Is it really junk or are we lacking in time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works?
I like to think that I am a Very Good Engineer™ but I am sure that I would produce a similar piece of "junk" if I was under the same lack of requirements, training and time.
who wrote this garbage???
> git blame
oh crap, it was me 2 years ago!
> are we lacking time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works?
This is a serious issue when a system becomes complex enough.
For instance you work there for 4 years, became the most versed into the system, and have a hunch that the manual process to validate all submissions to some system could be wildly simplified.
But then random managers come to ask “are you 100% sure there won’t be hidden issues ?”, and by definition the answer is “no”. And since you’re the only one on the proposition, you have to bear the risk alone if you push it through. You could, but it is hardly worth it (diminishing rewards at your level, heavy bashing in case of troubles).
And there’s ton of other subtle and not so subtle situations where you have some knowledge, you could do something, but you don’t have any backing to make it worth it because others just don’t know. So stuff keeps piling in.
TBF not all companies work like that, but you also don’t end up a lone expert in places where these kind of issues are solved early and organically.
I definitely agree and I have seen this. I can understand being risk averse to change and unknowns but debt and cognitive load should be a consideration too.
This is why teams creating a billion microservices because it is the pattern of the day gets me a little angry. It is just another unused thing to watch out for.
> Is it really junk or are we lacking in time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works?
I think OP was talking not about code quality but code value. A lot of legacy systems are maintained simply because we don't know for sure that there's not something that relies on them, or that they won't be needed later. The expert wants to discard them, but everyone else insists on keeping them around just in case. That adds burden on the expert.
Is it really junk or are we lacking in time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works?
I like to think that I am a Very Good Engineer™ but I am sure that I would produce a similar piece of "junk" if I was under the same lack of requirements, training and time.