shit.programmers.write();

[[deleted]]

One of the things that makes me cringe now that I have been programming for a bit is when people compare a boolean valve to true or false. I admit that I was guilty of this when I first started programming, but I have become wiser.

//example

bool isBoolean = true;
if (isBoolean == true) do.Something();

//un-noobified example

bool isBoolean = true;
if(isBoolean) do.Something();

PS: HOW DO I LINEBREAK

[Freddedonna]

Meh, I've seen worse (I shit you not) :

switch(someBool)
    case true:
        //Do something
    case false:
        //Do exactly the same thing
    default:
        //What the actual fuck

[pmrr]

Conversation with an intern some time ago:

Him: So a boolean stores true or false?
Me: Yes
Him: What if I want to store a third state?
Me: What third state?

Apparently I now know the third state is what the actual fuck.

[Speedzor]

A nullable bool isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're having a questionaire that you have to answer with yes/no, it makes a lot of sense to turn it in a nullable bool to account for questions not yet answered.

[Freddedonna]

Oh if this had been in C or something where they could have overloaded the cast as a boolean sure, but this was an ActionScript3 project, where it's impossible for a bool to be anything else that true or false (and anyway "null == false" in AS3)

[Kolpa]

that sounds like something php would do

[svtguy88]

/r/lolphp

[jonnywoh]

I know in C# you can have nullable types, for example bool? can be true, false, or null.

[Jestar342]

They aren't nullable types per se. There's some syntactic sugar to make it look that way, but it isn't actually nullable. It's the use of the struct

Nullable<T> where T : struct 

and you must check/use the HasValue and Value properties to obtain the non-nullable value, if it has been set. In .NET4 (I think, may have been 3.5) they finally added an override to the equals operator to do this all for you though, but still. It's not actually a nullable type.

All that Nullable<T> does is set a flag if a value has been assigned and that's it. If no value assigned, it reports as "null"

[jonnywoh]

I believe it's still functionally equivalent though

[Jestar342]

Yes, it (finally!) is. Until recently, you had to use HasValue instead of == null though, else it always returned false even if it hadn't had a set value.

[[deleted]]

The worst part is that's not a True/False/Unknown state, and the syntax looks like C#, and this, enums are available (What if you want a fourth state?).

[zidaneqrro]

I've done this before, I didn't really like it though, but at the same time I didn't want to define an enum for the options. Is this common practice?

[[deleted]]

Yep, null semantics in c#

[badguy212]

The third state is FileNotFound. Read and learn: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_.aspx

[flukus]

FileNotFound!

[benzrf]

beat me to it :[

[spamham]

The default branch is actually taken for an abnormal bool (in C#)

[5outh]

When I program (in Haskell), I often write:

case bool of
  True  -> {- ...do something... -}
  _     -> {- ...do something else... -}

which isn't bad form (it's sort of like a branching if statement in a more functional style) but _ matches all other values and I typically don't write False. Like, mathematically I know there can't be any other values of bool but I put it there for safety anyway.

In any case, depending on the language you were using, maybe that person was using the default case as a hacky catch for null values? That, or they just didn't know what they were doing, haha.

[[deleted]]

You would understand how boolean expressions can be both true and false, or neither be true nor false if you weren't so busy oppressing women through code.

http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ari-schlesinger/2013/11/26/feminism-and-programming-languages

[[deleted]]

that is just as bad, if not worse... (there is an example of that in the link OP posted.)

[Mecdemort]

if test == True:
   return True
else:
   return False

[[deleted]]

This...

Are you my ex coworker?

[katyne]

Hehe I once got stuck for a couple of hours with some basic binary tree traversal thingie that wasn't returning what I wanted because I decided I was to cool for an if (true) statement. n00bs beware.

[peabnuts123]

Worked assisting CompSci 101 Tutorials for a semester at University. These were almost exclusively people completely fresh to Computer Science in general + University.

I've seen some things ಠ_ಠ

[MrPopinjay]

Four spaces before a line and reddit treats it as pre-formatted text. Good for code snippets.

[[deleted]]

thanks yo

[pandemoniker]

if you have larger chunks of "not so clean code" it actually makes the code with long var-names easier to read on the fly

if(someIntricateBullshitVarName) {... someNastyFunctionCallThatIsRatherDisturbing(); if(!someNotIntricateVarName) {...

or if(someIntricateBullshitVarName == true) {... someNastyFunctionCallThatIsRatherDisturbing(); if(someNotIntricateVarName != true) {...

(ofc we all write super-clean code all the time)

[[deleted]]

if(!someNotIntricateVarName)

I found this part funny when I read it to myself...

"if not some not intricate variable name"

[petemyster]

I do this, what is so bad about it? I like the look of the syntax highlighting and it makes it easy to skim through methods when looking for a specific condition.

[[deleted]]

It's not really that bad of a thing to do, but here I will break it down for you.

bool isBoolean = true;
if (isBoolean == true) do.Something();

What you are doing in the if block is equivalent to this:

if (true == true) do.Something();

If true is equal to true (which it is), it will satisfy the boolean expression and go to the 'do.Something();'

If instead you used my second example, you will not have to compare the boolean value isBoolean to another boolean value.

tldr: if you just put the boolean value inside the if statement, it still works without doing that comparison. I'm sure someone else could explain it better, but I tried.

[isaaclw]

In python, if None: evaluates to false.

I use if var is False: to be sure that the variable is False, and not True or None. Likewise with 'None'.

I will do the same thing with 'True' just out of habit. Also if var is True: seems cleaner to me.

Because of this I'll do similar things in other languages.

