CodeSOD: Avoiding Magic Constants

Everyone knows that "Magic Numbers" are bad, Bad, BAD! Take, for example, dividing something into quarters. Because including the literal "4" in your code would be a Magic Number, many developers agree that it's best to define a constant named "FOUR", and then use that constant instead. Makes sense, right?

Wrong! The problem with using "FOUR" is that, like "4", it's a Magic Constant. While not nearly as bad as Magic Numbers, Magic Constants certainly aren't elegant. Fortunately, Allen's colleague has provided us all with a valuable lesson the proper use of Magic and Non-Magic constants. Read it, and learn.

public class Constants {

    ...

    public static final int FOUR = 4;
    public static final int THREE = 3;

    public static final int INTEGER_FOUR = 4;
    public static final int INTEGER_FIVE = 5;
    public static final int INTEGER_ONE = 1;
    public static final int LENGTH_FOUR = 4;
    public static final int LENGTH_FIVE = 5;
    public static final int LENGTH_SEVEN = 7;
    public static final int LENGTH_EIGHT = 8;
    public static final int LENGTH_NINE = 9;
    public static final int LENGTH_ELEVEN = 11;
    public static final int LENGTH_TWELVE = 12;
    public static final int LENGTH_EIGHTEEN = 18;
    public static final int LENGTH_FIFTEEN = 15;
    public static final int ONE = 1;
    public static final int INTEGER_FIVE = 5;
    public static final int INTEGER_ONE = 1;
    public static final int PLUS_ONE = 1;
    public static final int INTEGER_THREE = 3;

    public static final Long LONG_VALUE_TEN = Long.valueOf(10);
    public static final Long LONG_VALUE_ZEARO = Long.valueOf(0);

    public static final BigDecimal BIGDECIMAL_ZERO = new BigDecimal(0);
    public static final BigDecimal BIGDECIMAL_ONE = new BigDecimal(1);

    public static final BigDecimal NEGATIVE_NUMBER_ONE = new BigDecimal(-1);

    public static final int COMPARE_RESULT_ZERO = 0 ;
    public static final int COMPARE_RESULT_ONE = 1 ;
    public static final int COMPARE_RESULT_NEGATIVE = -1 ;

    ...

    public static final String NINE_STRING = "9";
    public static final String ONE_STRING = "9";

}

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Tales from the Interview: The Best, The TDWTF Interview, and The Storm-out

The Best (from Chris)
A while back, I helped interview for a programmer position on the web team. After talking to a number of candidates, we finally settled on an older gentlemen, probably in his late 50s. It wasn't an easy decision. Not only were his salary requirements above what we planned to pay, he had a few personality quirks. For example, a large part of his interview entailed him describing how he was a master composer of music, and had published songs in nearly every genre, including country, rap, pop, etc. But no matter, his experience and technical skills were top-notch.

After making an offer that met his salary requirements, the candidate made a counter offer: fifteen-thousand dollars more annually plus a signing bonus. Unfortunately, our budget couldn't accommodate that, and we declined. Negotiations after that failed, so we formally rescinded the offer for employment so we could talk to more candidates.

Later that day, the CEO of company received a rather childish email from the gentleman. He rambled on about age discrimination, made other accusations, and stated that he "knew" that we were hiring the "other" man that he had met when leaving his interview. His closing words were: "you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"

The "other" man he referred to was in his early 30s, and was interviewing for an entirely different position (business analyst) in an entirely different department. Looking back, we were all pretty happy that he didn't accept the position.

The TDWTF Interview (from Christian Riesen)
Two years ago, I was on the job hunt, and one company that looked interesting was a university spinoff. At the interview, I learned that they dealt with some specialization software that had to talk to a few different systems. Most of the code was in PHP, but there also were some .NET and Java components that were used to interface with the hardware's proprietary drivers.

One thing they were particularly proud of was the fact that the system was recently rewritten from Perl into PHP. Their pride came from the fact that none of them had coded PHP before that, but they had a strong theoretical knowledge, being university guys and all.

