• (cs)

    I think I would've shat myself.

  • uep (unregistered)

    Ouch, that's rough. I've had bad bosses who get that real serious look and I don't want to see it ever again!

  • (cs)

    Not Bad!!!!

  • (cs)

    Sounds like something my boss would do to me.

  • (cs)

    haha...

  • (cs)

    Hah! For once I don't mind being fooled. I was having sympathy heart attacks for the guy. On the other hand, we can take it as quite a cautionary tale. It can be risky business posting copyrighted code, trade secrets, etc. on the Internet, even with obfuscation, and even though the code is pretty much worthless to the developer.

  • (cs)

    Very, very well written.

    I was a "believer".  (reminiscent of the famous Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' broadcast)

    You successfully "pulled my leg".

  • (cs) in reply to R.Flowers

    Cooled chills... But we must fight against bad code! There are always casualties in the fight against idiots.

  • elmegil (unregistered)

    anonymization like "Moon Microsystems"? ;)

  • (cs) in reply to efox

    Damn, I expected some spice.
    But ended up getting a WTF April Fools joke.
    That must be the true WTF.

  • (cs)

    With the state of the art in security and traceability (pretty good, IMHO)

    and

    The fervor with which we ridicule some of the daily postings (the truth hurts, especially when the code is SO BAD)

    and

    The whole notion of whose code it is any way and corporate privacy (I bet if we could look into some of Mosler's or Cisco's or NASA's or CitiBank's code (a few random important companies, I ain't making any accusations) we could find enough stupidity to last all of us for years, especially if we could take it out of context 6 )

    ,  <- that is a comma

    I am coming to the conclusion that, no matter how good Alex is at obscuration,  it might be very risky to post a WTF.


  • (cs)

    That had my heart beating just reading it!

  • =P (unregistered)

    For an April Fools joke... he could have at least read it twice and corrected all of the text/grammar errors. 

  • Allah (unregistered)

    that was truly funny.
     I liked it.

     Pulled my boss over to look before I finished so I thought it was still real.
     me and him had a good chuckle.

     felt ripped off when it was a joke .. shrug

     then joked about presenting the "Latest" in designs put forth from our System's analyst.


    but we didnt want you all to have heart attacks in your chairs.
     so we decided to refrain.

  • (cs) in reply to =P

    Sheesh. No one writes perfect code for heaven's sake.
    So what's wrong with putting the worst code on a site for everyone to laugh at ? It's exactly the same thing as MSFT eployees not reading Writing Secure Code 2 and creating a bunch of WTF code that constitute the webserver running this forum.


    Oh btw, I thought Nancy (or the other lady) was in tears because the guys here were poking fun at her WTF design.
    Brillant!!

  • (cs) in reply to byte_lancer

    Fortunately we also don't have as many people poking around the internet for the companies behind posts these days, and posting links. It's sort of bad form. Even if fun. =p

  • xcor057 (unregistered)

    Man!  I had just posted this yesterday.

    Anonymous:

    The forum should stop protecting the identity of these perpetrators.  Instead, those posting and reporting these incidents should be required to hack into the company’s security badge image database and post them with the WTF.

    <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p>

    Then make use of The Daily WTF’s Most Wanted posters during the interview process.

    So I was believing the story the whole way.  This got me good.

    Now I've got to go get some ice for this burn.

  • (cs)

    First we had code, then we had self-commenting code.  Judging from these table and column names, we now have self-obfuscating code.  Short of using rot-13, how do you anonymize self-obfuscated code?

  • (cs)

    Was that a datatype called "city"? Did I read that right? 

  • (cs) in reply to jackass

    This might be somewhat off topic but wtf ever. :)

    This story reminds me of a trick that my basketball coach (I played college basketball at a Division 3 school) would pull every year on a freshman on a road trip.  Before every road trip, you would have to go down to the equipment room to get uniform, warm ups, practice gear, etc.  My coach always made a big deal, a huge deal, about checking your stuff to make sure that you got everything.  Well every year, my coach would have the targeted freshman's roommate for the trip go into the freshman's bag and swap out his game shorts with some old junior varsity practice shorts.  Our uniforms were red and these "replacement" shorts were incredible...bright red and very, very short.  So game time would roll around and the target would start to get dressed and discover that he didn't have the correct game shorts.  A huge locker room discussion would ensue between the players, pretending to discuss what to do, whether to tell the coach now or see if he notices, etc.  Of course, everyone else is in on the joke, so it's all just bs being shot around.  So, usually how it would work out is that my coach would come into the locker room for the pre game talk before warm ups and notice the shorts.  That's when it would get really funny because my coach, being quite the actor, would just go nuts, saying all kinds of things about how could you not check your stuff when you picked it up, how foolish the person looked, and so on.  And, in the mean time everyone else is trying not to bust out laughing.  Then, our coach would ask our manager where the extra pair of shorts were, since we had them in case someone got blood on theirs or whatever and had to swap them out during a game.  The manager would say he forgot them and our coach would start ripping on him too.  Our manager, who was also quite the actor, would apologize profusely and then leave the room almost in tears.  Then there would be dead silence in the room for about a minute and the manager would come back in with a real pair of shorts and hand them to the target while everyone went nuts, laughing their asses off, and jumping around.  Seriously, one of the best pranks ever. 

