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.

FirstPrevNext

Re: Catastrophic Failure! PIEBALDconsult18-Oct-13 14:04 PIEBALDconsult 18-Oct-13 14:04  Certainly if it's going to "faw down", it should "go Boom!"; so many kids nowadays don't think it should "go Boom!". Re: Catastrophic Failure! Brisingr Aerowing18-Oct-13 14:25 Brisingr Aerowing 18-Oct-13 14:25  I saw that in a Metro App on a friend's computer. I guess the developer agreed with the Fischer Price comparison. Keep Clam And Proofread -- √(-1) 23 ∑ π... And it was delicious. Re: Catastrophic Failure! vonb22-Oct-13 1:07 vonb 22-Oct-13 1:07  I got "Catastrophic Failure" right from MS: a VB6 app I made years (if not decades) ago, which tries to access a MS Access DB. There was a field with junck in it, making that message.. The same message occured in Access itself, so I believe it's an Access error message. The signature is in building process.. Please wait... Re: Catastrophic Failure! Argonia23-Oct-13 4:49 Argonia 23-Oct-13 4:49  What about : Welcome to Application suicide booth. Option 5 has been chosen : The user the is too dumb to close the app properly and that's why the application crashed. Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true Re: Catastrophic Failure! Brisingr Aerowing23-Oct-13 12:55 Brisingr Aerowing 23-Oct-13 12:55  LOL! I like to put Easter Eggs in my applications, and I wonder what I should do next. Keep Clam And Proofread -- √(-1) 23 ∑ π... And it was delicious. Re: Catastrophic Failure! BillW335-Nov-13 4:35 BillW33 5-Nov-13 4:35  I could use that in some old legacy software. It takes a while to shut down. Despite being told to wait, there are users who will use the task manager to force it to turn off immediately. This causes it to stop in the middle of saving settings to an Access DB which often corrupts the DB. So when the user restarts the program it isn’t happy about having a corrupted DB. Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code. Re: Catastrophic Failure! Sentenryu5-Nov-13 6:12 Sentenryu 5-Nov-13 6:12  just hide the window and let the user think it has shut down. <h> I'm Brazilian; English and other human languages in general aren't my best skills so I apologise for my less than perfect English... "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241 "'Sophisticated platform' typically means 'I have no idea how it works.'"</h> Re: Catastrophic Failure! BillW335-Nov-13 8:46 BillW33 5-Nov-13 8:46  We mostly leave the window there so the users won't try to restart it while it is still shutting down. And, yes, they would do this. It really needs a better status report so users don't think it has frozen, but it is old software with no more updates planned. Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code. Re: Catastrophic Failure! patbob21-Feb-14 5:20 patbob 21-Feb-14 5:20  Brisingr Aerowing wrote: I also include a 'Guru Meditation GUID' Let me guess. you used to program Amigas years ago, right? We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing. Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. yiangos17-Oct-13 4:16 yiangos 17-Oct-13 4:16  C# try { //do stuff that may fail } catch (Exception e) { throw new Exception(e.Message); } This is from an online tutorial I recently came across (thankfully not in CP). Apparently if something goes wrong, one can get ALL the information one needs from the exception message. Why bother with stacktrace etc... ... or that's what the author thought, anyway. Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων! (Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!) Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. Sentenryu18-Oct-13 1:06 Sentenryu 18-Oct-13 1:06  "An error has occurred, see the inner exception for details." I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241 "'Sophisticated platform' typically means 'I have no idea how it works.'" Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. yiangos23-Oct-13 6:57 yiangos 23-Oct-13 6:57  Yeah my point exactly. I'd done that same mistake myself, and thankfully it never got past the testing phase: I got that exact error message, and there was no inner exception to see , so after a bit of digging, I simply changed my C# throw new Exception(ex.Message); to C# throw; (Of course, I had an error logging call just before that, otherwise the entire catch block wouldn't make much sense...) I was just very (unpleasantly) surprised to come across such a basic coding mistake in an online tutorial. Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων! (Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!) Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. ZurdoDev18-Oct-13 5:15 ZurdoDev 18-Oct-13 5:15  Quote: //do stuff that may fail Well there's the real problem. Why would you purposely write code that may fail. Write it to not fail. Duh! There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. Lutosław19-Oct-13 5:12 Lutosław 19-Oct-13 5:12  I agree -- and not as a joke. In general code should not fail*. * -- in case you see my code fail: it was by design. Greetings - Jacek Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. yiangos23-Oct-13 6:51 yiangos 23-Oct-13 6:51  Continuing on your serious note: the code per se, should not fail, I agree. But the final program may fail at times. Say you have a web request in there, and any of the following occurs: (a) the remote server times out (e.g. the server is offline) (b) the remote server has a bug, returning a 500 error (c) the remote server cannot find the requested resource, returning a 404 error (d) the remote server forbids access to the requested resource, returning a 403 error Any of the above results in the web request throwing an exception in YOUR application, but your code is not to blame. So there is a chance that a bug-free program CAN fail. That's why you should have error handling and meaningful error reporting. Φευ! Εδόμεθα υπό ρηννοσχήμων λύκων! (Alas! We're devoured by lamb-guised wolves!) Re: Why bother with any other exception data? The message should suffice. Bill_Hallahan1-Nov-13 17:35 Bill_Hallahan 1-Nov-13 17:35  Bugs happen. Why care about descriptive names? Lutosław16-Oct-13 21:34 Lutosław 16-Oct-13 21:34  VB dbo.tlgn dbo.tlnc dbo.tlgp dbo.tlgpu dbo.tlgq dbo.tlgt dbo.tlgtu dbo.tlgv dbo.zm_hlav dbo.zm_prieb dbo.zmkv dbo.zmnor dbo.zmskc dbo.zmsvc dbo.zoz_hlav dbo.ztlgn dbo.ztlgnc dbo.ztlgp dbo.ztlgpu dbo.ztlgq dbo.ztlgt dbo.ztlgtu dbo.ztlgv dbo.zvnor Don't let me get into database field names... Oh, just some of them: par1 par2 par3 par4 par5 par6 par7 par8 par9 cpar1 cpar2 cpar3 cpar4 cpar5 cpar6 cpar7 cpar8 cpar9 Greetings - Jacek Re: Why care about descriptive names? Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter16-Oct-13 21:47 Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter 16-Oct-13 21:47  It is in Polish!!! I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is (V). Re: Why care about descriptive names? Lutosław16-Oct-13 22:03 Lutosław 16-Oct-13 22:03  Uhm, WHAT is in polish? "zm_prieb"? These "names" are meaningless abbreviations of names in polish. No docs of course... Greetings - Jacek Re: Why care about descriptive names? Argonia16-Oct-13 23:28 Argonia 16-Oct-13 23:28  Jacek Gajek wrote: cpar1 cpar2 cpar3 cpar4 cpar5 cpar6 cpar7 cpar8 cpar9 I am pretty sure they switched the positions of 2 of the letters Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true Re: Why care about descriptive names? Nicholas Marty17-Oct-13 4:30 Nicholas Marty 17-Oct-13 4:30  That's called obfuscation!!! Re: Why care about descriptive names? phil.o18-Oct-13 4:12 phil.o 18-Oct-13 4:12  How dare you blame someone because you don't know what a ztlgpu is? No memory stick has been harmed during establishment of this signature. Re: Why care about descriptive names? Lutosław19-Oct-13 5:18 Lutosław 19-Oct-13 5:18  Actually I know what is it, but telling it would require some inappropriate words. Greetings - Jacek Had a Boss michaelbarb14-Nov-13 8:58 michaelbarb 14-Nov-13 8:58  I had a boss once that did not believe in comments. He felt names should be descriptive enough that you should be able to read the program and not need them. Who ever wrote this would find all their personal belongings in a brown card board box the next day. So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know. Executable that requires elevation Michael Haephrati15-Oct-13 11:21 Michael Haephrati 15-Oct-13 11:21  I recently worked on a project and at a certain point noticed that the executable that is created requires elevation. It has this icon indicating that an administrator approval is required, and when it is double clicked, the elevation prompt appears. It drove me craze to remove this setting, as the nature of the software didn't require it to be elevated. I looked at the Manifest section when there are settings related to UAC (User Account Control), but even when I matched these settings to the ones taken from another project, which didn't require elevation, my new project did. Today, while speaking to another programmer, he told me how to fix that.... Well, my executable had the string "install" as part of it, and when I renamed it to demo.exe, the icon has changed and no elevation any more required.

Last Visit: 31-Dec-99 18:00     Last Update: 24-Apr-24 14:36 Refresh ᐊ Prev1...258259260261262263264265266267 Next ᐅ

General    News    Suggestion    Question    Bug    Answer    Joke    Praise    Rant    Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.