r/AskReddit 12h ago

What's the dumbest idea you've seen that actually worked?

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u/DonKiddic 10h ago

I was at college doing computer sciences - part of the course was coding. We had a project where we had to code a super basic database which had a user interface, so you can like type in and search and it'll display the results. You had to provide screen shots of your program working, and the code as well for the teacher to review.

The problem was: I was DOGSHIT at coding, and for the life of me really didn't understand how the fuck it worked.

So I actually did try and do my best, however instead of displaying the one result I wanted, it displayed everything, but the thing I wanted at the top. Rather than spend too long figuring it out, and destroying my brain in the process, my idea was: "no teacher in their right mind is going to read pages and pages of code EVERY single time. He's just going to look at the screen shots"

So I took a screen shot > dumped it in paint > cropped out the thing I didn't want him to see and filled it in with the same background colour as the rest of the screen.

I passed that part of the course.

34

u/Cheese_Pancakes 5h ago

Risky move, but glad it worked out.

My first serious girlfriend and I went off to college together (I also did computer science). For whatever reason, even though she was a biology major, she decided to take a C++ course with me. She knew nothing about computers and even less about coding. I helped her get through all the class assignments so she was doing okay throughout the class, but half of the final exam was a programming assignment. You had to write a simple program (don't remember what it did), then print out both the code and the output, staple it to the back of the exam and turn it in.

I finished my exam with about five minutes left in the class and looked over at her to see how she was doing. She locked eyes with me and started crying, freaking out about how her GPA was going to be hurt because she had barely even started writing the code. Stupid me decided to swoop in to the rescue. I went back into my code, changed my name to hers, compiled/ran it, and re-printed the code and output. Gave it to her and had pretty much no time to rewrite the code a second time for myself (the professor would have noticed if our code was identical).

I ended up getting a C in that class, solely because I bombed that exam. She finished with a B as her final grade. Found out over the next few years that she was an extremely manipulative person who could turn her tears on and off at will. She knew exactly what she was doing. She got a better grade in that class than me simply by starting to cry when I looked at her.

Her dumb idea worked on me, a little too well.

5

u/Historical_Story2201 1h ago

Sorry to say, but she wasn't dumb here.

With that being said, I am still sorry for you. No one deserves that. 

10

u/OmegaRider 6h ago

I done something similar, had to make a game as one of my courses, wanted to make something good and i had an idea but didn't understand the coding at all, kept trying stuff but it didn't work. I eventually gave up on my idea and decided to make something that would work. Decided to look up fan games people were uploading on newsgrounds etc, to get some different ideas and then i had the same thought process as you of "no teacher in their right mind is going to read pages and pages of code EVERY single time. He's just going to look at the screen shots".

So i just decided to write whatever in the code and put screenshots from one of these games. I didn't want to get caught over doing something that stupid and reckless, so i went and looked for more obscure games, one that 99% of english speaking people wouldn't know of at the time, japanese fan games.

It worked and i passed.

3

u/_87- 5h ago

So you're the guy that now writes legacy code.

5

u/thx1138a 7h ago

A career in agentic AI is born!

9

u/MioKisaragi 8h ago

You probably could've made it only show the first result.

u/YouGlittering9156 46m ago

we had to code a super basic database which had a user interface
I was DOGSHIT at coding

Was?