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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fletcher: Jun 27, 2003; ken park is my favorite movie; Cybernetic Crumb

How about writing JSON by hand in Java instead of using a library? Why would anybody do this to themselves

# ? Dec 9, 2009 19:49

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 22:10

Grazing Occultation: Aug 18, 2009; by angerbutt

ultra-inquisitor posted:

Wouldn't
code:
const string& str = fileNameGen->getFilename("blah");
delete &str;
work? This way you can return by reference which is faster than returning by value!

No. You can't delete a const pointer. You'd have to cast away the const-ness first.

Besides that, as Vanadium said: if I've got a const reference returned to me, I'm assuming that I don't need to manage it.

# ? Dec 9, 2009 20:30

Mustach: Mar 2, 2003; In this long line, there's been some real strange genes. You've got 'em all, with some extras thrown in.

Grazing Occultation posted:

No. You can't delete a const pointer. You'd have to cast away the const-ness first.

Not true. See 5.3.5.2. (I'm assuming that you mean pointer-to-const, not const pointer [which would still be a valid delete target])

Mustach fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Dec 9, 2009

# ? Dec 9, 2009 22:29

newsomnuke: Feb 25, 2007

Grazing Occultation posted:

Besides that, as Vanadium said: if I've got a const reference returned to me, I'm assuming that I don't need to manage it.

Of course, I was just questioning whether it was a "guaranteed" memory leak, which it's not AFAIK.

# ? Dec 10, 2009 00:34

Lexical Unit: Sep 16, 2003

code:

std::complex<double> d = (0.0, 1.0); // why's it getting it backwards? Whatever.

# ? Dec 10, 2009 01:43

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005

I'm stuck at work diagnosing some build error that only happens on my system in a perl script somewhere under seven layers of antcall with some gratuitous javascript tossed in the middle.

edit: I forgot about the little bit which runs some taglet parser over an autogenerated buildfile.

1337JiveTurkey fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Dec 10, 2009

# ? Dec 10, 2009 03:12

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

Lexical Unit posted:

code:

std::complex<double> d = (0.0, 1.0); // why's it getting it backwards? Whatever.

This is a little gem of a horror :3:

# ? Dec 10, 2009 14:26

BigRedDot: Mar 6, 2008

Fib posted:

This is a little gem of a horror

Your tax dollars buy only the best.

# ? Dec 10, 2009 17:38

Grazing Occultation: Aug 18, 2009; by angerbutt

Mustach posted:

Not true. See 5.3.5.2. (I'm assuming that you mean pointer-to-const, not const pointer [which would still be a valid delete target])

Hmmm. It seems you're right but I could've sworn otherwise.

# ? Dec 10, 2009 18:24

Dietrich: Sep 11, 2001

My own horror from today.

I've got a Dictionary<Tuple<int, int>, CustomObject> which is used to represent a cell on a grid and the custom object that that cell is in charge of displaying a value from.

Hurr, I had never heard of Point before, I guess. Duh.

# ? Dec 11, 2009 17:42

CanSpice: Jan 12, 2002; GO CANUCKS GO

Not really a coding horror but it's about codinghorror.com:

quote:

ugh, server failure at CrystalTech. And apparently their normal backup process silently fails at backing up VM images.

looks like 100% data loss. thanks.. crystaltech..

you sort of assume your hosting company is competent. That's not a safe assumption in my experience.

looks like it's 100% internet search caches for recovery. Any tips on recovering images, which typically aren't cached?

I had backups, mind you, but they were on the virtual machine itself I am OK on post-text, getting the post images is much harder..

Spot the horror!

# ? Dec 11, 2009 22:14

jandrese: Apr 3, 2007; by Tiny Fistpump

Failure to insure that your backup solution is actually working (by making a restore on a temporary server and verifying that everything made it intact) doesn't really qualify as a coding horror. Any backup software that silently fails is a coding horror though. That is the least appropriate place for a silent failure condition.

# ? Dec 11, 2009 22:27

king_kilr: May 25, 2007

CanSpice posted:

Not really a coding horror but it's about codinghorror.com:
Spot the horror!

That he wasn't doing backups? (No, backups on *the same server* aren't backups).

