Geoff Holden | Go ahead, try this at home

October 11, 2006

Go ahead, try this at home

On October 5th, Google Code Search was unleashed upon the world. People have found many uses for it so far, like finding things that people don’t want found, or finding other security bugs. Now, some people have been known to find some entertainment or humour in off searches (I wouldn’t know anything about that). So, in that vein, what would make good code searches?

I thought to search for common comments that developers might use to warn people of ugly, hackish, or otherwise complicated but working code.

“professional driver” “closed course”
One of my favorites, but only 5 hits.
“don’t try this at home” / “do not try this at home”
About 100, and 20 respectively; who’d have thought that programmers would prefer the slightly shorter one?
“trained professional”
Again about 100 hits.
(here)?\ t?here\ be\ dragons\ (here)?
Only 50 hits for this one–but, like the the ‘professional driver’ one, it has more colour and I like it.
“do as I say, not as I do”
It shows 19 hits, but a quick check shows that most of them look like they’re just quotes.

I can’t think of any other good ones right now, add a comment if you come up with any.