Jim programs a true WTF
Occurred: April 2000

Once upon a time I was a huge noob.  I wasn't a noob in the classical sense. I was just young, and still had much to learn about life and even more to learn about programming. I was in my high school computer science class. We were working with Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 on Gateway boxes that were barely able to run Windows 98. Our class work for the semester was determined by a project based sylabus.You were expected to complete a project every couple of weeks and complete all projects by the end of the semester. We were about half way through the semester and I was nearing the end of the project list. After completing all the easy projects (pointers, arrays, recursion,  dates, etc..) I had moved on to working with datasets. Our project was to build and manipulate a simple linked list. Create a few nodes, do a few sorts, perform a few searches. A very simple data structure. I'm an RDBMS pro these days, but as a young bastard this concept was quite daunting.

After a few hours of messing around I had managed to create a linked list structure and I had created an addNode function. I had just begun to build my first bubble sort with recursion. I hit compile. I saw the familiar DOS prompt and saw my application's menu. I hit 'A' to add a node. After adding a few nodes I type 'S' for Sort.

Let's stop here for a moment and review: I'm on a Windows 98 machine running a Turbo C++ application in DOS. I'm using no headers or libraries except IOStream.h. I have absolutely no reference in my code to anything that is related to color or style of font/text or video.

I'm looking at the output of my DOS prompt. I see half of my linked list and what seems to be an ASCII dump of every single character ever (including the leet ASCII smiley character ) in every single 8-bit color. All the text on the screen (including my previous input echos) are blinking in blocks of random colors. Hot pink, lime green, red, light grey....

I'm a little bit puzzled. I type 'exit' to return to Turbo C++.

My IDE is completely FUBAR. Just like the DOS prompt, the screen is covered in blocks of random 8-bit colors. Having some common sense, I close down Turbo C++ and reboot the computer. As the Gateway struggles to restart I see the BIOS information displaying on the loading screen. Green, Red, Pink, and Yellow blocks are flashing everywhere. The familiar black and white DOS has taken on all the colors of the 8-bit rainbow.

Now I'm starting to get freaked out.

Windows boots and everything seems to be fine. I load up Turbo C++ and the IDE is still FUBAR. Flashing colors are everywhere. Hot Dog Man and Jay are sitting next to me and have taken interest in my misfortunes. I call our teacher Mr. Stroker over.

Mr. Stroker thinks I have messed up a setting in Turbo C++ and tries to reset the compiler's colors to default. It doesn't work. He looks at the code and although he can see it is incorrect, he is adamant that my code couldn't change the DOS colors. He thinks I'm up to no good and tells me to log onto Hot Dog Man's computer. With Mr. Stroker watching over my shoulder I load Turbo C++ and run the code. Green, Yellow, Red, Pink, oh my! Mr. Stroker is watching in disbelief and makes me move to another machine. The exact same thing happens. DOS is now completely trashed on three machines. No one can use any DOS applications and the screens violently blink random colors while being booted.

The machines are removed from the computer lab and are never seen again. I restart the project from scratch.

A note from Jim: I wish I still had the code so I could post what I had actually written but all my electronic media was confiscated (and never returned) by police in 2001 due to The World Famous Priceless Story