So your [expletive] test failed. So %&* what? • The Register

Who, Me? Sometimes, a favor done for friends years ago can come back to bite you in a very corporate way. Welcome to another cautionary tale from the files of Who, Me?

Today’s annecdote comes from an event at the Centre for Computing History in which a recount of swears and shocked suits was told by someone we’ll Regomize as “Bob,” for that is not his name.

Our story takes us back to the white hot heat of the Microprocessor Revolution ^tm in the early 1980s. Bob was a wet-behind-the-ears hacker, working in a small team involved in the creation of some novel chippery initially destined for the company’s own products.

“The team were all friends,” he recalled, “very informal with lots of questionable banter, and lots of pub-time together.”

Bob was tasked with writing test cases for the new chip. He came up with many little test cases to check its nooks and crannies for odd behavior.

“The tests,” he said, “mainly reported nice polite happy messages because the device mostly worked as the specification had said, such as the rather tautological “*** TEST PASSED OK ***”

“But if the test failed, the informality of the team meant that messages saying “— F**KED —” were the order of the day.

“Remember this for later!”

All went well; the new devices worked fine after a couple of iterations and the test suite was deemed useful and correct. Bob moved on within the company, still writing machine code and C for the same devices, before eventually leaving for pastures new.

In the meantime, that new chip design spawned follow-ups and turned out to be useful for other purposes than the company’s own products. A spin-off occurred, although the new chip company was more Chipzuki than Chipzilla in those days.

And Bob’s test suite? Still there. In fact, it was occasionally shipped to customers. However, since the chips all worked fine, no questionable messages emerged until…

“One customer insisted on re-implementing things to take advantage of their specialization,” Bob told us.

“They did a good job, but one module was problematic; inevitably it was one of the ones with a sweary report as above. Worse, said customer was an older, US-based company, very into their suits [*clothing, not law-] and serious.”

Bob was long gone by this point, but he continued to enjoy a drink and gossip with those who were still around. “And they found what followed hilarious!”

“Apparently, the US company was rather upset, and a manager in the UK company got wind of this, and sent an all-developers email round condemning this lack of professionalism, the offence caused, and demanding to know who was responsible,” he recalled.

The finger of blame pointed at Bob… who had left years ago. In fact, he’d never even worked for the chip company.

“It’s all a lesson about using software developed in one context far beyond its shelf-life, and in a wildly different context, where customers can see, and image matters,” Bob remembered.

“At least I was far enough away to laugh at it when it finally hit the fan,” he wrote, “and 40 years later I’m still dining out on it, occasionally literally.”

Ever had an angry email about a favor you’d long forgotten about? Or been that person wondering exactly what the programmer of Christmas past was thinking? Send an email to Who, Me?. ®