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: Yet Another gem from the VB6 code I'm "porting"

Dan Neely21-Feb-14 7:04

Dan Neely

21-Feb-14 7:04

Rob Grainger wrote:
"Looks like some VB4 code" - apparently not, the company was born in 2003!

The brain guilty of creating that code must have been ossified for at least 6 years then. (VB5 came out in 97.)

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius

Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt

It won't take no for an answer

Pedro H. Fialho18-Feb-14 2:54

Pedro H. Fialho

18-Feb-14 2:54

Just found this:

private void trySave(ref clsWord objWord, string strFullPath, Format format)
{
    try
    {
        objWord.save(strFullPath, format);
    }
    catch (InvalidOperationException ex)
    {
        if (ex != null)
        {
            trySave(ref objWord, strFullPath, format);
        }
    }
}

modified 18-Feb-14 9:11am.

Re: It'll not take no for an answer

André Kraak18-Feb-14 3:05

André Kraak

18-Feb-14 3:05

Quote William Edward Hickson[^]:
'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again.

Re: It'll not take no for an answer

OriginalGriff18-Feb-14 4:37

OriginalGriff

18-Feb-14 4:37

Yeah, but your version stops after three goes... Laugh | :laugh:

Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

Re: It won't take no for an answer

LynxEnvoy18-Feb-14 7:55

LynxEnvoy

18-Feb-14 7:55

And what's that ex != null for? Laugh | :laugh:

Re: It won't take no for an answer

Pedro H. Fialho19-Feb-14 1:50

Pedro H. Fialho

19-Feb-14 1:50

For a moment I thought about that, but then I just gave up trying.

Re: It won't take no for an answer

thatraja19-Feb-14 3:09

thatraja

19-Feb-14 3:09

I think he got NullReferenceException so added that condition to avoid the error

thatraja

Code converters | Education Needed
No thanks, I am all stocked up. - Luc Pattyn
When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is - Henry Minute

Re: It won't take no for an answer

Bernhard Hiller18-Feb-14 21:45

Bernhard Hiller

18-Feb-14 21:45

Well, eventually it will, but detrimentously: the StackOverflowException won't be dealt with at this place.

Re: It won't take no for an answer

Vladimir Svyatski19-Feb-14 3:17

Vladimir Svyatski

19-Feb-14 3:17

The code is complete bullshit!

What is the point of using ref? objWord is not assigned any value. I guess, the author has never heard of reference types and value types, doesn't differentiate them and also is a former C++ developer.
If an exception is generated, a variable, representing it, can NEVER be null. And the check
C#
```
ex != null
```
just looks stupid.
Also, it will sound very upsetting for the author, but if the exception mentioned above is ever generated, he is about to face an infinite recursion, hence he will also face the full power of the StackOverflowException.

Summarizing the above, I'd say he better work in McDonald's. To get a chance to become a manager Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

, that is a real chance to afford Ford Mustang GT... someday $Shucks | :-\$ .

lifecycle of a lifecycle of a lifecycle

Re: It won't take no for an answer

Pedro H. Fialho19-Feb-14 3:44

Pedro H. Fialho

19-Feb-14 3:44

Lol. Btw, to add some background, I'm a contractor at a company that bought another company in the same business. A very successfull software came in the bundle (and of course they plan to merge its features into their own software), but little to no documentation came along and now people are having a hard time figuring ~~bugs~~ things out.

It is BS at so many levels, indeed, but the other products make up for it.

Re: It won't take no for an answer

dexterama19-Feb-14 7:19

dexterama

19-Feb-14 7:19

The good news is that developer's probably not writing code anymore. Probably your boss by now!

