The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: When it's OK to GOTO

by Alex Papadimoulis in CodeSOD on 2025-06-25

Where did you GOTO on your vacation? Nowhere. GOTO is considered harmful. Original --Remy

Everybody knows that you should never use "goto" statements. Well, except in one or two rare circumstances that you won't come across anyway. But even when you do come across those situations, they're usually "mirage cases" where there's no need to "goto" anyway. Kinda like today's example, written by Jonathan Rockway's colleague. Of course, the irony here is that the author likely tried to use "continue" as his label, but was forced to abbreviate it to "cont" in order to skirt compiler "reserved words" errors.

16 comments - Last comment @ 19:02

Classic WTF: The Core Launcher

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2025-06-24

As our vacation continues, we might want to maybe play some video games. What could possibly go wrong? Original --Remy

“You R haccking files on my computer~!!!” Charles Carmichael read in a newly-submitted support ticket, “this is illigle and I will sue your whoal compiny. But first I will tell every1 nevar to buy youre stupid game agin.”

The bizarre spelling and vague threats were par for the course. After all, when you market and sell a game to the general public, you can expect a certain percentage of bizarre and vague customer communications. When that game is a popular MMPORG (no, not that one), that percentage tends to hover around the majority.

11 comments - Last comment @ 16:51

Classic WTF: Python Charmer

by Alex Papadimoulis in Best of… on 2024-07-10

When comparing your language to a snake*, be careful to not get bitten. (*Yes, I know, the name of the language is a reference to Monty Python, not snakes). Original. --Remy

"I don't have a whole lot of experience in Python," writes Jakob, "in fact, when I was hired, the only thing I knew about the language was that whitespace was important."

"Fortunately — actually, unfortunately — it doesn't take a whole lot of experience in Python to recognize that my company's codebase is... well... sub-optimal. Submitted for your approval is a method used to generate a password, found in our network security library."

12 comments - Last comment @ 2024-07-19

Classic WTF: What's in a Name?

by Alex Papadimoulis in Best of… on 2024-07-09

We continue our summer break. Sometimes, you need to make a bad choice in your design, and you can often "fix" that, with documentation. "Don't touch the sharp pointy bit." But, not to spoil the ending, sometimes the documentation raises more questions than it answers. Original. --Remy

The year was 1993, and that meant one thing: Old Iron was finally ready for ~~the scrap yard~~ retirement after nearly fifteen years of faithful service to the university. Technically, the MVS-based mainframe had been well past its prime for quite a many years, but since it was used primarily as a data repository for research projects, no one seemed to mind. But what they would mind, however, was any sort of downtime in the transition to the new, UNIX -based research computer, so it was up to Todd M. Lewis to figure out how to ensure things went smoothly.

In order to give researches the opportunity to learn their way around Unix and adjust their processes for the new environment without disrupting ongoing work on Old Iron, Todd set up a migration process that would pull MVS data sets from the backup system (as not to interfere with “live” data sets users may be using) and copy them to an archive on the UNIX server. From there, users could check out copies from this archive and work with them under UNIX to hone their processes. If they screwed up the data, they could just check it out again from the archive.

5 comments - Last comment @ 2024-07-15

Classic WTF: XML Anybody?

by Alex Papadimoulis in Best of… on 2024-07-08

We're taking our summer break, which means we reach back into the archives and find some classics. This one teaches you everything you need to know about generating XML. --Remy

XML is an absolutely wonderful innovation. It allows us to easily describe and share just about any data immaginable. Of course, there's always gotta be someone (as Tim points out) who has to go and ... well ... see for yourself ...

11 comments - Last comment @ 2024-07-15

Classic WTF: Worse Than Failure

by Alex Papadimoulis in Best of… on 2023-11-23

So, it's a holiday in the US, and I'll be honest: the way I pick my holiday posts is by hitting the "Random Article" button until something fun pops out. And this time around, it gave me something to be thankful for: that this remains "The Daily WTF" and not… something Worse Than Failure. --Remy

Final Update: thankfully this is all nothing but an embarrassing memory.

As you can probably tell by now, The Daily WTF is now named Worse Than Failure. Don’t worry – nothing else is changing – it’s still the same ole’ WTF.

14 comments - Last comment @ 2023-11-25

Classic WTF: Insecurity Doors

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2022-11-24

It's Thanksgiving day in the US, and today, I'm thankful I'm not the person who had to spend the weekend hastily attaching baffles to 650 doors in a skyscraper because no one thought about how motion sensors worked. Original --Remy

It was a heck of a party and everyone was invited, from the executive vice president to the janitorial staff. There was champagne, shrimp, cake, and even a string quartet. There were door prizes, balloons, and all sorts of bank-branded knickknacks being given away. And it was all for good reason: the bank had just completed its high-tech, sixty-five story downtown corporate headquarters, and it was the tallest building within a three-hundred mile radius.

Virtually no expense was spared for the bank's skyscraper: a renowned architect was commissioned to design the building, skilled artisans adorned the corridors with marble statues, acoustical consultants made sure the lobby had just the right echo, and, most importantly, the world's foremost security firm was brought in to lock things down tighter than Fort Knox. It was considered less of a building and more of a work of art. The pinnacle of this creation was the high-tech sliding doors used throughout the building; this was the first time that StarTrek-esque doors were used on such a large scale.

18 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-04

Classic Errord: Phone Pain

by Alex Papadimoulis in Error'd on 2022-10-21

We're reaching back for a blast-from-the-past for today's Errord, all the way from 2009. How little things really change. Original - Remy

"This phone booth in Windhoek is obviously in distress," Chris Pliers writes, "who should I call?"

22 comments - Last comment @ 2024-07-23