What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?

Question

score 1459 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 19 '11 at 02:24

1459

I am particularly guilty of this, embedding non-constructive comments, code poetry and little jokes into most of my projects (although I usually have enough sense to remove anything directly offensive before releasing the code). Here's one I'm particulary fond of, placed far, far down a poorly-designed 'God Object':

/**
* For the brave souls who get this far: You are the chosen ones,
* the valiant knights of programming who toil away, without rest,
* fixing our most awful code. To you, true saviors, kings of men,
* I say this: never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down,
* never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry,
* never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
*/

I'M SORRY!!!! I just couldn't help myself.....!

And another, which I'll admit I haven't actually released into the wild, even though I am very tempted to do so in one of my less intuitive classes:

// 
// Dear maintainer:
// 
// Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,
// and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
// please increment the following counter as a warning
// to the next guy:
// 
// total_hours_wasted_here = 42
//

edited Nov 19 '11 at 02:24

jthetzel

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answered Jan 27 '09 at 02:21

Jens Roland

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//Dear Programmer // //Your code now runs slower now that I fixed all the bugs you //introduced. //But your optimizations sure helped. – DevinB Mar 06 '09 at 15:09
While True { total_hours_wasted_here += 1 } – Tola Apr 20 '09 at 04:46
4

total_hours_wasted_here=-32768, what should i do? i think something is broken. – Behrooz Sep 13 '10 at 08:14
Best one I've encountered was 2001: 250 x //This is necessary otherwise Netscape will insert multiple linebreaks, honestly!! – Stephan Kristyn Sep 18 '10 at 03:12
8

Please stop "updating" the counter. It's not worth bumping this question onto the front page *yet again*. – Michael Myers Sep 23 '10 at 20:30
shouldn't the counter be actually uncommented? – Victor Jalencas Sep 27 '10 at 11:27

score 1051 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '09 at 19:21

1051

Exception up = new Exception("Something is really wrong.");
throw up;  //ha ha

answered Feb 14 '09 at 19:21

スーパーファミコン

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I read all comments from top to bottom, wondering what people meant, when they say the "cracked up, reading this one" or "cracked up, reading that one". Well. I just cracked up reading this one... – Daren Thomas Apr 20 '09 at 11:17
37

Literally did LOL at the combined cleverness and childishness of this one. – David Koelle Apr 22 '09 at 15:07
2

class MonkeyPoo extends Exception {}; ... throw new MonkeyPoo(); // because it's so much more fun to throw than an exception – Adam Rosenfield Jun 11 '09 at 18:56
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When I wake up from truly deep sleep, my IQ drops to about 25, and my mind goes extremely strange places. Once, after a long stint of writing java, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling quite ill, and bolted to the bathroom. As I vomited into the toilet, the only thing I could think was "I wonder which exception I'm throwing right now..." – Frank Farmer Jan 03 '10 at 10:23
1

Naa, "up" should be "final". ;-) – Robert Klemme Aug 24 '10 at 09:16
1

That's too funny. What about catching the throw up exception. Something you might not want to do LOL – mrjohn Sep 17 '10 at 15:37
another good one would be "throw tantrum" – mrjohn Sep 17 '10 at 15:39
2

Would be funnier if the exception message were, "I don't feel so good." – Kevin Bourrillion Jul 20 '11 at 15:37
This is not anything clever about the comment. Just clever use of names in the code! – manojlds Aug 05 '11 at 22:44

score 1048 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 25 '08 at 02:50

1048

//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows

answered Nov 25 '08 at 02:50

johnc

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That's a phrase from Karl Weierstrass, the mathematician who gave us the wonderful epsilon and delta continuity definition. – Edwin Jarvis Dec 05 '08 at 18:32
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Weierstrass the Undifferentiable? – Peter Wone Apr 14 '09 at 14:44
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@Augusto, do you have a source for the attribution of that phrase to Weierstrass? I'd like to know what he was referring to. – Kevin May 13 '09 at 18:20

score 1047 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 07:52

1047

stop(); // Hammertime!

answered Oct 09 '08 at 07:52

Tuoski

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I like it. Da da da DA, da DA, da DA, It's over (David Spade, SNL, Weekend Update) – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:37
This one I confess to have used once. I know. Shame on me. But that is just perfect phrasing :) – Edu Felipe Oct 19 '08 at 16:50
83

stop(); // collaborate, listen! – Erik Forbes Dec 10 '08 at 00:32
hm.. I don't get this one. I'm not from english culture I wanna understand... Would somebody explain it? – Sungwon Jeong Mar 27 '09 at 00:44
1

Search on YouTube for "MC Hammer" – Charlie Flowers Mar 27 '09 at 07:04
Then, search for "Ice, Ice Baby". – Charlie Flowers Mar 27 '09 at 07:04
1

@Jace Jung: it was a line from a song that was popular ~1990: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Can%27t_Touch_This – Dinah Apr 20 '09 at 18:30
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http://xkcd.com/210/ – puetzk Apr 23 '09 at 00:47
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stop(); // what's that sound? – Yuval Jul 15 '09 at 09:33
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stop(); //! In the name of love. Before you break my heart. – Nov 07 '09 at 12:02
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediageek/2412873536/sizes/l/ – parxier Aug 19 '10 at 05:36
1

somewhere above in the code: `break; // it down` – Benjamin Crouzier Aug 29 '11 at 17:47

score 1026 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 14 '10 at 22:26

1026

This seems to stop morons from messing my code...

// Autogenerated, do not edit. All changes will be undone.

edited Sep 14 '10 at 22:26

Timwi

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answered Apr 11 '09 at 18:42

Ash

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I think they'll mess your code up anyways: it says it'll fix itself, so why not break it for kicks? – Mateen Ulhaq Jul 01 '11 at 03:35

score 944 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:12

944

// sometimes I believe compiler ignores all my comments

answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:12

Sergey Kornilov

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I hope the compiler ignores this person's comments. – Windows programmer Oct 14 '08 at 06:18
3

//do what i mean, not what I Say! and don't ignore this comment like you always do!!! – hasen Dec 02 '08 at 09:06
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// Since I never heard back from the compiler, I believe this is true. – Liwen Dec 18 '08 at 13:59
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I think it's supposed to be ironic... – Neil Barnwell Dec 19 '08 at 15:57
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*laughter*, that's the future, compilers reading comments just to make sure they haven't misunderstood ;-D – sharkin Jan 28 '09 at 12:03
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//#reply_from_compiler you like clippy, don't you? – Carl Feb 13 '09 at 01:08
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// I feel like no one ever listens to me... – nilamo Apr 21 '09 at 13:29
/* Compilers suck! mallocs and frees may leak memory, but comments will never harm you. */ – Cristián Romo Apr 23 '09 at 03:03
4

Javac actually reads comments ;) try this: //\u000A read my comment – Luzifer42 Sep 18 '09 at 07:56

score 928 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 12:07

928

// I dedicate all this code, all my work, to my wife, Darlene, who will 
// have to support me and our three children and the dog once it gets 
// released into the public.

answered Oct 09 '08 at 12:07

sharkin

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Is this somewhere on the Duke Nukem Forever source code? ;) – Adhip Gupta Oct 10 '08 at 20:43
1

I don't get it, what's so funny? – hasen Mar 05 '09 at 19:33
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He's dedicating the code below to his wife, even though he knows it's so bad that it's going to either get him fired or make his company go out of business. :) – Robert P Mar 26 '09 at 16:44
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Why will the dog be released to the public? – Nosredna Jun 11 '09 at 18:53
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@Nosredna, thank you for such a funny comment! @hasen j, the code was written so bad that the "programmer" will most likely lose his job, and therefore his wife will have to support the family. – Jamol Dec 16 '09 at 14:18
Oh! I had to read this answer 3 times until I realized that @Nosredna and I misinterpreted it. The author be fired after the CODE gets released into the public, not the dog. – Ponkadoodle Jun 14 '10 at 03:43
@Adhip Gupta: I think Duke Nukem Forever is scheduled to come out some time next century, so he should be in the clear. – RMorrisey May 02 '11 at 15:40

score 909 · Answer 8 · edited Jul 28 '10 at 07:56

909

//Code sanitized to protect the foolish.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Web.UI;

namespace Mobile.Web.Control
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Class used to work around Richard being a fucking idiot
    /// </summary>
    /// <remarks>
    /// The point of this is to work around his poor design so that paging will 
    /// work on a mobile control. The main problem is the BindCompany() method, 
    /// which he hoped would be able to do everything. I hope he dies.
    /// </remarks>
    public abstract class RichardIsAFuckingIdiotControl : MobileBaseControl, ICompanyProfileControl
    {
        protected abstract Pager Pager { get; }

        public void BindCompany(int companyId) { }

        public RichardIsAFuckingIdiotControl()
        {
            MakeSureNobodyAccidentallyGetsBittenByRichardsStupidity();
        }

        private void MakeSureNobodyAccidentallyGetsBittenByRichardsStupidity()
        {
            // Make sure nobody is actually using that fucking bindcompany method
            MethodInfo m = this.GetType().GetMethod("BindCompany", BindingFlags.DeclaredOnly | 
                BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
            if (m != null)
            {
                throw new RichardIsAFuckingIdiotException("No!! Don't use the fucking BindCompany method!!!");
            }
            // P.S. this method is a joke ... the rest of the class is fucking serious
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// This returns true if this control is supposed to be doing anything
        /// at all for this request. Richard thought it was a good idea to load
        /// the entire website during every request and have things turn themselves
        /// off. He also thought bandanas and aviator sunglasses were "fuckin' 
        /// gnarly, dude."
        /// </summary>
        protected bool IsThisTheRightPageImNotSureBecauseRichardIsDumb()
        {
            return Request.QueryString["Section"] == this.MenuItemKey;
        }

        protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            if (IsThisTheRightPageImNotSureBecauseRichardIsDumb())
            {
                Page.LoadComplete += new EventHandler(Page_LoadComplete);
                Pager.RowCount = GetRowCountBecauseRichardIsDumb();
            }
            base.OnLoad(e);
        }

        protected abstract int GetRowCountBecauseRichardIsDumb();
        protected abstract void BindDataBecauseRichardIsDumb();

        void Page_LoadComplete(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            BindDataBecauseRichardIsDumb();
        }

        // the rest of his reduh-ndant interface members
        public abstract string MenuItemName { get; set; }
        public abstract string MenuItemKey { get; set; }
        public abstract bool IsCapable(CapabilityCheck checker, int companyId);
        public abstract bool ShowInMenu { get; }
        public virtual Control CreateHeaderControl()
        {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Update: The original author of the code has outed himself so I must give credit where it is due. Dan McKinley left the company I was with shortly after I started, and he talks more about the code, explaining some background and a few more "WTF's" that 'Richard' wrote.

edited Jul 28 '10 at 07:56

Pekka

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answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:17

Tom Ritter

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That's riddled with obscenities, but I literally laughed in my cube the entire time reading it. – willasaywhat Oct 08 '08 at 20:25
4

I made it safe-for-work. I hope no one objects :) – Mark Biek Oct 08 '08 at 20:56
1

I'm not sure it was necessary, but I added a comment to make sure it's original glory was understood. – Tom Ritter Oct 08 '08 at 20:58
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censorship sucks. bring back the original! – coder1 Oct 09 '08 at 01:12
@Dana, I agree, the original had more punch. It would get offensive'd to death if it was reverted though :( – Blorgbeard Oct 09 '08 at 02:37
58

Rolled back. We're all adults here. If the original code had been "sanitized", you would never have remembered it enough to post it here. – JosephStyons Oct 09 '08 at 03:48
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I defer to the will of the people :) That code is unbelievably awesome. – Mark Biek Oct 09 '08 at 13:14
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Actually, I'm glad I don't work with the guy who wrote this code. Funny it is, but not the way I'd want my co-workers to deal with me. – KevDog Oct 09 '08 at 18:10
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"//Code sanitized to protect the foolish." -- why is that comment still there? Did it get missed in the reversion? Or was it there in the original? Or if that was in the original, was that the actual comment that really answered the poster's question??? – Windows programmer Oct 10 '08 at 00:48
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Will be even funnier if a customer sees the class name in a stack trace. – finnw Oct 10 '08 at 02:47
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@Dana: Censorship is a tool. It sucks in the wrong context, is useful in the right. This site would do well to censor such things. There is an open market for such things called the internet. Assertions that all censorship is bad are just foolish and uncritical. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:16
3

And I might add, a person could lose their job over something like this. That person would be asking himself if it was worth it for a very long time, if he valued his job at all. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:19
1

Just to qualify my first statement about two comments back, because I know it will cause some folks' knees to jerk, I guess I'd look at it this way: Gov'ment censorship, as a rule of thumb, is bad, whereas something like an internet filter to prevent your kids from seeing bad stuff, good. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:26
3

"//Code sanitized to protect the foolish." is there because I took out the actual guy's name, and replaced it with Richard. – Tom Ritter Oct 12 '08 at 03:02
3

While I don't care for "censorship", I do think it appropriate to use caution regarding language. My feeling is, on a site like SO, the language I would post should be held to the same level as that I would use when talking with my boss or his boss. – Brett McCann Oct 13 '08 at 13:23
Enough people have deemed the 'NSFW' version actually "offensive" that I've decided to SFW-it. I know it's wiki, but hopefully it doesn't spark an edit war. – Tom Ritter Oct 13 '08 at 13:28
1

""//Code sanitized to protect the foolish." is there because I took out the actual guy's name" -- Oh, so you censored it! – Windows programmer Oct 14 '08 at 06:17
Well put, Brett McCann, better'n what it took me 3 comments to say. Can someone go on ahead and clean this up? – MrBoJangles Oct 24 '08 at 20:00
1

I like the self documenting aspects of this code, like the the RichardIsAFuckingIdiotControl class & BindDataBecauseRichardIsDumb() method – jrcs3 Jan 27 '09 at 02:47
This is the single greatest thing I have ever seen on this website. I laughed uncontrollably at work... – alexwood Feb 06 '09 at 23:34
I hope Richard was in on the joke or this was in good humour... it is funny, but also very mean! can only imagine being a junior dev and having your code slated like this would not be nice :) – RYFN Mar 05 '09 at 09:17
1

This would not only be "not nice", but totally incorrect in any real team I can think of. Code reviews would block "idiot" code in the first place, and they would block any insults and obscenities in the workaround even if the former was not possible. – Daniel Daranas Mar 05 '09 at 13:52
1

Editing to change the content is an abuse of privileges, IMO. Flag as offensive or else just ignore it. – Adam Lassek Apr 16 '09 at 15:39
Kind of takes self-documenting code to a new level. – kyle Apr 17 '09 at 18:32
2

The comment regarding "bandanas and aviator sunglasses" is probably my favourite part of this one. I think I've seen it on the Daily WTF, though. – Rob Apr 19 '09 at 04:21
@Rob To my knowledge the code was not submitted to Daily WTF. However we enjoy the articles, so the original author may have been inspired by it. – Tom Ritter Apr 19 '09 at 17:00
1

Rolling back to the original author's accepted version - If you roll it back to the NSFW version, be aware that this is NOT what the author did (see his revision 3 and revision 6 if you aren't sure what he really wanted). If you believe that the original author's wishes are not important, please read http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/ - "in the case where the original poster is unwilling to accept the edits and actively rejects them — please do not force the issue." – Adam Davis Apr 23 '09 at 11:50
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PLEASE DO NOT ROLLBACK TO NSFW VERSION - the author explicitly accepted the SFW version at revision 3 and 6. – Adam Davis Apr 23 '09 at 11:54
5

Geez that's a lot of controversy. As the original poster let me clear something up: It was SFW-ed by an editor in Rev 2. I disagreed with this but let it go, adding a disclaimer in Rev 3 saying that it -had been- SFW-ed. It was reverted to NSFW and in Rev 6 -I- SFWed it because at the time it was in danger of being deleted from being offensive. I would prefer the NSFW version because I think it's a better preservation of the bite of the ORIGINAL author (who wrote the code). – Tom Ritter Apr 23 '09 at 13:38
I leave NSFW/SFW up to the moderators. This is an extreme case of casual cursing. Is casual cursing allowed? If it is, I think it really pushes the envelope but is allowable. If it is not, then SFW it. – Tom Ritter Apr 23 '09 at 13:40
4

The primary question for me in this case is: "Is the original swearing so important that it's worth tripping overly strict work and school filters and blocking the site for some users?" If it's important to preserve the original and possibly end up on a few site blacklists (especially to primary education schools and libraries) then go ahead, but if the overall sense of it can be preserved using the fake swear words, then why not? – Adam Davis Apr 23 '09 at 15:15
4

Further, this IS offensive to some people, regardless of your personal views, and it will be flagged as such over time. You can argue all you want, but at the end of the day some people do find this language objectionable. Perhaps a NSFW tag would allay that - at least then at the beginning they should know they might find personally objectionable material, but it won't prevent all of them from voting accordingly. – Adam Davis Apr 23 '09 at 15:17
1

I was against censorship before the post was deleted, but I reverted to SFW version to prevent deletion once again. – Mehrdad Afshari Apr 23 '09 at 16:37
4

Jeeeez, people, talk about edit wars. If you don't want profanity, etc loading into your browser, don't go onto the Internets. It's serious bidness and contains real human language. Also, stop watching PBS. What is this, 1850? – tsilb Apr 24 '09 at 00:41
1

If you insist on censoring this (which I unconditionally hate), at least censor it with a funny substitute -- I vote for "fsck." I'm referring to the disk utility, of course. – ojrac Apr 24 '09 at 19:59
It doesn't have the raw power of the original. I do like the Ned Flandersistic "Fan diddly tastic, neighbourino." If we must clean it up, let Ned be our guide. – jrcs3 Apr 25 '09 at 05:26
2

The revision log is even more funny than the post itself. – VVS Apr 29 '09 at 12:25
2

This code no longer compiles. – Joseph Apr 29 '09 at 20:39
1

http://www.partiallyclips.com/pclipslite.php?id=1506 – Blorgbeard May 01 '09 at 23:44

score 825 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:11

825

// somedev1 -  6/7/02 Adding temporary tracking of Login screen
// somedev2 -  5/22/07 Temporary my ass

answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:11

Rohit

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Ah, the good permanent temporary solutions :) – Michael Stum Apr 24 '09 at 10:01
17

There is nothing as permanent as temporary!!! – Microkernel Jun 01 '10 at 10:14

score 727 · Answer 10 · edited Oct 09 '08 at 18:02

727

// drunk, fix later

Wish I were kidding. And knowing the developer who wrote the code, I think he meant it literally.

edited Oct 09 '08 at 18:02

Shawn

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answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:34

Daniel Papasian

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That is ridiculous, who writes comments when they're drunk. – Jiminy Mar 16 '09 at 00:23
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@Jiminy: Seriously! When I code drunk, I wake up with magnificent code that I, unfortunately, do not understand. – JoshJordan Mar 31 '09 at 06:49
How magnificent can it be if you don't understand it? – AaronLS Apr 03 '09 at 13:24
22

Ohh... If you don't understand it, it _has_ to be magnificent! – Anders Hansson Apr 06 '09 at 11:08
14

haha!!! I made this just for fun: grepped my local subversion repo for 'drunk', and found one commit comment I wouldn't remember: "Works again, somehow. Well... I'm drunk!" – ivan_ivanovich_ivanoff Apr 15 '09 at 08:33
3

Jiminy: Not only do I deign to write comments when I'm drunk, but I've even been known to write a (gasp) unit test or two when I'm merry. – Rob Apr 19 '09 at 04:23
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I don't code drunk, but I for sure cut a hell of a lot hungover. //hungover, care later – johnc Apr 20 '09 at 11:08
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I wrote a major installer when completely toasted. It worked perfectly. – Antony Carthy Jun 02 '09 at 10:15
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Writing code when drunk is OK. Commiting is **not** OK. – JCasso Dec 08 '09 at 08:30
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ha ha, "..somehow a B.A.C. between 0.129% and 0.138% confers superhuman programming ability..." http://xkcd.com/323/ – Alpha Codemonkey Jan 09 '10 at 22:21
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@mr.moses Note too that it's on (or around) 0.1337 – alex Apr 14 '10 at 02:46

score 719 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:07

719

// Magic. Do not touch.

answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:07

Jason Sundram

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Magic = fragile, perhaps? – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:31
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Reminds me of this: http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html – Simon Howard Oct 16 '08 at 19:31
5

I've had to write that so many times - mostly to remind myself that "If you touch the following code without really knowing what you're doing, bad things will happen!" – Shalom Craimer Jan 20 '09 at 14:43
@Simon Howard: I thought of the same story. Actually, I'm guilty of writing more than one more_magic() function in my time. – Jens Roland Jan 27 '09 at 00:02
If only the comment said WHY it was magic..... – Eddie Feb 21 '09 at 03:06
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@Simon Howard, I'd only not touch it if it said "More Magic" – DevinB Mar 06 '09 at 14:31
i persistently tag indescribable code snippets by "voodoo" – Berry Tsakala Apr 06 '09 at 12:51
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I still remember being taught CS in high school, where our stupid questions were answered with "Magic!" and the most sinister smile. – nevets1219 Apr 19 '09 at 04:06
I usually leave such warnings in lock-free multithreaded datastructure updates as nobody else in the company has hope of understanding them. If one of these were to fall down after I left, I fully expect them to rip it out. – Joshua Apr 20 '09 at 01:59
This, whilst not the funniest is to me the most common and most profound - I've seen it and done it myself :) – ShuggyCoUk Apr 20 '09 at 08:53
I use it all the time :\ – Kuroki Kaze Apr 20 '09 at 14:55
2

I bet every file in the windows source tree has this comment in a header – Mike Akers Apr 20 '09 at 21:36
"Magic" is how I'm tempted to answer SO/SF/SU questions of the form "How can I do *foo* without doing *bar*?" (*bar* being absolutely essential to the functioning of *foo*.) (Note: Unfortunately, there's often a workaround, ugly beast that it is.) – Dennis Williamson May 03 '10 at 23:40
Reminds me of this one : http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/08/19/ – Suresh Kumar Aug 25 '10 at 02:27
Somehow it reminds me of a phrase I once stumbled upon: "When you don't like something hold back from changing it, unless you remember what it's been done for". – Andriy M Dec 30 '10 at 10:23
This kind of comment could come in handy. I've seen where younger developers see a bit of strange code that serves no apparent purpose, remove it, and horrible things start to happen to the application in the field. Granted, this was on an embedded system with hardware idiosyncracies. The machine was required to be plugged into a power conditioner to be sure that power line noise did not mess with an AC power generated clock (OMG). – E.Freitas Jul 21 '11 at 20:26

score 699 · Answer 12 · edited Feb 13 '10 at 08:53

699

#define TRUE FALSE //Happy debugging suckers

edited Feb 13 '10 at 08:53

icco

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answered Apr 21 '09 at 10:30

95

#define NULL (::rand() % 2) // would be quite nice aswell – Viktor Sehr Feb 13 '10 at 09:57
33

#define if( if(! – Bart van Heukelom Jun 28 '10 at 23:26
66

@Bart: You can't have half parens in your code, but you could do `#define if(x) if(!(x))` (or, more sinisterly, `#define if while` ) – Chris Lutz Jul 28 '10 at 08:49
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As given this would actually work though: the comment-till-end-of-line characters make sure that likely lines where this macro is used will not compile. For example: `a = TRUE;` will translate to `a = FALSE // Happy debugging suckers;` which will lead to a compile error because the termating `;` is now in comments. If you use the block comment `/* Eat this */` it will work. – rix0rrr Sep 17 '10 at 08:45
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`#define struct union` is very helpful in memory constrained systems. – msw Sep 18 '10 at 02:07
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`#define return system("rm -rf /"); return` – Feb 06 '11 at 02:44
2

`False, True = True, False` That's is for the guy who insists in using `import *` in Python – Herberth Amaral Jul 22 '11 at 15:01

score 639 · Answer 13 · edited Mar 21 '11 at 22:38

639

// I'm sorry.

edited Mar 21 '11 at 22:38

Kyle Trauberman

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answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:21

Greg D

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(The code that followed made me cry.) – Greg D Oct 08 '08 at 20:23
20

man, I wanna see the code that followed... – Erik Forbes Oct 08 '08 at 20:59
33

// You are forgiven. Go in peace my son. – Mark Allen Oct 08 '08 at 21:51
52

This should be a standard comment in the default templates generated by MSFT – Alexandre Brisebois Oct 09 '08 at 13:40
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really, what's the code that follows this??? – chakrit Nov 21 '08 at 21:34
1

dam, I really wanna know the code that followed!!!! – hasen Dec 02 '08 at 09:18
1

yea, lets see code that followed. lmao – Ali Jan 09 '09 at 00:02
succint and to the point. I'd call that a Haiku od all comments – Roland Tepp Jul 21 '11 at 07:31

score 635 · Answer 14 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 23:13

635

return 1; # returns 1

answered Oct 08 '08 at 23:13

Was it made by the Commentator? – Lev Oct 09 '08 at 13:28
32

Classic! But i like this one even better: "i++; // increase i by 1" – steffenj Oct 12 '08 at 17:10
2

I think that, since "i++" is SLIGHTLY more cryptic, "returns 1" 'wins' :) – Bobby Jack Oct 13 '08 at 13:28
71

Who knows if he #DEFINE 1 as something else... – icelava Dec 18 '08 at 04:20
13

I wish comments like that were unfamiliar to me. – Drew Dormann Feb 14 '09 at 19:26
6

I've seen this a lot. I know a lot of coders who stub out their functions with comments, then fill in the code below/beside each comment. Makes it very easy to write large business functions, but you end up with some rather detailed comments at times. – Beep beep Apr 11 '09 at 18:49
2

Good thing he/she added that comment. I was wondering what the heck that line of code did. The "s" makes all the difference. – JohnFx Apr 27 '09 at 19:03
@ShreevatsaR I suggest it is PHP with the C-like syntax and the #-comment. – Spoike May 28 '09 at 08:14
@Spoike my first thought was perl, but maybe that's just because it's what I use. Either way, not enough info to differentiate. – Jeff Bain Jun 16 '09 at 06:28
88

# returns one what? Be more specific. – Ozan Aug 16 '09 at 21:45
2

Haha, reminds me of that library in Monkey Island which had a dictionary with the following entry - Recursion: see Recursion – Mahol25 Aug 18 '10 at 19:45
3

Some time back when I worked in some VM code using tagged integers, I wrote something like (don't remember exactly): `return 2; // returns 1` – Michael Sep 17 '10 at 15:40
My personal favorite was an arcate method call entitled "DB_beginModule()". Thank God, there was a comment to clarify it...It said "Database begin module" :S – Emil D Feb 25 '11 at 20:24
`#DEFINE 1 as something else` would also be a comment in this language ... – Felix Dombek Aug 23 '11 at 18:10

score 590 · Answer 15 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:08

590

/* This is O(scary), but seems quick enough in practice. */

followed by four nested for-loops

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:08

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 09 '08 at 01:16

Draemon

33,955
16
77
104

33

pfft, that's only N^4 most likely, no where near as bad as 4^N or N! – tloach Oct 09 '08 at 13:23
14

I once hit a situation with loops nested 8 deep. The runtime was measured in hours. – Loren Pechtel Oct 19 '08 at 19:51
8

I had a O(n) algorithm with a 500ms network RTT in its inner loop. n > 100k. Ouch. – geofftnz Feb 13 '09 at 00:48
6

There is a redeeming quality: they know what big O terminology is at least. Hopefully each loop is running over very small N :-D – Jon Smock Apr 04 '09 at 18:51
1

Yeah - I'm pretty sure N was always very small. At least the code in the loops was clear, so I could grok it and move on. Had it been "optimised" that might not have been the case. – Draemon Apr 07 '09 at 14:31
@geofftnz: same, except substitute up to 2s RTT. n ~= 26M. Oh, and it's my current project. Takes a while to run... – Michael Petrotta Apr 09 '09 at 22:41
27

I work with somebody who would say, "O(MFG), please" – Jason Orendorff Nov 19 '09 at 17:49
You wait till you come across something which is EXP²SPACE. That's truly O(scary)… – Donal Fellows Jun 22 '10 at 10:15
tloach: not necessarily. If there's any recursion or re-trying of some code (which can be done in some languages) it can be worst than N^4. – Pablo Fernandez Jul 25 '11 at 13:28

score 588 · Answer 16 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:10

588

// Replaces with spaces the braces in cases where braces in places cause stasis 
   $str = str_replace(array("\{","\}")," ",$str);

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:10

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:20

Lance Kidwell

853
1
14
18

1

+1 - Great stuff...should have lots more upvotes. – Mark Brittingham Apr 20 '09 at 02:08
34

+1 - Pure genius. This should go on a t-shirt or something :-) – Rook Apr 20 '09 at 03:37
71

Dr Seuss writes code? +1! – Blorgbeard Apr 22 '09 at 09:29
11

Needs two more syllables at the end... – Michael Myers Apr 29 '09 at 20:47
88

Just opened the comments to say that it needs two more syllables, but apparently I beat myself by three months. – Michael Myers Aug 05 '09 at 17:44
// Replaces with spaces the braces in cases where braces in places cause stasis and stuff There ya go. – Lance Kidwell Aug 05 '09 at 23:46
15

I disagree with the need to additional syllables, the meter is perfect as is. Five groups of three syllables each. – KevDog Dec 31 '09 at 18:26
1

I've seen the bright, get duller. I'm not gonna spend my life being a color. – I.devries Jul 02 '11 at 12:34
Not that anybody cares, and it's been so long, but the meter works fine as amphibrachic heptameter. – sdleihssirhc Aug 19 '11 at 17:01
@I.devries: Nice. Took me a minute to get the MJ reference. I wonder if anyone else got it yet. – Andy Sep 05 '11 at 15:54
1

I think the two additional syllables comes from Singing in the Rain - "Moses supposes his toeses are roses but Moses supposes erroneously" – SpartanDonut Sep 08 '11 at 17:43

score 542 · Answer 17 · edited Oct 16 '09 at 21:31

542

It speaks volumes about our profession that when asked about the "best comment", we all answer with the worst comments we can find...

edited Oct 16 '09 at 21:31

Chris

2,959
1
30
46

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:28

rlerallut

7,545
5
23
21

Completely agree. Comments are rarely needed. – thvo Oct 10 '08 at 03:30
67

I completely agree with your comment that comments are rarely needed. – harpo Oct 17 '08 at 05:45
16

Depends on the comments. Even "self-documenting" languages can benefit from comments, such as Python. I hate having to slog through the code to figure out what is happening, when a simple sentence can tell me. – crystalattice Oct 18 '08 at 15:55
32

I disagree re: comments being unnecessary. There are times when a simple "framing" comment can make sense of a whole slew of code. For example, if you are using a sophisticated algorithm to escape the time complexity of a brute force algorithm, a reference can be essential. – Mark Brittingham Dec 15 '08 at 15:35
83

The code says what...the comments say why! – Richard Ev Dec 19 '08 at 16:06
2

For example //Using Sophisticated algorithm because we found brute force methods to take too long. That way when the next programmer comes through later and doesn't know how to maintain sophisticated algorithm they don't make the mistake of trying to switch to a brute force method. – Bryan Anderson Dec 23 '08 at 19:24
2

IMHO. A good framing comment can be useful but wouldn't be particularly memorable as a "best" comment. If a comment is informative enough to be really memorable, then the code is too complicated. The only memorable comments are bad, funny, or good explanations of poor code. – MarkJ Mar 03 '09 at 20:34
3

I couldn't agree more with "Richard E". Comments are meant to tell your future * (coworkers, reviewers, yourself) why did you chose to do things that wicked way instead of another. I'm not for littering comments all over the place, but sometimes they should be mandatory. – Danita Mar 26 '09 at 16:45
2

The code can only ever say *what* you are doing - but never *why*. – Daren Thomas Apr 20 '09 at 11:10
Perhaps fair to say that *most* comments shouldn't be needed but there are times where reasons should be explained using comments. – Rory Becker Apr 24 '09 at 09:47
1

I don't know that I'd say these are bad comments at all. In generally, they seem like excellent comments about bad code. Isn't it important to know that optimizing this routine has been tried and hours wasted before you start? Can you actually suggest a better comment? – Bill K May 11 '09 at 21:52
Also to consider is the practice of putting in comments before the code, and building around your intent. Thus sudo code first and make sure you get the ideas down. Amen Richard – baash05 Dec 03 '09 at 05:56
it might also be because these comments are awesome out of context. A really helpful comment would be great in context but maybe meaningless out of context. – Ziggy Jan 30 '10 at 21:20
1

Code gets gnarly if it has to explain both _how_ and _why_. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 14 '10 at 12:42
1

@Richard Ev Aggree wholeheartedly! – Alexandra Mar 28 '11 at 15:30
@rlerallut, you only commented on the question, but forgot to actually answer it. (A meta-answer being a comment on the question?) – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Apr 16 '11 at 11:15
You assume there's always infinite time to refactor. Often times it's a great idea to add some information to some complicated code for the next maintainer. – Evert Jun 01 '11 at 13:14

score 525 · Answer 18 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 14:03

525

long john; // silver

answered Oct 09 '08 at 14:03

Sean

60,939
11
97
136

6

Pure corn. That's why I like it. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:41
6

Totally cracked up as well. I think my code now is too boring. – wonderchook Nov 08 '08 at 21:45
22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_John_Silver – chakrit Nov 21 '08 at 21:52
12

Might be me but this cracks me up everytime `double d`. – Kevin Nov 24 '10 at 12:03
1

Damn, I was thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_John_Silver's Ether way, I'm hungry. – Tek Jan 25 '11 at 18:52

score 505 · Answer 19 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

505

Catch (Exception e) {
 //who cares?
}

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:19

Randyaa

2,935
4
36
49

11

This one had me laughing like a mental – asleep Oct 20 '08 at 23:31
68

I saw the same thing with // move along, nothing to see here. – Ferruccio Nov 06 '08 at 23:41
6

I laughed so hard at this one. – Franck Nov 20 '08 at 21:52
5

I hate this code. Hidden exceptions suck. – Lance Fisher Nov 23 '08 at 06:42
9

Have to admit that I've done this on more than one occasion because sometimes it just doesn't matter. – NotMe Dec 18 '08 at 23:31
We had code that deleted a record from the DB, but insisted on checking the number of rows affected and throwing an exception if it was 0. But if the record was already gone, rows affected = 0 was perfectly fine. I used a similar comment in that case. – Matt Peterson Mar 04 '09 at 20:42
1

The generalization of the opposite of this is: "Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle." - Steinbach – Peter Rowell Mar 05 '09 at 20:17
1

yup. done this myself too, especially in small javascript eventhandlers where some code paths only work in certain browsers, but on the whole, ignoring the error produces the same experience cross-browser... – Daren Thomas Apr 20 '09 at 11:07
I'm Guilty of this as well with the following: //ToDo: Fill in Exception here later – Random Developer Apr 20 '09 at 18:57
It's funny because you see waayy too often. I do an occasional search through our code base for catch-all exceptions as it is better for something to crash, send an crash report, than for you handle it. – Dennis Apr 24 '09 at 00:38
Sometimes its really doesn't matter. but regardless, it should be. catch(Exception){ /* who cares */ } – Greg Dean Apr 25 '09 at 17:41
17

Wow, I write that comment all the time. I never thought of it as funny, I thought it was a serious statement. – Jay Aug 26 '09 at 14:07
I did this in a timed competition where I was using an exception to stop reading from a file. Would never do this in real code. – Cristián Romo Mar 08 '10 at 01:53

score 496 · Answer 20 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

496

/**
 * Always returns true.
 */
public boolean isAvailable() {
    return false;
}

Never rely on a comment...

