The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

One Case

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2026-04-02

I feel like we've gotten a few SQL case statement abuses recently, but a properly bad one continues to tickle me. Ken C sends us one that, well:

SELECT CASE h.DOCUMENTTYPE
        WHEN 2 THEN 3 WHEN 3 THEN 4 WHEN 4 THEN 5
        WHEN 5 THEN 6 WHEN 6 THEN 7 WHEN 7 THEN 8
        ELSE h.DOCUMENTTYPE
    END AS DocumentType,
    h.DOCNMBR AS DocNmbr,
    h.FULLPOLICY AS FullPolicy,
    h.BATCHID AS BatchId,
    h.OrigBatchId,
    h.UPDATEDDATE AS UpdatedDate,
    h.CUSTOMERNO AS CustomerNo,
    h.PROJECTID AS ProjectID,
    h.AMOUNT AS Amount

21 comments - Last comment @ 17:36

Corporate Language Compliance Generator

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2026-04-01

You've already read the longer version. You need a quick phrase of corpo-speak to distract and confuse your rivals. Here's the generator for doing that:

14 comments - Last comment @ 16:57

Corporate Language Compliance

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2026-04-01

As we all know, there are two basic kinds of scientific studies. The first is a ground-breaking paper that changes the way we view the world, and forces us to confront our presuppositions and biases about how we think the world works, and change our perspective. The other tells us what we already know to be true, and makes us feel good. The second kind, of course, is what we'd call "good science".

Or, if you want to skip past this straight to the generator at the bottom.

23 comments - Last comment @ 12:14

Recent Articles

One Case

Corporate Language Compliance Generator

Corporate Language Compliance