• (cs) in reply to someguy
    someguy:
    that's always a problem I have with reading the summary in a changelog. "So, you made this happen, or you made this not-happen?"

    There's several ways of thinking on this:

    • Always write to "what this makes it do now". eg: "Sam's birthday is on the 12th". Problem with this: Bug tracker probably already has something that says "Sam's birthday is on the 11th" to refer to the error-condition.
    • Always write to "what was wrong". eg: "Fixes: Sam's birthday is on the 11th". Problem with this: doesn't tell you what was done to fix it, doesn't actually describe any part of the change.
    • Always write to "present tense", ie: what the change is doing. eg: "change Sam's birthday from 11th to 12th". Problem with this: doesn't at all tell you why.
    • Just link to the bug id. eg: "Fixes: #203921, Sam's birthday is on the 11th". Problem with this: Same as the second case, really. And forces you to go somewhere else for an explanation. And usually doesn't bother describing the resolution. And bug trackers change, I've had to deal with manually importing and changing references to issue numbers before. There will always be stray numbers.

    Has anyone worked out a solution to this which doesn't blow?

    Yes, I run into that too. I always try to write things that the program should do in my todo list:

    • TODO the program should reject input values less than 0

    And then I can copy this line of text to the changelog when it's fixed.

    • FIXED the program should reject input values less than 0

    not perfect, but at least it's clearer what was wrong and what I did.

  • (cs) in reply to .peter
    .peter:
    you could differentiate 3 types of programmers on how they progress over time:
    So you've cleverly broken down the entire coding world into three types: those who work at universities and those who don't. Well done.
  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Channel6
    Channel6:
    So the apocalypse occurred pre-1997 then?

    No, that's when we emerged from the primordial soup (or for you creationists, when God played with mud).

  • 01001001011101000010011101110011001000000110110101100101 (unregistered)

    33 jorgs 2009-02-09 fixed apocalypse

    Best. check-in. comment. ever.

    I must find a way to use that....

  • (cs) in reply to m0ffx
    m0ffx:
    The irony is that when Jorgs originally wrote the program, he made the SAME ERROR that he was writing software to help fix! (Assuming software won't be used in the distant future.)

    inb4 that's not what irony means

    I agree with the irony, but I'm less convinced about the "error" generalization.

    If I'm asked to write software for the 2012 Olympics, is it an error if it ends up not working for the 2035 super bowl? The 2060 world series? The 2576 blurnsball championship? Does the Olympic committee really want to foot the bill for me to sit around thinking of ways to enterprise up their app? Are they going to understand when it's way over budget and not ready until 2014?

    The arbitrary cutoff was an error though. Making a decision to reduce development cost by living with a system limitation is one thing, imposing arbitrary limits yourself because you don't trust your code is another.

  • (cs) in reply to 01001001011101000010011101110011001000000110110101100101

    Aww, did you have to waste 30 seconds of my time working out what your username said? Please don't do it again, 010011110100101100111111

  • Mr.'; Drop Database -- (unregistered)

    The real WTF is people that can't spell "occurred." It's phonetic. It's pronounced as though it has a double R, and it's spelled that way too.

  • (cs) in reply to Pim
    Pim:
    Aww, did you have to waste 30 seconds of my time working out what your username said? Please don't do it again, 010011110100101100111111

    010101110110100001111001001111110010000001010111011010000110000101110100001000000110100101110011001000000111001101101111001000000111011101110010011011110110111001100111001000000111011101101001011101000110100000100000011101110111001001101001011101000110100101101110011001110010000001101001011011100010000001100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100111111

  • Withheld by Poster (unregistered)

    I thought my company was the only one that had a Y2K10 issue...

  • (cs) in reply to .peter
    .peter:
    Jay:
    Erzengel:
    .peter:
    it always gives me the creeps (is that the right word?!) to read my code from a decade ago. It feels like someone else wrote it, but still I am cursing at my own stupidity.

    I hate when I look back at code from school and think, "No, no, why am I doing that?" (Funny how I'm thinking in present tense as I'm reading it...) We live, we do stupid stuff, we learn. It's only a problem when you don't do the last action.

    True. Surely the really sad thing would be if you looked at some bad code that you wrote twenty years ago and said, "Hey, what brillant code I wrote back then! Isn't it great that I haven't found a need to learn anything new in 20 years."

    True, and you could differentiate 3 types of programmers on how they progress over time:

    Type 1: The idiot: usually works at Universities, been there for 20 years, thinks CSS has something to do with Crimes Scenes, and never really fell for that modern PHP und SQL stuff those kids talk about all the time

    Type 2: The autodidactical kind: Also works at Universities, never actually learned something in school, but rather learned on the job ... He is somewhat knowledgable, is even aware of what he is unable to grasp, thus is usually scared of anything involving recursive formulas and the likes.

