• Bruce W (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    tired:
    <quote>The REAL WTF is Visual Basic.

    I wish people would stop trying to make it easier for idiots to program. They lower salaries and increase costs, but corporations never realize this, due to the myth that workers * hours = productivity. </quote> John

    Your attempt to open a subject that has been thrashed over and over again on this forum and many others is tiresome. The same code and set up could have been done in many other languages. The problem is not the language, I could pick up a book on C#, C++, php, mysql or anthing else and pump out crap like this in 24 hrs. Please comment on things that apply to the topic presented. Adding such a mundane comment only devalues this site. Thanks.

    tired.

    Now that's funny. Someone who's defeneding VB screws up the quote syntax!

    And someone criticizing him spelling a word wrong.

  • Russ (unregistered) in reply to savar
    savar:
    tired:
    John

    Your attempt to open a subject that has been thrashed over and over again on this forum and many others is tiresome. The same code and set up could have been done in many other languages. The problem is not the language, I could pick up a book on C#, C++, php, mysql or anthing else and pump out crap like this in 24 hrs. Please comment on things that apply to the topic presented. Adding such a mundane comment only devalues this site. Thanks.

    tired.

    A) You don't know how to use quote tags.

    B) The point that John was making is that while managed runtimes like VB.net are intended to increase developer productivity, they have the perverse side effect of lowering the bar for becoming a programmer. Then a company hires Philip Q. Shitforbrains instead of you or me because he has "tons" of VB.net experience and will work for 20% less.

    Just because you know/use/love VB.net doesn't make you an idiot. But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    At the same time, it would have taken more lines of code and more man hours to write it in C++. I think we all understand this. We just like to pick on VB because so many WTFs arise from it.

    The real wtf is people writing websites in C++ or VB. Although these are general purpose languages, it's comparable to building a windows application in assembly. Sure you can do it, but why not use something that's a little more high level and more designed for the task.

    I've built websites with Pro*C for a school project once, and that was no picnic. If you are going to build a website, use a language that was designed to build websites, such as ColdFusion or even PHP.

  • Russ (unregistered) in reply to vertagano
    vertagano:
    brazzy:
    Besides, what we're looking at is not necessarity a WTF. I remember doing something quite similar in order to host a DB-backed site on my university account that didn't support PHP - I had a PHP app running at home and with a little fiddling made it spit out static pages which I'd then upload to the university account.

    Maybe the actual code is running somewhere else?

    Either you're WaC, or this is a much more common practice than I would have imagined.

    As he mentioned, there are legitimate uses for this. Hosting that doesn't support dynamic languages, etc. Caching would be a good use as well. For sites that rarely change but have a lot of traffic, it might make sense to auto generate the static pages from the dynamic backend whenever a change is made.

    Also could've happened that someone bulid a dynamic site and then there were disagreements between the vendor and the client and the vendor would not allow the client to get the code. Someone probably went and used wget to grab all the pages on the site and make the site static.

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to nowtf
    It is by no means WTF.
    Nope. It just means you're one of those morons we're making fun of here.
  • Zygo (unregistered) in reply to Russ
    Russ:
    vertagano:
    brazzy:
    Besides, what we're looking at is not necessarity a WTF. I remember doing something quite similar in order to host a DB-backed site on my university account that didn't support PHP - I had a PHP app running at home and with a little fiddling made it spit out static pages which I'd then upload to the university account.

    Maybe the actual code is running somewhere else?

    Either you're WaC, or this is a much more common practice than I would have imagined.

    As he mentioned, there are legitimate uses for this. Hosting that doesn't support dynamic languages, etc. Caching would be a good use as well. For sites that rarely change but have a lot of traffic, it might make sense to auto generate the static pages from the dynamic backend whenever a change is made.

    Also could've happened that someone bulid a dynamic site and then there were disagreements between the vendor and the client and the vendor would not allow the client to get the code. Someone probably went and used wget to grab all the pages on the site and make the site static.

    ...except doesn't it defeat the purpose to use .aspx pages to make a static snapshot? If they were .html they'd be static, but they're obviously not...

