Coding Horror

Capt'n Midnight · 07-04-2014 6:46pm

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Id love to see the code behind what allowed that to happen. lol.

Quantum Cryptography.

We all know that spacebar represents the mythical "Any Key" ergo it could also be every key at the same time.

SimonTemplar · 07-04-2014 11:03pm

I emailed a new vendor to send me config details for an install of a new system. He sent them by txt

Fenster · 08-04-2014 12:29pm

SimonTemplar wrote: »

I emailed a new vendor to send me config details for an install of a new system. He sent them by txt

Could be worse. Spotted on Reddit last week: Someone wrote out a BSOD message by hand.

ChRoMe · 08-04-2014 7:57pm

Fenster wrote: »

Could be worse. Spotted on Reddit last week: Someone wrote out a BSOD message by hand.

Really? after working in support I'd ****ing commend them for it.

Mort5000 · 08-04-2014 8:12pm

ChRoMe wrote: »

Really? after working in support I'd ****ing commend them for it.

+1
It definitely beats "I didn't see, I just clicked OK"

Capt'n Midnight · 08-04-2014 9:54pm

Fenster wrote: »

Could be worse. Spotted on Reddit last week: Someone wrote out a BSOD message by hand.

Wayyyy off topic but

http://www.419eater.com/html/joyce_ozioma.htm

Gotham · 10-04-2014 11:04am

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Haha love the comments in the source code
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1bnezw/jedi_outcastjedi_academy_source_code_released/

And of course this beauty:

/*
** float q_rsqrt( float number )
*/
float Q_rsqrt( float number )
{
    long i;
    float x2, y;
    const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

    x2 = number * 0.5F;
    y  = number;
    i  = * ( long * ) &y;                       // evil floating point bit level hacking
    i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );               // what the ****?
    y  = * ( float * ) &i;
    y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) );   // 1st iteration
//  y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) );   // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

    return y;
}

This is Carmack's fast inverse square approximation, used for lighting algorithms that would otherwise be impossible on hardware of its time. This is genius code I'll have you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

Edit: I see somebody already explained this.

I'll share some cool stories then:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

Mmmm_Lemony · 11-04-2014 5:31pm

This!

Always wanted to be able to post an xkcd comic as a response. Feel like I've joined a special club or something. I would like to thank my family, baby jesus and the OpenSSL developers.

All right, all right, all right!

Arthur Beesley · 11-04-2014 5:36pm

Mort5000 wrote: »

I blame poor business requirements.
The developer is never wrong.

Yeah. There's a business case for users being able to bypass authentication.

carlmango11 · 11-04-2014 9:45pm

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

Yeah. There's a business case for users being able to bypass authentication.

Yeah I think it might have been a joke.

L.Jenkins · 12-04-2014 1:44pm

Coding horror, I know people who've done the following and the picture says it all :P

IRLConor · 12-04-2014 3:06pm

Uploading code to production without testing? Why not just edit it straight on the live machines?

When I started at boards.ie the development process was "ssh into the production machines and use vim". Terrifying doesn't even begin to describe it.

Tar.Aldarion · 12-04-2014 3:24pm

I know, vim :eek:

IRLConor · 12-04-2014 3:28pm

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I know, vim :eek:

Shush. I will have nothing bad said about the one true editor.

Sparks · 12-04-2014 4:19pm

IRLConor wrote: »

Uploading code to production without testing? Why not just edit it straight on the live machines?

Seen that, but with telnet instead of ssh... :eek:

Sparks · 12-04-2014 4:20pm

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I know, vim :eek:

Banned for a month

matrim · 13-04-2014 2:09pm

Sparks wrote: »

Banned for a month

Maybe he meant it like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vMO3XmNXe4

COYW · 14-04-2014 7:53pm

Starting working on a new project recently and met with the technical lead of the company I will be working with. He was going through the design of the application during which we looked at some of the code. It was a case of another MVC application, which was not MVC at all. I questioned this but got a blank stare in response.

Anyway, I noticed that there were no comments on the code at all, and I mean absolutely none, so I asked him about code commenting and the company standards that were in place relating to same. He replied that they don't comment code as it is "a waste of resources/time", followed by "code is code and if a developer cannot read and understand code, they shouldn't be in the business".

Sparks · 14-04-2014 10:29pm

oscarBravo · 14-04-2014 11:05pm

COYW wrote: »

He replied that they don't comment code as it is "a waste of resources/time", followed by "code is code and if a developer cannot read and understand code, they shouldn't be in the business".

You should do everything in really terse Perl and hand it off to him sans comments. Code is code, innit.

Sparks · 14-04-2014 11:11pm

oscarBravo wrote: »

You should do everything in really terse Perl and hand it off to him sans comments. Code is code, innit.

Why do it that way? Just write it in C, compile it to assembler, and hand in the assembler

COYW · 14-04-2014 11:17pm

oscarBravo wrote: »

You should do everything in really terse Perl and hand it off to him sans comments. Code is code, innit.

I was thinking exactly along those lines. I haven't written Perl in two years or so. Time to brush up on it.

Tar.Aldarion · 14-04-2014 11:28pm

What's with all these non binary casuals clouting up the forum?

Calina · 15-04-2014 7:52am

COYW wrote: »

Anyway, I noticed that there were no comments on the code at all, and I mean absolutely none, so I asked him about code commenting and the company standards that were in place relating to same. He replied that they don't comment code as it is "a waste of resources/time", followed by "code is code and if a developer cannot read and understand code, they shouldn't be in the business".

Run. Don't walk.

That can only be a precursor to problems.

Fenster · 15-04-2014 10:48am

COYW wrote: »

Starting working on a new project recently and met with the technical lead of the company I will be working with. He was going through the design of the application during which we looked at some of the code. It was a case of another MVC application, which was not MVC at all. I questioned this but got a blank stare in response.

Anyway, I noticed that there were no comments on the code at all, and I mean absolutely none, so I asked him about code commenting and the company standards that were in place relating to same. He replied that they don't comment code as it is "a waste of resources/time", followed by "code is code and if a developer cannot read and understand code, they shouldn't be in the business".

I would have probably had a panic attack then and there.

BrokenArrows · 17-04-2014 12:56pm

COYW wrote: »

Starting working on a new project recently and met with the technical lead of the company I will be working with. He was going through the design of the application during which we looked at some of the code. It was a case of another MVC application, which was not MVC at all. I questioned this but got a blank stare in response.

Anyway, I noticed that there were no comments on the code at all, and I mean absolutely none, so I asked him about code commenting and the company standards that were in place relating to same. He replied that they don't comment code as it is "a waste of resources/time", followed by "code is code and if a developer cannot read and understand code, they shouldn't be in the business".

ChRoMe · 18-04-2014 5:41pm

My head of operations and project manager asked me what a use case was yesterday.

Colonel Panic · 18-04-2014 5:58pm

if(pSomething != NULL)
{
	if(pSomeThingElse != NULL)
	{
		//  200 lines of Stuff
	}
}

// Let's change a few globals, I mean singletons here for the craic.
// And now we'll block the UI thread

return TRUE; // Always true and caller doesn't even check the return value

Calina · 18-04-2014 6:33pm

200 lines?

Odaise Gaelach · 26-05-2014 11:41am

I'm all for commenting code, including doing that little XML documentation at the top of things that you get in Visual Studio.

But when I am head of a team I will ban the use of GhostDoc and any of those documentation-generating tools. In fact, anyone who produces XML documentation like this:

/// <summary>
/// Automatics the convert.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="type">The type.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
private object AutoConvert(Type type, string value)


/// <summary>
/// Processes the and save.
/// </summary>
private void ProcessAndSave()

will first be sent on a six-week course in English, and then afterwards sacked. No warnings. No mercy.

(This was more of a rant than a coding horror, but it makes my blood boil to see people using these tools to generate nonsense XML documentation and then not even bother their arse to correct it to something that is actually useful.)

Tar.Aldarion · 26-05-2014 11:00pm

Not horror but how have I not seen this, pmsl.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454

Evil Phil · 27-05-2014 10:21am

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Not horror but how have I not seen this, pmsl.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454

Outstanding.

cython · 28-05-2014 11:38am

Came across this beaut being committed today (variables renamed to remove business-related naming) - this line in a test:

Assert.assertTrue("Record id's are the same!!", (recordId.longValue() != linkedRecordId.longValue() ));

got changed to be this line:

Assert.assertTrue("Record id's are the same!!", (recordId.longValue() == linkedRecordId.longValue() ));

So if the test starts failing at this assert, the assertion message is actually lying - cue confusion for developers working on the test down the line!

Beef · 28-05-2014 12:00pm

******************  Version 2  *****************
* User:         [COLOR="Red"]Date: 5/01/01[/COLOR]    Time: 11:10a
**********/
MESSAGE "Option available soon" SKIP 
    VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX INFORMATION BUTTONS OK.
RETURN NO-APPLY.

This code is in our production system. I only found it today. It's coming soon!

BrokenArrows · 28-05-2014 8:05pm

Beef wrote: »

******************  Version 2  *****************
* User:         [COLOR="Red"]Date: 5/01/01[/COLOR]    Time: 11:10a
**********/
MESSAGE "Option available soon" SKIP 
    VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX INFORMATION BUTTONS OK.
RETURN NO-APPLY.

This code is in our production system. I only found it today. It's coming soon!

Only 13 years behind schedule.

thewheel2.0 · 29-05-2014 7:19pm

Beef wrote: »

******************  Version 2  *****************
* User:         [COLOR="Red"]Date: 5/01/01[/COLOR]    Time: 11:10a
**********/
MESSAGE "Option available soon" SKIP 
    VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX INFORMATION BUTTONS OK.
RETURN NO-APPLY.

This code is in our production system. I only found it today. It's coming soon!

Christ there's other people out there developing Progress 4GL/OpenEdge???

jonster · 30-05-2014 12:10am

thewheel2.0 wrote: »

Christ there's other people out there developing Progress 4GL/OpenEdge???

They were certainly hopeful in 2001 that there would be to make this happen!

c_man · 20-06-2014 10:28pm

Tar.Aldarion · 23-06-2014 12:06pm

Just scrolling through code and had to laugh at the comment above a function:

/* FIXME */

Creamy Goodness · 03-07-2014 11:51pm

http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetimeimmutable.modify.php

oscarBravo · 03-07-2014 11:53pm

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetimeimmutable.modify.php

Jaysus.

MajesticDonkey · 04-07-2014 12:18am

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetimeimmutable.modify.php

Despite the name, and unlike <code>DateTime::modify</code>, this function does <i>not</i> modify the DateTimeImmutable object. Code inspection leads me to believe that it <i>copies</i> the DateTimeImmutable object, modifies the copy, and returns that.

It's still bloody stupid though.

BrokenArrows · 18-07-2014 11:31am

long propertyID;
if (//some validation here)
{
 // Some stuff
}
else
{
[B] propertyID = (long)1;[/B]
}

Why the cast?

Tar.Aldarion · 18-07-2014 11:32am

Because it's a big one.

Berserker · 28-07-2014 9:53am

BrokenArrows wrote: »

long propertyID;
if (//some validation here)
{
 // Some stuff
}
else
{
[B] propertyID = (long)1;[/B]
}

Why the cast?

I have seen this with boolean types too.

var somevar = (bool) false;

croo · 28-07-2014 2:17pm

Code:
long propertyID;
if (//some validation here)
{
// Some stuff
}
else
{
propertyID = (long)1;
}
Why the cast?

I've not seen it myself but might it be (mistakenly) instead of adding the L to the end of the literal where it might be misread?

The literal 1 being an int while 1L is a long value, right? Not that leaving off the L will cause an issue with the value 1. And, of course, if the 1 was replace with a real "long" value (i.e. one larger than allowed by int) it would fail anyway.

My guess is someone was told to always use the modify to be explicit but they misunderstood!

I cannot think of any reason why someone would do the same with boolean however.

ChRoMe · 28-07-2014 8:32pm

Opened up the class I've been asked to retro fit with unit tests (the code is 10 years old).

The class is 30k lines....

Colonel Panic · 28-07-2014 8:52pm

One static method in a class with no member variables?

Q_Ball · 28-07-2014 9:46pm

Lads, srsly, stop following me around!

BrokenArrows · 30-07-2014 10:23am

ChRoMe wrote: »

Opened up the class I've been asked to retro fit with unit tests (the code is 10 years old).

The class is 30k lines....

I have one with 32793
There are plenty of others around the 20k mark.

Every time a change request comes in for this software I die a little. Annoying thing was it was discontinued years ago but we have a few customers who refuse to let it go and are paying for continued development.

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