How To Write Unmaintainable Code

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Ted Dennison]

There's a rather interesting website mentioned on /. today titled "How
To Write Unmaintainable Code" ( http://mindprod.com/unmain.html ).
There's a lot of good stuff in there that is applicable to any language.
But I noticed that about %20 of the "suggestions" won't work in Ada.
Howwever, I suspect if we tried we could replace many of those 11
entries with Ada specific ones.

My own suggestions:
   56. - The people who orignially named all the objects and packages
you use were morons. Rather than try to convice them to change, just use
renames and subtypes to rename everything to names of your own devising.
Make sure to leave a few references to the old names in, as a trap for
the unwary.
   57. - Make everything possible a generic. Don't stop until you at
least have generics with parameters that are instantiated generics who
also took in instantiated generic parameters. If anyone complains,
explain how this makes your sattelite groundstation code flexible enough
to be reinstantiated as a soda-machine controller.



--
T.E.D.


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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Joe Wisniewski]

Using function renames, change the meaning of "+" to
"-" and vice versa, etc. (OUCH)

The only reason I thought of this was because I was debugging
someone's code once (YES, IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE!!!).
They had done a cut and paste on a function renames, and were
sloppy and missed changing the actual function name.

Joe

Ted Dennison wrote in message <814jiq$d8l$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>There's a rather interesting website mentioned on /. today titled "How
>To Write Unmaintainable Code" ( http://mindprod.com/unmain.html ).
>There's a lot of good stuff in there that is applicable to any language.
>But I noticed that about %20 of the "suggestions" won't work in Ada.
>Howwever, I suspect if we tried we could replace many of those 11
>entries with Ada specific ones.
>
>My own suggestions:
>   56. - The people who orignially named all the objects and packages
>you use were morons. Rather than try to convice them to change, just use
>renames and subtypes to rename everything to names of your own devising.
>Make sure to leave a few references to the old names in, as a trap for
>the unwary.
>   57. - Make everything possible a generic. Don't stop until you at
>least have generics with parameters that are instantiated generics who
>also took in instantiated generic parameters. If anyone complains,
>explain how this makes your sattelite groundstation code flexible enough
>to be reinstantiated as a soda-machine controller.
>
>
>
>--
>T.E.D.
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Steve Folly]

Joe Wisniewski <wisniew@acm.org> wrote in message
news:s3e4likc3ef78@corp.supernews.com...
> Using function renames, change the meaning of "+" to
> "-" and vice versa, etc. (OUCH)
>

I had the honour of helping someone debug their OWN software recently:

A 'priority' type had been created from an integer with a specific range.
The meaning of this type was such that a lower number meant a higher
priority.

Now, the "<" and ">" functions had been overloaded (can you see where I'm
going....) to reverse their meaning. The author of this software explained
that by doing "x > y" means that x is of a greater priority than y, and
since a low number meant higher priority, the function ">" return the result
of a "<" and ">" returned the result of a "<".

There was an if statement in part of the code I looked at which should have
been executed, but wasn't. So I was looking in the debugger and asking it to
evaluate this particular "x > y" expression. The debugger does not take into
account overloaded functions, yet the person I was helping assured me the
functions were not overloaded.

Upon searching the code we found those overloaded definitions, which he had
forgotten about because they were written so long ago.

After a couple of hours wasted and slap round the head :-) I think he learnt
his lesson.

I learnt my lesson as well - don't take anything for granted about someone's
software - always find out for yourself !!


--
Regards,
Steve Folly.
http://www.follysplace.demon.co.uk
donationsto:myaccount@mybank.co.uk

"Science is, foremost, a method of interrogating reality: proposing
hypotheses that seem true and then testing them -- trying, almost
perversely, to negate them, elevating only the handful that survive to
the status of a theory. Creationism is a doctrine, whose adherents are
interested only in seeking out data that support it."
        George Johnson, NY Times, 15 Aug 1999

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Ted Dennison]

In article <s3e4likc3ef78@corp.supernews.com>,
  "Joe Wisniewski" <wisniew@acm.org> wrote:
> Using function renames, change the meaning of "+" to
> "-" and vice versa, etc. (OUCH)
>
> The only reason I thought of this was because I was debugging
> someone's code once (YES, IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE!!!).
> They had done a cut and paste on a function renames, and were
> sloppy and missed changing the actual function name.

