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My first job out of college was maintaining and refactoring a 10+ year old Perl CGI application. After a bit of adjusting, I found it quite rewarding to refacto
by majewsky 5y ago
My first job out of college was maintaining and refactoring a 10+ year old Perl CGI application. After a bit of adjusting, I found it quite rewarding to refactor overgrown messes into nice and readable OOP patterns, and more significantly, it was character-forming because it really hammered home the point that one person's quick fix will always become someone else's maintenance burden down the road. It's definitely been a positive influence for me to experience the other side of the stick early on in my career.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoOne of my first jobs was as a maintenance programmer for about 100KLoC of 1970s-era FORTRAN IV. Not one comment to be found, short, inscrutable variable names, no indenting, and having been stepped on by dozens of junior devs before me. It was "Voodoo bug fixing." I had to close my eyes, and throw a dart, hoping I got it. It taught me, very early on, to write good code.
- rdevsrex 5y agoThat sounds like the stuff of legends or a horror novel.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoImagine me, with a flashlight under my chin, as I recount the story... It was an email system; before what's-his-name-The-Nanny's-husband "invented" it.