Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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rjmccall: Sep 7, 2007; no worries friend; Fun Shoe

TRex EaterofCars posted:

Yes but you'd run out of matter eventually. I feel dirty for how pedantic this is getting

Heh. That's clearly a limitation on a practical Turing machine, too � in fact, I seem to remember one of the fundamental papers addressing exactly this problem for Turing machines, although I can't find that section now.

There are models of computations requiring infinite simultaneous space, but I don't know much about them. Lenore Blum's work on real-number computability uses abstract operations on abstractly-represented numbers.

# ? Apr 13, 2009 18:36

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# ? May 14, 2024 21:47

pseudopresence: Mar 3, 2005; I want to get online...
I need a computer!

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/OptLocking_PrefixTable.aspx

code:

public object DeepCopy(object value)
{
    try
    {
        return value;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw ex;
    }
}

Hmm.

# ? Apr 14, 2009 10:14

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

Fib posted:

code:

public object DeepCopy(object value)
{
    try
    {
        return value;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw ex;
    }
}

Hmm.

code:

// FIXME: Implement DeepCopy

# ? Apr 14, 2009 10:44

Ferg: May 6, 2007; Lipstick Apathy

Fib posted:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/OptLocking_PrefixTable.aspx
code:
public object DeepCopy(object value)
{
    try
    {
        return value;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw ex;
    }
}
Hmm.

I seriously just came into this thread to post exactly this. A particularly in-your-face-cocky contractor we are hiring right now had about 8 or 9 catches that would just throw the exception right back up to the function that would handle it anyways. I deleted roughly 75 lines of code washing through the file I discovered it in.

# ? Apr 14, 2009 22:12

SiCk: Jul 4, 2003; My name's SiCk, and I'm the Biggest Idiot Ever!

a night or two ago at 2am when i was extremely tired, i wrote this:

code:

<?php
$something = somefunction();
$count = count($something);

if($count > 0){
   print "($count)";
}else{
   print "(0)";
}

?>

sigh.

i realised what i did in the morning.. though, in my defense, at least it worked.

# ? Apr 15, 2009 13:39

mister_gosh: May 24, 2002

Triple Tech posted:

These things, as Perl programmer, piss me off:
code:
@stack = ();
for ($i = 0; $i < scalar @elements; $i++) {
  $temporary = do_something_to $elements[$i];

  push @stack, $temporary;
}
It's abundantly clear this person doesn't know about scope, the context-sensitive return value of an array, foreach loops, and map. God drat.

Forgive me, some of my code may belong in here because I'm having trouble figuring out what is wrong with this code. There's an array of raw elements, they need to be post-processed (whatever do_something_to is) and then put into a new array.

Is it that the elements could have been taken care of (do_something_to) within the original array? Or am I on the wrong path?

# ? Apr 15, 2009 16:23

slipped: Jul 12, 2001

mister_gosh posted:

Forgive me, some of my code may belong in here because I'm having trouble figuring out what is wrong with this code. There's an array of raw elements, they need to be post-processed (whatever do_something_to is) and then put into a new array.

Is it that the elements could have been taken care of (do_something_to) within the original array? Or am I on the wrong path?

Looking at the code screams of someone who is writing perl that does not know perl, but just enough to 'get by', which in turn leads to really lovely perl code. Guessing the person has a c/java background.

for instance, the above could have been rewritten as :
my @stack = map do_something_to, @elements;

# ? Apr 15, 2009 16:40

Triple Tech: Jul 28, 2006; So what, are you quitting to join Homo Explosion?

code:

my @originals = ...;

# copied
my @modified_duplicates = map { frobnicate($_) } @originals;

# "in-place"
@originals = map { frobnicate($_) } @originals;

# in-place (ugly)
$_ = frobnicate($_) for @originals;

It's terse, perlish, parallelizable, and makes great julienned fries!

# ? Apr 15, 2009 16:42

POKEMAN SAM: Jul 8, 2004

Triple Tech posted:

code:

my @originals = ...;

# copied
my @modified_duplicates = map { frobnicate($_) } @originals;

# "in-place"
@originals = map { frobnicate($_) } @originals;

# in-place (ugly)
$_ = frobnicate($_) for @originals;

It's terse, perlish, parallelizable, and makes great julienned fries!

You really like the word frobnicate, don't you? Also I liked your old avatar better.

# ? Apr 15, 2009 19:32

Triple Tech: Jul 28, 2006; So what, are you quitting to join Homo Explosion?

Ugg boots posted:

You really like the word frobnicate, don't you? Also I liked your old avatar better.

Frobnicate is some old geezer word I got used to. What other word would you use in examples?

I liked it better also...

# ? Apr 15, 2009 20:10

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

Ugg boots posted:

You really like the word frobnicate, don't you?

At least it's something other than foo(bar).

