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Here at work, we use a Lanier Multi-Function Printer/Scanner/Fax/Toaster the size of a small car that does tons of things and does them pretty well. However, back in 1981, Lanier was in the business of selling systems, and if you think that their EZ-1 was simply a word processor, you'd best think again.
Peter Korsten used to work with a truly brilliant and exceptional individual. Before leaving for greener pastures and better pay, one of his former co-workers left an indelible mark on their system via his rather unique approach to programming.
One of these artifacts was the "8" report which consisted of the following SQL query:
When Nick Martin arrived at work at 8:30am, it seemed like he was in for a good day. Warm bagel and coffee in hand, he strolled into the IT office ready to fire up his email and maybe do a little recreational surfing before jumping into a day's worth of work. However, this was not meant to be as he was greeted by a support issue already in progress. And by "greeted", I mean "a dreary mess of a woman in a pinstripe suit was storming his way". It was Darlene, a manager from the university's financial department and conveniently, he was the only warm body in the office.
"Do you NOTICE any DIFFERENCE between these two printouts, Nick?"
I think that it goes without saying that handling freeform user input, no matter the programming language, can be a tricky endeavor. Having to work with code like today's SOD makes me appreciate the pain felt by this bit of code Catherine Palmer inherited.
Now, I won't say that this function is necessarily terrible code, but when you consider that the field that code is intended to handle demands (in big red text) the entry of a date in a specific format (DD/MM/YYYY to be exact) and that it's meant to prevent a user from entering a date in the future, it'll leave you wondering why "TONY B" chose this exact plan of attack.
If early 1980's marketing is to be believed, then the guy hauling around dead trees in a faux leather case is doing it completely wrong.
"Alright! 11:02 a.m...Another five bucks for me!"
Once again, Ricky Fine had hit it big in the network technician over/under betting pool for predicting the time of the daily network outage. It occurred around 11am, every day, but not precisely. The network would pulse on and off around 60 cycles per minute, but again, not exactly.
I'm not saying that some advertising is prone to exaggeration, but sometimes, on occasion, the truth might be stretched at least a little bit. Here are a few ads that I came across that I thought may be overstating their abilities just a little bit.
If "THE LAST ONE" is to be believed, any idiot can now write completely bug-free programs in plain English. All for only $600? More proof that my college education was only worth the certificate of attendance that I got out of it.
This code was sent to John W. by the support staff of one of the larger software vendors with the stated purpose of determining how much memory a program could use on one of the corporation's Unix servers.
Nov 08
#include <stdio.h>
#include <malloc.h>
int
main ()
{
float f;
char *p;
while (1)
{
p = malloc(102400);
if (!p)
{
printf ("malloc returned NULL\n");
exit(1);
}
f += 102400;
printf ("%g\n", f);
printf ("%g %f %f MB\n", f, f, f/1024000);
}
}
Fresh out of school, Maxim was able to score himself a pretty sweet entry level position in a small private bank. Rather than being responsible for maintaining the company's static phone book on the corporate intranet or some other stereotypical entry level thing, he was placed in the understaffed Publications department to do some surprisingly heavy impacting IT work.
The department's job was to produce and distribute various financial reports including the most important one of all - the Recommendation List. This list was considered mission critical for the bank as it contained the official recommendations of what stocks and bonds to buy or sell and was sent out to managers and customers alike. A bad recommendation could make or break the financial managers, not to mention the customers whom invested their money with the bank, who made decisions based on this information.