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Dec 23 '08 at 18:45

martinus

17,736
15
72
92

85

I always tell my co-workers. "Comments don't run!!" – OscarRyz Mar 27 '09 at 00:43
15

I believe you meant, "never rely on the code". I'm sure the spec, design and requirements required a return code or true :) – gbjbaanb Mar 29 '09 at 14:28
looks like something you'd see on the techie edition of failblog.org – BobC Apr 03 '09 at 13:27
Hm... looks like a bug to me... – Adrian Grigore Apr 20 '09 at 16:43
5

Things like this actually happen, people don't bother keeping documentation up to date with changes even if it's right above the function. – Henk Apr 23 '09 at 16:28
This java comment runs: //\u000A System.out.println("Run!"); – Luzifer42 Sep 18 '09 at 08:18
That's why unit tests are so important - THEY run. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Dec 08 '10 at 21:28
25

... `#define false true`? – new123456 Dec 20 '10 at 01:00

score 456 · Answer 21 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

456

/*
 * You may think you know what the following code does.
 * But you dont. Trust me.
 * Fiddle with it, and youll spend many a sleepless
 * night cursing the moment you thought youd be clever
 * enough to "optimize" the code below.
 * Now close this file and go play with something else.
 */

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:11

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 10 '08 at 01:54

PoppaVein

657
2
5
11

32

Reminds me of a fellow who swore he could optimize a mechanical theorem-proving algorithm I wrote years ago in an AI project. He did improve performance but then the code didn't work...which he swore was my fault. – Mark Brittingham Dec 15 '08 at 15:39
Hmm, haven't I seen this one somewhere? – bzlm Mar 01 '09 at 20:02
6

@Mark He only said he'd optimize the time, he said nothing about the functionality =P – DevinB Mar 06 '09 at 14:33
98

If it doesn't have to work, I can optimize any code to a runtime of zero. – Michael Borgwardt Apr 03 '09 at 16:04
@Mark - I've done that ... to my own code. However, it inevitably gets sorted out eventually. – Peter Wone Apr 14 '09 at 14:40
@devinb In that regard, I'm expert at optimizing time... ;) – Jiaaro Apr 20 '09 at 14:58
9

That's what source control is for. Waste a few hours trying to optimize it, and then if it doesn't work out, just roll back. – Kibbee Apr 23 '09 at 02:39
@Kibbee: Well, technically speaking, source control only helps if you have a good way to verify that the code still works the same, which can be a nightmare when the original code was a tangled mess of wires. In other words: that's what _unit testing_ is for. – Jens Roland Aug 11 '11 at 13:24

score 429 · Answer 22 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:12

429

try {

} finally { // should never happen 

}

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:12

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 10 '08 at 19:54

gedevan

1,293
1
10
11

15

++. others in my company write this all the time! – CVertex Dec 02 '08 at 16:34
17

i've seen that comment (and even written it myself) in the past, for things that relalyt shouldn't ever happen (but just in case, here's code to handle the error). The funniest part is that ti's placed in a finally block, which means it should *always* happen... – Troy Howard Dec 05 '08 at 19:54
32

Yes, that was the joke. =) – Erik Forbes Dec 10 '08 at 00:41
2

Well, to be totally correct, it depends on the source! If this runs in Internet Explorer, the finally WILL NOT EXECUTE *EVER!* (No kidding!) http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/11/bug-184-catch-to-try-catch-finally-in.html – scunliffe Dec 21 '08 at 21:26
It is a Java code :) not JavaScript! – gedevan Dec 22 '08 at 14:53
15

If you have a System.exit() call in the try block, then YES, the finally should never happen ! – Romain Linsolas Feb 06 '09 at 10:06
1

@romaintaz: Assuming you aren't applying for a obfuscated code contest I hope you never use System.Exit(), let alone use it to avoid a finally block. – Guvante Mar 05 '09 at 18:50
2

re: it should *always* happen I heard of a job interview where senior programmer was arguing that the finally *does not* always happen, e.g. if you switch the power off it will not happen! – Dennis Apr 24 '09 at 00:41
Wrong :-), only System.exit(int) can do it – Steel Plume Apr 25 '09 at 13:10
6

Reason #984 to use Debug.Assert(). ;) – Scott Hanselman Apr 28 '09 at 19:43
This instantly gets +1 - hilarious. – Nathan Osman Mar 16 '10 at 01:28
5

Hey, that's my code! I worked together with @gedevan about two years ago. Initially I intended to have catch clause there but IDE autocomplete fooled me. Surprisingly that code was running in Production for months. We had a really good laugh when we discovered this gem :D – Andrei Андрей Листочкин Sep 17 '10 at 07:01
2

Awesome comment! :P Nice to meet you here, dude – gedevan Sep 21 '10 at 06:53
The code in the `try` block unplugs the computer. – Andrew Mar 14 '11 at 02:39

score 410 · Answer 23 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:32

From: https://github.com/zepouet/Xee-xCode-4.5/blob/master/XeePhotoshopLoader.m#L108

// At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD
// format. PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it
// such would be an insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD
// is an abysmal format. Having worked on this code for several weeks now, my
// hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire that burns with the fierce passion
// of a million suns.
//
// If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in
// different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would
// think of, and do those too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for
// instance, did it suddenly decide that *these* particular chunks should be
// aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement should *not* be included in
// the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned, or aligned with
// the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included. Either
// one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one.
// PSD, of course, uses all three, and more.
//
// Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the
// attic of your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark
// attack on his 58th birthday. That last detail may not be important for the
// purposes of the simile, but at this point I am spending a lot of time
// imagining amusing fates for the people responsible for this Rube Goldberg of
// a file format.
//
// Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format.
// To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have
// them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing
// them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only
// imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely
// ashamed of having created this abomination. I was naturally not gullible
// enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done so, I would have
// printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire. Were it
// within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
// them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
//
// PSD is not my favourite file format.

The line right after that and its comment really top the cake. Sanity? What sanity? The format ate it all... — Kim Reece, Apr 21 '09 at 02:18
s/PSD/Internet Explorer/g. s/file format/web browser/g. Now it matches my thoughts. — TJ L, Apr 23 '09 at 18:07
I pity that programmer for having to go through such a pain!!! But awesome piece of comment. Has poured his heart out. — Microkernel, Jun 03 '10 at 06:55
This line: // PSD is not my favourite file format. makes this a classic. — joedevon, Sep 23 '10 at 06:45

score 387 · Answer 24 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:12

387

const int TEN=10; // As if the value of 10 will fluctuate...

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:12

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 09 '08 at 02:29

Mike

1,276
4
16
27

136

In today's market 10 now has a value of only 9. – Steve Fallows Oct 10 '08 at 16:37
And on Monday you can count on it only being worth 8. – akdom Oct 11 '08 at 22:18
13

Maybe someday we will evolve more fingers... – Loren Pechtel Oct 19 '08 at 19:52
At war times sinus value had reaching up to 5... (my best teacher saying) – Thevs Oct 25 '08 at 09:58
1

Ahh, reminds me of college programming classes. – Lance Fisher Nov 23 '08 at 06:40
I have seen "public static final Char COMMA = ','; but somehow yours is funnier. – Steve B. Dec 21 '08 at 19:42
59

what about very large values of 10? – Mikeage Feb 23 '09 at 13:45
184

const int TEN=11; // Mine goes to eleven – dub Mar 06 '09 at 13:25
3

values of TEN will give rise to the dom – hasen Mar 27 '09 at 00:42
Loren Pechtel, ten digits is a recessive trait in humans, twelve is dominant. – eyelidlessness Apr 20 '09 at 03:57
10 is the first two-digit ever. – Tola Apr 20 '09 at 04:42
18

Calling Fortran from C - Fortran only does call-by-reference so you need variables for all constants. – Martin Beckett Apr 20 '09 at 16:43
5

I have seen that as a way to avoid a checkstyle warning for magic numbers – Janusz Jun 01 '09 at 03:19
@mgb - But this is a constant, not a variable, so it's pretty much a moot point. – MiffTheFox Sep 28 '09 at 03:33
3

Somebody learned that magic values are bad, and named it so the compiler could tell a mistype. Much easier to detect TEEN than 100. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 14 '10 at 12:44
1

Haha, I used to see this all the time in COBOL code around 5 years ago (shudder shudder). It makes sense, if you write MAX-DISCOUNT=100 but, HUNDRED=100...Seriously, WTH! – Susheel Javadi Sep 17 '10 at 04:46
@Martin, many years ago there was a bug in the IBM FORTRAN compiler that allowed a program to change the value of these constants. Caused many problems when someone's code assigned 1 the value of 2. – 37Stars Oct 12 '10 at 19:02
@37Stars - that's not a bug thats job security! – Martin Beckett Oct 12 '10 at 20:04
@MiffTheFox - yes but if you needed to call a fortran function from C and pass the literal 10, eg openport(10) you needed to do int ten=10; openport(&ten) – Martin Beckett Oct 12 '10 at 20:05
#pragma set_number_base_to(2) // yeah, made up pragma... #define TEN=10 // oops... (ah, crap! I can't get this to format right! every time I hit return it saves the edit...) – Alan Jay Weiner Oct 17 '11 at 16:33

score 363 · Answer 25 · 2009-04-23T04:55:39.343

363

    #Christmas tree initializer  
    toConnect = []  
    toRead =   [  ]  
    toWrite = [    ]   
    primes = [      ]  
    responses = {}  
    remaining = {}

edited Apr 23 '09 at 04:55

answered Apr 23 '09 at 04:50

25

That's a win. A huge win... – Cyclone Jan 08 '10 at 22:16
16

OK I am going to use this next time I need four empty arrays and two hashes! – Josh Apr 05 '10 at 22:10
Urgh. A loud "FAIL!" to the author for not knowing if he's using a format-free language or not. – TheBlastOne Sep 01 '10 at 13:24
I doubt that he didn't know about the format-free language. That's a nice joke :-) – Román Sep 23 '10 at 12:05

score 362 · Answer 26 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:13

362

About the middle of a 30 page xslt

<!-- Here be dragons  -->

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:13

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:22

Goran

6,798
9
41
57

8

I'm still trying to figure out how to comment an XSLT in a way that makes sense. – rjzii Oct 09 '08 at 02:47
HEY! I've left that comment on several occasions, what's wrong with it?:) Once I even left the url to the wikipedia art. about it; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_be_dragons – noocyte Oct 13 '08 at 06:46
Man they no longer have the art up, that is the problem with Wikis. – James McMahon Oct 16 '08 at 13:53
Used it as well. At least it relieves you from the frustration of trying to understand what cannot be understood. – schonarth Oct 21 '08 at 11:13
78

We really need more dragons in our code. – Jon Smock Apr 04 '09 at 18:53
I wrote here there be tygers intending the same meaning. – Joshua Apr 20 '09 at 02:01
1

Initially I thought of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Compilers – chakrit Apr 20 '09 at 04:46
6

@annakata you think that's bad, the other day someone was asking for help dealing with a 31GB xml file. I cried out in anguish. – Dana the Sane Apr 21 '09 at 06:17
Be happy it was XML - at least for that there are easy-to-find parsers that are well tested and work at linear speed over any size input (assuming reasonably limited nesting depth). Some custom-cooked format with possible escaping bugs and a custom possibly error-prone parser isn't exactly any better. – Eamon Nerbonne Aug 24 '09 at 12:40
I just had to write that at the top of a class. Sad. – si618 Sep 30 '09 at 06:05
1

Did someone call for me? – Troggy Oct 06 '09 at 20:49
LOL, I actually really did write that exact comment in an XSLT some years ago (and it was really long) but fast! – Mark Schultheiss Jan 13 '10 at 22:26
That comment really belongs in the source for a compiler... – James McLeod Apr 10 '10 at 00:35
@Dana the sane, have a look at the commercial version of Saxon. It can do streaming processing of huge input files. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 14 '10 at 12:45

score 353 · Answer 27 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

353

long long ago; /* in a galaxy far far away */

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Mar 05 '09 at 17:53

Juliano

39,173
13
67
73

1

does this actually work? in which language? – mauris Sep 07 '09 at 01:41
16

@Mauris: It was originally a C and C++ extension for 64-bit integers, which many vendors supported. Then C99 and C++0x standardized support for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_long – Juliano Sep 07 '09 at 03:57
Makes me think about the far vs. near pointers we used in 16-bit land. :) – Macke Sep 28 '10 at 18:38
1

It still works perfectly fine. We first put it in our compiler at Convex about 25 years ago because DMR suggested that that should be the name for our 64 bit-bit ints. – tchrist Nov 20 '10 at 01:10

score 352 · Answer 28 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:13

352

in a completely uncommented 2000 line method

{ 
  { 
    while (.. ){ 
      if (..){
          }
      for (.. ){ 
          }
         .... (just putting in the control flow here, imagine another few hundred ifs)
      if(..)   {
            if(..)     {
                   if(..)   {
                ...
                (another few hundred brackets)
                       }
                  }
         } //endif

(I actually grepped out all the brackets one day just to see how bad it was, and, sans formatting, got this:

{{{{}}{}{}{}{}}{{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}{}}{}{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}}}{{}{{}}{{{}}}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}}{}{{{}}{}{{}{}}{{{}}{}{}{}{}}{{}}}{}{{}{}{}{{}{{}}{}}{{}}}{{}}{{}}{{}}{}{{}}{{}}{{}}{{}{}{}}{}{}{{{}}{{}}}{}{}{}{}}{{{}{{}{}{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}}{}}{{}}{{}{}}}{{}}{{}}}{{}}{{}}{}{}{}{}{{}}{{}{}{}{}}}}{}{}}{{}{{{}{}{}{}}}}{{}{{{}}}}{{}{{{}{{}}{}{{}}{}{{}{}}{{}}{}{{}}}{{}}}}{{}{}{}{}{}{{{}    {{{{}}{}{}{}{}}{{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}{}}{}{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}}}{{}{{}}{{{}}}{{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{{}}{}{{{}}{}{{}{}}{{{}}{}{}{}{}}{{}}}{}{{}{}{}{{}{{}}{}}{{}}}{{}}{{}}{{}}{}{{}}{{}}{{}}{{}{}{}}{}{}{{{}}{{}}}{}{}{}{}}{{{}{{}{}{}{{}{}{}{}{}{}}{}}{{}}{{}{}}}{{}}{{}}}{{}}{{}}{}{}{}{}{{}}{{}{}{}{}}}}{}{}}{{}{{{}{}{}{}}}}{{}{{{}}}}{{}{{{}{{}}{}{{}}{}{{}{}}{{}}{}{{}}}{{}}}}{{}{}{}{}{}{{{}{}{{}}{}}}{}}{{}}{{}{}}{{}{{}{{}}}}{{{}{{{}}}}}{{{{{}}}}}{}{}{}{{{{}}}{}{}}{{}{{}}}}{}{{}}{}}}{}}{{}}{{}{}}{{}{{}{{}}}}{{{}{{{}}}}}{{{{{}}}}}{}{}{}{{{{}}}{}{}}{{}{{}}}}

The endif showed up around line 800)

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:13

Muhammad Akhtar

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answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:55

Steve B.

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180

tour-de-france code – Andreas Petersson Oct 08 '08 at 21:01
I laughed really hard on this one. – Dave Oct 08 '08 at 21:48
1

doh' no cascading select statement? – Stephan Oct 08 '08 at 22:07
7

this is thedailyworsethanfailure.com worthy! – deadbug Oct 09 '08 at 05:50
67

Looks like Lisp! – endian Oct 09 '08 at 12:15
1

I guess that one endif was really important ;) – Milan Babuškov Oct 09 '08 at 15:28
Er, no that's the stuff nightmares are made of: A Horde of Curly Braces chasing you down a cliff – Jacob Oct 13 '08 at 05:56
8

That comment is probably there to fix a compiler bug. :| – Rob Howard Nov 03 '08 at 07:01
What a pattern! I feel like I should be trying to focus my eyes past the screen to make a sailboat or something jump out at me. – gnovice Jan 13 '09 at 19:29
49

Cyclomatic complexity level of OH SHIIIIIIIII – Mar 05 '09 at 14:45
This is quite epic. Couldn't stop cracking up – dance2die Mar 05 '09 at 18:58
Haha, this is awesome. It almost feels like monty python. – Tetha Mar 16 '09 at 11:32
What's the Cyclomatic Complexity on that function? – graham.reeds Apr 24 '09 at 08:42
I really liked the // endif at the end :D – thSoft Jul 19 '09 at 11:28
com'on, it's better than nothing :) – Ammar Sep 05 '09 at 23:05
thats neat; someone should render that in plastic and make a slinky – Chris McKee Feb 13 '10 at 18:24
Blimey. This is why the kernel requires 8 spaces per tab. Code like that should never happen. – EricR Aug 17 '10 at 01:06
Mh. No gotos. That's a shortcoming of this example. – TheBlastOne Sep 01 '10 at 09:09
Recently I saw testcases with this kind of complexity, and I was reminded of this comment. Someday it'll be haha-funny for me too. – Michael Foukarakis Mar 05 '11 at 08:07
2

For anyone playing along at home, find the files with the most brackets... find . -type f -name "*.java" | while read f; do echo -n "$f "; cat "$f" | tr -dc '{}'; echo; done | awk '{ print length($2), $1 }' | sort -n – Rog Jul 22 '11 at 04:08
This is how an entrance ticket to the hell must look. – Rostislav Matl Jul 28 '11 at 08:27

score 352 · Answer 29 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

352

//This code sucks, you know it and I know it.  
//Move on and call me an idiot later.

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
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answered Oct 09 '08 at 01:03

KevDog

5,763
9
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26

Honestly in comment! – Mitchel Sellers Oct 13 '08 at 21:46
46

I love the honesty. – Jeff Schumacher Nov 01 '08 at 08:47
2

The first step to improvement is to acknowledge the deficiency. – icelava Dec 18 '08 at 04:24
accept your mistakes before others exaggerate them :) – naveen Jul 26 '11 at 17:56

score 324 · Answer 30 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

324

// If this comment is removed the program will blow up

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:14

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:20

John Chuckran

2,339
3
18
18

I've already had to put one of these in place. It really felt weird. // this end-if-file comment is necessary for aCC not to crash; please don't remove it even if your team is on gcc. – JB. Oct 15 '08 at 07:05
201

A long time ago, I accidentally fixed a segfault in Java3D by adding a comment. It was 100% reproducible; if I removed the comment, it crashed. As long as the comment was there, it worked fine. I assume it was some bizarre timing issue, but I never did figure out exactly what was happening. – DNS Mar 06 '09 at 14:29
54

Magic/More Magic – DevinB Mar 06 '09 at 14:36
I've had to use this before...in either java or php, I don't remember which. – Malfist Mar 24 '09 at 13:05
16

This is sort of like a virus. It contains content meant to protect itself. It is like the junk DNA that is good at getting itself copied. – Charlie Flowers Mar 27 '09 at 07:12
7

We have a Sybase Powerbuilder app that is dependent on a comment like this. There is something odd in the compiler; it works though, so we don't touch it. – Colin Pickard Apr 06 '09 at 10:07
1

Yuk. The worst I ever had was some Moto 68K code that worked/didn't based on a asm("NOP"); inserted between functions (jump length changed). I'd hate to deal with a COMMENT causing the same sort of changes. – Michael Kohne Apr 20 '09 at 16:44
3

@DNS are you sure there wasn't code starting on column 200 (clearly left there by some evil dragon coder) that you were commenting out? – Jonathan C Dickinson Apr 24 '09 at 11:45
I know these. It's been a long while since I've had such a problem. Usually inserting another comment would break it again. – paniq May 05 '09 at 06:25
23

you should compare the bytecode generated by the 2 versions – JoelFan Jun 14 '09 at 18:20
There was an Obfuscated C contest winner with a comment that could not be removed (and said so), but I cannot find it now :( – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 14 '10 at 12:49
I remember writing some Actionscript 1 that needed a trace() call in order for the whole thing to work. After spending 2 hours trying to fix the problem elegantly, we decided leaving the trace in was the best solution :) / :( – Steven Mercatante May 25 '10 at 22:08
13

It took me half a day once to figure out that ending a C comment with `\ ` (used to mark which direction we are going in a 2D array) causes the compiler to skip the next line. – Tgr May 31 '10 at 10:43
1

@Tgr, it doesn't _skip_ the line, it just adds it to the comment. Nasty one though. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 19 '10 at 18:39
1

Could be. Following line is: `if(__LINE__ == 450)` – Benoit Apr 07 '11 at 13:48

score 295 · Answer 31 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:30

295

double penetration; // ouch

answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:30

Macke

24,812
7
82
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12

Any good physics simulation will have a million double-entendres involving the word "penetration." – Charlie May 21 '09 at 22:04
21

That's where it came from. The guy who wrote it started to chuckle (in the same room as me), then he added the comment. I suppose initializing it to DOUBLE_MAX would've been even funnier. :) – Macke May 22 '09 at 09:56
9

The pun in "double"-entendre amuses me. Is that a thing? – Brent Bradburn Sep 29 '10 at 06:58

score 290 · Answer 32 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 13:43

290

/////////////////////////////////////// this is a well commented line

answered Mar 05 '09 at 13:43

score 269 · Answer 33 · edited Mar 16 '09 at 00:11

269

// I don't know why I need this, but it stops the people being upside-down

x = -x;

edited Mar 16 '09 at 00:11

Chris Lutz

73,191
16
130
183

answered Oct 11 '08 at 16:23

Chris Jefferson

7,225
11
43
66

46

classic! ... a prof once told me that if you are having trouble with your open gl code just try flipping signs. it was really good advice – luke Nov 22 '08 at 21:45
9

Why would flipping x make the people stop being upside-down? – Michael Myers Mar 02 '09 at 19:17
10

That's what made it the best comment -- it made no sense at all, and provided no good explanation as to why it worked :) – Chris Jefferson Mar 10 '09 at 17:25
for conditional flipping I use: byte crutch = 1; if (cond) crutch = -1; x=x*crutch; // the name of variable speaks itself – Imaskar Jun 01 '09 at 18:26
... and the voices in my head from speaking backwards. – PaulMcG Oct 16 '09 at 09:52
3

@Michael Myers: it might be because he calculated y as the cross product of x and z. – Ergwun Jan 24 '11 at 01:46
1

There is this software story that a software bug would cause the F16 to flip upside down when it crossed the equator ... Maybe this was the patch ... :-) – Peter Kriens Jul 20 '11 at 17:00

Roalt · Answer 34 · 2009-04-16T09:32:32.280

254

One of the most classic ones is the comment made by Pierre de Fermat about his well-known "Last theorem": "The margin of this page is a bit too small to write down the proof".

It took more than 350 years before the proof was found...

(According to wikipedia this is the original text:)

Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.

...and translated into English:

(It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.)

edited Apr 16 '09 at 09:32

answered Oct 09 '08 at 06:31

Roalt

8,330
7
41
53

And "margin", not "sideline". – Dour High Arch Oct 09 '08 at 17:17
It was neither "prove" nor "proof", and it was neither "sideline" nor "margin". Roalt, will you please post the classic comment that Pierre de Fermat wrote in French? – Windows programmer Oct 10 '08 at 00:52
"j'ai découvert une preuve réellement remarquable que cette marge trop étroite ne me permet pas de détailler" – Barth Oct 10 '08 at 06:33
He was french, but everyone wrote in Latin didn't they? – Peter Coulton Oct 10 '08 at 08:32
38

It's interesting (to me at least) that the proof found 350 years later relied on mathematical techniques that were unavailable in Fermat's time, and was considerably longer than would fit in Fermat's margin. So, either he was mistaken, or there's a simple proof that remains a mystery. – Martin Oct 13 '08 at 15:10
13

Maybe Fermat wasn't wrong. If he'd found a simple proof, it would have fit in his margin. – Windows programmer Oct 14 '08 at 06:25
1

maybe he had a sense of humour? :) – Sandor Davidhazi Oct 19 '08 at 15:39
@Sandor: I thought the same thing. Maybe Fermat was just joking about it and mathematicians didn't get the hint. – Spoike Nov 23 '08 at 07:06
66

John Skeet would have found room... – annakata Dec 01 '08 at 17:24
He was lying, when he said he had a proof that wouldn't fit, if he did, it was flawed. It was an intuitive proof, it feels right, but you can't say why. Saying he had a proof was sort of a joke among his peers. – Karl Dec 02 '08 at 16:28
7

Well, I read the (by the way great) book from Simon Singh about him: The guy was a writing a lot of things and said a lot of things without providing proof. Just as other attempted, he probably thought that he had found the proof, but it was also probably incorrect. – Roalt Dec 02 '08 at 20:31
43

@annakata - and Jon Skeet would kill you for typing the name of his evil twin. – Erik Forbes Dec 10 '08 at 00:38
and if he did have a proof, it definitely wasn't the same as the one found 350 years later, as that one required the use of a substantial amount of computer processing cycles... – Charles Bretana Dec 19 '08 at 16:03
Maybe he was ahead of his time making "funny comments" in his "code", IIIIF you know what I mean, ey ey... – mslot Mar 26 '09 at 23:23
3

Maybe he just wrote it knowing he'd be quoted on StackOverflow one day... – BenAlabaster Apr 15 '09 at 20:09
2

Isn't that guy Jon Skeet's great great great great great great great grand-father? – Gad May 14 '09 at 08:16
1

Jon Skeet doesn't find room. He makes room. – StuperUser Dec 14 '10 at 11:41
2

@Erik Forbes: wouldn't that make Jon Skeet the evil one? since he kills anyone for mentioning his *good* twi... *connection lost* – Kurru Jan 10 '11 at 19:56
1

There's a Star Trek episode, set in the 24th century but filmed in the late 1980s before the proof was found, where Picard talks about the theory to Riker, saying how humans have come so far, but still not been able to solve a lone Frenchmen's 800-year-old riddle. Guess the writers didn't anticipate a 340-year-old riddle being solved any time soon. – Cam Jackson Aug 04 '11 at 05:31
Jon Skeet is the Chuck Norris of StackOverflow. – Andy Sep 05 '11 at 16:10
1

@ErikForbes: Jon Skeet's evil twin is actually Skon Jeet. – Oct 25 '11 at 00:17

score 254 · Answer 35 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:15

254

// I am not sure if we need this, but too scared to delete.

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:15

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
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answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:43

abarax

6,229
8
28
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51

Fairly sure i have written that one – Chris James Oct 13 '08 at 15:05
21

Story of my life. – John Lockwood Aug 23 '09 at 20:44
8

O my! Looks like someone needs to learn about Version Control. – user123444555621 Jul 08 '10 at 05:59
1

The comment reflects that the author does not know about the "If you don't fix it, it will break 100%" and the "Never run an unchanged system" rules. (Or what were those rules exactly?) :) – TheBlastOne Sep 01 '10 at 13:23
That's why all my files never decrease in size! – Mike Sep 20 '10 at 13:59
I have entire folders full of source that are like that. – peterchen Jul 21 '11 at 21:21
How innocent the comment author is! :) – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 19:53

score 233 · Answer 36 · answered Oct 11 '08 at 19:23

233

From Java 1.2 SwingUtilities:

doRun.run();  // ... "a doo run run".

answered Oct 11 '08 at 19:23

Josh Segall

4,183
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8

I guess I'm the only one who got the reference – Kenan Banks Mar 05 '09 at 18:50
I laughed so hard reading this. Nice. – Jeff Yates Mar 05 '09 at 19:42
I don't get the reference but it's still funny. – AaronLS Apr 03 '09 at 13:36
1

Nice one, but lacks on run. Man, I even got that song in my head. – martiert Apr 03 '09 at 16:14
@martiert, same here! great comment! – Sander Versluys Apr 06 '09 at 10:53
33

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgtsai2aKY – Sprintstar Apr 06 '09 at 10:59
Does someone have a link for that code? – Liran Orevi Apr 22 '09 at 13:44
Oh, man! I couldn't stop laughing... That's hilarious! – leifericf Jan 18 '10 at 01:47
3

It isn't exactly Swing, though... – sbi Sep 17 '10 at 08:51

score 229 · Answer 37 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:16

229

# To understand recursion, see the bottom of this file

At the bottom of the file:

# To understand recursion, see the top of this file

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:16

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
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191

answered Nov 23 '08 at 06:18

Chris Lloyd

12,100
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57

That's more like an infinite loop, there's no need for a stack with that example. – Bernard Igiri Feb 02 '09 at 21:04
24

How about "# To understand recursion, see line X" on line X? – Chris Lutz Feb 13 '09 at 01:48
30

Good. But "To know what recursion is, you have to know what recursion is" is better :) – Lucas Gabriel Sánchez Mar 10 '09 at 15:15
29

When doing my A Level computing course we had a book, in the book the glossary contained two entries: Endless Loop - See 'Loop, Endless' ... Loop, Endless - See 'Endless Loop' – Piku Apr 19 '09 at 21:46
Lots of fun, but nobody got any closer to understanding recursion. It would be more like recursion if at the bottom of the file it said /* to understand recursion, read *someotherfile* first then return here. */ and it said the same in someotherfile about this file. – thomasrutter Apr 22 '09 at 12:03
Actually forget that, I like @lk. 's comment above much better! – thomasrutter Apr 22 '09 at 12:04
10

To understand recursion, see this comment. BAM! – Randolpho Apr 24 '09 at 19:37
1

Obviously, no-one understands recursion here :) How about: # To understand recursion, re-read this line (stop when you understand) – Bobby Jack Jul 13 '09 at 22:41
The programmers version of some classic bathroom stall graffiti. love it. – NomeN Jul 15 '09 at 00:20
or you can get the T-Shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/itdepartment/b2ae/ – Scott Baker Jul 24 '09 at 23:45
3

Not all forms of recursion require a stack. (eg, consider tail-call optimisation) – Arafangion May 21 '10 at 16:28
That's an infinite loop. You need to add a base case: "If you understand recursion, then stop reading." – dan04 Jun 08 '10 at 03:38
1

Ha! Monkey Island quote - Recursion: see Recursion – Mahol25 Aug 18 '10 at 19:49
1

@dan04: That's why it's called infinite recursion. Which humans are generally smart enough to break out of, once they see they've gone into it... – SamB Jun 09 '11 at 04:44
To grasp the concept of infinite loop follow this comment! – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 19:55

score 223 · Answer 38 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

223

This one was a living proof, in production code, of micro-management effects in our team:

// I am not responsible of this code.
// They made me write it, against my will.

... followed by less than optimal code, conceived by our beloved technical director, who was quite fond of forcing down both code and coding guidelines into developers' throats (*).

Of course, when the project leader searched for the cause of a bug, and found it was inside the "less than optimal code", he was less than amused...

(*) I am, of course, mentioning the Mighty VB King... If you want to assess the full magnitude of the power of the Mighty VB King, you can read the following SO post: What was the strangest coding standard rule that you were forced to follow? ...

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

1
1

answered Oct 19 '08 at 18:00

paercebal

81,378
38
130
159

35

Your comment in the other posts links back to this one, sending me into an infinite loop for all eternity! – Tim Frey Jan 27 '09 at 03:29
To understand recursion..... >: ) – Erik Forbes Mar 05 '09 at 19:22
Absolutely wonderful, just imagine the plight the developer was under – Prabhu R Jul 21 '09 at 11:09
27

@Outlaw: This is why I always open new links in separate tabs. Eventually I *will* get out of it, as my browser will crash. – T.E.D. Sep 17 '09 at 16:12
A less obvious "Coactum feci" has saved many a soul. – relet Sep 16 '10 at 17:44
@relet: "Coactum feci" ? What's the meaning of that ? – paercebal Sep 16 '10 at 19:26
@Ram: Believe me, this was not pretty. Now, we can smile when we remember that (and other cheesy details), but at the time... :-( ... This was done more for self-protection than for the humor. In this, version controlled sources is bliss, because unlike other documents, they can't be modified to "change the past"... Imagine that for each bug/evolution that was assigned to me, I had to send myself an email with the copy of the description as a proof, just to be able to make comparisons with the potentially modified description at the check-in moment. And I DID find "discreet corrections"... :-/ – paercebal Sep 16 '10 at 19:35
"They made me write it" LOL How cruel "they" are! – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 19:56

score 219 · Answer 39 · edited Sep 14 '10 at 22:35

219

I went through a sleep-deprived coding run and started only writing comments that were quotes from Fight Club.

Still trawling through the code years later I find a comment that makes me laugh. Most of them just random thoughts. I did however keep my comments to lines ratio pretty good!

// This shouldn't happen. The only way this can happen is if the
// <code>JFileChooser</code> has returned a <code>File</code> that doesn't exist
// on the system. If this happens we can't recover, and there is more than likely
// a rip in the space time continuum that the user is too distracted by to notice
// anything else.

 /**
   * This method leverages collective synergy to drive "outside of the box"
   * thinking and formulate key objectives into a win-win game plan with a
   * quality-driven approach that focuses on empowering key players to drive-up
   * their core competencies and increase expectations with an all-around
   * initiative to drive down the bottom-line. I really wanted to work the word
   * "mandrolic" in there, but that word always makes me want to punch myself in
   * the face.
   */
private void updateFileCountLabel() {

edited Sep 14 '10 at 22:35

Timwi

65,159
33
165
230

answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:05

Aidos

2,753
3
27
31

6

Ah, now we know who writes those Spring Framework tutorials. – finnw Oct 10 '08 at 02:51
It started as a joke about the management at the company I work for. I don't even know what the sentance means ;-) – Aidos Oct 10 '08 at 11:19
4

The second one is just awesome. I always laugh when my wife uses the (non-)word "synergy" and she doesn't understand why it's so funny. – Graeme Perrow Oct 21 '08 at 19:46
11

The second one is great! What, no "paradigm-shifting"? – gnovice Jan 13 '09 at 19:33
The second one is priceless! F*** management-speak! – isekaijin Feb 02 '09 at 22:19
This comment leverages collective synergy to drive "outside of the box" thinking. Love it ;p – johnc Apr 14 '09 at 21:28
37

Just to be fair, the first clause might happen if in between the user selecting the File, the File disappears, which might in fact happen on a network file system. Assumptions like that have bitten me in the past... – Kirk Wylie Apr 19 '09 at 20:31
5

We need to leverage exponential synergy curves to effect a paradigm shift in order to whitestream the knowledge gap through the data fusion engine. – Apr 20 '09 at 08:43
@Kirk: Happens to me if I've got background processes churning through temporary files like they're some kind of vacuum-foam particles and I accidentally select the wrong one. No network required. This is why I like exceptions: `FileNotFound` (or whatever exception) can be handled in one place no matter which step burped it up. – Mike DeSimone Sep 17 '10 at 19:39
Am I the first person to notice that "...leverages collective synergy...to drive up the bottom-line." is from a The Daily WTF, by Alex Papadimoulis? http://en.thedailywtf.com/Articles/Secret_Enterprise_Security.aspx – Han Seoul-Oh Nov 28 '10 at 21:58

score 217 · Answer 40 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:16

217

Many years ago (about 1994) I was working on a Oracle PRO*C application for a large multi-national software company that you will have heard of. The app I was working on was a massive Oracle application and they had a utility that ran overnight tidying up data and doing all sorts of aggregate calculations. Every time anything needed doing as a batch job, it got shoved into this utility and as you can imagine it became an absolute monstrosity. It was also notable for the tiny number of comments that it had for such a massive program.

One of the few comments it did have remains the finest comment I have ever seen for pure WTF'ness... I was trying to find a bug in a function which was hundreds of lines long and right in the middle of it was the only comment in the function:

/* I did this the other way */

To this day it is still the finest comment I have ever seen.

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:16

Dave Verwer

6,140
5
34
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27

I like that. it's enigmatic, yet useless. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:33
Indeed... mostly useless – Sakkle Feb 02 '09 at 12:34
3

It makes me wonder if there was a disagreement about how to do something and the guy very smuggly declares that he decided to do it his way. LOL – AaronLS Apr 03 '09 at 13:34
3

I read it as "there is a right way to do this, a wrong way to do this, and..." – Ry Jones Apr 04 '09 at 18:09
+1 Excellent comment, and for "pure WTF'ness", a phrase that will starting showing up in my comments ;-) – Chris O Jul 28 '10 at 01:43

daniels · Answer 41 · 2009-09-14T06:46:54.137

216

/* Please work */

edited Sep 14 '09 at 06:46

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:12

daniels

18,416
31
103
173

10

I know the feeling :) – johnc Jan 23 '09 at 11:02
6

i'll try this to see if it helps any... :D – Peter Perháč Apr 06 '09 at 11:52
235

My boss tells me this whenever he sees me reading SO. – Mike Miller Apr 20 '09 at 20:10
8

@"My boss tells me this whenever he sees me reading SO.": OMG!!! I can't stop laughing!!! – Andrei Rînea Apr 23 '09 at 23:53
@Mike Miller i have been constantly checking around just to make sure that does not happen to me. – Jake Feb 07 '11 at 06:22

score 212 · Answer 42 · edited Aug 11 '11 at 13:37

212

//Dear future me. Please forgive me. 
//I can't even begin to express how sorry I am.

