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

ExcessBLarg! posted:

"Cancel" is at least recognized as "don't proceed with any changes" and is (usually) a safe answer to any question about a potentially-dangerous operation.

Unless that potentially dangerous operation is canceling something.

carry on then posted:

I never thought I'd hear an earnest argument against verb buttons but here we are.

Verb buttons are great if you can specify what they say.

# ? May 5, 2015 21:51

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# ? May 10, 2024 00:27

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

qntm posted:

This is one of my minor UI irritations right now. Words like "OK", "Cancel", "Yes" and "No" are generally fairly neutral, but if you start getting creative then it does start tripping people up, as you mentioned, but it's also effectively putting words in the user's mouth, words that the user doesn't necessarily want there. Google seems to have made a global habit out of putting "Got it" instead of "OK" on all of their acknowledgement buttons, which irks me because "Got it" simply is not me.

Worse, occasionally I see UIs where the acknowledgement button says "Thanks!", which is a great way to make people angry if they aren't particularly grateful for whatever it is the software just did, or if they're already angry at or frustrated with the software for any reason.

I think UI designers think that this kind of thing equates to user-friendly software, but what it actually is is making the user be friendly to the software. Bearing in mind how much most of us hate almost all software, this is a bad road to start down.

This said, I am okay with that one JavaScript dialogue box only having two hard-coded options, "OK" and "Cancel", because I believe that if you can't phrase your prompt in such a way that these two options are totally unambiguous, then you need to rephrase your prompt.

At least there's no more "not now".

# ? May 5, 2015 21:53

IT BEGINS: Jan 15, 2009; I don't know how to make analogies

A minor horror but still an example of silly.

Found a varchar field called 'enabled' in a table. I noticed all the code checking it always checked for an 'n' value. Looked up the table - the only values are null and 'n'. Genius. Ok, whatever, I'll fix it.

"Hey, I'm going to change this to a boolean instead."
No, just rename it to 'disabled' and set all the 'n' to 'y'.
"What? Why?"
Then you can just check if 'disabled ISNULL' instead.

:what:

# ? May 5, 2015 22:47

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

IT BEGINS posted:

A minor horror but still an example of silly.

Found a varchar field called 'enabled' in a table. I noticed all the code checking it always checked for an 'n' value. Looked up the table - the only values are null and 'n'. Genius. Ok, whatever, I'll fix it.

"Hey, I'm going to change this to a boolean instead."
No, just rename it to 'disabled' and set all the 'n' to 'y'.
"What? Why?"
Then you can just check if 'disabled ISNULL' instead.

Why were you fixing it? If it wasn't causing any problems other than being doofy, why kick the turd?

# ? May 5, 2015 22:58

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Bognar posted:

Unless that potentially dangerous operation is canceling something.

A cancel operation is supposed to be safe by returning the system to its state prior to the start operation that cause the question to be raised. So, if you "didn't really mean to cancel" you can always just invoke the operation again. Now, a cancel operation might take some time to complete and so could be inconvenient, but it's never dangerous.

Cases where "cancel" results in a destructive, unrecoverable operation, are even worse than "Yes"/"No".

# ? May 5, 2015 23:05

IT BEGINS: Jan 15, 2009; I don't know how to make analogies

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

Why were you fixing it? If it wasn't causing any problems other than being doofy, why kick the turd?

It's not particularly offensive, but we're adding a new feature to this code so we were having to move this stuff around anyway. 'enabled ISNULL' was making things unclear, as well as a few repeated nullchecks for "$enabled != 'n'".

You might be right, and I'm not changing it yet. Just amused that the response was 'yeah do this other stupid thing instead'.

# ? May 5, 2015 23:09

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

lord funk posted:

It belongs in this thread because it really is a coding horror to see three paragraphs of dialog alert text with [YES] [NO] at the bottom of it, and every developer should know that.

1000x this:

Unless the text says something like "do you want to cancel ..." and one of the options is 'cancel' (which is supposed to prevent the cancel). That can be really confusing, especially if the wording isn't perfect and/or the other button says something equally ambiguous.

# ? May 6, 2015 00:26

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

IT BEGINS posted:

It's not particularly offensive, but we're adding a new feature to this code so we were having to move this stuff around anyway. 'enabled ISNULL' was making things unclear, as well as a few repeated nullchecks for "$enabled != 'n'".

You might be right, and I'm not changing it yet. Just amused that the response was 'yeah do this other stupid thing instead'.

Think about it this way: if you make it a boolean, then it can only ever have two values (should be not nullable, of course). If you keep it varchar, then you have TRUE, FALSE and FileNotFound at a later date. What can be more beautiful than that? If it's limited to only one char in length, then you will be limited to 26 states, hopefully you can manage that.

