• anon (unregistered) in reply to Oh THAT Brian!

    [quote user="Oh THAT Brian]Captch: valetudo - Car park valet with an attitude.[/quote]

    Actually Vale Tudo is a pretty brutal martial art. Means "anything goes" in Portuguese.

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Billy The Squid
    Billy The Squid:
    Let's say you have a repetitive task
    Then you should be using a computer.

    Oh, sorry, I forgot. Computers used to be for automating repetitive tasks. Then they decided to let babies have chainsaws, and tried to make them baby-friendly, which means they put a lot of candy colored cartoons all over the place and made it really really hard to automate your work any more.

    Billy The Squid:
    Let's say you have a repetitive task in some Office application
    {stifles the urge to run screaming through the nearest window -- Windows will be the death of us all yet...}
    Billy The Squid:
    at some company which makes Office 2003 mandatory.
    OK absolutely time to run, for the window, or another interview, or weapons... something.
  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Sorry. Next time I'll prepare an easy-reader version for you.

    "See Jason. See Jason debug. Debug, Jason, debug! This code is very bad code. Jason doesn't like bad code. See Jason frown at the bad code."

    //I honestly know nothing about the missing comments.

    See Dot. See Dot Run. Run, Dot, Ruan error has occurred, and Dot has stopped running. Please contact a macro administrator!

  • Daveo (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Remy Porter:
    You give these mouth-breathers a thousand pounds of steel and a few gallons of a very explosive fuel and send them out on the roads with vague instructions- and somehow, we actually survive this.
    Please tell us where you live, so I can make sure I don't try to drive there. In the places I've lived, you have to have your learner's permit for a minimum of six months and pass both written and behind-the-wheel tests. And of all the government paperwork I've had to wade through, state drivers' manuals are among the least vague.

    Hmm...The state drivers' manuals in Australia ("Drivers' Handbook" in most states) have a disclaimer at the front pointing out that they're not legal documents and do not necessarily present the road rules accurately (or even correctly). Little wonder that few people know their road rules.

    That said (and drifting off topic briefly), the biggest problem is roughly what Remy said.... [rant] People are taught to operate a motor vehicle, not drive. They complete a (simple) multiple choice test to show that they have some vague idea that there might be some sort of order that dictates when they can do things, and they complete a practical that tests basic maneuvers (generally not in traffic). A driver is then given a certificate (licence) which says that they are competent to drive...yet though they can operate a motor vehicle, and may be able to execute some pretty impressive maneuvers, they aren't necessarily ready to drive. Driving is about more than moving the car, it is reacting to and working with traffic and conditions around you. Preparing early for hazards. Planning where you are going and how you will get there (being in the correct lane early). Anyways, that rant's for another day...the point is, it is extremely naive to think that a basic written test and a practical is sufficient to teach people how not to kill themselves with 1t of steel (actually, up to 4.5t in Australia on a basic car licence) and 50+ litres of petrol....

    The only reason road tolls don't rise quicker is because safety features are getting better. Drivers most certainly aren't!!

    [/rant]

  • Louis (unregistered)

    Maybe I missed something....

    So the application was written in Braille?

  • (cs) in reply to Raiding
    Raiding:
    Ex-Wow:
    More dots!! more dots!!

    Sorry, couldn't resist :)

    Fifty DKP minus!

    sigh

    Get away from the head, Lee.

  • (cs) in reply to ARMed but harmless
    ARMed but harmless:
    anon:
    My brain vapor-locked after reading the punch line. Let's hope that particular primate doesn't teach this trick to any offspring.

    I believe it's even worse. That particular primate IS the offspring of the programmer of the Bally Astrocade BASIC Interpreter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Astrocade#BASIC

    On the second thought - no. The interpreter is a brilliant hack, while the dot trick is utterly gaga.

    Jason definitely seemed to have a bad romance with this VBA monster.