"If Crime Fighters fight crime, and Fire Fighters fight fire, what do Freedom Fighters fight?" - George Carlin

Re: It won't take no for an answer

Brisingr Aerowing26-Feb-14 11:04

Brisingr Aerowing

26-Feb-14 11:04

Gender doesn't matter

T Pat10-Feb-14 20:28

T Pat

10-Feb-14 20:28

Few days back I came across following code

if(gender.contains('male'))
{
 DoMaleThing();
}
else
{
DoFemaleThing();
}

Was not sure whether my colleague was knowing that 'female' option also contains 'male' in it.
Had a great laugh with my TL when I showed him this. Laugh | :laugh:

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Re: Gender doesn't matter

Nicholas Marty10-Feb-14 20:36

Nicholas Marty

10-Feb-14 20:36

Well... Didn't you know it would have been discriminating otherwise Poke tongue | ;-P

Re: Gender doesn't matter

T Pat10-Feb-14 21:59

T Pat

10-Feb-14 21:59

Ohh..now I understood the code who wrote this is a lady D'Oh! | :doh:

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Re: Gender doesn't matter

Jörgen Andersson10-Feb-14 20:38

Jörgen Andersson

10-Feb-14 20:38

If you put some effort to it you can mess up an enum too.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated.
- Jeff Ello[^]

Re: Gender doesn't matter

Bernhard Hiller11-Feb-14 21:55

Bernhard Hiller

11-Feb-14 21:55

Lost in translation? It would work in most other languages.
Also, he could consider: ladies first!

Re: Gender doesn't matter

Nagy Vilmos11-Feb-14 22:06

Nagy Vilmos

11-Feb-14 22:06

Years ago, I worked on a pension system and one of the calculations was to find the retirement age, the standard function was [converted to C# as I can't remember Prolog]:

int normalRetirementAge()
{
  if (isMale())
  {
    return 65;
  }
  else
  {
    return 60;
  }
}

Now, one client had everyone on their scheme retire at 60 irrespective of sex, the proposed solution by the PFY:

int normalRetirementAge()
{
  if (isMale())
  {
    return 60;
  }
  else
  {
    return 60;
  }
}

speramus in juniperus

Re: Gender doesn't matter

BillW3313-Feb-14 10:10

BillW33

13-Feb-14 10:10

Sure, gotta leave the if/else logic in there in case it is needed later. Wink | ;)

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

Re: Gender doesn't matter

ZurdoDev12-Feb-14 1:00

ZurdoDev

12-Feb-14 1:00

That's funny.

Perhaps it's like mailman. Could be either male or female. Smile | :)

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

Re: Gender doesn't matter

Matt T Heffron13-Feb-14 10:44

Matt T Heffron

13-Feb-14 10:44

RyanDev wrote:
Perhaps it's like mailman.

which evolved to "letter carrier" (because "mailperson" still sounds like it is referring to "male")
like "stewardess" became "flight attendant"

VMWare logic

Bernhard Hiller5-Feb-14 20:29

Bernhard Hiller

5-Feb-14 20:29

After Jenkins built the setups, it starts a virtual machine, installs our programs there, and performs some integration tests.
Just recently our server has been migrated from VMWare Server to vSphere.
In order to start with a "clean" machine, a snapshot is restored - that can be done only when the machine is powered off. But I get an error when trying to power off the virtual machine:

Quote:
The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state.

Well, true, the virtual machine is already powered off, and consequently it cannot be powered off... Logic, isn't it?

Re: VMWare logic

Andrius Leonavicius7-Feb-14 6:56

Andrius Leonavicius

7-Feb-14 6:56

Yes, it is. Laugh | :laugh:

But it would be more logical if we wouldn't be able to power off the machine, which is already powered off. Smile | :)

Re: VMWare logic

Brisingr Aerowing10-Feb-14 15:16

Brisingr Aerowing

10-Feb-14 15:16

AFAIK, VBox simply returns 0 (Success) if you try to power off a machine that is already powered off through the VBox Management API, which makes sense to me.

But what to try?

Marc Clifton4-Feb-14 5:28

Marc Clifton

4-Feb-14 5:28

As found in some VB code:

Try
Catch ex As Exception
End Try

I may be posting a lot of these things here, as I finally got hold of the VB code that was for the previous system, that we're re-writing in C#.

It's bound to be full of gems like this.

Marc

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