The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.

The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

JMO:
The beauty of these stories is that they are so ludicrous.
A manager driving the choice of a gazillion static web pages is just nonsense.

What possible reason could there be?

I can only imagine questioning the guy, being screamed for being wrong, leaving and not going back.

He read an article once about how dynamically generating pages was slower than static pages. Mind made up forever.

Have you really never come across that type of person? We once had a consultant try to convince my boss that we should replace all if statements with switches, because they're "faster"...and he almost listened.

Steve The Cynic · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Charles F.:
Coder 2: It stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. It's great for slicing up log files, extracting relevant data and outputing that data in a useful way.

Of course this is TRWTF... "Perl" doesn't stand for anything at all...

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
[Of course this is TRWTF... "Perl" doesn't stand for anything at all...

Wow, that useless fact really explodes my point. I cited a common "backronym" for Perl.

The efforts to push Perl from a great scripting language to a horrible general purpose OOP language are just ensuring another generation of crap.

Quango · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Anon:
Eric now found himself in the employ of an electronics and entertainment giant. Amongst their weaponry were a huge catalog of songs, a line of MP3 players, and ample cash reserves- more than enough to squander on an acquisition they didn’t need.

So...Sony then?

That was my initial thought. But developing the solution outside Japan? Not really the Japanese way.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Wait a minute... they were embedding XML inside HTML?

...and then I googled this, and discovered that yes, some people apparently do think that this is sometimes a good idea.

Mind. Blown.

TGV · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Wait a minute... they were embedding XML inside HTML?
...and then I googled this, and discovered that yes, some people apparently do think that this is sometimes a good idea.

Mind. Blown.

It's just static AJAX.

lucidfox · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

chubertdev · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
QJo:
He can always try eyeballing it out with Vernon, but that may take courage and a risk of personal harm -- but then one can content oneself with the knowledge that if one is actually physically harmed by violence in the corporate environment, then not only will be have grounds for getting Vernon fired, but also incarcerated.
The other view of eyeballing out is that it gives me an opportunity to make use of my jujitsu(*) skills in a real situation.(**)
(*) No, don't get at my spelling of this word. I know well that the proper spelling is 柔術.

(**) When I was training in England, one of the things that we had to learn was the gentle art of "two man attack". This was described by one of the senior instructors as what happens when two men present the opportunity for you to attack them. (Of course, they think that they are attacking me, but since there's two of them and one of me, I outnumber them.) The essential rules of this discipline are (1) dispose of each one as quickly as possible, and (2) NEVER, EVER get in between them. There were no other rules.

I like how your writing style prevents any sane person from wanting to read what you wrote.

chubertdev · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

lucidfox:
A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

I think that it allowed multiple connections, it just caused a lot of concurrency issues.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.

But how can you know when the computer makes a mistake if someone doesn't look at every one of those files individually?

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

TGV:
anonymous:
Wait a minute... they were embedding XML inside HTML?
...and then I googled this, and discovered that yes, some people apparently do think that this is sometimes a good idea.

Mind. Blown.
It's just static AJAX.

Creating static pages with XML embedded inside is kind of like putting glasses of ice water in the freezer so that they won't spill and the ice won't melt.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.
But how can you know when the computer makes a mistake if someone doesn't look at every one of those files individually?

Vernon was going to do that anyway, right? Just don't tell him how the files were generated, and he'll never be the wiser.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

TGV:
Who else can drive Apple into obsolescence but a Steve Jobs clone?

My first thought when I read of "Vernon's" behavior was Ballmer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_AP3SGMxxM

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

th reel wtf is that nebuddy wold BOTTER havin sumtin 2do witth ituens. verin shod hav ben a kiler app deseyener nsted lol xD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

herby · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

My Name:
The RRRWTF was the bosses of the music industry. When they saw the success of Napster, they did not send product managers or SW-developers, but only lawyers.
Then they were SHOCKED, that iTunes and Amazon could sell digital music for a profit...

Yes, iTunes and Amazon do make a profit. It is just the creators (actual talent) that get left in the dust. They are the ones that get only pennies per song-download (if that!).

snoofle · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

TGV:
Who else can drive Apple into obsolescence but a Steve Jobs clone?

im sorry, was that "clone" or "drone"?

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

It's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater if you carefully save the bathwater.

