The dark side of the code

“Peace is a lie. There is only passion.
Through passion, I know the power.
Through power, I come to know power.
Through power, I will know victory.
Through victory, my chains break.
And the Great Force will set me free. ”
- Sith Code

I want to talk about the dark side of the code and what this leads to. What do I mean by the dark side of the code? From my point of view, this is such code that was written by programmers who succumbed to the desire to write somehow, based on their own goals, and not the goals of the product. They left peace (measured writing code according to practice) in favor of passion (code for code). And if there is a dark side, then there are its representatives - the Dark Lords, Darts. Here we will talk about them today.


Darth Underkoddu . There are old projects, really very old - 10 and 15 years old. But what is most interesting, they continue to develop. So, the one who maintains the old code and thereby influences the new one, changing its essence is Dart Andedkodd. According to rumors, he invented a recipe for immortality and it is impossible to kill him. He lives in large corporations, has concentrated his hands a great power and is terribly intractable.
')


Darth Manualalak. This dark lord does not recognize any tools. While the Jedi use scripts, build tools and other elements of the light side, Darth Manualak does everything with his hands. After his actions, gigabytes of external library sorts appear in the code, no one knows how to put together a project to put on the server, and especially no one knows what happened to the database and where such entities came from. He is just waiting for you to get distracted, to do everything in his own way and prevent you from quickly releasing a release.



Darth Maine. This dark lord is very cunning. Hiding behind what seems to be writing tests, goes out of sight of the Jedi. And as soon as they stop following him, he fills out a test project with classes with main methods. As a result, no one runs these tests, including CI, and many followers of the bright side unwillingly break the code. However, his harm is easily banished by meditation called refactoring.


Darth Zanna-Vo Write. As a woman, this dark lord is very cunning. Seducing the development team with promises that the framework it has written will be much better than all that is now, it delays the timeline to complete obscurity. It is very difficult to get close to her, as she is very executive and always knows how to tell what she does and what benefits she brings. As a student of Darth Maine, I wrote my test framework.


Darth Jinn Out of the Bottle. Dark Lord, about which little is known and no one knows what he looks like. It acts randomly and inconsistently, surprising other developers, testers and especially the customer with its code.


Darth Remerj is accustomed to acting on the sly, waiting for the Jedi to finish their work, breaks into the project's trunk and completely destroys it with their Merdj, saying that he is not guilty. His first actions seriously damaged the light side, but the correct use of the repositories reduced his efforts to nowhere and gradually forgot about him.


Darth Avtotestius is probably the most insidious and terrible dark lord. Hiding behind the methods of the Jedi, he adds Continuous Integration to the project and auto-tests, but he does it in such a way that the project is soon divided into two parts - those who write the code and those who support the tests. This leads to the fact that the team passes by all the terms, the team spirit falls and everyone forgets about all the good things that they had.


Darth Tyranus is known for his ingenious schemes for undermining the work of testers, for which he is actually named. He writes the code without checking it, gives incorrect test data, testers troll, that their work is the work of a monkey, and so on. Actively working with Darth Avtotestius, undermining the idea of ​​self-testing.



Darth Vnedrader. During his work, he managed to implement the Death Star framework, which destroyed more than one already connected library. Working muscles always wins his opponents and imposes his will on them. When he was a good Jedi, he was considered the Chosen Jedi, but then he passed certification and assessments and switched to the dark side. However, there is hope that one day he will return to the bright side and fulfill his mission.


Darth Troll . This dark lord is always at the forefront of any dispute, giving phrases to the right and left. Outwardly aggressive, but internally calm and always comes out dry from any dispute. By behaving in this way, it negates any improvement efforts. Appears on the project suddenly, but can be destroyed by an inspired Padawan. Being a student of Darth Avtotestius is able to write such tests, which also only confuse the code and prevent to figure out what's what.



And what examples of the dark side of the code did you come across?

UPD.1 : At the request of readers, the next post will be about the light side of the code.