There's the potential for endless installments of "programmers not understanding how UUIDs work." Frankly, I think the fact that we represent them as human readable strings is part of the problem; sure, it's readable, but conceals the fact that it's just a large integer.

Which brings us to this snippet, from Capybara James.

Since it's election day in the US, many people are thinking about counting today. We frequently discuss counting here, and how to do it wrong, so let's look at some code from RK.

This code may not be counting votes, but whatever it's counting, we're not going to enjoy it:

For years, Victoria had a co-worker who "programmed by Google Search"; they didn't understand how anything worked, they simply plugged their problem into Google search and then copy/pasted and edited until they got code that worked. For this developer, I'm sure ChatGPT has been a godsend, but this code predates its wide use. It's pure "Googlesauce".

    StringBuffer stringBuffer = new StringBuffer();
    stringBuffer.append("SELECT * FROM TABLE1 WHERE COLUMN1 = 1 WITH UR");

    String sqlStr = stringBuffer.toString();
    ps = getConnection().prepareStatement(sqlStr);

    ps.setInt(1, code);

    rs = ps.executeQuery();

    while (rs.next())
    {
      count++;
    }

Horror movies, as of late, have gone to great lengths to solve the key obstacle to horror movies- cell phones. When we live in a world where help is a phone call away, it's hard to imagine the characters not doing that. So screenwriters put them in situations where this is impossible: in Midsommar they isolate them in rural Sweden, in Get Out calling the police is only going to put our protagonist in more danger. But what's possibly more common is making the film a period piece- like the X/Pearl/Maxxxine trilogy, Late Night with the Devil, or Netflix's continuing series of R.L. Stine adaptations.

I bring this up, because today's horror starts in 1993. A Norwegian software company launched its software product to mild acclaim. Like every company, it had its ups and downs, its successes and missteps. On the surface, it was a decent enough place to work.

Once again, we take a look at the traditional "if (boolean) return true; else return false;" pattern. But today's, from RJ, offers us a bonus twist.

public override bool IsValid
{
   get
   {
      if (!base.IsValid)
         return false;

      return true;
   }
}

Quality control is an important business function for any company. When your company is shipping devices with safety concerns, it's even more important. In some industries, a quality control failure is bound to be national headlines.

When the quality control software tool stopped working, everyone panicked. At which point, GRH stepped in.