  • StickyWidget (unregistered) in reply to soo true
    soo true:
    I'm doing some freelance consulting with an acquaintance of mine right now - its my first gig as freelance - and he was going to set it up just like this. Not to fool them or such, but just because he thought it was supposed to be done like that. It's an ecommerce type website where every single page was going to be static. Worse, the pages were going to be image maps, gigantic image maps. If anything was changed, adding a customer, a product, a new advertisement, you would have nearly had to redesign the whole page. Finally convinced him it was correct to do a PHP/MySQL setup...now we just have a convince the guy we're doing it for...he just wants a pretty website.

    The convincing part should be relatively simple. Make a flowchart of the process you follow when something changes. All text in the flowchart should be set to 22pt. font, and printed out so that it is visible from 10 feet away. Then, make a flowchart of what you want to do, using the same criteria. I'm betting yours will fit on 8.5x11, the other one will fit on 85x110.

    When in the meeting, ask him which one he would rather be beaten with, the convoluted flowchart or the beautiful design. Guess which one he goes with. If the process to make changes to a site is large enough to beat a man senseless, it's not the best process. And if he picks the huge process, he deserves to be beaten.

    Besides, it's freelance anyway.

  • (cs)

    omg

    (actually I did something like that once, when I made the dynamic site static via wget, since the old web hoster wasn't going to let me take the source ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to StickyWidget
    StickyWidget:
    soo true:
    I'm doing some freelance consulting with an acquaintance of mine right now - its my first gig as freelance - and he was going to set it up just like this. Not to fool them or such, but just because he thought it was supposed to be done like that. It's an ecommerce type website where every single page was going to be static. Worse, the pages were going to be image maps, gigantic image maps. If anything was changed, adding a customer, a product, a new advertisement, you would have nearly had to redesign the whole page. Finally convinced him it was correct to do a PHP/MySQL setup...now we just have a convince the guy we're doing it for...he just wants a pretty website.
    The convincing part should be relatively simple. Make a flowchart of the process you follow when something changes. All text in the flowchart should be set to 22pt. font, and printed out so that it is visible from 10 feet away. Then, make a flowchart of what you want to do, using the same criteria. I'm betting yours will fit on 8.5x11, the other one will fit on 85x110.

    When in the meeting, ask him which one he would rather be beaten with, the convoluted flowchart or the beautiful design. Guess which one he goes with. If the process to make changes to a site is large enough to beat a man senseless, it's not the best process. And if he picks the huge process, he deserves to be beaten.

    Besides, it's freelance anyway.

    Totally agree with you there Sticky. And if we had more developers that explained systems in this manner, we'd be a lot better off in the world. And for the record, you can still make the sight look "pretty" when you use PHP and MySQL as a backend. :)

  • fl (unregistered)

    That is just hilarious. Thank you, WTF, for wrapping a smile around my face every day.

  • JOHN (unregistered) in reply to savar
    savar:
    tired:
    John

    Your attempt to open a subject that has been thrashed over and over again on this forum and many others is tiresome. The same code and set up could have been done in many other languages. The problem is not the language, I could pick up a book on C#, C++, php, mysql or anthing else and pump out crap like this in 24 hrs. Please comment on things that apply to the topic presented. Adding such a mundane comment only devalues this site. Thanks.

    tired.

    A) You don't know how to use quote tags.

    B) The point that John was making is that while managed runtimes like VB.net are intended to increase developer productivity, they have the perverse side effect of lowering the bar for becoming a programmer. Then a company hires Philip Q. Shitforbrains instead of you or me because he has "tons" of VB.net experience and will work for 20% less.

    Just because you know/use/love VB.net doesn't make you an idiot. But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    At the same time, it would have taken more lines of code and more man hours to write it in C++. I think we all understand this. We just like to pick on VB because so many WTFs arise from it.

    Thank you, this was my point exactly.

    Languages like Visual Basic make computer languages "less scary" to the average person.

    I can't tell you how many times people tell me they can't figure out C# because it's too confusing "with all those symbols", and they prefer VB instead.

    Look, Computer Programming is a mathematics and engineering field. If you're afraid of "all those symbols", you really have no business making software.

    Software is used for important things. Your banks use it. Your cars use it. Your company uses it. Your airplanes use it. Your trains use it. Your hospital uses it. Your insurance company uses it.

    Do you really want to trust these critical systems to people who are afraid of learning what a curly bracket does?

