The continuing saga of bad code [modified]
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I notice. I notice them all. :sigh:
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
I notice them all.
Didn't realize CP was affiliated with News Corp
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
Why don't you change jobs/contracts then? :confused:
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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Chris Maunder wrote:
I notice them all.
Didn't realize CP was affiliated with News Corp
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
Mark Nischalke wrote:
Didn't realize CP was affiliated with News Corp
:laugh:
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
Mark Nischalke wrote:
Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB.
If MS did away with VB those coders would code crap in C#, and then you would have no warning that it was going to be poorly written code. The way it is now, if you're called in on a VB project you can be fairly certain you are going to see horrors beyond comprehension. With C# you can expect it to be decent. There are exceptions in both languages of course, but by there definition exceptions are rare...
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Why don't you change jobs/contracts then? :confused:
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
Would be nice if I were financially independent and could pick and choose the contracts, or just quit after starting and seeing the mess.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
I feel your pain, this sounds exactly like our code base[^] (see also "why our Code Base Sucks Today II"). I inherited not only the situation you describe, but we also code against live. One dev hasn't been able touse a debugger, so he'd write the code and test on live site to see if breaks, really good fun on the main master page. This was the practise until I last week when I locked the devs out and put some change management in place. A re-write is going to happen, I've got the projects (literally just sub-folders on live) I want to keep into real solutions and into TFS (with deployment CI & builds none the less) and have started a prototype MVC3 app to replace the current cow-excrement heap. Oh the site is Arabic/English (almost, people are just plain lazy so we see a bit of both in each). We did have the situation where we had one panel displaying English text and another with Arabic (to sites in effect). I managed to convice them to put a stop-gap measure in :
<%= pageLang =="en"? "Events Calendar":"تقويم الأحداث" %>
before I took over. Even here, instead of creating a base-class with an
IsArabicproperty or something, they team decided comparing a parameter against a magic string, for each bit of text in the aspx was a good idea (as copy and paste is faster from my example scratch code). Its not worth fixing, in the new version we're switching to resx files. At least 95% of it is in c#* ;P** *Sadly not good c#. Yet **Actually bad code is bad code, doesn't matter what language it is inSort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
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A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^] -
Would be nice if I were financially independent and could pick and choose the contracts, or just quit after starting and seeing the mess.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
Mark Nischalke wrote:
Would be nice if I were financially independent and could pick and choose the contracts, or just quit after starting and seeing the mess.
In other words it's this mess that keeps you employed. So be happy for it :-)
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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Just come over to the dark side, Chris. It won't hurt a bit. I promise.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997God, that is all kinds of creepy, I'd rather join a cult :)
Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^] -
OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
Mark Nischalke wrote:
400 lines in one page load event alone
The project I inherited had one page with over 2000 lines of code in the page load event....on a page with around 6k lines.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
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Mark Nischalke wrote:
400 lines in one page load event alone
The project I inherited had one page with over 2000 lines of code in the page load event....on a page with around 6k lines.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
:omg: :wtf:
Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^] -
:omg: :wtf:
Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^]They want me to fix the issues this thing has, I told them I will fix the issues by scrapping the damn thing and rebuilding from ground up....It's such a Frankenstein monster that I am loath to simply do yet more patching and duct taping on it. Its basically the company intranet application, built by a self taught programmer over about 4 years time(constantly adding and patching stuff in). So its horrendous. I'm going to go with the basic user design and whatnot but am going to redesign the whole damn thing from the ground up with all its current functionality taken into account from the start, rather than patch in more crap code.(instead it will be a whole new generation of crap code, but it will be crap code that I wrote so I will know how to use it..... :-D ).
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
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They want me to fix the issues this thing has, I told them I will fix the issues by scrapping the damn thing and rebuilding from ground up....It's such a Frankenstein monster that I am loath to simply do yet more patching and duct taping on it. Its basically the company intranet application, built by a self taught programmer over about 4 years time(constantly adding and patching stuff in). So its horrendous. I'm going to go with the basic user design and whatnot but am going to redesign the whole damn thing from the ground up with all its current functionality taken into account from the start, rather than patch in more crap code.(instead it will be a whole new generation of crap code, but it will be crap code that I wrote so I will know how to use it..... :-D ).
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
I'm in pretty much the same situation, but most of the site Internet rather than intranet. I can understand this happening where I am, developers aren't seen as being professionals here, the equivalent of digital labourers. Most of the good devs end up in the gulf where they pay properly, which just makes the problem worse.
Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^] -
OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
Gah! I'd still be stuck on the "no dev database" issue. Even when we were a VB shop we had test databases. Of course, some of the applications had very large methods for things. Reminded me of some of the COBOL programs my mates from college wrote for class... *shudder* Flynn
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Mark Nischalke wrote:
Didn't realize CP was affiliated with News Corp
:laugh:
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
Better News Corp, than News International ;)
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Mark Nischalke wrote:
Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB.
If MS did away with VB those coders would code crap in C#, and then you would have no warning that it was going to be poorly written code. The way it is now, if you're called in on a VB project you can be fairly certain you are going to see horrors beyond comprehension. With C# you can expect it to be decent. There are exceptions in both languages of course, but by there definition exceptions are rare...
I disagree - I've got that crap in C# code..
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OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
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Just come over to the dark side, Chris. It won't hurt a bit. I promise.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
It won't hurt a bit. I promise.
Said the proctologist to the patient. :laugh:
Software Zen:
delete this; -
OK, so I've gotten past the no source control and no dev database. Now to build the site and step through it...no so fast. VS reports so many errors it stops recording them. When asked, the response was, "We've never built the site". :wtf: How do you use it then? "We deploy it and let it compile on the server when someone hits it the first time". :wtf: Did I mention the huge monolithic classes, 400 lines in one page load event alone, no layers, hard coded business logic. Not to get into the religious debate about languages but everytime I run into VB projects this is the quality I find. Software development would be so much better if Microsoft would just discontinue VB. :-D
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
modified on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 8:49 AM
It's not the language - it's the caliber of developer. I've seen some C# and C++ projects that would rival if not surpass the code you've described for it's shameless depths of bad practices/code/formatting/architecture/etc. I've also seen some very good work done in VB (not to try to say that I haven't seen some comparably bad VB - but I haven't noticed an inordinate disparity in the amount of bad code I encounter as related to the programming language).
Kevin Rucker, Application Programmer QSS Group, Inc. United States Coast Guard OSC Kevin.D.Rucker@uscg.mil "Programming is an art form that fights back." -- Chad Hower
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I disagree - I've got that crap in C# code..
boarderstu wrote:
I disagree - I've got that crap in C# code..
Right, the exception that proves the rule. <- how is that even a saying, it really doesn't make sense if you think about it so I'm going to stop thinking about it.
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boarderstu wrote:
I disagree - I've got that crap in C# code..
Right, the exception that proves the rule. <- how is that even a saying, it really doesn't make sense if you think about it so I'm going to stop thinking about it.
Jeremy Hutchinson wrote:
Right, the exception that proves the rule. <- how is that even a saying, it really doesn't make sense if you think about it so I'm going to stop thinking about it.
"The exception proves the rule" means that if an exception to a rule is specified, it proves the existence of a rule to be excepted from. In a simple example, if a sign were to read "No parking from 7am to 5pm", then that exception proves the rule that parking is allowed at other times. It's used in court cases to help establish right and wrong when the rules aren't necessarily clear. When you say "the exception proves the rule" when simply referring to a counter-example, then you're misusing the phrase.