The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Affidavit Deficit

by Dan J. in Tales from the Interview on 2013-06-26

Dave D. and his wife counted themselves lucky: they'd been in the right place at the right time more than once. When a family member's health began to fail, they were able to sell their software business and retire to help him manage. In their forties, their good fortune and low-key lifestyle meant they wouldn't have to return to work unless they wanted to.

After a couple of years, things had settled into a routine and Dave was ready to consider new opportunities. A local startup was courting him for a senior position, and their engineering team, relatively young and untested, seemed excited to have a steady hand at the tiller. But this startup was unusual: no hiring decision could be made on nautical metaphors alone. They - specifically, their overlords at WTF Ventures, Inc. - prided themselves on fusing the discipline and professionalism of the corporate world to the innovation and foosball-playing of startup culture.

You Can't Spell "Date" Without "Database"

by Dan J. in CodeSOD on 2013-06-20

At Shaun's company, the fiscal month ends on the 18th. Nothing wrong with that, but there's plenty wrong with this Perl code that finds the most recent fiscal month-end:

my $date='0000-00-00';
my $dd = 1;
my $mm = 1;
while(substr($date,8,2) ne '18') {
    my $sel0="select date_format(date_sub(date_sub(now(),interval $dd day),interval $mm month),'%Y-%m-%d')";
    my $setup=$dbh->prepare($sel0);
    $setup->execute();
    ($date)=$setup->fetchrow_array();
    $setup->finish();
    ++$dd;
}