Fuckin hell!!

Code works everywhere except at one client. Ok, I check logs & see something missing.. I go check the code that handles excel files.. try catch and do nothing.. great.. :/ ok let's log this shit to see what is not ok...
Insert logs, build, update, run.. now it freakin works o.O

As a Java developer, reasons to kill other programmers:

- static mutable variables
- WRITING to static mutable variables
- API call with Framework X didn't work. Add Framework Y along with X and try that. Wrap X in try/catch statement. Catch block fires framework Y.
- six, seven, ten levels of nested code. Zero thought put in organization
- 6K LOC Java files
- spring (singleton? Maybe) object assigning values in static mutable (see pt.1)
- a couple of unit tests in code base that no longer work. Zero unit tests in new code
- unit testing disabled in CI pipeline
- empty catch blocks
- pass mutable data between threads. Modify in various places concurrently.

try {
boolean isOk = meetTheGirl("Anna");
if (isOk) {
kiss();
goHomeAndProgram();
}
else {
cry();
goHomeAndProgram();
nextDay();
pickUpAGirl();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
//I don't know. My life is so empty
}

Roses are red
Exceptions are blue
Empty catch blocks are going to hurt you!

try
{ somethingVeryDangerous() }
catch { // No Op
}
finally { SaveFile() }

A piece of code someone just pushed:
In pseudocode
------------------------
Function foo()
Result = GetFoo()
If result != null
DoStuff()
Return result
Else
Result = null
--------------------------
Ffs.

It's written in a strongly typed language, and the whole function is in a try with an empty catch and inside yet another try with an empty catch. Guess he wanted to be sure no error got away....
Oh, and he has 9 years of experience, and since all paths don't return something it does not compile

there's a special place for people who write empty catch blocks INTENTIONALLY ..

try{

... do something that may produce NPE;

} catch {Exception fuckYou){

// go die in a fire

}

Be me, get a consultant job, go to a supposedly great client that has fame of getting scouted by Google. (attn: I doubted all this shit before I started)

Learn the basics by a awesome mentor and trial/error stuff at the same time to get the hang of things, after that was done, I noticed there was no documentation whatsoever, code is spaghetti and your documentation, good luck!

Royal spaghetti, you can't make heads or tails of it, dev code in production, empty try/catch blocks, empty statements, if (true)... (incl. their core classes)

Keep in mind this is a multi milion dollar company...

Someone please understand my pain...

Got one right now, no idea if it’s the “most” unrealistic, because I’ve been doing this for a while now.

Until recently, I was rewriting a very old, very brittle legacy codebase - we’re talking garbage code from two generations of complete dumbfucks, and hands down the most awful codebase I’ve ever seen. The code itself is quite difficult to describe without seeing it for yourself, but it was written over a period of about a decade by a certifiably insane person, and then maintained and arguably made much worse by a try-hard moron whose only success was making things exponentially harder for his successor to comprehend and maintain. No documentation whatsoever either. One small example of just how fucking stupid these guys were - every function is wrapped in a try catch with an empty catch, variables are declared and redeclared ten times, but never used. Hard coded credentials, hard coded widths and sizes, weird shit like the entire application 500ing if you move a button to another part of the page, or change its width by a pixel, unsanitized inputs, you name it, if it’s a textbook fuck up, it’s in there, and then some.

Because the code is so damn old as well (MySQL 8.0, C#4, and ASP.NET 3), and utterly eschews the vaguest tenets of structured, organized programming - I decided after a month of a disproportionate effort:success ratio, to just extract the SQL queries, sanitize them, and create a new back end and front end that would jointly get things where they need to be, and most importantly, make the application secure, stable, and maintainable. I’m the only developer, but one of the senior employees wrote most of the SQL queries, so I asked for his help in extracting them, to save time. He basically refused, and then told me to make my peace with God if I missed that deadline. Very helpful.

I was making really good time on it too, nearly complete after 60 days of working on it, along with supporting and maintaining the dumpster fire that is the legacy application. Suddenly my phone rings, and I’m told that management wants me to implement a payment processing feature on the site, and because I’ve been so effective at fixing problems thus far, they want to see it inside of a week. I am surprised, because I’ve been regularly communicating my progress and immediate focus to management, so I explain that I might be able to ship the feature by end of Q1, because rather than shoehorn the processor onto the decrepit piece of shit legacy app, it would be far better to just include it in the replacement. I add that PCI compliance is another matter that we must account for, and so there’s not a great chance of shipping this in a week. They tell me that I have a month to do it…and then the Marketing person asks to see my progress and ends up bitching about everything, despite the front end being a pixel perfect reproduction. Despite my making everything mobile responsive, iframe free, secure and encrypted, fast, and void of unpredictable behaviors. I tell her that this is what I was asked to do, and that there should have been no surprises at all, especially since I’ve been sending out weekly updates via email. I guess it needed more suck? But either way, fuck me and my two months of hard work. I mean really, no ego, I made a true enterprise grade app for them.

Short version, I stopped working on the rebuild, and I’m nearly done writing the payment processor as a microservice that I’ll just embed as an iframe, since the legacy build is full of those anyway, and I’m being asked to make bricks without straw. I’m probably glossing over a lot of finer points here too, just because it’s been such an epic of disappointment. The deadline is coming up, and I’m definitely going to make it, now that I have accordingly reduced the scope of work, but this whole thing has just totally pissed me off, and left a bad taste about the organization.

try catch lost me 4 hours of time today because someone put an empty catch block!
FML