How many times, have you started your project from a script that you think is not beautifully coded ?
This has became a common practice to use some open source module to start your project with. apart from popular (and good ) ones like WordPress and Joomla there exist many other like auto shop scripts, jewelery shop scripts, community site scripts or video sharing scripts. Most of the times these scripts are not good enough to be used by hundreds of websites.
Are these scripts useful
Not always. These scripts generally provide basic and default functionality. Customizing such scripts always take longer as these scripts are not so standard complaint and one has to learn some extra (and unnecessary) in the process of modifying them . Integrating few extra features in these scripts may take longer than developing the whole project from the scratch.
So do I really promoting bad code?
If you opt for an script by just exploring the features it provide and not by the coding standards it follows than definitely YES. You are supporting and sponsoring it.
Moral of the story
Don’t risk Quality of Code for Code Reusability.
