“Personal mountains” heard terrible rumors about one of the other developers; rumors about the quality of their work and their future prospects at the company. Fortunately for Personal Mountains, they never actually had to work with this person.
Unfortunately, that person was fired and the 30,000 lines of code are now the responsibility of Personal Mountains.
Fortunately, it didn’t really 30,000 lines of code.
list.DeleteColumn(61);
list.DeleteColumn(60);
list.DeleteColumn(59);
list.DeleteColumn(58);
list.DeleteColumn(57);
list.DeleteColumn(56);
list.DeleteColumn(55);
list.DeleteColumn(54);
list.DeleteColumn(53);
list.DeleteColumn(52);
list.DeleteColumn(51);
list.DeleteColumn(50);
list.DeleteColumn(49);
list.DeleteColumn(48);
list.DeleteColumn(47);
list.DeleteColumn(46);
list.DeleteColumn(45);
list.DeleteColumn(44);
list.DeleteColumn(43);
list.DeleteColumn(42);
list.DeleteColumn(41);
list.DeleteColumn(40);
list.DeleteColumn(39);
list.DeleteColumn(38);
list.DeleteColumn(37);
list.DeleteColumn(36);
list.DeleteColumn(35);
list.DeleteColumn(34);
list.DeleteColumn(33);
list.DeleteColumn(32);
list.DeleteColumn(31);
list.DeleteColumn(30);
list.DeleteColumn(29);
list.DeleteColumn(28);
list.DeleteColumn(27);
list.DeleteColumn(26);
list.DeleteColumn(25);
list.DeleteColumn(24);
list.DeleteColumn(23);
list.DeleteColumn(22);
list.DeleteColumn(21);
list.DeleteColumn(20);
list.DeleteColumn(19);
list.DeleteColumn(18);
list.DeleteColumn(17);
list.DeleteColumn(16);
list.DeleteColumn(15);
list.DeleteColumn(14);
list.DeleteColumn(13);
list.DeleteColumn(12);
list.DeleteColumn(11);
list.DeleteColumn(10);
list.DeleteColumn(9);
list.DeleteColumn(8);
list.DeleteColumn(7);
list.DeleteColumn(6);
list.DeleteColumn(5);
list.DeleteColumn(4);
list.DeleteColumn(3);
list.DeleteColumn(2);
list.DeleteColumn(1);
list.DeleteColumn(0);
The comments in the code indicated that this was done for “extreme optimization”, which leads me to think that someone heard about loop unwinding and decided to do it everywhere there was a loop, regardless of whether it actually helped performance in any specific case, whether the loop was executed often enough to warrant optimization or understanding whether the compiler might be better able to decide when and where to unwrap the loop.
Within weeks, Personal Mountains was able to reduce the program from 30,000 lines of code to 10,000, with no measurable impact on its behavior or performance.
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