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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SavageMessiah: Jan 28, 2009; Emotionally drained and spookified; Toilet Rascal

Fair enough. It is a bit of a pain to get utf16 out of it - you have to cast to []rune, then use unicode/utf16 to get []uint16, and then use encoding/binary to turn that into a []byte with whichever endianness you need.

# ? Nov 29, 2012 16:03

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# ? May 16, 2024 12:21

slam5000: Aug 19, 2012

The only word I have in my vocabulary to describe the following
formatting of java code, would have to be "Horrifying":

code:

	{}aabx.setTransform(
	new AffineTransform())
        ;i++;{}Point mousescreen
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	screenMouseLoc
       ;{}Point2D.Float mouseworld
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	worldMouseLoc
	;{}

This was written by a friend of mine who's new to programming, and even though he's new, I have no idea where he learned (or rather got the idea in his head) that it's ok to just throw in blocks in wherever the hell you want, and put your semi-colons at the START of the line!

# ? Nov 30, 2012 04:45

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

slam5000 posted:

This was written by a friend of mine who's new to programming, and even though he's new, I have no idea where he learned (or rather got the idea in his head) that it's ok to just throw in blocks in wherever the hell you want, and put your semi-colons at the START of the line!

I'm more interested in what purpose he gives those squiggly {} things.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 08:26

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

Tilt your head to the left.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 08:58

Wheany: Mar 17, 2006; Spinya^{ha^{ha^haha}ha}ha_{ha_{ha_haha}ha}ha!; Doctor Rope

So this is the person who jslint was made for.

Yes I know Java is not Javascript, but he needs his feelings hurt the jslint way.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 09:08

Extortionist: Aug 31, 2001; Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

I came across something like this today, in some older code written by one of our more senior programmers that's still being used for live, production work:

Perl code:

@somearray = ( "this work has been updated", "updated",
               "this work hasn't been updated", "same",
               "this work is new", "new"
               # and so on
              );

$somearray_len = @somearray;
$counter = 0;

while ($counter < $somearray_len){
    my $var1 = $somearray[$counter];
    $counter++;
    my $var2 = $somearray[$counter];
    # do stuff
}

This was, by far, the sanest and most comprehensible part of the program.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 09:46

omeg: Sep 3, 2012

slam5000 posted:

The only word I have in my vocabulary to describe the following
formatting of java code, would have to be "Horrifying":
code:
	{}aabx.setTransform(
	new AffineTransform())
        ;i++;{}Point mousescreen
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	screenMouseLoc
       ;{}Point2D.Float mouseworld
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	worldMouseLoc
	;{}

What the gently caress. :cthulhu:

# ? Nov 30, 2012 09:51

Nippashish: Nov 2, 2005; Let me see you dance!

slam5000 posted:

The only word I have in my vocabulary to describe the following
formatting of java code, would have to be "Horrifying":
code:
	{}aabx.setTransform(
	new AffineTransform())
        ;i++;{}Point mousescreen
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	screenMouseLoc
       ;{}Point2D.Float mouseworld
	 = ZoomAndPanListener.
	worldMouseLoc
	;{}

Every time I look at this I am increasingly more appalled that this guy is apparently using an editor with a <35 character line limit.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 10:08

pigdog: Apr 23, 2004; by Smythe

Extortionist posted:

I came across something like this today, in some older code written by one of our more senior programmers that's still being used for live, production work:
Perl code:
@somearray = ( "this work has been updated", "updated",
               "this work hasn't been updated", "same",
               "this work is new", "new"
               # and so on
              );

$somearray_len = @somearray;
$counter = 0;

while ($counter < $somearray_len){
    my $var1 = $somearray[$counter];
    $counter++;
    my $var2 = $somearray[$counter];
    # do stuff
}
This was, by far, the sanest and most comprehensible part of the program.

Came for awesome perl horrors, left slightly disappointed. Sure he could have just gone for %somehash = @somearray and worked it from there, but hey, TMTOWTDI. Sane and comprehensible is a tall order for Perl programs in the first place.

quote:

Every time I look at this I am increasingly more appalled that this guy is apparently using an editor with a <35 character line limit.

A junior Java dev of ours came from a startup company (where he was senior), where the framework they were working with expected developers to edit Java code literally in a HTML textbox with that kind of line limit.

pigdog fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Nov 30, 2012

# ? Nov 30, 2012 10:44

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

pigdog posted:

Came for awesome perl horrors, left slightly disappointed. Sure he could have just gone for %somehash = @somearray and worked it from there, but hey, TMTOWTDI. Sane and comprehensible is a tall order for Perl programs in the first place.

