Sadly those instances are fewer than those where my old bad code is literally just bad.
We've been in this situation lots of times, where we'll write some code, then finish the solution after a few days or a week, then look at it a month later and say "Wow, this is really not a good way of doing it," only to spend another few days or weeks rewriting it.
The idea of spending 10 minutes drafting a solution, throwing it out, spending another 10 minutes on diagrams and guesses, throwing it out, typically gets met with "Just _code_ damnit," but, diagramming could compress months of rework into minutes.
I suspect quite a few developers who "just code damnit" follow this same process too. After all, it's not exactly hard to rewrite code and with tools like Git in place you can easily stash the different implementation methods so you're not having to lose any work during the cycles.
Usually when bad code gets written by experienced developers it's not so much because of a lack of willingness to conceptualise the design but often just because either the deadline is sufficiently tight that you are forced into writing a "quick fix" rather than something robust. Or because the code base is already an mess (due to the evolution of the product and the aforementioned issue of quick fixes) which means the "ideal world" solution is a significantly larger undertaking than it should be and best not undertaken while you have deadlines depending on it. Or sometimes you see "bad" code simply because the aim of the project is a minimum viable product or proof of concept, thus it's more about proving the product works as a concept than the implementation of it. In that scenario it can make a lot of sense to throw quick code at a problem with the understanding that chunks of the application will be revisited when you start to scale the product.
...and remember that the "rewrite" is similar to an even older version that you temporarily forgot about.
As I've matured as a developer, I've taken to commenting much more heavily. However, I focus more on capturing why I'm doing something, which sometimes includes why I didn't do it a particular way.
In my past few contracts, the devs at each shop fell cleanly into the overcommenting or never comment school of thought. Many old time C coders hate or love comments for exactly the opposite reasons as new grads writing Javascript or Ruby, and when conversing most argued that the code should explain itself. It is very hard to make code explain why because it is doing what it does, and this tiny nuance is hard to grab.
One job we kept reintroducing the same bugs and the customer was furious. I started reading the version histories more closely and figured out two developers were dueling over two separate bugs in the same block of code. Each would reintroduce the other' bug. Since then and due to some other experiences, I spend time looking at how the code arrived to deduce why it was the way it was. I pride myself on a low regression rate and this helps a lot.
Note that if you value quality over quantity, you're self -selecting for writing less code but in more critical parts of the application, like libraries or cross cutting concerns like security or localization. And you also have to accept that if you insist that everyone on the team coded like you then nothing would ever get done. The last bit is, IME, the hardest part.
Unbeknownst to me, a defect was entered and another programmer made a change. It wasn't really a bugfix but more like a change in the desired functionality. His change worked perfectly well but I wasn't made aware that someone else had changed the code. When I was assigned another defect, I used the version of the code that I had from my last checkout to make the change. When I checked in, I overwrote his change.
We quickly discovered this during testing and I reverted my change. I used his last checked in code as the basis for my change and all was right with the world but we had a confused user and two confused programmers for a couple of hours.
He explained to me that the exercises were not being abandoned at all. They were being refined gradually over time. He had one goal, which was improving the uptake and resilience of brain and muscle memory for music. Every refinement was an opportunity he'd spotted, deep in his own mental language, to hone in on that goal.
The way my coding style (both deep and superficial) changes continuously over time always reminds me of the way my father taught piano. My goal, roughly, is to find the perfect balance of clarity and brevity, while maximizing the ease of continued development. My 27 years of practice has resulted in a long chain of insights about how to achieve that. It's always changing. The way I wrote code 8 months ago wasn't wrong, but I found a set of principles that's better. It wasn't bad, but I would not write in that style today. Why would I? I've learned things in those 8 months.
Why?
To paraphrase someone else: I wrote sufficient code because I didn't have the time to write good code.
There's always a better abstraction I could have teased out, a more complete refactor to make that one line hack never have to exist, and better documentation which would read more like English and less like shorthand.
(I'm saying this as someone who's been coding in C++ for over two decades, while still finding lots of room for improvement in my older code.)
