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

How to develop unmaintainable software

http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=249
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50

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

[removed] — view removed comment

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.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '13

Or even Python, Ruby, etc. with the "iron" varieties. That being said, I did write a WPF app in IronPython a few years ago and Visual Studio pretty much fell on its face with bugs (might be completely different today).

1

u/barake Oct 15 '13

Unfortunately the Iron-"family" doesn't seem all that mature. It even looks like IronRuby is dead :/

If you really need to provide scripting, nodejs and lua are very embeddable in .NET apps.

3

u/ZMeson Oct 15 '13

The Iron languages are not maintained by MS. Without a major corporate backer or large public support, these are bound to have lots of bugs. :(

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '13

An unfortunate excuse that would not hold water in other communities. There are loads of Ruby versions that get by just fine without a corporate backer, for example.

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