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The thing that ages software is changes. The irony with software is that the most successful pieces of software need to be changed frequently, because of changi

The thing that ages software is changes. The irony with software is that the most successful pieces of software need to be changed frequently, because of changing requirements. It means that the software is very useful. The more useful it is, the faster it ages and the worse the code gets. The best written software that doesn't change means that its usefulness is very limited. It is impossible to design software that can account for long term changes. It's 100% impossible. You need to design for the near future as best as you can, and realize that eventually you need to refactor. So design your software with the best maintainability you can for the next few years and then try your best to refactor it as you go along with new changes, but don't beat yourself up with things like tech debt creep up.

astine 7y ago
"The irony with software is that the most successful pieces of software need to be changed frequently, because of changing requirements." I don't think that this is true. Some software doesn't need to change much at all and yet remains quite useful. I'm thinking of common Unix utilities as a good example here. Some haven't changed much in decades and yet are still essential to many workflows. I think what is closer to the truth is that many tasks that we write software to accomplish have rapidly changing or highly variable requirements. This is especially true of things that directly support business processes. Those kinds of software projects are either going to require a lot of changes or will need to constructed in a highly flexible manner so as to acomodate different needs.
- docker_up 7y ago
  It depends on what your definition of "successful" is. I meant in the monetary term. Sure, there are old Unix utilities that haven't changed much but they haven't made a lot of money. Those with paying customers generally require a lot of changes to make their customers happy.

astine 7y ago

"The irony with software is that the most successful pieces of software need to be changed frequently, because of changing requirements." I don't think that this is true. Some software doesn't need to change much at all and yet remains quite useful. I'm thinking of common Unix utilities as a good example here. Some haven't changed much in decades and yet are still essential to many workflows. I think what is closer to the truth is that many tasks that we write software to accomplish have rapidly changing or highly variable requirements. This is especially true of things that directly support business processes. Those kinds of software projects are either going to require a lot of changes or will need to constructed in a highly flexible manner so as to acomodate different needs.

docker_up 7y ago
It depends on what your definition of "successful" is. I meant in the monetary term. Sure, there are old Unix utilities that haven't changed much but they haven't made a lot of money. Those with paying customers generally require a lot of changes to make their customers happy.