Who Writes Microsoft Support Articles? Can They Always Be Trusted? [closed]

Question

Here is an example of the type of article I'm talking about:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319401

I assume these articles are written by people who work for Microsoft and that the code in the articles will always be rock solid and never contain any malicious code. I just want to make sure I can explain to my boss that this is an ok place to copy code from (I've been told never to copy code from the internet, but this seems like a safe source).

Answer 1

I would trust them not to be malicious, but they're not always good code. (MSDN samples are sometimes pretty awful.)

For example, here's some code in the sample you gave:

compareResult = ObjectCompare.Compare
    (listviewX.SubItems[ColumnToSort].Text,
     listviewY.SubItems[ColumnToSort].Text);

// Calculate correct return value based on object comparison
if (OrderOfSort == SortOrder.Ascending)
{
    // Ascending sort is selected, return normal result of compare operation
    return compareResult;
}
else if (OrderOfSort == SortOrder.Descending)
{
    // Descending sort is selected, return negative result of compare operation
    return (-compareResult);
}
else
{
    // Return '0' to indicate they are equal
    return 0;
}

Now, there are two issues here:

• Why is it deemed valid to have a comparer with no sort order? This should be a constructor parameter, validated at the point of construction IMO.
• You should not just negate the result of one comparison to perform a "reverse comparison". That breaks if the result of the first comparison is int.MinValue - because -int.MinValue == int.MinValue. It's better to reverse the arguments used to perform the original comparison.

There are other things I'd take issue with in this code, but these two should be enough to make my point.

I heartily agree with the other answers too, in terms of: - Check the copyright / licence etc of any code you want to use - Make sure you understand anything you want to use

Answer 2

Your boss probably wouldn't mind if you only copied the code into a test project that you use to test and understand the code. You can then use what you've learned to write the production code.

And while I don't think anyone outside of Microsoft knows the names of the people who write those support articles, they come from the same vendor that your toolchain does, so if you don't trust the support articles, then you can't trust the tools you've bought either.