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Stupid variable names

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  • L Llasus

    CurtD wrote:

    But he could have just passed NULL.

    nevermind that. the name makes my head ache. :doh: I'd prefer a one letter name or a "temp" instead of this one. :doh: :doh: :doh:

    R Offline
    R Offline
    Ruairi Browne
    wrote on last edited by
    #3

    Llasus wrote:

    I'd prefer a one letter name or a "temp" instead of this one.

    calling it crap makes more sense because then it is obvious to someone else that it is crap and then they can make a post about it on here and feel all big about themselves - if he had given it a sensible name then maybe CurtD wouldn't have noticed what a load of crap it was and wouldn't have fixed it!!

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    • C CurtD

      I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

      MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

      He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

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      PIEBALDconsult
      wrote on last edited by
      #4

      What's in a name?

      L 1 Reply Last reply
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      • P PIEBALDconsult

        What's in a name?

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        L Offline
        Luc Pattyn
        wrote on last edited by
        #5

        sadly enough, often all the documentation one gets. :((

        Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]


        Sorry for any delays in replying, I currently don't always get e-mail notifications.


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        • C CurtD

          I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

          MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

          He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

          V Offline
          V Offline
          Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
          wrote on last edited by
          #6

          CurtD wrote:

          something_to_which_to_point

          Are you concerned by the nomenclature of this variable? Perhaps he was attempting to desist hardcoding in the parameter and using a constant type for better readability?

          Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
          Tech Gossips
          A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson

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          • C CurtD

            I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

            MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

            He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

            D Offline
            D Offline
            Daniel Ch Bloch MCSD MCAD MCTS
            wrote on last edited by
            #7

            Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx :) Now, try to read such a program ...

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            • C CurtD

              I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

              MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

              He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

              D Offline
              D Offline
              Daniel Ch Bloch MCSD MCAD MCTS
              wrote on last edited by
              #8

              The absolut hardes thing I found was when I searched for a bug in a Module written in some kind of PL/I. I tried to understand, why a special line of code does not work, using 'true' and 'false' Boolean statements... now ... my forerunner was able du redefine true and false so that true was 0 and false was -1 ... incredible!

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              • D Daniel Ch Bloch MCSD MCAD MCTS

                Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx :) Now, try to read such a program ...

                C Offline
                C Offline
                CurtD
                wrote on last edited by
                #9

                Daniel Ch. Bloch (MCSD, MCAD, MCTS) wrote:

                Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx Now, try to read such a program ...

                :laugh: In the really geeky days, I knew a guy who named all his vars after Star Trek characters. "Spock1", "Kirk42".

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                • D Daniel Ch Bloch MCSD MCAD MCTS

                  The absolut hardes thing I found was when I searched for a bug in a Module written in some kind of PL/I. I tried to understand, why a special line of code does not work, using 'true' and 'false' Boolean statements... now ... my forerunner was able du redefine true and false so that true was 0 and false was -1 ... incredible!

                  H Offline
                  H Offline
                  Hufak
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #10

                  In my first Fortran program I managed to redefine a constant 3 (written as a digit '3' in the source) to something else (by passing it to a subroutine that changed its argument) and then the program would crash at the DO statement which should have executed 3 times. I never figured it out, needed a senior colleague to find it for me.

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                  • C CurtD

                    Daniel Ch. Bloch (MCSD, MCAD, MCTS) wrote:

                    Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx Now, try to read such a program ...

                    :laugh: In the really geeky days, I knew a guy who named all his vars after Star Trek characters. "Spock1", "Kirk42".

                    P Offline
                    P Offline
                    Pete OHanlon
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #11

                    I used to know a sys admin who named all the hardware after Star Trek things. A server was called StarBase1 and it had printers attached to it called DeepSpace1 and so on. The reason he did this - he was called Pete Warr and we had the habit of using the first 4 characters of the surname and the first initial as user names so he was warrp (mind you, he was luckier than Kenny Cockburn, he really had problems with his login).

                    Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

                    My blog | My articles

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                    • D Daniel Ch Bloch MCSD MCAD MCTS

                      Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx :) Now, try to read such a program ...

                      C Offline
                      C Offline
                      Clive D Pottinger
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #12

                      An old favourite of mine was a piece of commercial software code I ran across in college. The programmer had a particular routine which was used to handle error exceptions, close any open files, etc. and terminate. He decided to mark the routine with the label HELL. Why? So that whenever he detected that something had gone wrong he could write GOTO...

                      Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

                      modified on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 4:48:12 PM

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                      • P Pete OHanlon

                        I used to know a sys admin who named all the hardware after Star Trek things. A server was called StarBase1 and it had printers attached to it called DeepSpace1 and so on. The reason he did this - he was called Pete Warr and we had the habit of using the first 4 characters of the surname and the first initial as user names so he was warrp (mind you, he was luckier than Kenny Cockburn, he really had problems with his login).

                        Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

                        My blog | My articles

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        Robin Imrie
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #13

                        A couple of sys admin i know have named their server room "the shire" all the *nix server names have a LOTR theme to them and the windows servers are named after the sith. eg Darth Maul.

