Anastacio knew of a programmer at his company by reputation only- and it wasn't a good reputation. In fact, it was bad enough that when this programmer was fired, no one- even people who hadn't met them- was surprised.

The firing wasn't all good news, though. That code needed to be maintained, and someone had to do it. That's how Anastacio suddenly owned 50,000 lines of code written by his predecessor. It didn't take long to see that this didn't need to be anything like 50,000 lines long, though.

For example:

//how to remove the columns of a list with aggressive optimizations enabled
list.DeleteColumn(61);
list.DeleteColumn(60);
list.DeleteColumn(59);
list.DeleteColumn(58);
list.DeleteColumn(57);
list.DeleteColumn(56);
list.DeleteColumn(55);
list.DeleteColumn(54);
list.DeleteColumn(53);
list.DeleteColumn(52);
list.DeleteColumn(51);
list.DeleteColumn(50);
list.DeleteColumn(49);
list.DeleteColumn(48);
list.DeleteColumn(47);
list.DeleteColumn(46);
list.DeleteColumn(45);
list.DeleteColumn(44);
list.DeleteColumn(43);
list.DeleteColumn(42);
list.DeleteColumn(41);
list.DeleteColumn(40);
list.DeleteColumn(39);
list.DeleteColumn(38);
list.DeleteColumn(37);
list.DeleteColumn(36);
list.DeleteColumn(35);
list.DeleteColumn(34);
list.DeleteColumn(33);
list.DeleteColumn(32);
list.DeleteColumn(31);
list.DeleteColumn(30);
list.DeleteColumn(29);
list.DeleteColumn(28);
list.DeleteColumn(27);
list.DeleteColumn(26);
list.DeleteColumn(25);
list.DeleteColumn(24);
list.DeleteColumn(23);
list.DeleteColumn(22);
list.DeleteColumn(21);
list.DeleteColumn(20);
list.DeleteColumn(19);
list.DeleteColumn(18);
list.DeleteColumn(17);
list.DeleteColumn(16);
list.DeleteColumn(15);
list.DeleteColumn(14);
list.DeleteColumn(13);
list.DeleteColumn(12);
list.DeleteColumn(11);
list.DeleteColumn(10);
list.DeleteColumn(9);
list.DeleteColumn(8);
list.DeleteColumn(7);
list.DeleteColumn(6);
list.DeleteColumn(5);
list.DeleteColumn(4);
list.DeleteColumn(3);
list.DeleteColumn(2);
list.DeleteColumn(1);
list.DeleteColumn(0);

Anastacio is optimistic:

Given a few weeks, I will be able to shrink it to less than 10,000 [lines].