• dutchieman (unregistered)

    1 = 1 10 = 8 + 2 100 = 64 + 32 + 4

    ... were they just lucky? or is that stuff in fact binary, and not decimal?

    CAPTCHA:vulputate, i.e. what you do after smelling this code

  • Weaselator (unregistered)

    Yeah, "3 bits" is suspicious. as dutchieman demonstrated, it would actually to at last 5 bits!

  • Tasty (unregistered)
    If iChkBx And 100 Then chkUS.Value = 1 Else chkUS.Value = 0 If iChkBx And 10 Then chkCanada.Value = 1 Else chkCanada.Value = 0 If iChkBx And 1 Then chkOther.Value = 1 Else chkOther.Value = 0

    Am I supposed to read the iChkBx And 100 etc. as bit-wise AND? Who reads 100 and doesn't think in decimal?

    It looks like they packed a 3 element boolean array into a single byte on modern hardware. Somebody started out as an assembly programmer. WTF?!?

  • Geoff (unregistered)

    "iChkBx And 100"

    Is this code real. I have not done bitwise operation in VB in well probably a decade but if iChkBx is dimensioned as BIT(3) how is And'ing it with 100 supposed to work?

    If you wanted to see if high bit was set you'd need to iChkBx with 4. Unless VB somehow understands 100 to be a string of bits because iChkBx is bit but I don't remember it doing that. Hex had to get prefixed &h

  • Tasty (unregistered) in reply to Tasty

    Yes, it's true. VB overloads AND to support bit-wise numbers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sdbcfyzh%28v=vs.80%29.aspx

    If iChkBx And 100 Then chkUS.Value = 1 Else chkUS.Value = 0 If iChkBx And 10 Then chkCanada.Value = 1 Else chkCanada.Value = 0 If iChkBx And 1 Then chkOther.Value = 1 Else chkOther.Value = 0

    Am I supposed to read the iChkBx And 100 etc. as bit-wise AND? Who reads 100 and doesn't think in decimal?

    It looks like they packed a 3 element boolean array into a single byte on modern hardware. Somebody started out as an assembly programmer. WTF?!?

  • SilentRunner (unregistered)
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

  • Black Bart (unregistered)

    Yeah, like it would have made sense to properly configure the data store by moving the registry data into a full SQL Server 2012 database 2 weeks before the update shipped.

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    it ain't using java, its wrong.
  • (cs) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You're the reason the bottom-feeding trolls get up in the morning...

  • shuffled, not stirred (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft?

    No.

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to shuffled, not stirred
    shuffled:
    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft?

    No.

    I lern that all scarecrow ain't be tired of massaging Microsoft excelant reputation of software development.

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You're the reason the bottom-feeding trolls get up in the morning...
    troll? in home bagneshdebad troll take money when cross bridge

  • neminem (unregistered)

    Hey, Microsoft has made some fine stuff. C# is actually one of the prettiest languages I've worked in. VB, especially old VB... not so much with that. (And while Windows itself has been getting remarkably robust, the UI just keeps getting worse. Good thing people keep writing user-space applications to fix most of the issues by throwing out the native UI entirely. Though I still haven't found a perfect explorer replacement for Win7 (I wish I could just run XP's explorer). Explorer++ is close, but there are a couple major annoying bugs, and while it's technically open source, its maintainer and sole -actual- developer hasn't touched it in months.)

  • Remy Porter (unregistered)

    Hey everyone, I just received bad news. Fake Nagesh is dead, he got run over by a dog sled team. Hopefully The Daily WTF will survive this tragedy ...

  • (cs) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You act like Microsoft fucked up 1 time like 10 years ago and we wont let it go.

    Since Microsoft CONTINUES to release new and sometimes interesting wtfery, We CONTINUES to jab on it. Its not that nothing good comes out of there, but the bad is just so much more fun to make fun of.

    Also a lot of people who "know better" (people with experience and understanding of how computers operate) like to make fun of microsoft because their target market tends to be people who struggle with checking their email. While microsofts software makes it easier for them, the rest of us just get annoyed at a lot of those "features" and do our damndest to avoid, turn off, or ignore them.

  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Hey everyone, I just received bad news. Fake Nagesh is dead, he got run over by a dog sled team. Hopefully The Daily WTF will survive this tragedy ...
    This is "Bad News". Looks like he had an "unfortunate accident".
  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to dutchieman
    dutchieman:
    1 = 1 10 = 8 + 2 100 = 64 + 32 + 4

    ... were they just lucky? or is that stuff in fact binary, and not decimal?

    Yeah, I wondered about that too. So if they add 1000=Mexico, 1000 = 8+32+64+128+256+512, which has bits in common with both 10 and 100. So:

    country=Canada if county and Mexico ... will be true

    And they'll probably sit there scratching their heads over this weird bug. Why does it work for 3 "bits" but not for 4? This is when they start writing letters to Microsoft informing them of the bug in the VB6 compiler.

  • myName (unregistered)

    Visual Studio 6.0 for editing VB6?

    And why buy it if they were joining the other company, didn't they already have the tools?

  • myName (unregistered)

    Visual Studio 6.0 for editing VB6?

    And why buy it if they were joining the other company, didn't they already have the tools?

  • Jazz (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft?

    Doesn't Microsoft ever tire of shipping crap that's only worth taking a dig at?

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    dutchieman:
    1 = 1 10 = 8 + 2 100 = 64 + 32 + 4

    ... were they just lucky? or is that stuff in fact binary, and not decimal?

    Yeah, I wondered about that too. So if they add 1000=Mexico, 1000 = 8+32+64+128+256+512, which has bits in common with both 10 and 100. So:

    country=Canada if county and Mexico ... will be true

    And they'll probably sit there scratching their heads over this weird bug. Why does it work for 3 "bits" but not for 4? This is when they start writing letters to Microsoft informing them of the bug in the VB6 compiler.

    I can think of 2 possibilities (non exhaustive list): 1: It really is true binary. That makes a wtf out of not getting your full potential out of it (since you can count to 7 with 3 bits) 2: They have a very similar storage method and is in fact storing it in the registry as decimal without realizing it, so anding a decimal 100 with a decimal 100 (im assuming the conversation is that it looks like decimal in the code and not binay) should = out right?

    The second one is my working theory.

  • RandomGuy (unregistered)

    TRWTF is buying VS6 at online auctions instead of pirating it ;)

  • Nick V. (unregistered)

    So all they needed was to switch to a 4-bit register.

  • Black Bart (unregistered) in reply to Nick V.
    Nick V.:
    So all they needed was to switch to a 4-bit register.

    It's a lucky thing we have 64-bit Windows now; they could expand to serve up to 64 countries before needing to redesign things.

  • (cs)

    No, you only see this kind of half-assed stupidity in Microsoft developers (and sometimes PHP). You rarely find this kind of nonsense in Java-land, although there's a different beast there (namely tons of XML). I'd rather deal with tons of XML than some harebrained idea like USING THE FUCKING REGISTRY. At least XML was meant to be a tool, but using the Registry just screams "I have zero idea what the hell I'm doing, but who cares?"

    Seriously, the problem with Microsoft is that they are always late to the party. It took them how fucking long to roll out an MVC framework despite that pattern being around since 19-FUCKING-70 and every other platform having some kind of MVC framework for it. No, instead Microsoft pushes this bullshit WebForms to mimic the style of VB6 apps, and continues to prove total ignorance by pushing the ability to do "RAD" and shlock code out using drag-and-drop or wizard driven nonsense.

  • (cs)

    There's nothing wrong with this code, assuming that one of the requirements for the app is that it has to run in environments with so little storage that it would be wasteful to dedicate an entire integer for each boolean flag. For example, an IBM PC 5150 with dual 360K floppies but no hard disk or cassette drive.

    Preposterous, you say? Any more preposterous than maintaining code written in a 13-year-old version of Visual Basic?

  • Jockamo (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    wow, Steve Ballmer is an angry man.

  • Guvante (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    USING THE FUCKING REGISTRY.

