Program page 42 doesn't work.

[Antares]

Back in my college days I worked as a consultant in the university computer lab. Mostly this entailed helping people with simple things and giving them their printouts. Most times, things were pretty simple.

And then there was the Little Greek Dude (LGD) as we called him. English was not his native language and and he was hard to understand. It didn't help htat he was about as smart as moss.

To log in you typed in your account which would be your class (CSC138) followed by your six digit student number. This was posted between every monitor. This was a time before we had PCs. These were simple monitors and keyboards connected to the VAX and Unix systems.

Day after day, the LGD couldn't figure out how to log in. In desperation, my roommate wrote him a step by step guide on how to log in including exactly what to enter including his username and password. This worked great until the day the paper was lost. He came back because he couldn't log in. He couldn't remember his password. When we went to reset his password he was overheard to say that he didn't understand. He always used his first name as the password. Apparently he'd forgotten his first name.


But the best LGD story came from the time I was working the output room handing out student's printouts. There were only two of us. Myself, who wasn't supposed to leave the output room and my roommate who was working in the front part of the lab.

I'm sitting there, minding my own business, probably playing a MUD when the LGD shows up with his textbook in hand. He proclaims that the program on page 42 doesn't work.

I look at the book. Its a short program, perhaps 15 lines of code. It is sample code that the students are supposed to type in exactly as it appears so they can see what a properly working program does. It looks pretty straight forward so I ask what's wrong. This is not his first programming class.

He tells me it doesn't work.

Why?

It doesn't work.

Okay...what seems to be the problem?

It doesn't work.

We go around and around with me trying to get some nugget of useful information from him. Is it compiling okay? Does he get an error when trying to run it.

He keeps saying that, "Program page 42 doesn't work."

After 10 minutes of trying to understand what his problem is it finally dawns on me what is going on.

He is typing in "run program page 42" into the command line and getting an error. Trying to contain my laughter, I try to explain that he can't just type that in. He has type the program in as it appears in the book, compile it and run it. He stares at me as if I've grown a 2nd head. Which it may have looked like as I think my brain just about exploded.

I try a different tact explaining that if he typed in "run program page 42" the computer would have no idea what book it was supposed to be referencing. Again, he looks like I've got some abnormal growth on my person. After two or three minutes of this he finally wanders away toward the front with a confused look on his face.

My guess that he is going to talk to my roommate is confirmed a short time later when he came back with a look of exasperation on his face asking, "Why did you send him to me."

I don't know what happened to him. I can't imagine he ever finished his Computer Science degree.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I don't know what happened to him. I can't imagine he ever finished his Computer Science degree.

Maybe he did. Maybe he's the one who inflicted VISTA upon us.

[dalesys]

... my roommate ... came back with a look of exasperation on his face asking, "Why did you send him to me?"

True suffering must be shared to be properly enjoyed.

[Antares]

Even today if I bring this up he gets the same look on his face.

[Draper Mel]

Was this the University of Illinois? Because he must have been the guy who invented Banner, only the world's worst university administrative software ever.

It was developed at U of I, but not actually implemented there until 2004, my last year of grad school. Our costume director had dealt with it at her previous position at Hope College, and warned us of its incredible suckitude. Unnecessarily complicated, slow, and inflexible is mostly what I remember.

[Antares]

Eastern Michigan University...early-mid 90s.

[Pedersen]

I've known some CompSci majors like that. Was in a group with one of them once, even, and made my head want to explode.

<compsci talk>This guy had a Master's in CompSci, and couldn't understand the concept of a linked list. Never mind the implementation, he couldn't do the concept.</compsci>

We can only hope that people like LGD never finish their degree. Sadly, at least some of them do.

[It's me]

A, err, `few`years I ran into pretty much the same thing, teaching BASIC. Incorrect inputs resulted in the the system displaying:

TYPE MISMATCH

And they did! Of course this was a class of 11 o12 year old kids who likely had never used a computer before, so it was understandable. ROFL, but understandable!

