Reply to: Second Contract In Finance - My Thoughts

[HairyArsedBloke]

At a city booze up the one of the managers of a mate of mine was saying that whenever he saw a spread sheet on the trading floor he though it was a failure and a potential point of serious trouble. He was right of course. Auditors hate them. Each on should be a proper application or part of one.

I am as guilty as anyone for having loads of old tat. I've cleaned things up since I've had time whilst I was poorly, but there is still loads of rubbish running.

What makes me laugh is that there is a massive load of rubbish holding the City together. Just think how bad it would be if they did recruit "The best of the best, of the best, of the best. SIR".

[Moscow Mule]

I have a little theory that the next major banking crisis could be a software crisis; bank loses tulipload of money in a system nobody knows or understands; back-ups fail due to untested rollback mechanisms; major tulip hits banking system. World blames 'software experts' when tulip hits the fan.

Nah, you just get a loan from the BoE.

I know for a fact that a bank we all own now was run on spreadsheets for 7 working days when the core banking system went down.

Traders were told to hold all of their positions unless it was critical to offload it. IIRC, most of the ****ers emptied their entire books.

[Zippy]

I really hope it wasn't in aerospace or nuclear power...

*cough*

[doodab]

I had a job like that once, but sadly not in banking.

I really hope it wasn't in aerospace or nuclear power...

[Zippy]

The best one is...

"can you check if that value is correct"

"well what is the calculation?"

"we don't know, can you not look in the program and see what it is meant to be doing?"

I had a job like that once, but sadly not in banking.

[Mich the Tester]

The best one is...

"can you check if that value is correct"

"well what is the calculation?"

"we don't know, can you not look in the program and see what it is meant to be doing?"

unless you can invoice them for reverse engineering, but that'll be tough if you only have binaries.

I was once in a team that was asked to take a look at the code in a banking system to see what was going wrong with some orders it sent to the markets. We said 'sure, just show us the source code and we'll take a look', to which the response was 'erm, source code; what...?'

[Mich the Tester]

By which point the only people in the business are the Bob's so it will all be their fault.

Equally, all the skills that the west had would have gone so it the banks will be stuck with the Bob's even though they caused it.

To be fair on the Bobs, I´d sooner blame the senior management chappy at a major bank who said to me ´don´t bother testing it; testing´s a waste of time and money'.

[minestrone]

The best one is...

"can you check if that value is correct"

"well what is the calculation?"

"we don't know, can you not look in the program and see what it is meant to be doing?"

[HairyArsedBloke]

I have a little theory that the next major banking crisis could be a software crisis; bank loses tulipload of money in a system nobody knows or understands; back-ups fail due to untested rollback mechanisms; major tulip hits banking system. World blames 'software experts' when tulip hits the fan.

By which point the only people in the business are the Bob's so it will all be their fault.

Equally, all the skills that the west had would have gone so it the banks will be stuck with the Bob's even though they caused it.

[Mich the Tester]

I found a document that described a core module in a large pension provider as...

"written in the 60s and 70s"
"unable to be rewritten as nobody knows how it works"

I have a little theory that the next major banking crisis could be a software crisis; bank loses tulipload of money in a system nobody knows or understands; back-ups fail due to untested rollback mechanisms; major tulip hits banking system. World blames 'software experts' when tulip hits the fan.

[minestrone]

I found a document that described a core module in a large pension provider as...

"written in the 60s and 70s"
"unable to be rewritten as nobody knows how it works"

[Mich the Tester]

One of my last contracts back in the last century, I had to go into the server room with one of the PMs and an Ops guy to find out what was wrong with the server running our app. We misread the location and opened up a cabinet to find a rack of old IBM ATs. Half of 'em had died. There was a modem that looked like it go some infrequent traffic. There was no indication of what they were for. Ops guy say, "Frack knows what they are. Anyway, no my problem" and locks the cabinet up again.

There was no interest in finding out what they were for. They could still be there.

What a coincidence! I talked to a chap in a restaurant in Cannes having pointed him in the direction of a car park where he could safely store his Aston; said he'd retired to the Riviera having been an Ops man in an IBM server room. Glad to clear that one up!

[HairyArsedBloke]

At one major international bank where I've worked they have approximately 2500 applications running on their servers according to their own 'estimates'. Truth is they don't know. They estimate that a half of those apps are empty of any data but can't be taken down because they act as interfaces for other apps, and because they've fired all the people who knew what the apps do and outsourced admin to Mr B Shawadiwadi, who knows even less about them.

Most of those apps are not present in test or acceptance environments, meaning that tests have to be carried out with lots of stubs or manual workarounds to simulate an app whose behaviour is unknown to anyone, and no test manager can really give a meaningful prediction as to behaviour in production. Testing´s often a bit of a waste of time anyway as whatever you´re testing will go into production however slipshod it is. Quite how they find auditors who are mad enough to sign their accounts defeats me.

Someday some large sums of money are going to missing in one or more of these apps and nobody will have the slightest clue where to look for them.

Still, good for contractors´ pockets.

One of my last contracts back in the last century, I had to go into the server room with one of the PMs and an Ops guy to find out what was wrong with the server running our app. We misread the location and opened up a cabinet to find a rack of old IBM ATs. Half of 'em had died. There was a modem that looked like it go some infrequent traffic. There was no indication of what they were for. Ops guy say, "Frack knows what they are. Anyway, no my problem" and locks the cabinet up again.

There was no interest in finding out what they were for. They could still be there.

[minestrone]

Seriously, this is a problem I had about 10 years ago
So I made sure that any long jobs on the system would redirect the user to a holding screen whilst the job ran. The "please wait" screen would automatically take them to the results screen when the process was finished.

I asked to put in a screen that would say something like "the batch is running on the server, please don't refresh this page" but the business could not sign off on the text. It really was that bad.

That was the application I wanted to put in 'special screens' targeted to the individual that would display big font text for a second in between normal naviagtion. Have a table to configure user, time and text.

"Oi, Charlie, ya a useless bawbag"

Would have liked to have seen the JIRA for that

"JIRA 3423: User claims application called him a 'useless bawbag'"

[Mich the Tester]

At one major international bank where I've worked they have approximately 2500 applications running on their servers according to their own 'estimates'. Truth is they don't know. They estimate that a half of those apps are empty of any data but can't be taken down because they act as interfaces for other apps, and because they've fired all the people who knew what the apps do and outsourced admin to Mr B Shawadiwadi, who knows even less about them.

Most of those apps are not present in test or acceptance environments, meaning that tests have to be carried out with lots of stubs or manual workarounds to simulate an app whose behaviour is unknown to anyone, and no test manager can really give a meaningful prediction as to behaviour in production. Testing´s often a bit of a waste of time anyway as whatever you´re testing will go into production however slipshod it is. Quite how they find auditors who are mad enough to sign their accounts defeats me.

Someday some large sums of money are going to missing in one or more of these apps and nobody will have the slightest clue where to look for them.

Still, good for contractors´ pockets.