Hey folks! I think this request is right up this comm’s alley. I’m sure that we all know bogo sort but, what other terrible/terribly inefficient algorithms, software architecture, or design choices have you been horrified/amused by?

I, sadly, lost a great page of competing terrible sorting algorithms, but I’ll lead with JDSL as a terrible (and terribly inefficient) software architecture and design. The TL;DR is that a fresh CS guy got an internship at a company that based its software offering around a custom, DSL based on JSON that used a svn repo to store all functions in different commits. The poor intern had a bad time due to attempting to add comments to the code, resulting in customer data loss.

  • sus@programming.dev
    11·
    11 months ago

    slow inverse square root:

    float slowinvsqrt(float x)
{
    const long accuracy = 100000000;    // larger number = better accuracy
    if (x <= 0.0f) {
        return NAN;
    }
    if (x == 1.0f) {
        return 1.0f;
    }
    if (x < 1.0f) {
        return 1.0f / slowinvsqrt(1.0f/x);
    }

    int max_power = log(accuracy) / log(x);
    long pow1 = pow(x, max_power - 1);
    long pow2 = pow(x, max_power);
    double current = 1.0;
    double previous = 1.0;

    for (long i = 0; i<10*accuracy; i++) {
        current = sin(current);
        if (i == pow1) {
            previous = current;
        }
        if (i == pow2) {
            return current / previous;
        }
    }
}
  • Corbin@programming.devEnglish
    71·
    11 months ago

    There are subfields of computer science dedicated to this question. A good starting point for the theory would be Pessimal algorithms and simplexity analysis, which lays out two concepts:

    • The time & space simplexity of an algorithm indicates best-case lower bounds on resource usage, and
    • An algorithm is pessimal if no equivalent algorithm wastes more time/space/etc.

    For example, common folklore is that sorting has O(n lg n) time complexity, depending on assumptions. In the paper, they give that sorting has Ω(n ** (lg n / 2)) time simplexity; any algorithm which takes more time, like bogosort, must do so through some sort of trickery like non-determinism or wasting time via do-nothing operations.

    • Mesa@programming.dev
      4·
      11 months ago

      https://thedailywtf.com/articles/gotta-catch-em-all

      Dear God.

      try
{
    /* ... some important code ... */
} 
catch (OutOfMemoryException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (OverflowException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (InvalidCastException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (NullReferenceException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (IndexOutOfRangeException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (ArgumentException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (InvalidOperationException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (XmlException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (IOException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (NotSupportedException exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
    Global.Insert("App.GetSettings;", exception.Message);
}
    • yogsototh@programming.dev
      2·
      11 months ago

      Technically, sleep sort is O(n), so faster than the theoretical optimal sorting algorithm O(n.log n) … not so bad ;)