Re^3: Perl Elitist Code vs Functional Code

[sundialsvc4]

Most of us have maintained plenty of “quick hacks” that the (long gone ...) original designers never imagined would become a full-fledged script.   Or, likewise, dozens of quick-hacks that became in the aggregate a completely-unmaintainable full fledged system.

And that is why, if you were hoping for a flame-war, you are not too likely to be rewarded with one.   People around here understand implicitly what the consequences of hack-code are, because they have had to deal with it for a very long time.   This is why they work as they do.   Even if you intentionally put in words like “functional vs. elitist,” you simply are not going to see this group dividing itself into two camps and bickering.

Early in my career, I tried to fix the plumbing in my house.   The corroded, galvanized fitting that my predecessor had attached to a copper piping system broke off in my hands.   “OMG!!” I thought to myself, “I’m screwed!!”   But the home improvement gods were smiling that day.   The first guy who I called showed up immediately, fixed the problem in less than ten minutes, gratuitously checked the piping in the rest of the house, charged me $50 and left a stack of business cards.   (I vividly remember his assistant innocently asking, “shall I turn the water on now to check for leaks?”   With a calm but withering stare, he replied, “My work does not leak.”   The assistant hurriedly found something else to do.)   I told that story and passed out business cards.   In fact, I am still telling that story right now.   What I desperately wanted, and could not do for myself, is what he very-professionally did.   What I feared most was to him unthinkable.   He could have charged me any price he named, and I would have paid it and never forgotten it.   Well, I did pay the price he named, and I have never forgotten it.

Ever since, and with every client we’ve ever had or will have, I have simply tried to copy the ways of that wise plumber.

[Anonymous Monk]

The first guy who I called showed up immediately, fixed the problem in less than ten minutes, gratuitously checked the piping in the rest of the house, charged me $50 and left a stack of business cards.

This!

My plumber was the one who installed the fitting, but did a fix it week later in about 10 minutes at no charge -- luckily this was for water boiler which is an outside closet , and yes, it did leak gallons and gallons

[sundialsvc4]

He must have been “Agile...”   ;-)

Oopsie, so it did leak gallons and gallons of boiler-water ... but he wrote the code the first time real fast, didn’t he?   (And the second time, and the third, and ...)

Every piece of code that you write is worth writing well, especially if it is to be anywhere close to a production system.   And there is no elitism about saying that.   (Personally, I do not like code that I thought had been finished years ago, coming back from the dead to bite me in the asterisk.   I resent and despise poorly-written stuff that fails at three o'clock in the morning.)   When you put in a plumbing fixture, you have one chance to make a permanent and lasting impression on the client ... and you will in fact do so, either way.   The client expectation is that the fixture is the right one, properly installed, and of course it never leaks.   My predecessor obviously did not know the basic plumbing rule that a galvanized fitting cannot be attached to a copper piping system because it will corrode; as it did, which is why it broke off in my hand.   A professional plumber has to get it right the first time, even though (s)he is merely dealing with a low-pressure water piping system ... not something as vastly complicated as computer software.

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