Ironically these types of tickets are kinda my ADD superpower. I hyperfocus on understanding the entire flow until I fully understand every possible way the bug could occur, then fix it.

It’s when I’m trying to plan something from the ground up that the writer’s block hits me and I fall into procrastination and infinite rabbit holes till pressure is applied externally.

The last task I got from my boss had a Jira ticket headed with “THIS CODE IS BAD. FIX IT BUT DO NOT REFACTOR IT”.

Yeah, I have a reputation.

But it would be better if my coworkers didn’t write garbage.

Others have covered this well. From my experience (35 years), most “developers” write stream of thought code. It reflects how their brains process, without regard to others. When I have agency, I can steadily refactor the code to reduce indirection, nested if.then, etc. When I don’t, I’m in danger of being too slow in completing the work. Just lost my job for that reason while working with a 1000 line service entry method with a cyclomatic complexity of 310 and 34 class parameters. Coupled with being the acceptance tester as well, it makes it near impossible to succeed.

For extremely complicated code I used to create simple diagram sketches that illustrated the dependencies. It acted as a series of bookmarks to help keep my place. I think I have a smaller “working space” in my mind than non ADHD programmers. I think they can keep all that complexity in their mind at once while I cannot.

In a way, I turn that into an asset by writing code that I can reason about, which by definition requires it to be SOLID, and with minimal responsibility per function.

Lately, I’ve been using AI to generate sequence and class diagrams of the code to act as a high-level view of what’s going on. Major time saver.

Hello there, I’m a senior level dev former manager specialized in database shit.

It can absolutely be difficult to trace complex misleading function calls but part of the emphasis in coding should be readability and expressiveness (personally my opinion is that the highest cost in software development is maintenance and difficult to comprehend code multiplies this cost). If something is so complicated that, while it’s being written, it can’t be comprehended then that’d be a huge red flag for me and I’d likely leave comments on the review asking for the code to be better labeled (either better variable/function names, comments, clearer division of class/module responsibility) and refactored. This may not be possible pushback to give in your organization (which would be a big company red flag) but if you have difficulty comprehending it now you’ll have a lot of difficulty in the middle of an incident.

For me personally, I “trust” code labeling to help minimize the scope I need to keep in my head at any given time. If there’s a call out to saveFileToS3() I won’t inspect it now, I’ll just trust it does what it says on the tin and keep my scope limited to the current change set to comprehend that. Later on in the review when I reach the definition of saveFileToS3() if it does anything sneaky, doesn’t do anything necessary to that logical operation (like maybe the file is initially marked private and a second call is needed to mark the file as accessible) then I’ll flag that. Code factorization is a tool for clarity and you should rely on and reinforce it - and if you are trusting ot you should verify that.

It sorta sounds like your company may be drastically underinvesting in code maintenance (everyone under invests but there is a reasonable amount of investment to demand) though, that’s a red flag for me and may mean it’ll be difficult for you to function in that environment.

I’m an admin not a dev, but when writing complex scripts, I found using a whiteboard essential to lay out high level workflows.

I am in a similar boat in career. I lead a small team of data engineers and do more code review now than code writing. For me, yes the meds help. They keep the tracks for my train of thought from disappearing. It stops my brain from having the context switching problems. The brain fog clears and I can actually think straight.

I’m on methylphenidate (36mg ER), but different meds work for different brains. Your experience may vary. Caffeine also affects us differently, helping us focus instead of keeping us hyper. I’ve heard it also helps convey some of the meds for more effective delivery.

I find note taking along the way with AI-assisted code summaries help too, but those don’t help my context switching difficulty.

Edit: I’d also add, schedule management REALLY helps. Avoid 30 minute back to back meetings with different themes if possible. Give your brain downtime after a meeting to chill and think. After 3-4 meetings of different concepts, my brain can’t handle anything, even with meds. This causes burnout more quickly than anything I experience.

I don’t write code, except for some sql queries used for verification, but do have an understanding of code and have reviewed code with developers when trying to ensure it functions as intended. Have adhd and while I often get praise for being able to understand and convey complex functionality and software concepts, the ever changing code bases is intimidating and keeps me from diving into actual development.

