About the course
When I first started coding HTML and slicing designs in CorelDRAW and Dreamweaver, I wanted to learn more about what makes websites great. In 1998, I visited a Borders bookstore and stumbled upon a book titled "Web Pages That Suck." The book's humorous title and vibrant graphics immediately caught my attention. Its tagline was "Learn good web design by looking at bad web design." As someone interested in graphics and improving my websites’ aesthetics, I loved the idea of analyzing poorly designed sites to understand what makes others excel. This book ignited my passion for website programming and user interface design, and I still remember it vividly years later.
Since then, I've always wanted to create something similar for Magento. We've all encountered some truly awful Magento code—you know, the kind that makes you cringe and would never pass a code review. Everyone has their fair share of past personal coding mistakes. Writing bad code is often the first step to learning how to write good code, but we don't always recognize what makes code bad or how to improve it. That's precisely what this "Magento Code That Sucks" course is about. And don't worry, we've all written bad code.
The "Web Pages That Suck" book was quite harsh, explicitly calling out names, websites, and agencies responsible for terrible sites. However, in 1998, we knew very little about web design, and this book offered a fun perspective on the topic, helping us become better designers. I promise not to be brutal in this course. I want to respect all developers and agencies who have written bad code because none of us can write perfect code all the time. We probably even wrote some bad code this morning. So, any bad code serving as a lesson will be anonymized in every way possible. I aim to protect all of us innocent developers and use poorly written code as a learning experience. Rest assured, even if you've written the most dreadful Magento code out there, you won't be singled out in this course.
Knowing all this, I would love to see the bad Magento code you've encountered, so don't hesitate to share it. Any code you submit will be kept strictly confidential, allowing you to send in your best friend's code, your own, or your company's. It will be thoroughly scrambled, altered, and protected, ensuring both your intellectual property and identity remain secure. The goal is to learn from our mistakes, not to blame or point fingers. I'm thrilled for you to take this course. Let's have some fun and learn good Magento code by examining bad Magento code.