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There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. However, if maintaining shit code turned people into good coders, then there'd be a lot less bad code (because the

There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. However, if maintaining shit code turned people into good coders, then there'd be a lot less bad code (because the precursor is so damn common). I think it also requires curiosity, desire to do things right, and access to the right information (which is now trivial if one knows where to look). What I would actually say is: the differential in difficulty between writing good code and writing bad code should be minimal or, if possible, negative.

Maro 14y ago
Actually I disagree on your first point. My first job was maintainenance programming, and for some reason I stuck around and did it for 3 years. That has taught me the suck of trying to maintain and work with shitty code. Now, X years later I still tell stories about that first job, and I always remember how I felt maintaining spaghetti code when I write code. BUT, I find that most of my fellow programmers either have not worked as m.programmers; or have done so but didn't notice it, because I guess they don't have a built-in desire for arete or just didn't want to get upset about their work and chose to ignore the crappy code.