• J. Doe (jr) (unregistered) in reply to grisle
    grisle:
    It doesn't work out that way. You tell them they're doing it wrong and they're going to crash and burn, and they ask "what would you know".

    Then when it crashes and burns it's because you didn't do it their way properly - you sabotaged it. You even sent out the emails suggesting this would happen (whoich nobody could predict, because they couldn't) ergo you are a saboteur)

    Sorry, I don't get your point. You're telling me they ask me "How would you do it?" and I respond with my plan, they however decide to stick to their plan and then it's my fault? Which reason could they give for that? That it just failed because I wanted it to fail? Would be quite far-fetched because I could argue "I just followed orders".

    However, of course snoofle could warn the project manager before working up his way to mgmt. In written form of course.

    If the project manager doesn't react to it, of course he can blame snoofle for sabotaging and for make his own prophecy come true - but that is just a short relief because it won't make the application run any faster. To do that, the project manager needs snoofle. Which looks funny if he has either blamed or even fired him only days before.

  • old guy (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy

    Eh, it's all about the same. There were a lot of bad programmers then. and there are a lot more bad programmers now. Back then we used to say "you can write FORTRAN" in any language, meaning that most programmers didn't understand any data structure more complex than an array. Today there are still a lot of FORTRAN programmers cutting-and-pasting their was in Java and C# and PHP.

  • (cs)

    Hey Snoofle!

    Good for you. If management is so stupid as to revert to old ways, then they are unworthy of your presence.

    Best of luck on the new gig :)

  • ForFoxSake (unregistered)

    You took a government job? You must be young, inexperienced yourself, or just a glutton for punishment. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the flame.

  • charles (unregistered)

    I'm offended at this article.

    In the previous 8 years or so that I've been a reader, the Daily WTF has always held the following policies:

    1. Always bold the name of the storyteller
    2. Always redact the real names of people who aren't the storyteller.
    3. Use some objectivity and distance - don't complain, but report.
    4. Never post from the first person.

    These things keep TDWTF from being a personal blog, diatribe or forum, and instead maintains a semi-professional newspaper-like decorum. No one wants to hear how smart the author thinks they are, or how stupid they think their management is. Those sorts of posts belong in the sidebar forum.

    I guess a good rule of thumb is that if you're telling the story in a way you'd tell your good friend, change it. We're not your friends, snoofle. We're readers. Some of us would never hire you because, frankly, you sound like an obnoxious, condescending and unprofessional jerk.

    I come here for a good story and a laugh, not a disjointed rant and blamefest. Reading your personal rant posts makes me feel like a worse person. Please stop.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    Meh. Given the choice between the 2 I think I'd rather have "6 months out of school" guy over "30 year veteran" guy.
    ... said the kid who was six months out of school.

    Okay, I started in this business in 1980, so let's see ... pulling out my slide rule ... that would be 33 years now.

    Personally, I'm more interested in learning new things now than I was 25 years ago. I spent about 14 years doing Java, so when I had an opportunity to get a job using VB and dot-net I jumped at it. Why? Because after 14 years doing things one way, I was bored and wanted to try something different.

    Are there old programmers who are convinced that punch cards and paper tape are coming back and the Internet is a passing fad? I'm sure there are. But I'm trying to think of one that I worked with and I really can't.

    Oh, I've known people who refused to learn anything new. For example, I remember when PCs first came out. Many of my co-workers were convinced that mainframes were "serious" computing and PCs were toys. (To this day I remember one programmer saying how PCs were useless because if a program failed, they wouldn't give you an ABEND dump.) But that wasn't just old people, plenty of the younger ones thought that, too.

    But let's bear in mind that there's a flip side to "willingness to learn new things", and that's chasing after every new thing. I think it was G. K. Chesterton who said that while it is irrational to reject the new out of a mindless devotion to tradition, it is just as irrational to embrace the new out of a fascination with novelty. Let's be blunt: most new ideas fail. The bad old ways have at least passed the test of time.

  • D-dub (unregistered) in reply to name

    And yellow-network PCs...

    Actually now that almost everything is fiber, they've loosened up on the physical space concerns a bit. KVMs are even in use in many places.

  • (cs) in reply to J. Doe (jr)
    J. Doe (jr):
    grisle:
    It doesn't work out that way. You tell them they're doing it wrong and they're going to crash and burn, and they ask "what would you know".

    Then when it crashes and burns it's because you didn't do it their way properly - you sabotaged it. You even sent out the emails suggesting this would happen (whoich nobody could predict, because they couldn't) ergo you are a saboteur)

    Sorry, I don't get your point. You're telling me they ask me "How would you do it?" and I respond with my plan, they however decide to stick to their plan and then it's my fault? Which reason could they give for that?
    Reason? They would just forget (or deny) that you ever warned them. If your warning was in writing, they would still blame you because the project failed in some way that was slightly different from the way you predicted...so it's still your fault!

