Yes, and so can most experienced developers. In fact unmaintainable human-written code is more often caused by organisational dysfunctions than by lack of individual competence.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 102 points 5 days ago (1 children)

In my experience there’s usually a confluence of individual and institutional failures.

It usually goes like this.

hotshot developers is hired at company with crappy software
hotshot dev pitches a complete rewrite that will solve all issues
complete rewrite is rejected
hotshot dev shoehorns a new architecture and trendy dependencies into the old codebase
hotshot new dev leaves
software is more complex, inconsistent, and still crappy

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

That's one of the failure modes, good orgs would have design and review processes to stop it.

There are other classics like arbitrary deadlines, conflicting and shifting requirements and product direction, perverse incentives, etc.

I would even say that the AI craze is a result of the latter.

[–] PapstJL4U@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Yeah, certain code developed organically (aka shifting demands). Devs know the code gets worse, but either by time or money they don't have the option to review and redo code.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

Yes. But the important thing is that now disfunctional organizations have access to tools to write unmaintainable code really fast.

[–] jardee@ohpossum.ooo 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not in my case. I dont write spaghetti code, i write fettuchini code

[–] kindnesskills@literature.cafe 1 points 3 days ago

I want to write gnocchi code, where each little nugget is good on its own and they still blend together perfectly in the sauce. But I still end up with mashed potato-code if I don't watch myself.

[–] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Every bad decision in my code bases were because I didn't have enough time to do things the right way