Guess the programming language and help out a fellow anon OK

>>58800781
C or FORTRAN are my guesses

>>58800781
COBOL?

>>58800797

how feasible is it for me to try to take on maintaining this program from a blank start? (I can code some ruby and java but that's about it and only for web stuff)

my boss trusts that i will work hard to learn and come in every day and give him progress reports on how I am coming along, that is why he is offering this to me, that's what I did with the website and I eventually got it working

is it possible for me to even do this?

the whole company runs on this software

Cobol, vb, fortran or C

>>58800819

op here this is possible

>>58800797

my first guess was C too

>>58800781

>but how can i say no?

If you don't know what it is and you find it's an old uncommented lisp variant you may wish you had done.

>>58800839

it could be vb, i had not thought of that, i would be more comfortable if it were vb

>>58800839
Scratch vb

>>58800853
>If you don't know what it is and you find it's an old uncommented lisp variant you may wish you had done.

I told him the possiblity existed that I would be unable to do the job, however I promised him I could figure out what language it's written in, what it does as far as database access and give him good advice as to who to hire or what to do and have me go back to my old job

he has no clue how it works except he remembered the word red hat

I think the other programmer he has been using is on drugs or something and has basically checked out

Help me out /g/ should i try to do this or not?

how crazy is it for me to try to take this on?

>>58800781

Good chance a loan company is going to have some kind of database ... this could get ugly for you, but paste some code if you want the best answer. All this speculation is worthless.

>>58800966
>Good chance a loan company is going to have some kind of database ... this could get ugly for you, but paste some code if you want the best answer. All this speculation is worthless.

I know there are multiple databases

ok so forget the exact language for a minute, what about the very idea of me taking this on, is that crazy?

>>58800839
It's definitely pascal

>>58800915
No. The program was written in the 80, but RH did not come out till the 90s so it was not the OS of origin. You are taking a setup that has traveled over *nix variants, has probably been hacked to death. Probably has poor commenting due do all these changes. If you don't know what it is how are you going to do it with limited knowledge and experience not just of the language but understanding the mess of legacy stuff it will be full of.

File: 1481763072137.jpg (56KB, 907x661px) Image search: [Google]

56KB, 907x661px

>>58801033
What if it's a dos program that's running in dosbox

I say go for it OP

>>58801033

well my boss said "20 years ago"

i get the feeling you are right and it's all fucked up because only this one guy has worked on it for about 10 years

Should I just take a look at it and do the best I can to farm out the work and try to act as an in house manager of the software while farming out modifications when needed

my boss is being ripped the fuck off right now, nothing has been done to the software in like a year and he's out 100k

>>58801078
>Should I just take a look at it

Wont hurt to check

Unless you give us at least a declaration or something from the code, this is all guesswork.

Why the fuck not?

>>58800882
If what you said here is true, there is no reason to not go for it.
Plus he's willing to pay for classes.

>Best case scenario:
Some hard work but you're earning way fucking more.

>Worst case scenario:
If you fail you still have someone else to blame and you still have your old job.

>>58801092

I'm worried im going to press the wrong button and blow up the company

I get the feeling he's going to fire the guy on it now and he will leave on bad terms

maybe i could hire a talented programmer or 2 for a month to get everything straight and documented and then maintain from there with occasional outside help as I learn?

Whatever is going on with the program I know it's not huge (as in lines of code huge) and given the right circumstances maybe i could figure it out and be getting paid six figures soon while doing right by the company

i am like beside myself right now, i don't know what to do

i don't want to misrepresent myself or be dishonest but I'm thinking my boss should just hire some pros and not think about me, however it's very tempting to try

>>58800981
In accounting, if you fuck up bad enough you could go to jail, ruin the company, etc.

>>58801078
You can take a look but don't promise anything. If you will be on your own and need to do a degree of learning on the job just don't unless it really is something super simple. Trying to sort out old database setups from platforms that may not even exists anymore would keep vets awake at night. You would just be giving yourself a world of hurt.

>>58801138
>>Worst case scenario:
>If you fail you still have someone else to blame and you still have your old job.

that's a good point thanks anon i had not thought of it that way

>>58801130
>Unless you give us at least a declaration or something from the code, this is all guesswork.

i agree, but at the end of the day it does not really matter what language it is, the question is "can some noob just dive the fuck in and start maintaining software if he tries hard enough"?

