• (cs)

    1. What kind of SEO Manager believes that a "user directory" that gets no traffic other than from webcrawlers

    2. What RDBMS are they using where sorting rules for different locales can be applied using nothing more complicated than an ORDER BY clause?

    3. Why does an intern have the CEO's username and password for the database?

    4. Why does the CEO have a username and password for the database?

  • (cs) in reply to someone
    someone:
    What I also expect from students, though, is the ability and the willingness to *listen and learn* from more experienced professionals, instead of always doing "their way" alluding to a number that have nothing to do with experience. That is the other half of an internship's purpose. In this case, we have a clear WTF example of such an *attitude*, not (just) the code.
    Most of the senior developers around here are still that way.
  • Defendor (unregistered)

    What do you expect when you think in PHP?

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to Preying on the weak
    Preying on the weak:
    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    I was. But then I had about 15 years of various computer experience already.

  • Nathan (unregistered)

    To Whom it May Concern,

    I am currently enrolled in the Ada County College where I was ordered to participate in the work intern program until I have brought my credit hour prerequisites current. Before I can enter the program, however, I must first find an internship. I saw your ad in the Idaho Statesman for an Intern Specialist and would like to ask that I be considered for the position. As you will see from my enclosed resume I have extensive experience interning at several places including McDonalds and Burger King. When it comes to Interning I am the master!

    Position Objective I am interested in a position as an intern, or any other position for which my skills would be applicable.

  • Monica Lewinsky (unregistered) in reply to Preying on the weak
    Preying on the weak:
    Yeah I'm going to cry foal on this one. A junior in college and he's being blasted on this site? I'm fresh out of college and the 'old guard' is getting on my nerves with all the high and mighty attitude.

    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    Foal? WTF do baby horses have to do with anything?

  • anon (unregistered)

    Um, I'm not sure it was just the intern doing the WTFing here. Look at that last part:

    exec(sprintf('mysqlimport -h db.company.com -u company_ceo --password=ceo_password users_%s %s', $locale_str, '/user_dir/'.$locale_str.'/'.$fname.'.txt'));

    Now, who gave the fresh intern the CEO's database password?

  • Christopher Martin (unregistered) in reply to MarkJ
    MarkJ:
    Mark:
    EngleBart:

    I also thought that WTF policy was not to bash newbie code? I would count a summer intern as a newb.

    My guess is this may have something to do with it: "several years in a well-known computer science program ... He did have a 3.9 average after all."

    It sounds like this intern didn't "have his listening ears on". He seems to have missed (a) different locales have different character sets and sort orders, and (b) the SQL SELECT ... ORDERED BY knows how to sort things; Stephen specifically mentioned these...

    Yeah, I'm going to jump on the "newbie mistakes aren't WTFs" bandwagon here. One of the many trivial-yet-important things to learn by experience when you first enter the working world (was for me, at least) is realizing that sometimes you have to jot down some notes during a conversation like that.

  • (cs)

    So, why alphabetize pages that humans aren't going to see?

  • John Hardin (unregistered) in reply to MarkJ
    MarkJ:
    It sounds like this intern didn't "have his listening ears on". He seems to have missed (a) different locales have different character sets and sort orders, and (b) the SQL SELECT ... ORDERED BY knows how to sort things; Stephen specifically mentioned these...
    That, and (c) "You don't need to worry about how it looks-- the crawlers won't care." I would have asked "If this page is only intended to be seen by a search engine crawler, why do we care how the list is ordered?"
  • Montoya (unregistered)

    You had me at 

    exec
    !

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to sprained
    sprained:
    frits:
    Preying on the weak:
    Yeah I'm going to cry foal on this one. A junior in college and he's being blasted on this site? I'm fresh out of college and the 'old guard' is getting on my nerves with all the high and mighty attitude.

    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    Will a unicorn foal do?

    How the heck is the mommy unicorn still alive after birthing that thing?

    Check with Remy, he seems to be the resident expert on Unicorns.

    ingenium: When an idea is so good it causes upset stomach.

  • (cs) in reply to sprained
    sprained:
    frits:
    Preying on the weak:
    Yeah I'm going to cry foal on this one. A junior in college and he's being blasted on this site? I'm fresh out of college and the 'old guard' is getting on my nerves with all the high and mighty attitude.

    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    Will a unicorn foal do? [image]

    How the heck is the mommy unicorn still alive after birthing that thing?

    Everyone knows that a unicorn's horn doesn't harden until it encounters Oxygen.

