The weekend winks coyly at me and beckons

[grammarwoman]

Good LORD, this code I'm investigating is ridiculous. According to the documentation, it was written 25 years ago (in FORTRAN, mind you, because my company is so behind the times it's laughably painful), by someone who thought it was a perfectly cromulent move to use a GOTO statement to read through a file instead of, I dunno, A FREAKING DO-LOOP, DUMBASS. No indentation or any other obvious signs to show the flow of control.

A GOTO statement. *headdesk* Examples like these help puncture my impostor syndrome. I know good code, and this, sir, is not good code.

Of course, to keep me from being too pompous, the senior programmer just punted back the compiler structure I changed because I forgot to add the definitions for compiling the program that's now SQL-dependent. Oops! At least it was a quick change, and he missed it, too - I diagnosed the problem when looking over his shoulder.

I love coding. I just hate tripping over other people's bad style.

Here's hoping Friday is treating you all well, and that you have a most excellent weekend, even if it's not actually a weekend for you (waves to resolute).

Comments

[mapsandlegends]

Ha, John and I were just discussing the differences between FORTRAN and COBOL yesterday. (I'm not well versed in programming languages, but I like hearing about them for some reason.) I think it came up because I was moving our collection of obsolete computer manuals between shelves. He has some horror stories about learning COBOL in college and then purposely forgetting it so that he'd never have to actually use it at a job or list it on his resume.

[grammarwoman]

Heh. I really want the Olde Fortran shirt from ThinkGeek, just to show off my cred. It will go nicely with the collection we also have of obsolete manuals and computers. *grin*

My friend here at work programmed in COBOL many years back when he was working a military coding job. Hopefully the military has at least upgraded.