The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

F:
Anon:
M:
Cue the obligatory xkcd reference, which happens to be today's comic!
http://xkcd.com/1070/
TRWTF is people who claim to be programmers but don't read xkcd every day.

TRWTF is people who claim to be readers of xkcd but haven't noticed it only appears three times a week.

What are you talking about? It happens eight times a week, sometimes only seven. Three at xkcd.com and five time here. Or four when they miss an update here.

shoeboy · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Clearly a person would only leave out future years only if they new what the future has in store!

C-Derb:
shoeboy:
I love this Mayan calendar implementation! 2013? There is no 2013!!!

I thought the same thing. Why go to all the trouble of dynamically populating the the Year selector when the "validation" is limited to 2011 and 2012, unless you know something?
            // set query filter based on selected value
            switch (GlobalVars.SelectedIndex) {
                case 2:
                    {
                        GlobalVars.Year = '2011';
                        break;
                    }
                case 3:
                    {
                        GlobalVars.Year = '2012';
                        break;
                    }
            }

herby · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Just a note: If this were back in (say) 1997 or so, there would have been a big debate as to weather 2000 was a leap year or not.

When asked the question "What day is it?", the proper response is (as any programmer knows) "Today!", sometimes "Monday" will suffice!

D-Coder · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Anon:
D-Coder:
Work on C++ started in 1979. So it could not have "held the state of the art in software back by several decades".
Only by three decades.

So far.
Wrong.

http://xkcd.com/1070/

I regret that I snipped too much and phrased my point so subtly, since you missed it. Here it is, in one-syllable words (except for "C++"):

"Lots of us think C++ sucks too."

Matt Westwood · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

xtremezone:
To be fair, most date selector UIs are incredibly slow and clunky to use. They are mostly useful for figuring out a date that you aren't sure about, but they're often quite painful. If you already have the date in mind then typing it is usually far easier. A smart text box that turns anything you type into a known date would be handy. Better than a "date picker", as they're generally called. A calendar view is useful for associating days with weeks or counting days, but not much else...
Also, JavaScript reliance is evil. Also, that code is really bad...

+1

A switched-on clueful app offers both options for each date selector.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

"Let his tale be a cautionary one, that a man must first learn the alphabet before he aspires to be Shakespeare."

Trying to cut down the vast difference between the ideas in this analogy cuts out wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much.

Is hjbdsfuyhbsdnaoiudbasodfnasldiugasasldunfasd Shakespearean enough?

Sorry to be pedantic, but it's quotes like the one supplied that make people think it really is that easy... and then they become web developers.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Why complain? This code is a dream come true if you ever wished that Feburary had 31 days!

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

An on:
> // final Date string to be passed to SAP is stored here
                                    ^^^^^
That's your first clue as to "why" right there.

Once you've spent some time with SAP, anything else looks good, especially on the UI front...

True, even just being forced to be a user of a SAP installation makes you want to start worshipping the devil, so I assume that the poor programmer had been brainwashed by SAP and therefore had to produce shite code

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Submitter really needs to learn that holding in his feelings is unhealthy.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Neither Gilbert nor Sullivan:
He was the very model of an enlightened modern-day senior web developer
Dammit. Now I've got The Pirates of Penzance running through my head. Thanks.

Is Penzance near Solaia? Or Connected with Penz Oil? Inquiring minds need to know!

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

GettinSadda:
The only way that I can currently think of to make that worse is to expect the user to enter the month in Morse code!

That sounds to me like a code challenge. ;)

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Chronomium:
Why is the year box about 40% wider than the other two?
Why is "check" abbreviated in the comments to "ck"?

Why Are the Alerts in Title Case!?

Why is the order month/day/year?

So many subtle things here.

That would be because only one inane country in the world thinks that the date order is mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of us spend hours coding arround the "default"

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Patrick Bell:
And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?

Actually, one of the original design goals of C was to allow for portable code.

Not to mention that many (all?) of the "RAD" languages in use today -- Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, etc., etc., etc., -- are implemented in the very language that "held the state-of-the-art in software back by several decades."

