Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts

Thursday, January 17, 2008

The bowels of bad code

Sometimes when wading deep into the bowels of a horrendously fiendish code base I will go through various stages of mental anguish on my way to a total mental breakdown.

Stage 1: Bewilderment and questioning. Things like "how does this even work?" "Are you sure this works?" "Can someone show me this running in production, I don't believe this works".

Stage 2: Cursing, anger, and fear. "Fuck". "OMFG, no way this shit can be this bad." "What the fuck could they have been thinking." "Dear God, please help..."

Stage 3: Laughter. The mind has begun to lose it's hold on the fabric of reality. There is a small tearing sound originating from behind the right ear, followed by snickers and then belly laughs. After a while you realize the laughter is coming from your own mouth.

Stage 4: Tears. Crocodiles only dream of weeping tears this big and perfect.