• zip (unregistered)

    Sounds like an attempt to abstract boring old html tables into something ... pure freaking evil.

  • (cs)

    Bah! Everyone knows that you NEVER need more than 128 characters in any line of text! The TRUE wtf is that you didn't format the page in word, print it out, place the print out on a wooden table, take a digital picture of the print-out on the wooden table.........

    :-)

  • Demarcus Cherish? (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I work for a mid-sized software company that developers web sites and web applications for different clients.

    Man, I'd *love* to work for a company that developered web sites.  I haven't developered a web site in *years*. :)

  • (cs)

    Wow ... And here I thought my job was anal about what could me used and what couldn't ... WTF were they thinking when they made that thing ?? And better yet, who in the hell named it ?? Surely not someone with any kind of common sense ... Seems to me the name of the tool also serves as a title for the person who designed it.

    Glad you got another job man, it sucks working for places like that.

  • JudoJohnson (unregistered)

    And they wonder why they have a high turnaround on employees?

  • Ash (unregistered)

    "As it turns out, The Tool is proprietary and a highly-guarded trade secret. Because of such a high turnaround, they can't let just anyone see the source code. Only developers with tenure of at least two years get that pleasure."

    -- Image what you would discover after working there for 5 years...

  • (cs)

    At my previous job, I had to work with their own version of The Tool.  We called him Gary.

  • Employee of a stupidly large company to remain unnamed (unregistered)

    That sounds dangerously close to developing web applications with Domino.

    Not quite...but close.

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    GoatCheez:
    Bah! Everyone knows that you NEVER need more than 128 characters in any line of text! The TRUE wtf is that you didn't format the page in word, print it out, place the print out on a wooden table, take a digital picture of the print-out on the wooden table.........

    :-)

    You actually can do this, but not with one large page...

    Cut the page into columns and rows (cells) - use a cross-cut shredder, then arrange the pieces in rows of columns on the wooden table, then ...

  • packrat (unregistered)

    Several years ago I worked for a major pizza company. A great deal of there back office software was written in a scripting dialect developed by Anderson Consulting.

     

    CAPTCHA = 1337.

     

    But I am a robot....

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Ash

    You would have learned absolutely nothing about The Tool in five years. The Tool would have stripped you of your sanity, erased all dangerous knowledge from your head and let you retain enough for you to properly feed it.

  • (cs)

    So, the WTF is that the submitter accepted a job offer for a web-development position which he essentially knew nothing about?

  • (cs)

    No line breaks? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, who needs 'em?

  • anonymous (unregistered)

     

    Is this The Tool from Saba/Thinq?  I helped build that one buahaha

  • (cs) in reply to Raider
    Raider:

    Wow ... And here I thought my job was anal about what could me used and what couldn't ... WTF were they thinking when they made that thing ?? And better yet, who in the hell named it ?? Surely not someone with any kind of common sense ... Seems to me the name of the tool also serves as a title for the person who designed it.

    Glad you got another job man, it sucks working for places like that.

    The had an actual name for The Tool, but in the interests of confidentiality, I just called it The Tool.

    Another great thing about The Tool was that when you typed in the name of a text box, button, or whatever, and the name was too long, BOOM!  The Tool would blow up and you'ld have to start over again.

    Quite a few developers at the company wrote thier own automation programs to run The Tool.  I had a program that used IE automation to run The Tool from a C# program.  Another guy wrote a console app to hack into The Tool database and create pages like that.  I'd leave my tool to create a few hundered checkbozes and captions (yes, they had pages like that) and go drink coffee and daydream about a new job. 

     

    TJ

  • (cs) in reply to Tool Jim

    Yeah, I figured it was just the anonymity thing, I just figured I'd carry it over a bit, guess it didn't work flop heh

  • (cs) in reply to wintermyute

    wintermyute:
    So, the WTF is that the submitter accepted a job offer for a web-development position which he essentially knew nothing about?

    In the interview they told me the language they used server-side and said they had "a custom tool for designing the front end".  At the time I needed the job, and liked the back end language.  Turns out I spent an order of magnitude more time using The Tool than writing any back end code.

    Next time I'll dig a little deeper.

  • (cs)

    I wonder if it was possible to bypass The Tool entirely, and just spit out pure HTML to the customer.  If The Tool was only used by the developers, would there be any proprietary BS at the customers' sites? 

    TOOL:  Terribly Offensive Object Layer?

  • (cs) in reply to Tool Jim

    That's too bad, dude. At least you got out.

