Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "comments make life easier"
-
I started my internship at the end of the year..
Fuck my ass!!! This code I have to work with is a huge pile of shit.
The code base I need to work with is around 40k LOC. It is a mixture of C++, C, Java, Python, Bash and I think I saw some lonely js files around.
A list of awesome parts:
- Paths are hard coded.
- Redundant code everywhere
- No documentation or inline comments available
Most of the comments in the code are just old code that is not used anymore. But the cherry on the turd is the class that should provide all kind of useful functions in my daily routine. About ninety percent of the functions have the same description or nothing. Sometimes a function name says "readSomethingFromSomewhere" but instead it writes something to a file. It is really confusing and I need to check everything twice instead of rely on what the function name promises.
I have also learned why copy paste isn't that good. The brief descriptions of every method in a files are always the same.
getName() - Description: Fork child process
getIp() - Description: Fork child process
getIpv6() - Description: Fork child process.
Surprise: None of these functions forks a child process. :D
Another awesome feature is the thing that they store up to five different versions of libraries. Everyone with slight modifications but no hint which one you need to use. Sometimes it is the newest, sometimes the oldest which is running in production. Another case of try and error.
Oh and my dev machine is a potato with a power supply and a fan. I started with NetBeans and every time I compiled the code it sounds like the machine wants to lift off and leave for a better place. (At this point I switched to Emacs and everything runs smoothly now)
At first I thought that I'm just not that good at coding and understanding a big project from scratch but some colleagues have the same problem. The whole system is very inflexible and it is all about "std::cout"-debugging to check if your changes do what you want them to do.
Currently I'm just trying to fix this mess to make the life for the next student or employee easier. The first month was just frustrating as hell. I need to ask so many questions and most of the time the answer was "I don't know, haven't touched this code in years". Needless to say that my progress isn't that awesome but at least I get a nice payment for 20 hours of work a week.2 -
Start-up I'm working for as a front-end dev is pretty nice. I have good hardware, free coffee and my coworkers are all decent people. My boss is chill, and I have flexible work hours.
There is this one policy for writing code, however. And I simply cannot understand it, nor can I ignore it because of code reviews: no comments in production code.
I mean, what? Why? Comments are nice, and they make life easier for the future maintainers. At least let me put a small two-liner explaining why I did stuff this or that way. But no, I only get to explain it verbally (once) to the person reviewing my PR. Why, man?9 -
Universal rule of opening tickets
Me: *opens ticket on basically ANY ticketing system EVER* (could be internal, from the customer, some random bug online, anything...).
Me: writes detailed explanation of issue, because I know working on tickets is hard. Of course I include that I tried steps A, B, C, and that I haven't been able to do D because of reasons.
Ticket derp: Comments...
"Hey, have you already tried A, B, C? Also you should totally do D first."
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? I TAKE TIME OUT OF MY FUCKING DAY TO WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN AND EVEN FORMAT IT NICELY, JUST TO MAKE YOUR MISERABLE LIFE EASIER, AND YOU DON'T EVEN READ IT YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE BALLSACK!? FUCK OFF!1 -
<sanityCheck> //asking for a friend
Some clever b*****ds wrecked a section of our production mysql db. To fix it I need to rollback the affected records 2 weeks - around 50/300 tables are affected, the other data must remain intact.
Currently my plan is to take a 2 week old dump and cherry pick the data I need from it, then combine it with a dump of the db in it's current state, drop the db and recreate it.
I know this approach will work - but it's risky, a pain in the ass and dealing with 300mb text files is tedious so since I only need to start in around 8 hours I figured It wouldn't hurt to post my approach and see if anyone thinks my plan is borderline retarded.
If you have any advice .etc that will make my life easier I would greatly appreciate it.
So in your opinion...
- is there a better/safer way?
- do you know of any db dump merge tools?
- have a recommended (linux) text editor for large text files?
- have you made any personal mistakes/fuck ups in the past you think I should avoid?
- am I just being a moron and overthinking this?
- if I am being a moron - In your humble opinion has the time come for me to give up all hope and pursue my dream of becoming a professional couch surfer?
</sanityCheck>
Note: Alternatively, if your just pissed that my rant is asking for a solution instead of simply trashing the people that created my situation and your secretly wishing it was on SO where it belongs so you can moderate/edit/downvote/mark the shit out it, feel welcome to troll me in the comments (getting dev advice just doesn't feel reliable without a troll - you matter to me). Afterwards If your panties are still in a bunch I'll post it on SO and dm a link to you to personally moderate - my days already fucked and I wouldn't want to ruin yours too.4