Next, they told me about the environment that they work in. As it turned out, the five-man crew worked all in the same room we were interviewing in: a factory attic converted loft style, with one wall made of glass in it so the conference "room" we sat in wouldn't disturb the others. Each employee had their own desk that was about twenty feet from another, which meant there was a lot of yelling going on. In addition, everyone used whatever the hell they wanted to code on whatever operating system they wanted: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and one even swore on FreeBSD.

Then came the general technical part of the interview: how I would setup a class, what I would do with a certain language construct, how I would solve a certain problem or assess a situation, all the fun things. Then they showed me two half pages of code in PHP. They told me to look at the code carefully and, if I wanted to change anything, write on the paper what I would change and why. As that would take some time, they left me to it for about twenty minutes. I was certain that they had set me up with a TDWTF-style interview, where they'd pick out a fun code WTF (actually, it looked like this one) and have me turn a convoluted two-page mess into a two lines of code.

When they came back, I complimented them on the clever examples of bad code and presented them with my rewrite. One of interviewers — the chattier of the two — didn't say another word; he was clearly upset, and I was half-concerned it might get physical. The other guy was a bit better, but he also wore a rather large frown on his face. "This is from our production code", was the reply.

I left the interview shortly after that, with a short bye from the one guy, and just a short nod with some nasty stares from the once-chatty guy.

 

The Storm-out (from Joshua Armstrong)
I've always dreamed of storming out of an interview, but I've never actually realized that goal. That is, until my interview with a certain "tech recruiting" firm.

First things first, I was lured in under the guise that I'd be actually interviewing for a job, not being primped for another interview. The firm's client was, as the technical recruiter put it, "an ISP like Yahoo! or Google." I thought to myself, neither of those companies are ISPs, but I didn't say anything.

When we moved on to the technical portion of the interview, his first question was "do you had any experience working at a server." And just to be extra clear, those were his actual words: "working at a server."

"Well, yeah of course," I diplomatically responded, "I am a network admin, after all... and I'm physically at servers all the time. That's what you meant, right?"

"No no," he clarified, "were any of the businesses you've worked at servers? That is, would you consider them to be a server?"

I said, "Err, uhh.... I don't know," and things went downhill from there.

"Have you ever connected to the database?" he asked next.

"Huh? Do you mean in code? Admin tools? Which database platform do you mean?"

He paused for a moment and said, "sounds good to me. Do you have experience working at an ISP?"

"I think you're using a different definition of ISP than me," I responded, "what I mean is... I wouldn't have considered Google to be an ISP, but a search engine. Can you clarify?"

"No, no. They're actually both ISPs, as they allow people to access websites. Would you consider any of the companies you worked at to be an ISP?"

"Uhh... I guess not."

He scribbled something down on his paper mumbling something about how a bank is probably an ISP and added, "have you troubleshot IIS?"

"Not, but I have maintained several Apache servers."

"Oh good, then you have since Apache is IIS. Moving on, what's the diff—"

"Err," I cut him off, "they're both web servers, but Apache is not IIS."

"No, no. It is. Apache is actually a kind of IIS, so yes, you have troubleshot IIS. Anyway, what's the difference between layer 7 routing and layer 4 routing?"

Finally, an answer I was prepared for. "Layer 7 is the Application Layer, and routing focuses on requests to resources that will be fulfilled in the shortest time. Layer 4, the Transport Layer, routing focuses on ensuring that all paths to a host are utilized proportionally to their bandwidth and response"

"Actually," he gave a confused look, "I was looking for an answer involving, uh, DNS pools and host headers. Shall we just say that was your answer?"

I was pretty frustrated by that point, as I knew this interview was going nowhere, and the "technical recruiter" was grasping at straws and hoping to get me in front of thier "ISP" client. I said, "actually, I was just looking for the door," and got up and left.

Later that day, I just got an e-mail from him thanking me for his time, and asking me to forward two references from each job. He also said that he'd taken the liberty of rewriting my resume to include a couple of things about my experience troubleshooting IIS, and that he was planning on submitting it to his client as soon as I got the references. I ignored the email.

 

---

Have tales from your own interview? Then be pal and share them!

