[madmanslitany]

I'm sure I can one up you with the kind of code that goes into a trading system.

I think production code in any realtime environment, whether it be at Amazon or a trading desk at a bank, tends to converge towards crap just because of the time pressure on the developers.

[Tamerlin]

You're probably right. So far in my experience, that's pretty prevalent -- and the industry really does go out of its way to reward failure by rewarding heroics.

I read a bank security audit report once... it made me very concerned about banking in general. It was astonishing how many glaring security blunders these banks were making -- and this was pervasive, neither isolated nor limited to small banks...