Cruft Sale!

Some real gems here:

First up, a refactored function named CalculateInterest_Old(). It has 300  lines of spaghetti code, 3 levels of nested loops, and 16 single-letter variables all declared at the top of the routine. Ninety percent of the time, this function works every time. Very little value today, but more than worth its weight in sunk costs.

Next up is a three-page report with 57 text boxes carefully arranged to fit neatly inside a pre-printed government report. The text boxes are aligned with pixel-perfect precision. More than a dozen hours were spent printing sample after sample to achieve this level of accuracy. Over the past six years, this report has saved its users hundreds of man-hours. It is flawless in every way. (NOTE: The government changed the formatting of its report; as of two months ago, this version is no longer accepted.)

Hold on to your hats folks! You’re not gonna wanna miss this one! This query includes three inner joins and one left join. It, in turn, serves as a subquery for a Very Important Report’s record source. Or, at least, it did until seventeen months ago. That’s when the requirements of the report changed and this query was copied, marked as a backup, and its clone is now serving in that role. There’s no sign of the old requirements ever coming back, but it's only been seventeen months. You are going to want to keep this one around, “Just in case.”

If you’re still here, you’re in luck. I saved the best for last. It’s not just a form or a report or a function, it’s an entire Access application! And, this is not just one item; it's a whole set.  That’s right, I have here 52 weekly backups of a front-end Access application. For you math wizards out there, that’s an entire year’s worth of work! Imagine there’s a bug in a Very Important Annual Process. With 52 backups of your application, it will be easy to find the bug. First, open the backup from last week. Is it there? Nope. Maybe it’s in the one from the week before. Nope, not there either. That’s OK, you’ll find it eventually. Only 50 more backups to check. This set of Access applications will keep you busy for hours! And it’s so much more fun than proper version control!

As you can see, I’ve got something for everyone.  Don’t be late for the sale. If these items are half as valuable to other people as they are to me, they won't last long.

Actually, never mind. The sale is canceled. I  had a change of heart. I just can’t get rid of any of this stuff. I mean, what if I need it someday?

[whispers] “You ain’t gonna need it…”

Photo by chrissie kremer on Unsplash