DCRoss · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

lucidfox:
A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

And I suppose that you know of some tool that is better than Access?

We just need to make sure that someone is always sitting at Lester's desk to re-open the file every time it crashes, but I'm sure that's normal with all enterprise level database engines.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Smug Unix User:
Build the site dynamically(Perl,PHP,Python) then use the rendered content as static html page so everyone is happy. Problem solved.

We actually do this for some of our products. We have clients and customers who want to use our product offline, so we have a custom static generator that generates the HTML files from our PHP code base and then put them on a cd.

chubertdev · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

accident:
Smug Unix User:
Build the site dynamically(Perl,PHP,Python) then use the rendered content as static html page so everyone is happy. Problem solved.
We actually do this for some of our products. We have clients and customers who want to use our product offline, so we have a custom static generator that generates the HTML files from our PHP code base and then put them on a cd.

Not the worst thing to do when data doesn't change often. I manage a site for my running group, and the people who enter the run information are the only ones who update the site. The runs aren't changed that often, so one of the projects that I have slated for the site is to make that process create a static HTML file that would be referenced by the main page that shows the next 10 run starts, instead of generating that list dynamically.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

herby:
My Name:
The RRRWTF was the bosses of the music industry. When they saw the success of Napster, they did not send product managers or SW-developers, but only lawyers.
Then they were SHOCKED, that iTunes and Amazon could sell digital music for a profit...

Yes, iTunes and Amazon do make a profit. It is just the creators (actual talent) that get left in the dust. They are the ones that get only pennies per song-download (if that!).

Well, iTunes and Amazon each give 70% of the sale of the song back to the label. Roughly 70 cents, while they skim 30% for themselves. And if you buy one song, that's no profit for either as that's eaten up in credit card fees.

Hell, iTunes (and software and other associated services) made Apple $1B in revenue, the worst performing division, and not counting expenses, either.

The labels get 70 cents per 99 cent song. If the artist is only getting a penny, well, the RIAA is chewing up the rest of the money. Not Apple, nor Amazon.

There are indie labels on iTunes that give their artists way more - 30 cents or more per song.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Smug Unix User:
Build the site dynamically(Perl,PHP,Python) then use the rendered content as static html page so everyone is happy. Problem solved.

Use a cache to deliver the site. Sell the boss the cache contents as "our static site, generated on-demand".

da Doctah · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

When Apples collide:

[image]

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
lucidfox:
A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

I think that it allowed multiple connections, it just caused a lot of concurrency issues.

Vernon might have driven the DBAs over the edge so they just up and left, and then he said to his superior, "we don't need no stinkin' database anyway". Hence the static HTML.

I am your manager. Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to work without it.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Xaser:
Though it's fun to comment on the Hanzos and mock the slightly unfortunate quality of some articles, can we take the time to appreciate that Ellis is good at this? Because Ellis is good at this and he should do articles more often.
[Disclaimer: I am not an Ellis parrot account. I think.]

CAPTCHA: "tristique" -- a boutique catered exclusively to people named Tristan.

I thought Ellis was responsible for the Hanzo rubbish?

But I agree, this article was a significant immprovement on most of the crap we 've been seeing here of late.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Charles F.:
Steve The Cynic:
[Of course this is TRWTF... "Perl" doesn't stand for anything at all...
Wow, that useless fact really explodes my point. I cited a common "backronym" for Perl.
The efforts to push Perl from a great scripting language to a horrible general purpose OOP language are just ensuring another generation of crap.

For certain tasks, Perl is excellent -- but I wouldn't want to use it for everything. A person without Perl on his CV would need an extra special something else to impress me enough to invite him for an interview -- OTOH someone who stressed his/her Perl expertise at the expense of all else would be demonstrating a severe imbalance and, if facing him/her over an interview table my first question would be to ask him/her what Perl would be used for. "Everything" would of course be the wrong answer.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Charles F.:
isee:
TRWTF is PHP. And Perl.
If this story dates from 2001, PHP and Perl were leading web technologies.
Despite my being a huge Java partisan, I considered J2EE a red flag because EJBs and JSP (and its evil twin JSF) were terrible, poorly-thought-out bloatware. Nowadays, there are nice lightweight Java frameworks for RAD web development, as well as options in half a dozen other non-PHP and non-Perl languages.

