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The articles that your search results point to generally contain warnings that text replacement techniques cause accessability problems. And as far as dynamic image creation, I dare you to try that on a server that is under any kind of significant load.

Give it up. Text as images is a WTF.

If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines. If you're an individual, not such a big deal. If you're a company... make sure you have an alternative to pure javascript so that the search engine robots can find the content.

There's an FPS game map review site I used to visit often which has an utterly pointless Javascript 'compression' system behind it, originally coded to supposedly make it load more quickly over dialup connections.

As a result, the site is effectively invisible to search engines, and isn't exactly healthy these days.

I've found that one of the best 'fallback' browsers for simulating how a search engine sees things is good old lynx - as a result, I make sure my own pages are legible, navigable and sensibly structured from a low-level point of view. Also, it's a good way of checking that you haven't introduced too many wheel reinventions when good old <a href=...>s would have done the trick...

Oh my friend, this is already being done, as featured in an article on TheDailyWtf.. HyperLink 2.0:

# a translucent layer (DIV) is placed over the entire page, causing it to appear "grayed out", and ...
# a "please wait" layer is placed on top of that, with an animated pendulum swinging back and forth, then ...
# the XmlHttpRequest object is used to call the "GetHyperlink" web service which, in turn ...
# opens a connection to the database server to ...
# log the request in the RequestedHyperlinks table and ...
# retrieves the URL from the Hyperlinks table, then ...
# returns it to the client script, which then ...
# sets the window.location property to the URL retrieved, which causes ...
# the user to be redirected to the appropriate page

No doubt Microsoft will catch onto this, very smart and complex ways of doing very dumb things :)

The link doesn't work, but I assume you are talking about this. And no, it is not an abomination of nature, I am convinced that they contracted cthulu to handle that bit of programming.

You mean, like this abomination of nature?

There was a wonderful looking, easy to use system documented a while ago on The Daily WTF. It was even shown to have a truly elegant architecture. Check it out, you'll definitely be surprised!

There was a wonderful looking, easy to use system documented a while ago on The Daily WTF. It was even shown to have a truly elegant architecture. Check it out, you'll definitely be surprised!

There was a wonderful looking, easy to use system documented a while ago on The Daily WTF. It was even shown to have a truly elegant architecture. Check it out, you'll definitely be surprised!

I'm glad I can learn from such quality enterprise code as this:

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/64597/ShowPost.aspx
http://thedailywtf.com/forums/64833/ShowPost.aspx

Excerpt for the lazy:

public class SqlWords
{
    public const string SELECT = " SELECT ";
    public const string TOP = " TOP ";
    public const string DISTINCT = " DISTINCT ";
    public const string FROM = " FROM ";
    public const string INNER = " INNER ";
    public const string JOIN = " JOIN ";
    public const string INNER_JOIN = " INNER JOIN ";
    public const string LEFT = " LEFT ";
}

I'm glad I can learn from such quality enterprise code as this:

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/64597/ShowPost.aspx
http://thedailywtf.com/forums/64833/ShowPost.aspx

Excerpt for the lazy:

public class SqlWords
{
    public const string SELECT = " SELECT ";
    public const string TOP = " TOP ";
    public const string DISTINCT = " DISTINCT ";
    public const string FROM = " FROM ";
    public const string INNER = " INNER ";
    public const string JOIN = " JOIN ";
    public const string INNER_JOIN = " INNER JOIN ";
    public const string LEFT = " LEFT ";
}

The real art of programming comes from an understanding of algorithms and complexity.

"Did I leave anything out?"

Sure did. Formal education is lagging in teaching new concepts and applicable practices.

I know I'll get a lecture on the value of education and that job training isn't the goal, but in terms of preparing students for programming jobs, the academic programs are inadequate. I've received instruction on how to do things that are all wrong - things like dynamic SQL queries without escaping or parameterizing user input, most recently.

I also just finished a COBOL class, required for ALL CIS majors. I'm never going to use it, it has a stupid structure, and it's just impractical. If I wanted to do COBOL professionally, make it an optional class.

The worst programmers I've worked with are college graduates. Anecdotal, I know. But I've gotten three articles posted on The Daily WTF about one in particular that has a master's degree.

I'm not saying college is absolutely detrimental to one's ability to write software, but perhaps enrollment in degree programs is down because future developers want to learn newer technologies like .NET and such.

The trouble with that is you need a lot of code to decipher the results of the boolean query as shown here.

Luckily there are lots of examples of Enterprise quality out there. The Daily WTF has lots of great stuff. Here are two recent examples.

Luckily there are lots of examples of Enterprise quality out there. The Daily WTF has lots of great stuff. Here are two recent examples.

Luckily there are lots of examples of Enterprise quality out there. The Daily WTF has lots of great stuff. Here are two recent examples.

