Jake Vinson

Aug 2007

For Your Security

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Josh D. appreciates having the convenience of online shopping with all the security of email:

207 comments - Last comment @ 2025-03-16

If Only I'd Been More Explicit

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As software developers, we automatically know what our clients want. Even if during the requirements gathering phase the client tells you they want you to zig, you know that they actually want you to zag.

(Hopefully) obvious sarcasm aside, getting requirements and building software that the client wants is a common point of failure in our industry. I've worked with developers that were dilligent enough to read the business requirements, but ultimately disagreed with them and went ahead to built crap that no one ever wanted. David A. understands the importance of building things that users want, and was delighted when his prototype was well-received.

94 comments - Last comment @ 2007-08-31

Privately Public

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Learning programming is like learning anything else. You have to start at the basics. Much like you won't be able to ride a bike without first being able to identify what a bike is and how you make it go, you'll need to know some of the essentials before whipping up your first "hello world."

Amro had a little programming experience under his belt, but not enough knowledge to test out of an early C++ course. Still, he was in good shape compared to the rest of the class, knowing the difference between public, private, protected, classes, structs, pointers, etc.

208 comments - Last comment @ 2024-06-13

Good Answer... Perhaps TOO Good

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Peter B. was an out-of-work PHP developer looking for contract work in early 2005. A recruiter he'd worked with in the past emailed him some information regarding a possible position. Reading the job description, Peter thought he'd be a good fit, so he submitted his resume and got a response via email a few days later.

The hiring manager described their typical process; Peter would have to answer a screening question to determine his skill level, and if his answer was satisfactory, they'd schedule a face-to-face interview. With a little trepidation, Peter said he was ready for the question. He was concerned that it could be about a complex topic that he wasn't very familiar with. A few hours later, an email arrived with the subject "SCREENING QUESTION," flagged with high importance.

327 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-27

I am error'd!!

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Glen sent this in and I am grateful!! This is apparently a hidden feature of some software that ships with certain Asus motherboards.

76 comments - Last comment @ 2011-03-24

A Perfect Score

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Joel (no, not that Joel) did a good job:

86 comments - Last comment @ 2008-07-17

That Internet Over There

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I hope that WorseThanFailure is James E.'s favorite internet.

53 comments - Last comment @ 2012-01-12

Good Thing we Tested It

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AJ got his start at a very small, clientless, and ultimately doomed software company, and it was there that he met Jerry. By the time AJ came to the company, Jerry was off the dev team and in more of a sales role. Still, he'd been on the dev team for years and his code remained throughout the system.

Jerry fell into the common trap of writing code in one language the way he wrote code in another. You know, like when you made the switch from VBScript to VB.NET? Well, Jerry's Assembly background didn't prepare him much for C++, and it showed. AJ became intimately familiar with Jerry's confusing code after having to maintain it for years.

105 comments - Last comment @ 2007-11-06

The Internet is ****ing Busy

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From James S.:

71 comments - Last comment @ 2010-06-19

The Cool Cam

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Brand G. got his start in the game industry working at MicroProse, famous for classics such as Civilization, the X-COM series, Masters of Orion, Pirates, and Dark Earth (one of my personal favorites). MicroProse was also known for its military simulation games, such as Gunship, Pacific Air War, M-1 Tank Platoon, and Falcon 4.0. Brand was brought on to work on such a simulation, European Air War.

European Air War was doomed. It was four years in development and not even close to being ready to ship. In Brand's first month at MicroProse, the whole programming team on European Air War quit, sensing that their project was on the verge of cancellation. Not only that, but everyone had grown tired enduring the stress of the weekly "why-shouldn't-we-cancel-this-project" meetings with the executives. In these meetings, they'd have to choose their words carefully when answering the executives' tough questions about the budget as well as major bugs in the system such as...

  • Why are the planes flying backwards sometimes?
    Well, uhh, a little known thing about Nazi technology developed in World War I...
  • Why do the wings come off the plane whenever you fire the guns?
    Uhh, err...
  • Why does the plane bounce up and out of the earth's atmosphere when you crash into the ground?
    Umm, in high-speed collisions like that it's not totally unreasonable that a plane's velocity torque rotary girder viscosity...
161 comments - Last comment @ 2017-08-20

Windows in Jeopardy

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From Marcelo L.:

61 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-15

Error'd After Dark

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Huh huh huh watch whut I'm gunna write in Scrabble huh huh.


(submitted by Adrian)

73 comments - Last comment @ 2019-06-11

The Pie T Department

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Many years ago, Dan B. worked at a large accounting firm that had several small, satellite offices spread throughout the world. The offices shared data -- mostly email -- via a dial-up based file synch operation that would run several times throughout the day. Since these offices were so small, they didn't need IT support on staff; instead, they'd rely on the IT staff at the central office for help.

The file synching had been going well for months, but the process began failing when attempting to synch with one of the Australian offices. Dan tried to diagnose the problem on his end, but determined that it had to be a problem with the remote server in Australia. It was going completely offline every few days and had to be manually restarted. Unable to convince his boss that a trip to the outback was needed, he had no choice but to work with the office's secretary, Sydney, to fix the problem.

147 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-14

This Juxtaposition In

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"...and that's why Colgate can kill you. And now a word from our sponsor... Colgate?! Ahh, crap."


(submitted by Jim S.)

62 comments - Last comment @ 2021-07-03

We'll Be In Touch Maybe

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You're special, reader. You're probably a developer and since you read this site you probably care about writing code that won't ultimately wind up being featured here. And you're hard for employers to find because you're probably employed and not looking for a job.

Now that I find myself the interviewer rather than the interviewee, it's really clear that good developers are hard to find. Even harder when you're a small company sitting under the shadow of big huge corporations that swallow up all the local developer talent. Such was the situation Brent R. found himself in.

206 comments - Last comment @ 2014-08-22

Gone in 12:01:00 AM Seconds

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Andrew K. discovered that the Skype updater is probably not using the right time conversion function...

92 comments - Last comment @ 2009-08-06

I've Got Your Special Offer Right Here!

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CodeRookie evidently isn't just a clever name.


(submitted by Scott)

36 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-20

Cold. Hard. Credit Report.

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If you really think about it, the fact that anything on a computer works is amazing. At a low level, magnets read and write ones and zeros on ridiculously fast rotating platters, and then are assembled into files, which then is stored in memory, which is then passed through a video card and converted into some format that can be displayed on a screen. Throw in networked computers and the potential for signal loss over long distances and the probability that something at some point in the process will fail, and the potential for failure increases exponentially. Maybe I'm alone, but I'm in awe of the fact that my computer doesn't just randomly catch fire and explode.

Of course, we can find and predict many errors, and even alert users that their software or hardware has failed (as long as either the monitor or a speaker is still working). Without any indication of where an error is happening, though, it gets harder to diagnose. Russ recently got to witness a complex issue being diagnosed and resolved firsthand.

60 comments - Last comment @ 2007-08-28

Makin' Funds

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There are plenty of good ways to make money. You can get a regular job working long days like Irving R...

71 comments - Last comment @ 2009-10-23
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