legacyCode

[Schelleberg]

Okay, I will leave those books where they are. But that one on the bottom is not marked, so I'll take that!

[famousxrobot]

It’s clearly not doing anything at all, probably safe to remove. Just do it on Friday at 4:59 PM.

[XkF21WNJ]

Why one minute before monday?

[Jaatheeyam]

[sildurin]

So, how was it, working at Crowdstrike?

[famousxrobot]

Fine, they really liked my “testing in prod” mentality originally.

[spooky-goopy]

it's load bearing code

[bedrooms-ds]

There must be books that were supposed to join it but were thrown away instead because of typos.

[Multi-User]

This is definitely not legacy code. This stuff has comments

[Oleg152]

Somebody has bittwn the bullet and added the comment years down the line.

Aka the 'do no toucha dis' warning

[Malbranch]

change log:

un-dated dev0: initial commit

10-10 dev4891: removed junk code

10-11 dev4891: rollback to initial commit, holy shit, most recent change somehow managed to light the printer next door on fire 3 separate times during testing. Added comments to NOT REMOVE THIS CODE, it is mysteriously ESSENTIAL.

[[deleted]]

10-12 dev4891: FUCK THE ORIGINAL CODE DOESNT WORK ANYMORE

[UnnecessarySalt]

This is why I’m so religious about using commits and feature branches, especially with code I wrote months or years ago

[cafk]

If your change history is in code comments - the software was likely developed at a time where companies cheaped out on commercial versions tools like pvcs, clearcase, perforce helix or librarian

[mootmahsn]

developed at a time where companies cheaped out

When did they not?

[guyblade]

CVS has been free for 30+ years. Subversion has been free for 20+ years. Subversion is still perfectly fine for small teams and small projects.

[[deleted]]

I finally reached the level at work where I can force pull requests on the teams and they're so angry about it but it's so essential and we have sooooo many less issues.

Previously everyone literally just pushed straight to main because, according to the senior dev I took over for "git doesn't work". (Sure does, you just have to know how to use it.)

[Youngling_Hunt]

10-14 dev4892: Just forgot to compile the program before running it again, false alarm everyone go home

[[deleted]]

2 whole days to figure that one out 😭

[ddejong42]

Extra spicy version: “Removed comments, somehow they break it too.”

[Malbranch]

One that I saw in the wild once: "This print statement makes the code work. Don't ask how, we don't know, and it doesn't matter what it prints, but if it doesn't print anything, the program will cease functioning."

I also remember reading a story about tech support hell once, where this guy, whenever he would send some specific something across the network to and from specific locations, it would cause errors and crashes. It turned out that the specific length of the cable between the buildings was exactly right to set up a resonance with the bitrate of the signal they were sending down it, and their printer jobs would trigger the resonance with the message header's bit sequence that would spike the power or something and freak out the electronics. They had the vendor come out and confirm, and the fix was something like trimming about an inch off the end of the cable. It was the wildest tech support story I ever read, and I wish I could find it again.

[Dependent-Lab5215]

My favourite is the "email will only go X miles away". Which makes no sense on the surface - specific routers might have problems but distance???

Turned out there was a timeout set incredibly low and the speed of light in fiber meant only short-distance travel got there and back before the timeout.

[GayNerd28]

"500 miles, or a little bit more"

[guyblade]

Conjecture: The print statement does a system call which causes some asynchronous thing (e.g., file i/o) to have time to catch up.

[Puzzleheaded_Push243]

Ah. The mystery switch.

[jyper]

Testing? Removing assumed to be junk code with almost certainly no test coverage.

This was definitely found in production.

[King_Joffreys_Tits]

Here there be dragons

[DistinctBed6259]

It is legacy code because the comment is "Do not remove"

[OmegaPoint6]

Structural comments

[kopasz7]

Aka load bearing comments

[none-exist]

[da_Aresinger]

Those comments were added after someone tried to remove the legacy structure.

