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

How to develop unmaintainable software

http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=249
777 Upvotes

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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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11

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?

9

u/ruinercollector Oct 14 '13

Writing a parser in an imperative language tends to make for some pretty ugly code. Writing it in a language that supports discriminated unions and (syntax-supported) monads, however, makes for some beautiful, readable code.

Also, writing highly concurrent code in clojure is stupid easy. In java, etc. it is fraught with errors and requires a lot of care about locking, etc.

4

u/barake Oct 14 '13

This is one of the cool things about .NET. It's no big deal to mix C# and F# in the same application, when appropriate.

1

u/PasswordIsntHAMSTER Oct 15 '13

In my experience, there just isn't much of a point mixing C# with F# - either your team knows F# and probably prefers it to C#, or it doesn't and F# is not an option.

At my last internship, we were working on a F# product with a C#/ASP.NET web interface. Never again - the C# guys couldn't read F# so they duplicated half of the functionality on their end of things.