  • (cs) in reply to Tool Jim
    Tool Jim:

    Another great thing about The Tool was that when you typed in the name of a text box, button, or whatever, and the name was too long, BOOM!  The Tool would blow up and you'ld have to start over again.

    Don't you love software like this? It's like shaving a balloon with a straight razor, and it's imperative that said ballon be shaved on time and under budget! :)

  • Lothar (unregistered)

    I'm sure the designer of The Tool was the one who was working with the last punchcard-based system running until last year, worldwide. After the shutdown of this system the developer has to look for new challenges. The Tool seems to be the result.

  • my name is missing (unregistered) in reply to R.Flowers

    Clearly its THE TOOL OF THE DEVIL.

  • (cs)

    i feel so much better about my job now.

    but that "The Tool" sounds like Witango, which another branch of our company uses....

    we're migrating as quickly as possible.

  • Anymoose (unregistered) in reply to Ash
    Anonymous:
    "As it turns out, The Tool is proprietary and a highly-guarded trade secret. Because of such a high turnaround, they can't let just anyone see the source code. Only developers with tenure of at least two years get that pleasure."

    -- Image what you would discover after working there for 5 years...


    Sort of sounds like scientology; the longer you stay, the deeper you go into the dark batshit insane darkness of insanity.

    captcha(appropriately): batman
  • (cs) in reply to Demarcus Cherish?
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I work for a mid-sized software company that developers web sites and web applications for different clients.

    Man, I'd *love* to work for a company that developered web sites.  I haven't developered a web site in *years*. :)



    I would love to have nothing better to do with my time than point out typos.   That must be what life in the fast lane is like.
  • (cs) in reply to Disgruntled DBA

    Disgruntled DBA:
    I wonder if it was possible to bypass The Tool entirely, and just spit out pure HTML to the customer.  If The Tool was only used by the developers, would there be any proprietary BS at the customers' sites? 

    TOOL:  Terribly Offensive Object Layer?

    The wisdom of The Designer was such that The Tool didn't store HTML in the database.  It stored custom XML that was rendered JIT when the user visted the page.  The user received plain HTML.

    The XML had hooks for DB fields and occasionally a link to some code to process business rules.  Remarkably similar in general design to, say, JSP.  Or servlets.  Or ASP.NET.  But better, of course, because The Tool was built in-house, quickly, with little thought towards usability or efficiency. 

    Not suprisingly, The Company had a big retention problem with its developers. 

    Thanks for the good thoughts. My new job is very cool.  And, uses industry standard tools.  Woot!

  • (cs)

    Put these guys in touch with me.  My tool generated asp pages that wrote out Javascript that rendered HTML...

  • (cs)

    It sounds to me like what you did with THE TOOL was no different than writing HTML by hand.

    Except it was more time-consuming, limited in capability, clunky, stupid, and irritating.

     

    WOW

  • (cs)

    "I must know you for two years before I allow you to see my TOOL!"

  • Mattastic (unregistered)

    The Tool isn't that suprising - we used a similiar concept at my work, except that it didn't originally produce HTML - it just went that way with a shift in technology - the WTF is the way they treated it .

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT

    Yet another one of those things you see a lot of these days ... Companies developing proprietary tools for in-house usage, that end up turning out like crap.  For example, far too often do I see really shitty SDKs coming out of companies that I develop interfaces and/or drivers for to support with our security systems, because when they originally built the SDK it was in-house, generally hidden from most of the developers, etc, and instead of doing it right the first time, they end up releasing the shitty code as what becomes their SDK, then force people like me to spend many nights doing error trapping, bug reporting, and writing wrappers to compensate for their idiocy.

  • (cs) in reply to Jeff S
    Jeff S:
    Anonymous:

    Man, I'd *love* to work for a company that developered web sites.  I haven't developered a web site in *years*. :)



    I would love to have nothing better to do with my time than point out typos.   That must be what life in the fast lane is like.


    Take it easy on him. Maybe he was molestored as a child.
  • (cs) in reply to Employee of a stupidly large company to remain unnamed
    Anonymous:
    That sounds dangerously close to developing web applications with Domino.

    Not quite...but close.


    You obviously have never developed Domino websites.
  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    They invented their own platform called The Tool. It is a web-based web-development system that stores content, business logic, and other application information in a database. At least, that's what I've heard. We've only had one client that needed "web application" stuff, so all that I've ever seen The Tool used for is simple, content-only web sites.
    Another fine attempt to re-invent MS Access, albeit with a new twist.
  • (cs) in reply to Jeff S
    Jeff S:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I work for a mid-sized software company that developers web sites and web applications for different clients.