  • (cs)

    I'm not getting all the whining about the coder being a newbie. Creating a WTF is not such a bad thing for him as it would be for an experienced programmer, and the bar is much higher for how bizarre it needs to be, but a WTF of that magnitude is still a WTF. It's a WTF simply because it's impossible to comprehend how he can have thought of doing that in the first place.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Rich
    Rich:
    sprained:
    frits:
    Preying on the weak:
    Yeah I'm going to cry foal on this one. A junior in college and he's being blasted on this site? I'm fresh out of college and the 'old guard' is getting on my nerves with all the high and mighty attitude.

    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    Will a unicorn foal do?

    How the heck is the mommy unicorn still alive after birthing that thing?

    Check with Remy, he seems to be the resident expert on homosexuality.

    FTFY
  • Design Pattern (unregistered)

    TRWTF came quite early in the article:

    TheArticle:
    It was the start of summer and Stephen was almost as excited about college junior Nathan's internship as Nathan was. Stephen’s company had a history of selecting new employees from their small group of fresh interns that started each summer and Nathan seemed like the right guy for the position.

    To get his feet wet, Nathan would be first assigned to the SEO group

    The article was going downhill from there...
  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    1. What kind of SEO Manager believes that a "user directory" that gets no traffic other than from webcrawlers
    There are other kinds of SEO Managers?
    Rootbeer:
    2. What RDBMS are they using where sorting rules for different locales can be applied using nothing more complicated than an ORDER BY clause?
    As can be seen from the codebase, mySQL supports this
    Rootbeer:
    3. Why does an intern have the CEO's username and password for the database?
    Because the CEO is the user with the least permissions, as it should be.
    Rootbeer:
    4. Why does the CEO have a username and password for the database?
    It is not stated that the CEO knows he has a username and password for the database.
  • Matthew (unregistered) in reply to J

    I thought that getting newb exemption the proper method for catching posers. Whenever an intern or fresh out of school hire started an answer to me by referencing their credentials I just let them talk until the rope got long enough and then dropped the trapdoor to hang them. I didn't do it to humiliate, just enough to help them understand that though they may have shown somebody somewhere they could do well, they hadn't proven it here.

  • (cs) in reply to johnr
    johnr:
    Since I'm not a programmer I often don't completely get the WTF of CodeSODs. In this case however, given the nature of the problem, as soon as I saw "mkdir" I knew that the "solution" was going to be really, really bad.

    Knowing when code smells funny and when it doesn't is an instinct that is absolutely essential to being a good programmer.

  • teambob (unregistered)

    I thought we had a no-student rule here at TDWTF????

  • Nobody (unregistered) in reply to strictnein
    strictnein:
    sprained:
    frits:
    Preying on the weak:
    Yeah I'm going to cry foal on this one. A junior in college and he's being blasted on this site? I'm fresh out of college and the 'old guard' is getting on my nerves with all the high and mighty attitude.

    You were perfect when you started working? That's what internships are for.

    Will a unicorn foal do? [image]

    How the heck is the mommy unicorn still alive after birthing that thing?

    Everyone knows that a unicorn's horn doesn't harden until it encounters Oxygen.

    So you're saying that unicorns are born with floppy dongs hanging from their foreheads?

  • DeGustibusNonDisputandumEst (unregistered) in reply to Jan
    Jan:
    Jan:
    What language is this? It's not PHP.
    Arghh my bad, it is PHP. Guess I'll go pour myself another coffee then ...

    No, it's not PHP, it's PHAIL.

  • (cs) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    frits:
    The Article:
    "Stephen’s company had a history of selecting new employees from their small of fresh interns"
    'Round here, we have a large of fresh interns.
    Sir Roderick: "Are these the interns?" Sir Ayelsbourne: "Aye, and small of fresh they are!"
    Great. Now everyone thinks I'm insane, walking around the office laughing about this.
  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to anon
    Rootbeer:
    3. Why does an intern have the CEO's username and password for the database?
    1. Why does the CEO have a username and password for the database?
    anon:
    [...snip...] 
    exec(sprintf('mysqlimport -h db.company.com -u company_ceo --password=ceo_password users_%s %s', $locale_str, '/user_dir/'.$locale_str.'/'.$fname.'.txt'));

    Now, who gave the fresh intern the CEO's database password?

    You guys are kidding, right? The CEO's password is the safest password to give the intern, cuz his shit's all fucked up and he talks like a...well, you didn't expect them to give the intern the password of someone with REAL (sic) and/or WRITE access, did you?

    :D

  • Glen (unregistered) in reply to sprained

    I know that baby is huge!! Poor mommy can't even get up.

  • (cs) in reply to wtf
    wtf:
    Most Windows machines, you mean. Damned work computer.