  • YourMoFoFriend (unregistered) in reply to rumpelstiltskin
    rumpelstiltskin:
    YourMoFoFriend:
    JOHN:
    The REAL WTF is Visual Basic. I wish people would stop trying to make it easier for idiots to program. They lower salaries and increase costs, but corporations never realize this, due to the myth that workers * hours = productivity.
    JOHN, you're a retard. Every time I see someone going "The REAL WTF is Visual Basic" it's a retard like you with overinflated ego thinking he is smarter then everyone else just because he isn't using VB. There is a million different reasons why VB (and .NET in general) is used, and quiet successfully I might add, but you wouldn't understand them anyway because you are a retard. And finally, this crap could've been just as easily done in any of the other 30 or so CLR compatible languages including C++, it's the programmer, not the language.
    Nice grammar there, YourMoFoFriend. Did you pick that up at DeVry? VB is a WTF- it exists so that people who can't be bothered with learning how to program, can write GUI apps. It's meant for Shirley in Accounting, but, somehow, the jokers using it started calling themselves programmers, and pointy haired bosses, not knowing any better, institutionalized the error.
    Right, I missed a couple of commas and used "then" instead of "than" once, is that it? Considering that English is not my native language I think I did mighty fine :). Now to the question of VB... you seem to be a retard as well.
  • Nitrous (unregistered) in reply to Russ

    Hey now, I've written websites (CGI) in x86 Assembler before, simply because I had extra time. ... fastest cookie processing code you've ever seen. I've also used TCL, Perl, C, C++, Ruby, PHP, VBScript, JScript, Java, and Pascal. I'm probably forgetting some.

    VBScript is really slumming it, but to a competent coder, it's no different than coding with a really bad standard library. Sure, the language is less expressive, but you simply revert to the way of doing things in the "old days." I definitely prefer it over ColdFusion's super specialized and super-proprietary "tag" coding, CFScript and CFC's.

    VB is not always the wisest choice, but rarely is the decision up to the developers. Languages and tools are usually entrenched in corporate culture. It doesn't matter how good the tool is: If they're not using it, then neither can you. Developers rarely, if ever, can persuade the business. It would be nice to never work on a Microsoft platform project, but it's not always realistic in some regions of the country.

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Nitrous

    I still don't understand why people rag on Microsoft coding platforms. It's all about the quality of work the programmer puts out. I use .NET (C# and VB) daily for a high-profile site; the site is always up, the users are happy, the pages all validate (most of them to Strict) and we have increased our customers since migrating to strongly-coded .NET projects. It's also far easier to maintain than what previous programmers created.

    I don't slam PHP or Java just because it's not my preference to use them. An idiot can produce garbage in any language, and Microsoft's Visual Studio suite has gotten to be quite effective and useful.

  • Zygo (unregistered) in reply to Russ
    savar:
    But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    Speaking from experience, I doubt C++ would really be a barrier. If you diligently ignore all compiler warnings, use a debugger, and strictly fix or work around each bug as it is reported, just about anyone can get C++ code that runs for a given input data set. I've seen this more than once in a corporate setting.

    Russ:
    The real wtf is people writing websites in C++ or VB. Although these are general purpose languages, it's comparable to building a windows application in assembly. Sure you can do it, but why not use something that's a little more high level and more designed for the task.

    Don't look at http://www.tntnet.org/ then. You can embed HTML in C++ or C++ in HTML, your choice. If you want to update a web page on your site, you literally recompile the web server (unless you made a dynamic web page which looks at the URL, reads the matching file from disk, and sends it out...).

    It does a passable job of extending C++ to produce HTML. For example, it uses constructors and destructors to ensure XML tags balance:

    { Xmltag a("a", "href="http://worsethanfailure.com/""); cout << "WTF"; } // destructor emits ""

    If you're looking for transparent encoding or escaping support, it's probably insufficient though.

  • Anthony (unregistered) in reply to JOHN

    Thats an idiotic argument. Programming is one thing, telling a machine what you want it to do. There are different levels of programming required for project complexities. Sally in accounting should be able to open up a VBA script in excel and write a script to make her job easier...and if she can't do it there should be a "programmer" on staff that can. That is the point of computers to MAKE OUR JOBS EASIER. Then there are professional grade applications that must be reliable, complete, and easy to use. For those application a "real" programming language should be used. But it's all programming. Get off your high and mighty horse... as a programmer your ONLY job is to make peoples lives easier any way you can, be it VBA,C#,JAVA,C++, COBOL or whatever other solution best fits the problem. I've found that good programmers can write good code regardless of the language and bad programmers will write bad code regardless of the language.

