Buy Bad Code Offsets Today!

Let's face it: we all write bad code.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/buy-bad-code-offsets-today.html

I can’t decide whether this is more “lame” or more “dodgy.”

Aside from the fact that the joke is so weak, where does the money actually go, and in what proportions? What’s the benefit of organizing this as a separate institution when all it’s doing is printing up fancy-ass certificates? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the jQuery, Postgres, ASF, etc folks to collaborate and print their own certificates?

Is this “Alliance” a corporation? A sole propietorship or partnership? A charity? Does it have a street address? A phone number? Any kind of regulatory oversight or transparency at all?

No? Didn’t think so. I guess you can put me down for dodgy and lame in equal parts. Nice work if you can get it.

1 Like

what a con

what’s next. going to start your own religion?

wait…this is for real? good luck with that, not all programmers have money to burn like you big city slickers and your 100k+ salaries.

I’m with Practicality, you need to buy another offset for the bad html:


:wink:

We’re still a way off from April 1st? I’d rather purchase some other offsets for the increase in hot air being produced here lately.

Would you please buy my Bad Blog Post Offset today?

Only a dollar per line of a Bad Blog Post.

Hurry up - offer valid only while stocks last!

you guys are getting a little to silly for your own good, come on get down off your high horse soon

I won’t support projects like that because really who are you to decide which open source projects deserve the funding and which do not.

No thanks I think my money is better spent when I directly donate it to a project to my liking.

Why the fascination with bad code Jeff? I know plenty of developers who make it very difficult to find bad code in their work products.

Then again, these people know how to write code without the IDE constantly compiling, and know how to deal with case-sensitive parsers…

What about bad design, bad architecture? which could lead to a total failure product even with perfect codes. Should buy bad design offset first!

You’re going to need larger denominations…

So you are now officially encouraging people to write all their bad code in as few and long lines as possible, to get cheaper offsets :wink:

Ridiculous idea. Seriously. How obtuse can you get?

I don’t know why it is that some developers consistently denigrate their code. I don’t know why this must be. I have worked as an electrician, and have had to review my own wiring and soldering and my own installations, and although there might be a thing or two here are there that could be tweaked, I was almost always proud of my work. As an engineer the degree of difficulty shot way up from being a tweak (Navy-speak for an electronics technician), but I never recall looking back and just loathing my prior work. And now, as an experienced developer, I can look at earlier samples of my work without cringing. Yes, I have polished my technique further since then, but the logic is not really going to change much. The implementation? Eh. Why waste time beating yourself up over your code? It is pointless to me. This is a progression. My code gets better and better. The corrolary is that it looks worse and worse the further back I go. But this is not a bad thing. Just like the circuit boards people designed in the 60s look quite quaint and inefficient compared to what we can design today, they still got the job done and did the job reliably.

Also, I am a musician who was written original music for years. I never rip my old stuff, even if my more mature ears are constantly noticing things that might have been expressed differently. But that’s why they invented the remix, baby.

What about people that write bad code using jQuery, PostgreSQL and ASF ?

“The proceeds from the sale of Bad Code Offsets are donated to various worthy Open Source initiatives…”

This implies that some portion of the amount donated is going elsewhere besides the open source projects - perhaps to cover your costs, or perhaps to pay someone a salary.

What are your costs in running this website? How much of the donations are going to some place that isn’t one of the open source projects (such as Jeff Atwood LLC)?

Wow, publicly calling out bad code (in that htmLawed example). I would hate to be Santosh Patnaik right now.

“How much of the donations are going to some place that isn’t one of the open source projects”

+1 I would very much like to see the breakdown for this or wouldn’t consider donating any money.

That’s almost like a religious teaching “If you sin, take god’s name x number of times and your sins are washed away”.