This is a story that I tell new engineers after they screw something up, to give them a sense of scale:
Once upon a time I worked for the NYSE as a computer operator; my job was to essentially run through a set of defined commands on a regular cycle (10-15 minutes) and check-off boxes on a paper list. One of these checks involved me arrowing-through a curses menu on very heavily loaded Unix host and hitting enter to run internal diagnostics regularly.
[ ] Start the one and only application this system ran
[ ] Order a pizza?
[ ] Run quick diagnostics
[ ] Shutdown the application
[ ] Cleanup old files
Are you old enough to remember how unresponsive a curses menu can be when the system is loaded? Do you remember how your keypresses seemed to buffer, then all happen in a burst? Can you see how I overran where I wanted the cursor to be by one position and ended up halting the NYSE Tradefloor supervision system on a Tuesday right before lunch?
Having the board of directors of the NYSE call me up and ask what the ^*#!#@$ was happening was not a great moment for me, but I kept the job.
This is a story that I tell new engineers after they screw something up, to give them a sense of scale:
Once upon a time I worked for the NYSE as a computer operator; my job was to essentially run through a set of defined commands on a regular cycle (10-15 minutes) and check-off boxes on a paper list. One of these checks involved me arrowing-through a curses menu on very heavily loaded Unix host and hitting enter to run internal diagnostics regularly.
Are you old enough to remember how unresponsive a curses menu can be when the system is loaded? Do you remember how your keypresses seemed to buffer, then all happen in a burst? Can you see how I overran where I wanted the cursor to be by one position and ended up halting the NYSE Tradefloor supervision system on a Tuesday right before lunch?
Having the board of directors of the NYSE call me up and ask what the ^*#!#@$ was happening was not a great moment for me, but I kept the job.
Chills just ran down my spine...