<story><title>Big Ball of Mud (1999)</title><url>http://laputan.org/mud/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>Sometimes a big ball of mud is exactly what’s needed.&lt;p&gt;Undertale has a single giant switch statement thousands of cases long for every line of dialog in the game. There are other stories of how infamously bad the code is. And none of that mattered one bit.&lt;p&gt;Banks are another example. The software is horrible. Everyone knows it. Yet all that’s required is minimally working software that fails rarely enough that the bank can maintain their lock in.&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, being hired to work on a big ball of mud can be pretty chill. The key is for you to be in a stage in your life where you don’t really care about your work beyond meeting professional responsibilities. Big ball of mud codebases are the best for that, because everyone’s there for the same reasons, and the assignments are always easy drudgery. Neither Scottrade nor Thomson Reuters cared too much what I was up to as long as I was there at 9am.&lt;p&gt;It’s soul crushing for people who want to create nice things, or seek meaning in their work, which is partly why I left. But when you just need the money, there’s no substitute.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cogman10</author><text>A nice aspect of big balls of mud is you can plow over small sections to make gardens.  Once you accept that completely dumping the ball of mud is impossible, you can just &amp;quot;do a good turn daily&amp;quot;.  Clean up a little code here, there, everywhere.  Most people working on balls of mud don&amp;#x27;t care that you do this (provided you aren&amp;#x27;t completely rewriting 90% of the system).&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll still have to regularly get dirty, but the petunias you grew over the years form nice memories.</text></comment>
<story><title>Big Ball of Mud (1999)</title><url>http://laputan.org/mud/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>Sometimes a big ball of mud is exactly what’s needed.&lt;p&gt;Undertale has a single giant switch statement thousands of cases long for every line of dialog in the game. There are other stories of how infamously bad the code is. And none of that mattered one bit.&lt;p&gt;Banks are another example. The software is horrible. Everyone knows it. Yet all that’s required is minimally working software that fails rarely enough that the bank can maintain their lock in.&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, being hired to work on a big ball of mud can be pretty chill. The key is for you to be in a stage in your life where you don’t really care about your work beyond meeting professional responsibilities. Big ball of mud codebases are the best for that, because everyone’s there for the same reasons, and the assignments are always easy drudgery. Neither Scottrade nor Thomson Reuters cared too much what I was up to as long as I was there at 9am.&lt;p&gt;It’s soul crushing for people who want to create nice things, or seek meaning in their work, which is partly why I left. But when you just need the money, there’s no substitute.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>One of my first programming gigs was working on a 1970s-vintage, 100KLoC+ FORTRAN IV codebase.&lt;p&gt;All one file.&lt;p&gt;No subroutines.&lt;p&gt;No comments.&lt;p&gt;Three-letter variable names.&lt;p&gt;LOTS of GOTOs.&lt;p&gt;VT-100 300-Baud terminals.&lt;p&gt;Inspired me to never do that to anyone else[0].&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;littlegreenviper.com&amp;#x2F;leaving-a-legacy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;littlegreenviper.com&amp;#x2F;leaving-a-legacy&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>