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> Maybe IDEs should include a feature that allows you to
> scan for comments that include exclamation marks, because > that means they must be important!
IDE's do have that feature, although Visual Studio went with the needlessly verbose 'TODO' rather than the more pithy !
I wonder what percentage of Visual Studio programmers know that it has a Task List feature?
Might make a good interview question actually.
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Unfortunately, in VS, the Task List for TODOs is glitchy and doesn't show everything. If you use R#, it has a much better To-Do explorer that includes TODOs, NOTEs, and my favourite NotImplementedExceptions!
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GibbleCH wrote: the Task List for TODOs is glitchy and doesn't show everything
I'm pretty sure you have to have the file open to see the TODO comments in the task list.
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Actually, the task list is token-based, defined from the Tools->Options->Task List->Tokens panel.
For interest's sake, I just tried to add !!! as a token name. No love (invalid chars).
IMPORTANT, however, just turned up three more instances...
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Yes, I'm also familiar with NetBeans and Eclipse in the Java world, both of which allow you to put comments in like TODO or FIXME or indeed anything you want and associate that with a priority in the task list. There is also Checkstyle which is a Java tool for checking source code and one of the things it can scan for is TODO comments, etc.
It just happens to be a personal bug-bear for me, the way developers throw exclamation marks all over the place. How often have we seen error messages like:
File not found!
What exactly is the developer trying to convey to the user by including that exclamation mark? The file was not found - surprise! Or maybe: The file was not found - Oh My God! Or: The file was not found - HA HA HA!
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David,
I don't know about anyone else, but you've convinced me.
A bit of work to do over the weekend, but by Monday my coding standards will have a new section called Smilies!
' File Not Found 
' File Not Found 
' File Not Found 
' File Not Found 
' File Not Found 
I'm amazed this isn't standard practice already.
-Richard
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I love it! Being on holliday, i can't wait to get back to implement this wonderful scheme.
- turin
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Great idea! I will have to suggest that my company implement that new standard for error messages 
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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int g = 0;
_more:
while(1)
{
g++;
if(g < 10)
goto _more;
else
goto _done;
}
_done:
printf("%d\n", g);
...byte till it megahertz...
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True programming talent 
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There is no excuse for that.
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You sir...have been topped.
int g = 0;
_more:
while(1)
{
g++;
switch (g)
{
case 0:
goto _more;
case 1:
goto _more;
case 2:
goto _more;
case 3:
goto _more;
case 4:
goto _more;
case 5:
goto _more;
case 6:
goto _more;
case 7:
goto _more;
case 8:
goto _more;
case 9:
goto _more;
default:
goto _done;
}
}
_done:
printf("%d\n", g);
Frankly, there could always be a worse.
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WOW! The example by the OP was BAD, but this is worse.
I just glad the loop had only 10 iterations and not 10,000.
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Thankfully, it's not real. I just took his code and applied the 'coding horror' found in the last posting here.
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You never know something like that will pop up :/ and it will inadvertently will.
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...byte till it megahertz...
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Looks a little like duffs device which unlike the code above was actually useful in rare cases... before compilers started to apply the optimization automatically.
Oh and here's a nasty one I've actually seen:
while (1)
{
if (foo)
{
break;
}
if (bill)
{
break;
}
break;
};
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That was not bad, it was very very bad
Andrew Rissing wrote: int g = 0;
_more:
while(1)
{
g++;
you started with g++, which has a value of 1, it will never be less than 1 then you do
Andrew Rissing wrote: switch (g)
{
case 0:
goto _more;
You may as well continue case 10, case 11 .......case 9999  
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I'm in tears from laughing at this.
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Is this a real horror or an artificial one? I find it hard to believe someone can be so stupid...
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Jeroen De Dauw wrote: I find it hard to believe someone can be so stupid...
... and not be using VB.
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My eyes, my eyes, they burn.
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I've tidied up that code for you:
int g = 0;
_more:
while((++g < 10) || (printf("%d\n", g), g < 10))
goto _more;
or:
printf("10\n");
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This is easy to top, even if I can't post the code here for several reasons.
Immagine this:
- A source file with a class
- All methods are static, so this is not really much of a class
- The whole thing has about 7000 lines
- The methods are more or less the application logic and data access for the entire application
- Some methods are redundant, possible differences to the other versions are not apparent or documented.
- To be precise: Nothing is commented except the many WTFs of the poor guys who tried to maintain that thing.
- Several methods consist of 500+ lines of real spaghetti code
- No error handling except for a few empty catch blocks
- The few catch blocks that are not empty try to send meaningless or even misleading mails to the responsible developer
- No apparent naming convention for variables except that the names usually are cryptic or misleading. On top of that a generous measure of German has been thrown in to make the code more readable.
- The application (a ASP .Net website) has no such thing as layers. Everything was thrown into this 'class' as static methods.
- One of the static methods (which also has two redundant copies which may have some significant changes - or not) tries to replace the entire data access layer. It takes about two dozen parameters and then tries to construct the required SQL command in about 500 lines of twisted code. Changes are next to impossible without side effects as each snippet of code is used to construct very different SQL statements. If nested select statements are needed, they are constructed in similar static functions.
- Once all SQL commands has been constructed, data access is done in the following fashion: First, a simple sql command is issued to get a DataSet as a result. The DataLines are then thrown away. The 'Developer' was just to lazy to initialize the DataSet the normal way. Then the thing tries to fill all tables in the DataSet with the prepared SQL commands, each table separately. If there is no error (a rare event), the whole thing is finished by declaring about 30 relations between the tables in the DataSet. This usually is the end of it, as the generated SQL commands usually do not fill the table precisely enough to enforce any constraints or relations.
This thing has nothing, no architecture, no class design, no readability, no maintainability. It is the ultimate coding horror. It is really the first piece of code I ever had to work with where I say that the 'developer' got nothing right. Not the least bit and not even by random luck.
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.
modified on Wednesday, August 4, 2010 4:41 AM
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And this horrifies you? In my last job my predecessor always wrote code like this. When you said that there was some German I really thought you are talking about him!
There is only one thing I don't understand. This guy gets one really nice job after the other and earns at least twice as much money as I do. I guess this is just because none of his customers can read his code - because they are no programmers and also because of the reasons you just mentioned.. 
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