All You Are

Xewleer here, it’s rant time.

So I debug tuesdays and Thursdays for extra cash. 8 bucks an hour for 4 hours is pretty sweet. But this BUGS me. FREAKING PROGRAMMERS WHO WRITE CODE BUT DON”T AT LEAST TEST IT TO SEE IF IT WORKS!!! There, I said it. I know how to do some code and I have written programs (for school, not for work) and you know what I did? I made darn sure that my thing worked before I started to nitpick.

First, a little more background. The program is an audio tutorial for an internet program. Works fine on Internet Explorer, but not on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. That’s right, 1 out of 4 worked. And the programmer didn’t catch it. The program will be used by computer savvy people who WILL NOT buy the product if there is such a glaring error. I wouldn’t. This isn’t some freaking button that is acting up, IT”S THE WHOLE PROGRAM. If it don’t work 3 out of 4 times, it doesn’t work! It’s simple!

So I called the boss out on it. I’ll admit that I said it wrong. But it wasn’t the first time I told him about it, no sirree. And he yells at me. It works now, but he and I should never have had that conversation. I consider that sort of behavior VERY bad practice. After all, what if the debuggers miss it? If I was a boss, I’d call them both out on it if that happened, but I would have words with the programmers first. Then the debuggers.

I’m not as practiced as most programmers, I admit that. I know there are going to be errors, some things not working at all or differently. But this was major, there are basically 4 major browsers that most geeks name: I.E. Firefox, Chrome, Safari. And likely in that order. When one works on code that will be used by a vast and different bunch of people, I think it’s not insane to make sure the fool audio works in more than 1 browser.

Sigh, at least it’s fixed. The boss won’t be likely to yell at me again… But I would like it if he understood where I was coming from. You can’t let stuff like that slip through the cracks of prototype developement. It could ruin whatever you’re goal is and force you back to square one. And better to do that yourself and explain it to the boss than having the boss himself find it.

Xewleer: Spleen Vented and feeling calm.