    Man, I'd *love* to work for a company that developered web sites.  I haven't developered a web site in *years*. :)



    I would love to have nothing better to do with my time than point out typos.   That must be what life in the fast lane is like.


    ZING!!@

    In a bad mood today Jeff? That post seemed pretty out-of-character for you. You're usually so chipper!

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon
  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT

    Before leaving, he should have had "What A Tool!" t-shirts printed up, then distributed them to management, developers of "The Tool", etc.  You know, as a "thank-you".



  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    As it turns out, The Tool is proprietary and a highly-guarded trade secret. 



    I can see why.  Developers worldwide would sell their firstborns for access to something as powerful and all-knowing as The Tool.
  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    GoatCheez:
    Bah! Everyone knows that you NEVER need more than 128 characters in any line of text! The TRUE wtf is that you didn't format the page in word, print it out, place the print out on a wooden table, take a digital picture of the print-out on the wooden table.........

    :-)

    Yep--that sure would have turned The Tool into something useful.

  • Matt (unregistered)

    Is it me, or are the WTFs shifting more and more from code snippits typed by an individual, to grand f-ups on the management and company level?  What kind of programmer would think that this system is better than writing and delivering plain HTML, and design it so poorly at that?

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    GoatCheez:
    Bah! Everyone knows that you NEVER need more than 128 characters in any line of text! The TRUE wtf is that you didn't format the page in word, print it out, place the print out on a wooden table, take a digital picture of the print-out on the wooden table.........

    :-)

    Hmmm seems to me that for every WTF that involves the web here restating " place the print out on a wooden table" is now a WTF.  Granted the first few thousand times it was funny, now it's just repetitve and umimaginative.

    ; )

  • agoat (unregistered) in reply to It's a Feature

    I was a little scared, for the first couple lines it sounded like an application I wrote back in the day.  Got a little relieved when I saw the differences.

    We had something similar, except it was based on XML, not database, definitely had a preview function, required no web caching, and was used exclusively for dynamic websites with complicated logic flow.  We had people who were brilliant at workflow who figured out the flow, then people who were brilliant at graphic design who made it look pretty.  The two were done independently and plugged together to form web sites.  These sites would typically have the exact same workflow (so that only needed to be arranged once) with multiple facades.

    I quit when I realized that our company paid people for sending out spam.

  • (cs) in reply to Demarcus Cherish?
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I work for a mid-sized software company that developers web sites and web applications for different clients.

    Man, I'd *love* to work for a company that developered web sites.  I haven't developered a web site in *years*. :)


    Anonymization error.  Instead of "developers web sites" it was supposed to say "completely fucks up web sites".
  • radiantmatrix (unregistered) in reply to Sean
    Sean:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    As it turns out, The Tool is proprietary and a highly-guarded trade secret.


    I can see why.  Developers worldwide would sell their firstborns for access to something as powerful and all-knowing as The Tool.


    I can see why, too.  If my company was forced to use that, I wouldn't want anyone to see the code, either.  It might make my stock go down. ;)
  • Website Developerer (unregistered) in reply to Jeff S

    What about the guy that points out the guy pointing out typos?  There's someone who's working towards a deadline!

    Or worse yet, the guy pointing out the guy whos pointing out the guy pointing out typos...

  • Waggs (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Didn't Harlan Ellison write a story like that?

    ;-)

  • Waggs (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:
    You would have learned absolutely nothing about The Tool in five years. The Tool would have stripped you of your sanity, erased all dangerous knowledge from your head and let you retain enough for you to properly feed it.

    The Harlan Ellison thing is better when considering THIS quote...

     

  • Eero (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez

    <<Bah! Everyone knows that you NEVER need more than 128 characters in any line of text! The TRUE wtf is that you didn't format the page in word, print it out, place the print out on a wooden table, take a digital picture of the print-out on the wooden table.........

    :-)>>

     

    That really is the best way to develop..

  • Matt S (unregistered)

    I suggest sending this email to your bosses:

    insert into YourAss select * from TheToolTable

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT

    ParkinT:
    "I must know you for two years before I allow you to see my TOOL!"

    She said 'I'll show you my tool if you show me yours'.

    So how much would a license for 'The Tool' run?

  • (cs)

    I think a better title would have been:

    'Time to Re-Tool?'

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