Miss Spelling

Gary Huck

I'm working on a code base which has *lots* of misspellings. Someone wrote a method by this name: StartInspectionDawnload() My question: Is that something that should only happen each morning? And at a different time each day? As [almost] a real question: Why do so many people leave code in place that has something spelled wrong?

Rage

Gary Huck wrote:

StartInspectionDawnload()

This is typical from people suffering dawn syndrom.

Do not escape reality : improve reality !

W Balboos GHB

Well, if it's referenced by an autocomplete function than that will always use the existing spelling. If it's used in multiple applications, then "fixing" it will break some of them. Would you like to chase down (or await user screams) as applications that have been working suddenly go belly up because the function call fails?

Ravings en masse^

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Rage

W∴ Balboos wrote:

user screams

My asperger puts much more priority on sorting spelling errors than avoiding user screaming.

Do not escape reality : improve reality !

W Balboos GHB

Hey - you're funny when you're in a good mood. To think, it didn't even take me eleven years to finally have an opportunity to notice.

Ravings en masse^

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein

"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

Marc Clifton

Gary Huck wrote:

Why do so many people leave code in place that has something spelled wrong?

Because they don't use an IDE that can find the legitimate references and automatically correct them? That at least is one my complaints with languages like Python, Ruby, and Javascript, and for that reason I've actually left the mistake in (but at least with # TODO: Fix spekking comment. ;) Marc

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den2k88

Once it gets in, if it's used by other sources not under your control, you're doomed to leave it in in some form or another - at the very least adding the corrected one, redirecting the misspelled one to the correct one and deprecating the former. The real question is: how come nobody checks anything before releasing? At least the interface functions should be checked and documented before release so have the time to make the necessary changes.

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Brisingr Aerowing

Spekking? Seems like you have the issue as well. :-\

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Rage

That *might* have been done on purpose.

Do not escape reality : improve reality !

Chris Maunder

Gary Huck wrote:

Why do so many people leave code in place that has something spelled wrong?

Because deep down we're evil and malicious. If it was hard to write it should be harder to understand and debug.

cheers Chris Maunder

Gary Huck

Now, that's the answer I was looking for! The other stuff, I get; no mysteries. Evil - now that answers it.

realJSOP

Gary Huck wrote:

StartInspectionDawnload()

Maybe it's only executed early in the morning. Is this a snippet from Nitin Sawant's code? If so, that might go a long way towards explaining why his co-workers hate him.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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Tim Carmichael

On a related note, the system I work on has a couple of million data collection points. Sometimes there are spelling errors in the point names; while it may seem prudent to correct them, if those points are used in calculations, that causes the calculation to fail... but only when the calculation engine is restarted. Otherwise, the calculation engine parses the input names at load time and then uses the internal point reference number - something that never changes. Some of the layered products (displays, etc.) use the collection point name, but, the newer products are maintaining the internal point reference number and, when a point is renamed, the change is made auto-magically in the newer products. So.. there is hope.

jeron1

I think it's intensional, done just for the simple joy of watching people with OCD go nuts.

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Dan Neely

Even if you can't fix it everywhere because it's a shared library and you don't have control of all the consumers there's no excuse not to do something like this:

[Obsolete("Spelling error, use StartInspectionDownload() instead.", false)]
StartInspectionDawnload()
{
StartInspectionDownload();
}

StartInspectionDownload()
{
//Do Stuff
}

If you have a deprecation policy in place eventually (eg the major version after the one where it's deprecated) you can change the annotation from false to true and convert it from a compile time warning to an error.

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Nish Nishant

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Is this a snippet from Nitin Sawant's code?

I did not get the reference initially, then I scrolled down :-)

Regards, Nish

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TheGreatAndPowerfulOz

Sounds like a Southerner (from the US South) wrote that method because it's spelled like they talk.

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