Forums
Dario got a call that simply said, “Things are broken.” When he tried to get more details, it was difficult for the users to pin it down more clearly. Things would work, then they wouldn’t. The application would run, then it would hang, then it would suddenly start working again.
Some horrible code is acres of awful, thousands of tortured lines of mess and horror. Some developers can compress their WTFs down into a handful of lines.
For example, Zlatko was working with a Node.js developer who was big on unit tests. Unfortunately, that developer didn’t understand that you couldn’t write a synchronous test for an asynchronous method- the test will always pass.
Kevin L saw the program crash with a null pointer exception. This lead to digging through stack traces, logs, and eventually the commit history to figure out who was responsible.
The code itself is a simple “string padding” function, the sort of thing that when people screw it up, you just have to wonder why. This variation on that theme, however, gives us that rare treat: an accurate comment that describes the function.
“I’ve got a gig for you,” said the recruiter.
Clive, like many freelancers, weighed the contents of his bank account versus the daily rate he was promised, and decided that any gig was for him under those conditions. This one sounded mostly okay; an insurance company needed a new software package that would help them leap through some regulatory hoops. As a bonus, they wanted someone who could teach their devs the latest tools and techniques… like source control.
Jan 15