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by dlcarrier 19 days ago
I'm amazed by how many professionals don't understand how the technology they work on works. I worked in an office that had low-voltage light switches, and when they started wearing out, they hired an electrician to come in and replace them, but instead he replaced the control board, misswired it, missconfigured it, and only replaced one or two of the dozen or so bad switches. Until we could get someone competent to fix it, we not only had to continue to jiggle the broken switches just right, we also had to keep track of which ones needed to be switched the wrong way, and to turn the lights back on after they would turn off during random points of the workday.

Richard Feynmann ranted about this kind of nonsense often, and I have to agree with you and him on that. Here's a relevant XKCD comic about software quality: https://xkcd.com/2030/