this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024

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Unexplained Phenomena (s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com)

submitted 10 months ago by i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source: https://musicians.today/@barnetboy/113475747574177779

Mastodon: @barnetboy@musicians.today

all 25 comments

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[–] tourist@lemmy.world 111 points 10 months ago (1 children)

arbitrary npm package:

last updated 4 years ago
sole developer legit dead and buried
47 dependencies
608 critical vulnerabilities
condemned by the United Nations

Still has 7 million weekly downloads

[–] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 31 points 10 months ago

Please mark this as NSFL.

Seriously, who the fuck starts a conversation like this, I just sat down!!

[+] GarlicToast@programming.dev 69 points 10 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 41 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I love hitting these things in the real world. Not the big, but the comment. You just know someone spent a fortune in time and company resources to never solve the problem and their frustration level was ragequit. But then something stupid like adding

while (0){};

Suddenly made it work and they were like, fuckit.

Usually it's a bug somewhere in a compiler trying to over optimize or something and putting the line in there caused the optimization not to happen or something. Black magic.

The downside is that the compiler bug probably gets fixed, and then decades later the comment and line are still there...

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I used to work on an old DOS product and we didn’t have a debugger so we used to have a DEBUG command line argument with

if (DEBUG) printf(“debugging”);

to try to see what was happening and the number of times that code alone fixed the problem was scary.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

I mean . . . I still do this on my own stuff. If I'm interested in optimizing for speed I'll do it as #ifdef instead of if ()

[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 10 months ago

And then the compiler updates to get better at spotting optimization opportunities and it blows up again

[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The digital manifestation of the ghost in the machine. It likes playing with the bits that line occupies when you aren't looking. Don't touch its line.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Mmm yes. Unexplained issues that have a single mention in StackOverflow five years ago, have a single reply by the author just saying "nvm I figured it out" and doesn't explain the resolution.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 34 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://xkcd.com/979/

[–] frezik@midwest.social 21 points 10 months ago

I've found that that comic alone has reduced the instances of this sort of thing happening. Not completely, of course, but when people figure it out, they seem much more likely to post the solution. Randall may have single-handedly improved the Internet a few points with that one comic.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or marked as duplicate and closed but when you click the duplicate it's a different issue.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 9 points 10 months ago

And there's a comment after closure, also from a decade ago, mentioning that this should not have been closed as a duplicate.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Like the horror of this code is wrong but the program works.

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Doesn't work anymore. It stops working as soon as you notice the code has always been wrong.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 6 points 10 months ago

Universe: whoops let me fix that.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Schrodinger's Bug

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

I have too many comments reading "... how did this ever work?"

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Ahh, the C pointer debugging section.

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago

an entire section on race conditions I see

[–] frezik@midwest.social 11 points 10 months ago

There are perfectly good reasons to sacrifice a goat to your USB drivers. Don't let Reddit Atheists tell you otherwise.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"Oh come on, why the fuck, there's no possible reason this code should-- wrong variable."

[–] JoYo@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

Undefined Phenomena

fify

oooo cake 🎂

[–] sheepishly@fedia.io 1 points 9 months ago

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