Comments on: Fixing other people's code

By: Severiaan

Severiaan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:00:09 +0000

What can I say more, everybody on his way through job experience met this kind of offers, and I can add that the worst code was from france:) no offence. I had lot of offers from there and it was painfull, so much, that I just had to rewrite the code almost all the time, and it wasn’t helpful that i know little bit of french, cheers.

By: Raphaël

Raphaël — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 21:58:40 +0000

Hi,

Upper i said that the AS1 code could be very well built and efficient. But i know since i learned AS2 basics that the new version of my product will be all written in AS2. I doesn’t mean that i will always write in AS2, if someone ask me a very simple application, i’ll write it in AS1 cause it’s very fast to develop.
bye

By: LEE

LEE — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 05:16:09 +0000

Personally I’d rather bag groceries than certain Flash projects. Especially if the project is with a company that doesn’t properly value their Flash needs.

By: LEE

LEE — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 05:14:45 +0000

state your terms.

Explain that you’ll charge less to ditch the old code and start fresh with your set of proficient technology languages. VALUE your time appropriately, set your price higher than you feel comfortable with setting, slightly even. You have to be prepared to walk away from EVERY gig, ESPECIALLY something that isn’t 100% what you want to spend your life doing. Personally I’d rather bag groceries that do certain specific types of work.

By: Raphaël

Raphaël — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:22:16 +0000

I think you follow the wrong way when u talk about the qualities of AS1 or 2. The quality of an application comes from the developpeur.

Remember our parents who begun writing code in assembler…
I’m on a project which bring me to improve and develop old AS1 project with 15 000 lines. The code isn’t well build and write.

I’ve learned few month ago the basic of AS2 in the book of colin mook “the best of AS2″. It gave me many good idea to improve AS1 code conception. Like doing unic objects which contains data and methods. These objects can rule the program and give limit, authorisation, they make check on the parameters. For example i build a sort of class which create scroll bars, keep a list of them, keep a list of the content to scroll and the mask which let appear the content in a window. All the methods are in this Object. If i want for what ever reason to close all the scroll bar, i just have to create the method on this Object. So all this story is to show u that it’s possible to write a very good AS1 code better than the average of AS2 code. The only problem is the difficulty of the AS1 to build a very big project and to re-use the best classes. But i told u again that AS1 is very good for average and litlle project which need reactivity and speed to deliver. The quality of an AS1 project is infinite. The people who don’t agree could ask them selves if the problem isn’t in their way of conception and maybe AS2 force them to build solids programs, that’s why they beleive that it’s very much better.
Sorry for the bad english, i’m french
rbenzazon@prestimedia.com

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:16:50 +0000

Sasha, there is no estimate. Experience has shown me that you:

- spend more time, with more stress, trying to make someone else’s spaghetti satisfy the requirements than simply rewriting it

- you end up with more maintable code, and thus a more extensible base for future projects

- the next developer doesn’t rue judgement day

The only hard part is justification and CYA. One slight slip-up in schedule and you can potentially be viewed as an elitist, a bad decision maker, and non-pragmmatic.

…hence me becoming a Flex developer to get away from the above insane dichotomy.

By: eestes1

eestes1 — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:24:36 +0000

In my experience the reasons that we recieve RFQ’s on others work is due to business requirements. Many of our customers require at least a 3 bidder process. Sole sourcing jobs are left for the really huge contractors. So these other vendors quote on it and might come in lower and purchasing chooses them as price is everything these days. Sometimes the original developer is moved on, too busy, the rfq winner used a sub contractor and dind’t pay for the source(my favorite), or the relationship is bad in some way. The mayjority of my daytime work is some how connected to using someone else’s code. Our customers also use the simple existance of the code no matter how bad or outdated as a way to force the price down-words like “spinoff”, “75 % already done” are red flags as often it’s a total teardown. But that’s why new vendors are bidding on stuff-they reduce cost by simply quoting.

By: Mike J

Mike J — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:48:32 +0000

*shudder*

No thanks. I don’t blame you for turning it down. If it’s not a small chunk of sample code to illustrate a concept then I prefer to stay away from AS1 completely. And these days I don’t even like having to work through the IDE for applications – FlashDevelop for the win, thank you very much. =)

Unfortunately, just because something is AS2, you’re not assured of having a good, readable code base. ^_^

By: C4RL05

C4RL05 — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:02:43 +0000

I don’t see the benefits of fixing someone else’s code, other than the money which probably won’t be as much as from original work.

These days I try to avoid jobs that aren’t good for my portfolio or r d.

A complete different thing is working with a colleage to fix or optimize his code. I find that quite rewarding. But life’s too short to waste it converting keyframes into classes.

By: Stefan Richter

Stefan Richter — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:09:49 +0000

I fix other people’s code only if the project is small. But a complex AS1 project that somebody else has written is probably the worst thing that could happen. I turn those projects down unless the client is prepared for a total rewrite a la JXL.