Shit programmers write • Hacker News Board

Re: Shit programmers write

#51

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:29 PM UTC

mephi5t0 wrote: post #50

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

I assume item itself is missing, so nothing to convert... My guess

[deleted]

Re: Shit programmers write

#52

Post by pmelendez » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:31 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #51

mephi5t0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume item itself is missing, so nothing to convert... My guess

[deleted]

I guess you are talking about: s.ToString();

Just note that s is a StringBuilder and not a string.

Re: Shit programmers write

#53

Post by acron0 » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

There aren't any obvious structural errors but two things occur to me. Firstly, JSON serialization is something every platform, including .NET, already has a multitude of libraries available for so this is 'reinventing the wheel' a bit. Secondly, looking at what it's actually doing, it's plausible the author doesn't even need JSON, as it's simply serializing a list of `id:name` fields. Thirdly, there are plenty of more 'inline' ways of achieving this using `string.Join`. All in all, just very 'novice' code but nothing _incorrect_ about it. IMO.

Re: Shit programmers write

#54

Post by iron_ball » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

I'm assuming they could have just used a well-known and well-tested library.

Re: Shit programmers write

#55

Post by pmelendez » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:35 PM UTC

acron0 wrote: post #53

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

There aren't any obvious structural errors but two things occur to me. Firstly, JSON serialization is something every platform, including .NET, already has a multitude of libraries available for so this is 'reinventing the wheel' a bit. Secondly, looking at what it's actually doing, it's plausible the author doesn't even need JSON, as it's simply serializing a list of `id:name` fields. Thirdly, there are plenty of mo…

Yeah, that's what I thought. I didn't see anything horrible that were obvious, and by horrible I mean laughable just as the other pieces of code in the website.

Re: Shit programmers write

#56

Post by rpedela » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:36 PM UTC

statictype wrote: post #39

hrktb wrote: post #6

> if (Session["startDate"] + "" == "") This feels horribly familiar. I'm not sure to recognize the specific language used, but there must be cases where one would like to target empty of filled with non processable characters strings only, and let null and falsy values pass through. This kind of use would typically need a line of comment, but hey...

Do this in javascript all the time. Adding a `+ ""` forces the object to become a string. Though not sure why it was required for this particular comparison.

Why not use toString()? It is clearer to the reader that way.

Re: Shit programmers write

#57

Post by MartinCron » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:37 PM UTC

guardian5x wrote: post #40

danabramov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, such code is not specific to MS technologies, but is indeed often found in “enterprisey” code, a lot of which just happens to be in Java and C#. And enterprisey code is like that because it's often outsourced to the lowest bidder. I once had to print a method that took 50 pages of paper, so I could understand what it does, and after 15 minutes I realized it's the same 60 lines repeated over and ov…

Just curious: Why does printing it on paper helps you to understand code better than reading it on screen?

I've only had to print terrible code to understand it. I think it's a way to leverage the spatial part of your brain more directly.... where was that part of this huge method that did that... oh, it's top left.

Re: Shit programmers write

#58

Post by jtheory » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

There are easier ways to "JSONize" data, maybe? They aren't escaping the keys/values going in, which could be bad, but if it's a known set of strings that may not actually be a problem.

I notice that the two pieces of data actually going into the JSON are "CustomFieldOptionId" and "OptionName" -- which seem somewhat useless/obscure, but there could be a legitimate reason for that.

So yeah, I don't quite get it either. Most of the others are more obviously silly.

Re: Shit programmers write

#59

Post by jebblue » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:43 PM UTC

wreegab wrote: post #32

sixothree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a programmer who likes to spell things out for future readers. It's easier to convey meaning with return foo == null ? true : false;

Let's picture a future reader: "Hmmm, if 'foo == null' is true, than it's true... I see..." Seriously..

From a maintenance perspective, it's a bit more involved than that. Returning the explicit evaluation result says, "I do care what foo is and these are the only valid possible return values after expression evaluation, today just return null but in the future we might return something different, either way the return value at this point is critical and needs to be explicitly considered and processed".

Re: Shit programmers write

#60

Post by potatolicious » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 3:45 PM UTC

mephi5t0 wrote: post #50

pmelendez wrote: post #48

I haven't slept well lastnight (only 4 hours) so please bear with me... but what is the joke on this snippet? "I Don’t Know".ToJson(); public string ToJson() { var s = new StringBuilder("{"); for (var i = 0; i

I assume item itself is missing, so nothing to convert... My guess

Been a while but:

  var item = CustomField.CustomFieldOption[i];

Shouldn't that be the item to convert? This looks like something stuck onto a class to serialize to JSON.

I might be missing the joke also :(