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Deliberate obfuscation: who needs it?Deliberate obfuscation: who needs it?Posted Apr 10, 2005 1:59 UTC (Sun) by rknop (guest, #66)In reply to: Deliberate obfuscation: who needs it? by hppnq Parent article: Protect Your Source Code: Obfuscation 101 (O'ReillyNet)
...then maybe good code doesn't exist?
To be fair, I have written lots of code, and seen lots of code, that does indeed make sense upon reading. However, that's the exception more often than the rule.
If the algorithm is anything other than straightforward, even a wealth of comments at the beginning still leave you with a reasonable task and some time to understand what code is doing. And, once it's been hacked a couple of times to adapt it for other purposes, it almost certainly won't be good code any more. That's when maybe it makes more sense to start over.
-Rob
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Deliberate obfuscation: who needs it? Posted Apr 10, 2005 10:15 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] However, that's the exception more often than the rule. Agreed! I have written my share of really bad stuff, so I know. ;-) What you're basically saying is that writing a sizeable amount of complicated code does not only demand good enough programming powers (knowledge of algorithms, data structures etc.), but also requires proper maintenance (version control, patch management etc). Not unlike how the Linux kernel is developed. ;-)
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