This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Weiqi Gao. Original Post: Friday Java Quiz: What Was The Programmer Thinking? Feed Title: Weiqi Gao's Weblog Feed URL: http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/rss.xml Feed Description: Sharing My Experience... Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Weiqi Gao Latest Posts From Weiqi Gao's Weblog

It's been a while since I last posted a blog entry here (or tweeted over there, for that matter). It mostly have to do with the new schedule I'm trying to maintain with a new client. I use to go to work at 8:45am and arrive at 9:00am. Now I start a 7:50am and arrive at 8:20am. I didn't realize how important that fifty minutes of early morning time is to this blog. The lack of blog entries is definitely *not* the effect of the Java 1.4 on IE 6 corporate standard programming environment. Although the "we are going to yank the Firefox that you installed on our PC (that you are using)" email people get from time to time are a little bit ...[the author redacted five words here].

Today's quiz is a gem that Michael showed me yesterday. It's part of a huge class that compiles, runs without exceptions, and has been in production for a while. So today's question is not along that line. Instead, I ask you to figure out:

Q: What was the programmer thinking? (The code has been hand-obfuscated to remove any hint of the domain model.)

public boolean isXXXXAllowed() {
  boolean rc = false;
  Iterator it = getYYYYList().iterator();

  do {
    if (it.hasNext()) {
      YYYYInfo aTemp = null;
      try {
        aTemp = (YYYYInfo) it.next();
      } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
        try {
          aTemp = (YYYYInfo) it.next();
        } catch (NoSuchElementException e2) {
          LOGGER.debug("huh");
        }
      }

      if (aTemp.isXXXXAllowed()) {
        rc = true;
        break;
      }
    }
  } while (it.hasNext());
  return (rc);
}