Monday, December 07, 2009

agony_aunt[0] : politically correct coding

Question I recently went to an interview where the lady asked me to design a payroll application. But after seeing my code, she got angry and called security guard to kick me out. I am now being sued for sexual harassment. I'm sending my code to you. Please tell me, where did I go wrong?

agony_aunt No wonder she threw you out! Your code is politically incorrect! Let me tell you why. Here's a piece of your code:

class Employee
{
Gender gender;
String name;
public Employee(String name, Gender gender)
{
this.name = name;
this.gender = gender;
}
...
}
...
Employee employee = new Employee("Ramya", Gender.Female);

Do you see what you did wrong there? You objectified women! You are such a sexist pig! Women should never be represented by objects. You should do this intead:

int calculateSalary(String name)
{
if(isMale(name))
{
Employee man = getEmployeeByName(name);
return man.getSalary();
}
else
{
//be careful not to create an object, not even a structure.
return getSalaryForFemalePerson(name);
}
}

The second mistake you did was here:

class Employee
{
...
int getAge()
{
return age;
}
...
}

You can't ask a woman her age! Thats rude, and in some countries, it's illegal! This is what you should do:

int getAge(String name)
{
if(isMale(name))
{
Employee man = getEmployeeByName(name);
return man.getAge();
}
else
{
throw new SexistException("Male Chauvinist Pig!");
}
}

Your comparison function is also totally wrong. What it should be doing is:

int compareEmployees(String emp1, String emp2)
{
if(isMale(emp1) && isFemale(emp2))
return -1;//men are inferior to women.
if(isFemale(emp1) && isMale(emp2))
return +1;//women are superior to men.
if(isFemale(emp1) && isFemale(emp2))
//woman with more jewelry wins.
return getJewelry(emp1) - getJewelry(emp2);
return 0;//all men are equally stupid.
}

Even though it is a payroll application, you always need to implement these functions:

boolean isFat(String name)
{
if(isMale(name))
{
Employee man = getEmployeeByName(name);
return man.getWeight() > AVERAGE_WEIGHT;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}

2 comments:

Unknown said...

ahhhaa, saar its geeky enough to figure out in 'The Big Bang Theory' !
sakkath funny!

The God Of Tall Things said...

@Anon: nimmajji pinDa