The Reinvented Wheel

A Cautionary Tale

This is an example of code I had to delete by someone who must have thought they were being paid by the line.

public static string Space(UInt32 count = 1)
{
    string errorMessage = "Count must be an integer greater than or equal to 1 and less than or equal to "
                          + CommonInteraction.OverflowProtection.ToString();

    if (count < 1 || count > CommonInteraction.OverflowProtection)
        throw new ArgumentException(errorMessage);

    StringBuilder spaceMaker = new StringBuilder();

    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        spaceMaker.Append(((char)32).ToString());

    return spaceMaker.ToString();
}

Clearly new string(' ', count); would have sufficed in place of this entire method. But it gets worse. After finding all references to this nonsense, I found that the only two references to it were:

delimiter = CommonInteraction.Space().ToCharArray()[0];

and

((TextBox)sender).Text = ((TextBox)sender).Text.Replace(CommonInteraction.Space(), string.Empty);

Will someone please tell me what is wrong with just using a literal space character in these instances?!?!

I don't know who you are. I don't know why you did this. If you are looking for me to approve your code for check-in, I can tell you that I don't have the patience for code like this. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you never write code like this again, that'll be the end of it. But if you don't, I will look for your code, I will find it, and I will delete it.