* * * * *
Wait! How did I end up with legacy code? I never got the memo!
I changed the image [1] on my homepage [2]. Normally, I wouldn't comment on
this, but this time? This time I had to track down a sixteen year old bug in
code I wrote [3] in a language that makes COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented
Language) look terse [4] that manages the non-bloggish part of the website
[5]. All because I broke from twenty-one years of tradition and used a
different image size! (It's a really good picture a friend took and it really
benefits from the non-traditional size)
I had thought the code I wrote would deal with the non-traditional size and
yes, it picked up on the new size, but that size was then used for every self
portrait on the site.
It's also been ten years since I last dealt with the code [6], and even then,
it was just to get it running under a newer version of the language. This
time, I had to figure out what the hell I was doing sixteen years ago. From
various timestamps, I can tell it only took about an hour to track down the
bug and fix it (eight new lines of code, mostly under 140 characters in
length—sigh) but it certainly felt longer.
This is one of those situations where the language is ugly, the solution
aggravating to maintain and yet, it works, and for what I want it's still the
best solution to the problem of maintaining a static website.
Sigh.
Hopefully, I can go another ten years before the next bug manifests itself.
[1]
https://boston.conman.org/people/spc/about/2018/1212.html
[2]
https://boston.conman.org/people/spc/
[3]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2002/10/21.1
[4]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/01/26.1
[5]
https://boston.conman.org/
[6]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2009/04/09.1
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