Things ya hear at the office

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
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A developer just came to me stating "This code is a mess because over the years so many people have touched it and never attempted any garbage collection."

Me: So what does that mean for this release?

Her: "I don't know I'm just stating there are too many hands in the kool-Aid."

Only thing I could do was break eye contact and mutter "Yup. Too many hands in the Kool-Aid."
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Personally, I am of the opinion that one hand in the Kool-Aid is too many.
Click to expand...
Depends on where it was BEFORE it went in the KoolAid.

There used to be a place on the Lower East Side of NYC that had a large pickle barrel. They'd reach in to grab a pickle, no gloves. Never changed the vinegar....
 
I wouldn't sweat it until someone starts asking you to drink the Kool Aid.
 
A guy who mixed his metaphors once told another manager, "I'd hate to bend you over a barrel". Lol.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
A developer just came to me stating "This code is a mess because over the years so many people have touched it and never attempted any garbage collection."

Me: So what does that mean for this release?

Her: "I don't know I'm just stating there are too many hands in the kool-Aid."

Only thing I could do was break eye contact and mutter "Yup. Too many hands in the Kool-Aid."
Click to expand...

Well, you *are* in the electronics recycling industry. Why should your software be any different?
 
b6f492b0f33101318277005056a9545d
 
Are these any worse?

"It works on my machine."
"I closed the bug because I couldn't reproduce it."
"We'll worry about performance|security later."

q: "How long will it take us to build <insert complex thing>"
a: "2 months"
q: "That's too long"
a: "Well what do you want to cut?"
q: "Nothing"
a: "Well pick any random time period then."
 
Are you trying to flush a baggie of heroin you had up your ass?
 
If you don't start paying attention, I'm going to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze until your ****ing eyeballs pop out. Unplug, get the trash and get out of here.

<--- said it today, about 2 hours ago.
 
Timbeck2 said:
If you don't start paying attention, I'm going to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze until your ****ing eyeballs pop out. Unplug, get the trash and get out of here.

<--- said it today, about 2 hours ago.
Click to expand...

BTDT myself.
 
Timbeck2 said:
If you don't start paying attention, I'm going to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze until your ****ing eyeballs pop out. Unplug, get the trash and get out of here.

<--- said it today, about 2 hours ago.
Click to expand...
training a new guy? or incompetent coworker?
 
Wrench978 said:
training a new guy? or incompetent coworker?
Click to expand...

New guy. A new guy that has been in training longer than most and just doesn't get it. He's on his second training extension with people backing up behind him and sucking the life out of everybody. It's SOGOTP* time for him as everyone is tired of writing evals and explaining things over and over again. Ain't nobody got time for dat! He approved a C-130 for a shallow beam approach with a helicopter directly in the C-130's path without saying a word to warn the helicopter. I told him to give traffic on someone...twice and he started talking to a medical helicopter that was 15 miles away.

*...or get off the pot
 
MadseasoN said:
Are these any worse?

"It works on my machine."
"I closed the bug because I couldn't reproduce it."
"We'll worry about performance|security later."

q: "How long will it take us to build <insert complex thing>"
a: "2 months"
q: "That's too long"
a: "Well what do you want to cut?"
q: "Nothing"
a: "Well pick any random time period then."
Click to expand...
We can’t get it done that quickly because it takes longer than that to go through the required processes.

No problem, we can hire a hundred people if we have to, this has to get done by then.

Can we skip “x” part of the process?

No

But the development isn’t the problem. It’s the time required to complete the processes.

We’ll give you whatever you need.

I need more time.

Except that.

Sigh
 
The Holy Grail of job security: A million lines of spaghetti code and not one line of documentation.
I worked with the guy who invented the security system for IBM main-frame machines. He was a bona fide, card carrying genius.
He also had a manager who deserved every bad thing that ever happened to him.
My friend finally drove the manager to a nervous breakdown by delivering the world-wide release of product code with every variable name composed of nothing but the letters o and l and the numbers 1 and 0 and not one word of documentation or comments.
For those of you who have been around long enough to remember the state of print technology back in the '70s and 80s the problem is obvious to the casual observer.
To this day I keep a paper copy of that code as a souvenir.
To this day, that code is still running on (probably) every main frame on the planet.
 
Just because he's bending over doesn't mean you have to goose him.

