I spent 2 years living in Thailand on back-to-back tourist visas (and eventually ran out of passport pages) and a little over 2 more with a work permit. You are making the visa situation out to be MUCH simpler than it really is. You'll very quickly learn this, should you want to stay longer term.
Every category of visa requires between 1-6 border runs per year, even with a work permit. If you get a permit and it expires or you lose the sponsored placement (which is tied to the permit) you have 15 days to leave the country.
I've thought about this long and hard. There is no way to stay "under the radar", without major hassles. This is the purpose of the mandatory visa runs. You'll either run out of passport pages from the 6 tourist visa runs per year (12 stamps -- 6 in, 6 out, 2 pages each) or you will have to get a real visa, complete with a sponsored work placement and proof of income. End of story.
Get caught at a border or an airport without a valid visa and you'll get fined 500 THB per overdue day, deported, and if the overdue period runs into months or years, blacklisted from future visas.
I agree about programming methodologies being pseudo-science, so I'll defer to something much simpler and less cynical -- the vague wisdoms of Unix Philosophy:
"Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust."
This code violates this rule horribly and is quite deserving of the label "spaghetti code".
Wow, that's naive in the extreme. You'd be surprised at how awful the code quality is in most large organizations. It's often the programming equivalent of a skyscraper made from lego and band-aids.
Every category of visa requires between 1-6 border runs per year, even with a work permit. If you get a permit and it expires or you lose the sponsored placement (which is tied to the permit) you have 15 days to leave the country.
I've thought about this long and hard. There is no way to stay "under the radar", without major hassles. This is the purpose of the mandatory visa runs. You'll either run out of passport pages from the 6 tourist visa runs per year (12 stamps -- 6 in, 6 out, 2 pages each) or you will have to get a real visa, complete with a sponsored work placement and proof of income. End of story.
Get caught at a border or an airport without a valid visa and you'll get fined 500 THB per overdue day, deported, and if the overdue period runs into months or years, blacklisted from future visas.