Magic Numbers
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On the subject of completelystupid programmers I one came accross this. Someone had told this idiot that literal cnstants (magic numbers) were "a bad thing", so the benighed fool hd produces a file containint the following: #define ZERO 0 #define ONE 1 #define TWO 2 #define THREE 3 ... #define TEN_THOUSAND 10000 and included it in every source file. And this is the absolute truth, no kidding.
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On the subject of completelystupid programmers I one came accross this. Someone had told this idiot that literal cnstants (magic numbers) were "a bad thing", so the benighed fool hd produces a file containint the following: #define ZERO 0 #define ONE 1 #define TWO 2 #define THREE 3 ... #define TEN_THOUSAND 10000 and included it in every source file. And this is the absolute truth, no kidding.
While that is a coding horror, I would hate to read your code comments.
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
completelystupid
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
cnstants
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
benighed
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
hd
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
containint
:omg:
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While that is a coding horror, I would hate to read your code comments.
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
completelystupid
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
cnstants
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
benighed
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
hd
Adrian.Tawse wrote:
containint
:omg:
Give him a break... His profile says he is in the UK.... :)
I wasn't, now I am, then I won't be anymore.
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Give him a break... His profile says he is in the UK.... :)
I wasn't, now I am, then I won't be anymore.
And after 4 years, that was the first time he's posted, so he's not yet aware of the abuse he'll receive for poor spelling. :rolleyes:
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And after 4 years, that was the first time he's posted, so he's not yet aware of the abuse he'll receive for poor spelling. :rolleyes:
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was wearing the wrong glasses. And now for a new snippet: A software package was being put together for release and a colleague remarked of one item "Oh God, not that pile of shit". I asked why and he said that it corrupted floppies. Now this was before the days when the FAT file system was build into Unix. The utility attempted to write Unix files to a DOS FAT floppy. It did this by opening the device in RAW mode and read and wrote whole sectors, including the FAT table. When transferring text files it would read a sector’s worth of data, scan for \n, shift everything up one, and insert \r. This, of course, would result in buffer overflow. What followed the buffer in memory? You guessed it, the FAT table, which was duly written back to the floppy at the end; it took about ten seconds to notice the problem. I went to the Team Leader to say “You cannot possibly ship this; I can fix it in minutes”. His reply was that they had had a summer student in ad it had taken him all summer to do that, and on no account was I to touch a line; it was to ship exactly as is. “It is OK when used with newly formatted floppies, and the file is not too big” I am not sure who I was more amazed with, the summer student or the Team Leader.
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On the subject of completelystupid programmers I one came accross this. Someone had told this idiot that literal cnstants (magic numbers) were "a bad thing", so the benighed fool hd produces a file containint the following: #define ZERO 0 #define ONE 1 #define TWO 2 #define THREE 3 ... #define TEN_THOUSAND 10000 and included it in every source file. And this is the absolute truth, no kidding.
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Worse things can be seen:
int ONE_HUNDRED = 100;
// Some really weird code and... Surprise!!
ONE_HUNDRED++;If it's any consolation, I've seen FORTRAN compilers which which will allow the equivalent of the following:
public void inc(ref int i)
{
i *= 2;
}
...
Console.WriteLine(100);
inc(100);
Console.WriteLine(100);
...And would print:
100
200And I had to find that in production code...:mad:
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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If it's any consolation, I've seen FORTRAN compilers which which will allow the equivalent of the following:
public void inc(ref int i)
{
i *= 2;
}
...
Console.WriteLine(100);
inc(100);
Console.WriteLine(100);
...And would print:
100
200And I had to find that in production code...:mad:
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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LOOOOL!! This is me while reading your post: :) :-D :omg: :wtf: Thanks for sharing such a pearl. :thumbsup:
I have been a Contractor for 35 years. In that time I have been on about 40 or so projects most of which have been at least partial disasters. Some day I will write the whole gory details. I will make you belly laugh, then very very depressed.
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Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was wearing the wrong glasses. And now for a new snippet: A software package was being put together for release and a colleague remarked of one item "Oh God, not that pile of shit". I asked why and he said that it corrupted floppies. Now this was before the days when the FAT file system was build into Unix. The utility attempted to write Unix files to a DOS FAT floppy. It did this by opening the device in RAW mode and read and wrote whole sectors, including the FAT table. When transferring text files it would read a sector’s worth of data, scan for \n, shift everything up one, and insert \r. This, of course, would result in buffer overflow. What followed the buffer in memory? You guessed it, the FAT table, which was duly written back to the floppy at the end; it took about ten seconds to notice the problem. I went to the Team Leader to say “You cannot possibly ship this; I can fix it in minutes”. His reply was that they had had a summer student in ad it had taken him all summer to do that, and on no account was I to touch a line; it was to ship exactly as is. “It is OK when used with newly formatted floppies, and the file is not too big” I am not sure who I was more amazed with, the summer student or the Team Leader.
That is organisationally crap on so many levels. :doh:
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
