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Message
From
14/03/2012 12:51:43
Dragan Nedeljkovich (Online)
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
 
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Title:
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01538110
Message ID:
01538331
Views:
38
>I think we developers are a little like electricians. Have you ever heard an electrician say the last guy who was here, he did a pretty good job? ;-)

Now you got me thinking... and no, we are actually better. I've inherited code from several people, and while I may generally agree with "I inherited a mess" sentiment, there is a handful of exceptions - all of them (once or currently) prominent UTers. With some I may disagree on formatting :) and comment style, but they generally left code well organized and easy to fathom. And I've been told my code was neat too, by one of the guys from whose texts I learned stuff, which was one of the highlights of my career.

On the part of the others, who leave a mess... we could fill a museum with the worst of code we met. My list, which is 11 years old now:
If used('tmpCnt')
	If inlist(thisform.pmnaddrtype, 2, 4)	&& Contact Address -----10/13 changed from 2,4 because on page 5,
	slcSel = rpt_dict.pmSelect1	&& Contact is value 1
	Else					&& Permanent
		slcSel = rpt_dict.pmSelect1
	Endif
Else
slcSel = rpt_dict.pmSelect1
Endif
*------------
IF ThisForm.AddNames # .F.
*------------
.cbNext.Enabled = IIF(EMPTY(ThisForm.pmaRptList[1,1]), .F., .T.)
Of course, later years brought more progress. I saw 200 line routines with "return" in line 3, pieces of code which were never called, but there's one FoxPlus guy who takes the cake: he issued a separate READ statement after each Say/Get pair. Obviously, to simulate how it used to work in Cobol. He ran them in a do while .t. loop, increasing the counter, and then had a long case statement...
      case nCounter=32
         @12, 40 say "Amount "
         @12, 50 get nAmount valid SomeFunction()
         read
         nCounter=nCounter+1
I don't remember how he left the loop, probably via if nCounter=45 /exit / endif or some such construction. I didn't get that far reading the code, my head was spinning from the slap I gave my forehead...

back to same old

the first online autobiography, unfinished by design
What, me reckless? I'm full of recks!
Balkans, eh? Count them.
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