Due to a cut'n paste error, I did that to myself once with '<' and '>'.
It took an entire 10 hour day to figure out. For weeks afterwards I was
complaining about the moron who wrote that code. :-)

--
T.E.D.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Kent Paul Dolan]

<html>
<pre>

In article <814jiq$d8l$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Ted Dennison  <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>There's a rather interesting website mentioned on /. today titled "How
>To Write Unmaintainable Code" ( http://mindprod.com/unmain.html ).

>My own suggestions:

>   56. - The people who orignially named all the objects and packages
>you use were morons. Rather than try to convice them to change, just use
>renames and subtypes to rename everything to names of your own devising.
>Make sure to leave a few references to the old names in, as a trap for
>the unwary.

Hmmmm.  On that renaming thingy.  I just finished reading a fairly
ancient paper on software architecture design practice that complained
about the tyranny of the fixed module and method names used in
implementing software when that software was reused in a field where
those names were no longer appropriate.  There may be more than one
valid viewpoint on the heavy use of renaming in Ada.

see:

</pre>

<em>Characteristics of Higher-level Languages for Software Architecture</em>,
<a
href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/able/www/paper_abstracts/salang-reqts-tr.html"
>abstract</a>, and
<a
href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/able/ftp/salang-reqts-tr.ps"
>postscript version</a>,
<br> a pretty good analysis of the inadequacies of then (1994)
current software architecture design methodologies.

<pre>

cited in:

</pre>

<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~Vit/publications/SA.html"
>Vitruvius Publications</a>

<pre>

[Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and _way_ ugly,
but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links "live", if I'm
lucky, and I tried to use the preformatted text tags to avoid the worst
of the braindamage; if this turns out to work poorly (I use a plain text
newsreader myself), someone warn me, and I won't bother to try any more.]

               ===== random archival quality quote =====

I  walked  away,  overcome  by the refusal or inability of this robot to
distinguish between the natural and the technological.
                       -- Mark Leyner:  My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist

--
Kent Paul Dolan.
<xanthian@well.com> <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu> <xanthian@whistle.com>

</pre>
</html>

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Ted Dennison]

In article <2x8_3.271$aj3.34645@news.wenet.net>,
  xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:

> [Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and _way_
> ugly, but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links "live",

Actually, most newsreaders I've used will make them live *without* the
html crapola around it. I know netscape and deja work that way.

--
T.E.D.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Robert Dewar]

> In article <2x8_3.271$aj3.34645@news.wenet.net>,
>   xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
>
> > [Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and
_way_
> > ugly, but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links
"live",


There is no need to EVER send HTML to newsgroups like this. I
personally immediately delete any posting including HTML without
reading it.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Kent Paul Dolan]

In article <81csuk$vku$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:

>> In article <2x8_3.271$aj3.34645@news.wenet.net>,
>>   xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:

>> > [Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and
>_way_
>> > ugly, but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links
>"live",

>There is no need to EVER send HTML to newsgroups like this. I
>personally immediately delete any posting including HTML without
>reading it.

Ah, yes, the old "invincible ignorance" ploy.  The article might
contain the cure for cancer, the HTML might demonstrate a Turing
complete gnat compiler constructed entirely out of SGML tags, but if it
offends the eye, out with it, blaming the messenger without first
reading the message.

Where do they _teach_ this attitude, Robert?  I want to make sure none
of my children accidentally enroll in whatever place that is.

In contrast, I tend to sit here, dull as dirt, patient as paint, and
edit out, by hand, all the quoted-printable damage, html tags, MIME
dividers, and other readability reducers offensively applied to
innocent plain text, on the off chance that someone intelligent might
have posted something useful to me, even without also having having
invested the time to gain a perfect grasp of Usenet technology before
learning whatever useful information they had to convey.

Even in this very newsgroup, careful mining in this fashion will
uncover the occasional nugget of great worth, and meanwhile I teach
myself new, more widely useful, editor scripting techniques.

Call it the humility driven approach.  It may be the only place in my
entire life where I bother to demonstrate any, but there it is, like
an oozing unbandaged wound, naked for the world to admire or detest.

             ===== random quote by or about this author =====

"Re:   In defense of drug testing":  I just wanted to thank your for the
posting.  I plan to show it to my children.  I hope others do the same.
                                                      -- Eric Rosenfeld.
--
Kent Paul Dolan.
<xanthian@well.com> <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu> <xanthian@whistle.com>

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Robert Dewar]

In article <Mjr_3.405$aj3.40078@news.wenet.net>,
  xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
> Where do they _teach_ this attitude, Robert?  I want to make
> sure none of my children accidentally enroll in whatever place
> that is.

Well my guess is that anyone who is so clueless as to send
HTML to an ASCII newsgroup is unlikely to have the cure for
cancer, and even if they did, it would be off topic in CLA :-)
>
> In contrast, I tend to sit here, dull as dirt, patient as
> paint, and edit out, by hand

Well obviously you have a lot of time to waste on your hands
(unless the whole snipped section was supposed to be a joke :-)



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
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Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <Mjr_3.405$aj3.40078@news.wenet.net>, xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> In article <81csuk$vku$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> 
>>> In article <2x8_3.271$aj3.34645@news.wenet.net>,
>>>   xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
> 
>>> > [Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and
>>_way_
>>> > ugly, but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links
>>"live",
> 
>>There is no need to EVER send HTML to newsgroups like this. I
>>personally immediately delete any posting including HTML without
>>reading it.
> 
> Ah, yes, the old "invincible ignorance" ploy.  The article might
> contain the cure for cancer, the HTML might demonstrate a Turing
> complete gnat compiler constructed entirely out of SGML tags, but if it
> offends the eye, out with it, blaming the messenger without first
> reading the message.

> Even in this very newsgroup, careful mining in this fashion will
> uncover the occasional nugget of great worth, and meanwhile I teach
> myself new, more widely useful, editor scripting techniques.

I have too many years of editor scripting experience.
I have too few hours of available time.
I vote with Robert.

I prefer to read posts from those who know how to avoid HTML
due to the considerably larger probability that they are not
a waste of my time.  This is not very different than the bias
I exercise to favor posts that demonstrate the ability to deal
with spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mixed case.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Kent Paul Dolan]

In article <1999Nov23.092557.1@eisner>,
Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:
>In article <Mjr_3.405$aj3.40078@news.wenet.net>, xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:

>I have too many years of editor scripting experience.

So do I, about 38  of them.  Just to keep things fresh, I'm not still
using the first one I learned, so there is always room to learn more.

>I have too few hours of available time.

Me to, but I trade that for the joy of being constantly exhausted by
too little sleep.

>I vote with Robert.

Always your choice.

>I prefer to read posts from those who know how to avoid HTML
>due to the considerably larger probability that they are not
>a waste of my time.

I work in an office in the real world.  If I were to discard all the
email I receive from people who probably don't even know that their
browser mail interface has turned on html duplicates of their code by
default, because they also don't ask (or know how to ask) for memo
copies of their own mail, my email box would be barren indeed.  Since
this is for the most part the email that keeps the company functioning,
I don't have the luxury of ignoring a financial analyst wizard's email
just because s/he is not also a browser usage wizard.

Now that we have an internal set of newsgroups, I have little hope
that these same inconveniences won't promptly translate themselves
from email to news.

I also belong to a mailing list for those suffering the same rare
cancer as my wife.  A good fraction of the the list participants are
WebTV access users, including the most useful medical abstracts
refrence provider in the group.  By the time I edit out all the garbage
these entirely non-technical and frankly otherwise distracted people
let their mailers put into their mail, I rarely have 20% of the
original message bulk left.  Funny, but their lack of skills with text
transmission have zip to do with the love, kindness, courtesy, courage,
and useful advice they interchange, and give freely to me and mine.
We are talking about people who get to commiserate about deaths in the
group at least monthly here, this is real life.

