While logging a boatload of bugs on the code my junior dev checked in, I added a couple of items to our product backlog.

Instead of fixing his bugs, junior dev started pulling things from the backlog. I found this out when he messaged me about the requested search results sorting.

His message was:
"hey, the sorting is going to be harder than I thought. Angular 2 dropped native support of filters. But I did find an MIT licensed npm package that should let me add sorting functionality to our JSON data objects. "

Um... You know you can sort using plain JavaScript, right?

BTW, junior dev has more than 3 years of professional experience in addition to a degree.

My boss keeps telling us that our dev team should be building using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow.

I'm debugging someone else's 10 year old legacy .asp web application (shoot me now), and I'm trying to find the most recent records in a database table.

Why is the most recent record from September of last year?

Oh.

Because they're storing the datetime value as varchar (40).

Good thing they were smart enough not to waste disk space by using varchar (255)!

The first fortune I've read in years... seems appropriate.

"If you don't program yourself, life will program you."

Good thing i do program, myself!

Customer asks us to add an exception report to a file upload process, to show which users failed to be added, and why.

File has 4 fields per record: id, first name, last name, and email.

Customer: "some of these records aren't uploading, and when I look at the new report, it says 'email required' for those users. I don't understand. Does that mean they can't be uploaded without an email?"

I'm sure this has probably been posted before, but it never fails to drive me nuts, and customers never stop doing it, so:

Why do end users think "it's broken" is all they have to put into the support ticket?

It's a web app, not a goddamn pretzel.

If the turn signal on your car stops working, do you drop your car off at the mechanic, hand them the keys, and say "its broken, fix it!"?

While I'm on the topic, "I tried to do {x} and it gave an error" is better than "its broken", but still: why do you think what the actual error says would be completely irrelevant, especially when we put in the effort to give you relatively meaningful error messages?

I mean, is "there was a problem sending the email" so utterly gibberish to you that it is indistinguishable from "error: 0x000351e6"?

If so, I'm sorry, but you're too stupid to use a goddamn computer!

We want a web site.

We're going to want lots of interactive content, which we'll define later.

You need to develop the whole thing in 2 weeks.

We'll give you all the details after you tell us exactly how much it will cost.

One of my teammates signed up for a day-long session on Angular 2, since he's been doing a lot with Angular 1 and wants to transition to the new version.

The instructor spent the first half of the day going through the w3schools tutorial on Angular 1, because "understanding the basics of Angular 1 will help understand Angular 2".

Btw, this was a paid workshop session.

Follow up on a previous rant:

I visited a customer to talk about the reporting discrepancy between two applications.

It turns out the applications were custom built by outsourced developers from Russia, that communicate with each other through a byzantine (and completely undocumented) series of web services, excel import/export tasks, and a customized SSRS environment.

These are spread across at least half a dozen servers, some on-premise and some cloud based, there are at least 3 SQL servers (2 running 2005, one running 2000), a 10 year old local install of TFS (which no one knows a username/password for), and who-knows-what-else.

They laid off their entire IT team years ago, and they have no backups.

I'm not certain anyone there even understands what the software is supposed to be doing beyond the most general terms.

No one knows if they even have source code.

Biggest case of "nope!" I've encountered in more than 20 years of IT experience.

Pair programming seemed awesome, until I started mentoring the guy who doesn't believe in holding farts.

I mean, I know everyone needs some relief now and then, but when I'm leaning over your shoulder to point out a bug in your code?

Fuck you, dude. You're on your own

Boss:

Here's an email from a customer who has a report that isn't showing the right data.

It pulls from one application that we've never heard of, and communicates with another application that we've never heard of.

The customer fired their IT team years ago, and can't get in touch with them anymore.

You're a programmer, so we're giving you access to their network so you can fix it.

Please hurry.

Great.

My mother got a "smarter than her phone" (her words).

Now she's realized she can text me inchorent questions about their home network at all hours.

At a previous job, I worked with a graphic designer who knew it all.

The first design he gave me, all font sizes were in points, and way too big.

I asked for them in pixels.

He said points and pixels are exactly the same.

I explained that they were not, when you're using a browser. He got visibly angry, and stormed out of the office to cool down.

When he came back, I sent him a link explaining the difference between points and pixels for digital media.

He sent me pixel sizes.

Next project, same exact thing happens, complete with him angrily storming out of the room.

By the third project, I just started picking my own font sizes, and ignored his point specs.

So my boss just announced that our department's focus should switch from C# and AngularJS to Sharepoint and MS Power Apps.

This is why you don't hire your son's friend to build your company's website. From a live (new) customer site that needs to be rewritten:

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