As soon as I stopped trying to write textbook OOP stuff, this stopped occurring to me. That was years ago.
I’m not saying I write perfect code, no. But when I read bad stuff I wrote, I can understand and it and think of ideas about how to improve it if that becomes necessary.
On top of writing more functional-style code, the way I achieved this was:
- Absolutely no inheritance whatsoever. Composition + interfaces work wonders for what I do.
- Minimal mutable state. This pays dividends when debugging.
- Ditto for type-system-encoded nullability markers (ie.
?in C#,std::optionalin C++…) - I avoid writing code just-in-case something happens. If I haven’t run it manually or via unit tests, it goes to the garbage bin (not an absolute, just a guiding principle). There’s a chance that code isn’t even correct to begin with and you’ll have to throw it away should you ever need it.
- Low indirection. I don’t want to jump through 10 functions to see what something is doing, and nobody else does either.
Arrrggghhhh! It’s hideous! Make it go away!
Junior ass meme
I looked at code I wrote about a year ago today. Yeah, there are things I would’ve done differently now, but I had no trouble following it. Some of the choices I made were company standards at the time as well which, thankfully, have improved.
I like that this meme implies women and enbies write immaculate code and never regret what they’ve written before 😎
Eh. I just jumped back into a project and felt kinda like a fish getting back into water.
I am usually quite pleased with my old code. It ain’t perfect, but it’s doing well for itself. Sometimes there is silly stuff I need to fix, but then I just laugh at myself.
This does happen a lot, but have you ever had the opposite happen? Where you go into some of your older code, and not only is it nice to read, but you had anticipated that you’d have to make this change later, and so the design makes the change easy?
That’s happened to me a few times and all I can say is that it takes days for my self-satisfaction to wane.
I had this happen recently. Very satisfying.
I did add some more comments and change names, though, since stuff I thought was obvious at the time wasn’t totally.
This actually happened to me last month. I had to touch code from a previous team/project I was on.
I got the call for a collaboration/consult. I forgot everything about it. Jumped in a meeting next day anyway. We pulled up the code. Everything was documented and I had a section with parameters for a “wish” feature that they actually wanted finally. I pointed it out and told them the needful to finish the feature.
Thank you past me. I’ll have to buy you a drink.
Then I had a nice 5pm Scotch.
and told them the needful
Sir, don’t redeem the code
I used to be better at math and coding. If I pulled up my old project euler solutions I’m not sure I’d understand them anymore.
Happens more often the better you get at your craft. I used to say that if you don’t hate the code you wrote last year, you’re not improving. Well, let’s just say I finally stopped hating mine.
Its a great to see how much i’ve improved in 2 years :)
Remembering the code i used to write and how i do it now
I really don’t understand this meme. As a longtime professional programmer I regularly go back and review code I wrote last month, last year and last decade; in order to find things I did wrong and learn from things I did right. Sometimes I do get the revelation of “oh, how much I’ve learned since then”, but that’s most often very far in the past and seldomly that I’d be ashamed of writing the same code again now, mostly just a welcome realization that I’ve been able to learn and improve since then.
I am beginning to suspect that 90% of programming memes are made by beginners and 90% of the engagement with them is also from beginners. Maybe I’m just projecting. I remember seeing this stuff when I was starting and just assuming that must be how it is.
I can look at old code that I wrote and feel good about the growth I’ve made.
I also can look at old code I wrote, which I need to understand/update, and be really annoyed at my past self.
How annoyed I am is entirely based on what I need to do to the code right now. The fact is, it’s way easier to be annoyed at myself than annoyed at other people.
Who the fuck wrote this!?
‘‘Written by Sanctus Two/Months/Ago’’
someone must have tampered with git history!
I stopped using git blame for this reason.
2 months.
I’ve been writing the same software since 2003.
Someone left some real crap in there.
See, this is why vibe coding is awesome. You’ll never have to look at the code ever again!
I barely remember anything I made from 2 months ago lol
When I git blame after finding the production issue and see the committer is me
