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by wkdneidbwf 1068 days ago
right? that whole bit reads like some lame parable. like who in there right mind is going to run a 10k line shell script named DISASTER they’ve never read and cannot read because it’s 10k lines of shell? there is apparently no documentation (and positively no tests)? one guy close to retirement remembers what it’s for and says “don’t delete this critical but of code!”

it’s just utter bullshit.
2 comments
chubot 1068 days ago
If tens of millions of dollars are on the line, you will be able to find someone who can run the script or derive enough knowledge from it

In a disaster scenario, something is better than nothing

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pavel_lishin 1068 days ago
Bill is clearly still picking up the phone. He'd likely be amenable to picking up a paycheck as well.
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fragmede 1065 days ago
Not if he's dead. Some of the stuff is old enough that it's a reasonable question.
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wkdneidbwf 1067 days ago
it’s more that i don’t believe it’s a real scenario.
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adityaathalye 1067 days ago
Isn't that the entire point? People don't believe (or choose to not believe) a certain disaster scenario is valid, until it happens. We all have seen first-hand the many examples of colossal failures of disaster-response planning in our recent planet-wide emergency. As have we seen the creative, dogged, herculean efforts to cope with it.
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adityaathalye 1067 days ago
OP here... As I wrote here, it is better to think of the story as apocryphal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36798893

Also of course it will be crazy to read a giant shell script. But then again if the stakes are high enough, and if it yields even one critical piece of information, then it's worth it.

The larger point is that organisational knowledge clings on in strange ways. In a crazy disaster scenario, people may appreciate having access to anything they can get their hands on.

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Gabrys1 1067 days ago
10K lines is not _that_ large. If it was written sensibly, it might be very useful. Bill might have written a text document, but chose to use Shell as a preferred engineers' language. Who doesn't share a one-liner with a colleague in need? Bill shared a 10k-liner :-). And Shell being a relatively high-level language, it probably packs the information more densely than a text file.
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adityaathalye 1066 days ago
True. And let me go a step further to argue that someone so forward-looking as to (allegedly) make a script for an all-caps DISASTER scenario would be intelligent about the contents of said script. They would have cared deeply for their fellow line staff of the then-unknown future.
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