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What happens when the cruft becomes so overbearing that you can no longer deliver features? Not only can you no longer deliver features, but you now have to com
by georgerobinson 11y ago
What happens when the cruft becomes so overbearing that you can no longer deliver features? Not only can you no longer deliver features, but you now have to communicate that the state of the system is unworkable and you need X weeks to fix it. Thats a much more uncomfortable position to be in than say "Hey, to enable us to keep developing this system we need to allocate some time to refactoring. If we don't, there is a danger that the system becomes too internally complex too manage and starts to damage the reliability and flexibility of our product."
- aidenn0 11y ago99% of software won't be around that long.
- the_af 11y agoSorry, but my experience shows the opposite. I've worked in multiple jobs where some piece of software was an incredibly complex ball of mud, where things were left without refactoring because no-one currently in the company understands how they work, and no-one can spare the time to do the refactor properly. Where changing a method or property unexpectedly breaks some other, apparently unrelated feature. Needless to say, this made adding new features a pretty risky affair. This happens all too frequently to believe in your 99% statistic. For example, it happens with some pieces of software at my current job.
- aidenn0 11y agoIt happens all to frequently because the 1% tends to be very long lived. If 99% of babies died in the first year of life, all of your friends would still be more than one year old.