• berrs (unregistered)

    One contractor, then on the brink of insanity, said that he had decompiled/changed/recompiled the same module seven different times.

     

     Uuuhhh.... this was one mother of a WTF. The ground beneath me is actually trembling right now.
     

  • (cs) in reply to An Orphan
    Anonymous:
    themagni:
    hbr17:

    Mental not for future interviews: Ask whether development and maintenance is done on:
      a. Source code
      b. Decompiled byte code 
      c. Assembly language (or the bit equivalent version)

    I ask, "What part of the codebase would you most like to change, and why?

    Good interview question - though I might modify it with something like: "If you could do it over again, what would you do differently, and why?"

    How are those applicable as interview questions? What codebase/project would you be talking about that  both parties know intimately enough to answer meaningfully / judge the answer?

  • (cs) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:

    How are those applicable as interview questions? What codebase/project would you be talking about that  both parties know intimately enough to answer meaningfully / judge the answer?

    It would be fairly easy to at least weed out the blithely idiotic responses like, "Oh, we're thinking of replacing our RDBMS with XML".

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to db2
    db2:
    It would be fairly easy to at least weed out the blithely idiotic responses like, "Oh, we're thinking of replacing our RDBMS with XML".

    You mean like this?

  • (cs)

    Normally I'm one of those people that complains about spelling errors...but this one would be excusable:

     

    "Instead, modules were decompiled on a "need-to-altar" basis..."

     

    It even makes more sense than the correct spelling! 

  • (cs) in reply to berrs
    Anonymous:

    One contractor, then on the brink of insanity, said that he had decompiled/changed/recompiled the same module seven different times.

     

     Uuuhhh.... this was one mother of a WTF. The ground beneath me is actually trembling right now.
     

    Huh, my sanity shield must have auto-blocked that. Now I'll have the giggles for the rest of the day.

  • (cs) in reply to JL

    Anonymous:
    This is like throwing away your car keys once you get your car started.

    No no... your analogy fails. You don't throw away keys when you get the car started. They are keys. Keys need to be in locks. You keep the keys in the lock so you shall be able to start the car again.

    And what comes to source code... of course you throw it away. Once the software is ready, you don't need the sourcecode anymore - you already have the product. Honestly, you don't see any big companies having sources, do you - all you ever see is products. If those products have bugs, they issue fixes. No need for sourcecode...

    Oh... wait... it seems like my keyboard has the satire-modifier stuck on enabled. Damn - need to toss the keyboard out and fetch a new one. Better yet - I think I'll toss the whole computer away... much nicer to start tomorrow on a clean desk... well, so to speak. 

  • enterprisey (unregistered) in reply to JL
    JL:

    Not getting (or keeping?) the source code in the first place was unbelievably foolish.  And then they continue to throw away any recovered source?  Crazy.  I mean, keeping the decompiled source means that at least you have the original source of the patches, and developers can leave each other breadcrumbs on how the system works.  It must be a very non-technical company not to have anyone that understands the importance of source code.  This is like throwing away your car keys once you get your car started.

    Analogies are like products developed by <insert favorite hated company name here>: they never quite work right. 

  • a small young one (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

  • Jon (unregistered)

    This would have been easy to do in C# ... oh well

  • Codethulhu (unregistered)

    That exact same thing happened to me :-(

  • (cs) in reply to enterprisey
    Anonymous:
    JL:

    Not getting (or keeping?) the source code in the first place was unbelievably foolish.  And then they continue to throw away any recovered source?  Crazy.  I mean, keeping the decompiled source means that at least you have the original source of the patches, and developers can leave each other breadcrumbs on how the system works.  It must be a very non-technical company not to have anyone that understands the importance of source code.  This is like throwing away your car keys once you get your car started.

    Analogies are like products developed by <insert favorite hated company name here>: they never quite work right. 

    That's a simile. (It uses like or as.) ;)

  • (cs) in reply to themagni

    I ended up doing something like this once, just not as bad.

    I'm in the process of rewriting an old custom app (rewriting because it was using Access, FoxPro, Delphi, only partial source was available, and the original developer had died).  I had setup a Subversion server and was doing development on my laptop with eclipse, things were going along well...  until

    1)  In a fit of updating things I upgraded the firmware on my Linksys wireless router.  However I later found out that the new version would kick Linux systems off the network if WEP/WAP was enabled.  My Subversion server was a Linux box, so I lost my source control.

