I picked up a project two years ago as a freelancer. An iOS and Android native app. Documentation was non existent, previous devs could not be contacted. Problem was: We needed to immediately start releasing updates. My best friend during this time was the debugger.
In the end I convinced my client to rebuild the entire app in react-native and maintain the old code until the new app was ready.
I do not generally avoid legacy applications, but I think it is important to be honest with your customer. If the code and documentation is really bad and beyond repair/maintenance, I try to convince him of the benefits of starting (at least in part) from scratch.
In my experience, trying to patch around broken projects will never make your customer happy, frustrate you as a developer and ultimately be more expensive in the long run.
In my experience, trying to patch around broken projects will never make your customer happy, frustrate you as a developer and ultimately be more expensive in the long run.
This is well put 👌👍
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I picked up a project two years ago as a freelancer. An iOS and Android native app. Documentation was non existent, previous devs could not be contacted. Problem was: We needed to immediately start releasing updates. My best friend during this time was the debugger.
In the end I convinced my client to rebuild the entire app in react-native and maintain the old code until the new app was ready.
I do not generally avoid legacy applications, but I think it is important to be honest with your customer. If the code and documentation is really bad and beyond repair/maintenance, I try to convince him of the benefits of starting (at least in part) from scratch.
In my experience, trying to patch around broken projects will never make your customer happy, frustrate you as a developer and ultimately be more expensive in the long run.
This is well put 👌👍