I will admit to writing code for a major company (in the top 100 of Fortune 500) that ran behind Excel. It was ugly when it was given to me and it was about the least ugly it could be when i turned it back over to them for the fact that it was still written behind Excel.
The code was completely independent and self-sufficient in that it could check itself against a network copy of the code and update itself should the dates not match. It read in information from a DB2 backend, interacted with a 2nd program controlling window events and sending keystrokes and did everything that would make you cringe.
At the end of the day, the new program was 3x as fast as it was before, and had all the "features" added above that they needed in it. And i was very scared of my future and any dealings i might have to do with the company.
The scariest part was that for the period of time they were using the code before i updated it, it was obsolete and producing improper numbers. Which they would alter by hand and did not always match what the corrected output was supposed to be. The other scary part is that they were using a lot more than just the one program.
A friend of mine just recently started doing the job i left and he has seen and understands the scariness. He will try to make his dent and eventually leave as well.
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Just putting in my "yes it happens experience."
I will admit to writing code for a major company (in the top 100 of Fortune 500) that ran behind Excel. It was ugly when it was given to me and it was about the least ugly it could be when i turned it back over to them for the fact that it was still written behind Excel.
The code was completely independent and self-sufficient in that it could check itself against a network copy of the code and update itself should the dates not match. It read in information from a DB2 backend, interacted with a 2nd program controlling window events and sending keystrokes and did everything that would make you cringe.
At the end of the day, the new program was 3x as fast as it was before, and had all the "features" added above that they needed in it. And i was very scared of my future and any dealings i might have to do with the company.
The scariest part was that for the period of time they were using the code before i updated it, it was obsolete and producing improper numbers. Which they would alter by hand and did not always match what the corrected output was supposed to be. The other scary part is that they were using a lot more than just the one program.
A friend of mine just recently started doing the job i left and he has seen and understands the scariness. He will try to make his dent and eventually leave as well.
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