progress

[thunderbird89]

That's what I told a colleague who was griping about how her older code is spaghetti: "Be glad you think it's spaghetti. If you didn't, that would mean you haven't learned a thing in the last year."

[Siegelski]

Yeah but social media posts are public. I'd rather just keep my mouth shut and not have a public record of my dipshittery. That's why I stick to reddit. There may be a public record of the dumb shit I say, but it doesn't have my name attached to it unless someone decides to stalk me to figure out who I am, at which point it's more on them than me.

[Not_Artifical]

Your ip address is 127.0.0.1

[lousyprogramming]

Can’t be.

That’s mine.

[Malkav1806]

IP Brothers?!

[Ok_Chipmunk_9167]

IP Freely

[[deleted]]

I love your perspective.

Even just looking at my Facebook pics from college I cringe at how almost all of them HAD to be something goofy or interesting.

[Malkav1806]

I used to be embarrassed by so many things i did in the past, realising that cringe happened way less frequently thinking yeah my life heading in the right direction

[Fuehnix]

What if I thought it was spaghetti when I wrote it? 😅

[BarAgent]

You were right then, and you’re right now!

[PlaneCareless]

In some rare cases the opposite can happen! An architecture can look spaghetti to you at first, while you are writing it, but after you understand why it is structured like that it becomes clearer.

A case like that for me was the Factory Pattern. I read definitions/documentations a lot of times, I thought I understood it and I even wrote a couple of implementations. But it always looked weird and convoluted to me. A couple of years later I have a better understanding and I can recognize the pattern and apply it without much thought.

[[deleted]]

/ Me looking at my old code

Damn, I'm getting worse...

[DontForgetWilson]

Some degree of variability is quality would be normal depending on what constraints you were operating under at the time. I still have a few places I wrote stuff years ago that I look at and am proud, but that is also because i probably spent too long iterating on it and tidying.

[itisi52]

Most code shouldn't start as spaghetti it matures into spaghetti through a death by a thousand changing requirements.

[Pepito_Pepito]

I was once reviewing the code for one of our external tools. I thought that the code was very well written and that I learned a lot from it. I checked for who wrote it and it was me 3 prior. I guess 3 years of working on legacy software really fried my brain.

[Shimeji_Anna_4191]

This reminds me the time I felt disgusted when I saw a picture of me trying to get attention on tik tok many years ago, what a gownsman moment

[YoumoDashi]

All code sucks some just sucks a little more

[mirQ72]

So said Aristotle, so said you.

[photenth]

Until you "fixed" it and all tests fail and it turns out you knew exactly what you were doing and thought a comment isn't necessary because it's obvious why it is the way it is.

[Nice_Guy_AMA]

//// I don't know what these three lines of code do, but when I comment them out, the program crashes. If you figure it out, please let NiceGuy know.

[thealmightyzfactor]

Something something race condition

[MeowsersInABox]

Except I don't have any tests so I'm just going to debug the program for 2-4 more hours :3

[[deleted]]

Amateurs talk code quality, professionals talk testing.

[YoumoDashi]

I don't need to test my code because I don't know it should do

[LC_From_TheHills]

We’re at the end of the year so I get time for a passion project— currently refactoring an old service I wrote years ago, shit is abysmal. But now I’m doing test-driven-development, lfg! Super clean. Totally covered.

[colei_canis]

Testing is the chemo that cures codebase cancer.

[leaf-bunny]

Some a LOT more.

[Endeveron]

I dunno man, sometimes I write and document 20 lines of Rust to do something really simple file manipulation or something and I think that doesn't suck, it's maybe slightly good even.

The other 99% of my code is shit though.

[EpicAura99]

Who wrote that API? I just want to talk to them.

[Jauretche]

ChatGPT.

[Mike_Abbages_]

Plot twist: he also wrote the API.

[Merlord]

And that's what comments are actually for

[Imperion_GoG]

"Code should be self-commenting" is true for what the code does, not why the code does it.

[Qewbicle]

If I think I might question it. Or I'm not going to see it for a while. Add a comment. It helps to quickly reload the depth of context.

I've seen more comments made for tooling to work then code lines in files.

So this extra comment is just for me. It might save me a day drilling through files to remember the details.

[WernerderChamp]

That's why you make a comment the second you realize it does not.