    Type 3: The professional: Would never work at a University. The only one who actually knows what he is doing.

    There are vast numbers of type 1 programmers, and not nearly enough type 3 programmers.

    CAPTCHA: ACSI ... Father of ASCII and Hex

    There must be more types than that.... I know of many similar to Type 1 and Type 2 who DON'T work in universities, and I've met very few Type 3s....

  • Clackers (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Not a suspect in any current investigation:
    shinobu:
    That's exactly why I would never ever go to work at any place where I've been an intern.
    Exactly. That's like gardening where you buried the bodies.
    Do you know how to get blood stains out of a clown suit?

    Start by removing the clown's body....

  • Perv (unregistered) in reply to Smyle
    Smyle:
    I'm just wondering why Miley Cyrus is coding for your company?

    Is she 18 yet??

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Withheld by Poster
    Withheld by Poster:
    I thought my company was the only one that had a Y2K10 issue...
    You're scaring me.
  • notme (unregistered) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    m0ffx:
    The irony is that when Jorgs originally wrote the program, he made the SAME ERROR that he was writing software to help fix! (Assuming software won't be used in the distant future.)

    inb4 that's not what irony means

    um, yes it is.

    Now that's ironic.

  • GermanGirl (unregistered) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    Pim:
    Aww, did you have to waste 30 seconds of my time working out what your username said? Please don't do it again, 010011110100101100111111

    010101110110100001111001001111110010000001010111011010000110000101110100001000000110100101110011001000000111001101101111001000000111011101110010011011110110111001100111001000000111011101101001011101000110100000100000011101110111001001101001011101000110100101101110011001110010000001101001011011100010000001100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100111111

    010001000110000101101101011011010110100101110100001000010010000001011001011011110111010100100000011010000110000101100100001000000111010001101111001000000110110101100001011010110110010100100000011011010110010100100000011001110110111100100000011011000110111101101111011010110010000001101001011101000010000001110101011100000010111000100000

  • (cs) in reply to .peter
    .peter:

    True, and you could differentiate 3 types of programmers on how they progress over time:

    You should switch to a different university.

  • (cs) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    abstract protected synchronized final void longSignature():

    Reminds me of that Allanis Morisette song 'isn't it ironic'. The irony there is the song is more about bad luck and bad planning than it is about irony.

    The song makes a lot more sense if you change every instance of "ironic" to "shitty". I always wondered if that wasn't the original title of the song and her label forced her to changed it.

    I doubt it. "Shitty" doesn't scan; you need a third syllable. Maybe "isn't it a shitheap" or "isn't it all fucked up"

    FWIW, the spell checker on text pad wants me to replace "shitheap" with whitecap. Anyone know how they got there?

  • acid (unregistered) in reply to valerion
    valerion:
    So did he actually fix it, or just change the date to 2020 because, y'know, that'll be long enough. There's just no way they'll still be using it then. Definately.

    Funny about that, 6yrs ago now I did some work in an organisation and I was working with a COBOL programmer who was on contract because the organisation was getting rid of their mainframe by the end of the financial year (30/6 here in Oz, which was 4 - 5 months away at the time). She was still there when I left 2.5yrs later. She actually quit the job late last year as she was having a baby. They replaced her with a permanent employee.

    Oh, and one place I was working at during Y2k just changed their 'infinity' date to 2045. Actually that one makes sense because it's after both interpretations of the Mayan Calendar prediction of the end of the world. Mind you, the Earth may well be destroyed, but cockroaches and COBOL will both survive I imagine.

    CAPTCHA - letatio? Now THERE'S a wtf... Seriously. I don't even want to know what that is.

  • (cs)
    The Apocalypse Must Have Occurred?!
    Nope, but according to this blind priest I knew, the metalocalpyse has begun.
  • Anony Mouse (unregistered) in reply to acid
    acid:
    CAPTCHA - letatio? Now THERE'S a wtf... Seriously. I don't even want to know what that is.

    Really? You might ENJOY it.

  • Hexatron (unregistered)

    That's why I write comments carefully. The idiot who can't figure out what the code is doing just by looking at it is most likely to be yourself+10 years.

    I use my own copy of the ed editor (mostly for sed-like stuff now). It is (c)1974 --the original unix ed, somewhat modified. I just changed the way g/xxx/d works--it was very slow on >100mb files. That didn't used to be a problem.

  • (cs) in reply to acid
    acid:

    CAPTCHA - letatio? Now THERE'S a wtf... Seriously. I don't even want to know what that is.

    I'm pretty sure that Letatio is one of the three suitors in "The Taming of the Shrew."

  • a prophet of doom (unregistered)

    Everyone knows the Apocalypse happens on January 19th, 2038, at 3:14:08am UTC.

