"I work with very bad developers," writes Henry.
It's a pretty simple example of some bad code:
If Me.ddlStatus.SelectedItem.Value = 2 Then
Dim statuscode As Integer
statuscode = Me.ddlStatus.SelectedItem.Value
Select Case statuscode
Case 2
' snip a few lines of code
Me.In_Preparation()
Case 3
Me.In_Fabrication()
Case 5
Me.Sent()
Case 7
Me.Rejected()
Case 8
Me.Cancel()
Case 10
Me.Waiting_for_payment()
End Select
Else
Dim statuscode As Integer
statuscode = Me.ddlStatus.SelectedItem.Value
Select Case statuscode
Case 2
Me.In_Preparation()
Case 3
Me.In_Fabrication()
Case 5
Me.Sent()
Case 7
Me.Rejected()
Case 8
Me.Cancel()
Case 10
Me.Waiting_for_payment()
End Select
End If
This is a special twist on the "branching logic that doesn't actually branch", because each branch of the If
contains a Select
/switch statement. In this case, both the If
and the Select
check the same field- Me.ddlStatus.SelectedItem.Value
. This means the first branch doesn't need a Select
at all, as it could only possibly be 2. It also means, as written, the Else
branch would never be 2. In the end, that's probably good, because as the comments provided by Henry point out- there's some elided code which means the branches don't do the same thing.
This has the sense of code that just evolved without anybody understanding what it was doing or why. Lines got written and copy/pasted and re-written until it worked, the developer committed the code, and nobody thought anything more about it, if they thought anything in the first place.
Henry adds:
It's only a simple example. Most of the codebase would make your head implode. Or explode, depending on a hidden parameter in the database.
This post originally appeared on The Daily WTF.