Other people's software
I have worked in IT for 12 years, mainly as a developer but I have done some support. The applications I've had to support, written by my fellow developers, can be a bit, well, shit. If you asked them to create a shopping till application, it would probably work something like this:

[scan can of beans]
"You have scanned "can of beans", is this correct?"
[click "Yes"]
"Would you like to add "can of beans" to the shopping?"
[click "Yes"]
...
"You have scanned "can of lager", is this correct?"
[click "Yes"]
"Would you like to add "can of lager" to the shopping?"
[click "Yes"]
"Are you over 18 years of age?"
[click "Yes"]
"Is the customer over 18 years of age?"
[click "Yes"]
...
[enter "carrots" in search box]
""carrots" not found"
[enter "carrot" in search box]
"Please weigh "carrot""
[weigh carrots at 300g, enter "300" in weight box]
"Invalid number"
[enter "0.3" in weight box]
"You have entered 0.3 tonnes of "carrot" is this correct?"
...
[enter "orange" in search box]
"How many "orange"?"
[enter "15" in number box]
"Invalid number, please enter a number between 0 and 9"
...
[select "print receipt" from menu]
"You must select "print receipt" before adding items"

and so on.

I pity the poor sods who actually have to use these applications every day.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 17:04, 3 replies)

Utter tosh
Everyone knows that lashups by the departmental "you know computers, make it do _this_!" guy don't have any error checking or user problem catching code in them at all.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 20:25, closed)

[enter "disagree with my post"]
"Invalid answer, press "I agree" to continue"
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 22:22, closed)

I worked for Marconi's once, many, many years ago...
Me and a fellow developer once had to write applications to test thermal imaging systems within environmental chambers. Each piece of kit would be vibrated, heated, cooled, soaked, etc., for 3 weeks.

All the while our software would be testing it.

At the end of a cycle, you entered the number of the item that was being removed (1, 2 or 3) and it turned that item off.

My colleague had used a simple string input, you if you entered, say 'E' instead of '3', it would crash the whole program.
When asked "Isn't that a bit wanky?" he replied "It's the users fault for entering the wrong character."

No wonder our military budgets are so high.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Wed 30 Sep 2009, 13:28, closed)