* How To Write Unmaintainable Code @ 2005-11-22 19:05 Martin Krischik 2005-11-23 2:24 ` David Trudgett 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Martin Krischik @ 2005-11-22 19:05 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 2005-11-22 19:05 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Martin Krischik @ 2005-11-23 2:24 ` David Trudgett 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: David Trudgett @ 2005-11-23 2:24 UTC (permalink / raw) 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! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* How to write unmaintainable code @ 2004-06-28 13:08 Ludovic Brenta 2004-06-28 14:59 ` Björn Persson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2004-06-28 13:08 UTC (permalink / raw) http://mindprod.com/unmainlanguage.html -- Ludovic Brenta. -- Use our news server 'news.foorum.com' from anywhere. More details at: http://nnrpinfo.go.foorum.com/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How to write unmaintainable code 2004-06-28 13:08 How to write unmaintainable code Ludovic Brenta @ 2004-06-28 14:59 ` Björn Persson 2004-06-29 2:22 ` John B. Matthews 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Björn Persson @ 2004-06-28 14:59 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How to write unmaintainable code 2004-06-28 14:59 ` Björn Persson @ 2004-06-29 2:22 ` John B. Matthews 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: John B. Matthews @ 2004-06-29 2:22 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- 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/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* How To Write Unmaintainable Code @ 1999-11-19 0:00 Ted Dennison 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 1999-11-19 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-19 0:00 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Ted Dennison @ 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski 1999-11-21 0:00 ` Steve Folly 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-26 0:00 ` Herve Regad-Pellagru 2 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Joe Wisniewski @ 1999-11-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski @ 1999-11-21 0:00 ` Steve Folly 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Steve Folly @ 1999-11-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski 1999-11-21 0:00 ` Steve Folly @ 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 1999-11-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-19 0:00 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Ted Dennison 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski @ 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1999-11-26 0:00 ` Herve Regad-Pellagru 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) <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> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 1999-11-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1999-11-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > In article <2x8_3.271$aj3.34645@news.wenet.net>, > xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote: > > > [Yeah, I know all this HTML crud is silly in a posting, and _way_ > > ugly, but it does, in some newsreaders, make the above links "live", There is no need to EVER send HTML to newsgroups like this. I personally immediately delete any posting including HTML without reading it. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <81csuk$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> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1999-11-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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.] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner 2 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1999-11-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner 2 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Aidan Skinner @ 1999-11-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code 1999-11-19 0:00 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Ted Dennison 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan @ 1999-11-26 0:00 ` Herve Regad-Pellagru 2 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Herve Regad-Pellagru @ 1999-11-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2005-11-23 2:24 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2005-11-22 19:05 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Martin Krischik 2005-11-23 2:24 ` David Trudgett -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 2004-06-28 13:08 How to write unmaintainable code Ludovic Brenta 2004-06-28 14:59 ` Björn Persson 2004-06-29 2:22 ` John B. Matthews 1999-11-19 0:00 How To Write Unmaintainable Code Ted Dennison 1999-11-20 0:00 ` Joe Wisniewski 1999-11-21 0:00 ` Steve Folly 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-22 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Kent Paul Dolan 1999-11-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-11-24 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner 1999-11-26 0:00 ` Herve Regad-Pellagru
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