Sometimes, you see a code sample and you almost scroll by. "This isn't bad, I see it all the time." So it took a second glance to see the awful charm of what Henrik H found.

Henrik was asked to join a project to fix a high load website having "some issues". Here's a JavaScript tag that was included on nearly every page.

<script src="path/to/jquery.nailthumb.1.1.js">

"What?" I'm sure you wonder. "What's wrong with that? Are we stooping so low that jQuery is a WTF now?"

Let me include the output of a dir command from the web server:

 Directory of X:\wwwroot\path\to
    03-08-2023  11:06    <DIR>          .
    03-08-2023  11:06    <DIR>          ..
    22-07-2023  09:26             1.609 jquery.nailthumb.1.1.css
    22-07-2023  09:26            28.459 jquery.nailthumb.1.1.js
    22-07-2023  09:26               629 jquery.nailthumb.1.1.min.css
    22-07-2023  09:26            17.382 jquery.nailthumb.1.1.min.js
    22-07-2023  09:26             1.654 jquery.nailthumb.less

We didn't anonymize or alter the provided code. The script tag is presented as it was in the original code base. The developer, when following the "getting started guide" saw "path/to/jquery.nailthumb.1.1.js" in the examples, and replicated the examples exactly.

That wasn't the only problem with the code- their idea of version control was naming files index.asp, indexA.asp, indexB.asp, etc.

Henrik turned down the opportunity to work on this project.

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