The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

I once worked in the testing department of an email company named for a Renaissance Italian. They had an...interesting...attitude towards our department.

A few years previously, a manager had stormed into the testing room and confronted the lead tester. "We need email shipped by the end of the week!" The lead tester protested that they still had major showstopper bugs. The manager fired him on the spot, turned to the second tester and asked him if they could be ready to ship by the end of the week. "Uh...sure. Yeah!"

The release was a disaster, going through multiple point panic-bug-fix releases a week. They obvious course was to fire the rest of the testing department, which they soon did.

Things didn't go so well after that, and eventually the testing department was reinstated. I was one of the new testers.

The code was still buggy. We documented the errors. We dealt with developers who returned every one as "Can't reproduce" without bothering to try them.
Then I found out that the dev leads were telling mgmt that the product had been ready to ship for months, but it was the testers holding up the release.

It seemed a good time to start job hunting. It seemed even better when my direct manager informed me that he had been told to fire the whole testing department at 5pm on Friday "after getting another week of work out of them", but that mgmt had changed their mind at the last minute.

I left. They got bought by an even worse-managed company and tanked a year later.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

richleick:
I wonder if firefox followed this lead. I use it, love it, but what the *&%# happened to my bookmarks with this last patch.

If you're using WinXP, they're in [BootDrive]\Documents and Settings\[Profile]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[firefox profile name]\bookmarkbackups\

Just copy the most recent backup that has your bookmarks inside out to the parent directory.

Firefox constantly eats my bookmarks and other settings.

Also, delete localstore.rdf in the [firefox profile name] directory whenever Firefox hiccups so that it can restore the settings.

I also have issues with my mouse gestures extension forgetting all of the gestures at the same time, but deleting MouseGestures.rdf forces it to reset them all.

Seems to happen every time Firefox updates as well as any time my computer restarts while Firefox is open.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

sparkfizt:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

Would the dev even bother to handle tickets if this was not the case? I mean, where else but at a place that hires people like this would you find an entrophy-powered compiler?

(captcha: hacker. Obviously the source of this companies' random code genera^W^W^W compiler.)

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I did not make any friends when I told our admin champion of QA that our testing did not make any difference in the quality of the released software. I came to the conclusion that unless the gas pump software caused the pump to spray the customer with gasoline and then light it on fire, there was no way the software was not shipping. And even then, it would be a close call...

Obviously if that were the case instead of fixing the defects they would shop around for a company to sponsor the lawsuit defense against the competitor they sold this to.

(captcha: craptastic. Indeed.)

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

snoofle:
Anonymous:

LoL, absolutely true.

In fact, that particular company's compensation structure promoted such software morals.

As long as the manager can ship the code to production, the manager and the senior management associated with the project got hefty bonuses and promotions. As always customers would find bugs and it really dint matter if the app worked in production. Actually, a new mission would be created to rewrite a 3 month old production app again with different vendor and a hefty budget ofcourse!! and the cosy feeling that this time things would be better keeps everyone happy.

I feel your pain. I worked in a place where the only relevant thing was the Almighty Date. Of course, the developers were supposed to write perfect code the first time, with perpetually changing (possibly incorrect/incomplete) specs from the sales-chimps - because it was our job to know what was needed. No architectural design was required because it was simple: just a button here, a text box there, n-tier distributed asynchronous multi-threading everywhere. I finally resigned, with a smile and a laugh - they didn't get why. They ultimately hired several consultants to replace me when they finally realized that maybe I had been pushing really hard to keep up, and was just tired of stupidity. They called me a couple of times asking me to come back. I stopped answering their calls.

I think I'm one of the consultants brought in on this... My last day with the consulting firm will be friday...

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
No longer with the same company. I tried to rationalize and supress my views for few months, but finally decided to leave the boat.

BTW the software is used in transactions worth few million dollars a day.

"Which car company did you say you worked for?"

"A major one."

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Management: "Why aren't your tests 100% passed?"
Me: "Because the code is broken; I can't pass the test until the code is fixed."
Management: "So when will you have 100% pass?"
Me: "um ... When the code is fixed."
Management: "You have until xx/xx/xxxx to have these tests 100% passed."