The analogy I'm experimenting with now is stage performers for Opera or Musical productions. If you see them up close, such as video recording, they clearly 'overact'. They use exaggerated facial and arm expressions to project their performance far enough so the people in the middle or even the back can see what's going on. They are expanding the audience greatly, but admittedly at the expense of those closest to the action. But on the whole it's a better performance.
When I find bugs in my code, introduced by me or added by someone else, I think about how it looked before and try to determine if it was just a dumb mistake or whether I tricked them into it. Maybe I grouped the code oddly, or chose an unfortunate variable name that implied something else was going on. If it's the latter I think about whether I really want to use that pattern anymore. What's tricky is that everyone tries to make their code look like the existing code, so people may be copying the pattern thinking it'll get them a clean code review. If I think the problem is bad enough I may stop and refactor all the places it's used (it only works if you're really, really practiced at refactoring), otherwise I'll just make a note so stop doing that in the future. I might mention it in a team retro.
I want my code to be as plain as it can be and still get the job done. Indeed at this point I positively fume when a 'senior' developer writes clever code, because they should know by now this isn't about them and they're hurting the entire team trying to fluff up their own ego. Look how important I am that you need me to fix all the really hard bugs. Fuck that, and fuck your dazzling bullshit. The only thing that pisses me off more is a manager that thinks 'blame allocation' is a viable management style.
That's a young mans game, after you've been doing this stuff long enough the things you learn are in terms of systems design, maintenance, etc. I regularly go back to code I wrote 2 and 3 years ago and think to myself "knowing what I know now, that code is mostly alright".
I can't understand how someone can go back and look at some authentication code, for example, and think the way they did it was horrible. Just how many different ways can you write auth code?
It's one thing if you're a young developer, but at some point the improvements to your code are negligible and have nothing to do with the value you bring to a project.
The thing is, if you're going back to the first time you've ever "programmed time", then what you're assessing is design, not code, which falls in line with what I said.
[edited to remove typo]
Sometimes, of course, you write code that is just right, and it still is after a year.
But, yes, that "What-was-I-Thinking" moment happens on a fairly regular basis. ;-)
Insist the person documents all the quirks and gotchas in a block of code or library. Sometimes the embarrassment at having to justify it will prompt them to fix the problem, other times they (or I) will realize that it literally takes less time to fix the issue than it does to apologize for it.
Something about the writing process unearths simpler solutions to tricky sounding problems. Possibly the same phenomenon that TDD tries to exploit.
In the grand scheme of things you'd hardly notice that it takes me a little bit longer. Over time those improvements become habituated and I just do a lot of them while I'm coding. Especially when I get stuck.
It's not in like cleaning while you cook. Once you have a tempo it hardly takes any longer to prepare the food but you don't leave yourself with a mess that discourages you from doing it again.
One of the unfortunate outcomes of the job market encouraging job hopping for salary bumps is many new engineers don't get the opportunity to see the cost of their own mistakes.
I can be horrified by something I'm writing right now, and if I check that code much later, remain horrified and add ashamed to the list.
But if I write code that I feel is good, then after ten years it is still clear code, concise and easy to understand, therefore, still good.
May be I am not learning fast enough. But everyone can easily understand my code.
Not at all. I started my first real project in September 2015, had a release out by mid-November. And the code worked, really well. I was praised by users of the software for how reliable it seemed to be. Now, 15-16 months later, I can definitely see the warts - there's a lot of global state, some crackpot abstractions and if I ever want to add new features to it I'll have to do some spring cleaning. But at the same time... it still works. The design is appropriate enough for the needs of the project and its functionality.
If you accept that your best is your best, then your best is good enough. The effort is what matters.
Not necessarily true, if you're (trying to be) a professional then it might not be enough.
String myBoolean = "yes" boolean alanIsABastard = true;
public class ClassWithBadNoGoodNameForSharingStuffCommonToHandlers { //TODO rename
public void encryptCreditCard(int[] cc) {
int tmp = cc[0];
cc[0] = cc[6];
cc[6] = tmp;
// and so on...
}