Today I Learned - Rocky Kev

TIL about the 11,000 line file

POSTED ON:

TAGS: devstory cleancode horror

On a freelance project, I remember a functions.php file that was over 2,400 lines long. It was the longest code I ever experience in a single file.

Then, at work, I discovered a core project file that is almost 4,000 lines of code. Code flowed from top to bottom. I thought this is what nightmares are made from.

But then I stumbled on this story.

Oh, the horror.

It was a single code file with over 11,000 lines of VBScript.

Countless people had made changes to this file over the years. But they did not appear to be software developers. Their roles ranged from IT support to business analyst. I'm shocked at how little value the project was given considering how many employees used these forms each day.

It looked like the entire file would execute through from top to bottom, although I never actually confirmed it. The code followed a rough pattern of fetch some data about the user, check if some conditions are met, then do some action which repeated a thousand or so times.

There was no version control. The only context about code changes was in the bug tracker and in the code comments, though I learned the hard way to not trust those.

Read the full story here: The project with a single 11,000-line code file

Related TILs

Tagged: devstory

TIL how a game developer's obsession with karaoke paid off

Initially, he says coworkers criticized him for going too far with the minigame – at the time, it was uncharacteristic to have the generally-stoic protagonist, Kiryu, doing something so goofy. But his instincts proved correct; it became one of the most popular features in the Yakuza series and went a long way in humanizing Kiryu.

TIL being a old developer

Every inspirational, blue-sky, brainstorming meeting or demo session has a person that keeps disrupting the flow. A battle-hardened, highly experienced developer with lots of memories of how things failed in the past. A person who a lot of people look up to and whose input counts as important. The even bigger problem is that this grumpy old person lives inside my head.

TIL about the 11,000 line file

At work, I discovered a core project file that is almost 4,000 lines of code. Code flowed from top to bottom. I thought this is what nightmares are made from.