Reminds me of an exchange in "Joe vs. The Volcano" between Joe and his boss, Mr. Waturi:

<font><font class="txt0"> 			  WATURI
	Listen, Joe.  What's this Dede
	tells me about the catalogs?

			  JOE
	I've only got twelve.

			  WATURI
	How'd you let us get down to
	twelve?

			  JOE
	I told you.

			  WATURI
	When?

			  JOE
	Three weeks ago.  Then two
	weeks ago.

			  WATURI
	Did you tell me last week?

			  JOE
	No.

			  WATURI
	Why not?

			  JOE
	I don't know.  I thought you
	knew.

.....
</font></font><font><font class="txt0">       			  WATURI
	And I want those catalogs.

			  JOE
	Then please order them.</font></font>
<font><font class="txt0">
</font></font>

marvin_rabbit · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I once came on a project that was budgeted for $1,000,000.00 and 6 months and after 9 months and $2,500,000.00 of development they started to gather requirements. Somehow none of the functionality coded matched what was needed. The project manager then came up with the "brillant" idea that we should "decouple development from requirements" that that we could finish the project "quickly". His manager bought the idea, and I decided to pursue employment else where.

\
But, but.... stammer... Isn't "decouple development from requirements" the definition of what you had done in the first place?

smbell · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

sparkfizt:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

Back when I was in school working on an in class assignment (I think it was fibonacci numbers or something) in VB I was having a problem. My code kept failing in the same spot. I would carefully look over the code and it all looked fine. When I debugged it what was happening didn't seem to make much sense. It was always failing on the same line, but I couldn't understand why. Finally out of frustration I cut the offending line out, saved the file, pasted the offending line back in, saved the file, and then it ran perfectly.

I've never touched VB since.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

marvin_rabbit:
Lovely... There are only two possibilities in his world: "Works as coded, so it is not a problem." - and - "Doesn't work as coded, so it's a compiler error."

The latter isn't a problem either -- the compiler is just working as coded.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

smbell:

Back when I was in school working on an in class assignment (I think it was fibonacci numbers or something) in VB I was having a problem. My code kept failing in the same spot. I would carefully look over the code and it all looked fine. When I debugged it what was happening didn't seem to make much sense. It was always failing on the same line, but I couldn't understand why. Finally out of frustration I cut the offending line out, saved the file, pasted the offending line back in, saved the file, and then it ran perfectly.

I've never touched VB since.

A very similar thing happened to me in my CSCI 240 class, except I was working in C++, and before this program I was very confident in my abilities. I wrote the code while the professor was explaining the assignment, compiled it, and then tried to run it. Nothing. Literally, nothing happened. The console window blinked on and off, and I was confused (there were multiple keyboard inputs requested, so there's no way it should have blinked off). I opened a command prompt and ran it again.

C:\>myprogram.exe

C:\>_

Nothing.

I checked the data files it was supposed to manipulate: no changes.

So I went back to the source, but I couldn't even invent an explanation that would cause this.

This was at mid-term time.

I struggled with this program, and had my professor review it, and other professors in the department, for the rest of the semester. None of the professors could figure out what was going on: while my code was significantly different than the solution my professor had developed, he could tell as well as I could that my program should at least do something. I filed for an incomplete in the class, which was granted.

About a week after finals, I had moved back home for the between-semester break, but didn't have my floppy disk from class with me, so I typed the program back in from my printed source.

It compiled and gave the proper output.

I was so very frustrated. I turned in the project the next day, and completed the class.

Later, suspecting that there must be something odd about the source, I opened it in a HEX editor. There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

heh, I remember how a faulty hardware just wasn't executing what was coded: while debugging in the disassembly you could see something like "ADD R3 #6" but instead of R3, R5 was changed.

