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Sherlock Ohms: The Case of the Oblivian Customer |
 You're
going to love this installment of Sherlock Ohms. Even if you have never
had to deal directly with customers for a product performance issue,
you will easily empathize with engineer Jonathan Eckrich in "The
Case of the Confused Customer." The incident reminds me of a story
I read years ago by an engineer who worked on development of one of
the early computer languages - I think it was FORTRAN. The user called
to complain that a section of code was failing and demanded assistance
because in his opinion, the language kernel was faulty. The caller's
name was not disclosed, but the engineer said he was a notable figure.
After listening to the problem, the cause seemed obvious, so the engineer
(wish I could remember his name) instructed the guy to make sure he
was using the "less than" symbol, to which the guy responded that he
is no idiot and the problem must be something else. The FORTRAN engineer
had run the code as described by the disgruntled customer and was certain
he had identified the problem. Remember that there was no e-mail or
FTP back then to exchange code files. After a few such phone calls and
dwindling patience, he finally told the genius for the umpteenth time
to make sure he was using the "less than" key, "That's the key with
the arrow pointing to the left, not the right." He heard some grumbling,
then a few moments later a click on the phone. He never heard from the
guy again.Posted
August 23, 2013 |
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