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Oct 07Notepad Translation Error
by in Feature Articles on 2007-11-29For several days, Rick was fighting with a third party vendor. Rick's system was supposed to talk to his vendor's system using XML files, but their files were coming back with invalid XML data. Rick complained to a technical contact ("Terry") that the XML they returned was invalid. Terry argued that they were processing the file wrong.
The issue that Rick discovered was that one of the attribute values in the XML file used single quotes instead of double quotes. Terry insisted that the XML file used only double quotes, and made his case by sending over screenshots from XMLSpy and IE, showing that they were indeed double quotes. The screenshot from IE would've looked something like this:
Not too long ago, The Powers That Be in the emerging eastern-European country of Latveria (as I’ll call it) decided that the time had come for a massive, central monitoring system that would be used to ensure the country’s security. SENTINEL, as the system would be called, involved data exchange between virtually every governmental agency, airports, financial institutions, transit systems, and so forth, all for the purpose of being able to track people and the money they spend. After well over a year of negotiations, The Powers That Be selected Christian B’s company to design SENTINEL’s enterprise architecture. 
The transition from computer technician to software developer can be pretty rough. Not only does one have to give up the chic company car (and, of course, all the hot dates it guarantees), but he has to land that rare technician job that has just enough programming work to stretch his job title on a résumé to “programmer.” Garret was lucky enough to find that job at a small computer repair shop we’ll called “AAAA Computers” 
Developers-turned-dev managers often struggle to contain themselves when it comes to bug hunting. After all, they can usually resolve problems faster and better than the coders in their employ. The problem is, no developer wants a boss who takes more time explaining what must be done than it actually takes to do it. That leaves dev managers in the difficult spot of delegating the bug hunt and waiting for results. 
When Sergey L. showed up for his first day at his new job, he wasn't really sure what he'd be working on. The hiring manager wasn't very specific. "Database skills are very important," he told Sergey. "You'll be our first real sysadmin maintaining some stuff that a bunch of consultants set up."