- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
read real oracle description about error SQL-02132
Admin
If the documentation were simple and accurate, how would Augur justify those monster consulting fees?
Admin
Ah, the old "sdfla asdjklfajs jfja ajsdf" runtime context
Admin
I was posted to a customer site some few thousand miles away (in the depths of winter for a few months, some way north of the 49th Parallel, brrr) who wanted to use some of the more abstruse and, er, "experimental" aspects of our application, because they wanted to reimplement much of our own functionality their way (NIP meets Inner Platform Effect via Complicit Project Manager, basically).
So we (in my view mistakenly) exposed a layer of our IDE we rarely do. And of course the customer required the javadocs. Okay, said the team back home, we'll provide them the javadocs. Some weeks later, we got the package. Let me just take a quick look first, I decided, before I unleash them onto the customer.
Good job I did, because most of the javadocs were along the line: "Oops! We really need to write the javadocs for this class! Don't hold your breath, though!"
This and several other embarrassments borne of poor project management, customer obstinacy to change direction when it was clear they weren't getting anywhere, and a horrific approach to Agile, saw us stumbling away from the wreckage with a less than stellar repulation.
Admin
Sorry, for NIP in the above read NIH.
Admin
A worthy classic.
Admin
"May day" is indeed the correct context for such systems. (Sorry, Remy...)
Admin
Augur is how you spell Oracle in WTF.
Admin
Comment held for until you buy my consulting
Admin
Remy just forgot to include among the bad documentation examples the blatantly useless docs.
The documentation of a tool I have the displeasure of working with is composed almost entirely of statements like "Button 'Taskbar': Click this button to set the properties of the taskbar." Wow, what a twist! All this time I was thinking it would be used to drop a random database, connect to a webservice, generate an updated network map, revert changes on a DFD schema, initiate a FTP transfer, dump a screenshot of the internet and flip Skynet's settings from "Debug mode" to "Production". Thankfully we cleared that up. Would never have guessed it if it wasn't for the documentation.
Admin
SNAPSHOT of the Internet, dammit. Tho I'm imagining now what a screenshot of the internet would look like and what kind of technology would be needed for it to happen.
Admin
This would have worked even better in Zork transcript format, with occasional references to Frobozzco
Admin
Sounds like my previous experience with somtehing called Endur which among other things measured gas in pipes... but it is clearly a coincidence. ;)
Admin
If it is an "Augur" system and you've not set the magic flag somewhere deeply non-obvious, pressing that button might do exactly that!
Admin
The real WTF is all the typos.
Admin
Currently struggling through an upgrade and asked the vendor for release notes showing the differences. We received a silent video of someone clicking options in a menu without any other description.
Admin
Step one: complain about docs that use in-house terms without defining them. Step two: shoot yourself in the foot by wheeling out a litany of initialisms without definitions. Step three: publish it on a site full of cynical, jaded pedants.
What could possibly go wrong?