I really don't think you are giving life a fair chance to inform you if
you first insist that all your correspondents be experts in everything
you yourself have found useful to learn, nor do I think you are likely to
succeed if you let a prejudice against a correspondent's non-expertise
in any area which results in things that intensely inconvenience and
annoy you, blind you to the good chance that there is some part of life
where the correspondent has something to teach you that you would
desperately want to know, if only you could glimpse the meaning through
the ground clutter within which it is hiding.

    "If  I die my knowledge may die with me, & no one may ever have the
    same knowledge  again."  Letter  from  Alice  May  Williams  of
    Aukland, New Zealand, to the Mount Wilson Observatory, November
    7th, 1915.         -- http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/letters/alice.htm

>This is not very different than the bias
>I exercise to favor posts that demonstrate the ability to deal
>with spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mixed case.

Well, to me they are not even closely related, since spelling, grammar,
and punctuation are a mandatory part of everyones education, provided
by professional teachers, from the earliest years and for years
afterward.  Typically, the email use training that comes with a browser
looks like: "here's your computer, if you have any questions, ask
Jill".

I tend to have _very_ little patience for those raised in American
English who ignore all the rules of civilized typing, but I was
recently embarrassed in this prejudice as well. I found out that the
office genius on whose creations the whole organization stands or
falls, and on whom I was ranking for his poor writing, suffers from
both dyslexia and mildly from aphasia.

Despite both, he can type three times as fast as I can, a world class
rate, using techniques he has had to invent himself to overcome as best
possible his disabilities. He can put more useful and better considered
prose into his writing than I could ever hope to attain, what with my
involuntarily giving away about 50 IQ points to him.

I got to feel like a complete fool, and deservedly so, as I tried to
sink unnoticed into the carpet while slinking back to my cubicle.  I'm
frankly old, cranky, and inflexible, but I hope I am not too old to
have learned my lesson.

>Larry Kilgallen

Anyway, this has gone way off topic, so I'm marking followups to
"poster" if anyone feels a need for more of my undying (see below)
prose and prejudices on this subject.

              ===== focused archival quality quote =====

[...]  a  posting  rife  with  typos  is  not likely to get your ideas a
friendly reception.  Fair or not, your ideas are judged in large part by
the care you take presenting them.
                                                   -- xanthian, 7/1/1990
--
Kent Paul Dolan.
<xanthian@well.com> <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu> <xanthian@whistle.com>
Pretense of web presense [poorly hidden] at http://www.well.com/user/xanthian
(just dumps you into a directory: glitz minus).  [Even more poorly maintained.]

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Aidan Skinner]

On Tue, 23 Nov 1999 07:25:32 GMT, Kent Paul Dolan <xanthian@well.com> wrote:

>Ah, yes, the old "invincible ignorance" ploy.  The article might

I think you will find that I'm both ignorant *and* invincible TYVM. ;)

>complete gnat compiler constructed entirely out of SGML tags, but if it
>offends the eye, out with it, blaming the messenger without first
>reading the message.

It's not so much that it offends the eye, as offends sensibilities of
cross-platform compatability and minimization of network usage. HTML
formatted posts on their own add ~25% to the size of a message, > 50%
if you include unformatted plaintext. That's just a waste.

>Where do they _teach_ this attitude, Robert?  I want to make sure none
>of my children accidentally enroll in whatever place that is.

news.answers.new-users. 

Once upon a time people actually read it. :(

>invested the time to gain a perfect grasp of Usenet technology before
>learning whatever useful information they had to convey.

It doesn't require a perfect grasp of usenet technology, just a basic
grasp of what used to be called manners and is now called netiqutte.

- Aidan
-- 
"I say we just bury him and eat dessert"
http://www.skinner.demon.co.uk/aidan/
OpenPGP Key Fingerprint: 9858 33E6 C755 7D34 B5C5  316D 9274 1343 FBE6 99D9

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Herve Regad-Pellagru]

See also <http://www.ioccc.org/index.html> for extreme
examples of method to make a C code unreadable.

