Code may not rust, but it may be broken out of the gate. Joel and others may not have seen really bad code, but it exists. All of us have written code in our careers that we're not proud of. And there's code written by people who are proud of everything they've written or code written by people who just don't care. These two are usually good candidates for rewrites.
The first kind was written by people who know about software, has some attempt at following some conventions, variable names, etc. etc. It's not "clean and shiny", but you can see someone tried. Like if a bunch of first year apprentices built a house. They tried their best, and often did a half reasonable job - at least for a first timer. Plenty of companies are using this kind of software to make many of millions of dollars. I would say this is extremely common in the real world.
And then there's codebases that consist of a single source file that has hundreds of thousands of LOC and that file is called indexNEW.php, indexNEWNEW.php index2022-1.php (and so on). Nobody who works on it has ever studied any kind of software course at any kind of school, and literally nobody has any real understanding of what/why/how, because it gets passed along like a hot potato everytime someone quits due to the insanity. Nobody who works on it even knows what source control is, has no idea why you shouldn't copy and paste code, and has never heard of TDD or automated testing or bullding or literally any software discipline. This isn't like first year apprentices building a house, this is like Homer building the Canyonero - an utter disgrace that just barely functions at all. [1]
I wouldn't be surprized if Joel is talking about type one, and doesn't even really consider type two to be "software" or "a system". It's just a stinking pile of garbage.
(I worked at a very large Telco. The vast majority of code plugging the systems together was type two - it was a nightmare of spaghetti so bad that when a power outage and failed backup generator took down everything (including 911), it took more than two weeks just figure out how to start everything back up again.)
I mean, it's not like it's in github or anything like that - again, the people that write it don't even know what version control is.
Imagine a file with 100,000 LOC, some commented out, copies of functions like "addCustomer()" and then "addCustomerNEW()" and then NEWAddCustomer() and then "makeCustomerDanGNewest()" and so on and so forth. Absolute gong show.
Is it so hard to check for heavy metals and common toxins on random batches of ingredients? I'd think this should be a standard practice to follow in food manufacturing. Aren't components and materials tested in mechanical and civil engineering?
I close my blinds at home because if I don't then I get people peering in, either curiously or with malintent; I have had my apartments broken into more than once before (thankfully while I was away), presumably because someone saw valuables. Granted, this happened in those "bad neighborhoods" you're recommended to avoid when you can afford to, but still. Ain't risking it, even though I've run out of valuables.
Sounds lovely to me. I sure do wish I lived in a high trust society surrounded by people culturally compatible. Alas, as an American, diversity is both our strength and our weakness. Good on the Dutch though, current and historical struggles notwithstanding.
Right and when we aren’t, we are exposing the window because it’s open to ventilate for fresh air. However, I just considered many people are in high rises where privacy isn’t as serious of a concern and so you might have less window treatments in that case.
