You know you're a real programmer when...

[jducoeur]

... you are capable of saying, "The system broke! Yay!" with a straight face.

I've been fighting an intermittent bug with CommYou's IM code for *weeks* now. It was almost completely working, but kept breaking occasionally -- mostly shortly after I put out a new release. I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with it.

Turns out that the problem is with *lists*. Things generally work fine, but any malformed HTML causes it to break -- and the HTML for lists was broken in the way it often is. And of course, the lists most often posted are the release notes that I send right after I put out each release.

Hence the "Yay!". It may be broken, but at least now I know *why* it's broken, and can fix the bloody thing...

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Also common in the medical profession. "Yay! You have [horrid but finally diagnosed ailment]!"

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

Completely been there. My junior programmers will tell me that something with an issue now appears to have another issue, to which I often respond, "Excellent, thank you!" They realize I'm not joking and are confused. I explain that two symptoms are far more useful than one, adding another one has just made things much better. At first they usually don't believe me.

Congrats on your brokenness.