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Code Extinction

Naturally, there are times when code simply cannot be evolved, times when it needs to be discarded and started over. In nature, we call this extinction, and if you've coded for very long, I'm sure you've seen code that really needed to go the way of the dinosaurs. I once had the misfortune of having to work on a financial software package for a Wall Street-based technology company. The GUI portion of this code was so poorly thrown together that I would find myself looking for ways to get out of even going into the office. It was one of the worst messes I'd ever seen. The original developers thought it was more important to cobble something together quickly in order to impress the nontechnical folk in the company (who didn't know ...