The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

xrT · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:

That explained why they never really had problems with the service before. And fortunately, they won't be experiencing any failures any time soon; only success.

It's like hiding all the dust under the carpet... Until the carpet can hold no more and you can't do anything about it but throw it away... ahh... success!

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

CodeReaper:
They key here is, DON'T PANIC... (the people who pay us).

For production I disable assertions. And add a catch event that capture all exceptions and ignore it.

Coditor · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Does anyone else wonder about this:

HTTP request sent, awaiting response ... 403 Not Allowed 11:17:04 ERROR 403: Unknown Service

403 doesn't mean the requested URL (service in this case) doesn't exist, it means you don't have access... A 404 would mean it doesn't exist.

I wonder why this reponse goes from "403 Not Allowed" (which is accurate) to "403 Unknown Service" (which makes no sense)...

I write webapplications and it's quite common NOT to display errors. In case it's a serious error, show a page that explains that there was an error without going into detail. If it's an error that will have no impact on the functioning of the application, just ignore it - as far as the user is concerned. The errors will be logged however and serious errors (database unavailable 'n such) will be mailed to the administrator.

Ofcourse, the example completely ignores the error without any apparent logging, and pretending that a service executed succesfully if the service doesn't exist (or isn't allowed) is a big WTF.

Coditor

Cloaked User · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
So let's get this straight - the vendor was allowed to update the production machine directly? Without going through any form of test environment first? Without informing the company? But when it blew up it was the company's own staff who had to track down the problem?

Unfortunately, that sounds all too familiar. A couple of times on my current project the first we've known of a planned change to production is when the client happens to mention that $thirdParty will be at $hostingCentre in a couple of days time.

Thankfully, we've managed to prevent it each time so far, and have expressed our disappointment at this circumvention of established process...

SomebodyElse · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

cconroy:

This would make a great management slogan (you know, for morale-boosting and such):
"Success is not an option."

OT, but this reminds me of the slogan of a local gasoline company "Quality is not an option"

I'm serious.

SomebodyElse · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Double post

SomebodyElse · 2006-09-29 Reply Admin

lomaxx:

Reminds me of a function a co-worker of mine once wrote:

if (value==true)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return 1;

}

or just rewrite this as

 
if(value || !value)
{
     return true;
}

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

try{

DoSomething("Not Useful");

}

Catch(Exception E){

// Ha Ha Suckers... we sold you a bum service! Good luck finding out it doesn't work!

}

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Trying to increase the readability a bit...

if (value == false && value != true)
{
// Just to be on the safe side...
return (value == false) ? false : true;
}
else if (value != false && value == true)
{
return (value == true) ? true : false;
}
else
{
// value is not false and not true... hmm, assume EOF
return EOF;
}

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

I always wondered how they could get these kinds of error messages until i got one in a soft i wrote.
I remember saying out loud in the office : "WTF !! Error: No Error ??"
My coworkers came to check and we had a good laugth :D

Once upon a time, when I was writing some code that read from an Excel file, I wrote an error message that said, "Missing data found." I caught it during testing, thankfully.

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

I won't say "What's the WTF here?", because I see it.

But I completely understand the vendor's actions. There was a big looming bug in the first place, someone tried to fix it by actually handling exceptional cases, and ended up breaking something that relied on the big looming bug. It seems to me the reasonable action is to send out a quick fix by re-adding the "bug" that has a known behaviour, rather than trying out new code - especially if a production machine is down.

Perhaps the WTF is that the vendor actually came out and admitted to the root cause?

I would expect this to be a quick fix that ultimately is replaced by handling exceptions correctly, but that could be a major change in architecture, so this seems like a reasonable duct-tape solution in the meantime.

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

How about this... guarantees no error EVER!!!

static void Main()

{

//Code here

static void Main()

{

//Code here

//Code here

//set up the error handler to handle EVERYTHING

ErrorHandler eh = new ErrorHelper.ErrorHandler();

Application.Run(new MainShell(eh));

}

ErrorHandler eh = new ErrorHelper.ErrorHandler();

Application.Run(new MainShell(eh));

}

Application.Run(new MainShell(eh));

}

public class ErrorHandler

class ErrorHandler

{

public ErrorHandler()

{

// Adds the event handler to to the main ui exeption

public ErrorHandler()

{

// Adds the event handler to to the main ui exeption

// Adds the event handler to to the main ui exeption

Application.ThreadException += new ThreadExceptionEventHandler(this.OnThreadException);

Application.ThreadException += new ThreadExceptionEventHandler(this.OnThreadException);

}

public void OnThreadException(object sender, ThreadExceptionEventArgs t)

{

public void OnThreadException(object sender, ThreadExceptionEventArgs t)

{

}

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

Works for me! Heh.

2006-09-29 Reply Admin

What's all this try / catch madness? I got four words for ya.

On Error Resume Next

Define Failure As Success

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