John vents his anger via the artful medium that is "e-mail".

After leaving BodgeCo, John kept in contact with Malcolm and often sent him e-mails describing his work life at CrapScape (and afterwards Flapsoft). Here's a selection of those e-mails. The messages have been edited for cohesion, and to cut out stuff which was a bit too specific to a particular product or company, too politically incorrect, or whatever. But the flavour's there, and there's plenty of detail and bitterness left over.

Managers, learn from these bitter e-mails. Your staff are probably saying these things about you right now.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 1 January

I'm starting to get into the work, & learning lots about [this type of product] which can only be good. It's such a shame their code is so crap. I can't figure CrapScape out. They SEEM like such a promising company - nice product, subject matter verging towards the Internet (but not quite there), er, nice office... But on paper everything seems stacked against them, e.g.:

They only have one real product (spooged across many operating systems), and don't seem particularly keen to look at new technologies, at least not the ones I'm interested in. They're a nice, amiable company which would be great for a retirement job. I think they need someone to give them a good kicking as the potential is there to turn them into an ass-kicking, cutting-edge company which embraces new technology. "Dodoware" was a cash cow, but they're not using it to go anywhere.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 2 January

They are doomed. They've grown fat and lazy. When is your next pay rise due?

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 4 January

Technically it's now, they just haven't told me how much yet. If they keep this up, I'll stay there for another 2 months (so I'll have been there 6 months), then leave. (I might leave then anyway, it's a frustrating company). I just don't want to leave sooner as it would look bad on my c.v.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 4 January

There are tonnes of jobs out there. What skills are you gaining at work, and don't say [a set of banking-specific skills], as I mean skills that people want not vertical technologies.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 4 January

Mainly C, but in a horrible way: deciphering crappily written libraries with no documentation and proprietary databases - oh! ooh! when they read in a record, it gets stored in a big buffer with NO constants, all fields are referenced with literal offsets, & ALL files get stored in one of two buffers (there's db.buf & db.buf1), so you're never totally sure what file was last read in, especially with the code being so full of gotos. I started to tidy the code up as I couldn't stand having to work with it, and got told to stop as the code is "historic". They really are doomed, the code is just going to get more complex and more indecipherable, especially as you don't know what field is stored where, you have to sift through old code to get the field offsets. (Pause for breath...)

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 7 January

Who do you like there? Who do you go to lunch with? I hope you have invented nicknames for your enemies and spread them.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 8 January

My "best friend" at the company is a balding 21-year-old programmer who works for me. He's okay I suppose, wants to leave the company, so I keep trying to persuade him to. It's in his interest, as CrapScape are messing him around with his salary. There's a guy in Support who seems quite competent, he's fairly cool and actually takes pride in being able to work things out for himself. Remember that large-chinned support guy at BodgeCo who used to consult us for every single support call?

They're looking for a junior programmer, specifically with a degree and no commercial programming experience. They WANT this!! (They got lucky with one and are superstitious enough to think they can repeat it).

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 8 January

Hang on, you can poach Stinky Stan, he's got no experience.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 9 January

I just bought a Ren & Stimpy video. It contains: Stimpy's Invention, Untamed World, Space Madness, and Breakfast Tips.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 11 January

There is a car advert on now that has loads of babies all making bizarre baby noises. I hate it more than any commercial I can remember.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 14 January

I spent most of today tracking down some bugs which had lain dormant for 2 years, then for no apparent reason suddenly caused 2 clients' programs to cack up. Oh well, at least I'm doing some Windows programming next week. Unfortunately we're still using VB3, not VB4. I asked my boss recently why we're not using Delphi. He said it doesn't produce native code for Power PC, Digital Alpha etc. running NT, which apparently VB does. Oh no! Even if this is the case, I suspect a Delphi .exe would out-perform an interpreted VB program running "native" on these platforms.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 14 January

VB does not produce compiled code. It is an interpreter. A VBX for Intel will not work on ALpha at a proper speed. Alpha NT can run emulated 16bit windows. I've never seen VB for Alpha. He is talking shit. Get him to prove it. Look at [a Microsoft URL which no longer exists]. It does not mention Alpha, only Intel. It is quite specific. He is a huge liar and mouthy <snip>

Its weird how they seem to take a dislike to products for no reason. You should get your wage rise then leave. Look at the uk.jobs.offered newsgroup.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 17 January

If you are going to be using Windows, and maybe not even MFC or OWL, try to get them to buy WinMaker Pro. Its a C/C++ GUI system that can target MFC/OWL/Raw API. Supposedly the nearest thing to Delphi for C/C++!! You can use it with VC++/Borland/Watcom, and even switch Targets whilst developing. It would make Windows programming mildly bearable. Let's see what bullshit answer your boss comes up with this time not to use new technologies.

