ReFRACKtoring

Once in a while one find itself on a task where numerous WTF moments appear. You can imagine such a task?

Yes you can. It’s adding new features to legacy code/database or to a ‘WTF’ code base.

A ‘What the F***’ code base, a collection of lines of code that make you shout WTF more than is healthy. You can usually hardly call it a program. It’s a collection of blunders after blunders. Not testable due to lack of interesting unit tests, thus not refactorable (if that’s even a word) without adding a unit test.

And then comes the day. ‘Hi mister, we’d like feature X, Y, Z added to this application.’  You say, ‘ok’ and come back with a rough estimation after carefully reading the specifications. Architect and Programmers decide: ‘Should take about 4 weeks in optimal man days’, what the client then hears that it will take around 3 months. And so the waterfall started spoiling it’s liquid.

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What questions they dare to ask?

Shouldn’t some people really be ashamed of what questions they dare to ask?

It’s been a week I looked at the itext mailing list, and 2 mails really stood out to me because I could have a good laugh (shame on me for laughing)

Code WTF’s
1. someone trying to set a static final variable: http://itext-general.2136553.n4.nabble.com/dialog-to-select-pdf-to-import-td3779993.html

Noob Alert
2 .Do you know what a servlet is? A web application? Tomcat? If not, you’re building a house starting from the rooftop.
http://itext-general.2136553.n4.nabble.com/newbie-Web-page-to-call-itext-Hello-java-td3781877.html
( at least Steve warns/admits ‘newbie’ and he seems willing to learn. But he received a brilliant answer )