Comment On The Difference Between "Better" and "Less Bad"

This comment used to be worse.

Better >= Less Bad

Now I want to see how they did that in excel, but i wonder if the interblog would explode in a fury of Spreadsheet Cells...

http://pugsoft.info

Captcha: Sino | Hrm.. is that like BINGO?

"colleauge"? For the love of god, is it that hard to run a spell-check pass on these things before posting them?

Cue the Four Yorkshire Men in 5....4....3...

VB6 and Regular Expressions?! VB6 is obviously a WTF on its own (and I think most of us knew that it could gobble up massive amounts of memory) but why in the holy hell would you do a ton of RegEx through VB at all? It's crap like that that Perl was made for.

Some Wonk:

Cue the Four Yorkshire Men in 5....4....3...

2... 1...

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

Bob:

Some Wonk:

Cue the Four Yorkshire Men in 5....4....3...

2... 1...

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

You were lucky....

When do people learn that some things can be expressed in regexes, but are better handled in a different way? Like, using parser generators (yes I know, steep learning curve), or an existing library to search through HTML?

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I’ll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

Bob Dole:

This comment used to be worse.

Not possible.

DOA:

Bob Dole:

This comment used to be worse.

Not possible.

He could have posted "first", that would have been worse.

It used to be worse...

Zylon:

"colleauge"? For the love of god, is it that hard to run a spell-check pass on these things before posting them?

It used to be worse.

which had been written by the CEO.

And now we see the root cause of all this madness.

Zylon:

"colleauge"? For the love of god, is it that hard to run a spell-check pass on these things before posting them?

For that matter, anyone care to explain what the fuck "clowder" means? (rhetorical question)

If regular expressions are never the solution to your problems, you do not have very interesting problems.

In a completely unrelated WTF: I had to get up at 4:30 tonight because my mother-in-law had to catch a plane at 7 AM. (WTF # 1)

Next thing, I had to call here a Taxi (WTF #2)

But unfortunately I seemed to have mistyped the number and thus rang somebody out of bed (WTF #3, or #1 from his perspective)

Now I wonder what is worse: being so tired that you are not able to dial a simple telephone number, or having a phone number which is similar to a taxi centre?

Just asking ;-)

Ok, now I gotta know. We need details of the CEO's Excel implementation!

Da' Man:

In a completely unrelated WTF: I had to get up at 4:30 tonight because my mother-in-law had to catch a plane at 7 AM. (WTF # 1)

Next thing, I had to call here a Taxi (WTF #2)

But unfortunately I seemed to have mistyped the number and thus rang somebody out of bed (WTF #3, or #1 from his perspective)

Now I wonder what is worse: being so tired that you are not able to dial a simple telephone number, or having a phone number which is similar to a taxi centre?

Just asking ;-)

Or any [fast food/takeout] place? Or a massage parlour? Or a support line (personally had that once - got calls at all hours - used to send folks on wild goose chases - fun!)

fanguad:

If regular expressions are never the solution to your problems, you do not have very interesting problems.

They *are* really poor for solving relation ship problems.

On the other hand, you never knows when you might need them :-)

snoofle:

(personally had that once - got calls at all hours - used to send folks on wild goose chases - fun!)

Oh, I'd love to have that one. Man, would I have fun!!!

Some Wonk:

Cue the Four Yorkshire Men in 5....4....3...

And here you go! http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm

this is my everyday life. I work on an ancient asp application that has been through 3 different developers and one hobbyist, with no one whose sole job was the app, well skip forward several years and that's my job now. Now when new content needs to be added i don't have to update the 12 or so static lists of product ids,skus, switch cases, or update the giant text file that lists what should be available, hell i don't even have to update it, the production manager can do it.

yeah writing yourself out of a job

Da' Man:

In a completely unrelated WTF: I had to get up at 4:30 tonight because my mother-in-law had to catch a plane at 7 AM. (WTF # 1)

Next thing, I had to call here a Taxi (WTF #2)

But unfortunately I seemed to have mistyped the number and thus rang somebody out of bed (WTF #3, or #1 from his perspective)

Now I wonder what is worse: being so tired that you are not able to dial a simple telephone number, or having a phone number which is similar to a taxi centre?

