The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: A Dumbain Specific Language

by Remy Porter in Best of… on 2026-09-07

It's a holiday here in the US, a celebration of labor, so we're reaching back through the archives for a story about an attempt to be labor saving that was not successful. Original. --Remy

I’ve had to write a few domain-specific-languages in the past. As per Remy’s Law of Requirements Gathering, it’s been mostly because the users needed an Excel-like formula language. The danger of DSLs, of course, is that they’re often YAGNI in the extreme, or at least a sign that you don’t really understand your problem.

XML, coupled with schemas, is a tool for building data-focused DSLs. If you have some complex structure, you can convert each of its features into an XML attribute. For example, if you had a grammar that looked something like this:

4 comments - Last comment @ 13:18

Good Time

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-09-04

Astute readers noticed last week that this editor (that is to say, me) had his own error'd failure to remember what day it was. Thank you for pointing it out promptly, and then proceeding to send in a bunch of examples of other sites calendar failures. Misery loves company!

Traveler's travails, from C_Chell "Trying to complete the form on https://www.ihg.com to tell when I plan to arrive at the hotel, I can't complete the form because of this little time problem."

15 comments - Last comment @ 06:55

Heating Up

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-09-03

A common option for retrofitting heating and cooling into older homes is a mini-split, frequently tied to a heat pump. They're (relatively) cheap to install, energy efficient, and can be added without substantial modifications to the home. They also, annoyingly, are mostly controlled via IR remotes, making them challenging to wire up to home automation or even a household thermostat.

People have made solutions, and today's code comes from one of those solutions. Which, I want to stress, this code comes from an open source project for home automation, so it's not the code that's wrong, here. At first I thought it was, and had a moment of, "I'm not going to pick on some hobby project," but then I realised the hobby project points at a deeper issue.

35 comments - Last comment @ 11:12

What You Measure

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2026-09-02

Rachel joined a new team which was proudly "metrics driven". When she first met with her boss, Zane, he explained his thinking.

"We need to be data-driven to make good decisions, right? We're a manufacturing company. We make widgets. At the end of the day, we need to make the most widgets for the lowest cost of goods sold. So we track that, and that feeds into every decision."

27 comments - Last comment @ 08:06

So Much Room

by Remy Porter in Representative Line on 2026-09-01

Today's representative comment ran out of room.

int maxLen = getColumnSize(session, "audit", "text_value1") - 16; // Leave some room for

22 comments - Last comment @ 2026-09-04

Tales from the World Cup

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2026-08-31

All I can say in response to our anonymous submitter's story is, ALMOST?!

With the World Cup being hosted in North America this year, I remembered this story that happened back in 2014. At the time I was working in Brazil, for a company that builds software systems for public services. And, with the World Cup being hosted there, in came the opportunity for local agencies to invest in modernization, with pretty much a blank check to get new services, so long as it was deployed before the end of the World Cup. And so the sales people did what they did best, and went around trying to upsell whoever would be willing to buy — no matter our actual capacity for developing the things.

7 comments - Last comment @ 2026-09-01

Hello, New Mexico!

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-08-28

Peter G. shared with us yet another ordering bungled example of. "Should really say "please engage in an Easter egg hunt to find your language"."

26 comments - Last comment @ 2026-09-01

The Big Family

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-08-27

Some time ago, Charles shared with us some awful PHP, aka the most common sort. Today's code sample is maybe a little too big to sum up, but I'll let Charles take a crack at it.

It's so bad that even analyzing and laughing at it feels impossible. But it’s so bad, I couldn’t not share it.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2026-08-31