Roshni has worked here several years, and when she started, I’m sure she made the same mistake several times. When making a database patch, we have a Patching Tool that not only applies the patch but runs some code analysis to make sure it conforms to coding standards.
Many times when developers have reviewed her code, Roshni has been told her patch would have been flagged by the tool if she had run it as part of her Developer Testing.
When I was a junior, once I was told by the Seniors; I never forgot to run it again. It’s like the embarrassment/shame makes you remember. Also I cared about quality and this was a simple process that ensured quality and standardisation of our SQL code.
Recently, she had merged her fix ready for release and a Tester, Mick pointed out there were patching errors so her SQL patch cannot have been run through the Patching Tool, or even tested.
She claimed it had been tested, and it was a problem between SQL versions. So her claim was that – both her local machine and the test server it was run on (by another tester in her team) was a different version to what was on the main test environment we use before releasing the software.
So Mick looked at the SQL patch and saw the error was about a missing namespace. The patch was inserting XML, and XML has a namespace attribute on the first line. So then he looked at what data is currently in the table, and saw that all the existing entries had a namespace declared, and this was missing from Roshni’s patch.
So Mick embarrassingly pointed this out. So she had lied about testing the patch locally, she must have lied about it being tested in her team, and lied that it was an SQL version issue.
She then submits a brand new patch which conditionally checks if the previous patch had created the entries. If it hasn’t then, this new patch would insert them, then if it had already added them, then her new patch would run an update statement instead.
Mick then points out that this is nonsense because the original patch had failed so would have just rolled back and stopped patching. What she needed to do was just to fix the original patch so it would run. So then she quickly deletes her new patch, and updates the original one.
Although it’s what we wanted, the speed that she did it makes me think she hadn’t run the Patching Tool because it can be very slow to run. So yet again, we have told her it is important to run it through the Patching Tool, and she hasn’t bothered.
Although I think nothing was actually wrong with her new change, another tester had pointed out that her changes were across two repositories and her changes in the other repository were also flagging errors in the Patching Tool. So it’s not like she just forgot to run it once, it’s just that no matter how many times in the past we have told her YOU MUST RUN PATCHING TOOL; she never does.
It’s just infuriating we keep employing people like that that don’t listen or care about the work they are doing.
Stranger Coding Tings 