So, after almost eight full months of small contracts, I've beat out a boatload of competition (1000+ applicants) and landed a FT position. Small dev shop, highly team oriented, opportunities for prof. growth, new technologies, etc etc...

Some Background: Experience Hath Shown™ that a lot of what passes for perl "code" is poorly written, insecure, homegrown (eg: no use CPAN || die)...in short, a big bucket full of crap. In my last two jobs, I maintained production code that looked like:

require "config_file";
$this_num=$number_from_config_file;
$that_num=$this_num;
if ($this_num == $that_num)
{
    $that_num=0;
}
elsif ($this_num != $that_num)
{
    $that_num=0;
}
#ignore this_num for the rest of the script's life.
[download]

If that's not ugly enough -- how about some lovely cgi code, with about 60 form-fields, cgi-lib.pl, and about 60 lines of code that look like:

$this_var = $in{"this_var"};
$that_var = $in{"that_var"};
$some_other_var = $in{"some_other_var"};
$foo = $in{"foo"};
$bar = $in{"bar"};
$baz = $in{"baz"};
.
.
.
[download]

<Rant>Honestly, folks. I'm not making this stuff up, and I'm hardly exaggerating. There really were if/thens in place of simple assignments, (forget ternary), multiple variables assigned to some other variable, and 60 scalars when a single hash (already created/assigned) would've sufficed. These were very large organizations, with pretty large IT budgets. And this was mission-critical production code.</Rant>

The Dilemma: As most people when they start a new job, I'm on some sort of probation, where dismissal can be for any reason. After discussing many of the particulars with my future supervisors, it seems, based upon what I'm hearing, that:

CPAN is not being properly utilized,

Security is compromised,

There exist many coding redundancies (eg change once, retype everywhere), and

Lack of sensible development environment (no testing/staging area, no version control, etc)

.

Now I'm no "guru" by any stretch, but I've managed to develop a nose for less-than-ideal code, largely by reading here, hanging out with my local PM group, lots of practice, and working at the above-mentioned IT garbage piles. And I think just about everyone would agree that the above foursome represent some Very Bad Things.

The Question: At what point do I start suggesting changes? Do I wait until my "probie" status is lifted? Do I drop subtle hints along the way, or come out with guns-a-blazin? Or do I just go with the flow? I don't wish to step on toes, or hurt feelings or anything like that, and I look to those of you who have similar experiences for guidance.

ÅßÅ×ÅßÅ "It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead." -- Kurt Vonnegut

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