Programmers Hold Funerals for Old Code 342
MacBrave writes "The AP has an interesting story about how the programming staff at an Ohio company are holding funerals for retired or 'killed' programs. I dunno, this sounds a little TOO geeky for my tastes......."
Do they cremate? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:4, Funny)
What can be sadder but than I tried use tab complete on
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a terrible idea. You're actually replacing the
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:5, Informative)
The '/dev/null' idiom (Score:5, Informative)
In the terminal room, there was suddenly a cacophany of beeping. The phone started ringing. This was bad. And no one knew how to fix it.
Someone suggested rebooting the machine. Of course, the machine promptly refused to boot. Much panic was in abundance, the phrase "complete restore from backup" was ominously spoken. Finally, someone with a Clue (TM) showed up and pointed out that we only needed to remake the symlink from
Moral? Several. man(4) null. Don't do things as root if you aren't sure what will happen. When you fsck shit up, try to find someone who actually knows what they're doing, and get them to fix it. And, above all, don't believe what you read on the Internet.
Re:The '/dev/null' idiom (Score:2)
Also FS damage can prevent you from deleting things sometimes.
Re:The '/dev/null' idiom (Score:5, Funny)
Here's another moral: learning Unix administration on Slashdot is like learning emergency medicine by watching ER.
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:2)
is a great way to truncate a file, especially if the file you're truncating is an apache error log that has grown out of hand.
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:5, Funny)
Flame war (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I'll probably get flamed for discussing cremation but...
pun intended.
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:5, Funny)
They had better not bury it...
All those memory leaks could contaminate the groundwater.
Where are the Enviromentalists? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because recycled printouts might lead to Microsoft code...
(For those young 'uns, Bill Gates used to dumpster dive for old program listings to help his programming skills. Personally, I would prefer to learn from code the programmers thought worth keeping, and not what they threw away, but to each his own I guess...)
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:5, Informative)
If anyone is willing to mirror, my pictures (including the aforementioned FOSS CEMETERY) can be found under
http://www.connelm.homelinux.com/foss/foss
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:2)
Please do *NOT* mod parent post up! If someone mirrors it, mod that up instead.
(I wish I could remember the URL for generic mirroring...I read a post for one quite recently.)
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:4, Funny)
I was recently in the small town of FOSS Oklahoma. I found their cemetery. Apparently they bury, not cremate.
OK,
A coralcached link to the FOSS CEMETERY pictures is:
http://www.connelm.homelinux.com.nyud.net:8090/fo
Now,
I like Karma as much as the next
It's OK to mod this one as Funny, m'kaaay?
Re:Do they cremate? (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly a year later, an unshaven shaggy Steve Ballmer howls in front of a full moon whilst hundreds of tattered printouts burst out from the soil. They all bear the terrifying mark of...
Be afraid, be very afraid....
BASIC program flatline (Score:3, Funny)
20 BEEP
30 GOTO 10
RUN
Gone to that endless loop up in the sky (Score:5, Funny)
whie I and they
lay me to rest
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna...
Re:BASIC program flatline (Score:5, Funny)
#include
int main() {
printf("Goodbye World!\n");
return 0;
}
Re:BASIC program flatline (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BASIC program flatline (Score:4, Funny)
Re:BASIC program flatline (Score:5, Funny)
10 PRINT "He's dead, Jim"
20 BEEP
30 GOTO 20
Does this count? (Score:5, Funny)
At the last place I worked, we retired a particular version of the application. We printed out the code onto paper, and all gathered around the project manager's barbeque and burnt the code, praying that we never, ever had to touch it again.
Re:Does this count? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this count? (Score:5, Funny)
But the next day, Joe didn't show up at work. And the day after, and the day after that. We began to wonder if there wasn't something amiss, but our boss wouldn't say anything about him. I called him at home, but just got his answering machine.
Well, we got suspicious, so one lunch hour we snuck out and went over to the boss's house to check around the shrubs. You know what we found behind that arbor vitae tree? A condom laying outside the window! And you know what we saw when we looked in the window? Joe and the boss's wife in an embrace! He'd been fired for sleeping with her!!!!
Or maybe I just drank the beer and imagined the whole thing...
