How to justify to your colleagues that they produce crappy code?

Question

I am finding somewhat difficult to carry on working in my current job.

The codebase has become a bit wild lately (but definitely not the worse I've seen), and I'm having a hard time dealing with some parts of the code. I could be stupid, but most likely it's just that it demotivates me a lot to start working on something that is hard to reason about.

My boss is already aware of my thoughts - I expressed what it feels like to work like this. He asked me to provide examples of what was wrong. When I pointed out two or three small issues, he said "yeah, ok" but that refactoring costs him a lot of money, and that we have to get the product out (not the first time I hear this).

I have to admit that the examples were not the most compelling, but the problem is actually tough to explain. It's made up of a lot of tiny "bad decisions" throughout the codebase. (We also see this issue is absolutely subjective). For instance, bad naming, dealing with nulls, boilerplate, not making code reusable (or the opposite) and so on. It can be tiring to re-think someone else's code over again to justify I would have done it differently.

Do you have thoughts on how to deal with this? I am a bit fed up of having to go hacking around a quick 'n dirty codebase every time!

Answer 1

99% of the time you never get to choose the people you work with. Not all relationships work out, be they work or otherwise.

It would be best if your project was broken up enough so that each developer can contribute to a spec of what the other needs, so programmers don't step on each other's toes.

Getting people to change their coding style is hard. It takes a cast iron technical lead committed to such things and will help when you bring it up. Management types can't do this, leadership needs to provide technical details.

Answer 2

It sounds to me like you don't have a problem with the code so much as your coworkers. It will probably be very difficult for you to force the changes you want to see. Your best bet would probably be to start updating your resume and keep your eyes open for other opportunities

Answer 3

You'll find that this is common-place. What you can do is accept that things are done differently by different people. As you fix bugs or add features, you'll get a brief window into a sub-section of the application that you can improve. When you work on the code, you can make it better, and they don't need to know that you're piecemeal improving the code.

Be very careful though. Sometimes code is written in a way that looks 'hacked', but solves a bug that is not easy to discern. Especially if it is older code which has been tried and tested.

On another note, complaining will only get you viewed as a complainer. Think about what outcome you want, and what actions will most likely produce that outcome. You will always hear the answer 'No' when you ask, 'Can I do X-days of work for absolutely no noticable result?'

Answer 4

You could quit and hope to find something better.

Or, you could stick it out and try improve the code that you can control, when you can control it. No matter how well intentioned the developers are, if there is more than one developer the code base will be "ugly" by a competent developers standards. Work with the other developers to improve their abilities and refactor code as you make enhancements.

Answer 5

I think that once you're in the middle of the weeds, you do not really have a good chance of getting things done right, you just have to get them done. I would say most developers do not like firefighting and want the ideal code base, but in my opinion this requires you to spend the time up front planning the system out.

I'd recommend trying to work with your manager to ensure that the areas you feel are lacking now are not lacking in the next project. Maybe its putting you on the lead, having more code reviews with peers, maybe it is further training for the entire team.

Either way, I think this is something that most of us go through. I do agree with the other person advising some caution on this. I know that code I wrote yesterday seemed great at the time and looking back on it, can probably find 10 other ways to do it and make it look cleaner.

Answer 6

Have you considered maybe adding fxcop to the automated builds to enforce coding style? Other than that, you could try suggesting TDD which would give the power to whomever writes the test to enfore that the interfaces for each class are structured in a particular way.

Off the top of my head, that's all that I can think of.

Answer 7

Perhaps you could setup monthly meetings and at those meetings you could demonstrate good and bad code. Obviously you don't want to point fingers so you'd want to use generic code examples that are based off of stuff you saw in your project. This way you can constructively gather support from others in your style. You might want to compile these after the meetings so people can easily reference them.

I think it is real easy to point out issues, and complain but to mentor people and help them change requires effort. It isn't an easy task but if you are having trouble being motivated with your job perhaps this would give you a nice burst of motivation. You might learn some things a long the way.

Answer 8

Things in life are not perfect and if you start nitpicking, feathers will be ruffled and relationships soured.

The best method is to pick your battles carefully. If something is small enough ignore it and live with it. If it is big and worthwhile (i.e. the management sees ROI in backing you) go for it.

This is apt for your situation...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Answer 9

If you have a good relationship with your manager, you might be able to use this to work yourself into a "Senior" or "Lead" Developer role. You could propose that it would be best if one person on the team takes technical leadership of the code base. It would be your job to review the code of others and ask them to make improvements when you feel it is necessary. If you go this route, just make sure to take it slowly. If you ask for a lot very quickly, then you could end up pissing off all the other developers.

Answer 10

One thing I try to do and it may help you. If a part of code is bad, and the idea you propose to fix it is agreed as best but "no time" excuse is given, why dont you rewrite it? say on your own time? If you decide on sticking around at that job for a while it will only help you. And only you will learn and become a better programmer.