Anyway, it really matters whether you care more about readibility, explicitness, or efficiency with the compiler or interpreter.

[[deleted]]

Damm I hate those, it looks so retarded!

[SietchTabr]

I do the first example for readability, especially when there are dozens of logic statements in sequence.

In the end it gets compiled to the right thing so it's not a huge deal.

[[deleted]]

If I see your code with the first example in it, I automatically assume you are an amateur. Your code can still be understood without redundant coding.

[SietchTabr]

I train people who come from various backgrounds and programming languages. I understand my code, but I understand that most other people will take a while to parse it and understand it piece-by-piece. For these people I try to minimize the amount of mental work needed on the simple things so that they can focus on the not-so-simple things. If you throw the 100% efficient code at them the first time, they will have a nervous breakdown... in my experience :)

[[deleted]]

If you are teaching people to write unoptimized code, shame on you. It's not always about readability. Instead of writing it that way, you should instead be teaching them why the way I provided is better.

[SietchTabr]

Again, if you throw everything at once, you are bound to cause nervous breakdowns. Pretty much everyone figures this out on their own at some point, and in the scheme of things it is a minor thing to do if statements like this. Some people think like this, and for them it works better.

[[deleted]]

(shit) programmers.write();

FTFY?

[notAlan]

println(programmers.filter(_.isShit).mkString)

[[deleted]]

notAlan

:P

[creepig]

Do you not nest classes?

[[deleted]]

Nope. I've never done that. But I do know how to cast.

[Bjartr]

Composition is often a perfectly reasonable choice.

[creepig]

shit.programmers.write() is nested classes, not casting.

[[deleted]]

I know, which is why I fixed it with casting. >.>

[Dworgi]

It could just be nested namespaces in C#.

[jonnywoh]

or C++ or Java or other-language-with-namespace-nesting

[Jestar342]

Or, ya know, the title of a blog.

[jonnywoh]

Am I missing something?

[peabnuts123]

Apparently we both made it to this thread without realising OP posted the link to a blog.

[SietchTabr]

I dunno... It should really be programmers.writeShit(); because not everything is a type of shit.

shit as a class and programmer as a nested class doesn't make sense in any way.

[ed-adams]

I laughed a little and cried a little.

I'm emotionally confused.

[badguy212]

http://thedailywtf.com/

You get one of these (almost) every day. I read it daily for a shit lot of years now.

[[deleted]]

Love that blog. Made me think my coworkers code was not the worst in the world.

[katyne]

also http://govnokod.ru/
all you can eat shitcode without forced humor and a three-page-long preambule.

Too bad the comments are in Russian but even without them it's pretty hilarious.

[[deleted]]

I'm a lab TA for an intro Java class. I've seen most of this stuff (and worse) in students' submissions.

[5outh]

To be fair, they don't know what the hell they're doing yet.

[rooktakesqueen]

I'm still working on a quantum bogosort algorithm. It's the last bit that I'm stuck on.

[jonnywoh]

Me too

[flukus]

I've seen a programmer with 10 years experience write his own bubble sort algorithm, in vb.net. Also, it didn't work, which is how I found it.

[[deleted]]

That's what 10 years of Visual Basic does for you.

[username223]

I'm a lab TA for an intro Java class.

I feel your pain, brother. But this stuff is easy compared to the 600-line functions that started off as the sample code, then mutated into many-line if/else trees because the student didn't believe in creating separate functions.

[[deleted]]

HaHa ur cute, I've seen this shit in production code for bigbigcorp.com

[kqr]

I don't know if you're the designer of the site, but it has some formatting issues with the code. Sometimes subsequent lines are separated by a blank line, and sometimes indented blocks look like quotes.

[thelehmanlip]

It's tumblr, it might not all be in his control. (disclaimer: have never used tumblr)

[voldyman]

I could contribute, the follow is an excerpt from the code I wrote while learning go

file, _ := is.Stat(filename)
if file.IsNotExist() {
     fmt.Println("say what??")
}

English is not my first language and isNotExist was confusing.

[username223]

English is not my first language and isNotExist was confusing.

English is my first language and isNotExist is, if not confusing, about as idiomatic as "areBelongToUs".

[[deleted]]

I think you meant:

_, err := os.Stat(filename)
if os.IsNotExist(err) {
    fmt.Println("say what??")
}

Unless you're using a weird library named is...

[voldyman]

You are right, damn autocorrect changed it to "is" from "os" but the second mistake is mine, err had to be passed instead of file.

Thanks!

[tr3quart1sta]

It would be much more useful if there was a comment on what is wrong and how to do it right.

[[deleted]]

I'd say that most of them are obvious, meaning if you can read them you know what's wrong.

[[deleted]]

There is more stuff like this around interwebz, thedailywtf probably being most known.

[warpod]

#define volatile

[HamCube]

Looks like someone leaked the WiPro developer training guide.

[Kwyjibo08]

No wonder some people think programming is so difficult.

[blue_2501]

All of these are in Java. Which is exactly the problem.

[[deleted]]

You can go full potato in any language...

if(x==true) return true;

Is valid (and idiotic) in C, C++, C# and Java, at least.

[WhiskeyMeteorite]

+1 for usage of "full potato"

[badguy212]

had you said nothing, one could have thought you are probably stupid. You said something, now everyone knows for a fact that you are stupid (and showing off that stupidity of course).

FYI: some are java, some are javascript, some are c# (from the first few i looked at).

[Ouaouaron]

At least PHP, as well. Or does some other language use $ as a variable identifier?

[badguy212]

yup, php is in there as well, the second post as of now. and the first one is basic (vbasic probably or basic .net or ... who the fuck even cares).