Or I'll just waste my time with crap software and use MS Office - like most everyone else.

FTFY

2010-03-25 Reply Admin

sino:
Holy crap. T0pCod3r, or whoever's running that account these days, TAKE NOTE: Bim Job just schooled the fuck outta TDWTF trolls.
Swedish tard:
Well, to be honest, this is the famed troll of TDWTF, TopCod3r.
Mason Wheeler:
You do know that the term "trolling" originally comes from a fishing technique, right?
Anonymous:
Jesus Bim Job, we know you're stupid but failing at the most basic level of reading comprehension is a new low even for you. If you're trolling, that's sad, but if you honestly read the above post as "hope you catch something [like herpes]" then you're an idiot, plain and simple. He meant "hope you catch something" as in catching a fish with his troll-bait.
Let's see some examples:

Example 1: "Fishing today? Hope you catch something!".

Example 2: "Fishing today? Hope you get gonorrhea you fish-fucking asshole!".

See, example 2 is you. Example 1 is us. Now do you see why we don't want you around? Exactly, because you're an idiot.

TBH, I think they were just having a go at BJ because, well, he's a complete BJ.

2010-10-19 Reply Admin

OMG I am so sick an tired of this argument that OSS is the best thing ever. Use what the hell you want to get the job done.... are you lot that hard up for a life you have to trawl through sites like this just to add another witty anecdote about "M$ is teh suxor man!"

Grow up and start focusing on getting the job done.

2013-07-30 Reply Admin

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