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CodeSOD: Accounting for Complexity

"I was recently assigned to work on a team that maintains a fairly large product," writes Aaron, "at first, I was a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the architecture. There were countless layers of abstraction, thousands and thousands of classes, and design patterns galore. Since it was such a large project – and my first large project – I figured that the architectural complexity was simply par for the course."

“Then I started looking at the code a little more closely. If I had two words to describe it, they’d be ‘unnecessary complexity.’ And if I had one snippet to describe it, it would be this.”

private void SetAccount(RequisitionData.RequisitionItem requisitionItem, 
                        AccountData.Account account, bool automation)
{
    bool allowSetAccount = false;

    if(account != null)
    {
        // if the account entry is being set by automation, ensure that 
	// the user hasn't already set a value
        if (automation)
        {
            if (!requisitionItem.IsAccountCodeNull())
            {
                if (requisitionItem.AccountCode == string.Empty)
                    allowSetAccount = true;
                else
                    allowSetAccount = true;
            }
            else
                allowSetAccount = true;
        }
        else
            allowSetAccount = true;

        if (allowSetAccount)
        {
            requisitionItem.AccountID = account.ID;
            requisitionItem.AccountCode = account.Code;
        }
    }
}

Aaron continued, "the beauty of it is that the method is private within the class, and has an 'automation' boolean parameter. This parameter is always passed as true."

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CodeSOD: Command 696

Think of all those old applications you’ve had to maintain. You know the type: the ones written by long-forgotten developers in long-lost languages. The ones that, after spending days searching for that one line of code that needs to be changed, you frustratingly decree “this f%*#@ thing needs to be rewritten.” And, naturally, the ones that never are, nor never will be rewritten.

Call it luck or persistence, but after dozens and dozens of maintenance requests over the years, Israel Brewster finally was given the opportunity to rewrite an application. From scratch. And the right way, this time. No shoddy VB6 front-end; no horribly-designed SQL Server 2000 (only) database; and certainly no Microsoft Access-based administration tool.

Though, after his third straight week of digging through form validation logic requirements – many of which were quadruplicated (or more), inconsistent, and often incorrect –he’s started to question if a rewrite is even possible. Consider, for example, Command 696: a method named that simply because Command1 through Command695 were already taken.

Private Sub Command696_Click()

  On Error GoTo Err_Command696_Click

  Dim stDocName As String
  Dim Response As Integer

  If Frame500 = 1 And pax > 37 Then
     MsgBox "CHECK PAX DASH 8 LIMIT 37 SEATS", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If Frame500 = 2 And pax > 29 Then
     MsgBox "CHECK PAX DASH 8 LIMIT 29 SEATS", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If totalload1 > 2000 Then
     MsgBox "OVERWEIGHT Fwd Shelf ", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If ttshelf > 1000 Then
     MsgBox "OVERWEIGHT Aft Shelf ", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If totalload1 + ttshelf > 2000 Then
     MsgBox "OVERWEIGHT Aft Compartment max 2000 lbs ", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If Frame500 = 1 And totalloadsecd > 0 Then
     MsgBox "DASH 8 WITHOUT SECTION D ", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If Frame500 = 2 And totalloadsecd > 2150 Then
     MsgBox "OVERWEIGHT SECTION D ", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If Remaining < 0 Then
    MsgBox "DASH 8 OVERWEIGHT REDUCE LOAD !!!!", vbOKOnly
  Else
  End If
  If ttload <= 0 Then
    Response = MsgBox("ARE YOU SURE AFT CARGO COMPARTMENT IS EMPTY!!!!", vbYesNo)
  Else
   Response = 6
  End If
  If Frame500 = 1 And pax <= 37 And totalload1 <= 2000 And _
     ttshelf <= 1000 And totalloadsecd = 0 And _
     Remaining >= 0 And totalload1 + ttshelf <= 2000 And Response = 6 Then
    stDocName = "csaprintinfo37seats"
    DoCmd.OpenReport stDocName, acPreview
  Else
  End If
  If Frame500 = 2 And pax <= 29 And totalload1 <= 2000 And _
     ttshelf <= 1000 And totalloadsecd <= 2150 And _
     Remaining >= 0 And totalload1 + ttshelf <= 2000 And Response = 6 Then
    stDocName = "csaprintinfo29seats"
    DoCmd.OpenReport stDocName, acPreview