Re:Does this count? (Score:2, Funny)
Professor Jonathan Vos Post
http://magicdragon.com/math.html
Re:Does this count? (Score:2)
retire this code please (Score:5, Funny)
echo "first post"
done! (Score:5, Funny)
import java.io.Writer;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
class Main {
int static main() {
OutputRoutine or = new OutputRoutine(System.out);
TextGenerator tg = new TextGenerator(or);
tg.run();
}
}
class OutputRoutine {
private PrintWriter pw;
OutputRoutine (Writer w) {
this.pw = new PrintWriter(w);
}
void Output (String text)
throws IOException {
pw.println(text);
}
}
class TextGenerator {
OutputRoutine or;
TextGenerator(OutputRoutine or) {
this.or = or;
}
void run() {
or.Output("First post");
}
}
Re:done! (Score:2)
public static void main(String[] argv)
That can't be Java :P (Score:2)
Re:retire this code please (Score:2, Funny)
?
Sure, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the same could hold true for a program. Admittedly, I've never had an emotional connection to any of my programs, but I know a few people who might actually love their code, and I could sorta-kinda-not-really-but-ok-it's-your-choice understand.
Re:Sure, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Posting AC given the number of religious nuts like to be reading this topic and what I'm about to say... anyway, I don't see how you can compare a living, breathing animal to a bunch of binary output. Other animals have at least as much chance of possessing a soul as we do -- which is pretty fucking small in my opinion -- but code is still manually assembled.
Re:Sure, but (Score:2)
And so is fictional writing, and pretty much all other forms of art. Stuff you've worked on, sweated over, cried over, stressed over. When it is necessary to set such a thing aside, it can be a loss, of momentary purpose if nothing else.. I've gotta stop posting drunk.
Re:Sure, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sure, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sure, but (Score:3, Funny)
In related news, anyone want to go to a dachshund funeral? They'll probably need to schedule one next week sometime.
Re:Sure, but (Score:2)
Re:Sure, but (Score:2)
What you possibly meant to say is that they don't have a sentient soul.
According to the jewish religion everything has a soul, and more then one.
They go in layers:
First the soul that means the object exists (like a rock or an atom).
Then the soul that gives life (like a plant).
Then the soul that give movement and will/desire to do something (an animal).
Then the soul that provides speech (also sentience),
ASP.NET (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ASP.NET (Score:5, Funny)
It will only breed and start again...
Re:ASP.NET (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ASP.NET (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ASP.NET (Score:3, Funny)
- echo "Starting Windows 98"
+ echo "Starting Windows ME"
- LoadBloatedUI();
+ LoadSuperBloatedUIItsBetterHonest();
- I = Random(50)
+ I = Random(2);
if I = 1 {Crash();}
+ Pray();
IMHO not "too geeky".... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not geeky at all (Score:2, Funny)
Your link posting skills are teh suck... (Score:4, Funny)
Eulogy (Score:2, Funny)
We should do more of this (Score:5, Insightful)
A ritual like they describe in the article seems like a really good way of encouraging long-needed rewrites and the tossing out of old code. Good code lives on, always young and fresh and rosy fingered. Timeless, never aging, good code does its job and does it well. Good systems are built around good code and intuitive use cases are built around good systems. A system that needs constant tweaking and patching and magic to keep it going is a system that is hopelessly falling towards the tomb. Better to print that code out and bury it in the cemetary and replace it with good code than to find another way to keep the herking and jerking system from collapsing under its own weight.
Definitely (Score:5, Insightful)
That way you can send invites to the original programmers saying if you wish to attend the laying to rest of the veritable workhorse which held up x, y and z parts of the company for 10 years and helped make $Xm.
Rather than having boss/PHB come in and say why does the VP IT access to the database no longer work? As he has been using a backdoor from 10 years ago. Or the VP comes down and says why are you deleting $Xm code investment (ie his OT bill from playing TrekWar).
Besides if the VPs show up you can get in some good schmoozing (sorry networking) so they know who you are when bonus time comes.
Never (ever) surprise management.
Re:Definitely (Score:5, Funny)
Look, I don't know if it's the same every where or not, but the reason programmers get moved to upper management ( and out of the development cycle ) around here is because they can do less damage there.
Re:Definitely (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Definitely (Score:2)
Is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle what you were looking for?
Re:We should do more of this (Score:2)
Old code has much embedded wisdom. Lots of l
bad signs (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how we do it...and not be too geeky (Score:5, Funny)
Copy the directory to a folder to be backed up (or burn it on a CD) Delete original code.
OR
Make sure all old outdated code is surrounded by
Old dead code...
Insert profane comment here about how crappy the guy is who wrote it if it's not mine
*/
And save it for later reference. No telling when I am going to need to scam some of my old code when I am in a hurry some day.