Just asking ;-)

Ours was similar to a pizza delivery place. Eventually, we started taking orders. The pizza place soon changed their number (we had ours for 10+ years at that point).

diaphanein:

Zylon:

"colleauge"? For the love of god, is it that hard to run a spell-check pass on these things before posting them?

For that matter, anyone care to explain what the fuck "clowder" means? (rhetorical question)

No. It's a rhetorical question. Answering it would be a WTF.

I suspect that this effect accounts for a lot of WTF posts. You know the ones, where the protagonist inherits code from some prior "great programmer" only to discover that it's crap? I'll bet that in a non-trivial number of those cases the prior programmer could explain that "It used to be worse."

Actually, "it used to be worse" is a pretty good description of how a lot of systems evolve. Maybe the CEO, an idea guy, figured out a way to make money by solving a certain problem. He used the idea-guy Swiss army knife, a spreadsheet. This worked until his business grew too large for he and his assistants to maintain all the spreadsheets, but they were smart enough to hire a programmer to automate pieces of it. He used a methodology that was easy to launch but, like the spreadsheet solution, it wouldn't scale well as the business got larger. So another programmer was brought in to upgrade it... Repeat as needed.

Zylon:

"colleauge"? For the love of god, is it that hard to run a spell-check pass on these things before posting them?

For the love of god, are you that easily offended?

fanguad:

If regular expressions are never the solution to your problems, you do not have very interesting problems.

I don't know why, but somehow I get the impression this should be prefixed by "Confucious says".

zeeboe:

Da' Man:

In a completely unrelated WTF: I had to get up at 4:30 tonight because my mother-in-law had to catch a plane at 7 AM. (WTF # 1)

Next thing, I had to call here a Taxi (WTF #2)

But unfortunately I seemed to have mistyped the number and thus rang somebody out of bed (WTF #3, or #1 from his perspective)

Now I wonder what is worse: being so tired that you are not able to dial a simple telephone number, or having a phone number which is similar to a taxi centre?

Just asking ;-)

Ours was similar to a pizza delivery place. Eventually, we started taking orders. The pizza place soon changed their number (we had ours for 10+ years at that point).

Back in college, my dorm # was similar to public safety. I remember once being woken up from one of the rare occasions I got to sleep to:
Her: "There's a guy here in the computer lab and he won't leave and I need to close."
Me: "And what the hell do you want me to do about it?" *click*

snoofle:

Next thing, I had to call here a Taxi (WTF #2)

How did your mud-in-law react to being called a taxi?

Anon:

which had been written by the CEO.

And now we see the root cause of all this madness.

We make industrial sensors. Our product development process is like this:

1. CEO designs the enclosure - far too small - and the user interface - influenced by his latest cellphone.
2. Expensive tooling and user manual are created. Now it's too late to change anything.
3. The hardware guys do their thing - and have to compromise to make it fit.
4. The software guy (me) finally gets to play. I have on occasion had to include code to cater for hardware differences which are only there because the enclosure is too small !

diaphanein:

Back in college, my dorm # was similar to public safety. I remember once being woken up from one of the rare occasions I got to sleep to:
Her: "There's a guy here in the computer lab and he won't leave and I need to close."
Me: "And what the hell do you want me to do about it?" *click*

How very public spirited of you. Has she recovered from being attacked yet?

Da' Man:

They *are* really poor for solving relation ship problems.

Yeah. My mother in law was a barge...

It used to be worse
It used to be worse
I debugged around
And finally found
The source of my curse
That damned XML
Was giving me hell
Name conventions were sad
Redundancy bad
It used to be worse

Code Dependent:

It used to be worse
It used to be worse
I debugged around
And finally found
The source of my curse
That damned XML
Was giving me hell
Name conventions were sad
Redundancy bad
It used to be worse

For the Blue ! we need a couple more verses please Code Dependent.

