additional offshoring adventures

My project at work is a set of Java applications for which communicate over UDP / RMI. The port numbers they talk over is configurable. In our hosted environment our servers may be running the apps for multiple clients. So, the users (or our tech support people) have to configure unique port #'s in each set of config files if there are multiple s running against different databases. It's a annoying, but the least of our worries at the moment.

Monday this week, I realize our configuration editor doesn't give the user the ability to edit a certain set of port #s. I ask the offshore team to add that ability to the config UI.

When I come in the next day the offshore lead has decided the existing way we do things is too error prone. He's made a great change so that the configurable settings are just a range of port #'s and the application(s) will pick unused ports within the range.

After reviewing the changes, the only issue I found was in some output files created by the apps once they pick a port number. Once the port # is selected, an output file will be written. It was implemented with a DataOutputStream to write an int primitive to the file, and read back in with DataInputStream. I'd prefer it to be human readable, so I respond with some notes saying to make the file a text file rather than a data file.

I come in the following day, and find that the only thing he's changed is to give the file a ".txt" file extension.

Wah?

It's the 'little' things like this that drive me crazy. Things I assume don't need much specification. It's particularly annoying because this engineer is so awesome -- he's always quick to turn around any solution, and always asks great questions on our calls. And, he did a great job of taking the initiative to fix a major flaw just a day earlier.