Definition: Dogfooding



  • verb:
    (1) the act of using ones own software.
    (2) the act of directly experiencing the pain you have wrought upon others.

    I have a web app that I wrote for others to easily create web forms.  It's been in use at a couple clients for a while now without major hiccups.  Enter a new client.  Due to time constraints they wanted me to do the install and get all their forms online for them.  Not a problem, or so I thought.

    During the installation process I asked for a new TLD, which was going to take their IT department a couple hours to set up: (WTF #1).  So, instead of waiting I just remoted in to the server and ran the browser locally to connect and start building away.  The pages make liberal use of javascript, and IE 7, the only browser available to me on that box, is for lack of a better word slow..  However, I figured I'd just muddle through.

    The first form had maybe 120 questions on it, which should have taken about 20 minutes to do.  But, being done through remote desktop and using a slow browser, it took about an hour.  Finally I thought, the first one is done.

    I then went to the forms list and clicked on what should have been the add new form button.. Unfortunately, the page had not fully rendered when I clicked and after rendering the delete button was right where my mouse click was sent to.  The browser then dutifully clicked delete.

    poof.  Form gone.  No pop up asking for confirmation, just a blank list.  I stared at that list for a full minute before I pulled up the sql explorer and saw that yes, the form and all 120 of those questions were gone.  One hour of my life now unaccounted for.

    Then I checked the code.  Sure enough, there was not a confirmation box tied to the delete button.  While wondering why no one had complained before and how I could miss something so small, I pulled up the IDE and added in the confirmation box: (WTF #2).  Then I went ahead and modified my hosts file to mimic the coming TLD which I should have done to begin with so that I wouldn't have to remote in: (WTF #3)

    Next step: implement a recycle bin...

     

     



  •  They can set up new TLDs?  Can I register .wtf?



  • @Aaron said:

     They can set up new TLDs?  Can I register .wtf?

     

    Shall we assume misuse of an abbreviation in TLD as this is the Third Level Domain while TLD is usually Top Level Domain. 

     

    And yes, you can register .WTF as a TLD if you're willing to provide DNS facilities for any requests coming to it.  http://inaic.com/index.php?p=faq006



  • @MyWillysWonka said:

    @Aaron said:

     They can set up new TLDs?  Can I register .wtf?

     

    Shall we assume misuse of an abbreviation in TLD as this is the Third Level Domain while TLD is usually Top Level Domain. 

     

    And yes, you can register .WTF as a TLD if you're willing to provide DNS facilities for any requests coming to it.  http://inaic.com/index.php?p=faq006

    Those aren't real TLDs.  They operate their own parallel set of root servers, which you have to point your resolver at in preference to your ISP's DNS server.  They claim in their FAQ "When will my local ISP resolve the Next Generation Internet" that "Many already do", but nowhere on their site do they say how many, or offer up a list.  Nonetheless, they "anticipate" that  "a majority of Internet users" will be able to resolved their domains "in 2 years".  Not if five out of eleven of their "preferred" servers down is a typical figure, they won't.  Sounds like marketing to me.  Holy fuck, and the skanks are even calling for volunteers to help them run this operation, with a whole bunch of sanctimonious bullshit about how vital volunteers have been to the creation of the internet.  But the internet is here and works already, and this organisation has only been created to try and help a bunch of private corporations monetize their crappy business plans for selling new TLDs to people, which are currently somewhat undermined by the fact that said TLDs don't work anywhere.  It may be a non-profit, but it's a front organisation; it should really be considered a trade body.  And they do nothing to dispel the impression of being a bunch of dodgy spivs when they crudely photoshop their initials onto a stock photo of a tower block in a pathetic attempt to conceal the fact that their main business address is in fact just an accommodation address.

    JFTR: Like fuck am I ever going to let some unheard-of Turkomen telecoms corp's server, part of a network with a near-50% failure rate, be my trusted master source of DNS information for the whole world.  The only real TLDs are the ICANN and IANA gTLDs and ccTLDs.   Any old tosser can set up a few DNS servers and call it a global root, but I'm not interested some home-made fork of the current system, which is huge and has many years of successful operations behind it.

    HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT MULLET! (#6)

     



  • @MyWillysWonka said:

    Shall we assume misuse of an abbreviation in TLD as this is the Third Level Domain while TLD is usually Top Level Domain.

    Good assumption, or rather subdomain.  Chalk it up to being a programmer and not a network guy.



  •  So TRWTF is you? Threefold?



  • So, you remoted into the server instead of just modifying the hosts file in the first place (WTF#1), and thus spend an hour designing a form instead of 20 minutes (WTF#2) and then managed to delete that same form because you used remote desktop (WTF#1 again + WTF#3 for missing such an important confirmation dialog in your software design in the first place). 

    I agree with IT, if anyone asks IT for anything (even a "Can you change my password?") it's always "a few  hours", because, well, most people don't know how long it actually takes and so they can talk bullshit ("Well, It needs time to propogate around the building", etc), plus, at least then you (IT) can try to finish what you are working on before doing other jobs and forgetting what you were doing previously. If I'm in the middle of something and I have to drop it to do some stupid job like "Can you permit Mr X to access site Y?" than it takes me ages to get back into what I was doing, and theres always some daft bug due to the that request (Yes, I've been places where it used to work like that - management wanting each employee having a list of sites they can access, to ensure the Internet was only used for work purposes. They never realised that all there "They no longer need website X, please remove it" requests were deleted without mercy). 


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