Off Color – The Daily WTF

Carolyn inherited a somewhat old project that had been initiated by a “rockstar” developer, and then passed to developer after developer over the years. They burned through rockstars faster than Spinal Tap goes through drummers. The result is gems like this:

private void init(){
	ResourceHelper rh = new ResourceHelper();
	for ( int i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
		months[i] = rh.getResource("calendar."+monthkeys[i]+".long");
		months_s[i] = rh.getResource("calendar."+monthkeys[i]+".short");
	}
	StaticData data = SomeService.current().getStaticData();
	this.bankHolidayList = data.getBankHolidayList();
	colors.put("#dddddd", "#dddddd");
	colors.put("#cccccc", "#cccccc");
	colors.put("#e6e6e6", "#e6e6e6");
	colors.put("#ff0000", "#ffcccc");
	colors.put("#ffff00", "#ffffcc");
	colors.put("#00ff00", "#ccffcc");
	colors.put("#5050ff", "#ccccff");
	colors.put("#aa0000", "#ff9999");
	colors.put("#ff8000", "#ffcc99");
	colors.put("#99ff99", "#ccffcc");
	colors.put("#ffcc99", "#ffffcc");
	colors.put("#ff9966", "#ffcc99");
	colors.put("#00c040", "#99cc99");
	colors.put("#aadddd", "#ccffff");
	colors.put("#e0e040", "#ffff99");
	colors.put("#6699ff", "#99ccff");
}

There are plenty of things in this function that raise concerns- whatever is going on with the ResourceHelper and the monthkeys array, for example. But let’s just breeze past that into that colors lookup table, because boy oh boy.

There’s the obvious issue of using server-side code to manage colors instead of CSS, which is bad, sure. But this translation table which converts some colors (presumably already used in the display?) to some other colors (presumably to replace the display colors) is downright mystifying. How did this happen? Why did this happen? What happens when we attempt to apply a color not in the lookup table?

I want to say more mean things about this, but the more I stare at the original colors and what they get translated to, I think this lookup table is trying to tell me I should…

…
…

lighten up.