  • (cs) in reply to JOHN
    JOHN:
    savar:
    tired:
    John

    Your attempt to open a subject that has been thrashed over and over again on this forum and many others is tiresome. The same code and set up could have been done in many other languages. The problem is not the language, I could pick up a book on C#, C++, php, mysql or anthing else and pump out crap like this in 24 hrs. Please comment on things that apply to the topic presented. Adding such a mundane comment only devalues this site. Thanks.

    tired.

    A) You don't know how to use quote tags.

    B) The point that John was making is that while managed runtimes like VB.net are intended to increase developer productivity, they have the perverse side effect of lowering the bar for becoming a programmer. Then a company hires Philip Q. Shitforbrains instead of you or me because he has "tons" of VB.net experience and will work for 20% less.

    Just because you know/use/love VB.net doesn't make you an idiot. But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    At the same time, it would have taken more lines of code and more man hours to write it in C++. I think we all understand this. We just like to pick on VB because so many WTFs arise from it.

    Thank you, this was my point exactly.

    Languages like Visual Basic make computer languages "less scary" to the average person.

    I can't tell you how many times people tell me they can't figure out C# because it's too confusing "with all those symbols", and they prefer VB instead.

    Look, Computer Programming is a mathematics and engineering field. If you're afraid of "all those symbols", you really have no business making software.

    Software is used for important things. Your banks use it. Your cars use it. Your company uses it. Your airplanes use it. Your trains use it. Your hospital uses it. Your insurance company uses it.

    Do you really want to trust these critical systems to people who are afraid of learning what a curly bracket does?

    Of course not. They should be (and many probably are) in COBOL, MUMPS and RPG.

    Or perhaps APL. After all if you want funny symbols in your programming language, you can't beat APL.

    Can we argue EMACS v. vi next?

  • Christophe (unregistered) in reply to poindexter
    poindexter:
    YourMoFoFriend:
    And finally, this crap could've been just as easily done in any of the other 30 or so CLR compatible languages including C++, it's the programmer, not the language.
    As a Java programmer can I just say that this WTF is not restricted to CLR compatible languages.

    Stupidity is the Universal Meta-Language

  • YourMoFoFriend (unregistered) in reply to JOHN
    JOHN:
    savar:
    A) You don't know how to use quote tags. B) The point that John was making is that while managed runtimes like VB.net are intended to increase developer productivity, they have the perverse side effect of lowering the bar for becoming a programmer. Then a company hires Philip Q. Shitforbrains instead of you or me because he has "tons" of VB.net experience and will work for 20% less.

    Just because you know/use/love VB.net doesn't make you an idiot. But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    At the same time, it would have taken more lines of code and more man hours to write it in C++. I think we all understand this. We just like to pick on VB because so many WTFs arise from it.

    Thank you, this was my point exactly. Languages like Visual Basic make computer languages "less scary" to the average person. I can't tell you how many times people tell me they can't figure out C# because it's too confusing "with all those symbols", and they prefer VB instead. Look, Computer Programming is a mathematics and engineering field. If you're afraid of "all those symbols", you really have no business making software.

    Software is used for important things. Your banks use it. Your cars use it. Your company uses it. Your airplanes use it. Your trains use it. Your hospital uses it. Your insurance company uses it.

    Do you really want to trust these critical systems to people who are afraid of learning what a curly bracket does?

    By that logic all good programmers write in assembly only and the really good ones in "1"-s and "0"-s directly. The idea that you can scare bad developers away by not having languages like VB is just wrong. Now, it is partially true that influx of poorly trained VB developers drove average salary down, but if it wasn't the VB it would've been another language all those people would've used. There was a huge demand for developers and marked filled the gap, regardless of the language chosen. I also happen to know for a fact that a ton of people found Java programming gigs after a week long course in Java. But sure, VB is the real WTF there... :)

  • John Doe (unregistered) in reply to Keith
    Keith:
    It gets better... take a look at the end of /pages/@id=5.aspx: 
    <map name="Copyright">
	<area shape="rect" coords="5,10,142,28" href="../../www.i4.net/default.aspx" target="_blank">
</map>

    Not only that, but http://www.i4.net/default.aspx is a .NET 404...

    !

    And when you click the link, the page goes to http://www.equilib.us/www.i4.net/default.aspx :D (does not exist of course)

    Going two "directories" up means you go to the "internet directory" or something?! Pretty WTF...

  • Lurker McGee (unregistered)

    ack... view source on this thing. I just noticed that there's no hidden viewstate field... this is just an html page that wants to be run on microsoft servers. In that way, its not so much of a wtf to open it up in dreamweaver - it's not really an asp.net app, after all.

    There's also a big long chain of non-breaking spaces (for tabbing, obviously) and font abuse going on... Eeek.

  • (cs) in reply to YourMoFoFriend
    YourMoFoFriend:
    JOHN:
    savar:
    A) You don't know how to use quote tags. B) The point that John was making is that while managed runtimes like VB.net are intended to increase developer productivity, they have the perverse side effect of lowering the bar for becoming a programmer. Then a company hires Philip Q. Shitforbrains instead of you or me because he has "tons" of VB.net experience and will work for 20% less.

    Just because you know/use/love VB.net doesn't make you an idiot. But VB.net does allow people who don't know what they're doing to get by anyway. If this project had been written in C++, the dumbass "consultant" who did this job would have never made the cut.

    At the same time, it would have taken more lines of code and more man hours to write it in C++. I think we all understand this. We just like to pick on VB because so many WTFs arise from it.

    Thank you, this was my point exactly. Languages like Visual Basic make computer languages "less scary" to the average person. I can't tell you how many times people tell me they can't figure out C# because it's too confusing "with all those symbols", and they prefer VB instead. Look, Computer Programming is a mathematics and engineering field. If you're afraid of "all those symbols", you really have no business making software.

    Software is used for important things. Your banks use it. Your cars use it. Your company uses it. Your airplanes use it. Your trains use it. Your hospital uses it. Your insurance company uses it.

    Do you really want to trust these critical systems to people who are afraid of learning what a curly bracket does?

    By that logic all good programmers write in assembly only and the really good ones in "1"-s and "0"-s directly. The idea that you can scare bad developers away by not having languages like VB is just wrong. Now, it is partially true that influx of poorly trained VB developers drove average salary down, but if it wasn't the VB it would've been another language all those people would've used. There was a huge demand for developers and marked filled the gap, regardless of the language chosen. I also happen to know for a fact that a ton of people found Java programming gigs after a week long course in Java. But sure, VB is the real WTF there... :)

    "1"-s and "0"-s? Real programmers wire up the vacuum tubes by hand!

  • joshua (unregistered) in reply to JOHN

    With all due respect, I could not disagree more. Software is most definitely used for important things. But, you know what? When I got out of college 10 years ago, I wrote an Access application for my parents to create invoices for their business. Mission-critical? Hardly. Useful, sure.

    I would agree that I would not want someone poorly versed in VB writing the software that keeps our economic systems viable, but, as a CEO (which I'm not, thank God, but play along for argument's sake), I do not want to spend $300 an hour for an Anders protege to build some reports.

    There is plenty of room for developers of all skill levels and expertise in our world. Some of us have moved beyond Access and VB to something bigger and better (and more complex), but that does not diminish either the value of people who still use those tools or the products they create. I am proud of the fact I invested a great amount of time and effort into learning to be a good developer and architect, but just because you can go out and buy a pneumatic nail gun, it doesn't make a hammer obsolete.

    Besides, if we were all "brillant" developers, this would be a horribly boring site.

  • rumpelstiltskin (unregistered) in reply to YourMoFoFriend
    YourMoFoFriend:
    rumpelstiltskin:
    YourMoFoFriend:
    JOHN:
    The REAL WTF is Visual Basic. I wish people would stop trying to make it easier for idiots to program. They lower salaries and increase costs, but corporations never realize this, due to the myth that workers * hours = productivity.
    JOHN, you're a retard. Every time I see someone going "The REAL WTF is Visual Basic" it's a retard like you with overinflated ego thinking he is smarter then everyone else just because he isn't using VB. There is a million different reasons why VB (and .NET in general) is used, and quiet successfully I might add, but you wouldn't understand them anyway because you are a retard. And finally, this crap could've been just as easily done in any of the other 30 or so CLR compatible languages including C++, it's the programmer, not the language.
    Nice grammar there, YourMoFoFriend. Did you pick that up at DeVry? VB is a WTF- it exists so that people who can't be bothered with learning how to program, can write GUI apps. It's meant for Shirley in Accounting, but, somehow, the jokers using it started calling themselves programmers, and pointy haired bosses, not knowing any better, institutionalized the error.
    Right, I missed a couple of commas and used "then" instead of "than" once, is that it? Considering that English is not my native language I think I did mighty fine :). Now to the question of VB... you seem to be a retard as well.

