I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my callstack. Debug me maybe.

Raymond ChenFebruary 26, 2018Feb 26, 201802/26/18

There was that time a team was hosting a two-day plugfest, and I was volunteered to assist them with debugging any issues in my area that may arise. They booked me to spend two entire days in a conference room with them. I showed up in the morning, and asked, "So how does this work?" They said, "People might come in at various points during ...

You can read as well as I can, or maybe not

Raymond ChenJuly 2, 2013Jul 2, 201307/2/13

Occasionally, somebody will ask for help on a distribution list, and it turns into a really annoying case of hand-holding. From: X I'm using the XYZ toolset to do some document management, and I want the server to run a script whenever somebody tries to modify the master template, so it can run validations before accepting the update, ...

If you're asking somebody to help you, you want to make it easy for them, not harder

Raymond ChenNovember 6, 2012Nov 6, 201211/6/12

A customer liaison asked a question that went roughly like this: From: Liaison My customer is having a problem with the header file winfoo.h. The environment is Windows Vista German SP1 with Visual Studio 2008 Professional German SP1 and Windows SDK 6000.0.6000 German. When they try to include the file in their project, they get an error ...

The day I stole Joe Belfiore's mouse

Raymond ChenSeptember 18, 2012Sep 18, 201209/18/12

He's now the head demo-monkey/cheerleader for Windows Phone, but back in the old days, Joe Belfiore was the head demo-monkey/cheerleader for the Windows 95 user interface design. A team-wide meeting was held to show off the new interface that they had developed. Wow look, we have a Start menu (though it wasn't known by that name yet), a ...

Management fallacy: If I send people email, then they will work harder

Raymond ChenJune 30, 2010Jun 30, 201006/30/10

A project many years ago neared the conclusion of one of its project milestones. Things were getting down to the wire, and upper management was concerned that the project may not reach the milestone on schedule. To ensure success, they decided to send email. From: Senior Manager Subject: READ NOW!!!! More than one bug Please see the ...

The best way to prove somebody incompetent is to make up stuff and then point out that it's idiotic

Raymond ChenJune 23, 2010Jun 23, 201006/23/10

One way to show that somebody is incompetent is to tell them that something they're doing is stupid, even when it's not what they're doing. Take for example this comment saying that it's stupid for copy and paste to use data objects which can allow code to execute. Um, we were talking about drag and drop, not copy and paste. And in fact, the ...