• Anon (unregistered)

    ...TRWTF is Comic Sans.

  • Ian (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the lack of the usual soul-crushing disappointment.

  • Ano (unregistered)

    COMIC SAAAAAAAAANS!!!

  • (cs)

    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.

  • EduMonkey (unregistered)

    Student and Librarian cobble together an unmanageable, unmaintainable, stinking mess of an application and promote it as "progress". This is par for education. We're stuck supporting these types of "apps" for years. Thanks guys.

  • Meep (unregistered)

    Ah, the joys of socialized education.

  • Dirk (unregistered) in reply to EduMonkey

    But is a cobbled-together house better than no house at all?

  • Meh (unregistered)

    Good story but it could have used a few more typos.

  • EduMonkey (unregistered) in reply to Dirk

    No, no it's not -- In particular, when you're trying to grow that cobble to house an entire district.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Not enough crushing defeat at the end. Ending a WTF on a high note? That's TRWTF.

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.

    Indeed, this story took a different path than what I was originally expecting, what with the 'mistook for a fellow student' and the 'closet-with-a-desk' back office.

  • (cs)

    "I'd like to thank the fine folks at Penguicon for having Alex and I as guests."

    That's "Alex and me". (You wouldn't say "...for having I as a guest", would you?)

  • anon (unregistered)

    Very little for the grammar nazis here, but "I'd like to thank the fine folks at Penguicon for having Alex and I as guests" is poor.

  • Grammer Nazi (unregistered)
    The Article:
    That goodness I saw this coming months ago
    A lot of the grammatical errors are forgivable, but did you really read this?
  • Brapp Zannigan (unregistered) in reply to Dirk
    Dirk:
    But is a cobbled-together house better than no house at all?
    Try telling that to 5000 Haitians after the hurricane.
  • (cs) in reply to EduMonkey
    EduMonkey:
    Student and Librarian cobble together an unmanageable, unmaintainable, stinking mess of an application and promote it as "progress". This is par for education. We're stuck supporting these types of "apps" for years. Thanks guys.
    I sincerely hope that you're not serious. If you are serious, though, do you think that, say, Facebook's code initially was anything more than "unmanageable, unmaintainable, stinking mess"? Or Google's? So, par for education should be something like NYC's CityTime, where well paid and supposedly well-experienced consultants create professional, manageable and maintainable nothing?
  • Brandon (unregistered) in reply to EduMonkey
    EduMonkey:
    Student and Librarian cobble together an unmanageable, unmaintainable, stinking mess of an application and promote it as "progress". This is par for education. We're stuck supporting these types of "apps" for years. Thanks guys.

    Well, most of these applications are created by people who know what the real problem is, and intended for use as a prototype - not a final system - which never gets funding to be properly designed. I have no problem with people taking the initiative to build these types of "apps", I have a real problem with rigid IT structures and unfunded schools that can't capitalize on these innovations.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Cantabrigian
    Cantabrigian:
    "I'd like to thank the fine folks at Penguicon for having Alex and I as guests."

    That's "Alex and me". (You wouldn't say "...for having I as a guest", would you?)

    Nobody cares.

    anon:
    Very little for the grammar nazis here, but "I'd like to thank the fine folks at Penguicon for having Alex and I as guests" is poor.
    Nobody cares.
    Grammer Nazi:
    A lot of the grammatical errors are forgivable, but did you really read this?
    OK, so one guy cares. But nobody important cares.
  • A Programmer (unregistered)

    So Brian learned his lesson: nothing you work on ever belongs to you, until you go into business for yourself. It's one of the harsh realities of this profession.

  • (cs) in reply to EduMonkey
    EduMonkey:
    No, no it's not -- In particular, when you're trying to grow that cobble to house an entire district.
    Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's nothing outrageous about scaling the application in TFA to a whole district. If the application doesn't have major bottlenecks, you could pretty much run it on a decent laptop with a hot spare for failover, with all non-BLOB database pages sitting in RAM. You don't need highly paid consultants, nor a whole rack in the data center. Just a single machine and a fat enough pipe. Heck, if you rework things just so and implement some logic in the browser, most of the application should be cacheable, even including historic data. I've seen fairly complex, data-intensive web applications that sip data after stuff got initially cached. Think <200kb of traffic per an hour-long session. It's not that hard. Of course you have to learn how to do it, but sometimes physical constraints (network bandwidth and server hardware) are motivation to optimize things.

    Do more with less. That's what I do at work, too: over the years, I've increased production of an electronics assembly "department" while using just one full-time technician position. In about a year or so, our output will be an order of magnitude higher than when we started some 4 years ago. All because the process got streamlined, designs were adjusted for manufacturability, and tools were purchased (or made) to speed things up. This includes an in-house production management tool that handles product documentation and BOMs, and automates ordering hundreds of parts per each job so that you don't need a purchasing department to push paper around and make mistakes.

