[aegiso]

Way too much schadenfreude given Gox's history.

Although contrary to popular belief Gox was never a Magic exchange, they were a Bitcoin startup at a time when Bitcoin was not much more than internet lols and pizza deliveries. The first thing you do when hacking together a stupid exchange for a joke e-currency isn't writing unit tests. You just write the code and blast it up on a domain you had lying around for a different project.

Cue runaway success, a company sale or two, scaling issues with complicated technology and not much precedent legal or otherwise, and this is what you get.

There is nothing at all surprising about this code. And it seems Gox's problems were much more deeply rooted than the subjective non-compliance of their code with "best practices".

[McGlockenshire]

> contrary to popular belief Gox was never a Magic exchange

The Wayback Machine disagrees.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070701000000*/http://mtgox.com

Whether it was open as one is unclear, but that was the obvious intent here.

Also, remember that the current owners aren't the original owners. This code is wrong in design but new in attempted style, made or majorly updated within the past year or two (based on the language features used).

[wcummings]

My understanding is that while the domain was originally purchased for a MtG exchange, it was never used for this purpose. I've yet to see proof that a MtG exchange has existed on mtgox.com

[acdha]

> The first thing you do when hacking together a stupid exchange for a joke e-currency isn't writing unit tests.

As soon as you write anything where a bug causes money to change hands, even on a laugh, you write some tests.

[LandoCalrissian]

No kidding, I would be so freaked out not writing tests the second money is involved. I just don't understand why he didn't bother to hire some help when things got bigger.

[acdha]

That's the part I don't understand – I'd be scared witless at the thought of not having tests for anything moving money out of my accounts. When you have millions in those accounts, even a really expensive developer is cheap insurance…

[afreak]

While it may have not been a MTG card trading site, Karpeles was involved in running MMO servers based around Ragnarok Online before running an exchange. His involvement carried through during MTGox's existence until maybe a year or two ago.

[tlrobinson]

If Mt Gox was ever a MTG card trading site, it would have been before Mark purchased it from Jed McCaleb.

[wahnfrieden]

McCaleb has said by email that MtGox was at least at some point used for trading or buying cards.

[hnisnotreddit]

> schadenfreude

Epicaricacy. because you're speaking english.