R&D built a lunch order aggregator

“The admin page isn't linked anywhere.”— Chen, R&D

Reason:

Officially because the bug was closed because nobody replied for 34 days. Quietly rolled out to five countries.

Built by:

Chen, a controller

Build time:

3 hours 40 minutes

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

a column called do_not_use that is required

Authentication:

the reset password button emails the old password back

Deployment:

running on Windows Server because that machine was available

Responsible:

whoever still has the admin password

Documentation:

none, but the variable names are "pretty clear"

Security situation:

the user's role is stored in localStorage

Future disaster:

It will stop working the day the free tier ends.

Age: 1.3 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 420 days ago · original builder left 216 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 5 departments depend on it, the builder has left, alive 8x longer than intended.