Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
As a programmer myself, I heard many many times that there is no such thing as a bug-free program.

I have to disagree.  I came up with a program (in BASIC no less!) that does exactly what it is intended to do and no user can ever break it.

10 END

Technically, that isn't a program, its a single instruction.  A program has to have a start, do some work, and an end.  That's what we were taught in school anyway.

Quoting Vega:

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Quoting ya_shin:

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Dear Dr.,

in Germany such person is acalled a DAU ("Dümmster anzunehmender User", which roughly ranslates to "Stupidest assumable User", or so). Is there some term for them in English...?

So far, in our office, nobody has caught on yet but when I get users' asking me stupid questions or they somehow manage to break things on their computer and I have to fix it.  At some point they will always hesitantly ask what the problem was (they know they did it, they just want to know if I know they did).  I always tell them it was just an "ID-10-T Error" and not to worry about it.  One of them even commented after several visits that he seems to be getting a lot of "ID-10-T errors" and wondered if he should get a new computer.

I'm wondering if they'll ever catch on.. 

Programmers have a rough job, and I give credit where its due, but another area I've had to deal with over the years is programmers trying to tackle hardware problems, or software problems related to hardware.  It is a common fallacy that if you're a programmer, you can fix anything on a computer. Trust me, such is not the case.  Hardware requires a completely different set of mental tools, and a different approach than programming problems do.

Troubleshooting is something that to me, is very intuitive and logical, and frankly, easy.  But, I've seen programmers who thought they knew what they were doing, blow up more than one computer over the years!  And, I've lost count of the PCs I've had to fix, AFTER the programmer brother-in-law got through fixing it.  If I had to pick between a good hardware tech, and a good programmer to help me out on a job, I'd take the hardware guy every time.  We may not knows all the bells and whistles of the program and its use, but we understand how that program interacts with the hardware, and thus with every other program on the computer. 

Quoting skipnet50:

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LOL, reminds me off a story of a friend of mine. He was a programmer for GTE. He was working on some new programming for the company and when he tested it there was ONE bad line of code, the way it was written his computer then proceeded to work it's way through the GTE network looking for what was needed, knocking the entire system down for 8 hours. This wouldn't happen today, but way back then...it certainly wasn't funny to GTE but it was to those of us outside of GTE that were aware of it.    


Skip

Ahhh, he created an early version of Vger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture... 

I forgot about that, Vega.      


Skip

Quoting Rifter:

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Technically, that isn't a program, its a single instruction.  A program has to have a start, do some work, and an end.  That's what we were taught in school anyway.

I find this to be a bit too simple a definition. For example programs used to guide missiles, control satellites, etc do not necessarely have an "end". Sure they will terminate when the hardware "fails" on them, but that is not the program terminating, that's just the hardware failing to execute the next instruction.

Quoting skipnet50:

Quote:
A late head coach when asked in the middle of the team's record-setting 0-26 losing record:

Coach what do you think of the team's execution?

"I think it's a fine idea"

John McKay-Tampa Bay Buccaneers-1975

Skip

I remember that season and I felt so sorry for those players.

Quoting Vega:

Quote:
Quoting ya_shin:

Quote:
Dear Dr.,

in Germany such person is acalled a DAU ("Dümmster anzunehmender User", which roughly ranslates to "Stupidest assumable User", or so). Is there some term for them in English...?

So far, in our office, nobody has caught on yet but when I get users' asking me stupid questions or they somehow manage to break things on their computer and I have to fix it.  At some point they will always hesitantly ask what the problem was (they know they did it, they just want to know if I know they did).  I always tell them it was just an "ID-10-T Error" and not to worry about it.  One of them even commented after several visits that he seems to be getting a lot of "ID-10-T errors" and wondered if he should get a new computer.

I'm wondering if they'll ever catch on.. 

thats hilarious - it took me a second - and then i was like... funniest thing ever