But obviously I'm being elitist now, so I'll just get back to not doing work....

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Looks at tdwtf code Looks back at code-base

Sighs this one's a little too close to a standard for a set of old deprecated code that has yet to be fully cleaned out.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

The Real WTF is insulting Olive Garden.

RedFeather · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Chronomium:
Why is the order month/day/year?

Presumably, the programmer is from the US, where month/day/year is the preferred order.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

I'm sure we can add a whole new level of WTF-ness by incorporating some XML.

Maurits · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

He was the very model of an enlightened modern-day senior web developer

Prosody fail.

"He was the very model of a senior web developer..." is OK. "He was the very model of a modern-day developer..." is OK.

I'm having trouble getting "enlightened" in there.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Chronomium:
Why is the year box about 40% wider than the other two?
Why is "check" abbreviated in the comments to "ck"?

....

Rather than self-commenting code, the decision was made to use self-coding comments

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:
...happily and cluelessly producing oceans of spaghetti code so bad that even Olive Garden wouldn't serve it.

That is now one of my top ten favorite quotes ever. Love it!

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Patrick Bell:
Because web developers are the only programmers who write horribly mangled code, amirite? Please. And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?
Dear Daily WTF,

I came for the lulz, and left because of the sickening elitism among your submitters and commentors whose lives are now so devoid of meaning that the only pleasure they get is derived from heckling the less gifted.

Enjoy your passive aggressive snickering and your tiny cubicles while you hide from doing real work.

plonk

Sincerely, Patrick

Meh - another Web Developer who thought he could play with the big boys.....

Scrummy · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

This looks to be a project desperately in need of Agile. If they were pair programming, such an abomination of run-on Javascript would never have happened.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

ubersoldat:
This is why college education is broken. They teach you so many things, except to look at the API. Go to any college class which is doing any development and show them the API to their current language... the looks of awe are simply amazing and the sheep stand there wondering of a whole new world of opportunities. So please people, stop reinventing new ways of fucking up date implementations. How many articles have appeared here where the subject is implementing his/her new Gregorian calendar? Oh! And TRWTF is JavaScript for not having a Date implementation like every other freaking major language in the world.

I agree to a large degree. When I was at Uni we spent a lot of time re-inventing the wheel (data structures in particular) in Java. While it is good to understand data structures, I think peoiple need to be encouraged to use or extend existing ones that were made by smarter people where possible rather than making their own linked list.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that creating a linked list helps teach how a linked list works, but if you want people to understand 'under the hood' teach them in C....If you teach people that they can make Data Structures in Java, then the freshman graduates will think that they should always make their own DS. I'm near certain that few if any of them would be able to develop even the simplest Data Structure as efficiently as the people who created the Containers in java.util

Unfortunately, I think if things (not just in CS) were taught properly, too many students would complain courses are too hard and there's be low attendance.....

spelley · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

That code: complete and utter abomination.

Submitter's assumption anyone doing web development is inherently more stupid than a programmer who doesn't do web development: elitist and misinformed.

2 WTFs for price of 1 today.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

F:
Anon:
M:
Cue the obligatory xkcd reference, which happens to be today's comic!
http://xkcd.com/1070/
TRWTF is people who claim to be programmers but don't read xkcd every day.

TRWTF is people who claim to be readers of xkcd but haven't noticed it only appears three times a week.

TRWTF is comments that appear two times a day

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

stew:
Patrick Bell:
And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?

Actually, one of the original design goals of C was to allow for portable code.

Not to mention that many (all?) of the "RAD" languages in use today -- Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, etc., etc., etc., -- are implemented in the very language that "held the state-of-the-art in software back by several decades."

But obviously I'm being elitist now, so I'll just get back to not doing work....

Fair enough, but we could have absolutely done without all the masturbatory programmer hipster arsehattery in the intro to the article. A web developer can write shitty code without automatically making all the rest more prone to it.

vulputate: Amputaing foxes?

