Yet another 'Disaster' caused by 'Programmers' (ebay down due to shift to 'Chrome')

[Beck38]

Yet another programmer-caused disaster, this time at EBay, caused by (according to their customer service) by an attempt to 'tweak' their system to make it work 'better' with the 'Google Chrome' web browser.

In doing so, they never tested it with more popular (and long running) browsers like... say... Firefox.

With programming disasters all over the news these days, one would have thought..... but no.

So now, the site is essentially down (for users of Firefox, don't know about any others) all in an effort to placate Google. I'm not trying to sell stuff, but if I was, I'd REALLY give them a piece of my thoughts.

But I am trying to buy stuff. Their 'help' phone lines are clogged, and have been all day, with complainers.

According to those customer service folks, they are working as fast/hard as they can to fix things. We'll see how long this lasts.

[Snee]

Nice rant.

It still isn't due to programmers though.

If ebay doesn't have a testing department, or at least a team of testers employed, there's something seriously awry, and, again, that'll be a management issue. Same goes for if the organization is so badly organized something like what you describe (if it's the whole truth. I am doubtful) can slip through the cracks.

For large coding projects, in large organizations, you can't possibly expect individual coders to have a complete overview of the project.


Also, here's a crazy idea: Use chrome?

Or iron if you have google issues.

[Beck38]

It still isn't due to programmers though.



In what parallel universe?

Right straight from Rule Two of Programmers:

"Avoid all responsibility, it's always the fault of management, not my poor to zero coding skills"

Back 'in the day', there was always a clutch of people standing outside the campus (at Microsoft) of folks who had been summarily 'shown the door', sometimes by Mr. Bill (Gates) himself. Of course, this was a long (LONG) time ago, way before the programming disasters known as Windows XP, Vista, 7, and now 8, all after he left the 'day to day' operations to others.

Where there problems with Win 4, Win2K? Sure, just not 'stop the bus, I want to get OFF!' kind of problems that generally remained until at least the first service pack.

EBay still isn't fixed, on a problem that's now going on to the third day. And it's affecting all browsers (well, all that I have in my multiple machines) on multiple OS's. It also appears that they've basically halted the 'system' (stopped all auctions in their tracks time wise).

[Snee]

In this universe.

Listen, programmers can make mistakes, but if management, project managers, and you know, everyone who should be doing the planning do their jobs, the public shouldn't even know that they happened. And maybe the programmers who fucked up would have lost their jobs, if it was their fault, and quite possibly even if it wasn't, since blaming someone on the floor is a time honoured tradition amongst executives and project managers.

The fact that you've even noticed that something's wrong, however, points to an organisational fuckup. (And really, do you honestly believe ebay would hire sub-par coders?) If I were to take an educated guess, I'd guess that the company were cutting corners and rushing the work, and that sort of thing generally isn't a programmer's decision.

I've been in the business for several years now, in positions ranging from external tech consultant, to project manager, to programmer, and in that time I've yet to see a project fail because of a programmer alone. I've seen plenty of mistakes, but those commited by someone actually writing code generally depend on an outside source, like an exec coming in and heaping other tasks on, outside of the agreed upon plan. People who solve complicated problems with their minds all day don't work well when priorities are constantly shifting and the tasks are changing faster than they can be completed, and work efficiency generally tends to taper off sharply after working too many hours. But regardless of who is making the mistakes, things only go bad when it gets all the way out to the customer, and there's a couple of steps between the code being written and it getting released, unless there's something off.

I could sort of see there being no one to blame for coding errors but the programmer, if it was a small mom and pop operation (or a school project) with a flat organisational structure. But Ebay? Come on. They should have safeguards upon safeguards.

[Skiz]

I can't find a single article, news story, blog post.... nothing related to this at all. Not even in the eBay forums.

Not saying there are none out there, just saying that it couldn't have lasted very long. I also doubt they were trying to "placate" Google, rather than trying to give their customers a better experience.

[mjmacky]

Yeah, I'm not sure when it happened, but I'm pretty much exclusively using Chrome now. When the fuck did that happen? I, along with others, have likely inflated Google's share in browser usage statistics. It's all conjecture, but I think that has something to do with it.

[megabyteme]

In doing so, they never tested it with more popular (and long running) browsers like... say... Firefox.

With programming disasters all over the news these days, one would have thought..... but no.

Interesting you would be a fan of Firefox. I abandoned that one when their management decided to push out a new version every [6] weeks- which resulted in inconsistency and incompatibility with other devices I own, not to mention the headache of Firefox itself constantly insisting to be updated.

Strange axe you grind, Beck...

[Skiz]

Yeah, I switched from FF to Chrome when FF v.4 or something came out. Whenever it was they moved everything around and added the Firefox button at the top. It was (is) ugly and I didn't like the functionality.

This one:
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[anon]

Whenever it was they moved everything around and added the Firefox button at the top. It was (is) ugly and I didn't like the functionality.


#appmenu-button { display:none !important; }

Adding that to your userChrome.css would have fixed that.

Due to the way the UI is handled, you can pretty much alter anything you want on it in this manner, actually. Change appearances of objects depending on status, hide or move elements around, add special effects, etc. Firefox is light years ahead of any other browser in terms of customization, and that's what I loved in it. It's a shame the same cannot be said about rendering and JavaScript performance.

[Skiz]

Whenever it was they moved everything around and added the Firefox button at the top. It was (is) ugly and I didn't like the functionality.


#appmenu-button { display:none !important; }

Adding that to your userChrome.css would have fixed that.

Due to the way the UI is handled, you can pretty much alter anything you want on it in this manner, actually. Change appearances of objects depending on status, hide or move elements around, add special effects, etc. Firefox is light years ahead of any other browser in terms of customization, and that's what I loved in it. It's a shame the same cannot be said about rendering and JavaScript performance.

None of that matter to me since I know fuck all about that stuff. Wouldn't know where to start.

Chrome should be pretty good about that stuff too though right? It has a greasemonkey equivalent as well as the right-click > inspect element thing. I use the latter all the time to get rid of pop ups that block sites until you like their page or login with facebook to view the site, circumventing whatever spam bullshit they have planned. News sites are horrible about this.

Edit: This shit. Motherfuckers. (https://www.google.com/search?q=popup+blocking+website&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS551US551&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=KOJxUuuIJe_wyAHs1oE4&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=1075#es_sm=122&espv=210&q=popup+facebook+like+website&tbm=isch)

[anon]

Chrome should be pretty good about that stuff too though right? It has a greasemonkey equivalent as well as the right-click > inspect element thing.

Yes, Chrome is fine on that regard since Google had the wisdom to introduce extensions early on, instead of Opera for example. But Firefox is so much better since there are addons for virtually everything. Don't like the default cookie or download managers, or the status bar? You can just swap them for better ones. NoScript adds a layer of protection beyond a simple JavaScript whitelist that's yet to be seen on other browsers. Obscure things like handling redirects based on regular expressions, or blocking cache tracking can also be done.

As for the element inspector, all major browsers have one nowadays. It's essential for testing the compatibility, appearance and security of pages, as well as useful for those who like to tinker with stuff. You can use it to test new styles, edit or remove elements you don't want to print, evade some "soft" limitations as in your case and send raw HTTP requests, among many other things.

[Ihino]

Chrome certainly seems less expandable than Firefox, the latter has a much more powerful plugin API. The Chrome philosophy (highlighted by their recent Chrome Web Store policy change) seems to be "small additions with clear focus", not "maximum flexibility for our users".