Introducing Bad Code Offsets

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Introducing-Bad-Code-Offsets.aspx

by phsr • 17 years ago

33 11 17 years ago

mquander3• 17 years ago

The dollars you spend purchasing Bad Code Offsets are donated to various worthy Open Source initiatives that are carrying the fight against bad code on a daily basis. These organizations currently include jQuery, PostgreSQL, and The Apache Software Foundation.

Very clever! In my grand naivete I assumed that my $.50 would go toward actually cleaning up bad code, but instead, it decreases the relative impact of my bad code by producing more bad code, which will help distract from mine.

mru• 17 years ago

Clever indeed. Does that mean I can offset my carbon emissions by buying some shares in a coal power station?

mquander3• 17 years ago

Sure, you can buy shares in various worthy clean coal stations, which, of course, are carrying the fight against global warming on a daily basis.

davidw• 17 years ago

Reminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Abuses

fsniper• 17 years ago

Is this some kind of joke? Or they are for real? Funding floss by paying for not feeling guilty writing bad code? Strange idea...

steveklabnik• 17 years ago

It's social commentary of Carbon Offsets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset

Mark_B• 17 years ago

Pretty much! :-)

Also, I can confirm that the whole thing is indeed completely legit. The Open Source projects listed really are benefited from the proceeds and in return you get bad code offset cards in the mail.

Robin_Message• 17 years ago

This reminds me of http://www.cheatneutral.com/

I'd say both of these parodies show why carbon offsetting doesn't really work.

---

When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.

Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.

Can I offset all my cheating? Well, first you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you've done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.

maurycy• 17 years ago

http://codeoffsets.com/

Also, I think that the idea is not that stupid. Bad code have many (business also) consequences and I can imagine a savvy company that punishes teams for poorly written code with similar mechanism.

For instance, let's say that team has $100k bonus budget for a year. Every poorly written SLOC means $1, or $10, less in a budget because the company has to spend this money on QA or customer service.

Of course, what's really complicated is how to measure poorly written code (cyclomatic complexity, length of methods etc. basic metrics?), and how to adjust it to the deadlines.

Introducing Bad Code Offsets

Related Stories