Tariq Ali is an aspiring web developer dedicated to producing interesting applications and websites for businesses. Before entering into web development, Tariq served as a journalist, real estate a...
Perhaps I'm naive, but why? It would seem to me that at least a few developers would definitely want to own this code, not just for "guaranteed job security" in maintaining legacy code, but also for the joy of successfully solving clients' problems and aiding them with their greatest challenges (assuming, of course, that the clients actually need those changes...and if they don't, well, there's bigger problems to worry about). Perhaps actually maintaining the code is a nightmare, but the prestige of ownership is definitely something to consider...at least on an abstract level. Legacy code is successful code.
That doesn't undermine your broader point though. "All problems can be solved by adding abstraction except for the problem of too much abstraction" (paraphrasing from the Fundamental Theorem of Software Engineering).
I'm working with a more-than-ten-years-old product, and I think I should say that I totally agree to "Nobody will want to own this code".
Imagine that the code was written by a developer, who just left the company for years, will you volunteer to own that code? Especially, the code is big and so messy, but it's shared across components and quite stable.
If you're my customer, would you like to wait and pay me for refactoring the code that was stable for years?
This was based on a real example. Nobody wanted to own the code, until recently someone saw its long-term potential as a useful service, and volunteered. There was a happy ending.
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"Nobody will want to own this code."
Perhaps I'm naive, but why? It would seem to me that at least a few developers would definitely want to own this code, not just for "guaranteed job security" in maintaining legacy code, but also for the joy of successfully solving clients' problems and aiding them with their greatest challenges (assuming, of course, that the clients actually need those changes...and if they don't, well, there's bigger problems to worry about). Perhaps actually maintaining the code is a nightmare, but the prestige of ownership is definitely something to consider...at least on an abstract level. Legacy code is successful code.
That doesn't undermine your broader point though. "All problems can be solved by adding abstraction except for the problem of too much abstraction" (paraphrasing from the Fundamental Theorem of Software Engineering).
I'm working with a more-than-ten-years-old product, and I think I should say that I totally agree to "Nobody will want to own this code".
Imagine that the code was written by a developer, who just left the company for years, will you volunteer to own that code? Especially, the code is big and so messy, but it's shared across components and quite stable.
If you're my customer, would you like to wait and pay me for refactoring the code that was stable for years?
These questions are not easy to answer man :)
This was based on a real example. Nobody wanted to own the code, until recently someone saw its long-term potential as a useful service, and volunteered. There was a happy ending.