  • Slim (unregistered)

    Beautiful story! Standing Ovation

  • Unsubscriber (unregistered)

    How do articles keep getting published with what appears to be zero proofreading?

    You've got incorrect words, incomplete sentences, and can't even get the main character's name right.

  • foo (unregistered)

    TRWTF today are the comments, more than ever. The few that actually comment on the story completely miss the point. ADHD must be widespread here.

  • 4% Neaderthal (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    TRWTF today are the comments, more than ever. The few that actually comment on the story completely miss the point. ADHD must be widespread here.

    Nobody cares you loser.

  • Kelsey Grammar (unregistered) in reply to Grammer Nazi
    Grammer Nazi:
    The Article:
    That goodness I saw this coming months ago
    A lot of the grammatical errors are forgivable, but did you really read this?

    obvious troll is obvious

  • Spivonious (unregistered)

    I enjoyed this one. There is lots of bad grammar, though; it's time to proofread!

  • QJ (unregistered) in reply to @Deprecated
    @Deprecated:
    frits:
    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.

    Indeed, this story took a different path than what I was originally expecting, what with the 'mistook for a fellow student' and the 'closet-with-a-desk' back office.

    TRWTF is that it didn't end up in a spontaneous episode of steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex. You can bet that's how it will end in the movie of the book.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to QJ
    QJ:
    @Deprecated:
    frits:
    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.

    Indeed, this story took a different path than what I was originally expecting, what with the 'mistook for a fellow student' and the 'closet-with-a-desk' back office.

    TRWTF is that it didn't end up in a spontaneous episode of steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex. You can bet that's how it will end in the movie of the book.

    • IT student
    • Steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex

    You don't need a degree in math to know that these are mutually exclusive sets.

  • Cap'n Spanky (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    QJ:
    @Deprecated:
    frits:
    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.
    Indeed, this story took a different path than what I was originally expecting, what with the 'mistook for a fellow student' and the 'closet-with-a-desk' back office.
    - IT student - Steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex

    You don't need a degree in math to know that these are mutually exclusive sets.

    Unless the IT student is in a steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    QJ:
    @Deprecated:
    frits:
    Ms. Kelly sounds hot.

    Indeed, this story took a different path than what I was originally expecting, what with the 'mistook for a fellow student' and the 'closet-with-a-desk' back office.

    TRWTF is that it didn't end up in a spontaneous episode of steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex. You can bet that's how it will end in the movie of the book.

    • IT student
    • Steamy, sweaty, business-consultant-suit-ripping jungle sex

    You don't need a degree in math to know that these are mutually exclusive sets.

    Only in the physical universe. I was fully expecting another one of those stories when I starting reading this.

  • (cs) in reply to Kuba
    Kuba:
    EduMonkey:
    No, no it's not -- In particular, when you're trying to grow that cobble to house an entire district.
    Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's nothing outrageous about scaling the application in TFA to a whole district. If the application doesn't have major bottlenecks, you could pretty much run it on a decent laptop with a hot spare for failover, with all non-BLOB database pages sitting in RAM. You don't need highly paid consultants, nor a whole rack in the data center. Just a single machine and a fat enough pipe. Heck, if you rework things just so and implement some logic in the browser, most of the application should be cacheable, even including historic data. I've seen fairly complex, data-intensive web applications that sip data after stuff got initially cached. Think <200kb of traffic per an hour-long session. It's not that hard. Of course you have to learn how to do it, but sometimes physical constraints (network bandwidth and server hardware) are motivation to optimize things.

    Do more with less. That's what I do at work, too: over the years, I've increased production of an electronics assembly "department" while using just one full-time technician position. In about a year or so, our output will be an order of magnitude higher than when we started some 4 years ago. All because the process got streamlined, designs were adjusted for manufacturability, and tools were purchased (or made) to speed things up. This includes an in-house production management tool that handles product documentation and BOMs, and automates ordering hundreds of parts per each job so that you don't need a purchasing department to push paper around and make mistakes.

    QFE. The cynicism of the average programmer when it comes to making projects scale up is astounding.

  • Robb (unregistered)

    Maude Lebowski: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here. The Dude: He fixes the cable?

    That is what I was expecting from this story.

  • (cs) in reply to Kuba
    Kuba:
    EduMonkey:
    No, no it's not -- In particular, when you're trying to grow that cobble to house an entire district.
    Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's nothing outrageous about scaling the application in TFA to a whole district. If the application doesn't have major bottlenecks, you could pretty much run it on a decent laptop with a hot spare for failover, with all non-BLOB database pages sitting in RAM.
    The description in TFA isn't especially detailed, but the impression I got is that it's trying to solve an NP-complete problem, in which case scaling it to the whole district might well cause it to become completely useless.
  • Gregg (unregistered)

    So if I get this right, the principal changed its funding from coming from Special Projects to coming from the library's budget, so then the head librarian was pissed because it ate all the library's budget? And the staff dropped out of PEN because all the new students that were getting involved in PEN were "less than desirable" (i.e. not really interested in improving their grades) but still allowed to participate because of the principal?

