Like you, I will sometimes find code I wrote a few months ago and wonder what I was thinking. How could I have ever come up with something so awful?

I think this proves that we learned something during the time we spent not looking at that code. If we didn't do that, we should wonder what we are doing wrong right now.

In a Slashdot interview a while back, David Korn, inventor of the Korn shell, said that he often looks through the code he wrote for the Korn shell about two years ago, wonders what an idiot he was, rips it out, and starts it over again. He's been doing this every few years since he started the project (15-20 years or so).

It at least sets my mind at peace to know that master programmers do this, too :)


In reply to Re: Self-improvement and TMTOWTDI by hardburn
in thread Self-improvement and TMTOWTDI by Tanalis

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.