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Author Topic: How To Write Unmaintainable Code  (Read 14,552 times)

Jibz

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How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« on: September 22, 2011, 10:39 AM »
I hadn't read this one before, but it is absolutely brilliant:

http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

;D
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Josh

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2011, 10:40 AM »
I saw the title and immediately thought about mouser coming out of the woodworks and talking about his coding "style" ;-)
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Renegade

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2011, 11:09 AM »
That was very good. I skimmed a lot of it, but there are some real gems in there. :)
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mouser

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2011, 12:02 PM »
Great stuff.  ;D

capitalH

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2011, 12:11 PM »
Blocked at work - will read later.

Luckily I do not need instructions - it comes naturally to me :D

Renegade

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2011, 01:43 PM »
Quote from: capitalH on September 22, 2011, 12:11 PM
Luckily I do not need instructions - it comes naturally to me :D

Hahahahaha~!

Nice one! :)
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40hz

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2011, 02:45 PM »
You could always hire a certain someone I know. Lovely person to talk to. She handles web projects for her employer - who thinks she's a wizard. She's the living embodiment of the 'stream of consciousness' school of programming... :)

iphigenie

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2011, 08:17 AM »
Quote from: 40hz on September 22, 2011, 02:45 PM
You could always hire a certain someone I know. Lovely person to talk to. She handles web projects for her employer - who thinks she's a wizard. She's the living embodiment of the 'stream of consciousness' school of programming... :)

Actually that style worked pretty well for web programming for the longest time, since http is a)linear and b)amnesiac. The industry is full of people like that who managed quite well on the server side programming.
It's harder in our days of ajax, html5, rich interfaces in javascript, flash and silverlight etc.

Renegade

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2011, 10:24 AM »
Quote from: iphigenie on September 25, 2011, 08:17 AM
Quote from: 40hz on September 22, 2011, 02:45 PM
You could always hire a certain someone I know. Lovely person to talk to. She handles web projects for her employer - who thinks she's a wizard. She's the living embodiment of the 'stream of consciousness' school of programming... :)

Actually that style worked pretty well for web programming for the longest time, since http is a)linear and b)amnesiac. The industry is full of people like that who managed quite well on the server side programming.
It's harder in our days of ajax, html5, rich interfaces in javascript, flash and silverlight etc.

It can be extremely difficult sometimes when you're working with umpteen trillion different technologies.

In 1 portion of 1 project, this is what I need to deal with:

C#
VB.NET
ASP.NET
X/HTML
CSS
XML
TXT
HTTP
JavaScript
2 Frameworks
4 Components
1 Database
6 Projects
4 Web applications (3 are also projects)
? APIs... I don't feel like counting...

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but whatever. Point is, it takes a lot of effort to keep each section separate and clean and working well with every other part. It's easy to see why some things turn into complete disasters. (I've been taking my time to make certain that things are as maintainable as possible. e.g. TONS of comments in code with everything as atomic as possible.)

In some ways, you're kind of like a conductor when you're programming -- it's up to you to orchestrate everything and "make music".

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

40hz

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #9 on: September 27, 2011, 01:41 PM »
Iphigenie is perceptive as ever.  8) :Thmbsup:

The woman I was speaking of dates back to the "fly by the seat of your pants" era in web development; and built her reputation back when transparent 1-pixel gifs were considered a brilliant web hack. Unfortunately, she has not kept up with current best practices.

f0dder

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2011, 06:23 PM »
Quote from: 40hz on September 27, 2011, 01:41 PM
and built her reputation back when transparent 1-pixel gifs were considered a brilliant web hack.
What, why are you using past tense?
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40hz

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2011, 06:35 PM »
Quote from: f0dder on September 28, 2011, 06:23 PM
Quote from: 40hz on September 27, 2011, 01:41 PM
and built her reputation back when transparent 1-pixel gifs were considered a brilliant web hack.
What, why are you using past tense?

Yeah. There is that.  :-\
But I was thinking more along the lines of it being clever rather than sneaky.
;D :Thmbsup:

Armando

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2011, 01:48 AM »
Utterly hilarious. What's also great about that piece is that it serves as a good reminder about annoying practices.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I should probably ashamed, but... I do like some of the "Hungarian notation" principles...  :-[ I find that, more often then not, it makes my code more readable in a simple text editor. Of course, more readable to me, hehe.
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Glenn Gould

Armando

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2011, 01:52 AM »
[Related to spoiler in previous post... ] Aaaaah. This just made me feel better. I love you guys  :-*

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=26284.msg244024#msg244024
"I suppose it can be said that I'm an absent-minded driver. It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it."
Glenn Gould
« Last Edit: September 29, 2011, 01:56 AM by Armando »

ewemoa

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2011, 09:33 AM »
From the source:

Quote
If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
- Anonymous

:)

Thanks for sharing, Jibz!

Armando

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #15 on: September 29, 2011, 02:45 PM »
^^^Would make a great "signature".
"I suppose it can be said that I'm an absent-minded driver. It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it."
Glenn Gould

Renegade

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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code
« Reply #16 on: September 30, 2011, 12:25 PM »
Quote from: f0dder on September 28, 2011, 06:23 PM
Quote from: 40hz on September 27, 2011, 01:41 PM
and built her reputation back when transparent 1-pixel gifs were considered a brilliant web hack.
What, why are you using past tense?

Hahahahahaha~! ;D

Nice one~!
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker
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