The article from "The Daily WTF" discusses a C++ codebase maintained over the years, highlighting the challenges and poor practices adopted by its developers, mostly PhD students in an esoteric field. It uses a specific line of code to illustrate how developers opted to create their own naming conventions instead of using standard library function names, resulting in less clarity and comprehension within the code. The piece critiques the understanding of object lifetimes, memory management, and ownership in the application, indicating that many of the code issues stem from a lack of proper software engineering principles, particularly preceding the C++98 standard.

Key Points:

• The project is a long-standing C++ tool in a niche field with mostly PhD student developers.
• A specific line of code demonstrates the poor practice of using custom names instead of standard library names.
• The use of boost::shared_ptr is highlighted as a method for managing dynamic memory.
• The developers lacked understanding of modern C++ principles like object lifetimes and memory ownership.
• The article reflects on how the code style and decisions indicate a lack of thought in the overall codebase.
  Link to Article