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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ErIog: Jul 11, 2001

drgn.txt is a coding masterpiece. It's one of the few examples of like truly outsider art in programming, and I have mad respect for that dude smashing forward to his goal while knowing his code is garbage. Then he actually took advice, implemented it, and the poo poo has been greenlighted on Steam. I'd love to have half the ambition and work ethic that guy has.

Every time someone makes a Kickstarter that's like, "my dream is to make games, we need money to hire a programmer" someone should link them to the White Dragon saga. It shows how if you're willing to work hard, even if you're not technically proficient, you can actually get real results. He's my god drat hero.

I've written a bunch of poo poo code, but never poo poo code that was that loving ambitious and actually worked.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 02:08

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# ? May 17, 2024 02:05

Bognar: Aug 4, 2011; I am the queen of France; Hot Rope Guy

Dessert Rose posted:

I had no idea how to store an arbitrary number of things somewhere. Like, I knew what arrays were, and I knew what objects were, I just didn't know how you made an array of dynamic size at runtime.

Then someone showed me linked lists and it blew my mind.

I wrote a reasonably complex online game in mIRC script, before it had hash tables. I was dynamically composing variable names and storing all my player data in .ini files.

I wish I still had the files for that game, it would probably be a magical experience.

I cut my chops in programming with TI-BASIC on the TI-83. You had about 30 easily accessible variables (A-Z, theta, etc.) and some statistical variables that were a bit more annoying to get to, 10 strings (Str0-Str9), and 6 lists of maximum size 999. Oh, also these variables were global to the whole calculator, so they stuck around when you stopped and started your program. Control flow was goto based and there were no functions. The best you could do was load information into some global variables, start execution of another program, and extract information from another global variable. It took a lot of time to unlearn all the terrible practices I picked up from programming calculators all through high school.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 02:59

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

You also had some images that you could store 6144 bits of data in.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 05:34

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

C was the first language I had learned after programming in Applesoft BASIC (with a bit of 6502 machine language). I had my "holy poo poo" moment after leaning about function pointers.

These days dynamic dispatch is taught early, often in the context of C++/Java-style polymorphism or Python/Ruby-style duck typing. But at the time, such a subtlety powerful mechanism built manually from primitive function pointers was absolutely incredible, and changed the way I thought about programming entirely.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 06:07

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

Wow, it's like the bizarro-world, good version of Matthew N. Brown

# ? Feb 25, 2015 06:56

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

What was it that caused all the memory issues, in the end?

# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:00

Tasgall: Dec 13, 2012

ErIog posted:

...and the poo poo has been greenlighted on Steam.

Wait, really? What was the game called? I didn't see the name mentioned in the archive.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 10:02

SupSuper: Apr 8, 2009; At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

Tasgall posted:

Wait, really? What was the game called? I didn't see the name mentioned in the archive.

dʒr�gɛn: A Game About a Dragon

# ? Feb 25, 2015 10:34

Bruegels Fuckbooks: Sep 14, 2004; Now, listen - I know the two of you are very different from each other in a lot of ways, but you have to understand that as far as Grandpa's concerned, you're both pieces of shit! Yeah. I can prove it mathematically.

Bognar posted:

I cut my chops in programming with TI-BASIC on the TI-83. You had about 30 easily accessible variables (A-Z, theta, etc.) and some statistical variables that were a bit more annoying to get to, 10 strings (Str0-Str9), and 6 lists of maximum size 999. Oh, also these variables were global to the whole calculator, so they stuck around when you stopped and started your program. Control flow was goto based and there were no functions. The best you could do was load information into some global variables, start execution of another program, and extract information from another global variable. It took a lot of time to unlearn all the terrible practices I picked up from programming calculators all through high school.

During Calc-1 in high school I wrote a dragon-warrior style RPG that was so large it filled the entire space of the TI-83+'s memory for basic programs.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 11:41

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

Pollyanna posted:

What was it that caused all the memory issues, in the end?