  • Mike Caron (unregistered) in reply to Simon Richard Clarkstone
    Simon Richard Clarkstone:
    YeahRight:
    SR:
    bl@h:
    Please contact a Comment Administrator to fix this Com.......

    But you are a Comment Administrator

    What do you do now?

    Quickly retrieve arms from database.

    You already have arms, numbnuts!

  • StychoKiller (unregistered) in reply to Captain
    Captain:
    THERE! ARE! FOUR! DOTS!
    Better still: "My God! It's filled with Dots!"
  • RandomUser423683 (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    RBoy:
    frits:
    And to think, just yesterday someone was lauding the virtues of VB.
    Because you couldn't do the same stupid thing in any other language?
    Write macros in Office? Not yet.
    (I'm going to reply to this, and then finish reading the comments. I will not be surprised if someone has already said much the same thing.)

    Just to be clear. Had Office chosen any other language to do its macros, we would be complaining about it right now instead.

    I have yet to be shown a Turing-complete programming language that both allows a programmer to perform non-trivial actions, and prevents said programmer from performing stupid actions. Or, to put it another way, if you can do something meaningful with it, it is nearly guaranteed that someone will find a way to do something stupid with it.

  • Fabiano (unregistered)

    One of the best! The are DOTS! DOTS are coming!!!

    :-D A question: Does "Feature Articles" contain real facts or are they make-up stories? This story looks too much funny. :-D

  • (cs) in reply to Fabiano
    Fabiano:
    Does "Feature Articles" contain real facts or are they make-up stories?

    The vast majority of this story comes from one of our readers (credited as Jason). Liberties were taken to enhance the entertainment value, but all of the code and weird programming techniques were kept as provided by the submitter.

    //I'll let Alex speak for WTFs at large, but they're usually based on a submission.

  • Someone (unregistered)

    Whats most amusing about this for me is I was just in the same situation.

    Urgent hacked mail merge application which was added to an existing project with no budget. No source control, not officially supported and suddenly mission critical. Had to fix it urgently because during the 2003 2007 upgrade someone decided to test it (finally) and discovered it was broken.

    Thankfully hacking around in VBA isnt too difficult and I was able to fix it in a day. Even gained an award for the trouble.

  • ClaudeSuck.de (unregistered) in reply to Spivonious
    Spivonious:
    Captain:
    THERE! ARE! FOUR! DOTS!

    There are five dots.

    In fact, there are ten dots. Ehm, eleven. Ehm, twelve

  • ClaudeSuck.de (unregistered) in reply to ClaudeSuck.de
    ClaudeSuck.de:
    Spivonious:
    Captain:
    THERE! ARE! FOUR! DOTS!

    There are five dots.

    In fact, there are ten dots. Ehm, eleven. Ehm, twelve

    Aitsch! I forgot te dot above the i.

  • (cs)

    Dippin' Dots: ice cream of the future.

    I can remember when this used to be the ice cream of the future:

    http://www.dawnsong.org/LotRO/housing/images/yard_small/HayStack.jpg

  • somedudenamedbob (unregistered)

    Two quality WTFs in a row, and well written. Bravo, Remy, Alex should learn a few things from you.

  • bw (unregistered) in reply to Smitty
    I'm with you on this one. One of the circles of hell described by Dante contained flatterers submerged in a river of shit. I say those who spawned VB belong there.
    Please expand this to the entire .Net development staff.
  • (cs)

    Circle, circle, dot, dot. Now you've got your WTF shot.

  • Rodman (unregistered)
    Didn't the "great" Joel Spolsky invent VBA? Or come up with the idea behind it, anyway? I seem to recall that.

    As I recall (could be wrong) he was on the team to bring VBA to Excel. I think Word may have already had it? Maybe? But he definitely was with the Excel team.

  • Luser (unregistered) in reply to ZPedro
    ZPedro:
    To add my 2 cents, I don't think VBA itself is responsible (and this is from a Mac user): some automation/macro is indispensable in an office suite, and it could have happened whatever the language. I don't think it's the people who started this codebase either; no, in my opinion the problem is an organization that lets such organically grown software become mission critical before it's taken over by actual IT programmers.

    It's not the whole organisation that causes such software to grow organically: it's the self-protecting, arrogant, ignorant, imature, IT programmers, who need a 3-year project and a 4-person budget to get half the functionality on the one-true-platform in the one-true-language. Fix that problem, and the Personal Computer revolution goes away.

    If you want to change the world, you must first start by changing yourself....

  • Gerrie (unregistered)

    Has enybody ever picked up the phone or hammered out a email to comaplian about the code that was posted in the Dailywtf? Or are they too ashamed? Maybe those users dont read these sites?

  • Cheong (unregistered)

    .-- .... . .-. . / .- .-. . / - .... . / .-.. .. -. . ... / -... . / -.. .-. .- .-- -. ..--..

    Captha: tristique = My old memory or Trist-run...

  • (cs) in reply to Rodman
    Rodman:
    Didn't the "great" Joel Spolsky invent VBA? Or come up with the idea behind it, anyway? I seem to recall that.

    As I recall (could be wrong) he was on the team to bring VBA to Excel. I think Word may have already had it? Maybe? But he definitely was with the Excel team.

    Didn't Visual Basic for Applications(tm) evolve from WordBasic (which was the macro language in Word95 and probably 6.0)?

  • ha (unregistered)

    "Don't blink. The dots are passing the data when you are not looking. And they are faster than you think. So, listen me carefully, don't freak out and don't blink..." see new Doctor Who episode.

  • Jimmy Jones (unregistered)

    The WTF is that the 'dots' weren't done in white. If they were white nobody would try to delete them.

  • (cs) in reply to ha
    ha:
    "Don't blink. The dots are passing the data when you are not looking. And they are faster than you think. So, listen me carefully, don't freak out and don't blink..." see new Doctor Who episode.
    Quantum dots - how can you be certain ?

    I can't decide whether I'd rather go skinny-dipping in the pond or the river.

  • (cs) in reply to Gerrie
    Gerrie:
    Has anybody ever picked up the phone or hammered out an email to complain about the code that was posted in the Dailywtf? Or are they too ashamed? Maybe those users dont read these sites?
    (FTFY)

    After a few, ah, problems such as the one reported in Payback's Payback, stories are now heavily anonymized (as told in that entry).

  • Kempeth (unregistered)

    Do not try to remove the dots, because that is not possible! Instead try to imagine the truth.

    What truth?

    There are no dots...

    Obviously the original programmer should have found a better solution to store those variables: Setting the text color to white!

  • InitHello (unregistered)

    Suddenly, Real Life isn't the only place where a missed period can cause problems.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Like I said in the article, the real WTF is that Office comes with a full development environment and is installed on every user's desktop, pretty much everywhere. Ridiculous code just follows from there.
    This isn't quite accurate though, is it? You'll only have VBA installed with Office if your system administrator saw fit to enable it for you during installation. If your sysadmin installs inapproriate software on your machine you can't rightly blame the software - it's just sitting there doing its job. You can only blame your shitty sysadmin for giving you a tool that you can't be trusted with.

    Just like the babies and chainsaws analogy - you don't blame the chainsaw, you blame the moron who gave it to a damn baby.

  • Cheos (unregistered)

    Probably the best WTF story I've ever read!

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    I'm a little confused about how, "Stop deleting the dots!" resolved the issue. Did they restore the dots from backup? Did they just throw out the code that referenced the dots and hoped nobody would notice?

    They were probably in the... erm... "DOT" file...

  • Sarge2009 (unregistered)

    The real problem with VB/VBA is that it encourages people who know nothing about programming to start writing programs. Which would be fine if they kept them to themselves....