    2)  After running about a week without source control and doing a fair amount of development I had hard drive problems on my laptop and lost all the source.

    3)  I had been pushing daily builds out to the company for testing and familiarity so I grabbed had to get the last release I sent to them, decompile it, and start there.

    4)  The app was written using Java 5, with all the nice new bells and whistles, the decompilers available really only supported Java 1.4.2 and lower, so some of the decompiled code was really interesting.

    Nice ending though, I got back up, have been slowly un-obfuscating the code, and there hasn't been any bugs found due to the decompile fiasco.
     

  • cratermoon (unregistered) in reply to DigitalLogic

    Another WTF: The folks who hired the Great Old Ones probably still worked under the assumption that software is like a truck: onces you take final delivery of the finished item, it's completely ready for use, and maintenance can be done by any ol' mechanic. When they got the delivered software, they could have discovered both. First, they didn't know enough to ensure that they software was as needed once final delivery is agreed. Second, as the op said, "Tried as they might, the company was unable to summon back the Great Old Consultants." Probably they were too cheap or had otherwise poisoned the relationship.  Believe me, you can always summon back a developer if you have sufficient coin and humility. Perhaps they determined that running through contractors at 3-month contracts at 120/hr was somehow more cost-effective than an extended maintenance agreement with the GOC at 200/hr.

    And yes, I can think of a similar situation in one company I'm aware of. Like the change of seasons I can count on email from a recruiter every three months notifying me of an opportunity there.
     

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Kristoff K

    Anonymous:
    As evil as it sounds one feels almost sympathetic to whoever came up with the decompilation plan. The way it looks it was either that or throw away milions of dollars
    Not using source control however... This is really WTFy to the max, perhaps a codebase would have formed over time.

    Another WTF: Maybe I'm idealistic but wouldn't you ensure by contract that you would have guaranteed maintenance posibilities or sourcecode access? Who hired those Great Old Ones? A temple-slave?

    If they want the source code when buying the system, that'll be a lot expensive.

    If they want to pay cheap to get the system, the writers won't hand over source code. They want continual monthly maintanance charge to cover the prize reduction.

    That's how software houses works anyway.
     

  • (cs)

    That was absolutely spectacular! I was cracking up after reading all of that! The picture topped it off. ROFL

  • JoshJ (unregistered) in reply to a small young one
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

     

    Oh for fuck's sake.  This "war on christmas" thing the religious zealots keep crowing about is nonexistent.   


    US Population, Census 2000:


    Christianity: 79.8%

    Other Religions: 5.2%

    No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic: 15% 


    Yes, you 80 percent are being persecuted SO HORRIBLY.  Take your BS and shove it.

  • (cs) in reply to Broken Hack

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 

  • (cs) in reply to steven22
    Anonymous:

    Whenever I start a new job, one of the first things I do (once I wrangle a source safe account from the admin) is to do a search for checked out code.  To see how much code has been checked out since 2003.  It's usually a lot.

    SourceSafe?  That's -10 sanity points before the game even begins. 

  • (cs) in reply to db2
    db2:
    brazzy:

    How are those applicable as interview questions? What codebase/project would you be talking about that  both parties know intimately enough to answer meaningfully / judge the answer?

    It would be fairly easy to at least weed out the blithely idiotic responses like, "Oh, we're thinking of replacing our RDBMS with XML".

    I didn't catch your name until after reading, but the irony component is sky-high here. :p (For those not in the know, DB2's most-touted new feature is their "XML" (object-oriented) native storage and acceleration. IBM was the first to hop on that bandwagon and bring object-oriented DBs out of expensive niches.)

    themagni:
    Anonymous:

    Analogies are like products developed by <insert favorite hated company name here>: they never quite work right. 

    That's a simile. (It uses like or as.) ;)

    Similes and metaphors are both (the lowest form of) analogies. 

     

  • (cs) in reply to Jackal von ÖRF
    Jackal von ÖRF:

    For example one of my clients. Fortunately, they had some IT people who strongly urged them to make a maintenance contract, so they have a maintenance contract for adding new features and bugfixes. However, they don't have the source code (just as it was written in the contract) and the program is distributed as precompiled PHP bytecode.

    PHP bytecode?

     
    Isn't PHP an interpreted script language? o_O
     

  • NotThatJamesC (unregistered) in reply to Arancaytar

    Zend actually sells an Obfuscator that provides bytecompiled PHP code (which in turn is parsed by the Zend optimizer). I get the impression, though I've never been enough of a crackhead to try it, that it operates on the same principle as the bytecompiled/optimized python scripts (pyc/pyo).