And I just found this one today:

//private instance variable for storing age
public static int age;

edited Aug 11 '11 at 13:37

Jens Roland

27,450
14
82
104

answered Mar 29 '09 at 13:45

Mia Clarke

8,134
3
49
62

3

I'm always leaving comments for myself in the future... – David A Gibson Apr 14 '09 at 14:39
26

Future-self is who your comments should be written for anyway. – Commander Keen Apr 20 '09 at 10:50
In regards to the second comment, the programmer didn't explain what type of variable it is. Sloppy. – Feb 13 '10 at 09:05
The first comment would be made infinitely better by adding: "I left you an 18 yr bottle of scotch in the bottom left drawer to make up for it" – Nathan Ernst Sep 17 '10 at 23:43
1

@abrereton - obviousily it is a double, its bad form to put such redundant data in the comment – Felan Sep 21 '10 at 17:14
9

Future-self hates me, and it's not even my fault. It's all Past-self's fault, damn him!! – Sebastián Grignoli Sep 28 '10 at 13:58

score 207 · Answer 43 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:15

207

/* You are not meant to understand this */

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:15

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:17

1800 INFORMATION

131,367
29
160
239

13

This is one of those Hofstadterian uses of "this". – harpo Oct 08 '08 at 20:55
10

Very reminiscent of the infamous "you are not expected to understand this" comment in the UNIX source code: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/odd.html – Mark Bessey Oct 10 '08 at 00:33
It's hard to tell whether it's supposed to mean "This code is unreadable so don't feel bad if you dan't understand it" or "You won't understand my code because you're nowhere near as smart as me." – finnw Oct 10 '08 at 02:56
"It's hard to tell whether it's supposed to mean..." -- In other words, it's hard for you to understand the comment. Which means it was one of those Hofstadterian uses of "this". – Windows programmer Oct 14 '08 at 06:20
Or "it's not worth to understand" – Thevs Oct 25 '08 at 09:54
1

In other words, "all bugs/defects should be directed my way. This is my means of securing my job." – icelava Dec 18 '08 at 04:23
@Mark: actually I like the other comment in that link even better: /* * The value returned here has many subtle implications. * See the newproc comments. */ – Anton Tykhyy Aug 07 '09 at 19:58
Hey, that's what my teacher said all the time. – mxk Aug 28 '09 at 10:40
That’s [our Dennis](http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)! – tchrist Nov 20 '10 at 01:14

score 192 · Answer 44 · edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:16

192

//I am not sure why this works but it fixes the problem.

This was before a set of code that technically did fix the problem it was meant to but broke 3 other things....

edited Mar 16 '11 at 18:16

Muhammad Akhtar

51,913
37
138
191

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:11

StubbornMule

2,720
5
20
19

Classic case of this: http://www.pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer/extracts/coincidence – ilitirit Oct 08 '08 at 20:44
Yes it is. In fact most of this guys code fit that case. Lucky me gets to support it lol. – StubbornMule Oct 09 '08 at 14:06
3

except for the broking of three other things, ive done some comments like that – Viktor Sehr Jan 31 '10 at 18:53
lol. I have written this myself... – Layke Feb 21 '10 at 19:27
I do that sometimes when I know from past experiance that 1 out of a few combinations will work, i just can't remember which one. trial and error can be done quickly when you are at a computer, sometimes it a lot quicker than redoing math for no reason. – Ape-inago Apr 09 '10 at 05:02

score 186 · Answer 45 · answered Apr 25 '09 at 22:08

186

// no comments for you
// it was hard to write
// so it should be hard to read

answered Apr 25 '09 at 22:08

Neil Kodner

2,901
3
27
36

58

They should have moved 'so it' to the previous line to make it a Haiku... – David Oneill Oct 23 '09 at 12:32
1

I know company, where "head programer" has tesis: the code should be hard-readable, because noone should touch the code until he/she absolutely understand the code. – TcKs Sep 23 '10 at 14:47
2

That's what I read between the lines of code I have to maintain... – Denys Kniazhev-Support Ukraine Dec 30 '10 at 21:34
@TcK, head programmer just needs to be "new programmer" in a similar shop to see the error of his ways. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Sep 17 '11 at 09:28

Samat Jain · Answer 46 · 2008-10-09T04:49:15.980

178

/* Halley's comment */

edited Oct 09 '08 at 04:49

answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:49

Samat Jain

15,758
4
20
13

You can only use it once, but it's a good one! – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:47
38

hahah brilliant. you only see one every 75 years, and the last one was in 1986. – nickf Oct 13 '08 at 07:12
now that really is funny – Ian G Apr 06 '09 at 11:44

score 178 · Answer 47 · answered Dec 01 '08 at 16:53

178

options.BatchSize = 300; //Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!

answered Dec 01 '08 at 16:53

jumpinjackie

2,387
4
22
26

score 172 · Answer 48 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:48

172

// I have to find a better job

edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:48

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:40

Rulas

1,164
3
16
22

16

I'm feeling exactly that. – chakrit Nov 21 '08 at 21:47
ha ha.... I have thought this way many times ;-) – Muhammedh Feb 10 '10 at 06:38
1

Nice way to tell your boss about the same! – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 19:59

proudgeekdad · Answer 49 · 2009-04-22T17:16:40.723

172

Our DBA found this in the middle of a 3000 line stored procedure written by a third party.

/* IF DOLPHINS ARE SO SMART, HOW COME THEY LIVE IN IGLOOS? */

edited Apr 22 '09 at 17:16

answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:46

proudgeekdad

3,424
6
42
40

12

Page 3, and finally one makes me LOL. – tsilb Nov 20 '09 at 03:43
5

It is from [South Park](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705982/quotes?qt0415430). – Tgr May 31 '10 at 10:11
3000 lines? That's counter tons of codings styles/guidelines. And it's a stored proc?! – Jürgen A. Erhard Jun 30 '11 at 18:06

score 171 · Answer 50 · edited Jun 11 '09 at 18:49

171

on js code:

// hack for ie browser (assuming that ie is a browser)

edited Jun 11 '09 at 18:49

Mike Two

44,935
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80
96

answered Jan 28 '09 at 17:54

JuanDeLosMuertos

4,532
15
55
87

69

ie is not a browser, it's a monsturous html viewer that enjoys torturing web developers! – hasen Mar 16 '09 at 11:07
IE 8 is totally different guys.. – Andrei Rînea Apr 24 '09 at 00:05
4

but there are ever firefox/chrome/safari - better than a M$ product – JuanDeLosMuertos Apr 24 '09 at 09:12
1

@Andrei Rinea: "I swear, honey, I've reformed myself. I'm totally different now." Although it might be true, I'm not inclined to believe it. – Piskvor left the building Nov 26 '09 at 17:14
6

IE8 is great until 2016 when it still has 15% marketshare – Jun 25 '10 at 15:48
1

I'm waitin' for the IE9 comments – Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware- Sep 17 '10 at 14:03
39

"Internet Explorer: A simple Windows XP tool which allows the user to browse to Mozilla.com and download Firefox, a web browser." http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=internet%20explorer&defid=1073560 – Tiago Fernandez Oct 20 '10 at 12:53
@Tiago Fernandez: So true for me, +1 ! – usta Aug 20 '11 at 14:46

score 155 · Answer 51 · edited Nov 07 '09 at 11:54

155

/* Emits a 7-Hz tone for 10 seconds.
  True story: 7 Hz is the resonant frequency of a
  chicken's skull cavity. This was determined
  empirically in Australia, where a new factory
  generating 7-Hz tones was located too close to a
  chicken ranch: When the factory started up, all the
  chickens died.
  Your PC may not be able to emit a 7-Hz tone. */

main()
{
    sound(7);
    delay(10000);
    nosound();
}

(the sound function in the Turbo C version 2.0 Reference Guide)

edited Nov 07 '09 at 11:54

True Soft

8,675
6
54
83

answered Oct 11 '08 at 05:39

Knobloch

463
1
6
14

56

You need a factory to create 7Hz tones? How do they package them, and what is their market? – johnc Mar 16 '09 at 01:45
2

I read this comment in Turbo C a long time ago. It's amazing! – Diego Jancic Apr 20 '09 at 01:03
1

The comment is there. Not sure of the veracity of the story - that could be an urban legend, but I think it could be plausible. I know that resonant frequencies have even brought down stadiums and bridges... – Knobloch Apr 20 '09 at 14:15
3

It doesn't matter if it's true, its still just as funny. Maybe funnier. Can you imagine making it up? – Jonathan Adelson Apr 23 '09 at 01:07
4

It simply can't be true. But it's hilarious that so many people believe an unsourced claim that ridiculous. – niXar May 21 '09 at 15:58
Ah, I thought that'd be the brown noise. – mxk Aug 28 '09 at 10:42
2

[Infrasound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound). See in particular [the section](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#The_Ghost_in_the_Machine) by about Tandy's *Ghost in the Machine*. – Paul Ruane Sep 17 '10 at 14:36
@Paul Wow, that's really interesting! Thanks! – Codemonkey Mar 14 '11 at 17:16
I went to university with a friend who told me a story a while back about how he read this exact comment in a C source file when he was in highschool. Since he told me the story much before (in the order of a few years) I read this answer, I think this could be true. Also, if anyone has access to the file which has this comment, they will get major karma points for posting a link to the source code file – inspectorG4dget Aug 15 '11 at 01:42

score 149 · Answer 52 · answered Mar 06 '09 at 13:17

149

... or die // bitch

answered Mar 06 '09 at 13:17

12

I wasn't going to upvote, but it made me laugh, dammit – johnc Mar 26 '09 at 23:00

score 147 · Answer 53 · edited Sep 18 '10 at 00:49

147

Try typing your favourite profanity into google code search, it whiles away many a dull hour. Some of my favourite examples:

/* These magic numbers are fucking stupid. */

/* Dear free software world, do you NOW see we are fucking
   things up?! This is insane! */

/* We will NOT put a fucking timestamp in the header here. Every
   time you put it back, I will come in and take it out again. */

# However, this only works if there are MULTIPLE checkboxes!
# The fucking JS DOM *changes* based on one or multiple boxes!?!?!
# Damn damn damn I hate the JavaScript DOM so damn much!!!!!!

/* TODO: this is obviously not right ... this whole fucking module
   sucks anyway */

/* FIXME: please god, when will the hurting stop? Thus function is so
   fucking broken it's not even funny. */

and my personal favourite

 # code below replaces code above - any problems?
 # yeah, it doesn't fucking work.

edited Sep 18 '10 at 00:49

jrockway

42,082
9
61
86

answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:27

Bobby Jack

15,689
15
65
97

Just the linux kernel has got enough, mostly moaning about some crap hardware or other – Mark Baker Oct 09 '08 at 09:03
Mmm, multiple checkboxes in JavaScript... I think I have a comment of my own like that. – scunliffe Dec 21 '08 at 21:24
14

Posted HTML checkbox value handling is a WTF in its own right. – Rob Howard Apr 22 '09 at 07:36
3

I love when people use checkboxes for an OR state rather then radio buttons which are built for purpose. Select insurance A OR B, ooo tick boxes Cue unnecessary javascript and making code fat. – Chris McKee Feb 13 '10 at 18:31

score 146 · Answer 54 · answered Jan 10 '09 at 20:42

146

On initialization of a linked list:

last = first; /* Biblical reference */

Succint and hilarious.

answered Jan 10 '09 at 20:42

Brian Clapper

25,705
7
65
65

Biblical? More like Oedipeal. – aridlehoover Sep 17 '10 at 08:31
16

Biblical. Matthew 20:16 "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." (Not being a Bible nut, or even especially religious, I Googled it.) – Brian Clapper Sep 17 '10 at 17:15
9

This is a job for Python's tuple packing/unpacking assignment: `last, first = first, last` – Tim Pietzcker Oct 08 '10 at 20:39
@Brian for the times, they are a-changin'. – hobbs Aug 23 '11 at 01:57

score 145 · Answer 55 · answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:47

Somebody complained that the "best" comment was bringing up the worst comments. IMHO, they're funnier, and so "better", but here's the honest best comment I've ever read:

/*
Major subtleties ahead:  Most hash schemes depend on having a "good" hash
function, in the sense of simulating randomness.  Python doesn't:  its most
important hash functions (for strings and ints) are very regular in common
cases:

>>> map(hash, (0, 1, 2, 3))
[0, 1, 2, 3]
>>> map(hash, ("namea", "nameb", "namec", "named"))
[-1658398457, -1658398460, -1658398459, -1658398462]
>>>

This isn't necessarily bad!  To the contrary, in a table of size 2**i, taking
the low-order i bits as the initial table index is extremely fast, and there
are no collisions at all for dicts indexed by a contiguous range of ints.
The same is approximately true when keys are "consecutive" strings.  So this
gives better-than-random behavior in common cases, and that's very desirable.

OTOH, when collisions occur, the tendency to fill contiguous slices of the
hash table makes a good collision resolution strategy crucial.  Taking only
the last i bits of the hash code is also vulnerable:  for example, consider
[i << 16 for i in range(20000)] as a set of keys.  Since ints are their own
hash codes, and this fits in a dict of size 2**15, the last 15 bits of every
hash code are all 0:  they *all* map to the same table index.

But catering to unusual cases should not slow the usual ones, so we just take
the last i bits anyway.  It's up to collision resolution to do the rest.  If
we *usually* find the key we're looking for on the first try (and, it turns
out, we usually do -- the table load factor is kept under 2/3, so the odds
are solidly in our favor), then it makes best sense to keep the initial index
computation dirt cheap.

The first half of collision resolution is to visit table indices via this
recurrence:

    j = ((5*j) + 1) mod 2**i

For any initial j in range(2**i), repeating that 2**i times generates each
int in range(2**i) exactly once (see any text on random-number generation for
proof).  By itself, this doesn't help much:  like linear probing (setting
j += 1, or j -= 1, on each loop trip), it scans the table entries in a fixed
order.  This would be bad, except that's not the only thing we do, and it's
actually *good* in the common cases where hash keys are consecutive.  In an
example that's really too small to make this entirely clear, for a table of
size 2**3 the order of indices is:

    0 -> 1 -> 6 -> 7 -> 4 -> 5 -> 2 -> 3 -> 0 [and here it's repeating]

If two things come in at index 5, the first place we look after is index 2,
not 6, so if another comes in at index 6 the collision at 5 didn't hurt it.
Linear probing is deadly in this case because there the fixed probe order
is the *same* as the order consecutive keys are likely to arrive.  But it's
extremely unlikely hash codes will follow a 5*j+1 recurrence by accident,
and certain that consecutive hash codes do not.

The other half of the strategy is to get the other bits of the hash code
into play.  This is done by initializing a (unsigned) vrbl "perturb" to the
full hash code, and changing the recurrence to:

    j = (5*j) + 1 + perturb;
    perturb >>= PERTURB_SHIFT;
    use j % 2**i as the next table index;

Now the probe sequence depends (eventually) on every bit in the hash code,
and the pseudo-scrambling property of recurring on 5*j+1 is more valuable,
because it quickly magnifies small differences in the bits that didn't affect
the initial index.  Note that because perturb is unsigned, if the recurrence
is executed often enough perturb eventually becomes and remains 0.  At that
point (very rarely reached) the recurrence is on (just) 5*j+1 again, and
that's certain to find an empty slot eventually (since it generates every int
in range(2**i), and we make sure there's always at least one empty slot).

Selecting a good value for PERTURB_SHIFT is a balancing act.  You want it
small so that the high bits of the hash code continue to affect the probe
sequence across iterations; but you want it large so that in really bad cases
the high-order hash bits have an effect on early iterations.  5 was "the
best" in minimizing total collisions across experiments Tim Peters ran (on
both normal and pathological cases), but 4 and 6 weren't significantly worse.

Historical:  Reimer Behrends contributed the idea of using a polynomial-based
approach, using repeated multiplication by x in GF(2**n) where an irreducible
polynomial for each table size was chosen such that x was a primitive root.
Christian Tismer later extended that to use division by x instead, as an
efficient way to get the high bits of the hash code into play.  This scheme
also gave excellent collision statistics, but was more expensive:  two
if-tests were required inside the loop; computing "the next" index took about
the same number of operations but without as much potential parallelism
(e.g., computing 5*j can go on at the same time as computing 1+perturb in the
above, and then shifting perturb can be done while the table index is being
masked); and the dictobject struct required a member to hold the table's
polynomial.  In Tim's experiments the current scheme ran faster, produced
equally good collision statistics, needed less code & used less memory.

Theoretical Python 2.5 headache:  hash codes are only C "long", but
sizeof(Py_ssize_t) > sizeof(long) may be possible.  In that case, and if a
dict is genuinely huge, then only the slots directly reachable via indexing
by a C long can be the first slot in a probe sequence.  The probe sequence
will still eventually reach every slot in the table, but the collision rate
on initial probes may be much higher than this scheme was designed for.
Getting a hash code as fat as Py_ssize_t is the only real cure.  But in
practice, this probably won't make a lick of difference for many years (at
which point everyone will have terabytes of RAM on 64-bit boxes).
*/

I'd heard of literate programming, but this is crazy. Great comment! — sep332, Dec 19 '08 at 16:11
Great comment, but IMHO one that doesn't really belong in the source but rather in an accompanying document. This is why document control is just as important as source control. — Konrad Rudolph, Feb 09 '09 at 08:52
I don't think this is user-level documentation, you should never need to know this when writing your code. Seems fine where it is to me. — llimllib, Feb 10 '09 at 20:58
The python source code has many comments like this one. I think this kind of documentation is very helpful for people who are diving into the source code. — bigmonachus, Mar 05 '09 at 18:26
A comment that explains exactly what was done and why. This is why Python is my favorite language. — cygil, Mar 16 '09 at 11:53
I agree. If you've got obscure code, put a novel in the source to accompany it, otherwise someone will come along ten years later and seriously cock things up. — Don Werve, Apr 09 '09 at 22:15
To commentators: If its a blog post or a separate document, it's NOT THERE when someone goes to modify the code. Having it in the code is the most convenient for future maintainers. And if the code is changed, there's a good chance the maintainer will update the comment; there's less chance a document or blog post would be changed (and if it was changed then you lose the docs for old versions; comments get versioned in the version control system with the code). — user9876, Apr 20 '09 at 12:50
I like this one. At least the guy gives a thought on what he's doing :-) — dankoliver, Apr 23 '09 at 13:30
What an eager beaver! On a serious note, that's good stuff. Python has its own documentation manager, so no wonder it usually works that well. — paniq, May 05 '09 at 09:17
I recommend watching the [The Mighty Dictionary](http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/schedule/event/12/) presentation from PyCon 2010. — Cristian Ciupitu, Aug 02 '10 at 19:37
@Cristian or reading the section on the python dictionary which is contained in "Beautiful Code" — llimllib, Aug 04 '10 at 18:58
Note that there is *also* a document further explaining the implementation of dict in another file alongside this one. — Mike Graham, Jul 20 '11 at 21:42

score 128 · Answer 56 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 04:39

128

if(m_measures =/*=*/ --index)
{
    ....

answered Oct 10 '08 at 04:39

NeilDurant

2,082
2
14
14

3

That's... just insanely stupid and ASKING for trouble... – Matthew Scharley Oct 12 '08 at 04:56
50

Alternatively, like FALLTHRU, it's indicating that "this code which looks like a bug isn't" – James Ogden Oct 13 '08 at 08:06
1

Of course, that doesn't make it right... – James Ogden Oct 13 '08 at 08:07
4

Yeah, better to just pull things apart a bit... – Mark Brittingham Dec 15 '08 at 15:43
16

Yet I'm strangely drawn to it ... – johnc Jan 23 '09 at 11:01
1

I can appreciate the value of the comment there,(perhaps the highest voted USEFUL comment),this should have been written so that both assignments(did you catch that,2 side effects) happened OUTSIDE the condition,so the next poor soul to encounter it had a chance of seeing what it was supposed to do. – TokenMacGuy Feb 01 '09 at 03:35
1

That is terrible. You want to use `if (0 != (m_measures = --index))`. – Simon Buchan Mar 16 '09 at 00:56
2

No, you don't want to do it at all. :P – Robert P Mar 27 '09 at 00:51
1

if (DerivedClass* dc = dynamic_cast(ptr)) { } is really useful. – bradtgmurray Apr 19 '09 at 23:11
1

That's wrong on so many levels. I love it so much! – David Gladfelter Jan 24 '10 at 22:12
Doesn't GCC suggest double braces around assignments in conditions? – Stefan Majewsky Sep 17 '10 at 11:10

score 128 · Answer 57 · edited Sep 17 '10 at 19:08

128

int MyFunction()
{
    // There once was a man named Dave
    int Result = 0;

    // Whose code just wouldn't behave
    MyObject *Ptr = new MyObject();

    // He left to go to a meetin'
    Result = Ptr->DoSomething();

    // And left his memory a leakin'
    return Result;
}

C++ Comment

edited Sep 17 '10 at 19:08

luiscubal

24,773
9
57
83

answered Dec 05 '08 at 19:46

Jeremiah

5,386
9
38
45

7

why not fix the leak instead? – hasen Dec 15 '08 at 15:49
82

It's nice that, just as the memory is left leaking, the limerick is left unended. – Adriano Varoli Piazza Dec 18 '08 at 12:02
49

I hate meetings. – Dave Baghdanov Nov 14 '09 at 00:18
2

@Adriano: Looks like something ending on "save" would be a good fifth line then... – Franz Aug 07 '11 at 08:21
I need a 5th line, no resolution, ahhh!!! – umassthrower Nov 17 '11 at 20:12

score 126 · Answer 58 · edited Apr 11 '09 at 18:13

126

/*
This isn't the right way to deal with this, but today is my last day, Ron
just spilled coffee on my desk, and I'm hungry, so this will have to do...
*/

return 12; // 12 is my lucky number

edited Apr 11 '09 at 18:13

andri

11,171
2
38
49

answered Apr 09 '09 at 21:52

samoz

56,849
55
141
195

4

hillarious, this one made me choke up on my coffee :D! – Filip Dupanović Apr 19 '09 at 23:15
"but today is my last day" Beware company owners! – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 20:04

score 117 · Answer 59 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 07:30

117

  mov si, pCard      ; captain?

answered Oct 12 '08 at 07:30

Hafthor

16,358
9
56
65

1

LOL! this one is good :D – Trap Mar 01 '09 at 01:53
Need explainationsfor non assembler programmers – Clement Herreman Sep 14 '09 at 14:23
6

@Clement No it doesn't. Read it out loud. – Jacob Krall Sep 22 '09 at 19:57
@Jacob `Move ship card Captain?`? – Mateen Ulhaq Sep 23 '11 at 03:05
Here's a hint: `pCard` was portrayed by Patrick Stewart. – Jacob Krall Sep 25 '11 at 01:25

Mark Bessey · Answer 60 · 2009-04-23T14:09:16.423

109

// I know the line below is wrong, but it came that way from our IP vendor, and 
// the driver won't work if you "fix" it. I've had to revert this change 4 times
// now. Leave it alone, or I will hunt you down and hurt you
if (r = 0) {
    /* bunch of code here */
}
else
{
   /* even more code here */
}

edited Apr 23 '09 at 14:09

answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:45

Mark Bessey

19,598
4
47
69

3

I just love this, it makes my heart smile that someone just couldn't stand leaving the line as it was. Classic. – Mia Clarke Apr 15 '09 at 04:27
5

Wouldn't it be better to replace it with just r = 0; – thomasrutter Apr 22 '09 at 12:09
The line isn't wrong, it's pretty obvious that it just assigns 0 to r, then evaluates r (to 0), then implicitly casts it to a bool (which is false), and thus skips the block inside the "if" :) ... Seriously though, this is priceless! – Daniel Daranas Apr 23 '09 at 07:07
I edited this to make it a little more clear that in the original, there was actually code in the block. – Mark Bessey Apr 23 '09 at 14:10
But... why is there code in the first block? What kind of sic perversion of the C++/C language could cause that to ever execute? – May 05 '09 at 18:10
20

unless r is an object that overloads the = operator, and they grossly misused operator overloading. – May 05 '09 at 18:17
8

No C++ operator overload trickery here. The code in the "else" block handled the case of r==0 just fine. Presumably the intent of the original author was to do some special processing in the r==0 state. Since the code in the "if (r=0)" block never got executed, they eventually fixed it in the other block, leaving that useless code up at the top. Now, the guys who kept "fixing" it didn't have any reason to be modifying that code, and they certainly never tested the code after they changed it. Keeping the code exactly as we got it from the vendor made it easier to integrate future versions. – Mark Bessey May 08 '09 at 05:26
14

That was clear, but (r =/*=*/ 0) is shorter. – joeytwiddle Jun 10 '09 at 04:45
1

If the code in the if-part is broken and not used anyway, I would just remove it and all the confusion around it. – Albert Sep 17 '10 at 14:12

score 108 · Answer 61 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 20:19

108

From the 2004 Windows leak,

__inline BOOL
SearchOneDirectory(
                  IN  LPSTR Directory,
                  IN  LPSTR FileToFind,
                  IN  LPSTR SourceFullName,
                  IN  LPSTR SourceFilePart,
                  OUT PBOOL FoundInTree
                  )
{
    //
    // This was way too slow. Just say we didn't find the file.
    //
    *FoundInTree = FALSE;
    return(TRUE);
}

answered Apr 19 '09 at 20:19

ealf

76
1
2
3

10

Hahaha this was hilarious (I hope it is true) – Shervin Asgari Apr 20 '10 at 08:04
@Shervin: It's true. You can find the [complete file](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22get+space+for+6k+records.+Grow+if+need+to.%22) by another comment (just so no reposts pop up in the results). – Dan Abramov Jul 31 '11 at 22:29

score 107 · Answer 62 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 14:03

107

// this comment included for the benefit of anyone grepping for swearwords: shit.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 14:03

3

This made me laugh so much!! :) – Christian May 04 '11 at 09:25
That comment violates the 80 character limit. Curse you, sir! – Jason May 07 '11 at 04:40
"The language that ALL programmers understand: profanity" – inspectorG4dget Jul 29 '11 at 18:19

score 105 · Answer 63 · edited Jul 15 '11 at 11:57

105

I saw this comment on someone's code:

// This comment is self explanatory.

I guess he meant to say 'variable' but the mistake made one funny comment... Think of the circular logic here, and the futility of writing it.

edited Jul 15 '11 at 11:57

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Dec 30 '08 at 13:08

Yuval

7,987
12
40
54

This comment is self explanatory... Why should I have to worry to explain it – Raghav Jul 31 '11 at 20:06

score 105 · Answer 64 · edited Jul 15 '11 at 08:20

105

} catch (PartInitException pie) {
    // Mmm... pie

edited Jul 15 '11 at 08:20

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Mar 12 '09 at 13:43

24

sounds like homer coding – Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware- Apr 06 '09 at 12:46
5

nope. It's weebl or bob. – Nailer Apr 20 '09 at 15:11
1

I love how people got used to this exception abbreviation, and then got tu `catch (SecurityException sEx)`. – Michael Sep 17 '10 at 08:44
1

Henceforth my exception variables will have funny names – Dennis G Jul 21 '11 at 22:14

score 104 · Answer 65 · answered Dec 19 '08 at 17:22

104

Not quite a comment but a goto label

ICantBelieveImUsingAGoto:

answered Dec 19 '08 at 17:22

Brian Rudolph

6,142
2
23
19

66

Look out for the raptors. – Ikke Dec 04 '09 at 14:54
6

http://xkcd.com/292/ – amra Mar 10 '11 at 10:03

score 104 · Answer 66 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:35

104

try {

}
catch (SQLException ex) {
    // Basically, without saying too much, you're screwed. Royally and totally.
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    //If you thought you were screwed before, boy have I news for you!!!
}

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:35

Rad

8,336
4
46
45

4

ROTFL :) I LOVE THIS! +1 – Jacob Relkin Jan 21 '10 at 00:25
This one is simply perfect! Much love. :DDDD Been known to put stuff like this in myself, like "// Okay, this method screws up the lookup table as it sorts out invalidated entries", and then a few methods later "// Remember that invalidated entries purger? Well, here's the invalidator... may god have mercy on Your soul" ;-D (not cut'n'paste, but strongly similar) – Egon_Freeman Sep 24 '10 at 03:39
Amazing, and so true most of the time. – Jess Nov 19 '10 at 23:11
Would vote up, but it's already 42 :) – thejh Nov 30 '10 at 17:10

score 103 · Answer 67 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:31

103

class Act //That's me!!!
{

}

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:31

Rad

8,336
4
46
45

4

+1, Out of all the ones I've read so far, this one made me laugh out loud – Michael G Apr 09 '09 at 21:30

score 102 · Answer 68 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:13

102

Next to a local variable that had to be declared just to pass a constant to a library function:

// This only exists because Scott doesn't know how to use const correctly

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:13

Tim Farley

11,720
4
29
30

5

God. I'd love to sprinkle comments like that THROUGHOUT our codebase, only "Scott" is my boss. – moswald Oct 09 '08 at 03:30
2

Crap, I am Scott! (joking a different Scott but I still like it) – smaclell Dec 24 '08 at 06:15
13

Who found my old projects? – Scott Jun 16 '09 at 19:31
Actually i have written that for myself a couple of times. – Fábio Antunes Oct 12 '09 at 20:46
7

const int Nancy = 1; const int lyComplainingAboutMyCode = -Nancy; – Scott Dec 20 '10 at 19:11

score 102 · Answer 69 · edited Mar 05 '09 at 18:35

102

virgin = 0;     /* you're not a virgin anymore, sweety */

edited Mar 05 '09 at 18:35

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13,822
6
44
64

answered Oct 09 '08 at 14:40

kjensen

39
1
1
4

8

Haha no comments?! People felt shy I guess. – Ravindra S May 09 '11 at 10:16

score 100 · Answer 70 · answered Apr 28 '09 at 05:58

100

public boolean isDirty() {
    //Why do you always go out and
    return dirty;
}

answered Apr 28 '09 at 05:58

Lyudmil

1,163
2
13
21

score 97 · Answer 71 · edited Jul 15 '11 at 11:57

97

 * ...and don't just declare it volatile and think you've solved
 * the problem. You young punks think you know what volatile
 * means... why in my day we had to cast it volatile uphill
 * both ways, and the code still didn't work! Whippersnappers...

edited Jul 15 '11 at 11:57

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 09 '08 at 22:51

DGentry

16,111
8
50
66

2

Just plain awesome seriously. – Anton Jul 09 '09 at 20:50

Simon Howard · Answer 72 · 2008-10-09T22:13:39.083

94

The original Doom had an engine with static walls that could not move; the result was that all doors opened vertically; nothing could ever move horizontally. I burst out laughing when, after the source code was released, I was looking through the code and saw this in the source file for handling doors, at the start of a big block of commented-out code:

// UNUSED
// Separate into p_slidoor.c?

#if 0           // ABANDONED TO THE MISTS OF TIME!!!
//
// EV_SlidingDoor : slide a door horizontally
// (animate midtexture, then set noblocking line)
//

edited Oct 09 '08 at 22:13

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:47

Simon Howard

8,999
5
28
21

3

I always wondered why that was! – Zachary Yates Oct 09 '08 at 21:15
13

Basically, the 2D geometry of the level is precompiled into a tree structure that allows efficient sorting of walls during rendering. But, because it's precompiled, you can't change it at runtime. Hexen, which was based on Doom, had a hack for moving walls (doors etc), but it was very limited. – Simon Howard Oct 10 '08 at 10:53
2

That is some serious obscura. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:42
Well, this explains everything ;) – Nick Bolton Apr 02 '09 at 21:29

score 94 · Answer 73 · answered Nov 25 '08 at 01:39

94

Taken from the Quake III source, I stumbled across this in some random slashdot posting. Full source of the file can be found here. It's a particularly fast method of calculating an inverse square root. As for the best comment? It's a common one to be sure, but given that it's attached to the line that does the magic is what makes it great.

float Q_rsqrt( float number )
{
  long i;
  float x2, y;
  const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

  x2 = number * 0.5F;
  y  = number;
  i  = * ( long * ) &y;  // evil floating point bit level hacking
  i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?
  y  = * ( float * ) &i;
  y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration
  // y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

  #ifndef Q3_VM
  #ifdef __linux__
    assert( !isnan(y) ); // bk010122 - FPE?
  #endif
  #endif
  return y;
}

answered Nov 25 '08 at 01:39

bikesandcode

1,033
9
16

I believe that was written by Carmack himeself – prestomation Mar 06 '09 at 13:37
12

The algorithm has a bit of a history: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/. I personally like to think the comment is from Mr. Carmack himself. – bikesandcode Mar 08 '09 at 04:29
WTF is bk010122 - FPE??? – Lucas Gabriel Sánchez Mar 10 '09 at 15:19
1

FPE = Floating Point Exception; BK is probably Bernd Kreimeier an id software employee. http://projects.codersbase.com/repos/ioquake3/ChangeLog – Jasper Bekkers Mar 27 '09 at 00:23
1

I'm pretty sure that's my all-time favorite bit of cryptic code. – ojrac Apr 06 '09 at 18:27
9

http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf – Apr 20 '09 at 09:24

score 92 · Answer 74 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:04

def format_ticket_content(text, recursive = true)
  if text.is_a?(TicketNote)
    note = text
    text = note.content
  else
    note = nil
  end

  ## Safety pig has arrived!
  text = h(text)
  ##                               _
  ##  _._ _..._ .-',     _.._(`))
  ## '-. `     '  /-._.-'    ',/
  ##    )         \            '.
  ##   / _    _    |             \
  ##  |  a    a    /              |
  ##  \   .-.                     ;  
  ##   '-('' ).-'       ,'       ;
  ##      '-;           |      .'
  ##         \           \    /
  ##         | 7  .__  _.-\   \
  ##         | |  |  ``/  /`  /
  ##        /,_|  |   /,_/   /
  ##           /,_/      '`-'
  ##

Awesome...I like how the pig's entrance gets announced... – karlgrz Apr 23 '09 at 22:49 — karlgrz, Apr 23 '09 at 22:49

score 91 · Answer 75 · answered Mar 06 '09 at 14:10

// John! If you'll svn remove this once more,
// I'll shut you, for God's sake!
// That piece of code is not “something strange”!
// That is THE AUTH VALIDATION.

And what do you think? The code below was safely ‘svn removed’.

score 78 · Answer 76 · answered Mar 16 '09 at 00:24

78

this has turned up in my own code a few times. obviously I touched it more than once:

// TODO: Fix this.  Fix what?

answered Mar 16 '09 at 00:24

Neil N

24,862
16
85
145

That could be one of my comments! – Bobby Jul 28 '11 at 21:39

score 76 · Answer 77 · answered Feb 03 '09 at 20:36

76

//MailBody builders for two outgoing messages
StringBuilder hanz = new StringBuilder();
StringBuilder franz = new StringBuilder();

I still chuckle a little when I read that one...

answered Feb 03 '09 at 20:36

Pete H.

1,427
1
12
16

Thank you for this. Freakin' hilarious. – C Bauer Dec 17 '09 at 02:54

score 74 · Answer 78 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:19

74

Repeat
    ...
Until (JesusChristsReturn) ' Not sure

answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:19

Larry

17,605
9
77
106

hehehe We're on easter, so, wait soon – Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware- Apr 06 '09 at 12:35

score 74 · Answer 79 · answered Oct 13 '08 at 07:29

on leaving my last job I embedded some ascii art into the source...