    After a number of years of incompetent interaction, sooner or later someone who knows what they are doing turns up and dies of a heart-attack after looking at the code. :(

  • Grande (unregistered) in reply to Nibh

    VBA in Access is okay if it's a) written by programmers b) only used by one or two people.

  • (cs) in reply to Billy The Squid
    Billy The Squid:
    You know.... as much as it pains me to say this... I actually like writing VBA macros. No, don't stab yourself in the eye, quick trying to throw up, and hear me out.Eg 1: Analyzing data in an excel sheet to look for particular entries, highlighting them, and copying these data rows into another excel sheet, printing both the original and the exception report to a single PDF, sending the information off to the appropriate recipient based on information in the first sheet? Lengthy macro (Which should probably have been a standalone program).

    Eg 2: Apply conditional formatting of various rows / columns based on the value in a particular cell, to ensure it stands out? Quick macro.

    Don't hate what it can do.... hate what people are doing with it.

    Signed. . . except for #2, for which excel has conditional formatting.

    Most of the VB/VBA bashing, however is because of:

    A: "Programmers" who are just jumping on the bash VB bandwagon

    B: "Programmers" for whom the majority of their VB/VBA experience is maintaing and debugging the code of incompetentes, like the VBA module I ran accross recently in an access application which, except for the header and end sub, was written as a tsql script. ("Why wont this compile?" "'Cause you're an idiot")

    C: Elitism, many people here see the "BASIC" part of VB/VBA and make assumptions, or just talk out of their A**. Or they look down on VB/VBA simply because it's easy enough, and ubiquitous enough, for the vast majority of users to actually think they have a chance of becomming programmers.

    D: Jealousy.

    But, C is the biggest problem. I've seen VB and VBA code both from average users and developers who REALLY ARE hardcore C++ or Java or whathaveyou programmers that are equally complete and utter garbage. I think a name change from VB (Visual Basic) to VRH (Visual Really Hard) might help. And then we VHR programmers might get some respect!

    It's similar to the Oracle vs MS SQL debates we have around here. I understand why an oracle developer is proud that they can write custom statements to completely and fully control the application of sequence numbers as unique keys for their tables.

    I mean that's really nice.

    I don't understand why they think it should be REQUIRED.

    Nor am I impressed when my oracle partners show me every instance of :NEXTVAL From SEQUENCE as though it's some kind of miracle magic supercode for getting a new number for their key.

    I can write custom modules for MS Sql to do the same thing, but if all I want is a simple, incremented number why should I have to? The less time i spend coding the simple stupid things, the more time I have to code the complicated requirements sent by our one step from the loony bin business partners.

  • (cs)

    Anyone who thinks pre-dotNet VB is a good language should try this exercise:

    Write a mutlti-threaded desktop application. You cannot use timer controls or pepper your code with calls to DoEvents().

    Bonus points for implementing a exception handler that catches excpetions from other functions down the call stack.

  • Oh THAT Brian! (unregistered) in reply to frits

    Been there, done that. While it's possible using unsupported calls (I have the Visual Basic Magazine around here somewhere ...), you're right - it's not pretty - or easy.

    About the best way to do something like that is to write a VB6 COM DLL with events. The VB code calls the DLL, then it continues on it's merry way, waiting for an event callback from the DLL. But it's a bitch trying to debug that thing!

    . -..- - .-. .- / .--. --- .. -. - ... / .. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... .-.-.-

  • RandomUser423683 (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Anyone who thinks pre-dotNet VB is a good language should try this exercise:

    Write a mutlti-threaded desktop application. You cannot use timer controls or pepper your code with calls to DoEvents().

    Bonus points for implementing a exception handler that catches excpetions from other functions down the call stack.

    Multi-threading is not within VB6's (and earlier) problem domain. Wrong tool for the job.

    For example, you can build a perfectly adequate house using wood. You may be able to do the same for some types of commercial or industrial buildings, but usually you'll want to use something else, e.g. steel, or risk structural issues.

