Coding Horror

GreeBo · 16-11-2020 10:56am

fcrossen wrote: »

var is never reassigned - use const instead.

Could easily be reassigned within the methods, GetTested() seems like a good candidate

GhostyMcGhost · 16-11-2020 8:07pm

Stolen from Reddit, a message on the PlayStation app

TheChizler · 16-12-2020 1:46am

Just got an email from our software lead, the jist of it was "IT have accidentally deleted all of our VMs"... So the main Git repo for a dozen ongoing projects, bug tracking, code analysis, build, test, gone. For some reason backups haven't been made for a month. Have to piece source code and histories back together from developers PCs. What a mess...

Buford T Justice · 16-12-2020 2:32am

TheChizler wrote: »

Just got an email from our software lead, the jist of it was "IT have accidentally deleted all of our VMs"... So the main Git repo for a dozen ongoing projects, bug tracking, code analysis, build, test, gone. For some reason backups haven't been made for a month. Have to piece source code and histories back together from developers PCs. What a mess...

Someone from IT is getting a promotion when the dust settles I imagine...... as would typically be the case.

This is also one of the reasons why in our place no one is allowed to delete any git repos...... ever

Wombatman · 16-12-2020 9:19am

Buford T Justice wrote: »

This is also one of the reasons why in our place no one is allowed to delete any git repos...... ever

What about the servers they are hosted on?

TheChizler · 16-12-2020 10:33am

Wombatman wrote: »

What about the servers they are hosted on?

Loophole!

DublinWriter · 16-12-2020 12:30pm

Seth Brundle wrote: »

I'm fairly sure that the max size for an Access 97 database is 1GB.

The recommended size for an Access DB should be 0Kb.

beauf · 16-12-2020 12:41pm

DublinWriter wrote: »

The recommended size for an Access DB should be 0Kb.

Lol. In fairness it has its "limited" uses.

Seth Brundle · 16-12-2020 5:08pm

DublinWriter wrote: »

The recommended size for an Access DB should be 0Kb.

In fairness, when I used it, it was for desktop use and quite often anything the client wanted had to be scrutinised by IT who could take 12-24 months to look approve something.
It's not ideal as a database but definitley has its uses.

Slutmonkey57b · 16-12-2020 7:30pm

Seth Brundle wrote: »

In fairness, when I used it, it was for desktop use and quite often anything the client wanted had to be scrutinised by IT who could take 12-24 months to look approve something.
It's not ideal as a database but definitley has its uses.

Exactly my experience.

IT: Peabrains using Access should be banned from computers!

Business: I need a database!

IT: That'll be 500 grand, we have to do a review of our server estate, I need you to answer 500 questions about which flavour of Red Hat Linux we should use, you've got to have 20 "governance oversight people" employed, you'll have to raise a change request any time you want a field added that'll cost you 50 grand and 6 months, and oh we'll get round to it sometime in the next 4 years.

Business: Double clicks Access.

IT: *Stoopid noobs*

igCorcaigh · 09-05-2021 5:38am

VB.NET

OK, I started off in it, and it has some nice features (and some gothchas, IFF)

But try writing a lambda, or a LINQ statement.

This was the company that chose VB.NET to make it easier... for the developers. LOL!

Wombatman · 10-05-2021 6:12pm

igCorcaigh wrote: »

VB.NET

OK, I started off in it, and it has some nice features (and some gothchas, IFF)

But try writing a lambda, or a LINQ statement.

This was the company that chose VB.NET to make it easier... for the developers. LOL!

Started off programming is classic VB. VB 6 was marvelous when it came along. Transitioned with my company to VB.NET. Kinda attached to it and vbscript too.

VB.NET is on life support and not worth the hassle of programming in when you can use C#. For every 50 C# tutorials, code samples, courses, scaffolding templates, libraries you might find one obscure one for VB. Tell your company to cease and desist developing VB.NET now. Total pain in the hoop at this stage.

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2020/03/12/vb-in-net-5.aspx

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 11:51am

Are IT/Sysadmin stories allowed here?

Got called in to old company where I was the sysadmin. New IT guy is in is 40's but completely new to the field and lied his ass off on the CV. I'm there to advise/consult & generally check up on everything, because my old manager (not an IT guy at all but the job was dumped on him) was REALLY concerned about the new guy.

