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A colleague of mine once turned in A FULL JAVA APPLICATION all written in the static void main method. Using booleans in databases polled at 25k/s to check for

A colleague of mine once turned in A FULL JAVA APPLICATION all written in the static void main method. Using booleans in databases polled at 25k/s to check for completion of async tasks. Worst is, it was working. I spent 6 months rewriting it, using it as a black blox to recreate the same system, including bugs because we were interfacing with other systems. Infuriating given that we were a team people team, but also a great deal of fun from the engineering's side. EDIT: Forgot to mention I was the junior dev and he had in excess of 15 years of experience :D

ur-whale 6y ago
> he had in excess of 15 years of experience From your description, it looks like the code was optimized to irritate while remaining functional. Might he have been pissed with the institution he worked for?
- jlengrand 6y ago
  No, I think he really tried his best, working more than 55 hours / week towards the end. He had been an architect for more than 10 years in a large corp, and joined this small company I joined too. I think the expectations, lack of coding practice for a few years, architecture jargon that made him seem like an expert was a recipe for disaster. Not completely his fault.
  - carlmr 6y ago
    >He had been an architect for more than 10 years in a large corp, and joined this small company I joined too. A lot of "software architects" are just people that have been at a big corporation long enough that they found someone willing to promote them, but they don't have social skills to put them in a managerial role. In my experience it often also means they stop coding and only do presentations and (bad) UML Diagrams. Leading to the complete deterioration of their skills.
    - jlengrand 6y ago
      Well, I'm not the one who said it. I have met some architects that were a crucial part of the company. I have also met exactly those that you mention. And arguably they get promoted because they do less harm there than in a team of developers. . .
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
It worked. That is kind of important. You wasted valuable resourcss rewriting a working product? Good job.. I guess.
kevsim 6y ago
A company I worked for acquired another company. When we finally got access to their code it was in two files: source.cpp and source2.cpp. The latter was introduced when they reached some limit of the visual c++ compiler at the time.
- jlengrand 6y ago
  Holy cow hahaha.

ur-whale 6y ago

> he had in excess of 15 years of experience From your description, it looks like the code was optimized to irritate while remaining functional. Might he have been pissed with the institution he worked for?

jlengrand 6y ago
No, I think he really tried his best, working more than 55 hours / week towards the end. He had been an architect for more than 10 years in a large corp, and joined this small company I joined too. I think the expectations, lack of coding practice for a few years, architecture jargon that made him seem like an expert was a recipe for disaster. Not completely his fault.
- carlmr 6y ago
  >He had been an architect for more than 10 years in a large corp, and joined this small company I joined too. A lot of "software architects" are just people that have been at a big corporation long enough that they found someone willing to promote them, but they don't have social skills to put them in a managerial role. In my experience it often also means they stop coding and only do presentations and (bad) UML Diagrams. Leading to the complete deterioration of their skills.
  - jlengrand 6y ago
    Well, I'm not the one who said it. I have met some architects that were a crucial part of the company. I have also met exactly those that you mention. And arguably they get promoted because they do less harm there than in a team of developers. . .

mrmonkeyman 6y ago

It worked. That is kind of important. You wasted valuable resourcss rewriting a working product? Good job.. I guess.

kevsim 6y ago

A company I worked for acquired another company. When we finally got access to their code it was in two files: source.cpp and source2.cpp. The latter was introduced when they reached some limit of the visual c++ compiler at the time.

jlengrand 6y ago
Holy cow hahaha.