Tada... it's super-WTF time

lgeekery

Remember http://thedailywtf.com/forums/55426/ShowPost.aspx? The supposed PHP-HTML conversion app. Someone made a comment about how it looked like it was born from Visual DialogScript (dialogscript.com). And now I bring you the ugliness from the Dialogscript app itself!
I wrote a simple app that pops up a dialog box from a button called "WTF". Read on below.

Warning! Proceeding code may result in hurt eyes or a goggle prescription. Talk to my lawyer.

Title WTF App
DIALOG CREATE,New Dialog,-1,0,375,286
REM *** Modified by Dialog Designer on 3/8/2006 - 18:17 ***
DIALOG ADD,BUTTON,WTFButton,118,158,,,WTFButton
DIALOG ADD,TEXT,wtfomg,54,109,,,nothing_can_have_spaces_in_it
DIALOG SHOW
:Evloop
wait event
goto @event()
:WTFButtonBUTTON
info WTF to the max! This program is uber retarded. This is somewhere in between basic, BAT files, and fortran.
goto evloop
:Close
info Replace this line with code to be executed before the dialog closes
exit

Some screenshots:
http://img417.imageshack.us/img417/4558/wtfcode9sv.gif
http://img417.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtfthing10qj.gif

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El_Foo

OMFG (Oh My Fucking GOTOs); we got to structured programming in the 1960s!

Dialog Script Considered Hamrful!

Angstrom

It's worse than that. It's a computed goto! @event returns the event, which is turned into a label for goto. Weird, spooky, and decidedly not good design.

lgeekery

I want to point out yet again the scariness of you not being able to put F*CKING SPACES in anything. Not even the text boxes. (O.o)

"It's a flightless bird! It's a burning plane! No, it's DialogScript!" (aka superwtfretard thingy)

Iago

Good lord... have you looked at features they're touting the DialogScript website?!

The contents of all variables (including system ones) can be changed once the script is running.

Wow, now that's a feature that really sets this apart from other languages...

That's a total of 292 variables that you can use to manipulate all the information that you need to in your scripts.

I'm sold. Good-bye, stupid limited Visual Basic!

There is a version for 16-bit Windows but this
version has certain limitations.

Maybe it can only support 291 variables or something.

And my favourite, from the FAQ:

Question:

When using the Application Wizard, the following message comes up when
Dialog Designer is openew (sic): Cannot find the file c:\WINNT\ddfxres.exe
(or one of its components)

Answer:

lgeekery

In response to my own thread... quite interesting article here

ellion

@lgeekery said:

DIALOG ADD,TEXT,wtfomg,54,109,,,nothing_can_have_spaces_in_it

umm, that's some fine piece o code :D

My favourite comment to dialogscript comes from wikipedia:

... to create professional looking programs.

Whiskey_Tango_Foxtro

Take a look at the list of corporate users of Dialogscript:

http://www.dialogscript.com/ref.html

Zlodo

Oooh... I'm in love.
There is a whole website with a vibrant community of users of that thing.

This is a fountain of WTF goodness.

I found this little gem in the "advanced VDS code" section of the forums without even trying:

forum.vdsworld.com :: View topic - Bitwise AND, OR, XOR, NOT, Bit Shifting and RGB.

We
found the nest, guys. Paula is surely hiding deeps in the center in
this vile temple of WTFness, ruling over a sprawling army of WTF'd
coders, slowly setting out to conquer the world.

Zlodo

Oh, and by the way the aforementioned website is here, for those eager to indulge themselves in hard core WTF lore: vdsworld.com

Zlodo

Run for your lives.

http://www.vdsworld.com/search.php?view_mode=article&sid=b003a6c0c76dc5249e3684cd7de66642

The second file is frightening, but the third one scarred me for life. It's a design document from hell covering some advanced WTF technology: a database for VDS, using html4 tables as a storage format.
The process of spawning these atrocities into existence actually involve a design process. They actually THINK prior the implementation.

lgeekery

Their clients? I'm worried now.

- IBM (why?)
- Xerox (I don't want that code near their copier department.)
- AOL (Their built in browser feels like it was made with VDS)
- USPS (My tax returns come through USPS! :/)
- Ernst & Young (I don't want them to do my accounting for me, ever.)

Ulvhamne

http://forum.vdsworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=1860
made me fear the dark.
I felt a chill run down my spine.

tufty

@Ulvhamne said:

http://forum.vdsworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=1860

Oh my giddy aunt. There's good code, there's bad code, there's WTF code, and then there's - that.

I sincerely hope I never have to approach that 'language'. I'd rather program perl on a keyboard with no shift key.

Simon

byte_lancer

From their site
"Would you buy a car with no engine,
wheels or interior?"

I dont know whether they're talking about their own product or not. If they want to call it a car, they give us 100,000 reasons on why it is a car in the WTF place.

Albatross

From the screenshots on the original post, it looks like the entire thing was written using VB6.

Zlodo

Wandering in that happy fun WTF land, it seems that it was written in delphi.
It's apparently been written by one guy alone in Delphi, and the rights have been sold succesfully to several different companies through the years. But the developers is still the same guy.

Apparently, those people are worried for the future of that piece of crap because Borland is selling its development tools division.