A job for life
-
How To Write Unmaintainable Code Some of my favorite parts Buy a copy of a baby naming book and you'll never be at a loss for variable names. Fred is a wonderful name, and easy to type. If you're looking for easy-to-type variable names, try adsf or aoeu if you type with a DSK keyboard. Use scoping as confusingly as possible by recycling variable names in contradictory ways. For example, suppose you have global variables A and B, and functions foo and bar. If you know that variable A will be regularly passed to foo and B to bar, make sure to define the functions as function foo(B) and function bar(A) so that inside the functions A will always be referred to as B and vice versa. With more functions and globals, you can create vast confusing webs of mutually contradictory uses of the same names. Let's start off with probably the most fiendish technique ever devised: Compile the code to an executable. If it works, then just make one or two small little changes in the source code...in each module. But don't bother recompiling these. You can do that later when you have more time, and when there's time for debugging. When the hapless maintenance programmer years later makes a change and the code no longer works, she will erroneously assume it must be something she recently changed. You will send her off on a wild goose chase that will keep her busy for weeks.
-
How To Write Unmaintainable Code Some of my favorite parts Buy a copy of a baby naming book and you'll never be at a loss for variable names. Fred is a wonderful name, and easy to type. If you're looking for easy-to-type variable names, try adsf or aoeu if you type with a DSK keyboard. Use scoping as confusingly as possible by recycling variable names in contradictory ways. For example, suppose you have global variables A and B, and functions foo and bar. If you know that variable A will be regularly passed to foo and B to bar, make sure to define the functions as function foo(B) and function bar(A) so that inside the functions A will always be referred to as B and vice versa. With more functions and globals, you can create vast confusing webs of mutually contradictory uses of the same names. Let's start off with probably the most fiendish technique ever devised: Compile the code to an executable. If it works, then just make one or two small little changes in the source code...in each module. But don't bother recompiling these. You can do that later when you have more time, and when there's time for debugging. When the hapless maintenance programmer years later makes a change and the code no longer works, she will erroneously assume it must be something she recently changed. You will send her off on a wild goose chase that will keep her busy for weeks.
I have read that before. I bet a programmer would not keep his job very long if he did that sort of thing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
-
I have read that before. I bet a programmer would not keep his job very long if he did that sort of thing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
Unfortunately this is an all too often real occurrence.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I have read that before. I bet a programmer would not keep his job very long if he did that sort of thing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
Actually, it makes him the only one able to maintain this software - instant job security. Until the application will be "expired", of course...
Pandoras Gift #44: Hope. The one that keeps you on suffering.
aber.. "Wie gesagt, der Scheiss is' Therapie"
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygen -
I have read that before. I bet a programmer would not keep his job very long if he did that sort of thing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
I didn't know that really happened. It seems like it would be obvious to the boss what you are doing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
-
Actually, it makes him the only one able to maintain this software - instant job security. Until the application will be "expired", of course...
Pandoras Gift #44: Hope. The one that keeps you on suffering.
aber.. "Wie gesagt, der Scheiss is' Therapie"
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygenpeterchen wrote:
Actually, it makes him the only one able to maintain this software - instant job security.
This was tried at NASA, even to the claim of job security. They couldn't fire him without hurting themselves. They fired him to save themselves. Any trouble fixing what he destroyed was far better and safer than allowing him to continue. Of course selling company equipment for profit didn't help matters.... _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
I have read that before. I bet a programmer would not keep his job very long if he did that sort of thing.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
In my first development job I inherited some VB6 (shudder!) code that managed to include most of those suggestions, only the last guy he didn't bother putting in any comments. A particualr method was named
GetJourneyNumberFromJourneyNumberand I never did find out what it really did. Another favourite was to vary the variable names from the call to the parameter list, and to include the oddtemphere and there, just for fun. And the return was always calledresult. A man with such obvious talents got promoted to management:laugh: -
peterchen wrote:
Actually, it makes him the only one able to maintain this software - instant job security.
This was tried at NASA, even to the claim of job security. They couldn't fire him without hurting themselves. They fired him to save themselves. Any trouble fixing what he destroyed was far better and safer than allowing him to continue. Of course selling company equipment for profit didn't help matters.... _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Yep, best move ever. This rarely doesn't happen, because the longer the troublemaker is kept, the more is invested in him and it's naturally harder to "throw away" more money - especially in large corps that play the blame game.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Of course selling company equipment for profit didn't help matters....
:omg:
Pandoras Gift #44: Hope. The one that keeps you on suffering.
aber.. "Wie gesagt, der Scheiss is' Therapie"
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygen