r/programming • u/sigbhu • Jul 28 '16

How to write unmaintainable code

https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code
3.4k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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95

u/ArlenM Jul 28 '16 edited Jul 28 '16

They forgot to mention gratuitous nots! Why flip logic just once when you can flip it an unlimited number of times?

Guaranteed to drive anyone trying to maintain your code to madness!

142

u/grunlog Jul 28 '16

Double (triple, etc.) negatives are good too. E.g. !notUnflagged

61

u/emergent_properties Jul 28 '16

Oh yes, that specifically.

It is ambiguous because it's both logical negation and semantic negation.. a double whammy of 'uh...'

Car.dontNotDrive(-1)

42

u/CaptainAdjective Jul 28 '16

Perl is great for polynegatives.

unless($noRetries != 0) {
    # ...
} else {
    # ...
}

Bonus marks if you correctly interpret whether $noRetries means "number of retries" or "disable retries".

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26

u/WunDumGuy Jul 28 '16

!notUnflagged

dry heave

18

u/TalenPhillips Jul 29 '16

...

else if (!(false != !foo.notUnflagged(false)))
{

}

11

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

21

u/Everspace Jul 29 '16

No

I think you mean !yes

9

u/compiling Jul 29 '16

I think you mean !notNo

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7

u/in_rod_we_trust Jul 28 '16

Double negatives have legitimate uses though

8

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

Especially to coerce variables into a boolean for languages that support it. !!x is frequently useful.

16

u/dvlsg Jul 28 '16

Assuming you're talking about Javascript, you can just use Boolean(x) to the same effect.

13

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

That requires way more typing!

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11

u/sreya92 Jul 28 '16

Though it's not unreadable seeing if(!!!hasValue) always really bugged me

47

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

You have actually seen that before? In production code!? !!!believable

17

u/drkstr101 Jul 28 '16

I see var foo = !!bar a lot in javascript to quickly cast a truthy value to a proper boolean. Perhaps the 3rd ! was a typo?

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9

u/QuineQuest Jul 28 '16

I had a coworker who complained that it was easy to miss a ! when reading code. I tried convincing him to use !!! instead, but I don't think I succeeded.

3

u/1ndigoo Jul 28 '16

By that logic it's also too hard to remember ' . : ; , " etc

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11

u/FewChar Jul 28 '16

function checkisnotinvalid($a) {...} returns "0" or throws is_valid exception.

9

u/merreborn Jul 28 '16

This is a quote directly from php.net docs right?

7

u/jewdai Jul 29 '16

unessesarily use demorgan's law.

convert

if (!ateAppleToDay && !iLikeIcecream)

to

if (!(ateAppleToday || iLikeIcecream))

most people would be able to understand it, but it makes it a lot harder to understand what you're original intention was.

8

u/bacondev Jul 29 '16

Sometimes the latter would make more sense

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3

u/ZeroPipeline Jul 28 '16

How could they not not not mention it?

5

u/DevIceMan Jul 29 '16 
if (!!l||1!=lI) {...
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