5 ms·
Is there a significant amount of people not working on code that already exists? That's like the total opposite of my experience
by tayo42 2y ago
Is there a significant amount of people not working on code that already exists? That's like the total opposite of my experience
- pavel_lishin 2y ago"Code that already exists" isn't necessarily the same as a "legacy project", though everyone's definition of what "legacy" means is different.
- tayo42 2y agoI guess, how do you define legacy then?
- esafak 2y agoOld tech
- pavel_lishin 2y agoHonestly, it's a "know it when you see it" situation mostly, but there are some strong smells indicating there's a legacy project in the walls: - none of the original authors are with the company anymore. - it's written in a language/using a stack/using technology that is used absolutely nowhere else in the company anymore. - it is big enough that migrating all of its functionality is a tremendously difficult undertaking, to the point where it's likely never going to get done, at least not in your lifetime (either in terms of your tenure at the company, or literally, before you die.) Outdated architecture/code practices/patterns are a smaller smell, as is the lack of documentation/testing - but those can be present even in greenfield projects written by a big enough dipshit - and I say this having been that dipshit at several points in my career :)
- kreco 2y agoIn one of my past job, for some reasons I was the only one diving into legacy 12+ years old code. The other members kept producing new code and debugging new code. Disregarding of whether it's fair or not, there was a kind of balance that kept the boat floating. I left since then and it wouldn't surprise me if the legacy was being rewritten from scratch (and over-engineered).
- callc 2y agoLegacy 12 year old? Try 40 - 45 year old code. Back when people mandated an 80 character line width because their CRT monitors only had so much resolution
- nateburke 2y agoIMHO 80 char lines are easier on my eyes, independent of monitor tech. I get antsy all the way over there on the right! Past 100 chars I am simply less confident in being able to pull off the ocular carriage return to the next line.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI find 80 characters to be too short, and the resulting code after passing through a linter is significantly harder to parse due to the indentation being all over the place.
- droobles 2y agoI always found that even at startups we had to at least integrate with legacy solutions.