There’s no way around this. Any software project where you have to interface with Someone Else’s Software you will run into untold suffering because Third Parties are Evil. They might be the nicest people in the multiverse. They might make the most wonderful software in several different realms of existence. But the moment your software has to talk to their software they immediately transform into eldritch horrors the likes of which H.P Lovecraft gibbered about before trailing off into the dreaded ellipsis…

This micro-rant brought to you by the discovery that customers using a third party that my company’s software talks to neglected to set a crucial item to be required on the third party’s software. As a result, it wasn’t there when our software pulled their changes. Because it wasn’t there it caused errors down the way because our software requires this one little item. And of course, since shit flows downhill, guess who gets the blame. Yup. Us. This, children, is why testers are such cynical people.

It’s also why I don’t write about the things I run into in my work life. No matter how I translated them into books, nobody – but nobody would believe it.