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The Weird and The Wonderful

   

The Weird and The Wonderful forum is a place to post Coding Horrors, Worst Practices, and the occasional flash of brilliance.

We all come across code that simply boggles the mind. Lazy kludges, embarrassing mistakes, horrid workarounds and developers just not quite getting it. And then somedays we come across - or write - the truly sublime.

Post your Best, your worst, and your most interesting. But please - no programming questions . This forum is purely for amusement and discussions on code snippets. All actual programming questions will be removed.

 
GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
Mark_Wallace24-Jul-09 8:09
Mark_Wallace24-Jul-09 8:09 
heh.

I put in couple of years in a trouble-shootery kind of post, where I had to look into network failures in the global network of a major multi-national (which Shell remain nameless) with several million terminals, including office PCs, POS units, and just about every kind of access point and shared gubbins you can think of, and find ways to make it never happen again.

One of the most fun failures took out the entire VPN in China (That's a LOT of people sitting at terminals that can't access data) for several hours.

It turned out that, in one of the network areas that we didn't have direct control of, someone had plugged both ends of a fibre into the same switch, causing a broadcast storm (on the bit we controlled, the broadcast storm couldn't have happened).

The 3rd-level support team was reduced to calling mobile phones all over China, almost at random, to try to find out what was happening. Huge amounts of money were being lost, and everyone took resolving the problem very seriously, but we still had a lot of laughs, dealing with it. A party atmosphere, almost.

When I sent out my report, I closed the accompanying intro with "I now keep an ethernet cable in my middle desk drawer, in case I want an afternoon off".

The response was mixed,

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
OriginalGriff24-Jul-09 9:08
mveOriginalGriff24-Jul-09 9:08 
GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
killabyte24-Jul-09 12:57
killabyte24-Jul-09 12:57 
GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
David Crow14-Aug-09 7:49
David Crow14-Aug-09 7:49 
GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
dasli5-Aug-09 0:12
dasli5-Aug-09 0:12 
GeneralRe: What happens when it fails... Pin
mateotrek18-Aug-09 19:14
mateotrek18-Aug-09 19:14 
GeneralHow to determine if button should be shown? PinPopular
Jarek Kruza23-Jul-09 1:52
Jarek Kruza23-Jul-09 1:52 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? PinPopular
Ian Shlasko23-Jul-09 3:11
Ian Shlasko23-Jul-09 3:11 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
David Skelly23-Jul-09 4:41
David Skelly23-Jul-09 4:41 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Nagy Vilmos23-Jul-09 7:33
professionalNagy Vilmos23-Jul-09 7:33 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Luc Pattyn23-Jul-09 8:50
sitebuilderLuc Pattyn23-Jul-09 8:50 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Jarek Kruza26-Jul-09 9:39
Jarek Kruza26-Jul-09 9:39 
JokeRe: How to determine if button should be shown? PinPopular
Chris Maunder26-Jul-09 3:17
cofounderChris Maunder26-Jul-09 3:17 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Jarek Kruza26-Jul-09 9:37
Jarek Kruza26-Jul-09 9:37 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
BillW3314-Aug-09 2:57
professionalBillW3314-Aug-09 2:57 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Paul Conrad26-Jul-09 11:04
professionalPaul Conrad26-Jul-09 11:04 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
supercat928-Jul-09 6:21
supercat928-Jul-09 6:21 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
SteveTheThread2-Aug-09 22:34
SteveTheThread2-Aug-09 22:34 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Tristan Rhodes3-Aug-09 0:56
Tristan Rhodes3-Aug-09 0:56 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
supercat93-Aug-09 5:14
supercat93-Aug-09 5:14 
GeneralRe: How to determine if button should be shown? Pin
Tristan Rhodes3-Aug-09 0:57
Tristan Rhodes3-Aug-09 0:57 
General!(How to best use a try catch block) [modified] Pin
singh.iz.king8-Jul-09 17:17
singh.iz.king8-Jul-09 17:17 
GeneralRe: !(How to best use a try catch block) Pin
killabyte9-Jul-09 0:38
killabyte9-Jul-09 0:38 
GeneralRe: !(How to best use a try catch block) Pin
josda10009-Jul-09 3:31
josda10009-Jul-09 3:31 
GeneralRe: !(How to best use a try catch block) Pin
Dan Neely9-Jul-09 3:43
Dan Neely9-Jul-09 3:43 

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