Validation and Testing

We all know that validation of user input is always a good thing. After all, even the most astute of user, is still at the end of the day, a user and that means if there is a way to cock something up, they normally find it... So therefore we validate what a user inputs to make sure it is sensible.

So when I read this article on the BBC news site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm I was left pondering quite what had gone wrong. For those that don't want to read the article, it is basically about a man being charged $23 quadrillion for a packet of cigs! Maybe America are trying a new tactic of health awareness, preventing people from smoking? We'll probably not, since that amount is several times more than the entire national debt of the USA!

Just how could someone be charged so much, and just how big was his credit limit? I want one of those cards! I did find his response of "Something I could never, ever, afford to pay back. " was very astute. If he worked 8 hours a day, for 364 days of the year (well let's have Christmas off!) and for 20 years, he would need to earn $397,473,477,132 per hour. that's $400 Billion an hour.

I want that job :)

Thankfully, the bank has rectified the "blip" and even refunded the $15 overdraft fee. How kind of them :-) perhaps some more unit testing would be beneficial here, it would be most unfortunate if the transaction credited him that much!