Sergio and the sigil

Don't be sloppy in your scripts

Posted by Sergio on 2008-11-14

For a few weeks now, every time I try to logoff from my home banking website something bad happens. See screenshot below.(screenshot eaten by backup failure.)

  1. Firebug opens unexpectedly
  2. There's a frigging debugger; statement in the live production site
  3. The logoff process hangs until I press F8 in Firebug or the continue button
  4. All my information is still on the screen. Imagine if I had just clicked Sign Off and left my desk.

When I saw this for the first time I though: wow, some developer will be slapped for that (actually there are some developer names in the file,) but it seems that nobody else has a debugger enabled or they just hate their clients that are also web developers. The "bug" has been there for at least 2 weeks now.

Even if you don't care for customers that happen to have a debugger like myself, leaving that kind of thing in your production environment immediately projects an image of sloppiness that is the last thing I want to have with my home banking.

Update 11/24/2008: That script was fixed sometime over this past weekend.