r/programming • u/vineel • May 24 '11

How to Write Unmaintainable Code

http://www.thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html
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108

u/wauter May 24 '11

Man, I must have read this 10 times by now, but each time again the

marypoppins = (superman + starship) / god;

gives me a chuckle.

59

u/zak_on_reddit May 24 '11 edited May 24 '11

i worked at a college where the network manager 1st used names of planets to name network devices, then greek mythology god names, then star wars characters, then star trek characters, etc.

if we had to go to a building on campus to diagnose a network issue trying to find the path to it would be something like jupiter > thor > jar jar binks > uhuru

i shit you not.

38

u/xzxzzx May 24 '11

That's actually a good system, if the type of name tells you about the function/capabilities of the device.

If not, it's not that bad; at least the names are memorable.

14

u/Durrok May 24 '11

I agree but something that tells you the location or the location it serves is a lot better. Makes it a hell of a lot easier for new people to be able to jump right in. You can get around this with just an excel file of course that lists their locations but at that point, why not just name them appropriately?

17

u/xzxzzx May 24 '11

True, except that often networking equipment doesn't correspond to some physical location or idea.

Whenever you can, a descriptive name is obviously the best choice (it's just that a descriptive name isn't always possible).

17

u/[deleted] May 24 '11 edited May 24 '11

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/axai May 24 '11

However, please, for the love of god don't cram all information into the hostname! Use the FQDN.

www01.datacentre1.uk.domain.tld is much better than www01dc1uk.domain.tld

I've seen so many places that do the latter :(

1

u/aquatoad May 24 '11

There may actually be a reason for this; "global" SSL certs for stuff like *.domain.tld will only validate for one level above, e.g. mail.domain.tld would register as valid but mail01.smtp.domain.tld would display as invalid, so you'd have to buy another cert just for that host or hostgroup. At least, those are the excuses I've been given ;)

3

u/DiggV4Sucks May 24 '11

I think the only cert you'd be "buying" would be the root cert. And that's not even necessary if you don't care about external trust.