  Else
  End If

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Large Blockage

The words "Enterprise Integration" strike fear into the most stalwart of developers. When coupled with "in-house developed" and "B2B", one is almost guaranteed to find complex code, arcane requirements, and a thicket of poorly understood file formats. Dan was made of sterner stuff. When the contract was explained to him, he didn't flinch. There were between 40 and 80 partners that used a web app to extract data about multimedia assets? Gigantic recordsets of them? In formats ranging from Excel to iTunes-compatible databases? No problem.

Steve, the project manager, explained: "Our original lead developer was one of those rockstar types. Real cutting edge, pushing the envelope type guy. He's since moved on to bigger and better things, so we've just muddled on the best we could. We really need you to step up and take on that rockstar role for us, because there are a few problems we'd like you to fix. And we need a real quick turn-around on this."

"What sort of problems?" Dan asked.

"Well, these exports take hours. That's expected- it's a huge pile of data- but some of our partners are complaining that it crashes on them near the end of the job. So they have to start all over. Hours wasted. That's the big thing, but some of our other developers suggest that you try and do a little 'refactoring'?" Steve used air-quotes and a look of incomprehension to convey the question. "They said it should help make maintenance cheaper. Is that right?"

"It could," Dan said. "Let me see your documentation and the code, and I'll see what I can do."

They only had code. Dan opened the solution up in Visual Studio and started poking around. He looked for any classes that were responsible for exporting. He expected to see a whole family of them tied together through inheritance, probably named something like "XMLExport", "ITunesExport", or something equally transparent.

He didn't find a family of classes. In fact, he didn't find any classes. The entire project was lacking in any code or code behind files- not a single ".cs" in sight. Not even a ".vb". The only likely candidate was "Export.aspx".

"Do I have the right code?" Dan wondered, thinking there must be some class library he was missing. Dan double-clicked on "Export.aspx" and waited for the file to open. And waited. The HDD rattled away; its noise covered up the faint sound of Visual Studio sobbing to itself. By the time Dan finished his cup of coffee, the file appeared on the screen. Dan skipped down to the postback event handler, which was wedged in-line between the opening <body> and the page heading. It took Visual Studio over a minute to repaint the screen.

At four levels of indentation under the event handler, there was a switch statement. This statement simply checked which button was clicked. The first case, for "__exportButton" contained a twenty-five thousand line block of if/else statements.

"Oh, this can't be right," Dan wished. "This must be old code. Or some obscure branch used for… for… for hazing the new guy." He checked SVN. There was only one branch and the most recent check-in was from the day before, with the comment, "changed XML date format for iTunes export."

Dan patted Visual Studio's shoulder and tried to console it by closing every other application running, to free up some RAM. He and Visual Studio, both on the verge or crashing, struggled to read through the document together.

At the start of the event handler was this:

//Server.ScriptTimeout = 3600;
//Server.ScriptTimeout = 10800;
Server.ScriptTimeout = 21600; //six hours should probably be enough. If it keeps crashing, raise this.

The code went downhill from there. The actual export logic in the twenty-five thousand line block contained batches of hard-coded SQL queries- they all varied slightly, but not much, and it was hard to spot the differences. For each SQL query executed, a new database connection was opened. The block responsible for closing them all, was near the end, and looked something like this:

oldCnon.Dispose();
db1a.Dispose();
dbMain.Dispose();
db1.Dispose();
connCore.Dispose();
newConn.Dispose();

Once a connection was opened, it stayed opened until the export job completed. There were copy/pasted blocks that repeated the same code again and again, although over time, they had drifted apart so they weren't exactly the same anymore, but mostly. The web page itself handled all of the file I/O, the communication with Excel Interop libraries. One of the XML formats was generated, not by using the XmlWriter object, but by concatenating a pile of strings together. The entire pile was topped off with a bow- the "bow" meaning "only one exception handler for the entire block". The single catch(Exception ex) responded to any error that could possibly happen in that 25,000 line thicket. Its response was to simply print out the informative, "An error has occured(sic). Please correct your request and try again."

