• HAXIMUS PRIME (unregistered) in reply to tragomaskhalos
    tragomaskhalos:
    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.

    Using an interesting "voice" (read: subtle humor) in your documentation is a good thing. Some of the best docs I've read are done this way.

    Being off-colour or just trying too hard to be funny is distracting. Documentation that is distracting is useless.

    Just because it's funny to YOU doesn't mean it's funny to everyone else.

    If you can't tell the difference, don't even try. Boring me with technical details is way better than making me have to get past thinking you're a sexist 12 year old nerd.

  • (cs) in reply to eman_ruoy
    eman_ruoy:
    Roby McAndrew:
    Why would other staff assume the comment refers to them?

    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.

    I am deeply offended by your comment! How dare you call me stupid! Reasonable people can disagree reasonably about donuts/doughnuts but you've proven that you are just completely off-the-wall about this.
  • (cs) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    TRWTF is using CVS.
    Should have used RightAid.
  • (cs)

    Oh, the frustration of the misunderstood ... This is what I recently found in the codebase of one of our huge projects (don't know if it is professional or not, just thinking that it doesn't belong there):

        // This following is not the best approach, but nobody cares for ellegance anyway.
    // Special treatment for spans of Kendo UI widgets because "MS unobtrusive blah-blah" victimizes them.

                // NOTE: Using protected values should be based on an option, but who has time for
                // good design decisions when everybody else does not care and just exercise pressure.
  • savar (unregistered) in reply to belzebub
    belzebub:
    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:

    1. namespaces over 256 chars

    2. dealing with insanely long namespaces by turning warnings off instead of making namespaces shorter

    3. calling warnings stupid while using way too long namespaces

    4. "signing" comments with initials when using version control

    5. nonsense "humor" in commits

    6. 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.

    Agree totally. I treat source code similar to an office-wide memo. Humor isn't out of bounds, but childish or pejorative language like "stupid" definitely is.

  • (cs) in reply to CigarDoug
    CigarDoug:
    The President's daughter gave my son a crappy doughnut
    Is it something I should never look up in Urban Dictionary?
  • (cs)

    The Standard Template Library, although the basis and inspiration for much of the C++ Standard Library, is not to be confused as /the/ C++ Standard Library. The STL is not part of C++, it's just a library that was really popular.

    http://stackoverflow.com/a/5205571/1959975

  • Butthats 4Eva (unregistered) in reply to belzebub
    belzebub:
    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:

    1. namespaces over 256 chars

    2. dealing with insanely long namespaces by turning warnings off instead of making namespaces shorter

    3. calling warnings stupid while using way too long namespaces

    4. "signing" comments with initials when using version control

    5. nonsense "humor" in commits

    6. 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.

    on #4, it really depends. Sometimes I use comments as a reminder for myself for work that I have a need to do but haven't gotten around to doing it and, not only do I want to remind myself, but I want to make other devs aware. Sure I document this elsewhere. But the comments in code really help to drive home what I was after.

    Yes, there are other means. I fail to see the problem w/ making it more direct in the code for this purpose.

    Or perhaps I simply want a developer to know to talk to me before making changes. It's faster than looking through version control because you are obviously already looking at the comment in code at this point. Why spend more time?

  • jmm (unregistered)

    and then there's this little comment in the source code on a certain site...

    snipped a bunch of JavaScript that Google told us to put in. Seemed pretty pointless and caused an error. We don't need no stinking JavaScript.

  • P (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Ok, lets test the professionalism of the linux kernel developers... 
    /usr/src/linux-3.12.24 $>for word in stupid fuck fucking fucked moron idiot shit teletubby; do\
    echo -n "$word: "; fgrep -rwi "${word}" * | wc -l;\
done

stupid: 154
fuck: 6
fucking: 20
fucked: 16
moron: 1
idiot: 5
shit: 24
teletubby: 0

    Nothing about teletubbies at least

    Indeed, we can also do something similar with some leaked MS Windows source code:

    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

    I wonder what the current status is in Windows 8.1 :)

  • GunShowTrash (unregistered)

    OK, I'll add a True-Life Adventure.

    Be me. Be embedded software at St Louis defense contractor. Inherit incomplete firmware from another (young) software engineer. Work together to finish design; I complete integration and test.

    Module comment header:

    [Firmware Title] A [Silly Ass Name] Production Original Story by [Guy Who Started It] Screenplay by [Guy Who Started It and My Name] Directed by [My Name]

    I get written up for "Unprofessional comments in source code."

    These people have no sense of humor. I bail on defense industry.

  • (cs)

    I've had a few issues recently that were user error.

    Users don't like it when you say that they erred.

    Maybe I'll just call them stupid.

