Legal System as a Perl OS?

OK, you really do have to be a geek to understand this, but that doesn’t make it any less funny:

Our legal code is almost entirely like an entire operating system written in undocumented Perl.

  • There are no hints as to what any part of it is supposed to do and it is written in a language that to most people looks like line noise.
  • Every significant patch is applied by adding an additional Perl module that overrides an existing method in an existing module, replacing all of the code in that method with a complete new copy of the method that is almost identical to the old one but adds or removes a backslash in a single regular expression.
  • The entire core logic was written in a crunch session by a bunch of geeks locked in a room together and forced to design it by committee.
  • The application was a rewrite of another application that never really worked well in the first place.
  • Every function name is chosen explicitly to provoke an emotional response in the developer, e.g. thisFunctionSucks() or callMeNow().

It’s funny because it’s true.

By Keith Survell

Geek, professional programmer, amateur photographer, crazy rabbit guy, only slightly obsessed with cute things.