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.

Re: ERROR_SUCCESS => the successful error

Edward Giles14-Jun-13 21:25

Edward Giles

14-Jun-13 21:25

ERROR_NOT_READY (Get a move on!)
ERROR_CALL_NOT_IMPLEMENTED (Don't try to contact your friend with your laptop)
ERROR_DISCARDED (you threw away your computer!)
ERROR_PIPE_CONNECTED (That's an error?)
ERROR_CANTREAD (Illiterate computer)
ERROR_CANTWRITE (Ditto)

No names, no refences - and not mine.

OriginalGriff6-Jun-13 2:25

OriginalGriff

6-Jun-13 2:25

Have a look at this little beauty, courtesy of QA:

ptotal = Double.Parse(Me.txtt1.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt2.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt3.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt4.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt5.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt6.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt7.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt8.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt9.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt10.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt11.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt12.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt13.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt14.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt15.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt16.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt17.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt18.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt19.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt20.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt21.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt22.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt23.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt24.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt25.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt26.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt27.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt28.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt29.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt30.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt31.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt32.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt33.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt34.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt35.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt36.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt37.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt38.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt39.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt40.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt41.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt42.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt43.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt44.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt45.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt46.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt47.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt48.Text) + _
                         Double.Parse(Me.txtt49.Text) + Double.Parse(Me.txtt50.Text)

O.M.G.

What else can you do, but gaze upon it's plethora of hideous features...Yes, those are all TextBoxes. D'Oh! | :doh:

The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

StM0n6-Jun-13 2:44

StM0n

6-Jun-13 2:44

My, my aren't you a beauty...

OriginalGriff wrote:
Yes, those are all TextBoxes

... and VB.Net?!

Guess, QA felt bored $Shucks | :-\$

(yes|no|maybe)*

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

obermd7-Jun-13 9:27

obermd

7-Jun-13 9:27

I've seen this type of garbage in VC6, VB6, VB.Net, C#, Java, JavaScript, etc. Garbage is garbage - it doesn't depend on the language.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

StM0n7-Jun-13 10:08

StM0n

7-Jun-13 10:08

Agreed... unfortunately Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

(yes|no|maybe)*

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Argonia6-Jun-13 3:25

Argonia

6-Jun-13 3:25

cycles are for w*****s !

modified 6-Jun-13 9:32am.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Sander Rossel6-Jun-13 19:46

Sander Rossel

6-Jun-13 19:46

FormatException in that one line there! Big Grin | :-D

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
    public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Shao Voon Wong6-Jun-13 20:14

Shao Voon Wong

6-Jun-13 20:14

Recently, I just took over some project whose variables are full of such naming. I took time to rename all of them with descriptive names and guess what? I found a bug! Wrong lock is held for a shared resource: programmer make this mistake bcos all the locks are named from lock1 to lock39. I found out because I renamed the locks according to the resource they are supposed to protect.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Simon O'Riordan from UK6-Jun-13 23:06

Simon O'Riordan from UK

6-Jun-13 23:06

Shouldn't the example be in the 'code as war crime' discussion?
Talking of which, I found some code in the Linux Kernel which was obviously written by someone new to C and C++; the error handling was classic VB6 'onerror goto' style.
Open Source; well it works at least, but shouldn't the entry bar be set a little higher than "I'm a VB6 programmer, let's have the party anyway"?

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

MSHYYC7-Jun-13 2:50

MSHYYC

7-Jun-13 2:50

Hey, at least with open source you can find that stuff much easier. If a person knows everyone in the world can see the source code they will try to write the best code they can. When the code is hidden things get much worse.

One time after much wrangling I was finally able to sign an NDA to gain access the source code to some e-commerce software that a customer was using but had become discontinued. I can completely understand their reluctance--even "on error goto" style exception handling would be better than nothing. And, it being e-commerce it would've been nice if the transactions were atomic. Even if I wasn't legally obligated to keep the identity of the "offender" a secret I probably still would--it just be cruel to mock them; they deserve our pity.

I have gained access to closed source via NDA on more than one occasion and horror code has ALWAYS been present and prominent. Every. Single. Time. It is a really big factor in why I do not use closed source software to run my business anymore. It is kind of like how people who have worked in a fast food restaurant chains sometimes stop eating the food there.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Simon O'Riordan from UK9-Jun-13 21:00

Simon O'Riordan from UK

9-Jun-13 21:00

Firstly I'm not dissing Open Source. Just making an observation. I'm quite sure that there is similarly 'bad' code hidden in proprietary. I use nothing but OSS at home(except nvidia) and as much as work will let me, which is why I was trawling the kernel. Besides, the section was in an 'Opened' module which had originally been written as proprietary in the 90s.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

ENOTTY7-Jun-13 3:31

ENOTTY

7-Jun-13 3:31

Actually, jumping out of complicated nested code via goto to an error label is fine in the kernel; what did you expect, setjmp/longjmp?

For your enlightenment: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/04/27/using-goto-for-error-handling-in-c/[^]

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Simon O'Riordan from UK9-Jun-13 21:03

Simon O'Riordan from UK

9-Jun-13 21:03

It certainly works. But when the labelled line merely sets a return value, it would have been more in keeping with C to use multiple return paths.(Perhaps the code was so old the then-compilers couldn't check multiple paths?)

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

ENOTTY10-Jun-13 2:34

ENOTTY

10-Jun-13 2:34

Well, this is keeping with kernel C style, since having one exit point is a well established pattern (not only) there; it makes it easier to argue about the correctness no matter eventual compiler warnings.

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

Fabio Franco7-Jun-13 1:23

Fabio Franco

7-Jun-13 1:23

Oh, what would be of us without VB.Net?

To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

edmurphy997-Jun-13 1:24

edmurphy99

7-Jun-13 1:24

I guess using a For Each is out of the question

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

RafagaX7-Jun-13 4:57

RafagaX

7-Jun-13 4:57

Well I guess he/she didn't know about arrays or for loops.

CEO at:
- Rafaga Systems
- Para Facturas
- Modern Components
for the moment...

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

thrakazog7-Jun-13 6:20

thrakazog

7-Jun-13 6:20

What data are we tracking here with 50 double textboxes on a single screen?

Oops. 4.75255314 should have been in textbox 35 not 37..

Play my game Gravity: Android[^], Windows Phone 7[^]

Re: No names, no refences - and not mine.

OriginalGriff7-Jun-13 8:03

OriginalGriff

7-Jun-13 8:03

That's what's even worse than the code and the design: it's an invoicing system, and these are for the prices he's going to invoice to the customer ... hence the total Sigh | :sigh: