The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

It's Not Wrong to Say We're Equal

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-07-01

Aaron was debugging some C# code, and while this wasn't the source of the bug, it annoyed him enough to send it to us.

protected override int DoCompare(Item item1, Item item2)
{
	try
	{
		DateTime thisDate = ((DateField)item1.Fields["Create Date"]).DateTime;
		DateTime thatDate = ((DateField)item2.Fields["Create Date"]).DateTime;

		return thatDate.CompareTo(thisDate);
	}
	catch (Exception)
	{
		return 0; // Sorry, ran out of budget!
	}
}

15 comments - Last comment @ 2025-07-01

A Highly Paid Field

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-30

In ancient times, Rob's employer didn't have its own computer; it rented time on a mid-range computer and ran all its jobs using batch processing in COBOL. And in those ancient times, these stone tools were just fine.

But computing got more and more important, and the costs for renting time kept going up and up, so they eventually bought their own AS/400. And that meant someone needed to migrate all of their COBOL to RPG. And management knew what you do for those kinds of conversions: higher a Highly Paid Consultant.

27 comments - Last comment @ 2025-07-01

Classic WTF: Take the Bus

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2025-06-23

It's summer break time, here at TDWTF, and based on this classic, we shouldn't be traveling by bus. Original --Remy

Rachel started working as a web developer for the local bus company. The job made her feel young, since the buses, the IT infrastructure, and most of their back-office code was older than she was. The bus fare-boxes were cash only, and while you could buy a monthly pass, it was just a little cardboard slip that you showed the driver. Their accounting system ran on a mainframe, their garage management software was a 16-bit DOS application. Email ran on an Exchange 5.5 server.

14 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-27

Using the Old Bean

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-19

If you write a lot of Java, you're going to end up writing a lot of getters and setters. Without debating the merits of loads of getters and setters versus bare properties, ideally, getters and setters are the easiest code to write. Many IDEs will just generate them for you! How can you screw up getters and setters?

Well, Dave found someone who could.

7 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-20

Stop Being So ####

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-18

Many a network admin has turned to the siren song of Perl to help them automate managing their networks. Frank's predecessor is no exception.

They also got a bit combative about people critiquing their Perl code:

20 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-25

A Second Date

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-17

Ah, bad date handling. We've all seen it. We all know it. So when Lorenzo sent us this C# function, we almost ignored it:

private string GetTimeStamp(DateTime param)
{
    string retDate = param.Year.ToString() + "-";
    if (param.Month < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Month.ToString() + "-";
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Month.ToString() + "-";

    if (param.Day < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Day.ToString() + " ";
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Day.ToString() + " ";

    if (param.Hour < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Hour.ToString() + ":";
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Hour.ToString() + ":";

    if (param.Minute < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Minute.ToString() + ":";
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Minute.ToString() + ":";

    if (param.Second < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Second.ToString() + ".";
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Second.ToString() + ".";

    if (param.Millisecond < 10)
        retDate = retDate + "0" + param.Millisecond.ToString();
    else
        retDate = retDate + param.Millisecond.ToString();

    return retDate;
}

16 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-19

The Firefox Fix

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-16

Yitzchak was going through some old web code, and found some still in-use JavaScript to handle compatibility issues with older Firefox versions.

if ($.browser.mozilla &&
    $.browser.version.slice(0, 1) == '1')
{
    …
}

17 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-18

Gridding My Teeth

by Remy Porter in CodeSOD on 2025-06-12

Dan's co-workers like passing around TDWTF stories, mostly because seeing code worse than what they're writing makes them feel less bad about how often they end up hacking things together.

One day, a co-worker told Dan: "Hey, I think I found something for that website with the bad code stories!"

5 comments - Last comment @ 2025-06-13