I was writing a system for Boeing 747s once (Score:5, Funny)
My recommendation is, don't fly on a pay day.
OK, so maybe most, or actually all, of this story wasn't entirely true.
And Umm... I also didn't come up with it myself. I paraphrased it from Wally in Dilbert. There. I said it.
No independent thought taking place here.
But what they missed... (Score:2)
revive("3 days");
......
christian anti-virus (Score:2, Insightful)
#!
cp -f $0
install -m 755 brain
(other versions available for different religions)
Re:But what they missed... (Score:3, Insightful)
while( IQ 100 || Redneck == true )
Vote( "Bush" );
Not really that bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really that bizarre (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not really that bizarre (Score:3, Interesting)
So Monday my boss asks me what I'm doing:
Boss: "What else is up besides the ABC project?"
Me: "I'm rewriting the XYZ script in bash."
Boss: [stunned silence] "Is that necessary?"
Me: "
Well there's a problem with the "redo it all" view (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that they think that they can rewrite the code to a perfect state. That whoever did it before was stupid, but with their rewrite it'll be so easy to maintain and expand. Of cours
Scary Quote (Score:5, Funny)
"Some things die gracefully and other things we've had to kill," Perseghetti said.
Can anyone say Programming Mafia?
LexisNexis Graveyard (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LexisNexis Graveyard (Score:2)
By the way, Lexis is definitely better than westlaw.
Ever thought of a tool that when you enter a citation, you set an optionnto get that case and all the cases it references, and all the cases they reference, in like a tree mode with the short summary? Maybe some option to set how many levels deep it goes?
Also, how about an easier way to copy the deep link to cases for when you're doing research?
I hate when non-techs try to give me progra
Get a proper permit first... (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, it was about 35 Celsius that fine July day, and there was a burn ban in place throughout King County. The neighbors did summon the department of fire protection, and did also summon the department of police protection. Hilarity ensued, I am told, while the hapless coders ran around trying to extinguish the blaze and eliminate the evidence before the arrival of those two fine force of Washington State's best.
(No, this story does not refer to employees of Microsoft. I wish it did, as that would make it better still -- but I'm afraid that geeks who live indoors are much the same everywhere.)
Re:Get a proper permit first... (Score:2)
I held a funeral for a pair of jungle boots (Score:4, Interesting)
In my case the soles of both boots cracked to such a degree that my green wool socks actually squirmed out and were visible. This is generally not considered very professional in military circles, so I had to go for my second pair. But this pair had been with me for something like four or five years, and it pained me to see them go. They were so comfortable, they felt more like hide on my feet than actual boots. They'd been to Ft. Irwin, Ft. Ord, Ft. Benning, Ft. Drum, Jungle Warfare School in Panama, and they finally died in Africa.
So after I retrieved by backup pair, I gathered a few guys, walked over to the trash pit, threw some gasoline on the old pair, and burned them while holding a salute. One of the guys played 'Taps' in Bobby McFerrin fashion.
People do weird things on deployment, but to bring it back to these programmers, when you're in the trenches (be they corporate or otherwise), sometimes it's important to engage in a bit of anthropomorphizing.
Or perhaps these guys in Ohio are nuts, and I am too.
later this week (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
bah i'd go (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Bob's Euology... (Score:2, Informative)
"During his short, unhappy life, Bob was ridiculed, ignored and finally abandoned.
Sure, he was only a computer program, but still: Let us now pause a moment to pay our respects to Microsoft Bob.
RIP: Bob, 1995-96"
source: Bob is dead; long live Bob [post-gazette.com]
Re:Microsoft Bob's Euology... (Score:2)
What about lesser but equally wonderful things, like the fact that Macromedia basically SHELVED several programs (such as Fontgrapher) and never sold the the code for someone else to bring into the world of OSX, OpenType, and complete Unicode?
HMmmmmmm?
How many other wonderful apps coulda been contenders except for the second most common resource in the universe: corporate myopia?
TELL ME? What do I HEAR?
(some
old code never dies (Score:2, Interesting)
Top 10 List of Dead Code Funeral Reasons (Score:5, Funny)
9) All the developers of the original code have been laid off, so we need to rewrite it to understand it.
8) Sorry, IT has no more maintenance hours to support this application, but we still have development hours to rewrite it.
7)[insert new tech buzzword here] is the future, the old platform of [insert old tech buzzword here] is passe.
6) If we rewrite the application, we'll have more features, less cost, and better quality...I promise.
5) What were they thinking, I have a clear vision of the solution now.
4) What was I thinking, I have a clear vision of the solution now.
