# In the end, it all worked out because we had the best OCD people working on it.
Dyslexics make the best testers. They will type things that no one else will!
I can beat that. I designed a database once and design the input to be fool proof. I brought in homeless people and welfare moms to do data entry… and let them loose on it after two hours of basic mouse and keyboard orientation. I’d come in and do data validation… and refine the entry choices.
I had originally thought I had designed a fool proof system… i was wrong. It was amazing the ways fools could screw up data entry. They were ingeniously creative in finding ways to break it. But it showed me ways to get the data I needed that they couldn’t foul up… accurately… and with minimal skills and training. But it took patience and a good sense of humor… It took almost two years, but I got the entry error rate down to almost zero, even with a weekly or biweekly turnover rate in data entry workers. It got to the point where i could have a supervisor do data validation once a month! That system eventually ran for twenty-six years like that.
During a dyslexic zombie attack, it’s always good to have several Brians around.