2 ms·

Legacy code is reduced to a fraction with good architecture, though. Well architected programs are a lot shorter and a lot more straightforward. And I don't rea

Legacy code is reduced to a fraction with good architecture, though. Well architected programs are a lot shorter and a lot more straightforward. And I don't really think you can make clear rules or exceptions - so no general discussions needed. Just don't admit data flow designs that aren't completely thought through (and really simple). Yes, it takes experienced developers.

klodolph 9y ago
You can point out that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids just fine, but I'm still going to argue in favor of mechanization. In my experience, good architecture does not materialize often enough to make this a viable strategy except for certain specialized teams. Consider writing code in C when you don't completely understand the problem and haven't devised a solution yet, or when you know it's going to get assigned to a junior developer and you don't have spare time for extra oversight. Or consider that you might ship poorly architected code because it's functional and shipping it will earn you money, or you might inherit large tracts of legacy code that are too expensive to refactor. We all love ourselves some good architecture in our programs, but I'd rather have the penalty for bad architecture be "fails to compile" or "assertion error at runtime" rather than "our product has a security vulnerability". Just because the problem can be solved by throwing better, more experienced developers at it doesn't mean that we should. Let's throw the experienced developers at the more exciting problems and let our tools figure out memory safety for us... at least, most of the time. > Legacy code is reduced to a fraction with good architecture, though. I honestly don't understand this claim at all. I've only worked at one company where I didn't have to work with legacy code. The amount of legacy code I've been personally responsible for has varied from ~20 kloc (fairly manageable) to ~1 Mloc. I don't know what kind of good architecture could reduce that 1 Mloc. I ended up just throwing the address sanitizer at it, working on the test suite, and prioritizing refactors based on expected cost and payoff.
- jstimpfle 9y ago
  That was meant as "the amount of legacy produced is much smaller".

klodolph 9y ago

You can point out that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids just fine, but I'm still going to argue in favor of mechanization. In my experience, good architecture does not materialize often enough to make this a viable strategy except for certain specialized teams. Consider writing code in C when you don't completely understand the problem and haven't devised a solution yet, or when you know it's going to get assigned to a junior developer and you don't have spare time for extra oversight. Or consider that you might ship poorly architected code because it's functional and shipping it will earn you money, or you might inherit large tracts of legacy code that are too expensive to refactor. We all love ourselves some good architecture in our programs, but I'd rather have the penalty for bad architecture be "fails to compile" or "assertion error at runtime" rather than "our product has a security vulnerability". Just because the problem can be solved by throwing better, more experienced developers at it doesn't mean that we should. Let's throw the experienced developers at the more exciting problems and let our tools figure out memory safety for us... at least, most of the time. > Legacy code is reduced to a fraction with good architecture, though. I honestly don't understand this claim at all. I've only worked at one company where I didn't have to work with legacy code. The amount of legacy code I've been personally responsible for has varied from ~20 kloc (fairly manageable) to ~1 Mloc. I don't know what kind of good architecture could reduce that 1 Mloc. I ended up just throwing the address sanitizer at it, working on the test suite, and prioritizing refactors based on expected cost and payoff.

jstimpfle 9y ago
That was meant as "the amount of legacy produced is much smaller".