Monday, The Death of Websites

An anonymous reader writes "Developers implementing 'weekend inspiration' are more dangerous than hackers. Vnunet.com has this article about how eager developers and administrators create more troubles than hackers and viruses do for websites. How about those of us who start the week with a cup of coffee and the morning online-news? My inspiration and new ideas for development are definitely not the cause of the Monday-crash hour ... I think."

The Death of Slashdot???

[corebreech]

You all died? Where are all the posts?

Does this mean I shouldn't expect anymore karma?

Emphasizing the story?

[h2oliu]

I log in, the story is a few hours old, and there are 4 posts. Slashdot implementing the theory?

The cause of bugs

[aggressivepedestrian]

This guy has just solved the software problem:

Neal Gandhi, vice president of product management at Attenda, said: "The quietest time of year for website problems is over Christmas and New Year because the development teams are away, even though it's a busy time for consumer websites. "Then, as soon as you see the developers logging on again, the trouble starts."

So, software bugs are caused by developers working on software. The solution is clear: all those VPs of product management should just pay us web developers to stay home.

Re:The Death of Slashdot???

[johnalex]

Sorry, the developers can't post because they're trying to recover from crashing their servers. I'm posting only because my weekend ideas didn't crash the server this week.

Does this mean that Monday mornings are peak productivity times for developers?

Sysop on vacation syndrome

[British]

Reminds me of the BBS days. Usually a few hours after the SysOp leaves on vacation, the BBS is guaranteed to go down.

Re:The Death of Slashdot???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. No Karma for you. Come back 1 year.

OMG

[Lane.exe]

OMFG I broke teh Intarweb this morning!

Tesing

[mgrennan]

I guess these sites don't test anyting. Maybe they are talking about small sites. I work for a big car company. We have three stages of testing.

I'm not saying the artical is wrong. The developers are still the biggest problem with our web site. It just doesn't always happen on Monday. Some times it takes tell Wednesday to get through the system. :-)

Re:Developers shouldn't be able to break stuff

[mog]

If stuff breaks on Mondays, either someone is skipping steps, or there is more going on.

You mean something like this?

if (day == MONDAY) {
die_you_scum_sucking_pigdog ();
}

Re:The cause of bugs

[Rick the Red]

STOP ME BEFORE I CODE AGAIN!

hmmmm

[bilbobuggins]

that's odd
i tend to spend the weekend trying to think of excuses to avoid doing any work on monday morning, somehow i figured other people did the same thing

p.s. our website hasn't gone down in 2 years, go figure

Re:Developers shouldn't be able to break stuff

[John3]

Your server (in sig) is down. Should I check back on Tuesday?

My cause for Monday morning crashes

[UncleAlias]

Log in.

Cup of coffee.

Browse online forums.

Read witty remark.

C|N>K

Change keyboard. Curse profusely.

Re:Unprofessional development

[gughunter]

while their spelling may be atrocious, their grasp of grammer poor

"Grammer"? You're just trolling, aren't you?

Re:day traders

[Consul]

Has anyone done any sort of bandwidth study looking at sites like etrade and yahoo, for purposes of determining any correlation between bandwidth consumption and movement on the stock markets?

Maybe you should lead the way in doing this study. Then, you can publish your results, get Slashdotted, and become an inexplicably famous Internet personality! ;-)

Re:What is it about developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking right? The difference is that the developer's job is to make changes and the sysadmins's job is to prevent changes. Which goal is more likely to cause outages?

Re:Unprofessional development

[tadas]

I could see the "liver server" going down after the weekend

It has to be said...

[ItWasThem]

"Looks like someone has a case of the Mooondays"

This rings so true.

[xA40D]

There must be a course somewhere for developers - how to piss-off sysadmins. Highlights:

1. Make changes last thing on a Friday.
2. Or before a 2 week holiday
3. Change Management does not apply to developers
4. CVS is for wimps
5. And if you must use CVS, wait a week before committing fixed code.
5. Don't bump version numbers
6. Don't update init scripts
7. Ecept if they are correct
8. If anyome is aware of what you are upto... go to lunch.

Re:Sysop on vacation syndrome

[NanoGator]

"Reminds me of the BBS days. Usually a few hours after the SysOp leaves on vacation, the BBS is guaranteed to go down. "

My boss went on a trip to Europe for a month. A few months previously, she had two racks full of servers managing our needs. It all ran like clockwork. Of course, this one-month trip included a 2 week stint where she couldn't be reached. The day after she was completely out of contact, *poof*. I shit you not, there was a *poof*. Something on the motherboard let all it's smoke out. Of course, it was the mail server. Not only did I get to learn how to build a mail server, I also learned that RAID drives don't like hopping cards!

I now appreciate leaving as early as 6.

What a gyp!

[Jonboy X]

You mean, other companies' web programmers get to take weekends?!? Man, that must be nice...

a solution

[cr@ckwhore]

Clearly we need a 5 day waiting period on developers. How many more of our websites must go down before congress gets the message? We should also launch a class action lawsuit against schools and staffing agencies for negligence in putting dangerous developers in the hands of unsuspecting companies. Its the republicans fault.

[/sarcasm]

Re:Sysop on vacation syndrome

[pcraven]

If you remember BBS's, you are too old to be posting on Slashdot.

Obligatory Office Space Quote

[crashnbur]

Peter: When you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?"

Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that.

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Desktop applications sucked because the developers were smart and the users were stupid.

Web applications suck because the developers are stupid and the users are smart.

Solution: have the desktop developers design web sites and fire the webdevs! I mean, I've been waiting WAY to long for a boss key on e2 [everything2.net], anyway.

Re:Sysop on vacation syndrome

[Keeper]

So the only people who should post to slashdot are people roughly the age of 15 and under? Actually, that'd explain a lot....

Re:Developers shouldn't be able to break stuff

[Unregistered]

"Now we compile to check for typos. "

It's great, ain't it. I bet you didn't know gcc has a "LEARN TO TYPE YOU IDIOT!" error.

Re:Sysop on vacation syndrome

[sjames]

He's got a five-figure user number - must be about 90 at least...

All right now...