Note that it is a good idea and I would even say required, to do a complete code review of that change before check-in and you should try to time the check-in so that it is before a complete regresion test cycle for a release. That way your refactoring is completely tested out. Over a period of 6 months or so, it will start showing a beneficial impact and you can then ask for time allocation for this, with proof to back it up.

Answer 11

The only thing that has a chance of convincing management is demonstrating that the things you are citing as perceived problems become actual problems.

To try to take advantage of this, try to keep the "complainer" tone down to a minimum, that is, focus on how this affects the bottom line rather than how it makes you feel. Point out possible consequences of poor decisions that you see being made. If those consequences come to pass, and they cost more than an up-front fix would have, gently remind management that you foresaw the difficulty and provide a helpful suggestion as to how future similar costs can be avoided with a little up-front effort.

The problem is, in many organizations, the problems will never cause enough of a problem for management to care, or if they do, they won't see the connection between your perception of the problem and the actual problem the way it occurs. In these cases, you end up seemin like a needlessly persnickety technical person, which isn't a reputation you want to have.

So my advice is, pick your battles. If there is something very egregious that others are about to let slip, then you can speak up and perhaps be vindicated later. For the little details that just grind away at you, I'm afraid there's not much you can do but put up with it.

Answer 12

1) Make the problem more visible and get management buy-in

Keep a very detailed diary of the time spent on various coding tasks over the period of about a month. At the end of the month analyse and summarise the contents for your boss, i.e. time wasted and hence money wasted, to illustrate that change of some form is necessary.

2) Think of a cost effective way of moving forward

For example; Rather than refactoring the entire code base, seperate interfaces from implementations, and enforce tighter standards, including unit tests, naming conventions, etc.. at an interface layer. Thus each programmer can have confidence in using code that they have not written. While this is sweeping the crap under the carpet to a certain extent, it is a good way of preparing for larger scale refactoring.

It is important from a management perspective that workflow is not interrupted, and positive results are visible, so plan accordingly.

3) Agree longer terms improvements with your co-workers

Sit down and agree reasonable coding standards for future code with the other programmers.

Answer 13

Sometimes your fellow programmers do things very differently than you, and things you might feel are way wrong might actually have positive aspects. We all have our schools we come from. I think I've come across programmers who complain about things I don't understand equally as often that I myself have felt something needs to be complained about.

Make sure you can deduce what you complain about into a concrete disadvantage. If for no other reason so that you can motivate middle management about improvements to make. Things that are hard to deduce into measurable facts usually originates from difference in taste/style rather than quality (there are boooks to read about this subject). The answer posted by smacl have good and concrete advice!

If you can deduce your concern into a real disadvantage, then I really do not agree when people say that one have to "accept" situations like this. I've been exposed to this problem more than once, and let me tell you, refactoring is not the solution to the problem. Refactoring only fixes the symptoms.

Accepting a situation like this is the same as saying "bad quality product lines and expensive and frustrating maintenance is something my company can live with". This is ofcourse seldomly the case. However management (i.e. those with the go/no-go on what projects to prioritize) are very often not technically aware of what the problems are, or why development is expensive. They shouldn't have to be for that matter.

That's why you need a development organization with technical leads, chief architects, a good organisational structure and tiered model etc. Experienced software professionals who have seen where the road leads to if you ignore certain aspects of development. It's about changing the "culture" of your team(s).

Either you stick with your company and try to change how you do things from the roots, or you find another place to work and make sure you find out during the interview exactly how they work in every-day development.

Good luck

Answer 14

I recently faced a very similar problem and a friend gave me some advice that helped a great deal. He said: "keep yourself out of it."

What he meant was, that you must communicate the problems because they are real, costly problems with consequences in terms of time and money. But when you do communicate, talk only about the consequences for the organization. Do not mention the consequences to you, because then it just sounds like whining and will be ignored.

For example:

Not keeping yourself out of it:

"The other developers use these obscure, misleading identifiers and then I have to spend hours going over the code trying to discover what they meant. It's taking up a lot of my time."

Keeping yourself out of it:

"It would be very helpful and cost effective to do some refactoring of class and variable names and also establish some coding standards around identifiers. The immediate payoff will be an easier-to-understand codebase for everyone, leading to better productivity. The longer-term payoff will be that later we'll be able to modify the code and fix things faster. If a critical bug is discovered right before a release, an understandable codebase will be really important."

I hope that helps.

Answer 15

Show them their own forgotten code disguised as yours for critique.

• Take an old piece of their code they have forgotten about
• Pretend you wrote it
• Ask them to figure out something with it
• Make sure they point out how bad the code is for whatever reason
• Add your own items. Brainstorm what should be done since it's your fault.
• Let them know you didn't know how to bring it up to offend them, but it's their code.

If they recall that they wrote it, they might catch on..