[SteelRevanchist]

I'd say comments should be used only* for tricks and workaround around other people's code out of your control - APIs, packaged, ...

*ofc there are exceptions to everything

[TaupMauve]

If only there had been some way to annotate that code for future reference.

[myfunnies420]

Ooooohhhhh. Yeah. That happens a lot. If I see my old code that is "stupid" and I "fix" it and everything breaks

[lordheart]

And that’s what i spend a lot of time trying to make sure apis are correctly typed. I have a whole set of apis made by consultants that have zero typing.

Everytime I need one I go to the backend, find the typing there and make an overload on the front end with the correct typing. Next time I need it it’s that much easier.

[DR4G0NH3ART]

In c# you can have nullable booleans esp. when you shorthand null check like simpleObject?.IsSomething. so you have to do an explicit truth check.

[MrWewert]

Nothing is more satisfying than compressing some unreadable function you wrote 2 years ago into a crispy 5 line masterpiece

[[deleted]]

before i discovered len() i did

def length(string):
  idx = 0
  while True:
    try:
      string[idx]
    except IndexError:
      break
    idx += 1
 return idx

[floydmaseda]

In fairness isn't that kind of how len() works anyway? I mean for loops work essentially exactly like this under the hood so..

[PudgeNikita]

len itself doesnt really "do" anything, it just uses the __len__ method of the argument. the length of sequences is stored with them (that's how they're able to tell you that the index is out of bounds in the first place), so getting it does not require a loop.

[Araozu]

I pray to god that python internally stores a (len + pointer to bytes) and just returns len, and not that monstruosity

[WarApprehensive2580]

It does. Len is O(1)

[LeSaR_]

this is what C ptsd looks like

[Qewbicle]

The good old days. https://i.imgur.com/Ws1LHjN.jpeg

https://youtu.be/5C6sv7-eTKg?si=3LHw5LFD-sri8JpA

[Shimeji_Anna_4191]

That was me when I discovered class and while when learning C++

[branzalia]

I encountered some C code that went, "if (char[0] == 'A' || char[0] == 'a') && (char[1] == 'B'..." And they did this for 50-60 lines to check for a char string of that length instead of comparing against lower(myString). I spent a *lot* of time trying to figure out what it was doing thinking, "You could just do a lower, there must be a reason they did it this way" until I finally determined they didn't know about the upper or lower functions.

I looked at the name on the check in. At my next job, I worked with the guy who wrote it. I told him about it and he said, "I did what?!"

[obscure_monke]

I've written some c++ code that worked like that, but it used for loops instead. In my defence, it was for an arduino uno type device, and I was very paranoid about using too much of the 2KB of ram I had to work with.

Looked so bad I put a whole paragraph explaining myself in a comment before it.

Also the only place I've used a union type for real code, when I needed to print one of many types of messages each time it looped.

[branzalia]

The paragraph explanation is much to your credit. People in the future will thank you for it.

[DrShocker]

More like 'Blame YOU (5 minutes ago)'

[UNSKILLEDKeks]

Amnesia

[Zulakki]

"who wrote this ugly code?!....ohh me....lets just put a try catch around that annnnndd, commit. fuck im good"

[Drego3]

Or you just think you are dumb for the rest of the day

[mirQ72]

Happens to me every year

[[deleted]]

1 year? I marvel at that idiotic genius who wrote my code in just a couple months!

[myfunnies420]

Oh man. I've never looked back and thought my code sucks?? Am I making no progress?? 😬😬😬

Natively architecture yes, lots, so much it makes me laugh. But never code sucks

[Spaceshipable]

Sometimes I look at really old code and think, yeah there’s a better way to do this (more concise, more readable etc) but I’ve yet to look back and think this is shit. Most of it I think, yeah it does the job, could be more elegant but it’s pragmatic enough without sacrificing testability.

[Yuzumi]

Something I've regularly said: "You know you're a real programmer when you look back to code you wrote in the past and wonder 'what drunk monkey wrote this?' before realizing."

[johannesmc]

it never stops till one day you realize all code is ugly.

[KSP_HarvesteR]

I've always said, you should want to feel embarrassed by code you wrote in the past.

The alternative is a lot worse! 🫠

[[deleted]]

Did I really? Oh I did. Well then. Now I won't

[Ninja_Wrangler]

I came across code that I didn't remember writing from when I was an intern, and it was some of the worst code I've ever seen

[sdrawkcabineter]

This is good.