Matt smirked. "But even before that... it used to be worse." Matt went on to describe the first version of the software, which had been written by the CEO. In Excel. I'll spare you the details.

Yeah, I've been there. I once worked for a company where their flagship product started out as the owner's son's high school comp sci final project. They were still using Delphi to build it, and needless to say it was a piece of crap that didn't work correctly, was hard to maintain and impossible to update. And of course, they had no idea how to write software properly. Shortest job I ever had. It was so retarded I started looking for a new job just a few months after being hired.

I find it difficult to believe these people survive in the wild. After all, with the schemes some people come up with to solve technical problems you'd think eating involves a dump truck and a grocery-store visits involve a pack of Llamas led by Richard Simmons.

The response would be formatted into XML via a clowder of regular expressions

Well no wonder the project was f'd up-- they used cats.

Don't know about anyone else, but I want to see the Excel version.

Bobbo:

How very public spirited of you. Has she recovered from being attacked yet?

She was never attacked, some ass just wouldn't leave the lab at close.

AT the time I didn't realize whom the call was for - was early in the semester and I hadn't noticed similarities in numbers yet. Also, try and think clearly when you get 10 hours of sleep a week and you've just been woken up suddenly.

I can't let you do that, Dave.

fanguad:

If regular expressions are never the solution to your problems, you do not have very interesting problems.

Oh yeah? www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2007/jw-09-optimizingregex.html?page=3

Overuse of regex, because you think it "looks cool" or for whatever reason you use it over something basic and simple, is all too common.

dcardani:

Shortest job I ever had. It was so retarded I started looking for a new job just a few days after being hired.

Fixed that for you.

Satanicpuppy:

VB6 and Regular Expressions?! VB6 is obviously a WTF on its own (and I think most of us knew that it could gobble up massive amounts of memory) but why in the holy hell would you do a ton of RegEx through VB at all? It's crap like that that Perl was made for.

You haven't had your kool-aid yet today, have you? .Net, VB, C#... languages of the fucking gods, man.

Right tool for the right job:

DOA:

Bob Dole:

This comment used to be worse.

Not possible.

He could have posted "first", that would have been worse.

No no! He could have posted 'first' using Excel - *THAT* would have been worse.

DOA:

fanguad:

If regular expressions are never the solution to your problems, you do not have very interesting problems.

I don't know why, but somehow I get the impression this should be prefixed by "Confucious says".

Or, better, "Confusious says"

Satanicpuppy:

VB6 and Regular Expressions?! VB6 is obviously a WTF on its own (and I think most of us knew that it could gobble up massive amounts of memory) but why in the holy hell would you do a ton of RegEx through VB at all? It's crap like that that Perl was made for.

No, Perl is not for regular expressions. WTF.

This comment used to be first!

diaphanein:

Back in college, my dorm # was similar to public safety. I remember once being woken up from one of the rare occasions I got to sleep to:
Her: "There's a guy here in the computer lab and he won't leave and I need to close."
Me: "And what the hell do you want me to do about it?" *click*

My old number was close to an auto-repair/tire shop.
My eldest brother decided to have fun with him one time.
(paraphrased mostly)

Man: I was calling to check on the status of my car. My name's Mr. Smith.
Brother: The black chevy sedan?
Man: No the red ford pickup.
Brother: Oh right. Well while our guys were in there, they found some problems with the engine and had to replace it.
Man: What?!
Brother: And while they were removing the engine, the transmission was damaged so that had to be replaced too.
Man: You've got the be f'in jokin' me. I brought it in for an oil change!

Thankfully for us (mostly my parents) the guy never figured out where the phone number he dialed actually went to.

fanha:

Satanicpuppy:

VB6 and Regular Expressions?! VB6 is obviously a WTF on its own (and I think most of us knew that it could gobble up massive amounts of memory) but why in the holy hell would you do a ton of RegEx through VB at all? It's crap like that that Perl was made for.

No, Perl is not for regular expressions. WTF.

FUD