
Webpack Doesn't Work on Monday (On Windows) - daenney
https://github.com/webpack/webpack-cli/issues/962
======
evenstensberg
I'm sorry, link to a fix found here:

[https://twitter.com/evenstensberg/status/1145755812129845249](https://twitter.com/evenstensberg/status/1145755812129845249)

Happy to help you to fix the issue through email or DMs...

Even (One causing this issue..)

~~~
cevn
Everyone breaks something in prod at some point, don't beat yourself up.

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jononor
... due to a bug in the code that is supposed to show banner asking for
donations.

~~~
edwintorok
Yeah looks like it didn't have the intended effect, some people consider
moving away from webpack due to this: " Someone should really rethink if this
is the most effective way to get donations (while I rethink if webpack should
be kept in our toolchain)." Which is understandable, everytime something
breaks is an opportunity to rethink whether you really need that dependency,
and if so whether there would be a better alternative implementation .

~~~
tekkk
I think that's an exaggerated reaction. Bugs happen all the time, is this one
any different because it involved such unusual circumstance? It wasn't a
security bug, and how many users did actually freshly install Webpack on
Windows-based computer on monday? Not a large subset. So it's more amusing
than harmful.

Whenever things like these happen, of course you should think if the effort
ripping off Webpack is better than suffering possible losses of productivity
in the long run. But for majority existing projects I'd bet the projected cost
of lost hours vs the cost of changing your bundler would result in net-loss.

And as an observation, I feel programmers often have a habit of lamenting
loudly about other people's mistakes while not saying a word if they make an
error of their own. Maybe they have a psychological need of maintaining a
feeling of superiority about your own abilities, I don't know. Just something
I've noticed during my years.

~~~
hluska
Just to correct you, this bug doesn’t happen during an install, it happens
when Window users run a build. Builds were badly broken 1/7 of the time
because of some shady code that really shouldn’t have made it through any kind
of review. And yeah, I’ve written some shitty code too, but can’t say that
I’ve bricked an important tool 1/7 of the time in the name of a sketchy
donation banner.

------
griko
Other day related bugs: OpenOffice can’t print on Tuesdays

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956)

~~~
Waterluvian
For a lark someone should curate a collection of these kinds of errors, even
if fixed, and make a calendar of what days we can't do certain things.

~~~
red_admiral
There's the classic 'Wednesday bug':
[http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/Softviz/CACM-
Debu...](http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/Softviz/CACM-
Debugging/Hairiest.html) [Story 'B']

(I'm sure I've read a longer version of this one somewhere else on the
internet.)

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the_duke
Easy fix: just don't work on Mondays. ( you don't really want to anyway...)

A: "Hey boss, I'm not coming in today."

B: "Why not??"

A: "Well, webpack does not work on Mondays. Do you expect me to write plain
Javascript code without Babel???"

B: "Makes sense. See you tomorrow."

~~~
jasonhansel
Try my new JS library! Key feature: it doesn't compile when the weather is
nice outside.

~~~
jasonhansel
Call it `time-pad`

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jrockway
The lesson here is that codepaths gated by conditionals like "if day ==
MONDAY" get 1/7th the testing of codepaths that aren't. If you want to have
features like this, which is fine, check those code coverage reports and make
sure that your tests can pretend it's Monday.

~~~
perfunctory
And the incentive to do that is?

~~~
hluska
Basically, it’s a good chance to:

1.) Question whether that codepath should be gated to a particular day of the
week.

2.) Assess the cost of that codepath failing (or failing to load). Does it
have the potential to brick the project?

3.) How big could the bug be? If software tells me it’s “just another manic
Monday” on Tuesday, or that I should “Walk like an Egyptian” on February 31,
who cares? There is no incentive to unit test because honestly, who cares? On
the other hand, if it has the potential to brick the project, go back to #1.
Do you really need to test the day of the week? Are you bloody sure?? :)

4.) If you reach #4, it’s time to invest in unit tests. You wrote a condition
where a day of the week test could result in software failure.

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stackola
Reminds me of this old classic:

Openoffice can’t print on Tuesdays

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956)

~~~
usrusr
Reminds me of the build script I found in a single-dev project I inherited:
failed due to truncated/missing leading zero when the wall clock was earlier
than 10 am. My predecessor was notoriously late at the office, it would have
worked for him every single time.

~~~
lloeki
Ok, let me up the game. I had one simple short-lived cron command that failed
on even minutes before h:20 where 5AM < h < 8AM on Sat, Sun, Mon.

Cause was another job that hammered IO because reasons, so mine was being
killed by some unreported IO timeout after 1min, and retried the next minute
(so every other minute). The other one was scheduled to run on off business
time (weekends and Monday before people get to work) and had some burstiness
that made the IO go down enough every other minute which allowed my short-
execution one to proceed.

top was silent because IO, took us a long time to even thing about iotop
because the failure was non obviously tied to IO.

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have_faith
Reminds me of the classic "I cant send email more than 500 miles" story:
[http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles](http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles)

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preommr
For additional hilarity: This bug was introduced because it displays a banner
asking for donations.

People complained that the dontation message was being shown too often. So
they made it ask on mondays only.

~~~
franciscop
A problem with OSS funding, not surprised. If only 1% of all the productivity
lost with this bug was donated to Webpack, they would probably not need to ask
for money at all. But the market doesn't work that way, so it's just a sad
reminder of our own problems.

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Japhy_Ryder
Apparently it "crushes". It doesn't "crash". It "crushes".

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pure-awesome
Reminds me of this:

"We had a unit test once which only failed on Sundays"
[https://qntm.org/unit](https://qntm.org/unit)

~~~
neotek
Ugh, thanks, now I have to read the Fine Structure series all over again.

~~~
leksak
Link?

~~~
michaelmior
> _Link?_

[https://qntm.org/structure](https://qntm.org/structure)

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baybal2
I really want to find an alternative to Webpack for our projects.

Webpack + babel is an extremely fragile piece of tooling that eats work hours
of senior devs like a candy.

Few years ago it might've been like 50/50 split in between fighting tooling
and development in shorter term projects

The problem in replacing webpack+babel combo is that what we call "the
JavaScript ecosystem" over the years turned into a "webpack ecosystem" with
even most trivial packages not working with some kind of all-involving "build
process"

~~~
lpellis
I've been trying out parcel ( [https://parceljs.org/](https://parceljs.org/)
), so far it has been awesome, the normal flow just works without setup for
most projects.

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ratsimihah
A bit off-topic but imagine if there was an internet-free day, like Sunday...

