|
(as a reference to the daily news)
Do you ever included easter eggs in your application? Did the customers found it? How they acted on?
[We have a 'David Akouka fatal error', that pops on network errors when the application can not connect home server. It named after or beloved sa...]
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
Quote: Do you ever included easter eggs in your application?
Yes.
Quote: Did the customers found it? How they acted on?
No, I guess (no reaction...) 
|
|
|
|
|
Not at work, but sometimes in my own stuff.
Look at the ships in the foreground at 00:18 in this video[^]. I saw this in some TV show[^] (look at 00:24) around 1978 when I still was figuring out how to put some pixels onto the screen and only dreamed of 3D graphics.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
|
|
|
|
|
Battlestar Galactica 
|
|
|
|
|
No. Never.
I personally think that while they may be fun to write, Easter Eggs are unprofessional. As far as your employer is concerned, programming wastes time that could be applied more productively. As far as the client is concerned, they are just another possible failure point. (How many programmers ensure that their Easter Eggs have no security issues, etc.?)
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
|
|
|
|
|
Daniel Pfeffer wrote: Easter Eggs are unprofessional
That depends. Not if you happen to be a game developer.
Daniel Pfeffer wrote: As far as the client is concerned, they are just another possible failure point. (How many programmers ensure that their Easter Eggs have no security issues, etc.?)
Usually the client's own ideas are far worse, especially when they have no foundation in reality at all.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
|
|
|
|
|
CodeWraith wrote: Not if you happen to be a game developer.
If Easter Eggs are expected, are they really Easter Eggs? 
CodeWraith wrote: Usually the client's own ideas are far worse
Tell me about it. Some of the things I've been asked for by Marketing...   :shudder:
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
|
|
|
|
|
|
CodeWraith wrote: What good is an easter egg that's never found?
you mean like y2k?
Way too many people made money off that one, a hell of a lot of it dishonestly too.
Installing Signature...
Do not switch off your computer.
|
|
|
|
|
CodeWraith wrote: Marketing guys always think you are some kind of wizard or the good fairy
Or an a**hole that refuse to do their wishes.
|
|
|
|
|
You must be the fun guy at parties 
|
|
|
|
|
I'm usually a wallflower, not fungi.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
|
|
|
|
|
Sure I do... And yes, they are found regularly.
Oh wait... you are talking about actual deliberate Easter eggs, not bugs... never mind.
|
|
|
|
|
|
We had one, many, many years ago in a VDT (a terminal, connected to a mainframe instead of a stand alone computer). It was a Space Invaders clone called "Police Raiders" and featured British Police coming down the screen, and a programmer with his feet up on the desk moving at the bottom. Every now and then a police car would move across the top.
I should say I didn't write it, wasn't responsible for it, not my fault at all. It was the London Office developers that put that in, not the Hampshire (Head Office) branch.
Did they find it? Yes.
And asked for it to be easier to get to...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
|
|
|
|
|
Well, my boys are put into application in finding them once a year.
Does that count? 
|
|
|
|
|
Once in a while.
Problem: my normal usership is just not worth the effort.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
|
|
|
|
|
It probably doesn't count as an Easter Egg: I develop/maintain a tool used internally by about two hundred developers. For years, the installation job has presented a license agreement that you have to confirm that you have read and understood. It took about five years before I had the first reaction to the missing 'l' in 'Common Public License' headline, then another year before one guy came over to my desk laughing so much that he couldn't speak...
The license terms refer both to source code and destination code. A "Contribution" is extended to cover
i) changes to the Program, and
ii) additions to the Program;
iii) subtractions from the Program;
iv) multiplication of the Program;
v) divisions of the Program;
vi) demolition of the Program; and grants the user ("recipient") rights:
Each Recipient may uninstall, delete or in any other way remove the Program from a computer, under the strict condition that
i) a complete, deep reformatting is made of the entire storage device where the Program was stored, and if not the same, the system drive of all computers having access to this copy of the Program. The formatting shall be performed a minimum of three (3) times,
ii) a physical demolishion of said storage device(s) is done by use of a sledgehammer of weight ho less than five kilograms, reducing the device to a maximum thickness of 2 mm for rotating magnetic disks or a maximum grain size of 2 mm for solid state devices.
By exercizing any such removal of the Program, the Recipient agrees for all future to make no complaints or critical statements about the Program or any other software procuded by any of the Contributors to the program.
A Recipient may reinstall the Program by performing the inverse operations listed above, in the reverse order. There are lots of such humour in this license that is not only royalty-free but also presidency-free (and coffeine-free). It states that "Contributors may not remove or alter any copyright notices contained within the Program for any other purpose than to ridicule typical License Agreements". Distribution of the source code is permitted "in a reasonable manner on or through a medium customarily used for software exchange, including, but not limited to, Pirate Bay", but requires that "the following Friday, two large size pizzas (one Pigs Knuckle, one Rio Grande) are delivered from Peppe's Pizza Pub at the Contributer's expense to the premises of the licensor, no later than 2.pm".
If this tool is ever given to an external customer, I will make sure that this license is removed. I was earlier working in a company where one developer handled an error situation that should never occur by writing a message on the console. It took a few hours from we released the new version until we had the first phone call from an international customer: "What does this 'Balla henger på fjøsveggen' indicate?" We hastily explained that it ment that an internal error had occurred an the text was a hint to the developer. The customer accepted this. The literal meaning of the text is "The balls are nailed to the cowshed wall". Maybe it was good that the impossible error didn't occur with a Norwegian customer.
|
|
|
|
|
Member 7989122 wrote: Balla henger på fjøsveggen
Stealing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
In my last university year, as a final project in CS, we had to write a program emulating a calculator. (I am a mechanical engineer, hence the triviality of the task). With my mate, we made a calculator that could handle variables and symbolic derivation and integration - that was the visible part - and we put a tetris in the calculator - that was the easter egg -. Nobody found out, but it was fun !
|
|
|
|
|
Rage wrote: final project in CS
Now I feel old... My 'goodbye-project' was in assembly of mainframe running a 'virus' imitating disk formating...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oh all the time!
And they call up and go "WTF is this software doing now!?"
I say sorry, I'll look at it.......
Latent bugs anyway.
|
|
|
|
|
Years ago I wrote an application internally for the business which created a printable catalogue from items salespeople selected.
On the 100th catalogue each salesperson printed an image of Cliff Richard appeared with the words "Congratulations" below the image.
The salespeople would get excited each time someone saw the easter egg and begged me to reset their count to 99 - which of course Ii refused as it would have been highly unprofessional of me to do that.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
