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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Dessert Rose: May 17, 2004; awoken in control of a lucid deep dream...

Zhentar posted:

1TBS is accurately named.

I actually consistently type code in 1TBS, and let VS turn it into Allman style. The visual change helps me balance braces.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 04:36

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 10:34

mr_jim: Oct 30, 2006; OUT OF THE DARK

Ryouga Inverse posted:

I actually consistently type code in 1TBS, and let VS turn it into Allman style. The visual change helps me balance braces.

I turn on 'showmatch' in Vim for that. If it's up to me, I use 1TBS. If I'm working on existing code, I'll use whatever style is already being used. Unless it's GNU style. That poo poo sucks.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 04:58

nbv4: Aug 21, 2002; by Duchess Gummybuns

1337JiveTurkey posted:

it turns out that a comment block immediately after an if or an else statement acts in exactly the manner that ColdPie's describing.

same goes for javascript

# ? Mar 27, 2010 05:14

HFX: Nov 29, 2004

nbv4 posted:

same goes for javascript

I'll have to remember to look out for that in coworkers javascript code. I use 1TBS for almost all of my code.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 12:40

Internet Janitor: May 17, 2008; "That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."

Rather than arguing endlessly about the best indentation style, why don't we simply all agree on the worst- Whitesmiths:

code:

void MyFunc ()
{
while (x == y)
    {
    something();
    somethingelse();
    }
 
finalthing();
}

# ? Mar 27, 2010 13:25

yippee cahier: Mar 28, 2005

just use a code reformatter and then who cares, it always looks good.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 18:11

dancavallaro: Sep 10, 2006; My title sucks

sund posted:

just use a code reformatter and then who cares, it always looks good.

You do realize that a code reformatter reformats code to a specified style, right? It doesn't just magically make your code "look good", for some undefined value of "good".

# ? Mar 27, 2010 18:22

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

Using an if block, for block, or whatever and omitting the braces is just bad in my opinion. It's like omitting brackets just because you know what the order of operations is; why make things less clear for the reader?

# ? Mar 27, 2010 19:31

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

Do you write x * y + z as (x * y) + z?

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:01

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

Hammerite posted:

Using an if block, for block, or whatever and omitting the braces is just bad in my opinion. It's like omitting brackets just because you know what the order of operations is; why make things less clear for the reader?

Whooooooooo caaaaaaaaaares

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:11

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

Plorkyeran posted:

Do you write x * y + z as (x * y) + z?

No. Although I would not object to seeing it.

I think BODMAS (or whatever you learnt it as) is sufficiently basic to be assumed. Obviously some base level of knowledge could be assumed in all instances. But I would stop short or writing, I don't know, x and y or a and b when I could write (x and y) or (a and b), because buggered if I can remember whether and or or has higher precedence.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:12

Jonnty: Aug 2, 2007; The enemy has become a flaming star!

Plorkyeran posted:

Do you write x * y + z as (x * y) + z?

No, but that's maths and 'multiplication's done before addition' is a much better known rule than 'AND's done before OR'. (And yes, I had to look that one up to check.)

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:14

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

Hammerite posted:

No. Although I would not object to seeing it.

I think BODMAS (or whatever you learnt it as) is sufficiently basic to be assumed. Obviously some base level of knowledge could be assumed in all instances. But I would stop short or writing, I don't know, x and y or a and b when I could write (x and y) or (a and b), because buggered if I can remember whether and or or has higher precedence.

So in other words, you support leaving out the parentheses when you know the order of operations but want them there when you don't?

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:23

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"

Plorkyeran posted:

So in other words, you support leaving out the parentheses when you know the order of operations but want them there when you don't?

Everybody knows the precedence of + and *. Without looking at a language manual, do you know what (1 << 5 % 4 & 3) is?

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:27

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

Playing it fast and loose with omitting "unnecessary" parentheses is the worst way to play code golf. Also,

code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
if ((not 0 && not 1) !=  (! 0 && ! 1)) {
  print "Larry and Tom must smoke some really primo stuff...\n";
}

For god's sake, just put the bloody parentheses in. Your parser won't mind doing the extra work and it makes the code orders of magnitude more readable.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:30

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

Janin posted:

Everybody knows the precedence of + and *. Without looking at a language manual, do you know what (1 << 5 % 4 & 3) is?

If it's C, (1 << (5 % 4)) & 3.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:31

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

Plorkyeran posted:

So in other words, you support leaving out the parentheses when you know the order of operations but want them there when you don't?

Yep, fairly close to that. But I'd certainly be charitable enough to put them in when I don't feel it's sufficiently "common knowledge" what the order of operations is.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:33

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

Hammerite posted:

Yep, fairly close to that. But I'd certainly be charitable enough to put them in when I don't feel it's sufficiently "common knowledge" what the order of operations is.

So what does this have to do with leaving the braces out of an if block?

# ? Mar 27, 2010 20:46

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

HappyHippo posted:

So what does this have to do with leaving the braces out of an if block?

