The Googlebot WTF cousin
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Ok, this sounds very familiar now that the Googlebot story is out.
At my previous company [name not disclosed obviously] where a bunch of WTF coders worked along with me, I was asked to implement a document generator [ I wont disclose which document format again, it's gonna make the story even more funny].
The docgen was coded as a Java servlet running on Apache Tomcat while the rest of the product (Ick! I cant call it a product) was built using VB6 and ASP.Net (I really cant explain how all these decisions were blessed because of the randomness of the reasons behind them).
Ok back to docgen which I coded. As you all know the HttpWebServlet class methods doGet and doPost can be overriden to enable the servlet to accept the 2 types of requests.
Now the other folks were script kiddies (since I cant find a better name) in ASP.Net. They had to write code to interface with the docgen. They knew of Server.Transfer and Response.Redirect, but they were unwilling to touch the Webclient, WebRequest and WebResponse classes even with a 10 foot pole. Oh and dont forget the fact that they didnt like cookies. This eventually resulted in a management order that had me enable the servlet to accept GET requests despite wild protestations.
This resulted in 2 WTFs.
One, in sending a GET request that resulted in a state change on the IIS server as well as the Tomcat server.
Two, some of the GET requests were generated using a redirection from a static HTML page (for some really unknown reason again; probably lack of wtf developer coordination).
All this to produce a document of around 200 kilobytes in size that was to be downloaded by the customer.
Now, if you're asking for code you're going to be disappointed because I found this on the day I left this shi*** place.
Apparently on the day of leaving :yay: the MD asked me to determine why they were running huge bandwidth bills even when no customers were using their system. A quick look at the logs on the server confirmed my fears. Googlebot was downloading 800 MB a day. And these people couldnt afford to pay $50 a month for their bandwidth while they planned to earn millions and billions from their WTF product.
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Oh I forgot to add that they still dont understand what's going on. Yea, a $200 per month employee who's called inexperienced because he's just out of college is not worth believing, is he?
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$200 a month? I pray that that was a *very* part-time job.
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Agreed. It was more about gaining experience while on the job.
I'm happy that I moved out. My current employer's feedback confirmed that I got what I set out to achieve - the status of having around 5 years of experience despite putting in 6 months of work.
BTW this is an Indian company.
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@byte_lancer said:
BTW this is an Indian company.
Can we start the outsourcing "discussion" again, please? Go on go on go on go on go on go on go on...
* tufty grabs flame-proof coat.
Simon
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Sure sure.
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@Volmarias said:
Lets not, and just agree that stupidity is universal?
Agreed. In fact, it has been my long-standing opinion that, per the great philosophical debate, people are not born inherently good or evil; people are born inherently stupid. What happens after that is more or less a crapshoot.
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@Pineconius said:
@Volmarias said:
Lets not, and just
Agreed. In fact, it has
agree that stupidity is universal?
been my long-standing opinion that, per the great philosophical debate,
people are not born inherently good or evil; people are born inherently stupid. What happens after that is more or less a crapshoot.
There is another very interesting theory I read about: the total amount
of intelligence available is limited and in fact constant. On the other
hand, the number of people on Earth is increasing rapidly...
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@brazzy said:
@Pineconius said:
@Volmarias said:
Lets not, and just
Agreed. In fact, it has
agree that stupidity is universal?
been my long-standing opinion that, per the great philosophical debate,
people are not born inherently good or evil; people are born inherently stupid. What happens after that is more or less a crapshoot.
There is another very interesting theory I read about: the total amount
of intelligence available is limited and in fact constant. On the other
hand, the number of people on Earth is increasing rapidly...
Oooh, I like that one.
I perhaps should have made it more obvious in my original post that I was being somewhat sarcastic, the fact it was an Indian company has no bearing on the quality of code. I've seen exceptionally crappy code coming from both insourced and outsourced coders. The only reason I can see for location being mentioned in the first place was the $200/month issue.
Anyway, yeah. The majority of people are stupid. Coders are people. Despite the amount of tests that coders generally have to go through, I don't see a massive difference in the stupid / not stupid ratio between coders and the general population.
Management and marketing staff, on the other hand, seem to have "lobotomised" on the list of job requirements.
Simon
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@brazzy said:
There is another very interesting theory I read about: the total amount
of intelligence available is limited and in fact constant. On the other
hand, the number of people on Earth is increasing rapidly...
Interesting. Looks like the intelligence and entropy connection.
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@byte_lancer said:
@brazzy said:
There is another very interesting theory I read about: the total amount
of intelligence available is limited and in fact constant. On the other
hand, the number of people on Earth is increasing rapidly...
Interesting. Looks like the intelligence and entropy connection.
Considering the amazing world of quantum physics, it's more than likely that all human intelligence is entangled.
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@Volmarias said:
Quote:
Managers, likewise, get promoted because they can impress people. Whether they can impress by getting results, or by dressing nice, they nontheless impress.
Objection!! They can impress even without putting anything on.
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@byte_lancer said:
@Volmarias said:
Quote:
Managers, likewise, get promoted because they can impress people. Whether they can impress by getting results, or by dressing nice, they nontheless impress.
Objection!! They can impress even without putting anything on.
Not any of our managers, they can't.
:: shudders at the thought of any of our management in the buff.::
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@DevNull said:
@byte_lancer said:
[quote
user="Volmarias"]Quote:
Managers, likewise, get promoted because they can impress people.
Whether they can impress by getting results, or by dressing nice, they
nontheless impress.
Objection!! They can impress even without putting anything on.
Not any of our managers, they can't.
:: shudders at the thought of any of our management in the buff.::[/quote]
Well, a deep-seated lifelong trauma IS a powerful impression.
