3 ms·
Introducing Bad Code Offsets
- mquander 17y agoThe dollars you spend purchasing Bad Code Offsets are donated to various worthy Open Source initiatives that are carrying the fight against bad code on a daily basis. These organizations currently include jQuery, PostgreSQL, and The Apache Software Foundation. Very clever! In my grand naivete I assumed that my $.50 would go toward actually cleaning up bad code, but instead, it decreases the relative impact of my bad code by producing more bad code, which will help distract from mine.
- mru 17y agoClever indeed. Does that mean I can offset my carbon emissions by buying some shares in a coal power station?
- mquander 17y agoSure, you can buy shares in various worthy clean coal stations, which, of course, are carrying the fight against global warming on a daily basis.
- ryanpetrich 17y agoClean coal is still pretty dirty.
- mquander 17y agoYes, that was exactly the point.
- davidw 17y agoReminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Abuses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Abuses
- fsniper 17y agoIs this some kind of joke? Or they are for real? Funding floss by paying for not feeling guilty writing bad code? Strange idea...
- steveklabnik 17y agoIt's social commentary of Carbon Offsets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset
- Mark_B 17y agoPretty much! :-) Also, I can confirm that the whole thing is indeed completely legit. The Open Source projects listed really are benefited from the proceeds and in return you get bad code offset cards in the mail.
- Robin_Message 17y agoThis reminds me of http://www.cheatneutral.com/ http://www.cheatneutral.com/ I'd say both of these parodies show why carbon offsetting doesn't really work. --- When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience. Can I offset all my cheating? Well, first you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you've done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.
- maurycy 17y agohttp://codeoffsets.com/ http://codeoffsets.com/ Also, I think that the idea is not that stupid. Bad code have many (business also) consequences and I can imagine a savvy company that punishes teams for poorly written code with similar mechanism. For instance, let's say that team has $100k bonus budget for a year. Every poorly written SLOC means $1, or $10, less in a budget because the company has to spend this money on QA or customer service. Of course, what's really complicated is how to measure poorly written code (cyclomatic complexity, length of methods etc. basic metrics?), and how to adjust it to the deadlines.