A Form of Reuse
by in CodeSOD on 2021-04-13Writing code that is reusable is an important part of software development. In a way, we're not simply solving the problem at hand, but we're building tools we can use to solve similar problems in the future. Now, that's also a risk: premature abstraction is its own source of WTFs.
Daniel's peer wrote some JavaScript which is used for manipulating form inputs on customer contact forms. You know the sorts of forms: give us your full name, phone number, company name, email, and someone from our team will be in touch. This developer wrote the script, and offered it to clients to enhance their forms. Well, there was one problem: this script would get embedded in customer contact forms, but not all customer contact forms use the same conventions for how they name their fields.