Comment by surgical_fire

2 years ago

Wow, I remember reading this article when it was new. This was such a trip down memory lane. I really enjoyed The Daily WTF, but for whatever reason I stopped reading it over the years.

But reading this reminds me of my favourite article there: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/itappmonrobot

It has an odd beauty to it.

5 comments

surgical_fire

Reply
hug  2 years ago

I stopped reading it because of its formulaic storytelling. I loved the actual stories. Weird, unfortunate programming hijinx that some unfortunate new hire had to deal with. I’ve been there, or near enough, tens of times throughout the time I worked at a boutique consultancy.

The problem I have, though, is their “set it up and knock it down” style of storytelling. It gets old, fairly fast, and once you’re over it you’re just constantly hunting for the actual meat of the story. The actual development WTF.

I don’t care that Grunthilda was a seasoned developer who had recently taken a job at a mediocre teapot manufacturer, whose boss was idiosyncratic and kept shouting “the shorter the better”. I don’t care if Francisco had just started his second job within an up and coming banana republic and all of the other developers has warned him against naming variables starting with a vowel.

Just tell me what off the wall programming mistake they were making.