Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

0x1C to 0x1F are clear the best bytes to delimit data with.

# ? Jun 14, 2008 13:21

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:37

npe: Oct 15, 2004

I should have clarified, the file has to be a valid "text" file in single encoding. While you could delimit the data like that, it would be mixed encoding and would piss off text editors.

In other words, the 0xFE bytes are tripping complaints from programs reading them about that byte not being valid utf8, and this is where the wtf complaints come from... "I thought anything could be unicode".

npe fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Jun 14, 2008

# ? Jun 14, 2008 13:36

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

0x1C to 0x1F are valid ASCII, and valid utf-8 encodings. Whether or not your text editor will like them I don't know.

# ? Jun 14, 2008 14:37

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
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From a test I recently corrected.

__m128 y = _mm_mul_ps(x, _mm_set1_ps(1.0f));

This is an SSE y = x*1;

__m128 rcp = _mm_rcp_ps(_mm_set1_ps(1.0f));

rcp = 1/1;

Wait, there's worse

__m128 rcp = rcp_nr(_mm_set1_ps(1.0f));

Hrmm. SSE reciprocal is not very accurate. I know, let's use a newtown rhapson iteration to increase the accuracy of our 1/1 calculation!

# ? Jun 14, 2008 16:35

ZorbaTHut: May 5, 2005; wake me when the world is saved

I wrote a 3000-line function once. It included a "goto".

No, I'm not going to paste it in here.

Took about five minutes to compile. I think I determined that GCC's optimizer was O(n^2) in the number of lines.

I cleaned it up once it was finished and split it into three or four functions (yes, still behemonths of functions, but they did big complex things and splitting it up further would have just made it less readable.)

# ? Jun 14, 2008 22:21

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
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ZorbaTHut posted:

I wrote a 3000-line function once. It included a "goto".

3000 lines is :psyduck:

, but there's nothing wrong with using the occasional goto. "Never ever use goto" is generally promulgated by people who've heard of Dijkstra's article but never read the drat thing.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:26

Factor Mystic: Mar 20, 2006; Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Zakalwe posted:

3000 lines is , but there's nothing wrong with using the occasional goto. "Never ever use goto" is generally promulgated by people who've heard of Dijkstra's article but never read the drat thing.

I'm skeptical that goto has a valid place outside of perhaps some simple scripting. I challenge you to show me a valid example of goto use in modern object oriented code.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:31

tripwire: Nov 19, 2004; _{ghost flow}

Zakalwe posted:

3000 lines is , but there's nothing wrong with using the occasional goto. "Never ever use goto" is generally promulgated by people who've heard of Dijkstra's article but never read the drat thing.

Gotos have no place in OO (or really any kind of structured) programming. Maybe you'd feel more at home with fortran?

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:38

ehnus: Apr 16, 2003; Now you're thinking with portals!

Factor Mystic posted:

I'm skeptical that goto has a valid place outside of perhaps some simple scripting. I challenge you to show me a valid example of goto use in modern object oriented code.

Two that come immediately to mind are breaking out of nested loops in C/C++/C# and cleaning up/freeing resources upon failure in environments that do not provide exceptions. I've used them when I've written parsers too as there was no other clear way of providing similar functionality.

Linus Torvalds addresses the use of "goto" in the Linux kernel with some good points here.

Yes, they can turn code into an unreadable mess but, sometimes, they can also make code more readable and more intuitive.

edit: I'm inclined to think that people who believe that "goto" has no place in modern programming languages have not been programming for long enough.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:43

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
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ehnus posted:

Two that come immediately to mind are breaking out of nested loops in C/C++/C# and cleaning up/freeing resources upon failure in environments that do not provide exceptions. I've used them when I've written parsers too as there was no other clear way of providing similar functionality.

DING DING DING.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:51

Allie: Jan 17, 2004

Factor Mystic posted:

I'm skeptical that goto has a valid place outside of perhaps some simple scripting. I challenge you to show me a valid example of goto use in modern object oriented code.

