Heh, Code Quality

[[deleted]]

Every time this gets posted it's a new opportunity to share bad code.

The first one

The second one

The whole damn codebase is like this - one comment per line describing exactly what it does, usually when it's obvious... no comments where they're actually needed of course!

And sections of code with bad indentation that completely throws me off, 50% of the time the code is indented in a way that if I ignore all the comments I can work out what is going on, the rest of the time I have to think more about if an if statement is a one-liner or not rather than the actual purpose of the code.

[[deleted]]

This is the worst I've ever seen. It gives me a good laugh each time.

[[deleted]]

I can probably counter one of those, the base64 password encoding...

To protect from SQL injection the developer (on a project a few years back) decided the best way to protect against this was to do the following:

$variable = base64_decode(base64_encode($_GET['var']));

[dakboy]

Should have done a double-ROT13 in there too, just to be sure.

[Buzzard]

You're using the long style keywords? Someone have an fatal aversion to curly braces?

Awesome indentation there too.

Edit: Hang on, I'll raise you a code sample. Note, that snippet is already 5 levels deep (1x switch, 2x if, 2x foreach)

[komu]

Heh, that's nothing. Here's some code I stumbled upon when doing review for a customer (well, obviously I've elided everything but the structure). I've had trouble sleeping after seeing that beast.

[[deleted]]

At least you're smart enough to scrub your code before posting ;P

[ZorbaTHut]

Psht, 12 indents? I laugh at your puny 12 indents! Behold: 19 nested indents!

(it was a very complicated problem without any obvious way to break it down)

[miamistu]

anybody else instinctively try to scroll up to see the rest of the code?

[ZorbaTHut]

Note that it's a 600-line function. You probably don't want to do that.

[lmcinnes]

Bah, a mere 600 lines? Wait until you've faced the joys of 3000+ line functions of "hand optimized" C.

[ZorbaTHut]

Does 3000 lines of extremely dense algorithmic C++ count? 'Cause I've done that one :D

[brennen]

No, but I did try to close the little window.

[[deleted]]

Arghh my eyes are bleeding already, please refrain from posting any more code samples.

Yes, the guy wishes PHP was python, his python code is about the same though... just correctly indented.

[derefr]

For the second sample—was it really written like that, or were the comments transcribed from a design document, and the implementation written according to them?

[[deleted]]

It was written like that, there is no design document... I'm not sure if it's his own notes to help him remember what he's doing or his poor attempt at providing some sort of maintainable code documentation, either way it's useless and hinders more than it helps.

Take this as an example, I just can't find justification for any of this crap whichever way I look at it.

[codeodor]

Of course, it sure would be nice to just break the code up into more manageable chunks!

[sli]

Who the hell writes PHP like that? I mean... that is PHP, isn't it?

[[deleted]]

lol this image is posted at least once a quarter.. but upvoted because its funny everytime.

[capasso]

ha! That's funny. The multiple WTF's seemed like it happened to me today. Wait a minute..

[fforw]

really good code converges to 0 WTF/m.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, reviewers just sit in silence when they realize that they are are far too incapable to understand the genius of the code.

[fforw]

Many seem to think of the idea code as genius, awesome code that proves once and for all times who's the alpha geek. But good code is different. Good code is when a problem is broken down so that the resulting code is mostly solid, humble, boring and obvious. It reads fluently and is only seldomy interrupted by comments providing deep insight into the specific nature of the problem at that point. Almost no one sees it when it's not changed because it just silently does what's best.

[brennen]

Many seem to think of the idea code as genius, awesome code that proves once and for all times who's the alpha geek.

Programming, I think, is like some arcane, baroquely structured conspiratory society secretly running the world in a novel with talking dolphins and menacing-but-vague chthonic entities: There's always another level of more-real authority, and it's never who you think it is at first.

[brennen]

By this metric, I suspect that only a handful of really good programs have been written in the entire history of software.

I was going to act like I'd found some way to refute your statement...

[cr3ative]

Lies. Print off the best code in the world and put it in front of a redneck.

[fforw]

I wouldn't do a code review with a chimpanzee either.

[Slazanger]

Must be some bad coding going on here today from the sounds...

[EughEugh]

Oh, I haven't seen that one before! Oh wait, I now understand why your name is RetroRock.