• Quite (unregistered)

    TRWTF is of course the magic number 2.

  • wiseguy (unregistered)

    So, you'd really appreciate a reader or two?

  • (nodebb) in reply to wiseguy

    One per "week ago". One or two, you decide...

  • isthisunique (unregistered)

    One upon an ago ago was a week ago ago.

  • Tim Ward (unregistered)

    ... which reminds me of

    R5 EQU 4

    in some IBM 360 assembler code. Obviously it took a very very VERY long time before anyone noticed this, having spent that time trying to work out why register 5 didn't hold the value that the instruction was obviously coded to put into it.

  • Russell Judge (google)

    Been there done that. When a single change risks epic fail, you keep changes to the bare minimum, in terror to reduce the possibility of spending your weekend trying to fix the fail.

  • TheCPUWizard (unregistered)

    Should have renamed it to weak_ago

  • RichP (unregistered)

    And that, dear children, is why we do not give variables meaningful names.

  • (nodebb) in reply to RichP

    Rather, why we don't give them meaningful names that are too specific . :pedant:

    They should still have a meaningful name that helps make the code readable.

  • Tenaya (unregistered)

    If you REALLY want to appreciate me, stop covering up 1/4 of the screen at the top; it's mostly white space anyway.

  • (nodebb)

    TRWTF is that they didn't prepare for the case that

    one

    is a variable. (A float, btw.)

  • Zylon (unregistered)

    "They do a great job building funny, entertaining narratives..."

    No, they really don't. The best WTFs are the ones with the least narrative embellishment. How they fail to comprehend this after all these years is beyond me.

  • WhoAmI (unregistered)

    Obviously the variable should have a meaningful name - why was 1 week ago so special? The purpose probably won't change, but the time period certainly did (any may do so again).

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered)

    I related the ITAPPMONROBOT story a few years back in the bar at a mathematics convention. It was new to everybody there, and spellbound them. Still one of my favourite stories of all time, in any genre.

  • isthisunique (unregistered)

    Here's a story submission from me:

    "The programmer who wasn't"

    Once upon a time there was a programmer, except they weren't, they were only hired as one. The end.

  • disagree (unregistered) in reply to Zylon

    I disagree, I like the embellishment, makes things more interesting. If I just wanted a list of facts, I'd go to work.

  • Simon Clarkstone (unregistered) in reply to Tim Ward

    For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of writing:

    #define r5 4

    when you meant:

    r5 = 4

  • (nodebb) in reply to disagree

    And I also disagree. Some amount of change is definitely useful. Anonymisation, for one, but also telling the story as an anecdote (as opposed to a list of facts) helps. Changing it enough to keep it entertaining instead of completely making up everything, however, is the trick. It's something that gets overlooked a lot. If you want to alter what happened, so it sounds a bit better, say Bob was awoken in the middle of the night due to the app crashing, arrives and sees the ridiculous problem (instead of him just wasting several hours at work tracking it down, using logs and stepping through using a debugger), that's fine. It makes it a bit more dramatic and skips the more boring part. But if it's three separate articles about some guy who inherited some bad code and then goes on to travel all over Spain to track down the original authors...that's way too much fluff for way too little effect.

  • byteflush (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood

    Mine too, definitely the best story on this website. I still get sad reading the last paragraph (yeah, yeah, I know, it has no feelings, the new one is much better). I just found out some band made a song titled ITAPPMONROBOT. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMeJOJuOAeU lyrics at http://genius.com/Binarpilot-itappmonrobot-lyrics

  • Olivier (unregistered) in reply to BobbyTables

    But we never see the story as it was submitted, so we cannot say if it was well written , with a narrative, or a simple list of facts.

    I agree that the narrative and embellishments sometime get too much and dilute the interest.

  • Np (unregistered)

    I suck at storytelling. I constantly relate the wtfs at work to my wife and although she is not technical, I don't think that is why my stories don't get across. So if I ever quit where I work and want to rant, I think I'll appreciate a story tellers embellishment.

    Today's wtf is common. For my fixes I also try to keep it minimal since there is a high chance something else breaks and I'll have to revert.

  • poniponiponi (unregistered) in reply to Tenaya

    This is what ABP element hider is for.

  • Zombie Wilford Brimley (unregistered)

    I don't mind a certain level of embellishment as long it doesn't stray into godawful Hanzo territory again.

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