The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

chubertdev · 2014-05-19 Reply Admin

David Emery:
I had this discussion once:
Me: What's the range of values for this 'integer' parameter?
Him: It's infinite. Me: Really? If you took every single bit of memory in this computer and constructed an integer value with that many bits, the answer would still be -finite and bounded.- Him: But integers are infinite! Me: Not when they're represented in the physical memory of a computer. And when an integer value is passed as a parameter to some function, it's a lot more finite than that.

The correct answer is "RTFM"

2014-05-19 Reply Admin

I can't help but wonder what they did to document any fields where you could enter an arbitrary integer, or worse, a decimal number...

A decimal number? That doesn't even make sense! A number doesn't have a radix, so you can't meaningfully say "decimal number" or "hexadecimal number". The written representation of a number can be decimal or hexadecimal (or a variety of other bases or systems), but the number itself cannot be.

If you mean a number written in decimal, well, I (and most other humans) write numbers--both integers and non-integers--in decimal most of the time, so I don't understand where you're going with that.

HardwareGeek · 2014-05-19 Reply Admin

Christopher:
I can't help but wonder what they did to document any fields where you could enter an arbitrary integer, or worse, a decimal number...
A decimal number? That doesn't even make sense! A number doesn't have a radix, so you can't meaningfully say "decimal number" or "hexadecimal number". The written representation of a number can be decimal or hexadecimal (or a variety of other bases or systems), but the number itself cannot be.
If you mean a number written in decimal, well, I (and most other humans) write numbers--both integers and non-integers--in decimal most of the time, so I don't understand where you're going with that.

And we have a winner in today's "Pedantic Dickweed of the Day" contest.

2014-05-19 Reply Admin

Bottom Problems:
Quality Expert:
If any of you knew what you were doing, you would recognize this instantly. For automated code testing tools, it is necessary to have as input a table of all possible good values.
What is not shown is the equally necessary table of all possible invalid values, which you use to verify the software will not accept any of them. Perhaps there is a size limitation for articles on this lame site?

Are you intentionally being thick?

It's to counter-balance all those who are unintentionally thick as a brick.

2014-05-19 Reply Admin

faoileag:
Unisol:
Obligatory: what happens in this system if I would, say, select 31st of February as my DoB?
It would assume you are William O'Malley and that you are 161 years of age, counting the years, not the birthdays.

Now, that would be a cool Easter Egg: autocomplete the other fields with William O'Malley's details when Feb 31 is selected.

2014-05-19 Reply Admin

Doctor_of_Ineptitude:
da Doctah:
MP:
'dob_dd' for Date Of Birth Drop Down? List of titles/values looks like it would be used to populate a drop down field.
or "Date of Birth - Day (two digit format)". Which they screwed up in the example by formatting the "values" column with leading-zero suppression.

I am no web developer, but won't the drop down thing being this way might help in Internationalization (different scripts write numerals differently) in that the title is different when requested language is different and the automated documentation generation tool that generated this doc simply put the values in title according the language settings of the developer?

I am not sure it is for a web site - web developers NEVER sort lists when presenting them to the user (don't ask me why).

2014-05-19 Reply Admin

IMO, this is just lame configuration table to workaround bureaucratic policy that "all selectable items must be configurable through database tables" which is common if you've worked in government projects.

Nothing to see here, move on.

Coyne · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

I found their table with the list of acceptable integers:

04/18/2014 06:34 AM  (147,573,952,589,676,412,928 bytes) AcceptableIntegers.db

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

This is what the Fear of Hard-Coding gets you.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Not much of WTF here, more of WTF-prevention.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

gnasher729:
Just recently had to look at RFC 822 and the definition of base-64 encoding, and they do enumerate all 65 characters that have meaning in base-64 encoded text, which are A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + / and =. So there is precedent for that kind of thing.
And here are the legal single character time zones for dates in RFC 822 (read carefully): A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. All 25 of them. Not 26 :-)

[s]Uhhh... WHAT?!? Only 25 code-points for a [ url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UTC_time_offsets]list of 40[/url] timezones? o.O[/s]

Thanks for pointing that out... Didn't know about the nautical time zones (or a "Local time" time-zone) until now. :">

chubertdev · 2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Darth Paul:
I am not sure it is for a web site - web developers NEVER sort lists when presenting them to the user (don't ask me why).

I'm sure that the three that you've met do not sort.

2014-05-20 Reply Admin

Doctor_of_Ineptitude:
I am no web developer, but won't the drop down thing being this way might help in Internationalization

Yes, but the moderators deleted the comment which demonstrated exactly that.

The standard way to write a day of a month is like this: 1 → 1日 2 → 2日 ... 31 → 31日 but if you internationalize your program and want to make an English version, you omit the 日: 1 → 1 2 → 2 ... 31 → 31

Similarly, the standard way to write a month is like this: 0 → 1月 1 → 2月 ... 11 → 12月 but if you internationalize your program and want to make an English version, you omit the 月: 0 → 1 1 → 2 ... 11 → 12

But who needs internationalization in the first place? Japanese was good enough for Jesus so it's good enough for everyone.

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

HardwareGeek:
Christopher:
I can't help but wonder what they did to document any fields where you could enter an arbitrary integer, or worse, a decimal number...
A decimal number? That doesn't even make sense! A number doesn't have a radix, so you can't meaningfully say "decimal number" or "hexadecimal number". The written representation of a number can be decimal or hexadecimal (or a variety of other bases or systems), but the number itself cannot be.
If you mean a number written in decimal, well, I (and most other humans) write numbers--both integers and non-integers--in decimal most of the time, so I don't understand where you're going with that.
And we have a winner in today's "Pedantic Dickweed of the Day" contest.

Oh, I wouldn't call myself a "pedantic dickweed". I prefer the term "good programmer". Sloppy thinking leads to sloppy software.

HardwareGeek · 2014-05-21 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
Yes, but the moderators deleted the comment which demonstrated exactly that.

Why? Is there a rule that says all posts must be in English, even if the post is demonstrating internationalization?

2014-05-21 Reply Admin

HardwareGeek:
Norman Diamond:
Yes, but the moderators deleted the comment which demonstrated exactly that.
Why? Is there a rule that says all posts must be in English, even if the post is demonstrating internationalization?

I don't think the moderators have rules.

2014-05-25 Reply Admin

Christopher:
HardwareGeek:
Christopher:
I can't help but wonder what they did to document any fields where you could enter an arbitrary integer, or worse, a decimal number...
A decimal number? That doesn't even make sense! A number doesn't have a radix, so you can't meaningfully say "decimal number" or "hexadecimal number". The written representation of a number can be decimal or hexadecimal (or a variety of other bases or systems), but the number itself cannot be.
If you mean a number written in decimal, well, I (and most other humans) write numbers--both integers and non-integers--in decimal most of the time, so I don't understand where you're going with that.
And we have a winner in today's "Pedantic Dickweed of the Day" contest.
Oh, I wouldn't call myself a "pedantic dickweed". I prefer the term "good programmer". Sloppy thinking leads to sloppy software.

You wouldn't. But the rest of us would.

Accepted Values for Days of the Month

Leave a comment on “Accepted Values for Days of the Month”