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                        • R Robin Imrie

                          A couple of sys admin i know have named their server room "the shire" all the *nix server names have a LOTR theme to them and the windows servers are named after the sith. eg Darth Maul.

                          P Offline
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                          Paul Conrad
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #14

                          :laugh::laugh::laugh:

                          "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon

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                          • C Clive D Pottinger

                            An old favourite of mine was a piece of commercial software code I ran across in college. The programmer had a particular routine which was used to handle error exceptions, close any open files, etc. and terminate. He decided to mark the routine with the label HELL. Why? So that whenever he detected that something had gone wrong he could write GOTO...

                            Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

                            modified on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 4:48:12 PM

                            P Offline
                            P Offline
                            Paul Conrad
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #15

                            :laugh::laugh::laugh: That is good.

                            "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon

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                            • C Clive D Pottinger

                              An old favourite of mine was a piece of commercial software code I ran across in college. The programmer had a particular routine which was used to handle error exceptions, close any open files, etc. and terminate. He decided to mark the routine with the label HELL. Why? So that whenever he detected that something had gone wrong he could write GOTO...

                              Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

                              modified on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 4:48:12 PM

                              F Offline
                              F Offline
                              fantasy1215
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #16

                              Very cool. :laugh:

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                              • C CurtD

                                I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

                                MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

                                He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

                                J Offline
                                J Offline
                                Jamie Nordmeyer
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #17

                                My favorite was a guy who used to contract at our company. He liked to write his code using variable names like tt (for Transaction Type), and pt (for Process Type, not Point). I happen to understand what he was writing as I somewhat knew the system he was working on, but what about another developer who was coming in fresh? They're not going to have a clue without asking, or a lot of time analyzing it. Even better, he liked to rewrite other people's code to fit in with his "better" design. There's nothing worse than someone "knows" they know better than you, but clearly doesn't.

                                Kyosa Jamie Nordmeyer - Taekwondo Yi (2nd) Dan Portland, Oregon, USA

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                                • C CurtD

                                  Daniel Ch. Bloch (MCSD, MCAD, MCTS) wrote:

                                  Years ago, another developer told me about a special coding horror... he had an developer that falled in love and so he called for the next module all his variables with the name of his beloved... from Susi001 to Susixxx Now, try to read such a program ...

                                  :laugh: In the really geeky days, I knew a guy who named all his vars after Star Trek characters. "Spock1", "Kirk42".

                                  H Offline
                                  H Offline
                                  HuntingWabbits
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #18

                                  My personal favourite is from some old Foxpro code I saw which had a global variable called: OB1KNOBI (Obi-wan Kenobi...) (Only 8 chars long of course...) Some (very) old support utilities I have seen had swear words as variable names, which caused a couple of problems when an error occurs... A big DOS error box appears showing 'Variable "swear word" not found' !

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                                  • C CurtD

                                    I've seen some good ones, but this has to be one of the best

                                    MyCrapClassVector something_to_which_to_point;

                                    He thought he had to declare this to pass a "dummy" ptr var to a method. Turns out the code was never executed anyway. But he could have just passed NULL.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Mark C Hagers
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #19

                                    Some years ago I had to convert a quickbasic program to VB6. The original developer had a variable called drol (for diameter of the roll). However in my (and his) native language, dutch, this also means turd.

                                    Mark C Hagers New Media Ventures Amersfoort, the Netherlands

                                    1 Reply Last reply
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                                    • C Clive D Pottinger

                                      An old favourite of mine was a piece of commercial software code I ran across in college. The programmer had a particular routine which was used to handle error exceptions, close any open files, etc. and terminate. He decided to mark the routine with the label HELL. Why? So that whenever he detected that something had gone wrong he could write GOTO...

                                      Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

                                      modified on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 4:48:12 PM

                                      R Offline
                                      R Offline
                                      Robodroid
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #20

                                      Reminds me of a former co-worker who named all his programs POORLY. (I don't mean he chose bad names, I mean *each* of his programs had the same name ... POORLY.) I asked him why he did so. He replied that he liked it when he saw the computer display "COMPILING POORLY" when he submitted his programs....

                                      ;^)

                                      'droid

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                                      • J Jamie Nordmeyer

                                        My favorite was a guy who used to contract at our company. He liked to write his code using variable names like tt (for Transaction Type), and pt (for Process Type, not Point). I happen to understand what he was writing as I somewhat knew the system he was working on, but what about another developer who was coming in fresh? They're not going to have a clue without asking, or a lot of time analyzing it. Even better, he liked to rewrite other people's code to fit in with his "better" design. There's nothing worse than someone "knows" they know better than you, but clearly doesn't.

                                        Kyosa Jamie Nordmeyer - Taekwondo Yi (2nd) Dan Portland, Oregon, USA

                                        D Offline
                                        D Offline
                                        Derek Bartram
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #21

                                        Sounds like a clever chap to me.... My kind of plan.... Guarenteed employment for life (or the life of the software :) )

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