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When you read a lot of bad code, you start to get a sense of why the code exists. Often, it’s ignorance- of the language, of the functional requirements, of basic logic. Sometimes, it’s management interference, and the slavish adherence to policy over practicality. Other times, it’s just lazy or sloppy work.
And sometimes, the mysterious logic that gave birth to a WTF is just that- a mystery.
In the ancient time of 2008, people were still using Lotus Notes. Rumor has it that some still do, even today. Danny worked for an IBM partner which was a “full service” provider. It was the kind of company that you’d leas your entire IT infrastructure from, from servers to desktops and soup to nuts.
Their newest client was the state Nursing Board, the government agency responsible for keeping track of every nurse in the state- when they became a nurse, when they last paid to renew their license, any complaints or reports. From the IT side, this involved tracking payments, physical documents, and navigating custom Lotus Notes applications developed by the Board’s own development team. It was a giant pile of confusion with a highly manual and error prone process.
Mar 14