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While this captcha is truly a display of ignorance I could imagine that "corporate developers" at D&B aren't web developers. All I am saying is that if you forc

While this captcha is truly a display of ignorance I could imagine that "corporate developers" at D&B aren't web developers. All I am saying is that if you force me to write enterprise software (which I have zero experience with) on a tight schedule I'm probably going to make a stupid mistake or two even though I hope I am not of "lower quality". I imagine someone in management refused to hire web devs because "we've already got developers inhouse". Just a wild guess though.

rytis 14y ago
What is this thing that people call "enterprise software"?
- Semaphor 14y ago
  According to the internet it's badly written, extremely slow and very expensive software that will only get replaced after 20-50 years of use.
  - LeeHunter 14y ago
    On the bright side, most enterprise software projects never actually get put into production.
  - thirsteh 14y ago
    That's actually fairly accurate.
  - dmix 14y ago
    Also written by a massive team with factory-like division of responsibilities.
  - mzahir 14y ago
    Haha, sadly the vast majority doesn't last past 6 years due to EOL on various components and inflexibility to changing business requirements. A more common need is the ability to have a scapegoat / fall-guy for failures of projects that have unrealistic/arbitary requirements and/or deadlines set by an upper management that is no longer in touch with technology.
  - tragomaskhalos 14y ago
    If it's impossible to make the software elegant because it has to incorporate a boatload of idiotic and mutually inconsistent "business rules", then it's enterprise !
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    Less than half of it I've seen is badly written. The bigger problem is enterprise software is all about connecting systems together. That leads to a morass of interdependencies that are nearly impossible to untangle. Worse, there is not a lot of communication between IT and the business, so the business tends to tell IT how to accomplish a task instead of telling it what it wants to accomplish. As a result, solutions tend to be short-sighted. Extremely slow is a function of the interdependencies and the CYA (nobody gets fired for buying IBM). And the unwillingness to replace is because nobody actually knows everything the current system does, much less how it does it. Projects that have 10+ year lifespans and touch every aspect of the business are incredibly scary to touch. So, at some degree of distance, the internets get. the definition mostly correct, but the reason it has chosen (eg all enterprise developers are stupid) is as simplistic as every other conclusion the internets have come to. While there are many people writing code in IT dev shops who really should be analysts, there are also a lot of smart people working in environments constrained like nothing your average startup developer has ever seen. I've been there, and the only way I'm going back is if it's the only way to keep a roof on my kids' heads. I'll go homeless myself first! :)
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  It is exactly the type of software you'd expect to be developed by huge, lumbering, beauracratic corporations. Several years ago when I was doing contract enterprise development work for various Fortune companies, EJB was all the rage in the Enterprise Java space. I started to feel a little rate pressure, so figured I'd better at least pick up a book and get up to speed. About 3 chapters into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was (especially entity beans). I mean, it was almost like the perfect anti-pattern. Anyway, that didn't stop massive numbers of enterprises from jumping in head first, because it was sold as "the way" to do enterprise development. The tooling and app servers were insanely expensive too. But many IT managers didn't want to take any chances on not going the standard route. Anyway, that about sums up enterprise software. Even for groups not into EJB specifically, the culture and thinking are the same. There is this meme that enterprise software must be more robust or scalable, etc., but the funny part is that consumer facing Web apps must typically be far more robust and dynamically scalable to serve much larger user bases. Enterprise software is typically run in a more tightly controlled environment too (specified required browser and OS, Intranet-based, etc.). Yet, just labeling something "Enterprise" and targeting it as such, seems to command a premium.
krapp 14y ago
It doesn't matter though. This isn't just a 'stupid mistake' made by a dev rushed for time, this is literally 'not a captcha.' It's not. Not even a poorly designed and incompetently executed captcha... it just isn't even one at all. It doesn't take long to find out that best practices exist for captchas, what they are, what the typical vulnerabilities are, and then pick one from the top shelf of existing solutions once you realize captchas are hard to do properly and you're probably not being paid what it's worth to roll your own.
- laurent123456 14y ago
  The funny thing is that the dev is apparently competent enough to make it look like a captcha, yet not enough to know what the purpose of a captcha is. Actually, even if it was real captcha, a computer could still easily guess the answer because the random parts are outside the answer text.
  - krapp 14y ago
    Yeah the regular grid and text would probably make ocr even easier if it were necessary. It wouldn't surprise me if they just used uppercase letters, too. Maybe they assumed that bots would interpret the page the way a human being would, when they're not looking at the source code? Though my money's on someone just not caring.
    - aoloe 14y ago
      You know, it could have been gone this way: Manager: Make me a captcha. Dev: We don't really need one, all we need is a simple way to avoid dumb automatic submits. M: Use a simple one, then. ... a few minutes later... D: Here it is, the user just has to copy over those four letters. M: Hey this is not a captcha. It does not look like a captcha. ... a few minutes later... D: Here it is, now it looks like a captcha. On the other side, it could be very true that if you don't put some annoyances behind it, "normal" people don't recognize it as a captcha... And most of the time (on most custom low traffic sites...) you don't really need much more that a static "write the result of 2+2". I've been there, I've already done it :-)

rytis 14y ago

What is this thing that people call "enterprise software"?

