Herp-Derp I like a laugh

Some world weary software developer has unwittingly focused the news eye on him/her self with this little blunder involving our EFTPOS system.  Affected EFTPOS (Electronic Fund Transfer - Point Of Sale) terminals occasionally displays a weird message that says

"Herp-Derp Eftpos"

I've done a bit of software development and still keep my hand in to keep my C# skills up to date.  I suspect the poor developer has simply overlooked a temporary piece of code when rolling out the latest update of the software.

This isn't a hack or a piece of malicious code, it's probably just something the developer wanted to return to and clean up later.  I regularly use terms like HFO in code to make certain conditions true in code.  In my case HFO stands for When Hell Freezes Over - in other words, never, or repeat this code until I tell you to stop.

I'm also fond of dropping "Flux Capacitor" into code as a variable which can take any and often unexpected values.  The Flux Capacitor was the significant bit in the De Lorean from Back to the Future films.

Of course developers always intend to return to these bits of nonsense, but can occasionally overlook them (as, I suspect, in this case).

The best bit of this story is not the unusual message, or the rush to roll out an upgrade, but the sang-froid attitude of the retailers.  You gotta love 'em.

Full story on stuff.co.nz:  Eftpos prank unnoticed for weeks