OMG, this board's software is the worst POS I've ever seen on the web, it requires JS to do a f#cking post and doesn't even has a <noscript>, you only see the captcha. I just hate JavaScript. Well, ASP.NET is a WTF itself, so no wonder...

themagni · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Foxy:

A very similar thing happened to me in my CSCI 240 class, except I was working in C++, and before this program I was very confident in my abilities. I wrote the code while the professor was explaining the assignment, compiled it, and then tried to run it. Nothing. Literally, nothing happened. The console window blinked on and off, and I was confused (there were multiple keyboard inputs requested, so there's no way it should have blinked off). I opened a command prompt and ran it again.

C:\>myprogram.exe

C:\>_

Nothing.

I checked the data files it was supposed to manipulate: no changes.

So I went back to the source, but I couldn't even invent an explanation that would cause this.

This was at mid-term time.

I struggled with this program, and had my professor review it, and other professors in the department, for the rest of the semester. None of the professors could figure out what was going on: while my code was significantly different than the solution my professor had developed, he could tell as well as I could that my program should at least do something. I filed for an incomplete in the class, which was granted.

About a week after finals, I had moved back home for the between-semester break, but didn't have my floppy disk from class with me, so I typed the program back in from my printed source.

It compiled and gave the proper output.

I was so very frustrated. I turned in the project the next day, and completed the class.

Later, suspecting that there must be something odd about the source, I opened it in a HEX editor. There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

So, let me get this straight:

1. You ignored the instructions on how to write the program.
2. You wrote a program that didn't work.
3. When it didn't work, you gave up and withdrew from the class.
4. You expected your professors to solve the problem for you.
5. You didn't try any other approaches.

How is this not your problem? You assumed that your code was perfect, even though you were a 2nd-year student. You strike me as the kind of person that this website is specifically designed around.

triso · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

snoofle:
...I finally resigned, with a smile and a laugh - they didn't get why. They ultimately hired several consultants to replace me when they finally realized that maybe I had been pushing really hard to keep up, and was just tired of stupidity. They called me a couple of times asking me to come back. I stopped answering their calls.

You should go back--as a consultant---and at Enterprise-class per-diem rates. It is possible to make a years salary in three months. You also get to use the consultants' deflection when asked to work on another project or some boring grunt-work, "I'm sorry but that's not in my contract."

ans:00101010 · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

What I get to hear: "No one has complained about this. It must not be a problem!"

The issue? Orphaned data... LOTS of orphaned data. And I guess the users saying "oh, that just disappears sometimes.." really isn't a complaint but an observation.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

I've dealt with an entire organization who's entire plan for dealing with bugs was to develop a report to detect the issue and monitor the situation. Time and time again for major serious serious bugs they would do this. I would think these reports would take longer to make then the bug would take to fix.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

its me:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

That's classic.... Show me just how a bug is a result of software not working how it's coded....

-me

Actually, I've had a compiler optimize out a rather vital "try ... catch" in C++. It made for some amusing errors.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

OK, so I was a PM on a project like this with a JIMM that bought a copy of web development for dummies and thought he could micromanage the project. The truly odd part to me was that we could not even get concensus on what data to use... or where to get it.

Glad to leave...

emurphy · 2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I got this once:

Boss: How's the project going?

Me: We completed m issues, and we now have n items in the list that need to be addressed.

Boss: N!. That's more than last time!. You aren't making any progress...

oh well...

This, at least, can be avoided by re-wording it as "We had m+n issues and completed m of them". Of course, the PHB will probably still yell at you for not even fixing half of them, much less all.

Anonymous:
richleick:
I wonder if firefox followed this lead. I use it, love it, but what the *&%# happened to my bookmarks with this last patch.

If you're using WinXP, they're in [BootDrive]\Documents and Settings\[Profile]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[firefox profile name]\bookmarkbackups\

Just copy the most recent backup that has your bookmarks inside out to the parent directory.

Firefox constantly eats my bookmarks and other settings.

Also, delete localstore.rdf in the [firefox profile name] directory whenever Firefox hiccups so that it can restore the settings.

I also have issues with my mouse gestures extension forgetting all of the gestures at the same time, but deleting MouseGestures.rdf forces it to reset them all.

Seems to happen every time Firefox updates as well as any time my computer restarts while Firefox is open.