  • (cs) in reply to Cheong
    Anonymous:
    If they want the source code when buying the system, that'll be a lot expensive.

    If they want to pay cheap to get the system, the writers won't hand over source code. They want continual monthly maintanance charge to cover the prize reduction.

    That's how software houses works anyway.

    Those who sell standard software at a fixed price to the masses, yes.

    It is most certainly not true for custom software. Because the entire point of custom software is that it's tailored to your needs and can be extended and adjusted as those needs change.

     

  • (cs) in reply to darin

    Darin is obviously not wise in the ways of Codethulhu.

    The trouble with breeding orphans is that, to get three more, you have to kill six of the ones you already have. Buying orphans is fine -- even Madonna does that. Killing them strikes me as a little extreme, just for a J2EE application.

  • (cs) in reply to darin
    darin:

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 

    Darin is obviously not wise in the ways of Codethulhu.

    The trouble with breeding orphans is that, to get three more, you have to kill six of the ones you already have. Buying orphans is fine -- even Madonna does that. Killing them strikes me as a little extreme, just for a J2EE application.

    (Augh! I hate this software.)

  • (cs) in reply to Arancaytar
    Arancaytar:
    Jackal von ÖRF:

    For example one of my clients. Fortunately, they had some IT people who strongly urged them to make a maintenance contract, so they have a maintenance contract for adding new features and bugfixes. However, they don't have the source code (just as it was written in the contract) and the program is distributed as precompiled PHP bytecode.

    PHP bytecode?

     
    Isn't PHP an interpreted script language? o_O

    You can do that for example with eAccelerator.

  • (cs) in reply to Franz Kafka

    Anonymous:
    what idiot orders up a custom supply chain app without getting a maintenance contract + code? 

    People with no computing experience.

  • Mats Gefvert (unregistered)

    Probably the first time I've actually felt physical pain while reading a wtf.

  • Watson (unregistered) in reply to Arancaytar
    Arancaytar:

    PHP bytecode?

     
    Isn't PHP an interpreted script language? o_O
     

    The PHP interpreter reads the script and compiles it to bytecode (catching parse errors in the process, of course), then runs the bytecode.

    PHP bytecode caches capture said bytecode and save it; eliminating the parse/compile phase for subsequent executions. Some go further and optimise/obfuscate the bytecode. And once you've got bytecode, who needs source code?!

    The interpreter is still needed at runtime, of course, to deal with cases of on-the-fly code generation.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Watson

    Hello.

     Can we have a hi-res version of Codethulhu image as XMax gift for all we, the TDWTF readers?

    The pure insanity of the image makes me cry :D

     Thanks in advance.

     
    -Anonymous.

     

  • (cs) in reply to Jon
    Anonymous:
    This would have been easy to do in C# ... oh well

    Last time I checked, decompiled C# is every bit as ugly as decompiled Java.

  • (cs) in reply to Jon
    Anonymous:
    This would have been easy to do in C# ... oh well


    What? throw away code and drive developers insane?
  • Da' Man (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I once worked on a Dell SatanicEdge sever, except it was called a Compaq.

    Uh, I once worked on such a server and it indeed required you to type its name backwards to gain access ;-)

     

    (captcha: pacman - munch munch munch...) 

  • wlao (unregistered) in reply to An Orphan
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    J2EE (Java 2 Evil Edition, not to be confused with Java 2 Enterprise Edition)


    So. Anyone with graphics skills to get a logo for "Java 2, Evil Edition" mugs?

    I will happily volunteer to be the first to buy one :)


    Well, maybe... just maybe, there is an image that could be used at http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2084/javaeehiti4.jpg.
  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to darin
    darin:

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 


    But they won't be orphans, 'cause their parents are right there...

     

    Chris
     

  • Winston (unregistered) in reply to Kristoff K

    Anonymous:

    Another WTF: Maybe I'm idealistic but wouldn't you ensure by contract that you would have guaranteed maintenance posibilities or sourcecode access? Who hired those Great Old Ones? A temple-slave?

    Yes. It's commonly done - so common, there are companies set up that do virtually nothing else: it's called code escrow. The contractor of the bespoke code lodges the source and utilities needed to build the code to a third party - the escrow company. Depending on the agreement and escrow company, when the code is lodged in escrow, the escrow company checks what is being lodged will build into a working product - which will include a demonstration of a simple code change during the verification test that they do.

