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Admin
While leaving commented-out code in there is certainly part of this many-sided WTF, I wouldn't assume it's definitely "old code that has been replaced".
I suspect it's more likely something a developer put in, and commented out, while debugging some issue. It certainly doesn't reflect well on code-review practices that this was left in (let's face it, this feels like the kind of product that doesn't do code reviews, or probably any testing except maybe some fully-manual, happy-path-only testing) - but it could have been worse, at least it got checkef in/deployed with the commented-out version!
Edit Admin
100% possible, certainly.
Admin
If only there was some easy way to find whether an array includes a particular character.
Edit Admin
You can use all the fancy frameworks you want, but if you put bizarre HTML soup inside it then you'll end up with bizarre effects. The amazing thing is that no browser seems to have decided to delete one of the input boxes for daring to have the same ID as the other one, as a "malicious compliance" sort of thing.
Edit Admin
Funny, my router doesn't show stars, it shows " hunter2 you"
Admin
This type of flaky behavior with the password field reminds me of the old fios router that I recently replaced. On that one, the number of asterisks I would see on-screen would vary each time I typed a character. IIRC cut & paste actually worked better than just typing.
Edit Admin
" the number of asterisks I would see on-screen would vary each time I typed a character." Lotus Notes did that as well, but they billed it as a security feature since then someone looking over your should can't tell how many characters are in your password.
Addendum 2026-02-04 12:45: "shoulder"
Edit Admin
I suspect that Lotus Notes varied the number of asterisks because the PLATO system, which inspired the developer of Lotus Notes, varied the number of X characters displayed for each keypress during password entry.
Edit Admin
Hey, that's my DailyWTF password!
Edit Admin
I seriously doubt that. I know a few network engineers who would laugh at their manager's face rather then write a frontend, in JavaScript even less so! More likely the web UI was initially written by whoever intern happened to be around. At worse it was actually written by some graphic designer who thinks he can code.
Admin
It surprises me how many times an employer (or client, in my case, since I'm a consultant) prefers a full-stack developer over a dedicated front-end dev. There is so much specialized knowledge required to properly produce a front-end application; and an equal amount of deep knowledge required to properly produce a back end, that you just can't get (unless you're really lucky) from a full-stack dev.
Edit Admin
As a full-stack developer for the last 17+ years, I cannot find any point to disagree with in your post. I would bet a month's salary (gross) that a good front-end specialist could improve my code in at least five different ways their first day.