Diogenes: China White Tea: My favorite is, "I tried to do X and I got an error."

I moved from doing development to being a support manager for my current companies custom development tools. Sometimes I feel lucky if we get that level of detail on incoming tickets. They actually say they got an error performing an activity? Lavish. Half our tickets are "product no work."

Of course there are others where you get the customer's life story and you have no farking clue what the problem is.

Sometimes I really wonder if they want help, or they want to biatch.

Rule of thumb for me is... Most people want to biatch about anything and everything

MooseUpNorth: Unfortunately, when the 'client/boss' decides he/she can forgo progs in the design phase, then overthinks the requirements and decides something is too complicated (to describe) and so goes with something simpler (on paper), or worse, holds back information (a required feature they think is best to tackle later), it can totally fark things up.

It's usually the first thing to hit the cutting room floor. It is a real shame too because as a Designer/HCI person myself I can save a project ridiculous amounts of money by foreseeing and solving problems long before they even reach a coder.

They make a good bit more than me, so if I spend 2 weeks doing something that saves them a week of time then it is a wash. Of course, I can actually save a project MONTHS of time if you give me a little up front space and freedom to figure out exactly how the project should be. Often though the client needs this product yesterday and in order to actually land a project the sales people have to lie their ass off because that is what all the competitors are doing.

/Race to the bottom

A few notes:

No matter how well you make the program, some farkwit will have issues using it. Even after you explain that computers aren't magic, and will go by what you tell it to do, not what you intend for it to do, they will continue to try to ham-fist their way through the program instead of reading the directions for the operation they're trying to use. If I haven't seen it from multiple people, I assume it's a user error. Even then, it's probably a user error.

Ex: Shifting all attendance submission to google drive for ease of collection (not the best system, but free and I don't have to code it). People delete spreadsheets, then add a new one by the same name and are mystified that we no longer have their reports. Yes, you know that spreadsheet is the supposed to go to us, like the last one with the same name, but the computer doesn't. It's a completely different thing, which means you'll have to sync it to us again. It takes about 30 seconds. Stop whining about a "broken system" - it's made by freaking google, for chrissakes.

Yes, doing something else helps with coding. It's not even that I'm thinking about code while I'm doing that other thing, it's that I'm not thinking about goddamn code.

Ex: Just about every problem I've ever solved, no matter how big or small. One 15 minute break to do something else lets me realize that, while the code can't do exactly what I want in one step, it can do two steps that accomplish the same thing.

/luckily I only write anything for the school's website, so it's all short scripts that do one or two things, nothing overly complicated

Diogenes: Sometimes I really wonder if they want help, or they want to biatch.

If they can say that something is broken while limiting the path to fix the issue, that means less time they have to do work combined with an easy excuse of "something is broken and the IT guy is fixing it".

Celerian: yves0010: Celerian: UberDave:

...



Wow, that is almost exactly what happens to me and my girlfriend's mother. She thinks shes an expert and that resetting it will fix all issues. But I told her over and over again that it actually makes things harder on me. Because she does the same damn thing over and over again and breaks the computer every single time. I usually am fixing the same error when I am over there. Rarely is it something I haven't seen.

I did get excited when the error was something along the lines of:
"Idiot, you got a virus and forgot to get an Antivirus like I said. Here, let me do this and you sit in the corner."

That made my day cause I was actually able to fix her computer without her getting involved. Something about viruses that scared her.

yves0010: yves0010: StopLurkListen: "That chick in accounting totally wants me"

Welcome to the modern world of 1950's. The assumption: the programmer is a male; there are no women programmers; and if there are women in the company, they're in some non-technical field like accounting.

"#1reasonWhy" was just yesterday, wasn't it?

Or maybe subby is a guy who is a programmer who has a think thing for this chick in accounting...

damn it... typed to fast and was not thinking thinging

/FTFY


StopLurkListen: "That chick in accounting totally wants me"

Welcome to the modern world of 1950's. The assumption: the programmer is a male; there are no women programmers; and if there are women in the company, they're in some non-technical field like accounting.

"#1reasonWhy" was just yesterday, wasn't it?

Funnily enough, it's attitudes like subby's that tend to turn women off from programming (and the sciences in general).

Celerian: Coolfusis: Yes, doing something else helps with coding. It's not even that I'm thinking about code while I'm doing that other thing, it's that I'm not thinking about goddamn code.

