Things like this are why I advocate for BA's with technical skills. Explaining why a system did what it did shouldn't require a developer. In the absence of someone else who could explain, I feel like you did the right thing. The absolute worst thing any vendor (or department if internal) could tell a user is that it's someone else's fault/issue without an adequate explanation. Pointing fingers without backing it up is one of the quickest ways to loose a client's trust.

I happen to be a self taught person, but I have had the good fortune to work for companies that have let me explore not only technology, but also business operations, from people who really understood what they were doing. As I've gone through my career, I had started working for larger and larger companies and observed that the largest companies tend to employ very few people that understand how business and technology work, and especially how they work together. I tend to believe that we have too many people getting into technology and/or business without the proper aptitude. People seem to think that just anyone can get into tech, but it's much more nuanced than that. I think that CS education still has its place, but not like it used to. People still need to know theory because we still need to more computing technology forward. What is missing is an education track for business developers. CS graduates shouldn't want to make an application, they should want to make the next operating system to run it. They shouldn't want to make a web page or web application, they should be wanting to write the actual web server. There should be a business software track that focuses on line of business application development, since that's the majority of what businesses are looking for. People who understand the general technology and put it to use for business purposes. Whether we like it or not, the majority of software that needs written is for accounting or business operations, not the "next big thing." It's our job as developers to make the business more efficient and to give value. It's like the difference between a doctor and a nurse, or an accounting and a bookkeeper. Both are needed, but in different quantities and for different things.

I've been looking for something like this!

haha, as a BASIC guy, I feel the same way about case sensitivity being part of syntax. THIS and this should not be different things!

I too am a fan of Linq to SQL. I've taken a lot of flack for it from other developers though. The ONLY advantage I can think of for EF is that it's database agnostic, supposedly making it easier to change database engines...but I think that's an awful idea. Changing database engines is a big deal and should be treated as such!