A junior Java dev of ours came from a startup company (where he was senior), where the framework they were working with expected developers to edit Java code literally in a HTML textbox with that kind of line limit.

Let me guess, and no one told them that you can drag out the size of a textbox in modern browsers?

# ? Nov 30, 2012 15:07

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

Or just copy and paste into an actual text editor.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 16:04

Extortionist: Aug 31, 2001; Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

pigdog posted:

Came for awesome perl horrors, left slightly disappointed. Sure he could have just gone for %somehash = @somearray and worked it from there, but hey, TMTOWTDI. Sane and comprehensible is a tall order for Perl programs in the first place.

He could also have just used a hash in the first place--he didn't use it for anything that wouldn't have been easier with a hash. Probably also worth noting that @somearray and $var1/$var2 are the actual variable names (there's also a $thing that recurs infrequently throughout the program).

Anyway, probably more impressive in the program were the ~200 regular expressions, all trying to match variations of the same relatively simple string. Stuff like:

Perl code:

@regexes = (
    "[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}",
    "[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}",
    "[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}",
    "[0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{1,2}",
    ## and so on for another 200-something lines
    );
foreach $r (@regexes){
    if input =~ m/$r/ {
        ...
    }
}

Slightly more complex than that, and probably complex enough that you'd want to use 2 or 3 regexes, just to make it easier.

But I may be being overly harsh on his code because the program doesn't really work at all, and the fact that it doesn't work creates probably an extra few day's worth of incredibly tedious work a month for a couple unlucky people (though not me, anymore).

# ? Nov 30, 2012 18:16

Polio Vax Scene: Apr 5, 2009

I'm starting to notice a slight trend in one of our developers' scripts.

code:

                    catch (Exception)
                    {
                        //DO Something
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //DO Something
            }

# ? Nov 30, 2012 20:49

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

Manslaughter posted:

I'm starting to notice a slight trend in one of our developers' scripts.

code:

                    catch (Exception)
                    {
                        //DO Something
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //DO Something
            }

Tell him about Pokemon Exception Handling and why it's bad.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 21:01

Zamujasa: Oct 27, 2010; Bread Liar

Ithaqua posted:

Tell him about Pokemon Exception Handling and why it's bad.

My favorite is still echo "mail send... ERROR"; // or use booleans here.

Ithaqua posted:

Tell him about Pokemon Exception Handling and why it's bad.

I don't know why they used Pokemon Exception Handling as the name of that (anti-)pattern, because to be pretty honest that kind of exception handling is exactly what made Pokemon entertaining. :v:

An attempt at googling where that came from (since "// DO something") did reveal this gem, though:

code:

bool exception = false;
try{
    // something
}catch(Exception e){
    exception = true;
}finally{
    if(!exception){
        // i can do what i want here
    } 
}

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10431413/try-catch-finally-do-something-if-no-exception-is-thrown

It makes a little more sense if you read the comments, but at first glance (and even afterwards) it's just a little :psyduck:

worthy.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 21:40

Opinion Haver: Apr 9, 2007

Zamujasa posted:

I don't know why they used Pokemon Exception Handling as the name of that (anti-)pattern, because to be pretty honest that kind of exception handling is exactly what made Pokemon entertaining.

It's because you gotta catch 'em all!

# ? Nov 30, 2012 21:46

Polio Vax Scene: Apr 5, 2009

It's not even the catch(Exception) that scares me. It's the fact that the guy looked at that, thought "yeah, I could throw or something here, but I'll just let it fly :geno:

" and then published. It's doing exactly the opposite of something.

# ? Nov 30, 2012 22:00

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

yaoi prophet posted:

It's because you gotta catch 'em all!

Yup. The worst offender I've ever seen just did this:

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		Go();
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

# ? Nov 30, 2012 22:00

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

Ithaqua posted:

Yup. The worst offender I've ever seen just did this:

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		Go();
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

That's more like Iraqi exception handling.

"There is no exceptions in this program. None. Ever."