Dan wasn't even sure where to start. For the heck of it, he upped the script timeout from 21600 to 43200. He checked that minor change in with the comment, "This should fix timeouts for the foreseeable future," and then started trying to get a grip on how to pry this pile of spaghetti apart and turn it into supportable code.

The next day, he was elbow deep in "Export.aspx"'s entrails when Steve interrupted. "Hey, Dan!" Steve beamed. "Great work on fixing that bug. I saw your check-in, gave it a spin, and promoted it to production. Fantastic turn-around time on that. Look, since you're done, we've got a lot of other projects that could use some TLC- can I move you onto one of those?"

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Error'd: There is No Survey Currently Running

Kristján writes, "I agree. No, wait..."

 

"I got this while doing my online homework for a calculus class I am taking," wrote Chase P., "I mean, it's freaking 42 of all numbers - how could it NOT be correct??."

 

In order to take over the earth, the Brain hatched a plan where he would sieze control of the world's banking system. The plan was true genius, but like all big plans, he had to start somewhere which, in this case, was to take control of OneWest Bank's QuickPricer.

 

"I know that folks in Texas have strong feelings about where they live," wrote Reinier, "but I had NO idea that people in South Africa did too!"

 

"I wasn't exactly sure what to do here so," writes Johann, "I figured it safest to click on the "X" to close the window, manually restart, and pray for the best"

 

"The text translates roughly "Some tray icons can't be shown. There isn't enough space to show all objects in system tray. Uninstall some programs or try to use larger display resolution.," writes Maar, "I guess that I'll be able to justify that larger monitor purchase after all!"

 

"I think I'm going to take my chances and say 'no' the extended warranty," writes Stewart.

 

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Fast Fix

"Do you think it's wise to have consultants running our IT department?" Holger asked. It was an honest question, worded as diplomatically as possible. Holger's company had more consultants on hand than actual IT staff.

"Holger, these folks are experts," his manager replied. "It isn't cost effective to hire-on this level of expertise full time. We may pay a little more up front, but when we don't need the consultants anymore, we can hand it off to our internal people."

Holger left that discussion pretty sure he had just been called incompetent. Maybe I should ask the consultants if they're hiring, Holger wondered to himself, thinking of the big money they pulled down relative to his salary. The thought was still percolating in his head when he sat down with the two newest consultants, Zack and Jack for their status meeting.

Holger hooked his laptop up to the projector and ran through a few recent changes in the configuration database, discussed the implications, and then moved onto other topics. He stopped paying attention to the computer, and it eventually dropped to its screensaver. Moments later, there was some snickering from Zack.

"Having some computer trouble?" Jack asked, mockery in his tone.

Holger glanced at the projection screen and saw that his screensaver was was running merrily. It merrily painted a BSOD to the screen, with plausible driver dumps, merrily churned the disk a little, like it was saving the contents of RAM, and merrily ran through a simulated reboot sequence. After which, the process repeated itself, merrily. "Oh," Holger said, "that happens sometimes. I've got it under control. No worries."

"Yeah, whatever," Jack said. The meeting continued.

The product of the meeting, like too many other meetings with consultants, resulted in the need for another meeting. "Let's see what my calendar looks like," Holger said. He grabbed the mouse, killed the screensaver, and called up his email client.

Zack gasped. "How did you do that?" Jack marveled.

"Oh, that?" Holger said. With his best deadpan, he said, "I got tired of waiting for the reboots to complete. I put together a tool that does an automatic fix and restart, letting me just continue right from where I left off."

Holger waited a beat. After a moment, he was certain that these consultants would realize he was pulling their leg.

Zack was up in a flash and quietly closed the door. Jack leaned across the table towards Holger and asked, "Did you make that on company time? And does anyone here know if you did? Because before we go back into that hallway, I want to buy this off of you."

