Yes, it’s a joke.
In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn’t be able to maintain the code!
This is what you’ll cover:
- General Principles
- Naming
- Camouflage
- Documentation
- Program Design
- Coding Obfuscation
- Testing
- Choice of Language
- Dealing with Others
- Roll Your Own
- Tricks in Offbeat Languages
- Misc Techniques
- Philosophy
Remember, just as the author of this essay warns us:
You don’t want to overdo this. Your code should not look hopelessly unmaintainable, just be that way. Otherwise it stands the risk of being rewritten or refactored.
[via Roedy Green]
Micah says
I’m getting a 403 Forbidden error. Anyone else?
Eric Dye says
Pulling up on mine.
Weird.