• LongTimeListener (unregistered)

    I'm curious to know what this was made in. Is this adobe FileMaker? If so there is a potential underlying data structure that is VASTLY more heinous than what we are seeing on the surface

    I've only been in IT for 8 years now but easily the worst data structure I ever saw was in a FileMaker system - it's worst feature is it's accessibility to "non-developer types"

    CAPTCHA: captcha hehehe

  • (cs) in reply to Elmer Fudd

    Anonymous:
    Well, it's better than 400 forms named frmAfterLookupByName, frmAfterLookupByAddress, frmAfterLookupByCompany, frmLookupByName, frmLookupByAddress, frmLookupByCompany, frmSelectName, frmSelectAddress, frmSelectCompany.... all of which are identical, except for the lookup and select forms having 398 "dummy" fields in them, so the LOOK like the AfterLookup forms... That crap makes stacking them all up and activating them conditionally look like a dream. "Can you just add one field to this form..." means "Can you search for all the forms that I might be referring to and add the one field (or dummy field) to all of them, by dragging and dropping it on the exact same pixel... GUI designers == Suck.

    I'm not sure, but could you put all the non-varying fields (dummy or not) on a single subform and imbed it in each "By" and "Select" form?

    --RA

  • (cs) in reply to LongTimeListener
    Anonymous:

    I'm curious to know what this was made in. Is this adobe FileMaker? ...

    The icon in the form is for Visual FoxPro.

    --RA

  • phs3 (unregistered)

    Any attempt to grok United's website is futile at best.  A couple of years ago, they had a promotion that was hosted on unitedgreatoffer.com.  I tracked down the site owner (a web designer at a shop in Chicago) and got him on the phone, asked why on earth the page wasn't www.united.com/greatoffer, that I wasn't about to use my United login on a non-United page, etc.; he agreed with everything, fumbled around trying NOT to say what I finally said for him:

    "The United web site is a disaster and getting anything like /greatoffer set up would take months, if it even ever got finished."

    When I said that, he agreed with obvious relief, and we parted friends.

     I could list any number of egregious behaviors of the www.united.com site, but we're getting a wee bit off-topic ("You say that like it's a negative thing...")...

     ...phsiii

    Captcha: genius (how did it know???)


     

  • padren (unregistered)

    I vote this WTF as the #1 "goggles" post of all time.  After the goggle comments have been used so gratuitously, I honestly believe this one can actually cause a detatched retina when looked at directly for too long.  If your eyes get tired, just stare at the sun for a few minutes to give them a rest.

    Now, which pills are the ones that make the nightmares go away?

     

    captcha = craptastic 

  • Brad (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    In order to change the text of a sub-heading (as Tom was required to do) or properties of any control, all of the overlapping controls must be carefully dragged off, put aside, and dragged back in the exact same place.

     Can't you select any of the controls from some drop list in the designer and change it's property w/o having to move things around in Foxpro?  Must be an old version?
     

  • Olddog (unregistered)

    Wow.  What a mess.  No wonder nobody wanted to fix it. As soon a someone solves it... they own it. And it owns them. It's like a game of Tag-> you're it. Once you're tagged as the only expert on something like this, you can stow your upward mobility in the basement. Good choice for consultant work... outta keep the revenue stream coming in for a while anyway.

  • derula (unregistered)

    O. My. Dear. God. This is awful. The person who originally did this must have had severe psychic problems.

  • forgottenlord (unregistered)

    I was going to say "sweet mercilous God", but even God doesn't have enough mercy to save someone from this.

  • (cs)

    All I have to say is shoot the MF's who put that together and the management that agreed to it.  WTF?!?!?!

  • (cs)

    hehe, like many others i thought there was something wrong with my browser... you could use that babble of junk as the bases for some pretty secure captchas i reckon :)

  • jbange (unregistered) in reply to Elmer Fudd

    Anonymous:
    edit /50 file.exe

     That would do for this application, but it's not actually a hex editor...
     

