- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
- Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Other Series
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
Hasn’t all of VB.Net been copied directly from classic ASP?
Admin
Don't worry. The message box is probably modal, so the frist time an exception occurs, the server will stop.
Addendum 2024-04-02 06:45: Until somebody logs on tho the console and dismisses the message box.
Admin
Based solely on the snippets... MessageBox could be in ANY namespace... it could do ANY thing. Presuming it is in the Windows.Forms namespace [or evenif in that nape space, it resolves the the typical DLL] is TRWTF!!!!!
Admin
Is that a challenge?
Admin
Well, maybe, but that would require the server application to be configured as a service with the "interact with the desktop" box checked, which is ... suboptimal ... at the best of times.
I'd guess that nobody has ever triggered these exception handlers.
Admin
"I'd guess that nobody has ever triggered these exception handlers." If an exception happens in a forest with no one around, does it really happen?
Admin
Admin
Depends. If it suspends the operation of the service (until someone clicks the button), then yes, it does really happen.
And before the moderators release Yazeran's comment, it occurs to me that the application could be an actual desktop application of some sort that's started when user X logs in at server boot time, and the server must consequently be permanently logged in as user X.
Admin
I worked at a company where the debit card swipe processor service did exactly that for a while. Complete with message box when an error occurred. And even worse...it was written in VB6.
Admin
Nah, the worst one is
ON ERROR RESUME NEXT
; and I'm pretty sure it's the most common one after not handling exception at all in VB.Admin
Even better: If the service stops, the whole server should be rebooted, as this is complete normal and everyone does it that way, because nothing else is even possible... and bonus points for a forced hard reboot a la "This solution is faster! Out valued customers rely on our brillant service!"
Admin
I like the snitch comment :P
Admin
I wouldn't be surprised if the message boxes were left in place but some tool like Buzof dismissed them automatically (or logs their content). On a peramanently-logged-in desktop, regular ex-developer PC, without backups, in an office space where only "involved" people had the key. What could possibly go wrong? VB.NET suggests that anyone can write software. I have seen too many of these amateurish oversights to still find this funny. It's just annoying. Like the WTF colleague who used text boxes for all the values his program on a large UserForm instead of variables because it is "so much easier to see everything that makes up the state", and it was even possible to change values on the fly. Thanks to default properties the code didn't even suggest that controls are used instead of variables. Don't ask about casting. This couldn't even be repaired, just thrown away and rewritten, and said employee moved to a "harmless" place. Unfortunately, I didn't know about TDWTF back in the day, so nothing was kept, otherwise I would love to present this issue here.
Admin
Most programming languages suggest that anyone can write code these days because of all the libraries that are available to do almost anything.
Admin
It's at least as likely that they have an unsolved bug where sometimes the server process stops responding to requests and has to be killed and restarted.
Admin
A logging system that could open a remote malicious website and run its code on the system would also be pretty bad, right? (CVE-2021-44228)
Admin
While minor compared to the rest,
ex.ToString()
includes not only theMessage
but the full stack trace. That rarely looks good in any message box or logging tool.