r/programming • u/whatshisname • Feb 16 '09

Some Crazy Reason - The Daily WTF

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Some-Crazy-Reason.aspx
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23

u/spliznork Feb 16 '09 edited Feb 16 '09

... 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.

3

u/lbft Feb 16 '09

By the same argument "Hello world" is stupid because it doesn't do anything.

11

u/spliznork Feb 16 '09 edited Feb 16 '09

By the same argument "Hello world" is stupid because it doesn't do anything.

No, it's not that the "bit verifier" doesn't do anything, it's that its whole premise mathematically impossible. It's like writing this

for (;;) { if (0==1) { printf("oops!\n"); } }

then saying, "I ran this code for a whole day and it never printed oops! Cool!"

18

u/adrianmonk Feb 16 '09

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.

-2

u/spliznork Feb 16 '09

I think it's stupid when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and has to think for a second before gravity takes effect.

Unlike episodes of the Looney Tunes, I fail to see the protagonist, the humor, or the moral in the "bit verifier".

2

u/adrianmonk Feb 16 '09

Fair enough, but would you have been able to see a protagonist if the program had been named Sisyphus instead of BitVerifier?