>>That's why I didn't mention you, nor the thread it was from. One suggestion for Michel's polls would be to have a question "what's the ratio of new stuff vs cleaning up legacy stuff in your work". My bet is 9:1 in favor of patching up legacy.
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>Dragan;
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>For the last ten years as a programmer, each employer I worked for would either give me someones code to fix or a new project. I was instructed "fix the problem and do not clean up any code". In other words if it works don't fix it! There is always a "best" way to do something but the problem is that

That' exactly that I heard lots ot times. "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Still my sense of coding style and efficiency of the code moves me to the changing and enhancing. Sometimes it's really hard to "keep" myself and don't change it. For my own projects I do it all the time, but when I tried to do it with my colleagues code, I usually got some unpleasant remarks and people became offensive. Well, I know, I have to shout my mouth and don't point to obvious flaws, holes or unefficient code, but sometimes I just can't...


no two programmers I have met agree what that is, unless it is his/her own code!
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>Most of my projects been new stuff, but I have done my share of "fixing" code written by others. Maybe I am lucky. Guys I work with tell me my comments are longer than the code I write. I just like to know what I did - in case I have to look at it at a later date.
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>Tom