That's hilarious. I had a similar situation, also back in the 90s, when a developer shipped some code that kept pegging the CPU on a production server. He insisted it was the server, and the company should spend $$$ on a new one to fix the problem. We went back-and-forth for a while: his code was crap versus the server hardware was inadequate, and I was losing the battle, because I was just a lowly sysadmin, while he was a great software engineer. Also, it was Java code, and back then, Java was kinda new, and everyone thought it could do no wrong. I wasn't a developer at all back then, but I decided to take a quick look at his code. It was basically this:

1. take input from a web form

2. do an expensive database lookup

3. do an expensive network request, wait for response

4. do another expensive network request, wait for response

5. and, of course, another expensive network request, wait for response

6. fuck it, another expensive network request, wait for response

7. a couple more database lookups for customer data

8. store the data in a table

9. store the same data in another table. and, of course, another one.

10. now, check to see if the form was submitted with valid data. if not, repeat all steps above to back-out the data from where it was written.

11. finally, check to see if the customer is a valid/paying customer. if not, once again, repeat all the steps above to back-out the data.

I looked at the logs, and something like 90% of the requests were invalid data from the web form or invalid/non-paying customers (this service was provided only to paying customers).

I was so upset from this dude convincing management that my server was the problem that I sent an email to pretty much everyone that said, basically, "This code sucks. Here's the problem: check for invalid data/customers first.", and I included a snippet from the code. The dude replied-to-all immediately, claiming I didn't know anything about Java code, and I should stay in my lane. Well, throughout the day, other emails started to trickle in, saying, "Yeah, the code is the problem here. Please fit it ASAP." The dude was so upset that he just left, he went completely AWOL, he didn't show up to work for a week or so. We were all worried, like he jumped off a bridge or something. It turned into an HR incident. When he finally returned, he complained to HR that I stabbed him in the back, that he couldn't work with me because I was so rude. I didn't really care; I was a kid. Oh yeah, his nickname became AWOL Wang. LOL