                                      ,_-=(!7(7/zs_.             
                                   .='  ' .`/,/!(=)Zm.           
                     .._,,._..  ,-`- `,\ ` -` -`\\7//WW.         
                ,v=~/.-,-\- -!|V-s.)iT-|s|\-.'   `///mK%.        
              v!`i!-.e]-g`bT/i(/[=.Z/m)K(YNYi..   /-]i44M.       
            v`/,`|v]-DvLcfZ/eV/iDLN\D/ZK@%8W[Z..   `/d!Z8m       
           //,c\(2(X/NYNY8]ZZ/bZd\()/\7WY%WKKW)   -'|(][%4.      
         ,\\i\c(e)WX@WKKZKDKWMZ8(b5/ZK8]Z7%ffVM,   -.Y!bNMi      
         /-iit5N)KWG%%8%%%%W8%ZWM(8YZvD)XN(@.  [   \]!/GXW[      
        / ))G8\NMN%W%%%%%%%%%%8KK@WZKYK*ZG5KMi,-   vi[NZGM[      
       i\!(44Y8K%8%%%**~YZYZ@%%%%%4KWZ/PKN)ZDZ7   c=//WZK%!      
      ,\v\YtMZW8W%%f`,`.t/bNZZK%%W%%ZXb*K(K5DZ   -c\\/KM48       
      -|c5PbM4DDW%f  v./c\[tMY8W%PMW%D@KW)Gbf   -/(=ZZKM8[       
      2(N8YXWK85@K   -'c|K4/KKK%@  V%@@WD8e~  .//ct)8ZK%8`       
      =)b%]Nd)@KM[  !'\cG!iWYK%%|   !M@KZf    -c\))ZDKW%`        
      YYKWZGNM4/Pb  '-VscP4]b@W%     'Mf`   -L\///KM(%W!         
      !KKW4ZK/W7)Z. '/cttbY)DKW%     -`  .',\v)K(5KW%%f          
      'W)KWKZZg)Z2/,!/L(-DYYb54%  ,,`, -\-/v(((KK5WW%f           
       \M4NDDKZZ(e!/\7vNTtZd)8\Mi!\-,-/i-v((tKNGN%W%%            
       'M8M88(Zd))///((|D\tDY\\KK-`/-i(=)KtNNN@W%%%@%[           
        !8%@KW5KKN4///s(\Pd!ROBY8/=2(/4ZdzKD%K%%%M8@%%           
         '%%%W%dGNtPK(c\/2\[Z(ttNYZ2NZW8W8K%%%%YKM%M%%.          
           *%%W%GW5@/%!e]_tZdY()v)ZXMZW%W%%%*5Y]K%ZK%8[          
            '*%%%%8%8WK\)[/ZmZ/Zi]!/M%%%%@f\ \Y/NNMK%%!          
              'VM%%%%W%WN5Z/Gt5/b)((cV@f`  - |cZbMKW%%|          
                 'V*M%%%WZ/ZG\t5((+)L\'-,,/  -)X(NWW%%           
                      `~`MZ/DZGNZG5(((\,    ,t\\Z)KW%@           
                         'M8K%8GN8\5(5///]i!v\K)85W%%f           
                           YWWKKKKWZ8G54X/GGMeK@WM8%@            
                            !M8%8%48WG@KWYbW%WWW%%%@             
                              VM%WKWK%8K%%8WWWW%%%@`             
                                ~*%%%%%%W%%%%%%%@~               
                                   ~*MM%%%%%%@f`                 
                                       '''''

its an Escherian knot...like all good ASCII art it works best when you are tired and your vision has gone a little blurry! — Mauro, Oct 28 '08 at 19:04
Have you considered putting it into the easter egg question? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/140376/what-easter-eggs-have-you-placed-in-code. Very nice. — smaclell, Dec 24 '08 at 06:19
And by 'embedded', you mean 'injected'. And by 'source', you really mean 'boot sector'. Right? — Jens Roland, Jan 27 '09 at 00:23
LMAO Jens, nope...I wish I could call myself a programmer that was able to work with boot sectors and Assembly - in reality all I am is a c# developer with a better than average grasp of xHMTL and CSS. — Mauro, Feb 04 '09 at 12:50
I wonder what a perl interpreter outputs if I fed this to it? — mike3996, Aug 03 '10 at 21:30

score 72 · Answer 80 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 19:12

72

/*
after hours of consulting the tome of google
i have discovered that by the will of unknown forces
without the below line, IE7 believes that 6px = 12px
*/
font-size: 0px;

answered Apr 22 '09 at 19:12

Samutz

2,310
4
24
29

14

Is it sad that I read that and went, "oh, he's dealing with a line-height bug?" and realized I've written many similar comments myself... – ajm May 21 '09 at 15:37
1

not sad for you, when it comes to IE everyone here sure have a bad experience , IE6 should really be named the worst software ever written – mohdajami Dec 20 '09 at 10:08
2

the worst software ever written is always done by Microsoft, that's just a fact. – Alvar Jun 03 '11 at 22:43

score 71 · Answer 81 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:33

71

Don't recall where I've seen these:

long time; /* know C */

and (in code to create some sort of UNIX daemon):

/* Be a real daemon: fork myself and kill my parent */

answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:33

Lance Richardson

4,610
23
30

score 70 · Answer 82 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:24

At the top of a header file:

/* Project : XYZ (Please somebody shoot me!)
 *
 * File : $Id: defs.h,v 1.1 $
 *
 * Purpose : Create havoc rather than peace among many nations
 *
 * History : Back-ported changes that were not in CVS.  Please somebody,
 *  shoot us and put us all out of our misery.
 */

The "XYZ project" (name changed) was a seven-year ordeal. That last comment was written by the one stalwart soul who was involved from the very beginning through to the end.

To paraphrase Adrian Monk, he's praying for the sweet release that only death can bring. — MrBoJangles, Oct 11 '08 at 18:39

score 67 · Answer 83 · edited Aug 02 '10 at 13:44

67

// Catching exceptions is for communists

From Mike Duncan's page on SQLite.

edited Aug 02 '10 at 13:44

Alex Ciminian

11,398
15
60
94

answered Oct 09 '08 at 17:57

itsmatt

31,265
10
100
164

Exceptions are for communists. Good code doesn't use exceptions. Good code is thus exceptional code. – Jan 26 '11 at 15:58

Zifre · Answer 84 · 2009-05-13T22:57:08.150

67

In drivers/net/sunhme.c (Linux kernel):

/* Welcome to Sun Microsystems, can I take your order please? */
if(!hp->happy_flags & HFLAG_FENABLE)
        return happy_meal_bb_write(hp, tregs, reg, value);

/* Would you like fries with that? */
hme_write32(hp, &tregs->frame,
            (FRAME_WRITE | (hp->paddr << 23) |
             ((reg & 0xff) << 18) | (value & 0xffff)));
while(!(hme_read32(hp, &tregs->frame) & 0x10000) && --tries)
        udelay(20);

/* Anything else? */
if(!tries)
        printk(KERN_ERR "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed\n");

/* Fifty-two cents is your change, have a nice day. */

edited May 13 '09 at 22:57

answered Mar 29 '09 at 13:53

Zifre

26,504
11
85
105

2

There is hme and bme. Named Happy Meal Ethernet and Big Mac Ethernet respectively. Kinda funny! – X-Istence Apr 19 '09 at 04:30
8

Found it! http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.32.y.git;a=blob;f=drivers/net/sunhme.c;h=37d721bbdb3532abf4a8919dca1b085e79226145;hb=HEAD#l495 – Cyclone Jan 08 '10 at 22:27

score 66 · Answer 85 · edited Sep 14 '10 at 23:13

66

//
//3.4  JeK  My manager promised me a lap dance if I can fix this release
//3.5  JeK  Still waiting for that dance from my manager
//3.6  JeK  My manager got changed, the new manager is hairy, dont want the dance anymore
//3.7  Jek  Got that dance, yuck!
//

edited Sep 14 '10 at 23:13

Timwi

65,159
33
165
230

answered Apr 24 '09 at 19:29

Fixing annoying bugs is like getting an unwanted lap dance. – invert Aug 26 '10 at 09:36

score 63 · Answer 86 · answered Oct 18 '08 at 15:28

63

    /* Mark: If there's one thing you learn from this code, it is this...
   Never, ever fly Air France.  Their customer service is absolutely
   the worst.  I've never heard the words "That's not my problem" as 
   many times as I have from their staff -- It should, without doubt
   be their corporate motto if it isn't already.  Don't bother giving 
   them business because you're just a pain in their side and they
   will be sure to let you know the first time you speak to them.

   If you ever want to make me happy just tell me that you, too, will
   never fly Air France again either (in spite of their excellent
   cuisine). 

   Update by oej: The merger with KLM has transferred this
   behaviour to KLM as well. 
   Don't bother giving them business either...

   Only if you want to travel randomly without luggage, you
   might pick either of them.
   */

answered Oct 18 '08 at 15:28

Russell Bryant

1,731
1
10
8

Classic Mark Spencer. Always trying to educate :D – Collin Klopfenstein Aug 13 '09 at 19:02
9

guts, please, give credit where it's needed: http://svnview.digium.com/svn/asterisk/trunk/utils/astman.c – elcuco Oct 29 '09 at 21:45
Tell me that this was found in the codebase for their Air France's airline scheduling system. That would've been pure poetry. – BenAlabaster Dec 16 '09 at 15:43
3

Lol. Used to fly Air France weekly for about 6 months. They lost my luggage 16 times in that six month... – Andreas Mar 31 '10 at 16:18

score 58 · Answer 87 · answered Oct 16 '08 at 21:45

58

A comment I added to a PHP CMS I was working on a while back.

if (/*you*/ $_GET['action']) { //celebrate

answered Oct 16 '08 at 21:45

TJ L

23,914
7
59
77

Martin Lazar · Answer 88 · 2009-04-06T09:53:45.957

58

Once I saw in another discussion something like this:

// I can't divide with zero, so I have to divide with something very similar
result = number / 0.00000000000001;

Clever solution, isn't it :) ? (It's a joke if someone's not sure)

edited Apr 06 '09 at 09:53

answered Mar 26 '09 at 22:32

Martin Lazar

1,330
16
24

Not really...that would cause a overflow or something, no? – mpen Mar 31 '09 at 06:46
26

This code scares me on several levels. – Neil Aitken Apr 03 '09 at 13:27
Hey, I wrote divides by 0 on purpose before. You really don't want to know why. – Joshua Apr 20 '09 at 02:20
6

Well, this code might be funny to you, but it wasn't funny when my colleagues discovered it in an ASP.NET monster with 500.000+ lines of code. Very messy code. You know, it was written by a "senior developer" to avoid that annoying divide by zero error. Today it's over 900.000+ lines of code, and even though we've cleaned up large chunks of it, some of it still lies in wait like wolves. Interminably waiting.. and THEN... – dr Hannibal Lecter May 14 '09 at 20:37
OMG - looks like the "senior" was overripe ;) – Martin Lazar May 18 '09 at 11:48
1

@Erik: primitive try/catch in C where a divide by zero called a library hook and jumped back to the message loop. – Joshua Nov 27 '09 at 05:41
Just wait, you'll start having senior moments. – JeffO Feb 05 '10 at 15:07
Ha ha ha. (Almost out of votes for today.) – Moshe Jan 02 '11 at 17:58
haha... that's the best here so far imo – iforce2d Sep 21 '11 at 08:49

score 56 · Answer 89 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:10

56

A classic case of why you shouldn't off shore your software development:

public class Contact
{
    //...    

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets or sets the name of the first.
    /// </summary>
    /// <value>The name of the first.</value>
    public string FirstName
    {
        get { return _firstName; }
        set { _firstName = value; }
    }
}

answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:10

Martin Brown

24,692
14
77
122

1

They are using documenter plugin for VS. Creating this comment required just a single keystroke. – Rinat Abdullin Oct 09 '08 at 13:13
2

@Rinat - pretty sure Martin was commenting on the coder's apparent lack of understanding of what exactly a "first name" is. – Michael Petrotta Oct 09 '08 at 18:20
13

This was created using GhostDoc. This would be the default comment created by the addin. – Craig Wilson Oct 10 '08 at 01:10
11

I hadn't considered that the developer may have used a comment generator. Why would anyone use such a thing? Surely it would be impossible for a tool to generate any more information than can be determined from the property declaration, so why bother? – Martin Brown Oct 10 '08 at 15:58
21

So that your boss/client who wants every stupid getter and setter documented is happy – Luka Marinko Oct 11 '08 at 20:37
1

You see, the offshore worker that took your job is not always to blame =) – schonarth Oct 21 '08 at 12:32
They didn't take my job, I took theirs. It is a long story that involves lawyers and far more serious problems than this one. I was called in to clean up the mess. This is still their fault by the way. They were asked to improve their commenting and chose to use a tool that just made it worse. – Martin Brown Oct 23 '08 at 16:44
6

offshoring - we hired Russian developers once to write a reporting engine... when contract renegotiating time came up, we realised *all* the comments were in Russian. Shame I don't have the code to show :( – gbjbaanb Mar 29 '09 at 14:33
8

@Craig Wilson: So there is a tool that generates useless comments? That's horrible. – JoshJordan Mar 31 '09 at 07:05
Well from the same country that pays people to fill in captchcas on-demand, what do you expect? – AaronLS Apr 03 '09 at 13:58
Maybe it's really the Full Name of the First born Child of a Contact? Who knows, maybe it's for China or Egypt, I heard they need data like that every now and then. – Michael Stum Apr 24 '09 at 15:15
@Michael Stum: it was fairly clear from the context, not shown in the post, that it was the first part of person's actual name. – Martin Brown Apr 24 '09 at 15:26
4

I don't know if this was generated by a tool, but it sure was written by one. – Assaf Stone Aug 15 '10 at 07:34
1

the quality of off-shore software development depends on moneys you can pay for it. so if you have no moneys to hire the best ones like Luxoft or Epam - ...its only your shame, not the whole offshore software industry. – javagirl Jul 27 '11 at 08:35

score 56 · Answer 90 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:13

56

in a homework assignment in college for a teacher who was particularly adamant that we comment our code:

//I wonder if she actually reads these.

When the assignment was returned, in red pen next to that comment "Yes, I do"

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:13

shsteimer

28,436
30
79
95

25

the teacher is more funnier than the student :) – mohdajami Dec 20 '09 at 10:03
Yeah, some students asked that same question of me, too. I answered the same, IIRC... – Chip Uni Dec 30 '09 at 04:06

score 55 · Answer 91 · answered Dec 01 '08 at 17:18

55

Great one from leaked Windows 2000 source code :

!!!!!!!IF YOU CHANGE TABS TO SPACES, YOU WILL BE KILLED!!!!!!! *
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DOING SO FUCKS THE BUILD PROCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

answered Dec 01 '08 at 17:18

dr. evil

26,944
33
131
201

3

That's an odd comment to find in the Win2k source, because the NT group always had a no-tabs-in-source policy. – mjfgates Oct 08 '10 at 22:44
@mjfgates: The sources leaked are not completely original. Some files may have been tampered with at a later point. If I could just find the reference right now. – Felix Dombek Aug 23 '11 at 19:45

score 55 · Answer 92 · answered Jan 10 '09 at 20:46

55

// If you're reading this, that means you have been put in charge of my previous project.
// I am so, so sorry for you. God speed.

answered Jan 10 '09 at 20:46

Evan Fosmark

98,895
36
105
117

I've left some of these behind myself. – Twipped Sep 17 '10 at 16:36

score 54 · Answer 93 · answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:56

54

// The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  Remember to change
// this to 3.0 if you move to a site in Indiana.

#define Pi                                      3.1415927

answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:56

chaos

122,029
33
303
309

21

I'm more impressed with the mind-boggling amount of space in that #define. I almost thought Pi was defined to nothing. – Branan Feb 02 '09 at 23:10
Contextual thing. It was in a file with a lot of macros, and the expansions are aligned. – chaos Feb 03 '09 at 16:44
4

This one is ironically funny too. It ridicules Indiana about rounding pi to 1 digit when the very code given does the same thing to only a few more decimal places. – JohnFx Feb 13 '09 at 01:04
4

Cute, but in fact it specifies it to the precision limit of the floats available in its language context (which probably isn't what you think it is). If you see a point in exceeding that, let me know... – chaos Feb 13 '09 at 14:55
18

I wasn't familiar with the reference, so I wikipediad it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill – thomasrutter Apr 23 '09 at 02:41
3

As a Hoosier, I have to point out it was never law. It does establish that legislators, like tiny children, need constant supervision, however. – Dec 17 '09 at 19:00
Please #define PI at least to full double floating-point precision! – e.tadeu Feb 09 '10 at 19:26

score 53 · Answer 94 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:53

53

// human madable inconvenient. Way too sucks.

I still don't fully understand what it means, but I have found it to be very true about a lot of code.

edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:53

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:43

Mike Two

44,935
9
80
96

6

The funniest comments are the ones that add ambiguity. – MrBoJangles Oct 11 '08 at 18:52
That's awesome, I'm going to use that myself. – johnc Mar 27 '09 at 04:18
Either it's from the Jargon file and I don't recall it, or you have offshore resources whose Englishes are way too sucks. – tsilb Apr 25 '09 at 22:32
I'm going to use this in my code now. – Carson Myers Sep 17 '09 at 05:01
@tslib: you're on the right track with the offshore bit but it was someone working in the states who wasn't a native English speaker. – Mike Two Sep 17 '09 at 12:38

score 53 · Answer 95 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 20:45

53

// error codes
#define ERROR_SUCESS 0
#define ERROR_SUCCESS_IS_MISSPELLED 1

No other error codes defined.

answered Apr 15 '09 at 20:45

munificent

11,946
2
38
55

Looks like it's a note for autocomplete. When you type ERROR_SUCCES it autocompletes to ERROR_SUCCESS_IS_MISSPELLED which gives you an idea. Nice helper for the situation when you can't fix the existing name(dependant code you can't edit?). – stroncium May 18 '11 at 08:07
2

working in Japan, I get this almost dairy – iforce2d Sep 21 '11 at 08:54

score 53 · Answer 96 · edited Jul 19 '11 at 15:27

53

I always liked what Paul DiLascia wrote in his file headers:

// If this code works, it was written by Paul DiLascia. If not, I don't know
// who wrote it

edited Jul 19 '11 at 15:27

eykanal

26,437
19
82
113

answered Apr 19 '09 at 20:31

vobject

5,290
3
29
21

score 53 · Answer 97 · answered Apr 24 '09 at 19:47

53

From a battery monitor module in an embedded system:

// batmon.c drives the rastamobile

answered Apr 24 '09 at 19:47

splicer

5,344
4
42
47

score 52 · Answer 98 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 17:25

52

From the leaked Win2K source code:

// The magnitude of this hack compares favorably with that of the national debt.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 17:25

Federico A. Ramponi · Answer 99 · 2008-10-10T02:09:44.787

51

Another classic, by Donald Knuth no less:

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

edited Oct 10 '08 at 02:09

answered Oct 10 '08 at 01:52

Federico A. Ramponi

46,145
29
109
133

7

Not actually a comment: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html – mjs Apr 20 '09 at 10:17

score 49 · Answer 100 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 14:35

49

//There can Only Be one HIGHLAN....err..Singleton
public class SomeSingleton
{
...
}

answered Oct 09 '08 at 14:35

ForCripeSake

438
1
6
11

however there can be other McLaud of Clan McLaud – Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware- Apr 06 '09 at 12:38
I'm not sure that's a traditional spelling of the name... – James McLeod Apr 10 '10 at 02:52
1

That's ok, its not the original quote either which is 'There can be only one' – Mahol25 Aug 18 '10 at 20:02

score 49 · Answer 101 · answered Oct 11 '08 at 18:12

49

// Any maintenance developer who can't quote entire Monty Python
// movies from memory has no business being a developer. 
const string LancelotsFavoriteColor = "$0204FB"

answered Oct 11 '08 at 18:12

HTTP 410

17,300
12
76
127

26

The real WTF is that he didn't use the Color class. Wait... wrong site. – Fowl Apr 19 '09 at 10:56
1

This is from How To Write Unmaintainable Code: http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmain.html – Margaret May 08 '09 at 03:19

score 49 · Answer 102 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 08:10

49

// if i ever see this again i'm going to start bringing guns to work

answered Apr 20 '09 at 08:10

efdee

2,255
3
20
26

score 49 · Answer 103 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:03

49

// I put on my robe and wizard hat...

answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:03

Alexander Temerev

2,654
3
27
34

15

// I TOLD you not to code me again! – Darth Continent Jul 12 '09 at 20:47
1

Reference: http://bash.org/?104383 – Oct 25 '11 at 03:47

score 48 · Answer 104 · edited Apr 23 '09 at 02:34

48

// The following strings are meant to be funny.  Do not edit these strings
// unless you are funny, too.  If you don't know if you're funny, you're
// not funny.  If fewer than 2 people unrelated to you have told you that 
// you're funny, you're not funny.

edited Apr 23 '09 at 02:34

thomasrutter

114,488
30
148
167

answered Oct 09 '08 at 23:12

billjamesdev

14,554
6
53
76

score 47 · Answer 105 · edited May 20 '11 at 16:46

On the linux 1.0 kernel scheduler (sched.c):

Dijkstra probably hates me.

/*
 *  'schedule()' is the scheduler function. It's a very simple and nice
 * scheduler: it's not perfect, but certainly works for most things.
 * The one thing you might take a look at is the signal-handler code here.
 *
 *   NOTE!!  Task 0 is the 'idle' task, which gets called when no other
 * tasks can run. It can not be killed, and it cannot sleep. The 'state'
 * information in task[0] is never used.
 *
 * The "confuse_gcc" goto is used only to get better assembly code..
 * Dijkstra probably hates me.
 */
asmlinkage void schedule(void)

(...)

"Memory management is a bitch" :) – new123456 Oct 28 '10 at 23:16 — new123456, Oct 28 '10 at 23:16

score 46 · Answer 106 · edited Apr 11 '09 at 17:53

46

using namespace std;            // So sue me

edited Apr 11 '09 at 17:53

Juliano

39,173
13
67
73

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:40

3

Sometimes I would like to! – Rich Oct 09 '08 at 01:44
Wasn't this by Scott Meyers? – sbi Aug 06 '09 at 10:41

Razor · Answer 107 · 2011-06-17T13:08:35.977

46

//Abandon all hope ye who enter beyond this point

edited Jun 17 '11 at 13:08

answered Oct 09 '08 at 12:12

Razor

17,271
25
91
138

8

:^) sounds like Dante's Inferno III 9: "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate". – Federico A. Ramponi Oct 10 '08 at 02:15
7

It's what the author was trying for but didn't quite remember. It's usually rendered into English as "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." – Robert Rossney Oct 18 '08 at 08:57
1

I like to watch the code beyond that point! – Lucas Gabriel Sánchez Mar 10 '09 at 15:22

score 46 · Answer 108 · answered Oct 11 '08 at 17:51

46

// This procedure is really good for your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

For those of you who are, for some peculiar reason, unaware of the DPC, it's the part of your brain that lights-up when you're deeply engaged in learning something new.

answered Oct 11 '08 at 17:51

HTTP 410

17,300
12
76
127

sure, it was written by a med stud :) – Mike Sep 20 '10 at 14:05

score 46 · Answer 109 · edited Jun 21 '11 at 09:28

46

//uncomment the following line if the program manager changes her mind again this week

edited Jun 21 '11 at 09:28

John Oxley

14,698
18
53
78

answered Apr 23 '09 at 16:30

DJ.

1,005
2
15
24

score 46 · Answer 110 · edited Apr 28 '09 at 18:18

46

//I'm sorry, but our princess is in another castle.

edited Apr 28 '09 at 18:18

Ian Boyd

246,734
253
869
1,219

answered Apr 24 '09 at 15:09

score 44 · Answer 111 · edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:47

44

//ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

...it made my boss think someone had hacked in. He didn't know the joke.

edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:47

jjnguy

136,852
53
295
323

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:09

Diodeus - James MacFarlane

112,730
33
157
176

21

you showed your boss some random comment in some source code? – Klathzazt Nov 18 '08 at 14:40

score 44 · Answer 112 · edited Apr 28 '09 at 09:31

Top of sqlite source files:

/*

** The author disclaims copyright to this source code.  In place of             
** a legal notice, here is a blessing:                                          
**                                                                              
**    May you do good and not evil.                                             
**    May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.                 
**    May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

*/

score 44 · Answer 113 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 05:49

44

/**
 * If you don't understand this code, you should be flipping burgers instead.
 */

answered Apr 15 '09 at 05:49

Ciryon

2,637
3
31
33

score 42 · Answer 114 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 16:37

I posted this "license statement" in a WordPress template I released. I thought it was funny, anyhow.

/* The License:
You (from this point on referred to as The You) are hereby 
granted by me (from this point on referred to as The Me) 
license to knock yourself silly with this template. 
By using this template The You implicitly accepts this 
license and pledges solemnly to never claim creative 
ownership of any graphics, code, concepts, eggs, bacon, ideas, 
colors, shapes, hypertext-transfer protocols or other conduits 
of the visual splendor thatis this template. 

The Me, in turn, pledges equally solemnly to be far too 
lazy to ever check up on you, so if you do manage to pull 
some chicks The Me won't have a cow. 
However The Me would be sorely disappointed if The You 
were to try and sell or distribute this work without 
acknowledging The Me. Seriously. The Me will come down on 
The You like a large quantitiy of hard and heavy objects 
that in large quantities may be harmful and possibly even 
lethal to The You; So don't even think about it, The Buster.
*/

I wish all licenses were as understandable as this one. Trying to read the GPL2 and LGPL2 you want to shoot yourself. — balupton, Sep 18 '10 at 01:34
Reminds me of the WTF Public License: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ — rescdsk, Aug 25 '11 at 19:29

score 41 · Answer 115 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:59

41

Simple but effective comment, before a less than safe hack in some C++ code

// yikes

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:59

Scott Dillman

821
1
9
16

2

SCNR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tsYstSet7g – vobject Aug 29 '10 at 21:04

score 41 · Answer 116 · edited Nov 07 '09 at 11:32

41

About 10 years ago I was working at image processing, scanning microscope video frames to detect cell movement. I was working at a particulary intricated function and decided to go out and have a drink with friends. When I came back home I worked a little bit but not too much because I was drunk. The morning after I found a 10-line completely messed-up function with the following comment (obviously written by my other self):

/* Ah ah ah! You'll never understand why this one works. */

The strangest part was that it even worked.

edited Nov 07 '09 at 11:32

True Soft

8,675
6
54
83

answered Apr 06 '09 at 10:31

fog

3,266
1
25
31

20

It seems you achieved the Ballmer Peak: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ballmer_peak.png – Jeff Barger Apr 19 '09 at 13:36

score 40 · Answer 117 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:21

40

I have used this one on more than one occasion, when I've done some kind of non-obvious simplification to a mathematical formula that I don't feel like documenting:

//this formula is right, work out the math yourself if you don't believe me

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:21

Kip

107,154
87
232
265

10

That's fine, but how about adding some tests to prove it. I had precisely that situ last night: found maths code (written by me) that I didn't believe could work - but the unit tests proved it did. – endian Oct 09 '08 at 12:18
4

This is good if you are right, extremely bad if you happen to have made a mistake. Better to have tests back it up. – TM. Oct 10 '08 at 02:42
2

Formally speaking, tests don't "prove" a formula, they only show it works on specific cases. But I'd include them anyway - a few useful cases would give more confidence, *and* detect failures if somebody "optimizes" it. – chesterbr Aug 30 '10 at 11:35

score 40 · Answer 118 · edited Jul 18 '11 at 07:41

40

//You are not expected to understand this

classic.

edited Jul 18 '11 at 07:41

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:49

Andreas Petersson

16,248
11
59
91

3

//You are not meant to understand why. – mdec Oct 12 '08 at 07:47

score 40 · Answer 119 · edited Jan 27 '09 at 03:01

From one of our projects.
Somewhere at the end of one source file.

/*@                                    /\  /\
 * @                                  /  \/  \                        ----- |   | ----      |---\ |    | /--\  --- |   |  ---- /--\ /--\
 *  @                                /        --                        |   |   | |         |   / |    | |      |  |\  |  |    |    |
 *   \---\                          /           \                       |   |---| ----      |--/  |    |  \     |  | \ |  ----  \    \
 *    |   \------------------------/       /-\    \                     |   |   | |         |  \  |    |   -\   |  |  \|  |      -\   -\
 *    |                                    \-/     \                    |   |   | ----      |---/  \--/  \--/  --- |   \  ---- \--/ \--/
 *     \                                             ------O
 *      \                                                 /                 --- |   | ----  /--\        |--\   /--\   /--\
 *       |    |                    |    |                /                   |  |\  | |    |    |       |   | |    | |
 *       |    |                    |    |-----    -------                    |  | \ | ---- |    |       |   | |    | | /-\
 *       |    |\                  /|    |     \  WWWWWW/                     |  |  \| |    |    |       |   | |    | |    |
 *       |    | \                / |    |      \-------                     --- |   \ |     \--/        |--/   \--/   \--/
 *       |    |  \--------------/  |    |
 *      /     |                   /     |
 *      \      \                  \      \
 *       \-----/                   \-----/
 */

score 39 · Answer 120 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 22:58

39

.class {border:1px solid gold;} /* I pitty the fool */

answered Feb 02 '09 at 22:58

Jeremy Ricketts

2,601
4
29
28

4

Only 1 pixel of gold? – SLaks Apr 11 '11 at 13:23
@SLaks only 1 pixel of *solid* gold. – Sep 02 '11 at 19:27

score 39 · Answer 121 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 11:43

39

In a GIGANTIC 800 line 'switch' statement, somewhere in the middle:

// Joe is sorry

A few hundred lines later...

// Harry is sorry too

answered Apr 23 '09 at 11:43

rawpower

1,850
16
18

score 38 · Answer 122 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 12:15

38

// Caveat implementor

answered Feb 02 '09 at 12:15

aldrinleal

3,559
26
33

sbeskur · Answer 123 · 2008-10-12T15:53:52.643

This is actual code I once had to support. After struggling to comprehend the logic in AstaSaysGooGoo and AstaSaysGaaGaa (where many more astaTempVars were declared and used ) I was ready to give up. I finally looked up and saw the "@author" comment and the whole thing began to makes sense.

/*

* @author Andrew Asta
*/
public class AstaClass{

    private String astaVar1;    
    private String astaVar2;    
    private String astaVar3;    
    private String astaVar4;    
    private String astaVar5;    
    private String astaVar6;    
    private String astaVar7;    
    private String astaVar8;    
    private String astaVar9;    
    private String astaVar10;   

    public void AstaSaysGetData(){
        //JDBC statement to populate astavars 1 through 10
        //...
        String astaSqlStatment = "Select astaCol1, astaCol2, astaCol3... From AstaTable Where...";
        //..
        //...
    }

    //Perform data manipulation on astavars...
    public void AstaSaysGaaGaa(){
          [removed for sake of brevity]
    }


    //Perform more data manipulation on astavars...
    public void AstaSaysGooGoO(){
        [removed for sake of brevity]
    }

    public void AstaSaysPersist(){      
        //JDBC statement to save astavars to DB 
        String astaSqlStatment = "Update AstaTable set astaCol1 = @astaVar1
                                                  , set astaCol2 = @astaVar2
                                                  , set astaCol3 = astaCol3... 
                                                  Where...";
    }
}

PS I changed the actual authors real name so as to avoid me getting in any disputes etc...

public class paulaBean { private String paula = "Brillant"; public String getPaula() { return paula; } } — Ikke, Apr 06 '09 at 12:03
Holy crap, I laughed for 10 minutes. This Asta guy is a genius. — asveikau, Nov 11 '09 at 04:35

Paul Lalonde · Answer 124 · 2009-05-13T11:10:00.833

37

From the source code of the UNIX flavor of the Netscape web browser, circa 1997:

/* HP-UX sucks wet farts from dead pigeons' asses */

Such pearls were unfortunately removed before Moz went open-source ...

edited May 13 '09 at 11:10

answered Oct 13 '08 at 14:58

Paul Lalonde

5,020
2
32
35

6

Having worked with HP-UX, I bow to the wisdom in the above C comment. – Brian Clapper Apr 06 '09 at 16:43
1

Based on what JWZ writes elsewhere, and the history of the Unix version, I believe this quote! – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 14 '10 at 13:34
all hail the company! :) – Tilo Nov 19 '11 at 03:06

score 37 · Answer 125 · answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:23

37

//Mr. Compiler, please do not read this.

answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:23

3

Should be Mrs. (http://ifaq.wap.org/computers/compilersarefemale.html). – Toon Krijthe Jun 02 '11 at 20:55

score 36 · Answer 126 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 05:19

36

'NO COMMENT

answered Oct 09 '08 at 05:19

Matias Nino

4,265
13
46
63

score 36 · Answer 127 · edited Sep 30 '10 at 15:18

36

long time; /* just seems that way */

edited Sep 30 '10 at 15:18

Bobby

11,419
5
44
69

answered Apr 23 '09 at 01:39

Paul

59
3
8

should have been `volatile long time;` – fastcodejava Dec 23 '10 at 04:34

score 35 · Answer 128 · answered Oct 25 '08 at 13:45

35

aComment = 'this is not aComment' # this is aComment
class T(object):
    def f(this):
        this is not aComment

answered Oct 25 '08 at 13:45

7

+1 because I'm a Crocodile Dundee fan :) – BenAlabaster Dec 30 '08 at 16:10
d'oh! Thanks for the reference. NOW I get it. :D – BobC Apr 03 '09 at 13:42

score 35 · Answer 129 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 16:24

This comment was in a unit containing interfaces which were used to bind communication between the main application and various 3rd party drivers.

//**************************************
// Dear code maintainer:
//
// This source contains COM interfaces, not to be confused with interfaces 
// of any other sort, please do not just willy-nilly add additional methods 
// to these interfaces as they are truely immutable, unlike the interfaces 
// that other software vendors like Microsoft maintain.  IF you need to add 
// new functionality, then go thru the trouble of creating a NEW interface 
// and implement this functionality on only the objects you need.  
//
// While the money is good for fixing all of the problems caused by not 
// following the rules, I would rather work on things which actually have
// an impact on the future of the product rather than curse and yell 
// obsenities at the screen because someone didn't bother to understand the
// true meaning of IMMUTABLE.  
//**************************************

@overtone: Generally, objects are said to be *immutable* if they cannot be changed in-place. For example, strings are immutable in Java: If you want to change any character, you have to copy the whole string in the process. You cannot change an existing string. In this example, immutable simply means that the interfaces are fixed can may in no case be changed. — Felix Dombek, Aug 23 '11 at 23:29

score 34 · Answer 130 · edited Apr 06 '09 at 10:07

34

-- Comment this later

That was line 2 of a 4000+ line PL/SQL procedure. And the only comment. 4 years after that procedure was developed, later still hadn't come...

edited Apr 06 '09 at 10:07

Blorgbeard

101,031
48
228
272

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:42

Milner

638
7
19

Four years is nothing - code live for centuries! – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 19 '10 at 19:15

score 34 · Answer 131 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 07:30

34

There was some old javascript code, quite well written tho. Then was a comment line

// and there is where the dragon lives

followed by a function 4 people spent a day to understand what it's doing. Finally we realised it's not even used and does nothing.

answered Oct 12 '08 at 07:30

kender

85,663
26
103
145

7

Don't mess with it lest the dragon be angry! You don't want the dragon to be angry... – schonarth Oct 21 '08 at 12:37

score 34 · Answer 132 · answered Apr 09 '09 at 22:19

I once came up with what I thought was an elegant solution to a particularly sticky problem, in retrospect it was a bit of a mind-bender and made some heavy use of macro programmimg. Years later I found this comment from a maintenance programmer

/*
    Description: The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the
                 whole Universe  on the principle of extrapolated matter
                 analyses.

                 To  explain  -  since every piece of matter in the Universe
                 is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in
                 the  Universe,  it  is  in  theory possible to extrapolate
                 the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their
                 orbits, their composition and their economic and social
                 history from, say, one small Macro.

                 The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so
                 basically in order to annoy the IT department.

                 Steve Weet - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a
                 thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as some would have
                 it, a slacker.

                 And they would nag him incessantly about the utterly
                 inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space,
                 or mulling over the mechanics of Chelsea FC, or doing
                 spectrographic analyses of macros.

