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, Reply)