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I doubt even 10% of the code I've written over the last 15ish years is still in use, anywhere. I doubt more than a quarter of it ever had an overall positive e

I doubt even 10% of the code I've written over the last 15ish years is still in use, anywhere. I doubt more than a quarter of it ever had an overall positive effect—monetary or otherwise—large enough to justify the cost of writing it. I've spent probably a third of my career, spread out here and there, working on projects that all the ICs could tell were doomed for super-obvious reasons (clear failure to find product/market fit then doubling down, entering a market very late and with only a few percent of the investment it would take to have a realistic chance at it, that kind of thing) Then there are vanity projects like a company's annual investor report app. JFC. Working in tech feels like being a small part of some kind of horrible random input process that feeds the capitalist pyramid above.

enobrev 5y ago
This echoes my experience as well, but from a freelance perspective rather than as an employee. About 20 years of web development experience with hundreds of projects. Some were excellent, hopeful projects that legitimately helped people. Most were not. Regardless, there are maybe 3-5 of them left, and it's hard to say if _any_ of the code I've written on them is still there. The majority of my last ten years have gone toward start-ups, and the timelines toward EOL are generally even shorter - at least until we hit something out of the park. At the very least the days are exciting, the problems are interesting, and the distance between myself and the end user is very short.