They're useful in C for cleanup in the case of errors, and they're usually more readable than the alternatives. Other than that, I don't know that I've ever used them for anything else, and in that case they usually aren't necessary or all that useful in languages with exception handling capabilities.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 01:52

POKEMAN SAM: Jul 8, 2004

ehnus posted:

Two that come immediately to mind are breaking out of nested loops in C/C++/C#

The one thing I did like about PHP was that they offer the break X construct that lets you break out of nested loops as far as you want.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 02:22

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
Poor Taste
Unlawful Carnal Gopher Knowledge

Ugg boots posted:

The one thing I did like about PHP was that they offer the break X construct that lets you break out of nested loops as far as you want.

Until you add another loop and WHOOPS, you're not where you think you should be.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 02:27

tef: May 30, 2004; -> some l-system crap ->

tripwire posted:

Gotos have no place in OO (or really any kind of structured) programming. Maybe you'd feel more at home with fortran?

There is the interesting paper "Structured programming with Gotos" by donald knuth.

http://pplab.snu.ac.kr/courses/adv_pl05/papers/p261-knuth.pdf

The horror of goto is using it in place of while, for and other looping and structured constructs. However there are occasions where a direct jump is needed and cannot be elegantly done with the existing constructs.

Even so knuth does suggest that goto not be used in high level languages.

Edit:

Perl had the nice thing of goto &function which was occasionally useful, and also allowed you to label loops so you could do break LOOP_NAME

# ? Jun 15, 2008 02:33

floWenoL: Oct 23, 2002

tripwire posted:

Gotos have no place in OO (or really any kind of structured) programming. Maybe you'd feel more at home with fortran?

Here's a nickel, kid, go buy yourself a C book.

Zakalwe posted:

Until you add another loop and WHOOPS, you're not where you think you should be.

Modern (non-lovely *cough*) languages like Java and Perl provide labeled loops and ways to break out of them, so that removes one of the two remaining use cases for gotos nowadays, and exceptions remove the other one.

floWenoL fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jun 15, 2008

# ? Jun 15, 2008 04:15

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

tef posted:

Perl had the nice thing of goto &function which was occasionally useful, and also allowed you to label loops so you could do break LOOP_NAME

Why the past tense?

# ? Jun 15, 2008 09:43

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
Poor Taste
Unlawful Carnal Gopher Knowledge

floWenoL posted:

Here's a nickel, kid, go buy yourself a C book.

Modern (non-lovely *cough*) languages like Java and Perl provide labeled loops and ways to break out of them, so that removes one of the two remaining use cases for gotos nowadays, and exceptions remove the other one.

break my_label is no different than goto my_label as far as breaking out of loops is concerned. It just removes the functionality of one "evil" and sticks it in another.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 14:20

zootm: Aug 8, 2006; We used to be better friends.

Zakalwe posted:

break my_label is no different than goto my_label as far as breaking out of loops is concerned. It just removes the functionality of one "evil" and sticks it in another.

This is largely correct but the essential point here is that goto should be limited to the point where execution paths can be easily determined. Gotos within local scope for breaking out of loops and the like are theoretically fine, but jumping between functions, jumping to arbitrary points to emulate flow control, and so on is craziness. There's definitely valid uses within C from what I've seen, though.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 14:42

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

Terrorism
Kidnapping
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zootm posted:

This is largely correct but the essential point here is that goto should be limited to the point where execution paths can be easily determined. Gotos within local scope for breaking out of loops and the like are theoretically fine, but jumping between functions, jumping to arbitrary points to emulate flow control, and so on is craziness. There's definitely valid uses within C from what I've seen, though.

Agreed.

Here's another coding horror. A student of mine refused to use a for loop. He wrote everything as a while loop

for(int i=0; i<5; ++i){
do_stuff(i);
}

was

int i=0;
while(i<5){
do_stuff(i);
++i;
}

Now they'll compile down to the same code 99.99% of the time, but it takes up more space, reads strangely to anyone else and the iterator now has scope outside of the loop. I never got a satisfactory answer from him as to why he did this.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 14:58

That Turkey Story: Mar 30, 2003

zootm posted:

This is largely correct but the essential point here is that goto should be limited to the point where execution paths can be easily determined. Gotos within local scope for breaking out of loops and the like are theoretically fine, but jumping between functions, jumping to arbitrary points to emulate flow control, and so on is craziness. There's definitely valid uses within C from what I've seen, though.