[Editor's note: This message was sent several years ago, and the WinMaker Pro product is no longer available. Besides, C++ Builder has since been released. It's a better product again. Hurrah!]

[Editor's note: That last Editor's Note was posted several years ago, and times they have a-changed (again). It's a fast-moving world out there. These days, you're better off just using Java. Then you can worry less about targetting any specific platform, as it sort of covers the board. Hurrah again!]

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 22 January

My boss was on holiday last week so I was able to deal with the MD instead. He seems much more receptive to new ideas, so I might start approaching him directly in future (if only to annoy Ginger). I'll mention WinMaker Pro to each of them separately on Monday, and compare their excuses.

I spent most of the weekend learning Delphi for myself, but put aside a couple of hours for VB on Saturday and almost finished what he'd allocated me 8 weeks to finish (I'll do a rewrite in work time so it's tidily written, nicely documented etc). My boss is the complete opposite to Stimpy from BodgeCo - that's the problem, he's got a sleepy company with no spark.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 23 January

Well, hopefully you can spend time company time learning stuff for yourself. Make sure you don't tell
him that you have finished. Look at all the jobs requirements put out on uk.jobs.offered. That will help
show you in what ways your CV is lacking.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 24 January

I produced a functional spec for my VB program and made sure that Ginger OK'd it before going on to the design spec, and similarly made sure he looked at that before I started coding. However, if I hadn't bothered then he would not have said anything. Sleepy sleepy...

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 26 January

Yep. Any way you can extend it? Make it into an OLE control? Export/Import various data formats. Make it talk Winsock? ODBC?

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 27 January

I think he cottoned on that it's taking less time than he thought. All it is is direct data entry - some spotty computer operator types transactions in all day, and that's it. Luckily, we agreed beforehand that if I finished before the 8 weeks' illusory deadline was up then I could use the time adding "nice" features. So, 8 weeks of adding nice features coming up!

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 27 January

I hope the product is completely usable via keyboard? How about graphing of data? There must be something you can do there. Export/Import from Excel would be brilliant. You could use DDE or OLE or ODBC, or all 3.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 1 February

Yup. I've had to keep all the fields in the same order as the DOS version, as the users might use data entry forms (which they wouldn't want to have to redesign). I mentioned that to my boss and he said "oh yeah, that's a point". I've made the data entry screen as distraction-free as possible, it can be maximised and resizes nicely. Hit <Enter> on the last field and it moves to the Save button (gives them a chance to pause and reflect on what they've typed in), hit <Enter> again to save. <Pgup> and <Pgdn> move between transactions.

There's the usual crap that I'm not allowed to use a proper database engine, so I'm kind of limited there. Importing/exporting other data formats would improve the product's potential. As we can't use SQL or anything else nice to query data, the records have to be read into memory and displayed in a crappy VB list box (go beyond 64000 bytes and it blows up). I'll probably put in a feature where you can select many lines and do stuff with them (delete, edit, change transaction types etc).

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 3 February

Its difficult to take a boring programme interesting. When they enter the data, I assume its record by
record. Can they go back and change things. Do you put the data in a grid of any sort. If so, can it
do in place editing? Yawn...

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 4 February

My boss looked at the screen and said it would have to be redesigned as it looks "too Windows-like", and too much like our main competitor's screen (which I haven't seen). nnnnnnnnnnnnngg.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 5 February

Tell him to redesign it if he wants. Make it nice, then say that if he wants it kacked up he should do it. There are far too many non-standard windows progs out there, and they handle like cack. I know, take off tool tips, accelerators, make the font old english, take off all 3d effects, and create your own menu with a VB list. Oh yes, and disable the mouse. It'll be fab.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 8 February

Another programmer has just started a vaguely Internet-related project here. No-one's quite sure what the product does, least of all the programmer. I've stayed well away from that one as it is too sad for words. (The MD has made himself "personally involved" with the design & development).

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 8 February

Oh well, yep best to stay away, especially if they don't know what it does. What a **** up.

From: John To: Malcolm Date: 9 February

I'm going to Canada for two weeks next month. I'll be looking for work before then, but I'll leave after the holiday.

From: Malcolm To: John Date: 12 February

I've found a wonderful magazine called Nexus.
Its full of suppressed info and stuff, here is its web site.

Its amazing but depressing reading. I'm going to subscribe to it.

http://www.peg.apc.org/~nexus/

That's the first batch of e-mails. There are more e-mails coming soon (if I can find them). Some are extremely inciteful and bitter. Ooh!

>>> Next chapter: John's Surreal Experiences at Flapsoft
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