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

xtremezone:
To be fair, most date selector UIs are incredibly slow and clunky to use. They are mostly useful for figuring out a date that you aren't sure about, but they're often quite painful. If you already have the date in mind then typing it is usually far easier. A smart text box that turns anything you type into a known date would be handy. Better than a "date picker", as they're generally called. A calendar view is useful for associating days with weeks or counting days, but not much else...
Also, JavaScript reliance is evil. Also, that code is really bad...

Yes indeeedy!!!

I much prefer being able to type dd <tab> mm <tab> yyyy (or even simply ddmmyyyy than having to select anything. The bank I use makes this particularly cumbersome - it allows typing of dates, but requires the user enter the separator (and also supports one of the calendar pickers). Personally, if I want to search for all transactions since July 2008 it is a lot quicker for me to use the Numeric KeyPad to enter 01072009 than to fiddle around skipping months and years in a Calendar picker.....

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

I had to fill in a USA Visa Waiver

goto https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ & follow the Apply for Visa

eventually you get to

https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/application.html?execution=e1s3

Try doing a view source on this beauty !

I expect there are legal requirements for the page format .... barfff .....

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Sayer:
stew:
Patrick Bell:
And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?

Actually, one of the original design goals of C was to allow for portable code.

Not to mention that many (all?) of the "RAD" languages in use today -- Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, etc., etc., etc., -- are implemented in the very language that "held the state-of-the-art in software back by several decades."

But obviously I'm being elitist now, so I'll just get back to not doing work....

Fair enough, but we could have absolutely done without all the masturbatory programmer hipster arsehattery in the intro to the article. A web developer can write shitty code without automatically making all the rest more prone to it.

vulputate: Amputaing foxes?

The article starts with "It's no secret web developers are generally considered...." This suggests an attitude toward the WebDev, not an attack insisting it's true.

When it follows up with: "...and with good reason" It's still not attacking all WebDev's (if you read the rest of it) it's merely highlighting that as the internet exploded on the scene and everyone wanted a website, this area of development got flooded with script kiddies who thought they could....

It does not suggest that ALL Web Developers are incomeptent idiots, it merely highlights a presumption that this is the case because of the disproportionate number of Script Kiddies in Web Development compared to the in other Programming roles.

For the record, I have worked with a lot of Muppets in Application Development too and perhpas they're just lucky that application source is not so readily available for people to inspect. But...from my experience about 2/3 of programmers outside of Web Development are useless/incompetent/dumb/underqualified/whatever (yes THAT many). In Web Development this figure seems a lot closer to 4/5 or more..... IT is flooded with useless incompetence, however I think even Blind Freddie in his naivest hour would agree that Web Development seems to attract a lot more than it's fair share - perhaps this is because it is easy to make things look really flash so business people are impressed.....

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

// string to int please

It's a WOMAN!

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Unfortunately my deadline was yesterday, and there is something about the web environment that makes it a lot easier just copy a pile of old code for some very similar pages and functionality, and tweak it as necessary for some new pages and new functionality, rather than factor out the commonality of function.

After several generations of such copy and hack, the code gets mighty strange.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

thaaanos:
// string to int please
It's a WOMAN!

Or a Canadian.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

I'm a fairly green coder with not that much experience in anything yet but I have set up a fairly basic UI in java one time. So when I first looked at the window I thought to myself "ok, I'd have used a typed input instead of choice lists or whatever they are called.

Then I scrolled down to see the code and reacted like this.

wtf?

Scroll down.

wtf!

WTF?!

Scroll down.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

WHYYYY?!

This from a guy having trouble finding a coding job due to lack of experience. :/

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

ubersoldat:
This is why college education is broken. They teach you so many things, except to look at the API. Go to any college class which is doing any development and show them the API to their current language... the looks of awe are simply amazing and the sheep stand there wondering of a whole new world of opportunities. So please people, stop reinventing new ways of fucking up date implementations. How many articles have appeared here where the subject is implementing his/her new Gregorian calendar? Oh! And TRWTF is JavaScript for not having a Date implementation like every other freaking major language in the world.

