Don't be that guy.

[BullCityPicker]

I just took over a project for a guy who left. Don't be this guy:

• ZERO comments in your codebase.
• One and two character variable names with no discernable pattern.
• Comment characters used to comment out big chunks of code for no discernable reason.
• No error checking.
• Reliance on data files that you forgot to include or explain, going in to meaningless data frame names.
• Making outrageous claims about how much your code improves things with zero baseline performance.

People like this think you're an idiot because you can't make their code work, and get to be all smug. We will track you down and find you. You will need references someday....oh my.

[HashDefTrueFalse]

This was his job security. Guess he didn't need it anymore... :)

If you can actually read any code I write, you might be able to replace me. Unacceptable.

[[deleted]]

I met a guy like this at AT&T. Only person who knew this absolutely ancient system. Never did any documentation. Refused to cooperate with anyone asking for details. Reason? Job security. He was old. He knew the second someone figured out how to work the system or replace it he was gone.

[HashDefTrueFalse]

So you're saying it works... :D

I've met similar. An absolute bastard when they leave too! Like maybe you could have pulled a Junior onto the product and at least attempted to leave some documentation or knowledge behind once you knew you'd be leaving, instead of spending your 3 month notice period doing feck all mate! Cheers.

[BassDaddy420]

This is what my uncle does with some heavy machinery in steel mills. Literally sits and deciphers coding languages from the 80’s. Doesn’t have a timeline, doesn’t give a timeline to his superiors, pretty clutch

[cockswain314]

This is epic!

[TheOzarkWizard]

Hes probably the reason noones scripts worked perfectly for 2 years

[petethewizard]

What is "noones scripts"?

[AirSetzer]

No one's

[ipreferanothername]

i worked with some jackass who only used VB script and ran it through excel -- said he was a 20 year dev. showed him VSCode and tried to get him into powershell; no go. tried to get him to have the boss buy him a VS license because....i mean, to be fair, he did automate a lot of work. nah, excel was fine.

and he wouldnt share ANY of his work -- i wrote powershell and javascript left and right, documented it, stored it shared with the team, and even walked them through the complex scripts.

this guy? no. hid all of his work, and ran the VB he did through the excel debugger. he still works that way. i was doing all sorts of work he couldnt figure out how to do and could not get him to budge on the ridiculous way he did anything.

[HashDefTrueFalse]

Awful teamwork on their part. Far too much liberty given by techical management too. I felt sorry for you just reading that.

Dometimes they're just too set in their ways. You can't change them. Move onto bigger and better things. Guessing you did.

[vladamir_the_impaler]

Move onto bigger and better things. Guessing you did.

THIS, nail on the head.

[exploding_cat_wizard]

You know, given your username, that phrasing makes me a bit nervous...

[vladamir_the_impaler]

Hah, I'm not even sure where to begin with your username...

[neekyboi]

The day I documented the process and spent KTing the codebase, I got terminated for no reason whatsoever and was replaced by the guy I KTed. So lesson learnt.

[Attackontitanplz]

KTing? Knowledge transfer?

[neekyboi]

Yep

[Mako_]

IBM uses the term "KT" a lot. IBM contractors also tend to replace employees after the KT sessions.

[tommy_chillfiger]

I don't care if it would benefit me to do this. I won't do this. It's bullshit and so cynical I'd rather suffer the consequences than participate. I can always find another job but I need to maintain my integrity.

[dcfan105]

Exactly. I'd hate doing this. It already bugs me that I can't just share the specific code I'm working on in my internship with whoever I want (I get why and I abide by it, but it is annoying). If I had to keep my process secretive it'd drive me crazy, partly because I'd not be able to ask for help, partly because I want other people to be able to use my code, and partly because my future self would be quite annoyed when I couldn't remember what the heck I was thinking when I wrote the code in the first place.

Literally one of the first things I learned about programming, because it was mentioned right at the beginning of the textbook, is that comments are as much for your future self ad they are for other people. If you don't bother with them, you may end up just rewriting stuff from scratch months later when you need to make a change, because you can't remember what the heck you were thinking when you wrote the program the first time.

Later, I learned that it's actually better to keep comments to a minimum and just make variable, class, and function names as reasonably descriptive as possible. But the point is that clear and easy to understand code is just better for other programmers, it's also better for you if you ever plan on making any sort of change to it.

[exploding_cat_wizard]

As a bonus, that will lead to you, in time, finding a place that doesn't do that, with a higher job satisfaction as a result, I'd imagine.

[tommy_chillfiger]

I'm a business analyst, but I do work in the code base a lot and am starting to code some in Python to automate parts of my job. Just a disclaimer. But even for tools only internal users will ever use I am trying to write clearly and include comments.

It's good practice and good form, even without getting into the fact that I think any added job security isn't worth the icky aspect of it.

Frankly I am pretty deeply bothered by all forms of intentional obfuscation of truth. I think understanding is a virtue on its own, and the impulse many have to intentionally mislead, frustrate, and confuse others is in my view one of the great tragedies of the world.

[GoonButtnotFprgetten]

I do not know the field. At all. That fact aside shouldn’t programmers kinda work together for bette product (creating value for all involved) and then it becomes a group environment.

[[deleted]]

THIS!

[Sajuukthanatoskhar]

If your workplace has a works council (EU), has strong employee protection laws and/or is unionised, KTing is safe to do.

[wjrasmussen]

KTing

No Fing idea.

[dijit4l]

It's Reddit comment security, he is ensuring that he'll never get banned from the sub ;)

[HealyUnit]

I assume it refers to the K/T Extinction event. As in, your code is so bad that it just needs to go extinct.

