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Admin
As a statistics fan, I would be devastated if some e-commerce site wouldn't let me browse my order history for orders older than 25 years.
Admin
Where is the wtf?
Admin
It is using PHP. 25+ year old records show the stability of your company. I for one prefer utilizing a system with some stability.
Admin
Crikey, I'd forgotten about Sculptor. Around about the time I started forgetting about QNX and DOS... you still out there, Brad?
And now with mobile!
Admin
I guess the WTF is how things too often seem more important by virtue of loss, regardless of the value of what is being lost.
I have to say though, someone needs to hurry up and find or make some rediculously silly code fast... or I might have to start making my own WTFs just to get my fix.
Admin
I guess they wanted something to boast about in commercials. Hope they didn't already pay to have them aired.
Admin
"Well, stammered before looking as though a cinder block had been dropped on his head."
So suddenly blood bursted from his crushed eye sockets and bits of brain dribbled down his chin? That's the real WTF for that to happen during a 7am meeting.
Admin
the guid thing from yesterday
Admin
Warehouse Historical Order Retrieval E-System = WHORE
Surely a made up name?
Admin
This isn't a WTF. It's more like chicken soup for the "perfectly understaffed" developer's soul.
Btw did he end up buying donuts for the staff after all?
Admin
Much like Richard, I also learn much about work tasks by wikipeding them.
Admin
Here it would be, "they just do!" After it's done you check the logs and not a single person has ever used it.
Admin
Admin
In August 1987:
I got my first car. On 6th August to be precise, which is why, to this day, that remains my insurance-renewal date.
I was working for an awful life insurance company called General Portfolio. I came in as a Maths graduate but was treated lesser than a kid with nothing but poor CSEs because his dad was more important to the company than mine.
Michael Jackson topped the UK chart with "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", a duet with Seidah Garrett. This was the lead single off his new album "Bad". It replaced "La Bamba" by Los Lobos at number one.
The Hungerford massacre - this happened on 19 August 1987 so next Monday will be 25 years exactly.
Admin
I don't get it... If nobody ever accessed that data, how did they notice the system was gone in the first place?
Admin
'Jim had just recently passed away after 35 years of dedicated service'
That's the most depressing think I've ever read.
Admin
this.
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Interesting - was just reminiscing about August 1987 with an old friend.
That was the month when, instead of doing the usual thing of going to Reading Rock festival, I went to an SF convention in Brighton where (also instead of playing at Reading Rock) Hawkwind performed. Ah, happy days.
Admin
"Warehouse Historical Order Retrieval E-System" Seriously? I'm calling BS.
Admin
But does anyone or any company really give a crap that they bought 1000 model 2 widgets, 1500 model 3 widgets and 5000 of the original widgets, 25 years ago? If they did, then the PURCHASER should have kept better records.
Admin
http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/26543.aspx
It was him!
Admin
The real WTF is that the business people are making development decisions (PHP will be a language of choice, etc. who decided that?) and it takes a developer to make the business decision (this project has no business benefit).
Admin
and come on, that last comment of mine was brilliant, you must feature it...
Admin
Warehouse Historical Order Retrieval E-System Not the first time WHORES stopped production...
Admin
Truefax: after ten or twelve espresso doubleshots, your head esplodes. 7 AM meetings are dangerous.
Admin
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Nah, Hawkwind at the Brighton SF Convention was April 1984.
Admin
Actually - the Documentation required the PHP code. Which - presumably - was written by the Dear Departed.
Admin
Thank you, that was my first thought as well. I truly hope that is never said about me.
Admin
I'm probably going to get murdered by Alex for this, but I think its well accepted (and admitted by himself) that he "fictionalises" accounts to make them more entertaining and to protect the submitter.
I am the submitter of this particular WTF, and I think I need to clear up a few things - the only non-fiction part of the story is the step by step process for data transfer.
There was no failure, there was no Jim, there was no meeting.