Although one could say "I'll never encouter that in real life", I
had the privilege to work on such codes. And to shout like hell,
of course :-)

It is extremely interesting to see how some of the method have been
defeated by the design of more advanced languages like ADA.
For those who don't see why #define is a real curse in C.

 Herve Regad-Pellagru

VMS: There once was a system called VMS Of cycles by no means
abstemious.  It's chock-full of hacks And runs on a VAX And makes my
poor stomach all squeamious.  --- The Great Quux


>>>>> "Ted" == Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> writes:

    Ted> There's a rather interesting website mentioned on /. today
    Ted> titled "How To Write Unmaintainable Code" (
    Ted> http://mindprod.com/unmain.html ).  There's a lot of good
    Ted> stuff in there that is applicable to any language.  But I
    Ted> noticed that about %20 of the "suggestions" won't work in
    Ted> Ada.  Howwever, I suspect if we tried we could replace many
    Ted> of those 11 entries with Ada specific ones.

    Ted> My own suggestions: 56. - The people who orignially named all
    Ted> the objects and packages you use were morons. Rather than try
    Ted> to convice them to change, just use renames and subtypes to
    Ted> rename everything to names of your own devising.  Make sure
    Ted> to leave a few references to the old names in, as a trap for
    Ted> the unwary.  57. - Make everything possible a generic. Don't
    Ted> stop until you at least have generics with parameters that
    Ted> are instantiated generics who also took in instantiated
    Ted> generic parameters. If anyone complains, explain how this
    Ted> makes your sattelite groundstation code flexible enough to be
    Ted> reinstantiated as a soda-machine controller.



    Ted> -- T.E.D.


    Ted> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.

How to write unmaintainable code

[Ludovic Brenta]

http://mindprod.com/unmainlanguage.html

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.


-- 
Use our news server 'news.foorum.com' from anywhere.
More details at: http://nnrpinfo.go.foorum.com/

Re: How to write unmaintainable code

[Björn Persson]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> http://mindprod.com/unmainlanguage.html

It also demonstrates how to write unreadable web pages.

-- 
Björn Persson                              PGP key A88682FD
                    omb jor ers @sv ge.
                    r o.b n.p son eri nu

Re: How to write unmaintainable code

[John B. Matthews]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 834 bytes --]

In article <7nWDc.97128$dP1.321329@newsc.telia.net>,
 Bj�rn Persson <spam-away@nowhere.nil> wrote:

> Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> 
> > http://mindprod.com/unmainlanguage.html
> 
> It also demonstrates how to write unreadable web pages.

Yes, Roedy reminds me of Liberace: a tremendous talent if a tad 
gaudy:-) And remember, it's a tongue-in-cheek piece:

"Avoid Ada : About 20% of these techniques can't be used in Ada. 
Refuse to use Ada. If your manager presses you, insist that 
no-one else uses it, and point out that it doesn't work with 
your large suite of tools like lint and plummer that work around 
C's failings."

I'd say Ada helps me avoid a good 50% of the ways to write 
unmaintainable code. I have to face the other 50% in peer 
review:-)

John
----
jmatthews at wright dot edu
www dot wright dot edu/~john.matthews/

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[Martin Krischik]

Hi there.

http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

and search for "Ada" ;-).

Martin

PS: There is a /. article as well:

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/21/1355243&tid=133&tid=156&tid=8

-- 
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com

Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

[David Trudgett]

Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> Hi there.
>
> http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html
>
> and search for "Ada" ;-).

It's a funny read! One of the good chuckles (for a Lisp programmer)
was towards the end, where the author thought he would take a
"serious" tack, and started a paragraph with: "Think of what might
happen if we started storing source code as structured data." :-) This
is, of course, exactly how Lisp works.

Admittedly, the author must have had in mind a type of structure that
is a whole lot more detailed and complex than a Lisp program, but that
didn't get in the way of a good chuckle! ;-)

I also liked the bit where it was recommended to reject the use of Ada
because one's huge suite of tools, such as lint, which work around C's
shortcomings, would no longer be able to be used.

David



-- 

David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/

In order for evil to triumph, good men need do nothing!