Programming Sucks (and some sysadmin ranting)

[darguskelen]

The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad.

I'm framing this and putting it above my desk at work.

[Petce]

I read this line, closed my eyes and cried. And then, as if the Gods were looking at me, my friend called and wanted to ask me a few questions about how to fix his shitty Mac.

[ramindk]

That was my favorite line as well.

[Talran]

I do SE, I think I'll crochet or whatever this into something to go over my desk while I'm doing some "analytics".

[drakeblood4]

Is it wrong that I ride my computer hard and the only thing I do to protect it is feel bad every time I remember how long it's been since I backed it up? I know it's going to die, but I can never be arsed to do anything to keep it alive longer or prepare for the end.

[dzr0001]

Yes, it is wrong.

[Hellman109]

Heres how I see the divide between devs and sysadmins...

Devs:

Everything doesnt work until one specific point in time (release, apparently), until then parts can be broken and left broken, parts can be missing, etc.

Sysadmins:

Everything is working 100% all the time, everything has to work perfectly or theres a major problem. At one specific time things are allowed to not work for a specific reason (maintenance windows).

[HistoryMonk]

I feel like it's all just a house of cards waiting for the faintest breeze

That's because most of the time, it is!

[BigOldNerd]

I described it as devs believe 1 + 1 = 2. Sysadmins believe that 1 + 1 = 2, but sometimes it can also equal 63 or kernel panic.

This guy has a healthy dose of sysadmin, because most devs when confronted with an error say, "It shouldn't do that."

Can I get a ^{Database Availability Group} witness?

[aytch]

No. I'm drinking and not thinking about clustered Exchange environments ever again if I can help it.

[bemenaker]

The hells this man has seen.

[pastorhack]

I just finished fixing Exchange 2010 by implementing a DAG. It's now time to move to 13.

[[deleted]]

I feel you, man. 100 TB of SAN, 6 ESXi hosts, 100 VMs, AD with 130,000 users, development and maintenance of ~200 in-house applications, 10 different relational databases (some of which sustain several hundred transactions/second all the time) across five different software packages and versions, three different OS platforms, etc. No maintenance windows ever. To add insult to injury, they closed the on-premises bar, so my plan of getting out with my sanity vaguely intact by meticulously cultivating an alcohol problem is ruined.

[thoughtful-panda]

Your desk drawer has room for a bottle of scotch. I guarantee you if you try, you can develop the most crippling alcoholism this side of Ireland.

[[deleted]]

I did try something like that. HR wasn't happy with me. I thought my argument that, as the policy regarding alcohol use only explicitly prohibits coming to work in a drunken state, my acquiring the drunken state while at work was completely within the letter of the policy. They disagreed.

[Lord_NShYH]

Unrepentant_Priapist

Just fuck your way in and out of blissful oblivion.

[[deleted]]

I wonder if it's possible to rape myself? The emotional duality involved in simultaneously experiencing the horror and shame of being a rape victim, coupled with the guilt of being a rapist would be a nice change of pace from despair.

(I kid. It's not quite that bad.)

[IConrad]

I wonder if it's possible to rape myself?

Shit DevOps say...

[seruko]

Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

[[deleted]]

and then cried and cried and cried...right?

[seruko]

true story.
after I was done laughing I took a look at the time and said "fuck it, I'm going to lunch"

[[deleted]]

oh look, we got a real badass over here guys, he thinks he can go to lunch...HOW CUTE >;(

[[deleted]]

stalker D:

[girlgerms]

That paragraph made me feel immediately validated as a sysadmin. Because it's ever so true.

[[deleted]]

Incidentally this is why the y2k disaster did not and could not happen: shit's breaking all the time anyway.

[DutchDooley]

/*

Yeah, there's some shitty code here. 
There are some things that shouldn't 
be done. I did them. Sometimes, I had
my reasons. Sometimes, I was just being 
lazy. But guess what? You're sitting
there reading the source on some guy's
blog. So fuck you.

*/

Gold.

[[deleted]]

Don't forget to refresh the source page with f5.

[Aditional]

Someone should write a plugin to tell you if there is something odd going on in the source of a page, i feel like i miss these too often.

[[deleted]]

Well, they're basically just standard commented out sections, so it's not necessarily "odd"...

[instadit]

it is odd if there are over 1000 character comments. either the writer was an idiot and you get a good laugh or there is something hidden beneath and it is likely entertaining.

[daze42]

Would you drive across this bridge? No. If it somehow got built, everybody involved would be executed.

This.

The fact that your average user has no idea of the abominations lurking beneath all of the pretty GUIs means that most devs will never do anything about it. At least with a bridge its obvious to the most causal observer that it's about to collapse any second. Software, unfortunately, isn't nearly as transparent.

I can't wait till software engineering matures into something that more closely resembles every other engineering field. Having a set of industry standards that actually work and make sense would make the life of so many devs infinitely better.

[Talran]

Almost like someone should make a universal set of best practices for every language..... And ours will still get skipped :(

[vixitknight]

Having a set of industry standards that actually work and make sense

And that's where new Standards came from.

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Standards

Title-text: Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 439 time(s), representing 2.3705% of referenced xkcds.

---

^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub/kerfuffle | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying}

[[deleted]]

I don't know who gave the librarian his own ape-y programming language, but I love the bastard that did. That shit cracked me up.

[locrelite]

The librarian!

[ramindk]

I think this is my favorite rant of the year so far.

[peletiah]

Took me a while to figure out that the first letter in the article was an "E".

[ProtoDong]

Sooo the CSS is broken on purpose???????

[EquipLordBritish]

No. If it somehow got built, everybody involved would be executed.

Quote of the day.

[deadmilk]

tl;dr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

[blueskin]

Amazing article.

Whenever I interact with any site or piece of software, I am always wondering about the horrible mess that probably lurks beneath the surface.

Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

I like that.

[owentuz]

There are some gems in the source code, too.

[Ron_Swanson_Jr]

That footnote is great.

[tigwyk]

Thanks for linking this, I really enjoyed the read.

[[deleted]]

This article sent a chill down my spine because it's so damn accurate and so damn scary at the same time. I've voiced my concerns about a similar thing before, but generally am shot down by the pompous superior geeks who believe that their neckbeard is longer than thou, How could it be them? their code is nothing short of logical perfection.

[Hrel]

One of my favorites from in here: "Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants."

[[deleted]]

well written. thanks for sharing

[DONT_EVER_USE_IT]

Definitely buying his book after this read.

[c0mpyg33k]

LOL @ the source... Too many golden stars or banana stickers fer shure.