[TUHS] Re: regex early discussions

[Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com>]

On the subject of learning how to use reg-exs:

For the better part of a decade I worked on a VoIP system (whose first
product plan was to replace the POTs network: the CTO had a
candlestick phone (sans dial) in his cube attached to a VoIP ATA
(everyone worked from a cube) to hilight that the telephone UI had
gone from switchboard to dial to number pad, and was past due for
replacement.

The admin UI was a poor stepchild (the UX developer was explicitly
excluded from work on it).  To implement "dial plans" and call
routing, the product had a screen with sed style match and
replacements.

My involvement with the product started in the second product plan: a
multi-tenant conferencing system in a 1U box, first at a startup,
after the startup was acquired by Alcatel, Alcatel became
Alcatel-Lucent, and finally when ANOTHER startup purchased rights to
maintain the code as critical to their operations.

In that final setting, I ended up in a room with about 30 customer
service representatives, none of whom I could easily imagine had ever
C.S. course.  I expressed my amazement at their ability to deal with
the reg-ex interface, and apologized the fact that they had to deal with an
interface with such sharp edges!