I know this site's a joke but...

[K.I.L.E.R]

is it really true that if you make your code so hard for anyone to understand but yourself that you will have lasting employment?

I'm just wandering because it seems reasonable. If they can't understand your code then they will have to fetch you every so often to make changes.

http://mindprod.com/unmain.html

 

[digitalwanderer]

ROFL~~~

Yeah, it is true Kruno. I learned all about the long-term employment benefits of spaghetti programming working at US Steel in the late 90s. There were programmers they wouldn't fire just because they were the only ones who understood all their old Fortran77 code.

 

[Althornin]

I remember my Assembly prof talking about programming in JSL - Job Security Language....
So yeah, it does work.

 

[davefb]

we had a guy who said he'd been taught this by his professor..... *nobody* who had to work with him shed a tear when he left.....
*true* example code...........

[ in header]
#define BOMB_PICKUP 1
#define OIL_PICKUP 2
#define WATER_PICKUP 3

[in code]

switch ( _pickup)
{
case (1)
_codeForWaterPickup;
break;
case (2)
_codeForFirePickup;

break;
case (3)
_codeForBombPickup;
break;
}

good eh,, not surprisingly even HE had trouble tracking down 'issues' !! to be honest, i'd say JSL is BLX ....

-dave-

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

So you believe JSL does more harm than good?

 

[davefb]

well at the moment i do.......... i'm working thru someone elses JSL

making yourself indispensable sounds great,, but i'd say there were better ways than writing unreable code.... remember *you'll* have to understand it at some time

-dave-

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Chances are if you obfuscate your code to be unreadable by other people, then it will be pretty much unreadable by you as well. Even with decent code , it can take some time to find your way about if it has been a while since you last looked at it.

Most companies have coding guidelines which should enforce things like comments and use of #define.
That #define BOMB_PICKUP code fragment should be a sackable offence IMHO as it is clearly deliberatly intended to be confusing to people trying to read the code.

CC

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I don't understand what's so bad about the _pickup code, I can understand it perfectly without much thinking.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

The switch statement is not using the #defines from the top of the code, AND the numbers it uses do not match up with the #defines.
Someone reading the code could quite easily just assume that _codeForWaterPickup will be executed when _pickup==WATER_PICKUP, but that is not the case, instead _codeForBombPickup is exectued.


CC

 

[davefb]

i-i-r-c , the guy given the job of writing the editor was rather confused as to why the incorrect pickups were being placed... also stuff like the pickups didnt look like the correct models.... and as for being able to read it,, well maybe when laid out like that,, but when you have 400 source files of say average 500 lines each,,,, try it then

-dave-

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

The switch statement is not using the #defines from the top of the code, AND the numbers it uses do not match up with the #defines.
Someone reading the code could quite easily just assume that _codeForWaterPickup will be executed when _pickup==WATER_PICKUP, but that is not the case, instead _codeForBombPickup is exectued.


CC

Hehehe, I did exactly as you said what most people would assume. Silly me.