The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: I Think I'll Call Them "Transactions"

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2011-12-29

I Think I'll Call Them "Transactions" was originally published on October 31, 2006.

As programmers, we derive satisfaction from our ability to create solutions to other peoples' problems. Unfortunately, the problems that we solve aren't the exciting "world-hunger" type, they're more along the lines of, "Sally is spending too much time doing expense reports and would like to automate the process." The inherently boring nature of these business problems lead many programmers to seek out new problems to solve, the most common of which is the meta-problem: a problem with the process of creating a solution for the actual problem.

73 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-06

Classic WTF: The Speed-up Loop

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2011-12-27

The Speed-up Loop was originally published on January 24th, 2008.

“So what do you think about the opportunity,” Ben’s recruiting agent asked. He thought about it for a few moments. It wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, but then again, he had been out of work since November of 1989 – nearly three whole months – and figured he should probably get back in to the swing of things. He told the recruiter that he’d like to talk to the client and asked to schedule an interview for the following week.

122 comments - Last comment @ 2017-12-26

Risk Management

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2011-12-20

John grabbed another slice of pizza and took a moment to review the project status and gather his thoughts. The project plan was buried unter a pile of empty pizza boxes and laptops. The room stunk of caged programmers, grease, and deadlines. At least it wouldn't be too much longer, now. John finished his slice and got back to work.

This particular deadline death-march was for a risk-management and assessment package. It was the pizza-and-pepperoni for John's employer, an insurance company. Identifying, assessing, and wrapping numbers around risks was their line of business. The VPs wanted the "tribal knowledge" of how to do this encoded into a software package, and they wanted it live by the end of the quarter- only a week away.

185 comments - Last comment @ 2012-04-17

Confessions: FSDB

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2011-12-14

Robert Horvath shares with us a confession from a system a long, long time ago.

When I was twelve years old, I wrote my first point-and-shoot game on my Commodore 64. The next year, I burned-out that very same C64 by trying use its sound chip for placing phone calls. At fourteen, I taught myself Pascal and wrote a little program that hid itself in memory and snooped on my classmates’ and teachers’ passwords as they typed them in. There was no question about it. Before I even entered high school, I was a bona fide computer genius.

158 comments - Last comment @ 2024-06-13

Sponsor Appreciation, Careline, laskdfa ksd l;fajs;f dkfas;, & More

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2011-12-09

And for try #2 of this article (first one was a bit null'd). Our sponsors help pay the bills so please, try to check out what they do!

TDWTF Sponsors

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Monetate - their testing, targeting and personalization platform for online retailers is used on leading websites like Best Buy, Sports Authority and Urban Outfitters. If you’re a problem-solver who is passionate about rich web applications, scaling Internet applications to billions of page views, and working with big data, then you’re a perfect fit for our close-knit and agile team.!

Inedo - the makers of BuildMaster, the free, and easy-to-use, web-based deployment and release management tool. Going far beyond Continuous Integration, BuildMaster delivers a series of robust features unparalleled by other build-promote-deploy-distribute tools. Oh, did I mention it's free?

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"Reading The Cooling Kludge" reminded me of our very own asterisk reboot procedure."

122 comments - Last comment @ 2013-06-14

The Source of Control

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2011-12-06

"I think I understand the process," Miguel said, "but how do I check in the code?"

Stephan leaned over his desk for a closer examination of Miguel. His expression spoke of a deep distaste for what he saw. "You don't," Stephan said. "Only I access source control. Only I check in files, after I've confirmed that you haven't made any mistakes. Can you imagine the chaos if we just let any developer have access to our code base? We like to keep things nice and organized around here."

280 comments - Last comment @ 2011-12-24

TDWTF Sponsors
		Aurigma makes it incredibly easy for users to upload photos, documents, or any other kind of file directly into your app. Give your users the power to upload multiple files at once, resize photos prior to upload, and so many other things without any complications.
		New Relic is basically a magical, real-time performance and user monitoring tool that works on virtually any web platform: Java, Ruby, PHP, .net, Python, Ruby on Rails. I'm not sure how it works (magic?), but it's incredibly easy to use and is pretty inexpensive. Remember: performance is a must-have feature!
		Monetate - their testing, targeting and personalization platform for online retailers is used on leading websites like Best Buy, Sports Authority and Urban Outfitters. If you’re a problem-solver who is passionate about rich web applications, scaling Internet applications to billions of page views, and working with big data, then you’re a perfect fit for our close-knit and agile team.!
		Inedo - the makers of BuildMaster, the free, and easy-to-use, web-based deployment and release management tool. Going far beyond Continuous Integration, BuildMaster delivers a series of robust features unparalleled by other build-promote-deploy-distribute tools. Oh, did I mention it's free?
		SoftLayer - SoftLayer is the innovation leader in Cloud, Dedicated, and Managed Hosting with 13 data centers worldwide. We integrate best-in-class connectivity and technology into the industry’s only fully-automated platform, empowering enterprises with complete access, control, security, and scalability

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