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    There is no obfuscation in this "design time" screenshot: all of the controls and labels are stacked directly on top of each other and their visibility is changed at run-time by a several-thousand line case statement. In order to change the text of a sub-heading (as Tom was required to do) or properties of any control, all of the overlapping controls must be carefully dragged off, put aside, and dragged back in the exact same place.


    <font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif">At first glance I thought there's something wrong with my eyes... And I was right, my eyes are completely wrong by looking at this...

    I've used to work with GUIs back in college, it really speeds up some dev time, if the GUI is somewhat static, then I code the dynamic parts...

    Why they just literally dragged and dropped similar controls with varying texts (and dynamically showing them in code) rather than just using one (which also need codes to dynamically change them) is beyond me... or am I missing something here?



    </font>
  • (cs)

    Since this is a VFP form, each of those controls should be stored in a separate record of the underlying database. So, theoretically, you could operate on it using VFP to do the updates. That could lead to just as much insansity as working with the form directly, though....

    Also, this used to be the only way to do certain reporting styles in VFP, as noted above: that has been greatly improved with the release of VFP9 and the ReportListener class.

  • A chicken passeth by (unregistered)

    Oh great - the screwtard that wrote "The Hotel Registration System From Hell" and "The Meterological Station In Hell" is still alive.

    Biggest WTF: Note that the text boxes STILL HAVE DEFAULT NAMES >_>

    Captcha: Paula - admittedly I'd rather be looking through her app than THIS. -.-
     

  • ViGe (unregistered) in reply to its me
    its me:

    Anonymous:

    You're right - my bad. I'm running NoScript and it's causing the display issue.

    I can see why people want to run with scripting disabled, but for me it just makes it far too hard to use the web. Seems most sites I visit rely on scripting, and with new techniques like AJAX growing in popularity I don't see it as a trend that will subside.... Of course from work I'm not exactly going to too many dangerous sites (unless you count thedailyWTF.com ;) ) 

    -me
     

    That's exactly the reason people use NoScript. You get the best of both sides: All of those sites whith I reqularly use, and which depend on Javascript, have Javascript enabled. All the others have it disabled.

  • John Q. Public (unregistered) in reply to Bill

    From even just glancing at the screenshot, it is obvious that this was done in some subset of Visual Studio or .NET. First, all the controls appear to be Microsoft-standard. Second, one or more control names are clearly shown in Hungarian Notation, a standard Microsoft adopted some years ago, to their (and coders') detriment. And third, it was coded by an idiot, since he (probably a he) did not even get the Hungarian Notation right in some cases. Why use a standard -- especially an inconvenient and bizarre standard like H.N. -- if you are not going to REALLY follow it anyway???

    All these things point to VS or .NET.

    While I believe the above deduction is correct, You can also see my coding bias in the explanation. So be it.

     

  • John Q. Public (unregistered) in reply to endergt

    Except that you didn't. If this is Windows XP (the context in which the question was originally asked), then you shoule be aware that this is not much of a hex editor.

  • VeXocide (unregistered)

    OMG, the flashbacks :S

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to meow
    Anonymous:
    www.united.com is still messed up in ff (?!?)
    Nah, if you have all scripts turned off, you (or at least I) get a mercifully blank page.
  • Devdas (unregistered) in reply to padren
    Anonymous:

    Now, which pills are the ones that make the nightmares go away?

     

     

    The dried frog pills. Ask the Bursar for some. 

  • Drak (unregistered) in reply to John Q. Public

    And why would hungarian notation be so bizarre? We use it as our standard at work, and after an initial adjustment period I have also started using it for personal projects. Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see.

  • (cs)

    For me, this is a classic WTF because it is impossible to understand the mind that would generate this.  One can understand lack of knowledge, overlooking a mistake or blinkered point of view but one cannot understand why anyone would want to make their work so hard for no benefit.  I've known people who generate work for themselves in pursuit of an unnecessary perfection but this is generating pain.  Developing with overlapping controls is so painful that it takes force of will to not refactor it.

    It has to be mental illness!

  • (cs)

    Arrrr! My eye! The eyepatch does nothing!