This is true, but there are a large number of idiots with keyboards out there who don't any common sense what-so-ever. If we see a "Web 2.0 bubble" develop, you can bet your bottom dollar those idiots will be all over the web (2.0).

You should spend more time at the The Daily WTF; it's an inside joke there. Look for "The Brillant Paula Bean".

The more people that develop buggy, slow, insecure, non-upgradeable & unmaintainable "applications" in Office, the more people will realize they shouldn't have paid their cousin to develop an app just because he could write a web page. This translates into dollars for me and my team, who have cleaned up such a mess on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, the price tag for this tends to be rather high, especially when compared to "pay me $500 and I'll do it" that he's getting from his brother-in-law (who inevitably divorces and leaves the business high and dry).

So, good luck with all that. Send me an email when you realize you've coded yourself into a corner because you run into a security problem or you're out of resources because Outlook is hogging them all...guess I'll see you on The Daily WTF sometime soon.

Oh, Windows more featureful than OS X? "Ajax isn't a competitor to OLE?" Nice try. And you call yourself an open source "zealot." Whatever.

Someone else will take on the work and cost of supporting OpenSSH. There's no "maybe" about it.

Um, like, perhaps.... Microsoft? Apple?
Some-small-software-firm-that-features-a-lot-on http://www.thedailywtf.com/?
Heaven forbid - SCO??

What we need is for a trusted company, organisation or team of hackers to take over if it does go to pieces. Not some evil company or group.

I think you mean "Brillant!"

For tech workers, the percentage of competents may reach as high as 30% or 40%.

Exactly. If you start with something like VB, you may never learn what's actually happening when you execute your code. That's fine when you're building your little four-function graphical calculator, but when you start building serious things, it's a huge problem.

If you want examples of why people should start programming in a real language, just read the Daily WTF. I guarantee the guy in this story didn't start with C.

Honestly, the only thing Office has that I really miss in Open Office is Access. Access is a great program to interact with other databases with via ODBC drivers, and I've yet to see a good open source replacement.

You don't have to miss it much longer, The Ultimate Address Book will be done shortly and will cover all your Access needs.

I just have to say that static methods inside a class is "Procedural Java" and not object-oriented in any way.

"System.out" is an object.

Applying OO analysis to this particular problem is not the best use of anyone's time, mind you...

On the contrary, giving this problem to a mind suspectible for using OO to solve it will keep said mind occupied for a while, preventing many WTFs.

Sure, and while we're at it, let's let any dude off the street design bridges, perform medicine on people or pilot aircrafts. It's not like you really need this people to be professional engineers, doctors or pilots, right? What could possibli go wrong? Errr... Possibly go wrong.

On the other hand, I, for one, am looking forward to the torrent of new content on The Daily WTF.

That is just bad programming. The people writing the query/gateway should check for a NULL as opposed to the string 'null'. Oh well, there _is_ http://thedailywtf.com/

Using http://javascript.internet.com/ makes you a DHTML *programmer*? Or do we need more fodder for http://www.thedailywtf.com/?

Somehow, this scares me...

There was a similar example of bad programming on thedailywtf a few days ago. Check out The Replacement...(and some of the other crazy code samples that they've found).

Sweet Jesus, that's funny. (and no, I'm not Jeff. I'm Sammy. Hi!)

Not two hours after I posted my thing here, I hopped onto The Daily WTF, and wouldn't you know that this was the WTF of the day? I'm not sure which is worse, a serialized object for all the important data, or an XML document...

Sweet Jesus, that's funny. (and no, I'm not Jeff. I'm Sammy. Hi!)

Not two hours after I posted my thing here, I hopped onto The Daily WTF, and wouldn't you know that this was the WTF of the day? I'm not sure which is worse, a serialized object for all the important data, or an XML document...

It makes Enterprise Software accessible to all!

I don't think the parent was trying to troll, this is a classic TheDailyWTF reference. http://www.thedailywtf.com/

right on the dot

and that reminds me of something i recently saw on thedailywtf: The Perils of Error-free Code

it all comes down to being competent or not

A language that is easy to learn does not guarantee good code.

Even the worst logic or options can be generated from the best languages. Some lovely examples can be found over heres.

We wanted you dead anyway.

This is what people mean when they say "reverse engineering" source code. Frankly, it might be easier to figure out the logic of some of those... constructs... by observation than by reading them.

If you've never seen such horrors, praise God for it--they don't often seem to be low on submissions over there :(

Brillant

They are practicing for the real world where their job will be outsourced to someone in Bangalore.

I have no problem with these kids though, gives people who KNOW how to code an easier way. Also checkout http://thedailywtf.com/ for samples of what these people will become.

