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Marcus inherited a big-ol-ball-of-mud PHP application. The entire thing is one difficult to summarize pile of WTF, but he searched long and hard to find one snippet that actually summarizes how awful the code is.
That snippet is this :
On April 10th, I hosted The Daily WTF: Live! in Pittsburgh. It was a blast. We had a great crowd, and some great performances.
Our first story is one of my own- a tale about how one computer virus finds its violent end.
Like most schools, Andy’s requried a “capstone” project for their software engineering track. It was a group project, which meant the project’s success was largely dependent on the luck of the draw. For his partners, Andy drew Mindy and Al. Mindy, he knew from other classes and had worked with before.
Steven quietly bowed his head as the planning meeting began. Their leader, messiah, and prophet was Jack, and today’s sermon was was the promise of Heaven- Heaven being the codename of their ground-up rewrite of their e-commerce solution.
Jack sat at the head of the table, in front of the projection screen. Behind him glowed the Spreadsheet of Pending Tasks, and the cells surrounded his head like rectangular halos. His eyes glowed with the power of his vision. “In Heaven, our customers will be able to customize everything. Everything!”
Jack had lead the development on Heaven’s predecessor. Like Heaven, it was endlessly customizable. It was also slow, buggy, impossible to maintain, utterly incomprehensible, and tied to a deceased proprietary technology stack. Jack had climbed the mountain and brought back word from management: a total rewrite.
This is your reminder: TDWTF's live show is happening this Friday, from 8–10PM at the Maker Theater in Pittsburgh. Tickets are available now.
We still have room for a few more storytellers, so if you're in the Pittsburgh area, pitch us your "real life" IT story. It need not be a WTF, just a story. Send a brief (1–2 paragraph) pitch for your story to [email protected], and Remy will be in touch to discuss. We'll work with you to build up a great 8-10 minute piece you can perform.
Mar 15