How to Write Unmaintainable Code (1999)

(doc.ic.ac.uk)

40 points | by downbad_ 12 hours ago ago

10 comments

  • vharuck 8 hours ago

    >4. Use acronyms to keep the code terse. Real men never define acronyms; they understand them genetically.

    I'll see this and raise inherited SAS code where data sets in the process were named "AAA", "BBB", and so on. To prevent any kind of naming reason, even chronological, new data sets could adopt others' when the existing data set would no longer show up in the program. Which was so helpful when updates needed the previous data.

    • TimK65 5 hours ago

      Back in 1997 I was assigned to convert a legacy SAS 5 application to SAS 6.

      Let's just say that the original programmer had adopted MANY of the techniques in the linked post. The first thing I did was to go through all the code and convert it to only have one statement per line. eye roll

  • Panzerschrek 5 hours ago

    > Make all of your leaf classes final. After all, you're done with the project - certainly no one else could possibly improve on your work by extending your classes.

    It's actually a good advice. A class not designed to be extendable should be marked as final.

  • oniony 11 hours ago
  • downbad_ 12 hours ago
  • miqkt 11 hours ago

    Ah, time to copy this into the custom instructions for an LLM to amuse myself with.

    • seamossfet 10 hours ago

      Honestly, it'd be really funny to try and make a CLAUDE.md file for slop maxxing.

      • Blackarea 9 hours ago

        Could make that an AGENT.md and use a dumber model via opencode to slop maxx even harder!

  • none2585 11 hours ago

    One of my favorites to come back to periodically