I've had no such problems. I believe you, but it smells like a corner case; I wonder what the criteria might be.

marvin_rabbit:
Anonymous:
I once came on a project that was budgeted for $1,000,000.00 and 6 months and after 9 months and $2,500,000.00 of development they started to gather requirements. Somehow none of the functionality coded matched what was needed. The project manager then came up with the "brillant" idea that we should "decouple development from requirements" that that we could finish the project "quickly". His manager bought the idea, and I decided to pursue employment else where.
\
But, but.... stammer... Isn't "decouple development from requirements" the definition of what you had done in the first place?

Well, obviously everything was just fine until you coupled them...

Anonymous:
I've dealt with an entire organization who's entire plan for dealing with bugs was to develop a report to detect the issue and monitor the situation. Time and time again for major serious serious bugs they would do this. I would think these reports would take longer to make then the bug would take to fix.

And this is one of those cases where the WTF is almost sane. Developing a report can be a good first step for dealing with bugs where (1) you know the effect but not the cause, and (2) developing a report to search for the bug systematically and objectively is cheaper overall than relying on end-users to manually wade through the existing reports, maybe make mistakes, and maybe overlook some instances. (In particular, when you have a list of every single instance of a bug within a certain search range, then you can start making deductions like "say, this list of customers looks like the list of customers who did X, so let's take a closer look at the X-handling code".)

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

triso:
snoofle:
...I finally resigned, with a smile and a laugh - they didn't get why. They ultimately hired several consultants to replace me when they finally realized that maybe I had been pushing really hard to keep up, and was just tired of stupidity. They called me a couple of times asking me to come back. I stopped answering their calls.
You should go back--as a consultant---and at Enterprise-class per-diem rates. It is possible to make a years salary in three months. You also get to use the consultants' deflection when asked to work on another project or some boring grunt-work, "I'm sorry but that's not in my contract."

Interestingly, they offered me two options: full time permanent at my old salary, or as a consultant, with my annual salary reduced to an hourly rate equivalent. But I'd still have to deal with the project as-it-was; I would not be allowed to change things. Who wanted to go back to that? Especially under those circumstances.

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Is this article about Citrix?

2006-08-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Turns out, the cause of this issue was a missing "else" before a code segment.

I forgot to mention that because I was on a deadline to get "100% passed" by "xx/xx/xxxx", I took it upon myself to hunt down the cause of this issue. Unfortunately, the no-brained dev got all the credit for "finding and fixing" this bug (which would have cost the company multi-millions); as a QA engineer, I didn't have enough access privileges to actually add the missing "else", add it to the mainline release branch, and recompile. So, the Dev got an extra day of vacation, some stock options, and a nice cash award, while I received an extra month of 80+ hours/week and a bad review for my attitude.

Workaround: next time, demand access privileges, or find someone who left themselves logged in and give yourself access privileges.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

themagni:
Foxy:

A very similar thing happened to me in my CSCI 240 class, except I was working in C++, and before this program I was very confident in my abilities. I wrote the code while the professor was explaining the assignment, compiled it, and then tried to run it. Nothing. Literally, nothing happened. The console window blinked on and off, and I was confused (there were multiple keyboard inputs requested, so there's no way it should have blinked off). I opened a command prompt and ran it again.

C:\>myprogram.exe

C:\>_

Nothing.

I checked the data files it was supposed to manipulate: no changes.

So I went back to the source, but I couldn't even invent an explanation that would cause this.

This was at mid-term time.

I struggled with this program, and had my professor review it, and other professors in the department, for the rest of the semester. None of the professors could figure out what was going on: while my code was significantly different than the solution my professor had developed, he could tell as well as I could that my program should at least do something. I filed for an incomplete in the class, which was granted.

About a week after finals, I had moved back home for the between-semester break, but didn't have my floppy disk from class with me, so I typed the program back in from my printed source.

It compiled and gave the proper output.

I was so very frustrated. I turned in the project the next day, and completed the class.

Later, suspecting that there must be something odd about the source, I opened it in a HEX editor. There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

So, let me get this straight:

1. You ignored the instructions on how to write the program.
2. You wrote a program that didn't work.
3. When it didn't work, you gave up and withdrew from the class.
4. You expected your professors to solve the problem for you.
5. You didn't try any other approaches.