It was the re-loading of all of his textures and sprites every frame.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 13:36

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

My first programming foray was the Linux kernel version 2.6.32-17. :v:

My boss at the time hires me to teach my friend Linux and get a project up and running.

3 years later I was programming low level kernel board startup code. My former boss is a old school c programmer that taught me object oriented C programming.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 14:17

Bognar: Aug 4, 2011; I am the queen of France; Hot Rope Guy

Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:

During Calc-1 in high school I wrote a dragon-warrior style RPG that was so large it filled the entire space of the TI-83+'s memory for basic programs.

Are you me? A friend and I did something very similar in high school. Different maps, random encounters, spells, etc. We ended up learning z80 assembly and writing a lot of the heavy processing things in that (like drawing to the screen), as well as using it for accessing archived memory so all you needed to run the game was a small loader program.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 14:56

Meat Beat Agent: Aug 5, 2007; felonious assault with a sproinging boner

Suspicious Dish posted:

Wow, it's like the bizarro-world, good version of Matthew N. Brown

Check out my new Steam Greenlight game "Freaky Bwalls 2: Electric Switcheroo"

# ? Feb 25, 2015 16:28

Sebbe: Feb 29, 2004

So, how do you generate a neverending stream of as in unix? Well, I just came across this solution.

code:

cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a'

Yes. That does in fact generate a bunch of random data, only to throw everything that isn't an a away.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 19:42

Karate Bastard: Jul 31, 2007; Soiled Meat

I heard urandom is pretty shoddy quality and should be avoided.

code:

cat /dev/random | tr -dc 'a'

There. Bam. Fixed it.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 20:28

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

yes has my favourite man page summary ever.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 20:28

apseudonym: Feb 25, 2011

Sebbe posted:

So, how do you generate a neverending stream of as in unix? Well, I just came across this solution.
code:
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a'
Yes. That does in fact generate a bunch of random data, only to throw everything that isn't an a away.

Seems technically correct to me.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 20:28

Karate Bastard: Jul 31, 2007; Soiled Meat

pokeyman posted:

yes has my favourite man page summary ever.

Its --help option is almost offensively unhelpful however. It does produce a lot of help, but ain't nobody got time for reading all that.

Karate Bastard fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Feb 27, 2015

# ? Feb 26, 2015 20:31

VikingofRock: Aug 24, 2008

pokeyman posted:

yes has my favourite man page summary ever.

For those of you using linux instead of BSD, here it is.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 23:01

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

VikingofRock posted:

For those of you using linux instead of BSD, here it is.

Another blow for coreutils.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 23:07

evensevenone: May 12, 2001; Glass is a solid.

Sebbe posted:

So, how do you generate a neverending stream of as in unix? Well, I just came across this solution.
code:
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a'
Yes. That does in fact generate a bunch of random data, only to throw everything that isn't an a away.

clearly the better solution is

code:

cat /dev/zero | tr "\0" "a"

# ? Feb 27, 2015 04:08

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

I don't know if I'm the horror, or my co-worker is the horror. He made a string in .NET called title. Turns out that title is also a reserved term, for the HTML title of the page. So I was messing with his title, but when it's undefined as a variable it actually ends up being the page Title tag.

# ? Feb 27, 2015 09:27

csammis: Aug 26, 2003; Mental Institution

Karate Bastard posted:

Its --help option is almost offensively unhelpful however. It does produce a lot of help, but ain't nobody got time for reading all that.

Please enjoy your Friday knowing that I opened up a terminal to find out what yes --help printed :haw:

# ? Feb 27, 2015 17:51

KaneTW: Dec 2, 2011

code:

yes help i'm stuck in the computer

# ? Feb 27, 2015 18:08

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

KaneTW posted:

code:

yes help i'm stuck in the computer

The GNU version is helpful rather than amusing.

# ? Feb 27, 2015 22:00

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Reading further into the textbook I was posting about earlier, it definitely presents the material in a really digestible way if you can ignore all the nerdy writing style.

