The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Pride Goeth

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2026-05-14

Janči, a master's student of bioinformatics, was seated near the back of a large classroom. This was a simple compulsory elective course geared toward biologists. The professor was currently walking the class through their latest assignment. "We'll need to connect to some Linux servers," he announced.

The other students seated nearby traded blank stares. They were all Mac and Windows users with no IT background. Meanwhile Janči, a veteran Linux user, started feeling a little smug. An easy A was at hand.

2 comments - Last comment @ 06:54

Over and Under Reaction

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-13

Today's anonymous submitter sends us two blocks. The first is a perfectly normal line of React code:

const [width, setWidth] = useState(false)

11 comments - Last comment @ 06:44

Underscore Its Unimportance

by Remy Porter in Representative Line on 2026-05-12

Frequent submitter Argle (previously), sends us a short little representative line. The good news is that this line of code came across Argle's screen during a code review: it was being removed. The bad news is that it was sitting in the code base for ages.

_ = len / 8.0f;

23 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-13

A Solid Reference

by Remy Porter in Representative Line on 2026-05-11

Today's anonymous submitter works for a large company. It's one of those sorts of companies which has piles, and piles, and piles of paperwork and bureaucracy. It also means that much of their portfolio of software is basic CRUD applications. "Here's a database for managing invoices." "Here's a database for managing desk assignments." "Here's a pile of databases which link our legacy applications to our new ERP system."

Which brings us to our representative line. It is not a representative line of code, but a representative line of the design specification. This is the design specification for yet another database-driven application.

10 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-12

Null Null Null

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-08

The single most common category of entries for this column is failed handling of NaN, null and undefined. Almost exclusively from javascript in web pages, sometimes in node servers, and almost never any other languages or frameworks. They're getting a bit repetitive but it's our solemn duty to call out failure where we find it. So if you send us one of these, make sure it identifies the source!

"If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done" exhorted Ben.

10 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-12

Failing to Fail

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-07

Russell F (previously) sends us a small one today. It's not just a representative line, it's a representative comment. More than that, it's a true confession. Russell wrote some code, you see, and the logic was confusing. So, a co-worker added a comment to explain what the code was doing:

'This is *supposed* to fail. If it fails to fail, it throws a failure message

13 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-13

Please Find, Rewind

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-06

As previously discussed, C++ took a surprisingly long time to get a "starts with" function for strings. It took even longer to get a function called "contains". In part, that's simply because string::find solves that problem.

Nancy sends us a… different approach to solving this problem.

15 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-09

Not for Nullthing

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-05-05

Today's anonymous submitter sends us some code that just makes your mind go… blank when you look at it.

	public static boolean isNull(String value) {
		return StringUtils.isBlank(value);
	}

15 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-12