I found this on Twitter this morning, and thought it very, very wise:

-
I found this on Twitter this morning, and thought it very, very wise:

'So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.' -- Ryan Singer

And then, this afternoon, it totally bit me in the ass!

I'm working on my legacy app, sprucing up the UI a bit, when I notice that at runtime, this button appears out of no where and sticks itself right in the middle of some other stuff.

A little investigation reveals that someone actually had this thought process:

"I need a new button for certain circumstances.  I know, I'll take an existing button, change its caption, change its size, change its position, and attach a completely different event handler, and I"ll have exactly what I need!!"

You know, because buttons are so expensive to create.

Comments

  1. Asbjørn HeidApril 25, 2014 at 10:57 AM

    OMG brilliant!

    That being said... the world would be a better place if someone with a time machine could go back and implement layout managers in Delphi 1...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stefan GlienkeApril 25, 2014 at 11:10 AM

    LOL Nick you could fill the Delphi category in thedailywtf.com alone :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. ido gendelApril 25, 2014 at 11:30 AM

    Heh. but one must admit that, on a modern system, if you want to have more than a couple of millions of buttons in a UI, you should definitely consider recycling them :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stefan GlienkeApril 25, 2014 at 11:42 AM

    It doesn't take millions but rather ten thousands (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724291(v=vs.85).aspx). 

    Just use inappropriate GUI elements for the job (like lots of edits on panels to display a change history in a ticket system) an you soon get some out of handle error - been there seen that :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. ido gendelApril 25, 2014 at 11:50 AM

    Stefan Glienke Wow, didn't know that. Good thing you told me though, I'll reconsider my amazing new "Each pixel's a button" UI :-D

    ReplyDelete
  6. Panagiotis DrivilasApril 25, 2014 at 12:22 PM

    Use TSpeedButton that does not need a new handle or FireMonkey.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jeroen Wiert PluimersApril 25, 2014 at 2:05 PM

    Panagiotis Drivilas a speed button rules out keyboard interaction which makes your application a lot harder to use for quite a few categories of users.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Panagiotis DrivilasApril 25, 2014 at 2:17 PM

    Jeroen Wiert Pluimers that's true but you can emulate keyboard interaction and focus for graphic controls by handling the proper messages.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Edwin YipApril 25, 2014 at 7:28 PM

    Thanks for sharing, I really like that tweet!

    ReplyDelete
  10. David MillingtonApril 26, 2014 at 5:52 AM

    Stefan Glienke , Nick Hodges : submitting to the Daily WTF is not a bad idea (regardless of what you think of the site these days.)  Reason being, it's read by a lot of people and seeing Delphi code there - even bad Delphi code - would raise awareness of the language being out there.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Stefan GlienkeApril 26, 2014 at 6:16 AM

    David Millington I would have done this numerous times in the past if I were allowed to ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. David MillingtonApril 28, 2014 at 5:33 AM

    Stefan Glienke Does your employer prevent you submitting content? Understandable, but a shame...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment