Nulls cause problems. Usually, they’re not big problems, but if a field might have a value- or none at all- we have to be careful with how we handle it.

Languages like C# have added Nullable types, which wrap around those problems. But sometimes, you need to cross a boundary between systems. When you send the C# data to JSON, how do you want to represent null values?

Heidi is doing some support work and maintenance on a application owned by a government agency. Currently, the work environment is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare where you can’t do even the mildest code change without going through four hundred layers of paperwork, signoff, and consensus building. This isn’t just normal government stuff- it’s coming straight as a reaction to the previous work done on this project.

Heidi was specifically trying to track down a bug where one of the generated documents was displaying incorrect data. That lead her to this method in their C# web code:

When using generic types in a language like Java, nesting generics is a code smell. That is to say, a type like List<Map<String, T>> is probably a sign that you've gone off the path and should rethink how you're structuring your program. Similarly, types that depend on more than one or two generic type parameters are probably a code smell as well.

If those are a "code smell" this code Adam S found is a "code sewage treatment plan in dire need of a visit from the Environmental Protection Agency".

Karl supplies us with an unusual bit of code. In the vein of a "true confession", it's code Karl wrote. In the vein of a good WTF, it had to be written like this because of bad choices made earlier in the pipeline.

But the code itself isn't a WTF. It's not good, but… well…

Today's submitter gave us their name as simply ImminentBurnout. IB works at a company that uses Python and has strong opinions about unit testing. They don't have much understanding to go with those opinions, but they definitely have opinions.

One opinion is that every object- every object must have a stub version to facilitate unit testing. Now, if you're familiar with Python, you know the MagicMock library is built-in in Python 3 and is available as a dependency in 2.7, so problem solved. A MagicMock can act as a stub for every class or method. Plus, it has patching operators to dynamically swap out implementations.