Further to my last post about the quality of code in certain well known PHP projects, I just stumbled across this fantastically pointless finger spew.
function the_title($before = '', $after = '', $echo = true) {
$title = get_the_title();
if ( strlen($title) == 0 )
return;
$title = $before . $title . $after;
if ( $echo )
echo $title;
else
return $title;
}
How entirely pointless that is, indeed, it gets worse, the entire thing is bloody well restrictive.
$title = get_the_title(); goes off and gets the title, but it adds HTML to it. I just want to get the title, but instead I end up getting <span blah blah>TITLE</span>.
Very poor code folks, and I think the naming conventions for the functions are not even worth commenting about… oh go on, I can’t resist “the _title”? Nice and descriptive, ain’t it. 
The thing is, I cannot understand why somebody would have done this. It’s just adding code that is in no way required. I think you’ll find that this particular program is riddled with dodgy designs, or lack thereof, like this, and if it was just coded properly in the first place, I dare say it would run considerably quicker, not to mention making the lives of us developers infinitely easier.
2 comments so far...
hehe that looks like my code from about 8 years ago!
This highlights a downside of opening stuff up to plugin developers, the Open Source project in question is a big enterprise and, iirc, has full time staff, so they could make it decent code with no real effort (assuming they know what decent code looks like) but they can’t without destroying hundreds of plugins
Open Source can be great… but it can also tie your hands
Though a quick comment on what the code would have looked like if you had written it would be nice
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