Man Spends Entire Career Mastering Crappy Codebase

Written by Taylor Troesh on 2023-08-02.


This week, software developer Arthur Westbook announced his early retirement at age 58.

Westbrook spent 35 years in a codebase that allegedly powers some sort of medical software somewhere. During his tenure, he contributed hundreds of lines of code. Westbrook once touched legacy code without ending the company.

Westbrook believes he grasped over 4% of the entire codebase. A former colleague called it “the War & Peace of wingdings”.

In the company, Westbrook was known as “one of the programmers on the team”. His manager noted, “Arthur had a knack for working hard without learning transferrable skills. He will be dearly missed. It’ll take two junior devs and a Keurig to replace him.”

In honor of his decades of service, one of his coworkers will take him out for drinks “sometime next month”. Nobody on his team responded for comment.

For his retirement, Westbrook plans to dabble in street performance and dumpster diving. He also plans to hone his culinary creation: Soylent mixed with Whole Foods Premium Adult Cat Salmon Mix.