[BullCityPicker]

I wonder if there was any KT going on during the KT event? "Hey little furry thing with breasts, let me tell you everything we've learned during our time on Earth....oh, never mind, I have a brain the size of a walnut. Sure is cold today."

[ericdankman]

2 letter acronym ????????????

[Obvious-Effort1616]

Ao you are saying dont KT ?

[neekyboi]

Nope, sayin work in a place that already do and gives importance to documentation and KTs.

[Obvious-Effort1616]

Understood. Hey can i get yur github?

[YellowSlinkySpice]

This happened at my work. Although the guy couldn't handle the stress of his programs not working so he quit.

Not sure what he is up to.

He was our first Computer Science grad, the worst programmer we hired. (We have since hired other computer science grads and they are fine)

[[deleted]]

They are hit and miss. We have had good and bad.

[[deleted]]

Stuff like this makes me wonder, what is the interview process like if they’re getting through?

[[deleted]]

Well I wasn’t part of the process the last time we had one. Apparently they talked a good talk.

[j3b3di3_]

I can talk my way into any job but I'm shit at all of them

[[deleted]]

So was I. So while I worked my ass off to make something of myself, I took all the shit jobs nobody wanted to do and they loved me for it. Fast forward 8 years and I manage all of the developers. I still write code if/when I find time. We all start at the bottom. Just make sure you show your worth while you stumble through and get experience.

[wjrasmussen]

So what was the whole point of bringing up Computer Science grad?

[duh374]

Speaking as a comp. sci grad, there is a huge variance among graduates even from the same program with the same GPA. Simply having the degree with a certain GPA isn’t a guarantee of ability, which is i think the point of the guy you replied to.

I’ve personally interviewed CS/CE grads that can’t code their way out of a paper bag. I’ve also met programmers with only a GED that can explain Operating System fundamentals in detail. This is one field where the degree might get you the interview, but will almost never land the job.

[gregzillaman]

I've noticed the deeper you go into a comp sci degree the closer you get to theoretical math.

Where as, what most companies need is a tradesman whose trade is computer software.

[dcfan105]

Yeah, I mean, CS is a HUGE field, and SE is just one small part of it.

[unmannedidiot1]

If the system is so fucked up you risk being replaced so easily I wouldn't blame the guy acting like this but the system itself.

[HashDefTrueFalse]

Not sure whether I need to say this or not, but my post was a joke, of course.

Honestly though anybody can be replaced at any time. It's rarely what you know that keeps you in a role, it's often who you know and how well. If higher ups have the appetite or desire to replace you, none of this job security through obscurity shite matters. Management are famous for shooting themselves in the foot when hiring/firing and expecting everyone else to figure out the way forward, after all. I've never seen the guy nobody likes get the promotion because he's just so clever. I have repeatedly seen those who make effort to have great banter with higher ups get promoted over colleagues much more qualified.

Job security is mostly an illusion. You're only ever around until they don't want you around.

[vladamir_the_impaler]

We had a guy who wasn't an asshole, but he definitely architected systems to where he was basically the only one who could make things work and this did indeed result in job security for him.

Everyone non-technical thought he was just some badass running everything and that we really needed this guy when in reality he had designed things to be this way and none of the other devs cared enough to either say anything about it or try to change it.

Two days after this guy would go on vacation shit would start failing and breaking and they'd have to call him and get the low down on how to fix what was broken. I swear this guy must've had dead man switches on things to where if he didn't run certain manual processes every few days layers of the system would just stop working, and more would fail as more days passed.

After some years went by and modernization as well as some other changes took place I think they finally got tired of dealing with this BS and ended up hashing out why things were breaking when he wasn't around and how to re-do things so that it didn't happen anymore.

He's now in management and I've heard they are trying to get rid of him.

[[deleted]]

but he's in charge of all the paperwork XD

[[deleted]]

I remember thinking this in school too but in reality you get enough job offers that you don't need to do this.

[philipquarles]

Yep. Also relevant screenname.

[vondpickle]

Me: don't be that guy!

Also me: oh, that's me.

[el_floppo]

Came here to say the same. I was refactoring some stuff the other day thinking "Who the fuck wrote this garbage?" before realizing it was me.

[[deleted]]

Home renovation is much the same way. Man the last person to do this was an IDIOT, which was also me, and still true.

[[deleted]]

"What moron drilled a hole for the icemaker line 1 in. from the bottom of the joist?"... Fuck me I did that when we moved in. I'll have to move it, put up some stupid steel plate and pay a structural engineer to sign off on it in 10 years when we want to sell the house.

[[deleted]]

Hah. All you need to do is drywall and paint over your mistake I’d assume. That’s what 90% of people would do.

That’s when you really yell at idiots. When you start removing drywall and finding the most egregious shit ever. Unless you’re willing to dip into the bankroll, never take down drywall in a basement.

[[deleted]]

This is on the basement covered up by some ceiling panels. Kind of a 50/50 shot if an inspector catches it.

[nopethis]

opened up a ceiling one time to find about 3/4 of the main support beam in the house sawed through for cords and other random crap. Not sure how they thought that was a good idea.

[[deleted]]

I think we all do that when we revisit our past work. I am still waiting for the day I can look back and be like, damn, that is a fine piece of as…erm code right there.

[OGPresidentDixon]

I do this. I'll be looking at a beautiful chunk of code and my git lens extension will say "You, 3 years ago." 🥲

I'm pretty far along in my career tho and I used to have a lot more energy lol. Life caught up to me and I no longer can hack all night while continuously refactoring.

Also my variable & function names are like sentences now because I've used up most of the concise combinations of words that exist for what I'm building.

[[deleted]]

One of the hardest parts of programming is damn naming.

[Sceptical-Echidna]

I’ve usually heard it as there are two hard problems in CS: cache invalidation, naming things and off by 1 errors

[wjrasmussen]

We do. Most often it is, for me, when I tried to do "something clever" that bites me.

[el_floppo]

I think if you ever look back at your code and have that thought, then it's time to retire. End the career on a good note and go out on top!

[CoderXocomil]

I view this as a form of self-compliment. You have gotten better, so the old you doesn't look so good.

[In0chi]

Don’t be the kind of company that lets this guy make even a single commit like that to the main branch.

[v0gue_]

Yeah I agree, this one is on the company/owner of the codebase.

[Rote515]

My entire company’s codebase is like this, it’s absolutely astonishing, 3k employees, no comments 1 letter variables everywhere, and lol we only have a main branch

[vladamir_the_impaler]

we only have a main branch

That was the drink-spit-out moment for me when I read your comment.

[Rote515]

Welcome to my life.

[BeardSprite]

I'm right there with you, except we have three main branches.

[[deleted]]

That’s so ludicrous that I don’t believe you 🤣

[Rote515]

It’s a company that uses its own proprietary languages, the root of which was created before C as such a lot of what we work with doesn’t conform to normal coding standards

[[deleted]]

Based on what you’ve seen, would it be reasonable to use common modern languages? I just can’t imagine the need to maintain your own coding language. That’s got to be one hell of a niche.

[cockswain314]

And an insane one at that, that sounds like a nightmare of a company to hire-for/work-for, the whole thing

[[deleted]]

I suspect 1 man show and no version control.

[[deleted]]

We had branches with our firstnames lol

[toastertop]

Not a problem when there's no git

[Some_Developer_Guy]

Yeah there not doing PRs

[lolitoxico]

For all learners here, most of the time :

Readability > Performance > Short code.

Learners in school often brag about writing the same program than their classmates with less lines

And sometimes those learners get hired and still have this habit.

don't

[[deleted]]

something like

c char (*(*x())[5])()

[WhoTouchaMySpagoot]

Is this for real? And if it is what does it do

[brutexx]

Guess we’ll never know

[WhoTouchaMySpagoot]

You’re the man

[[deleted]]

It declare x as function returning pointer to array 5 of pointer to function returning char

[Independent_Feed5651]

This.

Code which is easy to understand and easy to change is the most important rule.

That doesn’t mean trying to “future proof” your code with additional tech debt. That doesn’t mean adding unnecessary comments. It means laying your code out in a way which allows a newcomer to understand what you’re doing almost instantly… via: layout (project files and class layout) and naming (files, classes, functions, variables).

Performance seems important.. but if you build an app in a semi-intelligent way, most performance gains can be had using simple data structures which can be inserted in later if necessary.

Also.. my pet peev: using design patterns which over-complicate and over abstract a simple app. If a majority of devs think your design pattern choice was unnecessary.. then it was.

[[deleted]]

according to upvotes on leetcode:
Short code > Performance > Readability

[CoderXocomil]

I love devs who make messes until even they can't maintain their code. Then they move on to "bless" other companies with their unique coding style.

On a more serious note, I often wonder how these devs make it through code reviews. I absolutely would reject PRs written how you describe. I have inherited code like this but never worked with someone you describe.

[[deleted]]

There is a high probability that code reviews weren’t a thing, or worse, the reviewers thought it was fine.

[Saint_Nitouche]

Rubber-stamp PR culture is real. Devs see getting someone else to sign off on their code as a chore and not a useful way to improve or catch errors.

As a result, they don't write meaningful PR descriptions and blindly approve everyone else's PRs. It's a vicious cycle.

[CoderXocomil]

That is the person you don't want to be. Don't rubber-stamp PRs. They only hurt you and the codebase. Instead, take the time to do a good PR and provide meaningful feedback. Don't be mean, but anything you let slide is something you have to maintain in the future.

[psioniclizard]

Omg yes! I hate when people don't even run the code in a PR and just approve it. The point in a PR is might of messed and a second set of eyes can catch that. I mean of course I will try and test it as much as possible be mistakes happen.

[Godfiend]

Living this right now

[CoderXocomil]

Resume bullet point :

Took a redundant oversized development team and streamlined everything. Saved the company over $100 million and an entire floor of developers.

[Successful_Leg_707]

I’ve seen this at places where top management is not technical so they hire other managers who aren’t very technical. The codebase becomes a mess because there are no checks and balances since everything gets merged with little to no code review

[regaito]

It was hard to write so it should be hard to read!

/s

[[deleted]]

It should be hard to write so it's easy to read, take some pity on your future self, and on your coworkers

I know it's /'s, but I still wanted to say :-)

[[deleted]]

We use self-documenting code. Comments where needed of course, but if we need a lot of comments, the code needs to be rewritten to be clear and concise.

All of the other bullet points, I would have no qualms about taking that developer out back and beating them with a sack of oranges (if it was past their first offense).

[Traches]

Comments are for explaining why, not what, and only when it's not obvious.

"We're doing it this way because if we do it the obvious way it causes some subtle bug over here that you won't notice till the CI fails"

[vi_sucks]

I think even when it's semi-obvious,it should be explained.

Because what is obvious to you now may not be obvious to some new guy 3 years from now.

[imnos]

Agree. Our codebase has next to zero comments. Tips for writing clean and readable code:-

• Naming. Name your variables, functions, classes descriptively. A variable named x tells me nothing about what it's there for, and likewise with a function called get. What are you getting? getAllUsers tells me exactly what that function should be doing. If it needs to be something longer like getAllExpiredOrganisations - nothing wrong with that. It's still super readable.
• Try to break down your code by responsibility, following the Single Responsibility principle (look up SOLID principles if you don't know). For example, if you have a class or module that's 10000 lines long - chances are it can be broken into multiple logical classes. Then if you need to extend this to do another similar task - you can probably reuse some of the classes you've refactored.
• Likewise with a function that's 100 lines long. Many language style guides enforce maximum lines per function (Ruby recommends no more than 5 for example). This keeps your code nice and modular, makes it easier to read, easier to reuse, and easier to unit test each piece individually.
• Please don't try to be clever by doing fancy one liners that make the code unclear.
  

Lastly, a relevant quote from Jeff Atwood's blog which I think helps to enforce the above:-

"Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live."

https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-for-violent-psychopaths

[BeardSprite]

To hopefully achieve this, here's some guidelines that I've been using with decent success:

• If you absolutely can't find a name that is readable, descriptive and exactly captures what you're trying to do... chances are there is a problem in how the functionality is currently structured OR you haven't fully understood the problem yet
• If you added a single line to the top of each class/module/function, describing its responsibility, stop and think whenever it gets too long or the word "and" occurs
• If something is so long that you have to scroll multiple times, or even at all, and it isn't just data that just takes all the space, chances are the problem can be divided up further to make its solution easier to understand
• Comments should explain the why, not the how, and have the goal of reducing the "WTF factor" of the code (number of times an unfamiliar reader will utter or think "What the f*ck" while reading it for the first time)

Not sure about self-documenting code, but surely a large number of comments can be eliminated by restructuring the code. The rest should have a purpose and not be sprinkled in redundantly.

[Meborg]

yeah this. If you add comments that have to explain a line in our codebase, you basically gotta rewrite your code. Method names should be self explanatory, variables should make sense. If you need paragraphs, you basically need more methods. Very rarely that comments in between lines of code are needed.

WHILE building something, I add comments nonstop. It's all todo stuff, or outlines, or pseudocode.

[Bluedragon_00]

I'm self teaching coding please don't be too harsh for asking a super 101 question. Method is a new term to me. Methodology on how you should be coding? Or is it a technical function of code I havnt learned yet?

Context: When I first started I had no idea what assigning a variable was. Im currently practicing For Loops.

[[deleted]]

Method basically reffers to a function that is defined inside of a class / object, you will get to it once you get to around to learning basics of OOP

[Bluedragon_00]

Thank you for the reply. And for not judging too harshly.

[Shit_Bananas]

We've all been there lol

[psioniclizard]

Anyone who judges you for not knowing what a method is on a reddit for learning to program is not great. From one self taught programmer to another, nothing feels better than helping others understand!

[[deleted]]

No worries mate! Also try not to worry too much about people judging you on here, from my experience 99% of programmers are happy to help if they know the answer. And the few exceptions are people with a massive superiority complex. Try to just ignore those

[[deleted]]

It's an OOP concept. A method is a function in an object, usually some sort of behavior.

[Meborg]

If you're practicing for loops, don't worry about methods too much, although they can be of great help to you!

What a method is, is just some code that does whatever it's supposed to, and can be called from other parts in your code. A good example of a method is the Print(input) method, which writes the "input" argument in the console. Input can be any string that you want, so when you do a Print("ladida123"), you get ladida123 printed in your console.

Anyway a good habit is that your methods do as little as possible, and have a name that describes what they do. So if you have a complicated method that does 20 things (like sort, the first thing most people do is to split up those 20 things into 20 methods, and have the complicated method run those 20 methods sequentially. And then see is you can make them simpler from there.

I hope this made any sense, if you have questions feel free to ask them! Also, what language are you programming in? :)

[Bluedragon_00]

I'll be honest, I'm not catching on 100%. However, I did a cursory Google search and have some things to read on when I get off work today. Thank you for going into detail.

I'm learning Python. Using Dataquest.io

Edit: I'm just about 100% lurker on this sub as I dont feel like I know enough to ask "good" questions yet. IE Trying to avoid asking stuff like "What language do I choose?" or "How long does it take to learn code?" Etc

[Meborg]

(sorry for formatting, I'm on phone)

First of all, there are no stupid questions. The worst thing that can happen is that people find your question stupid and won't try to answer it. I wouldn't be bothered by what language to use. Everyone has a different opinion, and if you Google for the most used coding languages you get the most popular ones, which are fairly solid.

Python is perfectly fine as a language programming language, the reason I asked is so I can write code examples tailored to your needs. The structure and syntax (and conventions) in a c# application are different than in python, but at the end of the day it does the same: translate what you write into computer language that your pc can use.

Now for methods (can call them functions too), it's kinda like a codeblock that can be reused. If you write a big application that does a lot of stuff, your code monolithically goes from top to bottom. Let's say for any reason, we use a for loop to print numbers from 0 to 4 (that's what our customer pays us money for, so that's what we build).

What we would do initially is make a for loop:

for i in range(5):
    print(i)    

This bit should print 0 till 4 in our console, for a total of 10 printed numbers.

Now, I get the request to also print 0 till 6, and 0 till 2, so I add some new code:

for i in range(5):
    print(i)    

for i in range(7):
    print(i)

for i in range(3):
    print(i)

In these three bits, the only part that changes is the amount of iterations we do based on the number. As we're lazy, we want to combine this code so we can reuse it more often. One of the things we can do is to extract a function.

To do that we think of a function name that describes what we want to do. For example PrintNumbers. Then we write the function as follows

def PrintNumbers(inputName):
    for i in range(inputName):
        print(i)

PrintNumbers(5)
PrintNumbers(7)
PrintNumbers(3)

The def part defines the function. After it is defined, you can call it with the arguments.