  • dermot (unregistered)

    I have worked on a VB app that was similar to this. The program state was stored only in the UI controls, so the tab action was faked, with all the controls directly on the main form. Sort of a MVC without the MC. 

  • (cs)
    Classic old school VFP development, he he, had to fix many WTF'up's like this... 
    An easy way to fix this mess.
    Open Form, edit tab order of controls and save the form as a Class.
    Open Class in Class Browser.
    View Class Code and save as program.
    Modify Program and seperate label definitions as per case statement and add to Custom Container Control...[ bulk of work +- 2days ]
    Create Form Object from Class and save as a Form in runtime.
    One would still retain the label positions provided you place the container in the correct position....
    A
  • (cs) in reply to noofnuff

    This is exactly the reason why I spent 120 hours of personal time rewriting a dozen or so dialogs that did the same damn thing.  There was a combo box on each whose selection determined which 50 of the 5000 fields on the dialog would be visible or hidden AND if the text in the static labels needed to change AND if the properties of each visible edit field needed to be updated.  What a mess!

     All rewritten with embedded child dialogs, one per state, that would be shown or hidden as the combo box changes.  100 times more resources to keep track of, but still a hell of a lot easier to modify and maintain later.

  • (cs)

    On a side note, why does the form have two close buttons? Does one close the form better than the other?

     

    And on a totally unrelated sidenote, what happened to foosball girl? :) 

  • (cs) in reply to forgottenlord

    Anonymous:
    I was going to say "sweet mercilous God", but even God doesn't have enough mercy to save someone from this.

    That's why it's spelled "merciless."

  • (cs) in reply to Drak

    Anonymous:
    And why would hungarian notation be so bizarre? We use it as our standard at work, and after an initial adjustment period I have also started using it for personal projects. Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see.

    Depends on whether you're talking about apps hungarian or systems hungarian.

    Systems hungarian is just horrible.  If you change the type of something from e.g. int to long you have to rename the variables.  And it is easy to work out what type a variable is anyway so there's no need for it in the name.

    Apps hungarian can actually be quite useful although it is safer to do it with different class types instead.
     

  • anonymous coward (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    Anonymous:

    I program mostly PHP, but I have a project now with Delphi, so I need to do visual programing. 

    Well.. I like the fact I can "draw" screens fast that look profesional. But some task are visual, so I feel really dumb moving 20 combobox by hand. I feel like something is wrong.

    If I need to do some heavy modification on my designs on PHP is always very easy, because everything is controled by  CSS files, and templates, and is plain text and easy to modified.  The "text view of form" of Delphi is hard to hack, and If you do something wrong, the proyect seems to corrupt. So.. not only I feel dumb with Visual programming, but I have much less control over the result, and I need to do task by hand! thats new to me, task I can't automatize. Thats bad because move some reprograming task from O(1) to O(n)  :(

    Delphi forms are stored in text as .DFM files - if you enable the option 'DFM as text' on your form (which you should be doing anyway). Then you can edit the properties at will. Also the cursor keys on the keyboard are available for 'precision' moving of controls, as is the location property.
     

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to John Q. Public

    Hungarian notation is not that bad here. Is a nice hint what object you are working.  labelClient as .caption, and teditClient as text.  Is wrong to try  teditClient.caption := strClientName;

    Of course, things can become ugly after changes... <nonsense> function addFloats( xReal,yReal: Integer): String;</nonsense>    because the variables include the type on the name, if the type change, the code become really strange.  :I

     


  • DaveK (unregistered) in reply to Squiggle

    Squiggle:
    Arrrr! My eye! The eyepatch does nothing!

     Arrr!  Well, at least it do make ye look the part for Talk-Like-A-Pirate day, ye scurvy landlubber!

     

  • DaveK (unregistered) in reply to jbange
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    edit /50 file.exe

     That would do for this application, but it's not actually a hex editor...
     

    Oh yes it is.  In fact, it's soooo hex that you have to enter ascii codes using ALT+numeric keypad.

    Now that's old-school! 

     

  • JL (unregistered) in reply to warmachine

    warmachine:
    For me, this is a classic WTF because it is impossible to understand the mind that would generate this.  One can understand lack of knowledge, overlooking a mistake or blinkered point of view but one cannot understand why anyone would want to make their work so hard for no benefit.

