3 ms·
When you are on your second rewrite, wondering why the new codebase already has as much tech debt as the previous, it's because you don't have a Linus. Better
by snarfy 6y ago
When you are on your second rewrite, wondering why the new codebase already has as much tech debt as the previous, it's because you don't have a Linus. Better engineers might help, but what really matters is a better filter, one that has final say on the commits and the release date.
- nabla9 6y ago"Good programmers write good code; great programmers "borrow" good code; best programmers remove good code." – Mike Gancarz, "The UNIX Philosophy", mutatis mutandis.
- rtkwe 6y agoIt helps that beyond critical fixes the kernel doesn't really have deadlines so there's time to be extremely picky about the code and commits. I think a lot of cruft and bad code comes from time constraints from business, not all for sure but a lot. And beyond that as an OSS project going back and rewriting things doesn't cost anything (at least in real money) so there's not an economic pressure against going back and addressing cruft.