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Code Pet Peeves: What's Yours?

Welcome to Code Chatter, your go-to series for conversational coding insights. What makes this series of questions different from all the others? Well, truth be told, not much, but they're still thought-provoking and fun. Join us as we explore the coding world, one witty question at a time.

What's your secret 'code pet peeve' that, while not critical, drives you crazy?

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Latest comments (36)

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wraith profile image
Jake Lundberg

I have 3 that really get to me:

  1. inconsistent code formatting. i’m fine adopting different patterns or standards, but that pattern should be consistent throughout the codebase.

  2. when someone says “we’ll circle back and fix this later”…in my experience…no we won’t. unless this is a prototype and the team understands that this code will be thrown away, let’s do it correctly now.

  3. duplicate code. it may be easier for you in the moment to copy a chunk of code to get something working, but it causes so much more pain later. invest a little time now rather having to pay interest on that time later.

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pxlmastrxd profile image
Caleb (pxlmastr)
function curlybracesshouldbelikethis() {

}

function notthis()
{

}
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amarondev profile image
Amar Gupta

👏😁

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drewknab profile image
Drew Knab

Exceptions-as-control-flow, few things get me upset faster.

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kaamkiya profile image
Kaamkiya

No comments, and when (in Python), not all of the import statements are at the top.

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ksolomon profile image
Keith Solomon

It’s code-ish, but I ran into this doing a review with one of our juniors today. She was working on the mobile side of a site, and had the hamburger menu on the left…that’s not a problem. The problem is, the menu opened from the right. It’s so minor as to be pointless, but it drives me crazy to see that…

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nicolus profile image
Nicolus

Well to be fair if the spec she was given didn't specify what the hamburger button was supposed to do, she could have made it randomly open at the top/bottom/left/right and it would have been just as correct 😉

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ksolomon profile image
Keith Solomon

She wasn’t give a spec for it, and I didn’t say anything about it…I suffered in silence… 😂

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taikedz profile image
TaiKedz • Edited

Long, long functions. More than 2 levels of loop nesting. More than 2 levels of conditionals nesting.

Not splitting long functions is like writing an email without paragraphs.

🪓

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thumbone profile image
Bernd Wechner

Line length limit standards predicated on screens narrower than the narrowest screens we have today (not moved with the times). Aka PEP8.

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neilb_92 profile image
Neil B

Upper-case SQL keywords. It looks like someone's crazy uncle sent out another email forward and the illegibility gives me a headache.

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peterwitham profile image
Peter Witham

For me, it's over optimizing code to the point that whilst short and elegant, it is not readable at a glance for those that might not live in the code base every day.