I know at my previous job, if I thought too much about the code I wrote (how much money is riding on it, plus the number of people dependent upon it) I would feel like throwing up. Then new management comes on, and they are absolutely scared about every change. My new manager didn’t say as much, but through his actions (like actively rewriting code I wrote), it was clear the mantra was “the smallest change possible” even if the resulting code wasn’t all that great.
In reaction (I mean, besides leaving the company) I made huge structural changes to my blog engine (removed all global variables), and then went on to write a programmer’s calculator in C (and Xlib) without using any version control system what so ever. It felt great after suffering in a climate of programming fear at The Enterprise.
I know at my previous job, if I thought too much about the code I wrote (how much money is riding on it, plus the number of people dependent upon it) I would feel like throwing up. Then new management comes on, and they are absolutely scared about every change. My new manager didn’t say as much, but through his actions (like actively rewriting code I wrote), it was clear the mantra was “the smallest change possible” even if the resulting code wasn’t all that great.
In reaction (I mean, besides leaving the company) I made huge structural changes to my blog engine (removed all global variables), and then went on to write a programmer’s calculator in C (and Xlib) without using any version control system what so ever. It felt great after suffering in a climate of programming fear at The Enterprise.