# ? Nov 30, 2012 22:04

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

I posted about in an earlier iteration of this thread years ago but I can beat even that:

(to paraphrase,)

C++ code:

int main() {
    do {
        do_entire_program();
    }
    catch (...) {
        throw 1; // this part is not a paraphrase. this is a quote.
    }
    return 0;
}

do_entire_program even threw exceptions. I'm not entirely sure why.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 00:15

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

Ithaqua posted:

Yup. The worst offender I've ever seen just did this:

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		Go();
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

Holy poo poo. Do... like professional programmers, any of them actually do this in production. Because that is the just the most braindead instance of coding by coincidence I've ever seen. Throw out the exceptions, she'll be right, we'll eventually have a working product.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 00:21

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

The only thing that code does is make the program exit cleanly when there's an uncaught exception rather than report an error. It's dumb, but unless it's being called from a batch file that actually bothers to check exit codes it's unlikely to actually cause any problems beyond making it harder to debug things.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 01:00

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

Plorkyeran posted:

The only thing that code does is make the program exit cleanly when there's an uncaught exception rather than report an error. It's dumb, but unless it's being called from a batch file that actually bothers to check exit codes it's unlikely to actually cause any problems beyond making it harder to debug things.

But why would you do that? What's the benefit when you're still going to have to figure out what the exception is?

# ? Dec 1, 2012 01:04

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

Maluco Marinero posted:

Holy poo poo. Do... like professional programmers, any of them actually do this in production. Because that is the just the most braindead instance of coding by coincidence I've ever seen. Throw out the exceptions, she'll be right, we'll eventually have a working product.

Yes, this was done by a professional programmer and it was production code. Some people never learn good practices by never being exposed to them or bothering to learn about them. That's okay in a young developer, you can usually beat sense into them. The guys with 20 years of experience who suck are the really dangerous ones.

The code example I gave above was like that from top to bottom. Every method started with a try block and ended with an empty catch. It was a program that was supposed to be run 24/7 (it wasn't a service because that's harder than a console application run on the task scheduler), so I guess the developer responsible never wanted it to crash.

Note: the application did not work very well or reliably for some reason. But it never crashed!

New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Dec 1, 2012

# ? Dec 1, 2012 01:48

Freakus: Oct 21, 2000

I've got to imagine that people who blindly catch every exception and don't even log it have never had to support their own programs over the long haul. I don't see how else they could continue such a practice.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 02:13

how!!: Nov 19, 2011; by angerbot

Freakus posted:

I've got to imagine that people who blindly catch every exception and don't even log it have never had to support their own programs over the long haul. I don't see how else they could continue such a practice.

I think most people just don't know any better. They don't know it can be done better. I worked on a project once where a 'try/except/pass' pattern could be found once every dozen lines or so. We were constantly having to fix stupid bugs and sometimes it would take a whole week to track down a single bug. But everyone there just thought that was how the job of software developer is supposed to be.

Its sort of like how some people spend their whole lives working for $8 an hour at Walmart instead of learning a skill that will allow them to make hundreds of dollars an hour because they just see their life as what it is and can't imagine anything else.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 07:20

Malloc Voidstar: May 7, 2007; Fuck the cowboys. Unf. Fuck em hard.

C# code:

var r = new int[5];
Assert.IsFalse(r.IsReadOnly); // passes
IList<T> c = r;
c[0] += 1; // works. clearly not readonly
Assert.IsFalse(c.IsReadOnly); // fails

# ? Dec 1, 2012 10:46

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Ithaqua posted:

Yup. The worst offender I've ever seen just did this:

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		Go();
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

Could be worse... Could be

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		while(true)
		{
			Go();
		}
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

# ? Dec 1, 2012 15:52

akadajet: Sep 14, 2003

Maluco Marinero posted:

Holy poo poo. Do... like professional programmers, any of them actually do this in production. Because that is the just the most braindead instance of coding by coincidence I've ever seen. Throw out the exceptions, she'll be right, we'll eventually have a working product.

I've had a manager ask for exactly that before because "we can't crash in production".

# ? Dec 1, 2012 16:12

Flobbster: Feb 17, 2005; "Cadet Kirk, after the way you cheated on the Kobayashi Maru test I oughta punch you in tha face!"

Aleksei Vasiliev posted:

C# code:

var r = new int[5];
Assert.IsFalse(r.IsReadOnly); // passes
IList<T> c = r;
c[0] += 1; // works. clearly not readonly
Assert.IsFalse(c.IsReadOnly); // fails

It's been several years since I dabbled in C#, but... how does this happen? Is this just flat-out bug or is there some remotely rational explanation that I'm missing here?

