Gregory's ServerA broken clock fixed by taping a working clock over it is a metaphor for every codebase you’ll encounter in your professional career as a software developer.
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@AriT93 @carnage4life And this is why we all dream of a greenfield project to implement a sundial @fugueish @carnage4life 6 months later there would just be a solar powered digital clock duct taped over the second clock, and we'd have pretty awards hanging on our cubes. (what me cynical!? unpossible)  @darwinwoodka @AriT93 @fugueish @carnage4life interesting how the Wikipedia article on the same snuck “overtime” into the stage that was, according to the source above, merely just “panic.” Smells like propaganda to me @AriT93 @carnage4life Who documented it, though. However, the system was decommissioned 6 years back and the author didn’t respond to the numerous mails to „click here to migrate the content“.  @carnage4life And, taping over a feature that is mostly not even implemented in new construction. (Clocks? Who uses clocks‽‽)   @carnage4life the difference is that in software the broken clock ships from the factory already broken with the working clock taped to it  @carnage4life I have been occasionally scolded for my 'messy' PRs that muck out disfunction, realign ancillary internal methods & data structures and/or otherwise embrace my inner Fowler. The PR diffs are ugly AF but some of them are things I am most proud of. To the topic: lately I feel sometimes our PR/user story approach encourages the employment of duck tape by encouraging change that fully satisfies stated requirements, makes for easy-to-read PRs, but loses the plot along the way.   @carnage4life YES! #HardFollow if not already. Also the bar to rebuild from scratch is VERY low. We used to do this all the time, some of us still do! @carnage4life Not every codebase. In some of them the taped-on clock is also broken and would've run backwards had someone managed to hook it up properly.  Omg this is brilliant, the original clock is one of those utterly mind-boggling analog solutions. A master clock generates a power signal for all the “repeater” clocks. The wiring! The cost! And of course, the irrepeairability of either the masters or repeaters. Dang it would be fun to resurrect one of those systems. @carnage4life someone just did this to me and my work this week. And not because the underlying clock wasn’t working. It’s because they didn’t like how the clock was powered. They just did it without consideration. People are nuts. @carnage4life when I was an intern, the codebase I was working on had 4 different memory management systems (not including the malloc/free implementation provided by the OS) @carnage4life This is also how the law works. New legislation and decisions just get taped over the old junk. @troutgirl You might be shocked to learn that rangers are like this too. We considered it ingenuity. @carnage4life like many code developers. the broken clock is right twice a day, but the taped-on clock is never correct.  You can't remove the broken one because only that clock has the mounting plate that screws into the ceiling. If we just delete the broken clock, the working clock falls down. Also there is a test detects that we have clock support, by detecting the presence of the screws in the ceiling. We can't change it because we have to run in an identical building in which the same clock is still working and doesn't have anything taped to it.  @carnage4life #crowdcaption: a black clock bolted to the roof of a school or office building. The clock has another smaller black clock taped to it with blue masking tape in a grid pattern. @carnage4life  @carnage4life PR feedback: “I’m not going to hold up merging this right now, but make sure to file a ticket so that we fix this after the current mikestone” (PR was merged 3 years ago) NOT true, as in the "every" part. Just yesterday I "saw" a codebase where the other clock was screwed and hammered on to the extend that both clocks were so obviously broken... Had no smart ass come along to draw some numbers around it, it wouldn't even be useful. But now, when sun is shining, time is right (ish) 🤡 @carnage4life that's amazing! Another good metaphor would be a second mechanism rotating the numbers because the hands in the original clock are running too fast or too slow.  @carnage4life This is like being forced back to the office and still using Teams to meet with the coworker sitting beside you 🤦♂️  @carnage4life Some code I've seen –and worse, *read*– that makes some Fortune 500 companies their bread and butter is more like a five feet tall stack of such clocks piled up like pancakes.  @carnage4life Those workarounds are often lasting longer than the initial solution. :D  @carnage4life En the more "enterprise-y", the more layers,and the more brokeness.  Looks to me like the boss or manager went and bought another boat with the discretionary fund again. @carnage4life And along comes a business administrator and orders you to take the taped clock off. Don't you know the clock underneath goes right twice a day? The taped one only once. Can't have that. @carnage4life The ceiling clock is very thick so looks as though it is double faced, which I have seen in very large rooms. So this could be a bodge where the original clock works from one viewpoint but requires a hack from another viewpoint. |
@carnage4life all that's missing is the post it note telling you to talk to someone who left 10 years ago about how to change the batteries in the working clock.