I have been one of the toxic persons in a workplace. I was young and immature and an ungrateful arrogant prick. Not saying I'm totally reformed now (I still have my moments!). But every so often I see a little former-me running around. After a certain point I stop them and ask them to please calm the fuck down, because they are acting fucking nuts. That can sometimes result in a 180-degree behavior change (especially after a manager has already talked to them) because they usually don't want to get fired. I can't "fix" them, but I can give them the benefit of the doubt that they may want to be better, and may just need a nudge now and then to re-adjust.

Move to the east coast! We waste water like it's water.

> Is it ok to have if clauses that will basically never be run?

Yep.

> But when I thought about it more: should it be improved?

Nope.

If you are an average programmer, you should write your code first to be legible and maintainable.

If you are a smart programmer, you should add performance tests to your test suite (since you need to do performance testing anyway for any production-critical code) and run your app on the appropriate-sized machine.

If you are a very smart programmer, you should rely on performance hacks when your application no longer meets performance requirements under heavy load.

If you are a freaking genius, you should think about optimizing your code.

I never thought I'd say this, but: Thank you, Microsoft, for making useful, user-friendly software.

Make a company that does not suck to work for.

A lot of companies talk big about wanting to make their company "a great place to work". They talk about benefits, about inclusion, about a lot of ancillary things other than the work.

But when you start working on work, you find out there's a hornet's nest of beaurocracy, of office politics, departments run by finance rather than commitment to executing business needs effectively, lack of training, lack of industry standards, a sprawl of independent redundant silos, and a lot of people who seem to have no idea what the hell is going on. And of course they'll put you on-call 24/7 and force you to work overtime to meet unrealistic deadlines, without extra pay.

Most companies I've worked for, all of the engineers have known how shitty things are, and they've known how to fix it all. They tell their line-managers, and the line managers tell the middle managers, and the middle managers don't tell the executives. Everything stays shitty because the engineers are the ones who have to deal with the shit and can't do anything about it.

A contractor only has to deal with that shit in small bursts and can produce good work that somebody else can deal with actually running. It's the best way to avoid the long-term nightmare of working in shitty permanent roles. And the pay is better. And you can take a vacation!