    Well, that's not it, but that's not important.
    I think English is your first language- your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong. It signals stupidity, not ignorance. But, since you use VB, we already got that message.

  • ggoon (unregistered)

    When I first got into web applications development, I was tasked with the maintenance of something exactly like this.

    It was an online catalog of vet lab services my office offered for different animals, mainly blood work and the like.

    Rather than create a conventional database, the "developer" (now senior project manager) opted to create ~1485 static html pages, with the relevant information on each one for the animal. When information needed to be changed for the services offered on that genus/species, the update was emailed to the developer, who updated the correct HTML file.

    Each genus/species/subspecies/breed got its own HTML file. As you might imagine, in the veterinary world this is quite a collection!

    Enters GGoon: After writing the mother of all extraction scripts, I loaded it into an oracle schema. I then created 10 JSP pages. Maintenance time went from ~3 months to update the entire catalog to about 5 business days.

    ggoon

  • Pony Gumbo (unregistered) in reply to Hungry Dude
    Hungry Dude:
    hmmm...a curiously similar structure to the site we're reading..

    http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/When-the-Query-String-Is-Just-Not-Enough.aspx

    Except that WorseThanFailure actually uses a URL rewriting scheme, not static pages.

  • Shinobu (unregistered) in reply to JOHN
    JOHN:
    The REAL WTF is Visual Basic.
    * Brutally slaughters the troll with a chainsaw *
  • YourMoFoFriend (unregistered) in reply to rumpelstiltskin
    rumpelstiltskin:
    Well, that's not it, but that's not important. I think English is your first language - your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong. It signals stupidity, not ignorance. But, since you use VB, we already got that message.
    Well, what is it then? English is most certainly not my native language and you can confirm it by doing a quick search on my nick..., on this site alone you will find a few comments of mine in my native tongue. Having said that I will take the statement: "your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong" as a compliment and thus your "I think English is your first language" really "signals stupidity" as well as arrogance on your part. What was your programming language of choice again?

    P.S. Sucks to be outwitted by a foreigner in YOUR native language, huh? :))

  • Jeff (unregistered) in reply to JOHN
    JOHN:
    The REAL WTF is Visual Basic.

    First thought after reading the story (other than "wow, that's stupid) was I wondered how long it would be before some jackass blamed it on the fact it was VB.NET. Never mind this monstrosity could have been just as easily created in C#, Java, PHP, etc.

    And, no, I use C#, so I'm not a VB homey defending it because I use it.

  • (cs) in reply to Mr Ascii
    Mr Ascii:
    Can we argue EMACS v. vi next?

    ED!!! ED is the STANDARD!!

  • Jeff (unregistered) in reply to Russ
    Russ:
    The real wtf is people writing websites in C++ or VB.
    Hey, Russ, get a clue. ASP.NET (with which you can use VB.NET, C#, J#, or even C++ for .NET etc.) was specifically designed for building web sites. I mean, lets face it, little applications like DotNetNuke (VB.NET) or Rainbow Portal (C#) are all written using ASP.NET.

    I suppose the litany of HTTP* (i.e., HTTPResponse, HTTPRequest, HTTPCookie, etc.) objects in ASP.NET were never designed with the web in mind, were they?

    Know a little something about what you're writing about before you type.

  • Russ (unregistered) in reply to Zygo
    Zygo:
    Russ:
    vertagano:
    brazzy:
    Besides, what we're looking at is not necessarity a WTF. I remember doing something quite similar in order to host a DB-backed site on my university account that didn't support PHP - I had a PHP app running at home and with a little fiddling made it spit out static pages which I'd then upload to the university account.

    Maybe the actual code is running somewhere else?

    Either you're WaC, or this is a much more common practice than I would have imagined.

    As he mentioned, there are legitimate uses for this. Hosting that doesn't support dynamic languages, etc. Caching would be a good use as well. For sites that rarely change but have a lot of traffic, it might make sense to auto generate the static pages from the dynamic backend whenever a change is made.

    Also could've happened that someone bulid a dynamic site and then there were disagreements between the vendor and the client and the vendor would not allow the client to get the code. Someone probably went and used wget to grab all the pages on the site and make the site static.

