>> Seriously. Until I read this, I thought this kind of incompetent crap
>> was only on thedailywtf.com and asktom.oracle.com. Now it seems it
>> happens in The Real World too. This is... deeply worrying.
> 
> Of course. Where do you think those sites get their stories from? There are
> idiots everywhere.

I thought (hoped?) that only stupid companies employ people who can't do 
their job properly. Apparently I was wrong...

> What really worries me is that, other than the contractor who I've never
> met, I know these guys and they're neither stupid or careless. So how did
> this happen? Oversight? Managerial over rule? Critical mass?

Time pressure? Insufficient QC? Who knows...

Of course, The Real WTF is that they're asking you to check stuff over a 
few days before it goes live. ;-)

>> (Hey, did you hear about the guy who hired a bunch of programmers to add
>> multi-value columns to M$ Access? Because it's "impossible" to work with
>> a product so primitive that it doesn't have this "important feature"?)
> 
> Um, first rule of normalisation.

"Wot's normalizashun?"

> Wasn't that on daily WTF?

Yes, that's where I read it. Gave me a good giggle...



An extract from one of my Database Design lectures at Uni:

We are all gathered in room EWS14. There's approximately 40 of us. Ian 
Eyeball is at the front, lecturing us about normalisation and the 
potential problems that disregarding it can have.

Ian: "So, we have 1st normal form - which you never ever want to break. 
Then there's 2nd normal form and also 3rd normal form, then we come to 
Boyce-Codd normal form. There are higher normal forms, but you don't 
need to care about those. For the most part, you just need to make sure 
your tables are in Boyce-Codd normal form, which says - *Andrew*"

[I stand up]

Me: "Every determinent is a candidate key."

[I sit down again]

Ian: "Thank you Andrew."

[General amusement]

[Ian continues with the lecture.]

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> Plus you'd get one who was chartered.
> 
> Does anything equivalent exist for programmers?

I don't think so - but there probably should be...

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   And of course these employers completely lack the notion that a program
> can be inefficient and that more efficient solutions might be possible.
> If a program takes 2 minutes to perform some task, that must be because
> the task really requires 2 minutes to compute. It never crosses their
> minds that maybe, just maybe, it's taking 2 minutes because the program
> is crap.

Oh, I've seen reports of managers who won't believe that a particular 
task actually takes 20 minutes, and "can't you just change it to only 
take 3 seconds?"

I'll never be able to find the link now, but there was one company who 
phoned up some web design consultants and said they wanted them to build 
a website that shows DVD-quality fullscreen video but loads in under 1 
second on a 56k modem.

"Gee, what an awesome idea! I'm sure you're going to corner the market 
with that one. Good thing nobody else has thought of this revolutionary 
idea... Oh wait, they have, and they found out it's impossible. Oh well, 
I'm sure being impossible is no obsticle for visionaries like yourself."

After the consultants laughed and told them it was impossible, they made 
a stroppy retort and threatened to "take their business elsewhere". The 
consultants said they were perfectly happy for that to happen. 
(Unsurprisingly, really.)

I guess the root of all this is people who have no concept of what is or 
isn't possible with a computer. But it's more than that - people who 
have no clue but *think* they do. I mean, if a bridge was being 
designed, you wouldn't presume to know enough about structural 
engineering to make decisions about how long it should take or what the 
best way to do it is. And yet people who know nothing about computers 
seem to think they can do this with software engineering...

Post a reply to this message

> Oh, I've seen reports of managers who won't believe that a particular task 
> actually takes 20 minutes, and "can't you just change it to only take 3 
> seconds?"

An extremely valuable skill of any specialist is the ability to explain 
stuff to non-specialists in a way they understand.  Telling your manager 
that it's compute bound on 4 threads and is proven to not run any faster 
than the O(n^3) algorithm you are using is not going to work too well... 
(unless your manager is also a "specialist").

> After the consultants laughed and told them it was impossible, they made a 
> stroppy retort
*

> I guess the root of all this is people who have no concept of what is or 
> isn't possible with a computer. But it's more than that - people who have 
> no clue but *think* they do.

And it's people like that on both sides that cause the problem, which just 
leads to the problem getting worse.  On the one hand you have stroppy 
companies who have no clue about computers, but refuse to believe what they 
are told.  On the other hand you have supposed "specialists" who actually 
don't know what they are talking about.  Who's going to believe who anymore?

> I mean, if a bridge was being designed, you wouldn't presume to know 
> enough about structural engineering to make decisions about how long it 
> should take or what the best way to do it is.

Hahahahahha.  I take it you've never worked as an Engineer on a project 
then?  Almost every problem is due to the customer saying "I want X" and the 
Engineers saying "ermm we can't really do that".  Of course the customer 
usually forces the way they want, but then other things need changing or go 
wrong later.