    It's not particularly cheap to have an escrow agreemenet like this (particularly where full verification is required), but it's essential for any business critical bespoke code. Presumably, some PHB at the company decided that escrow cost too much and they didn't need it. Of course, by now they've spent far more trying to support a program for which they have no source code than they ever would have on the code escrow which would have saved their asses.



     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to JoshJ
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

     

    Oh for fuck's sake.  This "war on christmas" thing the religious zealots keep crowing about is nonexistent.   


    US Population, Census 2000:


    Christianity: 79.8%

    Other Religions: 5.2%

    No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic: 15% 


    Yes, you 80 percent are being persecuted SO HORRIBLY.  Take your BS and shove it.

     

    They are probably joking.  They put 'xmas' which "takes the christ out of christmas".  Anyway, happy birthday, invisible sky fairy.

  • Anonymious (unregistered) in reply to no name
    Anonymous:

    I can't believe the developers didn't keep one on the side anyway, official company policy or not.  I have to "bend" (i.e. smash into tiny little pieces) so many rules just to do my job properly it's not even funny. 

    I had the dubious pleasure of reading my companies rules for computer usage the other day. Some highlights:

    • I am under no circumstance allowed to keep "copyrighted files" on my computer. Remind me, was Windows copyrighted? How about the stuff I write for the company?
    • I am not allowed to download "copyrighted files" either.
    • I am not allowed to connect my computer to the corporate network and the internet at the same time (this may make sense in some environments. This isn't one of them).
    • I am allowed visit the web (yay!). However, I may not access any "home pages" (uhh?).

    So you might think I work for a non-computer company, and that said policy is at least twenty years old. But unfortunately that isn't the case: the company is a software company, I am a programmer, and the policy is dated 2006...

    And for the record, yes I understand what they mean. I just wish the same was true for the people writing this crap...

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    They are probably joking.  They put 'xmas' which "takes the christ out of christmas".  Anyway, happy birthday, invisible sky fairy.

     Which really shows how little they know about the history of such things.  The X was a symbol for the cross and Christ in the early church, so xmas was frequently used in a religious context because it did, literally, mean Christmas.  Kind of like most people have forgotten that Christmas Day is the first day of christmas, not the twelfth.  
     

  • BA (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

     

    Oh for fuck's sake.  This "war on christmas" thing the religious zealots keep crowing about is nonexistent.   


    US Population, Census 2000:


    Christianity: 79.8%

    Other Religions: 5.2%

    No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic: 15% 


    Yes, you 80 percent are being persecuted SO HORRIBLY.  Take your BS and shove it.

     

    They are probably joking.  They put 'xmas' which "takes the christ out of christmas".  Anyway, happy birthday, invisible sky fairy.

    And actually, the "X" is not the English letter "X", but the Greek letter Chi. Chi also happens to be the first letter in the Greek word for Christ, Christos. In earlier times, when literary rates were much lower than they are today, the letter Chi was used as an abbreviation for Christ.

    So "X" takes the Christ out of Christmas as much as the L takes the Language out of HyperText Markup Language. 

  • Rammer (unregistered) in reply to BA
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

     

    Oh for fuck's sake.  This "war on christmas" thing the religious zealots keep crowing about is nonexistent.   


    US Population, Census 2000:


    Christianity: 79.8%

    Other Religions: 5.2%

    No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic: 15% 


    Yes, you 80 percent are being persecuted SO HORRIBLY.  Take your BS and shove it.

     

    They are probably joking.  They put 'xmas' which "takes the christ out of christmas".  Anyway, happy birthday, invisible sky fairy.

    And actually, the "X" is not the English letter "X", but the Greek letter Chi. Chi also happens to be the first letter in the Greek word for Christ, Christos. In earlier times, when literary rates were much lower than they are today, the letter Chi was used as an abbreviation for Christ.

    So "X" takes the Christ out of Christmas as much as the L takes the Language out of HyperText Markup Language. 

    So Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Yule/Winter Solstice/Pagan kids get presents day/Birthday of invisible sky fairy/Santa Claus day/Consumerism gluttony day/Holidays !

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Anonymous:
    darin:

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 

    But they won't be orphans, 'cause their parents are right there...

    Chris 

    You can fix that killing then with a simple BubbleSort to order by birthday, so parents die first.

     

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    darin:

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 

    Darin is obviously not wise in the ways of Codethulhu.