JSP is actually okay, and in the correct context the technology can still be useful for certain applications -- but I'm completely in agreement with you on JSF and EJB. JSP shines through its ease of use.

chubertdev · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

You can't say that Perl is TRWTF in an article that even mentions Java.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

JAPH:
Perl AND PHP? Please don't introduce more languages than necessary. Either one would work nicely, though it might be easier to get PHP programmers to maintain the project.

Getting programmers isn't the issue, getting good programmers is hard, and both languages attract morons.

The operative difference is if you do it in PHP you won't waste ages picking a web templating language.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

no laughing matter:
“We’re having issues with hard-disk space.”
Because of some static HTML pages? In the day and age of J2EE?

The whole article is [BLEEP]ing unbelievable!

My thought exactly. Building the static content is a bit of a problem, but once it's done, who cares? Why spend a whole bunch of time porting it to a dynamic template? That seems like a long term migration project. Static HTML certainly isn't going to consume any appreciable percentage of space on a system that serves binary content.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.

You will find that computer programs are very good at applying uniform changes to 10,000 files in a very short amount of time. If you have to do this once a month, who cares?

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

00Davo:
TRWTF is misspelling Perl.

TRWTF is 00Davo not understanding irony.

Oddly, Vernon wasn't the one calling for Perl/Pearl. Nonetheless...

gnasher729:
I wouldn't really care whether some manager can spell Perl correctly or not.

Me too. I even kept my mouth shut when one manager told another manager about Perl and the second one wrote it down as Pearl. Though the second one wasn't Sony, it was a competitor who fits this scenario equally well as Sony.

gnasher729:
What I would care about is if a manager makes implementation decisions when he isn't in the least qualified to do so.

Yup, me too. But my remaining months weren't as long as Eric's.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Dale:
Yes, the situation is insane. But look at the bigger picture: The company has plenty of money to "squander on an acquisition they didn’t need". From the executives' point of view, that's a fine place to put Vernon. He can only mess up something that will likely fail anyway. Even better, when it augers in, Vernon can be blamed for the failure and he can be pushed out.

Yes, that is a way of getting rid of Vernon -- while paying Vernon more than the poor slobs who have to work under him, while the poor slobs who have to work under him get fired because they don't know how to put up with that idiocy. There ought to be a better way of getting rid of Vernon, but unlike the poor slobs under him, Vernon knows how to fight. Thus the WTFs continue.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Quango:
Anon:
Eric now found himself in the employ of an electronics and entertainment giant. Amongst their weaponry were a huge catalog of songs, a line of MP3 players, and ample cash reserves- more than enough to squander on an acquisition they didn’t need.
So...Sony then?
That was my initial thought. But developing the solution outside Japan? Not really the Japanese way.

Remember this article was anonymized. I think "Los Angeles" was an anonymization for "Shinagawa-ku."

chubertdev · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Kyle Huff:
no laughing matter:
“We’re having issues with hard-disk space.”
Because of some static HTML pages? In the day and age of J2EE?

The whole article is [BLEEP]ing unbelievable!
My thought exactly. Building the static content is a bit of a problem, but once it's done, who cares? Why spend a whole bunch of time porting it to a dynamic template? That seems like a long term migration project. Static HTML certainly isn't going to consume any appreciable percentage of space on a system that serves binary content.

You've never seen enterprisy HTML, have you?

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

Kyle Huff:
Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.
You will find that computer programs are very good at applying uniform changes to 10,000 files in a very short amount of time. If you have to do this once a month, who cares?

Given that the files themselves have been generated (most likely by hand) using FrontPage, it is less than likely they will be in a sufficiently uniform format as to allow a straightforward algorithmic treatment in order to provide those required upgrades. Seriously: such is the stuff of nightmares.

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.

It was dynamically generated, a process which took several days to do, and had to be done anytime links were updated.

lucidfox:
A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

The TRWTF was that it had been running months without a problem (that's how well marketed it was). Turned out it was configured by someone who didn't know connection pooling.

-eric

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

Jeremy:
Why not just dynamically create the static site? Yes, it's a stupid request, but that doesn't mean it has to be done stupidly on top of that.
The end result can be .html files without you actually opening up 10000 files to make a menu change.

