I'd like to take a moment to praise Brenda.
That's not her real name, though it might be. I've met at least
three of her over the years.
Brenda is not a programmer. Some big strong man told her that when she
was the office junior, and she believed it.
Brenda has casually invented modular coding, functional programming,
debug tracing, big O notation. While writing macros in Excel. She's
done more with the spreadsheet shackles on than her "programmer"
colleagues have dreamed of.
Nobody ever told her that mere spreadsheet work could be hard, not
like programming, so she thinks anyone can do it and she must be
very stupid for taking so long. So she has never written any
documentation. The younger admin types have checklists for using her
spreadsheets, that they follow as precisely as a demon-summoning
wizard with someone else's incantation.
Some time soon Brenda will retire. Within six months, the company will
explode. And nobody will know why.
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