[mkohlmyr]

You are a web developer, correct?

How do you parse known data formats from free text strings? (regular expressions, string manipulation) How do you parse a cookie? (string manipulation) How do your apps http requests end up in their respective handlers? (main method socket listener)

If your answer to each of these questions is that you use a library that's cool and all, but just because you didn't have to write it yourself doesn't mean it doesn't exist in "real life". Someone wrote that code for you, and you can call it "bad code" if you want - just know your app is built on it.

[79d697i6fdif]

it's bad code if you're writing it again. Everything you mentioned is something already handled for the developer through the browser/API's. It's like writing your own multithreading instead of using something provided by the OS. 99% of the time it's stupid

[mkohlmyr]

If we have reached the point where basic string manipulation is compared to multithreading in terms of complexity or need for abstraction then we have truly dumbed down the software development profession to a very saddening degree.

I simply can't fathom that you believe such basic constructs of software development would be a bad code smell. I really don't know how you get around using them and manage to do anything remotely interesting and novel.