Mitch Wheat - Treat the cause, not the symptoms!

Do you read thedailywtf? If you enjoy programming you should check it out. Sometimes the stories leaving you wondering whether to laugh or cry! Take this one for instance -- "…utilizing some Excel Interoperability" -- actually described the architecture of the system: a horrid amalgamation of Excel spreadsheets interacting with C# interacting with other spreadsheets…”

It reminded me in a tangential kind of way of an incident in my third full-time job after University. I’d been working at this company for around 3 months and one morning, one of the analysts dropped by and said “…come and look at this”. He opened a large storage cupboard and pointed to a huge pile of that green lined computer paper (you know, the type with the sprocket holes down the sides!) . A quick look showed that it was line after line of a large array initialisation setting each value to zero! The programmer responsible had obviously not quite got up to the point in the training course where loops were introduced!