WTFs by programming language repository on github | Hacker News Reader

WTFs by programming language repository on github

codeodor.com

28 pointsedw51916 comments

Let me copy+paste part of one of the comments to clarify high numbers of WTFs in Obj-C from the article, from Sammy Larbi:

For Objective C, I have some light to shed on that situation. If you look at the search results for WTF and Objective C (through github's search), you'll see there are a lot of references to Webkit, which has the Web Template Framework, which gets abbreviated to WTF namespace in the code. ( I learned that from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/834179/wtf-is-wtf-in-webk... )

WTFs aren't self-documenting. I'd prefer to use a better, more descriptive metric for code-profanity.

Like seeing how many people liberally apply 'that shit' to their comments and shit: https://github.com/search?type=Everything&language=&...

WTFs per comment would seem to me like a much more interesting measurement. Eg. I'm pretty sure CSS's low rating has more to do with the typical sparsity of comments than the awesome sensibleness and consistency of CSS renderer implementations.

Edit: Also takes no account for the quantity of code in each repository. Languages that are used for large projects are at an automatic disadvantage.

I agree, but I have no idea how to get that information out of github, aside from perhaps iterating over every project there.

I think it would be cool if they made some aggregate data like that available though. =)

Ah, I commented in the comments of the article itself that CSS was surprisingly low given the existence of IE6. This may explain it.

The biggest surprises for me: (copied from my comment on the article):

CSS is also surprisingly low. I would have expected it to dwarf any actual programming language, because IE6 exists, but it's actually lower than most. (Joeboy has a possible explanation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899418)

I also find it interesting that functional languages (Haskell, Erlang) are pretty low. These have been thrust into a more mainstream light lately, so I'd imagine they'd be doing worse from programmers who are less experienced in them using them. But they're not like that at all. If anything, Haskell has done pretty good.

Perhaps dealing with IE6 incompatibilities results in use of stronger language than 'WTF'

Very possible. We have a sheet of paper on the wall where we tally the number of times that IE has been the bane of our existence. I think that piece of paper keeps a number of profanities out of our source code and stylesheets.

It's okay cause IE is now all about embracing web standards and we know have access to all of the bleeding edge web technologies...oh wait SVG has been around (in other browsers and plugins) for a decade :P

WTF generally implies an unpleasant surprise. While dealing with IE6 is certainly unpleasant, it hasn't been surprising in years.

It could be worth clarifying that this is counting instances of the string 'WTF' in code, not code that makes you think WTF, as on http://thedailywtf.com/

I'm surprised C++ isn't in the lead. I've had more WTF moments reading C++ than any other language.

That is because most of the C++ monents (at least for me) have resulted in code that cannot even compile and the WTFs have been the pages and pages of template error messages.

What I found interesting is that the 3 lowest ones in his graph aren't programming languages.

So, I'm both a developer and a WoW player, but I've never done WoW mod development.

That said, I do know that WoW UI mods are written in Lua, and I also know that there's an interface-related folder in the WoW directory structure called WTF. If there are a lot of WoW mods on github, this could be related to Lua's outlier WTF status.

Looking at the search results[1] it mostly seems to be the same code being found in different repositories/forks. One of the most forked Lua repositories contains an add-on with a 8 localization keys named SoundWTF for example.

[1] https://github.com/search?type=Code&language=Lua&q=w...

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