Subj : Re: Is well written code a rare species ? To : comp.programming From : Anonymous George Date : Fri Aug 26 2005 12:20 am On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 13:16:53 +0000, David wrote: >> On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:56:51 UTC, Anonymous George >> wrote: Most of those programs were badly written. > > Why did it take you 10 years to write this? This new job has more pressure and making changes *fast* with poorly structured code is really hard. > More importantly what did you _do_ when you found code > that could have been written better (in your opinion, anyway)? I usually only change the minimum necessary to fix a bug or to implement an enhancement. If the code is badly structured that takes a lot of time, because it's hard to find out where you have to make the changes and what the changes are. So in such case, I complain loudly and try to get more time to understand and restructure the code before making the requested changes. But there's a lot of pressure to deliver the fixes and enhancements and usually there's no time to fix the structural problems in the programs. > Is that because the projects are structured so poorly, you > do not understand how they are put together, or perhaps you are being > asked to make significant changes and the changes should be rather > difficult to make? The changes are usually not so significant at all. But because of the poor structure of the code it's much more difficult than necessary to get a grasp of the base that I'm going to build upon / am going to fix. > I would hope that simple changes aren't that difficult to make. They are ! But perhaps it's also me. I hate making errors. It makes me feel embarrassed. I don't want to introduce new bugs when I'm fixing one and I don't want to introduce bugs when I'm enhancing some functionality. Greetings, George .