[earl colby pottinger]

It get's worse

My brother showed me some code from a person who clearly did not understand arrays. After that person was laid off after working for more than year for the same company as my brother Clive. Clive and his coworkers were asked to find out why this guy's code was taking up so much CPU-Time compared to the other batch programs written by others in the same company.

Please note, the code worked, and the output was correct, it just was slow.

Example code follows: (Yes, this is what the code was really like.)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 1 THEN DEPT1_WAGE = DEPT1_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT1_RATE)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 2 THEN DEPT2_WAGE = DEPT2_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT2_RATE)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 3 THEN DEPT3_WAGE = DEPT3_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT3_RATE)

.
.
.
.
.

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 99 THEN DEPT99_WAGE = DEPT99_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT99_RATE)

And yes, I am not faking a joke. This really what the code looks like that my brother showed me. Now imagine what an entire payroll system written in this format would preform like? I think that my brother told me it took all night to run and their proper rewrite ran in less than an hour not including the time to print out the checks.

And yes, as an outside contractor this person was paid twice the rate that my brother collected at the same company.

[Racket_Man]

<snip>

Example code follows: (Yes, this is what the code was really like.)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 1 THEN DEPT1_WAGE = DEPT1_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT1_RATE)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 2 THEN DEPT2_WAGE = DEPT2_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT2_RATE)

<snip>

And yes, as an outside contractor this person was paid twice the rate that my brother collected at the same company.

Seems vaguely familiar from when I worked at the mortgage place. Both a contractror AND my immediate boss programmed things like this. With my boss she would ABSOLUTELY NOT let me touch her code even after I pointed out how screwed up it was and SHOWED her how erronious stuff would happen.

Now ask me about in my time as a TA for a entry level business school beginning intro to computers class. throw in some very very light programming with some simple word processing, spreadsheeting and databasing.

[Dadeo]

This happened in one of advanced my programming courses

One of the students asked "What is an IF...THEN statement?"

The instructor's response was classic:

"IF you don't know what it is... THEN you don't belong in this class"

[Pagan]

Was this the University of Illinois? Because he must have been the guy who invented Banner, only the world's worst university administrative software ever.

It was developed at U of I, but not actually implemented there until 2004, my last year of grad school. Our costume director had dealt with it at her previous position at Hope College, and warned us of its incredible suckitude. Unnecessarily complicated, slow, and inflexible is mostly what I remember.

That explains why my mom's last boss (Vice-Prov of Info & Comm Tech) before she retired was so hot to get NMSU to use Banner. That's where he'd been before NMSU hired him.

Good grief, but that system gave them no end of headaches. I'm pretty sure they've gotten rid of it by now.

[It's me]

My brother showed me some code from a person who clearly did not understand arrays.

<-snip->

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 1 THEN DEPT1_WAGE = DEPT1_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT1_RATE)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 2 THEN DEPT2_WAGE = DEPT2_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT2_RATE)

IF EMPLOYEE_DEPT_NUMBER = 3 THEN DEPT3_WAGE = DEPT3_WAGE + (EMPLOYEE_HOURS * DEPT3_RATE)

<-snip->

And yes, as an outside contractor this person was paid twice the rate that my brother collected at the same company.

One word: KLOCs

[Analytical Gaijin]

From what I remember, there are examples like this in coding 101 classes. I didn't take many programming classes myself, but I seem to recall writing a code like this as homework. The point was to show how complicated it can be, with the next lesson being arrays and simplifying the whole process. Of course I don't remember the arrays homework, so if I was tasked to come up with code I would come up with something similar.

There are reasons I warn people I am not a coder.


-AG

[wolfie]

As a kid, I was an obnoxious little shit. Went to an early show for home computers, and one of them (Radio Shack Colour Computer) didn't have a program running. After a couple older kids got bored with it not doing what it was supposed to (didn't start the game they wanted when they typed in "Play hangman you dick") and wandered away, I walked up to it, typed in a quick 2-line program, and left. A middle-aged woman demanded to know what I had done to break the computer. What program did I type in?

10 print "I am broken, call a repairman"
20 goto 10