How is this not your problem? You assumed that your code was perfect, even though you were a 2nd-year student. You strike me as the kind of person that this website is specifically designed around.

Looks like you got it very crooked indeed.

1. He followed the instructions on what was required. (His solution turned out to be different from his professor's, but that's OK)
2. He wrote a program that failed in a totally inexplicable way.
3. When it didn't work, he spent many hours attempting to determine why.
4. He obtained assistance from other professors who aggreed that the failure was inexplicable to them as well.
5. He does not tell us what other approaches he tried. Probably many. They did not include re-writing the original file from scratch, but then why should he try that??

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

That's classic.... Show me just how a bug is a result of software not working how it's coded....

Actually, the original use of the word "bug" answers your question. In the olden days, before IC "chips", faults were often caused by bugs crawling across the wiring, or getting fried across the wires.

Some Idiot · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

themagni:
Foxy:

.......
Later, suspecting that there must be something odd about the source, I opened it in a HEX editor. There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

So, let me get this straight:

1. You ignored the instructions on how to write the program.
2. You wrote a program that didn't work.
3. When it didn't work, you gave up and withdrew from the class.
4. You expected your professors to solve the problem for you.
5. You didn't try any other approaches.

How is this not your problem? You assumed that your code was perfect, even though you were a 2nd-year student. You strike me as the kind of person that this website is specifically designed around.

Yeah, that's right. How stupid to not open your source code in a hex editor before you tried to compile it the first time. Sheesh, that's just like standard practice, newb!! WTF?!RTFM!!!GWTP!!!SOAPXMLEAIBBQ, SOB!! It's idiots like you make life painful for us 31337h4x0rs!!!!!!

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
or my favorite:
Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

With only this to go on, my guess would be "works as coded" means "it works correctly the way it is coded now" and not "it works the way it was coded to work." Ultimately it doesn't matter whether or not the design would work correctly... At least that would be merely wrong rather than mindbendingly stupid.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

I have seen this happen in Visual Studio several times. It can easily happen if you cut and paste code from the help files or from a web page. But usually it only results in very strange and incomprehensible compiler errors.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

And WTF happened to the quoted text in my post? The forum software must have ate it.

Previous post in reply to the guy that had the problem with invisible control characters in Visual studio.

Braechnov · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

smbell:
sparkfizt:

Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

Back when I was in school working on an in class assignment (I think it was fibonacci numbers or something) in VB I was having a problem. My code kept failing in the same spot. I would carefully look over the code and it all looked fine. When I debugged it what was happening didn't seem to make much sense. It was always failing on the same line, but I couldn't understand why. Finally out of frustration I cut the offending line out, saved the file, pasted the offending line back in, saved the file, and then it ran perfectly.

I've never touched VB since.

You were probably running code which was out of synch with the binary. If VB does not detect a change to the code, it doesn't attempt to recompile the binary until a change is made. By editing the file (cut/paste), you caused a change, which caused a recompile, which caused the code and binary to fall back in line.

rusty · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

sparkfizt:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

That's not funny. I actually have to use a compiler that does that. *cries*

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Braechnov:
You were probably running code which was out of synch with the binary. If VB does not detect a change to the code, it doesn't attempt to recompile the binary until a change is made. By editing the file (cut/paste), you caused a change, which caused a recompile, which caused the code and binary to fall back in line.

NAK. I had the same thing happen to me recently, and it persisted while I made changes to (other lines in) the code.

To be fair to VB, I've had something very similar happen in at least two other languages.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
For me the phrase was, "You're spending too much time down in the weeds looking at code. I need you to operate at a higher level and manage the (non-technical, end-user) business side people doing the actual testing."

Did that person look like an ostrich, by anyy chance?

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

rusty:
sparkfizt:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

That's not funny. I actually have to use a compiler that does that. *cries*

Compiler? That's too simple - at our enterprise, we have a "Standard Program Pre-Execution Code Control and Optimisation Service Unit". Just learn to love The Enterprise and I'm sure your weedy 'Compiler' will work :)

RayS · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Yes, we all know that in fact the bearer of bad news is the root cause of bad news. These people needed to be hunted down and eradicated for the good of all.

