The Daily WTF

Nearly fifteen years ago, I wrote Pounding A Nail: Old Shoe or Glass Bottle?. It opened by asking how one might respond to the following question:

A client has asked me to build and install a custom shelving system. I’m at the point where I need to nail it, but I’m not sure what to use to pound the nails in. Should I use an old shoe or a glass bottle?

The parallel to software development was that so-called professionals would ask questions just as preposterous in “the newsgroups/forums/lists” (i.e. the pre-StackOverflow days). And even worse, the answers given by other professionals may as well be step-by-step instructions for how to pound finishing nails using a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

This didn’t seem right to me at the time. I wondered if being a “grumpy curmudgeon” by berating them for asking such an absurd question would work.

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