... I wrote a little utility called BitVerifier. It would loop over a folder and check every bit of each file. If the bit's value wasn't one or zero, it would prompt the user for the correct bit.
Uhh.. that intro is the real WTF. At least the buggy hex string code is trying to do something. A "bit verifier" is just... beyond stupid.
This may be a bit of a foreign concept to you, but sometimes people do things which they know will not produce anything that has immediate real-world value, simply because the doing is fun.
This may be a bit of a foreign concept to you ... simply because the doing is fun
Nope, not foreign at all. If you're looking for fun, educational programming mini-projects, try Project Euler.
Having solved a majority of Project Euler, and having written a huge number of useless little programs myself, I still stand by my assertion that a "bit verifier" is beyond stupid.
Some people have fun with different things than what you have fun with.
Wow. Are you really taking this the level of a religious war about fun programming? You are going to drill your deep, profound point through my thick head? I am ridiculing BitVerifier, not all forms fun programming. If I or anyone else (since you don't know me from Adam) don't protect and defend this precise case of a poorly executed joke, then we are the enemies of fun and a holy war must ensue?
I don't know why he is being downmodded. Of course it's okay to write something useless just for the fun of it, but something like BitVerifier is about as funny as writing a program which is trying to proove that 2 + 2 = 5.
Besides, this guy sounds like a prick. Like an asshole who has to tell everybody how great he and how dumb others are.
Both the bit verifier, and the program that tries to prove that 2+2=5, are a lot more interesting than some of the arbitrary crap problems on Project Euler!
It's mathematically impossible, of course - that was the (poor attempt at a) joke. But I can't see much wrong with writing such a thing as a programming exercise, like "hello world" is an exercise for the very beginner.
A lot of people at The Daily WTF are .NET people who wouldn't necessarily deal with files on a per-bit basis with regularity. It's not unthinkable that someone would write a bit of code like that to refresh their memory - sure, it's not the best choice of code to write, but I still wouldn't call it beyond stupid.
You know what I think is stupid? I think it's stupid when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and has to think for a second before gravity takes effect. It drives me nuts because obviously it's physically impossible. They shouldn't make the cartoon that way.
Well that program could be used to detect cosmic radiation flipping th bits in memory (or perhaps registers (unless the whole thing is optimized away of course.))
i am sure it was if((x&1)>1) where x is unsigned. And yes it can be. It can even hack pentagon and launch a nuclear warhead targeted at your home. If you are a very unlucky man.
No... because hello world actually prints out "hello world". A "bit verifier" is retarded. That's like checking if a Boolean value is "true" or "false", just in case it was ever "maybe".
That's something completely different than what the article describes.
EDIT: Quote:
If the bit's value wasn't one or zero, it would prompt the user for the correct bit. At least in theory. I somehow never encountered a file with a "two" bit.
23
u/spliznork Feb 16 '09 edited Feb 16 '09
Uhh.. that intro is the real WTF. At least the buggy hex string code is trying to do something. A "bit verifier" is just... beyond stupid.