I agree with you. Also, Gregorian calendar is the TRWTF.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

James A. Donald:
Unfortunately my deadline was yesterday, and there is something about the web environment that makes it a lot easier just copy a pile of old code for some very similar pages and functionality, and tweak it as necessary for some new pages and new functionality, rather than factor out the commonality of function.
After several generations of such copy and hack, the code gets mighty strange.

You are failing in not letting the less succefull code die. Copy and past everywhere, but only take the best candidate to next project. Its called evolution, if it works for nature, then must work for you.

2012-06-18 Reply Admin

qbolec:
ubersoldat:
This is why college education is broken. They teach you so many things, except to look at the API.

I would love to work in place that:

hires only graduates of CS as web developers

does not depend heavily on "designs" provided by Photo Shop artists as a GUI specs

until then, I must say, that sadly, but we have developed more than one date-picker "control" even though some us knew that there is a plugin for that.

JPEG-driven development is my everyday nightmare. I believe the problem is that JPEGs say 1000 words to upper managment, while software architects just say a lot of sophisticated words which are hard to comprehend. What I believe is necessary is to develop a visual language in which architects could express their thoughts to managment. I am not talking about UML -- it's too complicated. Look for instance at the domain of real Architecture (that one which deals with buildings) : architects in that area olways provide visualisations, beautiful pictures, perspectives, and so on. CS lacks this kind of visual language :(

Problem is that CS courses have too much math and little hands-on coding with someone that actually codes. The works coders i knows are teachers from academy.

Kuba · 2012-06-18 Reply Admin

Patrick Bell:
Because web developers are the only programmers who write horribly mangled code, amirite? Please. And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?

Let me take you up on it. I have a bunch of C written for Z8 Encore!, some 20k lines worth. I recompiled those projects using gcc 4.2 with a bunch of command-line defines to massage types to retain their sizes and to nop-out near/far specifiers. Not only does it compile, but it even passes most of the unit tests -- those were coded to run on simulator anyway, so they don't care much for chip's peripherals.

IOW: Yeah, if you don't educate yourself and are sloppy, then yes, you are holding back "state of the art" whatever language you end up using.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

It's an especially bad analogy since Shakespeare was probably a notoriously bad speller. (Although some people claim his editors were at fault since we don't have much handwritten material and others say quite reasonably that even if he was, people at the time wouldn't have minded as much since the standards of the time were lower.)

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

All I see when I look at this code is responsive web design!

This good man used only percentages for width and height! Ok fine the inline styling is not exactly state of the art and I'm not entirely sure why you would need a height style on an input element but RESPONSIVE WEB!

NODEJS NON-BLOCKING RESPONSIVE WEB 2.0!1!!!

Any questions?

Captcha: abbas - Members of ABBA. Obvious...

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

snoofle:
I know *nothing* of web development...

That's OK, apparently, web developers don't either.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

mrfr0g:
Patrick Bell:
Because web developers are the only programmers who write horribly mangled code, amirite? Please. And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?
Dear Daily WTF,

I came for the lulz, and left because of the sickening elitism among your submitters and commentors whose lives are now so devoid of meaning that the only pleasure they get is derived from heckling the less gifted.

Enjoy your passive aggressive snickering and your tiny cubicles while you hide from doing real work.

plonk

Sincerely, Patrick

Hey congratulations! You just got the point of this website, to make fun of poorly written code. Today it is a javascript WTF, tomorrow it might be c/c++, Java, classic ASP, or really anything else "code" related.

I am a Web Developer, have been for a number of years and I can say with certainty that the code posted today is terrible, and deserves to be made fun of.

Well put. I'm going to add that the people we are making fun of aren't "less gifted" as Patrick put it. They are, in fact, complete incompetents who refuse to learn or improve and arrogantly take money from companies only because matching incompetent Dibertesque management can't tell shizz from Shinola when it comes to programming. We need a "dailymanagementwtf.come" to cover those stories, though.

Case in point (and this probably should get its own page, but wtf):

When I was teaching C years back, my first assignment was basically to code and compile "Hello, world." It wasn't a real challenge, but it got the students learning the dev environment without actually having to program. One student diligently turned in the first assignement. He was a programmer for a local company who was trying to take advantage of company-sponsored training.

