> Close runner up: an engineer who writes code that is inscrutable and therefore unmaintainable
The most spectacular example of this I've ever seen was a developer writing Java that only ever used single-character identifiers.
As in the following style:
class D {
public A foo(B b, C c ) {
D d = b.x( c );
return new A(d.f(1));
}
}
Now imagine this for several hundred thousand lines. Zero comments. Massive functions.
You might be wondering: what happens when he gets to "z" and runs out of identifiers? No problem! He just kept going thus: aa, ab, ac, ad, etc... I saw code up to "dh" or somesuch.
He had perfect job security... right up until the startup he was working for imploded because nobody could collaborate on that code.
No, it was job security. This happens all the time when incentives are not aligned. Some engineers even have private dictionaries to convert between the obfuscated code and the real definitions.
The most spectacular example of this I've ever seen was a developer writing Java that only ever used single-character identifiers.
As in the following style:
Now imagine this for several hundred thousand lines. Zero comments. Massive functions.You might be wondering: what happens when he gets to "z" and runs out of identifiers? No problem! He just kept going thus: aa, ab, ac, ad, etc... I saw code up to "dh" or somesuch.
He had perfect job security... right up until the startup he was working for imploded because nobody could collaborate on that code.