Programming Sucks (article)
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I'm petty sure this hasn't been shared here before, so in case you haven't read it...
Excellent rant. Representative sample:
Imagine joining an engineering team. You're excited and full of ideas, probably just out of school and a world of clean, beautiful designs, awe-inspiring in their aesthetic unity of purpose, economy, and strength. You start by meeting Mary, project leader for a bridge in a major metropolitan area. Mary introduces you to Fred, after you get through the fifteen security checks installed by Dave because Dave had his sweater stolen off his desk once and Never Again. Fred only works with wood, so you ask why he's involved because this bridge is supposed to allow rush-hour traffic full of cars full of mortal humans to cross a 200-foot drop over rapids. Don't worry, says Mary, Fred's going to handle the walkways. What walkways? Well Fred made a good case for walkways and they're going to add to the bridge's appeal.
Of course, they'll have to be built without railings, because there's a strict no railings rule enforced by Phil, who's not an engineer. Nobody's sure what Phil does, but it's definitely full of synergy and has to do with upper management, whom none of the engineers want to deal with so they just let Phil do what he wants.
Sara, meanwhile, has found several hemorrhaging-edge paving techniques, and worked them all into the bridge design, so you'll have to build around each one as the bridge progresses, since each one means different underlying support and safety concerns. Tom and Harry have been working together for years, but have an ongoing feud over whether to use metric or imperial measurements, and it's become a case of "whoever got to that part of the design first." This has been such a headache for the people actually screwing things together, they've given up and just forced, hammered, or welded their way through the day with whatever parts were handy.
Also, the bridge was designed as a suspension bridge, but nobody actually knew how to build a suspension bridge, so they got halfway through it and then just added extra support columns to keep the thing standing, but they left the suspension cables because they're still sort of holding up parts of the bridge. Nobody knows which parts, but everybody's pretty sure they're important parts. After the introductions are made, you are invited to come up with some new ideas, but you don't have any because you're a propulsion engineer and don't know anything about bridges.
Would you drive across this bridge? No. If it somehow got built, everybody involved would be executed. Yet some version of this dynamic wrote every single program you have ever used, banking software, websites, and a ubiquitously used program that was supposed to protect information on the internet but didn't.
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tl;dr version:
Us software engineers don't really know what we're doing half the time; we just make shit up as we go
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I have read this one before and I was sure it was on here, but discosearch couldn't find it,
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http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
This line is a good one, and one written while the author still had some grip on reality:
You now have one extra little fact to tuck away in the millions of little facts you have to memorize because so many of the programs you depend on are written by dicks and idiots.
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I like the suspension bridge simile. You're asked to build it, but some manager wants colored suspension cables; the client wants columns just in case and the offshore team builds components for cheap cars.
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I like that I wasn't the only one stupid enough to try to find it.
What search term did you try? I simply went with "bridge" because I don't trust this search.
Maybe I read it on the old forums?Filed Under: This topic was around number 10 in my search for bridge!
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The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases
That was funny.
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I have read this one before and I was sure it was on here, but discosearch couldn't find it,
Ditto, only I used Google to search the old forums as wel...
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Tried google search and disco search. Nothing x2.
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I have read this one before and I was sure it was on here, but discosearch couldn't find it,
Could be mistaking it for the programmer vs carpenter thing? It definitely reminded me of that.
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I have definitely read it on here, and I know, 'cause I never read the old forums
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I searched for stilldrinking.org, and I found a post in the fizz buzz article:
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/the-fizz-buzz-from-outer-space/2860/147?u=boomzilla
Google only finds this topic and the FP comment for stilldrinking.org
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This has been posted before. Probably by me.
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So TRWTF is 10 people having vague recollection they've seen this before, but unable to utilize any of the provided search technologies to find it.
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Because some of those technologies (not naming any names here) are broken as hell
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So TRWTF is 10 people having vague recollection they've seen this before, but unable to utilize any of the provided search technologies to find it.
Right; TRWTF is Discourse, like in every other fucking thread.
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Because some of those technologies (not naming any names here) are broken as hell
Fuckin' google. Probably wrote that shit in Go.
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Go ogle?
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Could be mistaking it for the programmer vs carpenter thing? It definitely reminded me of that.
Maybe the Discourse vs Construction topic that I started?
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Started with @xaade:
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/if-construction-was-like-software/1597?u=boomzilla
Continued elsewhere by @Polygeekery:
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/if-discourage-was-like-construction/1607?u=boomzilla
I wonder what Brian Williams would say about all this?
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I re-found it here:
The Ways Programming Is Hard - Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes "Those of us who spend our days sitting in front of a screen trying to make computers do our bidding know how difficult programming can be. But from an outside perspective, there's not much to indicate difficulty. Most of us have heard somebody compare our job to digging...
Maybe I actually read it because of /. first after all.
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I wonder what Brian Williams would say about all this?
He would say that he wrote the original article, not the similar one on here. ;)
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It gets worse -- just wait until you see the pile of hacks that makes it possible for the entire US economy to work, because without it, stuff doesn't get from point A to point B in any reasonable span of time, and that's bad.
Filed under: Satan's pube hairs? Hah! That's NOTHING, I tell you!
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just wait until you see the pile of hacks that makes it possible for the entire US economy to work
http://a3.southwestsolutions.com/images/gallery/military-armory-weapon-racks-ammo-optic-cabinets-GSA-texas-arkansas-oklahoma-kansas-tennesse/stackable-military-weapon-cabinets-armory-storage-GSA-racks.jpg
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I too am almost certain I read this on here. But maybe no one actually copied the text into dicsourse. before. I actually have it printed out and hanging on my wall.