    I suppose it could have been a slippery slope thing?  Like maybe the app was completed without overlapping controls, and then the client changed the spec, adding a user mode requiring a form with the same 50 controls as the original, except one checkbox becomes a set of radio buttons.  In that case, an overlapping control might be pretty tempting.  And then when the completed app is handed to a summer intern for maintenance, he sees the overlapping control, assumes it's the corporate style, and adds a dozen more.

    At least, I hope it happened like that.  The alternative -- that someone prefers to work that way -- is pretty scary.
     

  • (cs) in reply to drg
    drg:

    On a side note, why does the form have two close buttons? Does one close the form better than the other?

    And on a totally unrelated sidenote, what happened to foosball girl? :) 

    close() { ... }

    almostSortOfClosed() { if (... }

  • (cs) in reply to Bradlegar the Hobbit

    Anonymous:
    I agree. One would be insane to try and modify the screen using the GUI. I'd be surprised if the files written by the IDE weren't human-readable. There are times when GUIs just aren't the way to go, and it's at these times that old UNIX hands have an advantage.

    Press tab until you find the right control. Change the properties. Done.
     

     

  • (cs) in reply to Hubert Farnsworth
    Hubert Farnsworth:
    its me:

    Anonymous:
    Before I read the article, I thought I had a Firefox display issue when I saw this image (open www.united.com in FF). LOL -

     You might want to update your FF (or perhaps united.com got a clue) www.united.com looks fine in my firefox (v1.5.0.7)

    -Me

    At least without Javascript it has a slight resemblance to the image up there. 

    -- outing myself as a noscript user ;-)

     

    was confused myself ... tried it and now I see the resemblence! 

  • Konstantinos Kokkorogiannis (unregistered)

    (58% earn at least $50k/year)

    WTF!!!!

  • Papa Lazarou (unregistered) in reply to Bradlegar the Hobbit
    Anonymous:

    I agree. One would be insane to try and modify the screen using the GUI. I'd be surprised if the files written by the IDE weren't human-readable. There are times when GUIs just aren't the way to go, and it's at these times that old UNIX hands have an advantage.

     I'm faced with this problem all the time on the system I work on.  Of course I would have opened up a GUI-based text editor and clicked my way to the right file several minutes before my mouseless friends had finished messing around with their samba settings and correcting a typo in an arcane vim command for the fourth time.

     
    And it's at these times that those of us fortunate enough to understand the pros and cons of a number of different operating systems have an advantage.
     

  • PS (unregistered) in reply to Papa Lazarou

    <OT>

     As for that United.com thing:

    function isMpNumber(MPNO){
    
		 if(MPNO != null && MPNO.length == 11 && !(MPNO =="00000000000")) {
    
				var s = MPNO;
    
				var  w60count1 =0;
    
				var  w60count2 = 0;
    
				w60count1 = s.substring(0,1) * 5 +
    
							s.substring(1,2) * 4 +
    
							s.substring(2,3) * 3 +
    
							s.substring(3,4) * 2 +
    
							s.substring(4,5) * 7 +
    
							s.substring(5,6) * 6 +
    
							s.substring(6,7) * 5 +
    
							s.substring(7,8) * 4 +
    
							s.substring(8,9) * 3 +
    
							s.substring(9,10) * 2;
     
    wtf? 

     

  • scc4fun (unregistered) in reply to derula

    Anonymous:
    The person who originally did this must have had severe psychic problems.

    Yeah, they couldn't see into the future enought to know that this was a bad idea.

  • (cs)
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    its me:

    Anonymous:
    Before I read the article, I thought I had a Firefox display issue when I saw this image (open www.united.com in FF). LOL -

     You might want to update your FF (or perhaps united.com got a clue) www.united.com looks fine in my firefox (v1.5.0.7)

    -Me
     

    You're right - my bad. I'm running NoScript and it's causing the display issue. I didn't realize that to correctly view a page served by united.com, I'd have to allow scripts served by akamai.net permission to run (in addition to the scripts served by united.com)... If the akamai scripts are not allowed to run, the links in the pop up menus show up as text links underneath the three-tabbed-widget that includes the fare finder etc.

