After seeing how our careful and thoughtful design changes over time, it should be obvious that some designs will not survive implementation or later maintenance. It should also make you wonder how to do a better job on design. Looking Back on your Design In the future, some of your great decisions will look naive.… Read More »
One of my managers many years ago was in a meeting where someone from sales was disparaging our legacy code and he made a comment that has stayed with me for decades: “Legacy? Oh you mean the code that pays our paychecks?” The legacy system pays our paychecks Most code that hangs around long enough… Read More »
I have heard this comment in almost every company where I have worked. Without fail, this response occurs when someone on the technical staff suggests adding a practice accepted in other parts of the industry. Some variations are Early in my career, it was used to justify not using version control (yeah, I’ve been at… Read More »
Several years ago I gave a talk at work with the same title as this post. For a while, recordings of these lunch talks were available internally in the company. Over several years, I’ve had people either thank me for the original talk or reference things I said in the talk. Despite the fact that… Read More »