Comment On The Meteorological Station In Hell

I can't believe m22 wasn't c40 to the l16.  I mean, g10, for heaven's sakes!

[:S]  If I was handed this, I would have excused myself to the
bathroom and puked my brains out, and then ran for the high hills not
looking back!

What horrible naming conventions!  Everyone knows that "m12" should be named "tbl_m12" to make it more readable!

Nikolay Simeonov, you the man!

WTF did Nikolay do in a past life to get stuck with code like this, not once, but twice!?![:|]

And remember, that original programmer is on the loose, interviewing with unsuspecting potential employers who are totally unaware of the trail of destruction left in his/her wake.

"dbo.m15.val AS Tem"



I assume this is the temperature. 

Couldn't spare that extra 'p'

Coluld someone please please please PLEASE explain to me why other
programmers (especially those of the Microsoft Persuasion) INSIST on
naming their column and/or names stuff lke m22, c33, etc!?



I've been dealing with ALOT of code recently developed by "geniuses" who use these naming conventions. :(



I recently got a job offer from some place, and as a "test", they sent
me database table and wanted me to write code to use it as a mail queue
system. Neddless to say, the table name was tblM_Q and the columns were
named stuff like col_mail_f_send, col_mail_tcl_send, etc.



I simply replied that I had found alternative employment.

If this is hell, I am in hell every day! I see this kind of... well... demonic "solutions" in many large scale solutions on a day to day basis. However I must confess that I often wonder why I'm not givin it all up for a nice mindless job in a supermarket. I feel your pain Nikolay... you are not alone.

Best regards, JH, a developer in hell.

Sweets:

"dbo.m15.val AS Tem"



I assume this is the temperature. 

Couldn't spare that extra 'p'

No way could that extra 'p' be used - then it could be confused with "temporary"! :[:)]

For those of you unfamiliar with Delphi; the dataset components being used here are based on the BDE which was originally designed for use with Paradox tables.  Paradox for those who never had to deal with it is a flat file database system similar to FoxPro and DBase.  Anyway BDE datasets don't really understand SQL, the BDE replaces SQL with stuff it understands. Being flat file based the BDE basically works with data like is in an array... each row is an element of an array and where clauses create an index on the columns mentioned in the where clause the rows are then sorted according the that index and then the system only shows you data between record number x and record number y. So what they do is load all the data locally turn it into internal arrays and then replace the where clauses with index ranges... Nasty

And Nikolay... did you start organising the datasets before you took the screen shot, or is this how you found the datamodule?

Oh, I tried ... I really tried to reorganize it, but I gave up after 6 hours moving objects just to discover there are more and more objects beneath them...

This screenshot is from the original code as I got it.

I wish I saved a screenshot of the warnings once I compiled the program. I still have the code, but I lost some components and I can't compile it anymore.

To actually clean the mess I had to re-develop the system from scratch, because the database design was terrible (you see the table and field names), everything in the datamodules and all the related functions there were named accordingly and just thinking a bit one could replace 90% of the code with a few simple functions getting a few extra parameters. The code was full of "magical numbers" scattered everywhere.

I told the guys, that the code of the system is absolutely s**y and the only solution to clean it up is to re-design it from scratch, but I wouldn't be able to do it all for a week. Their response was they don't have any time and all they wante for the moment was a quick fix and I managed to do it for them. I guess it won't be a surprise to anyone, that I fixed it by extracting the hardcoded parameters of the parsing function into an ini file so next time their hardware changes a bit they will be able to adjust themselves the column order, sizes, separator etc.

I heard they started re-developing the system using a student from the local university.

But guys, this one wasn't as bad as the Hotel system. This masterpiece truly beats anything I've dealt with so far :)

I heard they started re-developing the system using a student from the local university.

But guys, this one wasn't as bad as the Hotel system. This masterpiece truly beats anything I've dealt with so far :)

Well lets be honest Delphi is a little easier to keep straight than Access.  You can have a really bad design and really bad naming conventions but Pascal really does force you to write almost readable code.  It (Pascal) was an extreme reaction to the Cobol and Fortan coding styles of the time...  just think the same system could very easily could have written in VBA using Access tables and then I think it would have been very similar to the Hotel system

 

m22? c40? i16?



You sunk my battleship!!!

:

just think the same system could very easily could have written in VBA using Access tables and then I think it would have been very similar to the Hotel system

 

Nooooo. The Hotel system was uniqie. And a lot bigger than this program. I guess this guy could do in Delphi a system as terrible as the other one too. I guess all he needed was more time, but he was on the wrong track - he actually named lots of functions and variables ok, instead of numbering them like the guy from Austria. And all forms had meaningful names compared to res_501 and x_k_book_0701_01 etc.