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox

    Joe Michael Straczynski?

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    Joe Michael Straczynski?

    Dang, Quote did not show up. Someone was complaining about JMS.

  • nope (unregistered) in reply to Warren

    The only person who is stupid is the one who doesnt take a chair leg and beat this snoozle twat to a bloody pulp. Last time we heard from him he was whining that some potential employer hadnt asked him the right questions in an interview and so missed out on the joy of having him work with them, then next we hear that another employer was too quick to offer him a job and again was not going to have the that deep joy. Now we find that he is still at his old job, still whining and still nobody has done the decent thing and kicked the crap out of him

  • nope (unregistered) in reply to Warren

    And the really shocking issue with this snoofle twat is not only has nobody taken him outside and kicked him to death, but his incessant whining and bullshit seems to represent the attitude of a lot of shithead programmers.

  • well (unregistered)

    sad story. but good one

  • the legendary gibbon (unregistered)

    The WTF is a consultant that just wouldn't outright ignore Manoj. Make the assumption that Manoj is a legacy employee with no read clout. People like that tend to bark because they know they won't be fired. However since they can't actually get anyone else fired...

  • Beta (unregistered) in reply to J. Doe (jr)
    J. Doe (jr):
    Sorry, I don't get your point. You're telling me they ask me "How would you do it?" and I respond with my plan, they however decide to stick to their plan and then it's my fault? Which reason could they give for that? That it just failed because I wanted it to fail? Would be quite far-fetched because I could argue "I just followed orders".

    "You didn't do your part! You resented our decision not to do it your way, so you decided not to participate at all. Yes, we know you accomplished a few little pieces, but right here in our schedule it says you were supposed to do about twenty times as much in half the time. We saved the email where we reminded you about this, and still you failed!"

    This is not exaggeration, it has actually happened to me. With much persistence I got a manager to admit -- in writing -- that if my account of what I had been asked to do differed from my boss's account, and I had documentary proof that my account was the correct one, then that would simply be taken as proof that I had failed to correctly interpret my boss's wishes. I still want to see that woman keelhauled.

  • Flaber Ghasted (unregistered) in reply to charles
    charles:
    I come here for a good story and a laugh, not a disjointed rant and blamefest. Reading your personal rant posts makes me feel like a worse person. Please stop.

    I entirely agree. I was settling in to see how Manoj P. would suffer in heroic silence, enabling The Founder's vision to the best of his ability.

    Suddenly there's a shift to first-person, and it changes from Manoj P.'s story to somebody else. "Snoofle"? At first I thought this was a nick-name for the guy that finally hammered in the last nails in the coffin of the Founder's vision, but no.

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Trust-Your-Instincts.aspx

    And seriously. What sort of Richard overloads a fresh-out-of-school programmer with a single-sentence summary of the entire architectual model and expects it to stick?

    FG

  • acsi (unregistered) in reply to Y
    Y:
    snoofle, one post about how awesome you are was more than enough. Two in three months is just stroking your, er, ego.

    I'm beginning to think that Snoofle is full of shit.

  • Resa (unregistered)

    I thought that this was about me. This was my life once.

  • test (unregistered)

    test

  • Mawg (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    Meh. Given the choice between the 2 I think I'd rather have "6 months out of school" guy over "30 year veteran" guy.

    I'm sure there are some good ones that keep up, but in my experience those are more like to be the "set in their ways" "you kids and your damned 'functions' and 'loops'" guys.

    They learned gotos and breaks, their car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way they likes it.

    Can someone please explain what is wrong with a "break;" statement? (and what the alternative is?)

    Captcha : dinosore

  • Asad (unregistered) in reply to Mawg

    Can someone please explain what is wrong with a "break;" statement?

    It gives us the gross (but irrational) feeling that the GC won't clean up all the shit our method is leaving in limbo.

    (and what the alternative is?)

    Personally I feel your methods should always have a fixed return type and should return it no matter what. Failing this, they should explode into a really loud exception (possibly one that blows a raspberry).

    Whoever's consuming/extending your objects should never have to write a null check before using the result from your method. If they call the method when the program state isn't right and you don't know what to return, sound the alarm. They need to know about it and add a try-catch.

  • Alsee (unregistered) in reply to Flaber Ghasted
    Flaber Ghasted:
    What sort of Richard overloads a fresh-out-of-school programmer with a single-sentence summary of the entire architectual model and expects it to stick?

    FG

    Snoofle's boss.

    "it was decided that I should spend a week offloading knowledge on how the multithreading in the application works. For this, they designate the most junior developer on staff to sit with me"

    And I take it that the "single-sentence summary" was merely illustrative of how that week went.

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