Amen. I can't remember when I've ever used a goto, but specifically for jumping out of multiple levels of loops/switches it is pretty much the only solution other than possibly a return statement in some languages (yes in OO-code too). Multi-level or labled breaks are great, but again, unfortunately not all languages have that option (*cough* C, C++). In those cases, goto can be the "correct" thing to do.

Don't get caught into a religious hatred of a particular language feature; it's the naive way of becoming a better programmer. Prematurely ruling out a tool like goto may help you decide more quickly on an implementation for whatever it is you are trying to do since you are decreasing your number of options, but sometimes you may be needlessly throwing away the perfect tool for the job. I'm an atheist, deal with it.

Zakalwe posted:

Here's another coding horror. A student of mine refused to use a for loop. He wrote everything as a while loop

for(int i=0; i<5; ++i){
do_stuff(i);
}

was

int i=0;
while(i<5){
do_stuff(i);
++i;
}

If that's the worst of your problems when teaching a programming class then you're doing a very good job :p

# ? Jun 15, 2008 17:03

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

Zakalwe posted:

Here's another coding horror. A student of mine refused to use a for loop. He wrote everything as a while loop

for(int i=0; i<5; ++i){
do_stuff(i);
}

was

int i=0;
while(i<5){
do_stuff(i);
++i;
}

Now they'll compile down to the same code 99.99% of the time, but it takes up more space, reads strangely to anyone else and the iterator now has scope outside of the loop. I never got a satisfactory answer from him as to why he did this.

It probably made more sense to him but he couldn't express why or how. That's sad, because I believe a majority of problems people have with code stem from an inability to delineate the nature of their thinking and the problems their thinking attempts to solve.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 18:53

Zakalwe

May 12, 2002

Wanted For:

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3rd year college level CS course, not a general programming course I'm afraid. The kid was very bright, but I got an air of "self-taught programmer" from him which would probably explain why he did things that way. The same course, although not the same person, yielded the above SIMD 1/1 and y=x*1 code snippets.

I know I've been guilty of the same thing. When learning C years ago (self taught) I had a habit of using (*foo).bar rather than foo->bar which some people would call horrific.

# ? Jun 15, 2008 22:46

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

Zakalwe posted:

I know I've been guilty of the same thing. When learning C years ago (self taught) I had a habit of using (*foo).bar rather than foo->bar which some people would call horrific.

Hey, at least you knew how to use pointers. :v:

# ? Jun 15, 2008 23:42

more falafel please: Feb 26, 2005; forums poster

Gotos are a better way of cleaning up in error conditions than big nested ifs in situations where exceptions either are not available or cannot be used for reasons such as performance.

This is essentially Linus' argument.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 17:49

Triple Tech: Jul 28, 2006; So what, are you quitting to join Homo Explosion?

Here's a coding horror, buttbot! :rimshot:

(

)

Zakalwe posted:

there's nothing wrong with using the occasional goto

Zakalwe posted:

the occasional goto

Zakalwe posted:

occasional goto

Zakalwe posted:

BOOK DEPOSITORY

You heard it here first, folks, liberal use of goto endorsed by professional programmers!

# ? Jun 17, 2008 18:55

6174: Dec 4, 2004

Speaking of gotos, I ran across this today when diagnosing a crash.

code:

for i=0, nlay-1 do begin  
;  print,i
  j=-1  
  next1:  
;  print, i,j
  j=j+1  
  if(z(j) gt laybnd(0,i))then goto,next1  
  indbnd(0,i)=j  
  next2:  
  j=j+1  
  if(j eq nlev-1)then goto, bottom  
;  print, i,j,z(j),laybnd(1,i)
  if(z(j) gt laybnd(1,i))then goto,next2  
  indbnd(1,i)=j-1 
  goto,loop 
  bottom:  
  indbnd(1,i)=j 
  loop: 
endfor

That is in IDL (a bastardized version of Fortran that kept all the bad parts and tacked on graphics), and yes IDL has the standard if/else conditionals and all the types of loops you could want.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 19:07

Randomosity: Sep 21, 2003; My stalker WAS watching me...

Error handlers are just another form of control structure!

code:

 //TODO to stop mike having an appaplexy, cause this to crash so we can find the break!
try
{
     Integer.parseInt( cc_text_id_split[i] );
}
catch( NumberFormatException nfe )
{
    //continued logic
}

I want to kill the people whose code I now maintain. And wtf is an 'appaplexy'

# ? Jun 17, 2008 21:31

Jethro: Jun 1, 2000; I was raised on the dairy, Bitch!

Randomosity posted:

I want to kill the people whose code I now maintain. And wtf is an 'appaplexy'

I would assume it's a misspelled apoplexy.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 21:46

ashgromnies: Jun 19, 2004

Randomosity posted:

I want to kill the people whose code I now maintain. And wtf is an 'appaplexy'

An application-induced apoplexy.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 22:20

dancavallaro: Sep 10, 2006; My title sucks

floWenoL posted:

Modern (non-lovely *cough*) languages like Java and Perl provide labeled loops and ways to break out of them, so that removes one of the two remaining use cases for gotos nowadays, and exceptions remove the other one.

Wow, I feel stupid. I've been programming in Java for like 5 years and I had no idea it had a labeled break. That would have saved me some hassles.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 22:39

That Turkey Story: Mar 30, 2003

floWenoL posted:

Modern (non-lovely *cough*) languages like Java and Perl provide labeled loops and ways to break out of them, so that removes one of the two remaining use cases for gotos nowadays, and exceptions remove the other one.

Whoa, whoa, backup. Are you saying Java isn't a lovely language?

# ? Jun 17, 2008 22:46

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

That Turkey Story posted:

Whoa, whoa, backup. Are you saying Java isn't a lovely language?

Oh come on when is this poo poo going to end? It's not that bad.

# ? Jun 17, 2008 23:21

JediGandalf: Sep 3, 2004; I have just the top prospect YOU are looking for. Whaddya say, boss? What will it take for ME to get YOU to give up your outfielders?

Randomosity posted:

Error handlers are just another form of control structure!
code:
 //TODO to stop mike having an appaplexy, cause this to crash so we can find the break!
try
{
     Integer.parseInt( cc_text_id_split[i] );
}
catch( NumberFormatException nfe )
{
    //continued logic
}
I want to kill the people whose code I now maintain. And wtf is an 'appaplexy'

Ah we have that too in our code. I've seen it before and I shared your exact reaction. I'll probably go back tomorrow and rework it.

# ? Jun 18, 2008 03:19

more falafel please: Feb 26, 2005; forums poster

code:

Foo* FindFooFromFooID(FooID id)
{
    Foo* pFoo = 0;
    for (list<foo>::iterator it = fooList.begin(); it != fooList.end(); ++foo)
    {
        if ((*it).GetID() == id)
        {
            pFoo = &(*it);
            return pFoo;
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

Foo& GetFooFromFooID(FooID id)
{
    Foo* pFoo = 0;
    for (list<foo>::iterator it = fooList.begin(); it != fooList.end(); ++foo)
    {
        if ((*it).GetID() == id)
        {
            pFoo = &(*it);
        }
    }
    if (pFoo != 0)
    {
        return *pFoo;
    }
    else
    {
        assert(FALSE, "Trying to get a nonexistent Foo");
    }
}

Now aside from the copy-paste mentality of this code, it's not *too* bad. Use FindFooFromFooID when you might be looking up something that isn't there, use GetFooFromFooID when you know it should be there.

