I see a lot of people writing code in a style my former teacher would kick my butt for...

Why ? is unreadable code the new standard ? is someone affraid a beginner sees what's going on or what ?? these are simplified examples but i've seen for loops that took 5 minutes to decipher, like writing the wole stinky mess in the loop check section..

and_this_Function(){
bla();
morebla();
evenmorebla(); }

is ugly

is it me or

Just because people can program doesn't mean they're good at it. The reason you see (mostly) good code on this forum is because people do it as a hobby/it's their passion. They enjoy doing it / learning about it.

When you see code outside in the real world its mostly shitty. This is because it was written by people who don't give a fuck. They're in it for the money, much like the majority of people in the majority of professions. Not saying this is wrong or anything, but it is as it is.

Another point is that customers who request software do not see the value in quality code. It might take longer to write quality code, but any time updates are needed, the quality code saves a lot of money. But customers do not understand that most of the time. They just want code that works.

However, the code in the OP is just stupid. Clearly anyone that writes that kind of code does not understand how programming works or something. They lack the logic necessary to code in the first place so I doubt they could code anything useful.

In production code, I often see ugly hacks, but I do not see much code like the OP. Most of that code could be commented out without affecting the result.

I guess (hope) that the people at your job writing code like this are not titled programmers. If they are they should be terminated immediately. I understand lazy No F***s coding, but writing code like this yields no benefit. It's longer to write this useless garbage than it is to do it right or even half right.

I've always made it a point of making my code visually nice to look at for my own sake, in case I have to take a break from it and come back to it later. Occasionally, this means defying convention. For instance, instead of:

for (x = 0; x < 10; x++)
{
  for (y = 0; y < 10; y++)
  {
    for (z = 0; z < 10; z++)
    {
      // stuff only happens here
    }
  }
}

I'll do the following instead to save on code space and to make it more obvious that I'm looping through a 3-dimensional set of variables:

for (x = 0; x < 10; x++) for (y = 0; y < 10; y++) for (z = 0; z < 10; z++)
{
  // stuff only happens here
}

This makes it more obvious to me that I'm looping through a 3-dimensional set because all three for loops start on the same line, which to me indicates that they're all looping through the same structure and that the results from one loop do not affect the results of the others. Otherwise, I would go with the normal method.

Also, when I need to call the same function multiple times in a row with different arguments each time, I'll often add unnecessary spacing between each argument for easier reading, such as in a situation like this:

SetValues(0,"The Frist One",100,400,20);
SetValues(1,"Number Two",50,200,185);
SetValues(2,"I Am Third",2000,0,0);
SetValues(3,"This Be the Fourth",250,72,950);
SetValues(4,"Always Fifth",0,600,120);

I'll usually do this for easier reading and editing:

//       ID,"Name"              ,   X,  Y,  Z
SetValues(0,"The Frist One"     , 100,400, 20);
SetValues(1,"Number Two"        ,  50,200,185);
SetValues(2,"I Am Third"        ,2000,  0,  0);
SetValues(3,"This Be the Fourth", 250, 72,950);
SetValues(4,"Always Fifth"      ,   0,600,120);

And yes, I comment my code whenever I do something that's not very clear on its own accord.

I think the best way to get people to code in a more appealing way is to simply code that way oneself and see that others follow your example. I will admit, my code used to be VERY ugly when I was still learning how...

Sometimes, I write ugly code if I'm trying to quickly test if some of my ideas actually work in practice. Prototypes I make in about or even under an hour.

In big projects I however dislike ugly code a lot, to the point I'll just start over again if I messed too many things up, because I can't be bothered cleaning it up. (Might be the reason why I never finish things.)

I've also often noticed that people use a switch statement where they could've just used an array, making the code harder than it should be.

switch(index)
{
    case 0:
        result = 5;
        break;
    case 1:
        result = 8;
        break;
    // and so on
}

// VS
int resultList[] = { 5, 8 };
result = resultList[index];

I also dislike the 'goto is always evil' principle.

'Smart' uses of the ternary operator.

bool isValid()
{
   return (x > 5) ? false : true; // Completely pointless use of the ternary operator
}

// VS

bool isValid()
{
   return x < 5;
   // Or perhaps
   // return (x < 5) == true;
   // Some think it's clearer, I think it's redundant
}

I don't even know what to say about this.

Before I forget, a teacher at my old school attempted to do this (VB.net), with very little success I might add:

myVar & index = 5;

If you don't know, '&' is the string concatenation operator in VB.net
So effectively she was trying to do this:

Dim myVar1, myVar2 As Integer
If index = 1
   myVar1 = 5
If index = 2
   myVar2 = 5

That just showcased a complete lack of understanding the very fundamentals of the programming language she was supposed to teach; I do not understand how incompetent people can be in their profession, yet, somehow manage to keep their jobs.

Yep, I have seen the for(;;) in some code examples in these forums quite a few times and it always bugs me. It just looks ugly.

for(;;)
{
   if (blCondition == true) break;
}

should be..

while(!blCondition) {
   // do stuff
}

or

do {
   // do stuff
} while(!blCondition)

I actually just changed one of my own while(1) loops into a do{}while() loop instead which checks a variable properly in the while() part. It was actually one of the first times I ever used while(1), I had intended it just as a quick hack to test something and almost forgot to properly code it, I don't like code like that normally.

Reading that out loud would be something like "Why the question mark is unreadable code, the new standard question mark is someone afraid. A beginner sees what's going on or what question marks..."

Ugly code is like ugly written text. It doesn't work. Wait... it does, but the ugly written text doesn't.

It's not that ugly code is popular, but that incompetence is plentiful. Most people don't even see code on that level. They only see one thing: does it "work". In my experience, they don't even read it to determine that. They run it. Usually once. As long as it seemed to work then they assert that it's fine! You can even point out blatant vulnerabilities in it and they'll deny them at first.

Kris Asick -
Thanks for your 3(n)-dimensional looping array suggestion, I liked it so much that I intend to adopt it for the future. I have noticed that as I have programmed more and more, I have shifted from a very clean, easily readable with lots of spaces, indents and formatting, etc to trying to cram as much concisely onto a single viewable line as possible. Ideally I would like to get the point where no function is longer than a page/screen of text, but that isn't always feasible or entirely convenient.

They're just habits. Mathematical notation has lots of weird things in it that could be improved too, but it's "carved in stone" by now, and if you won't learn the idiosyncrasies, you're deemed an idiot. Same for the English language.

I use the readable, lots of spaces, indents and formatting style. To compensate, my second monitor is rotated 90 degrees, so I have 1920 pixels of vertical space for code
If a function doesn't fit in a screen then it is too long and needs to be split up.

Only yesterday I wrote while(true);
For me it means that I have a section that is repeated until a return is performed somewhere inside the section. The only logical return point is in the middle of the section. Is this wrong? Should I have to write the section so that it must escape from the do-while section and never returns from inside?

The code went something like this:

string pop_a_word(void)
{
    string hlp = "";
    char letter;
    do
    {
        letter= pop_a_letter();
        if (letter == ' ')
            return hlp;
        hlp = hlp + letter;
    }
    while (true);
}

I do know how to rewrite it, but is it worth it?

Yes. That's how I would have done it. But the question is, is my example with while(true) uglier than those examples? To me, it's kind of ugly to have to write letter = pop_a_letter(); once outside the while block and once inside it. Next thing I might want to do is add something after the pop_a_letter() call, something I don't want to have inside the pop_a_letter() function.

But not only that. My example resembles very well how I think the task is performed. It resembles some pseudo-code-like structure I have. "Pop characters one by one and add them to the string, unless it's a space, in which case you return the string".