5 ms·

This reminds me of a comment I read a long time ago about somebody's experience working for a company that had a branch in Japan. They would demand that some sp

This reminds me of a comment I read a long time ago about somebody's experience working for a company that had a branch in Japan. They would demand that some spreadsheets be sent as a fax, and then some employee would be tasked with re-typing all that information back into a spreadsheet later on.

deleted 5y ago
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SllX 5y ago
Someone once told me this is how they share source code between departments at some software shops in Japan. I still refuse to believe this is true.
- mushyhammer 5y ago
  I bet code reviews with markers are fun though.
  - potatochup 5y ago
    I've done code reviews on paper, although mostly when I want to understand something, not for review purposes.
    - someweirdperson 5y ago
      I used to carry a red pen at all times for that purpose. Very useful when people had some hardcopy. That use-case died with the invention of virus-defined wfh.
    - rovr138 5y ago
      I've printed long, MESSY, code, huge functions, to review and cleanup. I loved working with engineers and using their plotter for that. Had a ton of space to actually write things out and draw connections.
- creakingstairs 5y ago
  Well it’s not source code but my wife’s work print whatever they’ve worked on and it goes around the team while they make change requests one at a time using pen. Once they are happy they stamp it. So I could definitely see people printing source code…
duxup 5y ago
I once had a cube next to mine. It was the “Japan Cube”, all it had was a printer and a fax machine. It was only ever used for faxes to and from Japan. Eventually it was decorated with Japanese art and etc.
iancmceachern 5y ago
I once worked at a job where one of the owners of the company, when asked to send a pdf copy of a document, would print out the document on the shared office copier/printer, then scan it back in using the same copier/printer and have it email him the pdf. Every single time he ever made a pdf of any file, even hundreds of pages, he would do this way.
- geoffeg 5y ago
  At a job many, many years ago I asked a developer on a different team (across town) to email me an XML file I needed for a feature I was working on. After a few hours of not getting anything I checked with him and he said the file was too large and the email server wasn't allowing him to send it to me. It was a few hundred kilobytes, it shouldn't have been a problem but I didn't care too much, I just wanted the file so I asked him to zip it up to reduce the size. A few minutes later he said the email server was still rejecting it, even as a zip file. Getting frustrated, I grabbed my laptop and drove to the other office. He showed me the XML file... which was a Word document with screenshots of the XML document opened in an editor. Exasperated, I asked him why he couldn't just send me the raw XML file instead of putting screenshots in a Word document. Turns out the document was on another system he had to remote into (with Citrix, I think? I don't remember what was used back then) and he wasn't "allowed" to copy files off that machine.
- tzs 5y ago
  On the plus side he didn't have to worry about the documents he send inadvertently containing damaging, incriminating, or embarrassing metadata.
- blahgeek 5y ago
  There's still plenty of places that specifically require a scanned copy of documents, instead of the original digital one. The printing and scanning process essentially makes it blurry and that's exactly what they want. I wonder if there's any tool that can achieve the same effect.
  - someweirdperson 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SllX 5y ago

Someone once told me this is how they share source code between departments at some software shops in Japan. I still refuse to believe this is true.

mushyhammer 5y ago
I bet code reviews with markers are fun though.
- potatochup 5y ago
  I've done code reviews on paper, although mostly when I want to understand something, not for review purposes.
  - someweirdperson 5y ago
    I used to carry a red pen at all times for that purpose. Very useful when people had some hardcopy. That use-case died with the invention of virus-defined wfh.
  - rovr138 5y ago
    I've printed long, MESSY, code, huge functions, to review and cleanup. I loved working with engineers and using their plotter for that. Had a ton of space to actually write things out and draw connections.
creakingstairs 5y ago
Well it’s not source code but my wife’s work print whatever they’ve worked on and it goes around the team while they make change requests one at a time using pen. Once they are happy they stamp it. So I could definitely see people printing source code…

duxup 5y ago

I once had a cube next to mine. It was the “Japan Cube”, all it had was a printer and a fax machine. It was only ever used for faxes to and from Japan. Eventually it was decorated with Japanese art and etc.

iancmceachern 5y ago

I once worked at a job where one of the owners of the company, when asked to send a pdf copy of a document, would print out the document on the shared office copier/printer, then scan it back in using the same copier/printer and have it email him the pdf. Every single time he ever made a pdf of any file, even hundreds of pages, he would do this way.

geoffeg 5y ago
At a job many, many years ago I asked a developer on a different team (across town) to email me an XML file I needed for a feature I was working on. After a few hours of not getting anything I checked with him and he said the file was too large and the email server wasn't allowing him to send it to me. It was a few hundred kilobytes, it shouldn't have been a problem but I didn't care too much, I just wanted the file so I asked him to zip it up to reduce the size. A few minutes later he said the email server was still rejecting it, even as a zip file. Getting frustrated, I grabbed my laptop and drove to the other office. He showed me the XML file... which was a Word document with screenshots of the XML document opened in an editor. Exasperated, I asked him why he couldn't just send me the raw XML file instead of putting screenshots in a Word document. Turns out the document was on another system he had to remote into (with Citrix, I think? I don't remember what was used back then) and he wasn't "allowed" to copy files off that machine.
tzs 5y ago
On the plus side he didn't have to worry about the documents he send inadvertently containing damaging, incriminating, or embarrassing metadata.
blahgeek 5y ago
There's still plenty of places that specifically require a scanned copy of documents, instead of the original digital one. The printing and scanning process essentially makes it blurry and that's exactly what they want. I wonder if there's any tool that can achieve the same effect.
- someweirdperson 5y ago