4 ms·

Legacy codebases make money. The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. If you can code something quickly and well enough th

Legacy codebases make money. The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. If you can code something quickly and well enough that it doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight, you have succeeded. The fact that a codebase has existed long enough to become "legacy" means it did a good enough job to stay alive.

onion2k 10y ago
The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. I don't think that's fair to a large number of engineers. We know that code gets loaded with technical debt and we know that we can't spend time fixing it because of "business realities". That doesn't mean it isn't a problem for us though. Anyone whose had to maintain a codebase that's years old and riddled with undocumented and untested "features" suffers for it. Old code is a source of stress and anxiety. It might make money, but that isn't a reason to think it's not an issue.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Can you name a single trade where that's not also true? Keeping any mechanical thing running for years takes a lot of monkey-patching and duct tape. Technical debt in software engineering is not the exception. It's typical.
jasonthevillain 10y ago
> The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. Far from. The worry is not "this code is old." Plenty of old code (especially boring old code) is cranking along just fine. The worry is that if an old, abstruse system stops working or has a critical security bug, there's a real risk that nobody will be able to put the fire out.
khedoros1 10y ago
> If you can code something quickly and well enough that it doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight, you have succeeded. Well, yeah, for the first version. But when is the first version also the last one? Not in many good situations. Crap that doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight will probably immediately collapse as soon as you add more weight to it in version 2. A lack of anxiety about the structure of the product is myopic and ignorant of engineering realities. There's got to be a balance. Too little anxiety, and you lose customers to competitors that spent more time to build a quality product, structured so that it's easier to grow. Too much anxiety, and you're in a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation, and you'll lose customers to competitors that were able to iterate faster and with a proper balance.

onion2k 10y ago

The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. I don't think that's fair to a large number of engineers. We know that code gets loaded with technical debt and we know that we can't spend time fixing it because of "business realities". That doesn't mean it isn't a problem for us though. Anyone whose had to maintain a codebase that's years old and riddled with undocumented and untested "features" suffers for it. Old code is a source of stress and anxiety. It might make money, but that isn't a reason to think it's not an issue.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Can you name a single trade where that's not also true? Keeping any mechanical thing running for years takes a lot of monkey-patching and duct tape. Technical debt in software engineering is not the exception. It's typical.

jasonthevillain 10y ago

> The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities. Far from. The worry is not "this code is old." Plenty of old code (especially boring old code) is cranking along just fine. The worry is that if an old, abstruse system stops working or has a critical security bug, there's a real risk that nobody will be able to put the fire out.

khedoros1 10y ago

> If you can code something quickly and well enough that it doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight, you have succeeded. Well, yeah, for the first version. But when is the first version also the last one? Not in many good situations. Crap that doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight will probably immediately collapse as soon as you add more weight to it in version 2. A lack of anxiety about the structure of the product is myopic and ignorant of engineering realities. There's got to be a balance. Too little anxiety, and you lose customers to competitors that spent more time to build a quality product, structured so that it's easier to grow. Too much anxiety, and you're in a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation, and you'll lose customers to competitors that were able to iterate faster and with a proper balance.