How can we Ostriches safely bury our heads in the sand if some idiot keeps trying to warn us that a forest fire is coming our way?

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Yes, Sir! Of Course, Sir! Shall immediately cause us to go bankrupt, Sir!

Men, YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS!!! One dagger at a time in the back. BE ORDERLY ABOUT IT!

CAPTCHA: Whiskey

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

I am pretty sure I got to solve the problems with this software at one of the eventual clients!

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

RayS:
Yes, we all know that in fact the bearer of bad news is the root cause of bad news. These people needed to be hunted down and eradicated for the good of all.

How can we Ostriches safely bury our heads in the sand if some idiot keeps trying to warn us that a forest fire is coming our way?

I protest. This post is insulting to Ostriches.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
smbell:

Back when I was in school working on an in class assignment (I think it was fibonacci numbers or something) in VB I was having a problem. My code kept failing in the same spot. I would carefully look over the code and it all looked fine. When I debugged it what was happening didn't seem to make much sense. It was always failing on the same line, but I couldn't understand why. Finally out of frustration I cut the offending line out, saved the file, pasted the offending line back in, saved the file, and then it ran perfectly.

I've never touched VB since.

A very similar thing happened to me in my CSCI 240 class, except I was working in C++, and before this program I was very confident in my abilities.

...

Later, suspecting that there must be something odd about the source, I opened it in a HEX editor. There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

I hope you've never touched Visual Studio since.

zamies · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

I fucking worked there! Must be the same company, story is exactly the same!

He should do what I did Resign, get another job!
I don't know if the use the same lingo in other countries. But when managers start talking trash like:
If we take a helicopterview, what would we decide.

Meaning if we don't bother about critical details, which I don't give a fuck about because I'm too damn lazy to put my grey matter on.

If I hear those kind of sentences, I'm already getting my coat.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

There were two odd control characters that Visual Studio was allowing to happily live in my source and ignore when I was editing. I removed them, and the original file finally compiled into a functioning program.

Do you remember what these control characters were? This would be a handy goodbye gift to all those Bastard Employers From Hell...

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

kipthegreat:
Anonymous:

I got this once:

Boss: How's the project going?

Me: We completed m issues, and we now have n items in the list that need to be addressed.

Boss: N!. That's more than last time!. You aren't making any progress...

oh well...

Do you work at my office?? :)

I think I have had this conversation many times. What's even funnier is that in my attempt to enlighten management I got branded the "negative" guy. Nevermind that I could produce numbers to backup my claim that the list of changes was growing and not shrinking. Nevermind that I can give them progressive, day by day, accounts of how much the list is growing. I am so jaded.

rusty · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
rusty:
sparkfizt:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

sweet, technically everything works "as coded" unless you have some freaky compiler that likes to jumble up the code as it compiles.

That's not funny. I actually have to use a compiler that does that. *cries*

Compiler? That's too simple - at our enterprise, we have a "Standard Program Pre-Execution Code Control and Optimisation Service Unit". Just learn to love The Enterprise and I'm sure your weedy 'Compiler' will work :)

Another reason to be happy that I work in the games industry. Although, it still infuriates me when i put in every directive known to man to tell the compiler to NOT optimize, re-order or screw my in-line assembler in any way or form....it goes ahead and puts nop's in my branch delay slots.

Waaahhhh....but you're right...I have it easier than you

TeeSee · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

its me:
Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

That's classic.... Show me just how a bug is a result of software not working how it's coded....

-me

VisualStudio's help says SqlConnection.Dispose() is "functionally identical" to SqlConnection.Close(). This is a blatant lie. Dispose() unsets member variables, so you can't recreate them with Open(), while Close() doesn't unset member variables.

Of course, it depends on whose code you're thinking of, but it's still the same.