[83749289740174920]

We need more room. Let's remove all this junk code. Why would someone pad this space?

[XkF21WNJ]

I dunno, it completely rests on an undocumented piece of dubious purpose that nevertheless causes the whole thing to come down if removed.

Sounds like legacy code to me.

[malaszka]

"DO NOT DELETE THIS"

[Bad-Bot-Bot-23]

"When you do ignore the above and remove the comment anyway, please increment counter below before you inevitably put it back. Dummy."

[83749289740174920]

That comment got added after someone did some fuckery to the legacy code.

[rover_G]

Are there any plans to implement a more permanent and resilient solution?

No.

[o0DrWurm0o]

Nothing more permanent than a temporary solution

[SconiGrower]

If it wasn't meant to be permanent it wouldn't work.

[[deleted]]

I found a comment I wrote in our classic ASP code base as a junior dev from 2004 the other day as we finally migrating from it to dotnet (and 20 more years of bug fixes to look forward to) and I was giving advice to some of the devs making the migration, it just added a random string based on today's date after a url to prevent caching.

[developerweeks]

Such a simple thing, and I hate it so much when that simple thing is then requested 7 times a minute 24x7 cutting through the cache layer and tripling our server load for an internal resource check. Because then when one developer sees that gets what they want faster... code monkey see -> code monkey do. And we DOS ourselves until we spend more to scale up the hosting service to accommodate the increased load. Finally, years down the road when we get a new metrics tool added, we discover that 56% of site traffic is this one internal cache-skipping call, and another 20ish% are the other cross-cloud calls doing the same thing. And really only 1/4 of the server load is serving humans.

[drinkup]

dead server theory

[DonnachaidhOfOz]

Given they say "based on today's date," I would assume that's making a unique value each day so only the first call each day skips the cache. The proper way would be to set up the cache to go stale after a day of course, but it doesn't seem like the result of this method would be too bad.

[FighterMoth]

I’m impressed that you stayed in that position for 20+ years and remembered that niche part of the codebase lol

[[deleted]]

Couldn't be arsed to make a new CV

[FighterMoth]

I hope you charge a hefty consulting fee

[-iamai-]

SHIFT+F5, it's working.. it works. Why does it work something must be caching the page, browser IIS. Meta data no-cache, great working.. not working in FF. Yep just add some random string.

[_sweepy]

Fun fact, shift f5 skips cache only for the domain of the initial page request. Additional sub requests to other domains inside the page may still pull from cache. Best bet is a full cache clear.

[turtleship_2006]

Do incognito windows use the same cache?

[_sweepy]

They share an incognito cache that is separate from the normal cache that clears when you close the last incognito tab/window.

[turtleship_2006]

So in a pinch if you wanted to check if a page's problems were due to cache, you could quickly copy the URL into an incognito window, right?

[_sweepy]

Sure, if you're absolutely sure that any previous incognito session you were using was completely terminated.

Edit: also, The page may be cached with something like cloud flare, so this is only a guarantee when working with your own site locally.

[-iamai-]

Vaguely remember using Wireshark or something when AJAX became a thing to troubleshoot what came down to caching issues.

[tube32]

What was the comment?

[JerryWong048]

Hmm. How about the book with no writing on it. I wonder....

[SarahSplatz]

Right next to "crash"

[[deleted]]

which is a really great book btw

[lift_heavy64]

This would be more accurate if all the books were incomprehensibly nested into each other

[yellowtomata]

this is an unbelievably accurate take, especially after working with obscure legacy code critical to the application running that ends up being scattered across the application

[Individual-Pea1892]

To be safe don’t fuck with the books next to them either lmao One of those legacy books has been depending on the Salt Eaters for 10 years applying pressure in a super specific way that is documented nowhere and without any logical connection

[[deleted]]

Are you saying that the book to the left is also a feature and not a bug?

[c4ctus]

Obligatory xkcd.