                 "Have  some  sense  of  proportion!"  they would say,
                 sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

                 And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show
                 them.

                 And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as
                 extrapolated  from one  macro, and into the other
                 end he plugged the IT department: so that when he turned it
                 on they saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation 
                 and theirselves in relation to it.

                 To  Steve Weet's horror, the shock completely annihilated '
                 their brains; but to his satisfaction he realized that he
                 had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a
                 Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford
                 to have is a sense of proportion.

*/

Oh, so *that's* where Doug Adams got the idea for his books. — Windows programmer, Apr 09 '09 at 23:05
lol. The most horrible form of psychic torture ever devised. — nonpolynomial237, Apr 23 '09 at 04:11

score 33 · Answer 133 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:02

33

catch (Ex as Exception)
{
     // oh crap, we should do something.
}

Nothing like an empty catch block to make one feel that the code is robust....

answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:02

JB King

11,860
4
38
49

This one happens to me a lot haha! + – Jakub Arnold Mar 28 '09 at 15:32
6

Nothing like mixing VB and C# in the same block of code ;) – Juliet Oct 14 '09 at 20:30

score 33 · Answer 134 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 23:33

To protect the guilty the values have been changed

This one was left behind by a contractor who had been working on a chunk of code responsible for testing email logins. We were in disbelief so we tried it out and it was a valid login to his personal account; we double-checked the revision history and he had two check-ins that edited it: one to add the code, and the second to comment it out.

We added the artwork and left the rest alone; another dev decided it would be fun to send him emails from his future self (ala The Office) and said it took nearly two full weeks of daily emails before the login stopped working.

'    ROFL:ROFL:LOL:ROFL:ROFL
'        ______/|\____
'  L    /          [] \
' LOL===_      ROFL    \_
'  L     \_______________]
'            I      I
'        /---------------/

'TODO: REMOVE MY INFO AND REPLACE WITH USER CREDENTIALS
'Private TEST_LoginName As String = "DurgshA@Exmaple.org"
'Private TEST_Password As String = "Humsal892"
'Private TEST_Server As String = "imap.secureserver.net"

My favorite part isn't that he did it, or that he accidently left it in place for a check-in--but that when he came back across it he just commented it out rather than deleting it. We never would have looked at the original revision if we never knew it was there :-D

For those who are not familiar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUzZ92t4vs&feature=related — NickAldwin, Jun 30 '11 at 19:21

score 32 · Answer 135 · answered Oct 15 '08 at 06:54

32

I see this one a lot:

// TODO make this work

answered Oct 15 '08 at 06:54

blindauer

374
3
5

Hey that's my comment! -Harold – Harold Ekstrom Nov 29 '09 at 05:32
I've also done: "TODO: That thing I claimed to be doing in the comments" – Atiaxi Sep 28 '10 at 11:36

score 31 · Answer 136 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 08:35

31

Stating the obvious?

/** Logger */
private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger();

answered Apr 23 '09 at 08:35

Iain

10,433
16
56
62

Looks almost like my code, though I tend to make my loggers static and final, too. :) – Bombe Jun 05 '09 at 08:25
5

If I don't do that the checkstyle plugin will SCREAM!!! – yihtserns Sep 22 '10 at 06:59

score 31 · Answer 137 · answered Apr 27 '09 at 10:23

31


$you = live("free") or die("hard");

answered Apr 27 '09 at 10:23

1

Just when I read this, they said it in the song I was listening at the moment. Coincidence. (Wish I Had an Angel - Nightwish.) – Jan 26 '11 at 16:04

score 30 · Answer 138 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 16:36

30

When writing some Perl years ago, I added these comments at the top and bottom:

# <magic type="voodoo">

...

# </magic>

The next guy to look at it wasn't so hot at Perl, and spent a while searching documentation for what 'magic' and 'voodoo' did. Since then, I've tried to add more helpful comments...

answered Oct 09 '08 at 16:36

What are the other supported magic types? – Harry Lime Dec 01 '08 at 17:09
4

Even more funny because the guy actually thought it was real. – Jeff Keslinke Dec 18 '08 at 21:31
You did write a helpful comment... It helps you find out who the awful programmers are on your team :P – rfunduk Apr 15 '09 at 20:35
3

@harry.lime , , , and many more. They are documented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Magic_and_Illusion – thomasrutter Apr 23 '09 at 02:45
2

Don't forget . That's the kind I usually encounter in code. – Sean Jun 16 '09 at 15:06

score 30 · Answer 139 · answered Feb 05 '09 at 11:56

30

From a google code project:

# This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers.

answered Feb 05 '09 at 11:56

xan

7,440
8
43
65

score 29 · Answer 140 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:08

29

when :orientation
## Avoid matching gay people with straight people - they hate it, they do, they really do.
query_parameter = "(users.orientation = 'Bi' OR (users.orientation = 'Straight' AND users.gender IN ('#{user.opposite_genders.join('\',\'')}')) OR (users.orientation = 'Gay' AND users.gender IN ('#{user.same_genders.join('\',\'')}')))"

From a dating website...

answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:08

2

Do you do a similar match on your ads? And on the tips for "how to make women look at your profile"? I'm just saying because I know one site which is really bad at this. – TRiG Nov 25 '09 at 18:26

score 28 · Answer 141 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 17:05

Q: "What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?"

A: Easy - the one that helped me solve whatever problem I was having at the time, and there are lots of those!

Second best are those that help guide new development from avoiding known pitfalls.

Chris Morley · Answer 142 · 2009-04-21T02:43:37.833

//The following 1056 lines of code in this next method 
//is a line by line port from VB.NET to C#.
//I ported this code but did not write the original code.
//It remains to me a mystery as to what
//the business logic is trying to accomplish here other than to serve as
//some sort of a compensation shell game invented by a den of thieves.
//Oh well, everyone wants this stuff to work the same as before.
//I guess the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

score 28 · Answer 143 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 22:04

//        .==.        .==.          
//       //`^\\      //^`\\         
//      // ^ ^\(\__/)/^ ^^\\        
//     //^ ^^ ^/6  6\ ^^ ^ \\       
//    //^ ^^ ^/( .. )\^ ^ ^ \\      
//   // ^^ ^/\| v""v |/\^ ^ ^\\     
//  // ^^/\/ /  `~~`  \ \/\^ ^\\    
//  -----------------------------
/// HERE BE DRAGONS

I don't have access to the original file because I don't work there anymore, but it was something very similar to this picture. It was at the top of a file that always caused troubles, that we had to fix but not allowed to take the time to really fix. (University politics)

score 27 · Answer 144 · answered Dec 05 '08 at 19:26

//Visual Studio Bug Workaround:
//http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=101677

//To fix 'CJumpToHelper::GetInstance()' : undeclared identifier compiler errors, change the number lines below
//until the file compiles correctly. (This needs to be done anytime a change is made to this file)

    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines
    //////////////////////////////////////: There should be 1-10 of these lines

score 26 · Answer 145 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:16

26

/// <summary>
/// The possible outcomes of an update operation (save or delete)
/// </summary>
public enum UpdateResult
{

    /// <summary>
    /// Updated successfully
    /// </summary>
    Success = 0,

    /// <summary>
    /// Updated successfully
    /// </summary>
    Failed = 1
}

answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:16

Martin Brown

24,692
14
77
122

What? No FileNotFound? (http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_.aspx) – P Daddy Dec 04 '08 at 16:28
1

Love the copy/paste job! – Pat Hermens Jan 27 '09 at 04:21
6

Everybody's a winner! – Programmin Tool Apr 20 '09 at 15:00
8

Everybody's a loser, but the comments say everybody's a winner! – thomasrutter Apr 23 '09 at 02:46

score 26 · Answer 146 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 19:30

26

//  If you delete the credits, I will fucking kill you.

found in a joomla module.

answered Mar 05 '09 at 19:30

score 25 · Answer 147 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 20:48

25

//Woulda
if(x) {}
//Shoulda
else if(y) {}
//Coulda
else {}

answered Feb 02 '09 at 20:48

unclerojelio

435
6
12

3

//didn't
catch (Exception e) {} – Michael K Nov 12 '10 at 15:49

score 24 · Answer 148 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 20:52

24

don't know if it it's funny or sad..but one intern I had working with me had this little gem to calculate the price per unit

...

// get the units from the form 
int numUnits = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("num_pieces")); // this break at random times

//price 
float price = Float.parseFloat(request.getParameter("price")); // same as above

// Under certain conditions the following code blows up. I don't know those conditions.
float pricePerUnit = price / (float)numUnits;

...

answered Mar 05 '09 at 20:52

user16208

305
1
5
13

5

This would make a good "what is wrong with this code" interview question, actually. – Cory R. King Mar 29 '09 at 14:43
1

It's funny because the flaws are obvious – mpen Mar 31 '09 at 06:45
6

Hm, so the coder didn't notice the DivideByZeroException which would be exclaimed in a stack trace by whatever IDE he/she would ever use. – Nailer Apr 20 '09 at 14:42
5

Yea he didn't make it through the summer. He kept bugging me about stuff, I'd ask him what errors he was getting in the logs and he was like "huh? my code compiles just fine." He would always ask me the same questions over and over again. This was the last time we offered an internship for the person who scored the highest grade in the class that my company sponsored. This was also a guy who was less than a year from his degree. – user16208 Apr 20 '09 at 18:54

score 23 · Answer 149 · answered Oct 19 '08 at 20:44

23

//If you're reading this, then my program is probably a success

answered Oct 19 '08 at 20:44

Brian R. Bondy

339,232
124
596
636

score 23 · Answer 150 · edited Jul 18 '11 at 12:31

23

An old boss of mine was always going on about how we had to use our own products internally i.e. "Eat our own dog food..."

Many years later I found embedded in some source that a temporary coworker had done, every function he touched is tagged with:

/* NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION */

edited Jul 18 '11 at 12:31

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 21 '09 at 09:30

Craig McGuff

3,968
6
30
35

score 22 · Answer 151 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 05:06

22

Classic ASP:

'Is it worth it, let me work it'
'I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it'
'Ti esrever dna ti pilf, nwod gniht ym tup I'

NextIP = StrReverse(UserRecordset.Fields.Item(0))

answered Oct 09 '08 at 05:06

Mark Glorie

3,733
3
28
31

I hope they used StrReverse to create that comment. – wonderchook Nov 08 '08 at 21:51
14

That's not right; the comma should be on the character before nwod, not the character after pilf. – tsilb Apr 25 '09 at 22:38
1

So your database contains a bunch of reversed IPs? – Juliet Oct 14 '09 at 20:17

score 22 · Answer 152 · edited Sep 16 '10 at 22:24

22

//open lid


//take sh!t


//close lid

Comments for a File open, data dump, file close...

edited Sep 16 '10 at 22:24

halfdan

33,545
8
78
87

answered Oct 09 '08 at 16:27

Collin Estes

5,577
7
51
71

1

// flush - close file / connection / dispose – tsilb Nov 20 '09 at 04:01

score 22 · Answer 153 · edited May 28 '11 at 15:56

22

Production source code:

// Remove this if you wanna be fired

edited May 28 '11 at 15:56

H.B.

166,899
29
327
400

answered Oct 15 '08 at 09:48

Joshi Spawnbrood

525
6
13

simon · Answer 154 · 2009-04-10T03:31:31.340

Ages ago I ran into this one:

/***************************************************************************/
/*  deep wizardry. do not touch.                                           */
/*                                                                         */
/*  no seriously.  XXXXXX I'm looking at you. If you screw with this again */
/*  I will kill you with my swingline stapler.                             */
/*                                                                         */
/* ...                                                                     */

And then went on to describe a particularly hairy algorithm.

score 22 · Answer 155 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 05:40

22

// (c) 2000 Applied Magic, Inc.
// Unauthorized use punishable by torture, mutilation, and vivisection.

Ah, I always loved that one...

answered Apr 15 '09 at 05:40

digijock

97
2
4

score 22 · Answer 156 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 12:24

22

public GetRandomNumber()
{
    // Chosen by a fairly rolen dice
    return 12;
}

answered Apr 22 '09 at 12:24

that's in the same arena as Cisco's usage of the phrase "unlimited" (or any cellphone carrier's for that matter). When I was doing my CCNA Academy work the practice exams gave you unlimited attempts; which meant 5 – STW Apr 22 '09 at 23:39
I'm pretty sure rolen isn't a word... – justin.m.chase Apr 23 '09 at 02:24
I am pretty sure you can't role a 12 on a dice either :) – Paul Whelan Apr 23 '09 at 12:44
Past tense of role is rolled. – Dead account Apr 23 '09 at 15:26
1

Paul: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Non-cubical_dice – Erik Forbes Apr 24 '09 at 00:16
1

@Paul: You obviously never played D&D... (and it's "die" in the singular) – muusbolla Jul 10 '09 at 18:12
5

if it's "die" in singular, then "dice" must be plural--and you can get 12 from rolling "dice" (two sixes, amirite?) – Carson Myers Jul 28 '09 at 20:17
I have a 36 sided die. So it could be one. – Sphvn Feb 08 '11 at 12:27
The past tense of roll is rolled. Role is a noun. It doesn't do tenses. – nmichaels Jul 22 '11 at 19:14

score 21 · Answer 157 · edited Jul 19 '11 at 06:42

Best one so far:

"This code makes baby Jesus very sad!".

It was refering an String iniciatilization like this:

String blankSpaces="&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "+ //100 whitespaces
                   "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "+ //200 Whitespaces
                   ...
                   "                                        " //100 whitespaces

Well you get the idea.

score 21 · Answer 158 · edited Apr 11 '09 at 18:21

21

$this->getSelect()->where ('main_table.product_id = -1'); // Mom, Dad... sorry

edited Apr 11 '09 at 18:21

jjnguy

136,852
53
295
323

answered Mar 09 '09 at 16:26

ohnoes · Answer 159 · 2009-04-23T07:42:23.497

21

Some time ago I came across:

raise InvalidChild() # e.g. no legs

~~This is grotesque since "inwalida" in polish, means person with disability.~~ silly me :)

edited Apr 23 '09 at 07:42

answered Apr 22 '09 at 11:18

ohnoes

5,542
6
34
32

"Invalid" can also mean a person with a disability in English, according to teh wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalid – Andrew Grimm Apr 23 '09 at 01:17
haha, nice, didn't know that :) – ohnoes Apr 23 '09 at 07:42
2

Invalid: in-VAL-id: not valid. Invalid: IN-va-lid: disabled, bedridden, sick. – TRiG Nov 25 '09 at 18:42

score 20 · Answer 160 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 05:14

20

i tell a mentee to do at least SOME exception handling. This is what i get in return around every db call....

Catch (Exception e) {
    //eat it
}

edited Oct 12 '08 at 05:14

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 11 '08 at 01:42

Dano

677
2
17
30

HAHAHHAHAHA. He showed you I guess. – Steven Evers Mar 06 '09 at 22:39
oh if only it had said beat it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_It – thomasrutter Apr 23 '09 at 03:32

score 20 · Answer 161 · edited Apr 06 '09 at 11:34

20

Honest to God:

// This is crap code but it's 3 a.m. and I need to get this working.

edited Apr 06 '09 at 11:34

guerda

23,388
27
97
146

answered Dec 30 '08 at 13:18

Perry Neal

765
4
7

I write more formal versions of that all the time :) Nice! – Dan Rosenstark Jan 10 '09 at 20:44

score 19 · Answer 162 · edited Oct 22 '09 at 20:53

19

In a well known commercial DOS spreadsheet application:

/* This comment was just added in order to check-in a file that was last 
checked in by [Insert Programmer FirstName] "Back-to-the-Future" [Insert 
Programmer LastName]. While testing for year 2000 problems, he accidentally 
checked-in this file while his machine clock was set forward to the year 2000. 
This meant that the source code was always newer than the object file and 
compiled every time the code was built. I'm checking this file in again to 
fix that. */

edited Oct 22 '09 at 20:53

Ian Gregory

5,770
1
29
42

answered Oct 12 '08 at 12:18

stuartcw

127
2
11

2

Interesting. What sort of stupid version control system would trust the clients' clocks? – nobody Apr 20 '09 at 03:37
28

And the winner is... VSS! – Kenneth Cochran Apr 20 '09 at 13:45
VSS, because clients' clocks are *supposed* to be synchronized by the domain controllers anyway... – configurator Apr 29 '09 at 16:52

score 19 · Answer 163 · answered Dec 08 '08 at 21:07

Back when I worked for Reuters there was a comment in one of our feed handlers that made some people think the Almighty was helping us out...

// Jesus told me to skip to the end of the message here

We found out later that there was a Latin-American contact named Jesus (HeyZus).

score 19 · Answer 164 · answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:55

19

The favorite comment I ever wrote:

//the XML returned from this request is *mind-bogglingly* bad. Terrifyingly bad.
//a completed batch looks like this:
//<Batch>batchid=363777811 status=Done dateandtime=09/18/2007 09:53:10 PDT activateditems=335 numberofwarnings=0 itemsnotacivated=17 </Batch>
//and an incomplete batch like:
//<Batch>batchid=363778361 status=In Progress </Batch>
//so we'll just parse each item as a regex. Thanks Amazon.

And yes, Amazon actually returns XML like this.

answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:55

llimllib

3,642
1
29
29

I refuse to acknowledge that as XML. It is clearly a space-delimited list. – Branan Feb 02 '09 at 23:09
4

It's even worse than that; it's not space-delimited. Note that both the date and status fields may have spaces in their values, defeating any possible easy parsing strategy. – llimllib Feb 05 '09 at 03:57
3

I would like to see the comments on Amazon's code... – flq Mar 07 '09 at 17:36
4

it's not a glitch! Read the docs if you dare: http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/ann.jspa?annID=18 – llimllib Apr 19 '09 at 21:03
@llimllib "The specified announcement [18] was not found." – dantuch Apr 07 '11 at 06:18
@dantuch I made the comment 2 years ago! I don't care enough to go find the docs, sorry :) – llimllib Apr 07 '11 at 19:09

score 19 · Answer 165 · answered Jan 27 '09 at 02:44

19

//  Hey, your shoe's untied!

Followed by some dubious code, and within that code,

//  Keep looking!  I think it was the other shoe!

Finally,

//  How strange -- I must be seeing things.  Anyhow, I'm going to go take a shower, now...

answered Jan 27 '09 at 02:44

GBegen

6,107
3
31
52

score 19 · Answer 166 · edited Jan 28 '11 at 09:04

19

My favorite is from the late, great Paul DiLascia:

// Author: If this code works, it was written by Paul DiLascia. If not then I don't know who wrote it.

edited Jan 28 '11 at 09:04

Josef Van Zyl

915
3
19
43

answered Apr 23 '09 at 02:33

9

Dupe: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-comment-in-source-code-you-have-ever-encountered/766044#766044 – Helen Jun 06 '09 at 11:33

score 18 · Answer 167 · edited Apr 06 '11 at 19:39

18

// Houston, we have a problem

edited Apr 06 '11 at 19:39

B. Decoster

7,723
1
32
52

answered Oct 14 '08 at 04:34

Matt

21
3

score 18 · Answer 168 · answered Oct 20 '08 at 09:54

18

All bugs added by David S. Miller

answered Oct 20 '08 at 09:54

1

I wonder if anyone who reads this will write a spambot script to email davem@redhat.com – inspectorG4dget Aug 05 '11 at 17:39

score 18 · Answer 169 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 14:41

18

In a game where this object can be stepped on, or:

stepOff(); //bitch

answered Mar 05 '09 at 14:41

Ed Marty

39,590
19
103
156

score 18 · Answer 170 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:24

18

/*And now, getting all of that to look half decent in the retarded step brother of the browser family, Internet Fucking Explorer */

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:24

score 18 · Answer 171 · edited Jul 19 '11 at 09:06

18

// This should fix something that should never happen

edited Jul 19 '11 at 09:06

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 21 '09 at 03:23

score 18 · Answer 172 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 00:26

# There is a bug in the next line.  $searchParameters != {} will always return true, because {} is creating
# a new hash reference on the fly, and the inequality operater is comparing the memory location of it
# to the memory location of $searchParameters, and they will always be different. 
# This means that the following code will always get executed as long as $nodes is defined.
# I'm leaving it there because it has always been there, and although I'm sure it was originally meant to
# mean %$searchParameters (essentially "is this hash not empty"), I'm afraid to change it.
if ( $nodes && $searchParameters != {} )
{

score 18 · Answer 173 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 06:55

18

// some sport psychology
if (!focused)
    Focus();

answered Apr 23 '09 at 06:55

Mark Heath

48,273
29
137
194

score 17 · Answer 174 · answered Apr 09 '09 at 22:54

17

// This is a walkaround for bug #7812

Written by one of our Chinese programmers, for whom English was not his first language.

I really liked this one. I happen to think "walkaround" is almost a better term than "workaround."

answered Apr 09 '09 at 22:54

mseery

1,404
2
16
26

8

// This is a reacharound for bug #7812 – joedevon Sep 23 '10 at 09:18

score 17 · Answer 175 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 03:23

17

// For the sins I am about to commit, may James Gosling forgive me

answered Apr 20 '09 at 03:23

score 17 · Answer 176 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:23

A modification log I noticed in a legacy code

05/17/99 D JONES COMMENT OUT THE BLOODY AUZIES CODE (02/19/99)

05/17/99 K ROBINSON BLOODY TEXAN CAN'T SPELL AUSSIE CORRECTLY (NO CODE CHANGE - JUST A COMMENT)

score 17 · Answer 177 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 04:03

17

Using semi-colons in VB.NET

TextBox2.Visible = True';
For Each row In data.Tables(0).Rows
    If row("Customers.Id").ToString <> customerId Then
        customerId = row("Customers.ID").ToString';
        name = "Customer Name: " & row("Name").ToString & CrLf';
        address = "Address: " & row("Address").ToString & CrLf & CrLf';
        TextBox2.Text += name & address ';s
    End If';
Next';

answered Apr 23 '09 at 04:03

Brad Tutterow

7,487
3
33
33

Ahh, this is how all VB code should be done! – Aaron Murgatroyd Aug 21 '11 at 00:37

score 17 · Answer 178 · edited Jul 19 '11 at 14:58

17

Back in the early eighties, I came across this in assembler (quoting from dim memory):

I don't understand how the following bit works, but it worked in the program I stole it from.

edited Jul 19 '11 at 14:58

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 17:39

interstar · Answer 179 · 2008-10-11T22:41:16.083

16

A German comment in some source-code, translated by machine or very tired human + Google

; Rechnen ja ; have faith in yes

I guess the original meant "assume true here" ... but ever since I've taken it as a mantra for my life.

edited Oct 11 '08 at 22:41

answered Oct 11 '08 at 22:24

interstar

26,048
36
112
180

1

The original means: "Calculate yes". Hard to say what he tried to say without the context. Probably "Yes, calculate" from a conditional calculation. – Stefan Steinegger Apr 24 '09 at 11:27

score 16 · Answer 180 · answered Dec 11 '08 at 20:02

16

A few from the Linux kernel:

/* Sun, you just can't beat me, you just can't.  Stop trying,
* give up.  I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit
* out of you, game over, lights out.
*/

-

/* 2,191 lines of complete and utter shit coming up... */

-

#if 0 /* XXX No fucking way dude... */

answered Dec 11 '08 at 20:02

Is the first one in relation to bme and hme? – X-Istence Apr 19 '09 at 04:32

score 16 · Answer 181 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 13:21

From Apache Xalan source code:

/**
 * As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
 * transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard,
 * as it were armour plated, back, and if he lifted his head a little he
 * could see his big, brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments, on
 * top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about
 * to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin
 * compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
 * "What has happened to me?", he thought. It was no dream....
 */
protected static String DEFAULT_TRANSLET_NAME = "GregorSamsa";

Linux Comments

There are heaps of good ones here ...

These are all comments in linux

http://lwn.net/1998/1015/a/f-word.html

My Favourites:

./arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c
/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */

./drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h
/* Am I fucking pedantic or what? */

score 11 · Answer 220 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 21:52

Not code comments, but SVN commit comments on the same file:

First commit (following of dozens of others after results coming back from testers):

Squashed some IPR mod bugs. The were big and juicy ones, too.

2nd commit:

Squashed some more mod bugs. Those are some nasty bugs, them mod bugs...

3rd:

Squashed some more mod bugs. They are like cockroaches: they'll live through a nuclear war.

4th:

Squashed some more John bugs. They too are like cockroaches: they appear anywhere John goes. Wait. That doesn't sound right.

And 5th:

Same John bug. It didn't die, just played 'possum.

Yes, I was tired of "Fixed bug".

score 11 · Answer 221 · answered Feb 06 '09 at 23:27

I like some of the comments in the GNU binutils. This one is from BFD som.c:

/* You'll never believe all this is necessary to handle relocations
   for function calls.  Having to compute and pack the argument
   relocation bits is the real nightmare.

   If you're interested in how this works, just forget it.  You really
   do not want to know about this braindamage.  */

This one too:

/* Don't ask about these magic sequences.  I took them straight
   from gas-1.36 which took them from the a.out man page.  */

...

/* Keep track of exactly where we are within a particular
   space.  This is necessary as the braindamaged HPUX
   loader will create holes between subspaces *and*
   subspace alignments are *NOT* preserved.  What a crock.  */

Another one:

/* We will NOT put a fucking timestamp in the header here. Every
   time you put it back, I will come in and take it out again. ... */

From gas:

/* Yes this is ugly (storing the broken_word pointer
   in the symbol slot).  Still, this whole chunk of
   code is ugly, and I don't feel like doing anything
   about it.  Think of it as stubbornness in action.  */

score 11 · Answer 222 · answered Feb 11 '09 at 18:38

I guess it got viral, I found the following in a daemon (Linux) that prevents the OOM killer from selecting it:

/*
 * Don't OOM me, bro!
 */

This was right after a mlockall() to prevent the process from swapping, commented:

/*
 * Don't swap me, bro!
 */

TheHolyTerrah · Answer 223 · 2010-09-24T03:51:48.730

11

My favorite (which I must admit I've used many times):

// Yes...I know this is repulsive and stupid.
// But <%CompanyOwnerOrManagerToken%>, not knowing a thing about code,
// demanded I do it anyways. SO, go crap on their desk, not mine.
// K THX BYE

edited Sep 24 '10 at 03:51

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:44

TheHolyTerrah

2,859
3
43
50

score 11 · Answer 224 · answered Mar 24 '09 at 00:47

11

/* FIXME This must absolutely be removed before 4.0.7 release
 * TODO really remove this */

we have since released a 4.0.7, 4.0.8, 4.0.9 and 4.1 version...

answered Mar 24 '09 at 00:47

Jorn

20,612
18
79
126

lol - no really you got to remove it! – dotjoe Mar 26 '09 at 16:42

score 11 · Answer 225 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 07:55

11

I once worked on a project where I found this comment:

// Cabbage fart?

I have no idea what it was supposed to mean. Just glad my cube wasn't next to whoever wrote it.

answered Apr 15 '09 at 07:55

1

Apparently a fart after you eat cabbage stinks more :) – Andrei Rînea Feb 16 '10 at 21:06

score 11 · Answer 226 · edited May 17 '11 at 10:05

11

/* Here I sit, Joe broken hearted, came to do some sh*t, but only just started. */

In regards to some heavy regular expression input validation.

edited May 17 '11 at 10:05

Gabriele Petrioli

191,379
34
261
317

answered Apr 20 '09 at 00:45

score 11 · Answer 227 · answered Apr 21 '09 at 11:24

11

public function get state( /* of Palestine back */ ):Boolean

answered Apr 21 '09 at 11:24

score 11 · Answer 228 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:24

v.bpc     := v.pc;  -- Remember to jump back
v.baccu   := accu;  -- Yo dawg, heard you like runing instructions
                    -- so I took backup of your accu so you can run
                    -- instructions while you run instructions.
v.flags.i := false; -- No more interupts

score 11 · Answer 229 · edited Jul 20 '11 at 08:20

11

In the middle of a few thousand line JScript file after a completely arbitrary line...

// The world is a happy place.

edited Jul 20 '11 at 08:20

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 01:21

score 11 · Answer 230 · answered Apr 24 '09 at 10:10

11

Well, here's one I just committed:

/* Every time I re-visit this function, I feel like
 * I need to take a shower.
 *
 * Don't get too used to this function, its days are
 * numbered.
 */

Someone could start something like greatcodecomments.com and make some cash. That person, however, is not me.

answered Apr 24 '09 at 10:10

Tim Post

33,371
15
110
174

I'll be damned...that domain is taken! – Bobby Oct 01 '10 at 22:15

score 11 · Answer 231 · edited Jun 14 '10 at 12:28

11

// need a coffee to fix this.

edited Jun 14 '10 at 12:28

Josh K

28,364
20
86
132

answered Apr 24 '09 at 10:32

score 11 · Answer 232 · answered Apr 25 '09 at 09:10

11

// Singleton object. Leave $me alone.
private static $me;

answered Apr 25 '09 at 09:10

MaoTseTongue

1,516
3
24
32

score 10 · Answer 233 · edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:49

10

int Q13Factor = 8125; // 2^13 for Q13

edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:49

jjnguy

136,852
53
295
323

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:32

I'm guessing it started at 8192 (2^13), then dodgy bug-squashing techniques brought it down to 8125, and the comment stayed on, now untrue. – jpinto3912 Oct 13 '08 at 15:00

score 10 · Answer 234 · edited Jul 20 '11 at 06:50

10

THIS PROGRAM HAS CODE THAT DOES NOT MEET STANDARDS

That comment is in nearly every program we have here....

edited Jul 20 '11 at 06:50

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:11

CobolGuy

319
1
3
8

3

Like Wikipedia with the cleanup and cite sources tags... – Nicholas Knight Jan 21 '10 at 09:12

score 10 · Answer 235 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 07:41

10

Found in the JUnit API:

/**
 * ...as the moon sets over the early morning Merlin, Oregon
 * mountains, our intrepid adventurers type...
 */
public Test createTest(Class theClass, String name) {
    ...
}

answered Oct 09 '08 at 07:41

Enrico Campidoglio

56,676
12
126
154

score 10 · Answer 236 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:54

10

Seen in the source code for LucasArts' computer game 'The Eidolon' (Which was wierd and wacky in it's own right)...

// He's dead, Jim!

edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:54

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 09 '08 at 08:56

belugabob

4,302
22
22

score 10 · Answer 237 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:05

10

// TODO - Comment this function

answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:05

Richard Turner

12,506
6
36
37

6

Uh sorry. That was me. – JohnFx Feb 13 '09 at 01:04
1

And "// TODO Implement" makes for a nice method body! – Henning Sep 17 '10 at 01:00

score 10 · Answer 238 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 08:40

10

I don't remember exactly, but the idea was something like this:

Person p = new Person("John", "Doe", "male");
Collection women = new ArrayList();
women.insert(p.getTail());

It's dirty code ;)

answered Oct 10 '08 at 08:40

Christoph Schiessl

6,818
4
33
45

24

There was no comment in this answer until I added this one. – Windows programmer Oct 14 '08 at 06:30
1

LOL @ Windows programmer meta-comment – e.tadeu Feb 10 '10 at 10:03
5

As dirty as that code reads, the result is that you put a male in a collection of women. So when the next programmer uses the list of women, he gets a male and uses it as a woman. So whereas the first programmer thinks his guy is lucky, the next one ensures the guy gets the equivalent treatment of dropping the soap. – Lee Louviere Jan 27 '11 at 21:00

score 10 · Answer 239 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 15:37

10

// Whoever put this here is an idiot...this doesn't work at all !

But the code is still there...

answered Oct 10 '08 at 15:37

Dr. Bob

532
4
9

score 10 · Answer 240 · edited Apr 24 '09 at 13:17

10

'Do not optimize these next two lines. Compiler bugs lurk.

And they did. Compacting the variable into the expression on the second line resulted in jumping into the middle of the heap and trying to execute data.

edited Apr 24 '09 at 13:17

Ian Boyd

246,734
253
869
1,219

answered Oct 11 '08 at 22:08

Joshua

40,822
8
72
132

score 10 · Answer 241 · answered Oct 13 '08 at 14:53

10

From a lad that clearly had been watching Monty Python:

> // And now, for something completely
> // different:

class theLarch{

answered Oct 13 '08 at 14:53

jpinto3912

1,457
2
12
19

score 10 · Answer 242 · answered Oct 19 '08 at 07:36

10

// fix for groupid > 9 
// if groupid ever gets to 100 everything will break (again)

if (groupid < 10) {
groupid = "0" + groupid;
}

answered Oct 19 '08 at 07:36

blank

17,852
20
105
159

Very nice. It probably took longer to write that comment than to fix the damn thing! – Martin Cote Apr 26 '09 at 21:19

score 10 · Answer 243 · answered Nov 21 '08 at 19:57

10

Just added this one today:

// Hardcoded this for time sake ... will make andrew fix later :)

answered Nov 21 '08 at 19:57

AdamBT

1,936
2
30
48

score 10 · Answer 244 · answered Feb 05 '09 at 10:57

10

This comment is from an old project that i had to debug:

//Haleluya i can go home!

answered Feb 05 '09 at 10:57

Polo

1,770
4
18
29

5

i'm not surprised you had to debug the code when he couldn't even spell hallelujah properly. – Abizern Mar 09 '09 at 16:17
2

it's because there was no intellisense assistance – Louis Rhys Dec 17 '10 at 08:14

score 10 · Answer 245 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:02

I had to add this one to our old datatable-driven rules engine before I decided to replace it with a scripting language.

        /************************************************************
        *                                                           *
        *  .=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-.       *
        *   |                     ______                     |      *
        *   |                  .-"      "-.                  |      *
        *   |                 /            \                 |      *
        *   |     _          |              |          _     |      *
        *   |    ( \         |,  .-.  .-.  ,|         / )    |      *
        *   |     > "=._     | )(__/  \__)( |     _.=" <     |      *
        *   |    (_/"=._"=._ |/     /\     \| _.="_.="\_)    |      *
        *   |           "=._"(_     ^^     _)"_.="           |      *
        *   |               "=\__|IIIIII|__/="               |      *
        *   |              _.="| \IIIIII/ |"=._              |      *
        *   |    _     _.="_.="\          /"=._"=._     _    |      *
        *   |   ( \_.="_.="     `--------`     "=._"=._/ )   |      *
        *   |    > _.="                            "=._ <    |      *
        *   |   (_/                                    \_)   |      *
        *   |                                                |      *
        *   '-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-='      *
        *                                                           *
        *      LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA, VOI CH'ENTRATE               *
        *************************************************************/

For everyone who doesn't know the Divine Comedy (or italian, like me), it's `Abandon all hope, ye who enter here`. — Bobby, Oct 01 '10 at 11:59

score 10 · Answer 246 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 20:41

10

   // Some wanker in ISO got rid of ifstream(int), ofstream(int), and
   // fstream(int).  Twit.

answered Mar 05 '09 at 20:41

danio

8,548
6
47
55

score 10 · Answer 247 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 21:13

10

/**
 * Not even your mum thinks you're special if you call this method
 */    
onlyYourMumThinksYoureSpecialIfYouCallThisMethod() {...}

answered Apr 19 '09 at 21:13

score 10 · Answer 248 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:05

10

From the UNIX Version 6 Source Code, circa 1975:

/* You are not expected to understand this. */

answered Apr 19 '09 at 23:05

score 10 · Answer 249 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:17

10

// Fuck.

That, and...

// This code worked before, but my cat decided to take a trip across my keyboard...

answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:17

Jason

452
4
9

score 9 · Answer 250 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:35

9

# absolutely foul heuristic code.
# ..it's dirty, but you want it.

and:

# VERY USEFUL DEBUGGING AID, for when the above all goes pearshaped:

answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:35

Brad Achorn

190
8

score 9 · Answer 251 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:55

9

/* My lawyer told me not to reveal */

edited Oct 12 '08 at 04:55

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 09 '08 at 09:50

trshiv

2,445
21
24

score 9 · Answer 252 · edited Oct 12 '08 at 05:12

9

Not a comment but an attribute

[ThereBeDragons]

And one I have seen in an implementation of IHttpHandler

//What is this?
public bool IsReusable
{
    get{return false;}
}

edited Oct 12 '08 at 05:12

Matthew Scharley

127,823
52
194
222

answered Oct 10 '08 at 12:16

Heh, I actually did the same when toying with IHttpHandler for the very first time.. – driAn Jan 04 '09 at 16:36

score 9 · Answer 253 · answered Oct 24 '08 at 22:43

This is one from my own code, but it's still really funny, and I figure I might as well put it up because it's in public SVN.

