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Exactly this. I grind on a massive codebase everyday and the time and risk involved in migrating to new tech would be far too great. Going home and spinning up

by downboy 10y ago

Exactly this. I grind on a massive codebase everyday and the time and risk involved in migrating to new tech would be far too great. Going home and spinning up a new project in some new language/framework is the only option.

tracker1 10y ago
8 years ago, I was working in a pretty massive codebase... I did two major refactors (both going into the wee hours of the night, so I could get it done without conflicting with others)... one was changing all date-time communications as well as ensuring all dates in the DB were UTC. The other was refactoring all of the logging within an application in the client and server-side. Both times consisted of intentionally breaking things and fixing everything that was broken in the new way. Both times I was jokingly referred to as the "king of refactoring." After some relatively bad experiences late last year, I was offered the job I have now working with a few of the people I worked with then, based on that experience. You don't always have to be afraid to make a sweeping change, but you should have a plan, and should try to execute with minimal impact on others. The date-time one was triggered by having to drive an hour into the office, at 1am because of a bug in a deployment update... in the end, it was easier to rip out and replace with something more consistent. Also, there are times where you can break something off into something that can use newer tech... such as a minimal node api connecting to a search database that's feed updates by another mini service that replicates data from an sql db... Try to dedicate a portion of your day/week to exploring how new things can provide value... get it done. As Admiral Hopper said, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." Sometimes in the face of contrarianism, it's easier to "just do it."

by downboy 10y ago

tracker1 10y ago

8 years ago, I was working in a pretty massive codebase... I did two major refactors (both going into the wee hours of the night, so I could get it done without conflicting with others)... one was changing all date-time communications as well as ensuring all dates in the DB were UTC. The other was refactoring all of the logging within an application in the client and server-side. Both times consisted of intentionally breaking things and fixing everything that was broken in the new way. Both times I was jokingly referred to as the "king of refactoring." After some relatively bad experiences late last year, I was offered the job I have now working with a few of the people I worked with then, based on that experience. You don't always have to be afraid to make a sweeping change, but you should have a plan, and should try to execute with minimal impact on others. The date-time one was triggered by having to drive an hour into the office, at 1am because of a bug in a deployment update... in the end, it was easier to rip out and replace with something more consistent. Also, there are times where you can break something off into something that can use newer tech... such as a minimal node api connecting to a search database that's feed updates by another mini service that replicates data from an sql db... Try to dedicate a portion of your day/week to exploring how new things can provide value... get it done. As Admiral Hopper said, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." Sometimes in the face of contrarianism, it's easier to "just do it."