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Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#491

Post by dleskov »

Izkata wrote: post #62
oraguy wrote: post #18

Oracle Database 12.2. It is close to 25 million lines of C code. What an unimaginable horror! You can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests. Generations of programmers have worked on that code under difficult deadlines and filled the code with all kinds of crap. Very complex pieces of logic, memory management, context switching, etc. are all held together with thousand…

A sentiment among members of a former team was that automated tests meant you didn't need to write understandable code - let the tests do the thinking for you. This, and stuff like your story, are why I don't trust people who promote test-driven development as the best way to write clean APIs.

TDD only works in conjunction with thorough peer reviews. Case in point: at my place of work, code and tests written by an intern can go through literally dozens of iterations before the check-in gets authorized, and even the senior engineers are not exempt from peer reviews (recent interns are especially eager to volunteer).

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#492

Post by meshugga »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #479
api wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code like this makes me think of the famous line from the film version of Hellraiser: "I have such sights to show you..." Contrast PostgreSQL or... uhh... virtually any other database. Oracle's mess is clearly a result of bad management, not a reflection of the intrinsic difficulty of the problem domain.

Nonsense. The problem domain you dismiss is hideously complicated. Oracle DB and PostgreSQL are entirely different classes of products. No airline runs its reservation system on PostreSQL. That's not a coincidence.

It's not a coincidence, no, because Oracle can provide support guarantees in a way a Postgres contractor can not.

This is also a factor for independent developers (who build airline reservation systems) who need to choose a RDBMS for their product - they'll choose oracle, because ... Oracle can provide support guarantees in a way a Postgres contractor can not.

Which makes Oracle not a different class of product than Postgres, but a different class of support for the product. (which could be considered part of the product, so ... maybe you're right)

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#493

Post by vaylian »

pmarreck wrote: post #222
vaylian wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market opportunity? Sounds more like the best way to throw away your sanity. Some things are just beyond repair.

Since when is a greenfield app on a new product addressing a market with only old entrenched players “throwing away your sanity?”

Sorry, I did not realize you meant to create a new software from scratch. I thought you were talking about supporting/extending/refactoring this old pile of madness. Thanks for the clarification!

I suppose you were referring to the statement "Customers in that space don't have many options". Your statement is reasonable and there might be market opportunities to create new software. But I somehow have the feeling that it would take a tremendous amount of time to recreate something that checks the same boxes as the old system. But I do not work in that sector so my judgement might be totally off.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#494

Post by Uhrheber »

oraguy wrote: post #18

Oracle Database 12.2. It is close to 25 million lines of C code. What an unimaginable horror! You can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests. Generations of programmers have worked on that code under difficult deadlines and filled the code with all kinds of crap. Very complex pieces of logic, memory management, context switching, etc. are all held together with thousand…

Or just use Volkswagen: https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#495

Post by jasonMickl »

oraguy wrote: post #18

Oracle Database 12.2. It is close to 25 million lines of C code. What an unimaginable horror! You can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests. Generations of programmers have worked on that code under difficult deadlines and filled the code with all kinds of crap. Very complex pieces of logic, memory management, context switching, etc. are all held together with thousand…

Where is the code?

Is this pure B.S. or a true story. Do you have it or is it one of your B.S. stories?

Show us the beef!

those of us who have worked WITH the database know it is extremely modular. THAT is why it has survived decades and will keep surviving for years to come.

So Mr B.S. artist, show it or shut up !

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#496

Post by edynoid »

acroback wrote: post #415
Izkata wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sentiment among members of a former team was that automated tests meant you didn't need to write understandable code - let the tests do the thinking for you. This, and stuff like your story, are why I don't trust people who promote test-driven development as the best way to write clean APIs.

TDD need to die. This is a curse. There should be integration tests along with some property based tests and fuzzy tests. Usually catches a lot of things.Invest in monitoring and alerts too. TDD is like relying on debugger to solve your problem. Is debugger a good tool? yes,it is a great tool. But using it as an excuse to avoid understanding what happens under the hood is plain wrong. The problem lies in industry whe…

What you allude to there is pretty bad TDD. It was never intended as a replacement for good design, rather as an aid to be clear about design and requirements without writing tons of specs up-front.

And I agree, that there are lots of anti-patterns that have grown in tandem with TDD, like excessive mocking with dependency injection frameworks or testing renamed identity functions over and over just to get more coverage. However, I'd argue that is equally the fault of object-oriented programming though.

Where I disagree is this: TDD and unit tests are still a very useful tool. Their big advantage is that you can isolate issues more quickly and precisely, IF you use them correctly.

For instance, if I have some kind of algorithm in a backend service operating on a data structure that has a bug, I do not want to spend time on the UI layer, network communication or database interactions to figure out, what is going on. Testing at the right scope you get exactly that.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#497

Post by meshugga »

dejv wrote: post #241
ThePhysicist wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to salute this construction worker for building a solution that is apparently so valuable for the business that they can’t simply replace or rewrite it. This probably means that it solves a real problem for them, and adding 30.000 lines of code per year without any formal training or much tooling is no small feat either. I understand the criticisms and laughs here from the “real” software developers, but damn…

It is impressive indeed. The coding started just in time when Windows 95 were released. There was no Stackoverflow and they don't even really have internet back then. The programmer (as far as I know) didn't even speak English so he has access to book or two in German language and code snipets in help section of Delphi. At the same time creating applications with UI just started, so there was very little experience a…

Rural Austria? Please provide a company name ... or at least first and last character :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#498

Post by forthy »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #426
oraguy wrote: post #18

Oracle Database 12.2. It is close to 25 million lines of C code. What an unimaginable horror! You can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests. Generations of programmers have worked on that code under difficult deadlines and filled the code with all kinds of crap. Very complex pieces of logic, memory management, context switching, etc. are all held together with thousand…

You've violated the terms of service of Oracle Database by insinuating the codebase quality is in any way not superior to any and all competitors. No benchmarks or comparisons may be performed on the Oracle Database Product under threat of grave bodily harm at the discretion of our very depraved CEO.

I doubt the competition (e.g. IBM or Microsoft) has any better code quality. Even PostgreSQL is 1.3M lines of code, so let's get something deliberately written for simplicity. SQLite is just 130k SLoC, so another order of magnitude simpler.

And yet, even SQLite has an awful amount of test cases.

https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#499

Post by jasonMickl »

satanic_pope wrote: post #36
oraguy wrote: post #18

Oracle Database 12.2. It is close to 25 million lines of C code. What an unimaginable horror! You can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests. Generations of programmers have worked on that code under difficult deadlines and filled the code with all kinds of crap. Very complex pieces of logic, memory management, context switching, etc. are all held together with thousand…

Good lord, just reading it can cause panic attack.

If you have fear of Panic Attacks then your problem is not Oracle , Software or anything but a psychiatric one.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#500

Post by quickthrower2 »

wasm_future wrote: post #433
ThePhysicist wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to salute this construction worker for building a solution that is apparently so valuable for the business that they can’t simply replace or rewrite it. This probably means that it solves a real problem for them, and adding 30.000 lines of code per year without any formal training or much tooling is no small feat either. I understand the criticisms and laughs here from the “real” software developers, but damn…

Somewhere out there, there's a software developer who was assigned the task of building the team's office using 30,000 bricks, making all kind of spaghetti patches to prevent it from falling over, and the construction workers are laughing about it on a construction worker forum.

And this is the wall where he discovered you can use cement to bind the bricks. And here he even mixes that cement with sand and water. This is a safer place to stand.
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