Code Humor Challenge By Milo Minderbender in Technology Tue Jun 01, 2004 at 01:21:10 PM EST Tags: Humour (all tags)
	The goal is to get a humorous piece of code into a production environment. Any kind of humor is acceptable...anything that might make a future developer smile. The code must actually be used by the application.

Qualifying Examples I've Seen StaleBreadcrumbException I've only ever truly succeeded once. One of my previous employers had a class called Breadcrumbs to maintain a navigation trail at the top of the web page. They also had a StaleRecordException for when the user tried to modify a database record that another user had modified since the record was loaded. The navigation breadcrumbs had a certain lifetime before they expired. If you tried to read the breadcrumb information after they had expired, I added a StaleBreadcrumbException. Royal Food Taster This is the only open source example that I know of. I won't get into how the technology works, but in the Prevayler project, to maintain data consistency, there is a need to run each transaction on a copy of the system first to make sure it succeeds. This is done by instantiating a RoyalFoodTaster. Close, but no cigar McNugget One of my previous employers had, for historical reasons, the requirement that all class names be prefixed with "Mc" (McUser, McCheckbox, etc.). I created the class McNugget, complete with methods like McNugget.dip(McNugget.BBQ_SAUCE). Unfortunately, I was unable to incorporate this into the telecommunications billing software the company was writing. It did, however, stay in the version control system long after I left the company. The Last Resort I worked on some software for a travel agency once with classes like Booking and Hotel and Resort. I did my best to find an algorithmic requirement to get the last object from a list of resorts, but I never could incorporate a getLastResort() or isLastResort() method. Honorable Mentions I include these because they are funny. However, because the humor is entirely based on complete programmer ineptitude and not on a clever pun, they really don't qualify for the Code Humor Challenge. Integer Wrapper The following is actually in production use in a nationwide travel agency chain. Every computer in every franchise location is running this code. Note the rare, but proper, use of the final modifier. (There were rumors of a BooleanWrapper too!) public class IntWrapper {   private final String value;   public IntWrapper(int value)   {     this.value = String.valueOf(value);   }   public String getValue()   {     return value;   } } Eastern Polish Christmas Tree Notation Once my team was handed some code written by an outsourcing company. The code had been formatted into "Eastern Polish Christmas Tree Notation" (that's what they called it, anyway). The . was always aligned in the center of the page and everything else surrounded it. This formatting was enforced by the two Polish architects who would reprimand any deviations and were found late at night tabbing their way through normal developer's code to ensure it met their strict guidelines. Again, it's only funny in its idiocy. (This code is no longer in production, unfortunately) public DataPair[] getHotelInformation(String hotelId, String informationId)                                       {                                         return getHotelInfo("EN", hotelId, informationId);                                       } public DataPair[] getHotelInformation(String lang, String hotelId, String informationId)                                       {                            String key = "_HOINF_"+lng+"_"+hotelId+"_"+informationId;                        DataPair[] tbl = (DataPair[])csh.getObject(key);                          if(tbl!=null)  return tbl;                         Connection cn = null;            OracleCallableStatement cs = null;                                   try {                            String qry = " begin HotelServices.getHotelInfo(?, ?, ?, ?, ?); end; ";                                logger . debug("---"+qry+" "+hotelId+" "+informationId);                                    cn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:weblogic:pool:oraclePool",null);                                    cs = (OracleCallableStatement)cn.prepareCall(qry);                                    cs . registerOutParameter(1,java.sql.Types.INTEGER);                                    cs . registerOutParameter(2,java.sql.Types.OTHER);                                    cs . setString(3,hotelId);                                    cs . setString(4,informationId);                                    cs . setString(5,lang);                                    cs . execute();                               int sta = cs.getInt(1);                             if(sta!=0)  throw new Exception("status not zero sta="+sta);                          ResultSet rs = cs.getResultSet(2);                                   tbl = getDataPairArray(rs);                                logger . debug("sta="+sta+" key="+key+" cn="+cn);                                   csh . put(key,tbl);                                       }                                  catch(Exception e)                                       {                                logger . debug("!!! "+e.toString()+" "+key);                                       }                                finally                                       {                                   try {                       if(cs!=null) cs . close();                       if(cn!=null) cn . close();                                       }                                  catch(Exception x)                                       {                                logger . debug("!!! "+x.toString()+" "+key);                                logger . error("!!! "+x.toString());                                       }                                       }                                 return tbl;                                       } Submissions Welcome Although my examples are in java (because that's what I do), the challenge applies well to all languages. I'm sure the K5 crowd with its wit and technical expertise can come up with some pretty good ones. Note to you perl people: "cryptic" != "funny". Disclaimer The point of this is entertainment only. Although it probably isn't strictly legal to post corporate source code, stupid little stuff like what I've posted isn't letting loose any industry secrets upon which my previous employers' success depends. The really important algorithms probably aren't very funny, anyway.

Poll

Most entertaining of examples StaleBreadcrumbException 12% Royal Food Taster 2% McNugget 15% The Last Resort 2% Integer Wrapper 2% Eastern Polish Christmas Tree Notation 64% Votes: 39 Results | Other Polls

Related Links

Prevayler project RoyalFoodT aster Also by Milo Minderbender