---
title: "A developer's nightmare"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/22/a-developers-nightmare.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/22/a-developers-nightmare.html"
published: "2003-12-22T15:44:00"
updated: "2003-12-22T15:44:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "If you think you are screwed over with the job you are currently doing, think again. Now thank the sweet lord that you don't have to reverse engineer 300 pages of bad C++ code into... COBOL ."
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# A developer's nightmare

By Roy Osherove December 22, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published December 22, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

If you think you are screwed over with the job you are currently doing, think again.

Now thank the sweet lord that you don't have to [reverse engineer 300 pages of bad C++ code into... COBOL](http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sriram/posts/4838.aspx).

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Dec 24, 2003

    ### [Holiday greetings, Gunderloy style](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/24/holiday-greetings-gunderloy-style.html)

- Dec 23, 2003

    ### [About the new .Netweblogs features](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/23/about-the-new-netweblogs-features.html)

- Dec 20, 2003

    ### [Promising Outlook](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/20/promising-outlook.html)

- Dec 19, 2003

    ### [Service announcement: Feedable and Regulator live again, and Norway tips](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/19/service-announcement-feedable-and-regulator-live-again-and-n.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/