• Bert (unregistered) in reply to Pim

    They're Second Life names by the looks of it.

  • Polar Bear (unregistered)

    int comment, Comment, cOmment, coMment, comMent, commEnt, commeNt, commenT, COMMENT, COmment, COMment, COMMent, COMMEnt, COMMENt, CoMment, ComMent, CommEnt, CommeNt, CommenT, ......;

  • (cs) in reply to hartmut

    It's a great website and I sent quite a few contributions to the site back in the day. Unfortunately, it's become un-maintained. Frankly, I forgot that was one I submitted to them.

    For the sake of completeness, I should probably mention another project with horrible naming. However, this one has some excuses.

    The "program" is actually a suite of relatively simple programs (still buried in a sub-folder on the computer I'm using to write this) and written in C++ using Code Warrior so it targets both Windows and Mac OS/9. It was all originally created for the Apple back in the day, so it's absolutely no surprise that as it was maintained over the years it still had a lot of global variables like A1, B1, B2, etc.

    Then add a later maintenance programmer fond of "descriptive" names and nestled among the A1 type names were GotThemByTheShortAndCurlies and MarkOfTheBeast666. As I recall, the MarkOfTheBeast666 held some kind of catastrophic error value.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to UncleAldo
    UncleAldo:
    RN:
    Does God exist anymore when no-one remembers him?

    If there are no more references to it, it should be garbage collected, I think.

    That would explain why God is so obsessed with people thinking about and worshipping him. (At least according to organized religion.)

  • Jack Strikes Back (unregistered) in reply to Argle
    Argle:
    It's a great website and I sent quite a few contributions to the site back in the day. Unfortunately, it's become un-maintained.
    Sounds quite a bit like this site.
  • BillClintonsThirdTerm (unregistered) in reply to Uncle Remus
    Uncle Remus:
    Uppity is a racist term, I'm not saying its usage is racist here, but it is a racist term. Its etymology is traced directly back to slave states in the U.S. as a term for a Black person who dosen't know their place.

    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/11/yep-uppity-racist/45321/.

    Nigga Please

  • Fred (unregistered)
    20 functions in it, all modestly complex (between 10 and 40 lines) that only differed from each other by which global variable they operated on
    Those functions are called getters and setters, right? OOP FTW!
  • (cs) in reply to boog
    boog:
    int up, Up, UP, uP, _up, _UP, _uP, up_, uP_;
    Since then, I bet the contractor's rates have gone up, Up, UP!

    His rates would have to go "up, Up, UP!" After all, his maintenance effort is going up, Up, UP!

  • Zekses (unregistered)

    They did not have the internetz back then, so he obviously did not know that he should commit suicide.

  • (cs) in reply to Argle
    Argle:
    Then add a later maintenance programmer fond of "descriptive" names and nestled among the A1 type names were GotThemByTheShortAndCurlies and MarkOfTheBeast666. As I recall, the MarkOfTheBeast666 held some kind of catastrophic error value.

    Let me guess: GotThemByTheShortAndCurlies was set to TRUE just before displaying that message, "Program internal error encountered. Select OK to terminate without saving."

    Right?

  • White Fang (unregistered)

    A better language would allow bolding, italics and subtly different fonts to obfuscate the code.

    Personally, I have failed to grok in fullness the manifest benefits provided by case sensitive languages.

  • Zekses (unregistered)

    Well, for me it's isSomething as a variable ad IsSomething as a function that returns it :)

  • other (unregistered) in reply to TheSHEEEP
    TheSHEEEP:
    But if you are German (as I am, though I prefer European) and go mad about people going mad about ridiculous stuff (as I did), are you then a nazi nazi?

    It seems to follow the "double negative" rule. "nazi" => "is a nazi" "nazi nazi" => "is against nazis" nazi**N and N is odd => "is a nazi"

  • Simply Zunesis (unregistered) in reply to other
    other:
    TheSHEEEP:
    But if you are German (as I am, though I prefer European) and go mad about people going mad about ridiculous stuff (as I did), are you then a nazi nazi?

    It seems to follow the "double negative" rule. "nazi" => "is a nazi" "nazi nazi" => "is against nazis" nazi**N and N is odd => "is a nazi"

    "nazi**N" I started to read that as Nazi Nigger.