I tried to find a scientific term for it, but gave up. Either way, when faced with difficult tasks, giving the brain an otherwise simple, muscle memory type task will allow the brain to think out the more difficult task in the background, so when you return to whatever it was you were having trouble with, you have a new idea to try. Its essentially shorting your brain into "sleeping on it" without needing to go to sleep.

Its simple as a break. I love doing that in projects. I have had team members look at me strangely while I am off reading a book or something like that while they are working on the project. They usually yell at me till they see I have the code written out and am just relaxing before I debug it. Refreshing my mind so I can focus and see things better and come up with better ideas.

Many a projects did I seem like the slacker but only cause I was the one coding the actual project.

YodaBlues: yves0010: yves0010: StopLurkListen: "That chick in accounting totally wants me"

Welcome to the modern world of 1950's. The assumption: the programmer is a male; there are no women programmers; and if there are women in the company, they're in some non-technical field like accounting.

"#1reasonWhy" was just yesterday, wasn't it?

Or maybe subby is a guy who is a programmer who has a think thing for this chick in accounting...

damn it... typed to fast and was not thinking thinging

/FTFY

Dude, out of my head! I was thinking about doing that as a joke too...

Diogenes: Yeah, I'm sure we've all seen that before. And I can understand it if you are an internal IT resource. But my customers' companies pay obscene support fees. Seems stupid to stymie me and my team.

My company isn't an internal IT resource. The company pays us obscene support fees. They still call for pointless reasons with limited information and seem to bask in the glory of having explanations for lowered productivity.

bulldg4life: Diogenes: Yeah, I'm sure we've all seen that before. And I can understand it if you are an internal IT resource. But my customers' companies pay obscene support fees. Seems stupid to stymie me and my team.

My company isn't an internal IT resource. The company pays us obscene support fees. They still call for pointless reasons with limited information and seem to bask in the glory of having explanations for lowered productivity.

I've encountered this kind of thing before, and I never fail to be baffled by it.

Ok, listen to me, you are PAYING me to give you expert advice. My expert advice it to do x instead of y. If we do y then you will have problems a, b, and c which you will then have to pay us to fix because they are outside the scope of the contract. Please listen to me, I am giving you advice that is in opposition to my very paycheck because I want you to be happy, and for us to do good work.

/We always do with y

13. This code doesn't need to be clean, it's more important that it runs correctly. I'll clean it up *after* we get it running properly.

"This fix is so simple that we can put it straight into production - I may as well just push it live and go home for the weekend."

Except the guy made the change at 4 a.m. and went surfing. Took 40% of our customers down. 11 hours for the other programmers to figure out what he had done and remove it.

Marine1: The self-documenting one... eh, it's sort of true. More and more languages are being developed as to make them read more like English, and this makes it easier to understand sans-comments. C# is an example.

C, on the other hand... if uncommented, is a nightmare.

C# always reads like the Gettysburg address:

namespace Monotalk.Indexer{using System;using System.IO;using
System.Collections;using Monotalk;using Monotalk.CSharp;public class Indexer{
public SourceDB db=new SourceDB();Hashtable fileIDs=new Hashtable();Hashtable
fileNames=new Hashtable();int files=0;public string this[int ID]{get{return(
string)fileNames[ID];}}public void Parse(string filename){CSharpParser parser;
ArrayList defines=new ArrayList();Stream input;int id;if(fileIDs[filename]==
null){fileIDs[filename]=(object)files; id=(int)fileIDs[filename];fileNa mes[id]=
filename;files++;}else id=(int)fileIDs[filename];try{input=Fi le.OpenRead(
filename);}catch{Console.WriteLine("So urce file '"+filename+
"' could not be opened");return;}StreamReader reader=new StreamReader(input);
parser=new CSharpParser(reader,filename,defines,d b,id);try{parser.parse();}
catch(Exception ex){Console.WriteLine("Compilation aborted: "+ex);}finally{
input.Close();}}}}

UberDave: He forgot, "The shiat I code is more cool/difficult/complex than 98% of everything out there!!".

This is related to "sure it doesn't handle all the cases but this code is so cool/elegant/efficient that it would be trivial to extend it".

6 months later there is a version that still doesn't handle all the cases, that nobody understands, and is a time hog for cases that are hard to pin down.

Unfortunately, as a team lead, but with no authority to fire anybody, the number one lie I keep telling myself is "If I give this to , he'll get it done on time and test it thoroughly and I won't have to go in and fix it for him in the end."

