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In the comments on Raymond Chen’s blog post today, was a reference to a startling question on Stack-Overflow.

As if the question itself wasn’t (unintentionally) amusing enough, the accepted answer demonstrates a commitment to lost causes that is truly inspired and contains a number of (intentional and very clever) laugh out loud moments for developer types.

But the absolute pinnacle of the achievement has to be one line from one of the comments in the code submitted with that answer:

   // Keep running until the heat death of the universe.

Has anyone ever encountered a comment that gave them such a chuckle ? Or a guffaw ? Or just a wry grin ?

13 thoughts on “Best Comment In The History of … well Ever (for ALL values of Ever) ?”

  1. How about one that might make someone else grin so long as they weren’t in the position of being the one to originally find it?

    I once took a freelance assignment to make some changes to someone’s Delphi code. It was clear they’d had someone develop it for them in the past. It was very strange stuff that seemed to be doing some sort of “Bible Code” style textual analysis. The fellow had a very specific set of seemingly arbitrary changes he wanted to make AS FAST AS POSSIBLE (I don’t know if his coven needed it done by the next full moon or what). He sent me a set of instructions and examples outlining the algorithm, in which I immediately found some errors. Not a good sign. 🙁 Once I resolved those with him (and got an additional set of changes, and a request to move the deadline up), I took a look at the source code. At the top of one of the main files, I found this comment, which I paste here for your pleasure (it certainly didn’t give me any pleasure):

    {
    To whoever is updating this code,

    I’m sorry if it looks messy but there was about a dozen of requirements
    changes or clarifications and the time was always critical. Var names
    and function names don’t completely match the purpose, so you’re on your
    own to figure it out.

    This unit’s code is coupled with that of frmSearch_u, it sets the values
    for strings that Search form will display. Again, several functions are no
    longer used (I lost count which ones) so step through the code to find out
    actual program logic.

    Good luck 🙂

    Boban [Belgrade Team]
    }

    Needless to say, I found an excuse to bow out of the project immediately.

  2. I use this construct often:

    CONST HellFreezesOver = FALSE;

    REPEAT
    …..
    IF [SomeCondition] THEN BREAK;
    …..
    UNTIL HellFreezesOver;

  3. Some people never worked out why I’d customarily build COBOL SORT records called ROGER.

  4. Expect to find some kind of this code in the Delphi RTL… guess this guy has been already hired by Embarcadero – if he wasn’t working for it already…. 😀

  5.   case aKind of //Magic ? :-)
        TXT:
          ExportGrid4ToText(FileName, aGrid, True, True, ',', '"', '"');
        CSV:
          ExportGrid4ToText(FileName, aGrid, True, True, ',', '"', '"', 'csv');
        XLS:
          ExportGrid4ToExcel(FileName, aGrid);
        HTML:
          ExportGrid4ToHTML(FileName, aGrid);
        XML:
          ExportGrid4ToXML(FileName, aGrid);
      end;
    
  6. One application I have used contained a form for sending the providing company an email requesting support.

    There is a checkbox on the form for ‘send me a copy of this email address’. One of the input fields is for the user’s email address.

    In the event that you attempt to send a support email with the ‘send me a copy’ checkbox enabled but no email address in the input field, an error message something like the following is presented to the user:

    Unfortunately, reading the email address from your mind is currently beyond the abilities of modern computer programming. If you would like a copy of this support email, please input your email address and try again.

  7. supposed to be

    // This code is as dirty as INSERT THE LOCAL BROTHEL/SAUNA HERE

  8. Comment in the code was:

    If you get to this point in the code during execution, please contact me to explain how as I never figured it out.

    Email and phone number was provided in the comment.

  9. Found in the last unit an ex-worker wrote:

    // just a quick workaround. ihatemyjob

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