• by (unregistered)

    an, his uy s umb!

  • KittyKat (unregistered) in reply to by

    Seah!

  • Ed Von Emacs, VI (unregistered)

    et his e [NULL] esson o ll nterns.

    Here's to some very confusing comments!

  • An Old Hacker (unregistered)

    hird!

  • S (unregistered)

    I love that dirty water! Oh Soston, you're my home!

  • Gram ma (unregistered)

    RWTF s oldfusion

  • (cs)

    Strategic Incompetence at its best. He did say he didn't want to be labeled as a programmer. Not to worry.

  • Gram ma (unregistered)

    hah, that last comment made a surprising amount of sense, even without the leading char.

  • Stefan (unregistered) in reply to by
    by:
    an, his uy s umb!
    Tried to fix the above code, but Askimet thought every entry was spam.
  • (cs)
    Mark Bowytz:
    and this problem one nut that...

    I think this problem has at least two nuts.

  • (cs)

    I don't get it.

  • Alargule (unregistered)

    Does this bug also account for the numerous spelling errors in this WTF?

  • Don't know coldfusion (unregistered)

    So, can someone explain where the problem came from in the first place? I assume it's an off-by-one issue with listGetAt, but not knowing the ins and outs of coldfusion, I could be wrong...

  • tragomaskhalos (unregistered)

    Ironic: attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause, as here, is perhaps the classic indicator that the person has poor to non-existent problem-solving skills.

  • (cs)

    ...the hell? Why didn't they make Stefan fix his shitty code? He's only going to go to the next job and pull the exact same crap. And then someone will have to rewrite everything or even worse, have to maintain his crap.

    And who the hell takes on people who utter "I don’t want to be labeled as programmer for the rest of my life", even as interns?

  • (cs)

    He's not a real programmer, a real programmer will declare it fixed and any new bugs will be closed as "works on my computer".

  • SirCharles (unregistered)

    Isn't this just a zero-indexing / one-indexing issue?

  • (cs) in reply to tragomaskhalos
    tragomaskhalos:
    attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause

    Isn't that how modern medicine works?

  • (cs)

    It could be worse. He could have tried to write his own parser for NOAA's web service.

  • tragomaskhalos (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    tragomaskhalos:
    attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause

    Isn't that how modern medicine works?

    My comment was about problem solving in software development
  • Yazeran (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    tragomaskhalos:
    attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause

    Isn't that how modern medicine works?

    Yep, but in most cases that's because fixing the root cause is impossible (think getting smokers to quit smoking and/or owerweight people to eat less, and even then in most cases retroactively 20 years ago.... :-)

    Yours Yazeran.

    Plan: To to to Mars one day with a hammer.

  • Rottweiler (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    tragomaskhalos:
    attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause

    Isn't that how modern medicine works?

    Dangit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a Programmer!

  • 3rd Ferguson (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    And who the hell takes on people who utter "I don’t want to be labeled as programmer for the rest of my life", even as interns?

    It's fine for anyone to have an ambition other than writing code. Many of us would rather be managed by someone who'd been a coder earlier on in their career.

    Stefan's problem (and this is a common WTF) was that he didn't see that short-term performance is the first step to achieving long-term goals.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Thank God that Scunthorpe wasn't one of the cities he needed to get the weather for!

  • (cs)

    <cfset weather = "S"&weather> made my head nearly explode since I was thinking in C++.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Don't know coldfusion
    Don't know coldfusion:
    So, can someone explain where the problem came from in the first place? I assume it's an off-by-one issue with listGetAt, but not knowing the ins and outs of coldfusion, I could be wrong...

    Looks like a couple of things.

    Manually parsing XML, rather than using XPath.

    Trying to create a delimited list with a multi-character delimiter.

    Probably more, but after the first couple, got bored and stopped looking. :)

  • (cs) in reply to Matt
    Matt:
    Don't know coldfusion:
    So, can someone explain where the problem came from in the first place? I assume it's an off-by-one issue with listGetAt, but not knowing the ins and outs of coldfusion, I could be wrong...

    Looks like a couple of things.

    Manually parsing XML, rather than using XPath.

    Trying to create a delimited list with a multi-character delimiter.

    Probably more, but after the first couple, got bored and stopped looking. :)

    Which is why the second intern just threw the mess away and did it the right way.

  • adfasdf (unregistered) in reply to tragomaskhalos
    tragomaskhalos:
    Ironic: attempting to fix the symptom instead of the cause, as here, is perhaps *the* classic indicator that the person has poor to non-existent problem-solving skills.

    Why would a company waste time/$$ making him fix it? It costs money to have a regular dev sit there to baby sit and hand hold him to fix it which may take who knows how long. I doubt that this was a paid internship so they may/may not be an added cost for no reason if he's just getting booted anyhow. According to the story, the real fix only took 5 minutes. Money saved imo.

  • adfasdf (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    ...the hell? Why didn't they make Stefan fix his shitty code? He's only going to go to the next job and pull the exact same crap. And then someone will have to rewrite everything or even worse, have to maintain his crap.

    And who the hell takes on people who utter "I don’t want to be labeled as programmer for the rest of my life", even as interns?

