The web’s biggest crisis

You go to the website, fill out a beautiful form with step-by-step guidance, readable fonts, perfect spacing, a breathtaking color scheme… an amazing User Interface!

Then, you hit the submit button and…

An error message. Beautiful, well-formatted, centered on the screen… and absolutely unhelpful!

In this particular case, I wanted to dig deeper; I opened Chrome’s console to try to understand the error. What I found were even more questions:

A secure site (HTTPS) calling an API over HTTP? What kind of nonsense is this?!
The first time I tried to submit the form, however, the error was different: a 422 error (Unprocessable Entity), and according to Mozilla’s documentation, “The HTTP 422 Unprocessable Entity response status code indicates that the server understands the content type of the request entity, and the syntax of the request is correct, but it was unable to process the contained instructions.”

A bit more research led me to understand that this type of error is usually used when the information in the form cannot be processed by the server/API. I concluded that it could be an issue with the data schema being sent, or even incorrect information in the form. The problem: there is NO error on the form! Nothing to help the user understand, if it is a filling error, WHAT the problem is!

Well, the form I filled out was simple, so assuming I completed it correctly, it can only be an issue with the website itself, sending incorrect information in the request payload. I decided to examine the payload more closely:

Nothing seems wrong. So, a 422 error makes no sense, at least to me.
The second error, making requests from secure sites to APIs on insecure URLs, is a total disregard for the user. Fortunately, the browser itself blocked this request, but having such a SEVERE security issue in the code is absolutely unacceptable. I think this type of problem is the worst because it gives website users the FALSE sense of security when using the system. After all, the site shows the famous “lock icon in the left corner of the address bar,” so it must be safe!

But that’s not even the point of this post. The main point is that the Software Engineering and Development market, not just in Brazil but WORLDWIDE, is a circus.

Companies hire unqualified labor for their teams despite endless interviews, usually looking for the cheapest option, without caring about the results. “Experts,” “Ninjas,” “Wizards,” and “Gurus” parade around, especially on LinkedIn, showing off their “credentials” and ridiculous titles to get hired. They live by misleading companies, usually promising impossible solutions within unrealistic deadlines.

Fresh graduates, proud of their degrees, enter the market with ZERO real-world experience but with plenty of goodwill and theories about how things SHOULD be done… forgetting that on the other side is a profit-driven entity that wants to spend as little as possible on developing its systems and apps.

When these two objectives collide, two things can happen:

• The graduate compensates for the lack of investment by taking shortcuts in architecture and code — after all, they’re not paid enough to care. Or;
• The graduate realizes they will never make a difference (something they imagined when they left university) and decides to leave the company in search of a position that better fits their goals. The project is left incomplete.

Whichever path is taken, the result is the same: the project will suffer. And so will its users.

The most prominent example of a site that has been plagued with infinite problems for years is “meucorreios.correios.com.br.” This is the site where Correios (Brazil’s provider of mail services) customers can register to track their imports and resolve related issues, such as paying import fees.

Or at least, it should be… However, nothing works properly on the site!

This error screen appears when you click the “My Imports” button. As you can see, not even the images load correctly.

You, like any other user, would try clicking the “Contact Correios” link at the top of the page to file a complaint. Well… if you try that, you’ll be greeted by ANOTHER error page…

The problems are so numerous that I’d have to spend an entire week just to list them all. And what’s most concerning (and perhaps even sad) about all of this: the errors are extremely basic. Amateurish. Beginner-level.

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) is a trivial error that should not happen on ANY website from a company the size of Correios. How this went from development to production (i.e., released to the public) I have no idea. But I suspect Correios’ Project Management isn’t exactly stellar.
And I won’t even start on the fact that the site is in PHP… :)

Conclusion

The web today is in crisis. Companies impose increasingly unrealistic deadlines on their developers, trying to meet a growing demand from clients, forcing the quality of systems to plummet.

An application or system, whether desktop, web, or mobile, is literally a work of engineering! From choosing the infrastructure to the selected architecture, the tech stack, the development team, and finally the first lines of code, a system consists of hundreds, even thousands, of moving parts in a delicate balance.

If there isn’t a solid methodology behind each stage of the Development Lifecycle of your project, from conception to production delivery, the result and inevitable destiny will be the same as so many others that never gain fame — and remain infamous…

Want to avoid all these headaches with your project? Contact us and learn what we can do for your business today!