The Call of Codethulhu

The article about the great Codethulhu on TheDailyWtf.com
Sounds familiar? :)
I love software. I love code. That's fun, powerful and tremendously entertaining.
Though sometimes you're plunged into a Codethulhu, that grips you, chokes you and plunges even deeper inside.
You know that resistance is futile. Noone (including you) is gonna rewrite millions of lines of code that somehow works. You're just stuck there. You try to:

• figure out what's going on in the depths of this monster
• solve return (test == true)? ( (test == false)? false : true) : ((test == false) ? false : true); riddles
•  stare at ugliness of Bool IsNumber (string str) {    return (str.Replace ("0", "").Replace ("1", "").Replace ("2", "").Replace ("3", "").Replace ("4", "").Replace ("5", "").Replace ("6", "").Replace ("7", "").Replace ("8", "").Replace ("9", "").Length == 0);
  }
• 
   trace in mind a call stack of multiple state machines, embedded one in another and recursively sending multiple signals, events and notifications — Jesus Christ, I have written programs that used to succesfully pass Turing tests that were simpler than that.^[1] — yeah, often the code is for embedded platforms you can't properly in-target debug

After all that, you feel like a surgeon. Carefully cutting some living tissues to insert some extra functionality inside, then even more carefully connect it together, make it compile, test is to the every extent of your possibility, and then still have nightmares for a week because of your hidden fear that your intrusion could cause some unwanted behaviour in modules that depend on the "operated" one but about which you were unaware of.

I will boldly claim that every company has a skeleton in a closet like that. Check the Dilbert video about Wally operating Black Betty. It says a lot.




Update 21/04/2008: How Codethulhus are born and how they grow up (geek)(SQL)

1. My bots for online games used to operate for months even while being monitored for "bot" behaviour by game administrators.
   

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