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How to write Unmaintainable Code

Published Sep 07 2019

In this tutorial I want to illustrate how to write unmaintainable code.

By writing unmaintainable code you can make sure you will never get fired because you’ll be the only one capable of understanding what the code does, and most importantly why.

Please note: this post is ironic

1. Assign weird, fantasy and casual names to your variables, functions and objects. There should be no correlation between the name and what the item does or how it behaves.
2. Prefer abbreviations and acronyms over descriptive names. One-letter variables are great.
3. Favor reuse of variables in the code. Always use i in your loops.
4. Use your own language for names. After all, there’s no need to all use English.
5. Same applies to comments. Feel free to write them in whatever language you speak, who cares if the next developer is from another country?
6. As for comments, I was joking. Do not write any comments.
7. If you really want to write comments, do not bother to update them when you change the code that they describe.
8. Prefer global variables over getting too clever with scoping
9. Never test your code. You are good, your code is good too.
10. Prefer overcomplicating than being too simplistic. No one was ever fired for creating a complex and ego-fulfilling architecture that required a 3-months long useless rewrite of code that was perfectly working.
11. Optimize whatever you can in clever ways. Computers are slow, we should avoid overheating them and help fight climate change. Rewrite your code in assembly is often a good idea.
12. Relatively unknown languages and frameworks are always better than popular and battle tested solutions. Prefer them over the solution everyone else uses.
13. Better yet, create your own framework.
14. Never use 3rd party libraries
15. Overuse 3rd party libraries
16. Use every design pattern you read about, and try to fit it into your design even if it’s not, really
17. Use tools built by large corporations because they know it better and your 1-person startup will surely benefit from the thousands of man hours that went into building them. Bonus points if they are very complicated to use and have their own set of clever-sounding naming conventions.
18. Do not use version control, and do not even version the code at all. After all there’s just one right version of the program. You can easily remember all the changes you perform and most importantly why a change was made. No need to track it in an external repository.
19. Freely copy and paste code from Stack Overflow or random blogs without understanding it first
20. Indentation does not matter. At all. Mix spaces and tabs, too.
21. Freely overuse abstractions. Abstractions are great. Make everything reusable and overthink things like a king.
22. Perhaps you’ll reuse this library in every project you’ll make in the next 20 years, who knows? Better think about all the possible edge cases first.
23. Always implement every single great idea you have
24. 2000-lines functions are a great idea
25. Assume there’s a 10x engineer watching over your shoulders while you code.