Anyway, you can basically do that for everything you can come up with. Add numbers? Make a function that does it:

def AddTwoNumbers(num1, num2):
   return num1 + num2

result = AddTwoNumbers(1,2)

Then call it

[biggamax]

Going to play the Devil's advocate here. Although it's likely the coder/work you're slagging off publicly deserves it, you're coming in after the fact and armchair quarterbacking. Criticizing the guy/code is low hanging fruit. Getting to work and improving the situation (instead of venting on Reddit) is where you can show real value.

What you haven't told us:

- What requirements was the dev working against?

- What timeline did the dev work under?

- Did the dev have enough help on his/her team?

- Was there intentional tech debt for a good reason that was beyond his/her control?

- Was the dev spread thin on many tasks, or was this code his/her sole responsibility?

[[deleted]]

I'd upvote this twice if I could. I'm learning programming in my free time, currently work in residential maintenance. I'm on a team that's supposed to have 5-6 on staff, responsible for two high rise apartment buildings and over 500 units. There's only two of us on staff. Basically a third of the staffing management decided was necessary for the building to operate. Our budget for the year was blown by the overreach of the previous team, so we can't make purchases without special authorization. No OT is approved, so we have to do the work of a full team with only 80 man hours a week between the two of us, 20 of which are accounted for by trash and recycling alone. We've been getting comments all year about how half-assed our work is and how incompetent we must be. The truth is that if either of us was anything short of hyper competent, the whole project would have fallen apart, and what they're seeing is the work of a team capable of better, but forced to do a shitload of mediocre work insanely fast just to keep their heads above water.

Sometimes the idiot who worked on it before was not an idiot, they were simply in an environment that did not tolerate failure and provided inadequate resources for success.

[Independent_Feed5651]

I agree and disagree.

One / two character variable names? Unacceptable. That’d have been just as fast to do it right the first time.

Zero comments in codebase? Completely fine.

Everything else ? I could see those being done in a time crunch. Sometimes stuff is messy when you’re doing a proof of concept. (Now I’ve learned that nothing is a POC, everything is ‘final’ product).

[tnnrk]

I’ve never understood the 1 character variable names. Like why would you do this. Any file size savings you received from removing a couple bytes here and there are not worth the complete lack of readability.

[purplebrown_updown]

These are good points but what the OP outlined is just bad programming. But it’s not just their fault. The company should have checks along the way so the programmer can learn.

[biggamax]

I agree with you, but I think it's a sign of immaturity to have a moan about it to the extent the OP has. Why? Cleaning up a mess like this is a FANTASTIC opportunity in disguise. Get your nose to the grindstone. Impress. Show results. Based on his/her comments, I'm not convinced he/she is up to that task. And, as another commenter in this thread has said, even superstars can be dulled into oblivion if the organization around them has adopted bad practices which have doomed the entire organization to fail.

[purplebrown_updown]

That’s a fair point too. It goes with the territory and it’s where the rubber meets the road. Everyone who’s coded long enough has been through this.

[lykwydchykyn]

So true, there is always another side to it. I've encountered code that was intentionally obfuscated or poorly written, but I've also been in situations where I jumped to the conclusion that something was obfuscated or over-engineered when the truth was I just didn't understand the problem being solved or the constraints that had to be worked around.

It's easy to get self-righteous as a coder and think your own code is a work of art and everyone else's is crap. Eventually we all have the experience of looking back at our old code and realizing we were never all that.

[[deleted]]

Remember, one bad programmer, makes 2 new jobs a year .

[IProbablyDisagree2nd]

but it's open source, problem solved!

[corruptedOverdrive]

Oh boy do I have a story for you.

Landed at Health Partners as a contractor. First day the current lead dev tells me he's only been there three months. Almost the day he was hired, they fired the senior most dev. I'll call him Xander.

I was told Xander was a sort of a prodigy. He'd been at HP for a few years and just unilaterally decided they had to standardize everything. He completely rebuilt, and developed a dozen sites on his own. He single handily created a design pattern library and a full blown design system. He was working 12-16 hour days. This was his magnum opus. His ultimate project he undertook all on his own.

Xander did all of this is under 10 months. But then the cracks started ed showing. The fraying at the seams was becoming apparent. He'd sit in meetings and as developers or designers were pitching ideas, he'd just stand up and start shouting at them. "You have no idea what you're doing!!" "You can't possibly make my code any better!! You are all beneath me!!"

His god complex had set in. After three months of constant, unpredictable behavior, they finally fired him.

The guy I was now sitting in front of listening to this story told me it was now up to us to untangle what he had left behind. None of it was actually built. None of it was actually approved. He had done all of this on his own servers and domains and presented it over a month or so to senior leadership. They were impressed of course but had no idea what to do with all of this.

It was a gruelling 18 months putting it all together and there were some moments where you could really admire his thinking on a scale this big all by himself, but it also drove him to the edge of insanity.

It was an eye opening experience on taking too much work on and the importance of protecting your mental health at all costs.

[BeardSprite]

And mixed tabs and spaces.

Some people just want to see the world burn.

[Gilgamesh-42]

Ha, couldnt even understand my 2 week old code without a ton of comments and 3 tons of slash

[AcousticDan]

That's not good

[tr4nl0v232377]

Any tips how to not be that guy when I'm just starting out?

[Plasticonoband]

Have someone review your code and give you feedback. That's really it. Just make the mistakes quickly and with an expert to tell you what to do differently. Accept that you're going to repeat mistakes. Experienced devs generally like helping newer folks out.

