• Sumocat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35·
    2 months ago

    My uncle was in that story. Decades ago, he told his boss a program would stop working in eight years (8-bit limitation, yeah, that long ago). His boss told him to ship it because they weren’t going to be there in eight years. Sure enough, they weren’t. Eight years later, their IT guy contacted my uncle because he couldn’t figure out why it stopped working, and my uncle showed him the math.

    • Ferrous@lemmy.mlEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      Sounds like your uncle did end up working for the company again, if only for an hour or day.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 months ago

          I’d do it just to style on the new guy, start with something like “ah, so humanity has lost the skills that we possessed in the days of yore…”

          (TL note: this is in reference to companies refusing to up the pay for their skilled workforce, and ending up paying more to new guys that’ll have to learn it all from scratch)

      • Sumocat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        Nah. Everyone knew everyone back then, and my uncle loves sharing his stories. Basically all he did was tell that then-eight year old story, which still holds up.

  • l_b_i@yiffit.net
    30·
    2 months ago

    the next dev, Hey this obscure feature probably doesn’t work, should I fix it… No, I’ll just patch “temporary-fix-don’t-use” and let the next guy fix it properly.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    18·
    2 months ago

    Maybe I’m a sentimental fool, but I feel like there should be some kind of basic respect for the craft, and doing things the right way just because. I get making bad code to meet a deadline, but not if you have a choice.

    Then again, I’ve never done coding as my main job.

    • fuzzzerd@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I have done it as my main job and I echo your sentiment. It’s inevitable that sometimes you have to meet a deadline or get something more important working first, but if you write bad code because you are lazy or unwilling to read the docs to do it right, shame shame shame.

    • psud@aussie.zone
      2·
      2 months ago

      We do. We make the best we can in the time we’re given. People say “minimum viable product” but we never deliver that

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Can confirm - you work like a dumber, more tired version of you needs to maintain it, so comment accordingly. Also, you do the work right but also fast; and you see how right you can do it in a reasonable timeframe of course.

      But we fired a lot of our mentors after Y2K to save money that quarter. And the juniors there had no learning as to the whys of the whats when it comes to best practice. Those juniors became seniors and their juniors are 2nd-gen flying blind. We’re doing dumb things because we know why we shouldn’t, but we don’t understand that we shouldn’t. (Hint: if someone says “Yeah But,” they may not get it)

      We need to rediscover the whys we lost; and it’s gonna be hard to really understand it, but we’ll figure it out. A few more ClownStrikes and we wont have a choice!

  • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
    14·
    2 months ago

    In capitalism, creating problems keeps people employed.

    If your shit’s maintained and running perfectly, it looks as if you’re not doing anything.

  • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    2 months ago

    Blame whoever implemented it if you want, but 9 times out of 10 it’s management that’s pushing for a quick fix.