The Utility Belt

apapadimoulis

This was submitted anonymously ...

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My highlights include:

1.Overall. All the logging. Put a link up the the Enterprise Library. Also notice the complete lack of commenting, oh and the variable naming standards are god aweful.

2. Useless wrapper methods...
Private Function ConvertStr2ByteArray(ByVal strInput As String) As Byte()
--In the comments there is discussion about changing to System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetBytes(string) but it still is not done in the code. I thought that this is brutally funny. To decide that something is crap, find an alterantive and much better solution and then simply not change it! What are you thinking!?

3. The use of single ByRef parameters and using a sub, that I find quite strange.
Example:
Sub DBPopulate(ByVal strConn As String, ByVal strSQL As String, ByRef string1 As String)

4. This just scares the shit out of me:
Dim strTask As String = "SUB DBPopulate / hash=3rd parm object, object=4th parm"

5. Function WebConfigGrab(ByVal strkey As String) As String
is a wrapper for
Private Function appkey(ByVal strParm As String) As String
which is a wrapper for the .NET AppSettings stuff

6. Private Sub XMLNodesToArray(ByVal htParams As Hashtable)
Its emtpy. Glad that is documented.

7. Function XMLToDataSet(ByVal strFilename As String) As DataSet
You would think that takes XML by the function name, but instead a filename itself. There are a few methods like this. Dataset's from disk? Sort of scarey if you ask me.

8. public Sub Xray(ByVal p1 As Object, ByVal p2 As String)
The entire Xray thing. Give the author(s) credit for the sheer amount of work that went into this thing but consider reflection!

And of course the entire 6000+ lines of code is in a SINGLE class. I'm sure 100 people could find 100 more things that just make you want to scream WTF!

Can you believe this guy wants money via donations for this?

cconroy

Holy spaghetti code, batman()!

Does that utility belt include a can of VB Repellent?

Manni

Wow that's a lot of weird shit...

The ByRef thing is funny. Maybe he thinks he's making his code more efficient by passing in his string variable by reference and updating it within the sub rather than taking up all those precious bytes of memory to send a string as the return value.

Then later in the code he has functions that return booleans, strings, DataTables... *sigh* I love inconsistent programming. This must be a result of the "help by Jeff, Steve and Dave". In other words, take the code they wrote, and paste it directly in to his garbage code.

At least when an error occurs, you'll be able to find it easily. You'll have to wade through thousands of log messages...

Zlodo

Oh my.
I'm not a VB coder, but this thing is a huge bunch of shit. This is clearly not what I'd tout as best coding practice for the purpose of learning... Yet they do exactly this, as this is apparently part of an online programming book.

Read this and weep: http://www.learnasp.com/freebook/learn/utilitybelt_faq_blackbox.aspx

Looks like we finally found this elusive school of WTF programming that spawns all those nightmarish programmers.

Albatross

Wow. Just... Wow.

Using "Option Strict Off" or "Option Explicit Off" should cause VS.Net to pop up a little window saying "Lern to code!" (sic).

Taliesin

The first thing I noticed while watching this "gem" is that the horizontal scroll was active so I looked for the line that caused this to happen. I find this

Dim keywords() As String = {"Private", "Protected", "Public", "End Namespace", "Namespace", "End Class", "Exit", "Class", "Goto", "Try", "Catch", "End Try", "For", "End If", "If", "Else", "ElseIf", "Next", "While", "And", "Do", "Loop", "Dim", "As", "End Select", "Select", "Case", "Or", "Imports", "Then", "Integer", "Long", "String", "Overloads", "True", "Overrides", "End Property", "End Sub", "End Function", "Sub", "Me", "Function", "End Get", "End Set", "Get", "Friend", "Inherits", "Implements", "Return", "Not", "New", "Shared", "Nothing", "Finally", "False", "Me", "My", "MyBase"}

So I started to be quite... scared. Then I saw:

' 1st parameter as array C# hated that
' as string() C# hated that

And I feel really scared, but I'm brave so I keep scrolling up (yes, I was going down->up) and saw:

Private Sub AAATemplate()
 ' DIM everything that needs to be seen by CATCH or FINALLY block
 Dim strTask As String = "SUB AAATemplate"
 Try
 LogTaskStart(strTask)
 ' LogTaskEndPremature(strTask,"reason for quitting early")
 ' LogFlow(strTask,"some branch people want to know about with UBFlowon")
 ' LogDebugData(strTask,"varname=" & varname)
 ' LogWarning(strTask,"some high level warning for the developer")
 LogTaskEnd(strTask)
 Catch ex1 As Exception
 LogException(strTask, ex1) ' Used for most exceptions
 Finally
 ' Release(Conn1)
 ' Release(Conn1)
 ' Release(stream1)
 ' Release(Rdr1)
 ' Release(Rdr1)
 End Try
 End Sub

So, let's analyze this:

1º Proper function (sub) name: AAATemplate()

2º ' DIM everything that needs to be seen by CATCH or FINALLY block

At this point he's instructing us in the complexities of the variable scope

3º Catch ex1 As Exception
LogException(strTask, ex1) ' Used for most exceptions

We will call it proper exception handling

4º Finally
 ' Release(Conn1)
 ' Release(Conn1)
 ' Release(stream1)
 ' Release(Rdr1)
 ' Release(Rdr1)

This code can be replaced for:

' ReleaseNothing()

5º End Try

And that's the best thing of all, just end trying, please.

About the donations -> I'm feeling like I can donate, but not money, maybe a primer on how to program

End Note: Not to forget that it's VB so ... maybe he put the language to it's limits [:P]

dhromed

@Taliesin said:

And that's the best thing of all, just end trying, please.

Ah yes, I propose and extension to VB:

Give Up

TankerJoe

@Alex Papadimoulis said:

Can you believe this guy wants money via donations for this?

Here is the donor list of people who apparently thought that his code
is worth something.... I'm particularly pleased to see someone from
Redmond,Seattle donate. ;-)

Since I started the tip plan in August 2004 I have recieved the following tips:

$5 from Steve Owens of Lilberg, GA
$20 from Rob Caron of Redmond,Seattle
$39 from Nicholas Vu from Walnut, CA
$200 from Pete Brunone of Texas
$200 from Doug Nelson of synappnorth

bugsRus

@TankerJoe said:

@Alex Papadimoulis said:
Can you believe this guy wants money via donations for this?

Here is the donor list of people who apparently thought that his code
is worth something.... I'm particularly pleased to see someone from
Redmond,Seattle donate. ;-)

Since I started the tip plan in August 2004 I have recieved the following tips:

$5 from Steve Owens of Lilberg, GA
$20 from Rob Caron of Redmond,Seattle
$39 from Nicholas Vu from Walnut, CA
$200 from Pete Brunone of Texas
$200 from Doug Nelson of synappnorth

Hey, if anybody know Pete or Doug's e-mail addresses, I am in need of $200 each too! I'll even provide a much less convoluted Utility Belt! Seriously, I vote hoax on the tips, just trying to make it look good and "guilt" you into donating. An "A" for effort and an "F" in execution.