Post

ca.2009, I was assigned to the most deranged software task of my life. Our lab machines that ran testcases had a small program that polled a server to see what tasks the machine should do (run a test, install suchandsuch software, etc)

We needed to rewrite the VB app into something that didn't have any installation dependencies, so they decided to rewrite this in C++ But instead of rewriting it (look at the code, determine what it does, write a new app), they decided to *line-for-line port* the VB6 code to C++

This is, objectively speaking, a doomed endeavor. This app had to run for weeks at a time. VB has a garbage collector, and C++ does not, so a single memory leak here will eventually brick a lab machine and require human intervention

Regardless, they hired a contractor team to do the port, but the contractors were "done" when the project compiled, not when it worked. Making it actually work (at all!) was our job