Discussion
LordGrover said:
^^ Working in IT, I can confirm a little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
Reminds me of the time when a newbie in the office decided to be helpful and clear out the /bin directory after having been given a beginner's guide to unix. I don't know who was dumber, the culprit or the admin that gave her the rights to do it.
We had a fine afternoon in the pub.
toasty said:
Reminds me of the time when a newbie in the office decided to be helpful and clear out the /bin directory after having been given a beginner's guide to unix.
I don't know who was dumber, the culprit or the admin that gave her the rights to do it.
We had a fine afternoon in the pub.
That's almost as good as the script that apparently someone at my current client wrote once that recursed up through the directory tree until it got to the build directory and then executed "rm -rf ."I don't know who was dumber, the culprit or the admin that gave her the rights to do it.
We had a fine afternoon in the pub.
Unfortunately it overshot and ended up in the root directory.
So that was fun.
toasty said:
Reminds me of the time when a newbie in the office decided to be helpful and clear out the /bin directory after having been given a beginner's guide to unix.
I don't know who was dumber, the culprit or the admin that gave her the rights to do it.
We had a fine afternoon in the pub.
That sounds like it should be an urban myth (emptying the "bin" folder) but unfortunately I have dealt with too many users to disbelieve it.I don't know who was dumber, the culprit or the admin that gave her the rights to do it.
We had a fine afternoon in the pub.
K12beano said:
MartG said:
Word of the day: VORFÜHREFFEKT (German) - "demonstration effect", when something doesn't work until you go to show someone the problem - and it suddenly works again
( From QI )
( From QI )
Is that for real? Love it!On account of the fact that if your telly was on the blink, it always worked fine the moment the TV Repairman came to look at it.
Clockwork Cupcake said:
K12beano said:
MartG said:
Word of the day: VORFÜHREFFEKT (German) - "demonstration effect", when something doesn't work until you go to show someone the problem - and it suddenly works again
( From QI )
( From QI )
Is that for real? Love it!On account of the fact that if your telly was on the blink, it always worked fine the moment the TV Repairman came to look at it.
Clockwork Cupcake said:
Einion Yrth said:
I've always found precisely the opposite; code that has executed flawlessly for an extended period of time suddenly goes tits and beer as soon as anyone "in authority" turns up to look at it.
Yes, that too. I think both are manifestations of Sod's Law.
"That can;t ever have worked" you say, having spotted the, previously unnoticed, flaw, and henceforth it doesn't.
Einion Yrth said:
And then there's the code that at least appears to have been performing excellently for quite some time, but for some reason you're giving it a look over...
"That can;t ever have worked" you say, having spotted the, previously unnoticed, flaw, and henceforth it doesn't.
Yup. Been there too. "That can;t ever have worked" you say, having spotted the, previously unnoticed, flaw, and henceforth it doesn't.
Also, when reviewing code for clients, I have often reported "this code only works if you send it exactly the data it expects to receive. I can only conclude that the reason it has never failed is because you have never sent it bad data".
I reviewed one bit of code which would have caused a segfault if you had so much as sent it an empty string for one of its parameters.
Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Friday 23 March 21:10
Einion Yrth said:
Clockwork Cupcake said:
Einion Yrth said:
I've always found precisely the opposite; code that has executed flawlessly for an extended period of time suddenly goes tits and beer as soon as anyone "in authority" turns up to look at it.
Yes, that too. I think both are manifestations of Sod's Law.
"That can;t ever have worked" you say, having spotted the, previously unnoticed, flaw, and henceforth it doesn't.
Previously, the cock-up only existed POTENTIALLY - it both simultaneously existed and didn't exist. By the act of showing it to someone or reviewing it, you are in fact observing it. And as we all know, observation crystallises anything quantum into a certainty...
havoc said:
Not quite. What's actually happening is that you're collapsing the quantum cock-up waveform.
Previously, the cock-up only existed POTENTIALLY - it both simultaneously existed and didn't exist. By the act of showing it to someone or reviewing it, you are in fact observing it. And as we all know, observation crystallises anything quantum into a certainty...
"Why would anyone put a dead cat in this code?" Previously, the cock-up only existed POTENTIALLY - it both simultaneously existed and didn't exist. By the act of showing it to someone or reviewing it, you are in fact observing it. And as we all know, observation crystallises anything quantum into a certainty...
Einion Yrth said:
I've always found precisely the opposite; code that has executed flawlessly for an extended period of time suddenly goes tits and beer as soon as anyone "in authority" turns up to look at it.
That's similar to the "demo" effect, caused by a sales person who's never seen the product before, let alone tried it, showing off beta code in front of potential customers. 
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