[Bru-list] Next meeting - Wednesday 14th Jan

[Vince M Hudd]

Vince M Hudd <vince at softrock.co.uk> wrote:

> (I'd guess a 30-45 minute drive there, 5-10 minutes fixing the problem[1],
> then a 30-45 minute drive home!)

Grr. I spoke too soon. My estimate above, which works out between 65 to 100
minutes, actually turned out to be a lot longer!

The problem *was* what I thought... except that I couldn't find the folder;
it had completely and utterly vanished. The program is ancient, and I don't
have any notes on any current machines about how it works - so I had to work
out exactly what files needed to go in that folder, the format and contents
of config files, etc., to get it up and running again from scratch[1], with
all existing data now lost. I did ask about backups; that got blank stares.

[1] When I wrote it, I didn't do sensible things like have the software
*create* suitable defaults when first run - the sort of thing I do now.
OTOH, given this company, that would probably be worse. An error, prompting
them to call me, means if the data is there to be recovered, it can be. A
program which attempts to deal neatly with this scenario would probably
result in regular data loss.

Sometimes the worse thing about developing software is the end users!

-- 
Vince M Hudd, Soft Rock Software - www.softrock.co.uk

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