The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Build Up

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-06-04

If there's one thing that seems to be a constant source of issues, it's people constructing SQL queries through string concatenation. Even if you're using parameters in the query, I'm opposed to handling raw SQL as strings in my programs. My solution is always "use a builder"- an API that constructs a syntax tree that it can then render to SQL as needed. (Yes, a builder, not an ORM, that's a whole other discussion, I'm not dogmatically anti-ORM, but it's a leaky abstraction at best.)

Many languages have such a thing, Java included. Lukasz's team was using Java, and they had a rule: "don't do SQL strings, use a builder". Unfortunately for Lukasz's team, their guideline didn't specify what kind of builder.

8 comments - Last comment @ 12:14

Coerce the Truth Out of You

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-06-03

Frank suspected something odd when he spotted a use of React's useMemo function in some JavaScript code. Now, there's nothing wrong with using that method, in and of itself. It watches some variables and recalculates a callback if they change for any reason. It's a great tool for when you want to avoid recalculating expensive things over and over again.

But in this case, the calculation in question was isAuthorized, which wasn't an expensive calculation; it was just checking if certain values are set. The code looked like this:

7 comments - Last comment @ 2026-06-03

Blocked the Date

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-06-02

Volodya sends us some bad date handling code in PHP. Which, I know, you're just reaching for the close tab and yawning when you hear that. You've seen it before. But bear with me, this one still has some fun bits to it.

$monthes = array(
        1 => 'Января', 2 => 'Февраля', 3 => 'Марта', 4 => 'Апреля',
        5 => 'Мая', 6 => 'Июня', 7 => 'Июля', 8 => 'Августа',
        9 => 'Сентября', 10 => 'Октября', 11 => 'Ноября', 12 => 'Декабря'
);

17 comments - Last comment @ 2026-06-03

What Condition is This

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-28

Untodesu sends us this submission, with this comment:

Literally no idea what kind of drugs the guy was taking but nonetheless we've rewritten it to be just a two-liner

13 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-29

Are There Files Yet?

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-27

Are there any files to send? That's the question that Chris C's predecessor had. So they asked it. Again. And again. And again.

Chris writes:

16 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-28

In the Know

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-21

Delilah works in a Python shop. Despite Python's "batteries included" design, that doesn't stop people from trying to make their own batteries from potatoes. For example, her co-worker wrote this function:

def key_exists(element, key):
    if isinstance(element, dict):
        try:
            element = element[key]
        except KeyError:
            return False
        return True

7 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-26

Find a Bar for This One

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-20

A depressing quantity of software is what I would call a "data pump". I have some data over here, and I need it over there. Maybe I'm integrating into a legacy app. Or into an ERP. Or into a 3rd party API. At the end of the day, I have data in one place, and I want it in another place.

Sally has a Java application written in the Quarkus framework, which has a nightly batch that works to keep a table of Bar entities in sync with a table of Foo entities. (This anonymization comes from Sally) These exist in the same database. There is also a Bar webservice, which provides information about the Bar entities. The workflow, such as it is, is that the software needs to find all of the Foo entities that do not currently have associated Bar entities, and then call the Bar webservice to get the required information to create those Bar entities.

12 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-27

Three Digit Acronyms

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2026-05-19

JB has a database table that, at first glance, looks like one of those data warehouse tables that exists to make queries performant. You know the sort, the table that contains every date between 1979 and 2050, or every number out to 1,000,000 or something. It looks dumb, but it helps make certain joins and queries performant.

The database table is called three_alpha_numerics. It has two columns: digit, which contains three characters, and is_numeric, which is a a single character: 'Y' or 'N'. It looks roughly like this:

13 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-19