# ? Dec 11, 2009 22:40

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

Dietrich posted:

My own horror from today.

I've got a Dictionary<Tuple<int, int>, CustomObject> which is used to represent a cell on a grid and the custom object that that cell is in charge of displaying a value from.

Hurr, I had never heard of Point before, I guess. Duh.

I had a moment like this the other day. I did an elaborate section of code to loop through an array, checking at every step if it was out of bounds, and resetting it to 0... with an if statement.

About a day after I submitted the code (it was an assignment) I realized that I could have reduced my code by half, and made it much more readable, by simply using modulo.

# ? Dec 11, 2009 22:55

king_kilr: May 25, 2007

CanSpice posted:

Not really a coding horror but it's about codinghorror.com:
Spot the horror!

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache...lient=firefox-a

# ? Dec 11, 2009 23:06

Dijkstracula: Mar 18, 2003; You can't spell 'vector field' without me, Professor!

king_kilr posted:

[url]http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2HHNAk2SB6EJ:https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001045.html+site:codinghorror.com+backup&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a[/url]

quote:

If you're using Linux, it's something a lot like that. If you're using Windows, go f*ck yourself.

what a superburn, such sublime ownage coming out of Atwood in that post :rolleye:

# ? Dec 11, 2009 23:08

HIERARCHY OF WEEDZ: Aug 1, 2005

Dijkstracula posted:

what a superburn, such sublime ownage coming out of Atwood in that post

you're a retard, he was quoting jwz, who *does* unequivocally own

# ? Dec 11, 2009 23:10

Dijkstracula: Mar 18, 2003; You can't spell 'vector field' without me, Professor!

Panic! at the Fist Jab posted:

you're a retard, he was quoting jwz, who *does* unequivocally own

So noted, though indeed, jwz's anti-M$$$ cheapshots do tend to grate on me, too.

It's not like it takes any special skill to come up with something like that.

# ? Dec 11, 2009 23:15

Zhentar: Sep 28, 2003; Brilliant Master Genius

king_kilr posted:

[url]http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2HHNAk2SB6EJ:https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001045.html+site:codinghorror.com+backup&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a[/url]

I love this comment:

Coding Horror commenter posted:

My backup strategy? I post my important data in base64-encoded little chunks in the comments on the blogs of people who actually take the necessary steps to backup their data.

U3VpdGNhc2UgY29tYmluYXRpb246IDEgMiAzIDQgNQ==
RS1tYWlsIHBhc3N3b3JkOiBwYXNzd29yZDE=

# ? Dec 12, 2009 01:31

Kelson: Jan 23, 2005

jandrese posted:

Failure to insure that your backup solution is actually working (by making a restore on a temporary server and verifying that everything made it intact) doesn't really qualify as a coding horror. Any backup software that silently fails is a coding horror though. That is the least appropriate place for a silent failure condition.

Silently failing backups is, I've discovered, far more common than makes any sense if half the responsible folks were competent. Hell, NetBackup (amongst others) semi-regularly emails updates addressing silent backup failures... (at least they're aware of it, I guess)

# ? Dec 12, 2009 02:25

jandrese: Apr 3, 2007; by Tiny Fistpump

Sadly, silent failure appears to be a very common feature in backup software. That's why it's so important that when you decide to change backup software that you go and test it first to discover exactly what happens when the backup fails and how the restore feature actually works (not what the manual says).

# ? Dec 12, 2009 02:52

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"

Dijkstracula posted:

what a superburn, such sublime ownage coming out of Atwood in that post

Atwood runs everything on Windows and .NET, he loves Microsoft

Zhentar posted:

I love this comment:

This is, in hindsight, the best thing ever posted on codinghorror.com

# ? Dec 12, 2009 03:08

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

CanSpice posted:

Not really a coding horror but it's about codinghorror.com:

It's the internet self-correcting itself.

# ? Dec 12, 2009 06:10

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

CanSpice posted:

Not really a coding horror but it's about codinghorror.com:
Spot the horror!

The fact that he was backuping his data on a VM image?

# ? Dec 12, 2009 14:49

jandrese: Apr 3, 2007; by Tiny Fistpump

It's like a coding horror clown car. Just when you think you've seen them all, another one pops right out.

