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The Weird and The Wonderful

   

The Weird and The Wonderful forum is a place to post Coding Horrors, Worst Practices, and the occasional flash of brilliance.

We all come across code that simply boggles the mind. Lazy kludges, embarrassing mistakes, horrid workarounds and developers just not quite getting it. And then somedays we come across - or write - the truly sublime.

Post your Best, your worst, and your most interesting. But please - no programming questions . This forum is purely for amusement and discussions on code snippets. All actual programming questions will be removed.

 
GeneralIt's alive.....! Pin
Duncan Edwards Jones18-Sep-15 4:42
professionalDuncan Edwards Jones18-Sep-15 4:42 
GeneralRe: It's alive.....! Pin
Richard Deeming18-Sep-15 4:52
mveRichard Deeming18-Sep-15 4:52 
GeneralRe: It's alive.....! Pin
Palash Mondal_18-Sep-15 5:12
professionalPalash Mondal_18-Sep-15 5:12 
GeneralRe: It's alive.....! Pin
phil.o13-Oct-15 1:57
professionalphil.o13-Oct-15 1:57 
GeneralRe: It's alive.....! Pin
Duncan Edwards Jones13-Oct-15 2:18
professionalDuncan Edwards Jones13-Oct-15 2:18 
GeneralRe: It's alive.....! Pin
phil.o15-Oct-15 0:01
professionalphil.o15-Oct-15 0:01 
GeneralWTF Pin
Brisingr Aerowing15-Aug-15 11:46
professionalBrisingr Aerowing15-Aug-15 11:46 
GeneralRe: WTF Pin
Sander Rossel15-Aug-15 13:29
professionalSander Rossel15-Aug-15 13:29 
GeneralRe: WTF Pin
kmoorevs15-Aug-15 14:22
kmoorevs15-Aug-15 14:22 
GeneralRe: WTF Pin
Amarnath S15-Aug-15 18:13
professionalAmarnath S15-Aug-15 18:13 
GeneralRe: WTF Pin
Weylyn Cadwell17-Aug-15 11:31
Weylyn Cadwell17-Aug-15 11:31 
GeneralRe: WTF Pin
User 1013254618-Sep-15 5:38
User 1013254618-Sep-15 5:38 
GeneralIs this the worst code in the world? Pin
Sean McPoland12-Aug-15 20:12
Sean McPoland12-Aug-15 20:12 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
ravikhoda13-Aug-15 0:07
professionalravikhoda13-Aug-15 0:07 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Tim Carmichael13-Aug-15 3:24
Tim Carmichael13-Aug-15 3:24 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? PinPopular
Power Puff Boy13-Aug-15 3:28
Power Puff Boy13-Aug-15 3:28 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Mark Whybird13-Aug-15 20:26
Mark Whybird13-Aug-15 20:26 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Member 1070767713-Aug-15 23:02
Member 1070767713-Aug-15 23:02 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Mark Whybird13-Aug-15 20:47
Mark Whybird13-Aug-15 20:47 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Weston Miller14-Aug-15 3:32
Weston Miller14-Aug-15 3:32 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Kirk 1038982114-Aug-15 4:01
Kirk 1038982114-Aug-15 4:01 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Dan Sutton14-Aug-15 7:24
Dan Sutton14-Aug-15 7:24 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
Dan Sutton14-Aug-15 7:29
Dan Sutton14-Aug-15 7:29 
...although, thinking about it, arguably the worst code in the world came about as a result of an undocumented instruction in the 80286 which Intel originally included for testing.

The way the instruction worked, you filled up an area in page 0 of memory with all the values you wanted all the registers in the chip to have (including instruction pointer, stack pointer, flags, etc.) and whether you wanted to run in real mode (640K) or extended mode (all the memory available) and where in the larger memory map you wanted your 640K to be... and so on - and then you could execute the instruction and the chip would cold-start in that state.

The worst code in the world that I'm talking about, then, was the first version of OS/2, written for that chip, which allowed you to have one - and only one - DOS window running at any time. And - yes - IBM made that work by hooking onto Interrupt 8 (the hardware timer) and cold-starting the 80286 eighteen times a second, flipping between real mode and extended mode each time around. Horrible. Amazingly, it actually worked... I shudder to think what the chipset around the chip was thinking at the time, but there it is.
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
PIEBALDconsult14-Aug-15 7:34
mvePIEBALDconsult14-Aug-15 7:34 
GeneralRe: Is this the worst code in the world? Pin
BrainiacV14-Aug-15 9:43
BrainiacV14-Aug-15 9:43 

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