The Weird and The Wonderful

BillW335-Nov-13 4:35

BillW33

5-Nov-13 4:35

I could use that in some old legacy software. It takes a while to shut down. Despite being told to wait, there are users who will use the task manager to force it to turn off immediately. This causes it to stop in the middle of saving settings to an Access DB which often corrupts the DB. So when the user restarts the program it isn’t happy about having a corrupted DB.

Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.

Sentenryu5-Nov-13 6:12

Sentenryu

5-Nov-13 6:12

just hide the window and let the user think it has shut down.

<h>
I'm Brazilian; English and other human languages in general aren't my best skills so I apologise for my less than perfect English...

"Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

"'Sophisticated platform' typically means 'I have no idea how it works.'"</h>

BillW335-Nov-13 8:46

BillW33

5-Nov-13 8:46

We mostly leave the window there so the users won't try to restart it while it is still shutting down. And, yes, they would do this. It really needs a better status report so users don't think it has frozen, but it is old software with no more updates planned.

Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.

Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

patbob21-Feb-14 5:20

patbob

21-Feb-14 5:20

Brisingr Aerowing wrote:
I also include a 'Guru Meditation GUID'

Let me guess. you used to program Amigas years ago, right? Smile | :)

We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

yiangos17-Oct-13 4:16

yiangos

17-Oct-13 4:16

try
{
    //do stuff that may fail
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    throw new Exception(e.Message);
}

This is from an online tutorial I recently came across (thankfully not in CP). Apparently if something goes wrong, one can get ALL the information one needs from the exception message. Why bother with stacktrace etc...

... or that's what the author thought, anyway.

Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων!
(Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!)

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

Sentenryu18-Oct-13 1:06

Sentenryu

18-Oct-13 1:06

"An error has occurred, see the inner exception for details."

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)

"Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

"'Sophisticated platform' typically means 'I have no idea how it works.'"

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

yiangos23-Oct-13 6:57

yiangos

23-Oct-13 6:57

Yeah my point exactly. I'd done that same mistake myself, and thankfully it never got past the testing phase: I got that exact error message, and there was no inner exception to see Smile | :)

, so after a bit of digging, I simply changed my

throw new Exception(ex.Message);

throw;

(Of course, I had an error logging call just before that, otherwise the entire catch block wouldn't make much sense...)

I was just very (unpleasantly) surprised to come across such a basic coding mistake in an online tutorial.

Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων!
(Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!)

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

ZurdoDev18-Oct-13 5:15

ZurdoDev

18-Oct-13 5:15

Quote:
//do stuff that may fail

Well there's the real problem. Why would you purposely write code that may fail. Write it to not fail. Duh!

There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

Lutosław19-Oct-13 5:12

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

19-Oct-13 5:12

I agree -- and not as a joke. In general code should not fail*.

* -- in case you see my code fail: it was by design.

Greetings - Jacek

yiangos23-Oct-13 6:51

yiangos

23-Oct-13 6:51

Continuing on your serious note: the code per se, should not fail, I agree. But the final program may fail at times. Say you have a web request in there, and any of the following occurs:
(a) the remote server times out (e.g. the server is offline)
(b) the remote server has a bug, returning a 500 error
(c) the remote server cannot find the requested resource, returning a 404 error
(d) the remote server forbids access to the requested resource, returning a 403 error

Any of the above results in the web request throwing an exception in YOUR application, but your code is not to blame. So there is a chance that a bug-free program CAN fail. That's why you should have error handling and meaningful error reporting.

Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων!
(Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!)

Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice.

Bill_Hallahan1-Nov-13 17:35

Bill_Hallahan

1-Nov-13 17:35

Bugs happen.

Why care about descriptive names?

Lutosław16-Oct-13 21:34

16-Oct-13 21:34

dbo.tlgn
dbo.tlnc
dbo.tlgp
dbo.tlgpu
dbo.tlgq
dbo.tlgt
dbo.tlgtu
dbo.tlgv
dbo.zm_hlav
dbo.zm_prieb
dbo.zmkv
dbo.zmnor
dbo.zmskc
dbo.zmsvc
dbo.zoz_hlav
dbo.ztlgn
dbo.ztlgnc
dbo.ztlgp
dbo.ztlgpu
dbo.ztlgq
dbo.ztlgt
dbo.ztlgtu
dbo.ztlgv
dbo.zvnor

Don't let me get into database field names... Oh, just some of them:

par1
par2
par3
par4
par5
par6
par7
par8
par9
cpar1
cpar2
cpar3
cpar4
cpar5
cpar6
cpar7
cpar8
cpar9

Greetings - Jacek

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter16-Oct-13 21:47

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

16-Oct-13 21:47

It is in Polish!!!

