Iterative refinement. Start with the most problematic parts of the code and work from there because you don't want to have to redo code because it didn't mesh with the higher priority fix. Unit Test extensively!
Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
271–280 of 346 posts
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Being able to read and work effectively in legacy code is an essential skill for any software engineer. This is key advise. It makes the difference between a person who enjoys the art of coding and a professional who get paid for work. Basically you have to first proof why the invest of rewriting brings any financial benefit. Till then, be professional and maintain it.
Just to offer a different opinion here: I think happiness at work is the most important thing for me personally, and I have no patience for legacy codebases that look like shit. I mean, you are offering good advice for a person that wants to fit in as his highest priority, no doubt about that. But there are people (like me) who don't enjoy working deep down in complicated shitty code to the degree that I don't even w…
With microservices, clean code becomes largely irrelevant compared to other concerns such as logging, monitoring, tracing, API patterns, configurability, scalability, timeouts, retry logic, circuit breakers, etc. If the code sucks, you can just take 2 days and completely rewrite the codebase, whereas if the microservice doesn't adhere to 12factor.net, you're in for unwelcome surprises.
That said, any codebase that has seen a few years of maintenance and further development is going to look complicated, especially if you're too young and inexperienced to recognize that each of the annoying edge cases was put there to fix real production issues. Rewriting sounds like a good fix, but it will take a very long time and in the best case you'll end up with a newer codebase that looks just as complicated to a person just entering the business as the one you were attempting to replace.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Being able to read and work effectively in legacy code is an essential skill for any software engineer. This is key advise. It makes the difference between a person who enjoys the art of coding and a professional who get paid for work. Basically you have to first proof why the invest of rewriting brings any financial benefit. Till then, be professional and maintain it.
Just to offer a different opinion here: I think happiness at work is the most important thing for me personally, and I have no patience for legacy codebases that look like shit. I mean, you are offering good advice for a person that wants to fit in as his highest priority, no doubt about that. But there are people (like me) who don't enjoy working deep down in complicated shitty code to the degree that I don't even w…
>and micro services. Work in the cloud. Avoid enterprise.
How is this even related? Worst code I've seen was in financial sector, but the project is so huge that is no chance of upgrading it without complete rewrite, 65% of code when I left it was still in Java5 with no option to upgrade to 7 any time soon, it's just too big, so we can understand why it's shit. Second worst code was in a startup, micro-service oriented code, k8s, dockers, javaEE, angularJS and angularIO + TypeScript. There was literally shit, HTML injection in chat-box, >200 JSON endpoints with something that mimics REST (it was closer to CURD than to REST), SQL injection using JSON objects was possible, deployment of new version of a microservice usually took 4-5hours, only if any of model classes haven't been changed. Now I work on medical software, the only split we have is frontend has own repo, backend has own repo, two monoliths. Best code I've ever seen, perfect organisation, good class and field names, easy navigation. I see completely no relation between code quality and microservices/monoliths, what I see it that sane people write good code.
Sure, enterprise is slower with moving with technologies, but that's because they're bigger and decision on upgrading Tomcat to the latest version might cost thousands monthly if there is a single performance regression. It doesn't mean that code is shit because they still use jQuery instead ReactJS.
>Work in the cloud
How is that supposed to help? Moderns devs already have to know JSON, XML, XSD, 2 IDEs, 10 testing framework, at least 2 frontend frameworks and languages, at least 2 backend frameworks and languages, so here, have this k8s YAML configuration and this docker-compose and Dockerfile so you can... avoid shitty code? Also, have this microservice oriented stack, learn how to do distributed logging, autoscaling, self-healing architecture, deploy chaos monkeys in your cluster.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#274Here's a hard earned tip. The first few months, nobody's going to expect much from you anyway. Try to stretch the time you're 'getting up to speed with the code' as long as possible. But in that time, write as many tests as possible. Don't tell anyone unless they ask; if there is no testing culture, they'll think you're just wasting your time on it. Then at some point you will be expected to start delivering value. A…
If there's no testing culture it's pretty hard to introduce it into a team that doesn't have it (either by choice or omission). It gets even worse if your teammates don't update tests (thus break CI) on code changes or just comment the tests out. I've seen both happening way too often and would recommend getting at least some sort of team buy-in - as the alternative will surely burn you out sooner or later.
If you're the new hire and the first you you're doing is pester everyone with extra work they don't see the advantage of - that'll just get you the reputation of a know it all, in my experience. That's why I suggested to start chipping at it on his own, so that he can show the value a few months down the line, rather than telling everyone how great it's going to be when he's not respected yet or hasn't proven himself yet. But that's also what I meant by 'it's not a technical issue'. It's a matter of positioning himself as a reliable person whose opinion on technical matters needs to be considered. New hires generally aren't, unless they have an impressive resume or reputation before they started at the company. But someone like that doesn't ask this question to a bunch of strangers on the internet.
Of course it depends on the circumstances. If you're on your own trying to maintain a test suite on the code of 50 other people, none of whom work on these tests and think you're just trying to slow them down for no good reason, there's no way that will work. But if there's only a few people working on the code and you can maintain tests for a more or less well defined part of it - it's possible (if you're experienced enough; if you have to spend 2 weeks reading up on how to do unit testing, it's not a viable strategy of course.)
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#275So you're the new guy that's been assigned to this project...possibly at the request of the current developer who desperately needs help...possibly because it's the project that existing staff don't want to work on...possibly to learn the project so the current developer can be moved to other projects. Every software company has these projects and many developers have been in your position. As long as the software is…
> However long you think it will take...double it ... and also don't think that your "double of original estimate" is anywhere near a maximum of what it can take to actually make the code base better and functionally correct.
Somewhere by someone I read that a realistic estimate is your original estimate multiplied by 8. This has proven to be more realistic than previous factors I've seen.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#276Should I just go and basically say that this person did a bad job?
No, because it’s not true. This person was operating under constraints you don’t understand with incomplete and constantly changing requirements. You would not have done better in that situation.
Other professionals do not stab each other in the back either. You will never hear doctors or lawyers do it. If you have a beef with this person keep it behind closed doors.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#277Look through the code base and make notes on how you would approach the rewrite. Break those notes down into tiny pieces. Break those into tiny conversations and get leader support on smaller things with recommendations for improvement and get those things into user stories/tasks they approve of. Triple all estimates because you're new
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> My advice is don't complain and don't attempt any significant rewrites for the first 6 months or so. I would agree with this, you need to be careful. I've seen a friend start at a new company with a horrendous code base, bring up the issues and be let go because they hurt / offended the existing developers. SOme people are really precious about their shitty code and can't take criticism, esepcially in small compan…
> I would agree with this, you need to be careful. I've seen a friend start at a new company with a horrendous code base, bring up the issues and be let go because they hurt / offended the existing developers. I'm not sure if I agree. As a programmer I feel my primary responsibility is towards the code, not the company, not my colleagues feelings, not the customer. There are other roles who speak for them (sales, pro…
> You judge the idea on it's own merits, not by who suggested it.
> I really don't get the tendency [...] to involve emotions [...]
You're absolutely right: if someone has a good idea for improvement, it should be adopted regardless of who they are.
The difficulty is that the suggestion of a total rewrite is not-infrequently prompted by a mostly-emotional reaction. It may not be taking all the important objective factors into account, so you have to be careful to assess whether it truly is a good idea.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#279Welcome to IT, where you need to work with little monkey that don't like their job and don't want to level up.
Re: Ask HN: Codebase at my work is a complete mess, what should I do?
#280Whenever I'm confronted with a situation like this - my first go-to response is to start documenting as much as I can. If the code is properly commented you may be able to use a tool like Doxygen to spit out some HTML documentation, which at least gives you a starting point to talk to people about the codebase.
Generally speaking:
1) Stick to bug-fixing for a good few weeks / months. This is invaluable for figuring out the mess and understanding why it is the way it is.
2) Ask questions - don't be afraid of asking basic questions if you think something looks silly. More often than not there's a reason.
3) Improve the code in small chunks, but be mindful that what you consider an improvement may not be.
4) Understand that working as a team means you will need to accommodate varying levels of skill.
5) Don't blame individuals for bad code. Leave that to your superiors.