Step into the confessional. Now's your time to come clean. What's the worst code you personally have ever written? Why was it so bad? What did you learn from it? Don't tell us about code you inherited or from some co-worker. This is about your personal growth as a programmer and as a person. ...
OK I know this could get some votes down, but as a time waster, who has some good Acronyms. My Favourite: TWaIN: Technology Without an Interesting Name ...
When you are writing code or naming products, which sources of cultural references are you most likely to draw from? Which reference sources do you think are more likely to be universally understood? For example when findbugs sees that you've implemented equals() without overriding hashCode() it suggest that you implement it by returni...
I know it is illegal to place Easter eggs in code via Microsoft's quarrel with the law a few years back. Microsoft has decided that if you place Easter eggs in code, it is an immediate grounds for termination, but they are still out there in the wild. I know I put my name in the code a lot that will never show up to the users, but it i...
What is the single software company that you most want to work for? Why? ...
What is the first thing you do when you install Visual Studio? I am talking about anything customization-wise (so we don't get answers based on 'I create a new project'). Do you have a favorite font? Do you have a must have extension you couldn't possibly live without? Do you have a keyboard shortcut you like to set? I am interest...
I'm thinking along the lines of the virtual world representation in Hackers. ...
Following the egregious use question, other than Antitrust (to some extent), and The Matrix episode where Trinity uses nmap in a legit fashion, what movie/tv/book references use computers correctly? Clarification - I don't merely mean someone sending mail like in You've Got Mail - I'm thinking a geeky film/show/book that should use it r...
Following the Egregious pop culture perversion of programming, what is the most outlandishly insane technobabble you have ever heard, either in fiction or real life? Extra points to those unfortunates whose real life stories beat Hollywood. Note: feel free to sketch out what would be necessary for such gibberish to actually work. ...
I remember testing a geographical data normalizer written in Java that had concurrency problems. So, when you tried to normalize a city (say "Rome") and another guy did that too (say "New york"), you would get the other guy's data normalized ("NEW YORK") instead of your query. What's the bug that mostly made you smile in your career? ...
When you first started to write program, what was the first programming language you learned? Please don't post repeats. If someone already posted it, just vote for it. ...
What is the most impossible/irrational/magic behavior you ever encountered and what was the 'simple' rationale behind it? As an example i give this link to the famous 500-miles problem. ...
Nobody likes waiting but unfortunately in the Ajax application I'm working on at the moment, there is one fair-sized pause (1-2 seconds a go) that users have to undergo each and every time they want to load up a chunk of data. I've tried to make the load as interactive as possible. There's an animated GIF alongside a very plain, very du...
The funnest thing I ever got paid to do was a compete in a competition. I the "Unix Guy" was tasked with using C# and .NET to build a client/server database application. Our resident "Windows Guy" was given the same specification and tasked with building the same application on Linux with Trolltech QT toolkit. I had NO .NET experience an...
I just finished debugging something really hairy, took me three days and one night of not sleeping (not just one bug, obv). What I WANTED to do was stand on my desk and dance. What I did do is let myself surf on reddit for a few, and I may treat myself to a walk and a nice lunch. What are some good rewards for getting a task complete...
What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? ...
In the spirit of "fun polls"... What is your favorite esoteric programming language? Guidelines: One language per response, upvote to echo others' responses If you can, describe what makes it your favorite Provide a code sample (if practical) See Also: Is it worth it to learn an esoteric programming language? What is the stranges...
Just wondering what little scripts/programs people here have written that helps one with his or her everyday life (aka not work related). Anything goes, groundbreaking or not. For me right now, it's a small python script to calculate running pace given distance and time elapsed. ...
What are your favorite personal projects? What I mean is a project that you designed and worked on without getting paid for it - but had fun developing. If you had a team of other people working on it as well, that is OK too. This can be in any language; or a program you wrote that did something another one did. Multiple posts are welc...
This one is pretty good, especially for Star Wars fans: ...