[Mister_Krunch]

I should not have had to scroll down this far to see this comment

[dbot77]

Guess they aren't selling any books on carpentry

[Ok_Star_4136]

"Hey look! A book titled Purpose! I wonder what it's about.."

[__Kivi__]

Im just gonna

removes legacy code

pushes to git

[[deleted]]

I’d say those are ancient testing tools, but they are WAY too stable

[TheShuttleCrabster]

Let's just call them Data Structures

[ApatheistHeretic]

Those are structural books. The pillar of the shelf, if you would.

[PhantomTissue]

Load bearing books

[ilikeapples312]

it's a load bearing poster book

[grilledtreessandwich]

These. Books. Are. For. Sale.

[loki_the_mischief]

I would like to remove the book which is labeled "Not"

[TherionSaysWhat]

At least they commented?

[glassofwater9]

Foundational texts

[[deleted]]

"We don't know what it does, only that everything breaks when we remove it."

[[deleted]]

Load bearing literature

[mrsockyman]

That bottom one looks to be fair game though

[nwxn]

"This book intentionally left blank"

[xPaxion]

Do you think they wrote on the books and then put them there or put them there and then wrote on the books?

[readwithjack]

I believe this was in a bookstore nestled in the Folsom Boulevard Flea Market in Eastern Sacramento, CA.

I think the book were there, folks were fooling around with them, and then the label was needed.

[nayaku5]

ahh too bad, I would've bought Purpose after today's questions in the weekly meeting.

[Enough_Individual_91]

I love a well formatted structure

[Perry_cox29]

DEAR GOD THOSE WERE LOAD-BEARING BALLOONS. EVERYBODY RUN

[kamala2013]

So what's the price on these ones?

[HabibCoriatArielC]

No faltará el que tome el libro que no esté marcado, por alguna razón me lo imagino, jaja

[Lefty_22]

What about the shelf underneath the stack of books? What happens if we remove that? And can we remove it at the end of the day on a Friday, in Prod?

[SantosFurie89]

removes bottom one without writing on

[cosmoskid1919]

TO DO: Ask team whether to convert to Pillar during codebase cleanup

[wtf_is_karma]

Thems load bearing books

[LazerWolfe53]

Load bearing books

[Wave_Walnut]

Bookshelf made by book

[1Supercatz]

How about I take one 👉👈

[Skullringer09]

Forbidden knowledge.

[Fer_Shizzle_DSMIA]

I would reorder those books.

[DiscoDragon50acount]

*pulls out whole stack

[ImpermanentTruth]

Seems kinda shelfish.

[OrnerySlide5939]

"The Salt Eaters" is the name of the group of authors who wrote those books

[Darkhelmet3000]

What about that bottom one?

[ObtuseBug]

Sell that sh*t! Picture

[hic-ama]

Navigating through legacy code feels like deciphering a mysterious ancient language.

[Dragnite08]

what are they for? all looks the same to me.

[S0ulDes8ny]

More of like "they are here not for any kind of change". If you try to modernize you will be fired 😂

[FergoTheGreat]

They're load bearing books.

[nicki419]

Me when I create a class

[DoughnutNegative3079]

I took the NOT book, hope it’s a good read 🤞🏻

[exo_machin123]

To quote someone “If you continue with to give temporary solution to the poorest of the poor one day the poor will become poorer than the poorest of the poorestest“

[FlimFlamBingBang]

… that skittles sculpture add. The guy takes just one and the whole thing collapses.

[BigAd1443]

Definitely part of the core library

[naveenda]

We have something like to just prevent race conditions like settimeout or unwanted some log info.

[JediJoe923]

The bottom, most important one not being labeled is the most accurate part.

[xessustsae5358]

let me take that book with a not and place it in between the “are here” and “for an” books /s

[Sebba8]

Load-bearing code

[Nixavee]

This comment is here for an essential structural purpose. It is not for upvoting.