Walk in the door: They have a new guest wifi. Great right? - Connects to corporate network. Literally same LAN, same subnet just a new SSID.

Complaints that the new computers are going slow. New IT Guy gave everyone brand new NUCs, connected them all to the wifi. Now there are approx 50 devices per access point (including everyone's company phone and personal mobile).

They are having difficulty saving word and excel docs on the server because wifi is now completely congested.

New IT guy had been watching Professor Messors A+ course, told him to go look at his Net+ videos and look under collision domains.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 12:08pm

Had a holiday ruined because as the only IT staff in a SME the 3rd party IT company had sold us a new Router/Firewall to replace the ancient sonicwall. I was all for it, the old equipment the was there before me was slowly getting chucked as the company trusted me more and business was picking up so there was a bit of budget left over.

Told them I'd be back in the office Wednesday. They arrived Tuesday and installed the new one...alongside the old one.

No big deal right, a few minutes of unplanned downtime isn't good but it isn't the end of the world.

Ohohoho. So they gave the installation to some know nothing via Remote hands ie a guy on a phone telling some newbie what to do. Got a million calls after that even though I wasn't even back in the country because the internet wouldn't work right, it was up but everything was ****ed.

Turns out they installed the new one along with the old one, same IP. Traffic was getting split and since its the Gateway...well try it some time. Failover WAN never engaged because technically the primary one still works 50% of the time.

3rd party company acting like it was on big deal, and trying to tell management I was clueless and inexperienced behind my back. HEY GENIUSES I run the on-prem email server, I can see when you contact management.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 12:15pm

I don't know how much the 3rd party paid their techs but it turns out that they all sold and installed the same Firewalls the same way for all their clients. Cisco configs pasted into the terminal with the same admin user and pass for remote 3rd party access (at least it would deny remote access form anything other than their companies static IP).

Same deal with switches. And everything else.

Single Sign On with Active Directory integration for the extremely expensive on premises windows server systems they keep selling? Nah, separate local accounts for everything.

igCorcaigh · 11-05-2021 12:32pm

I once accidentally left a visible database connection string in a client file. Oops.

My coworker one time deleted a record on a production database table, with cascading deletes turned on. Database devoured. Oops++

igCorcaigh · 11-05-2021 12:36pm

Remember that story where some guy deleted his own entire enterprise data, backups and all, from the linux command line?

True or not, I'd nearly walk into the sea. (except I wouldn't).

lawred2 · 11-05-2021 12:38pm

TheChizler wrote: »

Just got an email from our software lead, the jist of it was "IT have accidentally deleted all of our VMs"... So the main Git repo for a dozen ongoing projects, bug tracking, code analysis, build, test, gone. For some reason backups haven't been made for a month. Have to piece source code and histories back together from developers PCs. What a mess...

holeee sheeet

igCorcaigh · 11-05-2021 12:40pm

lawred2 wrote: »

holeee sheeet

Holy SF!

What kind of practices do some companies have!

GreeBo · 11-05-2021 12:42pm

purifol0 wrote: »

HEY GENIUSES I run the on-prem email server, I can see when you contact management.

Yeah, you probably dont want to be reading emails that aren't yousrs...

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 12:49pm

GreeBo wrote: »

Yeah, you probably dont want to be reading emails that aren't yousrs...

Email contents are encrypted. The TO and FROM are not and are necessary for administration.

The company just wanted more business and were perfectly happy with trying to throw me under a bus.

Said company still tries to sell new servers with SAS spinning rust in em for top dollar. I can only imagine they have a stockpile of em they need to offload. These were €250 300GB Hard Disks sold to clients last I dealt with them in 2019!

GreeBo · 11-05-2021 12:52pm

purifol0 wrote: »

Email contents are encrypted. The TO and FROM are not and are necessary for administration.

The company just wanted more business and were perfectly happy with trying to throw me under a bus.

How are you deciding they are throwing you under a bus from the TO and FROM in the headers...

Anyway, you dont need to be personally looking at emails to administer your email server, I can't imagine it would go down very well with your employer.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 12:57pm

GreeBo wrote: »

How are you deciding they are throwing you under a bus from the TO and FROM in the headers...

Anyway, you dont need to be personally looking at emails to administer your email server, I can't imagine it would go down very well with your employer.

