Michelle was hired by a software company to "clean up" an ASP.NET application they have been developing/maintaining for the last three or four years. A lot of the former team members were begrudgingly forced out of their VB6 comfort zones to use new-fangled things like "Objects", so you can imagine the state of the code. There is nothing unique about the quality (or lack-there-of) of this wonderful piece of code, but it was the accompanying comments that inspired Michelle to send it and me to post it ... 

'Way To Go O.O. !!!
'Gotta love this .NET. Now I need to *KNOW* whether or not
'it's a Option or Checkbox. They both have a Checked property
'but you know, ctrl.Checked = True would just be toooo hard for
'.NET wouldn't it?!
For Each ctrl In Controls

  Select Case ctrl.ToString
    Case "System.Web.UI.LiteralControl"
      'only looking for Check/Radios -- not these
    
    Case "System.Web.UI.ResourceBasedLiteralControl"
      'same

    Case Else
      strCtrlId = Trim(ctrl.ID.ToString)

      'Is the current control the one I want?
      If LCase(strCtrlId) = LCase(Trim(strCheckedControl)) Then

        'It is a checkbox, so check it
        If InStr(strCtrlId, "chk") = 1 Then
          Dim chkTemp As CheckBox = CType(ctrl, CheckBox)
          chkTemp.Checked = True
          Exit For

        'It is a radio, so ... *gasp* ... check it!
        ElseIf InStr(strCtrlId, "opt") = 1 Then
          Dim optTemp As RadioButton = CType(ctrl, RadioButton)
          optTemp.Checked = True
          Exit For
        End If

      End If

  End Select

Next

 

Michelle has since replaced the block with the desired OO principle ... 

Dim thisControl As Control = FindControl(controlName)
If Not thisControl Is Nothing AndAlso TypeOf (thisControl) Is ICheckBoxControl Then
  CType(thisControl, System.Web.UI.ICheckBoxControl).Checked = True
End If

... but left the legacy version there and commented out for future programmers to enjoy.

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