6 ms·

Before the launch of the XBOX 360, the company I worked for was one of their suppliers, and without going into enough detail to make me identifiable, the manage

Before the launch of the XBOX 360, the company I worked for was one of their suppliers, and without going into enough detail to make me identifiable, the management of our two companies had arrived at sort of a stalemate: We didn't want to tell them exactly how our algorithms worked, and they didn't want to tell us exactly what they were doing with them-- think of it like a data compressor where, we don't want them to know the exact compression algo, and they don't want us to have their data. So, somehow, It is arrived at that a website will be created that encodes MS's proprietary data, but doesn't store it, but also our algorithm is implemented server side, so there's no leakage of proprietary stuff. A month later, the app is done and tested and I'm decoding data from the website on real hardware. I move on to the next project. Three years later, the Xbox 360 is out, I decide I'm tired of filling out reimbursement forms for Heroku and its got to be a security risk with no updates in 3 years... so I take a look at the apps stats to see if its feasible to shut it down--exactly zero users. Nobody ever attempted to use it, not even once. Ironically and unknown to me, the source code had been lost in a freak accident and when I deleted the Heroku account that was the only copy of the source left. Even worse, a year later someone claimed to have a use for the app and where was it please? And I had to explain we no longer had the source. I remember a very long e-mail about how irresponsible we were.

arthurcolle 5y ago
Cool story thanks for sharing - so how did they get around the issue for three years without the app?
- oceanghost 5y ago
  Thank you! If they were that serious about security-- the chips we made also implemented this same compression algorithm. It would have been trivial to hook one up to an arduino and feed it the data you wanted to encode. I assume someone realized this, or they never really had a need to encode their own data (we provided a extensive library of encoded data). I strenuously disagreed with the business justification for keeping all this stuff secret. But it was my job to respect those decisions. It was a lot of fun writing the (rails) app itself.
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    back when turbolinks were hot shit :D
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The worst programming experience of my life related to lost source code. I was working for a place that had a service running from a Java app that was customized for each customer, about 200 copies of roughly the same app. There was source control at some point, and when a new customer was being on boarded they’d just make the customizations they required, compile the app, and deploy it. By the time I worked there (years later), all source code had been lost, and I was tasked with creating a CI/CD system that included managing these apps (they’d now decided they needed to be maintained). For each one I had to decompile the whole thing, rewrite the code into a human readable format, redeploy and test it. They were filled with all sorts of horrible anti-patterns too, like hard coded file paths, and some of them were only used once a year (but for an absolutely business critical process). About half way through we had a major data center failure that meant we had to do a failover, which of course broke most of these apps with all their hard coded configuration. So instead of having months to work through all of this garbage, I was asked to get them all working immediately. I got them all working in 3 days, which I thought was quite a monumental accomplishment. But my CEO was very dissatisfied that it took so long. I quit a couple weeks later, and still almost regret putting so much effort in to saving them. A friend of mine still works there and apparently all of these applications are in exactly the same state as I left them.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  That's brutal. You were right to quit. There's a certain personality type that will never appreciate or reward hard work.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    Yeah I was definitely right to quit, my career has been pretty great since then. But I did get a lot out of the few years I worked there, even though a lot of it sucked. It was my first proper job and they’d basically let me work on anything I wanted to, even though I was incredibly green and was just figuring it all out as I went. I definitely fit a lot more experience and learning into those years than you’d reasonably expect a person to. I think a lot of my success today came from turning their incompetence into opportunities.
oceanghost 5y ago
I can't edit my post anymore-- before someone realizes my mistake, it was the XBox One, not the 360. Rails barely existed at the time of the XBox 360 development.
- danbolt 5y ago
  Thanks for updating! I was a little confused since Heroku wasn’t around before the 2005 launch of the Xbox 360, but figured it was shorthand for something else. Given the Xbox One SOC had a lot more security in mind, I could see how Microsoft was more cautious about these things. [1] [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo&feature=emb_title
  - oceanghost 5y ago
    Just a lapse of memory and thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Another commenter mentioned turbolinks and I was like "whoooaaaa yes I used that and this timeline doesn't line up at all." This lead to a long internal discussion about when exactly did I play Bioshock and does that line up with my memories :-) I guess I don't mind talking about it so much-- we made a sub $1 component that could compress certain specific waveforms and play them back-- the trick was that they were highly structured, so the compressed data basically just parameterized the silicon in what might be considered to be essentially an assembly instruction-- frequency, carrier wave, data to be sent, etc. The chip then would generate the signal and you could shove it out the electromagnetic radiator of choice with a little amplification a diode and couple of resistors. The problem with these signals was they required very precise timing-- they weren't super complex, but not something a general CPU could handle-- the variability in the timing was too high. Now yes, you could use a general purpose DAC and an amp and generate the signals, but we sold you a turnkey thing-- with 10 lines of code you could be transmitting signals and the whole thing only use a few kb of ram. It wasn't super high tech, but our value add was high. I'd say most of the major electronics companies used our chips at one time or another.
    - ducktective 5y ago

