On 11/10/2010 6:47 AM, Invisible wrote:
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/LetGeneralisationInGhc7
>
> "The old [engine] had grown to resemble the closing stages of a game of
> Jenga, in which making any change was a delicate operation that risked
> bringing the whole edifice crashing down. In particular, there were a
> dozen open bugs [...] that I had no idea how to fix."
>
> I think that's a really amusing quote. How many of you have worked on
> programs that look like "the closing stages of a game of Jenga"? :-D

I have a slew of them I have to support

They started as a very good idea that was decently cleanly coded, but 
then ad-hoc requirements and programming made them into the beast that 
they are.

I got to the point where I told my boss I could not change the programs 
any more.  We had a couple of incidents where his 'request/requirement' 
caused the program to overwrite it's own data.  Basically a couple of 
days worth of work to re-do.
Really scary - especially when the bogus data makes it out to the clients.

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