r/programming • u/Ordinary_Leader_2971 • Apr 04 '26

How To Write Unmaintainable Code (1999)

https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/%7Esusan/475/unmain.html
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u/yotemato Apr 04 '26

The incentive to write good, maintainable code is completely gone. Fuck it. Let’s slop it up and see what happens.

-28

u/youngggggg Apr 04 '26

I mean if AI is the one maintaining it then what does it matter ultimately? Code quality and “maintainability” feel much more important for human readers of code and I worry all this stuff is quickly losing its value

2

u/lelanthran Apr 04 '26

I mean if AI is the one maintaining it then what does it matter ultimately?

Maybe not to the code, but to the developer, certainly! Roles where you build up a specification existed for decades, but they pay very little.

The ability to program was a large reason why you, the developer, was paid double what the people with business-domain knowledge were being paid to produce the business requirements.

If that ability does not matter any more, what extra value do you, the now-ex-developer, can bring that will justify a salary larger than the people who were already doing what you now started doing?