  • (cs) in reply to Digitalbath

    Kind of similar story with slightly less heart attacks... My name appeared in a story a couple weeks back, and I actually had several people come up to let me know they'd seen it, and to ask, "... er.... that isn't my code is it?"  Fortunately it wasn't anyone who came up and asked.

    I was proud, and didn't really care if someone got upset.  It's their fault for sucking at coding.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And yes, this is the April Fool's post (not to say that it isn't a true story -- the practical joke did happen).



    Damn, you got me there, man. I were ready to drop some huge sympathy tears for Adam :)

     * Magic Duck goes to scheme some evil practical joke to his family.


  • opello (unregistered) in reply to e.thermal
    Was that a datatype called "city"? Did I read that right?


    SQL Server / Access / whatever (it was 'dbo'...) gets increasingly less useful, taking out such great datatypes :)
  • ca (unregistered) in reply to elmegil

    Back when I worked for Sun, I would typically use "Moon Megasystems" as a fictional company when I needed to fill in such a line in some application.

  • (cs) in reply to jackass

    Wouldn't be a job I would care about losing. What's amazing about this Payback system is that it apparently works. How's that possible?

  • (cs) in reply to opello
    Anonymous:
    Was that a datatype called "city"? Did I read that right?



    SQL Server / Access / whatever (it was 'dbo'...) gets increasingly less useful, taking out such great datatypes :)

    It is inherited from the datatype called "state"!

  • (cs) in reply to maniac78
    maniac78:
    Wouldn't be a job I would care about losing. What's amazing about this Payback system is that it apparently works. How's that possible?


    My incredible abilities as a programmer, of course.  ;-)
  • (cs) in reply to OneMHz
    OneMHz:
    Kind of similar story with slightly less heart attacks... My name appeared in a story a couple weeks back, and I actually had several people come up to let me know they'd seen it, and to ask, "... er.... that isn't my code is it?"  Fortunately it wasn't anyone who came up and asked.

    I was proud, and didn't really care if someone got upset.  It's their fault for sucking at coding.


    It was probably not a joke, but I was a bit surprised this morning to read my name in dbdebunk.com's quote of the week.  Fabian Pascal selects his QOTW in the same way that Alex selects WTFs.  Fortunately, it was only context for the next paragraph from someone lacking in clue.  I think I still have my white hat.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

  • John Hensley (unregistered) in reply to Gene Wirchenko

    It's particularly obvious to me today why Alex would have so much trouble coming up with an April Fool's WTF. The biggest WTFs aren't entertaining, just nauseating.

    Right now my private hell is adding features to code written by "code something and see what happens" hacker type. God help me, there is no limit to the amount of damage these people can cause. If you've got one working for you, please, for the sake of your project and the other developers, find an excuse to sack him.

  • swell (unregistered)

    Haha!  That was pretty funny. 

  • No Fool (unregistered) in reply to swell

    The real WTF is that it's not April 1st yet.

  • (cs) in reply to No Fool

    In related news some americans managed to take their head out their arse and realise that in Australia its been April the 1st for 11 and a half hours now.

    America responds by invading Australia....

  • (cs) in reply to Digitalbath
    Digitalbath:

    ...

    Good gag.

    Also love the Catch-22 reference.
  • random dude (unregistered) in reply to No Fool
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that it's not April 1st yet.


    TDWTF doesn't post on weekends, so today is Observed April Fools Day.
  • Rain Dog (unregistered) in reply to elmegil
    Anonymous:
    anonymization like "Moon Microsystems"? ;)


    You have that wrong. It's "Moon Macrosystems"

  • tster (unregistered) in reply to Rain Dog

    If someone did that to me they would have to send me home for the day so the whole office wouldn't smell like the poop in my pants.

  • (cs) in reply to No Fool
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that it's not April 1st yet.
    ... posted at 12:38am. On April 1st.  *#$* Timezones.

    I've always had a healthy sense of humour about things such as this one.  The problem always was that I was happy to give at least as good as I got.  Which meant trouble a year out.  Not a good thing.

