I had a coworker on one project that took input as short integer values between 0 and 32767. The values conceptually represented min and max values between 0.0 and 1.0, so one day he changed all the parameters to Float, like in hundreds of places. Since the application then wouldn’t compile, he wrapped all the calls via search-and-replace so that the integer parameters were cast to Float and then clamped between 0.0 and 1.0.

Viola! the application then compiled. Unfortunately, this application controlled a baseball-throwing machine capable of 125 mph and he decided to test his new version (for the very first time) on an actual baseball field with Little Leaguers on it. The machine’s first throw was supposed to be a soft ground ball to the shortstop, but was instead a 125 mph knuckleball a foot above the kid’s head. This lead to the only time in my programming career when I had to physically intervene to prevent a fistfight (between the client and my manager).

It’s funny, I know exactly zero programmers (and this includes myself) who didn’t initially encounter SQL and decide it was clunky and stupid and try writing their own classes to write the SQL for them. I want to think it only took me a few weeks until I understand its actual value and purpose but I’m probably misremembering my past. The worst I ever saw, though, was a coworker who tried writing his own ORM. He had one project with classes named “AND.cs” and “OR.cs”. All they did was take an input string by reference and append " AND " or " OR " to it respectively. I’m sure I never before or since encountered a class that did less work.

Circa 2005 I created a mobile app (for the honest-to-god-that’s-what-MS-named-it “WinCE” OS that later became Windows Mobile) that allowed workers to survey power line networks in the field and indicate all the trees that needed to be trimmed or removed. The app used a local SqlCE database and the workers would upload their recorded data at the end of the day back in their hotel rooms using Remote Data Access, an MS technology which allowed SqlCE databases to “sync” with a master Sql Server database.

It almost always worked flawlessly (100% during development, natch), except for once in a while when synced data would somehow end up in a weirdly corrupted, mangled state on the central server. Like, records that were lacking a primary key value (!), something that is basically impossible to achieve. I opened a ticket with MS support and we went back and forth on this for a few weeks until they basically said “yeah that’s fucked” and recommended that I modify my app to sync the same data multiple times to ensure it made it to the server correctly.

I actually had substantial faith in MS products up to that point (facepalm).

90. Linux would kill her. Dealing with Windows and iOS is enough pain for her.

I want to say it would have been better if he’d driven through it while there was water in it, but it’s nowhere near deep enough for that to be true.

trump full on drove his full motorcade into the reflecting pool

I assumed this was some kind of typo or something. They drove into the pool?

It’s weird how Richard Linklater either makes movies that I love (like Slacker and Dazed and Confused) or movies that make me want to find him and hit him in the head with a brick. Waking Life was probably his worst movie ever (only Blue Moon is a contender) and it’s just bonus points that it also happened to introduce the world to Alex Jones.

Back circa 2000 I was a Visual Basic developer. In my corporate apps I would always put in easter eggs that would randomly throw up message boxes saying stuff like “No matter where you go, there you are.” This always pissed off the c-suite types and they would demand that the source be found and eliminated, but none of the other developers ever found it. All I did was convert the message string to a series of CHR(n) commands, and for the MsgBox command I just put like a thousand spaces in front of it in a small, rarely-used file. A search for the text of the message would return nothing, and a manual inspection of the file wouldn’t reveal anything unless you happened to notice the horizontal scroll bar this produced at the bottom. One of the applications I wrote is still in use at this company (and still occasionally throwing up these easter eggs) and it was basically a front end wrapping a mainframe program dating to the 1970s, which means that thing is still running.

My elderly parents both have laptops with Windows 11 (don’t @ me, they can’t possibly learn a new OS at this point). Every once in a while they briefly throw up like 100 cmd windows. I have no clue what they are.

Maude Deep?

Also, masturbation becomes just work.

My weed dealer a few years ago got all paranoid and made his buyers start contacting him with WhatsApp. “It’s encrypted and completely secure!” Lol sure. It’s weird that the only other person who has ever made me use it was my realtor.

Oh no! I’m also shaped like a vagina.

I’m a school bus driver. A few years ago I was about to switch to a different route, and was riding in the seats with my elementary school kids while the driver who was taking over drove and learned the route. This was towards the end of COVID and I had always worn a mask while driving. The kids said “we’ve never seen you without a mask. Would you take it off?” I said sure why not and took it off. A second-grade girl said “wow, you’re really cute, would you marry me?” The entire rest of the bus, sixty-some kids in perfect unison, went “EWWWWWWW!”

The extra-amusing thing is that I look like David Letterman in his “meth Santa” phase, complete with a foot-long snow-white beard and bald head. I’m still worried about that little girl.

Nik Fury … because he can’t c.

I’ve long said that the more people you add to a software project, the longer it will take and the worse the final product will be. Your scenario describes one of the many reasons why this is the case.

Not many people know that “Baba Yaga” is the real name of the song, not “Teenage Wasteland”.

My tax preparer had his tax software (expensive cloud-based shit that costs in the neighborhood of $30K per month) go completely down on him for a couple of months this spring (obviously not the best time for this). He had to have all of his clients file for extensions. When he told me about this I explained that it was almost certainly because the software company started using AI. He got all defensive and started saying how great he thought AI was, but it turns out he was talking about the use of AI instead of this expensive software and his employees for prepping tax returns.

I was already mentally picking out a new tax preparer, but when he mentioned that he was personally investing in a “reactionless space engine” where the inventor used ChatGPT to fix all the problems he was having with it, I made a point of starting the search that afternoon.

That’s about the same amount the federal government pays every year to give farmers super cheap crop insurance.

Or 1/15 of what we’re paying Iran for “losing” the war.

I prefer my DT466e. And weed.