If at first you don't succeed, blame the framework; then the language; then your colleagues and eventually fall into a deep depression when you realise that the only person you truly have to blame is yourself.

Then blame the framework again, and suggest an immediate move to the latest ill-advised JavaScript contraption in spite of horrified gazes from your disillusioned colleagues.

Today in development: discovered that it's possible via combination of keys to rename a database in SQL Server Management Studio without as much as a dialog box to confirm.

Shout out to the 2000ish users in production that discovered this delightful nugget of info with me.

Lessons learned:

A) Don't trust Microsoft to create software that makes you confirm potentially catastrophic actions

B) Make sure your user hasn't been granted ALTER DATABASE permissions without your knowledge before you start using it.

Ah, the elusive 31st of June - the clients favourite date. Also the DateTime parsers least favourite date.

I can't believe I have been so blind all this time! For years I have unquestionably accepted the lies of corporations and governments around the world, but I have been enlightened and it is glorious!

So thank you, JavaScript, you magnificent beast - for informing me of the misinformation that has resided in the public consciousness for thousands of years!

It is not the year 2016, it is in fact only the year 116 - wake up sheeple!

Three months down the line and I'm finally ready to admit that my first completion estimate of "this afternoon" may have been slightly overambitious

It seems Microsoft have taken my critique of Azure last week to heart. Last week, I insinuated that perhaps hometime on Friday was an inconvenient time of day for major downtime.

This week they've rectified their previous fault, and in their great mercy have decided to take down service at the busiest time of the day on Thursday instead.

After several months of bug fixing, I can proudly say the application I inherited at work has gone a whole day in production without an unhandled exception (from a peak of above 1200 a few months ago).

Well, either that or I've broken the error logging and am now living in blissful ignorance.

Microsoft Azure down on a Friday at home time? Whoever tripped over that cable is probably trying awfully hard to slink out of the building unnoticed right about now

If the codebase quality drops below levels measurable by way of "WTFs per minute", determine further negative code quality by counting the amount of times per hour you wonder if you're in Hell and what exactly you did to deserve this torment

The work internet seems to having trouble staying up. I wonder if they do Viagra for routers.

Say what you will, but nothing compares to the excessive pleasure one derives from transitioning from a top-tier development machine, the mere sight of which inspires awe from computer enthusiasts everywhere - the type of machine that seems to glisten in the light of the sunset as choirs ring out from nowhere in particular yet everywhere at once to sing it's praises as it's many full HD screens aluminate the room to offset the dying of the light.

To a mandatory, work provided claptrap with a Core 2 Duo, 2gb of RAM, 90GB of storage and an integrated GPU that can barely stomach 720p before it starts choking on its own mucous.

Truly fucking marvellous.

The best time for deployments is when the client isn't awake to complain about unexpected downtime.

Russian Roulette - Developer Edition:

Have a random generator for a number between zero and one hundred. Every developer present picks a unique number.

The generator must then reroll until somebody's number of choice is the result. It is now this person's responsibility to begin an untested deployment at 4:59pm the next available Friday.

According to my predecessor, naming variables is easy. You just hang a poster of the alphabet on the wall and start throwing darts. The letter you skewer is your next variable.

If you run out of letters, start again - but dual wield the darts

Gasping in horror when an assignment begins with Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace...

There is little as delightful as opening an old VB.net application to find that there's fifty obscurely named event handlers - each with their own block of largely duplicated (but subtly and crucially different) code

If this codebase were a small child, it'd be the dim one that can't stop licking the windows and starts chugging bleach should you be so foolish as to turn a blind eye

If nothing else, Team Foundation Server makes a compelling argument for euthenasia.

According to my predecessor, nothing showcases your SQL skills quite like generating the entire page (markup, JavaScript and all) from a single 2500 line query.