  • acid (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    acid:

    CAPTCHA - letatio? Now THERE'S a wtf... Seriously. I don't even want to know what that is.

    I'm pretty sure that Letatio is one of the three suitors in "The Taming of the Shrew."

    No, that was Lucentio. And curiosity got the better of me, it appears that Letatio is Latin for rejoicing.

  • Speedbird (unregistered) in reply to valerion

    That was just plain funny

  • 50% Opacity (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners

    0101011101100101011011000110110000100000011101000110100001100001011011100110101101110011001011000010000001101110011011110111011100100000010010010010000001100011011000010110111000100111011101000010000001100111011001010111010000100000011101000110100001101001011100110010000001001101011011110111001001101001011100110110010101110100011101000110010100100000011100110110111101101110011001110010000001101111011101010111010000100000011011110110011000100000011011010111100100100000011010000110010101100001011001000010111000100000001110100010110100101000

  • Herby (unregistered)

    This reminds me of the store of a Y2K Cobol programmer who decided that the world might end in the year 2000. He decides to be cautious, and finds a way to become "frozen" before Y2K, and leaves instructions to be revived "after Y2K". All goes well, then he is woken up and immediately asks has Y2K happened yet. The reply is yes, that was long ago, then he is asked "do you know Cobol?", and he responds "yes, why?". They respond with "Well, we found your frozen cask, and we have this problem, it is the year 9998, and we need some help with this Y10K problem...."

  • Cat killer (unregistered) in reply to .peter
    .peter:
    Type 1: The idiot: usually works at Universities, been there for 20 years, thinks CSS has something to do with Crimes Scenes, and never really fell for that modern PHP und SQL stuff those kids talk about all the time

    Well I'd better call the university. There's a runaway hiding in my team.

  • (cs) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    campkev:
    abstract protected synchronized final void longSignature():
    Reminds me of that Allanis Morisette song 'isn't it ironic'. The irony there is the song is more about bad luck and bad planning than it is about irony.
    The song makes a lot more sense if you change every instance of "ironic" to "shitty". I always wondered if that wasn't the original title of the song and her label forced her to changed it.
    I doubt it. "Shitty" doesn't scan; you need a third syllable. Maybe "isn't it a shitheap" or "isn't it all fucked up"
    According to the Urban Dictionary:

    Alanic:
    Something that one might mistake for irony, but is actually not. Typically, a predictable worst-case scenario come to fruition. Named after Alanis Morrissette, who's song "Ironic" uses examples of "irony" that are not ironic -- e.g. rain on your wedding day.

  • faceless_tech (unregistered) in reply to someguy

    or, write proper changelogs?

    -fixed #203921 - Sams birthday is on 11th not 12th, error in date field, allowed user selection.

  • .peter (unregistered) in reply to PSWorx
    PSWorx:
    .peter:

    True, and you could differentiate 3 types of programmers on how they progress over time:

    You should switch to a different university.

    Well, I consider myself a type 2 programmer. Humble me, that is. Self confidence-me says I am a type 3 programmer who works at a uni just to proof the theory right.

  • ex-ssadmin (unregistered) in reply to pingmaster
    pingmaster:
    shinobu:
    That's exactly why I would never ever go to work at any place where I've been an intern.
    why not? just make sure your get a new username in sourcesafe, then you can look like the hero fixing all your bugs and blaming them on 'some intern'

    Sourcesafe is problem-solved anyway since it'll have long since corrupted your mistakes beyond recognition.:-)

  • TB (unregistered)

    It's scary and really sad to think that the apocalypse is going to be heralded by Visual Basic code.

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to J
    J:
    I particularly enjoy referring to the process of writing code as enbugging. That way, the process of debugging is removing what you put in there in the first place.
    Programming is debugging the empty program.
  • Joshua (unregistered)

    Wait... Jörg Schilling? Author of cdrecord? I am so indebted to him for his contributions to the open source community.

  • ceiswyn (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the person who just changed every occurrence of 'Y2K' to 'Compliance' without bothering to check whether that was a sane thing to do.

    Find and Replace. Almost never a plan.

  • (cs) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Channel6:
    So the apocalypse occurred pre-1997 then?

    No, that's when we emerged from the primordial soup (or for you creationists, when God played with mud).

    God was in a band ? (Mud)

  • Ricky Finn (unregistered)

    Just another example of a temporary fix becoming permanent. Lord help us from those who tell us, "Don't worry about getting it perfect. We're going to replace it in a few weeks anyway."

  • (cs) in reply to .peter
    .peter:
    Jay:
    Erzengel:
    .peter:
    it always gives me the creeps (is that the right word?!) to read my code from a decade ago. It feels like someone else wrote it, but still I am cursing at my own stupidity.

    I hate when I look back at code from school and think, "No, no, why am I doing that?" (Funny how I'm thinking in present tense as I'm reading it...) We live, we do stupid stuff, we learn. It's only a problem when you don't do the last action.