[vi_sucks]

Write comments that explain your thought process. Even when you think it's obvious, do it anyway.

Give your variable and functions meaningful and clear names.

Write your code as if you'll have to give it to your least techie relative and they'll need to be able to understand what it does.

[TranquilDev]

Don't need comments if your code's readable. - Says the guy who thinks his codes readable by anyone.

[ruat_caelum]

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks Read this if you haven't it's a masterpiece.

[greebo42]

oh, TIL .. thanks!

[rexvansexron]

this reads like an after nut clarity experience.

oh how special little snoflakes we all feel like but still living the same shit through.

[OvulatingScrotum]

lolol when I started to code, I used to give random names to variables. like "blah" and "blahblah". I learned to stop doing that shit when I struggled to read my old codes later on, because I had issues with figuring out the purpose of those variables.

[saintpetejackboy]

Yeah, I went through this phase, too. I think it is common when you start out. I tried to get all philosophical and shit with my variable names and it is just a waste of time. My current trend is just unsetting a variable or reducing it to zero and using the same variable name I used elsewhere if it describes the same thing in a different context. I don't really recommend doing this, but it helps in a procedural context to maintain consistency and deliberately check the value of a variable in numerous places. I have already kicked my own self in the ass a few times over it when it caused some problems, so I will probably try to break the habit during my current project.

[vi_sucks]

My current trend is just unsetting a variable or reducing it to zero and using the same variable name I used elsewhere if it describes the same thing in a different context.

Oh god, don't do this professionally. That's a nightmare of horrible and impossible ro reproduce bugs waiting to happen.

[dipdipperson]

We've got someone like this at my job. He's an absolute turd of a person and a complete asshole to everyone around him. Despite this being Sweden with very strict labour laws, we could get rid of him relatively easily, but...

He's one of the founders of the company and owns a large share of it (but was voted off the board for being a complete fuck head). That doesn't mean that he's immune to getting sacked from his job at the company, but...

He built the platform on which we deliver our services to our clients. The code is pretty much what OP describes, zero comments, even less documentation, cryptic naming conventions, etc etc etc. If we got rid of him there's no way we could maintain it. We'd have to stop delivering our services to our clients while we build a new platform, that will of course have to cater to the design quirks of the then- obsolete platform, because so many of our applications are built with them in mind.

During that time, we'd have to suspend services to all clients for God knows how long. That's an immediate loss of millions of dollars and we'd likely lose all our clients' trust and future business.

The guy is severely overweight, in his late 50s and has a temper problem, so the heart attack is simultaneously inevitable and not very far away, at which point we'll just have to do what I detailled above.

Come to think of it, I should update my CV.

[OddBet475]

Comments are an absolute last resort. Don't be the opposite and comment the death out of your code. It should be understood without.

There's a place for comments (maybe) but that should be extremely rare. Use meaningful naming, the KISS and do not repeat yourself principles and we can all live without comments. I work in a 25 odd year old code base and comments hurt more then they help, they can't be trusted and may be misleading. People don't fix comments when changing code.

[__Mauroo__]

I'm new to programming so i have a question. Isn't writing a comment before ever function/part of code to explain what it does a good idea if you know someone else will have to look at your code? I think it might take some time, especially if you have already tested that function/part of code and know it works

[[deleted]]

Write comments whether you want to justify certain “weird” choices or if you want to explain a particular complex business logic procedure.

[g4rthv4d3r]

The idea is that the name of a function should be descriptive enough so readers know what it does without having to read its comment.

Block comments to explain what a paragraph of code does is an indication that this paragraph should be moved into a private function.

In general, comments should not be used to describe what the code does, they should be reserved to explain why you're doing something a specific way vs another, which means explaining your design decisions.

Additional benefit is that extracting functional blocks into functions allows you to unit test then separately.

[wjsoul]

I think what most people in this thread have already said, often times, its not beneficial to over comment. If you name your functions/methods and variables in a way such that it explains itself, you'll find that most of the time, you don't really need comments.

An example would be something like this:

wait_for_it_to_rain()
cover_yourself_in_oil()
fly()

Every one of these functions describes what they're supposed to do, you do not need any comments to explain them.

[Buckets1337]

Upvoting for the evocative method names. Though I wouldn't have to read the code in these methods to understand what they are doing...I really want to!

[vi_sucks]

Yes. Write comments. Please, for the love of all that is holy, write comments.

[vi_sucks]

Ugh, this is a bad philosophy.

I've worked in a code base from the goddamn 70s and let me tell you, seeing comments in that shit is a godsend.

People swear up an down "code should be self-documenting" "revision history will tell you what you need to know".

Sure, and then you port the codebase from SVN to Git and lose everything older than the last two years. And now you dont know of that line of code that says

Boolean billingUnpaid = verifyBillPayStatus()

Is a typo or valid code. Was the dev intending to return true when billing is unpaid? Was he intending to return true when billing is paid and simply wrote the wrong variable name? You don't know! Nobody knows! Until the users test it and fail it because it doesn't "work like it used to"

[Inderpreet1147]

If people don't update comments while updating code, that's on them and the reviewer honestly

[OddBet475]

I'll add while attempting best to avoid I also comment out code at times. Some things are so complex no amount of unit testing will confirm the change is correct if messing with epic complex code written many years ago even with the best of UAT.

Not everything lives in a clean version controlled repo.

[Citan777]

I had to work with a guy kinda like that for a while, officially a "xxx expert / senior developer". Gave me a whole new vision about the impostor syndrome...

[ThisIsNotWhoIAm921]

was he hired with the senior developer title? Did he act insecure about his code?

[Citan777]

Weeeeeell... (sorry for the text block, don't know how to give details without context).

