I worked at a firm once that had a cronjob that restarted 70+ instances of the same component.
The line was essentially a collection of:
restart instance_N &; restart instance_N+1&;
etc
I always assumed that the way you got to 70+ was:
- write the first restart for instance N=1
- add another restart
- keep doing this till you get to about 5-8 restart commands
- AT THIS POINT someone should say "Hey, we should make this a script or something else" BUT CRUCIALLY that didn't happen
- you keep adding restarts till you get to 20+
- Now, doing anything to that giant line other than adding a new restart feels too dangerous so you decide to just keep adding restarts.
Moral of the story: the ball of mud usually doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It appears b/c there were multiple steps were someone didn't say "hey, maybe we should..." (or they said it and no one listened).
The line was essentially a collection of:
etcI always assumed that the way you got to 70+ was:
- write the first restart for instance N=1
- add another restart
- keep doing this till you get to about 5-8 restart commands
- AT THIS POINT someone should say "Hey, we should make this a script or something else" BUT CRUCIALLY that didn't happen
- you keep adding restarts till you get to 20+
- Now, doing anything to that giant line other than adding a new restart feels too dangerous so you decide to just keep adding restarts.
Moral of the story: the ball of mud usually doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It appears b/c there were multiple steps were someone didn't say "hey, maybe we should..." (or they said it and no one listened).