Recently, I was tasked to debug an already existing program. It’s one of the hardest thing to do. Especially when the previous developer doesn’t give a shit of who’s going to read his program in the future. Any idiot can make a program, but only the best ones can make it understandable to humans. Programmers who don’t give a damn about commenting their code properly, and i mean properly! Some comment their code but still it’s not understandable. Some are even worst, they write an entire short story about what their program does when in fact what it does is just to return one variable. I’m speaking as a fresh graduate student who’s been working for about a month already. I’m sure everyone would agree
I don’t care if you’re using a different standard as mine. so long as you have one! it’s hard reading an inconsistent code.
Like for example,
if(condition){
do this and that..
} else {
do this instead..
}
then the next line goes,
if(condition)
{
i want this..
} else {
continue what you’re doing
}
That’s very ridiculous! I even see variables being renamed in reverse like $variable becomes $clbairav. Why not assigned just another name that’s readable? HTML tags aren’t even closed properly. No indention, etcetera. The list could go on. His code may have “worked” but it’s really a mess inside.
Well at least, I was able to read it. But it really gave me a head ache. It was really a mess, the existing program I mean.