The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Dummy Round

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-12-08

Different languages will frequently have similar syntax. Many a pointy-haired-boss has seen this similarity and thus assumed that, if their programmer knows C, then C++ should be easy, and if they know C++ then going into C# must be trivial. I mean, the languages look the same, so they must be the same, right? Boats and cars are steered by wheels, so clearly if you can drive a car you can pilot a boat, and nothing will go wrong.

Andreas S inherited some code that started at C/C++ and was then ported to C#. The original developers were the sort to reinvent wheels wherever possible, so it's no surprise that they kept that going when they moved into C#.

12 comments - Last comment @ 10:12

Leading From Affronts

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2021-12-06

Scientists frequently need software to support their research, but rarely are strong developers. And why should they be, that software is written to accomplish a goal, and it's the goal which matters to them more than anything about the software itself.

That's where Jared comes in. He worked in a university IT department and his job was simply to write the software the researchers needed. They frequently had a very clear picture of what they needed, along with big piles of math to explain it, plus piles of example input and expected output data.

24 comments - Last comment @ 2021-12-07

A Split in the Database

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-12-02

Oracle is… special. While their core product is their database software, what they actually sell is layers and layers of ERPs and HR systems that run on top of that database. And what they really make money on is the consulting required to keep those monsters from eating your company's IT team alive.

Because these ERPs are meant to be all things to all customers, you also will find that there are a lot of columns named things like attribute3. Your company's custom logic can stuff anything you want in there. "Do as thou wilt," as they say. And suffer the consequences.

27 comments - Last comment @ 2021-12-07

Two Comparisons, Hold the Case

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-12-01

There are a lot of times when we want string comparisons to be case insensitive. It's quite a lot of cases, so every language is going to give us a way to easily specify that's what we want.

Take, for example, this C# code, written by one of Robin's team-mates.

36 comments - Last comment @ 2021-12-03

Filtering Out Mistakes

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-11-30

We all make simple mistakes. It's inevitable. "Pobody's nerfect," as they say, and we all have brain-farts, off days, and get caught up in a rush and make mistakes.

So we use tools to catch these mistakes. Whether it's automated testing or just checking what warnings the compiler spits out, we can have processes that catch our worst mistakes before they have any consequences.

21 comments - Last comment @ 2021-12-05

Are You Doing a Bit?

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-11-29

"Don't use magic numbers," is a good rule for programming. But like any rule, you shouldn't blindly apply it. We know what happens when people do, however: we get constants that might as well be magic numbers.

Still, there are sometimes novel versions of this old song. Shmuel F sends us this one in C:

31 comments - Last comment @ 07:35

Classic WTF: When Comments go Wild

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2021-11-25

It's a holiday in the US, so while we're gathering with friends and family, reminiscing about old times, let's look back on the far off year of 2004, with this classic WTF. Original -- Remy

Bil Simser comments on comments ...

I'm always pleased when I see developers commenting code. It means there's something there that should be commented so the next guy will know WTF whoever wrote it was thinking. However much like any FOX special, there are times when "Comments Gone Wild". I present some production code that contains some more, err, useful comments that I've found.

7 comments - Last comment @ 2021-11-26

Counting Arguments

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2021-11-24

Lucio C inherited a large WordPress install, complete with the requisite pile of custom plugins to handle all the unique problems that the company had. Problems, of course, that weren't unique at all, and probably didn't need huge custom plugins, but clearly someone liked writing custom plugins.

One of those plugins found a need to broadcast the same method invocation across a whole pile of objects. Since this is PHP, there's no guarantee of any sort of type safety, so they engineered this solution:

17 comments - Last comment @ 2021-11-26