    What's a Nazi Nigger? A black person who wants to purify the country of whites?

  • (cs) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    Argle:
    Then add a later maintenance programmer fond of "descriptive" names and nestled among the A1 type names were GotThemByTheShortAndCurlies and MarkOfTheBeast666. As I recall, the MarkOfTheBeast666 held some kind of catastrophic error value.

    Let me guess: GotThemByTheShortAndCurlies was set to TRUE just before displaying that message, "Program internal error encountered. Select OK to terminate without saving."

    Right?

    Or maybe it was just a subtle comment from the maintenance programmer on how much follow-on work he expected to get from the poor mugs who were saddled with the application...

  • (cs) in reply to U. Ppity
    U. Ppity:
    faoileag:
    If you read the article again, you might stumble upon the clause: "A lot of people have no idea that the word "uppity," [i]when applied to black people[i], has racist connotations" (markup by me).

    So I wouldn't think it problematic in the sense of code discussions - unless applied to a coder of known african-american origin, of course.

    Curiously, you chose to emphasis that part with boldly black letters. That looks more racist than titling this article Uppity...

    You bunch of spastics.

  • Troy (unregistered) in reply to Uncle Remus

    Uppity may be racist, but the etymology is:

    uppity Look up uppity at Dictionary.com 1880, from up + -ity; originally used by blacks of other blacks felt to be too self-assertive (first recorded use is in "Uncle Remus"). The parallel British variant uppish (1670s) originally meant "lavish;" the sense of "conceited, arrogant" being first recorded 1734.

  • Troy (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Recursive Reclusive:
    Uncle Remus:
    faoileag:
    If you read the article again, you might stumble upon the clause: "A lot of people have no idea that the word "uppity," [i]when applied to black people[i], has racist connotations" (markup by me).

    So I wouldn't think it problematic in the sense of code discussions - unless applied to a coder of known african-american origin, of course.

    OK I get it. It's like when white people call each other the N-bomb-- Totally not racist, just stupid.

    What if I told you uppish originally meant someone with plenty of money

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uppish

    No, it's not like that at all. It has nothing to with race. It can, like all negative or derogatory words, be used in a racist context, but that doesn't make it a racist word.

    See: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uppity

    Actually, see something with some etymology to it. If I told you that the word originated around 1875-1880 in the USA and its first recorded use was in "Uncle Remus", would you then perhaps accept that it was a variant of the earlier English term "uppish" that was coined specifically to refer to blacks?

    See: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=uppity&searchmode=none. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/uppity

    <sings> Fuck you Akismet, fuck you A-kis-met, fuck you fuck you very muu-uuu-uuu-ch! </sings>

  • (cs)

    If I may be so adventurous as to turn against the prevailing tide of this thread and mention the actual content of the opening post....

    I once had the pleasure of working with a text editor that had apparently been designed by several groups who didn't often communicate with one another. One group had assumed the paradigm in which the text remained stationary and the user's viewpoint scrolled in front of it, while the other had decided that the window remained in place while the text scrolled behind it.

    The result was that by repeatedly scrolling "up", you would eventually arrive at the "bottom" of the file.

  • evilspoons (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    If I may be so adventurous as to turn against the prevailing tide of this thread and mention the actual content of the opening post....

    I once had the pleasure of working with a text editor that had apparently been designed by several groups who didn't often communicate with one another. One group had assumed the paradigm in which the text remained stationary and the user's viewpoint scrolled in front of it, while the other had decided that the window remained in place while the text scrolled behind it.

    The result was that by repeatedly scrolling "up", you would eventually arrive at the "bottom" of the file.

    All touch-screen devices and OS X Lion with a multi-touch trackpad, you mean?

  • Ralph (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    If I may be so adventurous as to turn against the prevailing tide of this thread and mention the actual content of the opening post....

    I once had the pleasure of working with a text editor that had apparently been designed by several groups who didn't often communicate with one another. One group had assumed the paradigm in which the text remained stationary and the user's viewpoint scrolled in front of it, while the other had decided that the window remained in place while the text scrolled behind it.

    The result was that by repeatedly scrolling "up", you would eventually arrive at the "bottom" of the file.