I submitted this because the real WTF was that this entire process never failed - despite its horrific nature, it was rock stonking solid for the decade I worked at the company, and it still goes right now.
Prior to this system being put in place (by myself, a quick hack at the start of 2000 designed to be a stop gap for a quick sign up form), the previous developer had PHP just doing a passthru() to the Sculptor server - and the Sculptor server outputted the entire HTML page.
I have since moved on from PHP and Sculptor, and have become an accomplished .Net developer. But those days still haunt me :)
Just goes to show that sometimes the WTF is that it works, and works well. That was the intention of the submission.
Admin
Warehouse Historical Order Retrieval E-System or WHORE for short.....
Admin
To quote Robert Browning on "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"... huh, a Victorian poet could actually forsee the sheer amount of busywork in middleware and communications layer to AIX:
I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three;
“Good speed !” cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we gallop’d abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turn’d in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shorten’d each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chain’d slacker the bit,
Nor gallop’d less steadily Roland a whit.
’T was moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawn’d clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, ’t was morning as plain as could be;
And from Mechelm church-steeple we heard the half chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”
At Aershot, up leap’d of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one, To state thro’ the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other prick’d out on his track;
And one eye’s black intelligence,—ever that glance
O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groan’d; and cried Joris “Stay spur!
Your Roos gallop’d bravely, the fault’s not in her,
We ’ll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretch’d neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shudder’d and sank.
So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laugh’d a pitiless laugh,
’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!
“How they ’ll greet us!”—and all in a moment his roan
Roll’d neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.
Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, lean’d, patted his ear,
Call’d my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer;
Clapp’d my hands, laugh’d and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland gallop’d and stood.
And all I remember is, friends flocking round
As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I pour’d down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Also, AIX is properly pronounced "aches".
Admin
where is irish girl? i miss irish girl!
Admin
Also, Why the hell would somebody bother reimaging a 25 year old server for use? The artical should read "Somebody decided to throw it out the window and that lead to the discovery that their 25 year old records were no longer available because it landed on the ceo's car." or some other such nonsense.
Also, Everybody misses the irish girl.
Admin
Ah, so that explains why the title of this story is "The Process that Never Failed".
Admin
That was all fictionalised - there is no "WHORE", it's not an ecommerce platform, the server wasn't reimaged and there was no hurried remplementation.
See my last post.
Admin
I was much more interested in Alex's story than this comment
Admin
First, It's WHORES[/s]. See the capitol "S"?
Second, welcome n00b5. This is the daily WTF where people submit examples of [b]your code for us all to laugh at. However, they make up names of places, people, products and companies to protect the guilty.
Thank you and we hope you enjoy your experience here.
Juliambo the Embiggener, Director, Dedicated Omni-Universal Client High-End Banking Analysis Group
Admin
featuring your own comments is the first sign of WTF-ery.
From Mark: Ok, self moderated. But, you get what you get when you ASK to be featured. ;-)
Admin
-Harrow.
Admin
Admin
Unfortunately that biggest WTF in software development is that poorly written software works. Yes, it can be a nightmare to maintain, not extensible etc. but it gets the job done. And therefore business managers continue to hire poor developers but their software works anyway.
Beautifully written software, where the developer unfortunately wasn't able to decipher the complex specification, on the other hand, doesn't work the way the business wanted.
So often, rather than clarify the spec, the person with the business knowledge will just code it all themselves. Only later do they hand it to the developers, often without a spec that makes any sense at all, and with a lot of "look at the code and see what it does".
Admin
What it takes to get something new added to the workplace: a single chance randomly-fired neuron in the brain of some marketing guy.
What it takes to get something old and unused removed from the workplace: a complete reversal of the Earth's axis. If you're lucky.
Also, I thought we were going to learn that for the last 25 of those 35 dedicated years, Jim had been running an illegal bookmaking business out of his cubicle using the company's critical server.
Admin
... and therefore has neither?
Admin
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