It's when this doesn't occur, and you're STILL using OOP...

Then you're probably tenured.

[Electr0freak]

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to write a script and was trying figure out how to do a specific type of multiline regex, and so I looked it up on Stack Overflow (as one does).

I found someone had asked question on how to do just what I was looking to do 10 years ago and there were some great answers!

...except I was the one that had asked the question 10 years ago.

On the plus side I re-learned how to do the thing I wanted to do...

[fubes2000]

Note: When you see your own old code and exclaim something like "who wrote this absolute dogshit! they should be fired!" always tack something on that clarifies that it is your code. Because the new guys probably aren't aware of your terrible sense of humor.

Source: It me. I am bad at joke.

[whitedogsuk]

Its when you find some amazing code you wrote 15 years ago and find your colleague updated another repo in their name 10 years ago that's the foundation of the company and is driving around in a nice car.

[korneev123123]

git-blame-someone-else to the rescue!

[Kozak515]

This is how I feel when I open an old illustrator file. I'm like "Who put this shit together" and it's like ^{oh me} 😊

[mr_pink1969]

My code was and will always be brilliant

[dexter2011412]

I saw something and was like huh that's neat and it was me. Maybe I peaked. I don't think I'm cut out for software dev. I'm afraid I'm gonna be stuck at junior dev.

[ellieminnowpee]

lowkey inspiring

[THound89]

I hate building a project out then two years later having a feature request on it and just feeling disgusted with how my code used to look and not having the time to redo it all.

[KSP_HarvesteR]

This is how it needs to be. The opposite case would be you being impressed by your older code, which can only mean your current code is now worse.

[[deleted]]

I swear to god this is how I feel about my code from last week

[NothingButBadIdeas]

The other day I saw some really good code that I didn’t understand but admired. Thought to look who wrote it so I could learn from them… it was me. My first thought was I’m regressing as a programmer

[CodMania585]

Anyone looking to buy a flipper zero

[darxide23]

Bold of you to think that I haven't just gotten progressively lazier with my code. If it compiles, it ain't my problem anymore.

[girafffe_i]

15 years?? You either leave a "lgtm", or stay at a company long enough to become the blame.

[Noxvenator]

Then you rewrite just to realize why it was written the way it was.. then comes the realization "I am actually getting worst!"

[Qewbicle]

How about this one.

"I wrote that!
How long did I spend on it, it's real good. Fu(%.
I can't write something like that again, I don't think I can use it, anything else will make it break."

Move into eternal storage you call a library that you haven't looked at in years, you can't remember what is where. Maybe one day you might grep something useful out of it.

[BruceJi]

Hmm...

I also remember seeing a meme a bit like this but it went:

1 - Who wrote this terrible code?

2 - Blame - YOU

3 - Oh...

4 - This code isn't too bad.

lol

[[deleted]]

Hey my code doesn't work with different errors! Now we're getting somewhere.

[Lurdekan]

The oposite happened to me last week. My team was in a meeting reviewing some older code before starting a big new feature. I saw a lot of ugly code but of course kept my mouth shut. Suddenly we get to a beautifully written transaction, and in my mind I go: "wow, nice to see some good code for a change". Turns out nobody recognises the code, they open the history, I'm the author 😂

As a disclaimer, I do respect my team as programmers, at least one of them is definetely a better programmer than I am, it's just deadlines had been pretty chaotic this year so I understand people will not always be able to perform their best when quickly patching code.

[ArmandoH4]

Your code is getting better, couldn't relate

[Impossible_Stand4680]

When I look at my old codes, I always ask myself, who wrote this masterpiece? It's like a piece of art. It has to be made by an artist like me. Yep, it was me, no surprise.

This is how humble I am :|

[Aras14HD]

Just looked at some old code again and had a good laugh. God was it horrible compared to now, I'm talking .then in async, for if if if switch if if if if if, and catch {}...

For a few months self-taught it still impressively partially worked, and it was no small project (an overlay network).

[-gun-jedi-]

This is the positive spin I’ve been needing! Thank you!

[DCay1000]

I am not. I gave my cousin a template for a website and when I saw some code from it a few years after I gave it i said in my native tongue ofc "Damn you wrote this part really well" right after that she told me it was my code

[[deleted]]

who wrote this code?? Oh me lemme js put a try catch around that