    The trouble with breeding orphans is that, to get three more, you have to kill six of the ones you already have. Buying orphans is fine -- even Madonna does that. Killing them strikes me as a little extreme, just for a J2EE application.

    (Augh! I hate this software.)

    You're assuming that each orphan couple would only have one child then, or that you are using your orphans to breed orphans.  The optimal strategy would be to buy slaves (orphans or not) breed them until you have sufficient children then kill the slaves, thus orphaning the children. If you are unable to purchase slaves then you must ensure that each orphan breeding pair produces at least three children to cover for killing the two parents.  Amateurs.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Rammer
    Anonymous:

    So Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Yule/Winter Solstice/Pagan kids get presents day/Birthday of invisible sky fairy/Santa Claus day/Consumerism gluttony day/Holidays !

    I am C programmer, you insensitive clod!.   Xmax  is my (void *)(p*)(); day

     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Rammer

    Anonymous:
    So Merry Christmas/[...]/Winter Solstice/

    I assume you mean "Summer Solstice"...
  • Brian (unregistered) in reply to JL

    no, its more like having the hood of your car welded shut when you buy it...

     

    captcha: whiskey

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    So Merry Christmas/[...]/Winter Solstice/

    I assume you mean "Summer Solstice"...

     

    Nope, don't think so.  'Winter Solstice' is the one in December, when winter begins, shortest daylight period, longest night period.  'Summer Solstice' is the one in June, when summer begins, longest daylight period, shortest night period.  To be the opposite, the Southern Hemisphere would have had to create the definitions.
     

  • (cs) in reply to sinistral
    sinistral:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    So Merry Christmas/[...]/Winter Solstice/

    I assume you mean "Summer Solstice"...

     

    Nope, don't think so.  'Winter Solstice' is the one in December, when winter begins, shortest daylight period, longest night period.  'Summer Solstice' is the one in June, when summer begins, longest daylight period, shortest night period.  To be the opposite, the Southern Hemisphere would have had to create the definitions.
     

    Actually The Summer Solstice is in December in the southern hemisphere.  So if Anon was in Austrailia, he would have been completly correct.

    Contrary to your definition, the winter solstice is not in december, but fits your extended definition as being the beginning of winter which happens to be in december in the north and June in the south.  Today is the solstice, which one depends on which hemisphere you are in.

    The definition is universal, our understanding of it is not.

  • An Orphan (unregistered) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    Anonymous:
    themagni:
    hbr17:

    Mental not for future interviews: Ask whether development and maintenance is done on:
      a. Source code
      b. Decompiled byte code 
      c. Assembly language (or the bit equivalent version)

    I ask, "What part of the codebase would you most like to change, and why?

    Good interview question - though I might modify it with something like: "If you could do it over again, what would you do differently, and why?"

    How are those applicable as interview questions? What codebase/project would you be talking about that  both parties know intimately enough to answer meaningfully / judge the answer?

    It's not the project/codebase so much, as the general answers. For example, if the interviewer says "I'd burn it and start over", take it as a hint that it's a world-o-wtf's. If they say that it's perfect as-is, take it as a stronger hint of cluelessness. The point is to give them an opportunity to bitch and see where it goes.

  • An Orphan (unregistered) in reply to smbell
    smbell:

    I ended up doing something like this once, just not as bad.

    I'm in the process of rewriting an old custom app (rewriting because it was using Access, FoxPro, Delphi, only partial source was available, and the original developer had died).  I had setup a Subversion server and was doing development on my laptop with eclipse, things were going along well...  until

    1)  In a fit of updating things I upgraded the firmware on my Linksys wireless router.  However I later found out that the new version would kick Linux systems off the network if WEP/WAP was enabled.  My Subversion server was a Linux box, so I lost my source control.

    2)  After running about a week without source control and doing a fair amount of development I had hard drive problems on my laptop and lost all the source.

    3)  I had been pushing daily builds out to the company for testing and familiarity so I grabbed had to get the last release I sent to them, decompile it, and start there.

    4)  The app was written using Java 5, with all the nice new bells and whistles, the decompilers available really only supported Java 1.4.2 and lower, so some of the decompiled code was really interesting.

    Nice ending though, I got back up, have been slowly un-obfuscating the code, and there hasn't been any bugs found due to the decompile fiasco.
     

    You know, memory sticks go for about $25/gig nowadays. You can temporarily back up an awful lot of source in a pinch. I do it every day because our admin's are a whole blog of wtf's in and of themselves.

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