Comedy > Programming >

This is a compendium of programmer expressions (read “excuses”) from the “Computer War Stories” (BANZAI::WAR_STORY) conference. I’ve ^[ 1 ] The authors are listed below, but this document’s creator’s name is not known. put them all together from the individual notes.

The authors ^[ 2 ] These might actually be people of note; I didn’t check. are:

• Paul Ahlgren (STKSMA::AHLGREN)
• SSDEVO::EGGERS
• MFGMEM::MEYER
• Steve Wellcome (DICKNS::WELLCOME)
• REGENT::MERRILL

• Graham Pye (IOSG::PYE)

—

• Strange…
• I never seen that happen before…
• It used to work…
• There are only a few small things that needs fixing…
• This should not happen here…
• It must be a hardware error…
• You must have done something wrong…
• You must have entered the data the wrong way.
• Maybe they changed the release…
• I haven’t changed anything in that module…
• Sure, I’ll be finished by then…
• You must be using an old version….
• It’s only a small error…
• I’m almost finished…
• Sure, if only I get time to do the last changes…
• It will take no time at all…
• We’re just testing it…
• It must be just a coincidence…
• Well, you can’t test everything…
• This can’t affect that!…
• I thought I’d fixed that…
• It’s in, I just haven’t tested it yet…
• Actually it works quite well, even though it doesn’t appear to…
• Excluding the fact that it doesn’t work, how do it look?
• The last bug is fixed.
• That’s a “feature” not a bug…
• It’s 90% complete.
• There is only ONE more bug!
• The build must have put the wrong version in…
• Yes I know, but it’s not a problem is it?
• Yes, but it’s only a problem if you use
• There can’t be anything wrong with my code, because my Team leader buddy checked it…
• It works alright if you type your input in upper case…
• Surely nobody would want to do that?
• Well it’s only a failure in the IVPs (Installation Verification Procedures)
• Oh, now that’s interesting…
• When it worked it was wrong, now that it doesn’t it’s right!!
• There are no bugs open against this product
• Well, it worked *before* I went to the pub
• That’s not my problem, I didn’t change that area of the code
• It only works with pre VMS 2.1 systems…
• That’s a hitherto unnoticed and undocumented feature of this subsystem…

• Well it worked alright when I had privileges turned on

Additions ∞

^[ 3 ] The author and date of these additions is not known.

When the new release of the telephone switch didn’t work, and the old release did work but of course just didn’t have the new features that were designed into the new release, the vendor tried to find the problem in real-time.

Why not revert to the previous release so that people can make phone calls, and build a duplicate of this system so that the problem can be diagnosed, I asked.

“It’s impossible to test every possible configuration in the laboratory.”

(And DEC buys phones from them……..)