The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

I can't help but wonder how their interview process goes... I guess somehting like this: Manager: Can you press keys on a keyboard? Candidate: Yes Manager: When can you start?

Steve_The_Cynic · 2024-12-19 Reply Edit Admin

This stumped them, as the following C# code only ever printed out a zero

Well, duh. new DateTime(), according to what I can find(1), initializes the internals of the DateTime to all zeroes (and most definitely not to a representation of "now"), so the "timestamp" would be 0+0+0 (hour, minute, second).

So:

I don't think this actually only ever printed out a zero. It certainly didn't print out a timestamp, but it also didn't print out a zero. So not only is the code bad, but the understanding of how it's bad is also bad. It's bad. Bad. Bad.

The code is bad, but the article's writer (that is, our friend RemyP), sad to say, is ALSTWTF.

("At least somewhat the WTF")

(1) My language of choice is normally C++, with a descent into madness ^W C when necessary (the codebase is an unholy mix of the two, and dosed with plenty of its own WTFs...)

Addendum 2024-12-19 07:03: And by 0+0+0, I mean the actual arithmetic sum of the three zeroes, that is, 0.

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

Maybe they were really at a blackboard. Back when I started, dotnetfiddle wasn't a thing, but now it is. Please show it to any .NET beginners.

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

Yes, new DateTime() initializes everything to 0. To get the current time, one needs to use DateTime.Now or DateTime.UtcNow

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

Was that co-worker a (former?) javascript developer? There a new Date() returns the current date+time, while in C# (as mentioned before) it returns a fixed value: DateTime.MinValue (=01/01/0001 00:00:00)

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

Where I work, the hiring process (for developers) includes a programming test where the candidate writes pseudo code to solve a fairly simple problem. I highly recommend this approach...

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

Yes, DateTime is a struct in C#, which as a general rule will be created with default values when invoked via a parameterless constructor. To get the current time you use DateTime.Now() or DateTime.UtcNow(), and if you want a specific value you can use one of the constructor overloads. Adding a number to a string does concatenate themso this code will print the message prepended by a 0.

Maybe this developer was used to Javascript where date objects initialise to the current time, but even then, adding the minute, second and millisecond together would give you a number rather than a concatenation. A common way to get around this in JS would be to start the addition with "" +, so a marginally more useful version in Javascript would be

let d = new Date;
let timestamp = "" + d.getMinutes() + d.getSeconds() + d.getMilliseconds();
let message = "hello world";
console.log(timestamp + message)

2024-12-19 Reply Admin

1980s hiring technique. We used to say that if you could spell the world "computer" with only a couple of errors then you were in.

mynameishidden · 2024-12-19 Reply Edit Admin

During Dotcom era, my consulting employer hired anyone with a pulse, I was handed an employee who did not understand for loops, and I was expected to have him bill 40 hrs a week. I wound up doing my work plus his, and sent him to training continuously, up until we went out of business...

tom103 · 2024-12-19 Reply Edit Admin

I don't think this actually only ever printed out a zero

It does. DateTime is a struct, so new DateTime() initializes an instance of it with all zeros, i.e. 01/01/0001 00:00:00

2024-12-19