"We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase
When I started programming as a kid, I didn't know people were paid to program. Even as I graduated high school, I assumed that the world of "professional development" looked quite different from the code I wrote in my spare time. When I lucked my way into my first software job, I quickly learned just how wrong and how right I had been. My first job was a trial by fire, to this day, that codebase remains the worst and the best codebase I ever had the pleasure of working in. While the codebase will forever remain locked by proprietary walls of that particular company, I hope I can share with you some of its most fun and scary stories.
Oh the merchants2 table? Yeah, we ran out of columns on merchants, so we made merchants2 When I started programming as a kid, I didn't know people were paid to program. Even as I graduated high school, I assumed that the world of "professional development" looked quite different from the code I wrote in my spare time. When I lucked my way into my first software job, I quickly learned just how wrong and how right I had been. My first job was a trial by fire, to this day, that codebase remains the worst and the best codebase I ever had the pleasure of working in. While the codebase will forever
Explore this link on the map →related reading
- Mistakes engineers make in large established codebasesseangoedecke.com
- Things You Should Never Do, Part I – Joel on Softwarejoelonsoftware.com
- Cognitive load is what mattersminds.md
- Everything I know about good system designseangoedecke.com
- The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code – Joel on Softwarejoelonsoftware.com
- A Bunch of Programming Advice I'd Give To Myself 15 Years Ago | Marcus' Blogmbuffett.com
- Ask HN: How bad should the code be in a startup? | Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.com
- A More Human Approach To Databasesccorcos.github.io
- Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and... — programming is terribleprogrammingisterrible.com
- Against SQLscattered-thoughts.net
- 5 Things I've Learned in 20 Years of Programming - DaedTechdaedtech.com
- 6 Weeks of Claude Code - Puzzmo Blogblog.puzzmo.com