{"id":42883,"date":"2003-08-16T21:38:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-16T21:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2003\/08\/16\/a-day-in-the-trenches\/"},"modified":"2003-08-16T21:38:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-16T21:38:00","slug":"a-day-in-the-trenches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20030816-00\/?p=42883","title":{"rendered":"A day in the trenches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>         I got up at 5 this morning to spend the day at Product Support Services answering         phones: today was the day the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/articles\/2003\/08\/16\/1060936101810.html\">Blaster         worm<\/a> launched its second wave. And by a startling coincidence, the person at the         station next to me was <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/msdnmag\/issues\/03\/03\/TalkingTo\/\">Michael         Howard<\/a> our Senior Security Program Manager and author of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/mspress\/books\/5612.asp\">Writing         Secure Code<\/a><\/i>. Getting Michael Howard to help you secure your computer is like         getting Lance Armstrong to help you change a flat tire on your bicycle.      <\/p>\n<p>     As enlightening yet humbling experiences go, for a software designer, it&#8217;s hard to     top (1)&nbsp;watching a usability session, and (2)&nbsp;answering product support     calls. You get to observe users &#8212; customers, the people your job it is to make more     productive &#8212; struggle with the software you helped create.  <\/p>\n<p>         Usability sessions are particularly frustrating since you are hidden behind a one-way         mirror, watching somebody struggle to accomplish something you designed to be the         most obvious thing on the planet. It&#8217;s a hard lesson to learn: Not everybody is a         geek like you. (Watching a usability session is a lot like being a member of the studio         audience at The Price Is Right trying to help the contestant on stage guess the price         of a new car.)      <\/p>\n<p>     Product support calls let you participate in the other end of the pipeline. The software     is written, it&#8217;s out there, and now you have to pay for all your mistakes and bad     designs when people call in with their problems. It&#8217;s software karma.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got up at 5 this morning to spend the day at Product Support Services answering phones: today was the day the Blaster worm launched its second wave. And by a startling coincidence, the person at the station next to me was Michael Howard our Senior Security Program Manager and author of Writing Secure Code. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-42883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>I got up at 5 this morning to spend the day at Product Support Services answering phones: today was the day the Blaster worm launched its second wave. And by a startling coincidence, the person at the station next to me was Michael Howard our Senior Security Program Manager and author of Writing Secure Code. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}