Purposely Obtuse Code

[HisVirusness]

With web design, you always want to make sure the code is efficient, light and easy to read.  But sometimes, it's fun to do the exact opposite: writing code that's messy, terribly optimized, yet still works as intended.

On my website, one page's backend code is unnecessarily ridiculous, but you'd never know it because the output HTML isn't out of the ordinary for the rest of the site.  And there's no reason for it to be that ridiculous, outside of my own enjoyment.

Anybody else do something similar?

[fairyrune]

there's a certain something about the way that different people write code; it's like handwriting. to some degree i understand the need for optimisation as code makes up so much of our modern world, especially very vital parts like healthcare and finance...

but i think that can coexist with the small web, and a desire to create code that's interesting and funny to look at!

it reminds me of how people approach things like dwarf fortress. for some the goal is to survive as long as possible, and optimising your strategies is valuable. however, part of the joy of a game like that is that it allows you to do some very funny things - even if they are fatal to your fort. seeing those systems interact is pleasurable in its own way, not just getting to the "end".

or how kids engage with art - they create in really odd ways, because they haven't been taught the socially acceptable methods. one of the most common ways to get out of art block is to essentially scribble with a multitude of mediums. it's play!

on the other hand... if the end user is unaffected, one page of spaghetti code for the fun of it is probably not going to have an impact. but i can imagine that with the small web's tendency to reference other people's pages for code learning, it may have an unintended effect!!

[Dan Q]

Anybody else do something similar?

100%.

Hit "View Source" (not Inspect Element/F12) on any page on DanQ.me and you'll see something (I think is) beautiful: a cascade of properly-indented, consistently-named, highly-readable HTML code with no missing closures etc.

Who's that for? Basically nobody: who uses "View Source" anyway? But it's important to me that my front-end - which to me includes my HTML source code, my URL structure, and so on! - is properly presented.

But if you were to see the backend code that produces that? Talk about spaghetti! Confusing comments, badly-named functions, includes from all over the filesystem, code in multiple different server-side languages all chattering away to one another via temporary files and shared database tables and all manner of antipatterns. 'Cos that's my bit.

It's like how I keep my living room tidy (in case I have a guest!) but my office is a pigsty, I guess!