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: IF-free codes

jschell19-Feb-13 8:16

jschell

19-Feb-13 8:16

SarK0Y wrote:
Here, i'd like to discuss how to reduce conditional branches in the code. 1st of
the all, i would like to share some tricks.

I would suggest that you learn what automated profiling is. Then buy or find a tool that does that. Then learn how to use it effectively.

Re: IF-free codes

Josh_T19-Feb-13 13:40

Josh_T

19-Feb-13 13:40

I'm definitely a beginner but I have a question:

Doesn't the program end up doing an if/then regardless of whether or not you're removing the actual syntax? There still needs to be a comparison done somewhere, or at least I thought.

Re: IF-free codes

Member 460889823-Feb-13 7:07

Member 4608898

23-Feb-13 7:07

The old IBM 360 JCL didn't have any if statements.

In PERL, you'd normally see something like

open ("fred") || die

which translates to

if (not open("fred")) then die

If you look at the assembler, in both cases, it is exactly the same.

Re: IF-free codes

Ingo26-Feb-13 4:23

Ingo

26-Feb-13 4:23

We had such discussion in the eighties when programmers wanted to be artists, writing unreadable code just to be irreplaceable.
If you would be one of my programmers I would fire you immediately for this waste of money and time and delivering error-prone code. I thought those times were gone! Dead | X|

------------------------------
Author of Primary ROleplaying SysTem

How do I take my coffee? Black as midnight on a moonless night.
War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.

Re: IF-free codes

SarK0Y28-Oct-14 12:13

SarK0Y

28-Oct-14 12:13

heh, i wasn't here for awhile Smile | :)

actually, ye're wrong on that: readable codes are good, only if you have no the needs of deep optimizations. deep optimization means vast asming.

P.S.
for fast sorting of floats, my if-reduced code http://sourceforge.net/projects/fsort--no-if/?source=navbar Smile | :)

Re: IF-free codes

Ingo28-Oct-14 23:20

Ingo

28-Oct-14 23:20

SarK0Y wrote:
readable codes are good, only if you have no the needs of deep optimizations. deep optimization means vast asming.

Code can be both: Optimized and readable. It's just depends on the plannings. Cryptic code isn't any faster than good, optimized readable code. It's just harder to understand and correct. That's all.

SharePoint Consultant and Developer at acocon
Author of Primary ROleplaying SysTem

I'm the ninth in a row of seven!

Re: IF-free codes

SarK0Y29-Oct-14 9:16

SarK0Y

29-Oct-14 9:16

Ingo, did you write asm codes ever??? Big Grin | :-D

Re: IF-free codes

Ingo31-Oct-14 1:41

Ingo

31-Oct-14 1:41

SarK0Y wrote:
Ingo, did you write asm codes ever???

Okay. I talked about higher languages. If you write asm codes, I won't mind if you code another way. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

SharePoint Consultant and Developer at acocon
Author of Primary ROleplaying SysTem

I'm the ninth in a row of seven!

Re: IF-free codes

Dave Kreskowiak5-Mar-13 3:53

Dave Kreskowiak

5-Mar-13 3:53

Without a doubt, that's the worst idea I've seen in a long time. Instead of using a nice, easy to read if, you've turned it into a very-expensive-to-support-and-debug piece of crap that you'd have to throw unit test after unit test at with a crap-ton of edges cases. Congratulations!

Now go back and wipe that smiley face off your post before I smack it off.

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]

Dave Kreskowiak

Spurious use of goto...

Rob Grainger7-Feb-13 1:46

Rob Grainger

7-Feb-13 1:46

A true gem...

If CurrentContext = "D" Then GoTo c45

GetUserDataRecord aForm

c45:

There were no other ref's to c45, so replaced by...

If CurrentContext <> "D" Then GetUserRecord aForm

Further down in same procedure:

    GoSub ResolveTabOrder

    ' Other code here

    Exit Function

ResolveTabOrder:

    If uControlNbr < 2 Then Return

    ' More code here

    GoTo ResolveTabOrder
End Function

modified 7-Feb-13 7:54am.

