Lead programmer insists there's something wrong with their computer to system admin, ends up being their own code: 'I tried not to laugh, but I just couldn't hold it in'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Aug 20, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

Educational qualification is interesting in the sense that it can mean wildly different things because—well, people are wildly different themselves. We perceive, retain, and apply information completely differently from one another. No two people are the same, and remember and apply things in the same way. Some people are great at memorizing and can ace any exam purely on the power of their short-term information retention, whether they actually understand how everything fits together or not.

So, while holding an advanced degree can mean you're intelligent, it doesn't necessarily mean that, and it's usually the people who insist that they're better and smarter than everyone else because of their degree who fall into that "not necessarily" category. The lead programmer in this story is one of those people.

The reality is that while having the dedication to commit years of your life to study is admirable, dedication doesn't always equal intelligence, and sometimes smacking your head against the wall enough times will still spark a good idea... Plenty of people with advanced degrees are absolute bricks in other areas and have the least common sense of anyone you've ever met. Just ask my classmate in my freshman year of university who failed Biology 101 but was eventually admitted to medical school because of their dad's connections. As the old saying goes… Medical students who get Cs still go by "doctor," and even if they technically pass their schooling, they might continue to fail their patients for their entire careers. 

It should be noted here that this same argument is true for any traditional marker for success that we might have. Being rich, famous, or successful in any way does not automatically mean that you're a paragon who should be idolized in all ways. Sure, we'll all make mistakes, but the truly intelligent among us will know when they do so and know how to laugh at themselves; they probably also wouldn't have done what this coworker did in the first place.

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    Cheezburger Image 10392163072
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    I have a Masters in Computer Science! Medium In the early 2000s, I worked as a Windows systems administrator for a small company that specialized in GIS software. I could talk for several hours about the craziness that went on there. Maybe another time. However, this is one of my favorite stories from that dumpster fire of a company. This is a story about how even technical people can be dumb.
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    I was sitting in my office, probably regretting taking this job, when Lucy comes running in yelling. Lucy is the lead programmer on our company's one mildly successful product. She is screaming that her computer is broken and I have to fix it. I tell her to slow down and explain the problem. She doesnt really say anything other than her computer is broken. I ask her what does she mean by broken. She says its broken. because she compiled her program and
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    was testing it and said it isnt working. I asked if the error only happens when she runs her program, to which she said yes. I said then its probably your code that is the problem. I should have known better, as Lucy is known to get... excited. She then yells and screams some more that its not her code, but her computer. I realize this is going nowhere and to show me the error. So we walk over to her workstation which was in a bullpen on
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    developers. Of course all the yelling and screaming has all their attention on us. She starts running the code from Visual Studio and I ask her what is program doing when the error happens. She said its loading a file from the program's folder. The program is running and she clicks some buttons in her application. Then an error dialog pops up. I read the message - and I tried not to laugh, but I just couldnt hold it in. This infuriated Lucy, who demanded to know why her
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    broken computer was funny to me. I told her the computer is fine, but it is definitely her code that is the problem. I told her exactly what the problem was. Lets just say that she disagreed with me. Loudly. At this point, I was kind of over it. I told her to bring up that section of code and I will fix it. You would not believe that this tiny woman could yell with such volume. "I HAVE A MASTERS DEGREE IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING! MY CODE IS
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    FINE!" I said I will prove it and if it doesnt work, I will give her a new computer. She finally thinks she has won and bring up the code. I look at the code and make a modification to one line. I then ask her to run the program again. She gets a smug look and repeats the process. Amazingly, the program works just fine. I just walk back to my office without saying a word. You might be wondering what happened? What was the error that I saw? Cannot find file C:\\Program
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    EdBear69 I will assume you added quotes around the file path like "C:\Program Files\foo\bar\the actual file.dat" acf423 OP Bingo. I just added quotes to her string.
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    agfitzp Colleague wrote some code to clear an on-disk cache but calculated the path badly and it was instead deleting recursively from the top of the disk until the operating system crashed. IT reset their PC twice before I pointed out that the only virus was their own. Same colleague was very offended that they were not my supervisor because they had SO much more experience.
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    Lumpy_Ad7002 I don't know why anybody would consider this to be acceptable behaviour. If I was having a cranky day the first time she rose her voice at me I'd give her that look that says "you're on thin ice here" and remind her to be polite. I also have an MSCS, and from a better university than hers, and many times when I was younger I was convinced that the bug could not be in my code. However, never once was I stupid enough to think that it was the PC that was broken.
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    Harley11995599 There was this game "Neverwinter Nights" That allowed you to create your own code for the game. I was working on some code and set it to compile. Would not compile and the code that was not compiling was original game code. Drove me nuts. I had taken a short course on C+, that was the general language of the game. Went through the program line by line since the compiler was not telling me what was going on.
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    The programmers missed a on the end of a line. Added it and it compiled. Packed it up and added it to the CEP "Community Expansion Project". Loved that game II
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    emax4 Because of her incessant nagging and not taking responsibility, I'd go to her supervisor and force her to take a competency exam.
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    Regis_DeVallis This reminds me of another story I read on here years ago where the opposite happened. Dudes roommate was writing some code, ran into a bug, and determined it was a faulty CPU. Reached out to the manufacturer and confirmed the issue with their engineers.
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    glenmarshall I recall many people with an MS in IT who could not write a coherent email.
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    Triabolical_ My experience is that many people with master's degrees in computer science got them because they didn't get hired when they had a bachelor's degree. Or at least that's what I found when doing interviews...
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    aspie_electrician Relative of the GoogleBing lady? Certificate in computering
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    KelemvorSparkyfox This is why I'm happy not to have an academic background in computers. When my code results in error messages, my immediate thought is that I must have done something wrong, and to start debugging. (Of course, that doesn't help when the problem is the vagueries of the platform. When you're working with a system that cannot convert the string true to the boolean true, you have to get creative.)
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    SideQuestPubs She has a Master's in CompSci and didn't learn the most important lesson... "Sometimes a mistake is only visible to a second pair of eyes."
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    K1yco "I have a masters/100 years xp/ job in *insert computer related field" This is the magic line that 80% of time, the next thing that is going to happen is I'm gonna solve this with one question or action. Because of this I make it a point to never say something like this myself because it's possible I might be wrong.
    via u/acf423

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