    The registry isn't useless, just over-used. The idea of a central place for configuration settings per machine is a decent one. And in fact it does quite well when used correctly.

    ObiWayneKenobi:
    It took them how fucking long to roll out an MVC framework despite that pattern being around since 19-FUCKING-70

    Quoting when pattern's existed is pointless. How long had the idea for inheritance existed before it was implemented?

    ObiWayneKenobi:
    No, instead Microsoft pushes this bullshit WebForms to mimic the style of VB6 apps, and continues to prove total ignorance by pushing the ability to do "RAD" and shlock code out using drag-and-drop or wizard driven nonsense.

    There are benefits to web forms. Look at mobile phones right now, everyone is doing native apps due to the limitations on web sites. The restrictions on web sites for computers are fewer, but they still exist.

  • Ralph (unregistered) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    Hey, Microsoft has made some fine stuff.
    They have? Hard to believe....

    Oh, I get it! It wasn't software. Right?

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Hey everyone, I just received bad news. Fake Nagesh is dead, he got run over by a dog sled team. Hopefully The Daily WTF will survive this tragedy ...
    I ain't being sorry fake Nagesh is being re-incarnation as cockroach. He has been massaging my good name for some time now.
  • wonk (unregistered) in reply to Ralph
    Ralph:
    neminem:
    Hey, Microsoft has made some fine stuff.
    They have? Hard to believe....

    Oh, I get it! It wasn't software. Right?

    you better believe it. That 128-bit Zune is going to rock the world ;-).

  • (cs) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Remy Porter:
    Hey everyone, I just received bad news. Fake Nagesh is dead, he got run over by a dog sled team. Hopefully The Daily WTF will survive this tragedy ...
    I ain't being sorry fake Nagesh is being re-incarnation as cockroach. He has been massaging my good name for some time now.
    YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!!! STAY DEAD!!!
  • Scrummy (unregistered)

    At the risk of sounding redundant, an Agile team would not have had this problem. Regular product review and retrospective would have unearthed that settings driven by bits stored in the registry is wildly untenable. And an Agile team's code would have been so thoroughly tested that post-merger integration would be a snap.

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL

    Fake Nagesh ain't me. It is that other scarecrow who always be massaging stupid coments.

  • (cs) in reply to Scrummy
    Scrummy:
    At the risk of sounding redundant, an Agile team would not have had this problem. Regular product review and retrospective would have unearthed that settings driven by bits stored in the registry is wildly untenable. And an Agile team's code would have been so thoroughly tested that post-merger integration would be a snap.

    But again, a "team" of "developers" like that wouldn't know anything about Agile, wouldn't have been using Agile, and would have probably thrown a fit if they had been asked about their thoughts on Agile. The fact it was a VB6 application, a platform that has been obsolete for nearly a decade and a half, is a good indicator of that team's quality and skill level.

    People like that don't use Agile, and it's doubtful they've ever heard of it,

  • Nagesh (unregistered)

    Me thinking there maybe two fake Nageshes.

  • Nagesh (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Me thinking there maybe two fake Nageshes.
    Me too.
  • (cs)
    But changing existing base logic -- no matter how flawed -- added risk to a process
    This isn't a WTF. If the existing software is doing the job you DO NOT jump in all gung-ho to improve it. How many WTF stories start exactly that way?
  • aptent (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    "Frist" is a shorthand for "I'm a dumbass because that's pretty much the only constructive comment that I can provide related to this article".

  • aptent (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You're the reason the bottom-feeding trolls get up in the morning...

    Screw you, octopus

  • aptent (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    SilentRunner:
    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You act like Microsoft fucked up 1 time like 10 years ago and we wont let it go.

    Since Microsoft CONTINUES to release new and sometimes interesting wtfery, We CONTINUES to jab on it. Its not that nothing good comes out of there, but the bad is just so much more fun to make fun of.

    Also a lot of people who "know better" (people with experience and understanding of how computers operate) like to make fun of microsoft because their target market tends to be people who struggle with checking their email. While microsofts software makes it easier for them, the rest of us just get annoyed at a lot of those "features" and do our damndest to avoid, turn off, or ignore them.

