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What is the Best Bug-as-a-Feature?

Posted by Cliff on from the unexpected-benefits dept.

Bat Country wonders: "The workflow system, at the department I develop for, was hand-coded by my predecessor in a rather short amount of time, resulting in somewhat unreadable code with a number of interesting 'features.' When I took over maintenance of the code base, I started patching bugs and cleaning up the code in preparation for a new set of features. After I was done, I got a pile of complaints about features that had disappeared, which turned out to be caused by the bugs in the code. So, that leads me to ask: what is your favorite bug that you either can't live without or makes your life easier?"

2 of 861 comments (clear)

  1. Much greetings to you Respected Sirs. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    It is with great humbleness I seek your indulgence, Sir. My name is Ai Cheet Yu, barrister-at-law in Hong Kong. Some three days ago a man with your respected surname was killed in the game of Dragon of Death, v 3.6. He had deposited a sum of 37 billion QQ coins in a trust with our well respected law firm. By law after 3 days I have to turn the QQ coins over to the unclaimed propety department.

    Sir, here is my plan. I suggest I present you as the next of kin and claim the QQ coins, which we can share at 30% for me, 60% to you and 10% to bribe the party officials in Beijing.

    Hoping, the well respected person like you will not forget the timely help rendered by this humble servant and reward me with your most esteemed cooperation, Please contact me for proceeding further.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  2. Re:Perl versus Python by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    As a programmer, I'm amused by both.
    4 and 4.0 are equal by value but not in precision. 4 has one significant digit, while 4.0 has two. This is important because multiplying it by 1200 (which has two significant digits), yields two scientifically different answers. 4*1200 yields 5000 (5 x 10^3) while 4.0*1200 yields 4800 (4.8 x 10^3).

    I'm curious as to what broke piece of crap you are using that thinks that 4*1200 is 5000. Dude, that's just wrong and it has nothing to do with precision at all. I guess in your world 2 + 2 does equal 5 for sufficiently large values of 2, as the old joke goes.