Developer given Mission:Impossible - fixing rubbish code that could crash a city - simply chose not to accept it
After imagining explosions, blackouts, and daring escapes, this techie decided the best thing to do was just not doing the job
Socrates, a young manager many years ago, was tasked with visiting a client's power station to address an issue with their monitoring hardware. Upon arrival, he was led to a massive turbine overspeed detector, a dusty CP/M computer surrounded by complex wiring. With little knowledge of electricity generation, Socrates imagined the terrifying scenario of turbines overspeeding, leading to cascading faults that could black out an entire city.
Though eager to avoid such a catastrophe, Socrates recognized the code as "horrible" and lacking any comments to guide his understanding. In his On Call story, he recalled the scene from Mission:Impossible where Tom Cruise narrowly avoids being hit by a helicopter's rotor blade. He knew that in that moment, he had to take a cautious approach, leaving the system unaltered to prevent any potential disasters.
Socrates now views this experience as a valuable lesson, emphasizing that sometimes it's best to refrain from meddling with something that's best left alone.
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