    Mac or Linux?

    On Mac it's alt-u, u.

    On Linux it's something else (Ctrl-Shift-U springs to mind).

  • Brent (unregistered) in reply to Zemm
    Zemm:
    wtf:
    Most Windows machines, you mean. Damned work computer.

    Mac or Linux?

    On Mac it's alt-u, u.

    On Linux it's something else (Ctrl-Shift-U springs to mind).

    I just use the compose key (aka the Multi key)... with the sequence u". If the keyboard doesn't have one, I can assign one to "Multi_key" with xmodmap.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Brent

    Compose-Taste? Crazy talk, sere's dedicated buttons for sat! See: ü ö ä ß!

    „Mein Leben!”

    Captcha: "enim" - I no enimy! No kill me!

    (PS: ÿ!) ((PPS: for the connaisseur: ſ and ẞ))

  • (cs) in reply to John Hardin
    John Hardin:
    MarkJ:
    It sounds like this intern didn't "have his listening ears on". He seems to have missed (a) different locales have different character sets and sort orders, and (b) the SQL SELECT ... ORDERED BY knows how to sort things; Stephen specifically mentioned these...
    That, and (c) "You don't need to worry about how it looks-- the crawlers won't care." I would have asked "If this page is only intended to be seen by a search engine crawler, why do we care how the list is ordered?"
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
  • Blowfish (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    wtf:
    boog:
    Medezark:
    Wow.

    Reminds me of the fresh out of school Uber .NET programmer we hired.

    It should be company policy never to hire anyone who uses the word "Uber" either on the resume or in the interview.

    Also, wie soll ich dann arbeit finden? Man findet "uber" uberall! (umlaut, andererseits, finde ich nicht - verdammte work machine...)

    'ü' is Alt + 0252 in most machines.

    And... if you select "United States-International" keyboard, " + {vowel} gives you Umlaut. Even gives you ë, ÿ and ï.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to John Hardin
    John Hardin:
    MarkJ:
    It sounds like this intern didn't "have his listening ears on". He seems to have missed (a) different locales have different character sets and sort orders, and (b) the SQL SELECT ... ORDERED BY knows how to sort things; Stephen specifically mentioned these...
    That, and (c) "You don't need to worry about how it looks-- the crawlers won't care." I would have asked "If this page is only intended to be seen by a search engine crawler, why do we care how the list is ordered?"
    Kudos for pointing that out, I was thinking the same.

    As for the "ceo_password" part, I'd think it's more likely seo_password

  • Ian Tester (unregistered) in reply to gil
    gil:
    So for japanese (where none of the words start with a, b, c, etc., everything would be written to the same file (handleZ)?
    The same goes for Russian (Cyrillic), Hebrew, and Farsi/Persian. Even the other European languages add letters to the Latin alphabet and have their own sorting rules.
    Also, what's the point of multiple files, why not sort the original file with the same sort command?
    That could have worked. Reading the 'sort' man page here on my GNU/Linux box, it says the locale environment variable(s) affect sorting order.

    This guy's first try was clumsily over-engineered and failed to do what it was supposed to do.

  • Roger Garrett (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:

    I sure hope, for the unicorn mother's sake, that the unicorn foal in the picture isn't a just-born unicorn. I'd hope that the horn of the unicorn only starts growing after birth.

  • Dr Unicorn (unregistered) in reply to Roger Garrett

    Absolutely right. This photo ignores basic Unicorn biology. That horn doesn't start growing until the foal is at least a year old.

  • MrApophis (unregistered) in reply to Roger Garrett

    There's a reason that unicorns are so rare, and it's not because of the unicorn blood trade!

  • Bill (unregistered) in reply to Defendor
    Defendor:
    What do you expect when you think in PHP?

    What's with the PHP bashing on this site? Is it because we didn't all grow up learning BASIC?

  • Merc (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Not to mention the code isn't really the problem. This intern, who claimed he was "on top of this one," couldn't even follow simple instructions.

    A typical newb mistake. So it's still just newb-bashing. I call "unfair"

  • (cs) in reply to MarkJ
    MarkJ:
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
    Crawlers have no issues reading 1-pixel font white on white text, for instance..
  • Glen Bartstrom (unregistered) in reply to Sol_HSA
    Sol_HSA:
    MarkJ:
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
    Crawlers have no issues reading 1-pixel font white on white text, for instance..

    Or place it all in a div with a -9999999px right margin

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Will a unicorn foal do? [image]

    No thanks, the last one I had shat all over the carpet.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Bill
    Bill:
    Defendor:
    What do you expect when you think in PHP?
    What's with the PHP bashing on this site? Is it because we didn't all grow up learning BASIC?
    No, it's because PHP is shit. Personal Home Page. Just think about that for a minute.
  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Sol_HSA
    Sol_HSA:
    MarkJ:
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
    Crawlers have no issues reading 1-pixel font white on white text, for instance..
    True, but an intelligent crawler will know it's 1px white on white and will give the data a lower score accordingly. Search engines figured that trick out some 10 years ago which is why you no longer see the "invisible keyword footer" that used to be so common on websites once upon a time.
  • Glen Bartstrom (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    If you're referring to idiots making their own crappy websites, that's the fault of FrontPage and Dreamweaver, not PHP.

    Besides, anyone can make crap with any programming language. Isn't that the focus of this site?

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Sol_HSA:
    MarkJ:
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
    Crawlers have no issues reading 1-pixel font white on white text, for instance..
    True, but an intelligent crawler will know it's 1px white on white and will give the data a lower score accordingly. Search engines figured that trick out some 10 years ago which is why you no longer see the "invisible keyword footer" that used to be so common on websites once upon a time.

    You will find that you do. You can also find 'SEO Consultants' that recommend you submit your site to search engines.

  • digitig (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Medezark:
    Wow.

    Reminds me of the fresh out of school Uber .NET programmer we hired.

    It should be company policy never to hire anyone who uses the word "Uber" either on the resume or in the interview.
    That could be somewhat limiting in Germany.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    frits:
    Will a unicorn foal do?

    No thanks, the last one I had shat all over the carpet.

    Wasn't that a rocking horse rather than a unicorn?

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Mark:
    Sol_HSA:
    MarkJ:
    It occurred to me that, if the crawler is going to see it, shouldn't there be a link to it on some page that humans can see? Or can you have a hidden link and I'm betraying my ignorance?
    Crawlers have no issues reading 1-pixel font white on white text, for instance..
    True, but an intelligent crawler will know it's 1px white on white and will give the data a lower score accordingly. Search engines figured that trick out some 10 years ago which is why you no longer see the "invisible keyword footer" that used to be so common on websites once upon a time.

    You will find that you do.

    Yeah but only from idiot webmasters that don't realise it doesn't actually make any difference anymore.

    Chris:
    You can also find 'SEO Consultants' that recommend you submit your site to search engines.
    This is basically good advice, as long as you haven't paid some "SEO Consultant" just to tell you that. Submit your site to Google and let their algorithms do what they do best. If your site deserves a high ranking because it's popular or commonly linked to then Google will figure that out without any help.
  • (cs) in reply to johnr
    johnr:
    Since I'm not a programmer I often don't completely get the WTF of CodeSODs. In this case however, given the nature of the problem, as soon as I saw "mkdir" I knew that the "solution" was going to be really, really bad.

    I don't know this particular language really and it's very difficult sometimes to know when someone has recoded a library feature (the "reinvent the wheel" anti-pattern).

    Here the obvious looking WTF is the big nested if statement,.That immediately catches my eye and says "it can't be right to do it that way"...

  • (cs) in reply to roba121
    roba121:
    I've had several interns myself over the years, I can say that they never get work that the company needs, its usually a small laundry list of things "that would be nice to do if I had the time" I start them off with the easiest one on the list and give them space. This is only to begin, I want to see how they approach a task. The tasks are well defined and sufficiently small to grasp the entire process. That said more times than not I'm ridiculously dissapointed. I once had a young woman who was 2 weeks from finishing a masters in comp sci and she couldn't write a basic sql query, didn't have any concept of actually putting together code practically and expected we'd hire her for 100k when the internship was over.

    Back to the point, if they do an awful job that's fine they are interns, but I think there is a more important observation. You don't have to have any programming skill to see a problem, evaluate possible solutions, then select a reasonable approach. Especially when someone gives you a list of important things to keep in mind (eg order by) So the wtf is not the code but the failure to listen and select a better approach.

    my 2c

    Maybe have an open session with them, where you can actually discuss the code and the approach? One thing I have found in working in a development environment - it is extremely rare to have meetings about code. Team "scrum" meetings about specs, what needs to be done, etc. but rarely code itself. Code reviews usually happen far too late in the process, and quite often the discussion on how best to do something should happen before much of the code is written.

    Computing is hard though because it's very much divided into knowing the right techniques and knowing the tools, and the tools keep changing. Getting to use new ones and use them well is hard.

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    The Article:
    "Stephen’s company had a history of selecting new employees from their small of fresh interns"
    'Round here, we have a large of fresh interns.

    We prefer our interns "aged," or stale.

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