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This is going nowhere. You have more time to argue than I have a desire to be here. Tootles.
Jeremy Falcon
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Hello? You're the one that started arguing with *me*. I'm simply defending my position.
Not only that, you couldn't keep it to debate, and had to insult my professional abilities and experience.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Nope. Wrong.
And a senior should know better.
Jeremy Falcon
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That doesn't even make any sense. You're seriously arguing that I'm the one that started arguing with you? 
Okay man. Get on with your life.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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You're not stopping with the replies... you can have the last word if arguing online is that important to you.
Jeremy Falcon
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At this point I think you're here to troll. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: If comments get stale, that's not the fault of comments but the developer.
The same with code.
In the PLC world it is a wide extended practice to just add a "AND 0" at the beginning of a code segment to anulate it. That's even worst than commenting it out, because it appears in the cross references as well, commented code doesn't.
I once refactored a program of the "Senior" that taught me whe I started, because it was a PITA to work with it.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: The same with code.
100% agree.
Nelek wrote: In the PLC world it is a wide extended practice to just add a "AND 0" at the beginning of a code segment to anulate it. That's even worst than commenting it out, because it appears in the cross references as well, commented code doesn't.
Nelek wrote: I once refactored a program of the "Senior" that taught me whe I started, because it was a PITA to work with it.
For sure man. Not a big fan of titles and there are some that are "senior" but for them it really means they just spent more years not really learning. Buyer beware. Gotta find the good ones.
Jeremy Falcon
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Also, and I repeat, code should be self-documenting as much as possible for the most part. But, the context of this entire chat is about crap code. This is completely contradictory to the subject at hand for the conversation you started.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Also, and I repeat, code should be self-documenting as much as possible for the most part
I said the same thing in my post. In fact it was a fundamental part of my position.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Self documenting code is ofcource the best. That is if it's really documenting in a fashion that anyone can understand. To achieve that means lots of time spent on clever naming.
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If your diagrams are riddled with:
honey the codewitch wrote: so many conditions around state changes and such
then, how can you trust the accuracy of them diagramz?
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Because as complicated as they are, the flows are coherent.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Interesting. If there is no maintainability argument against spaghetti, then the only argument against it is that spaghetti carries a greater risk of subtle typos. Whereas a generic machine could be "proven" to be correct with a great effort. It is not a clear bet, but I think that I too, would lean towards: pasta.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Regarding the flows, the reason they are complicated is we're dealing with 3 buttons, and on top of that, an e-paper screen with a 3 second refresh.
Buttons must ergo be contextual based on the screen, and transitions between screens must be minimized.
Furthermore, the machine sleeps. When it sleeps it runs just like a hard reset on wakeup, but with a different "wakeup reason" so you use that to determine whether you were awoken vs powered on.
There's a maintenance screen that can be gotten to by holding all 3 buttons for 10 seconds.
Finally, there are inactivity timeouts on each screen, polling intervals for the server CU, and and a watchdog timeout to make sure it doesn't hang.
So like I said, it's coherent - it's just complicated. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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honey the codewitch wrote: The bottom line here is that while we may chase perfect code, and "best practices" that's not always the most effective technique for keeping the lights on.
Knowing why this is a bad idea separates the seniors from those who think they are seniors but are not. Even on the off chance you can make sense of spaghetti, in a year or two it'll be harder if you come back to it. If it's handed off to another dev, it'll be harder.
As an aside, if a rewrite is only $2k, then it sounds like there should be no need for a diagram at all.
But anyway, if it will be used for anything customer facing, there should be some design to the code. Otherwise, don't do it. If it's a personal script that'll never leave your own machine that's fine or maybe even for a prototype/POC. But at the end of the day, people talk about saving time with a poor design simply because they never learned proper design to begin with and time is the number one excuse people use to not do something. It doesn't take much effort to avoid spaghetti despite not having the best stellar design.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 17-May-23 7:54am.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Knowing why this is a bad idea separates the seniors from those who think they are seniors but are not. Even on the off chance you can make sense of spaghetti, in a year or two it'll be harder if you come back to it. If it's handed off to another dev, it'll be harder.
Perhaps I wasn't clear in my original comment, but I tried to be explicit about the low cost of a rewrite.