Now, my tests were always 4 parts: 1) true-false 2) multiple-choice 3) fill-in-the-blank and 4) Essay. 2/3 of the test was #1 and #2. This student's test was so bad, random chance would have scored better. I asked my wife to take the test. She barely knew how to turn on a computer at the time and was going to refuse, but I insisted. She outscored this "professional" programmer even though she never attended the class.

The semester ended and his final was as bad as the mid-term. I gave him the F he deserved. A week later, after he got his grades, I got a panicked phone call from him. He didn't understand why he got an F. I said, "you turned in only the first assignment, but that was only 1 of 12. As I discussed the first day, I consider practical programming more important than the tests. Assignments were 2/3 of your grade. Did you hear and read something the other students didn't?" To my shock, his reply was something I never expected: "but I thought my test grades would carry me."

Come to find out, he was not a US citizen, but here on a work visa. After he failed my course, his company discovered that he didn't know how to program at all. He was facing firing and deportation at the same time.

Did I feel sorry for his family? Yes, I did. Did I blame myself? No, I didn't. Did I blame him for pretending to be competent and taking other peoples' money and give them nothing in return? Yes, definitely. Though, in retrospect, I'd have canned his manager(s) too. Incompetent worker and management too incompetent to know the difference. But as I said above, we need another website.

thedailywtf isn't about "less gifted" people. It's about the intolerable and incompetent scammers that, through either intent or ignorance, equate themselves with those of us who give a damn about our work.

Patrick, your plonk is a plink. Someone thought you self-identified as the creator of the problem. That's so unlikely that it boggles the mind, but the humor stands. If you really don't get it, then you're one of the con-men we're all nattering about.

'nuff said.

AZ

toshir0 · 2012-06-19 Reply Admin

alert('You Must Choose Another Fucking Job!');

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

KattMan:
F:
Anon:
M:
Cue the obligatory xkcd reference, which happens to be today's comic!
http://xkcd.com/1070/
TRWTF is people who claim to be programmers but don't read xkcd every day.

TRWTF is people who claim to be readers of xkcd but haven't noticed it only appears three times a week.

Who cares how often it appears, they still read it everyday. Just like I come here everyday but it isn't updated every day.

TRWTF is people not using RSS feeds.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

The problem with text dates is you never know if the user is going to input dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, or ISO standard yyyy/mm/dd, or worse - nn/nn/nn (which could be any of the previous formats with two digit years).

A proper system would use a sane date format like the interleaved dymydymy format.

captcha: usitas - usitas an example of how to do it.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

Why allow standard dates? What if the user lives his life in posix time? That's some elitist pigeonholing there, expecting him to know it's May the 14th in 1266.

captcha: Opto. From greek for visible (And basis for the Roman Optio. I'm an officer now!)

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

TRWTF is Experts Exchange. Any self-respecting web monkey knows that Stack Overflow is the place to flood with "please fix teh codes" questions on basic scripting/HTML/CSS.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

The frist words out of my mouth when reading this article.... Holy Shit!

I choose to believe that this was not written by a human being, but generated from a self replicating evil loop.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

Aargle Zymurgy:
mrfr0g:
Patrick Bell:
Because web developers are the only programmers who write horribly mangled code, amirite? Please. And yet it is taboo to say that C/C++ have held the state of the art in software back by several decades due to their extreme low-level concepts and lack of portability?
Dear Daily WTF,

I came for the lulz, and left because of the sickening elitism among your submitters and commentors whose lives are now so devoid of meaning that the only pleasure they get is derived from heckling the less gifted.

Enjoy your passive aggressive snickering and your tiny cubicles while you hide from doing real work.

plonk

Sincerely, Patrick

Hey congratulations! You just got the point of this website, to make fun of poorly written code. Today it is a javascript WTF, tomorrow it might be c/c++, Java, classic ASP, or really anything else "code" related.

I am a Web Developer, have been for a number of years and I can say with certainty that the code posted today is terrible, and deserves to be made fun of.