Semaphor 14y ago
According to the internet it's badly written, extremely slow and very expensive software that will only get replaced after 20-50 years of use.
- LeeHunter 14y ago
  On the bright side, most enterprise software projects never actually get put into production.
- thirsteh 14y ago
  That's actually fairly accurate.
- dmix 14y ago
  Also written by a massive team with factory-like division of responsibilities.
- mzahir 14y ago
  Haha, sadly the vast majority doesn't last past 6 years due to EOL on various components and inflexibility to changing business requirements. A more common need is the ability to have a scapegoat / fall-guy for failures of projects that have unrealistic/arbitary requirements and/or deadlines set by an upper management that is no longer in touch with technology.
- tragomaskhalos 14y ago
  If it's impossible to make the software elegant because it has to incorporate a boatload of idiotic and mutually inconsistent "business rules", then it's enterprise !
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Less than half of it I've seen is badly written. The bigger problem is enterprise software is all about connecting systems together. That leads to a morass of interdependencies that are nearly impossible to untangle. Worse, there is not a lot of communication between IT and the business, so the business tends to tell IT how to accomplish a task instead of telling it what it wants to accomplish. As a result, solutions tend to be short-sighted. Extremely slow is a function of the interdependencies and the CYA (nobody gets fired for buying IBM). And the unwillingness to replace is because nobody actually knows everything the current system does, much less how it does it. Projects that have 10+ year lifespans and touch every aspect of the business are incredibly scary to touch. So, at some degree of distance, the internets get. the definition mostly correct, but the reason it has chosen (eg all enterprise developers are stupid) is as simplistic as every other conclusion the internets have come to. While there are many people writing code in IT dev shops who really should be analysts, there are also a lot of smart people working in environments constrained like nothing your average startup developer has ever seen. I've been there, and the only way I'm going back is if it's the only way to keep a roof on my kids' heads. I'll go homeless myself first! :)
unclebucknasty 14y ago
It is exactly the type of software you'd expect to be developed by huge, lumbering, beauracratic corporations. Several years ago when I was doing contract enterprise development work for various Fortune companies, EJB was all the rage in the Enterprise Java space. I started to feel a little rate pressure, so figured I'd better at least pick up a book and get up to speed. About 3 chapters into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was (especially entity beans). I mean, it was almost like the perfect anti-pattern. Anyway, that didn't stop massive numbers of enterprises from jumping in head first, because it was sold as "the way" to do enterprise development. The tooling and app servers were insanely expensive too. But many IT managers didn't want to take any chances on not going the standard route. Anyway, that about sums up enterprise software. Even for groups not into EJB specifically, the culture and thinking are the same. There is this meme that enterprise software must be more robust or scalable, etc., but the funny part is that consumer facing Web apps must typically be far more robust and dynamically scalable to serve much larger user bases. Enterprise software is typically run in a more tightly controlled environment too (specified required browser and OS, Intranet-based, etc.). Yet, just labeling something "Enterprise" and targeting it as such, seems to command a premium.

krapp 14y ago

It doesn't matter though. This isn't just a 'stupid mistake' made by a dev rushed for time, this is literally 'not a captcha.' It's not. Not even a poorly designed and incompetently executed captcha... it just isn't even one at all. It doesn't take long to find out that best practices exist for captchas, what they are, what the typical vulnerabilities are, and then pick one from the top shelf of existing solutions once you realize captchas are hard to do properly and you're probably not being paid what it's worth to roll your own.

laurent123456 14y ago
The funny thing is that the dev is apparently competent enough to make it look like a captcha, yet not enough to know what the purpose of a captcha is. Actually, even if it was real captcha, a computer could still easily guess the answer because the random parts are outside the answer text.
- krapp 14y ago
  Yeah the regular grid and text would probably make ocr even easier if it were necessary. It wouldn't surprise me if they just used uppercase letters, too. Maybe they assumed that bots would interpret the page the way a human being would, when they're not looking at the source code? Though my money's on someone just not caring.
  - aoloe 14y ago
    You know, it could have been gone this way: Manager: Make me a captcha. Dev: We don't really need one, all we need is a simple way to avoid dumb automatic submits. M: Use a simple one, then. ... a few minutes later... D: Here it is, the user just has to copy over those four letters. M: Hey this is not a captcha. It does not look like a captcha. ... a few minutes later... D: Here it is, now it looks like a captcha. On the other side, it could be very true that if you don't put some annoyances behind it, "normal" people don't recognize it as a captcha... And most of the time (on most custom low traffic sites...) you don't really need much more that a static "write the result of 2+2". I've been there, I've already done it :-)