17

Legacy projects are cancers of this profession. I would not wish maintenance of legacy code(written by someone else) on my worst enemy.

Comments
  • 11
    Today's clean code will be tomorrow's legacy shit.
  • 1
    @jespersh And now let some requirements change, plus unforeseen edge cases that need to be addressed, and more robustness handling. Rinse and repeat several times, and you have a successful product with ugly code.
  • 1
    Everything will become legacy sooner or later. Not just your code, also the language, its standard library and 3rd party libraries.

    The question is, can we build our systems in a way that makes it easy to throw them away, in part or in whole, so they can be easily replaced? Basically, how close can we get to "development without legacy"?
  • 1
    I wish theres such a thing as software inspection, where a group of devs have a sole job of looking at a companies software and they can either approve its continued use or legally force them to make a new version
  • 1
    We are all writing legacy code. The difference is HOW SOON will it be called legacy.
  • 1
    @sleek ah, like cars and planes need to inspected whether they're still in safe condition. Would require a lot more standardization to be feasible, but why not.
  • 0
    I share this pain , i know as we sell chips to customers if bugs are reported in legacy code we have to solve it. But boy does my blood boils to see a 3 year old code branch
    I don’t feel like engineer i feel like a fucking maintenance guy !! Also it’s not like I introduced those bug. In that case it would make sense

    I always delay legacy issues until it’s from big customers like google or Samsung.
    No matter what management say new feature implementation is always priority for me
  • 2
    @netikras For some people "today's code is today's legacy code", unfortunately

    By the way, I still can't get used to your (lack of) haircut. It reminds me of an older @ewpratten

    When will you get a hairdresser appointment? Should someone just go to your place?
  • 1
    @Jilano I have short hair now 😁
  • 1
    @ewpratten AAAAHHH! Everything is reversed... The universe is broke!

    You chose the right time, though, with that infernal weather we've been having!
  • 1
  • 1
    @Jilano it's kind of triggering, isn't it :) I know, I don't like it too. I'm planning to return to the city temporarily next month, so.. Fingers crossed :)
  • 1
    Admission: I am writing some shit code right now.

    Result: I will have to maintain this later...

    Like a huge part of my day is reading other peoples code and deciding if it is shit enough to have to rewrite or good enough to reuse.

    Years ago I "worked" on a legacy PLC system with really scary ladder logic. It somehow got itself into 2 states at once. I didn't have time to work on this POS system. However, I noticed this dual mode issue. So I asked a colleague to "fix" this code by putting in a line of logic that would force the mode into one mode when it detected this problem. This solved 2 problems: it kept the system running, and it got management to call my colleague about future issues on this system.
  • 1
    @Fast-Nop and today’s bad code will be...

    “I know I am writing bad code know but I will clean it when I have time”
    Narrator: He had time but he didn’t have stomach to look at the shit he created.
  • 0
    I would
  • 0
    @aviophile Today's bad code will be tomorrow's "best practice".
Add Comment