The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Remember, Remember the Thirty-Third of November

by Dan J. in CodeSOD on 2013-10-28

Some say that time is nothing but an illusion. The degree to which some software developers struggle with times and dates certainly suggests mysterious and unknowable forces swirling beyond the brink of human understanding. Consider this code that Ian found while pruning an old application. It's meant to provide the correct suffix for any given day of the month:

string num = "th";

int day = Convert.ToInt16(DateTime.Now.ToString("dd"));
switch(day)
{
    case 1:
        num = "st";
        break;
    case 21:
        num = "st";
        break;
    case 31:
        num = "st";
        break;
    case 2:
        num = "nd";
        break;
    case 22:
        num = "nd";
        break;
    case 3:
        num = "rd";
        break;
    case 33:
        num = "rd";
        break;
    default:
        num = "th";
        break;
}

105 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-14

Decode("&#13;")

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2013-10-22

A quick and easy way to generate WTF code is to find some deceptively simple problem that’s been well solved, and reimplement a naive solution to the problem.

Ryan found this attempt to handle HTML encoding of key characters. This code is VB.NET, which is important to keep in mind, since the Framework provides a variety of methods to do this correctly.

78 comments - Last comment @ 2024-01-18

A Scrubbing Bubble

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-10-17

Matt was thrilled.

Finally, at long last, he had received the opportunity to rewrite one of the company's most overly complicated, fault intolerant, and important services. Over the years, it had achieved a "widowmaker" status where it was famous for crashing whenever it encountered one bit of uncommon (like accented characters) or mis-keyed data, often at the most busiest periods. There was talk among the teams for years of re-engineering the process but, because of its reputation, the code was deemed too gnarly and therefore too costly to fix...until now.

107 comments - Last comment @ 2013-10-26

Which Would YOU Rather Support?

by snoofle in CodeSOD on 2013-10-15

To populate a temporary database table, most of us would write something like this:

-- Assume table TempData exists
Truncate table TempData;
Insert Into TempData
Select ... From ... Where id = 1234 and Flag Is Not NULL;

77 comments - Last comment @ 2022-02-06

The Senior Format

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2013-10-09

Alex W. used to work with a “senior” C# developer. This “senior” developer’s resume proudly proclaimed that he had 15 years of experience developing in C#.

That “senior” developer has long-since moved on to more senior pastures , but he left behind code like this:

102 comments - Last comment @ 2019-05-13

83.3% Uptime

by Erik Gern in CodeSOD on 2013-10-07

It was the klaxon noise that Jacky hated the most. If there was even a whisper of the word “hacked,” Mr. Cullen would sound the alarm.

“All-hands meeting, boardroom, right now,” Mr. Cullen said. He left the klaxon on as the employees of Red Feather assembled in the boardroom. “The webserver,” he said gravely, “is no longer responsive. We’re being hacked as we speak.”

78 comments - Last comment @ 2013-10-18

854

by Erik Gern in CodeSOD on 2013-10-02

Troy, lead developer at IniTechMobile, should have known better.

The company was moments away from launching an Android port of their popular app, WereWolfTasks. The task management app plays a video of a transforming werewolf if the user doesn’t complete his to-do list before a full moon. Because IniTechMobile was an iOS shop, they outsourced the Android port to VampMobile, an eastern European company that specialized in iOS to Android ports.

The app launched on Google Play. Almost immediately, complaints flooded Support’s ticket log. "The werewolf video is all smushed when I rotate my phone!" "My tasks keep getting erased every time my phone restarts!" "Why are the tooltips all in Romanian?"

64 comments - Last comment @ 2013-10-07

Recent CodeSOD

Remember, Remember the Thirty-Third of November

Decode("&amp;#13;")

A Scrubbing Bubble

Which Would YOU Rather Support?

The Senior Format

83.3% Uptime

854

Decode("")