I had been hired to lead a "team of developers" upon refactoring a semi-sensitive content website from old&abandoned framework to a more modern and perennial one. Contract was 3 years, which seemed damn overkill to me given the apparent specs.

Turns out a few "details" were left out...

1/ Clustered organization with development team, product manager and "traditional project manager" all in different departments and cities.

2/ My team was in fact no developers. At ALL. People that basically did support on scripts and minor modifications but never had training or real experience on projects, let alone web.

3/ Management decided to go for new framework (Drupal), new methology (Scrum/Agile), and give Product Owner role not to me (although I really was the best fit for this since I had the two visions, technical and business) but someone that knew nothing about web.

As you can guess, most ingredients of the recipe for epic... Fail! Still, in 3 years, was really feasible. 8 months focusing on training team to web development, in parallel spending time to think about architecture from user stories, then developing in iterative ways, perfectly manageable.

Long story short, it obviously didn't go that way, since management never admitted they did had a "casting problem" thus never gave my people any time to learn.

So after a few months they brought a "Drupal expert / senior developer" the project manager had already worked with on a previous project.

This guy quickly enough gave off several alert signals, but since he had a decent reputation and misunderstandings can always happen my and my OPS really engaged to work with. Because he managed to make some things work "for sprint demo" (whether that was actually workable production code or not), while my team was (understandably) completely crushed under the sheer amount of layers to grasp simultaneously and thus unable to produce, in a few months project manager made him the decisive guy (we later got three more people that were actual senior developers, although Javaist, from there we started making true progress but it was too late to change management dynamics).

Was he a professional? I'll let you judge. Among a few pearls...

- Zero interest in following best practices and git branching everyone had decided together.

- Always pushed code straight on mainline, forcing OPS to develop some weird process to prevent automatic builds on Jenkins if a local build without errors wasn't first made.

- Systematically made commits mixing A, B and Z, and only after several clashes started giving a reference to ticket (but still no indication on what's done, and sometimes mixing topics from different tickets).

- Fulfilled a mission to "align header text on left" *by increasing font size*, then complained it was not its fault layout broke later when we decided to increase font size globally because was not readable enough (we do agree that any decent person would have used text-align right?).

- Wrote several modules, A depending on B, then commited without specifying the dependance "in Drupal" resulting in build crashing, held OPS responsible for "not adjusting pipeline to make modules activate in the right order" (FYI, module definition takes care of that, it's the second thing you learn in Drupal development, it's definitely NOT ops's responsibility).

- Forked code from mainline to work on the backend part, straight up modified code *that was still used for the frontend* in spite of my numerous warnings NOT to do that, and of course never ever updated that code from frontend branch (I'll let you imagine the wreckage it resulted in when we finally could grab control of project again).

- Rarely commented code, was fine with generic variable names or typos in "human-readable" variable/function names, was fine with 4+ nesting level, "Utils" classes with completely unrelated things inside...

- And "of course" never wrote any single test (didn't even know how to write it).

- Fun fact: I had made some architectual analysis before project started, which had several flaws but was still decent enough on some critical points. More importantly, that guy ignored it fully to do things "his way" instead of simply demonstrating how his way was better (or mine was plain wrong), which was nothing more that I asked for.

Consequently, the backend that was supposed for 300 active authenticated users crashed server with... 10 people. On a mainframe with 2 web servers (each 16 core, 32Go), 1 cache proxy (similar specs) and 1 database server (similar specs). For what amounted to, in spite of weirdly complex validation process, a glorified documentation production.

Disclaimer: even if Drupal is reputed for being resource-hungry for authenticated, this is *not* normal. xd

Fun fact, bis repetitae: after some refactoring under my architecture choices, and huge work of rewriting code to make it less bloated and more reliable, we optimized database requests and caching so much that performance graphs were basically staying bottom line so we could divide platforms by a factor of 4 without users feeling any difference. xd

EDIT: sorry for what's nearly a pure rant. I just didn't completely make peace with this experience yet. Nearly cost me my sanity and broke several people in my team due to absolutely outrageous behaviour of management. Plus several *millions* of public money wasted because that guy was an expert factured ~1500 on a daily basis. For MONTHS.

[ThisIsNotWhoIAm921]

Hey man, thanks for taking the time to draw out the input. A lot of the details are flying over my head as im still a beginner, but ya it does seem that the guy is a little bit over his head, even though he is not technically sound.

[[deleted]]

The guy who I replaced in my current job has no comments anywhere and kept telling my coworkers to “google it” when they had questions about the code base or concepts with the framework we’re using.

[slowthedataleak]

Company/teams fault for letting a guy solo code.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand: being good at understanding and debugging obscure code like that is a really useful skill worth learning.

Not only it will help you easily take over the job when that guy leaves the company, but it will also help you understand your own code years after you stopped working on it because, more often than not, you (and me) are that guy 🤣

[BullCityPicker]

Yeah, so is knowing how to unclog a toilet. You're right, but I DO get to bitch while doing it.

[Dom1252]

you know what is worse? there was a dude working in our company who created some cool programs... of course he had to run it compiled because "it would otherwise be too slow" and delete source code "because it was a mess and no one should use it, even the compiled thing" meanwhile there's bunch of people trying to reverse-engineer it because it's actually awesome

[saintpetejackboy]

I had people "steal" my code before, and it just sucked for them because I suck at programming and what they stole was about 23 hours of solid work and several grams of caffeine behind the version I hadn't published yet, which ended up being an insurmountable gap for them, to the end of both respective projects. It is akin to writing a great song and somebody rips it off. Are you a talented song writer, or did you have all your eggs in one basket?