# ? May 6, 2015 00:26

Dr. Stab: Sep 12, 2010; 👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀

Kilson posted:

Unless the text says something like "do you want to cancel ..." and one of the options is 'cancel' (which is supposed to prevent the cancel). That can be really confusing, especially if the wording isn't perfect and/or the other button says something equally ambiguous.

Are you sure you want to cancel?
Cancel | Continue

# ? May 6, 2015 00:33

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

Dr. Stab posted:

Are you sure you want to cancel?
Cancel | Continue

If the order of the buttons were flipped this would be fine, since you should also follow the convention that the operation being confirmed will happen when pressing the rightmost button.

# ? May 6, 2015 00:46

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

IT BEGINS posted:

It's not particularly offensive, but we're adding a new feature to this code so we were having to move this stuff around anyway. 'enabled ISNULL' was making things unclear, as well as a few repeated nullchecks for "$enabled != 'n'".

You might be right, and I'm not changing it yet. Just amused that the response was 'yeah do this other stupid thing instead'.

Have you posted any of this to The Daily WTF yet?

# ? May 6, 2015 01:11

return0: Apr 11, 2007

Are you sure you want to cancel your order?

Cancel / Yes

# ? May 6, 2015 01:26

TheBlackVegetable: Oct 29, 2006

Volguus posted:

Think about it this way: if you make it a boolean, then it can only ever have two values (should be not nullable, of course). If you keep it varchar, then you have TRUE, FALSE and FileNotFound at a later date. What can be more beautiful than that? If it's limited to only one char in length, then you will be limited to 26 states, hopefully you can manage that.

26 letters, 10 numbers, various symbols and of course you can always turn on case-sensitivity for that extra reach around.

# ? May 6, 2015 02:58

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

Volguus posted:

Think about it this way: if you make it a boolean, then it can only ever have two values (should be not nullable, of course). If you keep it varchar, then you have TRUE, FALSE and FileNotFound at a later date. What can be more beautiful than that? If it's limited to only one char in length, then you will be limited to 26 states, hopefully you can manage that.

I hope I'm just getting whooshed here. Leaving it alone is one thing. Planning to make it worse is another.

# ? May 6, 2015 03:49

TheresaJayne: Jul 1, 2011

code:


Are you sure you do not not want to not delete no files?

   YES                                              NO

do you click yes or no?

# ? May 6, 2015 07:01

nuvan: Mar 29, 2008; And the gentle call of the feral 3am "Everything is going so well you can't help but panic."

TheresaJayne posted:

code:


Are you sure you do not not want to not delete no files?

   YES                                              NO

do you click yes or no?

Aardvark

# ? May 6, 2015 07:06

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

you click the x button in the upper right

# ? May 6, 2015 08:03

Mr Shiny Pants: Nov 12, 2012

qntm posted:

This is one of my minor UI irritations right now. Words like "OK", "Cancel", "Yes" and "No" are generally fairly neutral, but if you start getting creative then it does start tripping people up, as you mentioned, but it's also effectively putting words in the user's mouth, words that the user doesn't necessarily want there. Google seems to have made a global habit out of putting "Got it" instead of "OK" on all of their acknowledgement buttons, which irks me because "Got it" simply is not me.

Worse, occasionally I see UIs where the acknowledgement button says "Thanks!", which is a great way to make people angry if they aren't particularly grateful for whatever it is the software just did, or if they're already angry at or frustrated with the software for any reason.

I think UI designers think that this kind of thing equates to user-friendly software, but what it actually is is making the user be friendly to the software. Bearing in mind how much most of us hate almost all software, this is a bad road to start down.

This said, I am okay with that one JavaScript dialogue box only having two hard-coded options, "OK" and "Cancel", because I believe that if you can't phrase your prompt in such a way that these two options are totally unambiguous, then you need to rephrase your prompt.

This, It feels like the programmers are trying to be "hip" and "cool" and failing miserably. SharePoint 2013 has this quite a lot and it is pretty annoying.

# ? May 6, 2015 08:15

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Suspicious Dish posted:

you click the x button in the upper right

in a window that is made of nothing but x buttons

# ? May 6, 2015 09:11

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

Mr Shiny Pants posted:

This, It feels like the programmers are trying to be "hip" and "cool" and failing miserably. SharePoint 2013 has this quite a lot and it is pretty annoying.

I wouldn't pin the blame on the programmers, they probably just want to dump a stacktrace on the dialog and use the default "OK" button.

# ? May 6, 2015 09:46

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

I still feel that Windows 7 (maybe Vista and XP too?) nailed the tone in error messages.

Windows 9x used the phrasing "illegal operation" which, while technically correct, freaked out non-nerds.

Windows 8 has a giant ":(" when it bluescreens, which might as well be a giant ASCII middle finger.

# ? May 6, 2015 09:50

ErIog: Jul 11, 2001

Mr Shiny Pants posted:

This, It feels like the programmers are trying to be "hip" and "cool" and failing miserably. SharePoint 2013 has this quite a lot and it is pretty annoying.

