Mastering the Art of Bad Programming: A Hilarious Guide
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Chapter 1: Embrace the Chaos of Bad Coding
The journey of coding often involves a multitude of blunders. In my programming adventures over the years, I've encountered more than a few mishaps. While I'm still on my way to mastering the craft, I've certainly excelled in the art of creating atrocious code. In the spirit of generosity, I’ve compiled some tips to help you earn the title of "worst programmer of the year." Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Confuse Your Code's Users with Strange Names and No Comments
"Embracing confusion is an important skill to develop, from childhood to advanced learning" — Noam Chomsky, American Linguist
Why make things simple for others when you can challenge them instead? If you’ve been annotating your code in any fashion—except for humorous quips—then it’s time to cease immediately. And if you’ve been using sensible names for your data structures, variables, and methods, that too must come to an end.
Instead of this: flavors = [chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, raspberry] You should opt for this: arrayOfFlavors26 = [chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, raspberry] After all, variables aren’t sentient beings. Why bother with meaningful names?
Step 2: Abandon Formatting Consistency
"Creativity is intelligence having a good time" — Albert Einstein
If you want to excel at being a poor programmer, you must throw out the rulebook on formatting. Forget about PEP 8 or any other style guidelines you may have come across.
If the guideline suggests camel case, go for snake case instead. If you’re meant to indent a certain number of spaces, choose a different number altogether.
However, let your creativity shine! Don’t simply replace existing rules with your own; a programmer who sticks to a set format is painfully predictable.
Step 3: Eliminate Whitespace for Brevity
"The most precious talent is using one word when two would suffice" — Thomas Jefferson
Recently, many developers have been cluttering their code with unnecessary whitespace, which will only be stripped out during compilation. It’s utterly pointless!
Don’t prioritize the reader's experience. Remember, once you reach the pinnacle of horrible programming, no one will want to decipher your code—except perhaps as a source of inspiration for their own bad practices.
And that’s it! I’ve shared my insights. Now, go forth and implement these tips to become the worst programmer ever. Cheers!
If you've reconsidered your aspiration to be a terrible programmer, you might find value in the advice from this article instead:
Even after 7 years, I feel like I'm still bad at coding. This video dives into the struggles many face in programming, even after years of experience.
How I Learned to Code in 4 MONTHS & Got a Job Offer (no CS Degree) This video shares a personal journey through coding and landing a job without a formal background.