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Similar to this one
TRACE("Shouldn't be able to reach this code! But good luck, though.");
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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MsgBox( "Oops." ) I found this one in something I wrote in my first job out of school.
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I used to do that alot in crazy if else statements that shouldn't have been needed:
Response.Write("Something has gone seriously wrong here, please reboot universe")
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I use a throw with a similar message - mostly on the default of a switch
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Yes, that kind of thing is always a bad sign. Not that I ever did such a thing when I started out!
I do make sure to avoid doing such things now.
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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In my first job I was working alongside some guys from an external vendor. Integrating their system into ours and trying to get the whole thing validated by System Test.
One day an error popped up that originated in the Vendors Code:
"The System Has Gone Pear Shaped"
System test weren't impressed.
The guy from the external vendor was summoned, and asked what a more accurate error message would be. I can't remember what it was, but he gave a very detailed, accurate and completely unintelligible response.
To which the head of system test replied...
"And what does that mean? In English?"
To which he replied...
"The system has gone pear shaped."
-Rd
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At which point, you take the vendor outside the building, put two bullets in his head, and leave his body mounted on a pike outside the castle walls as a warning to others.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: At which point, you take the vendor outside the building, put two bullets in his head, and leave his body mounted on a pike outside the castle walls as a warning to others.
Actually that particular project I had no problem with the Vendor. I was young Naive, what did I know?
I'll say this. Compared to experiences I've had and am still having with vendors, that project was a cakewalk.
When you've debugged a vendor's Javascript files you start to understand that a dodgy error message is no biggie.
There's nothing quite like javascript files which seem to have had all whitespace sucked out of them, presumably to stop people stealing some of the most horrible code ever written (why would anyone want to).
-Rd
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for(i = 0; i < num; i++)
{
strIntString.Format(_T("%3d,%#9.*f,%#9.*f,%#9.*f,%#9.*f,%#6.*f,%#6.*f,%#6.*f,%#6.*f,%02d:%02d:%02d,%3d,%4d,%1d,%5d,%1d,%3d\r\n"),
newObject->m_nIndex,
temp.prec[0], newObject->val1[0], temp.prec[1], newObject->val1[1],
temp.prec[2], newObject->val1[2], temp.prec[3], newObject->val1[3],
temp.prec2[0], newObject->val2[0], temp.prec2[1], newObject->val2[1],
temp.prec2[2], newObject->val2[2], temp.prec2[3], newObject->val2[3],
newObject->m_nHours, newObject->m_nMinutes, newObject->m_nSeconds,
newObject->m_nNext, newObject->m_nTotal, newObject->m_nGroup,
newObject->m_Extra, newObject->m_nMode, options);
numOut=strIntString.GetLength();
m_File->Seek(HEADERLEN+(105*i),CFile::begin);
m_File->Write(strIntString,numOut);
strIntString.Empty();
}
Guess what happens when any of the variables has more digits than was allocated in the Format call. Right, the line is no longer "EXACTLY" 105 bytes. File becomes a messy pile of bytes.
The only thing I changed from the actual code were the variable names. This is in production code, currently being run by thousands of customers.
You should see how these files are read in. It's worse, but too long to post.
Sigh.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely,
But thank you for your concern,
Here's wishing you a Happy New Year."
I wished him one back in return.
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David Kentley wrote: when any of the variables has more digits than was allocated in the Format call
Does that ever actually happen?
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aspdotnetdev wrote: Does that ever actually happen?
Yes, as I discovered today when I had to track down a customer reported bug. It is an usual case, but it's completely possible and even legitimate. I had no idea what I would find under the rock I kicked over.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely,
But thank you for your concern,
Here's wishing you a Happy New Year."
I wished him one back in return.
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rewrite it in COBOL, it's good at that sort of stuff
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Such constructs aren't so rare... in a company I worked years ago, we had to import lots of different file formats, and I'd say, 50% of them used a similar "design". Not to mention that our fantastic database also almost worked like that - yay! No wonder that company doesn't exist anymore.
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Doesn't the fact that the company is now defunct mean that such constructs are, at least, getting rarer...?
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Only in theory. For every horrible coder out of the race two new ones come to replace him. And the odds are good that the one who did this is still at large somewhere out there.
A while ago he asked me what he should have printed on my business cards. I said 'Wizard'.
I read books which nobody else understand. Then I do something which nobody understands. After that the computer does something which nobody understands. When asked, I say things about the results which nobody understand. But everybody expects miracles from me on a regular basis. Looks to me like the classical definition of a wizard.
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It's enough to make ya cry into your beer...
P.S. I like your sig.
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At least that block of code had line breaks. Just imagine trying to read that as one continuous line...
I find the best way to have a positive attitude is to have extremely low expectations
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Sometimes you just have to hope for the best until you get the next job - at least, this was the credo of more than one programmer who I've met in person or simply in the trash they left behind
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I had something similar in production to fix.
File had fixed length lines, every column meant something and couldn't change.
But it did, suddenly some lines were one char too long, so some columns were invalid.
A 2 char field was supposed to be 01, 02, or 03. An int was being used to calculate,
and got incremented up to 98, 99, 100, .... More than 2 characters. The program was
using C char* with strcpy and strcat, so this field being too long shifted the position
of all following fields, bad data!
I corrected the field to only be 1, 2 or 3 (zero prepended to make 2 chars), and added
checks for the line length before outputting to a the required file. And starting
using C++ class std::string instead of char* in my newer code to help my sanity.
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This gem was on the asp.net forums:
if (Session["_serial"] + "" == "")
Response.Redirect("menu.aspx", true);
Steve Wellens
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At first I thought it looked ugly, but actually you can add a null to an empty string and the output will be an empty string. Also, adding two empty strings together produces an empty string, so what this code does is checks if the string Is Null Or Empty, very clever
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Sam Cragg wrote: At first I thought it looked ugly,
It is ugly.
Sam Cragg wrote: very clever
Maintaining simple code is cheaper than maintaining 'clever' code.
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(Session["_serial"] as String))
Response.Redirect("menu.aspx", true);
if ((Session["_serial"] == null) || (Session["_serial"] == ""))
Response.Redirect("menu.aspx", true);
String _serial = Session["_serial"] as String;
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(_serial))
Response.Redirect("menu.aspx", true);
Steve Wellens
modified on Thursday, September 16, 2010 9:17 PM
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Sorry, I was trying to be sarcastic (the winking smiley?), as I said:
checks if the string Is Null Or Empty
Hinting at the built in function string.IsNullOrEmpty
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It is rather clever if it is dotNet1.1 where string.IsNullorEmpty doesn't exist. I would probably suggest that a dev write it in a more legible way though so that their code wouldn't end up here.
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If it's checking to see if the session object is null or empty, that seems perfectly cromulent.
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