# ? Dec 12, 2009 18:47

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

building an XPath query

code:

public String methodName(String tagString){
//tagString delmited by ";"
ArrayList<String> tagNames = processTagString(tagString);

for (int i = 0 i < tagNames.size(); i++) {
    // Set up filter string and add tags to array list
    String filterString = "";
    String queryString = "/jcr:root//content/foo";
    for (int j = 0; j < i; j++) {
        if (0 < j) {
            filterString += " and @cq:tags='" + tagNames.get(j) + "'";
        } else {
            filterString += "@cq:tags='" + tagNames.get(j) + "'";
        }
    }
    queryString += "[" + filterString + "] order by @cq:lastModified";
    return queryString;
}

}

geeves fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Dec 16, 2009

# ? Dec 16, 2009 03:19

Presto: Nov 22, 2002; Keep calm and Harry on.

code:

int zero = 0;
int one = 1;
int four = 4;
int five = 5;
int nine = 9;

This occurs in several files, with different combinations of numbers. And there are occurrences of things like this:

code:

for (i = zero; i < 15; i++)

It's like someone heard that magic numbers in code were bad, so they just thought they'd name them all, and the most obvious name is of course the word for that number. Or maybe they were guarding against the day when the value of 4 changes.

# ? Dec 17, 2009 18:12

TheSpook: Aug 21, 2007; Spooky!

Presto posted:

code:
int zero = 0;
int one = 1;
int four = 4;
int five = 5;
int nine = 9;
This occurs in several files, with different combinations of numbers. And there are occurrences of things like this:
code:
for (i = zero; i < 15; i++)
It's like someone heard that magic numbers in code were bad, so they just thought they'd name them all, and the most obvious name is of course the word for that number. Or maybe they were guarding against the day when the value of 4 changes.

Imagine what will happen if the value of 15 changes! Obviously, you have some future-proofing to do.

# ? Dec 17, 2009 19:34

CanSpice: Jan 12, 2002; GO CANUCKS GO

TheSpook posted:

Imagine what will happen if the value of 15 changes! Obviously, you have some future-proofing to do.

And what if the definition of ++ changes? Better change everything to use a plusplus() function!

# ? Dec 17, 2009 19:50

mr_jim: Oct 30, 2006; OUT OF THE DARK

Presto posted:

code:
int zero = 0;
int one = 1;
int four = 4;
int five = 5;
int nine = 9;
This occurs in several files, with different combinations of numbers. And there are occurrences of things like this:
code:
for (i = zero; i < 15; i++)
It's like someone heard that magic numbers in code were bad, so they just thought they'd name them all, and the most obvious name is of course the word for that number. Or maybe they were guarding against the day when the value of 4 changes.

This thread just came full circle.

# ? Dec 17, 2009 21:59

Goreld: May 8, 2002; "Identity Crisis" MurdererWild Guess Bizarro #1Bizarro"Me am first one I suspect!"

floWenoL posted:

I love it when people try to post coding "horrors" and it backfires.

I think embedding *180/PI or /180*PI (or /PI/180 or *PI/180) everywhere is more of a coding horror than the cited code, which isn't a horror at all.

Am I the only person that stores the (PI/180) or (180/PI) part beforehand as a macro, define, variable, or whatever? I know that a nonretarded compiler should convert it into a multiplication operation, but I'm so used to avoiding unnecessary division at all costs that it's just a habit.

Also, I agree that a degreesToRadians() et al. function is a necessity if you're doing any graphics work. Maybe change it to degToRad() or something shorter, but the code quickly becomes unreadable if you don't do it.

As for pi, I always have to have pi, 2*pi, and pi/2 defined. I deal with shitloads of cosines/dot products and vector calculus so it's a necessity.

# ? Dec 17, 2009 23:50

Steve French: Sep 8, 2003

king_kilr posted:

[url]http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2HHNAk2SB6EJ:https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001045.html+site:codinghorror.com+backup&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a[/url]

My favorite part of this is where he demonstrates that he doesn't understand what a filesystem is:

fatwood posted:

Acronis does a lot of things, but most of all it's drive imaging software, a fancy GUI over the rsync command.

