4 ms·

Imagine being the engineer who has to keep maintaining the IE codebase for the next 8 years. [shudders]

by brundolf 5y ago

als0 5y ago
This must be what hell is like.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Managing a legacy codebase can be a lot of fun if one thinks of oneself as a digital analog to Indiana Jones or Sherlock Holmes. It does take more work to keep up one's reputation though.
eric__cartman 5y ago
I doubt anyone will be actively maintaining it once it gets implemented as a rendering engine in Edge. It will probably be implemented including the existing bugs as issues and remain unchanged until it's late retirement date. Kind of what happened with flash player.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
While I wouldn't want to do it, if you've been working on that codebase for years and you're no longer young and fired up about always going for the latest things, it could be a good way to sunset your career. A guaranteed position using technology you understand rather than being thrown out into the job market, struggling to get up to date on the latest programming fads so you can compete with people half your age, would be nice for many.
- brundolf 5y ago
  That's fair! I guess I just assume the codebase is terrible (not just because of age, but also judging by the end-product) and will remain terrible; why would you do a refactor, or optimize something, or add new features when it's become a niche project that nobody likes and is on its way out? It's probably just patching over critical bugs from here forward It's not just about doing something new; a bad codebase that I don't have the opportunity to genuinely improve is probably the most miserable type of project I can possibly think of
  - Tostino 5y ago
    If the task is just "keep this working", I could see plenty of people being alright with not making major changes to a codebase. It pays the bills, and that's all a good number of people care about.
    - bigyikes 5y ago
      And that is all they should care about if the product is EOL. Good software engineering is all about building something that meets current business needs while being flexible enough to adapt to future needs. When you lose this flexibility, you need to refactor or changes become too difficult to implement. IE11 isn’t getting any new features. It’s in maintenance mode. Cleaning up the code in major ways at this point would be a waste of time.
      - ido 5y ago
        If I was in that position and had nothing else to do, why not leisurely refactor and clean up the code in a piecemeal fashion?
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        risk vs reward
        chronogram 5y ago
        I could really only see that if your job title is "IE11 maintainer" and for the next 10 years you clock in, drink coffee and chat while waiting for a CVE to come in to fix. But you'd still rather not touch anything because there's really only risk and no reward to it. Realistically it'll just be part of a far larger security team that fixes bugs in a large number of software preferably prioritising bugs based on severity where there's always going to be something better to do than mess with old codebases.
- nly 5y ago
  What makes you think they won't just lump it on a couple of juniors who rarely ever touch it, and even then only for critical bugfixes?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 5y ago
  True. If you really, deeply know COM and vintage C++ you can make a lot of money contracting in New York to this day.
Uehreka 5y ago
I’m pretty sure almost no one is. There are tons of IE11 layout bugs (not missing features, straight-up bugs) that have not gotten fixed in 8 years. I get the vibe that MS may have totally cut off development and all but the most critical security maintenance in order to speed the plow of Edge adoption.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  The bugs did get fixed. In Edge. If you are using IE11 you want the bugs to stay exactly the same so your legacy silverlight app still works the same.
  - datameta 5y ago
    MSFT goes so far as to have said bugs in Edge's IE11 compatibility mode. They've truly become features.
- wvenable 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm happy if they change nothing about IE11 till the end of time at this point. Software that currently requires IE11 isn't going to change either.
TranquilMarmot 5y ago
Honestly using modern web technology (Babel, PostCSS, etc.) makes it pretty easy to maintain IE11 support without TOO much effort and there aren't that many features you absolutely can't use (CSS grid is probably the most painful missing feature). That being said, our company is deprecating IE11 support in October and I already have the PRs ready to rip out some of the code that bloats our JS/CSS with polyfills.

Imagine being the engineer who has to keep maintaining the IE codebase for the next 8 years. [shudders]

als0 5y ago

This must be what hell is like.

nitrogen 5y ago
Managing a legacy codebase can be a lot of fun if one thinks of oneself as a digital analog to Indiana Jones or Sherlock Holmes. It does take more work to keep up one's reputation though.

eric__cartman 5y ago

I doubt anyone will be actively maintaining it once it gets implemented as a rendering engine in Edge. It will probably be implemented including the existing bugs as issues and remain unchanged until it's late retirement date. Kind of what happened with flash player.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

While I wouldn't want to do it, if you've been working on that codebase for years and you're no longer young and fired up about always going for the latest things, it could be a good way to sunset your career. A guaranteed position using technology you understand rather than being thrown out into the job market, struggling to get up to date on the latest programming fads so you can compete with people half your age, would be nice for many.

brundolf 5y ago
That's fair! I guess I just assume the codebase is terrible (not just because of age, but also judging by the end-product) and will remain terrible; why would you do a refactor, or optimize something, or add new features when it's become a niche project that nobody likes and is on its way out? It's probably just patching over critical bugs from here forward It's not just about doing something new; a bad codebase that I don't have the opportunity to genuinely improve is probably the most miserable type of project I can possibly think of
- Tostino 5y ago
  If the task is just "keep this working", I could see plenty of people being alright with not making major changes to a codebase. It pays the bills, and that's all a good number of people care about.
  - bigyikes 5y ago
    And that is all they should care about if the product is EOL. Good software engineering is all about building something that meets current business needs while being flexible enough to adapt to future needs. When you lose this flexibility, you need to refactor or changes become too difficult to implement. IE11 isn’t getting any new features. It’s in maintenance mode. Cleaning up the code in major ways at this point would be a waste of time.
    - ido 5y ago
      If I was in that position and had nothing else to do, why not leisurely refactor and clean up the code in a piecemeal fashion?
      - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        risk vs reward
      - chronogram 5y ago
        I could really only see that if your job title is "IE11 maintainer" and for the next 10 years you clock in, drink coffee and chat while waiting for a CVE to come in to fix. But you'd still rather not touch anything because there's really only risk and no reward to it. Realistically it'll just be part of a far larger security team that fixes bugs in a large number of software preferably prioritising bugs based on severity where there's always going to be something better to do than mess with old codebases.
nly 5y ago
What makes you think they won't just lump it on a couple of juniors who rarely ever touch it, and even then only for critical bugfixes?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simonh 5y ago
True. If you really, deeply know COM and vintage C++ you can make a lot of money contracting in New York to this day.

Uehreka 5y ago

I’m pretty sure almost no one is. There are tons of IE11 layout bugs (not missing features, straight-up bugs) that have not gotten fixed in 8 years. I get the vibe that MS may have totally cut off development and all but the most critical security maintenance in order to speed the plow of Edge adoption.

SilverRed 5y ago
The bugs did get fixed. In Edge. If you are using IE11 you want the bugs to stay exactly the same so your legacy silverlight app still works the same.
- datameta 5y ago
  MSFT goes so far as to have said bugs in Edge's IE11 compatibility mode. They've truly become features.
wvenable 5y ago
Yeah, I'm happy if they change nothing about IE11 till the end of time at this point. Software that currently requires IE11 isn't going to change either.

TranquilMarmot 5y ago

Honestly using modern web technology (Babel, PostCSS, etc.) makes it pretty easy to maintain IE11 support without TOO much effort and there aren't that many features you absolutely can't use (CSS grid is probably the most painful missing feature). That being said, our company is deprecating IE11 support in October and I already have the PRs ready to rip out some of the code that bloats our JS/CSS with polyfills.