I didn't have to open any email. I had to ring them on my holiday for bollicking up my network, and they had a cheek to tell me to lodge a ticket. I wasn't taking that, told them to get their installer to immediately remove the new Firewall. Next thing you know they are in damage control, and decided to go on the offensive. I saw the emails going to the Directors and asked them, they told me exactly what I expected. 3rd Party was trying to throw me under a bus.

The Continental Op · 11-05-2021 1:02pm

GreeBo wrote: »

How are you deciding they are throwing you under a bus from the TO and FROM in the headers...

Anyway, you dont need to be personally looking at emails to administer your email server, I can't imagine it would go down very well with your employer.

I used to support software that looked at all the email headers, logged them and produced no end of reports for administration.

Most of the time you can ignore the reports (best kept away from micro managers) but usage trends are really handy for spotting how the companies email system is being used or abused.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 1:09pm

Brother got a new job with a small engineering shop. They have an IT guy but he's young and apparently plays video games on his company laptop. Bro asks me to come in and have a look because he's not happy with the set up, so I wont charge for a quick consult, and his boss gives the go ahead.

IT kid has no certs, or formal IT education. The backup server is a SINGLE DRIVE 4TB NAS standing upright, it is also the file server. Now apart from how ****ed that it, I wanted to know how it was backing itself up. Yeahhhh turns out the windows backup was also backing up its mapped drive to itself. Drive IO was near zero at most times of the day and I was pretty sure the poor WD digital home NAS wasn't going to last past its 2 year warranty as the web console took ages to load and the SMART reading, had a warning on it.

The IT kid also didn't understand Active Directory at all, and had made everyone local admin, no AD accounts, email was Office 365. There was no link to peoples pc and there email account. This would have meant IT kid spent ages setting up accounts manually all the time.

The NAS is on the same subnet as everything else and since file permissions were set on the (single) Windows server, you could simply log in to a file share directly on the NAS via IP and default credentials. All the IT equipment was plugged into a single extension lead, no UPS.

That was when I stopped looking.

GreeBo · 11-05-2021 1:18pm

The Continental Op wrote: »

I used to support software that looked at all the email headers, logged them and produced no end of reports for administration.

Most of the time you can ignore the reports (best kept away from micro managers) but usage trends are really handy for spotting how the companies email system is being used or abused.

Oh yeah I know, but this wasnt someone happening to notice something on a report...in any case, those reports would be used by management to decide what action to take, if any.

PommieBast · 11-05-2021 1:26pm

If you think software is bad wait until you see hardware. Still have this gem from a decade ago..

Half-height PCI to PCI Express adapter with a full height PCI card on top. Case needed modding. It was shipped to a customer.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 1:32pm

The Continental Op wrote: »

I used to support software that looked at all the email headers, logged them and produced no end of reports for administration.

Most of the time you can ignore the reports (best kept away from micro managers) but usage trends are really handy for spotting how the companies email system is being used or abused.

Bingo. I worked at a place where the bosses wife used her company email as a personal one and though nothing of signing up to a million mailing lists. Everything from Lidl to Etsy clogging up the poor Small Business Server 2011 Exchange's DB and it's weedy 25Mb internet connection. Since she was too snobbish to use a gmail for bull**** like that I told them they'd be better off just moving to Offce 365 and let Microsoft deal with it.

She was employed by the company but it was funny when I got a call every few months to say that her pricey XPS13 skinny laptop was having problems connecting to shares. Turns out she did so little work the laptop was only ever turned on approx every 6 weeks and so it's (the laptop, not hers) Active Directory password had expired. That was a fun and very short report to write!

Earthhorse · 11-05-2021 1:33pm

PommieBast wrote: »

If you think software is bad wait until you see hardware. Still have this gem from a decade ago..

At least it has handy stickers on the cables though which will never fall off at the slightest touch.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 1:47pm

Ha Id love to post pictures of hardware IT disasters but I don't want to doxx companies or myself, and I suggest you lads do the same, it small world.

Had great fun going into an office before and watching everyone plug in the ethernet cable into their laptops (which they'd been always told to do) only to tell them that because the wifi network adapter has higher priority than the hardwired eth port, this had changed nothing at all and is the reason the network still felt slow (although there was a lot of placebo going on).