# ? Dec 1, 2012 16:15

pigdog: Apr 23, 2004; by Smythe

Hughlander posted:

Could be worse... Could be

code:

public static void Main()
{
	try 
	{
		while(true)
		{
			Go();
		}
	}
	catch (Exception) { }
}

public static void Go() 
{
	// Entire application branches off from here
}

You could put actual exception handling code inbetween these { } at the catch statement, and for most programs, end up with excellently handled exceptions.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 16:16

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

Flobbster posted:

It's been several years since I dabbled in C#, but... how does this happen? Is this just flat-out bug or is there some remotely rational explanation that I'm missing here?

http://nitoprograms.blogspot.ca/2009/11/icollection-isreadonly-and-arrays.html

Short answer is that arrays in C# implement multiple interfaces with conflicting definitions of IsReadOnly.

# ? Dec 1, 2012 18:26

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

pigdog posted:

You could put actual exception handling code inbetween these { } at the catch statement, and for most programs, end up with excellently handled exceptions.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Is it so bad to throw exceptions up the call stack until you pass it off to an error handling class?

If so, what's a better way to handle exceptions?

# ? Dec 2, 2012 01:40

Sedro: Dec 31, 2008

Handle exceptions as appropriate when the exception is recoverable and expected. It's fine to handle exceptions in the main, so long as "handling" means logging them and immediately exiting.

# ? Dec 2, 2012 02:05

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Sedro posted:

Handle exceptions as appropriate when the exception is recoverable and expected. It's fine to handle exceptions in the main, so long as "handling" means logging them and immediately exiting.

Yeah, I think that many times Pokemon exception handling gets made fun of it's not clear that the horror isn't catch (Exception), it's the fact that there's nothing in the catch block itself.

# ? Dec 2, 2012 09:53

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

GrumpyDoctor posted:

Yeah, I think that many times Pokemon exception handling gets made fun of it's not clear that the horror isn't catch (Exception), it's the fact that there's nothing in the catch block itself.

Those really are separate horrors, I'd say. Catching all is wrong because you don't know what you will end up catching and thus might never see serious problems, while doing nothing on an exception is just shutting your ears pretending the world (and yourself) to be perfect. So let's call them Pokemon EH and Iraqi EH. I just can't think of a good name for the combination.

# ? Dec 2, 2012 10:08

The Gripper: Sep 14, 2004; i am winner

Sometimes bad code throws exceptions where the only response you could possibly have is "so what? who cares". Sometimes that same bad code throws exceptions for stupid poo poo and you just don't care about anything other than keeping your own code running continuously.

The first case leaves you with either catch (SpecificException) { pass; } because the alternative is logging something you literally don't give any fucks about, and the second case leaves you either with catch (SpecificExceptions) { pass; } assuming you know every stupid exception the code can throw, or catch (Exception) { pass; } if literally no exception that code can throw is of any consequence to you and you just can't be bothered determining what specific exceptions are going to be thrown beforehand.

It's not something you're likely to come across in good code when you're dealing with current, in-house projects, but good lord it comes up way too often when you're dealing with legacy application/library support. I deal with manufacturing machinery from the late 80s and early 90s where the software for it is so flimsy that I spend 90% of my time just out loud saying "holy loving poo poo why are you even telling me about this aaaaAAAAAAA". edit; these are systems where if something legitimately breaks the machines stop running, and regardless of what exception is thrown the original software just restarted the process to try again anyway.

The Gripper fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Dec 2, 2012

# ? Dec 2, 2012 11:44

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Catching all exceptions in Main is fine for production releases, since in the event of a fatal error you can display a pretty error message with an appropriate amount of information rather than whatever normally happens (like a generic .NET exception message followed by an illegal operation), plus you can generate an error report that can be sent in.

Catching all exceptions anywhere other than Main is really dumb though.

# ? Dec 2, 2012 12:40

Gul Banana: Nov 28, 2003

Volte posted:

Catching all exceptions anywhere other than Main is really dumb though.

- a background thread or detached process which reports on its failure
- a WCF service which encodes them into faults
- a library component which needs to encapsulate failures of its own dependencies into a predictable exception type
- auditing code which logs the exceptions then lets them continue up the call stack

# ? Dec 2, 2012 13:20

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# ? May 16, 2024 12:21

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

Volte posted:

Catching all exceptions anywhere other than Main is really dumb though.

Well if, as The Gripper mentions above, have to deal with old, lovely code that throws anything and everything, then you may need to catch them all. But only around the calls to the old code!

# ? Dec 2, 2012 13:23

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