How beautiful code becomes ugly…..fast

February 28th, 2008 · No Comments

Ugly software dog bitch

As programmers most of us have been there at one time or another (more often than not if your life really sucks). That once beautiful (or always but ugly) piece of software that becomes an ugly dilapidated bitch. The kind of code you don’t wish on your worst enemy. The code so ugly you want to gouge your eyes out after seeing it, preferably after skull fucking it into utter annihilation.

Well, enough ranting my readers (all 8 of you that visit my site daily at the moment). The good news is that Software Creation Mystery has written an article about just this phenomena:

There are hundred objective reasons why it could happen - complex technology, changing customer needs, management pressure, time to market and many more. But some teams still deliver a good system under these conditions. And some teams cannot deliver even in the most favorable conditions. Why?

Degradation of the system starts in the people heads and there are three main reasons:

Incomprehension - developers don’t understand the purpose, ideas, design or technology behind the system
Inarticulateness - developers unable to express ideas through clear and effective architecture, design and code
Inconsistency - developers cannot act consistently or don’t care about the system