Nothing instrinsically. They are two separate things that I consider to be bad ideas on the grounds of contributing to poor understandability.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 21:03

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

nbv4 posted:

same goes for javascript

what interpreter? I just tried safari, firefox, ie and opera and none of them allowed the comment to interrupt "normal" parsing.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 22:25

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

What is everybody's favourite program/its configuration to reformat C++ code? :allears:

# ? Mar 27, 2010 23:04

Zhentar: Sep 28, 2003; Brilliant Master Genius

Hammerite posted:

I think BODMAS (or whatever you learnt it as) is sufficiently basic to be assumed. Obviously some base level of knowledge could be assumed in all instances.

I find it easier to just always use parenthesis rather than try to keep track of whether or not whatever I'm using today actually correctly follows order of operations.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 23:31

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

Zhentar posted:

I find it easier to just always use parenthesis rather than try to keep track of whether or not whatever I'm using today actually correctly follows order of operations.

Yes but you're the only one in this thread who uses MUMPS.

# ? Mar 27, 2010 23:52

awesmoe: Nov 30, 2005; Pillbug

Normally I'm happy to use whatever brace style is in the file I'm working on, but I recently had to maintain some code that uses this

code:

int foo () 
  {
    Bob bob;
    while (1)
      {
        // stuff
        if (1)
          {
            // more stuff
          }
      }
    bob.whatsit();
  }

It was really surprising how difficult it made reading the code. Didn't help that functions were usually ~800 lines long with up to 8ish levels of nested blocks. Astonishingly, it was full of bugs!

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:09

mr_jim: Oct 30, 2006; OUT OF THE DARK

awesmoe posted:

Normally I'm happy to use whatever brace style is in the file I'm working on, but I recently had to maintain some code that uses this
code:
int foo () 
  {
    Bob bob;
    while (1)
      {
        // stuff
        if (1)
          {
            // more stuff
          }
      }
    bob.whatsit();
  }
It was really surprising how difficult it made reading the code. Didn't help that functions were usually ~800 lines long with up to 8ish levels of nested blocks. Astonishingly, it was full of bugs!

Welcome to GNU-style indenting. Usually the opening brace of a function definition isn't indented though. And they put the return type of the function on it's own line.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Writing-C

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:17

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

mr_jim posted:

Welcome to GNU-style indenting. Usually the opening brace of a function definition isn't indented though. And they put the return type of the function on it's own line.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Writing-C

God drat, that's one smarmy article.

quote:

As for systems that are not like Unix, such as MSDOS, Windows, VMS, MVS, and older Macintosh systems, supporting them is often a lot of work. When that is the case, it is better to spend your time adding features that will be useful on GNU and GNU/Linux, rather than on supporting other incompatible systems.

If you do support Windows, please do not abbreviate it as �win�. In hacker terminology, calling something a �win� is a form of praise. You're free to praise Microsoft Windows on your own if you want, but please don't do this in GNU packages. Instead of abbreviating �Windows� to �win�, you can write it in full or abbreviate it to �woe� or �w�. In GNU Emacs, for instance, we use �w32� in file names of Windows-specific files, but the macro for Windows conditionals is called WINDOWSNT.

quote:

Similarly, don't make any effort to cater to the possibility that long will be smaller than predefined types like size_t. For example, the following code is ok:
printf ("size = %lu\n", (unsigned long) sizeof array); printf ("diff = %ld\n", (long) (pointer2 - pointer1));
1989 Standard C requires this to work, and we know of only one counterexample: 64-bit programs on Microsoft Windows. We will leave it to those who want to port GNU programs to that environment to figure out how to do it.

M$$$

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:25

HFX: Nov 29, 2004

Dijkstracula posted:

God drat, that's one smarmy article.

M$$$

It has some good points, honestly. I did find something I didn't like:
[code]
int c;
while ((c = getchar ()) != EOF)
{
unsigned char u = c;
write (file_descriptor, &u, 1);
}
[code]

Yes an actual recommendation to coerce to a smaller type without an explicit cast. I know C lets you. It usually is not a good idea.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:44

awesmoe: Nov 30, 2005; Pillbug

mr_jim posted:

Welcome to GNU-style indenting. Usually the opening brace of a function definition isn't indented though. And they put the return type of the function on it's own line.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Writing-C

Wow. I never, ever considered that anyone would institutionalize that style.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:44

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

HFX posted:

code:
int c;
while ((c = getchar ()) != EOF)
   {
     unsigned char u = c;
     write (file_descriptor, &u, 1);
   }
Yes an actual recommendation to coerce to a smaller type without an explicit cast. I know C lets you. It usually is not a good idea.

But... getchar() only ever returns values in the unsigned char range, except for when it returns EOF, so what could possibly go wrong?

# ? Mar 28, 2010 00:47

HFX: Nov 29, 2004

Vanadium posted:

But... getchar() only ever returns values in the unsigned char range, except for when it returns EOF, so what could possibly go wrong?

