Saturday, September 26, 2015

Dead Code; Is it Really Harmful?

The answer is YES, and can put you out of business in 45 minutes, like what happened with Knight Capital Group!

Recently, I have been watching uncle Bob explaining his famous SOLID principles, and he mentioned a very interesting case of a bug. The code mistakenly set a flag which enabled the execution of a piece of dead code.

The side effect of this execution is 440 million USD's losses which is 5 times the market value of the company :)

Further read about this case:

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-02/knight-shows-how-to-lose-440-million-in-30-minutes