Emma found a function called get_mileage_per_year. The purpose of the function is to apply some business rules around travel expenses, and while I'm sure it does that… it also makes some choices.

def get_mileage_per_year(self):
    # Mileage not set yet
    if not self.mileage_per_day:
        return 0

    weekly_miles = self.mileage_per_day

    extra_miles = 60 - self.mileage_per_day if self.purposes == ["special"] else 25

    # Add in extra miles for 'special' purpose is selected

    weekly_miles += extra_miles if "special" in self.purposes else 0

    #   where average daily miles are given by the weekly miles variable
    annual_miles = (weekly_miles * 365) + 2000
    if "special" in self.purposes:
        annual_miles = max(annual_miles, 24000)

    # Return annual miles bound to range 4,000 < mileage < 50,000
    mileage = int(min(max(annual_miles, 4000), 50000))
    return mileage

Daniel recently found this pair of stored procedures. While the code within them is simple, they hint at horrors just beyond the edge of the stage, the kinds of things that might drive one mad.

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_SomeProc]
@ID       VARCHAR(6)

AS

IF @ID = '109369'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table1
                WHERE ID = '109369'
        END
IF @ID = '100976'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table1
                WHERE ID = '100976'
        END
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_SomeOtherProc]
@ID       VARCHAR(6)

AS

IF @ID = '109369'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table2
                WHERE ID = '109369'
        END
IF @ID = '100976'
        BEGIN
                DELETE FROM table2
                WHERE ID = '100976'
        END
GO

"The Colonial" was trawling through some code they inherited, and found this approach to doing exceptions in C#:

public enum ReturnCode : int
{
      Success                                         = 0,

        Enum1                     = 100,
  Enum2          = 110,

   // *snip* - LOTS of enums
     // .
    // .
   
    UnknownError               = 998,
      Exception                  = 999
};

As a native English speaker, I've inherited a very chaotic perspective on language: "correct" language is defined by usage, loan words are less "loaned" and more like the mandolin someone lent me 20 years ago- mine now. New words can be ginned up on the fly, and parts of speech are just a suggestion.

Many other languages don't take this approach. French, for example, is defined by the Académie Française. There is a standard, and officially correct way to use French. In programming terms, we could say that French is C, while English is Perl.

We've already picked on bad logging code this week, but we haven't picked on PHP in awhile, so let's look at some bad PHP logging code, from Kris.

        $path = self::getPath();

        if (file_exists($path)) {
            $content = file_get_contents($path);
        } else {
            $content = "";
        }
        $content .= "\n" . date('Y-m-d H:i') . " | " . $message;
        file_put_contents($path, $content);