I feel like there is/should be some kind of programming language design equivalent of this. If you wanted to make programmers basically incapable of writing correct programs, how would you do it?
Here's where I'd share examples and it wouldn't be funny and instead start a flamewar.
We already have that: People who don't declare good variable names, people who don't follow DRY, creating spaghetti code. That's like the punk of programming.
Yes, I'm thinking of some mad-scientist types I've met who spin out WTF-worthy code on a daily basis. They love computers and programming, and can get workable output eventually, but it's terrible code.
I bet you could go farther and make a really bad piece of code and introduce it as such, and then have them talk about just how many things are bad about it.
On one hand, funny. On the other, potentially useful for either teaching yourself or learning to read other people's code. Intentionally botching or skewing code and teaching yourself to deal with it/fix it.
I'm going to make up hypothetical problem. then have the developer use the most retarded solution, and then use the resulting make believe coding chaos to prove my point.
Or you've seen an approach fail spectacularly in a programming language you're familiar with, which causes you to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Take it one step further: hire sufficiently terrible spaghetti coders that nobody, not you or even they know what the code does, and any hacker trying to make sense of it will feel ill.
I have encountered code written by people just psycho enough to think that's a clever way to handle just that scenario. They were not wrong it was indeed clever. It was also terrible.
That could be worked into a great programming language misappropriation-based comedy routine! Also the one about the guy who said "overriding" when he meant "overloading" is usually good for a laugh.
Here's where I'd share examples and it wouldn't be funny and instead start a flamewar.
reply