Hi all long time user first post on the new forum
a client asked me to create an app that beeps randomly
what is the most random request or bizarre application you have ever had to create
Sigh… doing the reporting for a Sharepoint “database”. The “database” itself is directly from WTF land. No data structure, no required fields, no type checking. The reporting is done in Excel and the requirements have been very agile. I think I’m now in 3rd or 4th revision. Every time I think the thing is finished I have to redo it again.
Sharepoint… the worst piece of **** that Microsoft ever devised.
The company I work for spent millions (well hundreds of thousands at least) to some company that was supposed to create this super wiz-bang do it all document management system with SP as its core… it failed… big time…
Not my own work but that of an evidently crazed bunch of academics: a word processor which, whenever it wanted a reply from the user, would start to beep if the user didn’t reply quickly. And beep and beep and beep…
While the idea of impatient software may be somewhat amusing, this one was definitely a loser.
I wouldn’t say bizarre but challenging and fun… in the late 90ies… I was young and just started doing software as business I was asked if I could do something in Lingo, the script language of Macromedia Director. They (2nd german TV) wanted somebody who extend its limited capatibiities and could realize a Multimedia Game (was the time of CDROMs everywhere, you remeber AOL?). I’ve never heard of Lingo before, but it looked like another Basic dialect and the external WIndows DLLs could be done with VB6 with ease. Finally I was caught in a small team of 4: 2xDevelopers, 1xGraphics Guru (and he really was kinda guru!) and 1xProject Leader, Beta-Tester, maid for everything and our only Communication Port to the world outside. We’ve had just 4 weeks from the scratch to the finish. But we got a well prepared storyboard with strict time plan and all media. It was a great time, but we worked like maniacs in crunch mode and sometimes we worked 20h a day and slept right next to our offices in the recreation room… and got back to our desk after “Nuttenfrühstück” (not translateable german: just a deep black coffee without sugar/milk and sole cigarette as breakfast). After the first project was successfully finished, we made a couple more titles… heck this was a time… today these Multimedia titles are less worth than 50 Cents:
Many moons ago I was working an MNC on the design/development of their European logistics system and one of the challenges was to replicate a bug in the discount calculation subsystem from their old mainframe system. The source code was missing and all that remained was the binary!
I spent about two weeks doing statistical sampling before I figured out a routine that replicated the bug with a 99% confidence level in testing. In production we never had a complaint, so happy days!
Before my time with Xojo, I was asked to write a program to forecast the Florida lottery based on an equation given to us by the requester. We were told that we would be paid as soon as it worked.
Did you write it?
if, would Greg work at Xojo then? 
‘Working’ is a relative term when you own the company 
That kind of depends, Eugene …
Scenario #1: You own the company and you’re the only employee … WORK = Never Ending (aka “I sure wish I had a life!”)
Scenario #2: You own the company and have enough employees that you can no longer count them on both hands … WORK = “Yeah, it’s really hard work improving this golf handicap of mine!”
Unfortunately, I fit squarely in Scenario #1 
Wall Mounted Mouse…
Attaching a mouse to the wall in a restaurant to turn down music and activate an intercom.
- solder leads of mouse left clicker to 100’ of cat5 cable
- insert leads into LPT port on back office pc
- listen for leads shorting out in vb6
- turning down the windows wave volume via sndvol32 mixer and turn on the desktop microphone output ( Mic on a 100’ extension cable, next to wall mounted mouse).
- the pc was connected to their 20 speaker sound system, when they wanted to notify of a car that had to move, etc. they would click the wall mounted mouse and talk into the microphone. Music would then resume.
Nuttenfrühstück: without knowing it, that has been my breakfast for years. I love it German has a word for it!
The most bizare app I ever created was the Hello World app found in every tutorial. 
I would think that most restaurants would prefer to keep mice out of their establishments 
Now that would be one app i’d like that you can build for me. Once it works, i’ll pay too …
No. The fact that every surface in this guy’s office was covered with graph paper (including the walls) , and every cell had a number in it, kinda made us wonder if he had a few screws loose.
I once created a database of rude words so we could run them against our CRM to see if we had mistyped a client name wrongly (since over the phone someone had typed in ‘Mr Hoare’ as ‘Mr Whore’).
Just beware if anyone asks you to develop a ‘Goodbye World’ app.
DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A GAME
LETS PLAY “GLOBAL THERMO NUCLEAR WAR”
On my 1970’s IMSAI 8080 connected to “The WOPR” … lol