Ah yes, the exceptions. My all time record in the opposite direction of
John's was a medical billing system for a one doctor practice in the
70s. Circumstances forced me to say goodbye to him (even as he pulled
out a perl handled revolver and put it on his desk to express his
distress, and I'm not making that up). But it would have taken a small
team of people to suck my brains hard enough to develop the information
to maintain that system. The doctor was well and truly hosed. As I
recall that one's not on my public resume. But I was a kid and nobody
asked me and I never stopped to think "what will happen if you can't
maintain this F O R E V E R?"
-Pete
On 7/2/20 3:12 PM, John Vaughters via TriEmbed wrote:
Yup I've been burned by my own sloppiness too. And I agree with you guys in
most cases, but sometimes it really does not matter. That's all. I have a GUI
utility that has been used for nearly 15 years now at two different companies
with slight modifications for each company that is the ugliest code I wouldn't
wish on my worst enemy. But it works and I rarely have to touch it. I'm the
only person that has ever looked at it and if anyone ever wanted to change it
but me, I would recommend a rewrite. But instead, it just keeps chugging along
with about 8-10 users that never have an issue with it. So the payback on that
one utility for me in time has been huge and the utilty itself saves them a ton
of time all day long every day.
Like I said from the beginning, it depends who will be looking at it and how
quickly it can get done, and this is the important part, if maintenance is not
a worry.
My normal mode, for sure, is comments. I am like you Pete, try to comment
before coding. It helps for sure.
John Vaughters
On Thursday, July 2, 2020, 2:51:43 PM EDT, Pete Soper via TriEmbed
<[email protected]> wrote:
I hear you, John. But after 47 years of coding I still get nailed by the
scenario Scott describes when I've sworn to myself I'll never have a
need for any bread crumbs. So unless I'm really REALLY pressed for time
or the code is going to be "so short it's obvious" I'll write some
comments first, and then the code. This has the added benefit of forcing
me to think about what I'm intending to do. If I'm pretending to
describe to somebody what the code is going to do it's amazing how the
exercise can make me realize I haven't even got the requirements
straight yet, how one-off/throwaway or general/reusable it ought to be,
etc. I know somebody like you can just do that on autopilot by
thinking. And doing some comments first means a fraction of the time my
code does not match the comments 'cause I'm lazy to the bone sometimes.
(And if the NSA is looking at my screen I swear the "compare two git
repo script" I just wrote is going to get a comment or two. Some day.
But it's really, really simple. Honest.)
-Pete
On 7/2/20 2:22 PM, John Vaughters via TriEmbed wrote:
When programming for yourself, anything goes to get to the result as quick and
painless as possible for me.
Boy do I gotta disagree - I even wrote a chapter in my book on this.
Time is Money and I'm and Engineer, not a Developer. Write dirty but effective
and never look at it again. `,~)
I get what you are saying, but not all methods are for all solutions. I will
stick with my time saving ways if the impact is minimal going forward.
John Vaughters
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