English language mastery



  • I just inherited a codebase which contains the following little gem:

    /* Misspelling kept for backwords comptability */

    The misspelling they're actually referring to is "UploadLeaglDocument", which should be "UploadLegalDocument" and which is called from exactly one place.

    Hooray!



  • Sounds like something I would write.



  • This is nothing to what I have seen here (big investment bank, where else?). Working on one of the trading systems, I came across an exceptions table which holds data of failed trades. It has a column "dayofweek" and looking at the values they go up to 31. Talking to a colleague how this could be he said:"Ah, that one, yes, somebody misnamed it." WTF!



  • @rox_midge said:

    I just inherited a codebase which contains the following little gem:

    /* Misspelling kept for backwords comptability */

    The misspelling they're actually referring to is "UploadLeaglDocument", which should be "UploadLegalDocument" and which is called from exactly one place.

    Hooray!

    Are you sure the misspelling they're actually actually referring to isn't "backwords"?

     



  • @DaveK said:

    @rox_midge said:

    I just inherited a codebase which contains the following little gem:

    /* Misspelling kept for backwords comptability */

    The misspelling they're actually referring to is "UploadLeaglDocument", which should be "UploadLegalDocument" and which is called from exactly one place.

    Hooray!

    Are you sure the misspelling they're actually actually referring to isn't "backwords"?

     

     

    If they changed it to "backwards" it wouldn't be comptable with the rest of the sentence.



  • Ah, backwards compatibility of typos!

    One system I work with uses what appears to be a random letters code for report names. For example, let's say we have a RIPSOT report. One program I wrote which acts on this report I put a typo in the app caption, calling it "RIPOST App". Correcting the typo while fixing a bug lead to complaints about the very important "RIPOST App" being deleted.

    No amount of explaining the original typo, pointing out that it was just a spelling error and the new version is named correctly helped. I reintroduced the typo, and everyone has been happy ever since.

    Sigh.
     



  • It happens to me all the time ...

    I create a table somtehing_image with the field called something_imgae_name and copy and paste it several times ...




  • Even the official Java API has done this. Take these three examples, which I found searching for "misspelled" on java.sun.com:



  • @rox_midge said:

    I just inherited a codebase which contains the following little gem:

    /* Misspelling kept for backwords comptability */

    The misspelling they're actually referring to is "UploadLeaglDocument", which should be "UploadLegalDocument" and which is called from exactly one place.

    Hooray!

    One word:

     "referer"
     



  • @DaveK said:

    @rox_midge said:

    I just inherited a codebase which contains the following little gem:

    /* Misspelling kept for backwords comptability */

    The misspelling they're actually referring to is "UploadLeaglDocument", which should be "UploadLegalDocument" and which is called from exactly one place.

    Hooray!

    Are you sure the misspelling they're actually actually referring to isn't "backwords"?

    I thought it was "comptability" myself. 


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