/What? Bitter? Me?

miscreant: Unfortunately, as a team lead, but with no authority to fire anybody, the number one lie I keep telling myself is "If I give this to <incompetent underling>, he'll get it done on time and test it thoroughly and I won't have to go in and fix it for him in the end."

/What? Bitter? Me?

FTFM

Celerian: I tried to find a scientific term for it, but gave up. Either way, when faced with difficult tasks, giving the brain an otherwise simple, muscle memory type task will allow the brain to think out the more difficult task in the background, so when you return to whatever it was you were having trouble with, you have a new idea to try.

It is usually called "unwinding" meaning that you are thinking too tightly about something and need to step back and loosen up your thinking. I don't know why you can't consciously unwind while still concentrating.

TheMaskedArmadillo: Marine1: The self-documenting one... eh, it's sort of true. More and more languages are being developed as to make them read more like English, and this makes it easier to understand sans-comments. C# is an example.

C, on the other hand... if uncommented, is a nightmare.

One Word - "COBOL"

Also, "Give me another 20 minutes and I will have it fixed..."

I have seen COBOL that would make you cry. People can write unreadable crap in any language. I actually used to have to write crap. My job wasn't to fix things, but to produce data files. I was a contract programmer and if I wrote good clean code, the other guys wouldn't be used to it. o_O. When I was gone, the code had to be maintainable and understandable across a collection of people's code. I slipped in fixes where I could, but needed to retain the crappy structure from the guy before me.

That said "The guy before me did it all wrong."

/For the love of God, make meaningful variable names.

UberDave: wingnut396: My favorite is

"Well it works on my machine"

Sure, the machine where you have all the SKDs installed, full local admin access and not controlled by any policies? You likely stopped the AV, firewall and all centralized management packages from running too. I bet your machine is not even on the domain...

So yeah, I don't give a fark that it works on yours, unless you are going to carry it and your ass up to accounting and do the receivables for the 10 people that now can't work.


The only time I ever say this to a client is when they do something like this:

Client: "I ran the program, and pulled up the personnel list. When I clicked on a person, I got errors. But the person seemed to load. I then tried to give the person a schedule record and got errors when I tried to save. Could you fix this?"

Me: "You need to send me a screen shot of your errors and/or the text of the errors. I cannot replicate this here at my office and my attempts to do what you are doing work perfectly. I will look at the code but it would be a huge help to have the actual errors descriptions."
--------------------

Most programmers aren't that stupid. We know you are running in a different environment (sometimes radically). If you can't do something, you need to either provide the error you are getting or give the sequence that led to the error or both.

"That wasn't the first error you got. What was the first error?" "I don't know, I ignored through a bunch."

Felix_T_Cat: /For the love of God, make meaningful variable names.

What do you mean? f is a perfectly good variable name! It stands for "fark you future maintainer!"

Slaves2Darkness: Who writes SQL anymore?

Orgs with bad schema. You can spot it in the req for the job:

"Expert-level SQL performance tuning"

BZZZZRT! No thanks! Even if I were an expert, I'd rather solve problems that are on the forefront of software development, like mobile UX. Not unwind your exotic solutions to mundane problems because you either developed the system before Google was invented, or refused to use it in lieu of crafting some bizarre schema that pleased some nerd's sensibilities.

mcreadyblue: C# always reads like the Gettysburg address:

Hey, Mono! High-five!

Diogenes: "product no work."

Remember that users are put out that they even have to submit a bug report at all. They're punishing the product for inconveniencing them. Think of bug reports as honking the horn when someone cuts you off, because that's how they think of it.

Of course, we'd all love to get 0. Environment 1. Action Taken 2. Expected Results 3. Observed Results, but keep dreaming!

Felix_T_Cat: For the love of God, make meaningful variable names.

Hey tell that to the guy whose code I'm copy/pasting off of Stack Overflow!

This is a [hardware | database | network] issue, not a code issue

If the code hasn't changed, and the last 20 times an issue was raised it was the DB or network, then excuse me for assuming that someone screwed something up on the DB side again.

It's not a bug; the user is doing something wrong

Sometimes, the user is doing something wrong, it's not a bug. In my experience, there are some users that just don't get computing (my old boss said things had to be designed for the "barely competent"). We keep a list of those users and take everything they say/report with a huge grain of salt.

