The Weird and The Wonderful

The Weird and The Wonderful forum is a place to post Coding Horrors, Worst Practices, and the occasional flash of brilliance.

We all come across code that simply boggles the mind. Lazy kludges, embarrassing mistakes, horrid workarounds and developers just not quite getting it. And then somedays we come across - or write - the truly sublime.

Post your Best, your worst, and your most interesting. But please - no programming questions . This forum is purely for amusement and discussions on code snippets. All actual programming questions will be removed.

Re: What you say is what you code

John R. Shaw14-Mar-07 16:59

John R. Shaw

14-Mar-07 16:59

Thanks Rage! Laugh | :laugh:

As soon as I open this post a laughed, before even reading it.

INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."Edsger Dijkstra

No QA for language in GUI [modified]

Marcus J. Smith14-Mar-07 6:27

Marcus J. Smith

14-Mar-07 6:27

I saw this[^] article at thedailywtf.com and it reminded me of something.

I was reproducing a web page's functionality in a web service and in doing so had to see some error messages. One of them was along the lines of "Your request not is having some information that is required, please see a representative".

This is for an official site for an important agency so many people would have seen this throughout the years and all because someone didnt check over a non-native English speaker's work.

I've worked with a few non-native English with some projects and this seems to be an issue on many projects whether it be button names = "cancel Btton" to crazy English errors. This is not necessarily a stab at someone without a perfect grasp of the language but there needs to be better QA processes in place to catch these things.

-- modified at 15:46 Thursday 15th March, 2007

_Cle^aKO

"I think you'll be okay here, they have a thin candy shell. 'Surprised you didn't know that." - Tommy Boy
"Fill it up again! Fill it up again! Once it hits your lips, it's so good!" - Frank the Tank (Old School)

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Pete O'Hanlon16-Mar-07 1:18

Pete O'Hanlon

16-Mar-07 1:18

I agree entirely. There's not enough proofreading/editing on interfaces of any description (web site, application, etc). Mind you, I am biased since my wife is a proofreader and we offer this service to all of our clients. Big Grin | :-D

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Marcus J. Smith16-Mar-07 2:23

Marcus J. Smith

16-Mar-07 2:23

The sad part about this instance is that none of the users ever said anything. Confused | :confused:

_Cle^aKO

"I think you'll be okay here, they have a thin candy shell. 'Surprised you didn't know that.'" - Tommy (Tommy Boy)
"Fill it up again! Fill it up again! Once it hits your lips, it's so good!" - Frank the Tank (Old School)

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Pete O'Hanlon16-Mar-07 3:48

Pete O'Hanlon

16-Mar-07 3:48

CleaKO wrote:
The sad part about this instance is that none of the users ever said anything

Doesn't that just tell you everything you need to know about users?

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Dan Neely16-Mar-07 3:54

Dan Neely

16-Mar-07 3:54

Pete O`Hanlon wrote:
CleaKO wrote:
The sad part about this instance is that none of the users ever said anything

Doesn't that just tell you everything you need to know about users?

Pete, CleaKO may i use the above as a sig?

--
Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Pete O'Hanlon16-Mar-07 4:07

Pete O'Hanlon

16-Mar-07 4:07

Help yourself mate.

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Marcus J. Smith16-Mar-07 4:16

Marcus J. Smith

16-Mar-07 4:16

That's fine with me. Big Grin | :-D

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Dan Neely16-Mar-07 9:36

Dan Neely

16-Mar-07 9:36

Thank you. my CP sigs been overdue for a change and my current email one's probably too incendiary to use outside of the soapbox.

--
C^{le^aK}O The sad part about this instance is that none of the users ever said anything [about the problem].

Pete O`Hanlon Doesn't that just tell you everything you need to know about users?

Re: No QA for language in GUI

Pete O'Hanlon16-Mar-07 11:13

Pete O'Hanlon

16-Mar-07 11:13

Like the sig. Big Grin | :-D

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

if else galore

Haroon Sarwar14-Mar-07 3:58

Haroon Sarwar

14-Mar-07 3:58

stumbled over this code while maintaining some script for an installer Dead | X|

:

if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
else
if ( SomeCondition ) then
...
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;
endif;

i guess it didn't occur to the fellow who wrote it to use elseif or switch/case Unsure | :~

Re: if else galore

C^hris L^osinger14-Mar-07 4:02

C^hris L^osinger

14-Mar-07 4:02

does the script language support switch/case ?

image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging

Re: if else galore

Haroon Sarwar14-Mar-07 17:47

Haroon Sarwar

14-Mar-07 17:47

yep...in fact I've already replaced it with switch/case Smile | :)

...