  • Sarc (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    I thought this was supposed to be an *Australian* Defence Department, so why is it all spelt 'murican?
    Because this damn yankee site is racist.
  • BK (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    Warren:
    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?

    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.

    i think thatmight be an embellishment. I don't think Australians would refer to military projects as "National Defense" (especially not with an 's') - maybe "the/our Defence Force" or perhaps "this country's security".

    The word National is only used in Canberra, and only for marketing to emphasise they're in Canberra: National Gallery National Science and Technology Centre (aka, Questacon) National Capital Motors National Railway Museum (ok, that's in Adelaide, but it's the exception that proves the rule)

    They also like "Capital" and crude names with "ACT" in them (transACT, ACTION etc)

  • Malcolm Turnbull (unregistered) in reply to tin
    tin:
    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.
    As the person who virtually invented the internet in Australia, I resent that.
  • Malcolm Turnbull (unregistered) in reply to John Chambers (but not that one)
    John Chambers (but not that one):
    Except that it is technically correct. You know, word != character string. (Yes, I do get "clbuttic" as a joke, but for teaching someone a lesson, well no ...)

    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.

    www.PenIsland.com

  • nqdenise (unregistered)

    I used the word "stupid" around my brother's kids once - they were probably 5 and 7 at the time - from the reaction I got, you would have thought I used a cuss word. My sis-in-law, who teaches at the same school their kids attend, told me they are very vigilant about their students never using the word "stupid". If someone uses it, they get a stern talking-to. Because no one is really stupid, you know. Everyone is able to learn or do anything. You don't want any student to ever become discouraged in any way.

    If this is happening at all schools, then I imagine this word is slowly coming taboo for a whole generation. And I wonder how long this has been going on. I've seen 20-somethings wince when I use the word stupid, so I'm learning to avoid it.

  • Undefined (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    I thought this was supposed to be an *Australian* Defence Department, so why is it all spelt 'murican?

    To make sure the Septics can understand.

  • fjw (unregistered) in reply to Roby McAndrew

    "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."

    You seem to forget that this is (apparently) from the Australian Department of Defence.

  • fjw (unregistered) in reply to BK
    BK:
    The word National is only used in Canberra, and only for marketing to emphasise they're in Canberra: National Gallery National Science and Technology Centre (aka, Questacon) National Capital Motors National Railway Museum (ok, that's in Adelaide, but it's the exception that proves the rule)

    National Gallery of Victoria is in Melbourne Australian National Academy of Music is in Melbourne Australian National College of English is in Melbourne National Tennis Centre is in Melbourne National Sports Museum is in Melbourne National Institute of Circus Arts is in Melbourne National Theatre Drama School is in Melbourne

  • fjw (unregistered) in reply to nqdenise
    nqdenise:
    I used the word "stupid" around my brother's kids once - they were probably 5 and 7 at the time - from the reaction I got, you would have thought I used a cuss word. My sis-in-law, who teaches at the same school their kids attend, told me they are very vigilant about their students never using the word "stupid". If someone uses it, they get a stern talking-to. Because no one is really stupid, you know. Everyone is able to learn or do anything. You don't want any student to ever become discouraged in any way.

    If this is happening at all schools, then I imagine this word is slowly coming taboo for a whole generation. And I wonder how long this has been going on. I've seen 20-somethings wince when I use the word stupid, so I'm learning to avoid it.

    I can understand why it's not a good idea to call kids "stupid" or even to call people in general "stupid".

    But I think it's pretty stupid to get upset about someone calling an inanimate thing "stupid", like a warning message in a program or an organisational policy. I think people are having difficulty understanding the different senses of the word.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to fjw

    Btw, the over 256 char namespace may be written in the requirement. I myself have seen Java code that has over 100 char namespace in order to follow government set standard. (Why the H do you need to put your company's domain name in reverse order as part of start of the namespace?)

    If that's the case I can certainly understand why they call the namespace stupid in comment.

  • Stupid Australian Public Servant (unregistered) in reply to fjw

    Research scientists in the Australian Department of Defence are pretty much all in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. DSTO's scientists are s/stupid/special/ .

    This story rings stupidly true in far too many ways. :(

  • Hannes (unregistered) in reply to nqdenise
    nqdenise:
    If this is happening at all schools, then I imagine this word is slowly coming taboo for a whole generation. And I wonder how long this has been going on. I've seen 20-somethings wince when I use the word stupid, so I'm learning to avoid it.

    You should just replace the word "stupid" with the word "fuck". Because, without fucking, none of us would even exist. So, it must be a good thing, right?

  • Frank (unregistered) in reply to John Chambers (but not that one)
    John Chambers (but not that one):
    Except that it is technically correct. You know, word != character string. (Yes, I do get "clbuttic" as a joke, but for teaching someone a lesson, well no ...)

    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.

    "Paul wrote a shell script that nuked all occurrences of the offending word and his initials"

    If it didn't also have his initials, it didn't get deleted. I'm sure you can come up with some hypothetical bit of code that includes PMJ as well, but given that he's clearny not just blindly removing stUpId there's nothing to suggest he didn't also include a preceding '//' in the requirements for a match. It's not rocket science.

    (Unless it is, of course, in light of the context.)

  • ph (unregistered) in reply to belzebub

    The warning was about generated symbol names in object files, not namespace names, the article (or Stan) got it a bit wrong. IIRC the problem was that some linkers did not cope with long names, and the compiler was not smart enough to figure out if this is actually an issue or not.

    And yes, in C++ you can easily get such long symbol names from templated code. Namespace names add some length here as well, of course.

  • nmclean (unregistered) in reply to belzebub
    belzebub:
    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:

    1. namespaces over 256 chars

    2. dealing with insanely long namespaces by turning warnings off instead of making namespaces shorter

    3. calling warnings stupid while using way too long namespaces

    4. "signing" comments with initials when using version control

    5. nonsense "humor" in commits

    6. 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.

    Now that's not fair, you're conflating a single WTF into three. Your first 3 items are all dependent on your belief that the warnings are not stupid. If you were convinced that they were stupid, or if they agreed that they weren't, all three would be eliminated at once.

    And #5 is most certainly not a WTF. As Roby McAndrew said, people with your attitude damage the work atmosphere. Anyone who actually behaves like "the offended scientist" in this scenario (which has probably been exaggerated) should be reprimanded for being so childish.

  • nmclean (unregistered) in reply to HAXIMUS PRIME
    HAXIMUS PRIME:
    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."

    I don't have to imagine it, I have done it -- I've seen comments that were written before I began working there, and didn't understand the joke references, and guess what? I thought "yeah this dude knew what he was doing." Why? Because the code made sense and the comments described it. If you think someone was an idiot because of their sense of humor, while literally looking directly at tangible results of their competency, then perhaps you're the idiot. The problem here is the fact that the comment didn't actually explain which warning was being suppressed and why, not that it was called "stupid".

  • (cs) in reply to Meep
    Meep:
    TRWTF are comments that don't tell you anything you can't get by looking directly at the code and reading simple English words. 
    // We don't need these stupid warning messages PMJ
#pragma warning( disable : 4507 34 )

    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!

    // Suppress stupid warnings about long namespaces
#pragma warning( disable : 4507 34 )

    Is that so fucking hard?!

    This, so much this. Should be featured.

  • Magarshn (unregistered)

    I always hear the "Don't write your initials when you've got Version Control", but I disagree.

    Why dig through the version history every time when you can just have the name right there. It's even more useful when someone leaves a timestamp with it. If you are just looking over a piece of code cause you have to fix or investigate something, you don't go straight to version history every time to see which piece was added when and why

  • 2nd dead. (unregistered) in reply to Roby McAndrew
    Roby McAndrew:
    I refuse to take part in that as it doesn't list Noo-Noo.

    Seconded.

  • Papa Smurph (unregistered) in reply to Stupid
    Stupid:
    I find it smurphy that people can put smurphing comments into their code or repository comments. Heaven forbid you have some smurphing fun while at work. OMFG, some smurphy person might not have a sense of humor. Well, smurph on them!

    FTFY

  • (cs) in reply to CigarDoug
    CigarDoug:
    eman_ruoy:
    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.

    The President's daughter gave my son a crappy doughnut, and let me assure you it was no laughing matter.
    I am not a crappy doughnut, you bastard!
  • Tux "Tuxedo" Penguin (unregistered) in reply to GunShowTrash
    GunShowTrash:
    OK, I'll add a True-Life Adventure.

    Be me. Be embedded software at St Louis defense contractor. Inherit incomplete firmware from another (young) software engineer. Work together to finish design; I complete integration and test.

    Module comment header:

    [Firmware Title] A [Silly Ass Name] Production Original Story by [Guy Who Started It] Screenplay by [Guy Who Started It and My Name] Directed by [My Name]

    I get written up for "Unprofessional comments in source code."

    These people have no sense of humor. I bail on defense industry.

    You made my day. I saluto you for that!

  • Rocky Mountain Coder (unregistered)

    But then there's the question: Why does Australia even have a defense department? With the stories and photos you see about the wildlife, you'd think their national defense plan would be to let them invade, and then sit back and watch them (the invaders) die.

  • Friedrice The Great (unregistered) in reply to Rocky Mountain Coder
    Rocky Mountain Coder:
    But then there's the question: Why does Australia even have a defense department? With the stories and photos you see about the wildlife, you'd think their national defense plan would be to let them invade, and then sit back and watch them (the invaders) die.
    Gotta protect themselves from all those non-white boat people, y'know.

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