>>58801148
Can he fuck up worse than a drug user who works from home and doesn't do shit? :^^)

>>58801148
>In accounting, if you fuck up bad enough you could go to jail, ruin the company, etc.

that would be bad, don't want that

>>58801185
Yes

>>58801163
>If you will be on your own and need to do a degree of learning on the job just don't unless it really is something super simple. Trying to sort out old database setups from platforms that may not even exists anymore would keep vets awake at night. You would just be giving yourself a world of hurt.

i would not have to be on my own, he said i could have a reasonable budget to hire some consultants early on to figure out what is going on with the whole thing since his current programmer basically won't talk to anyone anymore

im not going to promise anything except that i will try hard and be honest about what i find and think i can do

>>58800781
>any guesses on what language it would have been written in? I'm guessing "C"?
Could be anything. C would not be the most obvious choice in the 80s for someone who is not a programmer, it is not and has never been the language to mess around with if you don't know what you're doing.

>He's offering me more than double the pay if i take on the job...
Do it faggot.

>is this a crazy hairbrained idea?
Yes. Odds are you'll fuck it up. The first time you try something of this scale, you almost always fuck it up because nobody gets it right the first time. Your boss had better have some good backups in place.

>(I can code some ruby and java but that's about it and only for web stuff)
Do you know enough web programming to make a basic 4chan clone, or do you think you could learn to? Then you can certainly learn enough programming to maintain your boss's crap.

>how feasible is it for me to try to take on maintaining this program from a blank start?
Quite feasible. Everyone trying to maintain it would have to do so knowing fuck all about what the program does and how it works, and study the existing code to find out. That's part of the job. Yes, this will take time, separate and additional over the time of learning the necessary programming skill.

>the whole company runs on this software
I'm sure your boss is well aware how precarious his position is. Just make sure you tell him to have proper backups in case you mess up something.


>i get the feeling you are right and it's all fucked up because only this one guy has worked on it for about 10 years
All software that has been quietly powering a company for 20 years is fucked up beyond belief. ALL of it. Deal with it, make mad moneys.

>I'm worried im going to press the wrong button and blow up the company
You might. So learn yourself some backup discipline and treat it like the fucking bible.

>>58801309

thanks anon, yeah basically the position is precarious, his programmer won't talk to him and he does not know what to do.

I think he just trusts me to be honest and help him fix the problem and that's why he is offering this to me vs. going out and finding some high dollar consultants.

I think he does not realize how much more complex this is than making a website, and yes i maintain a site that has tens of thousands of pages and search functions etc.. so it's not just a static 5 page site or something

I guess I should give it a shot, back everything up twice and hire someone to look over my shoulder on a part time or consultant base while i take classes and get good

if this works out i sure was at the right place at the right time

>>58801392
>I think he just trusts me to be honest and help him fix the problem and that's why he is offering this to me vs. going out and finding some high dollar consultants.
Then I don't think you can really go wrong with "I can't judge in advance whether how far removed from my currents kills this is but I'll do my best".

>I think he does not realize how much more complex this is than making a website
It may be and it may not be. There's tons of apparently complicated shit out there that is really quite a simple chunk of automation once you sit down and understand it. Of course, it COULD be a complex beast beyond your level, it's hard to say in advance.

>yes i maintain a site that has tens of thousands of pages and search functions etc.. so it's not just a static 5 page site or something
On what level? Do you maintain the ruby (or possibly java) code behind it? Could you write that shitty 4chan clone with an SQL database behind it?

OP the answer is no. If you make one mistake and there is downtime or data loss you will get canned.

>>58801486
>On what level? Do you maintain the ruby (or possibly java) code behind it? Could you write that shitty 4chan clone with an SQL database behind it?

If is started out with a template like everyone else does, yes with some effort to get it smooth (not as smooth and refined as 4chan is, that took years)

from dead scratch, no i could not do it

>>58801486
>Then I don't think you can really go wrong with "I can't judge in advance whether how far removed from my currents kills this is but I'll do my best".

this is what i think i am going to do

>>58801489
>OP the answer is no. If you make one mistake and there is downtime or data loss you will get canned.

this is what i fear but i don't think he would can me, just put me back in my old job if I kept causing downtime

data loss is a huge concern for me i get the feeling they don't have good backups and have been getting by on luck for too long

>>58801542
>data loss is a huge concern for me i get the feeling they don't have good backups and have been getting by on luck for too long
As a rule of thumb, if your boss doesn't employ a system administrator, you don't have backups. Certainly not ones that will save your butt if you fuck up (which you likely will at least once). And you personally do not have the skill necessary to set up such backups *that will in fact save your butt when you need it, rather than being a nice try but useless in practice*, and will not have that skill until your programming skill is high enough that you don't really need those backups. (You should still make them, of course.)

tl;dr If you can't find someone else above you who is willing to stake their reputation on the reliability of the backups, expect data loss at some point during your development activities.

