At work I was amazed with this ... scientific explanation of programming stupidity ... Really! And this IS used in production system...

stupidity.vbs

'Here is where all starts he actually counted the characters from the SOAP response
  
  projectname = Mid(xmlhttp.responseText, 339, 30) 

'And here the explaned stupidity 

  'Aufgrund fehlender Funktionalität händische Überprüfung
  'auf schließendes Tag </projektname> und dessen Teil-Mengen
	'mit anschließender Entfernung aus der Variablen
		If InStr(projektname, "</projectname>") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projectname>", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</projectname") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projectname", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</projectnam") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projektnam", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</projectna") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projectna", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</projektn") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projectn", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</project") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</project", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</projek") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</projec", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</proje") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</proje", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</proj") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</proj", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</pro") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</pro", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</pr") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</pr", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</p") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</p", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "</") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "</", "")
		ElseIf InStr(projektname, "<") Then
			projektname = Replace(projectname, "<", "")
		End If