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I agree the legal system needs a good refactor from time to time. It’s like software, over time accrues debt.

• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I agree the legal system needs a good refactor from time to time. It’s like software, over time accrues debt. It's like software, in that incremental changes are safer and ground-up rewrites are usually disastrous failures engineered by people who failed to fully understand the complexity of the application domain. OTOH, I'm not sure a “refactor” is a meaningful concept for the legal system. Oh, sure, you can hold requirements and expected outcomes the same and change the details, structure, and organization of legal code. “Refactors” of that kind happen all the time. They aren't as significant in impact as with software, because the code isn't imperative and doesn't run on dumb machines, so refactors are mostly about readability, and don't (e.g.) improve runtime resource usage significantly.
• londons_explore 9y ago
  Usually a refactor happens through a revolution which throws the government out and with it all its laws. We haven't seen one of those in the western world for a while though.