The epic fail of modern software development

January 06, 2010

In this age of high-level computing it's quite easy to ignore the basic building blocks. You don't have to understand the difference between float and double as long as you know your DRY and KISS, right? Not quite. There is a ton of things that can go bump in the night if you don't watch your step.

If you're not a software geek, you've probably never heard of Jon Skeet. In fact, most coders probably haven't heard of him either so don't feel bad about it. Apart from being a micro-celebrity over at Stack Overflow with his own Chuck Norris-esque fact skeet, he recently held a talk at Stack Overflow Dev Days in London.

The title was "Humanity: Epic FAIL" and it deals with how real life manages to screw up everyday software development. He manages to squeeze in quite a lot of pet peeves in 30 minutes, such as the "Turkey locale bug" (I've hated it since I first found out about it in 2007) and the headache caused by time zones (it can sometimes be more confusing than a time travel episode of Star Trek).

Have a look at the video or read the transcript. It's quite entertaining.