    I have a program (proprietary, therefore crap) where the programmers decided instead of fixing the serious bugs that would result in incorrect financial transactions, or crashes that lose your data, it would be "cool" to implement their own scrolling routine so that when you scroll down a line, the entire screen would repaint line by line from the bottom up only to do it all over again (slowly) if you hold down the arrow key.

    Programmers who indulge their compulsions of misplaced "coolness" over actual usefulness need to be sent to another planet, preferably one without air. And that includes 99.44% of so called "web developers" who only know how to do client side code.

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Every professional C programmer knows to prevent collisions, append an underline character ('_') to the front of each variable. It's the only way to be sure.

    Actually, you can expand your range of variable names considerably by using the same core name, but using different numbers of leading and trailing underscores. The range can be further expanded by using all variations of upper and lower case letters in the name.

    This is an example of a code cockroach. It is an indicator of trouble ahead. You never seem to have just one cockroach. When you see one of them, there are probably a whole lot more of them just waiting to be found.

  • gimbar (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic

    already seen functions with about 10000 lines of code? that's my daily work. "it's historical grown" is what my boss keeps saying

  • (cs) in reply to gimbar
    gimbar:
    already seen functions with about 10000 lines of code? that's my daily work. "it's historical grown" is what my boss keeps saying

    ... hysterical groan ...

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to qwerty
    qwerty:
    I call BS. Nobody would name their kid Aargle.

    They didn't. The doctor misspelled Argyle.

  • Peter (unregistered) 
    int up, Up, UP, uP, _up, _UP, _uP, up_, uP_;

    I can just picture the author using slightly different pronunciation to tell these apart.

  • snea (unregistered) in reply to Ralph
    Ralph:
    da Doctah:
    If I may be so adventurous as to turn against the prevailing tide of this thread and mention the actual content of the opening post....

    I once had the pleasure of working with a text editor that had apparently been designed by several groups who didn't often communicate with one another. One group had assumed the paradigm in which the text remained stationary and the user's viewpoint scrolled in front of it, while the other had decided that the window remained in place while the text scrolled behind it.

    The result was that by repeatedly scrolling "up", you would eventually arrive at the "bottom" of the file.

    I have a program (proprietary, therefore crap) where the programmers decided instead of fixing the serious bugs that would result in incorrect financial transactions, or crashes that lose your data, it would be "cool" to implement their own scrolling routine so that when you scroll down a line, the entire screen would repaint line by line from the bottom up only to do it all over again (slowly) if you hold down the arrow key.

    Programmers who indulge their compulsions of misplaced "coolness" over actual usefulness need to be sent to another planet, preferably one without air. And that includes 99.44% of so called "web developers" who barely know how to do client side code.

    FTFY

  • genitus (unregistered) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Every professional C programmer knows to prevent collisions, append an underline character ('_') to the front of each variable. It's the only way to be sure.

    Actually, you can expand your range of variable names considerably by using the same core name, but using different numbers of leading and trailing underscores. The range can be further expanded by using all variations of upper and lower case letters in the name.

    This is an example of a code cockroach. It is an indicator of trouble ahead. You never seem to have just one cockroach. When you see one of them, there are probably a whole lot more of them just waiting to be found.

    http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

    using l33t speak can be effective to

  • (cs) in reply to Nag-Geoff

    It is interesting how a simple little WTF chuckle about needless combinations in code has in itself created needless comments about the code in question.

    I guess this circular thinking is what makes the world go round.

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    This is an example of a code cockroach. It is an indicator of trouble ahead. You never seem to have just one cockroach. When you see one of them, there are probably a whole lot more of them just waiting to be found.

    Worse, some environments breed them.

    Take a bunch of programmers, throw them into a proprietary environment sink or swim; with no mentoring, poor standards enforcement, and a code-cowboy culture...and you've never seen so many cockroaches.

    Been there, seen it.

  • Francis (unregistered) in reply to Konami

    FRIENDLY BRUTAL FATAL ANIMALITY!!!

  • Francis (unregistered) in reply to Konami
    Konami:
    ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A

    FRIENDLY BRUTAL FATAL ANIMALITY!!!

