Tales from the IT Cabinet of Curiosities
The world of IT brings forth tales of folly and misunderstanding. In this strange land, two particularly noteworthy stories have emerged. One involves a Visual Studio Code (VSCode) user who thought they could wing it with some Git features - only to watch their project folder disappear into thin air. And then there's the McAfee anti-virus software that decided to get all up in SQLite's business. But witness the chaos firsthand.
114 Times F*** YOU in One Bug Report
An IT tragedy takes off when a user wanted to familiarise himself with Visual Studio Code (VSCode). Eager to try it as an alternative to his usual editor, the user began experimenting with some of the Git features. What followed was a calamity of epic proportions — and a rant that has since achieved legendary status in the annals of GitHub.
The user reported that he had just downloaded VSCode and in a moment of curiosity, clicked "Discard" in the source control option. To his horror, the files disappeared not only from the staging area, but completely from his project folder. No recycle bin, no undo button, no trace. All of it, gone:
"I hadn't commited any of them to any repository. But that shouldn't mean that this thing is going to toss your files to oblivion because of that decision. It didn't say CAUTION: THIS WILL DELETE EVERY FILE FROM THIS FOLDER IN YOUR COMPUTER. It said: are sure to discard all the changes?"
The user lambasted the developers for implementing an option capable of such destruction, vented about the lack of a warning message, and questioned why discarded files weren’t simply moved to the recycle bin. Their fury culminated in an apocalyptic vow to abandon VSCode forever:
"I'M PERMANENTLY STAYING AWAY FROM EVERY WINDOWS DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE FROM NOW ON AND TO THE GENIUS WHO IMPLEMENTED THIS: F*** YOU"
The story ends with a bittersweet irony: VSCode’s developers made updates to the software to clarify the behavior of the “discard” option, but for this particular user, the damage was done. Their files may be lost, but their rage lives on in infamy.
But seriously, making it a habit to RTFM before creating those 'I'm too lazy to search for an answer' bug reports will save everyone involved from a whole lot of frustration and eye-rolling.
sqlite_ changed to etilqs_ - because of some anti-virus Software
Here’s another gem from the vaults of IT absurdity, this time featuring SQLite, a popular database solution. It seems that McAfee's anti-virus software began using SQLite in its product, causing users' temp files to be saved with the "sqlite" prefix. Harmless, right? Wrong. Soon, McAfee users found their computers drowning in a sea of mysteriously multiplying temp files.
Naturally, they turned to Google for salvation and, like digital detectives, unearthed the contact info for the SQLite developers. And because the internet is a magical place where logic takes a backseat, these poor developers suddenly found themselves fielding calls from irate McAfee users demanding answers — at all hours of the day and night.
In response, the SQLite developers changed the default temp file prefix from "sqlite_" to "etilqs_" (that’s "sqlite" in reverse) and left a delightfully snarky comment: "The temp files are still identifiable, but anyone clever enough to decipher the code should also be clever enough to realize that calling the developers won’t magically make the files disappear."
And so, another day in IT comes to a close, with our sanity (and project folders) left intact, but only just...