I can't program because the code I am using uses old coding styles. Is this normal to programmers? [closed]
- by Renato Dinhani Conceição
I'm in my first real job as programmer, but I can't solve any problems because of the coding style used. The code here:
Does not have comments
Does not have functions (50, 100, 200, 300 or more lines executed in sequence)
Uses a lot of if statements with a lot of paths
Has variables that make no sense (eg.: cf_cfop, CF_Natop, lnom, r_procod)
Uses an old language (Visual FoxPro 8 from 2002), but there are new releases from 2007.
I feel like I have gone back to 1970. Is it normal for a programmer familiar with OOP, clean-code, design patterns, etc. to have trouble with coding in this old-fashion way?
EDIT: All the answers are very good. For my (un)hope, appears that there are a lot of this kind of code bases around the world. A point mentioned to all answers is refactor the code. Yeah, I really like to do it. In my personal project, I always do this, but... I can't refactor the code. Programmers are only allowed to change the files in the task that they are designed for.
Every change in old code must be keep commented in the code (even with Subversion as version control), plus meta informations (date, programmer, task) related to that change (this became a mess, there are code with 3 used lines and 50 old lines commented). I'm thinking that is not only a code problem, but a management of software development problem.