Had a quiet chat with on-site IT about that, as the company just spent 8K on electricians to wire up a newly refurbed part of the office with Cat 6A.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 2:07pm

So Im working away and get a call about an email that one of the office admins reckons is dodgy, but they know the sender personally and they're another SME that sends us real bills all the time. I take a look and yep, spoofed FROM and a very direct invoice attack vector with complementary PDF payload.

I go check their DNS for SPF and DKIM records. None, nada. I ring them up about the spam email we received, woman on the phone nearly in tears, its Monday afternoon and shes been getting angry calls about this non stop. I tell her hey I understand and can help them fix the problem. Get a call back later from a higher up, "thanks very much, is there a charge?" tell em yes €250 and will do it today. He sounds outraged, and tells me no ****ing thanks.

Their domain is now blacklisted, and not just on my end. Last I checked they are doing invoicing via Fax. Some Oul lads dont reckon computer work is real work it seems.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 2:20pm

So covid Kicks in and mangement is unhappily greenlighting WFH.

Are people going to work just as hard from their beds as they would in the office? Well you see a few people did try it before and I was asked to keep an eye on them.

This involved checking the VPN. Employee dutifully connects at 8:30 and disconnects at 5. Thing is during that time no files were ever opened on her share. Well I figure I'll give her the benefit of the doubt until a few days later, same thing. Remotely switch Split Tunneling off. Gigabytes of Netflix, a constant connection to Facebook and a bit of RTE player from 2-3pm (Jooooooeeeee Duffy).

She doesn't work there anymore.

That said WFH home happened and the bizness is still going.

TheChizler · 11-05-2021 2:34pm

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Holy SF!

What kind of practices do some companies have!

I heard a rumour they gave it to a new guy to upgrade VM HD storage who tried to right-click cut and paste a couple of TB between windows shares, but maybe they were just winding me up.

Wombatman · 11-05-2021 5:42pm

purifol0 wrote: »

So covid Kicks in and mangement is unhappily greenlighting WFH.

Are people going to work just as hard from their beds as they would in the office? Well you see a few people did try it before and I was asked to keep an eye on them.

This involved checking the VPN. Employee dutifully connects at 8:30 and disconnects at 5. Thing is during that time no files were ever opened on her share. Well I figure I'll give her the benefit of the doubt until a few days later, same thing. Remotely switch Split Tunneling off. Gigabytes of Netflix, a constant connection to Facebook and a bit of RTE player from 2-3pm (Jooooooeeeee Duffy).

She doesn't work there anymore.

That said WFH home happened and the bizness is still going.

Was she using a personal device or one supplied by the company?

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 6:24pm

Wombatman wrote: »

Was she using a personal device or one supplied by the company?

Company laptop, company phone and a watertight user agreement. Essentially it's the exact same as if she was at her desk at the office, I can monitor that traffic too (and it's not 2 gigabytes of Netflix an hour)

Wombatman · 11-05-2021 8:58pm

purifol0 wrote: »

Company laptop, company phone and a watertight user agreement. Essentially it's the exact same as if she was at her desk at the office, I can monitor that traffic too (and it's not 2 gigabytes of Netflix an hour)

Still probably better to to use a web filter than getting a hooman to "keep an eye on them".

the_amazing_raisin · 11-05-2021 9:16pm

purifol0 wrote: »

So covid Kicks in and mangement is unhappily greenlighting WFH.

Are people going to work just as hard from their beds as they would in the office? Well you see a few people did try it before and I was asked to keep an eye on them.

This involved checking the VPN. Employee dutifully connects at 8:30 and disconnects at 5. Thing is during that time no files were ever opened on her share. Well I figure I'll give her the benefit of the doubt until a few days later, same thing. Remotely switch Split Tunneling off. Gigabytes of Netflix, a constant connection to Facebook and a bit of RTE player from 2-3pm (Jooooooeeeee Duffy).

She doesn't work there anymore.

That said WFH home happened and the bizness is still going.