# ? Apr 15, 2009 20:42

gold brick: Jun 19, 2001; no he isn't

I just watched someone put hungarian notation on a public member of a class. :gonk:

# ? Apr 15, 2009 22:15

Rapportus: Oct 31, 2004; The 4th Blue Man

I found this in some of my legacy code and couldn't help but laugh.

code:

## Lowercase these files just in case
# -- Let's not, perforce will hate us

# ? Apr 18, 2009 07:18

PrBacterio: Jul 19, 2000

Mick posted:

I just watched someone put hungarian notation on a public member of a class.

... I don't really see how that makes it any more or less bad than any other case of using hungarian notation? :confused:

# ? Apr 18, 2009 13:57

mr_jim: Oct 30, 2006; OUT OF THE DARK

PrBacterio posted:

... I don't really see how that makes it any more or less bad than any other case of using hungarian notation?

If you use it privately, you're only hurting yourself, I guess.

# ? Apr 18, 2009 14:30

gold brick: Jun 19, 2001; no he isn't

PrBacterio posted:

... I don't really see how that makes it any more or less bad than any other case of using hungarian notation?

Maybe it's just me. In any case, the intellisense over the events on that component looks like this now:

DataBinding
DataBound
Disposed
evtMyFooEvent
Init
Load
PageIndexChanged
PageIndexChanging
[etc.]

# ? Apr 18, 2009 15:02

Vinterstum: Jul 30, 2003

Mick posted:

Maybe it's just me. In any case, the intellisense over the events on that component looks like this now:

DataBinding
DataBound
Disposed
evtMyFooEvent
Init
Load
PageIndexChanged
PageIndexChanging
[etc.]

Breaking with the existing code standard of the class is bad form, sure, but a coding horror?

# ? Apr 19, 2009 22:46

Captain Cool: Oct 23, 2004; This is a song about messin' with people who've been messin' with you

I'm working with a variant of the Xerces XML library. After some analysis, I found that the program was spending 70% of its time getting the length of a list. Finally, I dug up the source code.

code:

// revisit
//   this implementation is too stupid - needs a cache of some kind.
//

XMLSize_t DOMNodeListImpl::getLength() const{
    XMLSize_t count = 0;
    if (fNode) {
        DOMNode *node = fNode->fFirstChild;
        while(node != 0){
            ++count;
            node = castToChildImpl(node)->nextSibling;
        }
    }

    return count;
}

It's been like that for at least ten years.

Maybe I should have expected something like that. But the only way I know of to get a NodeList is to call a function that returns it and, hey, getLength, that means they must store the length somewhere.

PrBacterio posted:

... I don't really see how that makes it any more or less bad than any other case of using hungarian notation?

Well, it means you're using public class members
half joke, don't fight

Captain Cool fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Apr 24, 2009

# ? Apr 24, 2009 20:43

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
Poor Taste
Unlawful Carnal Gopher Knowledge

Captain Cool posted:

Well, it means you're using public class members

Not necessarily a coding horror. Full encapsulation doesn't always make sense in the context of the problem.

I once had a friend who returned non-const references in getters argue against public class members. :psyduck:

# ? Apr 24, 2009 20:51

A A 2 3 5 8 K: Nov 24, 2003; Illiteracy... what does that word even mean?

mr_jim posted:

If you use it privately, you're only hurting yourself, I guess.

It's one of those coding practices so stupid that we keep shooting its inventor into space.

# ? Apr 24, 2009 21:09

dancavallaro: Sep 10, 2006; My title sucks

This speaks for itself:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791808/determining-whether-a-number-is-a-prime-number

# ? Apr 27, 2009 14:05

HIERARCHY OF WEEDZ: Aug 1, 2005

Interviewed at a place, wanted to get a grip on the current website code. Found this in java script:

code:

function Login()
{
    if ('' == '')
    {
        SetAuthUrl('/foo');
        Show(); 
        return false;
    }
    else
    {
        document.location = '/foo';
    }
}

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

# ? Apr 27, 2009 14:09

ih8ualot: May 20, 2004; I like turkey and ham sandwiches

dancavallaro posted:

This speaks for itself:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791808/determining-whether-a-number-is-a-prime-number

It's like he just kept adding constructs until he couldn't figure it out.

# ? Apr 27, 2009 14:22

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

dancavallaro posted:

This speaks for itself:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791808/determining-whether-a-number-is-a-prime-number

A question so bad, even StackOverflow shits on it. :pwn:

# ? Apr 27, 2009 17:00

j4cbo: Nov 1, 2004; huh?

λf. (λx. f (x x)) (λx. f (x x))

# ? Apr 27, 2009 20:47

TOO SCSI FOR MY CAT: Oct 12, 2008; this is what happens when you take UI design away from engineers and give it to a bunch of hipster art student "designers"

j4cbo posted:

λf. (λx. f (x x)) (λx. f (x x))

What's the problem here?

# ? Apr 27, 2009 21:11

Vinterstum: Jul 30, 2003

Janin posted:

What's the problem here?

Lambda calculus is a horror in itself.

# ? Apr 27, 2009 21:18

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

Vinterstum posted:

Lambda calculus is a horror in itself.

