The Weird and The Wonderful

2-May-12 22:42

Today I have my code horror hanging on the wall, in form of a printout from the ceiling to the floor. It's from a Win CE application which had been sent to a customer totally untested. Of course it failed miserably. It's almost ironic, but reporting the error in a message box also fails, due to a missing resource assembly. There also is no logging or any other mechanism to record errors. In short: Nobody really knows what's going on, not even the criminal who wrote that program.

The good news: The form that produces the error only has three methods, PageLoad() and two others. PageLoad() is only a few lines long. Initialisation, nothing really problematic. The first of the two other methods also was quite short. No problems here.

And now method #3:

- 350 lines of best spaghetti code rolled in a loop. Whenever this is executed, it will then hang up the entire application until it is done.

- A total of 17 try/catch blocks. Most catch blocks are totally empty. There is no error handling. The errors are simply swept under the rug and the code goes on as if nothing happened. Only three try to at least show the error in a message box, but our friend also failed at doing that. A brief scan of the rest of the application's code revealed that this is one of his favorite practices.

- There are eight code sequences which appear redundantly in this spaghetti monster. They could easily have been refactored into methods, but that of course would have harmed this work of art.

- The least of the problems, but does anybody know what a pflohneos, a finach or a fidel is? Those are just some of the variable names and they don't make any sense in any language I know.

Edit: Here a tiny sample cut out of the spaghetti monster. It's easy to see what he tries to do, but I can only guess what the intentions behind all this are. There are no comments and the strange variable names don't help very much:

try
{
    string pflohneos = pfl.Name.ToUpper().Replace(pflnamen, "");
    string danapfl = Path.Combine(Konstanten.Flashdir, pflohneos);
    MessageLabel.Text = String.Format(tt.Readwert("t1"), danapfl);
    Refresh();
    try
    {
        FileInfo finach = new FileInfo(danapfl);
        if (finach != null)
        {
            finach.Attributes &= ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly;
        }
    }
    catch
    {
    }
    pfl.Attributes &= ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly;
    pfl.CopyTo(danapfl, true);
    pfl.Delete();
}
catch
{
}

This is really an insult to the customer. Good that they will never get to see this mess in all its glory. My recommendation is to quickly write another application and then tar and feather the guy who wrote this one.

At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity

kdgupta872-May-12 23:32

kdgupta87

2-May-12 23:32

always an empty catch block remind me open manhole's in road, i feel uncomfortable, doesn't know why

CDP18022-May-12 23:56

2-May-12 23:56

This is more like a city with every manhole opened.Care to go for a walk?

At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity

Jeremy Hutchinson4-May-12 1:29

Jeremy Hutchinson

4-May-12 1:29

CDP1802 wrote:
This is more like a city with every manhole opened.Care to go for a walk?

Blindfolded.

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Jörgen Andersson3-May-12 0:00

3-May-12 0:00

CDP1802 wrote:
but does anybody know what a pflohneos, a finach or a fidel is?

Pfl ohne os, FileInfo nach, and a well known cuban dictator. D'Oh! | :doh:

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CDP18023-May-12 0:17

3-May-12 0:17

You are right. As if DD's CCC had been turned into a convention for variable names Smile | :)

Pf = Pfad (Path)
l = ???
ohne = without
os = operating system (Does that make any sense at all? Sounds just like 'Purple dog over the moon')

fi = file info
nach = after (after what, exactly)?

I have marked the printout on the wall with color markers and also added some notes. At that place I also wrote 'Castro?' Smile | :)

Ah, I got it! He's deleting files!

fi = file (please note that he has galantly switched to English now)
del = delete

Here's another good one: danapfl

dana = Dateiname (filename, first I thought he started to name things after his daughters)
pf = Pfad (path)
l = ???

What form of insanity is this and how is it treated?

At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity

Jörgen Andersson3-May-12 0:59

3-May-12 0:59

Is the nutcase an old git that learned programming when bytes were expensive? I'm thinking about classic unix folder names like 'USR' here.

It could be fun decrypting this, but I think I would need to see more of the spaghetti monster to have a fair chance.

Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak.
List of common misconceptions

CDP18023-May-12 2:34

3-May-12 2:34

He definitely is. Decoding his stuff is fun as long as the code gives you some hints to what is going on. Here he's messing around with files. By trying to kill running executables he also gives me the impression that this is supposed to be some kind of DIY deployment and updating mechanism. It really gets funny when it comes to updating the obviously running program itself.

If you really want to have a challenge, then you should look at how he works with relational data. First everything is 'imported'. That means a lot of files are copied from somewhere in the network into a folder of the mobile device. The stuff is not XML or CSV, of which he usually is very fond. It's some creation of his own with fixed record and field lengths. And then he does not actually import anything. The program searches through those files to find and display data and changes are made to copies in another folder. Those changes are then sent off into the network again once the device is docked.

That's what I call retro! A 'database' in the style of 1960 and a DIY DBMS that relies heavily on the file system and 'database files' which must be named after the primary keys of the content. All that in a mobile application that has been finished last week Smile | :)

At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity

MythicalMe11-May-12 4:59

MythicalMe

11-May-12 4:59

I'm one of those old gits. Honestly, I don't see what the problem is with the code except for the variable names. The programmer set all the files to read-only as a precaution. Probably not necessary now with the fast drives and IO buses, but in the 90's, it would have been a good precaution.

As for the term spaghetti monster, the term doesn't fit the example. At no time does the code jump out of scope, unless the definition has changed to include bad variable naming.

Jörgen Andersson11-May-12 8:28

11-May-12 8:28

Can't answer the part about spaghetti code or the other errors as I haven't seen more of the code than anyone else on the forum.
But empty catch blocks is a coding horror in my book. And those abbreviated variable names are just plainly unnecessary today.

Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak.
List of common misconceptions

Florin Jurcovici5-Jun-12 23:02

Florin Jurcovici

5-Jun-12 23:02

Cryptic variable names would have been a prrogramming crime 20 years back too. It was the binaries where bytes were expensive, not the source code.

Jörgen Andersson6-Jun-12 1:05