So we all make fun of yanderedev's bad code but apparently Terry Cavanaugh just released the source code for VVVVVV and it's making people go blind with despair

300+ case switch statements

This is like, a C++ port of Flash code that was half-assed to begin with

Some of it generated by custom tools that no longer work

this reminds me of the time toby fox tweeted a bit of undertale code or something and it was apparently a nightmare

this is only confirming my belief that all functioning code is actually a nightmare mess. neat, logical code is an unrealistic fantasy, no functional game or application can exist with any semblance of it

i really enjoy terry cavanagh deriving power from it

it's the Inertia Paradox

there often comes a time during the creation of a piece of code where the developer discovers that something that was perfectly fine when it started has now become poor code for handling what it does

given the choice between what is usually rewriting large chunks of code in order to better optimize or continuing to use the hellcode, developers (who by this point in the code have burned through their initial Fresh Project optimism) fall to inertia and leave it alone

often with the self justification that they'll "fix it later"

(there is no later there is only The Debug Phase)

in software dev, 'later' is synonymous with 'never'

it's less that logical functional code can't work and more that devs who can work entirely in logical functional code that works are mysterious dream-beings spoken of in coding class myths

in reality we're too tired for that

clean code can only exist if you know every single requirement of the project in advance and there are NO surprises

neither of these are ever true