Re: if else galore

Muammar©16-Mar-07 9:07

Muammar©

16-Mar-07 9:07

Chris Losinger wrote:
does the script language support switch/case ?

Good one!!

Smile: A curve that can set a lot of things straight!
(\ /)
(O.o)
(><)

Re: if else galore

Kevin McFarlane17-Mar-07 1:16

Kevin McFarlane

17-Mar-07 1:16

IIRC there was an early version of InstallShield's scripting language which didn't have else if, so you were lumbered with this kind of thing. No switches either.

But in your case you say the language does support else if, so no excuse. But could this be an old InstallShield script that hasn't been updated as the language features have moved on?

Kevin

Re: if else galore

Haroon Sarwar18-Mar-07 18:39

Haroon Sarwar

18-Mar-07 18:39

well it was written from scratch on a script version that did support elseif/switch-case, but i guess if the guy/gal was used to working on an old version that didn't support it, could be they thought the new one didn't either...

prolonged InstallShield usage does also have the capability to pretty much kill the any enthusiasm for development inside you...maybe he/she was just fed up!;P

Re: if else galore

Kevin McFarlane19-Mar-07 9:39

Kevin McFarlane

19-Mar-07 9:39

I don't know about you but one of the first things I do when a new version of a language comes out is look up what's new. But I suspect many don't bother with that.

Kevin

For loop

N a v a n e e t h13-Mar-07 1:22

N a v a n e e t h

13-Mar-07 1:22

Last week i was put into a maintenance project. It's big accounting project. When reviewing the code i came through one funny for loop..check this

for(int i=0;i<=7*2;i++)
{
//dosomething
}

will there be any specific reason for this type of coding ?

Cheers
Navaneeth!!

www.w3hearts.com

Re: For loop

Ed.Poore13-Mar-07 2:09

Ed.Poore

13-Mar-07 2:09

It'd probably be optimised away by the compiler anyway, perhaps it made sense to the programmer because for example it may have been to loop through two weeks so by writing the code like that it'd help him remember. Just a thought, although I personally wouldn't do it.

Re: For loop

PIEBALDconsult13-Mar-07 4:19

PIEBALDconsult

13-Mar-07 4:19

Yeah, 7*2 may be a little clearer than 14, but I'd make a constant of some kind.

I used to see things like:

# define SecondsPerMinute 60
# define MinutesPerHour   60
# define HoursPerDay      24
# define MinutesPerDay    (MinutesPerHour*HoursPerDay)
# define SecondsPerDay    (SecondsPerMinute*MinutesPerDay)

On a side note; the guru insisted we use defines rather than consts to conserve memory.

Re: For loop

Ed.Poore13-Mar-07 6:20

Ed.Poore

13-Mar-07 6:20

Agreed but does C# (my main language) support that type of define? I didn't think so.

Re: For loop

Shog⁹13-Mar-07 7:00

Shog⁹

13-Mar-07 7:00

Eh, you can use consts though. Pretty much all they're really useful for in C#...

(I do hate seeing raw numbers like that in code. Even if you put the const variable definition right above the loop, you've still created an opportunity to give the value a descriptive name. You see numDays = 7*2, you think, "ah, two weeks!" rather than wondering what the numbers signify.)

----

...the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more...

Re: For loop

Ed.Poore13-Mar-07 7:03

Ed.Poore

13-Mar-07 7:03

Shog9 wrote:
"ah, two weeks!" rather than wondering what the numbers signify.)

Very true

Re: For loop

#12313-Mar-07 7:35

#123

13-Mar-07 7:35

Ed.Poore wrote:
Very true

How about a few steps further? See my reply to Shog here[^].

Re: For loop

#12313-Mar-07 7:33

#123

13-Mar-07 7:33

Shog9 wrote:
Even if you put the const variable definition right above the loop, you've still created an opportunity to give the value a descriptive name. You see numDays = 7*2, you think, "ah, two weeks!" rather than wondering what the numbers signify.

Or, in a less primitive tongue:

A week is 7 days.
A fortnight is 2 weeks.
A day is 24 hours.
A second is 1000 milliseconds.
An hour is 60 minutes.
A minute is 60 seconds.

Conversions are handled automatically, as you would expect, and the plural terms are derived from the singulars. The definitions, of course, may appear in any order.

It always surprises me how people say they want their code to be transparent but nevertheless insist on using languages that require the most obtuse and unnatural syntax (as in "numDays = 7*2").

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