    ...except doesn't it defeat the purpose to use .aspx pages to make a static snapshot? If they were .html they'd be static, but they're obviously not...

    You're obviously a windows person. Only in windows does an extension very important. Either way, I can set up Apache on windows or linux and name my pages .wtf and still have them process using any language I like.

    If all the aspx pages contain is static html and there is no aspx handler defined, then the pages are static.

  • sammy (unregistered)

    I'd bet some nominal number of dollars that this site was once dynamic, but had to be "captured" due to some kind of falling out with a developer, ISP, hosting service, etc.

  • Corey (unregistered) in reply to Nitrous
    Nitrous:
    Hey now, I've written websites (CGI) in x86 Assembler before, simply because I had extra time. ... fastest cookie processing code you've ever seen. I've also used TCL, Perl, C, C++, Ruby, PHP, VBScript, JScript, Java, and Pascal. I'm probably forgetting some.

    Whoa... CGIs in Pascal. Was there something driving that choice of language, or was it (like the x86 Assembler) just "because you could"?

  • J (unregistered) in reply to YourMoFoFriend
    YourMoFoFriend:
    rumpelstiltskin:
    Well, that's not it, but that's not important. I think English is your first language - your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong. It signals stupidity, not ignorance. But, since you use VB, we already got that message.
    Well, what is it then? English is most certainly not my native language and you can confirm it by doing a quick search on my nick..., on this site alone you will find a few comments of mine in my native tongue. Having said that I will take the statement: "your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong" as a compliment and thus your "I think English is your first language" really "signals stupidity" as well as arrogance on your part. What was your programming language of choice again?

    P.S. Sucks to be outwitted by a foreigner in YOUR native language, huh? :))

    rumpelstiltskin has been owned.

  • manarth (unregistered) in reply to Russ
    Russ:
    Zygo:
    ...except doesn't it defeat the purpose to use .aspx pages to make a static snapshot? If they were .html they'd be static, but they're obviously not...

    You're obviously a windows person. Only in windows does an extension very important. Either way, I can set up Apache on windows or linux and name my pages .wtf and still have them process using any language I like.

    If all the aspx pages contain is static html and there is no aspx handler defined, then the pages are static.

    FWIW, a quick and dirty fingerprinting (i.e. reading the http headers of a get request) of the Equilib site suggests that it is running IIS6 with asp.Net (and therefore probably are parsed by the asp parser - of course, assuming it's lacking dynamic <% // asp code %> tags it might as well be static for the difference it makes)

    (and yes, I know it could be apache faking the headers, but...do you really think so? really?)

    My guess is the developers sold a static site, but used an in-house templating system to simplify the development. Sometimes TRWTF is us, presuming to second-guess without a knowledge of the architecture or circumstances.

    Still, I'd love to know the real reason!

  • jimmy (unregistered) in reply to YourMoFoFriend
    YourMoFoFriend:
    JOHN:
    The REAL WTF is Visual Basic. I wish people would stop trying to make it easier for idiots to program. They lower salaries and increase costs, but corporations never realize this, due to the myth that workers * hours = productivity.
    JOHN, you're a retard. Every time I see someone going "The REAL WTF is Visual Basic" it's a retard like you with overinflated ego thinking he is smarter then everyone else just because he isn't using VB. There is a million different reasons why VB (and .NET in general) is used, and quiet successfully I might add, but you wouldn't understand them anyway because you are a retard. And finally, this crap could've been just as easily done in any of the other 30 or so CLR compatible languages including C++, it's the programmer, not the language.

    amen to that brother!

  • Mnc_ (unregistered)

    This is one of those WTF's that gives you a migraine, and makes you want to cry. No, really.

  • Billco (unregistered) in reply to batasrki

    I hate idiotic web developers, because they get fired and I have to take over their messes.

    I'd rather sell my fat ass for crack money than have to maintain some bonehead's half-broken web app.

  • JohnFx (unregistered) in reply to JOHN

    No kidding. Only real programmers understand that using the most complicated tool for the job makes the most sense. That is why I use a Japaneese Keyboard and no mouse. </sarcasm>

    While every programmer who gets a boner over managing his own memory is debugging an incorrectly cased variable reference or a missed semi-colon there is a VB programmer out there that understands that programming is about producing software. The irony is that this type of programmer will obsess over the 80th level of abstraction in his data models yet scorn the very concept of letting a FRAMEWORK do his garbage collection. Snort!

