Re:Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
by spronkey on Thursday July 12, 2018 @07:49AM
(#17513637)
Depending on how heavily coupled the legacy codebase is, "Simple refactoring" really may not cut it.
I mean, you can write a bunch of pinning tests, then try to prise out various bits and pieces, sure.
But what if all the stuff you're trying to prise out can now be accomplished with a few open source libraries that didn't exist way back, with a very simple rewrite of your business logic on the top?
That's a situation I've encountered quite a few times - a lot of legacy code that's largely boilerplate, with business logic drizzled over the lot, oozing into the little cracks.
I mean, you can write a bunch of pinning tests, then try to prise out various bits and pieces, sure.
But what if all the stuff you're trying to prise out can now be accomplished with a few open source libraries that didn't exist way back, with a very simple rewrite of your business logic on the top?
That's a situation I've encountered quite a few times - a lot of legacy code that's largely boilerplate, with business logic drizzled over the lot, oozing into the little cracks.