The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2007-05-08 Reply Admin

WTFer:
Umm howcome everybody so far missed the wtf of the return type being object for a method that only returns a string value? Returning an object when you know the type of your return is retarded since you'd have to cast it as a string to use it

I'm glad you mentioned this point. You are correct: returning object instead of string is stupid. I see this 'idiom' frequently at work.

Here is how the calling code probably uses the result:

object sms = foo.GetEmailBasedOnCarrier(...) SendEmail(sms.ToString());

Personally, I am beginning to think that ToString in .NET is evil. It is usually employed in conjunction with type unsafe code involving System.Object instead of more concrete types. Stuff like this:

object obj; obj = MessageBox.Show("..."); if (obj.ToString().Equals("Yes")) ...

Unfortunately, I didn't just make this code up. It is really in one of our apps.

H

2007-05-28 Reply Admin

BBT:
It is now. Language changes- deal with it.

Phroge your quapple, you durmik knoxle-fropper.

2007-07-19 Reply Admin

Well, for starters:

Mobile carriers do not, habitually, expose SMTP interfaces to their SMS services to the outside world, so nothing would ever be delivered by this "software".
Working for an SMS service aggregator, I can tell you that just setting up ONE interface (there are 4 or 5 in general use) to ONE carrier network involves ooh, I'd say about 2 or 3 people from the client, the carrier, and the provider, totalling maybe 10 people putting 3 to 5 days into this (this includes setting up VPN tunnels, testing the messaging interfaces, putting monitoring in place, and running extensive end-to-end and billing tests)

Note that no carrier will even take you seriously until you're talking about 100K messages/month at the bare minimum.

2007-09-26 Reply Admin

"Do you like Kipling?"

"I don't know, I've never kippled"

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