arthurcolle 5y ago

Cool story thanks for sharing - so how did they get around the issue for three years without the app?

oceanghost 5y ago
Thank you! If they were that serious about security-- the chips we made also implemented this same compression algorithm. It would have been trivial to hook one up to an arduino and feed it the data you wanted to encode. I assume someone realized this, or they never really had a need to encode their own data (we provided a extensive library of encoded data). I strenuously disagreed with the business justification for keeping all this stuff secret. But it was my job to respect those decisions. It was a lot of fun writing the (rails) app itself.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  back when turbolinks were hot shit :D

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The worst programming experience of my life related to lost source code. I was working for a place that had a service running from a Java app that was customized for each customer, about 200 copies of roughly the same app. There was source control at some point, and when a new customer was being on boarded they’d just make the customizations they required, compile the app, and deploy it. By the time I worked there (years later), all source code had been lost, and I was tasked with creating a CI/CD system that included managing these apps (they’d now decided they needed to be maintained). For each one I had to decompile the whole thing, rewrite the code into a human readable format, redeploy and test it. They were filled with all sorts of horrible anti-patterns too, like hard coded file paths, and some of them were only used once a year (but for an absolutely business critical process). About half way through we had a major data center failure that meant we had to do a failover, which of course broke most of these apps with all their hard coded configuration. So instead of having months to work through all of this garbage, I was asked to get them all working immediately. I got them all working in 3 days, which I thought was quite a monumental accomplishment. But my CEO was very dissatisfied that it took so long. I quit a couple weeks later, and still almost regret putting so much effort in to saving them. A friend of mine still works there and apparently all of these applications are in exactly the same state as I left them.

oceanghost 5y ago
That's brutal. You were right to quit. There's a certain personality type that will never appreciate or reward hard work.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  Yeah I was definitely right to quit, my career has been pretty great since then. But I did get a lot out of the few years I worked there, even though a lot of it sucked. It was my first proper job and they’d basically let me work on anything I wanted to, even though I was incredibly green and was just figuring it all out as I went. I definitely fit a lot more experience and learning into those years than you’d reasonably expect a person to. I think a lot of my success today came from turning their incompetence into opportunities.

oceanghost 5y ago

I can't edit my post anymore-- before someone realizes my mistake, it was the XBox One, not the 360. Rails barely existed at the time of the XBox 360 development.

danbolt 5y ago
Thanks for updating! I was a little confused since Heroku wasn’t around before the 2005 launch of the Xbox 360, but figured it was shorthand for something else. Given the Xbox One SOC had a lot more security in mind, I could see how Microsoft was more cautious about these things. [1] [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo&feature=emb_title
- oceanghost 5y ago
  Just a lapse of memory and thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Another commenter mentioned turbolinks and I was like "whoooaaaa yes I used that and this timeline doesn't line up at all." This lead to a long internal discussion about when exactly did I play Bioshock and does that line up with my memories :-) I guess I don't mind talking about it so much-- we made a sub $1 component that could compress certain specific waveforms and play them back-- the trick was that they were highly structured, so the compressed data basically just parameterized the silicon in what might be considered to be essentially an assembly instruction-- frequency, carrier wave, data to be sent, etc. The chip then would generate the signal and you could shove it out the electromagnetic radiator of choice with a little amplification a diode and couple of resistors. The problem with these signals was they required very precise timing-- they weren't super complex, but not something a general CPU could handle-- the variability in the timing was too high. Now yes, you could use a general purpose DAC and an amp and generate the signals, but we sold you a turnkey thing-- with 10 lines of code you could be transmitting signals and the whole thing only use a few kb of ram. It wasn't super high tech, but our value add was high. I'd say most of the major electronics companies used our chips at one time or another.
  - ducktective 5y ago