An unlikely compliment

[hirez]

"You're the only person I know that can laugh when looking at code..."

Comments

[hazeii.livejournal.com]

/* This code doesn't do what you think it does */

[sciamachy.livejournal.com]

Bah, I've had a good snigger when looking at other people's code. It's the beauty of being a maintenance programmer rather than the poor sap who's been given a sketchy at best spec and a week to code a masterpiece in. I get to see the awful mistakes, point and laugh, and 3 days SLA to fix the bugger (Argh!).

[neilh.livejournal.com]

I thought that was normal.

Different bass, surely?

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I'll occasionally laugh in despairing amusement at my own mistakes, shortly after submitting the "final" version.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

In many ways developers are like plumbers, whenever we see someone elses work we shake our heads and say "what cowboy did you get to do this, it'll all have to be replaced"...

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Plumbing is easier then IT.

No-one ever asks plumbers to take a dreadful bodge that has been that way for years, fix everything up nice and shiny, but re-install all the old shit that was there before without losing any of it.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

I love refactoring. To the layperson, it looks just like actual work!

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

i do it. Several colleagues have done it. It helps if you are interviewing and asked people for sample code.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I think it is normal. Along with shouts of 'Oh great Christ!' when you work out how much old code you can throw away.

Mind, P. doesn't mix with hackers much so she's not used to that sort of behaviour.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You've seen the plumbing at 465 then? I suspect the second and third layers were put in by itinerant FORTRAN coders.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

 /* You are not expected to understand this */ 

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Have you read Spolsky on refactoring? Fine stuff.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've read Joel On Software for ages. He makes a lot of sense, which is why it's weird that no-one I know actually uses his product, or indeed has even heard of it...

Comments from Microsoft source code

[hazeii.livejournal.com]

// The specific idiot in this case is Office95, which likes
// to free a random pointer when you start Word95 from a desktop
// shortcut.

...and...

/* IWDFWI */

(It works, don't fuck with it)

[steer.livejournal.com]

/* Tricky bit */ -- from code handed in by one of my students

/* Note the important difference between being on a bus and being a bus */ -- from code written by me.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Modesty (and good taste) forbids me from posting any of my own commentary. And the fact that as preevus mentioned, like, it's been [mumble] years since I wrote anything that required the services of a compiler. (No, I don't consider Perl [that I've written] 'code'.)

Though now I think about it, I'm sure there was some turbo-for-windows circa 1990 where I became bored with the documentation and started writing a short story in the comments. If that's true, it'll be where the rot started.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Or Robert Deniro.

[dcarson.livejournal.com]

The complimentor can't know too many programmers - I can see four or five that I would say that about from where I sit at work!

Then again, maybe that just says something about the laughable quality of the (licensed at great expense) code we have to work with.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

TO be fair, the intent of that famous comment was "this isn't in the exam, don't worry about it" rather than it being anything particularly obscure.

I have a pile of code that the comments (attributed to me) says "handles the July 16th problem". I can't remember writing it, and none of the other people who have comments in it can either, nor can anyone remember speccing it or asking for it. We run it every year, just in case...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

... Lest the Elder Gods of Logic become Displeased.

(All hail, etc.)

[kathbad]

I understand almost none of this comment thread!

(Although I do understand bodge jobs!)