Have you ever worked on "old school code" that makes you die a little every time?

Question

I feel like I die a little on the inside every time I work on converting this legacy code to Web app. The database is crap. All the filed and column are nvarchar and blank (Empty string) suppose to mean Nothing (Null) instead using Null to mean nothing. For something like percentage instead of using decimal. You tag on extra two zero and store it as string (nvarchar). As i dig into the database, working on the code and discover how the old legacy app work. I die a bit.

Answer 1

Yes everday. We have a mixture of utilities that are either really really bad C++ (MFC) or VB6 which by implication is bad ;-)

I worked for 5 years as a contractor and part of that job is working on really really bad code. By the time a contractor is brought in, things are usually pretty dire. My soul died years ago!

Answer 2

I'm doing it right now. I'm working on architectural assessment of migrating to a .NET solution from:

• old VB6 code that has dozens of forms and only a couple of classes
• a SQL Server 7 back-end with 60+ DTS packages

It's all very old and has practically no error-handling.

I go cry now...

Answer 3

I sympathize. Dying a little bit is bad for your health. One way to feel better is to fix it, a little bit at a time. Make it a little more right and you will feel that much better.

Answer 4

yes, I have had that. One is where the database is made up of excel like tables. With some of the same data in every table.

Then there is the flowchart based program that does the data entering...no naming conventions, useless or no comments, unexplained constants all over the place... and don't even get me started on the flowchart software itself...