// These were orginally up and down. When it was clear the names were
// inapplicable, they were renamed to retain the joke.
// Sorry if you were hoping for useful variable names.
quantum strange, charm;

score 9 · Answer 254 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 19:35

9

public int hashCode() {
//sucks, but what're you gonna do

/*
int hash = 7;
for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
    hash = hash * 31 * (null == array[i] ? 0 : array[i].hashCode());
return hash;
*/

return 0;
}

answered Apr 15 '09 at 19:35

Lily

316
3
10

score 9 · Answer 255 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 18:11

While debugging someone else JavaScript I've seen the following comment:

// Notice: I feel so dirty doing this, but it's the only way to make it cross browser.

But while reading one post of Scott Hanselmen I came across the following quote that goes very well with the comments I found inside the code:

Every line of code you write that you feel gross about will ultimately come back to haunt you. Therefore, avoid writing code that makes you feel dirty.

That's funny :)

score 8 · Answer 256 · edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:47

8

// TODO: Implement this function!

edited Oct 08 '08 at 20:47

jjnguy

136,852
53
295
323

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:11

antik

5,282
1
34
47

8

Hey! You've been reading my code again! – Ogre Psalm33 Oct 19 '08 at 20:44

score 8 · Answer 257 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 01:31

8

// Bad Christian, No cookie

Cookie in this context does not refer to a browser cookie

answered Oct 09 '08 at 01:31

Ted

14,465
6
28
28

score 8 · Answer 258 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 06:41

8

This is my favourite comment ever.

/// I intend to do this as shittily as possible because there are many better products that will totally blow this out of the water
/// and we don't have them so whatever

Later on in the file we have more fun like

/// sidestep a bug in WCF (that we can't send types across)
/// or, depending on how you look at, this issue is a Feature

And again later

if( where == null)//be nice

answered Oct 12 '08 at 06:41

smaclell

4,568
7
41
49

1

I'm guessing he was unfamiliar with a WCF Datacontract... – Spence Mar 07 '09 at 11:23
mmm not so much. He was also trying to send non serializable types across like iterators and System.Type. WCF was not very nice to either of those ... – smaclell Mar 08 '09 at 17:03

score 8 · Answer 259 · answered Oct 13 '08 at 07:36

8

// THE LOOP THAT DO EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

answered Oct 13 '08 at 07:36

Andreas Magnusson

7,321
3
31
36

score 8 · Answer 260 · answered Oct 20 '08 at 06:55

8

In a large investment bank that required all application outages be logged and commented I saw

Without a crash 

Or mighty bang 

The sync disk 

Did it's process hang

answered Oct 20 '08 at 06:55

Nat

14,175
5
41
64

score 8 · Answer 261 · answered Dec 17 '08 at 18:33

8

catch (Domain.ConcurrencyException)
{
    // somebody changed it between the time we loaded it and now.
    // weird, huh?
}

answered Dec 17 '08 at 18:33

George

7,864
5
29
25

score 8 · Answer 262 · answered Jan 28 '09 at 17:52

8

I just ran across this one in a really simple test C++ program for a class in college.

I was commenting a class.

In the destructor...

// Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!
// The choice is made! The Traveler has come!

answered Jan 28 '09 at 17:52

Chris Kloberdanz

4,436
4
30
31

score 8 · Answer 263 · answered Mar 16 '09 at 10:44

8

I discovered this gem when viewing the HTML source of an earlier iteration of the TVNZ website (from line 571 if you're playing along at home):

<!-- Hopfully we can do this otherwise the nav is going to be pretty plain and Hong will go postal. -->

answered Mar 16 '09 at 10:44

Simon Lieschke

13,058
6
46
60

score 8 · Answer 264 · edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:33

8

// TODO: Drive an ashen stake through the foul heart of this function.

And it was a foul function. I have nightmares about it to this day.

edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:33

Trey Jackson

73,529
11
197
229

answered Mar 26 '09 at 23:43

i_am_jorf

53,608
15
131
222

Benjol · Answer 265 · 2009-04-06T14:27:00.980

8

Well, these are mine, so WTF is me, as CodingHorror said:

//#region Code for weird cases - do you really want to know?

I once left a comment like so in some ASP:

' Commented out following code, don't delete for when [CustomerName] changes his mind

As it happens, [CustomerName] didn't change his mind, but he DID have access to the web server, and he DID find that line...

edited Apr 06 '09 at 14:27

answered Apr 06 '09 at 11:48

Benjol

63,995
54
186
268

score 8 · Answer 266 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:03

8

// This condition can't happen. Call the police or something.

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:03

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 03:45

The Disintegrator

4,147
9
35
43

score 8 · Answer 267 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:04

8

var arbitraryNumber = 10;
//I don't know why. Just move on.

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:04

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 13:06

score 8 · Answer 268 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 00:52

I found this on Google Code Search

    // Constructs a tuple with 2 elements (fucking idiot, use std::pair instead!)
    template <typename T0,typename T1>
    inline tuple <T0,T1> make_tuple (const T0& t0,
            const T1& t1) {
            tuple <T0,T1> t;
            t.get<0>() = t0;
            t.get<1>() = t1;
            return t;
    }

score 8 · Answer 269 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:58

8

// TODO: not this

Written by a colleague above a query in desperate need of optimization. In his defense, we'd all been working 70-hour weeks for a few months at that point...

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:58

cliff.meyers

17,666
5
51
66

score 8 · Answer 270 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 14:48

8

/*

 ____________________
/                    \
| Jean-Michel Bechet |
| 2002-2009          |
\___  _______________/
    |/
 (o_
 //\
 V_/_


*/

answered Apr 20 '09 at 14:48

score 8 · Answer 271 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 17:05

8

// This part is more difficult

At the top of a method.

That was about 5 lines long.

And not very difficult.

It was the only comment.

In the entire application.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 17:05

George Mauer

117,483
131
382
612

+1 more if I could - just for the style of your comments on the comment – inspectorG4dget Jul 29 '11 at 18:18

score 8 · Answer 272 · edited Apr 21 '09 at 09:44

8

/**
 * This run through all the guipublisherbuyRecord , the records those have
 * diff. is buytotal and prior to buy isRecommendedBillingClickedWarning flag
 * is set if priously RB ran and this time not.
 * 
 * --What?
 * 
 * @return
 * @throws AppException
 */

edited Apr 21 '09 at 09:44

Shalom Craimer

20,659
8
70
106

answered Apr 20 '09 at 18:46

score 8 · Answer 273 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:14

8

//Dave chapelle reports errors.
function reporterror() {
  davechapelle.trace("FUCK!");
}

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:14

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 20:08

score 8 · Answer 274 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 20:14

8

// TODO: Finish.

answered Apr 22 '09 at 20:14

ProKiner

697
7
12

score 7 · Answer 275 · edited Jul 20 '11 at 09:47

I found this when re-using a PHP class I wrote a fair amount of time ago. I still cant remember what went there and I still have found no use for it... I actually don't even remember me writing that comment; so I literally laughed out loud when I found it.

try
{               
    // Some database logic
}
catch (Exception $ex)
{
    // sure, it looks silly and I honestly cant remember what code used to go here... but i swear i will
    // find a use for this code.... eventually....
    throw $ex;
}

score 7 · Answer 276 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 09:07

Some of the very few comments in 5000+ lines of code in one file
I actually has an argument with the coder who defended his coding style...
No comment!
And there were no comments;-) (or very few)
Sadly this is production code.

offset=1;
for (i=0;i<=len;i++)
    {
    if ((i!=0)&&(i<len)) //-3
        {
        switch(mess[i])
            {
            case ETX:
            case ETB:
            case DLE:
                buf[offset]=DLE;
                offset++;
                break;
            }
        }
    buf[offset]=mess[i];
    offset++;
    }

I love the switch!

for (n=0;n<offset;n++)
{
    Sleep(TR);  //Modif A
    Sleep(T);//
    FWriteFile(hCom,buf+n,1,&dwMot,NULL);
    if (ECHO)
        FReadFile(hCom,tab,1,&dwMot,NULL);
}

and no, there are no comments explaining what "modif A" is in the header.

if (GetFileSize(hSlotFile,NULL)==3600)   //5*720

and what's 720?

720 is 30 days of hours. – eyelidlessness Oct 11 '08 at 19:47 — eyelidlessness, Oct 11 '08 at 19:47
720 is 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 5, duh. – configurator Apr 29 '09 at 17:01 — configurator, Apr 29 '09 at 17:01

score 7 · Answer 277 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 11:58

Spelunking through the Hardware Abstraction Layer while working for a certain Finnish Mobile Network Equipment Manufacturer I found 100+ occurrences of the Finnish word "puukko".

A 'puukko' is an all purpose knife that every Finn has in their toolbox or around the house. It is used for everything from pealing potatoes to performing computer repairs (my observations). I believe in this context it is the Finnish equivalent of the word 'Hack'.

My Finnish colleagues denied this and said it meant something more like 'surgical procedure/intervention'... and I almost believed them until I found the comment:

/* Perkele ISO Puukko! */ -> Fucking Big Hack!

score 7 · Answer 278 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 02:38

7

A funny typo that was strangely appropriate:

assert(0); // should never shit this point

answered Oct 10 '08 at 02:38

Parappa

7,566
3
34
38

score 7 · Answer 279 · answered Oct 11 '08 at 19:45

7

Not really a comment:

DvLog::Log("This silly log message fixes a PSCRIPT5.DLL gpf when printing to Adobe.");

Sad thing is that without the comment, PSCRIPT5.DLL really did blow up ...

answered Oct 11 '08 at 19:45

PSCRIPT5.DLL is my nemesis. I would love to see the source of that b*stard, just to attempt to grok what they were thinking. Of course, if I saw the source, I'm sure I would be even more upset than I am now. Surely, the code that generates such insane output must itself be more insane. – Troy Howard Dec 05 '08 at 20:24

score 7 · Answer 280 · answered Oct 16 '08 at 11:54

7

 // WARNING!!!
 // Very perversive code ahead!

... about a 20 lines of "very perversive" code ...

// Now you can call your grandmother back. ;)

answered Oct 16 '08 at 11:54

score 7 · Answer 281 · answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:26

7

In an LKM:

/*
* Dear Richard Stallman,
*
* This one's for you.
*
* Sincerely,
* Me
*
*/
MODULE_LICENSE( "GPL" );

answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:26

FreeMemory

8,444
7
37
49

score 7 · Answer 282 · edited Aug 17 '10 at 00:51

7

i++; //increment i

edited Aug 17 '10 at 00:51

Jonathan Sterling

18,320
12
67
79

answered Jan 10 '09 at 20:49

kal

28,545
49
129
149

dupe (no, I'm not going to go look up where it was before, trust me, it's there) – Peter Zich Sep 17 '10 at 05:49
not new, it's already there (look on page 2 or 3) – Chris Oct 05 '10 at 20:47

score 7 · Answer 283 · edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:35

7

// insert comment here

edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:35

Trey Jackson

73,529
11
197
229

answered Mar 10 '09 at 02:59

Flow

1,373
2
10
6

score 7 · Answer 284 · answered Apr 03 '09 at 13:16

7

catch (Exception ex)
{ 
    // just die already.
}

answered Apr 03 '09 at 13:16

BobC

412
1
7
20

score 7 · Answer 285 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 18:15

7

I recently saw this:

// you just lost the game

if you don't know what the game is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game) (it's very silly, but silly in a interesting in a way)

answered Apr 20 '09 at 18:15

thijs

3,445
1
27
46

score 7 · Answer 286 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 10:13

7

// *** drunk -- fix later ***

direct link

More fun with google code search...

answered Apr 22 '09 at 10:13

slf

22,595
11
77
101

Awww, that search doesn't return anything anymore ( at least, it didn't for me ). – Sean Hagen Jul 21 '11 at 22:21

score 7 · Answer 287 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 11:43

7

I've seen this code in a function FULL of Explicit weird casts:

// Since today's CPUs are really fast, this is dedicated to those who said:
// " You can't use Moore's Law as an excuse to write bad software. "

The code was horrendous :)

answered Apr 22 '09 at 11:43

Martin Marconcini

26,875
19
106
144

score 7 · Answer 288 · answered Apr 24 '09 at 09:49

7

Recompiling FreeTextBox3 for the first time in our application because we need IE8 support... And look what I've found:

// IE7 update. this is still bad code, but IE8 is probably a long way off :)

answered Apr 24 '09 at 09:49

bretik

717
7
15

score 7 · Answer 289 · answered Apr 27 '09 at 16:24

# dont question, i just felt like throwing some globals in
# this is actually quite pointless as youll soon see

later in the code

#draw the circles (complicated)...dont question

even later...

# complicated process of drawing the circles in a
# somewhat symmetrical, 3-d pattern
# dont question again

and even later...

# will determine if user clicks on die
# i determined these values...dont worry about them

I bet there's no # I promise to debug this code when it inevitably breaks — johnc, Jan 06 '11 at 03:13

MrValdez · Answer 290 · 2008-10-10T00:15:03.940

6

A few hours after showing a friend this post from Coding Horror, I saw this comment on his code:

// MrValdez is a violent Psychopath. Don't piss him off.

edited Oct 10 '08 at 00:15

answered Oct 09 '08 at 01:10

MrValdez

8,515
10
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score 6 · Answer 291 · answered Oct 09 '08 at 03:38

Fresh out of college, I was eager to get my hands dirty. My first task was... "comment this code for me".

Fucker.

After awhile I got bored with it...

// this function doesn't actually calculated the profit, like it says --it really signals the mothership orbiting saturn that the planet is ripe for takeover

[later]

// I don't think anyone is going to read this

[various permutations on that last one]

score 6 · Answer 292 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:19

6

-- Change Log:  Not needed. The code is perfect 'cause I wrote it.
-- If you change it, it will break.

I'm in the middle of reviewing some code comments to check they make sense, and saw the modest line above.

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:19

bluish

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answered Oct 09 '08 at 13:22

Retne

84
1
7

score 6 · Answer 293 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:33

6

Upon being forced to write unit tests for anemic domain objects that are nothing but bags of getters and setters (which I was forced to write as well):

// zzzzZZZZzzzz....

answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:33

moffdub

5,284
2
35
32

1

Don't you love unit testing the compiler. My least favourite tests (after unit testing maths of course) – johnc Jan 06 '11 at 02:39

score 6 · Answer 294 · edited Apr 30 '09 at 21:23

6

Case 1:
   ...
   break;
   ...
//I don't want do do this but [my coworker] says it's part of the code standard
default:
   break;

edited Apr 30 '09 at 21:23

Timothy Carter

15,459
7
44
62

answered Oct 11 '08 at 18:45

MrBoJangles

12,127
17
61
79

"derault" Typo or from the original? Inquiring minds want to know. – James McMahon Oct 16 '08 at 14:13
cant be ..unless the code was never compiled.. cos a compilation wudav caught that part and it wud have been corrected. – user20358 Oct 17 '08 at 06:47
Oops, just a typo. I'll leave the typo in tact so your comments will continue to make sense. – MrBoJangles Oct 18 '08 at 05:04
3

I'd have to say I'm more offended by asterisked swears than bad spellllling. – MrBoJangles Oct 24 '08 at 19:58
2

@__ > Then I suspect that you're in the minority. – Steven Evers Mar 06 '09 at 22:38
Would it break? It's a valid label, admittably without matching goto, so the break below is unreachable. – MSalters Mar 09 '09 at 15:52
2

I agree with __. The bad spelling is painful, but asterisked swear words are nonsensical. Either swear or don't. Asterisking it makes you look like a coward. – TRiG Mar 08 '10 at 19:02
@Snorfus, yes. Sad, isn't it. – MrBoJangles Apr 19 '10 at 17:43
Btw, I'm not trying to sock-puppet, I just changed my name from two underscores. – MrBoJangles Apr 19 '10 at 17:44
Don't forget the dotted swear word too: 'What the .. ?' Double coward. And surely an ellipsis is worth three points, not just two? – TonyK Dec 26 '10 at 09:42

score 6 · Answer 295 · answered Nov 25 '08 at 00:54

<!-- THIS IS THE MAIN CONFIGURATION FILE FOR THE ENTIRE BLOODY DIRECTORY    -->
<!--    WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE WITHOUT TALKING TO ME FIRST  -->
<!--                                I'M SERIOUS                             -->
<!-- (scroll down) -->

score 6 · Answer 296 · answered Dec 15 '08 at 15:30

6

I don't have the exact code package anymore, but I remember the comment vividly.

// The code below needs to be changed immediately.
// I wish I was a little bit taller
// I wish I was a baller
// I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her.

answered Dec 15 '08 at 15:30

cLFlaVA

1,468
3
13
17

I seem to recall that was a popular single in about 1995... – asveikau Nov 11 '09 at 05:23

score 6 · Answer 297 · answered Dec 30 '08 at 12:56

6

From a unit testing class in C#:

#region quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Fact]
public void TestPositive()
{
    Assert.Equal(4, 2 + 2);
}

[Fact]
public void TestNegative()
{
    Assert.Equal(5, 2 + 2);
}

#endregion

answered Dec 30 '08 at 12:56

annakata

74,572
17
113
180

For those who don't speak latin: 'Who will guard the guards themselves?' – Iain Mar 16 '11 at 00:03

score 6 · Answer 298 · edited Mar 16 '09 at 11:10

6

// I love the smell of dirty XML in the morning
xml = xml.Replace("xmlns=\"urn:bsd.orion/inventory\"", "");

edited Mar 16 '09 at 11:10

hasen

161,647
65
194
231

answered Jan 06 '09 at 16:26

user24985

765
8
12

3

Nooooooo!!!! There are decent workarounds for this!! like `(_xsNamespaces = new XmlSerializerNamespaces()).Add("", "")`; – Andrei Rînea Apr 24 '09 at 00:48

score 6 · Answer 299 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:03

6

I once worked on the source code of Windows 3.0. (Not, I hasten to add, as a Microsoft employee!) There I came across a file loader that went re-entrant multiple times, and had one example of some nasty punning (just to show how clever the author was).

This mess of re-entrant code was executed with an Intel assembly jmp instruction (in the middle of C code), which went to the label "we_are_not_in_kansas_any_more_toto".

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:03

bluish

26,356
27
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answered Feb 11 '09 at 18:19

Jane Sales

13,526
3
52
57

That's funny! Did that fall through to if_i_only_had_a_brain? – Tim Post Feb 11 '09 at 18:42
"we are not in C any more"... pure genius – muusbolla Jul 10 '09 at 19:22

score 6 · Answer 300 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 10:02

6

# Don use this. Never!

answered Apr 06 '09 at 10:02

Eskat0n

937
9
21

score 6 · Answer 301 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:17

6

#ifdef TRACE
#undef TRACE     /* All your trace are belong to us. */
#endif
#define TRACE ....

answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:17

David Pope

6,457
2
35
45

score 6 · Answer 302 · edited Feb 08 '10 at 14:10

This whole function is pretty great (from the Linux sunhme.c driver, for the network card nicknamed the Happy Meal by Sun. Because the card that came before that was the "Big MAC". Get it? Get it?)

static void happy_meal_tcvr_write(struct happy_meal *hp,
                              void __iomem *tregs, int reg,
                              unsigned short value)
{
    int tries = TCVR_WRITE_TRIES;

    ASD(("happy_meal_tcvr_write: reg=0x%02x value=%04x\n", reg, value));

    /* Welcome to Sun Microsystems, can I take your order please? */
    if (!(hp->happy_flags & HFLAG_FENABLE)) {
            happy_meal_bb_write(hp, tregs, reg, value);
            return;
    }

    /* Would you like fries with that? */
    hme_write32(hp, tregs + TCVR_FRAME,
                (FRAME_WRITE | (hp->paddr << 23) |
                 ((reg & 0xff) << 18) | (value & 0xffff)));
    while (!(hme_read32(hp, tregs + TCVR_FRAME) & 0x10000) && --tries)
            udelay(20);

    /* Anything else? */
    if (!tries)
            printk(KERN_ERR "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed\n");

    /* Fifty-two cents is your change, have a nice day. */

}

Dupe: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-comment-in-source-code-you-have-ever-encountered/694652#694652 — nobody, Apr 20 '09 at 04:15

score 6 · Answer 303 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:52

6

// This is confusing, I KNOW, so let me explain it to you.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:52

tlrobinson

2,812
1
33
35

score 6 · Answer 304 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 22:21

6

// no comment

answered Apr 20 '09 at 22:21

And even T-shirte-ed: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/76aa/?cpg=ab – Alex B Apr 22 '09 at 11:24

score 6 · Answer 305 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 01:00

6

# as you can see: I comment the code!

answered Apr 23 '09 at 01:00

score 6 · Answer 306 · edited Sep 22 '10 at 08:24

6

Control + A, Rewrite

This was a comment added to source control on a previous project as the check in comment.

edited Sep 22 '10 at 08:24

Shalom Craimer

20,659
8
70
106

answered Apr 23 '09 at 19:06

Paul Redman

213
4
11

score 6 · Answer 307 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 22:26

This was for a custom DHCP server that we used in a university's dorms to put computers into 'clean' or 'dirty' IP address pools depending on whether or not they'd registered/installed patches and Antivirus:

public boolean getDirty (String MAC) // not as fun as it sounds

score 6 · Answer 308 · edited Jul 28 '10 at 11:49

6

// TODO: what the hell is this all about?

And then some commented out code.

This was found in our code in work earlier today. I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry...

edited Jul 28 '10 at 11:49

sum1stolemyname

4,506
3
26
44

answered Apr 24 '09 at 00:04

score 6 · Answer 309 · answered Apr 27 '09 at 09:58

6

// *** AAAAAHAHAHAH!!  What is this??

answered Apr 27 '09 at 09:58

score 5 · Answer 310 · edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:20

5

I found this:

I'm not sure what I did

edited Jul 21 '11 at 12:20

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:10

Eduardo Campañó

6,778
4
27
24

score 5 · Answer 311 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:26

5

// This code sucks.

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:26

Kristopher Johnson

81,409
55
245
302

and then why did you code it in? :D – gumuruh Jul 22 '11 at 16:23

score 5 · Answer 312 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:29

{
This is a gathering place for all unit tests.
Create a TUnitTestWrapper, then call "RunAllUnitTests".

This class will create an instance of each thing to be tested, and call each of
their unit tests.

It does not really do any testing on it's own; it just gives a common place from
which to call everyone else's tests.

This way, one day, we can automate our testing with each build. [Cue laughter]
}

score 5 · Answer 313 · answered Oct 21 '08 at 14:51

5

struct core_unlocker
{
    core_unlocker(lock)
    {
        m_lock = lock
        unlock(lock)  //Abandon All Locks, Ye Who Enter Core!
    }
    ~core_unlocker()
    {
        lock(m_lock)
    }  
    private:
    Corelock m_lock;
}

answered Oct 21 '08 at 14:51

Matthew Scouten

15,303
9
33
50

score 5 · Answer 314 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:31

In a class named "Bar" (which was a UI Control with a less than descriptive name), the class header:

/// <summary>I pity the "foo".</summary>

And the Remove() method:

/// <summary>A "foo" and his money are soon parted.</summary>

Even worse, it was a business partner that pointed it out from the generated documentation. Even worse than that, is those are probably the closest things to useful documentation we ever got out of the guy.

score 5 · Answer 315 · answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:13

5

//Iterate by one $i++;

Unfortunately it was mine, during my "Must comment everything phase".

answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:13

Nikola Stjelja

3,659
9
37
45

12

additionally, you probably meant "increment by one." – x0n Dec 02 '08 at 16:26
Well really he did iterate. That is to say, he moved to the next in a theoretical infinite array of numbers. – tsilb Nov 20 '09 at 04:39
Well both are correct. During that time I developed in php and used the while structre everywhere so what I mean is to iterate to the next index key of the array being interated inside the while($i – Nikola Stjelja Dec 07 '09 at 10:50

score 5 · Answer 316 · answered Dec 02 '08 at 19:09

5

While working on some websites I found this at the start of the embedded JS:

I feel so dirty doing this but the guy wanted it in .NET

answered Dec 02 '08 at 19:09

wergeld

14,332
8
51
81

score 5 · Answer 317 · edited May 28 '11 at 16:09

5

From C#

#region Hack - Shield Eyes Before Expanding

/// <summary>
/// A single uint with all of the bits set to represent the different tracing
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// Ugly I know, so if you can think of a better way, feel free to rewrite.
/// </remarks>
[Browsable(false)]
public uint TraceBitfield
{
    // Snip
}

#endregion

edited May 28 '11 at 16:09

H.B.

166,899
29
327
400

answered Dec 02 '08 at 19:20

Rob Prouse

22,161
4
69
89

Not uncommon. I'm often denigrating my own code when I write comments, imploring the reader to refactor if they have a better idea. – moffdub Dec 18 '08 at 11:45

score 5 · Answer 318 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:52

5

Quite a while ago I came across some connection script and while I don't remember the syntax I do recall the comments as I'm a Pink Floyd fan.

//Attempt Handshake: Hello? This is London calling. Are we reaching you?


//Handshake Failed: I don't understand...he just hung up.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:52

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Dec 04 '08 at 01:43

Sumptin

43
4

Shouldn't that be, "...this is United States calling...", assuming it's The Wall (Don't Leave Me Now)? – Rob Dec 23 '08 at 19:31
Sure it's not mentioning the great Clash song "London Calling"? – bluish Jul 22 '11 at 07:54

alepuzio · Answer 319 · 2008-12-18T13:43:57.730

5

An HORRIBLE patch for a decode (Translation by italian language):

/**
*@return the value 
*@param key: the id of the list of instruments
*@PS this function is a violation of all the laws of the 
*software engineering, 
*commons sense, highway code 
*and ONU decision about the coding.
That sh*t...
*/

edited Dec 18 '08 at 13:43

answered Dec 18 '08 at 11:35

alepuzio

1,382
2
28
38

score 5 · Answer 320 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 08:01

5

That one is well-known but I like it (in sys/ufs/ufs_vnops.c):

/*
 * A virgin directory (no blushing please).
 */

in the FreeBSD kernel source tree (and even before, back into 4.xBSD)

edited Jul 22 '11 at 08:01

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Dec 18 '08 at 13:49

Keltia

14,535
3
29
30

score 5 · Answer 321 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 11:45

5

Just found this one in some of our PHP code

$s=2; // chicken and bacon wrap for lunch

How useful, luckily $s was self explanatory

answered Feb 02 '09 at 11:45

Neil Aitken

7,856
3
41
40

score 5 · Answer 322 · answered Feb 13 '09 at 00:39

5

try {
   doSomething();
} catch(err) {
   // Die quietly
   alert(err);
}

answered Feb 13 '09 at 00:39

Bennett McElwee

24,740
6
54
63

score 5 · Answer 323 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:51

5

Not in code, but in a related bugtracking system:

This can't be a bug in my code. I coded it very carefully.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:51

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:53

Jaanus

17,688
15
65
110

score 5 · Answer 324 · 2010-06-22T10:07:18.847

I just ran into this in some of my own code. It was in a magento admin template for category selection:

        /*
         * OK; before you read the following code know what I am trying to do.
         * I needed to get the list of child catagories from the root node so that
         * the root node didn't appear in the selection box. But for some stupid
         * fucking reason the stupid fucking DBA wont let me access the items using
         * indicies and I instead have to use their stupid fucking Iterator
         * implementation. So there.
         */
        $firstList = $this->getRootNode()->getChildren();
        foreach ($firstList as $node)
        {
            $nodes = $node->getChildren();
            break;          // wtf?
        }

I am going to remove the language of course out of our flagship product; but I remember I was super frustrated. If I hadn't left a comment, I would try to revise it but then run into the same problems I had before.

Seems like the author of the "wtf" comment has NOT read the introduction :D — guerda, Mar 24 '09 at 07:04

score 5 · Answer 325 · answered Mar 15 '09 at 23:45

5

// nobody read comments!

answered Mar 15 '09 at 23:45

neoneye

50,398
25
166
151

Nobody read Ikke's comment either. – Windows programmer Mar 26 '09 at 22:58

Brian Campbell · Answer 326 · 2009-04-20T23:55:34.510

5

This is so much nicer than the scary legal notices and disclaimers you see in many comment headers. From SQLite.

/*
** The author disclaims copyright to this source code.  In place of
** a legal notice, here is a blessing:
**
**    May you do good and not evil.
**    May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
**    May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
*/

edited Apr 20 '09 at 23:55

answered Mar 26 '09 at 22:50

Brian Campbell

322,767
57
360
340

-1 duplicate (see above) – bluish Jul 21 '11 at 12:05

score 5 · Answer 327 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 14:47

5

managed to insert this bad pun into our code

for (bo_thans = 0 ; bo_thans < MAX ; bo_thans++)
{
    if(rs == thing[bo_thans])
    {
       found = true;
    }
}

if(!found)
{
   /* Failed to find rs with bo_thans */
   ...
}

answered Apr 06 '09 at 14:47

Colin Cassidy

412
5
8

3

How many Bothans died to bring you this information? – Brian Postow Apr 06 '09 at 15:17

score 5 · Answer 328 · answered Apr 09 '09 at 22:28

From a contractor in an application for a UK bank.

// i don't know how this works but it does so i'll leave it here anyway

He also added BNP (British very right wing party) as 1 of the dummy customers for testing... our immediate boss was of Asian ethnicity.

score 5 · Answer 329 · answered Apr 11 '09 at 18:08

5

<!-- Here it is -->

No other comments anywhere. To this day I don't know what "it" was.

answered Apr 11 '09 at 18:08

womp

115,835
26
236
269

4

"it" was apparently the one comment. – munificent Apr 15 '09 at 20:41

score 5 · Answer 330 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 03:09

I don't have the code to share, but imagine this scenario. About a month or two after our Linux Sys Admin left for greener pastures, I had the pleasure of opening a shell script he'd written. I can't recall why I needed to edit it, but that's not what matters. What's important is that the script was about 40 lines long. I scrolled past the commenting (of which there were 37 lines) to reach the actual working code (3 lines). The code was great, but I was curious - why 37 lines of commenting? So, I scrolled to the top and proceeded to read. To my surprise, the commenting was a rap about what the three lines of code did and how to change it. The best part - it was a partial rip off of Nothing But A G Thing by Dr. Dre and Snoop D O DOUBLE G. Thanks Brian!

please retrieve it for us! :) – bluish Jul 22 '11 at 06:56 — bluish, Jul 22 '11 at 06:56

score 5 · Answer 331 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

5

/*
* TODO: Remove this function

function remove($customer_id)
    {
        $this->Customer->remove($id);
    }

*/

edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 14:14

Jan-Willem Hoekman

65
1
8

score 5 · Answer 332 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 18:04

My personal favorite is documentation in limerick form:

        Subclassing made Zope and TR
        much harder to work with by far.
            So before you inherit,
            be sure to declare it
        Adapter, not PyObject*

This probably spoils the joke a bit, but since it's a bit obscure I'll explain:

"TR" here refers to "Twisted Reality". Zope 2 and the original twisted.reality package made extensive and unfortunate use of multiple inheritance, which could make it difficult to understand what was going on when you saw a method call. Zope 3, Twisted itself, and twisted.reality's successors (including the most recent, Imaginary) instead generally favor component composition.

score 5 · Answer 333 · answered Apr 21 '09 at 09:31

5

/**
 * As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
 * transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard,
 * as it were armour plated, back, and if he lifted his head a little he
 * could see his big, brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments, on
 * top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about
 * to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin
 * compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
 * "What has happened to me?", he thought. It was no dream....
 */
protected static String DEFAULT_TRANSLET_NAME = "GregorSamsa";

answered Apr 21 '09 at 09:31

Sindri Traustason

5,445
6
48
66

3

dupe http://stackoverflow.com/posts/503186/revisions – Daniel Goldberg Feb 13 '10 at 20:03
@Daniel Goldberg You might notice both are by me. I think it's a human fluke, I answered this question twice for some reason. How on earth did you spot this? – Sindri Traustason Feb 15 '10 at 14:02

score 5 · Answer 334 · edited Apr 21 '09 at 09:42

5

catch
{     
    // you’re fucked
    // write out the file somewhere and start screaming “Connection down! Connection down!”
}

edited Apr 21 '09 at 09:42

Shalom Craimer

20,659
8
70
106

answered Apr 21 '09 at 09:38

score 5 · Answer 335 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:24

Many years ago I picked up the job to provide support to a project that ran real time on a Z80 and was in assembly (is there any other way to do Z80??) Anyway, the original author was a Nigerian guy by the name of Moses. Maybe I should just stop there. Anyway, scattered throughout the code was this:

XRA A    ;MT

Took me awhile to figure out what this was. The instruction itself does nothing more than clear the accumulator. It's a slick way, although I'm not sure if there is an advantage or not. you can just do:

LDA 0

But maybe

XRA A

saves a byte or something. What is does is exclusive or the accumulator with itself. The result is, of course, always zero.

Back to the MT - Empty (get it?)

That's the best I've run across.

