Re: Greatest programming mistakes and what to learn from

[EdwardG]

In 1987 I accidentally IPL'd the production mainframe, taking down Natwest's entire network of terminals throughout New Zealand.

After the fuss died down, my manager took me to one side.

"Not thinking, Mr Guiness?"

"...no"

"Won't do it again, will you?"

"...no"

Not strictly a programming mistake, but one I remember vividly and with increasing nostalgia as time goes by.

[Anonymous Monk]

In the 80's I worked on a VAX with a funds transfer application. I had bad information on which machine was live and I deleted the active database. This was at 4pm and the funds transfer network closed at 4:30...come to find out this bank had VERY low traffic and they had not yet entered the transactions for the day...I reallocated the files and they entered their stuff and no one was the wiser (except me).