I think the URL was different or something and that's why we can't find the old reference?
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This article underestimates the wtf in the engineering sector.
Actual engineer WTF
31 Engineering Mistakes That Make You Wonder Who Gave Them Engineering Degrees
Civil engineering is the loudest of the engineering's - what civil engineers make is visible and can be seen, touched and lived-in by many for many ye
Red tape WTF in engineering sector.
Mall Drive bridge project strapped by red tape, City Council considers options
ST. GEORGE – Plans for a new bridge extending Mall Drive across the Virgin River in St. George may be in jeopardy. Bureaucratic delays are forcing city officials to decide whether to scrap plans to complete the bridge this spring, or to award contracts for a project that has not yet been permitted...
And before you think
But that door is too high because a platform was removed, resulting in an unused door. Or some other kind of nonsense....
... you're thinking like a developer, who has been told to just change the minimal to make a change functional, and we don't have money to make it make sense.
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http://cdn.wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/engineering-building-fails-6.jpg
Calling not a fail. Are we banned from using any objects in that arrangement, forever? Even if it's efficient (not saying it is here, but the point stands)?
http://cdn.wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/engineering-building-fails-9.jpg
Honestly, calling Photoshop on this one. This is way more work than doing it properly.
I'm gonna let some of them which reek of Photoshop alone because I find them at least somewhat plausible.
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Calling not a fail. Are we banned from using any objects in that arrangement, forever? Even if it's efficient (not saying it is here, but the point stands)?
It's an U.S. Navy building.
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It's an U.S. Navy building.
…
Ok, carry on...
No! Wait! Planned in... 1967... Fuck!
Ok, shortsighted. But I still think we should be able to use the damned geometric shape already. Hell, I remember the time when this:
was something that was frowned upon in my neck of the woods. It's a freaking star people!I concede that a swastika is a bit more conspicuous due to limited use outside the obvious implication, but still.
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Many of them appear to be builders' WTFs, or home owners'. The one with the escalator made me laugh.
Honestly, calling Photoshop on this one. This is way more work than doing it properly.
That might be actually a deliberate “signature” feature. OK, it's a signature in crayon and probably not much more than a very shaky
X
, but it appears to be something that someone really intended.
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I think it's more like this.
Hey, we want to extend this platform.
Over a train rail?
We're not using that rail and never will.
But it's still functional, what if someone wants to use it.
They won't.
So we'll leave all this dangling functionality that's now broken in here.
Just ship it already.
At least let me unit test.See what I did there?
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sigh
Take a hunting rifle, make it lightweight with a shorter barrel and modern materials.....
and everyone loses their minds.
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But I still think we should be able to use the damned geometric shape already.
Especially since Mein Kampf enters public domain next year.
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So they removed a door. Big deal.
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And left a sign that would probably fall off if you unbolted two struts.
This is hyperbole, but there are reasonable
in the physical engineering disciplines. That's my point.
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This is hyperbole, but there are reasonable in the physical engineering disciplines. That's my point.
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That is physically possible.
But at any other angle, the beam will reveal to be curved.
Whoosh - b
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That is physically possible.
But at any other angle, the beam will reveal to be curved.Because sometimes, one flag is enough.
Suck it, @blakeyrat.
<-- 6ab865b7-1b48-403b-b126-25fe3e0a8fa6 -->
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That might be actually a deliberate “signature” feature. OK, it's a signature in crayon and probably not much more than a very shaky
X, but it appears to be something that someone really intended.I can go with that. But I seriously doubt it's just incompetence. Because you actually have to be competent to do something like that.
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Honestly, calling Photoshop on this one. This is way more work than doing it properly.
Reminds me of the "door to nowhere" at my university...
http://i.imgur.com/zEcK4ou.jpg
Comes in handy when you fail an exam.
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The Suicide Door
At the university where Diogo worked, the Computer Science program outgrew its status as an unloved child of the Mathematics department. It was to become its own department, and that meant it finally deserved its own building. Since the university in question had a very strong architecture program,...
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My building at work isn't quite that crazy (yes, we've got a walkway that doesn't go anywhere, but that's because the building it went to was pulled down) but my “floor” has the distinction of being on 7 distinct levels with stairs between them. The site is absolutely flat, enough that the whole university has drainage problems when it rains. (In Manchester. Seriously…
)That it was built in 1970 is probably not a coincidence. The designer — waaay back in the '60s — must've been smoking something mind-altering.
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but my “floor” has the distinction of being on 7 distinct levels with stairs between them
That sounds suspiciously like the Rylands University Library…
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These are scarily common.
Last year a UK theatre was found guilty of breaching H&S law after someone stepped through such a door-to-nowhere.
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Suck it, @blakeyrat.
Feature request: Being able to like any post multiple times if it contains "Suck it, @blakeyrat"
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please tell me that door is customarily kept unlocked....
Filed under: i know... i know the evil ideas thread is that way....
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UK theatre
Inside theaters you will often find these contraptions because they are meant to move large equipment or parts in and out. It's a lot easier if you have a door that ends in nothing but where you can put a truck or moving lift or something similar there.
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I concede that a swastika is a bit more conspicuous due to limited use outside the obvious implication, but still.
What obvious implication? A Hindu religious symbol?
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What obvious implication? A Hindu religious symbol?
Are you the anti-Godwin or something?