One thing that really helps with reviewing older, especially nested, code is drawing out a simple flowchart. Well, simple unless there is some kind of spaghetti logic that makes it complicated, but frequently just drawing out a loop or indicating when something is changing in the middle of the process can identify where the problem is in a way that is far easier than breakpoints.

I also have some level of aphantasia so I can’t visualize a workflow that I didn’t create, which could be a part of why this works for me, but using it to explain where the code is failing is a lot easier too when you can point at something and say “when the person resets to this step then x, y, and z are reset correctly but when a reviewer resets to that point it is only resetting x and z” because that step needed x, y, and z to be in a particular state.

I personally doubt many people are good at this, ADHD or not. Anyway, logging is the best way for me to “see” what’s going on. If you can output the name of the functions when they are called, you can see the order of what’s happening. Then, hone in on certain areas and add more landmark output statements to show major steps and intermediate results until you locate the problem.

Meds can help the focus required to stick with this tedious process. Logging is a great tool, and even better if you take the time to make it configurable.

I find a nonlinear note taking app like Obsidian or Logseq to be helpful when I need to organize large amounts of information. Links and tags make it easy to traverse large amounts of data quickly, and since I link and tag however tf I want, I can usually follow my own thought process to rethink something if I have to.

Hi, I am a newbie coder who works on open source projects as a hobby. I usually take notes or draw diagrams of how do the things work.

I have ADHD and in software engineering. I was also diagnosed recently… around a year ago. Disclaimer: I have around 20 years of experience.

Since I take my medicine I notice that I am way more precise than before and that I am not rushing things anymore. It’s absolutely insane how many sloppy mistakes I made before and how much my code quality improved overall. I am now deeply ashamed how much of a pain in the ass for my colleagues I must have been before :p

Anyway: What makes the difference for me: taking the time to think about proper solutions. Let some problems rest for a day and reevaluate the things I made the day before, before review, merge or deployments.

Back to your original problem: legacy code like that is probably hard for everyone but it makes a difference in what pace (or patience!) you are doing your work. I think medication can help you with that :)

I have a suspicion that a lot of people, when faced with this problem, just say “Sure, looks good to me. It’s legacy, so it’s been working forever,” and carry on with their day.

But - I could be mistaken.

I’m a fairly early career dev, my job doesn’t really give me a lot of opportunity to write new code, instead I spend most of my time updating other people’s code, much of which is a legacy rat’s nest. Most of my time on a given story is spent trying to understand the code I’m given, and as I’m reading it I often feel like my eyes start drifting apart, it’s really hard to focus on it and understand the meaning.

The two most helpful things I’ve found are a) diagramming everything out. For that I have a big white board next to my desk, like 15 scattered notebooks and a tablet for onenote. b) my medication.

I was put on Ritalin about a year and a half ago, and (when I remember to take it) the difference is night and day. I wouldn’t say the medication makes the work easier, but it does make me feel motivated to do it and be less distracted even though it’s not work I necessarily want to be doing.

I do feel I should mention since you mentioned having some anxiety issues on other medication that I can end up with the save issue, but I’ve noticed that it only happens if I didn’t eat before taking it, or take it too late in the day to where it’s still fully in effect after I’m done working.

I also absolutely feel you on wanting to refactor everything that doesn’t make sense - it would make life so much easier, but I’m not allowed to do it -_-.

Skim the book, “working effectively with legacy code”. In a nutshell, you write characterization tests around the module or method, then do safe IDE based refactorings, then do some slightly more significant refactorings. After that the code should make enough sense for you to make changes if you need to.

It is as much in art as a science. The important thing is that as you are doing refactorings, the main one you do is to extract methods, and give the methods clear names that say what they are doing. You should be left with a top-level method that reads like a narrative of what the whole thing does.

Medication helps me quite a bit. I am also using Atomoxetine. The effect is much more subtle than stimulants, but I think just as powerful in the long run.

I feel this as a mid level dev of 3 years lmao. Maybe straight up ask your supervisors for feedback but im sure some of your thoughts are imposter syndrome rather than genuine poor performance.

If you’re working on a legacy codebase it might even be worth using that knowledge to lobby for technical debt sprints to actually deal with the issues you’re running into. I don’t believe for a second that it’s a problem unique to yourself (though some are weirdly adept at it!)

Good luck pal, it’s a pain for sure