OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#1

Post by gthank » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 12:59 AM UTC

OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)
msmvps.com

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#2

Post by kylec » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 2:28 AM UTC

The video, for those that missed the link in the second paragraph: http://vimeo.com/7403673

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#3

Post by mumrah » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 2:32 AM UTC

It's important to note that choice of language affects a lot of these issues. For example, the unicode issue in Python:

  >>> s = unicode('Les Misérables','utf-8')
  >>> print s[::-1]
  selbarésiM seL

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#4

Post by seldo » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 2:56 AM UTC

"due to rainfall thousands of miles away, my unit test had moved Greenland into Argentina. Fail."

Argentina's 11-day notice for changing their DST rules wreaked all sorts of unexpected havoc. It's sort of awesome (small worlds are more fun) and also totally exasperating.

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#5

Post by kuda » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:08 AM UTC

I've gotten to the point where I automatically dislike anything containing the phrase "Epic Fail."

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#6

Post by gord » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:08 AM UTC

mumrah wrote: post #3

It's important to note that choice of language affects a lot of these issues. For example, the unicode issue in Python: >>> s = unicode('Les Misérables','utf-8') >>> print s[::-1] selbarésiM seL

I think the s is round the wrong way.

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#7

Post by brown9-2 » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:10 AM UTC

kuda wrote: post #5

I've gotten to the point where I automatically dislike anything containing the phrase "Epic Fail."

Same here, but you should really look past that in this case.

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#8

Post by blasdel » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:27 AM UTC

Unicode has its own special line terminator character as well, just for kicks

It looks like you're trying to refer to NEL, which is in Unicode because it was distinct in EBCDIC, and who doesn't want lossless round-trips?

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#9

Post by blasdel » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:39 AM UTC

mumrah wrote: post #3

It's important to note that choice of language affects a lot of these issues. For example, the unicode issue in Python: >>> s = unicode('Les Misérables','utf-8') >>> print s[::-1] selbarésiM seL

Nope, Python fucks this up just the same, even in Python 3:

  >>> print u'Les Mise\u0301rables'[::-1] #2
  >>> print('Les Mise\u0301rables'[::-1]) #3
  selbaŕesiM seL

Almost no implementation will fuck up LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE U+00E9, but nearly all programming languages will royally fuck up a COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT U+0301 even in much easier cases like string length. Almost all implementations that claim to be UTF-16 are actually UCS-2, and can't handle surrogates in the slightest.

Re: OMG Ponies (Aka Humanity: Epic Fail)

#10

Post by jmatt » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 3:49 AM UTC

The article really was entertaining. These are all common problems for new C# programmers.

Doubles in .net are IEEE 64-bit (8-byte) double-precision floating-point numbers . I've written a few different comparers to deal with problems like the one he demoed. He should have typed it to be a decimal if it was currency or he wanted it to have an exact value instead of be a double-precision floating-point number.

As for the reverse on the string. He reversed the characters, which are defined in .net as char / byte. Not unicode. If you want to play nice with unicode in .net you need to parse it as unicode. A hugely common mistake for all of us who have done some internationalization in .net.

I remember or sorts of trouble with java.util.GregorianCalendar back in the day. Ugh.

I'm not defending .net or C#. I'm just not surprised he ran into these newbie problems. You guys should see the evilness that is Access, the inconsistencies there make this look like nothing. And it's a black art with almost no documentation anywhere.