• Adam (unregistered) in reply to Ohnonymous
    Ohnonymous:
    The REAL WTF is it took this guy a whole day to figure out one line of code. Granted it is a long line, but it's not that complicated.

    Adam here, wow it has been a while since I have seen that monster.

    And to the guy quoted above - I can't believe you are shallow enough to not see how involved the queries behind that line must be to produce a monster like that. Honestly, a reporting system preparing one row with an array containing 13 elements of numbers (and unlabeled)? I wonder where they came from. Ah well I guess it would be easy to assume that the posted line is the only line related to itself, ever. I assume I am not the super Visual Basic programmer you are.

    If anyone is interested - finally got it compiled and it worked as they always wanted. The problem was that they saw 2 days of processing time to import a year's worth of data appropriate. Convinced them to rewrite it and 2 days has now become 3 and a half minutes. This ratio is shown throughout the entire system.

    Thanks for feeling my pain everyone.

  • (cs) in reply to JTK
    JTK:
    poochner:
    Jesus Howard Christ. That's just painful.

    No, Howard is his dad...

    Howard you know?

  • (cs) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Thanks for feeling my pain everyone.

    I haven't come close to feeling your pain. I still have both my eyeballs and ALL of my hair.

  • (cs) in reply to mo
    mo:
    It takes a certain genius to get a compiler to throw hundreds of errors. When I write malfunctioning code it'll throw a couple and refuse to continue, and are subsequently easy to fix because they're as obvious to me as they are to the compiler. Hundreds of errors means there are hundreds of things just a little off, rather than hundreds of blatant typos. the real wtf=captcha=riaa
    Well, it's pretty common in the middle of a long refactoring session. When you go from 200 to 100 errors, you're on the right track, at least; at that stage, it's mostly just a check for stupid syntax mistakes as you go, since it sure isn't going to compile anytime soon.
    Zylon:
    peon:
    But it only makes sense to use "literally" when the expression that follows has a second, figurative, connotation. That way, you tell the reader that you meant to use the expression in the literal sense, instead of the figurative sense, and thereby avoid any ambiguity.
    For the love of god, shut up already. Using "literally" when there's no possible figurative interpretation doesn't make it incorrect, it just makes it redundant. Best-case, one could consider it acting loosely as an intensifier.
    C'mon, TDWTF is nothing if not pedantic.
  • (cs) in reply to Old Wolf
    Old Wolf:
    JTK:
    poochner:
    Jesus Howard Christ. That's just painful.

    No, Howard is his dad...

    Howard you know?

    It's the classic Misheard Lord's Prayer (real version here): Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name...

  • Beltira (unregistered)

    On my first job in the field, I was cubed next to a senior developer with a hot shot attitube. Supposidly, his last job had been working for IBM on OS/2.

    We were still doing 16 bit code in C(no C++) using the Windows SDK and Microsft C 7. Each of us had an assigned range for RC script ID's. This senior developer had on window a group of 10 buttons, he assigned them literal ID values starting at 1. One of our two directors(and one of the best coders Ive ever had the chance to work with) found this one thurday evening and blew a gasket. He spent a couple hours going through this guys code and fixing it using this guys assigned resource ID's.

    The senior developer comes in the next morning, I hear him over there bitching about someone changed his code. I told him what went down he gets more irrate and goes into Source (Un)Safe and reverses out those changes.

    Over the weekend the director found this again and blew more gaskets. And then some more. And then yet more.

    He goes back to fix it, I hear him bitching the whole "No, grep'ing for '1' isnt too hard" along with a great deal of profanities. Sunday evening I have the VP of engineering in my cube informing me to lock out the senior dev from Source (Un)Safe and that any changes the guy needs will have to be checked and approved by me.

    I had to look to see what the director had done, and there in our .h file of resource ID's was the #define BILL_IS_A_DOUCHEBAG1 through #define BILL_IS_A_DOUCHEBAG10.

    Bill was promptly escorted from the building a couple weeks later when we shipped the product.

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    Completely understandable if you did lose your hair and or eye/eyes.

    Almost as bad as being put in charge of fixing yet-to-be-seen proprietary software to roll out into a location servicing over 1800 users. But then again.. we do what we have to do.

    I'm proud to say I know that man.. :-) (Mr Lane)

    CAPTCHA: ewww (also my first response to that code)

  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to Andrew

    lol hey andy

  • (cs) in reply to JTK
    JTK:
    poochner:
    Jesus Howard Christ. That's just painful.

    No, Howard is his dad...

    Yeah, but you never heard of a son getting dad's name in the middle?

  • cat pow (unregistered)

    What is it that guy Adam is crying about anyway ? If he can't quickly transform that kind of code to something more to his liking I'd suggest he makes a step aside and gives the job to someone who can.

  • (cs) in reply to bodge
    bodge:
    Better.... or worse?

    At least he got an apology, which is more than most get!

    Except it wasn't an apology. It was a LOLpology. Big difference between the two.

  • dl (unregistered) in reply to mo
    mo:
    It takes a certain genius to get a compiler to throw hundreds of errors. When I write malfunctioning code it'll throw a couple and refuse to continue, and are subsequently easy to fix because they're as obvious to me as they are to the compiler. Hundreds of errors means there are hundreds of things just a little off, rather than hundreds of blatant typos. the real wtf=captcha=riaa

    Specially being in VB, which throws the errors from one to one (there're no warnings) so i wonder how did he know there were hundreds... (without counting how much they fixed so far).

  • ELIZA (unregistered) in reply to peon
    peon:
    spaz:
    Peon:
    Jax:
    It's not often that I literally shout out "what the fuck" when looking at these examples. But today was definately one of those.
    Literally != Actually

    It's not often that people literally use literally correctly. While literally does not actually mean actually, Jax means that (s)he most of the time would should out something like "god that's dumb" or "what a completely stupid mistake". This time, jax literally shouted "what the fuck", literally using the word correctly, as opposed to my use of commas.

    But it only makes sense to use "literally" when the expression that follows has a second, figurative, connotation. That way, you tell the reader that you meant to use the expression in the literal sense, instead of the figurative sense, and thereby avoid any ambiguity.

    AFAIK, "shout out" has only one meaning. (As a verb, that is; people also use it as a noun.)

    To quote Dilbert, "They've been downsized, literally", from Dilbert S1E07 Little People. The thing about taking things literally is that normally the literal meaning is not appropriate: For example, having your software engineers literally "soaring like eagles" means that they're not at their computers engineering your flagship software; the same way they talk about obsolete computers being "boat anchors", whereas a more suitable term would be mooring weight, as a real anchor depends upon its grapnel-like shape for its mooring ability.

  • Elisha (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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