    I wish people would stop making it easier for platform snobs like you to post.

  • JohnFx (unregistered) in reply to YourMoFoFriend
    YourMoFoFriend:
    rumpelstiltskin:
    Well, that's not it, but that's not important. I think English is your first language - your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong. It signals stupidity, not ignorance. But, since you use VB, we already got that message.
    Well, what is it then? English is most certainly not my native language and you can confirm it by doing a quick search on my nick..., on this site alone you will find a few comments of mine in my native tongue. Having said that I will take the statement: "your grammar is too much sloppy, and not enough wrong" as a compliment and thus your "I think English is your first language" really "signals stupidity" as well as arrogance on your part. What was your programming language of choice again?

    P.S. Sucks to be outwitted by a foreigner in YOUR native language, huh? :))

    I think this qualifies as the Burn of the day. OUCH!

    captcha: burned - No freaking kidding. Even the dang blog software felt the heat offa that one.

  • (cs)

    I think we've found a programmer who doesn't grasp the concept of variables. The mind boggles.

  • Wabbitseason (unregistered)

    That "pages" directory is in fact the cache.

  • (cs) in reply to Russ
    Russ:
    You're obviously a windows person. Only in windows does an extension very important. Either way, I can set up Apache on windows or linux and name my pages .wtf and still have them process using any language I like.

    You're obviously NOT a Windows person, purporting to know something that you don't actually understand. Extensions can be mapped to anything in Windows. And dreamweaver can be forced to open any file type, just like any other text editor out there.

    Apache is not special in being able to handle whatever file extension you throw at it. On the contrary, I'd argue it's easier to configure IIS for that. It can be done either by directly editing the metabase and adding one line or via the simple GUI interface at the server or application level. Our servers treat files with the .ddt extension as asp.net files, for one of our internal sites. It took me all of 20 seconds to set that up in IIS 6 and then export the config to copy it to the other servers in the farm.

    And guess what? Looking at the headers, you'd think the system was running Apache. You Apache people think IIS can't do everything your beloved Apache can... Think again...

  • Gordon JC Pearce (unregistered) in reply to Will

    That's what Actinic e-commerce does. The management software has an Access database with all the product details. When you upload, it constructs static pages for all the products based on template fragments and the contents of the database. Finally it throws a couple of Perl scripts into /cgi-bin/ to handle the shopping cart.

    Makes sense in the context of old hosting that only gave you static HTML and a cgi-bin, really it does. These days, though...

  • A Zanescu (unregistered) in reply to poindexter
    poindexter:
    YourMoFoFriend:
    And finally, this crap could've been just as easily done in any of the other 30 or so CLR compatible languages including C++, it's the programmer, not the language.
    As a Java programmer can I just say that this WTF is not restricted to CLR compatible languages.

    Java (J#) is a CLR compatible laguage

  • mrbungle (unregistered) in reply to batasrki

    A true WTF!

  • Lachy Junior (unregistered)

    I'm curious. Why are so many people convinced this is VB? It's true that the chances are high, but I can't see anything that identifies the language one way or another.

  • (cs) in reply to Lachy Junior
    Lachy Junior:
    I'm curious. Why are so many people convinced this is VB? It's true that the chances are high, but I can't see anything that identifies the language one way or another.

    Would you name your files with .vb at the end if they weren't VB?

  • gotcha (unregistered) in reply to Pony Gumbo
    Pony Gumbo:
    Hungry Dude:
    hmmm...a curiously similar structure to the site we're reading..

    http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/When-the-Query-String-Is-Just-Not-Enough.aspx

    Except that WorseThanFailure actually uses a URL rewriting scheme, not static pages.

    Why don't they scrap the ".aspx"?

  • Phill (unregistered) in reply to gotcha
    gotcha:
    Pony Gumbo:
    Hungry Dude:
    hmmm...a curiously similar structure to the site we're reading..

    http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/When-the-Query-String-Is-Just-Not-Enough.aspx

    Except that WorseThanFailure actually uses a URL rewriting scheme, not static pages.

    Why don't they scrap the ".aspx"?

    Probably because it's running on a hosting provider who won't let them change IIS to map everything to aspnet_isapi.dll therefore need the .aspx so that it hits the URL rewriter in the first place.

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