    Why would a company waste time/$$ making him fix it? It costs money to have a regular dev sit there to baby sit and hand hold him to fix it which may take who knows how long. I doubt that this was a paid internship so they may/may not be an added cost for no reason if he's just getting booted anyhow. According to the story, the real fix only took 5 minutes. Money saved imo.

  • THG (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    ...the hell? Why didn't they make Stefan fix his shitty code?

    .. you mean promote him from a "Problem Solver" to a "Problem Resolver" ? __ /hg

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    ...the hell? Why didn't they make Stefan fix his shitty code? He's only going to go to the next job and pull the exact same crap. And then someone will have to rewrite everything or even worse, have to maintain his crap.

    And who the hell takes on people who utter "I don’t want to be labeled as programmer for the rest of my life", even as interns?

    We all know what's going to happen. He's going to go back to school, get his MBA, then get a job at a big financial institution as a project manager. He'll make life insufferable for the developers by telling them that they are 3 months late and that they are incompetent and they can't they do their jobs. After all, he'll remind them, he single-handedly wrote an entire website that interfaced with the NOAA in a matter of weeks.

    In fact, sounds a lot like an old boss of mine.

  • notadummy (unregistered) in reply to SirCharles

    Probably. Cold Fusion is horrible in many ways, but the most egregious to me is that all lists, arrays and other references always start at one rather than zero. Except for a few weird places where they don't.

  • My Name Is Missing (unregistered)

    Stefan is now your boss. Good luck!

  • Bevis (unregistered)

    I never wanted to be a programmer. I always wanted... to be LUMBERJACK! Leaping from tree to tree! The fir! The larch! The Scots pine!

  • Sinatra (unregistered)

    Start spreading she sews, S'm seaving soday, S sant so se s sart sf st, Sew York, Sew York!

  • Darth City (unregistered)

    I have removed the first letter from your city's name. Pray I do not remove any more.

  • Whatever (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    ...the hell? Why didn't they make Stefan fix his shitty code?

    Stefan's broken approach was to continue trying to fix his idiotic design with code to handle individual test cases.

    The company's correct approach was to ditch the self-proclaimed 'problem solver' who can't fix a problem that only existed because he's a terrible programmer!

  • THG (unregistered) in reply to Darth City
    Darth City:
    I have removed the first letter from your city's name. Pray I do not remove any more.

    hat us ever art f he eal!

  • (cs)

    Somebody explain to me why Jim allowed Stefan to publish untested, bug-riddled code to the production environment? Repeatedly?

  • (cs) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    Somebody explain to me why Jim allowed Stefan to publish untested, bug-riddled code to the production environment? Repeatedly?

    Given that "it had been up and running for a while", it was probably not a critical application (probably not even publicy facing -- corporate intranet, perhaps) and not noticed by that many users.

  • parliament (unregistered)

    This is coldfusion code? Who thought it would be a good idea to use XML tags for loop constructs?!

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    Rootbeer:
    Somebody explain to me why Jim allowed Stefan to publish untested, bug-riddled code to the production environment? Repeatedly?

    Given that "it had been up and running for a while", it was probably not a critical application (probably not even publicy facing -- corporate intranet, perhaps) and not noticed by that many users.

    The story doesn't tell us how long "a while" is (a few minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks?) or in what environment (developmestuction?) and, as you say indirectly, whether it had actually been accessed at all before the issing irst etter roblem as oticed.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I was waiting for the punchline where you show us that the original problem was a trivial indexing issue that could have been corrected with a simple '+1' (or something similar). The story loses something without that payoff, instead we just have to assume it was a trivial issue and we don't get the pleasure of knowing exactly how much additional effort Stefan had to put in to produce his ridiculously over-engineered solution. Ah well, thanks anyway.

    Oh, also, I like the way he doesn't want to be "labeled as a programmer" but is more than happy to be labeled as a raver, which is pretty much synonymous with "dribbling, brain-dead simpleton".

  • (cs)

    Ravers are TRN (The Real Nerds).

    Sincerely, A Metalhead

  • (cs)

    Limiting the fix to the west was a good idea, after all, the only cities on the west coast are SEATTLE, SAN DIEGO, SAN FRANCISCO, and SOS ANGELES.

    Stefan should have sent the SOS up earlier

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to notadummy
    notadummy:
    Probably. Cold Fusion is horrible in many ways, but the most egregious to me is that all lists, arrays and other references always start at one rather than zero. Except for a few weird places where they don't.

    This is actually something I never understood, as a CF array is just a wrapper around Java's ArrayList. To the point where you can directly call Java's ArrayList methods on a CF array. So why make this change?

    CF is actually really great in a lot of ways. Right until you get to some glaring omission or inconsistency that reminds you that it was essentially designed by committee.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    Could I interest you in the BobX programming language?

  • boog (unregistered) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    Somebody explain to me why Jim allowed Stefan to publish untested, bug-riddled code to the production environment? Repeatedly?
    In addition to testing, this would have been a great opportunity for a code review. Not only can a code review reduce bugs before going to production, but a review can be a great learning experience for an intern.

    Oh, Stefan doesn't want to? Well Stefan is an intern. Stefan doesn't get a choice.

  • guillaume (unregistered) in reply to frits

    This is why I rely on osteopathy, because as a software analyst --not a vulgar programmer, mind you-- I know better than to just try and fix symptoms.

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Could I interest you in the BobX programming language?

    +1 For using a tr00 programming language.

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