If only that was the worst part of SharePoint we would be living in a utopia.

# ? May 6, 2015 10:07

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.

Wheany posted:

Windows 8 has a giant "" when it bluescreens, which might as well be a giant ASCII middle finger.

At least it has error codes you can actually Google.

# ? May 6, 2015 10:33

TheresaJayne: Jul 1, 2011

SupSuper posted:

At least it has error codes you can actually Google.

well i play minecraft and someone was killed by an item in the game and the response was hillarious it posted in general chat

java.Exception.DivideByDiamond.

# ? May 6, 2015 12:31

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

I hope I'm just getting whooshed here. Leaving it alone is one thing. Planning to make it worse is another.

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_ posted:

enum Bool
{
True,
False,
FileNotFound
};

# ? May 6, 2015 14:17

Purple Prince: Aug 20, 2011

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

I hope I'm just getting whooshed here. Leaving it alone is one thing. Planning to make it worse is another.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic

# ? May 6, 2015 14:46

itskage: Aug 26, 2003

Just need to increase user knowledge so that they know how to mentally escalate a confusing prompt to the next escape option.

Click X
Hit Escape
Ctrl+C
Alt+F4
Command+Q
Ctrl+Shift+Break
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Press reset
Hold Down the power button
Un plug
Kill self

# ? May 6, 2015 14:53

Blotto Skorzany: Nov 7, 2008; He's a PSoC, loose and runnin'
came the whisper from each lip
And he's here to do some business with
the bad ADC on his chip
bad ADC on his chiiiiip

Purple Prince posted:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic

code:

enum Bool 
{ 
    True, 
    False, 
    FileNotFound 
};

# ? May 6, 2015 14:57

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

Blotto Skorzany posted:

code:

enum Bool 
{ 
    True, 
    False, 
    FileNotFound 
};

Opening brace wastefully on its own line, lack of trailing comma on last enum entry resulting in spurious diff lines? Terrible.

# ? May 6, 2015 15:57

Blotto Skorzany: Nov 7, 2008; He's a PSoC, loose and runnin'
came the whisper from each lip
And he's here to do some business with
the bad ADC on his chip
bad ADC on his chiiiiip

It's copied from a C#-centric site where wonky brace and indent styles are prevalent. I certainly wasn't going to sully myself cleaning it up.

# ? May 6, 2015 16:02

No Safe Word: Feb 26, 2005

sarehu posted:

Opening brace wastefully on its own line, lack of trailing comma on last enum entry resulting in spurious diff lines? Terrible.

People have actually questioned my use of "always put a trailing comma". The true and rare coding horror of advocacy of eliding optional syntax.

# ? May 6, 2015 17:28

Zopotantor: Feb 24, 2013; ...und ist er drin dann lassen wir ihn niemals wieder raus...

Hughlander posted:

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_ posted:
enum Bool
{
True,
False,
FileNotFound
};

Amateurs.

IEEE 1164 posted:

The primary data type std_ulogic (standard unresolved logic) consists of nine character literals in the following order:
Character Value 'U' uninitialized 'X' strong drive, unknown logic value '0' strong drive, logic zero '1' strong drive, logic one 'Z' high impedance 'W' weak drive, unknown logic value 'L' weak drive, logic zero 'H' weak drive, logic one '-' don't care

# ? May 6, 2015 18:49

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

*huff, puff* Is this where the indentation and braces style debate is happening? I'm not late, am I?

# ? May 6, 2015 18:53

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

Dessert Rose posted:

*huff, puff* Is this where the indentation and braces style debate is happening? I'm not late, am I?

You're just in time!

*Ahem* The way you do it is stupid and wrong, you piece of poo poo.

# ? May 6, 2015 19:17

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

Zopotantor posted:

Amateurs.

Psh, nobody needs more than 0/1/X/Z unless you're doing full blown GLS. That'll help you figure out what wand is broken.

# ? May 6, 2015 19:22

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

John Big Booty posted:

You're just in time!

*Ahem* The way you do it is stupid and wrong, you piece of poo poo.

Python.

# ? May 6, 2015 19:46

Soricidus: Oct 21, 2010; freedom-hating statist shill

xzzy posted:

Python.

Oh cool, how do you prefer to do your braces and indentation for multiline dict/set literals and comprehensions?

# ? May 6, 2015 19:49

Zopotantor: Feb 24, 2013; ...und ist er drin dann lassen wir ihn niemals wieder raus...

xzzy posted:

Python.

Occam.

Anybody remember the transputer?

# ? May 6, 2015 19:54

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

xzzy posted:

Python.

4 spaces > tabs :c00lbert:

# ? May 6, 2015 19:55

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# ? May 10, 2024 00:27

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Soricidus posted:

Oh cool, how do you prefer to do your braces and indentation for multiline dict/set literals and comprehensions?

I.. I..

# ? May 6, 2015 19:58

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