Other than those "barely competent" folks, if something isn't working the way a user expects, then generally, there's something wrong with the design itself, not just the code. I personally try to make my stuff as user friendly as possible and crappy errors/interfaces piss me off.

For example


I know what the client wants

I don't know what the client wants, and I'm in good company because often the client doesn't know what they want either.

Slaves2Darkness: I guess you could use an SQL code generator, but really aren't most apps using a persistence framework like Hibernate? Who writes SQL anymore?

A generator writes the SQL, and then I modify it anyway to clean up the crap code that the generator generates.

// spaces instead of tabs, WTF is wrong with the people that wrote this SQL generator?

I also just realized something.



"even in different folders"

Um, how would you have two documents with the same name in the same folder?

// in the case of that error, I was opening up XLS files on my local machine and trying to compare to an XLS file from a UNC path, not only were these files in different directories, they were on different machines entirely.

// had to rename my local file temporarily in order to do the comparison, then rename it back when I was done.

lordargent: I modify it anyway to clean up the crap code that the generator generates.

No! Bad! Do not do this! Modify the generator source to make the code you want instead. What you're doing is "poisoning" the file so that it can never be regenerated without human intervention (in a continuous integration/automated build environment, for instance). What would be ideal is getting over your compulsion to reformat code so that tools can be used as they are intended, that way you don't waste time pleasing your sensibilities instead of fulfilling requirements.

lordargent: spaces instead of tabs, WTF is wrong with the people that wrote this SQL generator?

Here, read this. Nothing is wrong with them, there's something wrong with what the TAB character (and corresponding keyboard button) is supposed to mean, and it's represented differently by different systems and editors.
In short, disk files should never contain TAB characters, if there is any chance they will be either viewed on more than one OS, or edited with more than one editor, or an editor whose TAB behavior is not known at the time the file is made.

wingnut396: My favorite is

"Well it works on my machine"

Sure, the machine where you have all the SKDs installed, full local admin access and not controlled by any policies? You likely stopped the AV, firewall and all centralized management packages from running too. I bet your machine is not even on the domain...

So yeah, I don't give a fark that it works on yours, unless you are going to carry it and your ass up to accounting and do the receivables for the 10 people that now can't work.

Well, to be fair, that's not a programmer issue, that's an environment management / change control / overall IT governance issue that demonstrates the need for some serious professional help.

Need a consultant? :)

nmemkha: Four score and seven semicolons ago ...

NSCalendar *calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDate *today = [NSDate date];

NSDate *fourScoreAgoComponents = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[fourScoreAgoComponents setDay:-80];
NSDate *fourScoreAgo = [calendar dateByAddingComponents:fourScoreAgoComponents toDate:today options:0];
[fourScoreAgoComponents release];

/complaining about objective-c is my shiat

Vendor: "You have to call your IT, it's an issue with your system."
Client: "Ok, I'll call Felix."
Vendor: "What are you talking about? Felix works for us."
Client: "No Felix does upgrades on my system."
Me: "You're the payroll person... have you ever paid me?"

or

Client: "We've laid off half our IT staff. We need something, but don't know what it is."
Me: "Ok, lets set up one on one interviews with everybody involved."
After 5 interviews...
Me: "Ok, you have a test systems and a production system and you need version upgrades to both."
Client: "Yes, that's it!"
Client makes implantable medical devices.

or

Me: "I'm here to upgrade the software. Where's the machine?" (10 years ago)
Client: "I don't know, there's been 3 rounds of cuts in IT. I've only been here a few months."
Never did find it physically. Usually, you remote desktop and eject the CD, but the machine must have been at another location.

mccallcl: No! Bad! Do not do this! Modify the generator source to make the code you want instead.

The generator is closed source, and it's basically a one shot thing.

It's used to generate the initial queries (because typing all of that crap by hand at the outset is a PITA)

But after that, it's basically just the addition/subtraction of fields.

Here, read this. Nothing is wrong with them, there's something wrong with what the TAB characte

We standardized on tabs, the generator just doesn't have an option to use tabs, it's stupid. None of the arguments for using spaces in that link apply to our environments.

Some editors (like vi) treat TAB as being exactly like X, Y, and Z: when you type it, it gets inserted into the file, end of story.

So tabs piss off vi users, even more reason to use tabs :D

Felix_T_Cat:

Admin: Coolfusis, can you install all kinds of new servers and access points and such and so forth? BTW, your boss is gone. He refused to be a mystical, magical unicorn that fixed everything and made all this stuff free, so we forced him to resign.