It was dynamically generated, a process which took several days to do, and had to be done anytime links were updated.

lucidfox:
A database that only allows one connection at a time? That's TRWTF. Is it some kind of corporate edition of a big enterprise DBMS for which they were too cheap to buy additional client licenses? Never mind that the task in question doesn't look particularly complex and could probably be done by something like MySQL.

The TRWTF was that it had been running months without a problem (that's how well marketed it was). Turned out it was configured by someone who didn't know connection pooling.

-eric

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

clifhanger?

waiting for a sequel...

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

now this is shitposting:
th reel wtf is that nebuddy wold BOTTER havin sumtin 2do witth ituens. verin shod hav ben a kiler app deseyener nsted lol xD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry, we'll get to it first thing tuesday.

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

qazwsx:
Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow, written by Erik Gern.

Then it's Hanzo vs. Vernon - does that remind you of "Mortal Combat"? "Hanzo ... wins"...

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

QJo:
Charles F.:
Steve The Cynic:
[Of course this is TRWTF... "Perl" doesn't stand for anything at all...
Wow, that useless fact really explodes my point. I cited a common "backronym" for Perl.
The efforts to push Perl from a great scripting language to a horrible general purpose OOP language are just ensuring another generation of crap.

For certain tasks, Perl is excellent -- but I wouldn't want to use it for everything. A person without Perl on his CV would need an extra special something else to impress me enough to invite him for an interview -- OTOH someone who stressed his/her Perl expertise at the expense of all else would be demonstrating a severe imbalance and, if facing him/her over an interview table my first question would be to ask him/her what Perl would be used for. "Everything" would of course be the wrong answer.

I'm an embedded software engineer and I've never had a need to use perl for anything except university classes, and even that was minimal.

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

00Davo:
TRWTF is "versioning" files by keeping copies with .old in their names. Use a version control system. Always use a version control system.

Yes, of course. Our version control system is full of SomeProject.old OtherProject.bak AnotherProject.Original etc. projects. Do it right!

Captcha: facilisis - easysys?

Zemm · 2014-02-04 Reply Admin

realmerlyn:
Yeah, Perl programmers are actually in short supply these days. Want a job? Learn to code in Perl.

Perl was actually my first "love" way back in the late 1990s. When I found a free web host that supported user CGI files, so Perl was the de-facto language to use. I had only used QBASIC before Perl so it was quite a change, not only syntax but also how CGI and web programming worked. When I did "Web Programming" at uni, I had a crazy lecturer who wanted us to use pure C for CGI scripts. Perl was much easier!

Then I found PHP and used it professionally for a while but now I have been a Perl programmer for over a year.

I used to use software that had its web interface written in PHP and its commandline/cron parts written in Perl, both accessing a common database. That was quite weird but it seemed to work.

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

So Mr. Vernon

berated somebody for ad-hoc workaround solutions to capacity issues
generated static HTML for content that is read thousands of times per day and changed, well, almost never
used a third party search engine instead of rolling his own

Maybe he was more competent than it seems?

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

N one:
What's sad is how many of these F$(;ing idiots there still are in top positions.

+1 in my organisation

(actually make that + quite a few)

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

This one is hardcore. I almost feel sorry for Eric. Almost. Because nobody was forcing him to stay there. I would probably walk away after the first Mr.Vernon's exhibition. The next possibility for exit was after being told how retarded the whole system is. And the final "Just be better" speech would be the final straw. There's no possibility I would stay there. Even if I had to go flipping burgers.

In my career I've met my share of "Mr.Vernons" and it's just not worth it.

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

This is fat more common than you imagine. I recently left a large company where almost every senior manager was an imbecile. Worseha they covered folongevity is not a requirement of promotion.r each other. The root of the problem was that most if these people had worked for the company for 15-20 years. It should be law that

2014-02-04 Reply Admin

belzebub:
This one is hardcore. I almost feel sorry for Eric. Almost. Because nobody was forcing him to stay there. I would probably walk away after the first Mr.Vernon's exhibition. The next possibility for exit was after being told how retarded the whole system is. And the final "Just be better" speech would be the final straw. There's no possibility I would stay there. Even if I had to go flipping burgers.
In my career I've met my share of "Mr.Vernons" and it's just not worth it.

bollocks. never try to write comments with an Android phone.

The Killer Product

Leave a comment on “The Killer Product”