Journalism 101

[adina_atl]

My latest programming project is turning into something from Journalism 101. I'm working on code written by someone else, in a language I'm not 100% comfortable with, using technology I'm not 100% familiar with. My thought processes when looking at their code go something like this: "How do I do fix this? What is this even supposed to do? Why are

Comments

[timetiger]

Welcome back! Thanks for introducing me to the word "exanimate."

[adina_atl]

Thanks. Only my brain is dead, but I think the original programmers have been brain-dead for a lot longer.

[therealjae]

Welcome back! :)

What programming language?

-J

[adina_atl]

C# (C-Sharp).

I originally thought the problem was that I wasn't that familiar with C#--I can read it fine, but I'm iffy on writing it--and haven't worked that much with threading. But after figuring out where the error was coming from I called in a coworker who was more familiar with both, just to make sure my solution would work. His reaction was "They're doing what? Why?" In other words, the problem wasn't that I couldn't make sense of the code; the problem was that the code didn't make sense.

It was written by a consulting company that we...stopped working with...because of generalized incompetence. I'm stuck fixing it because I wrote the original design specifications and requirements, so I at least know what it's trying to accomplish.

[therealjae]

Man, that sounds like a huge job. How long do you have?

-J

[adina_atl]

It took me about two weeks of (re)development and testing, after two weeks of head scratching and WTFing. At this point I think about 50% of the code is new or updated. It's also got commenting and error handling!

[amyboyd]

We have a saying in Texas for that, "Well bless your heart!" Take care!

[adina_atl]

I went on a three-day coding binge (and have a hangover this morning to prove it) but it's working now, with better performance than it's ever had, commented code, and thread management that doesn't look like a kitten in a yarn shop. I told my boss that I was really glad we didn't use "lines of code written" as a performance metric for developers because I think I reduced amount of code in the application by 25%.