Inferiority Duplex

It really bugs me when someone who I feel is an inferior developer, and I don't mean inferior to me specifically, but inferior to every person who I have ever worked with, is given a task which involves an enhancement to something that I originally built.

It always means three things, I am going to be asked a lot of questions which I will either have to ignore or waste valuable energy coming up with the vaguest answers possible (who am I kidding...I love doing that), I will get blamed for whatever P.O.S. gets launched into production because I birthed that baby and there's no such thing as giving it up for adoption (translation: I was the original developer attached to the project and nobody will ever forget that until I die or sample the green grass on the other side of the fence (translation: get a new job)), and finally, I will have to fix it at some point in the future, a task which I am doing right now on something else.

Yip Yip

My two illustrious coworkers, Thing 1 and Thing 2, will sometimes discuss problems they are having at Thing 1's desk which just happens to be right behind mine. For months I've been trying to figure out who or what they remind me of when they are jabbering away. Finally, today, I had an epiphany or maybe it was a moment of clarity brought on by the injury sustained to my nads whilst bike riding. Either way, I got it.

Know .NET?

If you do then you will definitely appreciate this, if not then move along. There's nothing to see here.

This was in Thing 2's codebehind, I was asked if it was correct:

If Session("RoleID") = 4 Then
     <TR><TD colSpan=5><div id="flashparent">
     <DIV id="flashcontent"><SPAN>Please make sure that you have the latest 
     version of your browsers Flash player.</SPAN></DIV></div>
     </TD></TR>
End If

(""" & ohComeOn & """)

Jeez. I just spent 10 minutes watching someone mangle string concatenation. I actually felt bad…

Ampersand. Ampersand. Right there. Ampersand. Double quote. Two double quotes. Ampersand. Parenthese. You didn’t close your parenthese. That double quote escapes the other one. Escapes. Ampersand. Double quote. Two double quotes.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[breathe]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Stankmouth

Thing 2 consistently has some of the worst breath I've ever had to deal with in the workplace. You ever know a guy in high school who would burp with his mouth closed and then blow a sulfurous cloud of burp at you? Well, Thing 2 does this. Not maliciously or with intent to cause harm, I know. It's just a lack o'social skill. While I can forgive a deficiency in propriety to a certain extent and accept the fact that Thing 2's intentions are not to purposely burn the hair off my face with each breath, it still does not make giving a self-described "Web Developer" tutorials on HTML tables any more palatable.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Two of my recently hired coworkers I am dubbing Thing 1 and Thing 2. I will say nothing about their gender, orientation, religion or creed, just that as web developers they leave a lot to be desired. Every day, at least once, a question is asked that boggles my mind with its stupidity. These are my peers complete with five page resumes and computer science degrees and they cannot solve basic problems by themselves.

Somebody was lying.

These two are a gold mine of blog content and I intend to start mining.

An IM between me and Thing 1. Names have been blurred to protect he innocent. I am the red blur.