this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

The high level setter function should be made to handle both string and numeric values.

If it contains "%" it's a percentage value.

If it's a string without a "%" it's an absolute value and needs to be normalized.

If it's a numeric value, it's an absolute value.

If it's a numeric 100, it's 100%.

If it's a subunitary numeric value, it's a percentage.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yeah I’m gonna go ahead and reject your PR, please change this function to accept a decimal value between 0 and 1

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Ironically, the worst thing I ever saw a coworker do was to change a function that accepted an Integer value between 0 and 32767 to one that accepted a Float between 0.0 and 1.0. Perfectly sensible change except that it resulted in a 120 mph knuckleball fired a foot above a 10 year old kid's head, followed by a fist fight between the client and my boss.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like something that should have been caught by QA, integration tests or unit tests long before it was launching balls at ten year olds.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, testing the new Little League control module on a field full of Little Leaguers was not the best plan.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What is a little league control module?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

You push a button and it makes Little Leaguers do whatever you tell them to do. Very potent, should never be misused.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

The Big League Control Modules are called contracts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

yeah every engineer knows you gotta set KidHeadKnuckleballClearance waaay higher than that, it's compsci 101

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it’s a numeric 100, it’s 100%.

absolute lunacy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Absolute (cm)

adding one 0:

100%, automatically changes unit to %

(Word table properties)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oldman.setHealth("dicktits"); //normalize pls

Oldman.setHealth("-100±1%"); //make percentage pls

Oldman.setHealth(0.0); //it is subunitary, but undefined behavior - will it access the 'numeric value' overload, or the 'subunitary numeric value' overload?

Don't write your own code just yet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Oldman.setHealth(“dicktits”); //normalize pls

0

Oldman.setHealth(“-100±1%”); //make percentage pls

Reject operations.

Use absolute number to remove the minus. Math.abs()

Oldman.setHealth(0.0); //it is subunitary, but undefined behavior - will it access the ‘numeric value’ overload, or the ‘subunitary numeric value’ overload?

Same result either way, so whatever if branch is first.

Understand the purpose. If you want to kill the old man with 0, then there's no point to leaving it as 0.9%, understand the non-linear characteristics of life and death.

When you're dealing with the low level functions, sure, you can keep it simple. When you're reaching the surface of user input, you're either going to waste time with validation and error reporting, or you're going to waste time with interfaces that can handle more shit without complaining. There's no fool proof either way, but good luck pissing users off with endless docs.

Don’t write your own code just yet.

If your goal in programming is just to be a traffic cop between the user input and the database, all you're doing is building a virtual bureaucracy, the kind that people really hate and is easily generated with coding tools. Or you're just deferring the "smoothing out" burden to the UI developers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

...ends with. And there are more ways to parse.