I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is (V).

Lutosław16-Oct-13 22:03

16-Oct-13 22:03

Uhm, WHAT is in polish? "zm_prieb"? These "names" are meaningless abbreviations of names in polish. No docs of course...

Greetings - Jacek

Argonia16-Oct-13 23:28

Argonia

16-Oct-13 23:28

Jacek Gajek wrote:
cpar1
cpar2
cpar3
cpar4
cpar5
cpar6
cpar7
cpar8
cpar9

I am pretty sure they switched the positions of 2 of the letters Laugh | :laugh:

Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true

Nicholas Marty17-Oct-13 4:30

Nicholas Marty

17-Oct-13 4:30

That's called obfuscation!!! Laugh | :laugh:

phil.o18-Oct-13 4:12

phil.o

18-Oct-13 4:12

How dare you blame someone because you don't know what a ztlgpu is? Poke tongue | ;-P

No memory stick has been harmed during establishment of this signature.

Lutosław19-Oct-13 5:18

Executable that requires elevation

19-Oct-13 5:18

Actually I know what is it, but telling it would require some inappropriate words.

Greetings - Jacek

Had a Boss

michaelbarb14-Nov-13 8:58

michaelbarb

14-Nov-13 8:58

I had a boss once that did not believe in comments. He felt names should be descriptive enough that you should be able to read the program and not need them. Who ever wrote this would find all their personal belongings in a brown card board box the next day.

So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know.

Michael Haephrati15-Oct-13 11:21

Michael Haephrati

15-Oct-13 11:21

I recently worked on a project and at a certain point noticed that the executable that is created requires elevation. It has this icon indicating that an administrator approval is required, and when it is double clicked, the elevation prompt appears.
It drove me craze to remove this setting, as the nature of the software didn't require it to be elevated. I looked at the Manifest section when there are settings related to UAC (User Account Control), but even when I matched these settings to the ones taken from another project, which didn't require elevation, my new project did.
Today, while speaking to another programmer, he told me how to fix that....

Well, my executable had the string "install" as part of it, and when I renamed it to demo.exe, the icon has changed and no elevation any more required. Smile | :)

Richard Deeming15-Oct-13 12:11

Richard Deeming

15-Oct-13 12:11

I'm not sure if there's a complete list anywhere, but the heuristics are documented on MSDN:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530410.aspx[^]

Installer Detection only applies to:

32 bit executables
Applications without a requestedExecutionLevel
Interactive processes running as a Standard User with LUA enabled

Before a 32 bit process is created, the following attributes are checked to determine whether it is an installer:

Filename includes keywords like "install," "setup," "update," etc.
Keywords in the following Versioning Resource fields: Vendor, Company Name, Product Name, File Description, Original Filename, Internal Name, and Export Name.
Keywords in the side-by-side manifest embedded in the executable.
Keywords in specific StringTable entries linked in the executable.
Key attributes in the RC data linked in the executable.
Targeted sequences of bytes within the executable.

Note The keywords and sequences of bytes were derived from common characteristics observed from various installer technologies.

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

Michael Haephrati15-Oct-13 12:40

Michael Haephrati

15-Oct-13 12:40

Thanks. This is really useful information.

Rage15-Oct-13 22:56

Rage

15-Oct-13 22:56

Richard Deeming wrote:
Filename includes keywords like "install," "setup," "update," etc.

What the elephant ?
It checks for filename or keywords to determine if a file is an installer ? I call this epic fail !

~RaGE();

I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb

Dave Kreskowiak16-Oct-13 1:30

Dave Kreskowiak

16-Oct-13 1:30

Yes, it does. Any icons with those words in the names do not show up in the Start menu, even if you pin it.

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]

Dave Kreskowiak