    Then go ahead and use linux with the fastest GUI responsiveness or an equally buggy Mac. Windows is the best desktop (and server) operating systems availalbe nowadays (I'm not digging into the past, though).

  • aptent (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    No, you only see this kind of half-assed stupidity in Microsoft developers (and sometimes PHP). You rarely find this kind of nonsense in Java-land, although there's a different beast there (namely tons of XML). I'd rather deal with tons of XML than some harebrained idea like USING THE FUCKING REGISTRY. At least XML was meant to be a tool, but using the Registry just screams "I have zero idea what the hell I'm doing, but who cares?"

    Seriously, the problem with Microsoft is that they are always late to the party. It took them how fucking long to roll out an MVC framework despite that pattern being around since 19-FUCKING-70 and every other platform having some kind of MVC framework for it. No, instead Microsoft pushes this bullshit WebForms to mimic the style of VB6 apps, and continues to prove total ignorance by pushing the ability to do "RAD" and shlock code out using drag-and-drop or wizard driven nonsense.

    You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Go flip burgers.

  • aptent (unregistered) in reply to Ralph
    Ralph:
    neminem:
    Hey, Microsoft has made some fine stuff.
    They have? Hard to believe....

    Oh, I get it! It wasn't software. Right?

    Ralph, I fucking KNOW that you can't even turn on a non-windows machine, so shut the fuck up - dick!

  • AGray (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner

    No, we never tire of taking digs at Microsoft. And we wouldn't necessarily be frying eggs; we might even be working for Apple!

    'frist' is probably a captcha that turned into a "first post" thingamabobster.

    CAPTCHA: Tego - if we were frying eggs, you would need to leggo this!

  • (cs) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    J-Po:
    Frist?

    Real WTF is Visual Basic

    Don't you people ever tire of taking digs at Microsoft? You SOBs would be frying eggs at the local diner if it weren't for Microsoft.

    And WTF is "frist"? Is that a medal you pin on your ass, J-Po?

    You fucking would because you're a fucking prick.

  • (cs) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    Hey, Microsoft has made some fine stuff. C# is actually one of the prettiest languages I've worked in. VB, especially old VB... not so much with that. (And while Windows itself has been getting remarkably robust, the UI just keeps getting worse. Good thing people keep writing user-space applications to fix most of the issues by throwing out the native UI entirely. Though I still haven't found a perfect explorer replacement for Win7 (I wish I could just run XP's explorer). Explorer++ is close, but there are a couple major annoying bugs, and while it's technically open source, its maintainer and sole -actual- developer hasn't touched it in months.)

    May you choke on vomit. I don't care whose.

  • Trans Verbero (unregistered) in reply to English Man
    English Man:
    But changing existing base logic -- no matter how flawed -- added risk to a process
    This isn't a WTF. If the existing software is doing the job you DO NOT jump in all gung-ho to improve it. How many WTF stories start exactly that way?
    Hmmm come to think of it.... they just had one like that YESTERDAY!!! ;-)

    As much as I hate working in VB6, you're absolutely right.

  • (cs) in reply to myName
    myName:
    And why buy it if they were joining the other company, didn't they already have the tools?
    No, the other company had VB 6 or VS 6. Doyle's company didn't. The earliest version of VS included in your MSDN subscription has been VS.NET for at least the last 5 years.
  • (cs) in reply to aptent
    aptent:
    Windows is the best desktop (and server) operating systems availalbe nowadays (I'm not digging into the past, though).
    Is this the same Windows which mixes an utterly unpredictable mechanism for quoting arguments to subprocesses and a strong inclination to spaces in filenames?
  • Ralph (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    aptent:
    Windows is the best desktop (and server) operating systems availalbe nowadays (I'm not digging into the past, though).
    Is this the same Windows which mixes an utterly unpredictable mechanism for quoting arguments to subprocesses and a strong inclination to spaces in filenames?
    Yes, but Mac and now Linux encourage spaces in filenames too so they're just as crappy.

    Hint: It is supposed to be a file name not a fucking sentence!

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