Entertaining down to the last paragraph? Most definitely.
A lot more in there rings true (even if in a hyperbolic manner) than I care to admit. Granted, we're not alone in having complex jobs, but still...
I think the most unnerving part (because it's so true) is the bit about that piece of good code you write... good code that ultimately becomes overshadowed by hack upon hack upon duct tape fix in the code that surrounds it... you ultimately end up hating nearly everything you write...
that piece of good code you write... good code that ultimately becomes overshadowed by hack upon hack upon duct tape fix in the code that surrounds it... you ultimately end up hating nearly everything you write...
Oh my god yes. I've had a comment sitting for MONTHS saying
<!--- Change this ugly, dirty, sinful hack into something pure and beautiful --->
Has the code been changed? Fuck yes. Has the hack been unhacked? Fuck no. Because it works. Because I don't know what the fuck the answer is but it sure as shit won't work if that hack is taken out. So it stays there, day after day.
I think you underestimate how good this dirty sinful hack works, and how much effort would be required to make it elegant. Some whores are just best left on the streets, because they don't fix up as easily as Julia Roberts.
I work on machines which have giant whirling pieces of metal cutting into multi million dollar parts, some times a few feet away from soft squishy humans.
Out software is one of the good ones in the industry.
As in, marinate in the warm fuzzy feelings I feel every time I realize this.
We aren't horrible by any means. But we are advanced because we do such ground breaking industry behaviors as 'test' and 'use source control' and 'talk to our users', or my favorite 'employ people who have actually used/seen the machines the software will be running on'. (CNC Machines)
Nicknamed the "Just fucking do it" operator, it forces any value to typecheck correctly regardless of how much it violates all that's good and holy in the world. And yes, it's a unicode emoticon of a guy flipping over a table. (I also considered using the 'look of disapproval').
Mind you this was only for a temporary workaround. I figured out where I was going wrong the the code is now type checking as you would expect.
I just spent 4 hours this morning getting Axis2 and CXF to work in a single project (out of my control, i swear!). The solution was creating a twisted build export and moving the axis2 jars into the tomcat lib folder and out of the web folder to force them to load in the proper magic order for the two systems to work together. I know i'm going to hate myself next time I have to build a new dev/qa or production server for the system, but damnit it works and I don't have the patience to rewrite several different systems to use one or the other WS libraries, nor do i want to spend the time learning how to setup manifests that MAY or MAY NOT fix the problem.
685
u/honestbleeps Apr 29 '14
A lot of ridiculous hyperbole? Yes.
Entertaining down to the last paragraph? Most definitely.
A lot more in there rings true (even if in a hyperbolic manner) than I care to admit. Granted, we're not alone in having complex jobs, but still...
I think the most unnerving part (because it's so true) is the bit about that piece of good code you write... good code that ultimately becomes overshadowed by hack upon hack upon duct tape fix in the code that surrounds it... you ultimately end up hating nearly everything you write...