This page doesn't render properly in firefox. I've had the same problem with a few other pages on this site.

It's ecause you are anonymous. The site doesn't like people who do not dare to let themselves be known. [:P]

Drak

I am using Firefox and I don't see anything wrong with how the page is rendered. 

I'm using Firefox and I can't see this page at all.

:

I am using Firefox and I don't see anything wrong with how the page is rendered.

:

I'm using Firefox and I can't see this page at all.

Dear Anonymous

You seem to be suffering confusion. Are you sure someone else hasn't hijacked your account and is impersonating you?

Yours with concern

Alan

I did Delphi from beta (I was in support for PDoxWin and decided I had to convert to Delphi soon after I saw it) until VS02 and .NET.

And- While I have not seen a data module that bad- it's simply because I've never seen the components placed on top of each other like that- it looks like it was done on purpose...

But I have seen MORE components in a DM and that makes it look horrible- I've also seem BUNCHES of DM's per project.

I eventually decided that no one under my direction was going to create a datamodule, period.

Things got a lot nicer at that point.

i suggest from now on this forum to be only accessible to people with 18 years+ programming experience or non-programmers. it is against federal law to display such damaging code without warning the faint-hearted.

Need to correct the post describing the workings of the BDE. While the BDE is getting old in the tooth and is not really recommended for new development, it is not *nearly* as bad as described. When connecting to SQL databases it uses SQL and fetches rows just as with any other proper SQL access. It has its own SQL dialect for Paradox/Dbase but that does not come into play when dealing with MSSQL, Oracle, etc. It has SQL drivers for each of these that generate proper SQL in each case and, if you specify your SQL, that is passed through directly to the server. Of course Delphi also provides ADO and other means of db connectivity besides the BDE.

Now back to the program in progress... :) 

 

I too, am using firefox, and the only bug I currently notice (aside
from the known quoting bug) is that when a thread initially loads,
sometimes the table that shows the posts is very narrow (1/4 of a
screen width) instead of full-width.  If I use the Back button and
then the Forward button to reload the page, it then renders
correctly.  I am of the opinion that this is a FireFox issue and
not a Forum issue.

Opera doesn't seem to have any problem with this site and the only problem I saw in firefox is, that the ads in the right column go to the middle of the page not to the top. Same with Netscape actually.

The middle of the page bug is a very simple css bug (brought to by the
Only Tested On IE Group Inc) caused by using one of the random IE-only
duplicate css values, and steadfastly refusing to test or research.
Hey, who needs specs when you have code-n-compile?



I wasn't looking closely enough at first, but now that I do, I notice
this falls into megaview territory: Join every table into one megaview.
(And then make lazy views out of that, apparently.)



My friend was most amazed by the way hours were spend sorting out the gui cesspool with no apparent headway.

as a delphi programmer myself i find it hard to believe that the above mess was created by a programmer..... i think this is a fine example of the short comings of child slave labour or maybe a test of the limitations of a trained chimp

Anonymous:

m22? c40? i16?



You sunk my battleship!!!

Thanks for putting that in my head, i'm sure the next idiot dba I come across will be really pleased when I can't help but blurt that out.

He was one of the inventors of Ada.... ;)

I love it when old main-framers graduate to the PC.  I'm currently engaged in working with a system whose naming convention is something like this: DGBNCNT (DogBoneCount).

[:D]

Otis Mukinfus:

I love it when old main-framers graduate to the PC.  I'm currently engaged in working with a system whose naming convention is something like this: DGBNCNT (DogBoneCount).

[:D]

Can't be SAP, SAP uses 5-character names like LGTYP.
It's not Movex eighter, since Movex uses 6-character names like OPORNO. (sic!)
So it must be a very modern system, with 40% more cpm (chararcter per name) power than SAP!

I am interested in becoming a meterological programmer what are the courses i need too take.

bwc74@hotmail.com

Out of runes of magic gold? Need it in urgent? Yes, I can understand you. As the most important currency, without rom gold, you ever can’t do anything. So you need to buy rom gold from those most professional and loyal game online shops with years’ experience and have a good reputation among players. Is there any difficult? No, when you need the rom gold, please feel free to contact us, we are promising to offer you the cheap runes of magic gold with fastest delivery. Moreover, we are online 24/7, you can contact us any time with any question about. So why are you still irresolute? Come here to grab your cheap runes of magic gold now. Crazy about running warhammer gold? Yup, it is so crucial indeed for us in Warhammer Online. Without it, we can even do nothing, without money to buy items, weapons and so on. So enough warhammer gold is substantial.

My hat's off to Nikolay. I would've left that company like a bat out of hell.