useful thoughts. it reinforces my view that it's really the intent that bugs me. I've dealt with crap code, littered with comments like "I'm sorry, didn't know what I was doing, etc". The person/people knew they were in a tough spot. In other cases I've dealt with crap code with random comments like "Java sucks. Sun sucks. Everyone using Java sucks and is stupid - Ruby is the only true language, and it sucks that this is in Java" and "if you're too stupid to understand this, quit right now and tell so-and-so to go hire a real programmer".

Just... garbage attitude oozing through the code at every line - difficult to work with.