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  4. Most Unhelpful Message Ever

Most Unhelpful Message Ever

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Weird and The Wonderful
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  • G Gary Wheeler

    vonb wrote:

    Why can the HR department be empty when somebody new starts?

    Simple: the home office downsizes your local HR presence to a single overworked and harassed individual. Despite her angelic personality and the patience of Buddha, sh!t still happens.

    Software Zen: delete this;

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    vonb
    wrote on last edited by
    #15

    Gary Wheeler wrote:

    home office downsizes your local HR presence

    The problem is: it is already the home office where I work... And there is a MAIN rule: 50 % office occupation is MANDATORY. Who invented that: HR... :laugh:

    The signature is in building process.. Please wait...

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    • J jsc42

      I still like the ones that you used to see a lot of the form: _description of the problem_ Cancel this action? [OK] [Cancel] which leaves the user in a complete quandry. Does [OK] mean 'yes,I want to cancel' and [Cancel] mean 'No, please cancel the Cancel'; or does [OK] mean 'continue without cancelling' and [Cancel] mean 'Yes, cancel is what I want to do'? Plus, there is no indication of what dire effects either of thse two options have.

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      BotCar
      wrote on last edited by
      #16

      Just for fun, have a look at this: http://imagesup.net/?di=213751878365[^]

      What is this talk of release? I do not release software. My software escapes leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.

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      • L Langenbach

        I've done something like that too. (And I confess I never cared to take it out of production code. At least I put a bit of comment besides it. And I put in a bit of information where this strange condition occurred, of course.) Sometimes we get errors because the programming environment behaves differently from what the documentation says, and they are among the errors that are hardest to find. And iirc, it was one of these cases when I put in that code (among tons of similar code elsewhere of course). (We even had several times encountered an error that occurs only in production code, but never in debug.)

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        Isfeasachme
        wrote on last edited by
        #17

        I remember coding basicscript (like vb) for an old Scantron machine. It had the single worst production compiler ever created. For loops would skip steps... If statements with true conditions would be ignored… My code was filled with "this should not happen…", but eventually I had to be specific just for my own sanity.

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        • N NickPace

          My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

          -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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          Simon_Whale
          wrote on last edited by
          #18

          I did something similar in a C project while at college which had the message "Bo*****s it shouldn't get here!" and I forgot to take it out when I submitted it.

          Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians. Help end the violence EAT BACON

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          • N NickPace

            My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

            -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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            RafagaX
            wrote on last edited by
            #19

            NickPace wrote:

            Should never get this message.

            I prefer "If you see this, there is something terribly wrong."

            CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

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            • N NickPace

              My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

              -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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              User 9328955
              wrote on last edited by
              #20

              Well, this is not a message seen in a piece of software being debugged or modified... does anybody remember that useless message "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue." that old BIOS (AMI, I believe) used to show when they could not detect a keyboard? A long time ago, but I've seen them in old 386's and 486's. I know, I know, that was last century. ;)

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              • N NickPace

                My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

                -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                DaveBurt
                wrote on last edited by
                #21

                Perhaps more unhelpful is an error message that was context related and then got copy-pasted into a totally unrelated function i.e "Error in function A!" when it is really in function B :^)

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                • Z ZurdoDev

                  That's awesome. It's what happens when you feel you need a try but have no clue what to do in the event it ever does fail. Also, it could be that if the developers ever saw it then they knew some approach was not working and could fix it but assumed their approach was right and therefore should never see it.

                  There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

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                  Member 4608898
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #22

                  I have gotten some of those before. Had a look at the code and can't see how it could possibly get there. Normally it is an indication that something has gone awry. Possibly stack corruption or something like that. The thing is they don't normally print the if or case bits so you haven't a clue how it got there.

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                  • U User 9328955

                    Well, this is not a message seen in a piece of software being debugged or modified... does anybody remember that useless message "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue." that old BIOS (AMI, I believe) used to show when they could not detect a keyboard? A long time ago, but I've seen them in old 386's and 486's. I know, I know, that was last century. ;)

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                    IndifferentDisdain
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #23

                    I've seen that one derided before, and I honestly don't think it's that bad. I read it as "your keyboard isn't plugged in, dolt. When you decide to plug it in, press F1, and I'll continue to do my thing." Maybe they should have phrased it as such.

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                    • I IndifferentDisdain

                      I've seen that one derided before, and I honestly don't think it's that bad. I read it as "your keyboard isn't plugged in, dolt. When you decide to plug it in, press F1, and I'll continue to do my thing." Maybe they should have phrased it as such.

