[jahnu]

A lot of that feeling, at least for some of us, comes from jobs which require us to implement lots of business logic.

Business logic often requires coding lots of small conditions distributed all over the code base of an application. Especially once you hit the maintenance phase.

[vladsanchez]

Sounds like a Rules Engine to me. Your description implies a brittle solution that may not be representative of the utopic circumstances pursued by our colleague. Look into Drools. ;-)