Me: Uh, no? I know nothing about networks, I do some basic programming/web design. FFS, I'm still a student.

Admin: Oh. Well, we went ahead and bought everything he'd recommended, but now we don't have anyone who knows how to install it. Also, we don't want to pay 10k for someone else to come do it. Oh, hey, are you interested in being full-time "IT guy" from now on?

Me: LOLWAT NO. I'm nowhere near qualified, I'm like...adept level, at best.

Admin: Darn. Guess we'll go ahead and hire someone who isn't as good or as qualified as the one we had. Maybe he can do it better!

Me: dafuq

wingnut396: My favorite is

"Well it works on my machine"

Sure, the machine where you have all the SKDs installed, full local admin access and not controlled by any policies? You likely stopped the AV, firewall and all centralized management packages from running too. I bet your machine is not even on the domain...


I don't think it's all that complicated. I'd guess that 9 times out of 10 they forgot to check in all of their files/changes.

jbtilley: wingnut396: My favorite is

"Well it works on my machine"

Sure, the machine where you have all the SKDs installed, full local admin access and not controlled by any policies? You likely stopped the AV, firewall and all centralized management packages from running too. I bet your machine is not even on the domain...


I don't think it's all that complicated. I'd guess that 9 times out of 10 they forgot to check in all of their files/changes.


I take that back. The forgot to check something in is probably 1 or 2 out of 10. The rest is usually coding up an app that is very sensitive to bad data and the data on the QA/production machine is different from the data on the development machine.

natazha: Except the guy made the change at 4 a.m. and went surfing. Took 40% of our customers down. 11 hours for the other programmers to figure out what he had done and remove it.

Which brings us to another one: "It's just a tiny utility, it doesn't need to be in source control."

lordargent: The generator is closed source, and it's basically a one shot thing.

That program is not doing its job, get a new program. The state of the art has changed significantly since you got that generator. Depending on your platform, there are a multitude of ORMs that will generate and log SQL for you. With the right tool, you can use continuous integration to rebuild all your stored procs (or inline SQL, whatever you're using) from your model, or generate your model classes from your schema. Most, if not all of these tools are FOSS.

Or write your own!

lordargent: None of the arguments for using spaces in that link apply to our environments.

Sure they do. You're putting meaningless characters in your files that behave differently depending on where and when they are edited or consumed. Use spaces, which are standardized across systems and editors. Or, just leave well enough alone, because the designers of your tool made an intentional decision not to include the option to insert tabs for a reason. If you're confused as to why, email them and ask.

You standardized on tabs? Wow, way to use time making a "standard" that is not only wrong (and useless, compared to standardizing on something important), it's costing you extra work. Let me guess: Windows shop?

My Favorite programmer story from the 90s:

phone rings, me: "Hello"
VFP Programmer: "Hi. I need more memory"
me: "Why?"
VFPP: "Because my computer says so"
me: "and exactly what does it say?"
VFPP: "out of memory"
me: "Wha? What are you doing?"
VFPP: "Just writing my code and all of a sudden I got that error. I need more memory"
me: "I'll be right there"

So I walk over to his desk, ask him to show me what he's doing. He clicks the 'compile and run' button, which immediately comes up with 'Out of memory'.

Me: "So, has this code ever worked?"
VFPP: "Yeah, it's the main system. I was just making some changes"
Me (not a programmer, not even a college grad): "What, did you put yourself in an infinite loop?"
VFPP: "No. What? Ummm... huh. Ohhhhh! heh... Yep"

grrr

mccallcl: That program is not doing its job, get a new program. The state of the art has changed significantly since you got that generator.

Preaching to the choir, but I'm the programmer, I don't buy these tools.

And well, I can use my own tools for code generation, and I have some control over my developers on shore, but I don't directly control the offshore guys.

mccallcl: Sure they do. You're putting meaningless characters in your files that behave differently depending on where and when they are edited or consumed.

Which is exactly what's needed.

Put a tab in the code, and one guy will configure his editor to show it at 5 stops, another will show it at 10 stops, etc.

Put spaces in the code, and you will never get an agreement as to how many spaces there should be.

Fact is, there's an expected way that tabs should work today.

// spaces instead of tabs == failed code review.

// also, commas in the front on SQL statements :P