Or, you could go this <http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html> route: How to Write Unmaintainable Code
Excerpts: In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee *yourself* a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed *all* these rules religiously, even you wouldn't be able to maintain the code! To foil the maintenance programmer, you have to understand how he thinks. He has your giant program. He has no time to read it all, much less understand it. He wants to rapidly find the place to make his change, make it and get out and have no unexpected side effects from the change. He views your code through a toilet paper tube. He can only see a tiny piece of your program at a time. You want to make sure he can never get at the big picture from doing that. You want to make it as hard as possible for him to find the code he is looking for. But even more important, you want to make it as awkward as possible for him to safely *ignore* anything. Programmers are lulled into complacency by conventions. By every once in a while, by subtly violating convention, you force him to read every line of your code with a magnifying glass. You might get the idea that every language feature makes code unmaintainable -- not so, only if properly misused. A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.Use acronyms to keep the code terse. Real men never define acronyms; they understand them genetically. Thesaurus SurrogatisationTo break the boredom, use a thesaurus to look up as much alternate vocabulary as possible to refer to the same action, e.g. *display*, *show*, *present*. Vaguely hint there is some subtle difference, where none exists. However, if there are two similar functions that have a crucial difference, always use the same word in describing both functions (e.g. *print* to mean "write to a file", "put ink on paper" and "display on the screen"). Under no circumstances, succumb to demands to write a glossary with the special purpose project vocabulary unambiguously defined. Doing so would be an unprofessional breach of the structured design principle of *information hiding*. Use Plural Forms From Other LanguagesA VMS script kept track of the "statii" returned from various "Vaxen". Esperanto , Klingon<http://www.kli.org/> and Hobbitese<http://www.chriswetherell.com/hobbit/default.asp%20target=> qualify as languages for these purposes. For pseudo-Esperanto pluraloj, add oj. You will be doing your part toward world peace. CapiTaliSaTionRandomly capitalize the first letter of a syllable in the middle of a word. For example ComputeRasterHistoGram(). Reuse NamesWherever the rules of the language permit, give classes, constructors, methods, member variables, parameters and local variables the same names. For extra points, reuse local variable names inside {} blocks. The goal is to force the maintenance programmer to carefully examine the scope of every instance. In particular, in Java, make ordinary methods masquerade as constructors. Åccented LettersUse accented characters on variable names. E.g. typedef struct { int i; } ínt; where the second ínt's í is actually i-acute. With only a simple text editor, it's nearly impossible to distinguish the slant of the accent mark. There is plenty more at the link. J - Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. - Henry Kissinger Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. - John Quinton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:358874 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