>>58801615
>As a rule of thumb, if your boss doesn't employ a system administrator, you don't have backups.

there is no system admin, one of the secretaries backs shit up on a drive and they think it's all backed up

i guess job one would be to tell them to get the backups in order and do recovery tests

>>58801637
The first thing to find out about this software, more important than the language it's written in or how large it is, is what role it has in regards to data.

Does the program maintain a database that useful analysis comes out of? Does it store the only master copy of critical crap like customer details? Does it store data for customers?
Maybe it only takes relevant data as input (like quarterly sales data or somesuch) and produces relevant statistics and reports? Maybe it's something your boss interacts with to produce useful outputs (like designs, suggested stocks to invest in, etc) without ever storing any long-term data? Maybe it interacts with some bunch of external data / external resources on a regular basis?

These different kinds of programs imply hugely different risks of fucking it up. If you are hacking on a tool that analyzes your boss's spreadsheets, if you fuck it up, your boss just needs to feed his spreadsheets into the fixed version of the program again. If the program maintains the master copy of anything, the consequences of fucking up are much more serious. Lots here in between, of course.

>>58801690

Thanks anon I can tell this is good advice. I know he is always looking at reports that come out of the software such as daily profit and loss, loan and interest calculations and for customer data and loan repayment details.

I get the feeling I could really fuck something up badly, I also get the feeling that everyone in the company knows they dont have their shit together backup wise and program security wise but have no idea what to do about it

that's the problem, he owns several branches of loan offices and there is only one lazy programmer who does anything and he does less every day, they all know they are heading for problems but have no idea what to do

>>58800781
Why are you fretting over this? Your boss sounds very accomodating.

Why would you turn down the chance for a massive pay rise? Even if you fail you still keep your current job.

Harden the fuck up before your life passes you by and you never took any chances.

>>58801856
>Why would you turn down the chance for a massive pay rise? Even if you fail you still keep your current job.
>Harden the fuck up before your life passes you by and you never took any chances.

true

it's because I don't even know how much I am taking on, maybe it's impossible, maybe it's not. I don't even know. If it's not nearly impossible for someone to run blindly into a project like this I feel I can do it, I learn quickly and work pretty hard, but if it is basically impossible I feel the responsible thing to do is decline the job so I don't fuck anything up.

I was also wondering if anyone here had ever been thrust into programming in a similar way and how it worked out

>>58801542
>>58801187
One mode word of warning.
A friend of mine who worked with software at a financial company was forced to plead guilty to wire fraud in court. He made some mistake (I don't know the technical details) but the prosecutors collected a bunch of emails and somehow made a case that there was a conspiracy between the individuals in the company to commit fraud. If he had plead innocent (which he claimed to be) and lost the case he would have ended up with several years jail time.

My point is, there are probably a bunch of industry regulations you will be operating under, even if your boss is making it sound like an informal deal. If something goes wrong, even if it was a problem before you got there, you could be in deep water legally. And management never takes the fall when they can pass it down the chain.

Also, even if you are "just looking" at the code, you could be getting yourself into trade secrets, NDAs, non-competes, etc.
Financial firms take that stuff very seriously.

This seems like a no brainer. Take the job, see how fucked up it is. If it's real bad let him know what language and whatever details you can, get some consultants to help you learn and figure it out

>>58801764
So the software maintains the master copy of the accounting data, such as loans and repayments by different customers?

If so, I would politely decline to touch the software with a ten foot pole until your boss has hired a system administrator guy (which can work on a freelance basis if need be) who can take charge of keeping the software operational, no matter what harddisk dies tomorrow how how silly a programming mistake the programmer (be it you or the current guy) makes. Odds are the current programmer is currently taking care of that and doing a decently good job of it, or things would have come crashing down earlier. In terms of strategic company risk, this is the considerably more valuable position to replace if the current programmer is likely to leave soon.

Some day, the programmer --be it you or someone else-- is going to activate code that accidentally removes all payments ever recorded, rather than all payments by Bob last Tuesday. Oops.

