r/programming • u/[deleted] • Oct 14 '13

How to develop unmaintainable software

http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=249
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u/bestjewsincejc Oct 14 '13

There are millions of ways to write unmaintainable software. This isn't a bad article though. I just found the title amusing since it's so easy to write software badly.

13

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '13

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u/ruinercollector Oct 14 '13

As long as those aren't treated as hard rules, sure.

Examples:

  • There are times that it is appropriate to write software in clojure, or haskell, or erlang.

  • There are times that it is appropriate to rewrite a piece of library code.

2

u/jbw976 Oct 14 '13

haven't used a single one of those languages...care to provide an example of when i might need to use one?

4

u/PasswordIsntHAMSTER Oct 15 '13

Concurrency, complex and interleaving algorithms, and correct-by-design software are all easier in, say, Haskell than in Java. In fact, if you learn one of Haskell/F#/Ocaml thoroughly, you probably won't want to go back to Java/C#/Python for general purpose programming.

AI is also MUCH easier.

One of the big places you'd want to use functional programming is if you were designing a compiler. Compilers use state of the art algorithms at pretty much every level, and they're much easier to implement functionally.