Or maybe they won't realize it, and you'll be writing the kind of code that ends up on The Daily WTF. The reality is, unqualified graduates have been coming out of CS programs for years. The problem is that many employers have no good way to guage whether a candidate can really write code or not. In the mean time, you can take comfort that these incompetent employees will be moved the where they can do the least damage, management (The Dilbert Principle)

I found an excellent resource for this. They cover a new example each work day. Some of the examples are truly brillant.

Then you would probably like the code posted on thedailywtf.com. The original author apparently thought exclamation points were used too often today, even in code.

In '72 I was toggling bits/bytes in manually to crack the "evuhl empire" ... tracking subs and suchlike; after I gagged on tumbling Chile's democratically elected gov't I shifted to supporting SAC/NORAD by single-handedly maintaining the arctic tropo site. *shrug* So what ... withdrawing from all that to run MCR/CBC and repair kits at Heathkit was proper. My point: snake oil, gentlemen and gentlewomen. Before TimBL (in a resource rich environment, note) invented WWW some of us had been toying with and using SGML/hyper-text for years ... in my case developing MILSPEC tech_docs for navaids in an R&D environement ... to land passenger planes in snow storms. *shrug* I've been on welfare since '92. I got grossed out. Uber-grossed. Snake-oil ... smoke and mirrors ... Gates, M$, Win95 ... not QuatroPro, or JWZ and NS1.02 (Mosaic 0.72a for that matter.) It ain't just forward fire support that suffers ... or e-commerce ... or S&R ... right down to the roots, kidz ... check out http://thedailywtf.com/ Point? Saddam Hussein is a brave mofo ... massively hypocritical mofos (i.e. "plausible deniability") screw up the education system or rob old folk of their retirement funds. *shrug* To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch. stay well

You've just been re-reading the Brilliant Paula Bean haven't you? :)

Sometimes you just gotta wonder whether the IT industry (if such a thing can be said to exist) has any pride in its work at all. I think I'll just stick to the outskirts and reading the horror stories!

I'm not sure if you need to type this every reboot, or just once. Since it requires re-enabling, I'm hoping it's just once.

regsvr32 registers a COM/ActiveX "server" by modifying Windows registry entries. So, in theory, you need only run it once.

It is possible, however, that if you later install other software, the installer may re-register the DLL in question, in which case you'd want to manually unregister it again.

(Hmm. I suppose it's only coincidence that this novel approach to registering appeared on thedailywtf yesterday...)

Luckily, someone has even figured out a way to store a printf into a string! Why reinvent the wheel? Reuse the code!

Wow...I've seen odd things in the Times, but this (which, if you haven't RTFA, is in fact in the article!) is just weird and scary. I mean Daily WTF-type weird, and transit-strike-type scary. WOW.

I was tempted to just mod you down, instead I thought Id reply.

Youre not being un-PC...youre just an idiot. Consider any geek credentials withdrawn; your lack of reading comprehension and understanding of just how a severe disability such as his (he requires a portable ventilator as well as only having 2 digit mobility) would prohibit him from entering a working environment (hint 1: no company would be able to justify the insurance premium hike) places YOU squarely in the WTF (http://thedailywtf.com/) coding category.

To quote the article :- "Now the NGE has the mouse solely for combat and movement solely reserved for the WASD keys, no customization possible. So since left click is a basic attack and right click is a special, how do I move forward? Now I can't even walk my character to the starport."

Please note what he is complaining about. That no customization is possible so he cant play the game that he used to be able to play. As a developer who has had to consider disability access in the past I know it isnt necessarily easy to do but with what is comparably little effort, access for those with disabilities can be vastly improved. It would have probably taken one coder under 2 weeks to have provided sufficient customization to the UI to have accommodated disabled access AND give additional options to others who dislike their control layout. Usability work on a UI usually benefits EVERYONE!

Anyways, It isnt your genetic defect that prevents you having sexual intercourse. Its the fact that you are such a fucking worthless peace of shit that no woman in her right mind would give the time of fucking day to. But if you do ever successfully breed just consider for a moment what would happen if YOU had a child with a severe disability (god forbid, even for you I pray they are all healthy)...wouldnt YOU rather that the state/government had the heart to provide a sufficient level of care to ensure that your child lived as comfortable and satisfying life as was possible within the confines of their disability? Or would you rather watch your child slowly suffer and possibly die while you go bankrupt and your marriage disintegrates because youre worthless insurance provider tries everything and anything to minimize the amount of money they have to pay out in order to meet the letter of the contract?

Well at least now I'll finally be able to say to the young turks who love to produce bad code and come up the endless excuses to justify it: EAT ME!

...for large companies. By that point in your life you've learned enough to know that big companies move slowly and make dumb decisions. By age 40, you've either moved into management to participate in the stupidity, or you've left for a small company or consultancy. At least that's the way it's been for me and my friends.

I love programming and will write code until I die. It's fun (in a perverse way) to come in to various companies, fix their WTF code and look like a hero.

YHBD. It was taken from The Daily WTF.