# ? Dec 17, 2009 23:51

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

Goreld posted:

Am I the only person that stores the (PI/180) or (180/PI) part beforehand as a macro, define, variable, or whatever? I know that a nonretarded compiler should convert it into a multiplication operation, but I'm so used to avoiding unnecessary division at all costs that it's just a habit.

Probably not, but that doesn't justify superstitious programming.

# ? Dec 18, 2009 00:13

Presto: Nov 22, 2002; Keep calm and Harry on.

mr_jim posted:

This thread just came full circle.

Maybe it's the same guy. :aaa:

Forgot about this part too: double dzero = (double)0.0;

# ? Dec 18, 2009 01:40

minato: Jun 7, 2004; cutty cain't hang, say 7-up.; Taco Defender

Janin posted:

Please post more details about insane Japanese software, because this post right here is incredible.

I was asked to migrate a Japanese webapp from Sun to Linux. The webapp supported authentication, downloads, forums, and a support tracking system. They gave me access to the directory where all the code was kept, and I thought there was a mistake because there was only one file in it, a large Perl file. But there was no mistake. That single gigantic Perl file did everything. There were no other Perl files, HTML pages or templates. Every URL in the site would load that file and query parameters would tell it what to render.

:downsgun:

# ? Dec 18, 2009 22:36

Janitor Prime: Jan 22, 2004; PC LOAD LETTER

What da fuck does that mean; Fun Shoe

How big was the file?

# ? Dec 18, 2009 23:44

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

minato posted:

I was asked to migrate a Japanese webapp from Sun to Linux. The webapp supported authentication, downloads, forums, and a support tracking system. They gave me access to the directory where all the code was kept, and I thought there was a mistake because there was only one file in it, a large Perl file. But there was no mistake. That single gigantic Perl file did everything. There were no other Perl files, HTML pages or templates. Every URL in the site would load that file and query parameters would tell it what to render.

Oh man, I've been there except instead of a Perl script, it was a single Java servlet class that rendered every page based on query parameters, using huge blocks of System.out.println calls to dump the HTML.

First thing I did was throw that code out and replace it with a handful of JSP pages.

edit: This was the same project that had another Java application as the server back-end (the servlet was a student front-end), and used a message-passing scheme where each message was a different class that contained the message parameters. That's great, but instead of having an abstract base class for all the message types and having the message class implement its "do it" logic in a virtual method, there was a four-page long if/else if statement that did an instanceof test for each message type.

Flobbster fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Dec 19, 2009

# ? Dec 18, 2009 23:58

king_kilr: May 25, 2007

Anyone here ever parsed psycinfo or scopus records (some medical bibliography format). I'm dealing with a code base for parsing them out, and it's a fracking clusterfuck. It's actually open source

# ? Dec 19, 2009 00:31

minato: Jun 7, 2004; cutty cain't hang, say 7-up.; Taco Defender

MEAT TREAT posted:

How big was the file?

I don't remember exactly, but it was huge, over 1MB.

Another Japanese coding horror. A long while ago there was a 3D file format designed for games. Each component of the file had a type (3D mesh, texture, animation data, etc) and each type had various bitfields that described attributes of that component ("flat/gouraud/textured shading", "anti-aliased", "has normal", etc) and these were meant to be used to indicate which "driver method" to use to handle that component.

But the way the libraries were set up, each combination of bit fields had to have its own driver method. So if you had a 3D mesh that was anti-aliased and another that wasn't, you couldn't just use a single driver method for both where you'd check the bitfield and flip the anti-aliasing on. You had to write two separate drivers. Multiply this by the many different bitfields and it meant that potentially it would be necessary to write 2^32 drivers.

So dumb.

# ? Dec 19, 2009 04:24

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 22:10

Vinterstum: Jul 30, 2003

Goreld posted:

Am I the only person that stores the (PI/180) or (180/PI) part beforehand as a macro, define, variable, or whatever? I know that a nonretarded compiler should convert it into a multiplication operation, but I'm so used to avoiding unnecessary division at all costs that it's just a habit.

A nonretarded compiler would store that as a constant, actually. So yeah. Don't

. At least not for that reason.

# ? Dec 19, 2009 19:08

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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