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Admin
This is how you learn not to put your initials in the code.
Admin
// We don't need no stupid anonymization FAF
Admin
This is how you learn to put someone else's initials in the code
Admin
Although the scientists' comments were a bit stupid(!), Paul’s boss was right to call out the tellytubby comment. I mean, who could possibly choose Tinky Winky?
Admin
Over the years I have seen far too many cases where inappropriate comments came back to haunt the creator...(including myself a few times in the "early years")...
Best to keep the comments on track - of course that will reduce the amount of WTF material....
Admin
I dread to think what would be said if anyone inspected the comments in our codebase for professionalism. Or the documents in our knowledge base, or the contents of our team mailbox. Or anything my immediate supervisor has had a hand in writing.
At least we don't have stupid things like commit comments to worry about.
Admin
I thought this was supposed to be an Australian Defence Department, so why is it all spelt 'murican?
Admin
TRWTF is using CVS.
Admin
There's a Poll available on our Forums where you may vote for your favorite Teletubby. Links can be found in the Sidebar or in this post.
Admin
The pragma suppresses incorrect warnings; it is fair to describe them as "stupid". Why would other staff assume the comment refers to them?
However, if you have version control, why initial comments?
Finally, it's very dispiriting working in an environment where all humour is vigorously suppressed. I'd complain to HR about the scientists creating a bad atmosphere due to their complete lack of humour.
Admin
I refuse to take part in that as it doesn't list Noo-Noo. You always ignore the workers don't you?
Admin
Everyone knows that Po is the best Tellytubby.
Admin
Your boss's, for example. Or better, some stupid scientist's boss
Admin
oh, that sounds so familiar ... "the indians are offended because you didn't write 'hi' and 'br' in your emails", "the indians are offended because you rightfully swore at them", ...
Admin
Am I the only one here who thinks that namespaces longer than 256 characters are a huge WTF?
As I see it, there are total of 6 WTFs:
namespaces over 256 chars
dealing with insanely long namespaces by turning warnings off instead of making namespaces shorter
calling warnings stupid while using way too long namespaces
"signing" comments with initials when using version control
nonsense "humor" in commits
using CVS (assuming it's not 15 years old)
"The offended scientist" requesting removal of STUPID comment is not a WTF, request for teletubies "humor" removal also not a WTF.
Admin
I got bitten by something very similar - some pointless architecture astronaut type delighting in getting all het up over some vaguely off-colour comment I'd put in a checkin.
It's the same attitude that informs the idiotic view (brilliantly deconstructed by Spolsky) that design documents have to be inordinately boring and po-faced otherwise they are not "professional", despite the demonstrable fact that introducing a bit of humour or chattiness into them can make them far easier to read and understand.
Admin
It's very hard to side with the scientists because the case they make ("Do you think national defense is stupid?") is fallacious in places. It's hard to trust an argument that contains fallacies, because it is reasonable to conclude that a person using them is not thinking rationally.
The scientist's case should have been "the information to word ratio is too low in this comment", or "can you explain why it's stupid, using a short explanation or a reference to a technical report". If that.
I also do childrens' parties.
Admin
The "good" usage, as I see it, is for example Guido van Rossum's usage of Monty Python references in python's tutorial and documentation, where they are integral part of the text and they do not lead you away from the subject (python programming).
The "bad" usage would be a pointy-haired boss using a picture of his hideous child in 6738 pages long superboring powerpoint presentation just to "lighten up the mood", while effectively proving to everyone he's a moron and shouldn't be allowed to procreate.
Admin
TRWTF are comments that don't tell you anything you can't get by looking directly at the code and reading simple English words.
Thanks, moron, I can read "warning disable". What do the numeric codes stand for? That's the only thing you should mention in the comment!
Is that so fucking hard?!
Admin
Ok, lets test the professionalism of the linux kernel developers...
Nothing about teletubbies at least
Admin
Or Paul's
Admin
Well, I was disappointed that the story didn't proceed to the disaster that followed the order to "to remove the word ‘stupid’ wherever it appears in the code base". This is a perfect situation for a "clbuttic" type error. All you need is a few variable names that happen to contain the character string "stupid", and removing them causes two names to be merged into one. And, of course, when the problem is diagnosed, the coders oh-so-innocently explain that they aren't allowed to fix it, because they have an explicit order to make that change. Then they can goof off, watch Teletubbies, whatever, until the power structure figures out that they have to actually admit their mistake and replace their erroneous command with one that's technically correct.
Yep, I've seen groups of developers use this approach (usually with a shorter objectionable word that "stupid") to teach their bosses a lesson. But unfortunately, it's generally not feasible to use this to instill a sense of humor.
Admin
Considering the "stupid" coming out of our (Australian) government regarding computers and networks at the moment, I'm not surprised they're getting offended by the word "stupid" written on a computer.
Admin
Admin
Just for the record, my favorite teletubbie was Drinky Winky, he had a magic bottle that made all his troubles disappear.
Admin
Admin
Did you ever program with C++ STL? If you use templates you automatically get this warning.