Re: Spurious use of goto...

joe_j7-Feb-13 23:37

joe_j

7-Feb-13 23:37

Now this is what happens if you Google "coding" in the "Fill in the blanks" forum

AspDotNetDev6-Feb-13 12:43

AspDotNetDev

6-Feb-13 12:43

Just came across a [view name].[column name] combination in some SQL code I'm working with that is that many characters long. Actually, if it included the square brackets, it'd be 81 characters. Cry | :((

Here it is (characters changed to protect the guilty):

vw_AaaaAaaaaaaa_BbbbBbbbBBB_vw_CcccCcccCcccc.AaaaAaaaaaaaDdddddDddDddddddDddd

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Re: 77

Marco Bertschi16-Feb-13 5:17

Marco Bertschi

16-Feb-13 5:17

Quite long. Suppose this is an unique name...

Re: 77

Sander Rossel18-Feb-13 20:48

Sander Rossel

18-Feb-13 20:48

I'm sure I already read this a few weeks ago... Did you get stuck in a loop? Codebase day...?

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
    public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

Re: 77

AspDotNetDev19-Feb-13 7:12

AspDotNetDev

19-Feb-13 7:12

You know, you may be right. I did have a feeling of deja vu when I posted it.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Re: 77

AspDotNetDev19-Feb-13 7:15

AspDotNetDev

19-Feb-13 7:15

Maybe this is why it seems familiar. That must be the answer.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Re: 77

Sander Rossel19-Feb-13 7:22

Sander Rossel

19-Feb-13 7:22

Nope, I still remember the Aaaa_Bbbbb.Cccccc_Ddddd kind of notation.

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
    public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

working with Dates...

joe_j6-Feb-13 3:03

joe_j

6-Feb-13 3:03

working with Dates in codes and reports on different date formats and zones contributes to some of my coffee breaks.

Re: working with Dates...

Stefan_Lang7-Feb-13 1:40

Stefan_Lang

7-Feb-13 1:40

Do dates go well with coffee? Have you tried figs as well? Java | [Coffee]

Re: working with Dates...

V.8-Feb-13 0:13

8-Feb-13 0:13

I would love to take dates for coffee... Big Grin | :-D

V.

(MQOTD Rules and previous Solutions )

Re: working with Dates...

joe_j8-Feb-13 0:17

joe_j

8-Feb-13 0:17

hahahah guess you got the whole point

When you aren't even sure WHY you're writing bad code

philip_cole5-Feb-13 23:26

philip_cole

5-Feb-13 23:26

Our old customer service system has some brilliantly bad code in it, but I just had to share this one I spotted this morning.
I think the guy got halfway through and forgot exactly what he was even meant to be fixing, let alone how to fix it.

'ISSUE 2862 ?
If CurrentUser.WorkingSession.Market.TaxInclusiveInCatPrice Then
    'Me.lblTotalOutstanding.Text = String.Format("{0:c}", decOutstanding)
Else
    '?
End If
Me.lblTotalOutstanding.Text = String.Format("{0:c}", decOutstanding)

I just wish we still had our old issue tracker to see what the mystical ISSUE 2862 is...

Phil

modified 6-Feb-13 5:50am.

Re: When you aren't even sure WHY you're writing bad code

joe_j6-Feb-13 3:05

joe_j

6-Feb-13 3:05

I have seen something like that, but this time the reason being, the contractor didn't get paid, yup so he eloped with the pending code.. thankfully he didnt' leave behind any ISSUE 2862 for us to figure out Smile | :)

Re: When you aren't even sure WHY you're writing bad code

StM0n6-Feb-13 3:38

StM0n

6-Feb-13 3:38

Mhm... it was DenverCoder9[^]

(yes|no|maybe)*

Re: When you aren't even sure WHY you're writing bad code

CHill609-Feb-13 13:26

CHill60

9-Feb-13 13:26

Scarily Issue 2862 on our tracking system was raised in 2003 - I'm now searching our codebase for DenverCoder9 Big Grin | :-D

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