Let’s say you’re out and about and you meet 5 people, standing in a line. Their names are Bob, Harry, Susan, Persephone and Jeremiah. If you wanted to attract their attention, you could call out ‘Hey, Harry, over here!’ Or, you could say ‘Hey, you, the 2nd in line, come here!’. And both times, Harry would respond.
Now let’s say that you’re a crackhead, and you decide that from now on, no matter what line of people you come across, you’re going to assume that the same people are lined up in the same order. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume you run across the same 5 people. But this time, the line order is reversed. Now, if you call out for Harry, you’re going to get the 4th person in the line responding. If you call out for the 2nd person, the second person will come.
And of course, if you were in fact calling for Harry, it wouldn’t matter where Harry was standing. But you weren’t. You were asking for the 2nd person in line to step forward, only now, it’s the wrong person. And so every one of your 150 cross-table links are wrong now. Because the order has moved around as the database has evolved. Suddenly there are new people in line, while others have left altogether.
One would have thought that this possibility might occur to you, but apparently, it never did. And so now I’m having to rewrite your nearly indecipherable, completetly undocumented and completely useless code, based on a spec from a client who says ‘It used to print out a big report when I clicked this, only I can’t remember what exactly was in it. But I’ll let you know if you’re missing anything’. You’re lucky I’m a forgiving person, but were this that weird morning show bit, Former Developers, you could all Lick Me Today.
I hope that client is paying you by the hour.
I hope that client is paying you by the hour.