There is no justification for spending $1000 to possibly save $1000 down the road. It makes no sense.
There's little justification for even spending $500 to again, possibly save $1000 down the road when the downside is that you go dark in terms of client visibility as you're developing the framework in the alternative.
Edit: What we have is a fundamental disagreement, which you're trying to paint as hubris, and that's insulting. I think my contributions here speak for themselves, as well as my extensive history of successful development projects. I wish you'd be a little bit more circumspect about what you write here. It would be nice to keep it civil. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
modified 17-May-23 8:35am.
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honey the codewitch wrote: There is no justification for spending $1000 to possibly save $1000 down the road. It makes no sense.
Despite needing a diagram? Something isn't adding up. Not sure how many people you've employed before but $500-$1K is a joke. Seems that the diagram would take longer than the code according to you. Which makes no sense. People don't diagram something that takes 1-2 days to develop.
honey the codewitch wrote: I wish you'd be a little bit more circumspect about what you write here. It would be nice to keep it civil.
I'm not being uncivil. I'm just challenging you. If saying a senior programmer knows why this is a bad idea is being uncivil in your book, then that's just oversensitivity.
I could also say that always arguing with people (this is where you say you're not) is also being uncivil. But, this is the Internet. Arguing is a way of life here. This is where you say you're just defending your position. And so am I. But, don't make it seem like I'm a bad guy here because I speak of what a senior should know.
But don't worry, this is easily solvable. I'll just stop replying to your click baits.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Despite needing a diagram?
I already have a diagram, which I made the code closely follow.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: Not sure how many people you've employed before but $500-$1K is a joke.
You've maybe never done embedded? Projects don't sprawl when you have kilobytes of RAM and less than 1MB to store your code.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: I'm just challenging you.
I'm sorry but that's false. If you were just challenging me you wouldn't be insinuating things like I think I'm a senior developer when I'm not - that's insulting, and it's nonsense. You should know better.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: I could also say that always arguing with people (this is where you say you're not) is also being uncivil.
There's nothing uncivil about a debate. This is about the statements you made that specifically did not further it.
I stand by what I wrote.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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You're missing the point. Thus, this is going nowhere nor will it. It's just another pointless argument. I'm gonna go live my life now.
Jeremy Falcon
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Solid plan.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: what a senior should know
In general, you are right!
He is just arguing that in his very particular case it's better to break the rules (and by better he means time to deliver and money saved, not technical excellence or performance improvements). Unfortunately, he did not paint the entire picture - only the parts that supported his decision.
Who knows?! Maybe in his very particular case the decision was correct.
Eusebiu
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Sorry buddy, but I disagree. There are different levels of good design and for a one- or two-day job, you are 100% correct in the fact we don't have to go full on SOLID, RAII, etc. But that doesn't mean you don't do the basics of a decent structure that should be ingrained in our subconscious by now - especially if it's for work or pay. No senior should and I'd never hire one twice that thought otherwise.
Also, there are factors that don't add up. If this quick project was so insignificant, there shouldn't have been a diagram in the first place. Nobody in the industry diagrams anything for a one-day job - nobody.
And lastly, if you check out the entire post, you'll notice my points where entirely skipped over too. This whole thread was just clickbait over someone being bored.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: If this quick project was so insignificant, there shouldn't have been a diagram in the first place.
Indeed! The thing is that we don't know the full picture - maybe some PO/BA really wanted to have that flow diagram which got complex over time (no one said it was created at the same time with this 'small' change).
If the project was already a spaghetti code and the change was minimal (one can debate what minimal is, but since a full rewrite would be 2-3 MD ~$1-2k, I would assume just some functions), then it really doesn't make sense to refactor the whole thing (as small as would be) just for that minimal change. It makes sense if new changes/requirements would come but apparently that's not the case. If the client is fine (assuming that one asks it) with the spaghetti code and nothing will be added in the future, then again, doesn't make sense... E.g. think of a security patch/blocker that is dirty, does the job and can be released in 1h - this scenario I completely understand (I would recommend refactoring but if the client doesn't have the budget - which contradicts the 1k-2k rewrite but anyway...  - then it's on the client).
If OP was part of the original team or at least was asked to change something previously and did not inform the client on the structure, then it's on OP.
Eusebiu
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