Works every time.
 
Shepherd said:
The Holy Grail of job security: A million lines of spaghetti code and not one line of documentation.
I worked with the guy who invented the security system for IBM main-frame machines. He was a bona fide, card carrying genius.
He also had a manager who deserved every bad thing that ever happened to him.
My friend finally drove the manager to a nervous breakdown by delivering the world-wide release of product code with every variable name composed of nothing but the letters o and l and the numbers 1 and 0 and not one word of documentation or comments.
For those of you who have been around long enough to remember the state of print technology back in the '70s and 80s the problem is obvious to the casual observer.
To this day I keep a paper copy of that code as a souvenir.
To this day, that code is still running on (probably) every main frame on the planet.
Click to expand...
The hardest bug I ever had to find was with code that said something like this. This is simplified for understanding, but you get the idea.
Code: 
int doStuff = l;

If (doStuff == 1)
{
     // do stuff
}
The code inside the if condition would not run. After 5 others spent a week not able to figure it out, it took me 3 more days with a debugger to finally figure out that some jackass had created a global variable as a lower case L. In the font we were using 1 and l looked identical.

You would step over the line of code that appeared to assign 1 into doStuff and doStuff would equal 42 not 1. We were convinced it was some sort of threading shared memory issue.
 
I remember a coding job when I was in college where I was given a data deck and asked to write a program that told you how many times each question was answered a particular way. Multiple guess answers, 1 to 10. In FORTRAN, that's easy. Except they didn't mention that some people didn't answer all the questions and the "no answer" questions were coded as "0". 0 is not a valid subscript. It took me forever to finally find that bug in the data. Fixed it by adding "1" to each answer and then updating the subscripted variables appropriately. And those forestry people wondered why it took so long to write this program. I don't miss entering card decks in one window and waiting for printouts in the next using mainframes at all.
 
Developers have been complaining about code they didn't write originally for years. And they can always do it better.

Technical debt, bad code, and it goes on and on. Just make it work, solve a customer problem so the company can make a little money, and just maybe you will get a bonus from the extra money we make.

Suck it up butter-cup is the shortened version...
 
Fortunately it only took two sets of eyes and about 3 hours, but I had a guy working on an ETL task (Extract, Transform, Load) and the remapping was missing the bulk of the records. He, and then I, were so focused on how we were doing the map that we missed that the source data had two spaces at then end of the errant records. Everything was 16 chars!

Duh!
 
I once had a network vendor ask me if I was plugged in to the front or rear USB when I asked them which port they were using so I could open the firewall.

That same vendor escalated my ticket and then told me the port number was proprietary.

It was Port 21.....
 
Heftiger said:
I once had a network vendor ask me if I was plugged in to the front or rear USB when I asked them which port they were using so I could open the firewall.

That same vendor escalated my ticket and then told me the port number was proprietary.

It was Port 21.....
Click to expand...

You were dealing with IBM Global Services?????
 
Bill Jennings said:
A guy who mixed his metaphors once told another manager, "I'd hate to bend you over a barrel". Lol.
Click to expand...

A mistake like that could get you Weinsteined these days...:oops:
 
Heftiger said:
I once had a network vendor ask me if I was plugged in to the front or rear USB when I asked them which port they were using so I could open the firewall.

That same vendor escalated my ticket and then told me the port number was proprietary.

It was Port 21.....
Click to expand...
I had an on-call remote tech from a major server vendor leave an incident call in the wee hours of the morning to go to Walmart to purchase a laptop charger. Seems he’d left his in the office. I have to say electricity didn’t really improve his skills.
 
Shepherd said:
The Holy Grail of job security: A million lines of spaghetti code and not one line of documentation.
I worked with the guy who invented the security system for IBM main-frame machines. He was a bona fide, card carrying genius.
He also had a manager who deserved every bad thing that ever happened to him.
My friend finally drove the manager to a nervous breakdown by delivering the world-wide release of product code with every variable name composed of nothing but the letters o and l and the numbers 1 and 0 and not one word of documentation or comments.
For those of you who have been around long enough to remember the state of print technology back in the '70s and 80s the problem is obvious to the casual observer.
To this day I keep a paper copy of that code as a souvenir.
To this day, that code is still running on (probably) every main frame on the planet.
Click to expand...

That is the best story I've read on the internet in like forever.
 
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