Well put. I'm going to add that the people we are making fun of aren't "less gifted" as Patrick put it. They are, in fact, complete incompetents who refuse to learn or improve and arrogantly take money from companies only because matching incompetent Dibertesque management can't tell shizz from Shinola when it comes to programming. We need a "dailymanagementwtf.come" to cover those stories, though.

Case in point (and this probably should get its own page, but wtf):

When I was teaching C years back, my first assignment was basically to code and compile "Hello, world." It wasn't a real challenge, but it got the students learning the dev environment without actually having to program. One student diligently turned in the first assignement. He was a programmer for a local company who was trying to take advantage of company-sponsored training.

Now, my tests were always 4 parts: 1) true-false 2) multiple-choice 3) fill-in-the-blank and 4) Essay. 2/3 of the test was #1 and #2. This student's test was so bad, random chance would have scored better. I asked my wife to take the test. She barely knew how to turn on a computer at the time and was going to refuse, but I insisted. She outscored this "professional" programmer even though she never attended the class.

The semester ended and his final was as bad as the mid-term. I gave him the F he deserved. A week later, after he got his grades, I got a panicked phone call from him. He didn't understand why he got an F. I said, "you turned in only the first assignment, but that was only 1 of 12. As I discussed the first day, I consider practical programming more important than the tests. Assignments were 2/3 of your grade. Did you hear and read something the other students didn't?" To my shock, his reply was something I never expected: "but I thought my test grades would carry me."

Come to find out, he was not a US citizen, but here on a work visa. After he failed my course, his company discovered that he didn't know how to program at all. He was facing firing and deportation at the same time.

Did I feel sorry for his family? Yes, I did. Did I blame myself? No, I didn't. Did I blame him for pretending to be competent and taking other peoples' money and give them nothing in return? Yes, definitely. Though, in retrospect, I'd have canned his manager(s) too. Incompetent worker and management too incompetent to know the difference. But as I said above, we need another website.

thedailywtf isn't about "less gifted" people. It's about the intolerable and incompetent scammers that, through either intent or ignorance, equate themselves with those of us who give a damn about our work.

Patrick, your plonk is a plink. Someone thought you self-identified as the creator of the problem. That's so unlikely that it boggles the mind, but the humor stands. If you really don't get it, then you're one of the con-men we're all nattering about.

'nuff said.

AZ

Fantastic story, but not his point. The elitism he's talking about isn't the part where the bad code is made fun of. The part that rubbed him the wrong way (and me) is the part where it's implied that web programmers are all knuckle dragging halfwits when compared to "true" programmers.

"It's no secret that web developers are generally considered the red headed stepchildren of programming, and with good reason," writes Joe. "With its proliferation of forgiving and loosely structured languages and the huge demand for web developers in our modern web-centric world, it's not surprising that the field is practically overrun by script monkeys with no real programming background. Armed with a shelf full of books on all the latest web technologies and a subscription to Experts' Exchange, they enthusiastically pound away at their keyboards day after day, happily and cluelessly producing oceans of spaghetti code so bad that even Olive Garden wouldn't serve it."

That sounds damning, except that describes nearly every bad self taught programmer I've ever met, many of whom started with a shelf of Borland C++ books and a pirated version of the compiler. Does my anecdotal evidence trump his?

This very site is proof that jacktards exist in every aspect of coding across the board. The perception that web developers are worse stems from the same type of reasoning that causes PS3 fanboys and XBox fanboys to get into fistfights.

2012-06-19 Reply Admin

'A programming language is only ever as bad as your lack of understanding of it.'

The reason why Javascript is percieved as a 'bad' language is because there are so many incompetent people in the field. Anyone who can copy&paste can create a website and put it online. But that does not mean it's impossible to write good code. Just look at all the google webapps.

dgvid · 2012-06-19 Reply Admin

How is it that after 99 comments, including several mocking JavaScript, C, and C++, that no one has pointed out that this awful code was obviously written by a VB programmer? I mean, look at the coding style. Look at the capitalized names! This is an example of someone trying to make a web page and JavaScript into Windows Forms and VB. There's the root of the problem.

Date Selector of the Damned

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