Share the most embarrassing code you've ever written

I saw this post today and it took me back to my only CS class which was taught using Java. I'll post my embarrassing final project below 🙈

Java turns 28

Sendil Kumar ・ May 25

#watercooler

No judgment: share the most embarrassing code you've ever written!

Cover image via Unsplash

Comments

[Ben Halpern]

I write open source code, so all my shame is public

[Rense Bakker]

Its not so much a piece of code itself, but my most embarrassing moment was when I got called behind the pc of a team mate and he showed me that his password was visible in localstorage, because the login I implemented put it there... I put the credentials instead of the token in localstorage and then I messed up further, by adding the password to the token which isn't private either, just slightly harder to decode 🤦 in the end I did it right, but that was a painful way to learn 😅

[Sendil Kumar]

@peter Are you implying that post had some embarrassing code? ;)

[Matt Eland]

I don't have it because I don't own that code (a former employer does), but I had a commit that I later had to fix in production with the comment "The only explanation I have for this past code is that I was coding on painkillers at the time". I can't recall the specifics of what the code was, but I still remember the message of the fix commit.

[Jarrod Roberson]

The first EJB 1.0 code that I wrote trying to figure out what the hell it was supposed to be useful for and why it existed.

For the record, it was useful for and existed only for billing lots and lots of hours as a consultant ...

[cloutierjo]

Can't reproduce exactly but goes like this (pseudo code):

Enum step: a; b; c;

For value in step{
    Switch (value){
        Case a:
             // Do something
             Break;
        Case b:
             // Do something
             Break;
        Case c:
             // Do something
             Break;
        Default:
             // Do something that won't ever happen
    }
}

Took me a while to understand that in the end it was just procedural code and no enum, switch or for loop were required. (Ps it was probably a 200 lines function! Which in itself is embarrassing)

[Randall]

Most of my most embarrassing code is lost to the sands of time.

But when I was a huge n00b at frontend stuff, one of my first projects was a web game for practicing Japanese kanji readings, and it was disgusting. Not only did I suck at CSS, I sucked really bad even just at coordinating colors too.

It got reviewed here and you can see some screenshots. Just hideous, I cringe to see it now.

I am still bad at frontend, but not as bad. I have polished this project up a bit since and it's far from amazing but I'm no longer ashamed of it :)

[Thomas Rigby]

tbh I've seen worse design from "professional web designers" 🤷‍♀️

[Stuart]

Cursing Css for an hour before I turned my monitor brightness up...