3) The customer changed the requirements and a rewrite is required.
2) Prior mismanagement lead us to this position, but the current management can support us in this rewrite.
1) I need to justify my job, this application should be rewritten.
They call it "Blocker Hill," but... (Score:3, Funny)
Not ALL LN programmers buy this (Score:3, Informative)
This is so embarassing to the rest of us that work there. I've been writing software at LN for almost a decade and have NEVER heard of this. Where did the AP dig this crap up? One little group out of several thousand programmer employees decides to be incredibly stupid, and the rest of us have to wear "Complete Retard" stamped on our foreheads. I only hope this can be lived down before I have to look for another job. Christ, I'm going to find these people's cubes and bury THEM. "Blocker Hill", indeed. Shoot me now.
And to those jackass apologists here (jsav40, Dancin _Santa, ewe2) who say "it's not TOO geeky or bizarre", fuck you. You don't work there.
Re:Not ALL LN programmers buy this (Score:2)
Re:Not ALL LN programmers buy this (Score:2, Funny)
My project at work got killed... (Score:4, Interesting)
We held a bit of a ceremony where we poured out some malt liquor for our killed project.
I don't work 60 hour weeks anymore. These days I'm more reasonable.
More details... (Score:2)
Clippy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Clippy (Score:2)
Hi, Microsoft Bob. Could you please put that stupid XP search dog to rest?
I like puppies too, but...
Artificial Intelligence (Score:5, Interesting)
Ohio? (Score:2)
Maybe while they're at it they can hold a funeral for American Democracy.
Server not slashdotted (not as of 10:53 PST) (Score:2, Funny)
Alas, the server's up, so it's apparantly not meant to be.
*sigh*
Funerals for nerds, stuff that mattered (Score:4, Funny)
But the funniest I've ever seen is when I visited a good friend of mine in a software development company during the dot-com era (lots of young geeks around), he was showing me the office and all that, then he took me to the backyard/graveyard, where they had several things buried, but the most recent one was a modem (they were also an ISP), complete with a tombstone and an epitaph that read "NO CARRIER".
Code passing away is sometimes sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
Over time, as you became more familiar with the code and the game you were given more responsibility over more of the code, until as Lead Programmer the entire project was your domain. If you left the project, though, there was usually nobody to maintain the code in your "name file", and as routines got re-written/moved/deleted, the name files would shrink in size, and then one day be deleted entirely. In this way they acted as sort of a historical record of the people who had worked on the project.
Over my five years, I had worked my way up to Lead Programmer and then moved on to different pastures. I still kept in touch with my old co-workers, and 3 years later I got an email from one who told me that they had finally removed my file, "forii.cpp" from the Makefile.
My source code file from when I had started at the company had by this time just been reduced to a single small routine and a lot of commented out code, so it wasn't a tough decision. But I still felt a tinge of sadness, as it felt a little like being written out of the history books.
Even better: suicidal programs (Score:5, Funny)
Closure is good (Score:5, Interesting)
Later I learned that a data warehouse I had spent two years building was being cancelled because the client didn't want to spring for additional drivespace. About that time the startup for whom I'd worked a year of 60-hour weeks laid off all its programmers, deciding that its patent portfolio was more profitable than its actual product.
Today, not a single line of production code that I've written is running anywhere.
What depresses me is that I had been pouring my heart and soul into something so ephemeral, that all my hard work was being thrown away and obsoleted. It still saddens me greatly to know that my career has left no lasting mark on the world.
Re:Closure is good (Score:4, Interesting)
What depresses me is that I had been pouring my heart and soul into something so ephemeral...
Make sure you learn something important or useful from every project. That way, no matter what happens to the project later on, you carry some benefit with you forever.
Sometime what you learn is only something not to do in the future or that something you were sure was true was in fact completely wrong.
One thing I've learned is don't work 60-hour weeks unless you get paid for overtime. If you do get paid for overtime, work as many 60-hour weeks as you can because there may be many 0-hour weeks in the future.
Re:A special funeral scheduled for (Score:2, Funny)
if BSD is dead wouldnt it be moe likely to fall than simply duck?
Re:0xDEADBEEF (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stand Tall (Score:2)
My comment was not directed at you. It was for the publisher of this story, LexisNexis, and slashdot.
Your follow-up to my comment does shed light on your initial comment, too (your sig), so thanks
Personify it (Score:5, Funny)
That way we can say that "GDBPF has shat on the server again", and perhaps illustrate this on a whiteboard or two.