In this case, likely nothing. However, I wouldn't want to rely on that always. I'd much rather see the explicit cast to mean that is what you really want to do.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 01:04

Bonfire Lit: Jul 9, 2008; If you're one of the sinners who caused this please unfriend me now.

Internet Janitor posted:

Rather than arguing endlessly about the best indentation style, why don't we simply all agree on the worst- Whitesmiths:

I'm working on a medium-sized C++ project that's inherited a lot of Whitesmiths formatted code as a legacy. We've decided that we want to change that for consistency reasons though (due to the size of the code, preferably automated). I've been told GNU indent doesn't work too well with C++ code. Do you have any experience with code reformatters, and if so, which one would you recommend?

# ? Mar 28, 2010 02:42

Deep Dish Fuckfest: Sep 6, 2006; Advanced
Computer Touching; Toilet Rascal

awesmoe posted:

Wow. I never, ever considered that anyone would institutionalize that style.

Though anyone who uses that style should consider being institutionalized.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 02:44

mr_jim: Oct 30, 2006; OUT OF THE DARK

awesmoe posted:

Wow. I never, ever considered that anyone would institutionalize that style.

This guy would.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 02:56

Nomnom Cookie: Aug 30, 2009

If you put five programmers together, no two of them will agree on what the best brace style is...but all of them will agree that GNU style is the worst.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 05:20

zero knowledge: Apr 27, 2008

A coding horror:

I found myself working on a medium scale Java project at university. I know school projects and assignments are cheap shots when it comes to coding horrors, but this is a higher level class so I'd expect some measure of competence at this stage.

I was working on a calendar component of a course management tool (think WebCT or Blackboard but not lovely... except of course it turned out to be even shittier than WebCT). Some other guys were responsible for the database stuff. I decided to let them do whatever awful poo poo they felt necessary since it'd be easier to deal with the consequences later than to argue about it--it's a disposable school project in an awful class so who gives the merest shadow of a poo poo about how good it actually is.

One particular database API I need to use is Courses[] getCoursesByUserID(int userID). I'm iterating over the array it returns to create the appropriate number of tabs in the UI and find I'm getting NullPointerExceptions. Well, maybe the particular user has no courses and the array is null (as it should be in such a case). I add a check against this and still get an NPE. Well what the gently caress?

So it turns out that in the method that grabs the courses from the DB, we have the following:

Course [] returnCourses = new Course [10]; ... /* DB query result copied into returnCourses */ ...

If the user has fewer than 10 courses? Get hosed, eat some null pointers. User has more than 10 courses? Holy gently caress I hope that doesn't happen!

I've heard the adage that everyone has 10,000 lines of poo poo code in them they need to get out. I get that I'm working with students. Certainly I've written some awful stinkers in my time. But these are third and mostly fourth year computer or software engineering students. Is this kind of thing really beyond them?

# ? Mar 28, 2010 08:45

GROVER CURES HOUSE: Aug 26, 2007; Go on...

The only possible excuse is that it's debug code that somehow snuck into the final thing, but that only diminishes it from a crime against computer science to an atrocity of a slightly milder sort.

This is what they teach you in the first month of CS, why would you even :negative:

# ? Mar 28, 2010 08:59

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

Maybe they didn't know that in Java you can do a Course [] returnCourses = new Course [numberOfCourses];

# ? Mar 28, 2010 09:44

Kelson: Jan 23, 2005

Spazmo posted:

If the user has fewer than 10 courses? Get hosed, eat some null pointers. User has more than 10 courses? Holy gently caress I hope that doesn't happen!

I've heard the adage that everyone has 10,000 lines of poo poo code in them they need to get out. I get that I'm working with students. Certainly I've written some awful stinkers in my time. But these are third and mostly fourth year computer or software engineering students. Is this kind of thing really beyond them?

If you think 3-4 year CS students should know better, I've worked with grad degree holding folks who submit similar garbage. Global constants everywhere, smoke-and-mirror gotos, type abuse, unsafe code (or the ever popular 'catch any error, ignore, continue execution normally'), and memory leaks everywhere (Java will normally catch that - but not if you keep the old data in your data structures... forever)

# ? Mar 28, 2010 10:55

ErIog: Jul 11, 2001

Kelson posted:

If you think 3-4 year CS students should know better, I've worked with grad degree holding folks who submit similar garbage. Global constants everywhere, smoke-and-mirror gotos, type abuse, unsafe code (or the ever popular 'catch any error, ignore, continue execution normally'), and memory leaks everywhere (Java will normally catch that - but not if you keep the old data in your data structures... forever)

To expand on this, if there can be coding horrors in applications that are products that companies sell then certainly there are going to be coding horrors in applications where the stakes are far lower, like student projects.

# ? Mar 28, 2010 16:57

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 10:34

jarito: Aug 26, 2003; Biscuit Hider

Wheany posted:

Maybe they didn't know that in Java you can do a Course [] returnCourses = new Course [numberOfCourses];

Or just use a higher level construct like a List, Hash or Set.

# ? Mar 29, 2010 18:06

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