Problem:
You write something like list[MyClass] . The compiler will generate something like list[std::allocator[MyClass], std::iterator[std::allocator[MyClass], MyClass], std::rev_iterator[std::allocator[MyClass], MyClass]]
Now assume you use something like MyCompany::MyProject::MyClass instead... Good luck reading your messages.
Note: seems the correct brackt type is not allowed
Admin
Admin
Why are the research scientists looking at the code? Shouldn't they be just running the programs and doing research?
Admin
Admin
Admin
At my last job, access to version control (Oracle Designer's RON, basically an interface to an Oracle BLOB table) was strictly limited to management. The "proper" software development process was:
Managers only ever check out and in using a period or "for John" for comments so it is on you and your tech lead to make sure your changes are marked with initials in comments marking what changed.
After a few years I moved to a new project under the same consulting contract where we used subversion... and the team had only one SVN account to share among 5-6 devs.
Admin
In 3.14.xx "fucked" is depricated. In 3.17.xx "fucked" has been replaced with "hella-fuck-sacked".
Admin
The WTF is the need to not have humor in our workplace because "It's not professional"
I find it stupid that people can put stupid comments into their code or repository comments. Heaven forbid you have some stupid fun while at work. OMFG, some stupid person might not have a sense of humor. Well, stupid on them!
Admin
This reminds me of the time my colleagues were tweaking our intranet's search engine and used the same query every time during testing. They momentarily forgot about the 'top search terms'-list.
New entry at number 1 was 'Anal sex'.
Admin
I am constantly amazed how some people take comments personally, when the comment has absolutely nothing to do with that person whatsoever nor was the comment ever directed at them.
For example, you could say to your friend, "This doughnut is not my favorite type." And if the cook hears you, they hear, "They think ALL my doughnuts are crap! They think I'm crap! Well, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind..."
This happens many times in hot-topic social and political topics, particularly with people who are looking to be offended.
Admin
Quite. Plus a commit message like this:
Well done - if I'm checking the VCS log to see what the commit message for a change was, perhaps you should mention what you fucking changed rather than just tagging it with a bunch of meaningless references to other databases.
I mean, fine, put these refs in as well, but is it too hard to say what you did to fix the issue?
Admin
At least here in physics, we scientists often write our stupid code for simulations/data analysis ourselves, using some library a programmer wrote for us, so it runs a bit faster.
Admin
Admin
Bah. You want to see what was done? That's why your VCS has a 'diff' command. Boy, you just need to be spoon-fed, don't you?
Admin
Paul's team spent the rest of the month trying to track down mysterious errors involving missing Stub Pointer IDs. Nobody is quite sure why that happened.
Admin
I got into deeper trouble when in some code that manipulated LIDAR and NUMSTAR data, I put in the comment "LIDAR and NUMSTAR sound like the names of two gay space aliens". Hoo boy, there were huge repercussions from that!
Admin
The diff command shows me what they changed.
The log command tells me what they were thinking they were changing.
That these two things are often different is the root cause of many bugs. By not putting in a proper commit message it is impossible to determine intent.
Admin
Humor and professionalism are not mutually exclusive.
These comments are neither funny nor professional.
Admin
In all your pedantry did you have a point other than "HAHA he said ISSUE when he should have said BUG!!!!!111"?
You quoted it, but probably didn't read it, so I'll put it in caps - INCLUDE THOSE NUMBERS AS WELL, BUT TELL ME WHAT YOU DID
Admin
Admin
Got this far in the thread and nobody's noticed TRWTF:
The correct phrase is "we don't need no stinkin $NOUN"
Gawrsh, don't they watch Bogie movies in OZ?
Admin
Admin
Well, yeah, I knew that, but it doesn't quite work in this case. It's common for variable names to be multiple words and/or abbreviations, all run together without spaces or delimiters, because the programming language doesn't allow non-alphanum chars inside variable names. It'd be easy enough to include a "word" delimiter with most kinds of RE matching, but then the code would miss things like "stupidly", stupidest", "uberstupid", and all the other forms that the coders are likely to include in comments. After the pass showing that such things were missed, the harrassed victims of the manager's wrath are likely to just shrug, and do a "s/stupid//g" to satisfy the request in the short term. The next test shows the damage this did to a name made by catenating words containing "st up id" and dropping the spaces, and big grins break out on nearby faces as they realize the fun they can have with this demand.
The only good solution is to hire intelligent managers with a sense of humor. But that's not the reality in the sort of companies whose creations appear here.
Admin
I agree with the scientists, athough I suspect the reaction was exagerrated by the article author.
There's nothing worse than looking through history on a project for some useful purpose like trying to discover why someone did something, and having to scrape through their shitty inside jokes that no longer have any relevancy.
Imagine doing that TODAY on one of your projects. If you came accross something that didn't make sense, and you saw the author referenced teletubbies and called compiler warnings designed by someone (probably) much smarter than them stupid, how much...are you more likely to think "yeah this dude knew what he was doing" or "what an idiot."