"Dark Horse" inherited some PHP code. They had a hundred lines to submit, but only sent in a dozen- which is fine, as the dozen lines tell us what the other hundred look like.

$suite_1_1 = number_format($item -> {'suite_1_1_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_1_2 = number_format($item -> {'suite_1_2_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_1_3 = number_format($item -> {'suite_1_3_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_1_4 = number_format($item -> {'suite_1_4_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');

$suite_2_1 = number_format($item -> {'suite_2_1_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_2_2 = number_format($item -> {'suite_2_2_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_2_3 = number_format($item -> {'suite_2_3_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_2_4 = number_format($item -> {'suite_2_4_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');

$suite_3_1 = number_format($item -> {'suite_3_1_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_3_2 = number_format($item -> {'suite_3_2_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_3_3 = number_format($item -> {'suite_3_3_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');
$suite_3_4 = number_format($item -> {'suite_3_4_'.$the_currency}, 2, '.', '');

Sean was supporting a web application which, as many do, had required form fields for the user to fill out. The team wanted to ensure that the required fields were marked by an "*", as you do. Now, there are a lot of ways to potentially accomplish the goal, especially given that the forms are static and the fields are known well ahead of time.

The obvious answer is just including the asterisk directly in the HTML: <label for="myInput">My Input(*)</label>: <input…>. But what if the field requirements change! You'll need to update every field label, potentially. So someone hit upon the "brillant" idea of tracking the names of the fields and their validation requirements in the database. That way, they could output that information when they rendered the page.

Today's anonymous submitter asks a question: "How do you imagine the rest of the codebase to be like?"

Well, let's look at this snippet of TypeScript and think about it:

Today's anonymous submitter inherited an application with a huge list of bugs and feature requests for missing features. While tracking down a bug, our submitter learned a lot about why "Allow additional stores to be viewable in the store selector," was an unimplemented feature.

if (inv.inv_storeloc == 0) {
	out.println("<option selected value=\"0\">Select</option>");
	out.println("<option value=\"1\">Location 1</option>");
	out.println("<option value=\"2\">Location 2</option>");
} else if (inv.inv_storeloc == 1) {
	out.println("<option selected value=\"1\">Location 1</option>");
	out.println("<option value=\"2\">Location 2</option>");
} else {
	out.println("<option value=\"1\">Location 1</option>");
	out.println("<option selected value=\"2\">Location 2</option>");
}

Mike was doing work for a mobile services provider. He found this in their code:

private static YesNoType toYesNo(String isYes)
{
		if (isYes != null)
		{
				if (isYes.equalsIgnoreCase("Y"))
				{
						return YesNoType.fromString("Yes");
				}
				else
				{
						return YesNoType.fromString("No");
				}
		}
		else
		{
				return YesNoType.fromString("No");
		}
}

/**
 * @param isYes
 * @return
 */
private static YesNoType toYesNo(boolean isYes)
{
		if (isYes)
		{
				return YesNoType.fromString("Yes");
		}
		else
		{
				return YesNoType.fromString("No");
		}
}

/**
 * @param isYes
 * @return
 */
private static String fromYesNo(YesNoType isYes)
{
		if (isYes != null)
		{
				String resultStr = isYes.toString();
				if (resultStr.equalsIgnoreCase("Yes"))
				{
						return ("Yes");
				}
				else
				{
						return ("No");
				}
		}
		else
		{
				return ("No");
		}
}

/**
 * @param isYes
 * @return
 */
private static boolean isYesNo(YesNoType isYes)
{
	boolean isBroadbandUser =  false;
	if (isYes != null && isYes.toString().equalsIgnoreCase("Yes"))
	{
		isBroadbandUser = true;
	}
	return isBroadbandUser;
}