... WHY?!

Matt U

I'm working on a maintenance project for a client. It's ASP .NET MVC. When exporting some charts, they use an HTML To Image converter. I found this today:

if (Session["tWidth"] != null)
{
htmlToImageConverter.BrowserWidth = int.Parse("1025");

}

I've seen similar posts here before. Why call int.Parse() and pass what's obviously an integer, instead of simply assigning: 1025? Why, oh why? :doh:

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Brisingr Aerowing

And what is the tWidth for? Is it an integer? Or just some random value?

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. - Mitchell Kapor

Matt U

I had a difficult time understanding that as well. 'tWidth' is, in fact, an integer. In other places throughout the project it's used to store the width of certain widgets in a report. But this particular statement, I have no idea. That's literally all the code in it. It never references 'tWidth' in this particular section. *smh* There are a ton of bad practices in this project. A lot of empty 'catch' statements after a large 'try' block and so forth. Almost *ZERO* comments. Blah, blah, blah. :(

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Brisingr Aerowing

X|

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. - Mitchell Kapor

Bernhard Hiller

The reason behind that WTF is likely simple: somewhen during development, there was a problem, or an extreme value case had to be tested (width greater than screen width), and a developer decided to replace temporarily

htmlToImageConverter.BrowserWidth = int.Parse(tWidth);

by

htmlToImageConverter.BrowserWidth = int.Parse("1025");

But then forgot to change it back. And nobody complained till you happened to find that WTF...

ZurdoDev

Quote:

But then forgot to change it back.

You're probably right; however, that takes all the fun out of harassing the previous developer for this. :)

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

Matt U

That's a very reasonable observation, and you're probably quite right. Thank you for that. Now I'm going to put "tWidth" back in there and see if it fixes some of these problems. Haha.

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Bernhard Hiller

Be careful! It might introduce a new defect now - do you know how many later changes assume that that WTF is the correct solution? :)

Matt U

Haha. I changed it and it didn't make any difference whatsoever. ;-P

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Giuseppe Tollini

that's easy to fix, just change it to: int.Parse(int.Parse("1025").ToString());

Matt U

:laugh:

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Bernhard Hiller

You lack experience with such WTF code! In some two or three years, a customer will complain about a page being too wide or too narrow... And then the new guy working on the project will submit your little change as a WTF: a useless change introducing a new bug. That's how such WTF code works...

Matt U

;-P I do lack experience. This is the first project I've ever worked on that was written by someone else.

djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.

Quirkafleeg

It may be for those special people with a 1025 x 768½ screen resolution?

walterhevedeich

Bernhard Hiller wrote:

and a developer decided to replace temporarily

You seem to know about it very well. I can almost pinpoint who that was. :laugh:

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Bernhard Hiller

Oh dear, I'd better use a different login name for such posts...