January WTF

This week, I refactored parts of a group programming project that had been completed last year. Browsing the source code, looking for opportunities to polish and slightly enhance the program, I had several moments of „what the f… is this?“ There is even a web site dedicated to WTF moments.

I will share an example here. It looks like a loop, but is a quite complicated way of performing an assignment just twice:

for(i=1; i<3; i++)
{

if(i==1)
{

FB = 4*CNo;

}
else if(i==2)
{

FB = 4*CNo+(SPF*BPS);

}
Buffer[FB]= 247;
Buffer[FB+1]= 255;
Buffer[FB+2]= 255;
Buffer[FB+3]= 15;

}

I reduced the length of the code without changing functionality:

FB = 4*CNo;
Buffer[FB]= 247;
Buffer[FB+1]= 255;
Buffer[FB+2]= 255;
Buffer[FB+3]= 15;
FB = 4*CNo+(SPF*BPS);
Buffer[FB]= 247;
Buffer[FB+1]= 255;
Buffer[FB+2]= 255;
Buffer[FB+3]= 15;

There were more WTF moments and the code ruined a whole afternoon in the first week of the new year.

Lesson learned: education in programming is important and our fine offerings obviously do not reach all students in time.