4 ms·

There's legacy software... and then there are coding artifacts from another era. I'm not necessarily saying it's a deal breaker, but if your development tools

by Zot95 17y ago

There's legacy software... and then there are coding artifacts from another era. I'm not necessarily saying it's a deal breaker, but if your development tools consist solely of products that have been End of Lifed, you have right to be concerned how the job would affect your career development.

pwnstigator 17y ago
Legacy code isn't always bad. All code becomes legacy code. Poor legacy code is a liability, and legacy code that leads to suboptimal technical situations (e.g. using C++ in 2009) is a pain.
- nickelplate 17y ago
  What's wrong with using C++ in 2009?
  - prodigal_erik 17y ago
    It gives up all possible safety for performance gains that haven't mattered on the desktop for years. "volatile" is not enough of a memory model to write portable threaded code for I/O bound multicore machines. And it's missing an awful lot of modern conveniences that are painful or unreliable without language support: AOP, closures, currying, invariants, reflection, serialization, remoting, extensible syntax.
    - gaius 17y ago
      Echoing the commenter above, people writing C++ in 2009 are laughing all the way to the bank.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
        I don't know about laughing all the way to the bank, but I would probably have more difficulty writing machinery control code in anything other than C++
- blasdel 17y ago
  All legacy code is a liability, and all code is legacy.
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  To me "legacy" connotes flawed, not merely old. If a rewrite would end up slightly modernized but basically the same, what you have is an investment. If a rewrite would end up completely different because the old version doesn't meet the current requirements, what you have is a legacy problem.
  - access_denied 17y ago
    You are distinguishing between "legacy" and "legacy problem" and thus rendering your own opening 'thesis as moot.
    - prodigal_erik 17y ago
      Sorry, what I was trying to get across is that I don't expect to hear "legacy" unless there's a problem.

by Zot95 17y ago

pwnstigator 17y ago

Legacy code isn't always bad. All code becomes legacy code. Poor legacy code is a liability, and legacy code that leads to suboptimal technical situations (e.g. using C++ in 2009) is a pain.

nickelplate 17y ago
What's wrong with using C++ in 2009?
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  It gives up all possible safety for performance gains that haven't mattered on the desktop for years. "volatile" is not enough of a memory model to write portable threaded code for I/O bound multicore machines. And it's missing an awful lot of modern conveniences that are painful or unreliable without language support: AOP, closures, currying, invariants, reflection, serialization, remoting, extensible syntax.
  - gaius 17y ago
    Echoing the commenter above, people writing C++ in 2009 are laughing all the way to the bank.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
      I don't know about laughing all the way to the bank, but I would probably have more difficulty writing machinery control code in anything other than C++
blasdel 17y ago
All legacy code is a liability, and all code is legacy.
prodigal_erik 17y ago
To me "legacy" connotes flawed, not merely old. If a rewrite would end up slightly modernized but basically the same, what you have is an investment. If a rewrite would end up completely different because the old version doesn't meet the current requirements, what you have is a legacy problem.
- access_denied 17y ago
  You are distinguishing between "legacy" and "legacy problem" and thus rendering your own opening 'thesis as moot.
  - prodigal_erik 17y ago
    Sorry, what I was trying to get across is that I don't expect to hear "legacy" unless there's a problem.