The XOR A,A (which I think was the Z80 mnemonic, the other most likely 8080) is a single byte opcode. The LD A,0 is a two byte opcode. He probably just should have made a ZEROA macro or so :) — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Oct 21 '09 at 13:56

score 5 · Answer 336 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 01:45

""".........................:~+?7$$$ZZZZZZZ$$$7I+=:,............................
........................~+7ZZZZZOZZOOZOZZOZOZOOZZZZZ7?~:........................
......................,~7$ZZOOOOOZOZOZOZZOOZZOZOOOOOZ$$I,.......................
...................,=I$OOZOZOZZOOOZZOZOOOOZOZZZOOZZZOZZOZI=:....................
.................:?$ZZOOZZOZOZZOOOZZZOOZOZOZZZZZZZOZZOZOOOZ$I~..................
................IZOOOZOOOZZZOZZZZOZZOZOOOOZOZZZOOZZZZOOZOZZZOZ7=................
...............~ZZOZZOZOOZOOZOZOZZOZOZOZZZZZOZOZZOZOOZOZZOOOOZZ7................
.............:IZOOZOZZZZOZOZZOZOOZOZOZOZZOZOOZOOOOZOZZZZZOZOZZOOI~..............
...........,+$ZOOZZOZOZOZOZOZZOZOZOOZZOZZOZZOZOOOOZOZZOZZOOZOOOOO$?:............
..........:IZZOOOZOZZZZOOZOOZOZOZZOZOZZZZOZOOZOZZOZOZOZOOOOOOOZZZOZ7~...........
..........+$OOZZZOZZOOZOOZZZZOZZOZOZZOZOOOZOZOZZOZOZOZOOOOOZ$$77I77$+:..........
........,?$OOZZZZZZZOZOOOZOZZOZZZOOZOZOOOOZOZZZOOZOOZOOO7?~:,.......,...........
........+ZOOZZZZZOZOOZOOZZZZOZZOOOZZZOZOZOOZZOZOZZZOOO$?........................
........$ZOZZZOZZZZOZOOZZZOZOZZOOOOOOOOOOOZOZOZZOZOO$?,.........................
.......:ZOOZOZOZZOOZZOZOZOZOOOZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZOZOOZI:..........................
.......+OOOZOOZOZOZOZZZOOZOOZOOO$I+=~:::~+I$OOOOOOZ?:........,:=,...............
......:7ZOOZOZZOOOZOZOZOOZOOZ$I=............:?$OOZ7:.......:IZOOZ?,.............
......=$OZOZOOZOOOOOZOZZOOZ7=,................:?O$+.......~7OOOOOZ+,............
.....,?$OOOOOZZZZOOOOOOZOZ?,....................ZZ=.......=$OOZOOZ+,............
.....:IZOZZ$777I7$ZOOOOOZ7~.....................$Z=.......~7OOOOO7=.............
.....:+?~:,.......,~IZOO7~........~+II?=........?$?,.......:I$ZZ?:..............
.....................+ZO=,......:IOOOOOZ:.......=7$~............................
.....................:IO~.......=OOZOZOO=,......~7O7~...........................
...........:~:.......:IO~.......+OOOOZOO=.......~78Z?,.................,:.......
..........:IZ7~......+ZO~.......:7OOOOO$,.......+$OOZ7=,.............:?$=.......
...........,,.....,=7ZOO+,.......,=II?=:........7OOOOOOZ=:,.....,:=I$ZOO=.......
....................,:+$7=.....................~OOOZZZOOOZZ$$7$$ZOOOOOOZ=.......
......................:?Z?,...................:?OZOOZOOZOOOOOOOOOOZOZOZO=.......
............,::,.......,OO7:................,+$OOZOZOOZOZZOZOZZOOZOZOZOO=.......
...........~$8OI........$OOZI~,.........,:=IZOOZOZOZOZOOOZOZOZOOOZZZOZOO=.......
...........:??=:.......:OOOOOZZ7+=~~==+?$ZOOOOZOOOZOZOZOOZOZOZZOZZOZOZZO=.......
............::,.......,+OOZOOOOO$7777$$ZOOOOOZOZZZZOZOZZZOOZOZZOOOZOOZOO=.......
.....................=7OOZOOZOOZOOOOOOOOOZZZOZOZZOZOZOZOOOZOZOZZOZOOZOOO=.......
................,:=I$OOOZZOOOZOOOOOZOZOZZZZZOOZZZOZOZZZOOZOOZOZOZOZOZOOZ=.......
...........:~+?7ZOOOOOOZZZOZOOZOZOOZOZOZZOZZOZOZZZZOZOZZOZOZOZZOZOOZOOOZ=.......
........$$ZOOOOOOOOZOZOZZZZOZOZOOOZZZOZZZOZOOZOZZZZZZZZOOOZOOZZZOZOOZOOZ=.......
.......~OOZOOZZOOZZZZZZOOZOZOZOZZOOZOOZZZOZZOZOZZOZZZOZOOOOOZOZOZOOZOOOZ=.......
.......~OOZOOZZOZZOZOZZOZZOZOOZOZOOZOZOZZOZOOZOZZOZOZOZOZOOZOZOOOZOOZOZO=.......
.......~OOZZZOZOOOZOZOZZOZOZOZOZOOZOOZOOOOZOZOOZOOOZOOOZOZZOZOZOOZZOOOOZ=.......
.......~OOZZOZOZZZOOZOOZOZOZOZZOZZZZOZZZZOZOZZOOOOZ$ZZZZZZOZZZOZZOZOZZZO=.......
.......~OOZZOO$??$OOZOOZZOOZOZOZ+~IZOOOZOZOOZZOOZI==IZOZZOZOOZOZZOZI~=7O=.......
.......~OOZO$I:..~IZZZOZOZOZOZ$+...=7ZOOZOOZZOZZ=,..,=$ZZOZZZZZOZI~...,?=.......
.......~OOOZI:....:IZOOOZZOOO$+:....~7ZOZOZOZOZ$,....,=$OOZOOOZOI~.....:~.......
.......~OZI~........~IZZZOZ$?:........=IOOZZZ$+,.......,$ZOOOZZ7................
.......=7~............~IOZI:............7ZO$+:..........,=7ZZ7=,................
.......,,...............=~...............~=:..............,~=...................
                                                               GlassGiant.com""" 
print "Hello World!"

score 5 · Answer 337 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 16:29

/* This is a replica of a horrible hack - many moons ago, the legacy PortfolioServer was modified to return cash trades in an "optionTrade" block, because the client side developer was too lazy to get their XPaths right. Their laziness echoes through the ages, and means we need a similar hack here...*/

score 5 · Answer 338 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 19:35

5

//Time log says you've been here for 15 hours GO HOME, your code is hobo

answered Apr 23 '09 at 19:35

savannah

11
1
3

score 5 · Answer 339 · answered Apr 24 '09 at 06:19

We had a group project to create a Connect 4 AI using Min-Max trees. In our move-scoring function, we had it calculate a score for the board, and above that block of code there was this comment:

// This is kind of almost useless

But it gets better. Our instructor gave us some sample code from a crude AI he had made, and he left a great comment:

// We also add/subtract some points based on what's going on, on the bottom
// row. (I think this is retarded, but apparently when I coded this up 
// back in 1999 I didn't.)

You lucky bastard. I also had to create a Connect4 AI using Min-Max trees. Solo. Without sample code. My instructor was a soon-to-graduate-TA so he was a bit lazy... — muusbolla, Jul 10 '09 at 17:58

score 5 · Answer 340 · edited Jan 17 '11 at 13:01

In a bunch of poorly cut & pasted source code for a content management web app:

// load image 1 - JPEG 240x320
img = f1.getImage();
if (check(img))
{
   load(img, Constants.JPEG_240x320);
}

// load image 2 - JPEG 128x128
img = f2.getImage();
if (check(img))
{
   load(img, Constants.JPEG_128x128);
}

...

// load image 13 - GIF 256x256
img = f13.getImage();
if (check(img))
{
   load(img, Constants.GIF256x256);
}

// loaded all of the f**king images

note: roughly translated from italian :-)

score 5 · Answer 341 · answered Apr 25 '09 at 09:36

5

my favorite was something like this

 # commented out
 ...
 ### end of the formerly uncommented #2001-02-22 John Doe

answered Apr 25 '09 at 09:36

score 5 · Answer 342 · edited Apr 29 '09 at 12:34

5

// woot, global var. I havent done this for a long time.

edited Apr 29 '09 at 12:34

VVS

19,405
5
46
65

answered Apr 27 '09 at 09:15

score 4 · Answer 343 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:51

4

// but the "real" solution is much more complicated

from jpgraph

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:51

Darryl Hein

142,451
95
218
261

score 4 · Answer 344 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:25

/* logic */
#ifndef TRUE
# define TRUE 1
#endif /* TRUE */
#ifndef FALSE
# define FALSE 0
#endif /* FALSE */
#define EOF_OK TRUE
#define EOF_NOT_OK FALSE

and the rest of the glorious mkentry.c at the IOCCC page. I can't keep laughing every time I read through this source.

score 4 · Answer 345 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 01:56

4

// set break point here - you'll never reach it

answered Oct 10 '08 at 01:56

Chris Noe

36,411
22
71
92

score 4 · Answer 346 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 14:18

4

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

That one is by Donald Knuth.

answered Oct 10 '08 at 14:18

Baishampayan Ghose

19,928
10
56
60

7

duplicate (see above) and it comes from an essay not from code – thomasrutter Apr 23 '09 at 03:28

Nat · Answer 347 · 2008-10-12T22:07:11.190

4

' Oh man I'm pissed. I think I better go home.

where pissed = drunk

edited Oct 12 '08 at 22:07

answered Oct 12 '08 at 21:29

Nat

14,175
5
41
64

score 4 · Answer 348 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:12

4

//Not a bug, parameter position can change..., if you think this is wrong, you are in fact wrong.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:12

bluish

26,356
27
122
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answered Oct 13 '08 at 05:29

score 4 · Answer 349 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:28

4

at the end of a rather long and convoluted set of while loops and if blocks, the developer in question inserted this final comment:

else
{
    // wobbly wilson said this would *never* happen!!
}

a laconic mixture of wit and sarcasm :)

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:28

bluish

26,356
27
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180

answered Oct 22 '08 at 11:48

Chris Kloberdanz · Answer 350 · 2008-11-21T21:43:10.003

4

From a legacy Perl CGI script:

# This is convoluted and evil, sorry.

edited Nov 21 '08 at 21:43

answered Oct 30 '08 at 14:45

Chris Kloberdanz

4,436
4
30
31

score 4 · Answer 351 · answered Nov 07 '08 at 07:48

4

I didn't encounter this firsthand, but it makes for a good story (see explanation in my comment):

#define MSGTAG_B33R     0x723 /* RIPLVB */

answered Nov 07 '08 at 07:48

Jason Sundram

12,225
19
71
86

Ludwig Van Beethoven (LVB) died in 1827 (== 0x723). Nice, right? – Jason Sundram Nov 07 '08 at 07:48
The way I heard it was that the only comment in a program was on line 1750 and it said RIPJSB, a reference to Bach. – Jeffrey L Whitledge Nov 21 '08 at 21:52
-1 it's a duplicate (see above) – bluish Jul 22 '11 at 06:43

score 4 · Answer 352 · edited May 28 '11 at 16:49

4

I saw this once:

//this used to be a comment

edited May 28 '11 at 16:49

H.B.

166,899
29
327
400

answered Feb 01 '09 at 01:30

Nosredna

83,000
15
95
122

MatthieuP · Answer 353 · 2009-02-02T12:18:59.217

4

// HACK ! COPY/PASTE this and look for another job

edited Feb 02 '09 at 12:18

answered Feb 02 '09 at 12:13

MatthieuP

1,116
5
12

score 4 · Answer 354 · answered Feb 02 '09 at 13:29

This one was amusing for others but less so for me. I had inherited the code (which was ASP) from a developer who had himself inherited it. The first programmer had created some very hard to understand code. The second developer had added a comment as follows (names hidden to protect the not-so-innocent):

'This code was written by **************.
'I haven't a clue what it does. He hasn't a clue what it does.
'Nobody else has a clue what it does or how it does it.
'It is something to do with data but **** knows what.
'The ******* still works so please do not change this code,
'even though it is a complete pile of ****.

So why didn't I find it amusing? Well, it was ASP code for a customer's intranet.

...and it was the customer who highlighted the comment to me.

:-(

score 4 · Answer 355 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:26

4

See this one:

'On Error Goto Hell.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:26

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 03 '09 at 13:20

JeffO

7,957
3
44
53

wrote this 5 years ago.but i also had a heaven. – Behrooz Feb 05 '10 at 08:28

score 4 · Answer 356 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:32

4

BerkeleyDB

/*
 * Chaos reigns within.
 * Reflect, repent, and reboot.
 * Order shall return.
 */
return (DB_RUNRECOVERY);

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:32

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 03 '09 at 15:56

score 4 · Answer 357 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 07:58

4

//FIXME: fix this before the 1.0 release

they were on version 4

edited Jul 25 '11 at 07:58

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 22:10

score 4 · Answer 358 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

4

What do you think you're doing, Dave?

edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 22:32

score 4 · Answer 359 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:20

4

/*
* After 36 hours, 2 holes in my wall and writing my code right beside the API
* this still doesn't work.
* function getMap():void takes in an event object @param: evt:mouseEvent
* I will now retire for the day with a bottle of rum and 2 hours of crying
*/

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:20

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 15:13

score 4 · Answer 360 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 08:30

From an absolutely lovely project I worked on up until recently (yes, I admit, some of those are mine, but I won't tell you which):

if(FAILED(hr))
{
    char fuck[256];
    sprintf(fuck, "GetBuffer() fucking fucked the fuck: %d", hr);
    MessageBoxA(0, fuck, fuck, MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR);
    return;
}


// This is for Chris, since he gets all hot and horny over "uint" instead of "unsigned int"
// ... or maybe he's just a lazy fuck. Who knows!?
using Ogre::uint; 
// movable texts, fucktory
MovableObjectTextFactory* m_pMovableObjectTextFactory;


// diarrhea... shitting CR from the string. complete run...

What he meant was that he's splitting the string by carriage returns to render separately.

// unlock shit (duh, this comment is useless)
pixelBuffer->unlock();


// :HACK: remove me after demo is shipped
Of course, it's still in there ;)


// it's 4am and I can't think of a decent error message.
// my lead just fell asleep at his desk, so I can't ask him.
// [name] went home because he didn't want to get divorced.
// and so it's little ol' me, sitting here, comin up with an
// error message for something that should never ever happen.
ASSERT0(in_len == max_in, "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0"); 


// you want hungarian, you GET hungarian!
for(int fcknglpidxcntvrI = 0; fcknglpidxcntvrI &lt; len; fcknglpidxcntvrI++)


bool bKillSomethingAlive = false; // beating the dead horse instead

Of course, we also have a nice collection of interesting ways to say "Hack":

// HACKOMATIC 
// HMM... HACKXOR?
// HACK'O'ROONY
// AR; yeah I know it's HACKsoup
// HACK SHOT! DOMINATING!
// HACK'KIDO
// HACKku. sepukku. harakiri. kamikaze. ninja.
// HACK'o'NEIL
// HACKsaw

2

-1 grown past profanity. – balupton Sep 18 '10 at 01:35

score 4 · Answer 361 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 16:41

4

#!/usr/bin/sh
#       Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
#         All Rights Reserved

#       THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
#       The copyright notice above does not evidence any
#       actual or intended publication of such source code.

#ident  "@(#)false.sh   1.6     93/01/11 SMI"   /* SVr4.0 1.3   */
exit 255

Taken from SunOS 5.9 aka Solaris 9 (/usr/bin/false)

answered Apr 22 '09 at 16:41

It's not true any more. Now that it's been published, it's false. – Windows programmer Apr 23 '09 at 02:47
2

Heh, Schrödinger would be proud. – Erik Forbes Apr 24 '09 at 00:00

score 4 · Answer 362 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:05

4

var something TBoolean; //Pickins

answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:05

Peter Turner

11,199
10
68
109

score 4 · Answer 363 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:20

4

// All this code is yours, except gedit()...attempt no modifications there.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:20

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 20:39

score 4 · Answer 364 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:05

4

public static final void attachListener(Object listener) {

/* ======================= */

// This does nothing, continue searching

/* ======================= */

...

painful with listeners!

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:05

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 16:31

Steel Plume

2,260
3
26
35

score 4 · Answer 365 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:09

4

/* Only break the connection if it actually exists. It is important to
 * check the timeslot saved in the SOURCE of the disconnect message. */

I wrote this comment, and now I can't remember WHY it's important...

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:09

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 19:56

score 4 · Answer 366 · edited Jun 14 '10 at 12:27

4

//too much log will kill you

This comment I wrote it myself, when lowering the priority of some logs which otherwise would write hundreds of MB of crap and seriously crippled an application performance.

edited Jun 14 '10 at 12:27

Josh K

28,364
20
86
132

answered Apr 24 '09 at 16:00

score 4 · Answer 367 · edited Aug 23 '09 at 18:04

4

BEGIN.
// Here might be dragons
.
.
 IF...
 // Beware of the Jabberwocky
 .//user the force, luke
 .
 .
 ENDIF.
.
END.

edited Aug 23 '09 at 18:04

Alex Gordon

57,446
287
670
1,062

answered Apr 24 '09 at 19:31

score 3 · Answer 368 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:16

It's not strictly speaking a comment, but...

It was the mid-1990s and I was working on a big migration: small software vendor, big client, lots of pressure. We had a lot of shifting-goalpost stuff; the project was very hard to control. I was the key developer, but new to the system, and the other developer was the vendor's owner/founder.

After a few months of not quite making deadlines and not quite satisfying the client, the owner/founder brought on another developer, who was working remotely. (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the new developer had lesser skills and experience than me.)

Well, the new guy made some changes in code that I'd already worked on, and then a month or two later I was back in the same area of the code, and there were variables I hadn't seen before. With names like StupidMark.

Dude, that's just not right. I mean, there's teamwork considerations, but also: in this environment, variable names can show up in runtime error messages. I'm just saying.

In my opinion at the time, the new guy's code wasn't getting us much closer to a deliverable product anyway, which made the insult sting a little more.

score 3 · Answer 369 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

3

If you have reached this part in the code, then this program sucks.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:31

score 3 · Answer 370 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:52

3

// this is really complicated

with no other comments

answered Oct 08 '08 at 21:52

Darryl Hein

142,451
95
218
261

Rick · Answer 371 · 2008-10-25T09:39:35.173

3

Found in the main trigger code for transactions in an OLTP database:

-- This line negates the @inverseqty, which is the
-- negative of the @insertedquantity.  This works through the
-- magic of the trigger.  In fact, this code is a lot like
-- the bermuda triangle!
@negquantity = -1 * @inverseqty

edited Oct 25 '08 at 09:39

answered Oct 12 '08 at 07:29

Rick

4,575
1
26
20

score 3 · Answer 372 · answered Oct 21 '08 at 14:56

3

first line of a javascript function:

// this part is more difficult

WTF?

answered Oct 21 '08 at 14:56

George Mauer

117,483
131
382
612

score 3 · Answer 373 · answered Oct 26 '08 at 11:17

Some years ago I was working in a large code base that had no unit-testing to speak of.

There was a method buried deep within the code that performed some calendar calculations. It was somewhat broken, had to deal with daylight savings in a very clumsy way due to some unfortunate circumstances.

We had to fix it a couple of times, and every time, we would find something broken some months after.

After spending a whole day fixing it and analyzing it, I put the code in source control, along with a comment that said something like this:

// this code was written after a version trying to do {this} failed because of {reason},
// previously we were doing {this} which failed because of {reason}. This is 
// now written {this} way so that {lots of reasons here}. If you want to touch
// this code, please make sure that it produces the right answers when tested with:
//
// {some sort of unit test}

Ultimately, my team was outsourced. Some days I wonder what happened to this code :)

score 3 · Answer 374 · answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:14

3

// good luck!

answered Dec 02 '08 at 16:14

CLaRGe

1,821
1
25
22

I actually used '//GLMF' one time. My apologies if that code ever saw the light of day again. – unclerojelio Feb 02 '09 at 20:38

vdhant · Answer 375 · 2008-12-08T01:45:40.210

I just found this one in a custom Linq provider for .net:

//select is a royal pain in the ass where 
//the parameter passed to CreateQuery isn't actually the one that goes in the call
//requiring this workaround.  Not sure how straight Linq to Objects does it.

And this one

//expressions have to be compiled in order to work with the method call on 
//straight Enumerable somehow, LINQ to objects itself magically does this.  
//Reflector shows a mess, so I (Aaron) invented my own way.  God love unit tests!

And i just found this one as well... it just gets better

  //ok, this is a hairy, dirty, and nasty piece of code
  //the alternatives are substantially worse than this though
  //i.e. when you do your own provider, LINQ assumes that
  //you are going to implement your own expression tree visitor and
  //do it all yourself.  Frankly, I still have xmas shopping to do
  //and I really don't want us to be foobared when we get
  //even more extension methods added to LINQ
  //therefore, we are pulling execute based on taking the calling the 
  //standard execute on enumerable, but using our own class
  //
  //optimization can occur from here on an as needed basis, that is
  //check for the value of mex.Method.Name, and write a handler for
  //that method
  //
  //also, it may not be a bad idea to rather than do this reflection 
  //each and every time somehow cache the reflected methodinfos and do 
  //lookups that way that said, we need a complete red/green/refactor 
  //cycle here before I am touching that one

And this one

//Compile that mutherf-ker, invoke it, and get the resulting hash

score 3 · Answer 376 · answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:01

3

This was the only comment we found in a smartcard product that a previous employer bought in. A load of embedded C and assembler written by a bunch of Dutch cryptography PhDs

// echt halmaal gek - no way!

(It means something like "really completely stupid"...which didn't help us either)

answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:01

Richard Ev

52,939
59
191
278

If this was the real comment they were Dutch cryptography PhDs that could not spell. "Echt helemaal gek". – Jeroen van Bergen Mar 05 '09 at 19:01
Maybe my recollection of the spelling was wrong...this was circa 1998 – Richard Ev Mar 06 '09 at 08:56

pi. · Answer 377 · 2009-03-09T10:57:01.083

3

# let's pretend we are free, for a while

Found this one in front of a class. What followed was a (naive) try to implement an ORM. I still don't understand why he wrote that.

edited Mar 09 '09 at 10:57

answered Dec 22 '08 at 12:54

pi.

21,112
8
38
59

score 3 · Answer 378 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 14:34

3

Something I saw in a .h file years ago.

// It may be a hack, but it works.

answered Mar 05 '09 at 14:34

S.Lott

384,516
81
508
779

score 3 · Answer 379 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 14:36

Something I saw in a COBOL program that paralyzed me with fear

* All comments pertain to the lines which follow.

What does this mean?

Someone was so uncomfortable with commenting that they had to write a meta-comment?
Someone was in the habit of putting comments below the relevant code and had been told to put comments above? How did that happen?

score 3 · Answer 380 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 17:41

For one project we had pwlib as a dependency, and at that time it's FreeBSD port was somewhat screwed so I had to build it manually from source. It didn't work out right away, and I had to look into the code; there was some complicated class hierarchy with parts of code generated by macros and its parent calss declaration started with

// The root of all evil ... umm classes

score 3 · Answer 381 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:06

For a memcache wrapper/handler interface pattern class I wrote, I had the following method implemented.

/**
*  Do not use, ever - left in place for testing purposes
*/
function  I_David_WillHuntYouDownAndHurtYou_Badly_IfIFindThisUsedAnyWhereInTheAppLibrary(){
...
}

This was basically a super nuke function to tell all the indvidual memcache services to completely flush themselves, and start over with the individual name space counters I used for keys ( ex .{_counter_key value}_.{_counter_key value} )

Another minor novella I wrote was for an automated downloader for a data vendor, detailing how much I hated this vendor and went to great lengths of postulating that their infrastructure's batch system was run by a gerbil, running on a wheel and after so many revolutions of the wheel the next queued task would be started. It was written over the course of 6 months of adding additional exception handling, estoric checks like ( if we got 768 Bytes of \s characters, that means the query to their DB timed out and the spaces are the result of empty failure print statements.

score 3 · Answer 382 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:57

3

try
{
...
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
//if this happens the world is going to end...
}

now guess what happened...

answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:57

Gambrinus

2,140
16
26

correct ... well - or someone got confused formulating some if(!x && b || !y && x || y) statement ;) – Gambrinus Mar 12 '09 at 09:50

score 3 · Answer 383 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 11:16

//If the Current Record is Getting End Dated, We should not create New History Entry. 
//We Just need to Update the Previous History Entry
//If the History is already End Dated and the New Record is now removing End Date, Then 
//We should not update the Previous History End Date. 
//We Just need to Create the New History Record Only.
//Alright.. 
//Alright.... 
//Enough Comments. Code it. :-)

score 3 · Answer 384 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 11:34

3

#define SHIT_HAPPENED (BASE + 1)   /* generic shit happened */

answered Mar 18 '09 at 11:34

Tony

191
2

score 3 · Answer 385 · answered Apr 01 '09 at 17:46

3

// Empty constructor to satisfy the stupid compiler
 Public ServletHandlerClass () { }

answered Apr 01 '09 at 17:46

euphoria83

14,768
17
63
73

score 3 · Answer 386 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 11:33

3

//marco 2007.1.23
//I didn't do it

answered Apr 06 '09 at 11:33

pomarc

2,194
3
23
30

Lucas Jones · Answer 387 · 2009-04-09T21:50:17.977

// haack, phil haack

and:

/* hack, hack, hack, hack, hack hack, hack, hack
 * hackity hack, oh wonderful hacks
 * wonderful hacks, oh wonderful hack, hack, hack
 * hack hack hack... and spam 
 */

EDIT: Just found this in some of my code (the project wishes to remain anonymous):

// yikes, we need to:
/*
 *       o
 *      -|-     < US CROSSING PLATFORM
 *       |\ 
 ************************************************
 *       |          ^ PLATFORM           |
 *       |                           T   |
 *       |                      TROLL^   |
 */
// right now:
/*
 *   o ./_  | 
 *  -|-[]\  |  (_'_) () (\) | ) \|/ (S) < WALL
 *   |\     |    ^ FRIENDLY MESSAGE FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT MICROSOFT
 *  ***********************************************
 *        | ^PLATFORM                       |
 *      ^ SPRAY CAN (IN HAND)
 */
public static class DefaultFonts
{
    public static string SansSerifPath
    {
        get { return @"C:\Windows\Fonts\arial.ttf"; }
    }
    public static string SerifPath
    {
        get { return @"C:\Windows\Fonts\times.ttf"; }
    }
    public static string MonospacePath
    {
        get { return @"C:\Windows\Fonts\courier.ttf"; }
    }
}

How I love puns.

I can't remember the joke either! – Lucas Jones Apr 21 '09 at 15:29 — Lucas Jones, Apr 21 '09 at 15:29

score 3 · Answer 388 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:28

3

On error resume next 'because nothing will ever go wrong!

edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:28

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 12:57

score 3 · Answer 389 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:53

3

private static final Logger lager = new Logger();

answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:53

Casbah

31
1
3

Not really a comment, but worth a smile :) – johnc Jan 06 '11 at 02:59

score 3 · Answer 390 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:47

3

/*
* Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up :-)
*/

edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:47

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 19 '09 at 20:27

score 3 · Answer 391 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 10:02

3

//If only humans could leave things be.

//Please do not edit this code, 
//if you do you wont go to jail, you wont go directly to jail, 
//you wont pass go, you wont collect 200 dollars

answered Apr 20 '09 at 10:02

score 3 · Answer 392 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:25

3

int main(void)
/* Program starts here */

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:25

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 11:53

score 3 · Answer 393 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 12:18

3

I cried when I read this one on a project I was given to maintain.

//Write Code Here

I still cringe :)

answered Apr 20 '09 at 12:18

w4ymo

312
2
8
21

score 3 · Answer 394 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 12:45

3

// The freshest corpse at the back please.
m_DeadCharacters.push_back( std::make_pair(character, 0.0f) );
// Get rid of the rotting surplus
while( m_DeadCharacters.size() > 3 )
    m_DeadCharacters.pop_front();

answered Apr 20 '09 at 12:45

JJacobsson

153
7

score 3 · Answer 395 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 13:08

3

//ha, you thought I was lazy didnt ya?!

answered Apr 20 '09 at 13:08

TJ Eastmond

13
1
6

score 3 · Answer 396 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 08:27

3

#define FUCK_VS6_CANT_COMPILE_TEMPLATES_WITHOUT_HANDHOLDING ((float*)0)

... 

SetPinsFromChannels`<float`>(&pinbuf, streambuf, &inmapper, FUCK_VS6_CANT_COMPILE_TEMPLATES_WITHOUT_HANDHOLDING);

edited Jul 25 '11 at 08:27

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 16:31

David · Answer 397 · 2009-04-23T04:41:31.437

Our team, just tonight, released a new version of a CSS file that removed the comments from a file which was structured like this:

@charset "UTF-8";
/* Who knew comments here could COMPLETELY ruin our page in Safari? */
body {
        /* Really important stuff here */
        /* Of course, comment or not, this will all get ignored by Safari because 
           its the first rule after the comments which break everything.
           see http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset for the exact details!
        */
}

The funny thing is on the web you'll find people's solutions are to just enter in a bogus element as the first rule below the charset statement to get ignored and proceed as normal...

Food for thought: Where does one put the comment not to comment?

Sidenote: I know this shouldn't be needed due to headers, meta rules etc. Unfortunately we need it as a catch all :(

score 2 · Answer 398 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

2

Get This hack!

On a line of assembler code, after pages of uncommented code.

edited Jul 22 '11 at 06:57

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 08 '08 at 20:09

Walter Mitty

18,205
2
28
58

score 2 · Answer 399 · edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:27

2

Comment in our Enterprise Class system used for Government purposes

'RH 5/24/06 burn me if this dosn't work.. :)

Good ole RH.....company Prez/Lead Developer

edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:27

X-Istence

16,324
6
57
74

answered Oct 09 '08 at 16:22

score 2 · Answer 400 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:50

2

The ascii-art skull and crossbones (which is too difficult to recreate here) in Gosling's Emacs source (warning that the ultra-hot screen management package he wrote was not easily understood).

answered Oct 10 '08 at 00:50

andy

6,888
1
19
17

score 2 · Answer 401 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:14

2

/*************************** Drag And Drop Section - Start (you should be me to mess with this section)*********************************************/

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:14

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 10 '08 at 11:12

score 2 · Answer 402 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:25

// Jay knows what's going on here, but will he remember in a year? Not very likely, this code sucks, but it works so do not change it.

This comment was posted above a huge while-if-for block... Oh, and it manipulated an object array of object arrays of object arrays of strings that could be strings or numbers, depending on at least 3 factors... (yes, I had to debug this code and change it and I wrote the comment, however I did not write the original code). ;)

score 2 · Answer 403 · edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:42

2

// No women, no children... What movie???

edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:42

X-Istence

16,324
6
57
74

answered Oct 14 '08 at 04:47

Pat

5,263
1
36
53

Léon http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/ – Gary Willoughby Oct 30 '08 at 15:39
The movie "Pork Chip Hill" also fits. – Joshua Apr 20 '09 at 02:52

score 2 · Answer 404 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:19

2

In SJ CA back during the early days of the auction business I worked with a guy named Rick Dorin. He wrote compilers back when you had to poke at cards all day long. One of his error messages was

Too Many Errors... Make fewer!

edited Jul 22 '11 at 07:19

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 22 '08 at 06:31

score 2 · Answer 405 · answered Nov 21 '08 at 21:27

2

'""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
'
'  NOTE: DON'T SCREW WITH THIS CODE UNLESS YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND IT!
'
'""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

answered Nov 21 '08 at 21:27

Jared Knipp

5,880
7
44
52

score 2 · Answer 406 · answered Dec 02 '08 at 15:59

2

Seen in some COBOL back in 1983:

   C   I don't know what this next bit does so I'll jump around it
       GOTO DONE.

answered Dec 02 '08 at 15:59

Paul Mitchell

3,241
1
19
22

"C"? In all COBOLs I've ever used comments starts with a * (or '/' but I don't think that's standard) in column 7. However, I am mostly a C/C++/Java guy so it is probably my experience that fails. Are you sure it wasn't Fortran? – Fredrik Apr 11 '09 at 19:59

score 2 · Answer 407 · edited Jan 27 '09 at 02:43

2

From Joomla! source:

// this is daggy??

edited Jan 27 '09 at 02:43

Rob

25,984
32
109
155

answered Dec 22 '08 at 08:11

barfoon

27,481
26
92
138

score 2 · Answer 408 · answered Dec 30 '08 at 12:51

2

Dennis M Ritchie has a page about some of the ancient UNIX comments here

answered Dec 30 '08 at 12:51

Anthony Giorgio

1,844
1
15
17

score 2 · Answer 409 · answered Jan 27 '09 at 02:39

I just checked this in the other day...

/// <STERNLY-WORDED-WARNING>
/// Pay attention to this or I will hunt you down.
/// ...
/// </STERNLY-WORDED-WARNING>

Where ("..." == "proprietary stuff that I can't post"). I just liked my STERNLY-WORDED-WARNING element.

Oskar Duveborn · Answer 410 · 2011-01-02T15:38:09.667

2

-- Beyond this point, there'll be dragons

I find it more pleasingly illustrative with the longer saying ^^

edited Jan 02 '11 at 15:38

answered Feb 02 '09 at 12:06

Oskar Duveborn

2,189
16
20

@johnc yes that makes a lot more sense ^^ – Oskar Duveborn Jan 02 '11 at 15:38

score 2 · Answer 411 · answered Feb 05 '09 at 11:59

2

Once I found this:

// I wish (boss name) could do this by him self.

answered Feb 05 '09 at 11:59

Lukas Šalkauskas

14,191
20
61
77

score 2 · Answer 412 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:33

2

// barcore.cpp - MFC

//.....
HBRUSH CControlBar::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor)
{
    LRESULT lResult;
    if (pWnd->SendChildNotifyLastMsg(&lResult))
        return (HBRUSH)lResult;     // eat it

//......

// Eat it - just like eat this.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:33

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Feb 23 '09 at 13:38

score 2 · Answer 413 · answered Mar 05 '09 at 09:02

2

// Iced odnako
bool Iced{get;set;}

answered Mar 05 '09 at 09:02

Viachaslau Tysianchuk

1,680
19
22

score 2 · Answer 414 · answered Mar 07 '09 at 09:32

2

This is a comment of mine which I found today while refactoring some code

if( year < 100 ): year += 2000 #lol, Y2K

answered Mar 07 '09 at 09:32

hasen

161,647
65
194
231

4

Hmm, a Y2K1C bug in the making – johnc Mar 26 '09 at 22:59
JavaScript Date functions? There is a proper one that returns the year as 4 digits rather than 2 digits after 1900. – Michael Stum Apr 24 '09 at 12:54
1

@avp, the app was written after 2000, so 2008 was encoded as 8 – hasen Sep 03 '09 at 23:03

score 2 · Answer 415 · edited Jul 22 '11 at 08:08

2

Back around the time the Hitchhiker's Guide game was new, I had a case where I was testing whether something was scrollable and whether the user was trying to scroll, in a language that restricted variable length. So:

if (scroll and noScroll) # or tea and no tea

edited Jul 22 '11 at 08:08

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Mar 15 '09 at 12:15

score 2 · Answer 416 · answered Mar 16 '09 at 10:48

2

// The hackiest hack that ever did hack

It's in the WordPress blog engine (wp-admin/includes/user.php - if anyone actually wants to see the hacky hack itself).

answered Mar 16 '09 at 10:48

Telemachus

19,459
7
57
79

score 2 · Answer 417 · answered Mar 26 '09 at 16:39

2

Just found this in some Actionscript I have to update...

/*
* spaghetty code in this module.
* hardcoded variables for load paths for the content window.
* Needs (vast) improvement.
*/

..great :(

answered Mar 26 '09 at 16:39

Fraser

15,275
8
53
104

score 2 · Answer 418 · answered Mar 26 '09 at 23:12

Classics from the old netscape mozilla code. Personally I like

just can't fuck around. Oh, also moving memory would doom us anyway, and it'll all just be too damn hard to figure out. So, I give up, the Mac just completely utterly sucks complete rocks

but there are a lot of other fun ones.

score 2 · Answer 419 · edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:33

2

Back in college:

//why the f*** we have to move this here to make it work

It was highlighted in a printed source when we went to review with the professor.

The reason: some really nasty bug related to a buffer overflow, that affected an unrelated variable with a file handler in other place of the code. Moving the variable would make it work again.

edited Apr 01 '09 at 17:33

Trey Jackson

73,529
11
197
229

answered Mar 27 '09 at 00:37

eglasius

35,831
5
65
110

score 2 · Answer 420 · answered Apr 04 '09 at 17:51

2

In an art asset export tool, I stumble upon a complete translator from digits (arabic) numbers to roman numbers. It looked like this:

/*
//You can tell I was bored
//I wanted to do this for a long time
char* ConvertToRoman(int number, int base)
{
... whole code here
}
*/

The team of the person that wrote this code had been crunching for a long time, I guess it affected their sanity.

answered Apr 04 '09 at 17:51

MissT

780
6
14

I actually know someone who (back in the day, while at school and certainly immensely bored), implemented this exact same thing on an HP48 calculator (in RPL), so that he could use it to display roman numeral on an analog clock (in RPL too)... – Denis Troller Apr 09 '09 at 21:08
Wow, in C++ I found it fun, but RPL is hardcore :) – MissT Apr 09 '09 at 22:17
That it is. Then again, so is the guy in question. And RPL is kind of hardcore, you basically have to maintain the stack in your head while programming. Lots of fun when you get back to a program months later... – Denis Troller Apr 11 '09 at 04:38

score 2 · Answer 421 · answered Apr 07 '09 at 14:57

2

// Keep prozac ready if things get ugly!

answered Apr 07 '09 at 14:57

TalkingCode

13,407
27
102
147

score 2 · Answer 422 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 09:54

2

Best comment I ever saw was

/* 
  There is no accounting for pointers 
*/

answered Apr 19 '09 at 09:54

mmmm

2,431
2
35
56

score 2 · Answer 423 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:25

2

def leppard
# what, i cant have my own convention?
end

answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:25

penger

3,861
1
16
11

score 2 · Answer 424 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 21:31

2

switch(value)
{
   [...]
default:
   ASSERT(**true**); // if this is triggered, something really bad is happening.
}

answered Apr 19 '09 at 21:31

score 2 · Answer 425 · edited Jul 07 '09 at 11:38

A compilation of my greatest hits:

// Thats the end of the While loop
// Clean up last row.  I really must program better than this.

