The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

A Highly Paid Field

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-30

In ancient times, Rob's employer didn't have its own computer; it rented time on a mid-range computer and ran all its jobs using batch processing in COBOL. And in those ancient times, these stone tools were just fine.

But computing got more and more important, and the costs for renting time kept going up and up, so they eventually bought their own AS/400. And that meant someone needed to migrate all of their COBOL to RPG. And management knew what you do for those kinds of conversions: higher a Highly Paid Consultant.

24 comments - Last comment @ 13:46

Button, button, who's got the button?

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-06-27

Wikipedia describes the (very old) English children's game. I wonder if there's a similar game in Germany. In any case, the Worcester News is definitely confused about how this game is played.

Martin I. explains "This is a cookie acceptance dialog. It seems to struggle with labeling the buttons when the user's browser is not set to English ..."

24 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-29

Classic WTF: NoeTimeToken

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2025-06-26

Maybe we'll just try and read a book. That's a good way to spend your vacation. This can't possibly go badly! Original --Remy

"Have you had a chance to look at that JIRA ticket yet?"

23 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-28

Classic WTF: When it's OK to GOTO

by Alex Papadimoulis in CodeSOD on 2025-06-25

Where did you GOTO on your vacation? Nowhere. GOTO is considered harmful. Original --Remy

Everybody knows that you should never use "goto" statements. Well, except in one or two rare circumstances that you won't come across anyway. But even when you do come across those situations, they're usually "mirage cases" where there's no need to "goto" anyway. Kinda like today's example, written by Jonathan Rockway's colleague. Of course, the irony here is that the author likely tried to use "continue" as his label, but was forced to abbreviate it to "cont" in order to skirt compiler "reserved words" errors.

20 comments - Last comment @ 08:39

Classic WTF: The Core Launcher

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2025-06-24

As our vacation continues, we might want to maybe play some video games. What could possibly go wrong? Original --Remy

“You R haccking files on my computer~!!!” Charles Carmichael read in a newly-submitted support ticket, “this is illigle and I will sue your whoal compiny. But first I will tell every1 nevar to buy youre stupid game agin.”

The bizarre spelling and vague threats were par for the course. After all, when you market and sell a game to the general public, you can expect a certain percentage of bizarre and vague customer communications. When that game is a popular MMPORG (no, not that one), that percentage tends to hover around the majority.

12 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-26

Classic WTF: Take the Bus

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2025-06-23

It's summer break time, here at TDWTF, and based on this classic, we shouldn't be traveling by bus. Original --Remy

Rachel started working as a web developer for the local bus company. The job made her feel young, since the buses, the IT infrastructure, and most of their back-office code was older than she was. The bus fare-boxes were cash only, and while you could buy a monthly pass, it was just a little cardboard slip that you showed the driver. Their accounting system ran on a mainframe, their garage management software was a 16-bit DOS application. Email ran on an Exchange 5.5 server.

14 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-27

Colophony

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-06-20

Just a quick note this week: I discovered that many people have been sending in submissions for this column and designating them for CodeSod by mistakes. Consequently, there is an immense backlog of material from which to choose. An abundance of riches! We will be seeing some older items in the future. For today, a collection of colons:

Bill NoLastName , giving away clues to his banking security questions online: "If had known there was a limit, I would have changed my daughter's middle name. I've been caught by this before - my dad has only a middle initial (no middle name)."

25 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-23

Using the Old Bean

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-19

If you write a lot of Java, you're going to end up writing a lot of getters and setters. Without debating the merits of loads of getters and setters versus bare properties, ideally, getters and setters are the easiest code to write. Many IDEs will just generate them for you! How can you screw up getters and setters?

Well, Dave found someone who could.

7 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-20