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to pjt33
    pjt33:
    Kuba:
    EduMonkey:
    No, no it's not -- In particular, when you're trying to grow that cobble to house an entire district.
    Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's nothing outrageous about scaling the application in TFA to a whole district. If the application doesn't have major bottlenecks, you could pretty much run it on a decent laptop with a hot spare for failover, with all non-BLOB database pages sitting in RAM.
    The description in TFA isn't especially detailed, but the impression I got is that it's trying to solve an NP-complete problem, in which case scaling it to the whole district might well cause it to become completely useless.

    It does seem like a program like this is better suited to run on each school, individually, rather than grouping the entire district into a single database.

    captcha: appellatio...holy shit that sounds hot and appropriate.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Gregg
    Gregg:
    So if I get this right, the principal changed its funding from coming from Special Projects to coming from the library's budget, so then the head librarian was pissed because it ate all the library's budget? And the staff dropped out of PEN because all the new students that were getting involved in PEN were "less than desirable" (i.e. not really interested in improving their grades) but still allowed to participate because of the principal?

    That is how I understood it, too.

    The principle was playing Hubert the fool, and making changes guaranteed to doom the project, and being able to place the blame on OP for it.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF are nerds that don't recognize Slayer.

  • Fernando (unregistered)

    In having Alex and I as guests, change I to me.

  • (cs)

    So, the principal killed the program by funneling a horde of inner city kids into it and inducing White Flight. Very politically incorrect.

  • Karl (unregistered)

    There's no WTF here -- this is life sometimes, plain and simple. I sure wouldn't want someone to read this to me -- far too lengthy and dry!

  • Google Translate (unregistered)

    Official reading copy of today's article. And yes, forum-dwellers (read: Trolls), it is in Comic Sans MS

  • Fat Guy In a Little Coat (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    TRWTF today are the comments, more than ever. The few that actually comment on the story completely miss the point. ADHD must be widespread here.

    One of the better stories here, and sadly, the Asperger's crowd is in full force.

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    It does seem like a program like this is better suited to run on each school, individually, rather than grouping the entire district into a single database.
    It depends how much load there is. It's generally a lot easier to maintain a system if all of the equipment which you might be asked to fix is in one room.

    On another topic, more people die these days because someone wrote the wrong number in the wrong box than because of anything involving swords. Knives are another matter.

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered)

    I very much enjoyed this story -- and I have ADHD, so I don't think that explains why some people appear to be missing the point or unable to read what is frankly not that long of an article.

    And I think I could find somebody with Asperger's to agree with me that it's a good article. Learning disorders don't make it impossible to appreciate the nuance of this story.

    The new manager who deliberately tanks the project while pinning the blame on the poor sap running it is definitely the WTF, and deserves to be a WTF because it is so commonplace. The world has a lot of bullies in it, who think nothing of stepping on the unwary to achieve their goals, just as this principal got PEN shut down while letting Hubert take the fall for it, so he comes out smelling like roses both for graciously supporting a student project and for the district not suffering from such a "miserable failure". A lot of us have had experiences like that; not all of us were lucky enough to learn it so early, before it can tank our careers. And precious few were as amazingly fortunate as Hubert, to have a no-nonsense mentor who understood the situation, understood his real qualifications, and could get him a new position where his work would actually be appreciated.

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    TRWTF today are the comments, more than ever. The few that actually comment on the story completely miss the point. ADHD must be widespread here.
    Swiss cheese is better than cheddar (IMHO).
  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    TRWTF are nerds that don't recognize Slayer.
    No, the TRWTF is that the amount of censorship currently happening in the forums are killing all the good puns and will deprive later readers of any chance to understand what you were referring to.

    But don't expect your post to surive the next hour.

  • LANMind (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    TRWTF are nerds that don't recognize Slayer.

    In the spirit of making the world a better place, here's my contribution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkRKP7_8CwY

    And if I could, I'd drive a stake thru Askismet's heart.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Calli Arcale

    The whole point of the story is the politics. This couldn't be an ongoing success because the new manager couldn't take credit for it. It had to fail, because of someone else, then be re-created (probably the exact same code) and a huge success.

  • ÃÆâ€â†(unregistered)

    I couldn't tell if I was reading Twilight, or some middle-schooler's autobiography of the 14 years of his life (complete with the horrible writing of a middle-schooler). The whole story was saturated with WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Design Pattern
    Design Pattern:
    frits:
    TRWTF are nerds that don't recognize Slayer.
    No, the TRWTF is that the amount of censorship currently happening in the forums are killing all the good puns and will deprive later readers of any chance to understand what you were referring to.

    But don't expect your post to surive the next hour.

    There does seem to be quite an arbitrary censoring of comments going here.

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