Michael has a confession. Once upon a time, a very long time ago, he needed to write some JavaScript to serialize data and send it as part of a request. The challenge for Michael is that he didn't actually know JavaScript or what its built in functions could do and the task was already past the deadline by the time it got assigned to him.

function objectPrepareSave()
{
    for(var _a = 0; _a < aEditfields.length; _a++)
    {
        try
        {
            tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', false, aEditfields[_a]);
        }
        catch(err)
        {
        }
    }

    /* Basic Data */
    var _out = "DATA:{";
    _out += 'online="'+escape(getElementById("objOnline").checked)+'"';
    _out += ';;ref="'+escape(getElementById("objRefnum").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;name="'+escape(getElementById("objName").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;parent="'+escape(getElementById("objParent").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;rubric1="'+escape(getElementById("objRubric1").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;rubric2="'+escape(getElementById("objRubric2").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;rubric3="'+escape(getElementById("objRubric3").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;category="'+escape(getElementById("objCat").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;stars="'+escape(getElementById("objStars").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;isle="'+escape(getElementById("objIsle").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;municipio="'+escape(getElementById("objMuni").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;city="'+escape(getElementById("objCity").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;desc="'+escape(getElementById("objDesc").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;sDesc="'+escape(getElementById("objSDesc").value)+'"';
    //_out += ';;extra="'+escape(getElementById("objXtra").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;addition="'+escape(getElementById("objAdd").value)+'"';
    _out += ';;gifs="'+escape(getElementById("objPicList").innerHTML)+'"';
    _out += '}';
   
    /* Detail Data */
    _out += "::DETAILS:{";
    _out += 'null="null"';
   
    var _tbl = getElementById("detailTable");
    for(var _i = 1; _i < (_tbl.rows.length-1); _i++)
    {  
        var _row = _tbl.rows[_i];
        _out += ';;' + (_i - 1) + '="' + escape(_row.cells[1].textContent + ';' + _row.cells[2].lastChild.value) + '"';
    }
   
    _out += '}';
   
    /* Price Data */
   
    _out += '::PRICE:{';
    _out += 'null="null"';
   
    _tbl = getElementById("priceTable");
    for(var _i = 0; _i < _tbl.rows.length; _i++)
    {
        var _row = _tbl.rows[_i];
        if(_row.cells.length == 1)
        {
            _out += ';;' + _i + '="' + escape(_row.cells[0].textContent) + '"';
        }
        else
        {
            _out += ';;' + _i + '="';
            var _o = "";
           
            for(var _h = 0; _h < _row.cells.length; _h++)
            {
                _o += _row.cells[_h].textContent + ';';
            }
            _o = substr(_o, 0, strlen(_o) - 1);
            _out += escape(_o) + '"';
        }
    }
   
    _out += '}';
   
    _out += '::TPL:{';
    _out += 'null="null"';
   
    _tbl = getElementById("tplTable");
    var _index = 0;
    for(var _i = 0; _i < _tbl.rows.length; _i++)
    {
        var _row =_tbl.rows[_i];
        if(_row.cells.length == 1)
        {
            _out += ';;' + _index + '_' + _row.id + '="';
        }
        else
        {
            var _o = '<'+escape(_row.cells[0].textContent)+'>=<';
            if(_row.cells[1].childNodes[0].tagName)
            {
                if(_row.cells[1].childNodes[0].tagName == "INPUT" || _row.cells[1].childNodes[0].tagName == "TEXTAREA")
                {
                    _o += escape(_row.cells[1].childNodes[0].value);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                _o += escape(_row.cells[1].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
            }
           
            _o += '>';
            _out += escape(escape(_o));
        }
        _index++;
    }
   
    _out += '"}';
   
    aEditfields = new Array();
   
    return _out;
}

I've known a surprising number of developers who say, "Why use any higher level abstractions, you can just do this all in C, and the code will be cleaner and easier to read." Sometimes, they're right. Other times… not so much. And then there are the developers who find C too abstract for their tastes, and eschew things like structs.

That's what Renee encountered when inheriting a chat server written in C. I'm guessing it was an IRC server, based on some terminology in the code.

It's a holiday in the US today, so as per tradition, we reach back through the archives. Today is a classic of code generation gone horribly, horribly wrong. Original. --Remy

It’s an old joke that Perl is a “write only language”. Despite some of its issues, back in the early 2000s, Perl was one of the best options out there for scripting languages and rapid-development automation.

Speaking of automation, build automation is really important. Back in the early 2000s, before Maven really caught on, your build automation tool for Java was Ant. Ant, like everything invented in the early 2000s, was driven by an XML scripting tool. Since it was tuned specifically for Java, it had some high-level operations to streamline tasks like generating proxy classes for calling web services based on a supplied WSDL file.

Visual Studio and the .NET languages support a feature known as "regions". Enclosing a block of code between #region SomeName and #endregion creates collapsible regions in the text editor.

It can, in principle, help you organize your code. It does, in practice, make code like this, from Mark, possible.