Aieee

[ralphmelton]

The annotation engine part of our code traumatizes me. The code reflects the political and social problems that were going on when it was written.

I thought I spotted a bug in the code that deserializes saved analysis trees.
I tried a test case, and it worked.
I looked more closely:
It turned out that the author of the deserialization code intended to do the wrong thing; she intended to iterate through the inputs of a node, instead of just reusing one input.
But she failed to implement her intention correctly; she didn't check the return value of the iterator, so when it failed, she just used the old input without realizing it.
So it worked after all.

This is not exactly two wrongs making a right. At best, this is two wrongs making a right with a heaping helping of AIEEEE!

Comments

[elletweedy.livejournal.com]

It's at this point that I smile to myself because I know the pain of which you speak and I no longer have to deal with it. I have all new incomprehensible code to make me think, "why, why, why in the name of all that is holy did you do it *that* way?"

And "how can I fix it to serve my evil ends?" :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Reading this post caused me to spend a few moments laughing. You are, of course, absolutely right.

Good luck. :) Call me if you need anything--a 10 ft pole, for example. :)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, you helped write some of this code. (Not that I blame you.)

[elletweedy.livejournal.com]

I believe that you remember correctly. Go ahead and blame me; I'll keep on laughing from afar. ;)

Pretty bad

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I have to add that it's pretty bad when I look over and you are twitching and shivering due to the horrors of that code. That's the kind of behavior I'd expect from me. :)