Don't change my code!

Dear developer peer,

May I bring up a delicate subject? You were offended because I changed code that you had written. You got upset because there was some sense of ownership of the code. You put time and energy into the code. You had to sweat to get the code to do what you wanted it to do. You pressed CTRL+C and CTRL+V six times to get the code in the right place, and write some very funky if statements to get it to work correctly.

All of that was lost to your wailing about lost code is that now TWO people have had to spend time trying to understand what the code does. Your time and mine. I needed to alter the behavior of your code in some minor way, but before I could do that I had to go through and figure out the twisted logic. What gets lost is that I am offended when I find in your code of 60 lines of nested ifs (4 deep). I am offended when after spending 45 minutes trying to understand the intent, I can, in 10 minutes, convert said atrocity to 20 lines and 1 if.

You yelled at me because I wanted the code to be "my way". And that "there is more than one right way". But when your way is 9 if statements and mine is 1 then, well, I don't feel bad. I changed your code because I was offended. I never got a chance to tell you that because you were so pissed, so, now, 10 hours later, I am telling you. If you don't want me to change your code, then write clean code that doesn't offend me. Write code that doesn't offend the compiler. Write code that won't put the CPUs at 100% for 25 seconds. Write code that lets the database limit the dataset instead of returning everything and then looping through it to discard what isn't needed. And for sanity's sake, don't have the exact same code copy and pasted six times in the same method/function.

And don't take this as me thinking that my code is great. I know my code sucks. I look at the code of other developers that I know are smarter than me and try to mimic their style. I try to improve my code every day. The difference between you and me is that I know my code can be improved and would love it if someone came in and showed me how.