This dumb mistake just cost me an hour spelunking around in the debugger: var status = source.Substring(source.LastIndexOf("/" + 1)); (where source is e.g. “http://foo.com/status/all-is-good“) Fortunately the ramifications were picked up in the acceptance tests, but the root cause wasn’t at all obvious from such a high level. Lesson for the day – code is never too trivial to warrant unit testing.
So, base rates are now down to 1.0%, and the Zero Interest Bug is not just conjecture. From The Times: “About 1,500 customers who took out a tracker mortgages pegged at 1.01 points below the base rate with Cheltenham & Gloucester (C&G), owned by Lloyds Banking Group, will be paying no interest at all on their home loans from next month. It is the first time that a mortgage lender has been forced to reduce the interest on their home loans to zero. Lloyds Banking Group, now 43 per cent owned by the taxpayer and also the owner of C&G, said that there was a zero floor to the deal and that because its computer systems could not cope with zero, it would be temporarily charging 0.001 per cent, or 8p a month for a borrower with a £100,000 mortgage. However, that money will be refunded.” ...
I started my career in professional software development a decade or so ago by testing and fixing banking code that had fallen victim to the millennium bug. Could the prospect of zero percent interest rates create a similar boom in demand for software developers? From Contractor UK: Interest rates have plummeted from 5% to 2% since early October and are heading lower. Some analysts say 0% is not out of the question. ...
Never underestimate the stupidity of users—or the benefits of a little field validation. One of the web-based systems I’ve been developing allows users to enter a customer’s fax number and automatically fax confirmation details (using Zetafax). It’s been working pretty well—until we discovered a flaw today. One user, tired of obtaining valid fax details from customers, had been entering a string of nines and then actually attempting to send the fax to this number. ...