     

    Interesting though that akami seems to be just bouncing to united.com. Look at the urls:

    http://a56.g.akamai.net/7/56/7207/247c0c9752cf5a/www.united.com/ual/asset/udm-custom.js
    http://www.united.com/ual/asset/udm-custom.js is a perfectly valid url
    

    See this post:
    http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/apple/archive/2000/08/msg00014.html
     
     Why united would do that however is beyond me. 

     

    Akamai is often used as a high-bandwidth high-reliability caching service. They have big pipes, big servers and a lot of traffic, so you offload part of your files there and your regular servers don't take as high of a beating, especially if you get huge traffic peaks.

  • (cs) in reply to Devdas
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Now, which pills are the ones that make the nightmares go away?

     

    The dried frog pills. Ask the Bursar for some. 

    He won't share :( 

  • (cs) in reply to TeeSee
    TeeSee:

    Anonymous:
    I agree. One would be insane to try and modify the screen using the GUI. I'd be surprised if the files written by the IDE weren't human-readable. There are times when GUIs just aren't the way to go, and it's at these times that old UNIX hands have an advantage.

    Press tab until you find the right control. Change the properties. Done.
     

     

     

    Why Tab your way through all those controls? After all you ALREADY have a multi-K Line Case statement that will alter the Controls properties... Why not modify the text inside that one also? Lets make this App a REAL nightmare to maintain ;)

  • William Sanders [wsanders at efgroup dot net] [http://terrafox.n (unregistered)

    This is a 'design time' screen shot of a VFP screen. Whilst they are there during design time - they surely are not there during run time (ya, I read what you've typed). I'm not that worried about this amount of stuff in the real estate - it makes it useful sometimes at design time - though not my way to instantiate things at run time (I'm a fan of using visual classes that are instantiated on forms at run time instead).

    What DOES bother me is that the developers naming convention for the text boxes - why keep a numbering scheme? Time to see what the underying meta data looks like instead, and make it more meaningful (unless of course there's a slew o code that exists in a scan..endscan lopp construct that needs the field number order to match up with the visually displayed textboxes).

    He'll have fun if he moves stuff off the page in that pageframe then try to move it back on the pageframe - it will become lost and not anymore a child of the parent container (again, in this case a page frame).

    If Tom finds it too difficult to deal with - he can subcontract it out (to me perhaps?) -

    Hoping this finds you well and well rested !!! Mondo Regards [Bill]

  • Embarassed (unregistered) in reply to William Sanders [wsanders at efgroup dot net] [http://terrafox.n

    It's even worse. The data is stored in delimited format in a Memo field. Delimited with ^s if you are interested.

    I know this because I wrote the code to read and write to the database.

    I am, however, not responsible for this particular horror of a screen. Well, not directly anyway :)

    (Waves hello to Tom) 

     

  • D.R. Fairday (unregistered) in reply to its me
    its me:

    Ok, I don't get it, what's this thing written in? Even if the only tool you have/can think of is the visual GUI designer, can't you still select a control by name?

     It's VFP (Visual FoxPro) and yes you can select a control by name, but the names of the labels (judging by the idiocy of whichever moron created this monster) are probably left at Label1, Label2, ... Label324.

     If this pays well, I'm willing to write a builder that'll repack these controls into a few overlapping containers - which'd be separate classes, ergo maintained separately - and show only one at a time. I'm a Fox guru, and still have some mortgage left. I reserve the right to hunt down and shoot the moron.
     

  • jminkler (unregistered)

    This looks like a really fun use of FoxPro ... what would this take in VB 6 or better yet .Net, java, or heck just about anything else. FoxPro to me is just about the worst place to put your UI. The controls are designed by idiots.

  • (cs) in reply to jminkler

    Jminkler, I think the moron who wrote this would be quite capable of writing the exact same crap in any GUI designer.

Leave a comment on “Surgical Module Changes ”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article