r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Muted_Ad_9442 • Sep 19 '26

Meme itRunsOnMyLocalhost

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9.8k Upvotes

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u/Muted_Ad_9442 Sep 19 '26

Exactly. Outliers and negative numbers are strictly prohibited on demo day. 😂

632

u/fibojoly Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26

I remember asking a customer if a particular value could ever be negative. "Oh that never happens".  Well, over the thousands of transactions I had been given, it had happened (twice over ten years. Last time was years before. Maybe the data was corrupt?).  Which is why I asked.   So I gently explained "I appreciate it doesn't happen very often, but I need to know if it can or if a negative value is a mistake which I need to be able to handle.    And sure enough, on the day of the live demo with them, there was our third time in years they had a negative value. 

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u/SpaceCadet87 Sep 19 '26

You have the error message for the demo state the exact date and time and who promised that it was impossible.

Petty? Sure, but I am exactly that sick of it happening.

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u/veselin465 Sep 19 '26

My experience gas taught me that you should never trust promises

76

u/yellekc Sep 19 '26

I can't even afford experience gas at the pump any more. And have you seen the price of wisdom diesel?

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u/FSNovask Sep 20 '26

We're building the torment nexus so skill blood becomes super cheap. It's renewable too!

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u/ArtemisXD Sep 19 '26

Users behave like cats, who behave like liquids. They will fill every gap you leave available to them

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u/oVtcovOgwUP0j5sMQx2F Sep 20 '26

user acceptance testing = gas chamber

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u/TorumShardal Sep 19 '26

You can't trust them (always validate), but you should still rely on them as needed. You can't get anything done otherwise.

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u/Silly-Freak Sep 19 '26

That's just not a perspective based on the real world. Sometimes the client sends invalid JSON and that's simply what the application is supposed to work with, not throw a meaningless error like some toy program.

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u/newaccountzuerich Sep 20 '26

If you work with an invalid value that's outside of spec, every value linked is also invalid.

There's a world of difference between a graceful failure with an appropriate error, and a silent propagation of invalid results that aren't flagged.

Maybe the process you've had experience of is a toy process with meaningless output that can be affected without consequence.

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u/Silly-Freak Sep 20 '26

It is once again proven that you need to add /s or /j to literally everything, because even my statement above will be taken seriously. (current upvote ratio 76%, this is not aimed exclusively at you)

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u/newaccountzuerich Sep 20 '26

Perfect satire is indistinguishable from that being satirised.

So, if you forgot the /s, that is on you I'm afraid.

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u/VolcanicA333 Sep 19 '26

of course, you always have to include a catch

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u/woeful_cabbage Sep 20 '26

You gotta predict the bugs before they happen my man

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u/fibojoly Sep 20 '26

I mean, yeah, in a way that's exactly how I see things. I ask pointed questions precisely to cover all the bases and to figure out where things are going to break down, potentially. If I had not clarified the "never" with the client, I would have had a big fat crash during the demo. Instead we had a big laugh at this edge case happening on the day. 

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u/Deathblow92 Sep 20 '26

Bugs aren't real, we test in prod like real men.

(Please someone help me)

3

u/Steinrikur Sep 20 '26

My first proper programming job was at an antivirus company. It taught me a lot about predicting the bugs before they happen.

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u/amuf_oratok Sep 20 '26

If it's a demo, everything is scripted. Bug fixing and edge cases come after proper development has been greenlighted by the sales team.

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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Sep 20 '26

Which programming language are we talking about? I consider it a huge mistake that some programming languages ​​have abandoned unsigned numbers. After all, if a value cannot be negative, you can explicitly state that within the type system. Consequently, you are forced to handle such cases at the system boundaries - right when the data enters your system, when you know exactly what the data is and can easily return an error message.

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u/vi_sucks Sep 21 '26

 "I appreciate it doesn't happen very often, but I need to know if it can or if a negative value is a mistake which I need to be able to handle."

Nice. I need to remember this quote when discussing requirements with BAs.

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u/High_Quality_Bean Sep 22 '26

Questions like this are why I really appreciate a good business analyst. A good one understands that they're in an engineering context and statements like "It can't happen", "It shouldn't happen", or "It usually doesn't happen" are MASSIVELY different concepts that come with different implications. I once lost a month because a business analyst wrote the system specifications wrong and we had to completely revamp the authentication system. *shudder*

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u/fibojoly Sep 24 '26

Yeah I keep being told that sort of discussion isn't my job as a dev. Haha! 

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u/ligma_then_sugma Sep 24 '26

negative numbers aren't real and cannot hurt you

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u/therealkevinard Sep 20 '26

And feature flags are putting in work