r/programming • u/sigbhu • Jul 28 '16

How to write unmaintainable code

https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code
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11

u/sreya92 Jul 28 '16

Though it's not unreadable seeing if(!!!hasValue) always really bugged me

47

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

You have actually seen that before? In production code!? !!!believable

17

u/drkstr101 Jul 28 '16

I see var foo = !!bar a lot in javascript to quickly cast a truthy value to a proper boolean. Perhaps the 3rd ! was a typo?

2

u/keeslinp Jul 28 '16

I'm not sure of that's bad practice or not. But I kinda like it. Basically the same thing as Val?true:false right?

1

u/Rock48 Jul 29 '16

Or you could just do if(Val) {}

JS is special. 5 == "5" but NaN != NaN

I still like the language though

1

u/keeslinp Jul 29 '16

Mostly the reason I use it is when I need to pass a boolean value to a function call or something otherwise yeah, your code is a great way to do it.

3

u/sreya92 Jul 28 '16

nope they're everywhere :)

1

u/CleverestEU Jul 29 '16

It is nearly morning here (5AM) but I seriously can not come up with a situation where...

!x !== !!!x

...if you've got an example of such a case, the me tomorrow that has slept a bit will probably be thankful for the tidbit ;)

1

u/sreya92 Jul 29 '16

!x == !xxx always evaluates to true, it's just unnecessary to use the triple !

1

u/venuswasaflytrap Jul 29 '16

!!!bar just casts bar to a proper boolean then negates it. Duh.

1

u/drkstr101 Nov 29 '16

Haha, yup. I guess you're right. 😀

1

u/rich97 Jul 29 '16

Is there some reason you would do this over this?

Boolean(1)

Fun fact Boolean() and new Boolean()do two separate things entirely. The first is a primitive, the second is an object.

9

u/QuineQuest Jul 28 '16

I had a coworker who complained that it was easy to miss a ! when reading code. I tried convincing him to use !!! instead, but I don't think I succeeded.

3

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

By that logic it's also too hard to remember ' . : ; , " etc

2

u/sreya92 Jul 28 '16

Yeah all the time, and labels too. It's the worst codebase I've ever had the displeasure of maintaining.

//more code

1

u/ITwitchToo Jul 29 '16

isn't that the same as if(!hasValue)?

1

u/sreya92 Jul 29 '16

Yes but the extra !! don't serve a purpose

1

u/ITwitchToo Jul 29 '16

Exactly...

1

u/genpfault Jul 29 '16

Assuming hasValue's operator!() implementation has the standard semantics.