On Dec 30, 2007, at 1:52 PM, Jay Levitt wrote: > On 12/29/2007 5:46 PM, Francis Hwang wrote: > >> - How quickly the business needs change. Designs for medical imaging >> software are likely to change less quickly than those of a consumer- >> facing website, which means you might have more or less time to tease >> out the forces that would lead you to an optimal design. > > A few weeks ago, I ran across the following comment, explaining > away 200 > lines of copied-and-pasted internal structures in lieu of > encapsulation, > in what was once the world's largest consumer-facing web site: > > /* Yes, normally this would be */ > /* incredibly dangerous – but MainLoop is */ > /* very unlikely to change now (spring '00) */ > > Careful about those assumptions.
Yeah, well, there's a difference between chaotic code and foolish code. Regardless of what company I was working at, pretty much any code that would probably break a few years out would be a problem. Of course, you can't predict with 100% accuracy which parts of the code are likely to change and which are likely to go untouched for years. I think you can make educated guesses, though. Incidentally, how well-tested was that code base? 200 lines of copy- and-paste smells like untested code to me. Francis Hwang http://fhwang.net/ _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