    But friends were pretty good about the entertainment aspects.  Things like rearranging the walls so a guy couldn't enter his own cubicle without jumping over the wall (gotta love Herman Miller).  Or replacing another's chair with a spare toilet from home (don't ask ... it was clean), and installing a .wav file on the local PCs to play a "flushing" sound every few minutes.  Others moved his car, which he reported stolen to security ... until he found it elsewhere in the parking lot and had to "admit" forgetting where he parked.

    Aahhh, those were the days.
  • I.T. (unregistered)

    Enough to raise the old blood-pressure a bit. I'm actually quite impressed that the whole staff managed to keep up the pretense long enough.

    Thankfully, I take my own boss' words with such a large pinch of salt that I doubt he could get me in that way. Or perhaps that's tempting fate...

  • toxik (unregistered) in reply to I.T.

    Hillarious. Best post in some time, if you see it from the fun-perspective (although we're here to see dumb mistakes, not have a good laugh, even though those two tend to go pretty much hand in hand :-P)

  • (cs)

    Gotta love a good practical joke successfully pulled off.

  • (cs)

    So... Your bosses knew you'd posted bad code from the project, on three seperate occasions, and instead of firing you in an onslaught of self-righteous indignation they called you into the office to play an April Fool's prank on you and let you go about your business? Okay, that's pretty cool of them to take it so lightly, but isn't it pretty WTFish in itself? I mean, it means that they're aware of the truly horriffic code being produced in their company but they consider it as a joke rather than something which they really need to fix for the good of everyone's sanity.

  • erlando (unregistered)

    Excellent! Well done April Fools. You had me believing all the way.

    Also well done on the part of the practical joke. Just goes to show that Adam's boss has humour. You've got to appreciate that.

    (CAPTCHA is enterprise. That made it three laughs from TheDailyWTF today. Not bad! :-) )

  • (cs)

    A cruel joke indeed but things like that can actually happen. And that's real scary.

    Yeah, I know my boss and I know he wouldn't make a fuss of finding some of our code on this site (I've found plenty of awkward code over the last few years), but I also know that the higher the level of management, the more idiots sit there.

    But fighting for quality code is rather pointless in this way. Code quality depends on the IQ and experience of the coders and having someone analyse produced code and give a feedback to coders as to what they did right and what they did wrong.

    Sadly, the typical WTF author's confidence-to-intelligence ratio is way too high to visit this site and learn. So it's more like an emergency valve for their victims to reduce stress caused by having to work with their bad code.

  • Pong God (unregistered)

    Pwned!

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to phx
    phx:

    America responds by invading Australia....



    Hasn't it already done that? After all, the harmonization of copyright laws, this law, that law, that other law, you'd think Australia would be southern hemisphere US in all but the accent and terminology... Unless you meant the military invasion type of invasion (so old fashion these days. It's far better to do it gradually so those being invaded don't know they are).

    (BTW, is it me or do I have to always do these CAPTCHA things twice? Seems the first time around the captcha doesn't validate)
  • Hypnotron (unregistered)

    Funny story.  But what if Adam had tried to lie by denying any involvment?  That would've changed the way people thought about him even though the lie was a result of a prank. 

    Probably not a good analogy, but what if your wife played a prank on you to make it look like she was cheating on you and as a result, you start calling her all sorts of names.  They reveal that its a prank, but all those words remain.

  • Kiss me, I'm Polish (unregistered) in reply to phx
    phx:

    In related news some americans managed to take their head out their arse and realise that in Australia its been April the 1st for 11 and a half hours now.

    America responds by invading Australia....


    CNN reported: Luxemburg started to retire their soldier from Iraq...
  • (cs) in reply to Worf
    Anonymous:
    phx:

    America responds by invading Australia....



    Hasn't it already done that? After all, the harmonization of copyright laws, this law, that law, that other law, you'd think Australia would be southern hemisphere US in all but the accent and terminology... Unless you meant the military invasion type of invasion (so old fashion these days. It's far better to do it gradually so those being invaded don't know they are).

    We would just be retaliating for the devastating Australian invasion of America in the 1980s. Paul Hogan, that guy who advertised batteries, Yahoo Serious... dark times for the USA.

  • (cs) in reply to elmegil
    Anonymous:
    anonymization like "Moon Microsystems"? ;)


    When obfuscating something like "HAL computers" that would be a good one... LOL
  • Eric (unregistered) in reply to e.thermal

    SQL Server has something called User Defined Types, which you can define a type with your own name, and use it in multiple places without worrying that your city will be a VARCHAR(20) in one place and a VARCHR(30) in another.

    It's a useful feature in a large (read enterprise) database

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