← Back to context

Comment by 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.

Today's The Daily WTF is very direct, usually just one intro paragraph and then the wacky code or process. Maybe more your speed?