If you think lambda calculus is bad, try adding continuations.

code:

((call/cc call/cc) (lambda (f) (display "butt!") (newline) (f f)))

# ? Apr 27, 2009 21:28

TOO SCSI FOR MY CAT: Oct 12, 2008; this is what happens when you take UI design away from engineers and give it to a bunch of hipster art student "designers"

Vinterstum posted:

Lambda calculus is a horror in itself.

Math

# ? Apr 27, 2009 21:33

TheSpook: Aug 21, 2007; Spooky!

j4cb0 posted:

λf. (λx. f (x x)) (λx. f (x x))

After five minutes of trying to remember lambda calculus . . . can you explain this?

# ? Apr 27, 2009 21:56

trex eaterofcadrs: Jun 17, 2005; My lack of understanding is only exceeded by my lack of concern.

TheSpook posted:

After five minutes of trying to remember lambda calculus . . . can you explain this?

It's the fixed point function, also called the Y-Combinator.

# ? Apr 27, 2009 22:04

TOO SCSI FOR MY CAT: Oct 12, 2008; this is what happens when you take UI design away from engineers and give it to a bunch of hipster art student "designers"

TheSpook posted:

After five minutes of trying to remember lambda calculus . . . can you explain this?

It's the Y combinator, it can be used to declare anonymous recursive functions.

# ? Apr 27, 2009 22:18

Kilson: Jan 16, 2003; I EAT LITTLE CHILDREN FOR BREAKFAST !!11!!1!!!!111!

shrughes posted:

If you think lambda calculus is bad, try adding continuations.
code:
((call/cc call/cc) (lambda (f) (display "butt!") (newline) (f f)))

A cool thing is that call/cc is its own fixpoint. Gory details here

# ? Apr 27, 2009 23:05

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

Avenging Dentist posted:

A question so bad, even StackOverflow shits on it.

Idea: Post code to Stack Overflow that was pulled from highly rated answers previously found on Stack Overflow, pretending it's yours. Ask for feedback.

"Is it possible for a turd to eat itself?"

# ? Apr 27, 2009 23:08

The Evan: Nov 29, 2004; Apple ][ Cash Money

dancavallaro posted:

This speaks for itself:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791808/determining-whether-a-number-is-a-prime-number

"I've set up a massive switch statement that consists of all the prime numbers up to 271"

He hard-coded a LUT for primes. Mother of god. Somewhere in my deep dark past, I recall reading an optimization suggestion that checking prime-ness is so easy computationally that making a table is a complete waste of memory, even ROM.

What made him stop at 271, anyway?

:psyboom:

# ? Apr 28, 2009 10:02

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

Everybody needs to vote that up.

# ? Apr 28, 2009 11:01

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

Advertisers, as we are all aware, are the abolute scum of the earth. I have to write code to talk to their web affiliate synergy leveraging networks. Basically this means sending users of our site to "URL"s like this:

code:

http://www.scumsuckingadvertiser.com/track?p1(DEADBEEF)p2(12345)url=http://www.example.com/some+other+url?with=a&bunch=of&other=params

Note the way they use param(value) instead of param=value, note that the passed through URL is only escaped once. Pay special attention to the way most browsers will try to fix this broken heap of poo poo so I have to write lovely code to stop them. For example:

code:

http://www.fuckwits.com/?DEADBEEF&url=http://www.example.com/?some=poo poo&goes=here

Given the chance, browsers may "correct" this to:

code:

http://www.fuckwits.com/?DEADBEEF=&url=http://www.example.com/%3Fsome=poo poo&goes=here

This will not work.

And each network is different, each with it's own lovely idea of what a URL is. Every time you have to guess what they intend you to do with this poo poo, and try to guess what they'll send use next week so the whole thing doesn't fall over when they send it.

Zombywuf fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Apr 28, 2009

# ? Apr 28, 2009 17:26

Factor Mystic: Mar 20, 2006; Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

The Evan posted:

"I've set up a massive switch statement that consists of all the prime numbers up to 271"

He hard-coded a LUT for primes. Mother of god. Somewhere in my deep dark past, I recall reading an optimization suggestion that checking prime-ness is so easy computationally that making a table is a complete waste of memory, even ROM.

What made him stop at 271, anyway?

Whoooosh

# ? Apr 28, 2009 17:58

oldkike: Jan 10, 2003; hey

www.pleasegimmeadollar.com

Saw a comment like this today:

code:

I know this violates the coding standards, but who cares anymore

Sad part is, this was new code in a new project, not some maintenance on existing garbage

# ? Apr 29, 2009 02:52

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# ? May 14, 2024 21:47

awesmoe: Nov 30, 2005; Pillbug

oldkike posted:

Saw a comment like this today:
code:
I know this violates the coding standards, but who cares anymore
Sad part is, this was new code in a new project, not some maintenance on existing garbage

I feel for that guy. I found this in our c++ coding standards the other day

quote:

Class Data members are prefixed by \ ie (\foobarsStringDataMember)

just shows the attention and care that's been lavished upon that document.

# ? Apr 29, 2009 03:17

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