The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Speak No Evil, Pat

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2013-05-14

It was with a great deal of enthusiasm that Pat, fresh out of college, joined Multinational Bank. Their technology division was the pride of the financial industry, and the on-boarding session Pat received did not disappoint: he was treated to a full day of slideshows on compliance, whistle-blowing, and, most importantly, ethics.

When on-boarding was complete, Pat's first port of call was one of the bank's many conference rooms. His team was in the process of taking over a project from a remote office via a flurry of emails and conference calls. These were simpler times, before Cisco's robust line of telepresence solutions. If the bank had deployed videoconferencing, as they would a few years later, Pat's story might have turned out very differently.

A Cascade of Failure

by Dan J. in CodeSOD on 2013-05-07

Ben sent in the following snippet from a PHP site. His description of the site as a whole is unpublishable in most countries, but among his frankly shocking profanity he pointed out a lack of error checking and comments, and an abundance of unreadable inline code and confusing, unnecessary functions.

When Ben tried to describe the following routine though, he broke down, weeping openly. While we wait for him to regain his composure, let's ponder the depth of wrong present in this code: