I'll be interested to follow the comments about this problem, because it seems to me that it can be generalized to working with any legacy backend system. In my

I'll be interested to follow the comments about this problem, because it seems to me that it can be generalized to working with any legacy backend system. In my first job it was an 8 year old custom CMS built in ASP classic, then it was a home-grown PHP CMS, then a very large Java BE codebase - in each case I felt that the existing system made very aspect of development more difficult than it "could be" with a more current framework (1/3rd productivity loss was a major underestimate in some cases). I am interested in people's experiences with using a third-party system and trying to keep it updated versus using an in-house system that gradually becomes more difficult to update/maintain. Sometimes a state of permanent updates can be just as limiting.