Ever since I became interested in programming I stumbled upon bad formatted code. The reason someone writes such code is because he is sloppy and fails to see the importance of clean written code.
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photography by Kristel van Beek
21 May: Sloppy code
posted by: martijn, at 21 May 2009 8:02 GMT+1, 21 May 2009 8:17 GMT+1
Write a comment for this article- Bad indenting is probably the worst crime committed daily.
- Using as spaces instead of tabs for indenting are for me unbelievable (there is reason to use tabs instead of spaces, because tabs appearance are adjustable you should use tabs instead of spaces).
- Mixing tabs and spaces is far worse.
- Using names as “a” for method names just because it is written faster is also a thing I see very often.
- Using names as “r” for important data, not just for an iterator or some other not critical variable.
- Double code (just copy/paste something is probably faster than just making a method for it).
- No comments at all.
- Comments that still exists but the code it explains is already gone.
- Using method names that don’t make sense at all, the method name should describe it purpose.
Why are developers sloppy with this? Is it because I’m original a designer that I care about this? Code should look clean and tidy as far as the language permits (eg. php code can look messy because of the dollar sign). Code that is clean and tidy is far more readable, even when it is missing comments in opposite of code that is messy with a lot of comments.
I wonder if a messy developer is proud of his work, and what he thinks if he sees work of himself that is more than 6 months old.
I don’t pretend that all my code is clean as it should be it cam always be better, and I’m much happier that I’m currently surrounded with developers that do care more than I ever saw.6 Comments
Write a comment for this article-
Taylor says:
at 21 May, 2009 13:52 blogs.4point.com/taylor.bastien/Hi Martijn,I agree that there are some aggravating coding crapstorms to be found out there. (I know I've created my own at times in the past.) They all have a root cause, though:Apathy -- In some cases, people either forget that they aren't the only person who will see the code, so they don't care.Ignorance -- They don't know any better, since they are having a hard enough time getting it to work as it is.Arrogance -- They want to impress people that they can keep 50 plates spinning in the air/get squirrelly code to run.This last one leads to what I (unfairly?) call "PERL stye" code where the developer tries to do everything in a method in one line: return + ternary operators or other obscure syntax + non-descrptive variabe names. It makes him/her feel good to be the only person who can understand what it's doing.I've also run into code where the coder threw in a try/catch and in the catch just say in a comment that they're not sure why but they expect this error to happen. (This woud fall under "ignorance). Anytime a coder is clearly confused by his own code, he might need to take a big step back, catch his breath and break it down into more transparent pieces.That's what I can come up with, first thing in the morning (7:00AM). Have a great one, Taylor -
Sean Moore says:
at 21 May, 2009 16:59 www.seantheflexguy.com/blogHey there! Great post. I totally agree with you. Spaces instead of tabs KILLS me. Copy/paste coding is terrible. One letter method and variable names are horrid. Mixed tabs and spaces is brutal. Bad indenting is just straight lamesauce.I thought you had an interesting point about being a designer. I never really thought about that before. I was/am a designer as well and then got pretty heavily involved in software development. Maybe that does have something to do with it.... At any rate I never understood why people don't take pride in their work. I do mostly Flex development now so the source isn't available but when you're talking HTML/CSS the source is always just one right click away... How embarrasing ;)Anyway, great post. Keep up the good work and keep fightin the good fight!Peace,Sean -
Gooswa says:
at 21 May, 2009 21:17 old.dubink.comI agree totally about horrid looking code. I just had a nightmare with a css project that had a lot of duplicate classes and selectors. One thing I do all the time though that people will probably throw tomatos at me for is I hardly ever comment my code. Why? cause I think I do a pretty good job of giving my variables descriptive names, and I could care less if a method/variable name is super long (what does it matter, it gets turned into byte code anways right?). I probably should comment my code more, but to me sometimes when I am the only one thats ever going to be looking at the project I could careless about comments. Maybe if I actually got a project that I couldn't handle myself and needed another coder then I would start being a better commenter. -
Hans says:
at 28 May, 2009 23:23 www.dandy.nlHeyRemember me? I am the sloppy coder.But seriously.Bad indenting is probably the worst crime committed daily.I agree.Using as spaces instead of tabs for indenting are for me unbelievable (there is reason to use tabs instead of spaces, because tabs appearance are adjustable you should use tabs instead of spaces).Well. I always use tabs. But with a tab size of 4 every one lese uses 8. So when editing old code of some one else and using tabs Other people reading the file go beserk. Looks super messy. if you want to be sure a 100% that your code looks the same for every one you should use spaces. But I stick to tabs anywayMixing tabs and spaces is far worse.Totally agree. The reason why is above. Double code (just copy/paste something is probably faster than just making a method for it).Double code sucks but I never use methods.Comments that still exists but the code it explains is already gone.What worse, Commenst that explain code that has been changed and does other things than the comment tells you!Using method names that don’t make sense at all, the method name should describe it purpose.Again methods suck. But I am olf fashioned.hee maar de groeten uit Almere hoe gatie verder?hansgPs I had to maximize my exploder 7 window before I could find the "send:" button. A bit sloppy? :-) -
Martijn van Beek says:
at 29 May, 2009 11:12 martijnvanbeek.netSloppy code is not equal to bad layouting Hans ;). (worse is the fact that the comment panel doesn't work in Safari).But thanks for the tip I fixed it! (you need a bigger screen!). -
dave says:
at 3 January, 2010 2:57Thank you. I'm so sick of crappy code. It makes it impossible to read.function a ($d){ if (is_null ($d) { $d = 0; } else { $d ++; } return $d; } function IncreaseVar ($DataInput){ /* INPUT: $DataInput - the var to increase in size. DESCRIPTION: We increase it by one, or we init the variable. RETURN: Modified $DataInput*/ if (is_null ($DataInput) $DataInput = 0; else $DataInput ++ return ($DataInput); }
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