Survey Results - What scares you as a developer?

And especially on the day of the demo when the customer says
"This is not we wanted" Laugh | :laugh:

Oh, god. I have something similar. I'm withholding names and won't go into specifics to protect the innocent.

At a previous job, I'd been telling the boss for years something he wanted automated couldn't be automated, unless he hired somebody to maintain the automation code, pretty much as a full-time job. Basically, the process being automated was a moving target.

So one day he decided to go ahead anyway and wrote the code over a weekend. It only worked for a week. And yes, somebody had to maintain his code all the time from that point forward.

Being told your little side project you had been working on, because you were never really sold on the current design would work.

Well they hit the wall and now your baby is it, only you aren't really sure about it either Smile | :)

In vino veritas

Oh sh*t, I'm doing a prototype in WPF for a Java project - I hope like hell they don't go forward with the WPF Laugh | :laugh:

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH

1) Requirements
2) Licensing
3) Component interfaces and ways of doing things
4) Unsupported code

Mehdi Gholam wrote:
2) Licensing

oh yes!!!

I'd rather be phishing!

And especially at the moment of the release.

Although the available choices could be scary, they are not really terrifying.

For bone chilling scares, I would point to decisions made to update old, large (1 million LOC and up), MFC based projects. Here are a couple of samples off the top of my head:
- We need a 64-bit version of the application(s).
- We want to introduce the application on the Chinese market, so let's add Chinese UI.
- Let's change the projects from Multi-Byte to Unicode Character Set.

Unsure | :~

"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty

Multi-Byte Vs Unicode; why on earth was it not dealt with the day after it was discovered that there are people outside of Europe and USA. Windows should have been 100% unicode every since it no longer depends on MS-DOS.

Yep

and especially when they say:
"I think we would not be needing the feature you have developed. Its redundant" after banging heads on weekends and after prior instructions.

Option	Votes	%
Someone who needs help with their computer recognising you as an IT professional	549	43.47
Finding your desk has been turned into a pair-programming station	277	21.93
Being told you have to demo the code to the customer in person. Today.	333	26.37
Shipping code that has a debug `DROP TABLE Users` statement left uncommented	330	26.13
Your manager reading a new management book	385	30.48
Your main admin password being mailed to you	315	24.94
Being told the day before launch that you need to support IE. Version 7.	479	37.93
Other (please comment)	150	11.88
Responses	1,263
Respondents were allowed to choose more than one answer; totals may not add up to 100%