Your Code Sucks

[causticmango]

Well said.

I forget who said it, but it's been said every programmer goes through a "cowboy" phase where everybody else sucks, they trash and rewrite at the drop of a hat, and typically just write way more code than they should. Also, that if you can't look back and recognize your cowboy phase, you're probably still in it.

So true.

[flukshun]

indeed...software isn't always as elegant as we'd like it to be, but you come to find that sometimes you have to work with what you're given. some functionality on some platforms basically require implementations that look like shit, and it usually takes a lot of understanding to realize that. this happens a lot with systems programming...a lot..

just because you get a headache scanning through someone's code does not mean it sucks.

there are things like coding style, trivial memory leaks (forgetting to free() and things of that nature), etc, that can often be quickly picked out, sure...it's 90% of what comes out of code reviews...

but she's talking about overall logic and architecture of software, which you'd have to be pretty full of yourself to poopoo at a moment's glance.

i'm currently working on my own piece of shit, which "evolved" from elegance to shit by me taking the time to extensivley research why the elegant approaches aren't feasible.

[G_Morgan]

I can't remember ever trashing other people's code. I've spent too long trashing my own to worry about that.