Thread

Forgive me for ranting…

... but I HATE poorly written code!  I hate seeing functions and such scattered throughout a script with various includes here and there!

I just turned a job down right now.  Quick, easy $100.  Should have taken 1 hour max.  I accepted the job, got all the server information I needed, etc and then looked at the code.  *GASP*.  THE HORRORS I SAW!  I think I spent about an hour trying to figure out the logic of this spaghetti mess and then I quickly pressed the “refund” link on my PayPal transaction and called the client and apologized profusely for wasting his time.  Problem was that he needed it tonight, ASAP.  No way in @#$% could I have made my way through that mess.  I think I am going to start requesting copies of the code before I accept another job.

How many jobs have YOU turned down because the time line was too restrictive for you to rewrite it in a more structured, clean, ACCEPTABLE manner?  Does refusing to work on sloppy code make me a bad developer?

Thanks, as ALWAYS, for “listening”!

I agree with you clients think you can rewrite everything in five minutes. I always want to see a code example before i can give a time estimation. But even then the estimation could be way off due to server configurations and so on.

I go by the mantra : do it right or don’t do it at all. But if i have to cut corners i make sure it can be fixed easy. Recurring code and hard coded strings are my worst offenses.

Hi, about me. It happens once. The client wanted to make things work on a website. It was a website that sells music online. At first i said ok, but i wanted to give a look at the code.

The value of the work it was too much, because of the actual code. And i made a new proposal, to create a new website. And the client accepted the new one. I explain what was happening with the code…

But i prefer to make a new website for the client, and if they really want to use the same code, just making it better, i would have to charge much more for that. And the time is also much more…

But no, it doesn’t make you a bad developer.

9 times out of 10 - I’ll refuse a project that deals with someone else’s code. It’s worked out so far for me - I have enough work to keep me busy (and paid) and I only work on things where I get to start from scratch.

I agree with that. Working with someone else’s code, than that ‘someone’ has to be a very good developer…

My current job requires me to maintain some awful code while I build a replacement. To put it simply, this app *requires* register_globals function, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Funny, I was just thinking about this a few days (err… weeks) ago when I wrote in my blog. I hate ugly code as much as the next guy, but I’m not too quick to pass judgment anymore 😉

You just need to set the expectations at the beginning of the project, give the disclaimer.  The problem here is that the job description and the actual job requirements were not aligned.  The job description might have been to add a feature but the actual job requirement might have been… who knows!  You might have even needed to rewrite a portion of the existing code.  These types of unknown situations are horrible.

You have to look out for yourself.  The client has a business to run but so do you.  If you take something that you underbid because of hidden dangers or the job takes up so much time that you have to push other jobs back then you hurt your own business as well as your reputation.

Funny, I was just thinking about this a few days (err… weeks) ago when I wrote in my blog. I hate ugly code as much as the next guy, but I’m not too quick to pass judgment anymore 😉

Yeah, I’m quite aware of that. I only started programming in 2005, so I don’t have to look too far back to see some of the silly mistakes I used to make (I’m sure I still make some awful mistakes, but they are comparatively tame 😉 ). The project I took over was run by a single, self-confessed, amateur developer who learned PHP especially for the occasion.

Everyones has done bad code, just wait until you get projects where you have to convert something like CFM to PHP, thats just hectic.

Lots of great feedback here…

... and yeah, I came across the post on your blog just the other day, Derek, helped to put some things into perspective from a different point of view than I’ve previously considered.

Thanks!