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                      User 9328955
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #24

                      Yes, I agree. Nevertheless, the couple of times I saw this the message itself was useless. Once, the keyboard didn't work and the other was unplugged, but plugging it didn't work until turning off and on...

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                      • N NickPace

                        My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

                        -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                        Andy Brummer
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #25

                        I worked with a guy that would litter his code with assert(Date.Now < [next tuesday]), so that he would remember to remove his debug code before it hit production except when he released his assert statements to production. :-D

                        Curvature of the Mind now with 3D

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                        • A Andy Brummer

                          I worked with a guy that would litter his code with assert(Date.Now < [next tuesday]), so that he would remember to remove his debug code before it hit production except when he released his assert statements to production. :-D

                          Curvature of the Mind now with 3D

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                          Argonia
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #26

                          Hm, if i remember correct in c++ even if you have asserts in the code in build due of the compiler optimizations they don't get executed with validate . I don't see the problem with putting asserts and validates in code

                          Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true

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                          • N NickPace

                            My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

                            -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                            jeron1
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #27

                            At least it gives some indication of something, as opposed to an empty catch block grrrrrrr! :mad:

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                            • U User 9328955

                              Well, this is not a message seen in a piece of software being debugged or modified... does anybody remember that useless message "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue." that old BIOS (AMI, I believe) used to show when they could not detect a keyboard? A long time ago, but I've seen them in old 386's and 486's. I know, I know, that was last century. ;)

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                              Chad3F
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #28

                              An even better 'hypothetical' error message:

                              Monitor not detected. Turn it on to continue.

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                              • N NickPace

                                My head hurts from banging it on my desk. Just came across this beauty in the 'else' statement of some code I'm debugging (not mine, of course): MessageBox.Show("Should never get this message."); :doh:

                                -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                                Chad3F
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #29

                                Could be worse.. something like (in C):

                                /* Should never get here */
                                exit(0);

                                Now there is a useful error message.. oh, wait! what message? :wtf: The sad thing is that a long time ago I came across a library that did this (just outright exited the program, rather than return an error code to the caller). :sigh:

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                                • N NickPace

                                  Yeah, that's nice too. I've also come across several completely empty catch statements. Those are fun to debug: "Error? What error?"

                                  -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                                  James Lonero
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #30

                                  This is probably because the programmer didn't know how to handle the error or what to do with it.

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                                  • N NickPace

                                    Yeah, that's nice too. I've also come across several completely empty catch statements. Those are fun to debug: "Error? What error?"

                                    -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                                    Lutoslaw
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #31

                                    Here on Code Project somebody made an excellent point about empty catches: This piece of code

                                    try {
                                    SaveUserData();
                                    }
                                    catch
                                    {
                                    }

                                    is equivalent to:

                                    try {
                                    //SaveUserData(); -- if it can fail silently, then why care?
                                    }
                                    catch
                                    {
                                    }

                                    Greetings - Jacek

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                                    • J James Lonero

                                      This is probably because the programmer didn't know how to handle the error or what to do with it.

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                                      Lutoslaw
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #32

                                      All programming is about handling errors. A whole life is about handling errors, actually. I bet the programmer was a no-lifer. ;)

                                      Greetings - Jacek

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                                      • L Lutoslaw

                                        Here on Code Project somebody made an excellent point about empty catches: This piece of code

                                        try {
                                        SaveUserData();
                                        }
                                        catch
                                        {
                                        }

                                        is equivalent to:

                                        try {
                                        //SaveUserData(); -- if it can fail silently, then why care?
                                        }
                                        catch
                                        {
                                        }

                                        Greetings - Jacek

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                                        NickPace
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #33

                                        Wow, this post's timing is perfect. I've been tracking down a bug this morning where data is not being saved to a database table when it should be (in the same code that started this thread). It came down to an error being thrown by the database, but caught in an empty catch statement. As frustrating as that is, it has been going on for a couple of years...nobody seemed to care until now, so why bother?

                                        -NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.

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                                        • C Chad3F

                                          An even better 'hypothetical' error message:

                                          Monitor not detected. Turn it on to continue.

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                                          Brisingr Aerowing
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #34

                                          A message like that actually exists in the BIOS firmware. :doh: (Actually saw it once. On the monitor. :doh: )

                                          brisingr_aerowing@Gryphon-PC $ rake in_the_dough Raking in the dough brisingr_aerowing@Gryphon-PC $ make lots_of_money Making lots_of_money

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