I Am The User Now

The only programming advice worth taking is the one you'll find on that little strip of wisdom: "IF IT WORKS, DON'T TOUCH IT." Nothing strikes more fear into a developer's heart than having to modify code that's somehow functioning despite violating every principle of software engineering. That magical spaghetti mess held together by duct tape and prayers? Yeah, that's staying exactly as is. The moment you try to "improve" it or "refactor" it, you'll unleash chaos that'll have you explaining to your boss why the entire production system is suddenly speaking Klingon. The unwritten 11th commandment of programming: thou shalt not mess with working code.

That beautiful moment when you hand over your legacy codebase like a soggy cardboard box on a clothesline. "Here's that microservice I built at 3 AM during a production outage. No documentation, just vibes. Good luck figuring out why it crashes every third Tuesday!" Meanwhile you're skipping away to greener pastures while your replacement stares at 5,000 lines of uncommented spaghetti code with variable names like 'temp1' and 'finalFinalREALLYfinal2'. The digital equivalent of leaving a time bomb with a sticky note that says "it works on my machine!"

When your PR shows "-9,953" lines of code and your manager gives you a thumbs up. Nothing says "senior developer" like knowing what code not to write. The most efficient code is the code that doesn't exist. Somewhere a project manager is frantically updating their burndown chart while wondering how to report "negative progress" to stakeholders.

The golden retriever of accountability has arrived. That judgmental stare penetrates right through your soul as you scroll through memes instead of fixing that critical bug from three sprints ago. Dogs can smell fear, treats, and apparently your complete lack of git commits for the day. Close this tab and get back to work before he reports you to the scrum master. Your productivity metrics aren't fooling anyone, especially not this canine code enforcer.

OH. MY. GOD. You thought submitting your PR was the hard part? SWEETIE, NO! 💅 Your code is about to face the FIRING SQUAD of senior developers who've been WAITING ALL DAY to tell you that your variable names are "problematic" and your indentation is a "crime against humanity." That shotgun isn't for show, honey! Your beautiful 3 AM code baby is about to be DISSECTED like a frog in biology class, except the frog is your self-esteem and the scalpel is Chad from Backend who "doesn't understand why anyone would implement it this way." Prepare for comments so passive-aggressive they could power a small nation!

The most profound truth in software development, delivered with zero lies detected. That "quick fix" you implemented on Friday with plans to refactor on Monday? Congratulations, it's now running critical infrastructure for the next decade. The irony is exquisite - we write documentation for our "temporary" hacks more detailed than our actual architecture because deep down we know that duct-taped monstrosity will outlive us all. Future developers will build religions around your commented "TODO: fix this properly later" from 2015.