Right now, my firm is concluding a massive project to install a new Document Processing System (DPS) using Word 97, to replace their previous WordPerfect 5.1-based one. This is a massive task, involving making meticulous backups of each office's data, then putting the new software onto the server and making sure it all works.So, this week we do the two last - and smallest offices, Bristol and Cardiff. At once. I get roped in to create some batch files to copy the data (old letters) from one part of the network to another. I'm not really good with MS-DOS, so it takes me most of the morning, getting a text listing of directories then converting it into a series of move commands.
I do it. All looks OK. Come 1730 hours, I run the first one. Result - "File does not exist" a hundred times over. Disaster! What's happened? I find the directories are not where they were, but where they are meant to be - have I got the source and destination the wrong way round, or have the software development team moved them without telling the rest of us? Guess. . .
But it took an hour to sort all this out, with frantic directory searches and calls to mobile phones etc. . . and that was just Bristol! So, I check Cardiff too - and find that half the files are missing from the source, and there are a lot of files and half-empty directories appeared at the destination.
Further confusion! It turns out the developer sent to Wales for this had botched the move, tried to do a Copy, and then just given up, going to his hotel. I was there with the head of IT until 1930 writing another batch file to do a complete transfer. . .
Basically, programmers are the ruin of any IT Department. They usually act like they've crawled from under a rock, have no idea of business criticality, and yet believe the whole shebang revolves around them.
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