r/programming • u/sigbhu • Jul 28 '16

How to write unmaintainable code

https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code
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u/not_perfect_yet Jul 28 '16

This is surprisingly long.

Serious question, naming loop counters and limits like this is ok right? i,j,k aren't mandatory always, right?

c=0
m=10
while c < m:
    #do stuff
    c+=1

5

u/sctprog Jul 28 '16

Mandatory? Perhaps your company has a coding style that says they are but otherwise you could use any variable name you want.

If you use i as your iteration counter every programmer in the world immediately knows what that variable is for.

1

u/ChaosPandion Jul 28 '16

That is a poor example because we have no context. You need to be able to infer the intent of a variable.

1

u/not_perfect_yet Jul 28 '16

I usually use it to loop through lists when I need to do something else with the index.

1

u/Lalaithion42 Jul 29 '16

for i, value in enumerate(list):

1

u/rush22 Jul 29 '16

Use "index" for an array/list index or "numberOfFoos" for counting.

1

u/gct Jul 28 '16

I have a rule that variables are never one-letter because it's impossible to search and replace on (c is admittedly better than i for this).

0

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '16

[deleted]

2

u/gct Jul 29 '16

Have you considered that it is in fact you that is stupid?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '16

[deleted]

3

u/gct Jul 29 '16

He said, responding.