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I think the question reveals a secret that nobody talks about. Your software is not understandable to others, so it's impossible to adapt. Your software needs
by samsquire 4y ago
I think the question reveals a secret that nobody talks about.
Your software is not understandable to others, so it's impossible to adapt.
Your software needs high quality documentation about the mental models used to create and think of the software. But too many developers think the code is the documentation, meaning their code is legacy as written.
- jostiniane 4y agocan't agree more as somebody who joined a place for the sole purpose of maintaining already profitable products and continuously pay the tech debt there. I keep emphasizing it, looking at this project is like looking at a complied code, you can understand what this portion does by reading the program but You can't understand what the dev/architect had in mind when they did it, architectural diagrams + proper high level docs can do wonders. I can understand what those modules are doing, but it will take me years before I can grasp the entire system to know where to look for every fix/new increment.
- drowsspa 4y agoThat is so, so true. So many open source software that I'd like to be able to contribute to, if only they would put a Markdown file documenting at a high level how the code is organized, how data flows through it... Instead all we have is the code itself, sometimes some instructions for running the tests and that's it. Then every contributor needs to go through all of the code and reverse engineer it to even start.