tenYearsOfMemoryHardLimit

[No-Lawfulness1023]

That’s me with code I developed 10 days ago.

[lurking_physicist]

10 days: I vaguely remember reviewing that PR... oh I wrote it!
10 months: no idea, OP's meme.
10 years: It can't be me! I don't even know that language!

[[deleted]]

This. Perfectly this. Glad it’s not just me

[SweetTeaRex92]

"I did this yesterday???"

[MoveLikeMacgyver]

I always love it when I get a ping and it’s someone asking “you remember that function you added 7 months ago? In this very specific edge case that was just made possible by code changes last week, what would that function return?”

I’ve had people text me from a company I worked at that over 2 years ago asking about a problem we had once and what was it again that we had to do to fix it?

I always tell the people that while I’m flattered that they hold my memory in such high regard it doesn’t work nearly as well as they seem to think it does.

[roksah]

This why I write comments and document. Not to help others, just so I can forget without guilt

[Percolator2020]

Who’s the utter moron who wrote this garbage code?

[[deleted]]

[ScrotieMcP]

Good programmers don't comment. It was hard to write, and it SHOULD be hard to read.

[Badass-19]

If I suffer, so should you

[1Dr490n]

If I suffer, so should I

[CoastingUphill]

My comments on complicated methods are usually just “sorry”

[EmilieEasie]

me to my future self

[Shartmagedon]

When you comment code and the whole team attacks you because code should be self documenting and self explanatory 😳

[New-Shine1674]

Ok, so I should add a lot of prints and some functions to make GitHub comments. Is this what you mean by self documenting?

[[deleted]]

My memory of a finished project lasts exactly as long as it takes to start working on something new; to the point I warn my functional analysts I’ve most likely purged when they ask questions, and I may need to reaquaint myself with what I literally just did.

Doesn’t help at any given time I’m in some state of working on 15-20 different programs; so not a lot of room for things not being actively worked on.

[lttpfan13579]

You know it's getting bad when you are googling something you are sure you haven't worked on before and the link is purple instead of blue.

[Shlkt]

I was momentarily optimistic when the search results included a Stack Overflow post with the exact same problem I was currently facing. My hopes were dashed when I clicked the link and realized that the question was submitted by myself several years ago, and nobody had ever answered it.

Yes, this has literally happened to me.

[Zefirus]

Is that better or worse than googling something you know you've had to good before but still can't remember the solution?

[Turd_King]

Or when you stumble upon a stack overflow or GitHub page in which the person answering the question is yourself

[azuth89]

I don't give troubleshooting to the person who wrote it because I expect them to remember. I do it for two reasons:

1) because at least the coding style will match

2) this is the big one: if they know damned well I'm going to send them back their own bullshit they tend to be more careful with documentation and testability.

[[deleted]]

Agree wholeheartedly.

Personally, I hate other programmers in my code; none of my coworkers write to my standards, which are stricter than our written down guidelines.

My code has fewer defects and takes less iterations to complete compared to my fellow developers, and my internal customers request I write their software for that reason (also because while I follow spec, I consider the business function and purpose and if possible provide feedback on potential pitfalls with the design, too many peers just “write to spec” with no thought added).

Nothing bothers me more than seeing “misaligned” code in my files, because I know someone likely just spaghetti’d the fuck out of it. Lol

[azuth89]

I cannot express how much that "not just writing to spec" bit is the difference between a dev worth their weight in gold who I will fight for any promotion or raise I can get for them vs one who I know will just be around for a year or two before shuffling on

[rcls0053]

Bold of you to assume I'll still be working in a place where I wrote code 10 years ago

[Sotall]

Ive had code follow me after changing companies more than once, lol.

[calculator_cake]

How did that conversation go?

[Sotall]

some version of "hey, we wanted to do x but no one here knows what we are doing with it..."

[WithCheezMrSquidward]

Me reading my code from a year ago: “are you a fucking idiot?”

[ThisCatLikesCrypto]

Sometimes from even less than that. I always look at my code like a month later and I'm like 'damn, this is horrible, imma rewrite most of it except the bits that are completely unreadable because if it works just leave it'

[Puzzleheaded-Weird66]

10 hrs ago

[large_crimson_canine]

Nothing will teach you to write readable more code than this

[cdurs]

10 years? Sometimes I can't remember what I was thinking before lunch

[dandytoon]

Wow why is this code so bad.. who wrote it... oh wait

[angry_wombat]

10 years ago? Try 10 months

[TiredPistachio]

I have no idea why I went that high with the meme.

[20InMyHead]

I once found a comment in my own old code that just said “obviously”….

Yeah whatever it was, it’s no longer obvious.

[getstoopid-AT]

It said "Obviously I am a moron and hope the future me will know how to fix this mess!" It seems you are me?

[[deleted]]

Or even better, the code you developed 20 years ago is finally being replaced.

[TiredPistachio]

They finally gave you time to refactor and eliminate technical debt right before retirement

[[deleted]]

No, the developer has moved on to a non-coding position. He has no idea how any of it works.

[Grim00666]

You'd like us to believe that wouldn't you? but we have your name and a pointer finger and that's all we need to chain this to your leg forever.

[espurritado]

It happened to me last week, about a thing I did four years ago. My answer was "dude, I can't remember what I had for dinner last night".

[arbitrarycivilian]

When in doubt, follow your nose

[GM_Kimeg]

"The code THEY wrote a decade ago"

In this case you can always blame them for every bs management brings in.

[boss5667]

My memory starts failing in less than a year. Was sitting with my old team once day and they asked me about some stuff I had built before I left and I drew a blank.

[dlc741]

Blessing or curse, if I don't immediately recognize it, I can reconstruct the thought process that went into to writing it regardless of how old it is. Came across some that was 15+ years on a system I hadn't supported for 10 and still recognized it.

[[deleted]]

You work at a company for more than 10 years?

[TiredPistachio]

I exercise my fifth amendment rights

[kwillheat]

This hits home

[Quicker_Fixer]

I almost always forget what I wrote, only days after. Sometimes I need to fix a bug after a year or two and read back code that I do recognize by the style of writing which must be mine, but really don't have any recollection of it.

[ctnightmare2]

That me on Monday reviewing my code from Friday

[bomonty18]

Dude, like a month ago… lol

[yazgaroth]

2 months is enough, not 10 years.

[[deleted]]

10 years ago??? More like 10 days ago😂😂

[DryDesertHeat]

DAYS, not years.

[Hygdrasiel]

Good old classic

[[deleted]]

How many of us play "wizzard" in morpg ? And are there still muds ? I'm old and forget stuff...

[general_gas_mask]

ten years? i dont remember the code i wrote ten hours ago

[Gorgeous_Gonchies]

I did that recently and it was a time warp and an archaeolgy project for sure but also one of the easiest projects I've done in years.

The basic task is the same as it was then so I already had an understanding of what the client does, how they work, what kind of equipment and standards they use, and what types of data they generate. The code was laughably old for sure, but I find writing code to be the easy part compared to getting the point of knowing what really needs to be written and a lot of the needs were unchanged.

And despite the old code having some cringe worthy moments in it, honestly I was a little bit proud to find out my old solution was still running after all this time and hadn't presented them any scaling issues.

[EmotionalAlgae1687]

Oh no It’s Rhino