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A comment on Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by gabriel34 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @03:49PM (#18444747)
Really surprising considering that Oracle is the standard for serious enterprise databases. Not really surprising when you consider Oracle's other bug ridden offerings (probably not as thoroughly tested). Makes me fear for Oracle 18c.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by cntlzw on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @04:22PM (#18445021)
Not surprising at all. There code might be not performance, maintainable or good looking by developer standards but as OP said they have a gazillion of test cases that make sure oracle db runs and doesn’t produce weird outcomes.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by _0nac on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @04:52AM (#18448716)
Totally unsurprising if you've ever worked with Oracle. The layers upon layers of legacy cruft are plainly visible even in simple things like the GUI installers.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by C1sc0cat on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @07:24AM (#18449320)
I remember an oracle forms product based product I helped develop to install on end users pc's required several oracle products installing - which meant 14 or 15 Floppy disks to be used in the right order.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by avisser on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:36PM (#18451777)
The fact that the first version shipped in 1979 has to contribute to this as well.

The field of software engineering has matured a lot since then.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by philjohn on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @03:55PM (#18453851)
I mean, PostgreSQL can trace its roots back to 1982's INGRES ... and UNIX started in 1969.

There are quite a few very old projects that don't have the same level of cruft as Oracle; it epitomises a Sales Division driven culture.

How many of those switches (that now need to be supported and tested) are because some functionality was promised to a large contract, and so it just had to be done? I would wager a good number.

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