It is the system administrator's job to make sure the company will not collapse even if you make a mistake like that. Or if a harddisk explodes at an inconvenient time, for that matter. IF a competent system administrator is present, you could try getting acquainted with the actual software, and keep it up to date, as long as you listen religiously to what the sysadmin has to say about procedures for getting your software running on the live system, and all that.

I would NOT recommend trying to take responsibility for running this system and keeping it operational against all odds if you don't have experience with that. That is something that you really WILL inevitably mess up, and quite a different skill from the software development side. If that is what your boss really needs... stay away.

>>58801939

yeah I don't know about all that, I am not going to commit fraud, i get what you are saying that you could fuck up and do it accidentally but although the software is apparently fucked my boss and the secretaries and managers take all the regulations very seriously and are always doing this or that for "compliance" so i think I'm ok there

>>58801913

I can only assure you that turning down good opportunities will stay with you a lot longer than fucking one up.

It's not impossible. Try your hardest and you won't have regrets.

>>58801964
>So the software maintains the master copy of the accounting data, such as loans and repayments by different customers?

I do not know for sure, but this is possible

>>58801964
>It is the system administrator's job to make sure the company will not collapse even if you make a mistake like that. Or if a harddisk explodes at an inconvenient time, for that matter. IF a competent system administrator is present, you could try getting acquainted with the actual software, and keep it up to date, as long as you listen religiously to what the sysadmin has to say about procedures for getting your software running on the live system, and all that.

I am 99% sure nobody is fulfilling that role and the server just clones itself to a backup drive every night attached with USB

I will tell him this and ask what plans he has in place from this end, i don't think the answer will be good but maybe this is the place to start

>>58801996
This is THE KEY question on which your decision should hinge. I suggest you find out.

>>58801993
>I can only assure you that turning down good opportunities will stay with you a lot longer than fucking one up.
>It's not impossible. Try your hardest and you won't have regrets.

thanks anon, for some reason someone telling me it's not impossible makes me believe it

I was half expecting a flood of programmers to come into the thread and say it was impossible, so far nobody is really saying that which is surprising to me

>>58802032
>This is THE KEY question on which your decision should hinge. I suggest you find out.

I will find out, thanks anon

>>58802039
Nah, it's quite possible. If the software is not too complex (which is hard to predict) rolling into maintaining it one minor feature at a time is quite feasible.

It's the prospect of suddenly being responsible for the continued existence and non-explosion of the company's primary bookkeeping that you should think twice about.

>>58802117
>It's the prospect of suddenly being responsible for the continued existence and non-explosion of the company's primary bookkeeping that you should think twice about.

good point, I will try to separate the two, I could make it known the flaws in the software if that is the possibility or make sure a part time sysadmin is doing proper backups before I fuck with anything.

It may not be that dire, the software in question may just be a bunch of queries that pull reports from the real database. That is what I mainly see it used for, it may not even be a "program" per se but a bunch of queries they are used to having and want tweaked sometimes.

I just dont know

It could both do that and directly manage all the data at the company. I will have to look into it

He's paying for you to learn a useful skill, do it

>>58800781
It would probably be faster/easier to rewrite this shit in java + modern database.

Working with old undocumented databases is pain in ass.

I bet you it's fucking FoxPro. Fuck FoxPro

>>58805340
>I bet you it's fucking FoxPro. Fuck FoxPro

is that a thing anymore

>>58807047
It was a thing in 1997. A few years ago I worked at a place where the HR department was still using a FoxPro program on Windows XP boxes.

>>58807047
FoxPro is like PHP. You can whip up programs real quick that solve business problems. Its roots were in DOS, but there is a (now unsupported) Windows port which has SQL so it can be used as a client in a modern environment.

I was paid to support and extend an essential FoxPro system, which I successfully accomplished for 10 years until it was replaced (I was also the lead on the replacement system).

>>58809159
>I was paid to support and extend an essential FoxPro system, which I successfully accomplished for 10 years until it was replaced (I was also the lead on the replacement system).

sounds not very fun

>>58800781

OP, post two lines of code.

It's impossible to tell without a code example.
Maybe change the variable names if you paranoid?

>>58800781
Most positions held in jobs are given to unqualified people, OP. If anything, take it and run with it.

>>58800781
it could be coldfusion but i doubt it.

>>58810732
This just literally type it out by hand if you're afraid to touch it.
We won't be able to help you if neither you nor us know what's going on in that code.

>>58800781

Why not be a bro and let the guy continue to suckle that sweet teat?

I don't understand why software engineers (and wannabe's) are so intent on undermining their peers whenever possible. You realize you're just playing into the hands of management, right?