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James Ingram shares one of his most impressive experiences ...
I had some legacy code originally written by a highly paid consultant. Among his innovations were that all his "Cancel" buttons were on the left, and all his "OK" buttons on the right; the opposite of the MS standard (and every app I've ever seen). The users had gotten used to it, so we couldn't change that.
When he had to present the user with a number of actions to perform, he didn't like the idea of having a button for each option (and an MDI form with menus was something he'd only dreamt about in a nightmare). No! Far more flashy to have an option button for each choice, and an "OK" button at the bottom of the form (on the right, natch, because the Exit button is on the left). A handy two-click launch for each action!
So what did the code behind the "OK" button look like? Well, naturally, it could only be the largest nested If statement in the world:
If optCashReportDay.Value = True Then DoCashReportDay Else If optCashReportWeek.Value = True Then DoCashReportWeek Else If optCashReportMonth.Value = True Then DoCashReportMonth Else If optCashReportAnnual.Value = True Then DoCashReportAnnual Else If optBondReportDay.Value = True Then DoBondReportDay Else If optBondReportWeek.Value = True Then DoBondReportWeek Else If optBondReportMonth.Value = True Then DoBondReportMonth Else If optBondReportAnnual.Value = True Then DoBondReportAnnual Else If optStockReportDay.Value = True Then DoStockReportDay Else If optStockReportWeek.Value = True Then DoStockReportWeek Else If optStockReportMonth.Value = True Then DoStockReportMonth Else If optStockReportAnnual.Value = True Then DoStockReportAnnual Else If optOptionReportDay.Value = True Then DoOptionReportDay Else If optOptionReportWeek.Value = True Then DoOptionReportWeek Else If optOptionReportMonth.Value = True Then DoOptionReportMonth Else If optOptionReportAnnual.Value = True Then DoOptionReportAnnual Else If optAssetReportDay.Value = True Then DoAssetReportDay Else If optAssetReportWeek.Value = True Then DoAssetReportWeek Else If optAssetReportMonth.Value = True Then DoAssetReportMonth Else If optAssetReportAnnual.Value = True Then DoAssetReportAnnual Else 'And so on .... seriously End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End If End IfSome of his menu screens had 10 or more items, meaning that the nested IFs would actually begin off the right hand side of the code window.
That was one of his better pieces of code...
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