Worst source code EVER

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

I think I know what your first programming language is... :-D

-- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit

[Gary R Wheeler]

When I first started my current job, I was hired as a contractor to help the guy currently on the project. Talking to him, he sounded fairly sharp, if a little vague at times. After I found something that looked like this:

#define ENDCAS1 case 23: \
DoThing();\
break;\
case 36:\
DoThing2();\
break;\
default:\
DoThing3();\

switch (operation)
{
case 1:
DoThis();
break;
case 14:
DoThat();
ENDCAS1
}

in his code, I knew better.

Software Zen: delete this;

[Ger Hayden]

Code that forced Oracle tables to behave like ISAM files

Ger

[PIEBALDconsult]

Oh, yeah, on the assignment I just started there are lots of those... :sigh: One in particular is around an access to a Dictionary -- in case the key doesn't exist I guess. Personally, I'd check with ContainsKey, but not the guy who wrote this.

[PIEBALDconsult]

The second time I took a course in C, the textbook was "C as a Second Language, For Native Speakers of Pascal", I still have it right here. (But BASICplus was my first programming language.)

[Vivi Chellappa]

SAP requires costly, difficult-to-manage programmers be available in very large numbers so that one may be sacrificed daily to appease the beast! The same thing goes for Oracle ERP too!

[Vivi Chellappa]

Oracle was implemented on IBM mainframes using VSAM! ;P

[was8309]

not even the code, but the name. A while after a nice old dude named Larry retired, I figured it was safe to delete a clist (old mainframe stuff) named 'Larry'. soon enough the phone was ringing off the hook - "what happened to the Larry command?!"

[tuningd]

A MS Access app(lol) that a accountant wrote over some years. It looked a excel documents and another access database all over the network using mapped drives. It produced a huge excel document that all the executives used every day. Oh and the excel documents were created by our own programs which we had full access to the database so I have yet to understand why this was created.

[destynova]

And its more verbose but equally horrible Java cousin:

try {
mystery1();
mystery2();
mystery3();
mystery4();
theRestOfTheProgram();
} catch(Exception e) {};

I've been bitten by that a few times, testing something that is not behaving as it should, but not producing any error messages. What's the point of having exceptions, and just as importantly, a managed language with automatic line-numbered stack traces etc, if you're going to suppress all of that goodness? :omg:

[Lost User]

I had to check on some Visual Basic code a few month ago, and saw a funcion called

isNada(obj)

The function returns true if the obj = Nothing I'm no saying that the funcion is wrong, but the mix of languages just pissed me of, if he just called it isNothing, isNull or esNada maybe I'll just smile a little

Saludos!! ____Juan

[Danny Martin]

Brian C Hart wrote:

Now, what is the worst, nastiest, ugliest source code you ever saw

I'm still writing it :-D Danny

[Fabio Franco]

There was this code they wrote a SQL Server stored procedure just for completing a string with zeroes to the left until its maximum length, in pseudo code it was like this:

if value.Length < 2
value = "0000000" + value
else
if value.Length < 3
value = "000000" + value
else
if value.Length < 4
value = "00000" + value
else
if value.Length < 5
value = "0000" + value
else
if value.Length < 6
value = "000" + value
else
if value.Length < 7
value = "00" + value
else
if value.Length < 8
value = "0" + value

When I saw this, I was like :omg: and wondered what else I was going to find :~. I feared that I would :(( on the course of this project and really hoped no to :sigh: along the way. In the end I had a lot of :doh:

"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson

[Roy from Detroit]

I once had to take over a VB6 project (maybe 300 modules, each a few hundred lines) which had "On Error Resume Next" at the start of each and every routine. There were errors being thrown (and ignored) everywhere. I spent days just unraveling the circular references :sigh:. In critical places, I was able to add proper error handling (or at least check Err.Number to see if something important was being ignored) but did not have time to address them all. Truth be known, after a while, I got to LIKE "On Error Resume Next" :-D. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome, but it seemed like there was a certain..."freedom" in knowing the code just will not stop. Kind of like being a passenger an automobile accident. Once stuff starts happening, there is not a lot you can do until the big crunch at the end. :omg:

[Alan Balkany]

About a decade ago, I was a consultant at a data-mining company where most of the software "developers" were self-taught programmers with PhDs in other areas. One of the programs resulting from this had a 40-page C++ function! This company's software was unreliable, and was constantly crashing and being patched. Another place I worked at had convoluted C# code with no comments in their main system. The simplest modifications required a goddamn research project to trace the interactions among multiple files/classes. The owner of the company told me when he had the software written, he told the developer not to bother with comments to speed up development; "we don't need those!". And he wondered why bug fixes and new features took so long to add!

[thoiness]

The correct answer is always: "Any code that isn't mine."

[Lost User]

I had to do something similar recently to fix all the data in a column in a SQL DB cos the leading zeros had been lost in the data export. I think I did if length < 8 value = "0" + value and kept running it over and over until it changed no records. In my defense I don't really know SQL. More recently I had to stick trailing zeros back on that had been lost by an export routine (123456.789 exported and becomes 123456789, 123456.700 exports as 123456.7 and needs to become 123456700). I have to do this in xpath, which I am also just starting with. I would hate to post what I have come up with to achieve that.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

[Fabio Franco]

ChrisElston wrote:

I think I did if length < 8 value = "0" + value and kept running it over and over until it changed no records.

Can I assume you used a loop? Because that's completely different. Imagine if the guy that coded the sample I provided had to do this for a 255 characters field. You get the idea right? I really hope you didn't do the same. And worse, this was a procedure on database for a common task of the application.

ChrisElston wrote:

I would hate to post what I have come up with to achieve that.

:~

"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson

[Battlehammer]

After reading some of the responses, I guess I am lucky. However, one of the worse was at my last job I had to constantly fix bugs in my college's code. He almost always used two letters for variable names. All data tables were "dt" for example. Probably the worst was that he always used "ln" for "Last Name" and also used it for "Loan Number". (Banking applications) What a mess, you never knew what you were looking at. When stepping through the code I would be in one module looking at the Last Name and the next thing I knew, I was in another module looking at the Loan Number thinking "what happen"?

[MacRaider4]

The worst I have come across so far is a vb program where the one sub is 2600 lines long. Yes I said "the one sub" :confused: I had to update that from VB 6 to 2010, took a few days to just figure out the flow of the application as it jumped all over the place with GOTO's. I hope who ever replaces me at some point in time finds the new version much easier to follow. There were some comments but they were things like "s = the count of something" not what was actually trying to be accomplished or anything...