Fixing others' code

Fixing old code is always a humbling experience. Especially your own.

That's a lie. Fixing other people's old code is a maddening experience that puts you in a stabby mood. At the very least you'd like to punch the programmer in the face repeatedly while screaming "WHY DID YOU DO THAT LIKE THAT WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ARE YOU A COMPLETE IDIOT OR JUST A TOTAL IDIOT?" and showering them with spit. Veins popping out of your neck and forehead. Face going red. The whole spiel.

Your own code though ... that's humbling.

A few weeks ago, closer to a month or two than a fortnight, a project of mine suddenly went offline. I usually don't notice, which is a terrible habit, but I tend to build cool things, being excited for a week or two, then letting them rot and fall offline.

But not this project. This is my crowning glory, the coolest thing I've ever built. That strange cacophony of technologies that sends me an email every few days saying "Hey you, you're doing fine. Keep spending." or "What the fuck are you doing idiot? Your money is vanishing! STAHP!"

It's really neat.

But man is it built out of some truly atrocious code. It started as a Haskell learning experiment over new year's break two years ago and, you know, back then I really thought I was a great engineer.

Last night I almost cried.

The first atrocity committed in the name of hacking was writing the program in two distinct languages for reasons that were weak at best.

I used node.js to drive the main process and talk to API's. runner.js calls other parts of the code, talks to mongodb, and runs the algorithmic Haskell part as a subprocess.

The Haskell and node.js part communicate via mongodb.

I didn't even use a mongodb library. Hacked something together because mongoose - ORM-like mongodb library for node - was too slow for some reason. And I have no idea how Haskell does it. Monads continue to confuse me.

To make matters even more worse, I didn't use any libraries to talk to either Toggl or Toshl. Partly because Toshl only released an official API this summer and other than my half baked attempt from two weeks ago there are no libraries, partly because I don't know why.

The Toshl part is the worst. I fake user interactions to log into their service and export a CSV file with data, then parse it locally.

Yes that includes sending plaintext passwords over https. Yes it also includes saving said password in a file on the server.

Why yes, yes I do use that email/password combination elsewhere.

Wonderful innit?

And don't even get me started on the Toggl implementation. That's what broke by the way. Version 6 of their API was deprecated on September 1st and I just didn't notice.

I know there was a library for Toggl. I even remember using it. But the code I was fixing last night used superagent to make JSON requests manually.

Yes that includes setting Accept: application/json headers and utf8 encoding.

Yup, there also wasn't any abstraction at all. The three API calls were meticulously spelled out. Everything from bits of the URL (https, toggl.com, ...), to specifying the headers every time.

All of that became this function:

var __request = function ( url , query , callback ) { callback = arguments [ arguments . length - 1 ] ; query = typeof query === "function" ? { } : query ; request . get ( { protocol : "https" , hostname : "www.toggl.com" , pathname : url , query : query , auth : require ( "./secrets" ) . toggl_api + ":api_token" , } ) . set ( "Accept-Charset" , "utf-8" ) . set ( "Accept" , "application/json" ) . end ( callback ) ; } ;

Which lets me do this:

var workspaces = function ( callback ) { __request ( "/api/v8/workspaces" , callback ) ; } ;

Much better than essentially having __request function repeated every time.

Had I been using an actively developed library maybe my project wouldn't break. Somebody else would make sure my code still knew how to talk with Toggl by virtue of updating their library.

Alas, I was being an idiot. Alas alas I didn't really fix the situation last night either.

To top it off, the CSV parsing library changed in the newer version so I had to fix that part of my code as well.

And I will never understand why looping through aaaaaall the data for both Toshl and Toggl was a good idea when all I care about are the last three days. Everything else is in mongodb anyway.

Another time maybe. When I once more muster the courage to go fixing my old code.

I just hope I still know enough Haskell to fix the algorithmic part if it ever breaks. No comments. No explanation of the algorithm. D'oh.

Did you enjoy this article? 👎 👍

Published on November 12th, 2013 in Haskell, Languages, Programming, Spaghetti code, Toshl, Uncategorized

Learned something new?

Want to become a high value JavaScript expert? Here's how it works 👇 Leave your email and I'll send you an Interactive Modern JavaScript Cheatsheet 📖right away. After that you'll get thoughtfully written emails every week about React, JavaScript, and your career. Lessons learned over my 20 years in the industry working with companies ranging from tiny startups to Fortune5 behemoths. Start with an interactive cheatsheet 📖 Then get thoughtful letters 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. "Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only email I open from marketers and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌" ~ Ashish Kumar Your Name Your Email Your Address Subscribe & Become an expert 💌 Join over 10,000 engineers just like you already improving their JS careers with my letters, workshops, courses, and talks. ✌️

Have a burning question that you think I can answer? I don't have all of the answers, but I have some! Hit me up on twitter or book a 30min ama for in-depth help.

Ready to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization

Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, modern backend for the frontend engineer.

Ready to learn how it all fits together and build a modern webapp from scratch? Learn how to launch a webapp and make your first 💰 on the side with ServerlessReact.Dev

Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com

By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️