Recent Representative Line

A single line of code from a large application that somehow manages to provide an almost endless insight into the pain that its maintainers face each day.

Jul 2025

National Exclamations

by in Representative Line on

Carlos and Claire found themselves supporting a 3rd party logistics package, called IniFreight. Like most "enterprise" software, it was expensive, unreliable, and incredibly complicated. It had also been owned by four different companies during the time Carlos had supported it, as its various owners underwent a series of acquisitions. It kept them busy, which is better than being bored.

One day, Claire asked Carlos, "In SQL, what does an exclamation point mean?"