How my batch process nightmare was solved by a Wombat

Over the years, I have automated any amount of processes that don't really "need" automating but I found it convenient. This inevitably grows into a "Well, I see you do X... any chance you could make it do Y while it's there" scenario and it soon becomes an entire application. Hell, I put some code on our access control system that our access control system guys wanted to buy off us.

The problem I have is that the end product is then "looked down"" upon because it's not got a brand name, a version number and isn't available with a EULA (no, it's just the entire source code to something that the company I work for has free copyright over, that's all...). When the process of hand-over comes along, it's thrown out of the door rather than employing someone who understands a bit of VBScript or Javascript (let's not even get into batch files / shell scripts / C code).

The problem with business IT today is that even the "professionals" don't code. They avoid coding like the plague. I would get that in, say, a stock exchange where one wrong semicolon could cost you dear (but, strangely, in such environments, a lot of stuff is held together with scripts written by people who can code and code-flux is quite high), or on an emergency services desk where you don't want to be debugging the system.

But I hate the culture of "Well, we'll just rip all this out and replace it with Microsoft Whatever which can't do half of what it does anywhere near as fast or as nicely and costs thousands and thousands of pounds", especially when you then employ idiots to run it. Why? Because almost every job I've taken has been where that's happened, it's collapsed catastrophically, and someone with a brain has said "Let's just get in a geek that knows what he's doing, to get us out of this mess" and then I've ended up staying because they realise my "higher" price than some spotty teenager is actually saving them an AWFUL lot of money elsewhere (I once worked in a job where I saved them my year's salary - directly and provably, not theoretically - in just the first three months, and stayed working there for many years). There's even a cycle you can witness of this - outsource, bring back in-house, outsource. It takes 10-15 years to complete the cycle but it's definitely there in some places.

In fact, I'm now in discussions with a new employer where exactly that has happened again. They had a geek to run their network, but they found out that he wasn't doing the job (not because he was coding, he just didn't have any backups at all when a server went down). They sacked him. Then they bought in very expensive temporary commercial support to get them out of the hole they found themselves in, who ripped out all his stuff, replaced it with Exchange and all sorts of expensive gear (and way more servers than were strictly required), but they are too expensive and quite inflexible. So now the company are in negotiations to hire me to come in as an "on-site geek" and do all these things that the geek used to do rather than spending money left, right and centre on products not designed for their particular usage.

I'm sorry, but if you want a simple rule in IT, it's employ someone who can code. They don't need to be a coding star, because then they'd not be interested in a small business, but you have to be able to throw them a problem for which NO solution exists (or is affordable) and have them produce something that will work. It may not be pretty (but what the hell does that matter unless you're selling it on to customers, in which case HIRE A DAMN PROGRAMMER and maybe even a UI designer), but it will get the job done and they will know that the effort they put into making it nice and understandable is more than saved by not having to touch the damn thing for YEARS except for the occasional tweak.

I've yet to inherit a system that actually has code. And I've left dozens of systems with code clearly marked, visible, documented and simple, and producing some real results and making a real difference - but I don't think in any of them has anything actually happened because the next guy is usually some dolt (which is usually why I leave - because the situation has changed, the management who knew what I did for them have moved on, etc. and they think that hiring a random idiot will be "better") and he just formats the servers back to the default configuration that has nothing customised in it at all - i.e. they could have just installed Windows and Office without the network at all and have done with it.

Relevant XCKD: http://xkcd.com/1205/

Relevant non-XKCD: http://imgur.com/Q8kV8

P.S. If anyone knows a place hiring a educational network geek at the moment, I'd be interested in a short-term contract to tide me over until my negotiated position becomes available.

First Steps in Programming?

In the late 1970's we bought a training simulator, for 6 trainees and one supervisor, it could have up to 32 training positions and was all wonderful wizzy computer driven stuff. We bought and installed it early to allow the staff to be trained ready for 'The New System'.

The only problem was that we spent the entire budget on the beast and then changed the way that the new system worked. Two dozen training programs then taught the wrong thing and needed to be changed with no budget. So Muggins sat down and started to reprogram the beast. It was programmed in assembler but we had no command interpreter. What I could do was direct memory access, up to 6 bytes at a time writing hexadecimal code. Then shoot the slides, then make the training tapes. It saved about 24 times £25,000 so was worth the effort.

After that I played with Lotus 123. That was fun,

I wrote macros to write macros as the PC was faster to generate a number of 1000 line columns with up to 200 plus characters per line than it was than type them all out by hand. Using a few other tricks and programs I ran an automated system for the collection of stats, production of analysis and writing letters to go out with the results. All good automated fun and it saved a mountain of work.

It did catch out one of my staff. He entered the locked off room where the automatic set up slaved away wanting to use Lotus 123 on the control machine. Clutched in his hot little hand was the floppy disk he had worked on for weeks. The system ran his little job and being an automated system then backed up its own production data wiping out his month's work.

It was tactfully(?) suggested that in future he should only use his own machine or one that he was authorised to use.

So many truths in there...

Ohhhh yes. But the difference is that all those hours spent will immediately pay off because you won't ever, ever have to do it again (unless something's changed, and you must tweak it again).

The amount of times I've done this, even if it only shaves a few minutes off, is a lot. It's just that those few minutes, multiplied by the amount of people using that instead of the old method, and multiplied by the amount of times it's used instead of the old method just adds up to a *LOT* of man hours saved, even though people just don't realise!

Lotus 1-2-3 was awesome.

Earning a living as an Excel & VBA expert now. Lotus 1-2-3's macro language was miles better twenty years ago than VBA is now.

the first time you wrote a snippet of code to persuade that clunky Commodore PET at school to send a variable string to a dot matrix printer

Good call. It had no printer, but the school's Commodore PET was indeed the machine I wrote my first snippets of code on.

Fred Brooks referred to those of us who'd rather spend time creating a program to do our work than actually do our work as "toolsmiths". In The Mythical Man-Month¹, he says that every programming team should have a toolsmith, because every team needs custom tools.

Personally, I have always found Wombats obtuse. And furry.²

¹Not to be confused with the mythical man-moth, featured on SyFy this Saturday.

²Sunday on SyFy: "Obtuse Wombat vs Mythical Man-Moth".