It's the little things

So I have only been on this job a month and I am already disappointed with my predecessor. I use an application called SAS and I have to use this code she, and her predecessor, wrote to manipulate data. She's been doing this for 5 years, so the code should be in fairly good shape, right?

Not only have the programs been poorly written, with no comments what-so-ever, (and mind you , I am no expert with this code. I have had one semester of SAS, so it's not like I know all that much.) but there are mistakes, wrong values, forgotten things, and mispellings. Now I can understand how, you write code, it works for years, you don't think about going to check it on a regular basis so some of the missing stuff is sloppy but understandable. Or you don't know sas all that well, so you do what you can (all of my first programs were sloppy), but the mispellings?? I mean, if I am looking at reports that say teanus instead of tetanus, or incease instead of increase for 5 years, don't you think that I would have noticed that there was something wrong?? It just looks bad, especially since these reports are sent out to our contractors every month or two. I mean, it just makes my group look unprofessional. So we don't catch every single mistake, yea, it's bad programming... but it's the little things that just piss me off.

Now don't mistake me, I am upset about the other things to. There have been so many things that I feel like I need to correct to get this done right. It's like no one actually looked at the reports to make sure they match up with what the database says. Just look at it once, to make sure all is okay, and someone would have seen some of these problems. luckily I was able to fix a lot using what are called arrays (if I have many variables that I need to do the same things to, I can just tell the computer what I do to one, I do to all. That way i don't have to code everything for all variables), but still, this lack of basic understanding and checks bothers me.

But I really shouldn't complain... I am busy now and will be for a few months, once I re-write everything, create a tracking database, and do all sorts of wonderful stuff to make this whole thing work. Yeaaaa. No one's going to fire me anytime soon (which is good, because I locked in the loan for the condo today....1 month to go. :-) )