Well isn't that special?

[cjsmith]

The problem I've been fighting for the past two and a half days at work is NOT me. The lovely counterintuitive overcomplicated bloated slow-as-molasses approved Symbian development tool, in its latest release,

CANNOT BUILD BINARIES.

No really. It can't do it. It cannot compile. If you had a preexisting project it won't destroy that, but for any new code, it's a great, um, text editor I guess, as long as you never wanted that code to DO anything or RUN on anything.

If you deinstall and go back to the latest .0 revision, everything works fine. Heh heh. Oops.

I suspect some hapless QA manager is buried under a smelly steaming pile of blame right now.

This is just about as good as the on-device debug capability I spent nearly a week on, only to discover that it could never possibly work because that phone's firmware release never got tested either.

Y'know, after the BREW deathmarch, I honestly doubted Symbian was worse. People said it was bad, but these people had never programmed in the BREW environment either, so I took it with a grain of salt. Well, they were right and I was wrong.

Comments

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's just. Wow.

It seems to be a day for staggering doofusity.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Today is quite the day, all right. *eyeroll*

Was there ever an era when competence and, oh, I don't know, not committing felonies, were required for keeping one's job? Or am I just an old curmudgeon, pining for good old days that never were?

[mapache]

That would seem to be an important facet of a build system…

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It, uh, yeah. Something smells vaguely... mission-critical... about that one. :-)

I am reminded of the classic scene in EE "Doc" Smith's Lensman series where a mine is flooding and the emergency pumps quit because their safety sensors halt them when high pressure is detected. The guy in charge goes nuts. "I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!" Best line of the whole book. (Only line I remember from the whole book.)

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Something about Smiths inclines them to a low tolerance for engineering idiocy?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It sure is true for me!

[eichin.livejournal.com]

google finds only one reference on the entire net to that quote - giving the same context - and the highly relevant variation:

"I could eat printouts and *shit* better code than that!" (http://24.98.103.119:8080/Schmitz/list/00002803.htm)

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :-)

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

Hah, excellent. That certainly trumps any bug -I've- ever let go to market.

My guess is a last-minute change that absolutely could not have possibly broken anything broke everything.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, that sounds about right! *sigh*