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Quote: REV 1.20
; 06/09/82 Prints "directory" after directories
; 06/13/82 MKDIR, CHDIR, PWD, RMDIR added
; REV 1.50
; Some code for new 2.0 DOS, sort of HACKey. Not enough time to
; do it right.
In the following years, all us devs stopped adding those kind of comments, because they were redundant.
All code is HACKey. There is never time to do it right. 
From MS-DOS/COMMAND.ASM at master · historicalsource/MS-DOS · GitHub[^]
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raddevus wrote: There is never time to do it right.
I'll tell you, that is true.
I recently moved from a job that had no software development structure to a job where there are comprehensive procedures in place for writing and testing code.
I am quite pleased with the new job because when code finally gets released, we are sure that it works.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote: I am quite pleased with the new job because when code finally gets released, we are sure that it works.
Do you work for SpaceX? It seems to be they are the only company that manages to get the code right, certainly demonstrated by their successful launches and landings.
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I guess I was lucky in my career. For the first 20 years I always had time to do it right. I then went to a startup (about a year before the dotcom crash) and things changed. The next place I worked at was pretty much a 'we need it yesterday' mentality (which I ignored).
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I had a sign in my office that read
Why is there never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over?
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Isn't that because "Doing it over is agile! We're an agile company!"
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Sadly, I'm much older than agile. Even before agile, promises made by yes men had the same effect. 
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Greg Utas wrote: Why is there never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over?
I know what I am going to put in the office... thanks
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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A similar one I had is:
There is no time to do it right, but there is time to fix it in production.
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The one I like most (I assume, according to names present) reflects failed outsourcing attempt:
* Author Date Comment
*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Nilesh Rajbharti 07/12/04 Rel 0.9
* Nilesh Rajbharti 11/24/04 Rel 0.9.1
* Rawin Rojvanit 09/17/05 Rel 0.9.2
* D Flowers & H Schlunder 08/10/06 Much better now (1.0)
* D Flowers & H Schlunder 09/11/06 Add base signed types (1.1)
********************************************************************/
Source: Microchip, https://www.microchip.com/forums/download.axd?file=4;429496[^]
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I love line 201:
CMP BX,AX ; enough for EXEC?
JB EXECMER ; nope... cry
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My boss and I once inherited a very poorly designed chunk of software which
cried out for a complete rewrite. But that was never going to happen, so we
often had to write code which we would otherwise never have written. My
boss always prefaced such code with a comment:
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So true, man. I have manager who always give crazy deadline.
"Finish this in three days!"
"Our client can't wait! This new feature has to be done in one week!"
"We have to do with current members!"
Me: Well... well... I will simply hack here and there. There's simply no time to code them from the fundamentals.
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I used to work for Microsoft, in Exchange CPR (Critical Problem Resolution), writing bug fixes for Exchange from version 5.5 through 2007.
One of the more notable comments from the Exchange source was in the Information Store Code...
// This blows dead goats!
A few years back, they started going through the codebase, cleaning up/removing such flamboyant comments.
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I-16-741018 wrote: A few years back, they started going through the codebase, cleaning up/removing such flamboyant comments.
I'm sure it's not everyone in every department, but I can confirm MS has some automated build systems that have rules that match comments/variable names/strings against a...let's call it a list of "reserved words".
For one, a check-in will get rejected if your code contains something like:
$ass = Load-Assembly [...]
This is built server-side, and as such I haven't been able to find the actual list. But I'm sure it would make for some interesting reading...
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Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me, especially considering that MSFT has opened up parts of their codebase to specific partners. There were a lot of unusual references to various farm animals back then. LOL!
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I was hyper-focused on my latest article and took not of the wildly low vote-to-view ratio, and decided to look around at my other articles, and then other author's articles, and the story is the same pretty much everywhere. Despite have sometimes hundreds of thousands of views, the vote count is struggle to eclipse higher than 50 or so votes. The percentage is usually in the 0.001 to 0.002 range, even in the most well received articles.
I'm trying an experiment (in my latest article) to see if I can get more people to cast votes without too much effort on their part.
On a semi-related note, I've found that writing really huge articles (or multi-part articles) involving significant development effort really don't generate the interest you'd think they would. For example, my SqlXAgent article series required a couple of years to write the code and then the articles, and it was largely ignored. Admittedly, it was a giant waste of time anyway because Microsoft made the dev edion of SQL Server available for free, making my code totally pointless. I'm not complaining about that really, but you come to realize that, more often than not, the juice just ain't worth the squeeze.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
modified 8-Jan-21 17:15pm.
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How much of those view counts are the result of bots scraping or visiting the site, I wonder.
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Interesting point. I don't know if Chris et al can even determine that. You're one of he other authors I checked, BTW. Same story for you.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Very few people upvote articles or vote for them as Article of the Month.
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In 20 years (and 71 articles), I've only won that one time. I'm not optimistic about my chances this time around. 
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Maybe they're just too niche? I've had plenty of wins here, and I don't think it's because of my good looks or winning personality. I can't even remember where I left them.
I'm not a particularly great author, but I do write a lot of articles. Prolific doesn't mean good, as you say, but maybe it helps earn some mugs.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: Maybe they're just too niche?
Said the author of articles on lexers and parsers 
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honey the codewitch wrote: but maybe it helps earn some mugs.
If you have too many, I would accept one or two   
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I'll remember that. I've got two right now and an additional one got lost in the mail. Of the two that arrived, one came broken and I have repaired it with superglue.
But after two mugs, it gets a bit excessive, like people I serve tea or coffee to might think i work for CP or something.
I'm going to see if I can wrangle a shirt out of them again for my next win. I have one but it's just a little small. After that, I'll send you my mugs.
Real programmers use butterflies
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