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Someone I used to work with once left a alert('W.A.N.K') in the codebase. This was in a fairly rarely occurring branch of code and made it all the way to produc

Someone I used to work with once left a alert('W.A.N.K') in the codebase. This was in a fairly rarely occurring branch of code and made it all the way to production. I've taken that as a warning and never write anything I wouldn't be happy for a customer to see in logs, test-data, comments (although handfuls of sarcasm are still acceptable) or debugging code.

mootothemax 13y ago
I've taken that as a warning and never write anything I wouldn't be happy for a customer to see in logs, test-data, comments (although handfuls of sarcasm are still acceptable) or debugging code. Very good advice! I once worked with someone who had the unfortunate habit of naming debugging log files "shit". After a server migration, a couple of paths had been incorrectly set, leading to the client complaining about a now-memorable error: "Cannot open: shit". Whoops
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > "Cannot open: shit". I'm adopting this error message for I/O from now on.
venomsnake 13y ago
I was officially forbidden in my old job to write error messages at 3AM. Code was ok. But text - not after а high ranking client saw an error message. Its good that during the meetings with him we both were (in)appropriately vulgar and offensive so only my manager was shocked.
philbarr 13y ago
I worked on some software that automatically generated documentation for engineers. During testing someone put "hello fuckers" in the code so that he could easily see when it came out the other end. Naturally that code was left in and went into production, and the customer rings up to complain they'd just printed out a 2000 page manual with "hello fuckers" at the end of every line. I've never seen a manager look so furious, but we were all paid so little we just laughed.
- gcb0 13y ago
  > but we were all paid so little we just laughed. that summarizes the whole thread.
tripzilch 13y ago
This. I didn't even need to learn this the hard way, just had to read back some of my earliest teenage code (obviously not for any type of "production" setting) and hear enough of these scary stories to decide once and for all, it's really not that hard or big of a deal to be professional about these kinds of things. Same goes for code comments. Unless it's a really, really good joke that won't offend if it happens to show up anywhere, or over your shoulder.

mootothemax 13y ago

I've taken that as a warning and never write anything I wouldn't be happy for a customer to see in logs, test-data, comments (although handfuls of sarcasm are still acceptable) or debugging code. Very good advice! I once worked with someone who had the unfortunate habit of naming debugging log files "shit". After a server migration, a couple of paths had been incorrectly set, leading to the client complaining about a now-memorable error: "Cannot open: shit". Whoops

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> "Cannot open: shit". I'm adopting this error message for I/O from now on.

venomsnake 13y ago

I was officially forbidden in my old job to write error messages at 3AM. Code was ok. But text - not after а high ranking client saw an error message. Its good that during the meetings with him we both were (in)appropriately vulgar and offensive so only my manager was shocked.

philbarr 13y ago

I worked on some software that automatically generated documentation for engineers. During testing someone put "hello fuckers" in the code so that he could easily see when it came out the other end. Naturally that code was left in and went into production, and the customer rings up to complain they'd just printed out a 2000 page manual with "hello fuckers" at the end of every line. I've never seen a manager look so furious, but we were all paid so little we just laughed.

gcb0 13y ago
> but we were all paid so little we just laughed. that summarizes the whole thread.

tripzilch 13y ago

This. I didn't even need to learn this the hard way, just had to read back some of my earliest teenage code (obviously not for any type of "production" setting) and hear enough of these scary stories to decide once and for all, it's really not that hard or big of a deal to be professional about these kinds of things. Same goes for code comments. Unless it's a really, really good joke that won't offend if it happens to show up anywhere, or over your shoulder.