You Know It’s Bad When the Computer Starts Mocking You

So we’ve been training a new programmer at work on VBScript and ASP for our logistics software at the Coast Guard base, and this week my team leader and I thought it was a good time to give him a JavaScript-intense task to accomplish. JavaScript is one of the more frustrating web-based solutions because it’s difficult to troubleshoot, very touchy about bad syntax, and can easily run away from you with unintended consequences.So the junior programmer is, understandably, getting pretty frustrated trying to accomplish his envisioned solution and is worried about bothering me too much with questions about different problems he’s experiencing. Over my shoulder I can hear quiet dings through his speakers as error messages keep popping up in his application.

“Oh great,” I hear him huff and I turn around to find him shaking his head. “Now the application’s mocking me.”

On his screen I can see the following message:

“NaN” stands for the “Not a Number” JavaScript error.