----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <
davezelt@attbi.com>
> You can learn a lot from bad writing also - even if
you're not
> consciously aware of it. My first job out of school
I had to support and
> enhance the most godawful piece of code you could
ever imagine. This was
> 6800 assembly code, the source listings stacked up
were about 5 feet
> high, and not a comment anywhere. There was no
effort in the design to
> make the code extensible or capable of debugging.
And of course any
> attempt at simplicity was ignored - the orginal
developers strived for
> the most complex methods possible. I got all my gray
hair at about 22
> trying to work with that code, but I learned a lot
about how not to
> write software, how important it is to focus on
simplicity and on
> building code that can be extended and debugged. As
awful an experience
> as it was working on that code, it was probably the
best experience I
> could've had to help me understand what not to
do.
>
> I guess this was a longwinded (and probably
uninteresting to anyone
> outside of software development) example of how
sometimes you can learn
> the most from bad stuff. And to some degree I think
you're influenced by
> everything you read. It may not change your voice,
but you may pick up
> different ways (or not)of plotting, of (or not)
shifting scenes, etc.
My problem, I guess, is that I'm unlikely to read very much
of a book that I consider badly written.
Al
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