Re:Avoid rewriting a legacy system from scratch by stranglin...
by hinkley on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @02:42AM
(#22354216)
I’ve seen enough people who are in love with their excuses to know that some places are just going to have legacy code. If I stay there, there is some other legacy code lover who is going to take a job bothering another team that would have been happy to have me.
Nothing is perfect anywhere, sure, but there are degrees.
You get the spaghetti when you take your eye off the ball. When you start making excuses for why we are going to do dumb things just “for now”. And by the time you notice the three year old comments that say “this is temporary”, well, your processes are set. This is the culture, and if you make a stink, people are thinking more about “why now” than “why not”.
The only way I know to get out of that is starting the conversation early about how we can do the things we always do faster and more accurately, and how we can do things we’ve never tried before. But that tree takes a while to bear fruit. And it requires coworkers who are willing to try something new, because for sure as shit nobody has shown them how to do this before.
Nothing is perfect anywhere, sure, but there are degrees.
You get the spaghetti when you take your eye off the ball. When you start making excuses for why we are going to do dumb things just “for now”. And by the time you notice the three year old comments that say “this is temporary”, well, your processes are set. This is the culture, and if you make a stink, people are thinking more about “why now” than “why not”.
The only way I know to get out of that is starting the conversation early about how we can do the things we always do faster and more accurately, and how we can do things we’ve never tried before. But that tree takes a while to bear fruit. And it requires coworkers who are willing to try something new, because for sure as shit nobody has shown them how to do this before.