TeeSee · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

themagni:
At my previous job, the QA guy quit in disgust after the owner refused to follow QA directions. (Like "wear a static strap" or "when you stay here until 3am rushing a job, you always make mistakes. Stop doing that.")That was just for the mechanical side. I kept pushing for a firmware QA so my work could get reviewed. I was told to "do your own QA".

Of course, bugs got out and it was All My Fault. If I'd put in the 60+ hour weeks that they suddenly started demanding, of course I'd have found them all. Last I heard, they were still looking for my replacement. For some reason, they're having trouble finding firmware engineers with 3+ years of experience willing to work 60+ hours a week for 40k (CDN) with no benefits or profit-sharing.

40k is pants. Assuming my current company likes me, after I graduate I'm looking at 25K, bonuses, profit-dependent bonuses, and all for 37.5 hours/week.

And I like to think I'm worth more than that ;)

TeeSee · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Turns out, the cause of this issue was a missing "else" before a code segment.

I forgot to mention that because I was on a deadline to get "100% passed" by "xx/xx/xxxx", I took it upon myself to hunt down the cause of this issue. Unfortunately, the no-brained dev got all the credit for "finding and fixing" this bug (which would have cost the company multi-millions); as a QA engineer, I didn't have enough access privileges to actually add the missing "else", add it to the mainline release branch, and recompile. So, the Dev got an extra day of vacation, some stock options, and a nice cash award, while I received an extra month of 80+ hours/week and a bad review for my attitude.

Obviously we all need a lesson in playing cards right. A better thing might be to tell the QA manager that you found the bug ;)

But then, any company which isn't putting bugfixing as the devs' jobs has problems anyway.

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
"decouple development from requirements"

That's brilliant - any man who could come up with such a devious and wonderful bit of double-speak is obviously a genius.

Ass protecting on a grand scale...

TeeSee · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
> That's classic.... Show me just how a bug is a result of software not working how it's coded....
Actually, the original use of the word "bug" answers your question. In the olden days, before IC "chips", faults were often caused by bugs crawling across the wiring, or getting fried across the wires.

Allegedly.

Bugs, you see, are a scapegoat. A little bit of bug shouldn't mess up valves (as they were at the time). And in the days of the ENIAC, reprogramming was done by wiring it up differently. I'd be surprised if a majority of 'bugs' were due to bugs and not bad "programming".

Anyone who's done electronics labs knows that wiring is easy to get wrong.

TeeSee · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"

Jimm takes alot of the blame. He failed to articulate WHY this class of bug was so important. The write-up made it clear - "half state data-changes", but is that an after thought? Inconsistent Data is a show stopper. Period. If Jimm couldnt get that message across then he shouldnt be in Testing. Add to that an incompetent manager, and you get a corporate level WTF.

"So what?" his manager barked, "our software has the **small** flaw of creating a few extra rows in the database. Big deal, who cares?!?"

Tell me how Jimm is to blame. The company was lacking in a few things, e.g.
Proper code reviews (and when I mean proper, I don't mean 'formal code review before commit'. I mean 'review what each user actually commits'). Mine doesn't, so when my coworker submits his code which I overhauled, I get no credit.
Proper ways to complain about bad managers/coworkers, i.e. a regular employee review, with ratings from 1-10 for code clarity/quality/comments, design decisions, management... and managers are not exempt if they make, say, design decisions, or review code.

Sadly, I don't know of any companies which have both of those.

pjsson · 2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Dev: "This trouble ticket is being closed because the software works as coded."
Me: "... but it doesn't work as designed."
Dev: "So? It works as coded and that's all that matters."

Best WTF in a long time, this will be a classic like Paula on this forum for sure!

2006-08-16 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I took over management of a QA group in a company that shall remain nameless, and one of the things I learned in the first few weeks was that some enterprising tester had pulled the validation statements out of all of the tests, because the tests kept failing (who needs to fix the code...). The funny (ok, sad really) was that they were still running these tests and considered them valuable because they were automated, even though they didn't actually check any conditions.

Hey, I used to work for them ... They laid off all of us QA who would waste time tracking down and fixing the bugs and left only the "important" person who was steward of the scripts we wrote and modified then to 100% passing in no time.

Stop Reviewing the Code

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