Every usage of either of these functions looks like this:

code:

Foo* pFoo = FindFooFromFooID(ID);
if (pFoo)
{
    Foo& Foo = GetFooFromFooID(ID);
    // do stuff
}
// ELSE COMPLETELY HIDE PROGRAMMING OR WORSE YET ART ERRORS

I got to get rid of this today. This was a win.

# ? Jun 18, 2008 07:52

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

On the subject of exception based control flow:

code:

class A {
  ...
};

class a : public A {
  ...
};

class b : public A {
  ...
};

void dispatch(const A &obj) {
  try {
    throw obj;
  } catch (a &a_obj) {
    do_stuff_with_a(a_obj);
  } catch (b &b_obj) {
    do_stuff_with_b(b_obj);
  }
}

# ? Jun 18, 2008 10:13

Smackbilly: Jan 3, 2001; What kind of a name is Pizza Organ! anyway?

Zombywuf posted:

On the subject of exception based control flow:

code:

class A {
  ...
};

class a : public A {
  ...
};

class b : public A {
  ...
};

void dispatch(const A &obj) {
  try {
    throw obj;
  } catch (a &a_obj) {
    do_stuff_with_a(a_obj);
  } catch (b &b_obj) {
    do_stuff_with_b(b_obj);
  }
}

haha oh god... at least that gets creativity points. Who needs RTTI when you have exceptions?

# ? Jun 18, 2008 14:36

The Noble Nobbler: Jul 14, 2003

int newNum = Utils.PrestoChango(x);

# ? Jun 18, 2008 15:09

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

Smackbilly posted:

haha oh god... at least that gets creativity points. Who needs RTTI when you have exceptions?

On the subject, I got to extend a code base for a student project that did stuff like this:

code:

if(successCondition)
{
  //do some cleanup
  throw new WhateverIdoHappenedToWorkException(returnValue);
}
else
{
  /*do the same cleanup with a couple things possibly 
    commented out for some reasonbecause copy and paste 
    is like a control structure, right?*/
  throw new WhateverIdoFailedException();
}

And the calling code had a big try/catch/catch/catch... block to handle the 'result'. Some had multiple success or failure 'conditions' that had to be caught. This technique was used instead of events, or at least mostly in places events should have been used*, in C#. It was all written by a 4th year CS undergrad.

*Class functions would throw exceptions on completion (or error) to be caught by other class functions. There were also a few places where whoever wrote it clearly could have used a switch if it had occurred to him.

# ? Jun 18, 2008 23:32

more falafel please: Feb 26, 2005; forums poster

Munkeymon posted:

On the subject, I got to extend a code base for a student project that did stuff like this:
code:
if(successCondition)
{
  //do some cleanup
  throw new WhateverIdoHappenedToWorkException(returnValue);
}
else
{
  /*do the same cleanup with a couple things possibly 
    commented out for some reasonbecause copy and paste 
    is like a control structure, right?*/
  throw new WhateverIdoFailedException();
}
And the calling code had a big try/catch/catch/catch... block to handle the 'result'. Some had multiple success or failure 'conditions' that had to be caught. This technique was used instead of events, or at least mostly in places events should have been used*, in C#. It was all written by a 4th year CS undergrad.

*Class functions would throw exceptions on completion (or error) to be caught by other class functions. There were also a few places where whoever wrote it clearly could have used a switch if it had occurred to him.

Exceptions are like goto, only they're just "gosomewhere".

# ? Jun 19, 2008 23:50

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:37

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

ZorbaTHut posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Factor Mystic posted:

ehnus posted:

Factor Mystic posted:

ehnus posted:

Ugg boots posted:

tripwire posted:

tripwire posted:

Zakalwe posted:

tef posted:

floWenoL posted:

Zakalwe posted:

zootm posted:

zootm posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

Zakalwe posted:

code:

code:

Randomosity posted:

Randomosity posted:

floWenoL posted:

floWenoL posted:

That Turkey Story posted:

Randomosity posted:

code:

code:

code:

code:

Zombywuf posted:

code:

Smackbilly posted:

code:

Munkeymon posted:

code:

more falafel please posted: