My Life and Code

Software developers often have to contend with the consequences of bad practices (either their own, or those of other developers). How many of us have looked at code we wrote a few years ago and thought "What was I thinking ?" Or, looked at code someone else  wrote and thought the same thing? Unless you are a perfect  software developer who only works with his or her own code, chances are you've been bitten by some of the bad practices listed below...or have inflicted some of them on others (shame!!!!!)! Here's a list of 11 of my least-favorite software development bad practices. 1. Copy/Paste Coding So you've got some complex code to implement, but it's already been done in your codebase, so rather than doing it all from scratch, you just copy an existing block of code and modify it to suit your needs. This saves time, right? Maybe in the short term , but it can lead to duplicate code (which we'll discuss shortly), unnecessary code (code that was copied b...

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been using  SKYBOX VR  on Oculus Quest to watch movies in a virtual cinema that I didn’t get to see when they were theatrically released. The illusion of sitting in a movie theater is a convincing one, minus any reaction from the (non-existent) audience. It doesn’t change my perception of the films I’ve been watching — I’m just doing this for fun: to whet my appetite for going to the movies, and for a little VR escapism. Warning: Spoilers ahead.   For the past few years, I've been watching the old Universal Monster movies in the weekends leading up to Halloween. These are the first times I'm seeing these, as they were all released well before I was born, and I never happened to catch any of them before. It's become part of my yearly tradition to try to get into the spirit of Halloween. So, watching this film in SKYBOX VR was the first time I'd ever seen the film. The Universal Monster films, like any series of films, are hit-or-mi...

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been using  SKYBOX VR  on Oculus Quest to watch movies in a virtual cinema that I didn’t get to see when they were theatrically released. The illusion of sitting in a movie theater is a convincing one, minus any reaction from the (non-existent) audience. It doesn’t change my perception of the films I’ve been watching — I’m just doing this for fun: to whet my appetite for going to the movies, and for a little VR escapism. Warning: Spoilers ahead.   This film was a remake of the original silent film The Phantom of the Opera  from 1925, which in turn was based on the novel of the same name. I've never seen the original film nor read the book, and this was my first time watching this movie, so all of this is new to me. I chose this one because for the past few years, during fall and leading up to Halloween, I've been watching the old Universal Monster movies. As this one seemed to be on the periphery of those movies, I chose it t...

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been using  SKYBOX VR  on Oculus Quest to watch movies in a virtual cinema that I didn’t get to see when they were theatrically released. The illusion of sitting in a movie theater is a convincing one, minus any reaction from the (non-existent) audience. It doesn’t change my perception of the films I’ve been watching — I’m just doing this for fun: to whet my appetite for going to the movies, and for a little VR escapism. Warning: Spoilers ahead.   Released way before my time, this film is very loosely-based on the novel of the same name. In actuality, only the basic premise is the same, with the location and characters being different, and some of the more disturbing elements of the book not being present in the film. Martians invade Earth, tear the place up, then die from bacteria after all hope is lost. Gene Barry plays Dr. Clayton Forrester, a scientist who takes point on the whole invasion due to the lucky fact that he was cam...