Alex Papadimoulis

Founder, The Daily WTF

Jun 2017

Classic WTF: The Accidental Hire

by in Feature Articles on
At least we get a summer break, I suppose. Not like over at Doghouse Insurance. Original -- Remy

Doghouse Insurance (as we'll call them) was not a pleasant place to work. Despite being a very successful player in their industry, the atmosphere inside Doghouse was filled with a constant, frenzied panic. If Joe Developer didn't delay his upcoming vacation and put in those weekend hours, he might risk the timely delivery of his team's module, which might risk delaying the entire project, which might risk the company's earnings potential, which might risk the collapse of the global economy. And that's just for the Employee Password Change Webpage project; I can't even begin to fathom the overarching devastation that would ensue from a delayed critical project.

To make matters worse, the primary business application that poor souls like Vinny maintained was a complete nightmare. It was developed during the company's "database simplification" era and consisted of hundreds of different "virtual attribute tables" stuffed into four real tables; it was a classic case of The Inner-Platform Effect. But amidst all this gloom and despair was an upbeat fellow named Chris who accidentally became a part of the Doghouse Insurance team.


Classic WTF: It's Like Calling Assert

by in CodeSOD on
We continue our summer vacation with this gem- a unique way to interact with structured exception handling, to be sure. Original. --Remy

When we go from language to language and platform to platform, a whole lot of “little things” change about how we write code: typing, syntax, error handling, etc. Good developers try to adapt to a new language by reading the documentation, asking experienced colleagues, and trying to follow best practices. “Certain Developers,” however, try to make the language adapt to their way of doing things.

Adrien Kunysz discovered this following code written by a “Certain Developer” who wasn’t a fan of the try...catch…finally approach called for in .NET Java development and exception handling.


Classic WTF: Server Room Fans and More Server Room Fun

by in Feature Articles on
The Daily WTF is taking a short summer break this week, and as the temperatures around here are edging up towards "Oh God I Want to Die" degrees Fahrenheit, I thought it'd be great to kick off this week of classic articles with some broiling hot server room hijinks. -- Remy

"It's that time of year again," Robert Rossegger wrote, "you know, when the underpowered air conditioner just can't cope with the non-winter weather? Fortunately, we have a solution for that... and all we need to do is just keep an extra eye on people walking near the (completely ajar) server room door."