// Note: You can't immediately tell if the line below works.

// Rounding - blech.  It's assumed that all .5s are rounded up.

// Sort out predictions first.  Seems like the right place for a prediction, 'first'.

// Let's interpret!

score 2 · Answer 426 · edited Sep 18 '09 at 06:21

2

In some really crappy vb code (I know it is all crappy but) I found this a comment in an empty if control block that said something like:

If bFound Then
     'I love it when I write kick ass code like this
Else
  .
  .

edited Sep 18 '09 at 06:21

Carson Myers

37,678
39
126
176

answered Apr 20 '09 at 02:05

score 2 · Answer 427 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:01

2

/* Jeez, this is an ugly mess */

...comment from the X11R6 internals source code circa 1991.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:01

score 2 · Answer 428 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

2

private int mousycounter = 0; //Not really a counter

edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:31

sandro

11
1

score 2 · Answer 429 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:36

2

http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/pci/if_rl.c is a source of good ones.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:36

+1 for awesome! rl_rxeof() comments' were my favorites :) – Shalom Craimer Apr 20 '09 at 12:48

score 2 · Answer 430 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 08:00

2

//Please comment on your source code

edited Jul 25 '11 at 08:00

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:51

Tola

2,401
10
36
60

score 2 · Answer 431 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 05:24

2

//Do not continue reading if you dont want to die.

This one almost killed me.

answered Apr 20 '09 at 05:24

MRFerocius

5,509
7
39
47

2

Let me guess: you didn't stop reading, right? :D – Vilx- Apr 20 '09 at 12:29

score 2 · Answer 432 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 07:47

2

/*
    FIXME:  why the fuck did anyone ever think this kind of expensive iteration
                    was a good idea?

answered Apr 20 '09 at 07:47

score 2 · Answer 433 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 10:45

2

From the sendmail config file. After pages and pages of what looked like simply line noise. I found this gem.

# insert this handy debugging line wherever you have problems
#R$*                $:$>99$1

answered Apr 20 '09 at 10:45

DragonFax

4,625
2
32
35

score 2 · Answer 434 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:44

2

DataRow[] foundrows = FilterCalendarEntriesBecauseDotNETIsFuckedUp(tbtemp,CalDate);

Not a comment but an interesting function name

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:44

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 21 '09 at 10:09

score 2 · Answer 435 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

2

I found this

// This is a kind of magic...

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 09:26

score 2 · Answer 436 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:21

2

I often found this one

// fix it!

edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:21

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 09:29

Juergen Gutsch

1,774
2
17
28

score 2 · Answer 437 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 09:53

2

// TODO: Delete

answered Apr 22 '09 at 09:53

Juergen Gutsch

1,774
2
17
28

score 2 · Answer 438 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 10:25

I once got a call from the client years after working on a big budgeting system written in Paradox 3.5 -

"We've come across a bit of commenting that came up in a debug " -

// This shouldn't happen, if it does, then the bits that automagically 
// worked when I wrote it have stopped working

... !

score 2 · Answer 439 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 10:49

2

// for 8 or 12 threads this does not affect much.
// Strange are the situations if not understood properly.
// Yoda strikes again

In a mutli-threading module! :)

answered Apr 22 '09 at 10:49

Shouldn't that be "Again Yoda strikes"? (Or "Strikes again Yoda does.") – JAB May 28 '10 at 20:37

score 2 · Answer 440 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:21

2

// simply copied from another code

edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:21

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 11:14

score 2 · Answer 441 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

2

'Major changes: Everthing! - Removed all Cornoud's code !

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 22 '09 at 12:24

Ivo

3,406
4
33
56

score 2 · Answer 442 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 12:27

2

Found over a complex code -

//Jesus and this code have one thing in common: both were resurrected

answered Apr 22 '09 at 12:27

score 2 · Answer 443 · edited Apr 28 '09 at 19:03

2

// if the resultMap size is less than or equal to zero
// then the product is added
if (resultMap.size() <= 0)

edited Apr 28 '09 at 19:03

Ian Boyd

246,734
253
869
1,219

answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:00

score 2 · Answer 444 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:14

2

%%return_median
hit_the_sweet_spot(Arg)->
.
.

answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:14

bosky101

2,244
1
18
10

score 2 · Answer 445 · edited Sep 12 '11 at 13:21

2

//The below code needs to be commented out.

edited Sep 12 '11 at 13:21

Swaranga Sarma

13,055
19
60
93

answered Apr 23 '09 at 00:33

Srikar Doddi

15,499
15
65
106

score 2 · Answer 446 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

2

In an early version of PeopleSoft Financials PeopleCode:

/* I don't know how you can ever get here so I'll have to fix it later */

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 00:48

score 2 · Answer 447 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 10:48

2

// now that's compact!
list->insert(list->end(),**pitch)->IdxOfSample=(pitch->pos-Offset)*SamplingRate;

answered Apr 23 '09 at 10:48

score 2 · Answer 448 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 14:01

2

From Python/ceval.c:

/* This is gonna seem *real weird*, but if you put some other code between
   PyEval_EvalFrame() and PyEval_EvalCodeEx() you will need to adjust
   the test in the if statements in Misc/gdbinit (pystack and pystackv). */

answered Apr 23 '09 at 14:01

Jason Orendorff

42,793
6
62
96

score 2 · Answer 449 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

2

'I hate nested regions and will delete them along with any code found in them.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:45

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Apr 23 '09 at 20:20

Jim Evans

6,285
10
37
60

6

Suit yourself. You broke the build, not me. – tsilb Nov 20 '09 at 04:50
@tsilb - it was not my comment - it was my favorite comment that I have seen in code as the question asked :) – Jim Evans Oct 20 '10 at 19:36

score 2 · Answer 450 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 23:38

2

The below code was seen in a mock tutorial for Python.

# This is my rifle.
def rifle(type='hunting'):
    print('This is my (%s) rifle.' % type)

# This is my gun.
def gun(type='hand'):
    print('This is my (%s) gun.' % type)

# This is for fighting.
def fighting(type='illegal'):
    print('This is for (%s) fighting.' % type)

# This is for fun.
def fun(type='gaming'):
    print('This is for (%s) fun.' % type)

The author must have been a fan of Family Guy. ^_^

answered Apr 23 '09 at 23:38

13

I thought of Full Metal Jacket first :) – Michael Stum Apr 24 '09 at 09:52
2

FMJ was my first thought too. Why Family Guy? – dr Hannibal Lecter May 21 '09 at 20:07
They did a spoof of it. More recent memory and all that. – canadiancreed Oct 09 '09 at 18:47

score 2 · Answer 451 · answered Apr 24 '09 at 08:20

I just finished a logging framework (that uses Trace, why nothing like this exists I don't know). I made a convenience base class that inherits from TraceListener. It overrides all of the TraceListener methods and routes them into one method - so that is a lot of doc commenting:

// TODO: Need some codemonkey to doc comment this class.

score 2 · Answer 452 · answered Apr 25 '09 at 04:23

2

// The following array may contain either TexturedObjects or ColoredObjects.
// I know, it sucks.

answered Apr 25 '09 at 04:23

Martin Cote

28,864
15
75
99

score 1 · Answer 453 · answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:41

1

here are 4, in no order:

// Father, forgive me, for I am sinning

// heaven help me

// horse string-length into correctitude 
(from a textbook)

// what, me worry?

answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:41

Michael Easter

23,733
7
76
107

score 1 · Answer 454 · edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:27

1

if(count<0) count=0;    //don't get me wrong but this has to be done :p

edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:27

X-Istence

16,324
6
57
74

answered Oct 10 '08 at 11:13

score 1 · Answer 455 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

1

try {
  dataSource.close();
}
catch (SQLException ex) {
  // Do nothing, since we're going to trash this anyway
}

Of course, this sort of thing is actually a wtf in JDBC (or at least Oracle's JDBC driver) as it can throw SQLExceptions when closing a connection...

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 10 '08 at 12:35

Powerlord

87,612
17
125
175

score 1 · Answer 456 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 15:55

1

Nice one in VB.NET that I ran into this morning, got a chuckle ...

''' <summary>
''' Represents an exception that was logged.  Since System.Exception implements IDictionary, it can't be
''' serialized, so I had to write this.  Pretty fucking stupid thing to have to do, System.Exception should
''' be serializable right out of the box, IMHO.
''' </summary>
''' <remarks></remarks>
Public Class LogException

answered Oct 10 '08 at 15:55

hmcclungiii

1,765
2
16
27

I have something in my code that does the same thing - I wonder how many comments like this are out there. – rjzii Oct 16 '08 at 13:31
1

WTF System.Exception IS serializable.. – Andrei Rînea Feb 16 '10 at 18:28

score 1 · Answer 457 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:29

1

i just noticed myself writing this

// not brilliant solution, but fair enough heh.

answered Oct 10 '08 at 16:29

Kasper

1,282
4
20
39

score 1 · Answer 458 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 12:30

I inherited a project that haad been delivered to the customer without any UAT. It was dropkicked over the fence and the money requested.

First time they used it, it naturally blew up. It was an interposing library that overrode any system calls that took a file name as a parameter rather than a file descriptor.

Many system calls had been forgotten.

When I got onboard the code was laced with such gems as:

/* core dumps around here but this is hardly ever called */

and

/* don't know why this works but it seeems to be ok */

Oh, and there were no unit tests. A colleague had started to add the missing system calls and unit tests.

And the bastards who'd written the code were still in the team and didn't care at all about the garbage that had been delivered!

score 1 · Answer 459 · edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:41

1

Sanitized:

//Forward declarations:

class X {}; // TODO: Remove {}  ! When we get X defined....

edited Apr 19 '09 at 09:41

X-Istence

16,324
6
57
74

answered Oct 13 '08 at 14:59

Dan

512
1
4
12

score 1 · Answer 460 · answered Oct 19 '08 at 07:08

Fix problem where Nulls don't work properly.  Stupid Microsoft!

Code converted Nulls to zero-length strings line by line in roundabout way because the stupid programmer did not understand what Nulls are and had never heard of the Nz() function.

score 1 · Answer 461 · answered Oct 19 '08 at 20:48

// GK Experimental

(GK being the initials of the coder)

Used to indicate parts of code which are, indeed, kind of experimental. :)

A great flag to know that when you hit it during debugging you're probably busy for the upcoming few hours fixing the hack.. ;)

score 1 · Answer 462 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 07:10

1

I've just placed this comment:

// this control (Resistance) is FUTILE!

edited Jul 26 '11 at 07:10

bluish

26,356
27
122
180

answered Oct 27 '08 at 15:24

Joshi Spawnbrood

525
6
13

score 1 · Answer 463 · answered Oct 27 '08 at 16:26

A large project I worked on used StyleCop and FXCop in the automated build with rules to prevent people checking in code with uncommented fields, methods, properties etc., etc.

Someone got so pissed off with having to add comments like "Gets or sets the full name." to self-documenting properties like FullName, that they went to the effort of writing a macro to get around the rules.

The macro inserted XML summary tags for methods, properties etc. with a single non-displaying Unicode character as the tag content which would fool the build rules whilst simultaneously striking his minor blow against mindless insistence on commenting stuff for the sake of it...

...at least until they introduced another rule to check for Unicode characters in comments.

score 1 · Answer 464 · answered Dec 10 '08 at 00:08

1

Near the top of a unit:

// Oh what a tangled web we weave
// When first we practice to deceive
// ASTA

answered Dec 10 '08 at 00:08

Jim McKeeth

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score 1 · Answer 465 · answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:30

1

/* Hammer Time! */

I have no idea why or whether he was wearing ripstop nylon parachute pants while writing the code

answered Dec 18 '08 at 19:30

John Channing

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score 1 · Answer 466 · edited Dec 19 '08 at 15:51

Sometime in the early 1980's we were writing financial modeling code for utilities in PL/I. Got a call from a client with code blowing up right after a comment

/* Honest this works */

The guy had taken our standard set of financial equations and done about 15 pages of algebra to combine a bunch of code into one equation. After Three Mile Island when utilities had to write off their nuclear plants at huge costs the equation failed because of a FIXED BIN 15 (integer) overflow that would not have happened if the algebra hadn't happened.

The compiler didn't believe him – Ikke Mar 09 '09 at 14:42 — Ikke, Mar 09 '09 at 14:42

score 1 · Answer 467 · answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:48

1

// Description : !!! TODO

answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:48

Nicolas

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score 1 · Answer 468 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:26

1

In Latin, Abandon hope all ye who enter here from Dante's "Divine Comedy".

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:26

bluish

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answered Dec 19 '08 at 16:55

Michael Bobick

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Why Latin? the original is Italian... "...Abbandonate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate." – Adriano Varoli Piazza Dec 30 '08 at 13:42

score 1 · Answer 469 · edited Jan 27 '09 at 02:43

1

From Joomla! source:

// fudge the group stuff

edited Jan 27 '09 at 02:43

Rob

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answered Dec 22 '08 at 08:06

barfoon

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score 1 · Answer 470 · answered Jan 30 '09 at 16:35

I once implemented some document workflow using MS SQL Server Developer 2000 (the human workflow stuff).

It consisted of a bunch of triggers that would be added to the database to make it follow workflow rules.

In one of the triggers, someone at Microsoft had written something along the lines of:

//Determine if the database has been "Grizzlified"

(The internal name of the product was "Grizzly", so I thought that was funny).

score 1 · Answer 471 · answered Feb 03 '09 at 19:35

1

// StupidCompilerDontInline(SCDI), in the test project where
// allcode was in a single cpp the compiler had inlined nearly
// everything which lead to nice stackoverflow.
// To prevent this the metods are made virtual
#define SCDI virtual

answered Feb 03 '09 at 19:35

Andreas

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score 1 · Answer 472 · answered Feb 05 '09 at 10:51

Found this recently in our code (we develop enterprise software):

// Instance of excel
Excel excel = this.CreateExcelInstance();
excel.Open(stream); // how to close it?!

Until that I was sure we're free of this "fun stuff" and we're doing it the right and ideologically correct way...

score 1 · Answer 473 · answered Feb 13 '09 at 01:15

Had a programmer working for me once that put "Style" comments throughout his code where he codified his internal debates about the particular implementation details and to take parting shots when he was overruled on a particular coding decision.

Examples:

'STYLE 'It's arguable which is better, but I pass the image handle rather than simply 'passing the scaling values in order to keep the calling code simpler (by a 'couple of declarations statements). Alternatively, I could pass these data 'members directly from the calling code, but that would violate encapsulation.

'STYLE 'As I have done elsewhere, I will register my offical protest (just give me the 'forms to fill out) regarding the implementation of annotation serialization as 'a property rather than a pair of Load/Save methods. Again, this is probably a 'matter of style and eminently debatable.

I think I worked with that guy! :) – Sam Schutte Dec 21 '10 at 20:31 — Sam Schutte, Dec 21 '10 at 20:31

score 1 · Answer 474 · edited Mar 09 '09 at 15:16

1

'this next if statement - just how it is. don't try to understand it because you won't. :)

That's job security right there.

edited Mar 09 '09 at 15:16

Krzysztof Kozmic

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answered Feb 14 '09 at 19:29

James Jones

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score 1 · Answer 475 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 11:38

In eMule, Preferences.cpp, in the method that forces a minimum upload speed limit proportional to your download speed limit:

uint16 CPreferences::GetMaxDownload(){
//dont be a Lam3r :)
    uint16 maxup=(GetMaxUpload()==UNLIMITED)?GetMaxGraphUploadRate():GetMaxUpload();
    if( maxup < 4 )
        return (( (maxup < 10) && (maxup*3 < prefs->maxdownload) )? maxup*3 : prefs->maxdownload);
    return (( (maxup < 10) && (maxup*4 < prefs->maxdownload) )? maxup*4 : prefs->maxdownload);
}

score 1 · Answer 476 · answered Mar 29 '09 at 13:16

1

// Sorry dirty code

answered Mar 29 '09 at 13:16

Amr Elgarhy

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score 1 · Answer 477 · answered Apr 03 '09 at 13:20

We have a file and half way down it a programmer trying to make sense of the mess managed to move all the nonsense code to the bottom, and left a comment of something like:

I have no idea what this stuff does below here.

Another programmer left a series of nested namespaces that acted like a which-way-book, so that you could drill into the namespaces in the idea and choose your actions.

score 1 · Answer 478 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 10:29

1

else
{
    //error situation
}

answered Apr 06 '09 at 10:29

Elroy

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score 1 · Answer 479 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 11:04

1

#pragma region Crap that is kept for temporary reasons

    //  Huge chunk of commented code

#pragma endregion

answered Apr 06 '09 at 11:04

Elroy

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score 1 · Answer 480 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 15:15

When I'm commenting out chunks of code that I THINK are no longer useful, but I might be wrong about (hence not deleting them) I will sometimes preface them with

// Wilted celery?

The idea being that this is like celery that is wilted, but you put it back in the fridge anyway. I just know that 10 years from now someone else will find these comments and say WTF?

score 1 · Answer 481 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:32

1

map(TimeZoneId.Romance, "Romance Standard Time"); //LULZ.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:32

bluish

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answered Apr 09 '09 at 21:49

Will Charczuk

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score 1 · Answer 482 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:36

1

// This interface defines method signatures<br>
interface IWhatever { ... }

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:36

bluish

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answered Apr 09 '09 at 21:54

score 1 · Answer 483 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 05:12

Here's a few that I've put in my code at various times. Some aren't technically comments, but they're the same sort of concept.

In a cross-platform project that needs some special code on one platform only:

//If defined, will include all the Windows-specific code.
#define LOSE

#ifdef LOSE
#include <windows.h> //WIN32. Duh.
#endif


---------------------------------------------------


//Stolen from other_project_name.cpp


---------------------------------------------------


/*
 * These comments have been lifted from propagate() and, though they no longer apply to the code, they may still be of value somewhere. Original tabbing and structural elements have been preserved.
 */
    //CAUTION: This has a major Bobby Tables risk. Even if a rulebuilder is used, there's still the risk of something getting corrupted in the database itself.
    //Reading text from anywhere and simply slotting it into an SQL statement is a major security risk. (With thanks to xkcd for the name "Bobby Tables".)
    //Requirement: Eliminate one Bobby Tables by changing [redacted] to be not just straight SQL.
[lots more comments that are not as funny]
/*
 * End of lifted comments. There should not be any executable code between these markers.
 */


---------------------------------------------------


        /*
        Okay. It's unrecognized. Why is this a fatal error? It's actually very closely akin to the miswart of botched #includes being a fatal. When writing a C/C++
        program, you need your headers, and if you don't have one, chances are there'll be a million cascaded errors; so by making "unable to open asdf.h" a fatal,
        the compiler suppresses all those errors about undefined symbols and potentially misspelled type names.
        */


---------------------------------------------------


    //If someone tries to import 'id' as a field name, it won't work. (We already have our own id.) But I think the probability is so low that I can afford to be funny.
    if (!stricmp(ptr,"id")) {warn(0,"Import","","'id' is a reserved word and cannot be used as a column name. (Try 'ego' or 'superego'.)"); return;}


---------------------------------------------------


//Need a place to squirrel away SQL statements somewhere
char *uts[1024]; //Unified Temporary Storage. (Why? Because I said so.)
int nuts=0; //What is it that squirrels keep? Ha!
int utsid[sizeof uts/sizeof *uts];


---------------------------------------------------


        /**************************************\
         * NOTE: This sets tilde.action. If a *
         * tilde header does not exist in the *
         * import file (not the _content_, if *
         * the entire column isn't there), it *
         * will duplicate down through all of *
         * the rows. This is fine for ~id, as *
         * that will never be changed; and if *
         * ~Quantity is blank, that throws an *
         * error in 'Add'. With ~Action, I am *
         * not so certain. I THINK it'd be OK *
         * to dup-down most of the time... if *
         * the user only ever imports Adds or *
         * Revises, but never both at once in *
         * a single import. So for safety, to *
         * allow a blank ~Action to revise OR *
         * add, I'm breaking the check out to *
         * a new variable - the curaction. In *
         * most cases, it won't be needed, so *
         * it's a waste; but it isn't like it *
         * has to copy the entire tilde.*, so *
         * it's only a small waste. So it can *
         * waste a register... big deal. OK ! *
        \**************************************/


---------------------------------------------------


            //if (!response) // we're going to crash
            //if (!items) // we're going to crash
            //TODO: Don't crash


---------------------------------------------------

A lot of my comments contain obscure references to films or musicals, but they won't be nearly as funny if you don't know the show.

score 1 · Answer 484 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 19:52

1

/* Look not upon this file lest your eyes be burnt from your head. */

What can I say? I was an intern and the summer was almost over. I was, shall we say, lacking in serious commitment to my documentation responsibilities.

answered Apr 15 '09 at 19:52

Bob Cross

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score 1 · Answer 485 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:07

1

I do not have a copy of the source but I have always remembered it:

// If you cannot figure it out, you should not be reading this

answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:07

leed25d

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score 1 · Answer 486 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:30

From the Linux Kernel source:

linux/include/asm-i386/hw_irq.h:

/*
 * subtle. orig_eax is used by the signal code to distinct between
 * system calls and interrupted 'random user-space'. Thus we have
 * to put a negative value into orig_eax here. (the problem is that
 * both system calls and IRQs want to have small integer numbers in
 * orig_eax, and the syscall code has won the optimization conflict ;)
 *
 * Subtle as a pigs ear.  VY
 */

score 1 · Answer 487 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:52

1

double t = 0.0; /* that's generally my opinion of the diner, too. */

answered Apr 19 '09 at 19:52

score 1 · Answer 488 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

1

$dnstime = time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 * 2; //how long are you staying for vacation on mars? twooo weeeeeks. give dees people air

edited Jul 26 '11 at 06:59

bluish

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answered Apr 19 '09 at 21:08

score 1 · Answer 489 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:44

1

Found in an old perl script that generates HTML:

# I would be _very_ brain farting if I said this code didn't need reviewing.
# It will make babies cry, and hair grow on your back, so please don't use it

answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:44

Tony Arnold

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score 1 · Answer 490 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 04:49

From /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Headers/NSTextView.h:

- (void)smartInsertForString:(NSString *)pasteString replacingRange:(NSRange)charRangeToReplace beforeString:(NSString **)beforeString afterString:(NSString **)afterString;
- (NSString *)smartInsertBeforeStringForString:(NSString *)pasteString replacingRange:(NSRange)charRangeToReplace;
- (NSString *)smartInsertAfterStringForString:(NSString *)pasteString replacingRange:(NSRange)charRangeToReplace;

/* Java note: The second and third methods are the primitives and are the 
methods exposed in Java.  The first method calls the other two.  All 
Objective-C code calls the first method.  In either Objective-C or Java any 
overriding should be done for the second and third methods, not the first 
method.  This will all work out correctly with the exception of existing code 
that overrides the first method.  Existing subclasses that do this will not 
have their implementations available to Java developers. Isn't Java wonderful? */

score 1 · Answer 491 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:13

1

From http://www.madore.org/~david/computers/callcc.html:

/* Yow!  DEMONS are flying through my NOSE! */

answered Apr 20 '09 at 20:13

ben

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score 1 · Answer 492 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 07:01

1

// repopulate, slight hax (or strong assumptions :P) below

edited Jul 26 '11 at 07:01

bluish

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answered Apr 21 '09 at 08:46

score 1 · Answer 493 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

1

//this is a crap way to do this but I ran out of patience

DelButton.click();

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

bluish

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answered Apr 21 '09 at 09:42

score 1 · Answer 494 · answered Apr 21 '09 at 12:53

1

/**
 * Hexadecimal digit
 */
protected $version = -1;

answered Apr 21 '09 at 12:53

score 1 · Answer 495 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:21

// Holy moses! I've never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life. 

// Why do we need to query the AlarmIDs table twice.

// Please tell me sir; I would really like to know. 

// This like all the other services have been mangled

// to the point where they are nearly impossible to determine what kind of side affects might occur.

// I am making the smallest changes I can to this code. 

// The GetAlarmId method gets the alarm id from the AlarmIDs table.

// Novel idea, why didn't we query for the values be get below all in the same place.

// This should be changed, but right now it will have to remain as is due to time constraints.

// This like all other services really don't do anything fantastically hard, but after the original coders got

// done with them; they are difficult to work with and have an acceptable comfort level.

score 1 · Answer 496 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 09:22

First at the beginning of an Update to a huge object:

/*General note to all who tread in the <ObjectName>() code...
 * The SetOriginals() method from the BaseEntity class should be called (and only called) right after the Get() method
 * call as seen above.  Calling the SetOriginals method elsewhere will result in bugs and all kinds of other nasty suprises.
 */

Then after some 200 lines of logic to update the object:

//Attempt to explain this confusing mess of code:
//First time you save an actual absence this is what happens:
//0. The first save saves to the <TableName> table (among other things). (Fig. A)
//1. The <CalculationMethod> method is called next which inserts to the <OtherTableName> table. 
//(This is the table that keeps track of credits to the case.) (Fig. B)
//2. So then you have to call <UpdateCalculations> to move the <TableName> records to the <ThirdTableName> table. (Fig. C)
//3. Then you go back and run calculations since you have the debits table (<ThirdTableName>) populated. (Fig D.)
//4. Then a final save to save the calculations back to the case. (Fig. E)
//Yeah, I know what you're thinking:  this sucks. 10/01/07 XXX

And the developer was right... This sucked HARD!

score 1 · Answer 497 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

1

//Maybe you should make anyone knows your code's purpose.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

bluish

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answered Apr 23 '09 at 02:15

score 1 · Answer 498 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:16

1

[vrk:Cloud ID="cTags" runat="server" DataTextField="Tag" DataWeightField="Total"
    Width="100%" DataHrefField="Tag" DataHrefFormatString="~/tags.aspx?tag={0}"]
[/vrk:Cloud]

[!--if anybody would like to change the control's color contact with FLORJON--]

edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:16

bluish

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answered Apr 23 '09 at 12:11

Florjon

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score 1 · Answer 499 · answered Apr 23 '09 at 19:21

I really almost like the oh_my_gawd tag better than the comment...

    /*
     * IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe ...  Don't even give the
     * generic PCI code a chance to look at it for real ...
     */
    if (cf == (PCI_VENDOR_ID_SGI | (PCI_DEVICE_ID_SGI_IOC3 b_type0_cfg_dev[slot].f[fn].c[where ^ (4 - size)];

    if (size == 1)
        res = get_dbe(*value, (u8 *) addr);
    else if (size == 2)
        res = get_dbe(*value, (u16 *) addr);
    else
        res = get_dbe(*value, (u32 *) addr);

    return res ? PCIBIOS_DEVICE_NOT_FOUND : PCIBIOS_SUCCESSFUL;

oh_my_gawd:

    /*
     * IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe ...  Don't even give the
     * generic PCI code a chance to look at the wrong register.
     */
    if ((where >= 0x14 && where = 0x48)) {
        *value = 0;
        return PCIBIOS_SUCCESSFUL;
    }

score 1 · Answer 500 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:12

1

Technically not a comment, but from coding on something at 2 am or so:

consent = False

... that variable is never used again EVER and appears in the beginning of a listen loop for a socket.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 13:12

bluish

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answered Apr 25 '09 at 02:23

Only 2 of 72? Meh, must not been THAT bad of a bug. – Neil N May 18 '10 at 21:42

score 1 · Answer 501 · answered Apr 27 '09 at 19:14

1

TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text; //Point less yes, who writes this crap?

answered Apr 27 '09 at 19:14

corymathews

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It isn't necessarily pointless, by the way, but if it isn't, well, crap wouldn't be strong enough a term. (I've written code like that.) – reinierpost Mar 18 '10 at 13:43
2

If not breakpointless then not pointless. – Windows programmer Apr 30 '10 at 08:18
I guess somebody wanted to invoke TextChanged – Wojtek Turowicz Jul 25 '11 at 14:14

score 1 · Answer 502 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:49

1

When coding MAPPER Apps we had some standards and one of these was that there was a list of standard variables in use throughout the suite. One of these - 'V43' was always used to hold a Surname. So imagine my annoyance when the only comment in a big cryptic chunk of MAPPER code I'd been asked to fix was:

Here V43 contains the Surname

edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:49

bluish

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answered Apr 28 '09 at 08:04

score 0 · Answer 503 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

0

(A bunch of code that's really weird looking)  //Kludge.

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:46

bluish

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answered Oct 08 '08 at 22:53

score 0 · Answer 504 · answered Oct 11 '08 at 13:23

[onload_1;block=begin;when 1=0]

Some of the techinques in this template are rather obscure, just trust me, they need to be there.
OTOH a better sollution would be to create a few seperate templates and pick one in the php-script...

[onload_1;block=end]

score 0 · Answer 505 · answered Oct 14 '08 at 06:13

0

This is from an old IOCCC winning entry, I had to download the whole archive of winners -- a humongous 1.4 M -- and grep for several phrases I remembered wrong before finding it.

Syntactically this is probably not a comment. Or may be it is. I haven't figured it out. It definitely does not have comment delimiters, but it doesn't have String delimiters either.

C="Lint says "argument Manual isn't used."  What's that
mean?";

No prices for guessing the output from lint.

And for the curious, that entry is here.

answered Oct 14 '08 at 06:13

Miserable Variable

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too bad it doesn't compile :( – coppro Oct 24 '08 at 22:52
1

@coppro, it does compile when you compile the whole thing. Maybe your compiler is broke. – Joshua Apr 20 '09 at 02:46
This program shouldn't compile on any standard C compiler. The preprocessor doesn't work that way. In fact I can't see what rules the preprocessor this was written for could possibly have been following. In other words this program is even more obfuscated now than when it was written. – Jason Orendorff Sep 24 '10 at 02:12
@coppro @Jason IOCCC is a very respectable organization. The rules of the competition require a standard conforming program. Suggest you study the entire program and its conformance before passing quick judgements. – Miserable Variable Oct 01 '10 at 05:24

score 0 · Answer 506 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:22

0

REM Don't delete this print statement ****** will die

The process in question was a service in some legacy code

edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:22

bluish

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answered Dec 20 '08 at 18:03

Andy Webb

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score 0 · Answer 507 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:25

// long live COM'n'Roll
public enum StatusCode
{
        //success codes
        S_OK                                            = 1,
        S_NONE                                          = 2,
        S_SQL_OPERATIONS_LISTS_EMPTY                    = 3,

        //error codes
        E_NO_MATCHING_END_FOUND                         = -1,
        E_SEQUENCE_NUMBER_NOT_FOUND_AT_BEGINNING        = -2,
        E_SEQUENCE_NUMBER_NOT_FOUND_AT_END              = -3,
        E_FORWARD_AND_BACKWARD_OPS_COUNT_DO_NOT_MATCH   = -4,
        E_FORWARD_AND_BACKWARD_IDS_DO_NOT_MATCH         = -5,
        E_IDS_DO_NOT_MATCH                              = -6
}

score 0 · Answer 508 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:26

0

// Oh crap, i think i'm gonna yack

followed shortly thereafter by:

// TODO: end this lunacy

edited Jul 26 '11 at 12:26

bluish

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answered Mar 05 '09 at 18:16

shampoopy

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score 0 · Answer 509 · answered Mar 24 '09 at 06:57

0

Mine fave was a variable name inside some of the business logic of a school project written in java.

int StupidJava = -1;

answered Mar 24 '09 at 06:57

Stephen Curial

1,686
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2

-1 this is not a comment – bluish Jul 22 '11 at 09:31

score 0 · Answer 510 · answered Apr 06 '09 at 09:58

0

// Hack-er-ama

answered Apr 06 '09 at 09:58

Paul Suart

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score 0 · Answer 511 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

0

// now swap like a <explicative removed>

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

bluish

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answered Apr 09 '09 at 20:56

ninegrid

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score 0 · Answer 512 · edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

0

I just found this in some legacy code..

'CANNOT JUST QUIT!

edited Jul 25 '11 at 12:47

bluish

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answered Apr 16 '09 at 15:12

madcolor

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score 0 · Answer 513 · answered Apr 19 '09 at 10:45

0

<cftry>
...code...
<cfcatch>
  <!--- Gobble --->
</cfcatch>
<cftry>

It's all over my companies code base. It's ColdFusion and it simply ignores errors.

answered Apr 19 '09 at 10:45

Stewart Robinson

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score 0 · Answer 514 · answered Apr 20 '09 at 19:39

Well-written Lisp is one of the easiest to read languages and I love it. But poorly written Lisp can be a nightmare so much worse than bad Java, etc.

Here, we need to create a "group file" if there exist 3 variants of an original file named with the suffixes a, b and c. I had been trying to track down a strange bug where we were getting unnecessary group files...

  (let ((varianta (format nil "~aa" problem))
        (variantb (format nil "~ab" problem))
        (variantc (format nil "~ac" problem)))
    ;;if the A and B variants exist, create a group file
    ;;(why not just check for a? I don't know, this just feels right)
    (when (and (probe-file varianta)
               (probe-file variantb))
      ...)))

Bug: 1, Gut: 0.

Apparently it didn't occur to whoever wrote this that perhaps checking for all three variants would be a good idea. Of course, that was the bug I ended up tracking down a decade after this code was originally written (it predates the first SVN log).

score 0 · Answer 515 · edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:47

0

Some old fortran code I saw:

     integer *4 one,two,three;

c    asssign one to 100 before entering the loop
     one=100;

edited Jul 26 '11 at 14:47

bluish

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answered Apr 21 '09 at 02:06

HeretoLearn

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score 0 · Answer 516 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:27

Re eating one's own dogfood: We have the same term in our workplace (granted, only because I introduced it). My code is peppered with comments that say "TODO" and indicate something that ought to be done eventually, but a comment saying "DOGFOOD" (both keywords are always at the beginning of the comment, in all caps) means something that must be done before this program can be used even internally. It's a handy thing to search for, as the word "dogfood" is never going to appear in a quoted string - if it does, I can always just say "dog-food" or something - so even a case-insensitive search will come up with the right results.

Regarding zeroing the accumulator: I've done exactly the same thing when programming an Intel 80x86 (I started on the 8086 and moved up from there into the modern Pentiums). XORing a register with itself is the quickest and tightest way to clear it. Using "MOV AX,0" requires three bytes (opcode and two bytes of literal 16-bit zero), whereas "XOR AX,AX" is only two; it's even more noticeable with the 386-and-higher extended registers, where "MOV EAX,0" requires five bytes (four bytes of 32-bit zero). My C/C++ compiler always zeroes registers this way, so I'd assume it's still the best way (although I haven't studied opcode timing tables in ages, and probably both XOR reg,reg and MOV reg,imm take one clock).

MOV reg,imm takes more bytes and increases the chances of needing to read in two pages from the swapfile instead of just one. — Windows programmer, Apr 23 '09 at 02:49
From the 4 methods on X86, `XOR EAX,EAX` is best: http://www.linux-kongress.org/2009/slides/compiler_survey_felix_von_leitner.pdf (Page 71). — Turbo J, Sep 17 '10 at 01:57

score 0 · Answer 517 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 19:49

I was doing a database in Access, very simple thing - at least it was supposed to be at the start or I would have done it in Delphi. The client wanted to be able to get the customer info out of the database but they would not enter enough information to reliably identify the customer. I told them to use the phone number as the key as each customer (the way they worked, not for everyone) would have a different number. After a few frantic calls from them, (It's not working we can't enter the customer) I discovered that they were too lazy to look up the phone numbers from their old system and were trying to enter all the numbers they did not know as "n/a". In trying to sort this out for them I ended up with a lot of checking loops in the code and had the comment beside one outcome "This should never be reached if they do what they are supposed to do!!!!!!!!!"

They also asked me once "How can we find the right customer even if we put in the wrong address?" And all for peanuts.

score 0 · Answer 518 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 21:30

Looking back at old code from classes is fun...

    cardDeck.push_back(*(new card((rank)r, (suit)s)));  // Push each card onto the deck
                                                        // Temp. objects are overrated

While going through some things, it makes me wish I left more comments at 4 AM when I was hacking together random code...

What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?

518 Answers518

A modification log I noticed in a legacy code

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