    True. Surely the really sad thing would be if you looked at some bad code that you wrote twenty years ago and said, "Hey, what brillant code I wrote back then! Isn't it great that I haven't found a need to learn anything new in 20 years."

    True, and you could differentiate 3 types of programmers on how they progress over time:

    Type 1: The idiot: usually works at Universities, been there for 20 years, thinks CSS has something to do with Crimes Scenes, and never really fell for that modern PHP und SQL stuff those kids talk about all the time

    Type 2: The autodidactical kind: Also works at Universities, never actually learned something in school, but rather learned on the job ... He is somewhat knowledgable, is even aware of what he is unable to grasp, thus is usually scared of anything involving recursive formulas and the likes.

    Type 3: The professional: Would never work at a University. The only one who actually knows what he is doing.

    There are vast numbers of type 1 programmers, and not nearly enough type 3 programmers.

    CAPTCHA: ACSI ... Father of ASCII and Hex

    So... most programmers work at Universities?

  • (cs) in reply to a prophet of doom
    a prophet of doom:
    Everyone knows the Apocalypse happens on January 19th, 2038, at 3:14:08am UTC.
    No, no, no. That's the Epochalypse.
  • (cs) in reply to SenTree
    SenTree:
    Andrew:
    Channel6:
    So the apocalypse occurred pre-1997 then?

    No, that's when we emerged from the primordial soup (or for you creationists, when God played with mud).

    God was in a band ? (Mud)

    No, He was in Cream before He went solo, and the Yardbirds before that.
  • Jason (unregistered)

    Worthy, of a WTF itself, I worked for a small company that just fired two developers for not doing what the boss had told them. With just me, I was able to accomplish more for the company. (Because I did the assigned work!). I worked on this code base for two years and even though I added features, it only got smaller. Apearently following proper software design techniques was not on their agendas either. Well the software used a similar style date check. The "license key" was a hex code that was a number whose date bits were scrambled, with some check digits in there just to be sure. Well, there were 7 bits allotted for the year of expiration, which was relative to 2000. So the greatest date would be in 2127. But there among all the other lines of code was a line that IF (Year> 2009) THEN GOTO invalidDate

    The problem was, all dates were valid until 2128. I removed the offending line and extended its usefulness by another 120 years.

    By the way, that is the only software that I've ran a total LOC count to be negative. For two years in a row. While adding features.

  • (cs) in reply to Jason
    Jason:
    The "license key" was a hex code that was a number whose date bits were scrambled, with some check digits in there just to be sure. Well, there were 7 bits allotted for the year of expiration, which was relative to 2000. So the greatest date would be in 2127. But there among all the other lines of code was a line that IF (Year> 2009) THEN GOTO invalidDate

    The problem was, all dates were valid until 2128. I removed the offending line and extended its usefulness by another 120 years.

    Surely you mean "I removed the offending line and therefore made brute-forcing a valid license a whole lot easier"? (Ok, granted, it can't have been all that hard before.)
  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    SenTree:
    Andrew:
    Channel6:
    So the apocalypse occurred pre-1997 then?

    No, that's when we emerged from the primordial soup (or for you creationists, when God played with mud).

    God was in a band ? (Mud)

    No, He was in Cream before He went solo, and the Yardbirds before that.
    Excellent taste, sir ! I must agree.
  • MulticsFan (unregistered)

    The most famous of these occurred in Multics: "Bernard S. Greenberg's 45th birthday". TRWTF in this case is that in 1995, a bit of PL/1 from 1975 was still running.

    Your old code will never die.

  • (cs) in reply to acid
    acid:
    ContraCorners:
    acid:

    CAPTCHA - letatio? Now THERE'S a wtf... Seriously. I don't even want to know what that is.

    I'm pretty sure that Letatio is one of the three suitors in "The Taming of the Shrew."

    No, that was Lucentio.

    I'm pretty sure that Letatio was one of Hamlet's close friends in "Hamlet".
  • My Name (unregistered) in reply to Smyle
    Smyle:
    I'm just wondering why Miley Cyrus is coding for your company?
    Alanis (the sagaciter) got her the job?
  • anotherguy (unregistered) in reply to someguy
    someguy:
    There's several ways of thinking on this: - Always write to "what this makes it do now".
    I can't think like that. What are you trying to say?
  • Huh? (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    SenTree:
    God was in a band ? (Mud)
    No, He was in Cream before He went solo, and the Yardbirds before that.
    I thought he was in The Thamesmen
  • (cs) in reply to Huh?
    Huh?:
    DaveK:
    SenTree:
    God was in a band ? (Mud)
    No, He was in Cream before He went solo, and the Yardbirds before that.
    I thought he was in The Thamesmen
    Different God, but 11 points for trying.

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