    Admittedly, unlike wood, there are few-if-any examples where you would be better off choosing VB over other common languages. (No fair pulling out an obscure or special-purpose language that is even less functional.)

  • OfficeMadness (unregistered) in reply to RBoy
    RBoy:
    frits:
    And to think, just yesterday someone was lauding the virtues of VB.

    Because you couldn't do the same stupid thing in any other language?

    There is another language that lets you store variables as 1pt font objects in a Word document? Horrifying thought there...

  • (cs) in reply to RandomUser423683
    RandomUser423683:
    Multi-threading is not within VB6's (and earlier) problem domain. Wrong tool for the job.

    So running all code on the UI thread and forcing the program to manually process messages via DoEvents() is a good thing? Doesn't seem like a good tool for any job.

  • methinks (unregistered) in reply to dgushurst
    dgushurst:
    TRWTF is Jason. First words out of his mouth should have been, "Hello. What do you mean by 'crashing'? What is the error message? And what were you doing?"

    You know that the answer to the last question is inevitably going to be "Nothing! Really!! I swear!!!", don't you?

    ;o)

  • methinks (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    keigezellig:
    At that time when i was literally plowing through all the shit, I was seriously thinking of a career change
    Hopefully you're better at programming than English.

    Granted, I'm not a native speaker myself - but I do not see anything wrong with this at all.

    Would you care to elaborate?

  • SeaDrive (unregistered)

    No matter how badly a program is written, if it works, it works. When the program has been running for a while, there is high probability that the problem is in the data. With old programs, data bugs are much more common than programming bugs or system bugs.

    So, WTF, why didn't start by with the user.

  • RandomUser423683 (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    RandomUser423683:
    Multi-threading is not within VB6's (and earlier) problem domain. Wrong tool for the job.
    So running all code on the UI thread and forcing the program to manually process messages via DoEvents() is a good thing? Doesn't seem like a good tool for any job.
    There are reasons to use DoEvents, but just like storing variables as 1pt text in a document, there is usually a less-stupid way to do whatever it is you are trying to do, within VB. Or, what you're trying to do is beyond VB's intended use. Are you building a ranch-style house, or a ten-story office building?
  • RandomUser423683 (unregistered) in reply to RandomUser423683
    RandomUser423683:
    frits:
    RandomUser423683:
    Multi-threading is not within VB6's (and earlier) problem domain. Wrong tool for the job.
    So running all code on the UI thread and forcing the program to manually process messages via DoEvents() is a good thing? Doesn't seem like a good tool for any job.
    There are reasons to use DoEvents, but just like storing variables as 1pt text in a document, there is usually a less-stupid way to do whatever it is you are trying to do, within VB. Or, what you're trying to do is beyond VB's intended use. Are you building a ranch-style house, or a ten-story office building?
    But, even if this discussion had a point, it may soon not. I'm not sure about VBA, but MS is making noises that there will be no VB6 VM runtimes after Windows 7. I guess we'll see if they finally pull the plug, or keep paying the ICU bills.
  • BentFranklin (unregistered)

    So how would a world class programmer store data in a Word Document?

  • ool.. umm... corp- err.. (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    keigezellig:
    At that time when i was literally plowing through all the shit, I was seriously thinking of a career change
    Hopefully you're better at programming than English.
    The shit a programmer plows through is literal!
  • ool.. umm... corp- err.. (unregistered) in reply to SenTree
    SenTree:
    I think is the first WTF that made me literally facepalm.
    Smitty:
    The_Assimilator:
    Ah yes, Microsoft Office macros; yet more proof that VB should never have been invented, and that its inventors deserve endless torment for their crimes.
    I'm with you on this one. One of the circles of hell described by Dante contained flatterers submerged in a river of shit. I say those who spawned VB belong there.
    ...but headfirst.
    But let's start with Haag. For crimes against humanity.
  • Gary Olson (unregistered)

    One dot if by lAND two dots if by C three dots if by Java and four dots if by VB.

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