Kind of points more fault to the employee than WFH, I think it depends a lot on the person

In our place we've been WFH for the past year. The pace definitely slowed down for the first couple of months, but since then things picked up and work is getting done at a regular pace

I find there's 2 types of employeee, those who work by the hour and those who work by the task. My place is definitely the latter, we were told pre covid that if we got all our jobs done on Monday and spent the rest of the week watching cat videos then that's management's fault for not giving us enough to do

I think that attitude has filtered better into WFH since as long as stuff gets done by the due date then nobody really cares if it took 5 mins or an all nighter

I feel like employees that view work by the hour have a harder time adjusting to WFH as they've lost that clear separation between work and personal time

the_amazing_raisin · 11-05-2021 9:22pm

My personal coding horror is Perl

I just can't wrap my head around it, the syntax is at simple and bizarre at the same time, and it seems like writing totally unreadable code is encouraged

I feel like it's brilliant for what it was designed for, searching and parsing large data files, but as soon as people started using it for things like web apps it just got abused

I know in the next 5 mins I'm going to have 100 people yelling at me about how it's a brilliant language and they've used it for years without issues and that's fine, I just feel like it's still my personal coding horror

oscarBravo · 11-05-2021 10:17pm

I'm with you. I've never been able to get my head around perl.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 10:37pm

Wombatman wrote: »

Still probably better to to use a web filter than getting a hooman to "keep an eye on them".

We have a WAF proxy for gambling, porn and violence. I never added social media because frankly I'm okay with it, Netflix binge-ing is taking the absolute piss though.

purifol0 · 11-05-2021 10:39pm

the_amazing_raisin wrote: »

Kind of points more fault to the employee than WFH, I think it depends a lot on the person

Yep, agree 100%.

PommieBast · 11-05-2021 11:47pm

purifol0 wrote: »

Ha Id love to post pictures of hardware IT disasters but I don't want to doxx companies or myself, and I suggest you lads do the same, it small world.

This particular firm has since dissolved but yes see what you mean. Anonymity is not the same as it was even only 5 or so years ago.

My personal software horror was having to contend with this CI system where each module had to be in its own repository. Think there were 40 or so by the time I left. Lost count of the number of times that unit tests had to be nobbled so that a cross-module change could be committed..

JoyPad · 13-05-2021 7:45pm

the_amazing_raisin wrote: »

My personal coding horror is Perl

I'll see your Perl horror, and raise you a Mason horror.

I used to work for a very large company whose entire website was built with Mason, and it was a huge mess. It was supposed to be Perl code embedded in HTML, but most modules were the other way round, Perl code that produced HTML snippets. If Perl is a horror, you can imagine what Mason would look like.

The author of Mason, Jonathan Swartz, was an employee there, and he shepherded the migration.

GhostyMcGhost · 15-05-2021 11:05am

Whoops! Someone’s getting a P45 ….

Mediatonic Accidentally Leaked The Fall Guys Source Code

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/05/mediatonic_accidentally_leaked_the_fall_guys_source_code

the_amazing_raisin · 15-05-2021 7:58pm

GhostyMcGhost wrote: »

Whoops! Someone’s getting a P45 ….

Mediatonic Accidentally Leaked The Fall Guys Source Code

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/05/mediatonic_accidentally_leaked_the_fall_guys_source_code

Oh I can imagine how that guy is feeling

It's a bit like that moment of terror when you accidentally push to the production branch

PommieBast · 15-05-2021 8:12pm

Only time I felt real terror was during a customer acceptance test, which was taking place on a military base somewhere in Sandopia. I had spotted a fault in plain sight and was hoping like hell no-one else had...

Capt'n Midnight · 21-05-2021 2:45pm

On Reddit somebody in r/sysadmin mentioned that he had an user with a dial-up modem.

Everything worked beautifully, but then the user got ADSL.

And ADSL doesn't warboe, beep or boop. User was most unhappy.

Cue brainstorm - every time user want to "connect" to the internet, a script is run playing a .WAV of a modem handshaking and connecting - and user was happy.

the_amazing_raisin · 21-05-2021 10:26pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

On Reddit somebody in r/sysadmin mentioned that he had an user with a dial-up modem.

Everything worked beautifully, but then the user got ADSL.

And ADSL doesn't warboe, beep or boop. User was most unhappy.

Cue brainstorm - every time user want to "connect" to the internet, a script is run playing a .WAV of a modem handshaking and connecting - and user was happy.

I wonder did they also have to hook the hang up switch on his house phone to a power switch for the router, so that it would kill power to the internet connection when he picked up the phone

Don't want to break the illusion

iLikeWaffles · 25-07-2021 4:44pm

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iLikeWaffles · 25-07-2021 4:44pm

Coding Horror

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