"You don't have that kind of cash," Holger said.

"No, but I can put it on the expense account and then pay it off when I get VC funding," Jack said.

Holger spent the next fifteen minutes declining their offers to buy his tool. In the process, he discovered that the consultants had creative and unethical ideas about how to quickly get funding, and that one of them had a trophy wife that would do anything for the kinds of profits they were talking about. "And I do mean anything," Zack said with a leer.

Finally, Holger "confessed". "Look, you guys are generous and all, but I've already signed a contract with another company. Even if you could beat their offer, I can't break a contract."

"Sure you can!"

Holger left the meeting without any interest in finding out if their company had any openings.

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Powerful Stupidity

Everything went dark and a chill wind went up Simon's back. A deep rumble rattled his brain in his skull. He glanced behind him to see Noel looming over him. "Simon, can you ping the Exchange server?"

When the trained bear that doubles as your IT manager asks that question, it's a bad thing. Simon tried to ping Exchange and failed. He then tried to ping an app server. And a database. And the outside world. All dead.

About a thousand users were about to discover that the only IT asset they could access were their desktop computers. Shortly thereafter, the phone next to them was going to ring. The person at the other end would likely scream. And then it would ring again. The ringing and screaming would continue until the network was back up.

They hustled to the server room, with Noel's bulk clearing a path through the corridor. It was hectic, and he may have trampled an intern. In one corner of the server room, a jump-suited man with a tool-belt bobbed his head to the music in his earphones. The server room was so quiet that the two could actually hear his music from across the room.

"What have you done?" Noel rumbled. The ominous wave of fury failed to penetrate the shield of Lady Gaga songs the electrician had surrounded himself with. Noel closed on him and repeated the question, with more volume and a heavy hand on the shoulder.

Once he had the electrician's attention, he didn't wait for an answer. "I will tell you what you have done," Noel said, "since you obviously do not understand. You are drilling away into a little metal box that is labeled 'Uninterruptible Power Supply', rendering it quite interruptible and cutting power to the room."

"I… I'll fix it…" the electrician managed to croak out.

He set to work. Noel set to work as well by providing a profanity laden commentary on the level of failure the electrician had just wreaked, how many tens of thousands of dollars of equipment the electrician had probably damaged, how many users were useless at the moment.

The electrician worked through the tirade, which says good things about his saving throw versus intimidation, even if his saving throw against stupidity left something to be desired. With a sigh of relief, he flipped the circuit breaker. Green blinking lights and the sounds of whirring disks filled the room.

Then the breaker clunked back into position. The servers rattled back to silence. An expensive sounding clunk came from a hard drive somewhere in the room.

"I'll fix it!" the electrician squeaked. After a frantic adjustment, he flipped the breaker again. The show repeated itself, although the encore added some sparks in the UPS. The third time the electrician reached for the breaker, Noel nearly broke his hand off.

"I think that's enough of that for the day," Noel warned.

"The… the breaker can't handle the load?"

Noel ignored the electrician and turned to Simon. "Do you think I can heave him up to the ceiling?" Simon looked up, and fifteen feet away, he saw the spare pin-and-sleeve-plugs that had been installed to power future expansion.

Since the electrician didn't have a ladder -- and since Noel's throwing arm wasn't up to the task -- Simon clambered on his back. One egregious violation of the health-and-safety policy later, the server room was on a different circuit. A round of cajoling, screaming and cursing brought the servers back online, although a few HDDs were trashed. Noel's blood-pressure receded to something slightly less than the water pressure in the Challenger Deep, and Simon drafted a thoroughly plausible explanation as to why there were shoe prints above head level.

The root-cause for the debacle was traced back to Building Facilities. The server room, normally accessible only to sever admins and the facilities manager, contained an emergency power-off switch. Despite the fact that all of those people were quite clear about the purpose of the switch, and that it was clearly marked, someone with pointy-hair had deemed it an "unacceptable" risk, and decided to do an end-run past change-control to "fix" it. After all, if left unfixed, someone might cut off power to the server room and damage the equipment.

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