Another Priceless WTF

Friend ReadOnly Property CheckUserRole() As Boolean 
  Get 
    Dim user As SystemUser = SystemUser.CurrentUser 
    If user.AssertRole(RoleTypes.Admin) Then 
      Return 0 
    Else 
      If user.AssertRole(RoleTypes.Training) Then 
       Return 1 
      Else 
        If user.AssertRole(RoleTypes.Supervisor) Then 
          Return 2 
        End If 
      End If 
    End If 
  End Get 
End Property 

Comments

# William said on December 12, 2004 9:54 PM:

Terrible and ignominious code!

It shows a dull disinterest in the possibility that now and in the future, assertRole can return True for User AND Admin AND Training or indeed any one of eight combinations. I do not know whether it can but certainly in Windows 2000, group and role membership is flexible.

Whether or not the possibility exists, the code could have been written to work flawlessly in EITHER scenario but it is characteristic of dull fellows to want to write code only for a specific narrow scenario.

In fact, the code is of negative net worth, for it poses as a "tool" giving you "simple" access to flags, like a Russian bureaucrat out of Gogol who has appointed himself in charge of all village affairs and proceeds to make a drunken mess of them, or the clowns in Shanghai who impounded my author copies last June and demanded 200 Yuan to release them.

We got rid of thug Communism only to have shadowy bureaucracies lurk in code.

# William said on December 12, 2004 11:40 PM:

You know what's really scary. I believe a boolean returns 0 if it's unnasigned in VB doesn't it? Well if they don't have one of those three privileges then it will return 0 and 0 is what they define as admin so all non-defined groups get to run as admin. Hurray everybodies admin! What a stroke of pure genious. I guess the concept of bit flags never occured to this guy so now he has to recode every time a permission is added.

# William said on December 12, 2004 11:42 PM:

But the money qoute says it all. If you get a bunch of squiggly lines and warnings, the OBVSIOUS VB6 answer is "Option Strict Off"