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I really liked this: "as a general rule, large established codebases produce 90% of the value." People see the ugliness -- because solving real problems, espec
by adamc 2y ago
I really liked this:
"as a general rule, large established codebases produce 90% of the value."
People see the ugliness -- because solving real problems, especially if business practices are involved, is often very messy -- but that's where the value is.
- bdangubic 2y agoI also find amusing that “legacy” more often than not gets used in negative conotation. I hear “legacy” and I think “bunch of people wrote some AWESOME shit that lasted so long that now other people get to view it as ‘legacy’”
- tpoacher 2y agoThere's a good chance that's not what people mean by this term though. It's probably used in the (now) classic sense as defined by M. Feathers in his "Working with legacy code" book. Code that is old but otherwise awesome, maintainable (or even actively maintained) and easy / a joy to work with are rarely referred to as "legacy code".
- bdangubic 2y agohmmm almost 3 decades in the industry and have very seldom (some exceptions) heard “legacy” for code that is old but awesome.
- jimbokun 2y agoIt doesn’t seem awesome at first glance because it takes longer to get up to speed on a large, old code base than a small, young one. But you will quickly learn how awesome the old code base is if you attempt to rewrite it, and realize everything the old code base takes into account.
- forty 2y agoMeasuring value by what stays the longer is tempting, but sometimes it's just that the mess is such that no one can touch it :)
- bdangubic 2y ago100% but mess or not - it works - otherwise you’d have no option but to touch it
- galimaufry 2y agoSometimes it doesn't work and no one can tell.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jsrcout 2y agoIn my experience people use it to mean "old crap that we can't get rid of (yet)".
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoEarning code trumps pretty code every time.