  • Luiz Felipe (unregistered) in reply to UncleAldo
    UncleAldo:
    RN:
    Does God exist anymore when no-one remembers him?

    If there are no more references to it, it should be garbage collected, I think.

    +100

  • Luiz Felipe (unregistered) in reply to gimbar
    gimbar:
    already seen functions with about 10000 lines of code? that's my daily work. "it's historical grown" is what my boss keeps saying
    Once i had a single function with 2000 lines, in reality, the function was only metadata, only one big switch and multiples calls. Then i replaced it with xml.
  • (cs) in reply to BillClintonsThirdTerm
    BillClintonsThirdTerm:
    Uncle Remus:
    Uppity is a racist term, I'm not saying its usage is racist here, but it is a racist term. Its etymology is traced directly back to slave states in the U.S. as a term for a Black person who dosen't know their place.

    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/11/yep-uppity-racist/45321/.

    Nigga Please

    [image]
  • Abbas (unregistered)

    I increasingly get the impression that (at least) 90% of the kids here have never actually worked on real systems (maybe they're the web devs mentioned earlier, who knows). Then I realise it's really a much higher percentage....

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    It seems to me that this story is already posted elsewhere long before...

    http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_programming.shtml

  • Cheong (unregistered)

    Hey, at least they're not using OoOOo... :P

  • geoffrey (unregistered) in reply to Abbas
    Abbas:
    I increasingly get the impression that (at least) 90% of the kids here have never actually worked on real systems (maybe they're the web devs mentioned earlier, who knows). Then I realise it's really a much higher percentage....

    You are probably right. Many of these maverick web programmers think it's so easy to manage REAL enterprise development. They don't know what it's like in the real world where there is little room for petty ideals.

  • blank (unregistered) in reply to Pim
    Pim:
    The poop of DOOM:
    TRWTF is the name Aargle Zymurgy
    Indeed. Google for him, and you'll find his "about" page, featuring such people as Beccaboo Aero and Hannibal Kennedy. Come on, what do they think they are pulling?

    my guess would be they're all professional golfers. based purely on that assumption, i've decided not to investigate further. do i win?

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to hartmut

    Came here to say this. This is obviously ripped off.

  • David (unregistered)

    May as well note the _UP is reserved for the implementation for all purposes, having a leading underscore followed by a capital letter. As a nice simple word, an implementation is likely to use that identifier in one of its libraries, as it is perfectly entitled to do so.

  • Gibbon1 (unregistered) in reply to geoffrey
    geoffrey:
    Abbas:
    I increasingly get the impression that (at least) 90% of the kids here have never actually worked on real systems (maybe they're the web devs mentioned earlier, who knows). Then I realise it's really a much higher percentage....

    You are probably right. Many of these maverick web programmers think it's so easy to manage REAL enterprise development. They don't know what it's like in the real world where there is little room for petty ideals.

    That's somewhat my impression. The comment about the programmer not understanding function parameters starts making me think the original code was written for a microprocessor with very little RAM and or no stack. In those situations you end up with code like that. And often the person writing it isn't really an experienced programmer. Yet, crappy as it is, the code probably worked, shipped and made money. Which for me is the true test.

  • Ari (unregistered) in reply to AdamJS
    AdamJS:
    You know, I would assume that there would already exist a tool for dealing specifically with these situations.

    There is. It's called "Good Coding" but it's pretty expensive, so most use some cheap knockoff.

  • Kempeth (unregistered)

    Uppity the fool...

  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to RN

    God doesn't exist even if everyone remembers him.

  • StJohn (unregistered)

    Aargle Zymurgy. Sounds like an anagram.

  • Patrick Jacquot (unregistered) in reply to Uncle Remus

    It's really "a pity" to see how words become taboo because they were misused

  • +9 (unregistered)

    Well this is unexpected... TRWTF in Java? Sure. TRWTF in C? Oh, no...

  • Warlaan (unregistered)

    int up, Up, UP, uP, _up, UP, uP, up, uP; #define __UP up #define ___UP Up #define ____UP UP #define _____UP uP #define ______UP _up #define _______UP _UP #define ________UP _uP #define _____UP up #define MAX_FILESIZE uP

    There, problem solved.

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