A recent example is the LCD that goes in the instrument cluster of some car 
to be launched soon.  It goes behind a dark glass cover so that the driver 
cannot see anything behind, the display just kind of "glows" through it 
(like some Sony MP3 player i saw the other day).  Anyway, near the end of 
the design phase of the project, they told us they wanted it about twice as 
bright because they had made their dark glass darker than before.  We told 
them this was a bad idea as there might be problems with overheating etc. 
Of course they forced their way and told us they'd done tests etc and it was 
ok.  So guess what, we made it brighter, and now it shuts off during the 
high-temperature test because of overheating...  And as usual this is a 
"problem" with our design and we have to fix it at our expense asap....

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Oh, I've seen reports of managers who won't believe that a particular 
>> task actually takes 20 minutes, and "can't you just change it to only 
>> take 3 seconds?"
> 
> An extremely valuable skill of any specialist is the ability to explain 
> stuff to non-specialists in a way they understand.

I like to think I'm fairly good at this. I'm probably just deluding 
myself though...

>> I guess the root of all this is people who have no concept of what is 
>> or isn't possible with a computer. But it's more than that - people 
>> who have no clue but *think* they do.
> 
> And it's people like that on both sides that cause the problem, which 
> just leads to the problem getting worse.  On the one hand you have 
> stroppy companies who have no clue about computers, but refuse to 
> believe what they are told.  On the other hand you have supposed 
> "specialists" who actually don't know what they are talking about.  
> Who's going to believe who anymore?

True...

I think if we could sort out who the *real* experts are from the liers 
and fakers, we'd probably be in better shape though.

>> I mean, if a bridge was being designed, you wouldn't presume to know 
>> enough about structural engineering to make decisions about how long 
>> it should take or what the best way to do it is.
> 
> Hahahahahha.  I take it you've never worked as an Engineer on a project 
> then?  Almost every problem is due to the customer saying "I want X" and 
> the Engineers saying "ermm we can't really do that".  Of course the 
> customer usually forces the way they want, but then other things need 
> changing or go wrong later.

OK, I rephrase: *I* wouldn't presume to know about structural 
engineering. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

> OK, I rephrase: *I* wouldn't presume to know about structural engineering. 
> ;-)

But, like with a lot of subjects, most people think they know the basics. 
Like if I told you that your new server room could only take 3 servers 
otherwise the floor would break, you would probably suggest that I made the 
floor stronger... If I then said this was not possible due to X, you (ok, 
not you personally) would either let it go or get angry and tell me to make 
the floor stronger as it *must* be possible.  You might then start to look 
at the details yourself and see if some beam could be made larger, you might 
even demand that I put in this bigger beam instead.

Then when the walls below collapse due to increased weight of the servers 
and the bigger beams you'll blame me :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> OK, I rephrase: *I* wouldn't presume to know about structural 
>> engineering. ;-)
> 
> But, like with a lot of subjects, most people think they know the 
> basics. Like if I told you that your new server room could only take 3 
> servers otherwise the floor would break, you would probably suggest that 
> I made the floor stronger... If I then said this was not possible due to 
> X, you (ok, not you personally) would either let it go or get angry and 
> tell me to make the floor stronger as it *must* be possible.  You might 
> then start to look at the details yourself and see if some beam could be 
> made larger, you might even demand that I put in this bigger beam instead.
> 
> Then when the walls below collapse due to increased weight of the 
> servers and the bigger beams you'll blame me :-)

Mmm... clearly I'm not as much of a butthole as the people you get to 
work with. :-}

Post a reply to this message

> Mmm... clearly I'm not as much of a butthole as the people you get to work 
> with. :-}

Maybe you would be if you'd already ordered 10 new servers and announced to 
the entire company that the new system will be up and working by date X, and 
everyone is planning their own work based on your date, and if you don't get 
those servers running you will be responsible for your company losing a lot 
of money... And if you have no other options on where to put the servers, 
you're going to be on my back to make them go in that room whatever it 
takes...

And here's what happens when you mess with stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

Post a reply to this message

Gail Shaw wrote:
> Warning, rant follows. If you're not interested, don't read further.
> 
> So, yesterday my boss asked that I take a quick look at a couple of the
> scripts for a rather major change to our one system that's going live
> tomorrow evening. I wasn't overly concerned, because the code had already
> been checked over.
> 
> 
> *sigh*
> 
> I feel a bit better now.
> 

WOW - I feel for you.

Since you've been dragged in to 'check' it, are you now responsible to 
'care' for it.  Then I REALLY feel for you.

All I have to say is - "Good Luck!"



Tom

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"Tom Austin" <taustin> wrote in message news:47594dde$1@news.povray.org...

>
> Since you've been dragged in to 'check' it, are you now responsible to
> 'care' for it.  Then I REALLY feel for you.

I'd be responsible to care for it even if I hadn't seen it.

I'm the person the users call when the database apps are slow, so slow code
in production is automatically my responsibility.
Persionally I'm glad I found it this week and not next week.

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