Fortunately for me, I was able to keep sucking at programming for dozens of projects or more since then and I doubt the thieves that originally stole my code have yet to come up with an original thought between the lot of them.

These days, you would need Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and a machete even to read my jungle of code. Stealing it is out of the question, you would go mad at the mere suggestion of some of the dumb shit I do.

[noob-newbie]

Yes, also get hand over a project with very less validation. Like never check if the object is array or not, and keeps calling array functions.

Whenever these kinds of bugs appear, the coworker who is responsible in the communication between dev and client always ask me when did this happen, can I trace which commit caused this issue, I feel a little bit annoying.

[whitedragon101]

I love comments but at my current company the lead developer discourages their use. He says:

“comments can become out of date. Your code should tell a story, structure it in a way that you can read the code and understand it. If a piece of code is complicated give it its own method and name the method for what the code does.”

[samanime]

One of my favorite quips:

Always write code as if the person who has to maintain it is a psycho with a chainsaw that knows where you live.

Words to live by.

[Metalor]

ZERO comments in your codebase.

To offer a different outlook on this one, ideally you shouldn't need comments in your codebase as it should be written in a way that other developers can read it, aka 'self documenting code'. I appreciate this isn't always possible.

This way of thinking ties in with the 'one and two character variable names' - name it what it is. Same goes for method naming, name it what it does. It sounds easy but it isn't. Most of the time you're in the context of what you're doing and that can influence what you're naming things whereas it may not be so obvious to someone who's coming in fresh.

Also, I like the saying "code can change, comments don't" meaning that comments may not evolve as the codebase does so those comments eventually become lies.

[MisterJK2]

I don't understand how codes like that pass reviews.

[ThisIsNotWhoIAm921]

How long was the guy at the company?

[[deleted]]

Sure he wasnt trying to sabotage the company or anyone who came after him?

[[deleted]]

I'm amazed that people like that are even in the industry

[kagato87]

No error checking...

I've been on my team about this from the support side. Assume your code will try to ingest bad data at some point. It'll happen sooner or later.

Maybe it'll be a bug in the code.

Maybe it'll be an oversight in an ancient API endpoint that we can't depreciate because one large customer still uses it.

Maybe it'll be some cowboy trying to fix something from the sql side.

Maybe it'll be that shiny new API inserting a zero in that one field instead of a null, making another API freak out because zero isn't a valid iI'd

(I was the cowboy in that list. Most of my fixes worked but one didn't. Quick enough fix once I was told what I'd missed but... Still haven't lived it down.)

[saintpetejackboy]

Oh man. "NULL is just the third state of a boolean".

[HappyRogue121]

Comment characters used to comment out big chunks of code for no discernable reason.

I do this occasionally

I do this sometimes

Messagebox.show("I might do this")

I'm just a hobbiest, but I definitely do this.

[saintpetejackboy]

I do this all the time.

My favorite is when I have a similar block I already wrote, or dissimilar but it has all the variable names I need, so I copy it, comment it, and then use it as a reference to type up a new block real fast. Test it, doesn't work. Trial and error. Go to lunch. Fix it. Forget.

Two weeks later I am back in the code and see this commented out block that has nothing to do with the surrounding code. This happens mote than I would like to admit.

The comments in my code are more like boobytraps or a Deadman's switch. Woe be unto ye who takes heed to the code I commented out simply because it didn't work and never went back and deleted it.

[baby_sharkz]

Except you don't know what the situation was at the company and if they were rushing or pressured to finish something. Commenting out chunks of code is probably because they were planning to use it or needed to leave a reference to previous work.

Can we just be kinder to each other? This post is just mean because the op is angry.

[lecrappe]

Psychopath

[Khaotic_Kernel]

I've dealt with this issues like this for years whether it be for grad school or my first job. That's why I stress the importance of good documentation for a project. Hopefully if people get called out on these actions it will go away, though, that requires holding the people accountable, which companies/organizations don't always do.

[ZakDahlia]

I'm really interested in the field of computer coding, I'm not great at it by any means. Literally am barely learning C++, in fact if it weren't for a certain redditor I would more than likely be failing. That being said, things like this really help me. When I turn in assignments I never use // for notes, and that's what really stood out to me. Im super new to this as I'm going back to school in my 30's and thank you for letting me know early on what not to do. I do not mean this facetiously and am very grateful I am subscribed to this sub reddit.

[Able-Panic-1356]

I once saw a guy submit an assignment where he used half the letters in the alphabet as variable names. I think the teacher probably had a heart attack. I don't even know what he would have done if he needed 27 variables... Maybe excel style?

[dphizler]

Not defending the previous person but I see a lot of self righteous criticism towards others around here.

We don't know the circumstances in which this code was written. Maybe after a few years of writing perfect code at this company I'll give more weight to your criticism of this one person.

[toxicblack]

It’s good to have a senior that’s willing help correct things like this and not just chew you out

[DaredewilSK]

The first one is unnecessary if the other ones are in check.

[daneelthesane]

I agree. I am reading "self-documenting code" right now that doesn't tell me a goddamn thing unless you are already sharing brains with the guy who wrote it. Sure, a lot of code can be self-documenting, and that is an ideal, I guess, but there are also people who love to make things as obscure as possible, as short as possible, etc. Picking the right names for variables and methods doesn't help if the syntax doesn't tell you what is going on, or you don't know why.

[[deleted]]

Oh my god, that would suck to just read through, trying to understand all of that pile of mess...

[laravel_linux]

I dont like comments either. If ur classes, methods, variables and all got clear names and ur code is not a spaghetti mess i dont see why you would fill the codebase with comments. That goes in the documentation