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How to write unmantainable code (2015)

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Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#11

Post by Waterluvian »

ziml77 wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

They forgot the masterpiece I saw years ago: 1. Give all your Python class members a tedious naming convention. 2. Be DRY by writing helper functions that do name lookup based on a string of the last half of the member name. 3. Be even more DRY by having the function guess a little if the match isn’t exact You now have an application where you cannot search for where members are referenced.

I did something like step #2 in C# some years ago. Pulled data from the database based on the calling function’s name. Clean Code was mental poison for me and certainly led to a bunch of overly abstracted or overly-DRY code.

I feel like every coder has to overdo it at least once to truly grok why it is a balancing act. And I think that oftentimes leads to the discovery that every best practice is a balancing act.

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#12

Post by matsemann »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #5

This is the way it seems to go in the public sector, at least here in Norway. 1. Get an n year government contract for some huge public IT overhaul. E.g building a new hospital journal system for a large region(this example is real, google "helseplatformen") 2. Spend years developing this huge proprietary .net monolith with a waterfall model, and minimal user interaction and testing during most of the contract. 3. Re…

I've done big government contracts for many years as a consultant in Norway, and haven't really seen this. Guess it's because Java is so much better than those .NET monoliths ;)

But seriously, I guess it depends on the maturity of those writing the tender / anbud. Too often they get bamboozled by big4 like consultancies (Accenture, Sopra Steria etc..) that act more like project managers and sales people than developers.

The company I used to work for actually stopped giving offers on lots of these kind of projects. None of us wanted to work on these kind of bureaucratic nightmares where one is set up to fail. It's much more fun to deliver something of value, even if one doing something else could've squeezed out some more money. We "fired" clients that didn't give us opportunity to actually do good or have an impact.

I think more of these public sector tenders should stop focusing on "projects", and instead focusing on just getting the correct people that can help them iteratively move in the correct direction.

Unfortunately it's often hard to get money for this. Easier to say "we need X millions for this huge project".

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#13

Post by ziml77 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #11
ziml77 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something like step #2 in C# some years ago. Pulled data from the database based on the calling function’s name. Clean Code was mental poison for me and certainly led to a bunch of overly abstracted or overly-DRY code.

I feel like every coder has to overdo it at least once to truly grok why it is a balancing act. And I think that oftentimes leads to the discovery that every best practice is a balancing act.

You're probably right on that. I now weigh my options to try to find a middle ground between impossible to change because it wasn't designed for change and impossible to change because it was designed for too many future use cases that will never happen.

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#14

Post by jongjong »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #5

This is the way it seems to go in the public sector, at least here in Norway. 1. Get an n year government contract for some huge public IT overhaul. E.g building a new hospital journal system for a large region(this example is real, google "helseplatformen") 2. Spend years developing this huge proprietary .net monolith with a waterfall model, and minimal user interaction and testing during most of the contract. 3. Re…

The worst part is that the people who work for these companies who work for the government think that they're efficient. In reality, there are often startups out there which could build the same system better in 1/10th of the time.

The bigger an organization is, the more easy money they have, the worst their expectations are when it comes to software development. I once worked for such a company as a software developer and I was shocked that I kept getting positive reviews in spite of being the laziest I had ever been. I was spending most of my time watching videos on YouTube; but the little work I did between YouTube videos was somehow better than that of their average employee...

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#15

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #5

This is the way it seems to go in the public sector, at least here in Norway. 1. Get an n year government contract for some huge public IT overhaul. E.g building a new hospital journal system for a large region(this example is real, google "helseplatformen") 2. Spend years developing this huge proprietary .net monolith with a waterfall model, and minimal user interaction and testing during most of the contract. 3. Re…

Sounds like defense industry software. You have super geniuses laying down the actual design and hardware in a few years and troglodytes writing the code for 20 years.

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#16

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

matsemann wrote: post #12
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #5

This is the way it seems to go in the public sector, at least here in Norway. 1. Get an n year government contract for some huge public IT overhaul. E.g building a new hospital journal system for a large region(this example is real, google "helseplatformen") 2. Spend years developing this huge proprietary .net monolith with a waterfall model, and minimal user interaction and testing during most of the contract. 3. Re…

I've done big government contracts for many years as a consultant in Norway, and haven't really seen this. Guess it's because Java is so much better than those .NET monoliths ;) But seriously, I guess it depends on the maturity of those writing the tender / anbud. Too often they get bamboozled by big4 like consultancies (Accenture, Sopra Steria etc..) that act more like project managers and sales people than develope…

Thanks for the insider perspective. My experience as a dev in this sector is limited to interviewing for a few consultancies and noping out once I got a look at the code. But most massively public systems I interact with regularly seem to track with both our POVs. Of course the client side is definitely at fault too, for being naïve about these consulting firms.

I wholly agree with you that big projects are not the way to go. I think a push towards open source would greatly improve accountability. And I don't see why say the tax reporting system needs to be proprietary besides a thin veil of security through obscurity.

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#17

Post by Stratoscope »

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

They forgot the masterpiece I saw years ago: 1. Give all your Python class members a tedious naming convention. 2. Be DRY by writing helper functions that do name lookup based on a string of the last half of the member name. 3. Be even more DRY by having the function guess a little if the match isn’t exact You now have an application where you cannot search for where members are referenced.

> Be even more DRY by having the function guess a little if the match isn’t exact

At that point you'll be singing How DRY I Am!

https://temperanceblues.web.illinois.edu/how-dry-i-am/

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#18

Post by Sirened »

My favorite is when the codebase is so deeply buried in macros and headers that send you on a wild goose chase to find any actual code that it becomes much easier to just dump the binary in ida/binja. The source code can lie but at least the compiled binary directly does what it says

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#19

Post by actionfromafar »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #16
matsemann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done big government contracts for many years as a consultant in Norway, and haven't really seen this. Guess it's because Java is so much better than those .NET monoliths ;) But seriously, I guess it depends on the maturity of those writing the tender / anbud. Too often they get bamboozled by big4 like consultancies (Accenture, Sopra Steria etc..) that act more like project managers and sales people than develope…

Thanks for the insider perspective. My experience as a dev in this sector is limited to interviewing for a few consultancies and noping out once I got a look at the code. But most massively public systems I interact with regularly seem to track with both our POVs. Of course the client side is definitely at fault too, for being naïve about these consulting firms. I wholly agree with you that big projects are not the w…

Job security through obscurity.

Re: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

#20

Post by SCLeo »

> Hungarian Notation is the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques; use it! Due to the sheer volume of source code contaminated by this idiom nothing can kill a maintenance engineer faster than a well planned Hungarian Notation attack. The following tips will help you corrupt the original intent of Hungarian Notation:

I can't stop laughing.

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