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Admin
The worst part is "fiscal year" means different things in different countries. Which is the starting week? The week starts on Sunday, Monday or some other day? Does the fiscal week match the normal week or is something like Thursday to Wednesday? Do you consider the whole week if the period doesn't start at the begining of the week or just the days after? And let's not forget about legacy systems using outdated date ranges because they were implemented before the local law changed and can't be replaced because they're "critical infrastructure" or updated because nobody knows how so all data imported into them has to be "corrected". Been there, done that, got the dead neurons because of it. :)
Admin
For me the biggest WTF is
subtract ... minus .... If you're going to use pseudo English in your computer language, at least make it something like actual English.is what it should be. Having just looked up the equivalent COBOL statement, I see it went the right way, which is my way.
The secnod biggest WTF is any new system where the specification is "do whatever the old system does". This is always a red flag because, if there is a spec for the old system, it is likely out of date and the knowledge of what the old system does is distributed amongst everybody who uses it and the really important expensive function is in the head of the one person you didn't interview because they were off sick or something.
Admin
Thanks god almighty I never had to write anything in IQ or COBOL. (I did some reading about COBOL out of curiosity, and immediately tried my best to forget everything about it.)
Admin
It really could be worse: it could be written in MUMPS.
Admin
Now you make me want to start reading about COBOL. What is wrong with me?
Admin
The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) will be very annoyed that this report shows all their costs, and also uncovers they have a "in the middle man" (ITMMAN) amongst them - maybe one who is not really up to standard use of language (as mentioned above), multiplying something times (instead of "with") someting else...
Admin
Writing things in MUMPS is fine. Reading them afterwards is a whole different thing! (every command in MUMPS can be abbreviated to a single character. A crash dump looks like line noise)
Admin
"Thanks god almighty I never had to write anything in IQ or COBOL. " I made up for you. I wrote an OS/2 Presentation Manager program (i.e. GUI) mostly in C, but boss' boss was unhappy because ("Nobody knows C.") (This was early 1990's.) He insisted part of the program be written in COBOL. And if that doesn't make you shutter, I'm not sure what will.
Admin
Please. The obvious WTF here is the same as in any language: no comment was added to explain the sure-to-be-baffling-in-the-future code. Let's face it, if there had simply been a line "* THIS IS ACTUALLY A YEAR PLUS TWO MONTHS BECAUSE H.R. WANTS 14 MONTHS" then this wouldn't even have been submitted.
Admin
Considering that, in 1990, C was the single most popular programming language in the world with Ada being a distant second, you boss was definitely out of touch. Oh, and it's "shudder", not "shutter" :-).
Admin
Indeed,
SUBTRACT x FROM y GIVING zis the analogous COBOL syntax. IQ looks like it was inspired by COBOL, I wonder why they changed this. Maybe they only use the FROM syntax when subtracting in place (as happens when there's no GIVING clause).I can't find IQ syntax documentation. When I google "intelligent query" I only find something associated with Microsoft SQL-Server.
Admin
I maintain a product that started with MUMPS. I have 40-year old routines written when every byte was sacred. Newer implementations ("Cache Object Script") allow/encourage full command names, variables with names longer than 2 characters, and actual white space. Much easier to read, but a bit jarring when a new method was added to an original routine.
Admin
At least both reports will be consistently wrong on leap years.
Admin
Fiscal year was invented to solve this exact problem. An organization's fiscal year is exactly what they say it is. It isn't modified by culture, conventions, or calendars. An organization whos weekly cycle is more important that its monthly cycle (maybe they do most of their business on Saturdays and Sundays) might make a fiscal calendar of thirteen fiscal months, each having exactly four weeks and always starting on Monday. They'll decide when to have 52 week years and when to have 53 week years to keep the cycle consistent in whatever way makes performance evaluation easier.
Most organization make a dates table that has a column with the date, and one for each of the metadata fields. e.g.: FiscalYear, FiscalMonth, IsHoliday, etc. They don't use dat functions like DATEPART to find out the year, they joint to the table. Shortly after leadership decide the structure of a future fiscal year, IT adds the days for that year to the table.
Admin
Nothing wrong with MUMPS. Compact, powerful and easy to learn and work with. Spent nearly 10 years coding in DSM-11 & VAX-DSM and still miss it. Yes, you could write rubbish using it, but look at the contributions to this site....
Admin
I don't know IQ, but you might be right. It may be analogous to the subtle difference between SUBTRACT x FROM y GIVING z. and COMPUTE z=y-x.
Admin
Probably SAP IQ. It was released in1990. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_IQ and references at end for syntax.
Admin
"Oh, and it's "shudder", not "shutter" :-)." Well, unless you mean hiding in your house and covering the windows as best as you can. But otherwise, you're right.
Admin
Substract minus 426 isnt equivalent to add 426 ?