However, this section header is certainly a horror in a different way:

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces posted:

The Final Producer/Consumer Solution

# ? Mar 2, 2015 18:09

Ellie Crabcakes: Feb 1, 2008; Stop emailing my boyfriend Gay Crungus

KaneTW posted:

code:

yes help i'm stuck in the computer

code:

yes Penus | tr '\n' ' '

# ? Mar 2, 2015 18:24

Master_Odin: Apr 15, 2010; My spear never misses its mark...

ladies

Nice 2,500 line file with ~25 comments.

My favorite part:

code:

  //  /*
  ... some code ...
  //  */

Same file has a couple "// comment line!" comments too.

:aaaaa:

# ? Mar 3, 2015 00:45

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

Master_Odin posted:

Same file has a couple "// comment line!" comments too.

//TODO: Comment this line

# ? Mar 3, 2015 01:10

Pavlov: Oct 21, 2012; I've long been fascinated with how the alt-right develops elaborate and obscure dog whistles to try to communicate their meaning without having to say it out loud
Stepan Andreyevich Bandera being the most prominent example of that

I do the //* //*/ thing all the time when I'm prototyping stuff. Not sure what the issue is.

# ? Mar 3, 2015 01:11

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Pavlov posted:

when I'm prototyping stuff

There's supposedly a giant brick wall between that and what's checked-in and visible to others? Idk, I've never seen one myself.

# ? Mar 3, 2015 01:12

tyrelhill: Jul 30, 2006

Che Delilas posted:

//TODO: Comment this line

// TODO: Autogenerated stub.

With implementation right under it...

# ? Mar 3, 2015 05:30

carry on then: Jul 10, 2010; by VideoGames
(and can't post for 10 years!)

tyrelhill posted:

// TODO: Autogenerated stub.

With implementation right under it...

// 1997-11-14:
// CHANGE ASAP

# ? Mar 3, 2015 05:31

Fullets: Feb 5, 2009

// TODO delete this

scala posted:

/**** This implementation to merge parents was checked in in commented-out
form and has languished unaltered for five years. I think we should
use it or lose it.

The comment was committed three years ago.

# ? Mar 3, 2015 12:04

ErIog: Jul 11, 2001

carry on then posted:

// 1997-11-14:
// CHANGE ASAP

Found another one.

code:

//2001-11-09:
//CHANGE ASAP
public bool CanMeltSteelBeams(Material material) {
     if(material == Material.JetFuel) {
          return false;
     }
     return true;
}

Log(CanMeltSteelBeams(bubblegum).ToString());
--> True

ErIog fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Mar 3, 2015

# ? Mar 3, 2015 13:17

Polio Vax Scene: Apr 5, 2009

Recently I found out visual studio automatically adds // HACK to your Task list.

# ? Mar 3, 2015 14:40

Hammerite: Mar 9, 2007; And you don't remember what I said here, either, but it was pompous and stupid.; Jade Ear Joe

code:

shared_ptr<classX> p = ref ? def.x.thing1 : def.y.thing1;
const float f = ref ? def.x.thing2 : def.x.thing2;
const classY y = ref ? def.x.thing3 : def.y.thing3;

In code from 2012

Maybe I should suggest doing some static code analysis...

# ? Mar 3, 2015 15:41

HappyHippo: Nov 19, 2003; Do you have an Air Miles Card?

carry on then posted:

// 1997-11-14:
// CHANGE ASAP

I've found very old code with //BUG BUG BUG scattered throughout

# ? Mar 3, 2015 15:56

Dicky B: Mar 23, 2004

At the top of an uncommented cmake file which defines macros for generating a bunch of cpp files from a directory of xml inputs

code:

# haha good luck

# ? Mar 3, 2015 16:21

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# ? May 17, 2024 02:05

ijustam: Jun 20, 2005

don't remove it because then your name is last on the commit log and you're the sucker who has to fix it when it breaks

# ? Mar 3, 2015 16:27

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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